As Mallory’s description wound down, Alton leaned over to David. “I think coming here to the Lodge is the highlight of Mallory’s day.” In his best National Geographic narrator voice, he intoned, “The social animal thrives in its natural environment.”
David chuckled. “Yeah, it’s the highlight of my day, too,” he said, turning to gaze at Fahima. He then turned back with a worried face. “Mallory is doing her usual imitation of a friendly Tasmanian devil, making the social rounds, but have you noticed something’s up with Fahima? She seems…I don’t know…worried about something.”
“Why don’t you ask her?” urged Alton.
David seemed to like the idea, yet he swallowed hard as she approached from behind the bar.
“You like another drink?” asked the barmaid, trying but failing to appear cheerful.
“Fahima,” said David in an uncharacteristically gentle manner, “We’re good friends, right? What I’d like…is for you to tell me what’s bothering you.”
The gentle side of David seemed to catch Fahima off guard. Her eyes welled up, and long-contained emotions poured down her cheeks in the form of quiet tears. She leaned over the bar and spoke to him in a near whisper. “Al-Qaeda man come here this morning. His name is Hadir. He want to know how you and your friends find out about them. He is very angry.”
For the first time in Alton’s experience, David reached across the top of the bar and laid his hand gently atop Fahima’s. Rather than stemming the flow of tears, the simple action hastened it. Fahima covered her eyes with the palm of her free hand and gave vent to her emotions.
“How can I help?” asked David gently. “Let me do something.”
At the question, Fahima looked up with plain relief in her face. She laid her other hand on David’s. “You are good man.”
David shook his head. “I’m not that good—”
“You help him, the sad man,” interjected Fahima, looking at Alton. “You like to make people laugh, be happy. I don’t want you to be hurt by this bad man Hadir.”
“If I’m a good person, I’d want to help you, too, right? Sometimes doing the right thing means taking risks. The key is knowing when to take those risks.” He looked her in the eye with a kind yet determined gaze. “This is definitely one of those times.”
Fahima drew in a long breath, her frame shaking as she struggled to suppress another bout of tears. She exhaled slowly and asked, “Why you help me?”
A touch of worry crept into David’s eyes. “Do you really not know, Fahima?”
Looking down, she nodded without speaking. After calming her breaths, she looked at David timidly. “I think I see now, but before I never know what you really feel about me. You like to make everyone happy. Before, I think maybe I just imagine you feel different for me. Maybe you are nice to me like you are to everyone else.”
“And now what do you think?”
“Now I think I am special for you,” she replied with her first smile of the day, which—although genuine—still fought with her previous tears for control of her emotions. Her smile won the battle, and David brushed a lingering tear off her check with the back of his hand.
“Now you wet,” said Fahima with a single, loud laugh born of a sudden release of anxiety and pent-up emotion.
Alton spoke up. “Fahima, the man from Al-Qaeda, Hadir—did he say what he would do next?”
By now, Mallory had finished her story and was listening intently.
Fahima shook her head. “No, he talk to me and to the other people here. No one say anything.” She shrugged. “We do not know.”
“We should keep it that way,” said Alton. “Telling you any of the details just puts you at risk.”
“But if Hadir come back…?” she asked.
“Can we talk over there?” asked Alton, pointing to an isolated table. “I’d rather not make this conversation too public.”
Fahima conversed briefly with a co-worker, presumably to cover her bartending duties, then joined Alton and Mallory in the corner. While Alton scanned the table for listening devices, David slid into the booth next to Fahima. Alton couldn’t be sure, but he thought they were holding hands under the table. He smiled at this happy fulfillment of his expectations, yet the contrast of the couple’s mutual regard to his own lonely journey caused a momentary stirring of melancholy. Oddly enough, Mallory’s proximity only strengthened the feeling. He glanced at the delicate, strong hands she rested on the table. In some ways, so near…
Before they could renew their conversation, several soldiers trooped over to their table.
“We’re taking off now,” said Lieutenant Pham. “You guys coming?”
Alton didn’t like returning to camp alone, but the conversation was too important to postpone. “No, thanks. We’ll be along shortly.” David and Mallory also agreed to stay.
“Suit yourself,” said Pham. “See you back at camp.”
Once their friends filed out, Alton turned to Fahima. “Would you be willing to play along with Hadir long enough to help us find out a little information about him? Maybe we could catch him and his friends.”
“Al,” interrupted David, “you and I are soldiers. Taking risks is an occupational hazard for us. Fahima’s not a soldier. She just wants to have a normal life, right?”
Fahima nodded.
“I think Fahima is entirely capable of pulling it off,” continued David, “but then what? Once the insurgents find out she’s worked with us, they’d go after her and maybe her family. We can retreat behind camp walls. She doesn’t have that option.”
“You’re right,” said Alton. “Not about my name, by the way—it’s ‘Alton,’ not ‘Al.’ But I agree that we can’t pull Fahima into this. It’s too dangerous for a civilian.”
“Fahima,” asked Mallory, “When you told Hadir you didn’t know how we found out about the Al-Qaeda plot, did he believe you?”
“I do not know. I think he believe me. It is the truth.”
“If he thinks you have more information than you’re telling, the truth won’t matter,” said Mallory. “He might come after you anyway.”
“Do you have a guard here?” asked David.
“Yes,” said Fahima. “Tahir always stay by the door.”
The tall, chubby guard reclined on a stool by the entrance, picking dirt from his fingernails. The sight of him didn’t overwhelm the soldiers with confidence.
“I guess that’s better than nothing,” mused David, “but it won’t be enough if Hadir decides to seek you out, especially if he brings friends.” He turned to Alton. “Do you think General Mooreland would be willing to post of couple of MPs here to provide security for the next few days? If they’re in civvies and Hadir returns, they might even be able to arrest him before he bolts.”
“I think it’s worth asking,” said Alton. “What do you think, Mallory?”
In the male-dominated military, Mallory seemed to appreciate her friends’ natural inclination to seek her input. “I think we ought to move immediately,” she said decisively. “Al-Qaeda has been known to act quickly to intimidate Afghanis who cooperate with coalition troops.”
“It’s settled, then,” began Alton, “tomorrow—”
Before he could finish his sentence, the doors to the establishment flew open with a crash, and a score of armed insurgents streamed inside. They shouted angrily in their native Pashto dialect and began to spread throughout the bar. One of them jammed an AK-47 into Tahir’s ample girth. The guard stood with his hands in the air, too dumbfounded to speak.
“Down!” hissed Alton. The three unarmed soldiers and barmaid slid under the table. In the dimly-lit, isolated corner of the room in which they were located, the small space underneath the table was as dark as midnight.
“That is Hadir—the one in front with the blue shirt,” whispered Fahima.
The slovenly-clothed leader possessed a large nose and protruding upper teeth. After committing the rodent-like face of the insurgents’ leader to memory, Alton scanned t
he area around him. Their table sat adjacent to the door leading to the restaurant’s kitchen. If they low-crawled along the floor, they would probably make it through the kitchen door unseen, although they would have to run the risk of the insurgents noticing the door swinging open, apparently on its own. As he turned to discuss the plan with his comrades, he noticed one of them was missing.
He glanced desperately around the floor and saw Fahima. She had already crawled several tables down, away from the kitchen.
“No!” said David, whose voice was fortunately drowned out by the shouting militants. He began to emerge from beneath the table to retrieve Fahima, but Alton grabbed his leg with an iron grip.
Alton shook his head and whispered, “She’s doing this so we can escape. At the moment, Hadir and his gang don’t know whether or not she was involved in yesterday’s plan. If you emerge now, and they see she’s been conversing with us in the corner, you’ll sign her death warrant, and ours too. They’ll assume she was in on the plan with us and will kill us all.”
David’s eyes blazed with agonized indecision. Alton pressed his case. “Let’s use the opportunity she’s given us to come back and help her. We can’t do that if we’re dead.”
Hanging his head, David nodded. As he did so, Fahima reached the opposite side of the back wall and finally stood up. She spoke in angry tones to the armed men, and Hadir shouted back at her.
“That’s our diversion. Let’s move,” commanded Alton, grasping his cane.
With the attention of the militants focused squarely on Fahima and Hadir’s shouting match, the trio of soldiers squirmed unseen across the floor until they passed through the kitchen door, then rose and bolted out the restaurant’s back exit as quickly as Alton’s pace would allow. Thick clouds obscured the moon, and the friends used the cover of the dark night to steal through the parking lot unseen. They hid behind a large, dense bush on the perimeter of the restaurant’s property.
Alton quickly dialed Camp Eggers. “MPs are on the way,” he told his friends after the brief discussion.
Within scarcely three minutes, the troop of insurgents emerged from the Lodge. Alton squinted to see if Fahima was part of the group, but the evening’s inky blackness now worked against him. He simply couldn’t tell.
A woman’s cry penetrated the night. “Tahir!” As a car door opened, a dim light from the vehicle’s interior illuminated a bound woman and man being pushed into the rear seat.
With lightning speed, the remaining militants jumped into three other waiting cars and accelerated away while the trio of soldiers looked on helplessly. Fahima and her guard were now prisoners of Al-Qaeda.
CHAPTER 22
Kabul, Afghanistan
The next morning, Alton watched David emerge from his office, downcast.
“I haven’t been able to find out a single bit of information about Hadir—who he is, where he’s located, his role in Al-Qaeda, nothing.” As a Military Intelligence officer, David had the inside story on most members of the vast terrorist network. For him to have no leads on this case, one in which he had such a vested personal interest, boded poorly for their attempts to locate Hadir and Fahima, his prisoner.
At least Alton hoped she was still his prisoner. Alton couldn’t bring himself to vocalize the possibility that the terrorists had already executed her. Surely the same thought was already running through David’s mind.
Upon David’s recommendation, General Mooreland had assigned Alton to the detail investigating Fahima’s abduction, ensuring Alton’s entire focus—for the next few days, at least—would be concentrated on finding Fahima, and in doing so, rooting out a terrorist leader. So far, though, Alton hadn’t managed to provide much help.
As he pondered how to proceed, Alton formed the faintest outline of an idea. “Do you have a composite artist on your staff?” he asked David. “You know, a person who can sketch a picture of someone from a description?”
“Not on staff, but there’s a local guy we contract with on an as-needed basis. I’ve already called him in on this case, but to be honest, I didn’t get a good look at Hadir.”
“I did. Let me know when the artist arrives and I’ll help. Once you have copies of the sketch, can I have one? I have an idea I can work while you’re in touch with your usual informants.”
“Sure—the more, the merrier,” said David in a failed attempt at jocularity.
“I’ll also need a picture of Fahima.”
“I’ll send you one.” David accessed his smart phone and began scrolling through its picture gallery. Alton peered over his shoulder and observed a score of photographs of the fair barmaid from a variety of angles. David finally selected two to send to Alton: one shot in a close, portrait style, and the other a full-body photograph, taken from a distance. Alton confirmed the pictures had arrived on his phone and switched it off.
“David…my idea is a long-shot. But since you’re the intelligence expert, I might as well try something unconventional.”
“Yeah, I understand,” said David, staring at the photo gallery on his phone as if in a trance. Snapping himself out of it, he added, “Thanks for helping with this. If ever there were a puzzle that needed decrypting, it’s now.”
The composite artist arrived within minutes. Shortly after the artist completed his work, David presented a copy to Alton. “I hope you can do something with this.”
Alton traveled straight to his workstation and scanned the sketch into his computer. He initiated an e-mail message and attached the scanned document. He quickly downloaded the two photos of Fahima and attached them to the e-mail as well. He then typed his message.
Do you know the man in the drawing? His name is Hadir. He is an Al-Qaeda leader, and he has taken a good friend of mine prisoner. My friend’s name is Fahima. She is the person in the photographs. I am worried for Fahima’s life. Hadir thinks Fahima may have given the US information that helped us avoid an Al-Qaeda attack. She did not help us, but Hadir doesn’t know this and might hurt Fahima anyway. If you have any information about Hadir, please let me know. I won’t tell anyone where I got the information. Your friend - Alton.
With a sense of foreboding, Alton clicked the “send” icon and watched his message disappear. Knowing every minute counted, he hoped his distant friend would read the e-mail soon.
As he waited for a reply, Alton returned to David’s office and helped as best he could. His phone vibrated, and he snatched it from his pocket to read the incoming message. After quickly scanning the reply, he approached David. “I’m going to follow up on a lead. Can one of your guys give me a lift?”
“Should I go myself?” asked David.
“No—it’s still a long-shot, and quite frankly, I’m relying on someone else’s expertise, not my own. Why don’t you stay here and do the tasks that only you can do.”
David nodded, a determined set in his jaw. “Keep me posted, will you?”
“You bet.”
As Alton limped toward the motor pool with Specialist Rowe, his driver, he thumbed an e-mail message on his phone. “Where we should meet?”
The two soldiers climbed into a battered Growler, the Army’s modern incarnation of its storied jeep. After Alton received a reply to his e-mail query, he leaned over to Rowe and asked, “Can you locate the Darul Aman Palace on your GPS?”
Rowe tapped the dash-mounted system for a minute, then replied, “Yes, sir. It should take about thirty minutes or so to get there.”
“Punch it,” said Alton. “We’ve no time to lose.”
When the two soldiers arrived at the historic palace, Alton turned to Rowe. “Wait here. We don’t want to draw any more attention to ourselves than necessary.”
Alton sauntered through the walkways until he was alone, then increased his pace as much as his limp would allow. Eventually, he reached the meeting-place: an antechamber at the rear of the property, seldom visited by guests or staff.
The waiting Mastana raced into his arms and squeezed him tight for a quarter minute. A
fter returning the enthusiastic greeting with his own bear hug, Alton glanced around the room.
“You were thinking to find interpreter?” asked Mastana with a smile.
“What? You speak English? You little stinker!” exclaimed Alton, laughing.
“Yes,” said Mastana. “Ever since I was little girl, my family sell clothing to the Americans. We learn to speak their language.”
“Why didn’t you tell me before?”
Mastana cast her gaze down to the paver-stone floor, shame-faced. “I was afraid. I did not know what will happen to me in hospital. I listen to the doctors and nurses talk about me…and I listen to you, Alton.”
“You knew English the whole time?” asked Alton, incredulous. “So, when you listened to our conversations, did you discover what you wanted to know?”
“Yes—that is why I am sad. I see that the doctors and you want to help me. You are not going to send me to a prison like my uncle say.”
“Why would your uncle say that?”
“He is Al-Qaeda. He is always saying bad things about the Americans.”
Alton instantly assimilated this new piece of information into his plan. What was once a vague concept transformed into a specific course of action. “Mastana, I have an idea for helping Fahima. I want you to tell me if the idea is dangerous for you. If it is, we’ll come up with another plan, okay?”
“Okeydokey.”
Alton snickered at her reply and asked her to wait a minute. He stepped aside to place a phone call, spoke for ten minutes, and returned.
Alton spent the next few minutes describing his plan to Mastana. At the conclusion, he asked, “What do you think? Will it work?”
“Yes—is good plan,” replied Mastana. “It is not dangerous for me, I think.”
“Okeydokey,” said Alton. “I want you to tell it back to me so I know you understand everything.” The girl methodically recounted their planned undertaking, requiring only a single, minor correction along the way.
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