Khadija checked his pulse. Nothing. She went to her knees and began compressions, but bullets stopped her. She threw herself down as the projectiles slammed into the rear of the Jeep.
Michael. If she couldn’t save Amidullah, she had to save him. The glint of a familiar-looking vial sent her scrambling for it. She grabbed it, rolled it over in her hand.
Chloramphenicol. For once what she needed was to hand. She fished in the litter of medical supplies for a syringe.
Allah, let this help. Let him live.
Syringe filled, she stabbed it into Michael’s left arm. Let the bacteria that was eating him not have developed immunity.
The Jeep flew down the road, Safit sitting low in his seat against the bullets that came at them. Amidullah’s weapon lay against her thigh. She had to do something. She wrestled the weapon from the dead man and held it to her shoulder. Use it?
With no returning gunfire, Hashemi’s men were gaining on them—were now no more than a hundred feet away—and with each yard their aim was improving. If Safit was hit, then they’d all be dead. She fought for balance and pulled the weapon tight into her shoulder, bracing herself against the seatback. The weight felt strange in her arms, the black metal, slick. Evil.
She trained the muzzle on the Jeep, found the trigger, and pulled. Nothing. There was something that stopped these things from firing. Otherwise just bouncing in such a vehicle could set them off. There. A small switch by the magazine.
She pulled the weapon back to her shoulder as someone loosed a barrage of bullets at her. Her Jeep careened wildly, but stayed on the road. Safit—had he been hit?
She fought for balance, aimed for the engine—she did not want to kill—and pulled the trigger. The recoil beat into her shoulder, bounced in her hands, tore at her fingers, and she almost let go. She jerked her finger off the trigger, but she had already done her damage.
The windscreen exploded—her shot had gone high. The vehicle shot sideways—towards the cliff face away from the river. It slammed into the rock fall. The engine hood accordioned, but the vehicle’s speed didn’t allow it to stop. The driver’s side drove up onto the rocks, drove along the cliff, and then caught, twisted. The vehicle hung in the air, then slammed down on its side, skidding to a stop broadside across the road.
Safit kept the Jeep going as Khadija looked at the weapon in her bloody hands. She had killed. She gazed at Amidullah still sprawled across the back, his blood spreading in the bottom of the Jeep. Another bullet had caught his right shoulder, so his right arm hung only by a shred of skin. She had caused something like that.
Numb, she collapsed back into the rear of the Jeep. She set the safety and dropped the machine gun, then looked at Michael. He lay in a widening pool of blood and she feared the bullets had caught him, too. She checked him.
ABCs. His airway was clear. His chest still rose and fell and his pulse still ran strong. She ran her hands along his body, his arms and legs, checking for wounds. There was only Amidullah’s blood—nothing she could do about that, except get rid of the body.
She slumped back against the seat back as the Jeep slowed, came to a stop, and the engine died. Safit didn’t move. She swung around to him, then clambered forward over the seat.
Safit lay over the steering wheel, a bloody hole as large as Khadija’s fist in his upper back.
“Safit?” She climbed into the passenger seat.
He turned his head and smiled at her, a sweet smile of youth.
“They kill me.”
Then his eyes closed and his breath wheezed in his chest. Khadija scrambled to grab the medical supplies from the back, but he grabbed her wrist.
“You live. You remember us, yes?” Then his eyes closed and his body relaxed against the wheel and there was only the silence of the wind and distance.
Chapter 50
A bird of prey’s rasp brought Khadija to her senses. She wondered how long she’d been like this, Safit’s words echoing in her head. She still crouched on the passenger seat, amid the blood of the Panjshiri man whose name she didn’t even know. Above her, the blue bowl of the sky was edged with snowy peaks and the black wings of the eagle circling far above.
Closer in, the constant rush of water and wind over rock filled the air. No, there was something else. Movement and she didn’t know if she could move again, fight again.
Sparrows twittering in the trees. Something small, rushing over the stony ground on the slope above the road. Life. Something closer. Adrenaline sent another shock of alarm through her limbs.
She scrambled for the rifle, pushed herself up from where she’d sagged against the passenger seat. If someone had survived the crash of Hashemi’s Jeep she couldn’t afford to be helpless. She looked at Safit—brave young Safit.
“I will honor you.” But now she needed to get away. She needed to get Michael to a doctor and his message to someone who would listen. Another sound. So close. She had to get them away. Safit was dead. But she wasn’t and neither was Michael—yet.
“I’m sorry. I’m sorry. I’m so sorry,” she said as she pushed Safit’s body sideways.
He tumbled out the open side of the Jeep, landing like a small boy collapsed in exhaustion—except for the exit wound in his chest.
Look away. You can do nothing for him. Triage. If you cry, your tears will blind you. She scrambled into the driver’s seat. She needed to see. She needed to get them out of here. She needed to remember the things Dr. James Hartness had taught her about driving a car.
The driver’s side floor was red with Safit’s blood. There was no help for it—she had to do this. Her city boots rested in the sticky mess as she pressed down the clutch and the gas. She found the ignition key and turned. The engine turned over—once—twice—three times. Start damn you!
It caught and roared: the sweetest sound she had heard in a long time—just as a hand grabbed her shoulder.
She screamed. The Jeep jerked, stalled, and she pulled out of the grasp. Safit’s gun…
It lay on the far side of the passenger wheel well—beyond her easy reach. They couldn’t catch her now—not so close to freedom and help. She scrambled out of the seat and half-fell over Safit’s body. Then she turned to see her attacker.
No one.
No one at all.
She was going crazy—had gone mad as the crazies she’d seen brought into the London Emerg. She’d end up locked in a ward somewhere. But the noise came again. Close. Very close. She peered into the Jeep’s back and Michael stared up at her, his eyes pale as light on snow. His mouth twisted in that grin she had come to know so well. It no longer taunted her.
“I didn’t…mean to scare you.” His voice was faint. His breath wheezed in his lungs as he leaned against Amidullah’s body. So the infection had traveled.
But he was awake. He was alive. He had strength enough to pull himself to her. She caught him in her arms. “Allāhu akbar—God is great,” she murmured into his neck.
His arms came around her. His hand found her hair, her back. Tender, so tender, but then he pulled away.
“We have to get to Kaabul. Can you drive this thing? I don’t think I can.”
All she wanted was his arms around her, his breath in her hair, his kisses, and that look of need fulfilled she had seen in his eyes just once.
But he did not want that. He had held her away in the snow as well. He had a mission and that was most important to him. It would always be most important. In that he was like Yaqub—always driven by his need to win and his work.
She tried to close off her heart and nodded through the pain. Stay the detached professional. Treat this as you treated all things in medicine. Wasn’t that what the Inglisi had taught her—stay uninvolved even in matters of the heart?
She had learned that well—too well. She inhaled a ragged breath.
“Just rest. I found chloramphenicol in the Jeep’s supplies. I gave you some, but you need broad spectrum antibiotics, rehydration—something you can only get in Kaabul.”
She did as she was told, pulling Amidullah out of the Jeep and fighting to drag him and Safit to the side of the road. She hated to leave them like that, hated more having to defile their bodies for any money they might have, but it was the best she could do.
She returned to the Jeep and prayed she hadn’t flooded the engine. It roared to life and she slowly, slowly, released the clutch. The vehicle jerked. Jerked again as the clutch caught and she drove forward. Gradually she increased the speed, growing more confident as she maneuvered down the narrow road towards the long green valley she had seen from high up the mountains. Driving this was much different than sedately driving a quiet country road in England. She pressed down on the accelerator.
The wind blasted through her hair, tugged at her clothing as the Jeep careened along the road. She wasn’t a good driver, nor an experienced one, but desperation drove her to the limits of her skill and beyond. Down the mountains slope. Down to the green and life. That was what she wanted most of all.
She blasted through a small town along the river, scattering sheep and old men with a blast of her horn. No one tried to stop her. It took all morning, and the sun had fallen towards the western mountains when she reached the valley floor. The road was so flat and easy she could barely believe it.
She slammed the throttle down and the Jeep fishtailed until its wheels caught. She could almost yell for joy. They were free of the mountains, free of Hashemi, and the road lay clear before her to Kaabul. Sixty miles, Michael had said, and she had cleared the worst of them. Then another forty of the best highway remaining in Afghanistan. She could do this.
The wind whipped past as the afternoon stretched on. It carried the scent of mulberry and grapes like an intoxicating wine. It would be between the two harvests of the fruit. The fields were still green here. There were still leaves on the trees and the villages were teeming with people and animals. Cattle in the fields. Horses. Along the road sulked the carcasses of tanks. In some places the busy farmers had enlarged their fields and built the tanks into their fence lines. Khadija smiled at the way the Panjshiri thumbed their noses at the might of Russia.
The towns—she counted them—coming to Dasht-i-Rewat—Safit’s town—as the sun lowered close to the mountains. It would be evening soon and she felt fatigue like a blanket. She kept finding her eyes had closed. She couldn’t remember the last time she’d truly slept. Before the pass, certainly. Before Skazar? She remembered warm arms around her.
The slide of the Jeep jerked her awake. The vehicle was sliding off the road.
“Allah, no!” She cranked the wheel. The vehicle wobbled, its wheels seeking traction in the road’s soft shoulder. The Jeep fishtailed. The right front wheel caught the road.
The Jeep slid, spun. 90 degrees. 180. Was backwards on the road, sliding sideways. Another field waited. One of the hulking tanks. She slammed her feet on the clutch and brake. Braced herself for the impact, the pain, the fall as she tumbled from the Jeep.
Gravel sprayed behind them. The Jeep’s engine roared, stalled, and suddenly they were stopped. Her side of the Jeep rested in the soft soil on the opposite side of the road. The engine ticked over.
When she managed to release the steering wheel, her hands shook. The tremors ran up her arms, sending deep shudders through her that kept her in her seat. She needed to check on Michael. She needed to make sure he was all right.
She managed to climb out of the Jeep, but her legs gave and she clung to the vehicle. When she could stand, she pulled herself to the rear.
Michael lay with his arms wrapped around the medical box. He grinned up at her.
“One hell of a ride.”
Her legs gave again and she sank down beside the Jeep, her knees to her chest. She had to rest. She had to sleep or there was no way she could keep going.
“I’m going to find a place to pull over and sleep for a few hours. Otherwise I’ll kill us both.”
He grunted agreement.
Just get back in the Jeep and turn it around. Just find a place the road is wider and pull over. That’s all you have to do. It was like talking to a child, coaxing herself to crawl to the front seat, to climb in to where the blood had dried on the floor. The heels of her boots were stained, too.
She started to giggle. She’d tried so hard to keep the darn things clean and shining in Kaabul—had scrubbed Omar’s handprints from them.
She breathed deep as she tried the ignition. The Jeep sputtered, then rumbled under her, the vibrations setting off her shaking again.
She didn’t know if she could drive, but she had no choice. She eased her foot off the clutch and managed to turn the Jeep around. Then she drove slowly until she found a copse of trees along the road. She pulled in beside them and turned the ignition off.
There was the ticking of the cooling engine, the wind in the leaves, and the gradually deepening blue of the sky. The sun fell past the mountains, sending a crown of rays into the heavens. Just follow them home.
Home and Kaabul and her father and safety.
Then she was asleep.
Chapter 51
The floor of Mohammed’s room was hard under his knees. He had never noticed it before. He faced Mecca, performing his first prayer of the day. Relating to Allah was the one thing he could do that gave normalcy to his life.
“The All-Powerful. The Majestic. The All-Merciful. The Forgiver. The Gentle.” He murmured the names of Allah, while in his house the voices of invaders performed their own version of the morning prayer. He wondered how it had come to this—Kabulaay against Kabulaay—the warlords’ fighting that had torn this country apart now brought down to the level of friend against friend, daughter against father. In a country of devout, it made no sense that Islam could not bring them together. He supposed that was what the Taliban had tried to do.
When he was finished with his prayer, Hamidah helped him back to the corner he had taken as his own. Zahra waited there. She crowded into his right side just as Hamidah pressed into his left. The two girls were terrified—had been since strange voices dragged them home and pushed them into Mohammed’s room. They had been together ever since. And tomorrow Ahmad Mali Khan and his two wives would walk right into this.
His home as a prison since the voice took him from his clinic and walked him through darkness until he was dragged into the main room of the house and forced to his knees while questions barraged him.
Why they brought him here, he still could not fathom: perhaps because it gave them room. Perhaps because no one would question the isolation of a man who had just lost his daughter. He wished for his marigolds, for the days he had his garden, for even amongst the debris, if given water the good earth of Afghanistan could bring forth riches.
He caught the girls around the shoulders and pulled them to him.
“I’m sorry you’ve been brought into this. I should never have used you to ask questions. I should never have agreed to have you come.”
“Hush, Uncle. How could you know these men would do this? Besides, my wedding is coming. I had to come.” Hamidah’s soft voice.
“And you could not live by yourself. Besides, I wanted to see the world. Feyzabad is nowhere as grand as Kaabul.”
Zahra’s sense of adventure seemed to give her a facsimile of strength, even as her slim fingers dug into Mohammed’s arm.
He patted her hand. “You’re both very brave, but you see, it’s not just that I tried to find Khadija.” He lowered his voice. “I’ve played a part in this war. That is why these men are here. They want—something—from me.”
Information. That was what they wanted and he could not—would not—give it. Too many people would die. Michael Bellis’s face crossed his mind. Yes, Michael would be threatened too, and that man had given far too much over the years, even risking demotion and punishment when he did what he thought best for Afghanistan—rather than following orders in keeping with American foreign policy. Michael, who had disappeared once m
ore to investigate information he feared boded ill for everyone.
So far, Mohammed knew, he and his wards had been spared the worst that their captors could give. He’d treated enough victims of the Taliban to know their kinds of maiming. He could only think it was because they were not sure if he was The Doctor that rumors said aided those who fought the Taliban. Their spies had sought that man all the long years of their occupation. Hiding in plain sight was the only thing that saved him.
He closed his eyes. The Doctor. It was a name that had been borne by two men who had worked so closely together they could have been one—Yaqub and himself—the body and the head, he supposed. But now the body was dead and for once he had no idea what to do.
It was like everything inside him had unraveled since Khadija’s disappearance. All the strength that had preserved him through the years of hardship, that had kept him fighting when Yaqub had died, had dissolved. Knowing Michael still lived had helped Mohammed deal with Yaqub’s loss. The younger man was, in some ways, almost a second son. But Michael wasn’t here now.
In the center of the house, the voices came closer.
“We should act now. Get the information before he comes. It will gain his favor, neh?” The soft voice. It sent a shiver up Mohammed’s back. “We have the girls. They will help convince him.”
“And he hath said we wait. Do you want to get us killed, brother? Are you such a fool? Hathemi said to hold them until he arrives; he knows the way to free a man’s tongue.”
Mohammed stiffened at the name.
“Uncle? What’s wrong?” from his left.
“Nothing. Nothing at all.” But everything was wrong. His daughter gone. These two girls prisoners because of his actions.
Surely he had given enough to this cause. His sight had been given to preserve secrets. His son to helping others. Khadija—he supposed he’d given her up to keep her and himself safe.
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