Soldier's Heart Part Four: Brotherhood Protectors World

by Ilsa J. Bick

  Something...happened.

  There was a sudden blaze of light and then a jolt, the sense of something jumping or flinching, or maybe that had been a sound, the crack of metal against bone or wood on stone.

  All at once the weight on her chest was gone and so was the pressure on her throat, and she drew in a tortured, cawing breath. Her eyes rolled; she couldn’t focus. There was blood in her mouth, running down her throat.

  Someone, not Gholam, swam out of the gloaming to grab an arm. Still coughing, drawing in on shrieking breath after another, she tried to fight.

  “Kate!” Light bouncing crazily as a pair of hands tried to stay hers. “Kate, it is all right. He cannot hurt you now. Stop, we are here, you are safe!”

  It was the voice that got through. My God. The voice, that voice.

  “Bibi?” she croaked. “Bibi?”

  Chapter 18

  Afghanistan

  A voice?

  Oh boy. She froze. All the hairs on her neck spiked. Her hands moved to rest on her rifle…which wasn’t there. The hell? When had she put it down? Getting Six ready, that’s when. And then I checked Pederson and got distracted. But she did have her Glock, not standard-issue, but Jack was lenient that way—and thank God, the Army had finally gotten it through its head that medics needed not only to defend their patients but themselves.

  She waited another few seconds, trying to figure out what to do. Shooting the guy because he was talking to himself was not high on her to-do list, but she really didn’t think he was anyway. For one thing, no clickety-snick of that camera app. For another, this really sounded like one end of a conversation.

  “Chup sha!” Gholam snapped. Pashto for be quiet. He wasn’t loud, but she heard the ferocity. Another long string of what was really only so much gibberish. Pissed about something. She caught a few more words, “waderega” and “wulim.” Stop. Shoot. Maybe he was ticked off they were shooting at him? Or that the Americans were getting away? He was ordering them to stop shooting or to shoot to stop them?

  But I was right not to trust him. She shot a quick look the way she’d come. Although there were lanterns, they were spaced far apart, like someone was having a garden party but was too cheap to spring for enough Chinese lanterns so you could actually see something. The lanterns’ light was quickly gobbled up by the deep shadows here. That also meant, however, there was little, if anything, to backlight her, and she had the advantage of her night vision. Plastering herself against stone, she listened, waited, eased around, hugging the wall.

  Darker here. Why? Raking a gaze over the walls, she spotted an empty iron hook then looked down and caught the faint residual luminescence of a lantern. Gholam had doused the lanterns in this tunnel, the better to discourage anyone from coming this way.

  The smart play was to go get someone. She might have done that, too…if not for the fact that Tompkins said goatherds used this once upon a time. That meant other people could, too. A chill shivered up her spine. There was someone else here? Already? Some of Gholam’s friends had come in a back way? What if even more now knew what they planned and were circling around to the front?

  Leave. Go tell Jack. But tell Jack what? She didn’t know or have anything. Still, she might have left if Gholam hadn’t moved from behind a bend and she caught that silver glow. He was on his phone. Of course. A cell wouldn’t work in all this rock, unless there was a way to get a signal out—and she felt a breeze, which meant a vent or, perhaps, an actual exit.

  Which meant Gholam knew these tunnels. Gholam also knew they were being jammed, but only intermittently, while he could use the local network.

  If she could get that phone, that would be proof enough. There’d be a time stamp and duration. There might even be texts, though would that do them any good? Yes, they had Amir. He could translate.

  Her big advantage—surprise. The rubber cups around her eyepieces meant there was no stray light from her NVs. She was still well enough back to be invisible. But she was one person. For all she knew, Gholam was talking to other guys already here or on the way. Taking down Gholam now would eat up time she didn’t have.

  Gholam rattled off something else. The only word she recognized was paramzaka. That meant weapons. You’ve heard enough. Go. Raising up on the balls of her feet, she pivoted soundlessly, took two quick steps then heard a resounding metallic clang as her boot collided with one of the lanterns. She tripped, falling to a knee. In the tight space, her helmet smashed into a rock wall, knocking the helmet and goggles askew to clatter to stone.

  “Who’s there?”

  Shit! Her heart slammed into her ribs. Gasping, she turned a quick look over a shoulder then winced as a spear of light from Gholam’s cell pinned her like a bug on cardboard. In the backwash she saw his face register first shock and then rage.

  He came for her.

  If she’d been thinking, she’d had rolled, grabbed her pistol, shot the bastard. She might have even managed to hit him. But the distance was short, and drawing a weapon when a guy trying to murder you is bearing down would be tough for someone who wasn’t panicked.

  Get up, get up! Clawing her way upright, she bolted for where she thought the entrance must be, but the cell’s light had blinded her. Disoriented, she smacked into stone, a hard whack. Pain exploded in her face. Her vision blinkered, white spangles bursting in the darkness, and she reeled as a spume of warm blood sprayed from her broken nose.

  In the next second he had her, tackling her like a linebacker, bearing her to the tunnel floor. She opened her mouth to yell, but a fist clubbed her head hard enough her vision stuttered. Stunned, she struggled to get an arm up, but he flipped her over and dropped onto her chest. Tacking down her shoulders with his knees, he clamped his meaty hands around her neck. Already choking on her own blood, now she could draw no air at all. A surge of horrible, unthinking panic blasted through her veins. She could feel her hands batting and slapping at his back, his arms, but she couldn’t reach to tear at his hands or even score the backs of his hands with her nails. It wouldn’t have made a difference even if she could. He was just too big, and she was already hurt. Bucking, she tried heaving him off. He rode her, saying nothing. He’d dropped his cell, which was still lit, so she saw him only as a huge, hulking shape and then not at all as orange-red spangles bloomed before her eyes. Her chest was tight, a bright burn, and her pulse was frantic, wild, thudding in her ears faster and faster, harder and harder as her heart tried desperately to drive every precious molecule of air to her brain. Dimly, she was aware that her legs were drumming against stone. She was losing it; she knew it, and then she wasn’t thinking anymore as her consciousness slewed, her world collapsing the way an iris closes down against the light.

  Something...happened.

  There was a sudden blaze of light and then a jolt, the sense of something jumping or flinching, or maybe that had been a sound, the crack of metal against bone or wood on stone.

  All at once the weight on her chest was gone and so was the pressure on her throat, and she drew in a tortured, cawing breath. Her eyes rolled; she couldn’t focus. There was blood in her mouth, running down her throat.

  Someone, not Gholam, swam out of the gloaming to grab an arm. Still coughing, drawing in on shrieking breath after another, she tried to fight.

  “Kate!” Light bouncing crazily as a pair of hands tried to stay hers. “Kate, it is all right. He cannot hurt you now. Stop, we are here, you are safe!”

  It was the voice that got through. My God. The voice, that voice.

  “Bibi?” she croaked. “Bibi?”

  Chapter 19

  Afghanistan

  “Did you get in?” She forced the words through what felt like a throat filled with glass, but she was better off than Gholam, who was still out cold. An enormous welt erupted from his forehead like a unicorn’s horn. Given how hard Bibi clocked him with her rifle, it was a wonder she hadn’t shattered his skull. Bibi had also tightened zip ties around his wrists and slapped duct tape on his mou
th. The nice thing about police was that just about everyone everywhere used flexible handcuffs.

  “I am in. Thank goodness, he uses fingerprint ID instead of a password.” The Afghan policeman poked at Gholam’s phone. Dust and grit caked her face; her sweat showed in dark streaks from her temples to her jaw. She’d lost her hijab somewhere along the way, too, loosing her long dark hair to tumble around her shoulders. A number of kids, just as grimy, were clustered around, too, Fatimah, Malik, Jawad. Even Aram, who’d once mistrusted Bibi on sight. Bibi had given a hurried summary, telling Kate they’d met up with Stanton and the other members of the convoy when they were nearly down from the mountains and only minutes before the RPGs struck. Stanton had opted to remain down-mountain to support Stone. She didn’t know when they would make it here. She and the kids had immediately turned back, opting to take this shortcut both to save time and get out of sight. If Bibi had shown up even thirty seconds later, they wouldn’t be having this conversation.

  And they also had a big problem. Not one kid reacted to Gholam. No one shrieked or pointed an accusing finger. For them, Gholam was not the wrong policeman. But the right one wouldn’t have tried to kill her, either.

  So…what was that about?

  “What did you find?” They’d been at this for only a minute or two, but Kate felt time slipping away, running out. Gholam’s words kept orbiting in her head: Shoot. Stop. “Are there texts at least? What about that last call? Where was it coming from?”

  “Phones are different here. The prefixes only tell you which company a caller’s using, but there’s no way to tell if a call is local or not.” Bibi poked another button, her frown deepening. “These texts are another matter. They are going to various cities, Lashkar Gah, Kabul. Jalalabad. Also, many I do not recognize.” She grunted. “Hunh. Shuro-Obod. Interesting.”

  She almost didn’t ask—and she would think back to this moment often, wondering that, if she had kept her mouth shut, things would’ve been different. Because then, she wouldn’t have made like a bat out of hell. She would’ve been calmer. She could’ve gotten closer.

  Instead, she asked, “Why is Shuro-Obod interesting?”

  “Oh.” Bibi was still scrolling. “Because it is not in Afghanistan. It is north.”

  “North?” Oh Jesus. Because, to the kids at least, Gholam wasn’t the bad guy. “North, where?”

  At her tone, Bibi looked up in surprise. “Why, the border. With Tajikistan.”

  God. Every cell in her body turned to ice. Fumbling for her radio, she tried to get a call out, but, of course, what hissed from the speaker was all hash and she didn’t try again.

  “Kate.” Bibi put a hand on her arm. “What is wrong?”

  “I have to get to Jack.” Wheeling, she grabbed her helmet, jammed it on, thumbed on her NV. “I have to get to him right now! Bring Gholam!”

  “Kate, what is going on?”

  “Everything. Bibi, it’s not one bent cop,” she said. “It’s two.”

  Chapter 20

  Dead Man

  One upside—now that there wasn’t as much of her to drag, she was faster, wriggling upstream like a virtually limbless salamander. She kept eyeing that lopsided oval, gauging if she might make it without using her strong right hand as a battering ram. The light was bright enough now she saw blue sky, the wintry thin light of the sun, and she got more scents now, above the water: the pines, snow, wet earth. An animal, she thought…no, two…but not the same type…

  Oh. Her heart gave a painful kick. One scent was dark woods and deep mist and something wild and ancient. The alpha. The wolf? He had found her?

  But…she frowned…there was something else.

  “Someone, too,” Jack murmured. “But I don’t…”

  No, she didn’t recognize the someone, either, and wondered if there might not be more than one. Vance’s men? That was what she wanted and needed, but God, if they saw the wolf…people could be stupid. She had to stop them, but this other scent, the animal that was not the wolf, was so strange—and stranger still because she knew it. Whatever this was, it was on the tip of her tongue. A foot shy of the opening now, she dragged in another frantic breath and one more—

  And tasted memories of grit and pulverized earth. Munitions and blood.

  My God.

  Six.

  Chapter 21

  Afghanistan

  “Jack!” She was running flat out, still trying the radio even though she knew it was no use. “Jack, Jack, come in, over!” All she got back was a fizzle of static she barely heard over the stutter of her own panting breaths. Behind, came the clatter and footfalls of the others, Bibi and the kids, Gholam.

  As she neared the exit, she caught something new: a faint but unmistakable whup-whup-whup of rotors thrashing air. Choppers. She keyed her radio again then decided to hell with it. Jack had worried about jamming and maybe that was the case here, or just bad luck on account of the caves—although Gholam got through, he got through, he knows what’s going to happen, he said stop, he said shoot—and she couldn’t worry about it now. Save her breath, run like hell, get to Jack, warn him, warn them!

  As she swept past the exit, she snatched up her rifle, which was still standing where she’d left it, and then she was out. The night was ebony, moonless, yet full of stars. Blasting down the road, she rounded the bend and hit a straightaway. She spotted them all about a hundred yards away. They were ranged on the broad expanse of a table of stone that rose several feet from the surrounding plateau. Lowry was covering with his rifle. Pederson was bent over Tompkins, who sprawled on his back. Handset to an ear, Jack was talking into the radio—and Amir stood just to Jack’s left and a few feet from the edge.

  No one saw her coming but Six. Six’s head turned, and then he was clambering to his feet. Someone had taken off his muzzle, and he let out a happy yap she only saw but couldn’t hear over the helicopter. His tail was going like mad, too, but only at first and then not at all, stopping in mid-swish, and if a dog’s stance could indicate concern and confusion and then alarm, Six’s did. The dog knew something was wrong; he just didn’t know what.

  “Jack!” she screamed. But the helicopter’s thunder was so much stronger and greater, and the word was lost. “Jack, it’s Amir, it’s Gholam and Amir! Jack!”

  He must have heard something because, in those last seconds, he did turn, handset to an ear, and raised his free hand in a wave, and although she would never be sure, she could swear he was smiling. Because, in Jack’s mind, this was almost over, and soon there would be snow and cold and their love and Christmas.

  Amir saw her coming, too, and did a remarkable thing. He took a step back and then flattened and rolled—and then he was simply gone.

  At the same instant, a Black Hawk levitated up and over the mountain to her left. A medevac. The Black Hawk was on approach and close enough now the chop of its blades echoed off rocks and vibrated through the ground, the roar growing louder by the second.

  If there was a crack, a snap, that kerSHAW of a bullet breaking the sound barrier, she never heard it. Either her heart was beating too hard or, more likely, the shooter was that close.

  Because that was when Jack’s head exploded.

  Chapter 22

  Dead Man

  “They tried to kill me!” The woman, a tiny thing though with a tough edge that reminded Kujo of beef jerky, clutched at his arm. “They pulled out guns and I only just got away! Thank God, your soldiers found us when they did or I don’t know—”

  “Slow down, slow down.” The lady was giving him a headache. Finding her…well, actually, she’d come stumbling out from somewhere near the mountains and found him…had not been on the agenda. He’d been following the big gray. Call it intuition, but when the alpha disappeared only seconds before McEvoy, he’d played a hunch. Boone had not been amused to relay his request—Guy wants to know where this big honking wolf got to—and would probably have nixed it if Kujo hadn’t persuaded Hacker to get Vance on the horn. Even then, when he e
xplained, the colonel sounded skeptical. But Kujo had gotten the go-ahead and he and Six had split off from the others, who continued on, dogging the guys they’d spotted earlier, hoping they would eventually lead them to McEvoy.

  He and Six found the wolf, all right, but then this lady had found them.

  “Just take it easy,” Kujo said, slipping a sidelong glance at Six. The shepherd stood obediently to heel, though his gaze was riveted to a woody verge near a broad stream about fifty yards away. The big gray was enormous, a real monster of an animal with glittery yellow eyes. Most wolves would slink away at the first sight of a person or whiff of a dog, but not this alpha. Kujo could almost imagine the animal was, well, waiting for something. Just so long as it stayed put. He returned his attention to the woman. “You were kidnapped?”

  “Yes!” The woman’s face twisted. “Along with those poor girls! I’m a nun and I do charity work and so I was driving the van, taking the girls to a mission house when these men flagged us down and they had guns and we’ve marched through these mountains for days… Oh!” The woman clapped her hands together. “Thank our Lord, your people came in when they did, but then everyone started shooting and I just panicked, I ran.”