by Roland Smith
ETHAN STOPPED NEXT to the stream. Judging by the number of footprints in the mud, the captives had stopped there as well, but there was one set of prints that looked fresher than the others—much fresher. I pointed them out. Ethan squatted down.
“A few hours old,” he said quietly. “The other prints are a lot older. Yesterday, I’d say.”
“Those newer-looking prints belong to one of the kidnappers,” I said.
“How do you know that?”
I’d been paying close attention to the tracks for the last several miles, trying to memorize the patterns and guess which pattern belonged to whom. As long as there were tracks, the others were alive. Mom’s and Alessia’s were the easiest because their feet were smaller. Mom was wearing hiking boots, because she had been on the ground when they were captured. Alessia was wearing climbing shoes. They hadn’t allowed her to change out of them, which could not have been very comfortable. Climbing shoes aren’t designed for walking. The film crew was also wearing climbing shoes—identical climbing shoes because the patterns were all the same. Zopa was wearing boots. His tracks were easy to pick out in the soft ground because he walked with his feet splayed out. The other boots on the ground were the bad guys.
I explained my theory to Ethan.
“How many kidnappers are there?” he asked.
“I think there are four.”
“Useful information.”
“I could be wrong.”
“We’ll find out soon enough.” Ethan pointed at the fresh prints. “Let’s see what this guy was up to.”
We followed the prints over to the stream. They stopped at a shallow pool. On either side of the prints were several round indentations the size of dinner plates.
“Water containers?” I asked.
“That would be my guess. Four of them. If they were a gallon each, he walked away from here carrying thirty-two pounds of water.”
“Which means they’re close,” I said.
“Absolutely. When you fetch that much water, you don’t go a step farther than you have to. This also means that their hideout isn’t next to the stream.”
“And it’s on this side of the stream,” I added.
“There are at least ten people. In this heat, sixteen quarts of water aren’t going to last long. This could have been his last water trip of the day, but I doubt it. I think they’ll make another water run before dark. It’s kind of a risk, but I say we conceal ourselves on the other side of this stream and try to get a look at our enemy before we make our move.”
I wanted to follow the boot prints to wherever they were holding the others, storm the entrance, and save my mom before they slit her throat.
“Are we still dead?” I asked.
“Of course,” Ethan answered. “What’s your point?”
“So the guy may, or may not, come down here. We already know he’s armed and in great shape. What’s to be gained by getting a glimpse of him? We need to figure out where they’re holding our friends and do something about it before anyone else gets killed.”
“Maybe I’m not quite as dead as I’m letting on,” Ethan said. “Old habits die hard. I was trying to gather intelligence. That may not be a dead-man thing to do, but I think we’re lucky we didn’t blunder into the water guy when we got here. He would have shot or captured us.”
“That’s it!” I said.
“What’s it?”
“Blunder. Capture. Do you have a two-way?”
Ethan nodded.
“Me too. You’re after intelligence, right?”
“Yeah, but—”
“When he comes down for water, I’ll blunder into him like I’m out looking for the others. I’ll let him capture me. We’ll tape down the talk button on the two-way. Have to figure a way to conceal it so he doesn’t find it. You’ll hear everything that’s going on. I’ll try to feed you information, or intelligence, about where we’re being held, how many people there are, what kind of weapons, what kind of security they have in place.”
“Then I come in and save you,” Ethan said.
“Something like that. Didn’t the Marine Corps teach you how to—”
“Kill people?” Ethan asked.
“Right. Kill people.”
“As a matter of fact, they did. In a lot of different ways. But I never had to put any of that training into play, I’m happy to say. And what if you blunder into this guy and he simply shoots you in the head?”
“What difference does it make? I’m already dead.”
“All I’m saying is that maybe I should be the guy that does the blundering. If he decides to shoot first, I’d have a better chance of taking him down than you do.”
“And if he doesn’t shoot you, and you get captured, what then? You could feed me all the information you want, but there is nothing I could do with it. The only thing I know how to do is climb. I’m not a marine.”
“Neither am I,” Ethan said. “Not anymore. But I get your point. How do you want to play this?”
“I guess I’ll go downstream a ways and wait. When I see him, I’ll walk up to him.”
Ethan shook his head. “If you’re set on doing this, you need to do it right. I think it would be better to let him blunder into you rather than you blundering into him. You need to look completely defenseless so he doesn’t shoot you on the spot.”
“I am completely defenseless,” I pointed out.
“Yeah, but he won’t know that. I think you should set up camp right here. Roll out your sleeping bag, have something cooking on the camp stove, maybe even pretend like you’ve dozed off or passed out from exhaustion. These guys are ruthless, but I doubt they’d shoot you while you’re sleeping.”
Ethan was obviously forgetting that they murdered Elham and Ebadullah while they were praying, but I liked his plan better than mine.
We got the two-ways, put them on the same frequency, taped my transmit button on with duct tape, then spent five minutes debating where we should put my “wire” as Ethan called it. Fortunately the two-way was pretty compact, about the size of a small sponge, although not nearly as soft. We decided to strap it to my side under my arm with an Ace bandage and a sock underneath to stop chafing and soak up the sweat. I put on my baggiest T-shirt and modeled it for Ethan.
“Perfect. Of course, if he frisks you, it’s all over.”
With that happy thought, Ethan waded across the stream. We tested the wire one more time. He gave me a thumbs-up, then disappeared into the trees.
Blunder
I have water heating on the camp stove for oatmeal and raisins. I have my sleeping bag rolled out. The two-way strapped to my side itches. I wonder how long the battery is going to last with the transmit button on. I wonder how long it’s going to be before water guy shows, or if he’ll show at all. It’s getting dark. The water comes to a boil. I pour in my packet of oatmeal. Stir. I hear my mother scream—
I WHIPPED AROUND, sending the camp stove and oatmeal flying. Mom was standing in front of a giant with a gun, pounding on his chest with her bound hands. He pushed her away. She stumbled backwards and fell. He pointed his pistol at her, thumbing the hammer back.
“No!” I shouted.
He pointed the pistol at me.
“No!” Mom shouted, then started pleading with him in French.
The giant appeared to be listening to her, considering, the pistol still pointing at me. He was at least six foot four, three feet across the chest, and two feet at the waist. Muscles were literally bubbling out of the tight camouflaged T-shirt he wore. A lot of times musclebound hulks like him have absolutely zero endurance, but in his case, I knew better. The route they had traveled to get here was brutal, but he looked perfectly fine. Ethan had been right about their condition and nationality. But the thing that really scared me was that his face wasn’t covered. I’d be able to pick him out of a thousand photos in an instant. This could only mean that he had no intention of letting me or Mom or anyone else identify him. No one was getting away. They were
going to kill us. And I thought he might do it right then.
Mom finished her plea. He looked at her with cool, intelligent gray eyes. His long black hair was pulled back into a ponytail. He wore a brown sweatband around his forehead. He said nothing. Scattered around the ground were a half dozen collapsible plastic water containers. They must have dropped them before I was able to turn around.
He finally said something to Mom. She got on her stomach with her zip-tied hands stretched out above her head.
“He wants you to lie down next to me and assume the same position. Don’t try anything. If he even thinks you’re making a wrong move, he’ll kill us both.”
I walked over to her, resisting the urge to raise my hands above my head. If I did, he might see the bulge on my right side. I lay down next to her and put my elbows at my sides with my hands up to keep the two-way covered. He stepped around in back of us. I felt him kick my legs apart, then the search began. Right leg, left leg, butt, pockets . . . if he patted me down above the waist, we were dead. But he didn’t. He came back around to the front and said something to Mom.
“Non,” she said. “He wanted to know if you spoke French.”
“Does he speak English?”
“I think he understands a little.”
I was going to have to be very careful about what I said.
The interrogation began, with Mom translating.
He wanted to know how I got there. I told him that I had fallen asleep in the cave. When I woke up, everyone was gone except for Elham and Ebadullah, who had been murdered, and Rafe, who looked like he had died in a fall. I took off in the dark and got lost, disoriented. My water ran out. I climbed the hill, thinking there might be a stream on the other side, and if there was, I might be able to follow it down to the river. I found a stream and was going to follow it down, but I came across footprints heading upstream and followed them instead.
He wanted to know if I had seen the graves.
I acted like I didn’t know what he was talking about.
He wanted to know what I had hoped to accomplish by following them.
I said I wanted to find my mother and the others.
It went on like this for ten more minutes, then the questions abruptly stopped. He looked up at the darkening sky, then back down at us, pistol still cocked and ready. After what seemed like an eternity, he said something to Mom. She nodded.
“We can get up,” she said. “He wants to search your pack.”
His technique for searching my pack was to have me unzip every pocket and shake the contents out onto the ground. When he finished toeing the gear and clothes with his boots, he stomped on the pack to make sure it was empty. My knife and anything else that might be used as a weapon were kicked into the stream.
“You can repack,” Mom said. “Quickly.”
The guy talked to her while I stuffed everything back into the pack. I wondered if Ethan spoke French and was picking any of it up. Or was the battery already dead? Was all this for nothing? I finished about the same time he finished talking to Mom. If I got out of this alive, I swore I was going to learn French and several other languages.
“Okay,” Mom said. “Here’s the deal. He’s going to cut me loose because you’ll be my new cuffs. If I try anything, he’ll kill you. If you try anything, he’ll kill me. You shouldn’t have followed us.”
“I had to.”
“They’ve already killed Phillip, Choma, and Aki.”
I tried to look shocked. The guy pulled a knife out, flicked it open, and sliced through the plastic zip-ties around Mom’s wrists. I wondered if the knife had been used to slit the others’ throats.
Mom rubbed the feeling back into her hands. “This is the first time they’ve used one of us to haul water.”
Which accounted for the fact that her footprints hadn’t been with his next to the stream.
We grabbed the containers and started filling them. The French guy stood ten feet behind, the pistol pointed at our backs. With him standing that far back and the stream masking my voice, I thought it was safe to talk if I kept my voice down. I tried an experimental question.
“Does this guy have a name?”
“We don’t know his real name so we call him Géant, French for giant,” she whispered. “The other Frenchman, who you’ll meet if Géant doesn’t kill us, we call Émile.”
“Ethan is watching and listening to us on the other side of the stream,” I said quietly. “I have a two-way strapped to my side.”
I wondered if she had heard what I had said. Without a word, she filled her container, screwed on the cap, and grabbed the next one. I did the same.
“We need to feed Ethan as much information as we can,” I said.
She gave me a very slight nod. “We are being kept in a cave half a mile away. Three Frenchmen. Three Afghans. Professionals. Weapons. An Afghan and one of the Frenchmen left yesterday to take the ransom video to Kabul. There are four at the cave now. Géant, Émile, two Afghans. When they have their money, they will kill all of us.”
Géant stepped closer and said something.
“Hurry,” Mom said. “He wants to get back before dark. The others were killed because they were slowing us down.”
We hurried.
The Cave
Moving up a darkening trail with sixteen pounds of water in each hand, a pack on your back, and a guy with a pistol behind you is hard. What makes it even more difficult is trying to give information to Ethan in code so I don’t get shot in the back of the head. My worry is that the two-way won’t work inside the cave, or the battery is already gone.
“So everyone’s okay?” I ask Mom.
“Yes.”
“All in the same place?”
“Yes. A cavern a hundred feet from the entrance to the cave. Straight back. There’s an Afghan outside the entrance of the cavern twenty-four-seven.”
“One way into the cave?”
“It’s like a rabbit warren. I suspect there’s more than one way inside, but I don’t know where it is.”
Géant doesn’t seem to mind us talking, but I don’t want to push my luck. I stay quiet until we reach the cave . . .
WE STOPPED NEXT to a vertical wall covered in plants and shrubs. I didn’t see a cave opening at first. Géant said something, and a rope dropped down from a narrow opening in the tangle.
“Thirty feet up,” I said. There was no way the radio was going to transmit from inside the deep cave unless Ethan was directly in front of it. I looked back at the trail we’d just walked. There were some good-size climbable trees that might give him a line of sight to the opening, but how was I going to convey that without Géant figuring out what I was doing?
Mom came to the rescue. “Help me tie the bottles onto the rope,” she said. “When they have the water up, they’ll throw down a thirty-foot rope ladder. I’m not sure why they’re using a ladder. Climbing the wall would be easier than climbing one of the trees across from the cave.”
I looked at Géant. He didn’t blink at this exchange. He obviously didn’t understand what she had just said. I just hoped Ethan did.
We got the bottles tied to the rope, and someone heaved them up.
“Émile is on the other end of the rope,” Mom said. “He speaks perfect English. You’ll have to watch what you say.”
What I was watching was how strong Émile was. The water jugs flew up the side as if they were empty. As soon as they disappeared, a rope ladder was tossed out of the entrance.
“I’ll go first to run interference,” she said. “You’re going to get grilled again.”
I followed her up.
Émile was almost as tall as Géant, but leaner, with short blond hair and blue eyes. Like Mom predicted, he asked me roughly the same questions as Géant, but in English. Midway through the grilling, Géant clambered into the cave and pulled the ladder up behind him. When he stood up, he had to stoop so he didn’t scrape his head.
“So this Rafe was dead?” Émile asked.
&nbs
p; “Yes,” I answered, acting like I was so out of it that I could barely stay on my feet.
“And you were the only one left behind?”
Trick question. Émile was better at grilling than Géant. I wasn’t supposed to know about the graves downstream. Did he know about base camp? Did he know about Ethan and Cindy?
“As far as I know,” I said. “I didn’t see anyone else until I saw Mom.”
Émile stared at me, letting my answer, or lie, float in the darkening cave entrance for several seconds. He glanced at Mom, then said something to Géant in French. Géant shrugged and said something back. I looked at Mom; her face was blank, neutral, like she was waiting for a verdict. And I guess she was.
“You should not have come here,” Émile said.
Another man squeezed into the cavern through an opening in the back. He was thin and dark, and older than Émile and Géant. One of the Afghans. He had a rifle slung over his shoulder, a pistol strapped to his waist, and a headlamp around his forehead. He looked at me, then at Émile, as if he were waiting for instructions. Émile didn’t say a word. Instead, he moved over to the left side of the cavern and turned on a battery-operated lantern hanging on the end of a rope. Along the wall beneath the lantern were four unrolled sleeping bags and a big pile of climbing gear—not as nice as the gear Plank had given us, but serviceable. Ethan wasn’t going to be able to use this entrance to get into the cave. It would be like walking into a nest of venomous snakes. But I couldn’t tell him, not then. The thing Ethan might hear next was me getting killed.
Émile picked up a pack of cigarettes off a sleeping bag, shook one out, and lit it. Gauloises. The Afghan guy followed suit and lit up too. Marlboro. Émile walked over to the narrow cave entrance and looked out into the darkness. By the time he turned back around, the cigarette was smoked halfway down. He said something to Marlboro Man in what I assumed was Pashtun. Marlboro stubbed his cigarette out on the wall, unslung his rifle, and nodded at Mom to go through the crack in the back wall.