Blue Warrior

Pearce first led them farther down the hill, then back around and higher up, suspecting an ambush. He was right. Pearce took out two of Khalid’s men with single shots to the head before they knew what hit them. When the other bad guys opened up in the night, their flashing barrels made them targets, and Daud’s men took out two more with Pearce providing covering fire. The air rang with automatic-rifle fire, muzzle flashes sparking between the trees like strobe lights. Then it stopped. The black night returned, and the sound was swallowed up in the gauze of thick, wet flakes blanketing the mountain.

Pearce kicked the bodies over and flashed a light in their faces, giving Hamid a clear look. Hamid nodded with recognition at each face, spitting heavily in the snow at the last.

“Khalid?” Pearce asked.

Hamid shook his head no. The other fighters rifled through the pockets of the dead men. They pulled out wadded rupee notes, cigarettes, stale rounds of naan. No contraband.

Pearce went back on point. Hamid and the others followed silently behind at a distance, carrying their precious cargo through the frigid air.

* * *

Pearce trudged ahead, exhausted. A headache raged. Hours of concentration and physical exertion had taken their toll. No matter. He had to push on. There was still another kilometer to the village, maybe more. He checked his watch. It was just past two a.m. on the illuminated dial. He heard the rush of feet tramping in snow up ahead. Flashlights swept through the trees. Pearce signaled the men behind him to halt and drop, and he raised his weapon to fire. A ghostly gray head walked into the target reticle and Pearce laid a sure finger on the trigger. He hesitated.

It was Daud’s father.

Six other fighters from the village were with him. The new men took up the stretcher and the band raced back to the village, carrying Daud into his father’s house and laying him on the rug-covered dirt floor in front of the fire.

In the dim, flickering firelight, Daud looked bad, pale and beaded with sweat. His lips moved, but he wasn’t conscious. They stripped his snowy garments off and his mother covered him back up with a couple of dry blankets. Pearce checked the green Israeli bandage. There was a bloodstain, but it was small and dry. The wound must be infected. Why else the fever? Pearce had only oral antibiotics, but Daud was in no condition to swallow them now.

“Doctor,” Daud’s father said. He motioned with his hands and added, “Helicopter.”

Pearce told him in his clumsy Pashto that the snowstorm wouldn’t allow it.

“Cella, Cella,” his mother said, pointing at the doorway. Two teenage boys standing in the doorway shouted something Pearce didn’t catch and bolted away into the dark.

“‘Cella’?” Pearce asked.

The old man flashed a toothless smile.

20

Afghanistan — Pakistan border

6 January

Pearce’s teeth chattered. He’d never been so cold in his life. He’d grown up in the snowcapped Rockies bow-hunting mule deer and cutting timber. Knew all about cold weather, but nothing like this.

Pearce shook his head. His mind was wandering again. It was still two hours before dawn and every able-bodied man from Daud’s village was posted on guard, including Pearce, watching the road. After the ambush, they could only expect a counterattack from Khalid and his Taliban fighters. The two villages had exchanged potshots for years, but now the war had come with a vengeance.

Pearce thought about the gunfight earlier that night. At least three kinds of automatic rifles had fired in the dark. Every kind of rifle had its own distinct sound, even if it fired the same caliber of round. He was firing an M4 loaded with 5.56mm, and Daud’s men all had AKs firing 7.62mm. But Pearce had heard the distinct retort of Heckler & Koch G3s. They also shot 7.62mm. He’d heard enough of HKs shooting practice rounds on NATO ranges in Germany to recognize them instantly.

Since when did Taliban fire G3s?

The sound of grinding gears slapped him back to reality.

Down the hill, in the distance, a pair of headlights threw two wide cones of light through the falling snow. A faint engine roar finally made its way up to him, most of the sound absorbed in the blankets of white powder.

Pearce raised his M4 and tracked the vehicle through his infrared scope, but at this distance in the heavy snowfall he couldn’t make out more than the shape of the car, the blazing heat signature from the engine, and the headlights.

The vehicle bounced and fishtailed unsteadily up the hill until he could make out the shape of an old UAZ, the Soviet army’s version of an American jeep. Pearce counted a driver and two heads in the shadow of the cab. It flashed its lights and honked the horn. The engine rattled like a high-speed whisk scraping the inside of a stainless-steel bowl.

“Cella! Cella!” a voice rang out behind him, then another. Pearce turned around. Light spilled out of open doors, bodies outlined in the frames.