The Renegades (18 page)

The pararescuemen from the second aircraft helped with Conway. Parson tucked the poncho under the dead man’s shoulders, took Conway’s feet. When they lifted him, a few drops of blood dripped from the creases of the poncho. They carried him to the Pave Hawk, stumbling and sidestepping with the weight.

Then Parson gathered up his helmet bag, survival vest, and Conway’s pack. The PJs loaded the dog and kennel, and Parson boarded last. He sat beside Gold and fastened his seat belt. Now she was talking to Aamir. In the pale glow of a utility light mounted on the helicopter’s ceiling, Parson saw Aamir’s expression change. The tight set of his lips relaxed as if he’d found some thread of relief.

The aircraft lifted off. The pulse of rotors coursed through Parson’s body like his own heart pounding. Turbulence jounced the chopper as soon as its wheels left the ground, but it climbed unencumbered by downdrafts. In the clear air of a country without industry, the moon lit the sky a deep garnet. Parson wondered when a fighter plane or gunship would come along to blow up the crippled Mi-17.

“Do you think Black Crescent has his boy?” Gold asked.

“I don’t know,” Parson said, “but it wouldn’t surprise me.”

“I talked to the national police. They said he hasn’t reported the kidnapping, and he had a clean record up until now. No connections with bad guys.”

“That doesn’t surprise me, either. You know what’s a shame? He’s actually a damn good pilot.” So much about this sucked, and to Parson’s mind, what sucked most was the waste of talent. Aamir hadn’t started out as a criminal. But he’d been dealt a bad hand, and he’d played it the worst way possible. And now he was going to jail. It occurred to Parson that once again, he and Gold were escorting a prisoner. Different circumstances from last time, thank God. But bad enough.

He wondered how Rashid was coping in the other helicopter. The poor guy had lost two aircraft and a number of crew members all within a matter of days. Enough loss to get any aircraft commander to turn in his wings, but Parson doubted Rashid would do that. He’d come too far, worked and studied too hard, to throw it all away.

Gold and Aamir spoke again. The copilot’s lips trembled, and a tear fell from his cheek. But then his face dried up, and they talked in what sounded like matter-of-fact tones. Maybe Gold was filling him in on Black Crescent, the videos, the statements from Chaaku. Parson couldn’t think of much in that to offer hope, but the guy needed to know. And the more he knew, the more likely he could help. The more dots out on the page, the more likely the dots would connect. Son of a bitch better help, Parson thought, after what he’s done.

That judgment was getting way out of Parson’s field. He was an aviator, not a cop. The Air Force had an Office of Special Investigations for just this sort of thing. He supposed the OSI boys would want a long sit-down with Aamir. Parson hadn’t noticed any OSI types around Mazar, but that didn’t mean they weren’t there. Some of them wore civilian clothes, and they had a way of turning up anywhere.

Up ahead the terrain flattened, and the lights of Mazar glowed like crystals on black velvet. So power had returned, at least for part of the city.

At the moment, the city looked so peaceful that Parson could hardly imagine Mazar had been the stage for one of the worst massacres in Afghanistan. Gold had told him how the Taliban tried to take Mazar in 1997 and got routed. Hundreds, maybe thousands of Taliban troops were killed in combat or executed as prisoners. When the Taliban rolled back into town the following year, they went on a payback frenzy for days, charging down the streets in pickup trucks, blasting away with automatic weapons. Witnesses told of bodies decomposing in the streets and dogs eating corpses. Thousands of Shiite Hazaras died before it was over.

The Pave Hawk banked and descended to set up an approach for landing. Parson tried to make his mind stop wandering, but his mind always wandered when he was tired. He looked forward to a shower and a good long rest before dealing with all this shit again in the morning.

When the chopper touched down, the bump startled him awake. Parson realized he had dozed off, leaning on Gold’s shoulder.

16

A
amir watched the TV screen with a look of pure, undistilled hatred. In the secure room at command post, Gold sat with him as he viewed the first of the videos from Chaaku and Black Crescent. She hated to show him statements from the sword-wielding terrorist who might very well have abducted his son. But Aamir never hesitated; in fact, he wanted to get on with it.

To Gold’s relief, Aamir had not appeared in a prison jumpsuit and shackles. He wore the same sweat-stained flight suit he’d had on last night. She didn’t know what authority had decided that, but she considered it a good call. If they treated him like a military officer and crime victim instead of a perpetrator, maybe he’d act like an officer and help out. He had to face a reckoning for what he’d done, but that could wait.

Parson, Rashid, and an OSI agent stood by. “Has he ever seen this Chaaku guy before?” the OSI agent asked.

Gold felt sure Aamir had not, but she interpreted the question anyway.

“Never,” Aamir answered in Pashto. “I never heard of this monster until today.”

After Gold repeated the answer in English, the OSI man asked, “When did his boy go missing?”

More translation. “A little more than a month ago,” Aamir said.

So the abduction had happened before the earthquake, Gold noted. Had Black Crescent been abducting kids for weeks now? If so, they might have used the natural disaster as a way to step up what they’d planned all along.

“Ask him what happened the day the kid was abducted,” the OSI agent said.

Gold apologized in Pashto for having to ask the question, but Aamir cut her off.

“I do not deserve your respect,” he said. “You may ask me anything in any way.”

“You faced awful choices, Lieutenant,” Gold said. “We understand that.”

Aamir showed no reaction to Gold’s remark, but went right to the question. “My son, Hakim, went to school that morning in Jalalabad as always,” he said. “I was on the other side of the country, flying at Shindand Air Base. When I landed, there was a message from my wife saying Hakim had not returned home. By the time I reached her by telephone, she had received a
shabnamah
.”

Gold explained in English that a
shabnamah
was a “night letter,” a warning from terrorists. The letter told Aamir not to call the police, and instructed him to fly to a certain set of coordinates as soon as he had a mission with an American officer on board.

“So they did not seek Lieutenant Colonel Parson by name?” Gold asked.

“No,” Aamir said, “they wanted any American. But they said the higher the American’s rank, the more likely I would see my son again.”

“What were they going to do with the rest of the crew?” Gold asked.

Aamir did not speak for a moment. “They did not say,” he said finally. His lips began to tremble, and the color went out of his face. He looked over at Parson and Rashid. Rashid stared at him without any apparent emotion. Aamir lowered his gaze to the floor. “I am sure the crew would have been executed,” he said. “Me, too, most likely. But I saw no other choice. By now, they have probably killed Hakim.”

Gold translated everything Aamir had said while the OSI agent took notes. “I guess we need to show him the latest video,” the agent said, “the one with the kids in it. Do you think he’ll fall apart if he sees his son?”

“I don’t know, sir,” Gold said. “He thinks his son might be dead.”

Rashid spoke up in Pashto. Evidently he’d followed the conversation in English well enough, but he had thoughts he could express best in his own language. Or maybe he just wanted Aamir to hear them straight from him. “I care not if the video makes him fall apart,” Rashid said. “He must help.”

“Captain, please—” Gold said.

“You are right, sir,” Aamir said. “Show me this cursed video.”

Gold nodded, and the OSI agent leaned over, clicked the mouse. The image came up on-screen. Before Chaaku even began speaking, Aamir slid from his chair and fell to his knees.

First he cried out in a moan of anguish that formed no words. Then, with his head on the floor, he shouted, “That is him! That is Hakim!”

Now even Rashid seemed moved. He placed his hand on his copilot’s shoulder and said, “Tell us which one, Lieutenant. Show us your son.”

Aamir sat up, coughed, wiped his eyes and face with the sleeve of his flight suit. He pointed to the computer and said, “To the immediate left of that monster. Dear God, they have placed upon him the head scarf of a martyr.”

With another mouse click, the OSI agent paused the video. Gold looked closely at the boy beside Chaaku. He held an AK-47 with the magazine removed. His face bore no expression. The boy’s resemblance to his father became clear now that Gold knew who he was. Hakim had that same penetrating gaze, something about the set of the eyes. In the video, he was looking at something offscreen. Probably an adult pointing a loaded rifle, Gold supposed.

“When was this made?” Aamir asked.

“Within the last week,” Gold said. She had translated none of his last few words into English, but she didn’t need to. It would have been obvious to Parson and the OSI agent that Aamir had identified his son.

“They will put a suicide vest on him and send him to his death,” Aamir said. He began to wail again.

Rashid placed his hand on Aamir’s back and said, “Allah is merciful, Lieutenant. He hears your cries.”

God is merciful, but people are not, Gold thought. She could hardly imagine Aamir’s pain, and she could hardly imagine a good end to this. And what of Fatima’s brother, Mohammed?

“Is it not enough for my son just to be killed?” Aamir asked. “Must he die a murderer? Must he suffer?”

No words Gold knew could offer a decent answer to that question. So maybe she could get him to focus on other questions, more ways he could contribute. One thing she’d learned in her years of working with men: In bad situations, they felt better if they thought they had some control. If they faced a problem, you needed to give them something to do about it, no matter how insignificant. If they could do little to help, let them
believe
they were helping. Nearly all men shared that trait, whether they were American or Afghan, flyboys or ground-pounders. She couldn’t give Aamir unrealistic hope, but she could get him to focus.

“Lieutenant Aamir,” she said, “I know this is difficult, and I will not lie about the gravity of your son’s circumstances. But you might be able to help him if we look at some things on a map.”

“Anything,” he said. “Please tell me anything I can do.”

“Let us look at where those coordinates were, and where your helicopter went down.”

“Yes, yes. Right away. I want a chart. Where are some aeronautical charts?”

In English, Gold explained what she was doing.

“Good job,” Parson said. “I was going to ask him to do that anyway. Let me get a TPC.”

Parson went into the flight planning room and came back with a Tactical Pilotage Chart. Gold didn’t understand all the different kinds of aviators’ maps, but she’d gathered that the white ones with a bunch of lines and circles were for flying on instruments. The colorful ones that depicted terrain were for visual flying. This map had color—mountains and valleys and streams.

Parson spread the chart across a table. He took a pencil from the pen pocket on the left sleeve of his flight suit, marked a spot on the chart.

“This is where we went down,” Parson said. “Now, where was he trying to go?”

Gold asked the question in Pashto. With the pencil between his thumb and forefinger, Parson held it toward Aamir. The Afghan flier took the pencil and marked another location. As he looked up from the chart, he locked eyes with Parson. To Gold’s relief, Parson did not seem angry or even surprised. He just took back the pencil and placed it in his sleeve. Judging from the scale reference on the chart, only a few miles of ground separated the two points. No wonder the insurgents had seen the Mi-17 go down and had attacked so quickly.

Both pencil marks fell within a spur of mountains called
Kuh-e Qara Batur
. Gold examined the spur’s contour lines. The contours ran closely together, indicating steep terrain. The ridge base at the valley floor lay at an elevation of two thousand feet, and the mountain’s peak topped out at 5,692. Just a hill, by Afghan standards.

“Have you ever been to that location?” Gold asked in Pashto.

“Never,” Aamir said. “They did not even tell me if there was a flat spot to land.”

What Gold really wanted to know was whether Black Crescent hid there, in a compound or cave complex. Or was it just a random spot they’d chosen for this single purpose? No way to find out quickly. To Aamir, the location was just a set of coordinates.

On a thread of hope, she thought back to her conversation with Mullah Durrani’s wife. If Gold ever got to talk to Durrani himself, perhaps she could ask if there was something in
Kuh-e Qara Batur
. As an old mujahid, Durrani would know about all the old caves and forts that insurgents might use. But if she asked, would he just turn around and warn Black Crescent?

Tomorrow she would visit Durrani’s wife again. The woman had said she’d have an answer about a meeting with her husband. That whole exercise could turn out to be a waste of time or worse. But Gold knew only one way to find out.

—

O
nce again, Parson found himself in Gold’s world. Riding in the Cougar MRAP, even his clothes felt strange. For this ground mission, he wore MultiCam fatigues—officially known as the Operation Enduring Freedom Camouflage Pattern—instead of his usual flight suit. He’d been issued one set of MultiCams for this deployment, though he’d never expected to use them. Just free hunting clothes for later, Parson had thought. He’d not even bothered to get the cloth wings of a command pilot sewn onto the shirt. Body armor hid that oversight. No one could see he was technically out of uniform.

Blount and his driver rode up front. A gunner stood in the turret. A second MRAP, another Cougar, carried more Marines. Parson rode with Gold in Blount’s vehicle, and Gold introduced him to the Marine Corps Lionesses, Ann and Lyndsey.

“Did you have any trouble getting permission to come with us?” Gold asked Parson.

“Yeah, a colonel with Joint Relief Task Force gave me a ration of shit. Said this fell outside my role as an Air Force adviser. He didn’t even like it that I’d let you go last time. But I told him it might lead to the people who took Aamir’s boy.”

“So if it’s the business of the Afghan Air Force, then it’s your business,” Gold said.

“Ah, I didn’t put it quite that well, but that’s kind of what I said.”

He’d actually used words he shouldn’t have uttered to a superior officer, but he’d made them a little more acceptable by adding a
sir
at the end. Eventually, the task force commander had seen the logic and told him he could go as long as he filed a full report.

The armored vehicles rumbled through the airfield checkpoint and out onto the road. Overhead, the rotor-and-turbine pulsing of helicopters rose above the Cougar’s diesel. Parson looked up to see a flight of three Mi-17s climbing toward the south. More loads of rice and Unimix, he knew. People had to eat. Parson didn’t have Gold’s understanding of cultures and history, of human nature and spirit. But he’d seen enough to know that some of the most powerful tools of foreign policy were a bowl and a spoon.

With Mazar receding behind him in the dust, Parson felt vulnerable, out of his element. Here on the ground, roadside bombs presented a constant danger; Gold and the Marines had received a loud reminder of that. Certainly there were plenty of ways to die in the air, but Parson had training and experience to handle those risks. Ground threats seemed more sinister. However, if Gold was going to take these kinds of chances, he wanted to go with her.

Beside him, Gold took off her helmet and untied her blond hair. She shook it out with the fingers of both hands. Parson liked how her hair fell around her shoulders. As she tied it back into a ponytail, Parson glanced down at her helmet on the floor. She had written something in black marker, tiny script on the inside liner. Soldiers often did that. Many wrote their blood type, for obvious reasons. Parson had also seen girlfriends’ names,
Remember 9/11
, and
Gotcha Osama
. But this was different—two lines of poetry, something vaguely familiar. Parson thought he might have read it in an English class long ago, though he had no idea who wrote it:

Because I could not stop for Death—

He kindly stopped for me—

Gold caught him looking. “Emily Dickinson,” she said as she put the helmet back on and snapped the chin strap into place. “It reminds me not to get careless.”

She’s too smart to get careless, Parson considered. But he liked the way she could find, in all the stuff she’d read, thoughts that cut to the heart of issues they faced. Parson’s own reading seldom ventured beyond flight manuals, newspapers, and
Field & Stream
.

He wondered what experience had inspired that poem. In his own life, he’d come to understand the truth of those lines. Death sure as hell didn’t care what plans you’d made. Parson just hoped Gold’s musing on the subject didn’t mean she’d taken some dark turn in her thinking. She’d seemed different on this deployment, with an undercurrent of sadness. You could hardly blame her, given all the things she’d witnessed. He just wished she’d stop owning all the problems in Southwest Asia. Too big a mission for anybody.

For now, though, she appeared okay. Gold and these Marine Corps women seemed to have hit it off pretty well, too.

Blount turned in his seat to face Parson. “Sir,” he said, “we’re taking mostly a different route than what we used coming and going last time. But it’ll be the same for the last couple miles. There’s only one road into that village.”

“I’m sure you know what you’re doing,” Parson said. He appreciated being kept informed, but the update didn’t make him feel more secure.

Parson decided to focus on things he could control. If this op produced some actionable intelligence, what would he do with it? Well, if it led to a fix on where this Chaaku jackass hung out, maybe he could arrange for a little visit. Ideally, Parson thought, from the Spectre gunship that had rained down so much fire two days ago. Parson could not order such a strike himself, but with decent intel he could make a strong case for it up the chain of command.