Blue Warrior

Pearce dropped to the deck in a puff of snow just as a Pakistani soldier stepped into the open gate area. He wore heavy-weather camouflage gear and carried a G3 rifle.

Just like the rifles that Khalid’s men carried.

That was enough confirmation for Pearce. The Pakistanis, or at least some of them, were helping the Taliban. With allies like that, how could we possibly fail to win this war? he thought.

Assholes.

The soldier scanned the road carelessly, then stepped back inside the gate, out of view. Pearce dashed across the road, as far away from the sight line of the gate entrance as he could get. A stand of pine trees marched up to the high stone walls of the compound. Pearce used them as cover. When he reached the wall, he listened. He counted three voices in the little courtyard, but heard more voices shouting from inside the clinic.

Pearce slung his rifle over his back, pulled himself up silently onto a low-hanging branch, then climbed to another just above. He could barely feel his hands. His gloves were still in the clinic. Up in the second branch he had a view just clearing the wall. He saw three men directly below him, sheltering themselves against the chilling breeze behind a heavy-duty truck parked near the wall, shivering and smoking cigarettes.

Pearce considered his tactical disadvantages. He was outnumbered and outgunned here in the courtyard, an unknown number of bogeys were in the clinic, and Cella was nowhere in sight. No grenades, no flash bangs. Could he evade detection and make his way into the clinic without endangering Cella’s life, or Daud’s? He tried to formulate a plan, but his mind was numb with fatigue and clouded by an agonizing headache brought on by the frozen air and lack of food.

A gunshot burst inside the clinic. Cella screamed.

Pearce pulled his knife and leaped over the wall.

So much for planning.

* * *

The Pakistani officer held a fistful of Cella’s hair in his powerful grip and pointed a pistol in her face, inches from his.

“CIA! WHERE IS CIA?!” he screamed in broken English.

“I… don’t… know!” Cella cried.

“Here,” Pearce said.

The officer whirled around, still clutching Cella by the hair, the other hand pointing the gun toward Pearce. He fired.

Too late, by a breath. Pearce had fired first, kneeling.

The pistol round cracked on the doorframe just above Pearce’s head as the Pakistani’s throat blossomed in petals of blood and meat. His hands went limp as his spinal cord severed from the base of his skull, freeing Cella, dropping the gun, dead before he crashed to the floor.

Cella stood frozen in a half crouch, trembling.

Pearce ran to her and threw an arm around her. She wrapped both arms around his neck, clinging to him like a life raft.

“The others?” he whispered.

She raised her face. It was smeared in tears and snot. Her left eye was blue and swollen shut. She pointed at the women’s clinic. “Five of them.” She noticed that Pearce was bathed in wet blood.

She gasped. “Where are you hit?”

He shook his head: I’m not.

He shoved her against the far wall, trying to get her out of sight of the doorway, just in case. “Wait here,” he whispered.

“Stay with me. They will be waiting for you.”

He shook his head again. “They think their buddy just shot you.”

Pearce ducked back out the door in a low crouch as Cella raced over to Daud’s bed. The Afghani’s brains were spattered against the far wall and he was bled out all over his pillow. Too late, she knew. But something in her had hoped.

She suddenly realized she was sticky with blood, too. The blood that was on Pearce.

Panicked shouts rang out on the other side of the wall.

So did five muffled gunshots. Cella flinched.

Seconds later, Pearce raced back through the doorway.

“The women were all dead. I’m sorry,” Pearce said.

Cella buried her swollen face in her hands and sobbed.

Pearce glanced at Daud’s bed, then the other two. The boy and the old man were shot through the head as well.

“Was that the asshole that killed Vittorio? Marwat?” He nodded at the corpse on the floor lying in the spreading pool of blood.

All Cella could do was nod.

“We need to scoot.”

“Where will we go?”

“The only place we can.”

23

Medicia Oltre Frontiere Compound

Afghanistan — Pakistan border

7 January

They changed out of their bloody clothes and layered up as warmly as possible, careful to avoid any military-supplied gear, Italian or otherwise. Over Cella’s protests, Pearce allowed her just one backpack stuffed with whatever she could fit in it, along with her passport. She tossed him Vittorio’s.

“What’s this for?”

“It might prove useful.”

Pearce opened it, examined the photo. “I hardly look like him, and I don’t speak Italian.”

“With that beard, who can tell? I can always vouch for you.” She forced a grim smile. “Just keep your mouth shut.”