Whisper

by Tal Bauer

  “Where are we going, Kris?” Ryan’s agitation was tangible, his jaw muscles clenching hard. “Where the fuck are we going?”

  Naji wouldn’t answer.

  They pulled off the dirt road and bounced over the rough, rocky track of the Afghanistan hills. Shale slipped beneath their tires. Ice crusted the edges of the truck’s chipped windshield.

  Hours later, Naji pulled up to a blasted, half-bombed brick building, squatting against the base of the mountains, nestled in the flinty foothills. The truck’s dim headlights caught on the figure of a lanky man in a salwar kameez and camouflage jacket, a bandolier, and a turban. He clutched an AK-47 and watched them drive closer, never blinking. Fighters in turbans, their faces covered, loitered around the blasted building.

  Over the team’s radio, Palmer ordered his men to raise their weapons, to take cover.

  “What the fuck is happening, Kris?” Ryan vibrated next to Kris in the truck. Kris could smell his fear, the stink of his adrenaline.

  Naji pointed to the man, the leader. “Shirzai,” he said. “Our commander.”

  “It’s our ally.” Kris put his hand over Ryan’s, fisting his handgun. He radioed the team. “This is Shirzai. Our contact.”

  When the trucks stopped, Kris was the first out, striding with Naji to Shirzai. “As-salaam-alaikum,” he said, one hand over his heart.

  “Wa alaikum as-salaam,” Shirzai responded. He eyed Palmer’s men, and Ryan and Jim, hanging back. “These are your fighters?”

  “The rest of our fighters are up in the sky. The Air Force and the Navy.”

  “Ahh, yes.” Shirzai smiled. His narrow face, hawkish with a beaked nose, creased in deep lines. “Your bombs.” He pointed up. His smile disappeared the next moment. “Your men will stay here. I have fighters guarding this place. The rest of my men, and Majid’s men, have pushed into the mountains. They are in the villages.” He pointed to the mountains, rising above them like claws ready to slash at them, destroy everything in a moment. Only the peaks shone, starlight reflecting off shimmering tips.

  “Majid?” Kris asked.

  “Another warlord. He will need one hundred thousand from you. Cash. Tomorrow.”

  Kris sighed. American foreign policy, again. “Nam.” Yes. “But not tomorrow.”

  Shirzai gazed at the darkness, squinting. “The Arabs have gone up the mountains,” he said. “Into the Black Dust.” The Black Dust. Also known as Tora Bora.

  Kris’s heart pounded. “We need to go up there. We need to find Bin Laden. You will you take us? Up into the mountains, to where we can find them?”

  “Yes. Yes, we will do this for you. Tomorrow, we will go up the mountains.”

  Daybreak dawned crisp and frigid, the frozen air shivering snowflakes in a dry dusting around their shattered forward base. It had been a long, chilly night.

  Shirzai had left with Naji the night before, disappearing on a bouncing track that took them up into the foothills. Ryan had kicked into command gear, throwing his weight right and left, barking orders at Jim and Kris and Palmer to get their forward operating base up and running. Palmer and his men had done what they could to reinforce the decrepit building. Everyone managed to catch a few hours of sleep before dawn, Palmer and his men keeping watch.

  Instead of the wail of the muezzin and the call to prayer, Kris woke to Ryan and George going back and forth over the radio.

  “How confident are you in the situation there? In Shirzai and his alliance?”

  “We’ve met Shirzai so far, and we’re rendezvousing with Majid, another warlord. We’re at the foothills of Tora Bora. Bin Laden is here. I know it,” Ryan insisted.

  “Take a forward team into the mountains. I want eyes on this al-Qaeda camp where he’s hiding out, and on his fighters. As soon as you do, radio back. I’ll bring the entire air power of the US military down on that camp.”

  “Yes, sir.” Ryan clicked off the radio.

  David appeared at Kris’s elbow, a thermos of hot coffee in one hand. “Morning.”

  The war had gone so fast, so furious, that Kris couldn’t remember getting more than four hours sleep in one stretch since before they had landed in Afghanistan. Since before September 11. He felt like something the subway had run over and dragged for three stops. David’s morning cups of shitty instant coffee, thick like tar and bitter enough to make his molars scrape together, were manna from heaven.

  “Thanks.”

  David, too, seemed exhausted. Looked exhausted. His eyes were sunken, deep, dark circles lining their orbits. His bags had developed bags, a double-layer paunch of exhaustion that aged him beyond the young thirties he was. Dirt creased in the furrows of his face, the lines of his frown and his cheeks above his beard. He smiled, though, as Kris sipped his coffee. “We built a fire out back and boiled some water. And—” He passed over an energy bar from an MRE. “Breakfast.”

  “Mmm, I actually miss the eggs fried in ghee and seared goat.”

  “You mean the shoe leather?”

  “I thought it was a bit like jerky.”

  David laughed. “Remember pancakes? And French toast?”

  “Mmm… There’s this diner on the Lower East Side, in my old neighborhood. Made the best pancakes. It was island flavor, a Spanish fusion hole-in-the-wall. The pancakes had a piña colada twist to them. Pineapple and coconut, with guava syrup and sliced mango.”

  “That sounds so fucking amazing.” David’s eyes were burning, miniature suns spinning in the blackness of space. “We’ll have to go there when we get back.”

  Kris’s smile faltered. “David—”

  “Everybody, listen up!” Ryan barked. “Gather around.”

  Frustration filled David’s gaze. He held out his hand, helping Kris stand. “Later, we’ll talk,” he said softly.

  “We’re moving out.” Ryan crouched in front of a map of Eastern Afghanistan, Jalalabad, and the Pakistan border. “Everyone but Caldera and Jim. We’re moving into the mountains with Shirzai and Majid.” He tapped on a village, high on the side of the tallest mountain. “Milawa, here, above the snow line. That’s where al-Qaeda’s base camp is. We need to get eyes on. Find him there.”

  David had gone ripcord taut, his spine straightening, muscles clenching, when Ryan said Kris wasn’t deploying forward.

  “Caldera, Jim.” Ryan glared at Kris, then addressed Jim. “You both will maintain Team Bravo base camp. We’ll be able to radio you, but no farther. You’re our link to the outside world. Kabul, CENTCOM, Langley, everything.”

  “What about translation? On the mountain, you’re going to need someone who speaks Dari.”

  “Majid speaks fluent Russian. He did time in a Siberian gulag for drug smuggling across the border during the Soviet invasion. I’ll provide translation for the forward team. Caldera, you’ll provide translation for the base camp.”

  He couldn’t argue with that, much as he wanted to scream and shout and rail at Ryan for leaving him behind. For taking David into the mountains. Separating them.

  They hadn’t been separated at all in this war. Not once. Every mission, every moment, they’d been together. The longest they’d gone apart was seven and a half hours in Kabul. And now David was going into Tora Bora, into the den of al-Qaeda, to hunt Bin Laden… alone.

  It wasn’t like Kris was David’s vanguard of personal security and safety. David’s entire team was with him, and Kris wasn’t a Special Forces soldier. Ryan was. He knew how to move, how to fight. Kris was a graduate of The Farm at Langley, and he could field strip an AK-47 and put it back together in under a minute, but he was no James Bond.

  But… the thought of being away from David’s side, especially now, at this moment, at this juncture, when everything they’d all planned for, worked for, had struggled and sacrificed for, was lining up like a constellation before them all…

  He didn’t want to be apart from David. Not in the quiet mornings, sharing terrible coffee, and not in the heat of combat, the electric chaos of battle. What did that say abou
t him?

  God, he’d gone and done it. He’d fallen for a teammate.

  What was David going to say to him before Ryan interrupted?

  “Caldera? When is Shirzai due to arrive?”

  Kris shook his head, scattering thoughts of David as far into the corners of his mind as he could. “He said he’ll come down from the village after morning prayers.”

  “He’ll be here soon, then.” Ryan stood, folding the map. “Everyone, get ready to move out. Once we go up the mountain, we’re not coming down until we have Bin Laden’s body.” He nodded to Palmer. “Captain, would you like to address your men?”

  Palmer stepped up, reminding his team to check and recheck their gear, and then do a complete weapons and ammo inventory. Kris watched as David’s expression hardened, turned to stone.

  After, he had to coordinate with Ryan and Jim on radio frequencies and secured channels and mandatory report-in times. By the time they were finished, Shirzai and Majid were rumbling down the track, dust rising behind their trucks in a thick cloud.

  Kris searched for David as his teammates repacked their gear and loaded their ammo into their combat vests, snapped their helmets into place, and fixed their radios and throat mics. They’d painted their faces with lines of dark camo paint and had transformed from the men Kris had joked around with, had laughed with, to fierce hunters.

  He spotted David slipping out back to the rocks behind their base camp.

  He followed.

  David waited for him. He reached for Kris, pulling him close. Their foreheads brushed. Kris smelled the coffee they’d shared and David’s musk, his sweat. He shivered.

  “Be careful,” Kris whispered. “This is…”

  Everything. What they’d come to Afghanistan for. The most dangerous mission they’d undertaken.

  Except, it wasn’t them undertaking it. It was David, without Kris.

  “I wish I could come with you,” he breathed.

  “You have to be careful here.” David’s gaze seared into Kris, burning his soul. His eyes were brighter now, suns going supernova, set against the blackness of his face paint.

  David had always been unreadable, a star fixed in the heavens, something Kris could see and feel but never touch, never know. He lived like he was an event horizon unto himself. Everything seemed to fall into David and get swallowed up in the churn of his heart, his soul. Kris had no idea, none at all, what was going on. What David thought, or even felt.

  “You and Jim, alone here. I don’t like it. Make sure you have tight security. Keep an eye on Shirzai’s guards. Be careful.” David’s hands closed around his. “Keep an extra weapon on you at all times.”

  Kris had his handgun strapped to his thigh and an AK-47 next to his pack. He nodded.

  “Kris… I’m coming back.” David’s voice rumbled.

  “You’d better.”

  David reached for him, for his cheek. His big hand cradled Kris, one thumb stroking his cheekbone. His hands were cold, dry, roughened from being in the field for six weeks. Kris tried to stop his whimper, his gasp, but he couldn’t. He melted into David’s touch, turned into his hand. His lips grazed David’s wrist, chapped skin barely kissing his pulse.

  “I’m coming back to you.”

  Finally, David let him see, when Kris looked into his eyes, everything. Desperate hunger, aching need, a raw, almost painful yank toward each other. Days and nights by each other’s side, David’s constant attention, his physical touch, the way their souls had curled into the other. “I’m coming back to you,” David whispered, his voice shaking. “If you want that.”

  Kris grabbed him, both hands wrapping around David’s face, his head, and pulled him the last inch until their lips met. Their lips were chapped, dry skin catching, and David tasted like bad coffee and Afghanistan’s dust, dust that clung to his mouth and his beard and his skin. But Kris didn’t care. He kissed David like he was trying to bring him back to life, trying to resuscitate his soul. Trying to merge, in some way give David a part of Kris to carry, bury a part of David inside of him. David’s arms wrapped round him, all the way around, encircling him and drawing Kris against David’s bigger, stronger body. He could spend forever in David’s arms, fall into David, live each day beginning and ending with David’s lips and his arms around him, just like this.

  “Haddad!”

  David pulled back, breaking their kiss. He didn’t let go of Kris.

  Palmer, leaning out of the building, stared at them. “We’re rolling out in five, Haddad. On the move.”

  “Yes, sir.” David never looked away from Kris. Palmer disappeared back inside.

  David’s face paint was smeared, black and green and brown smudged together around his lips and chin, his cheeks where Kris had grabbed him. “I’m sorry,” Kris breathed.

  David kissed him again, a soft peck on the lips. “I’m not.” He licked his lips. “I’ve wanted to kiss you for so long. I didn’t know if you— And it wasn’t the place, or the time.”

  This hardly was, either, at the penultimate moment of their hunt for Bin Laden. But what if everything went wrong after this moment? What if all their good luck, every roll of the dice that had come down in their favor, turned once David went into the mountains? What if this was all they ever had?

  “I’ll be waiting for you.”

  David smiled, and it was like watching the sunrise over the Hudson River in March, when the light struck the first buds of spring and the last snow melted into a dizzying spray of rainbows, and the air was bursting with potential, with everything that could ever happen in that one golden ray of perfect light. Forget that they were freezing, standing in dust and rock and dry snow, with wind whistling through the shattered mudbricks of their camp at the base of Bin Laden’s last stand in the mountains. Kris would remember this moment, this smile, this kiss, this feeling, for the rest of his days.

  A tinny horn honked. David cursed. “Gotta go.”

  They jogged back inside, David grabbing his pack and running to Shirzai’s trucks. Palmer and the rest of his team were loading up in the beds. Ryan sat in the lead truck, next to a scraggly fighter with one milky eye and a long, jagged cut, fresh and oozing blood, going down one side of his face. Ryan and the fighter spoke in fast Russian, gesturing back and forth to a map.

  “You, uh, have paint on your face.” Jim sidled up beside Kris. He waved to Kris’s mouth. “Might want to wipe that off before Ryan sees.” Jim’s lips quirked in a tiny smile.

  Kris scrubbed his jacket sleeve over his mouth, rubbing away streaks of green and brown and black just before Ryan hopped out of his truck and jogged over. He handed Kris a marked-up map, a duplicate of his own. “Here’s our route. Shirzai and Majid say we’re staying off the main roads ’cause they’re mined. We’re driving to this mountain, and then hiking up the rest of the way.”

  “We’ll wait for your radio check-ins. Be safe.”

  Ryan studied Kris. “You too,” he finally said. Turning, he jogged back to the truck.

  “Good luck!” Kris called as the trucks pulled out, skittering on rocks and shale. Jim ducked back inside, but Kris watched the trucks slide along the track and climb the rough trail up the mountain until he couldn’t see their dust cloud any longer.

  Chapter 11

  Tora Bora, Afghanistan

  November 26, 2001

  “Just over those rocks. Point the laser down, right on top of them.”

  Ryan’s voice whispered into David’s earpiece as he crawled on his belly up the ice-crusted stone of Tora Bora’s tallest peak. He breathed hard through his mouth, trying to suck up all the oxygen in the air. At almost twelve thousand feet, the air was thin and frigidly cold. His nose ran constantly. His lips were cracked, bleeding.

  It had taken four days to climb to the al-Qaeda camp at Milawa. Shirzai, Majid, and their rabble of fighters had led them up the shale slopes, through farms that seemed trapped in the Middle Ages, primitive villages and communities that hadn’t seen a foreigner ever. David and
his team might as well have been aliens. The Afghan farmers stared at them like they weren’t even human.

  Up they’d climbed, farther and farther, passing through the snow line and into shin-deep drifts, at times plunging down to their thighs. Scraggly trees stretched for the sky, and frost clung to the boulders, tree trunks, even their packs and their clothes.

  Earlier that morning, Shirzai had led them to an overlook above a valley, beside a mountain peak that cast long shadows over the hills and the farms. They’d been climbing into the peak’s dark hollows for days.

  Majid had pointed to a military camp, built into the side of the mountain and covered in snowdrifts. Mudbrick buildings lay scattered along the ridgelines. Flat spaces around the homes looked like fields for crops, now covered in snow. An unused obstacle course squatted between three structures that looked like warehouses or barracks. Lookout posts and gun turrets were manned by guards watching over the valley.

  “They do not look up,” Majid had said, smiling. “Only down. This is why we came this way.”

  Ryan had barely been able to contain himself. “This is Milawa?” he’d asked. Everyone had seen the shine of his eyes, the bloodthirsty gleam.

  “Da,” Majid had said. “Milawa. Al-Qaeda’s base camp in Tora Bora.”

  Ryan and Palmer had dispatched them all to observation points above the camp, ringing the mountain’s peak. Cover was sparse, just snow and rocks and scraggly trees. They’d moved slowly, hauling the laser-guided targeting system as carefully as they could.

  To call in air strikes, they needed laser-targeted coordinates to feed to their fighter pilots. The jets’ bombs would ride the laser down, a perfect strike.

  But in order to paint their targets, they needed to be close. Especially in the mountains.

  David and his partner, Jackson, slid to the boulders perched at the top of a rise overlooking the Milawa camp. They ditched their packs and crouched, peering over the rocks. “We’ve got eyes on,” David radioed back to Ryan. He listened to the other two teams—Warrick and Cobb, Rodriquez and Palmer—ringing the camp report in. He couldn’t see them, but he knew they were there.