Whisper

by Tal Bauer

  Hesitation. David stared into Kris’s eyes, deep into his gaze.

  Kris reached for him. His hand shook.

  Silently, David slid into the sleeping bag beside Kris, their bodies aligning, folding into each other. A sob caught in Kris’s chest, and fresh tears spilled over the edges of his eyelashes. Arms wound around him, held him close. “It’s not your fault,” David whispered. “It’s madness, it’s hatred, it’s murder, plain and simple. It’s history that got all fucked up. It’s a thousand things other than you. It’s not you, Kris.”

  Kris pressed his face into David’s neck and, for the first time, let himself weep.

  Chapter 8

  Panjshir Valley, Afghanistan

  October 14, 2001

  “We came here thinking we’d be with the Shura Nazar until April, getting them up to strength. Well, good news. They’re already there. With a little more money, more ammo, and supplies, they’re actually quite fierce. They just need a little extra oomph.” Ryan briefed the team as they sat in the nerve center, struggling against exhaustion.

  Ryan grinned, the Special Forces warrior rising within him, poking through the CIA officer. “So, we change the war. We strike first, and we strike now.”

  Everyone sat up, suddenly awake, focused on what Ryan was saying.

  “CENTCOM is going to begin bombing the areas we’ve designated on all fronts.” Ryan deigned to nod toward Kris and David, sitting together at the back of the semicircle next to the radios and Phillip. They’d mapped the northern front like they’d mapped the Shomali Plain, ducking mortar fire and artillery rounds for three days as they snaked through the mountains with General Hajimullah. “When the first bombs drop, the war will begin.”

  George took over. “CENTCOM’s strategic plan is to bomb the Taliban into such an obliterated state that the Shura Nazar can walk right over them. Estimates put the capture of Kabul occurring within days of the first push by the Shura Nazar and General Khan.” He fixed each of them with a long stare. “Which means we need to be ready to move fast. Stay ahead of the fighting and make sure we’re identifying, targeting, capturing, and/or killing senior al-Qaeda members. We capture anyone who can lead us higher for interrogation. We kill the leaders.”

  “We fight now, or we’re stuck here through the winter.” As Ryan spoke again, icy wind whistled through the cracks in their compound. Frozen mud clung to their boots. They were all in their warmest clothes, dressed in layers, but it wasn’t enough. The concrete box they were living in was a freezer. They could see their breaths, big puffs in front of their faces.

  It would be a long, miserable winter locked in the valley, with no evacuation and no resupply until the snows melted.

  Unless they won the war early.

  “Is everyone ready? Really ready for this?” George went around the room, asking everyone individually. Twelve people, George’s team and Palmer’s, deciding to start a war.

  Kris was the last to speak. “Yes.” George gave him a ghost of a smile.

  “Then that’s it. I’ll tell Langley we are ready for CENTCOM to begin combat operations.”

  Excitement flooded the valley, electrified the Shura Nazar. Khan drove up personally and shook George and Ryan’s hands, inviting them to feast with him and to watch the bombs fall. George accepted, and after Khan left for the afternoon, he pulled Kris aside and asked for specific advice on how to be a better guest and friend of Khan’s.

  Ghasi and Fazl appeared later in the afternoon, buzzing about the imminent combat. “Would you like to watch the bombs? The news reports? We can build a satellite to capture the TV signal,” Fazl offered. Reporters were embedded with the Shura Nazar forces along the front and in occupied Kabul, and just like in the Gulf War, there would be grainy video footage of the bombs falling and flaming clouds rising into the dark night.

  Ryan’s eyes boggled. “What took you so long to ask? Hell yes! Here, I’ll help you make it!”

  Within hours, Ghasi and Fazl taught Ryan, who’d brought in Jim and Phillip, how to make an Afghanistan satellite dish. Flattened beer cans, completely illegal in the country, were bent around Chinese rebar left over from half-finished reconstruction projects into a crude metal saucer. Odds and ends of wires were strung together, loops tied and twisted into a spaghetti array. Phillip managed to get it linked to their power system, creating a power cord from scratch and connecting it to the generator.

  Khan arrived just after evening prayers with his staff and a banquet for the team. They ate together, everyone jovial and exuberant at the thought of the war finally beginning in just a few hours. It seemed impossible that it was all coming together.

  They all gathered around the satellite and the boxy, static-filled TV after dark on the roof. Khan’s men watched with binoculars to the south. British commentators from the BBC narrated the anxiety-filled darkness, the patch of black that was Afghanistan on the grainy TV, as everyone waited for the first strike.

  “It will be the end of the Taliban,” Khan said. “My forces are ready to move at dawn. Afghanistan will be liberated at last.”

  The first flash appeared in the sky, a yellow blink that seared the clouds. Another. And another. Cheers rose, and the team clapped and hugged as Khan’s men cried Allahu Akbar to the sky and held each other as they cried tears of joy.

  David wrapped an arm around Kris’s shoulders and held on, not letting go. Kris rested his head on David’s shoulder.

  No one said a word.

  The revelation of Kris’s secret, the sharing of his burden, his anguish, had bridged them together in a way he hadn’t expected. He’d thought David would discard him, drop him like the trash he was, pull back in revulsion. He was a monster, a murderer. No better than the hijackers themselves.

  David had held him through every tear, through every “but”, until he’d exhausted himself, was nothing but a bag of bones and snot. When the moon had set, he’d started to whisper, breathing into Kris’s ear. “I felt like this before. When I was a kid. Something happened. And, I knew it was my fault, all of it. I knew it. If I’d been better, if I’d done something different. But I had to convince myself, I wasn’t the one who pulled the trigger.”

  He’d stared at the line of David’s jaw, the scruffy beard there.

  “I thought the same after Mogadishu. How many died because I wasn’t good enough? Didn’t do my job right? I failed, and those deaths are on me. Right?”

  “That’s not true—” Kris had sputtered, between his sniffles.

  “Then it’s not true for you, either. Not in this.”

  David had held him until dawn, when the intrusion of the sunlight forced them out of their shared sleeping bag.

  Every night since, David had cradled him as they slept.

  Kris didn’t know what that meant. He knew what he wanted it to mean. But he was exhausted, run through with the invasion, strained until he was nearly broken. He didn’t have any bandwidth left to wonder about David, about the way David looked at him. About how his face curled into Kris’s neck in the middle of the night, and how their hands found each other’s when their eyes were closed.

  Was it comfort? Simply human need, the pull to connect to someone in their upside-down world? God knew he’d read lip-biting stories when he was a high schooler about soldiers seeking illicit comfort in the arms of their brothers. He’d jacked off to fantasies like that when he was a teen. But now that he was living it—

  He just couldn’t puzzle through the mystery of David, not while bombs were lighting up Afghanistan and David was holding onto him like he was a shield against the darkness.

  “A month after September eleventh. Here we fucking are.” Ryan and George shared their own hug, muttering into each other’s ears as they hugged like they were grappling.

  Khan’s radio chirped.

  The first reports from the front trickled in, anxiety-filled Dari from the Shura Nazar spotters.

  Khan’s disappointment, his frustration, his look of disgust tinged with exhaustion, h
it Kris like a punch to the gut. Even George froze.

  “Your bombs have hit only their storage depots! Old staging grounds! Empty compounds! Your bombs have hit nothing!” Khan bellowed in his stilted English. Rage silvered Khan’s eyes, made them shine in the night. “After your mapping! Your insistence that you would destroy the Taliban!”

  “They were supposed to hit the front line!” George went pale, as white as the moon.

  “Nothing on the front has been hit! The Taliban, al-Qaeda, they are rejoicing at your stupidity!”

  “General, this is not what we were told. Our bombers were supposed to strike front line targets. Take out everyone in your way.”

  “More American duplicity! Lies!” Khan cursed, but the fight seemed to go out of him. He sagged, sighing as he shook his head. “I put my trust in you Americans time and time again. Always, the same outcome. You never keep your word. Never.”

  “No, not always. We’re friends.” George scrambled, reaching for Khan’s hand. Khan didn’t accept. He stayed still, a silent statue. “We brought food. The aid drop, it went great. We can bring more. I’ll schedule more food, more supplies for your people. We are friends, General.”

  Khan stared him down. “You will do that, and you will destroy the Taliban like you said you would. Or you will leave my country.”

  Days later, and the nightly bombing runs from the US fighters were still weak. Taliban radio intercepts laughed uproariously at the pitiful might of the Americans, the unintelligence of the most powerful nation on earth bombing dust-filled, abandoned shacks into oblivion.

  George and Ryan railed at Langley on the satellite, almost every hour. George had Kris on the calls, too, since he was still the main liaison with General Khan. “The Shura Nazar expect our bombs to raze the earth, Clint! They expect the sun to be blocked by the number of our bombers!”

  “They are going to have to adjust their expectations, perhaps permanently.”

  “What the fuck does that mean?”

  “Look, the Russians, the Pakistanis, and the Iranians are making noise about the Shura Nazar taking over Kabul. They think General Khan and his fighters are going to slaughter the Pashtun minority once they’re in power. Your Shura Nazar forces are mostly ethnic Tajiks. You ready to put a different ethnic tribe in power? History shows what happens next.”

  “General Khan has absolutely no plans to engage in ethnic cleansing.” Kris’s voice shook as he spoke up. “The Tajiks and Pashtuns have existed together for centuries. The Pakistanis just don’t want to lose their influence in Kabul. ISI in Pakistan props up the Taliban, you know that!” Oh, the twisted web of international relations: Pakistan was America’s ally today, the Taliban’s yesterday. Maybe their ally still.

  “The president is working to ensure the UN takes control of Kabul. You have to get your Shura Nazar forces to stay outside of the city. We won’t move forward unless they agree to stop advancing on Kabul.”

  Kris’s stomach sank. Khan would be furious. More than furious, he would be betrayed. His entire life had been forged around securing Kabul, on saving his country and his people. The team, Kris, and by extension the Americans, were there to help him do just that.

  There was no way he could tell Khan that he wasn’t allowed to take Kabul. That men in briefing rooms on the other side of the world were changing his fate, curtailing his destiny. Kris shook his head at George, not saying a word.

  “We’ll discuss that here, Clint. That’s a big fucking ask, though. For someone we’ve spent Goddamn weeks convincing we’re his allies that he can trust.”

  “We can find another warlord, George. There are dozens. He’s a tool, a means to an end. We can find a new tool.”

  Kris walked away, frustration building in him until he wanted to lash out, cut Williams down, kick a chair, scream about the trickle-down effect of constant American lies and a foreign policy of duplicity and double-talk, of changing sides when it suited their mercurial mission. This is why the world hates us. This is why Khan is waiting for our betrayal.

  George growled something and ended the call. “Kris…”

  “We can’t turn on General Khan. We just can’t.”

  “I know.” For a moment, George looked like he’d been stabbed, like he was facing the worst possible decision in his life. “I think I have another way.”

  Panjshir Valley, Afghanistan

  October 20, 2001

  Snow flurries blasted Kris’s face as Derek spun up their helo. He squinted. David shifted, sliding the bulk of his shoulder in front of Kris, as if he could block the onslaught. As Derek lifted off, David and Kris sat with their legs dangling out of the open cargo door, the wind and the snow blitzing past them. David’s arm wrapped around Kris’s waist, out of sight and hidden beneath Kris’s jacket.

  Afghanistan’s weather had turned, shifting from the chill of autumn to a frigid winter that locked the country in an icy stalemate. Snow fell in the Panjshir, storms that left inches on the ground and turned the dirt to sucking, ice-filled mud. In the mountains, blanketed peaks closed the pass to Tajikistan by land and by air.

  As they flew to the Shomali, descending in altitude, the snows grew lighter. At the front, the snow had softened the harsh mountains and craggy hillsides, blunted the bare, desiccated earth. From the air, it almost looked serene, peaceful.

  Derek dropped them near Khan’s compound. Khan wasn’t there to meet them. One of his deputies, a major who spoke only Russian, guided them to a jeep that bounced and slid down the snowy track to the front. The snow slowly vanished, stretching until it turned to frozen dust.

  Khan was in a forward-fighting position between two of his soldiers, peering across the Shomali Plain through a pair of binoculars. “Gul Bahar,” he called, not looking back. “Do you see what I see?”

  “I see the Taliban, General.”

  “Exactly!” Khan twisted, glaring at him and David. “They are all there, hundreds of Taliban positions and foreign fighters, al-Qaeda embedded within them! Your bombs have hit nothing! The Taliban laugh every morning when they wake and nothing has been damaged.”

  He climbed out of the fighting position and strode right up to Kris. “Gul Bahar… My men are ready. I am ready. We can take Kabul as soon as you break the Taliban lines. My men, they will not last another winter in these snows, in these mountains.” He looked up and down his lines at his fighters. “If your country does not fulfill your promise, we will attack the Taliban. We will not wait. We cannot wait, not any longer.”

  Kris swallowed. David shifted, pressing into his side, silent support. “General, that will be suicide.”

  “What choice do I have? Your country has abandoned me and my men.”

  “No, we haven’t. We have a plan to help.” Kris squared his shoulders. “We need to start laser-targeting the Taliban positions, General.”

  Khan frowned.

  “We’re here with a laser-guided targeting system that communicates directly with our pilots. We can paint each target with this laser, and then—” He smiled, patting the backpack David held. “The bombs will go exactly where they are supposed to go.”

  A new light glittered in Khan’s gaze. “How soon can we begin?”

  “Take us to Bagram. To the very front, General.”

  Khan piled them into his truck, but he dismissed the fleet of vehicles and the guards who had ridden with them before. “We will be riding through the Shomali. The Taliban attack anything they can down there, and they hold a ridgeline to the south. I won’t give them too many targets.”

  Khan’s driver pushed the pedal to the floorboards. The old engine whined, coughed, and spewed dirt as the truck’s wheels spun, sliding on melting snow and mud. Door panels rattled, windows shivered and shook almost hard enough to fracture. They slipped down Khan’s front lines, down the hillside, and dropped into the Shomali.

  Desiccated earth, the dust of a ceaseless famine, blustered by the truck. Snow blown down from the mountains mixed with the dust, creating an alien landscape
, a desolate expanse of dead land. Crops had long withered, whatever vegetation long shelled by bombs and turned to craters and ash. Broken villages and the remnants of homes littered the windswept land.

  “The Taliban punished the Shomali when they first took power. The Plain, it resisted. So the Taliban smashed the farms, destroyed the homes. Burned villages to the ground. They blew up the water pipes and dams and poisoned the wells. Murdered anyone who did not fall into line.” Khan nodded to the devastation.

  David was ripcord taut next to him.

  “Even Allah has forgotten Afghanistan,” Khan rumbled. “Now there is no water, no food. The people starve and the animals die.” Weariness weighed heavily on the general, etched into the growl of his voice.

  An hour later, Khan guided his driver to the northern side of Bagram Airfield. It rose from the Shomali like a concrete ghost town, decrepit bunkers and shattered buildings, twisted rebar and broken glass, an apocalyptic nightmare.

  Khan’s driver stopped at a line of low bunkers reinforced with sandbags along the front. He stayed in the bunkers’ shadows.

  Kris poked his head around the side of one. A long runway stretched toward the south end of the airfield. More bunkers hovered at the end of the runway, sandbags and a dirt berm beside them.

  “That, Gul Bahar, is the Taliban. We are one runway away, here. The front line goes across this airfield.” He pointed to the northern end of the base, where the ravaged pillar of the air traffic control tower still stood, windows long blown out. “But we have the high ground.”

  Three cracks sounded, fast snaps that broke the cold air. Whizzes whistled by. Dust sprayed off the bunker wall.