Her Heart and the Friend Command

by M. L. Buchman

  The dog always knows what the trainer feels, she repeated her trainer’s prime axiom. Always. So only feel what you want the dog to feel.

  Liza took a deep breath to calm herself.

  “Friend,” she managed. Though it was harder than she’d expected—and she hadn’t thought it would be easy.

  Sergey and Conway both looked at her in surprise. Here was one man who saw her clearly behind the dog. He lowered his hand for Sergey to smell, but didn’t look away from her.

  She could feel her dog still looking at her in question.

  “It’s okay,” she repeated, though she wasn’t sure for whose benefit.

  4

  Last night’s patrol—and the five nights before that—had narrowed down their mission. Narrowed it down enough for Garret to know they’d need all the help they could get, specifically from a MWD. He’d sent the request up the chain of command and they’d sent back down Sergey and Minnow.

  Time to just live with it. Just this one assignment, then she’d be gone back into the vast world of US Army Human Resources Command and wash up on someone else’s shore. That knowledge, like so much in the military, was both a relief and a knife to the gut.

  He unrolled the map of Wesh, Afghanistan, and the near edge of Chaman, Pakistan, separated by the towering, dual-arched Friendship Gate.

  “The Durand Line, the border between Afghanistan and Pakistan, is over two thousand kilometers long from Iran up to India. It is generally named as the most dangerous border in the world—which if you’ve done time in Korea you know is saying something. The two countries have been fighting over it ever since the line was first drawn in 1893 by the Brits and the Afghan Amir. Oddly, Pakistan is fine with the line, it’s the Afghanis who say they’ll never accept the border.”

  “Whoever would want this stretch of desert is welcome to it.”

  “Pashtuns, dude.” Mutt and Jeff were at it again. “The Pashtun tribes cover thousands of square kilometers on both sides.”

  “Then why are they killing each other if they’re all Pashtuns?”

  “Not our business,” Garret cut them off. Because there were a hundred layers of answers to that question: some historical, some religious, some about power, and none of it good for the locals.

  He could feel Minnow assessing their group dynamics. It made him see himself and all his flaws as a commander as if seeing himself through stranger’s eyes. Too rough? Or just holding the team’s focus? He couldn’t think how to change the patterns even if he understood what they were. Chris had always made it look so easy. How was he supposed to know that leadership was such a pain in the ass.

  “Our business is that Wesh-Chaman is the only crossing for hundreds of kilometers in both directions. All through the Afghan War—”

  “Which one?”

  And again it spun out of his control before he even—

  “The one that started with Alexander the Great. That was like three hundred AD or something.”

  “Three-thirty BC, dude, learn your history. And no, he’s talking about the one that started in 1978 with the Communist Insurrection and hasn’t stopped since. Next came the Soviets, the communist collapse, the Taliban, and then us. No wonder this place is a disaster area. Did you know—”

  “Shut up, Jeff,” Garret shut them down harder this time. “I’m talking about the US War in Afghanistan and you assholes know it so give me a goddamn break. This Wesh-Chaman crossing has been our major supply route since Day One for all of southern Afghanistan. Still is, since we haven’t really left, and it’s coming apart, again. Tonight we’re going to put some of it back together, again.”

  “Good. I was getting bored. How about you, Sergey?” Mutt rubbed the dog’s neck where he lay between Mutt and Liza. Sergey just scowled up at him, Garret-radar on red alert. The dog wasn’t having anything to do with the “friend” instruction no matter what Minnow commanded.

  Garret continued. “They sent in a reinforced platoon of over sixty regular Army, and they found squat. Now it’s Delta’s turn.”

  The five of them, a woman, and her dog.

  “The US has had constant problems with the Paki gunrunners supplying the Afghanis. In turn, the Pakis have been getting nailed by the Afghani militants who think shelling civilians across the border during a census-taking makes some kind of sense. Just last week they blew up another pair of fuel tanker semi-trucks. Not like the sixteen they got at once back in 2009, but—”

  “Can you imagine what…” Baxter joined in for the first time.

  “…two hundred thousand gallons was like…” Burton was on it.

  “…all at once?” Baxter sighed for having missed such a spectacle.

  “Ka-boom!” they said together and both sighed again. They were both explosives techs, so he let them have their moment.

  “I’m lead,” Garret told them. “BB, you’re both hot on my tail. Mutt and Jeff, you alternate sniper overwatch and watching the back doors.”

  “Where do you want us?” Liza had her hand dug into the dog’s fur. He could see that her knuckles were white no matter how calm her voice was.

  “You, Minnow, are glued to my hip.”

  And wasn’t that going to be fun.

  5

  The buildings of Wesh were pitch black—invisible except as dark notches out of the stars. Without her night-vision goggles she couldn’t have made it ten steps. No street lights and what electricity the town did have was apparently on the fritz per usual in small Afghan towns. A few windows were lit by the flickering of oil lamps, a very few. It was a town with air conditioning, and one that needed it desperately. She and Sergey had been tramping through Afghan hell for three months now and neither of them were any more used to the heat than the day they landed.

  “What are we after?” Liza eased down the narrow street far closer to Garret Conway than she’d ever been to him in high school. Much to her surprise, she’d liked watching him with the men. Whatever else she might think of him, his men trusted him completely. This wasn’t some cluster of sycophantic hallway teens; these were top Unit operators.

  “Sergey’s specialty,” Garret kept his voice low. “There is a constant stream of explosives moving in both directions here. Bombs for inbound NATO supply trucks headed into Kandahar and Lashkar Gah. And Taliban and other pissed-off Afghanis going into Pakistan to blow the crap out of shrines and the civilian populace. I don’t care which side is holding it, I just want it gone. No matter which way it’s headed, it comes through Wesh. We want the bombmakers and their middlemen.”

  Wesh was laid out differently than most Afghan towns she’d patrolled. Usually they were a rabbit warren of streets which had evolved for donkeys and pedestrians. But the old Silk Road had passed through here since the Romans began trading with the Chinese and probably before that. The town was sliced by the one wide main street that must date back thousands of years. Rather than being lined with haphazard two-story structures that were connected only by the chance of shared walls, the main road was lined to either side with long rows of stone one-story warehouses. Each warehouse was a great V with dozens of storefronts and storage bays facing inward—the open end of the V facing the trade road. They served the only passage between the countries for a long way around.

  At the head of the first V, Garret stopped at the corner of the building where they were in deepest shadow.

  BB were close behind them.

  Jeff had peeled off to go down the back side of the building in case they flushed anyone out that way.

  Conway tapped her shoulder then pointed across the street and up. With her night-vision goggles, she could just make out Mutt on top of the only two-story building for several hundred meters around. He then indicated for her to lead the way, pointing close along the line of closed shops.

  She turned on the feed from Sergey’s camera in one eye of her NVGs. For brightness, she selected a level that didn’t distract her, but she could see as an overlay if she concentrated on it. Originally, it had been a ve
rtiginous experience—disorienting dog-style motion fed into the human eye—but she’d learned to use and finally appreciate it. Wherever Sergey went, she could feel the connection between them until they functioned as one.

  She knelt next to Sergey, gave him a good scratch, then whispered, “Seek.” A hand gesture—that she knew he could see even if it was too dark for unaided human eyes—was all the direction he needed.

  In that instant, he transformed. He would no longer react well to anyone trying to touch him, but neither would he be bothered by Garret Conway standing a foot away. He now had only one task in mind—sniffing out one of the thousand-plus explosives compounds he’d been trained to recognize.

  Trusting her, he stepped around the corner and began working his way along the line of shops. She swung loose her FN-SCAR assault rifle, double-checked that the flash suppressor was in place and moved in behind him. Sergey trailed his nose along the base of battered wood and steel garage doors that shuttered each bay of the long building.

  Fifty meters down, he skipped a narrow doorway, probably leading up a set a stairs to the roof. She snapped her fingers lightly, calling him back. He double-checked where she indicated, but showed no interest, so she waved him to continue.

  After the third building with no “alert,” she could feel the team’s growing impatience.

  But she knew she couldn’t share that. Couldn’t let Sergey know or he’d pick up on it, get distracted or hurry at the wrong moment.

  She signaled him along the fourth building and followed in his footsteps.

  6

  Garret didn’t know whether to be thrilled or worried. If his team had been searching on their own, they’d still be back at the first building, breaking into bay after bay of worthless garbage. Some of it would be household belongings, stored when refugees had been told they couldn’t take them across the border—all held in the hopes of returning someday. Foodstuffs, manufacturing supplies, bicycle parts, the list was endless. The locks were feeble at best, easily picked. But each lock took time. Each inspection was visual and usually tedious.

  But the dog went by each bay as fast as they could walk.

  This was either fast…or useless. What if they’d walked by some major weapons cache?

  He’d worked with military war dogs before, but always as point on a patrol, sniffing out buried IEDs. He’d never let a MWD guide the destination of an entire mission.

  As they moved to the fifth warehouse, he couldn’t help watching Minnow. She moved like her nickname: quick, smooth, hardly disturbing the air around her. In a land where standing still and just breathing could produce a rising cloud of brownout dust, she and her dog barely stirred the air as they slipped along.

  Get her out of your head, Conway! Being distracted by anything on a mission was bad news. He thought that had been trained out of him, but apparently not.

  Liza could distract a dead man already in his grave. That pleasant, can-do attitude she’d struck with the team this evening had been pitch perfect. She’d won all four guys over with her polite introduction and her ever-so-gentle but obviously dangerous-as-hell companion. He pitied the man who tried to touch her uninvited.

  Minnow had also stood out because of how she looked. They’d all been in-country for a week and looked it. She’d arrived from wherever she’d been, looking fresh-showered and poster perfect. Her straight blonde hair swinging just along her fine jaw line. Her blue eyes wide and observant. Her smile easy—for everyone except him. And the way she acted with the dog was just too much.

  Like the one that he’d murdered and never been able to apologize for, it was clear that she loved her dog and that the feeling was returned. Together they—

  Sergey sat abruptly and Garret almost plowed into Minnow when she stopped as well.

  The dog was looking up at her expectantly, his tongue lolling happily.

  “What?” He was so close to here that he barely had to whisper. As close as lovers.

  Shit! He’d just been in the field too long. Had to be to think such things.

  Minnow made the throat-cutting signal with her hand meaning danger, then pointed emphatically at the closed door.

  Oh! Pay dirt. Sitting was the dog’s signal of a find.

  She quickly guided Sergey forward, pointing at the ground. He sniffed the ground, but kept walking. No IEDs. Then she led him to the opposite edge of the door. Once more he sat abruptly.

  Garret clicked his mic and whispered, “West side, bay seven.”

  Jeff was now on sniper overwatch and Mutt was on the ground out back. Mutt would position himself to deal with anyone trying to escape that way.

  Burton came forward to pick the lock, but hesitated at the door. He swung his hand forward, the sign for point of entry. Then he made an non-standard gesture like twisting a doorknob. Like—

  There was no lock for him to unlock. Garret checked the door edges again. No light leakage. It was a double, wooden door, with handles and a wear line where a chain and padlock had hung. The doors would swing out to either side.

  In case it was booby-trapped, or a gunman waited in the dark, Garret yanked out a length of tactical line and tied it to one handle. Burton did the same to the other door. He had them switch sides, which confused Burton, but that was just tough. They each backed up holding the end of the line. Burton stood beside Baxter and, as he’d planned, Garret ended up between Minnow and the dog.

  He held up three fingers…two…braced himself, then yanked open the doors.

  A heavy sheet of black plastic hung just inside the doors, blocking all light.

  “Tsook?” a voice asked “Who?” through the black plastic.

  Garret held up a fist to freeze the team in place.

  Someone pulled aside one edge of the plastic less than two feet from where Garret stood with his back against the now open door. The man was backlit by a kerosene or oil lamp and would be night blind. Like most Afghan men, he was thin, weather-beaten, and wore a thin black beard.

  “Tsook?” he asked again.

  Garret reached out, grabbed him by the throat, and dragged him out through the plastic. As the material flapped aside, he didn’t see anyone else inside. He thumped the man in the solar plexus hard enough to make sure he wouldn’t be crying out an alarm in the next few moments, then passed him back to the soldier behind him.

  That would be Minnow! Crap! No choice. He handed the man off and hoped for the best.

  He used his rifle barrel to brush aside the plastic as Baxter did the same on the other side. Two women squatted low over an entire array of armament. There were dozens of AK-47s and several rocket-propelled grenades. An old Toyota Land Cruiser SUV was stripped down, ready to be turned into a rolling bomb. Everything would be hidden inside door panels, fenders, and seats. The only thing they lacked was a pile of something that exploded to shove inside the exposed cavities.

  In moments, Minnow had handed off her prisoner and had the two women bound. Dealing with another woman, the two Afghani women were surprised, but calm. If a man had done it, they’d fight and scream because no married woman was supposed to be touched by another man. Minnow hadn’t missed a single trick. No matter how fresh she looked, she’d clearly spent plenty of time in-country.

  He squatted down and began questioning the man, who just kept shaking his head in refusal.

  That’s when he noticed Minnow. She had Sergey playing his nice-doggie game. Garret never heard the word “friend” but neither was the Malinois poised to rend.

  Unable to get anything from the man, he finally gagged him just as Minnow signaled Garret to the other corner.

  BB made fast work of completely securing the area and clearing the weapons.

  “Couldn’t get shit out of him,” Garret grumbled.

  “The women are waiting,” Minnow replied. “They aren’t happy about it either, but he’s brother to one and husband to the other so they have little choice.”

  “For what?”

  “There’s a shipment coming ton
ight,” she waved toward the partially disassembled car. “A big load of explosives. Coming here. Not for a while, but it’s coming.”

  Now that was good news.

  He stopped BB before they could burn some thermite and melt the weapons cache. Everything had to look normal. He deployed his team as well as he could, restoring the black-out plastic, closing the doors, as well as arranging a few other surprises. He roamed the room. All the tools of a car mechanic’s shop were piled along one wall, but no spare parts—new or used. The man was a car-bomb producer. Pull in a car, receive a delivery of explosives and, presto chango, mass destruction in a marketplace.

  The front had been cleared for the pending delivery. A stripped Land Cruiser SUV stood in the middle of the bay. The guy was good. He’d welded steel struts in place of the springs. It would make for a hard ride, but the suspension wouldn’t sag—a common indicator of a car loaded down heavy with explosives. Near one back corner, past the stack of dismounted fenders and seats, stood the refuse pile—all the stripped-out metal, springs, fittings, even spare tires from prior car-bomb conversions. There was a small gap along the back wall for access to the rear door. He made sure it was secure. To the other side stood a massive, rusted-out truck’s engine block. He stashed his prisoners behind that.

  At the center of the back wall he was able to sit with a view of the whole bay. He dropped into place with his back against the wall to do what Delta did best—be patient and wait.

  A low growl informed him that he should have landed somewhere other than close beside Minnow and her furry guardian.

  7

  “Shush!”

  Sergey huffed grumpily then lay his head on her thigh, effectively pinning her in place. That blocked any excuse for getting away from Conway.

  “How long until the shipment arrives?” Conway checked his watch for the twentieth time in the last ten minutes.