by Brad Thor
The four boys standing above her in her small, mud cell were repeating it in an effort to build up their courage. For what, she had no idea, but she knew that it wouldn’t be good. She was being held by the Taliban, that much she had ascertained, and Taliban children were raised on extremist videos. They were subjected from ages as young as three years old to videos of suicide bombings, beheadings, torture, and rape. It was a diet of unadulterated horror that served to desensitize them to violence and inoculate them against having any pity whatsoever for their enemies. Gallo had no illusions about how they viewed her. She was their enemy.
In less than a week of captivity, she had become an emotional and physical wreck. They kept her in a room twelve feet long by eight feet wide. The room had one window, which had been nailed shut and covered over on the outside by a piece of canvas. Her only connection with the world outside was a small ventilation hole the circumference of a Coke can cut into the bottom of one of the walls near the floor. Through it she could make out a small tree of some sort in the foreground and a narrow mountain valley beyond.
Lying on her stomach studying the tree and the small sliver of valley was the only thing that kept her from losing her mind.
Using the tree, she marked the passage of the hours based on the shadows cast by its slim trunk and twiglike branches. She counted its buds and wondered if she would still be here, still be alive, when the tree bloomed. She marveled at how despite being a doctor and understanding the science of life, she had never really stopped to appreciate it. There was a bitter irony in coming to finally value and understand it only to be on the verge of losing it.
Gallo subsisted on the meager amount of food she was given once a day—short, ropy pieces of beef, scraps of nan bread, or almonds, washed down with lukewarm tea. For her bodily functions, there was a hole in the floor on the opposite side of the room.
A narrow wooden bed with a thin blanket was the only furniture she enjoyed, and at night the temperatures fell so low, Gallo wondered if she was more likely to die from hypothermia than at the hands of the Taliban.
She knew why she had been taken. Sayed had been right. The Taliban were going to make an example of her. She had pushed her luck too far and it had finally run out.
The Taliban had interrogated her mercilessly upon her arrival. They had called her a spy and had threatened to execute her. Why they had not yet done so was a mystery, but she had read enough accounts of kidnappings in Afghanistan to know that it could take time before they finally dealt with her. That was the way things worked here. They could be incredibly cruel, like cats that had caught a mouse. They delighted in seeing their captives suffer.
Julia had been required to take a security preparedness class in the United States before leaving for CARE’s mission in Afghanistan. She learned about what to do and what not to do and that kidnappers could keep better control of you if they kept you frightened and off balance. She tried not only to remember the training she had received about how to handle being a kidnap victim, but also why she had come to this country in the first place.
Julia had come to Afghanistan because she wanted to help its people. She now realized that she had also come in search of adventure, even danger. The longer she had been in-country, the bolder she had become, and in becoming bolder she had taken up an extremely provocative cause. Though she deeply believed in what she was encouraging Afghan women to do, she now had time to truly examine her motives. Would she have been as passionate if her trips into the countryside didn’t serve to heighten her sense of danger?
Looking death in the eye, she could no longer delude herself. She had been addicted to the danger. She justified the risk by focusing on the people she claimed to be helping. She reveled in the awe her peers back in Kabul showered upon her for traveling so far outside the relative safety of an already unsafe city. She was a smart woman and should have known much better.
Life in Afghanistan was an extremely dangerous gamble. She hadn’t needed to go looking for trouble. Working at the CARE hospital in Kabul was dangerous enough. Afghanistan wasn’t some drive-through safari park where as long as you kept the windows rolled up and the doors locked you’d come out unscathed.
She had pushed her luck further than she should have, and the crushing isolation she had since been subjected to, and the promise of a very unpleasant fate, only drove the point home. But of course, now Sayed was dead and it was too late.
Julia wondered if her mother knew what had happened. Certainly, the CARE International doctors were aware that she and Sayed had gone out and had not returned. The question, though, was whether they even knew where to begin searching for her. By Gallo’s calculations, they were at least three, maybe four hours away from where she and Sayed had been ambushed. A bag had been placed over her head and her watch had been taken away, so she had no idea how long they had traveled before reaching wherever they now were.
The door to her cell had been repeatedly kicked open, both day and night. She never knew when anyone was going to materialize in its frame and she tried to keep her headscarf wrapped around her head at all times. When the men did enter, she kept her eyes cast down toward the floor. Her heart palpitated and she had trouble taking deep breaths. It was like living through one prolonged panic attack.
Intermingled with the feelings of terror and loneliness were the sorrow and guilt over Sayed’s murder. While she tried to push the image of him from her mind, it always found a way back in. They had killed him in cold blood and she knew they were capable of that and worse toward her.
The chanting of the young boys increased in intensity. Gallo steeled herself for what was going to happen. Being in captivity, she had not taken her birth control pills recently and then almost laughed out loud at herself for the concern. Getting pregnant was the least of her problems at this moment.
She looked at the young boys and recalled the high level of homosexual activity among the Taliban. There was an old fable that said that birds flew over Taliban territory with only one wing because they needed the other to guard their rectums.
One of the boys reached his hand out to touch her breast. Reflexively, Gallo slapped it away. The other boys laughed, and the first boy’s face flushed red. Julia couldn’t be sure whether it was embarrassment or anger.
The boy, who couldn’t be more than sixteen, drew his hand back and struck her hard across the mouth. Julia tasted blood. The other boys laughed and the chanting began again in earnest. When the boy reached out to touch her breast again, Julia didn’t stop him.
When he made contact his hand crushed down like a vise. Julia winced and bit down on her lip to keep from crying out. His grasp was amazingly strong.
She almost felt that she deserved this—that this was the price she must pay for having gotten Sayed killed.
As the boy’s other hand clamped down on her opposite breast, Julia willed her mind to leave her body. She wanted to travel as far away as possible.
She had made it to a small village in the south of France where she had vacationed after graduating medical school when the sound of the door being kicked open pulled her back to her tiny cell.
Standing in the doorway was the mentally challenged man who had been feeding her. In his hands he held the cardboard box he always carried. Slung over his shoulder was a rifle, its barrel covered with tape. On his feet was a pair of new basketball shoes.
Upon seeing the boys in the room, the man set down his box and unslung his rifle.
He pointed it at the boys, but it had no effect. They weren’t scared.
The man repeated a Pashtu phrase Julia was familiar with. “Lar sha. Lar sha!” Go away.
The boy gripping Julia’s breasts called the man over to the bed. He approached slowly and looked confused.
The boy let go of one of Julia’s breasts and motioned for the man to put his hand in its place. The man shuffled forward and Julia resigned herself to the fact that what was about to happen might turn out to be worse than she had imagined. Fighting bac
k the nausea rising in her throat, she prepared her mind to return to the south of France.
The man studied the situation as the boy and the others behind him egged him on. The chant of whore, whore, whore in Pashtu was taken up again, and he looked at Julia with an emotion she couldn’t quite decipher. Then he lowered his rifle, and she closed her eyes for what would happen next.
But it didn’t happen. With amazing force, the man snapped his rifle straight up. There was a crack as the butt of the weapon connected with the boy’s jaw.
Spinning, the man raised the weapon as high as he could and began beating the other boys. They shouted curses at him and he shouted right back, but none of them raised a hand to strike him.
He hit them repeatedly against their backs and shoulders as they dragged their dazed friend from the room and ran.
Once they had gone, the man slung his rifle, reached down, and helped Julia up. He was incredibly strong for his small size. He helped her to the bed and took her chin in one of his rough hands.
He turned her face from side to side, examining her split lip, and then let her go.
Returning to his cardboard box, he unpacked her paltry meal and muttered to himself repeatedly the Pashtu word for bad.
Julia had never spoken to the man. Each time he had entered to bring her food, she had kept her eyes cast toward the floor. She had remained quiet, her goal to appear meek and unthreatening. The last thing she wanted was to draw the ire of her kidnappers.
But now that the local boys had made their intentions clear, she needed to make sure she was protected from them.
While far from the stereotypical knight in shining armor, the mentally challenged man had come to her rescue once. Would he do so again?
The man appeared to take his job very seriously—unceremoniously kicking her door in at all hours in some form of surprise inspection. She had no idea if the kicking was necessitated by a sticking door or if it was designed to keep her on edge. If it was the latter, it was working. Every time the door crashed open, Julia’s heart raced into the red zone. She never had any idea who was on the other side or what their intentions were. Were they coming to kill her? Beat her? Rape her? The not knowing had frayed the nerves of the normally cool and collected doctor right to their bitter ends.
“Stan a shukria,” she said. Thank you.
The man in the basketball shoes acted as if he didn’t hear her.
“Sta noom tse dai?” she asked. What’s your name? “My name is Julia,” she said. “I’m a doctor.”
Doctors were revered in Afghanistan and she hoped that if her kidnappers could see her as someone who could provide value to them, they might think twice about killing her. Though her Pashtu was limited, it was passable.
But despite her attempt to communicate, the man continued to mutter to himself.
After laying everything out, he gathered up his box, tucked it under his arm, and headed for the door.
“Stan a shukria,” Julia repeated.
As he reached the door, the man stopped. He then spun so quickly that he startled Julia, and she shrank into the corner.
He stepped quickly, almost violently across the room and shoved his hand into his pocket.
When he pulled it out, he held two Afghan sweets known as dashlama in his upturned palm. Suddenly very timid, like a little boy feeding an animal at a petting zoo, he offered them to Julia.
Slowly, she crept forward and reached her hand out to take the sweets.
The man watched and then motioned with his fingers to place them in her mouth.
Julia placed one of the candies on her tongue. The man smiled, but as soon as the smile appeared it was replaced by a frown.
He returned to muttering the Pashtu word for bad and left the room, slamming the door on the way out.
CHAPTER 13
KABUL
Baba G’s Afghan National Police contact, Inspector Ahmad Ra-shid, had picked a small restaurant in an obscure part of the city that rarely, if ever, saw any white people.
Based on how violent things had become in Kabul, Gallagher advised that they go native. They wore the salwar kameez—the baggy cotton trousers and loose-fitting tunics—as well as the pakol hats upon their heads and patoo blankets over their shoulders to combat the intense cold that would build in the late afternoon as soon as the sun started to dip behind the mountains.
After changing into his Afghan clothes, Harvath stopped in Hoyt’s room to access his “safety deposit box” and then stepped out into the courtyard. Gallagher looked him up and down and reminded him to leave his sunglasses behind. Few things in Afghanistan screamed, “I’m a Westerner, shoot me,” louder than a pair of shades, and that went double if they were Oakleys.
“Thanks, Greg,” said Harvath. “But this isn’t my first rodeo.”
Gallagher laughed. “I’m so used to carting civilians around that it just becomes second nature to tick off all the boxes. Let me see your walk.”
“My Afghan walk?”
Baba G nodded.
“Then what? A bathing suit contest and the talent portion of the show?” remarked Harvath. “I’ve got it. Don’t worry about it.”
Gallagher wasn’t giving in. “We’re not driving into downtown Detroit, buddy. TIA, remember?”
Harvath shook his head. He was as detail-minded as the next guy, but Gallagher took things to a whole new level. He had learned long ago not to argue with him. They’d get on the road a lot faster if he simply gave the man what he wanted.
Harvath tucked his hands behind his back beneath the patoo, leaned forward, and began the slow, shambling Afghan walk. At the edge of the small courtyard, he turned and came back. “Are we good?”
“I’ll make sure to park as close to the restaurant as possible,” he replied.
“Up yours,” said Harvath.
* * *
Once they were in the Land Cruiser and Baba G had it started, Harvath cracked another can of Red Bull and cranked the heater up as far as it would go. His jet lag had made him extra susceptible to the cold.
“You can monkey with that all you want,” admonished Gallagher. “It won’t do any good until the engine heats up.”
“Really?” Harvath replied as he took another sip of Red Bull.
Baba G was about to explain when he realized that Harvath was being facetious. For a moment, he had forgotten who he was with. Harvath had used humor to deal with good situations and bad for as long as he had known him. He decided to change the subject. “How’s Tracy doing?”
Harvath had been so exhausted, he honestly hadn’t thought much about her since he’d landed in Kabul. He’d learned a long time ago that one of the keys to being successful and staying alive in his line of work was the ability to compartmentalize. If you couldn’t put the rest of your life in a box and keep a lid on it while you were in the field, this wasn’t the career for you.
Gallagher was an old friend, though, and the question wasn’t out of bounds. Still, the relationship with Tracy was complicated. “She’s good,” he replied.
“Are her headaches any better?”
This was where things got complicated. Tracy had been shot almost two years ago by someone with a very serious vendetta against Harvath. She had survived and recovered, but not 100 percent. The doctors had advised her to avoid stress as much as possible. There had been little to no stress in Maine. In fact, they had joked that it had been like spending the winter inside a snow globe. But the net effect on Tracy’s headaches had been negligible. She still got them and when she did, she had to pop some pretty strong medication to beat them back. Tracy was tough and she refused to give up. She also, however, refused to move forward.
An ex–Navy Explosive Ordnance Disposal technician, she had seen danger up close and had even had an IED she was defusing detonate prematurely and take one of her eyes. The doctors had matched it perfectly and you had to look very closely to notice any of the scarring her face had suffered. Lesser people would have given up, but not Tracy, and Scot
admired the hell out of her for that.
Where she refused to move forward was in their relationship. Harvath wanted to get married and Tracy didn’t. She knew how badly Scot wanted children and she just didn’t think she could handle the headaches and kids. They were engaged in a quiet stalemate and had been most of the winter.
On the job front, Harvath couldn’t have hoped for a person more understanding or supportive of his career. Tracy was content keeping the home fires burning for as long as his assignments took him wherever they took him. She appreciated both the danger and the fact that this work was what he was born to do. She would never make him decide between being with her or pursuing his career. Tracy allowed him both. What she asked in return was to accept their relationship as it was and to not ask her to make any changes.
It sounded reasonable, but the longer he and Tracy were together, the more he realized what a great mother she would be—even with the headaches. Harvath wanted kids and he wanted to have them with her. He still held out hope, as dim as he knew it was, that Tracy might change her mind and come around.
“The headaches are still the same,” said Harvath. “Regularly irregular and when they come they’re pretty tough.”
“Have you guys seen any specialists?”
“Tons,” replied Harvath as he took another sip of Red Bull.
“That sucks,” said Gallagher.
Harvath attempted to change the subject. “How long have you known this police inspector we’re going to see?”
“Ahmad?” asked Gallagher as he did the math in his head. “About three years now.”
“And you trust him?”
Baba G laughed. “If I didn’t, we wouldn’t be going to Kabul’s version of South Central LA for this meeting. Don’t worry. He’s good people.”
Don’t worry. It was a funny piece of advice coming from the man who had insisted upon seeing Harvath’s “Afghan walk.”
“Normally, we just meet to gossip. Sometimes, we trade pieces of intelligence. This is the first time I’m going to offer him money for something.”