The Missionary

by Margaret Ferguson

  When I skidded to a stop, Mikey quit waving his arms and jumped out of the way to avoid being struck. He immediately climbed into the passenger door. When I saw his face was cut and bruised, I gripped the steering wheel in anger.

  “Hey, Ro.” He gasped. “Thought you forgot about me.”

  “Nope,” I said, forcing a grin. “Stopped for a smoke.”

  “Got any on you?”

  “Nope,” I said again, putting the vehicle into drive and turning it around. “God… the smell!” I winced.

  “Oh. Yeah, sorry. That hill smelled like—well, I hate to say. I have no idea what that was, but it was disgusting.”

  “That, Sergeant, was their outdoor outhouse,” I chuckled.

  Mikey smelled the clothing I had given him the night before and made a face. “Really?” He rolled down his window. “You didn’t happen to bring an extra set of clothes with you, did you?”

  “As a matter of fact,” I replied, dragging my bag forward and setting it between us. “You can change back there,” I said, pointing over my shoulder. “Were you followed?”

  “I don’t think so.” Mikey rolled the window back up, climbing over the seat and into the back section of the truck. “Didn’t think I’d ever topple that stupid thing. Slid right down the hill, though, smooth as snot.”

  I wiped the window again with my sleeve since the glass was fogging faster than the heater was defrosting it.

  “Uh, Captain?” he called from the back. I glanced in the rear-view mirror to see that he had the curtain pulled back. “Looks like you have a couple of stowaways.”

  I hit the brakes quickly and slid to a stop for the second time tonight. I turned in my seat to see Abraham and Abdullah peering from the back of the truck. Scolding them wouldn’t do any good at this point, so I motioned for them to come forward. They sat quietly in the back seat, and soon Mikey climbed over them into the passenger seat again.

  He turned to me and grinned. “Friends of yours?”

  “Yeah,” I grimaced. “I told them to stay home, but I guess they thought I might need them.” I looked back out the window. The snow was coming down heavily now. There was no way I could drive any further in it. I sighed. “Well, it looks like we’re going to bunk here for the night. I don’t want to get lost.”

  “I’m not worried. Colonel Corson says you’re half Injun, and that you could find your way out of any situation.”

  “Well, Sergeant, I exhaled. “Let’s hope he’s right.”

  We all climbed from the truck and walked to the back where I proceeded to designate who would be sleeping where and when. Then I handed out weapons to each person. I never wanted to put a gun in the hand of a child, but if Abraham or Abdullah had to defend himself against one of his own countrymen to save his life, then so be it. When I asked them if they would rather have a knife or a gun, they each chose a sidearm. Mikey and I showed them how to use the weapons, and I instructed the boys to keep the safety on to prevent them from shooting themselves. Or one of us. Then I told them to get some rest.

  Mikey and I walked the perimeter, me with my night vision goggles, to assure there was no one else out there. When I was satisfied that we were safe, for now, we climbed back into the truck and shared nuts, berries, and naan. Then Mikey ate two more MREs.

  “Boy, am I glad you found me,” he said excitedly. “They said they’d been talking to my family and were selling me back to them for fifty thousand dollars.” He noisily smacked as he chewed. “My mom doesn’t have fifty thousand dollars. She must have mortgaged the house or something.” Mikey peeled open the MRE and ate it with his fingers. “I think they were close to moving me when their radio broke. Some luck, huh?”

  I reached into my pocket, lifted out the SIM card and dangled it in the air.

  “That, was you?” he exclaimed.

  “Found the satellite phone to set up an extraction, and I didn’t need them messing that up.”

  “They know we’re alive?”

  “They do now.”

  Mikey stopped, and for a brief moment, I thought I caught his lip trembling. I put my hand on his shoulder.

  “Sorry, Cap.” He rubbed his eyes with the back of his hand. “It’s just, I thought I might never get home. And,” he wiped another tear. “I couldn’t bear my mom thinking she had to buy her son back, or they were going to kill me.”

  I squeezed his shoulder. “I was feeling the same way as you, Mike.”

  He sniffed, wiping his eyes with his sleeve. “And when they took me, but left those other two guys, well—.”

  “What other two guys?” I asked suddenly, sitting upright.

  “The two other guys they had penned up with me before they moved me to that village.”

  “Our guys?”

  “No—civilians.”

  “Did they get released?”

  “I don’t know. I don’t think so. They were both in pretty bad shape. I mean, at least the journalist was.”

  “Shot?”

  “No. They beat the hell out of him, though.” He shoved bread into his mouth, then spoke with his mouth full. “But the doc, he fixed him up, best he could.”

  “An Afghan doctor?”

  “No, the one they were holding with us. I think he’d been there the longest.”

  I suddenly felt all the blood leave my face and felt dizzy.

  “What was his name?” I asked weakly.

  “The journalist fella, he was Randall. British, I think. Real funny guy. Great sense of humor and great attitude—considering. Until they beat the hell out of him.”

  “No, the doctor. What was his name?”

  “Teddy. They called him Teddy, only I don’t think that was his real name.”

  “Henry? Was his name Henry?”

  “Yeah, Henry,” he replied, nonchalantly, not realizing that with those two words, he had just altered my world forever.

  Chapter Forty-Seven

  I contemplated going back to our village, now that I knew they held an arsenal. Henry had been a beloved part of the community for two years before his supposed death. Certainly, there would be volunteers to fight the men who had kidnapped him and led everyone to believe he’d died over a year ago. Only, if we had to make two trips, we wouldn’t have enough gas to come back and get to the extraction site by tomorrow. And yet, knowing what I now knew, I couldn’t just leave them there, any more than I could have left Mikey. So, I was at a crossroads: go into battle with two soldiers and two goat herders, with minimal armaments against who knows how many men, or go back for more guns and possibly more men and miss my pick-up. Damn it!

  So much to consider, not the least of which was rescuing the man to whose wife I had just proposed. Only, I had to push that to the back of my mind. Way back. Somehow.

  Mikey detailed how he was made to walk from one camp to the other mere days before his escape—the day before my return. They had moved him during the daytime, and it had only taken them four hours. That told me that they weren’t concerned about being seen. Since he knew the route in the daylight, that’s when we would try to find it. At first light. The camp clearly hadn’t been on our list of villages to immunize, because it was off the grid. It didn’t have an official name, and, according to Mikey, housed only three soldiers, (possibly) their families, and prisoners. He remembered seeing two, or maybe three huts, and was merely guessing about the size of the guard they kept on-site. However, with only three prisoners, three soldiers seemed reasonable. When I asked how sure he was about where the camp was located, he said, “pretty sure.” When I pinned him down, he replied that he was ninety-five percent sure. Hell, we’d moved on less than that before— as evidenced by my being where I was at this moment.

  I asked each man in the vehicle with me what they wanted to do before I committed to it, though I already knew the answer. Abraham cried when he realized that his beloved Henry was alive. Abdullah swore his allegiance to our little band of renegades that were about to go to war with his own neighbor, to save a Western
er. Mikey acted like he did the day I first met him. I merely needed to point him in the direction of the enemy, and he’d do whatever I asked.

  I drew in a deep breath and slowly exhaled. We were now less than a mile from where Mikey swore he’d been held before being moved the prior week. He told us about the bunker with the political prisoners, as they were called. The journalist, Randall, had been doing an undercover story for the BBC when the caravan transporting several journalists, photographers, and a military attaché’ was targeted by a rocket. Most of them survived. They were all brought to the holding area, as they referred to it, so that the doctor could patch them up. Then, one by one, they were ransomed back to families, or governments, or whoever the Taliban could extort money from for their return.

  Apparently, Henry had become extremely valuable to them for his skills, specifically attending to wounded soldiers returning from battle and captured political prisoners. The supplies they didn’t have, they stole from the clinic where he used to work, which would explain Mary Beth’s dwindling inventory. So far as Mary Beth could say, no Taliban soldiers had ever been treated in the little berg that had rescued and cared for me, or most certainly, they would have realized they had been trying to extort money from the wrong family. And, Mary Beth would have known months ago that her husband was alive. It was too overwhelming to think about. Suddenly, I had a new mission, all other considerations aside. I couldn’t allow the logistics of this little rescue mission to distract me from what had to be done.

  So, we spent the early morning hours planning our attack. Mikey drew into the snow what he remembered about the camp and their routine. We would get closer, and then I would recon the encampment to assure that nothing had changed in troop size. I made him disclose everything he could recall, from when they ate, to where they prayed. Did he remember what type of lock was used? What kind of weapons did they carry? At dawn, we left the vehicle, in two teams—Abdullah with me, Abraham with Mikey—and headed in different directions, to at least take them by surprise on one side. Hopefully two.

  I crawled up the small ridge, overlooking the camp from the east. Once in place, binoculars in hand, I surveyed the land for miles around. Thanks to the steady snowfall, I couldn’t see the plumes of smoke from the distant village where we were no longer welcome. Only time would tell if the weather would hinder or help us in our endeavors. When I spied two bundled figures below me, moving stealthily from building to building I could only hope it was Mikey and Abraham, and not enemy soldiers walking their perimeter.

  After glancing at my watch, I stood and began making my way downward through what was now shin-deep snow. Only as I turned, I spied three men walking around the hill coming from the direction of the other village. Crap. Reinforcements? That meant three more men to fight. Or, more probably, they had begun searching for their escaped prisoner. I glanced in Mikey’s direction, although I already knew it was too late to warn him, too late to change the plan. I turned to Abdullah, noting the concern on his face as well. I nodded encouragement and then slowly made my way down the side of the ridge, Abdullah on my heels, trying to be as invisible as possible.

  After we planted ourselves in a perfect hidden observation position, we waited. I counted off the minutes in my head as Mikey moved, unseen, to the bunker. I was maybe a fifty yards out, the snow letting up long enough for me to spy him talking through a grate in the door. He wanted to give the hostages as much warning as possible before setting off a grenade, mere feet away from them. I watched Mikey run to the side of the building and then counted down in my head. The explosion was loud, and it echoed through the valley. There was no turning back now.

  Mikey took down the first enemy soldier that he caught off-guard, with his knife. I took the second one down with my rifle. Another man ran from one of the structures shooting. Mikey flattened himself against the mud house so that I would have a clear shot. No one else came out, though there was repeated gunfire from two of the buildings. That made five combatants, total. The men from the other camp ran around the ridge, and I took two of them out immediately, a single shot for each. Now, things were about to get more complicated. Abdullah dropped to the ground when someone in one of the mud huts shot at him. I watched as Mikey reached around and tossed a grenade into the shelter. Within a few seconds, the colorful blast blew out one wall of the rudimentarily built abode.

  Gunfire erupted from my right, aimed at Mikey. Slowly, I crawled backward in the snow, Abdullah mimicking my actions until we were on the other side of a canopy of low bushes growing from the hillside. We ran together toward where the last man would probably be hiding. It would leave Mikey and Abraham unprotected, but if I didn’t, either of us could be ambushed by the remaining soldier. We had to end this now. More would come. And I’m sure if they caught us, this time we wouldn’t be taken prisoner.

  More gunfire erupted, and I ran as quickly as I could in the now foot-deep snow. When I rounded the hill, I came face to face with a soldier running my way, surprising him. Immediately, I hit the man in his face with my rifle, breaking his nose. He fell to his knees before me, stunned and bleeding. When he looked up at me, I saw pain and confusion in his young eyes. He couldn’t have been much older than Abraham or Abdullah. Slowly, I lowered my weapon as I picked up his and backed away from him. Blood continued to trickle from his nose and mouth as his confused stare turned to shame, and he scurried back in the direction from which he’d come.

  I handed Abdullah the confiscated weapon, which he took tentatively. Shakily, he looked down at the bloodied gun. I helped the boy switch the safety mechanism off before placing it back in his hand. Then, I explained that he didn’t have to aim it at anyone, he just had to shoot in the general direction of the gunman. Oh, and, I reminded him not to accidentally shoot himself or, more importantly, me. Then, we moved stealthily as one towards the clearing and our counterparts, who were assuredly securing the hostages’ release at this very moment.

  As we turned the corner, I heard the sudden report of a rifle—a fraction of a second before the impact, as I was struck from behind. It momentarily knocked me to my knees. I drew a deep breath as Abdullah immediately fired at the perpetrator, distracting the gunman. With effort, I pulled my gun and began firing from under my arm, both of us continuing to shoot until the man fell backward into the blood splattered snow. When I turned, Abdullah walked toward me, warily. As he neared, he looked at me, perplexed, and then fell against me. He slid down my body and onto the ground, his own blood mingling with mine in the snow at my feet. Quickly, I propped Abdullah up, pulling him up against the rock we had just hidden behind. I tore at his clothing until I found the wound.

  Now, an injury inflicted by a bullet is directly related to the bullet’s kinetic energy—the measure of the bullet’s weight, velocity, and gravitational trajectory. The combination of the three determines the extent of damage a bullet can cause. I breathed with relief. Abdullah had been shot clean through. That usually meant no shrapnel inside. Hopefully. That would also mean no internal injuries, with the bullet potentially soldering any wound from the inside.

  “You’re the luckiest son of a gun I know.” I grinned and shook my head. “If you’re gonna get shot—.” I grimaced, drawing in another tight breath. He looked at me soberly as I attempted to explain to him in Pashto that he’d been shot in the fatty part of his thigh, which in the realm of getting shot, is a good thing. Abdullah nodded, unconvinced.

  With great difficulty, I stood, pulling him up, my arm draped around his waist. Cautiously, we walked around the hill. I was caught off guard before, and I couldn’t afford to make that mistake again. It was eerily quiet. There was no more gunfire, no yelling. Just silence. Except for the sound of the snow falling around us again, faintly crackling like a campfire, as the large flakes hit the branches and hillside beside us.

  We limped as one toward the bunker. Mikey and Abraham walked from the other side of a building, their weapons at the ready. The two entered the bunker and moments later, walked b
ack out, each of them holding up a freed prisoners. Abraham hugged one tightly, and I quickly looked down. I closed my eyes just for a moment, trying to measure my breathing. When, I felt Abdullah slide from my grip and all other concerns simply faded away. I looked into Abdullah’s pained face as I fell into the snow beside him. “I have a wounded man here,” I called out.

  The figure holding onto Abraham looked up and then rushed toward us. I watched him approach, with mixed emotions, though they were secondary to attending to Abdullah. The snow was coming down heavier again, so he was no more than a shape hobbling to me through the growing flurries surrounding us.

  “Secure the area,” I called out to Mikey.

  A slender man, close to my height, knelt beside Abdullah, tearing at the boy’s clothing until he found the wound, sincere concern in his eyes. He breathed a sigh of relief. “He’ll be fine. It went straight through. Didn’t hit anything major,” he added, confirming my triage summary.

  “Look at that, my friend. Wounded in action.” I grinned. “In America, they would give you a medal for this.”

  Abdullah gazed at me, a drunk smile on his face.

  When the man’s eyes met mine, he reached his hand across the boy’s chest. Tentatively, I took it. “Henry Peebles.”

  “Eddie,” I said with a forced smile, shaking his hand. Then I looked down. “And this brave fellow I think you know.”

  “Abdullah,” Henry grinned. “Didn’t know you had it in you.”

  There was a crooked smile pasted on Abdullah’s face as we both raised him up.