Cross down, p.19
Cross Down, page 19
He sighs. “I have heard that. A few who were once in power in Kabul and who still have friends and contacts in your capital say that what happened to Mir Kas was the start of something in the United States.”
“What’s the connection?” I ask.
“Oh,” he says as if he’s surprised we don’t know. “The attacks were made by those who are killing people in your country now in preparation for…I’m sorry, I can’t remember the correct word. A French word, I believe. When a government is overthrown by violent means.”
I say, “A coup?”
He clasps his hands together. “Ah, a coup. Quite right.”
Damn, damn, damn. I can feel Deacon get tense at that dangerous and heavy word. Coup. I say, “Do you have any information about who’s behind the coup? What group or country or organization?”
A sad shake of his head. “I wish I could help you, Miss Elizabeth, Mr. John. But I have no other information to give to you.”
Deacon says, “We need to get to that village. Now.”
He gets up and we do the same. “I will give you directions. It’s only an hour’s walk from here. But you will go alone. I can’t give you any of my men to escort you.”
I say, “You were ready to give us escorts to get back to the border, but not to the village. What’s the difference?”
He speaks like an old teacher lecturing an ignorant student. “The bones and broken stones of that village are haunted. No one will approach it.”
Chapter
87
According to Gul Hazara, once we climb this one last bit of rocky trail, we will be on the outskirts of whatever’s left of Mir Kas. There are stone-covered hills, mountains, low shrubs, and stunted trees, and the cold wind is buffeting us. We stop to catch our breath and pass a water bottle back and forth, and then, in the middle of a rocky no-man’s-land, a chime sounds in my rucksack.
“What the hell?” I say.
Deacon says, “Sounds like someone’s trying to call you, John.”
“Stop joking.”
“Who’s joking?” she says. “It sure as hell isn’t my rucksack that’s making a noise. Get it out and quiet it before half the district hears it.”
I shrug off my M4 and rucksack and dig in a side pocket, not quite believing it, but yes, it’s my burner cell phone, chiming with a text.
Breathing hard from the altitude, I bring up the screen. A garbled message appears:
Ran records check best I could on E. Deacxxx. Smart, ruthless, divorced…herself is first, Agency s@#ond, country third…8*&^….
Can she be trusted? Well…it seems ##@@
Be safe get home ASAP ti09876…
#674mpw9,,,,
We need to know what you know…
Ned
I want to reply but the little icon says No Service.
Then how in hell did this message get through? I look around but see nothing that wasn’t there before. How did I get this message?
I put the phone back in my rucksack. Could be weird atmospherics or the magnetic field of the Earth shifting, or maybe the signal piggybacked off some drone or high-flying aircraft.
Almost anything’s possible in this land.
Deacon says, “What was the call?”
I say, “Wrong number. Let’s saddle up and get moving.”
Our hike continues, slow and painful. I take point and Deacon is right behind me, so close I can hear her panting and smell her skin. I think of our little moment last night, and I think of Ned Mahoney’s scrambled message and how the most important part didn’t make it through.
Can she be trusted? Well…it seems ##@@
Not very helpful.
I reach the top of the rise, look at what’s in front of me. Deacon comes up and stops next to me, breathing hard.
“Good God,” she whispers.
“Sorry,” I say. “Looks like God was somewhere else that day.”
Chapter
88
As fast as he can, Bibi Ahmadi moves along the trail leading to what is left of Mir Kas. Five of his cousins are trotting behind him, all of them heavily armed, and Bibi carries hate and a desire for revenge in his heart.
No man who has humiliated him will live, and especially not a man who humiliated him in front of a woman!
His plan is simple: They will find and ambush the pair of Americans, kill the male, and take their time with the woman.
And with the woman, he will be first, and his cousins can fight over who gets to be next.
He turns, his vest and pants legs flapping in the wind, and says, “Hurry, hurry, there’s no time to waste!”
Bibi’s cousin Azeez calls, “But the village is haunted—full of ghosts.”
“And we will add two more before the day is out, but only if you move faster than a mule, fool!”
Chapter
89
Again, Deacon says, “Good God,” as the two of us look at a field of rubble.
I’ve seen damaged and ruined villages before, both here and in Iraq, but nothing like this.
Nothing.
Deacon says, “Can you believe this?”
There’s a slight depression before us filled with broken bricks and stone, no piece larger than a coffee table. Burned and charred timbers and more broken stone as far as the eye can see.
“No,” I say.
The only color comes from green and black banners, some with writing on them, posted on poles shoved into the tortured ground.
Funeral flags, marking the final resting places of the deceased.
I say, “This wasn’t just an attack. It was a slaughter. It looks like the village was bombed, then bombed again, and then bombed one more time to flatten everything. The air force has a joke about using so much ordnance on a target that in the end, the only thing pilots can do is make the rubble bounce. Two years ago, Elizabeth, the rubble here must have been dancing.”
“I want to take a closer look,” she says.
“Not too close,” I say. “There might be unexploded munitions still among the rubble.”
She nods and I take lead again, stepping carefully. The wind rises, and I hear the flapping of the funeral flags in the distance. I look down and see scraps of cloth, bits of metal and bones.
Lots of bones.
Deacon swears and says, “Who did this, John?”
“Like that French doctor I ran into at the aid station said two years back—we did.”
“What, a rogue military mission?”
I say, “You heard Gul. This is part of something that’s going to happen back in the States. A coup. A goddamn coup. Maybe rogue, maybe planned, who the hell knows.”
On the ground is something that looks like a dark brown brick wrapped in clear plastic, about the size of one of our MREs. I crush it with my boot.
Deacon says, “What is it?”
“Brick of opium,” I say. “Worth about a hundred bucks here, maybe ten thousand over in the States.”
Deacon is quiet as I take my time destroying the opium brick completely with my boot, and it strikes me: Was it opium from here that was converted to the heroin that poisoned my parents? Was this the place where it all started? This barren place—is this where it began for my long-dead father and long-absent mother back in the States? And what weird or strange quirk of fate or kismet brought me here?
“Well? What next?” Deacon asks.
“Let’s wait another five or ten minutes, then head out.”
She says nothing, but I can sense her disappointment. Still, what did she hope to find here? A sole survivor living in the rubble, ready to reveal all and solve our crisis thousands of miles away?
We both walk carefully through the rubble, and I see more scraps of cloth, a leather sandal, and broken pottery.
What was it like here that night when the bombs and rockets fell over and over again? I imagine the explosions, the screams, the roar of buildings collapsing, and then the brief moment when the explosions stopped and the few survivors tried to race to the safety of the nearby hills, only to be cut down by the harsh chatter of machine-gun fire.
And for what?
Something catches my eye—a piece of green plastic.
I am about to say something but keep my mouth shut. I take a knee, pretend to retie my left boot, and gingerly pick up the piece of plastic. It’s a bit of a circuit board, about the size of a playing card, lots of circuitry and—
A serial number. Nice and clear and whole: ANZ-10-8907688 P Q.
I stare at it, turn it over and over again in my gloved hand.
Then I slip it in a thigh pocket of my BDUs and stand up.
Deacon is about five yards away. “Everything okay?” she asks.
“Sure is,” I say.
Then rapid gunfire breaks out, the rounds snapping over our heads and ricocheting off the rubble.
Together, we start running.
Chapter
90
General Wayne Grissom is back at the White House for another briefing with the president. Well, technically, he’s underneath the White House, nearly two hundred feet down in one of the most recently built bomb shelters.
He’s been here twice before, but only on training modules, and he feels sick knowing this is the first time he’s entering the place officially.
Grissom is in a room adjoining the president’s temporary office, sitting on an uncomfortable couch, briefcase at his feet, hat in his lap, clear disposable gloves on his hands. The walls are concrete and painted a sickly green color, and two Secret Service agents in full battle gear are staring at him.
Earlier, Grissom went through the humiliation of having every part of his body searched. Then his temperature was taken, his blood drawn—to make sure he wasn’t carrying any communicable pathogens—and he and his briefcase were x-rayed.
“Sorry,” a Secret Service technician had said. “New procedures.”
He held up his hands. “And the gloves?”
The technician seemed almost ashamed. “Sorry. Always a possibility there’s poison under your fingernails. We have to account for that.”
Sure, Grissom thinks. Always new procedures to protect POTUS. Like this shelter, built a few years back to protect the president in case a Russian Borei-class submarine off the coast of Maryland suddenly lobs an SS-NX-30 into DC, giving the White House maybe five minutes’ warning before nuclear destruction.
Now the shelter is protecting the president not from a foreign adversary but apparently from some of his very own people.
The heavy steel door of the president’s quarters opens. A female Secret Service agent in a black pantsuit comes out and says, “The president will see you now.”
“Thank you,” Grissom says. He gets up and takes the few strides into the large room.
Unlike the Oval Office two hundred feet up, this place is well lit, though the fluorescent lights overhead give the place a sickly pallor. The president is sitting behind a reproduction of the Resolute Desk, and there are two flat-screen televisions set into the concrete wall, one showing a forest and the other showing a lake.
Grissom thinks, If those screens are supposed to brighten up the place, they’re utterly failing.
President Lucas Kent looks about ten years older than he did when Grissom met with him on the Oval Office patio. He’s dressed casually in blue jeans and a checkered flannel shirt.
Kent doesn’t get up, and Grissom doesn’t make the effort to shake his hand. He takes a seat in front of the desk. The room is the same sickly green as the waiting area, and even though the place is carpeted, there’s a chill in the air.
“Well?” the president says.
“Sir, we’ve come to an impasse, I’m sorry to say.”
The president says nothing for a moment, then starts talking quietly. “I’ve felt something for the past several days,” he says, his voice hoarse. “The news media hasn’t picked up on it yet, but most members of Congress are gone, out taking tours or visiting their home districts. The vice president is at Mount Weather, and even most of the cabinet secretaries are out in the countryside.” He wipes his face with a trembling hand. “The First Lady and the girls…they’re in California, at the western White House.”
“That does sound prudent,” Grissom says, not liking the thought of the president of the United States riding out this storm of violence alone in a deep bunker. Too many dreary historical parallels.
The president finally acknowledges his presence. “Yes, it is prudent, just like this administration. But the latest I’ve heard from the CIA and the NSA is that the attack is coming in one or two days. And it will probably involve a nuclear device or some other weapon of mass destruction.” The president stops speaking. There is utter silence in this underground office. Then: “I’m sorry, General. You were saying? Something about an impasse?”
Grissom says, “That’s correct, sir. We are at an impasse. It’s doubtful that, after months of investigation, we will be able to come up with the sources of these terrorist attacks and halt them before the major attack that’s expected.”
“What do you suggest, then, General?”
Grissom opens his briefcase, pulls out a red-bordered file folder, and removes from it a single sheet of paper with his seal on it. He passes it over the faux Resolute Desk.
“Martial law, sir,” Grissom says. “It’s time you declare it. You have no other choice.”
Chapter
91
It’s standard military doctrine that when ambushed, you fight forward toward the ambushers, spoiling their aim and killing those whom you can kill.
But our situation is anything but standard here; we’re alone, with no reinforcements and no air assets over the horizon. Making a stand amid the rubble might work for a while, but soon we’ll be outflanked, within the attackers’ grenade range, or otherwise overwhelmed.
I think through all of this in about a second, then push Deacon and say, “Peel, now! You first!”
Deacon runs, keeping her head down and zigzagging, while I drop and take cover among broken stone and rubble, sending off three-round bursts at our ambushers. I do a quick scan and see maybe five or six attackers in motion, and Deacon yells, “Covering fire!”
She starts firing and it’s my turn to move, peeling away from my position and doing what Deacon did, head down, zigzagging, making my six-foot-nine-inch frame as small a target as possible.
I race behind Deacon as she continues her shooting, and when I get about thirty or so yards from her, I take cover behind brush-covered boulders and yell, “Covering fire!”
I snap out three-round bursts as she hauls ass in my direction, and I see our attackers have stretched out in a skirmish line. Except for the first burst of gunfire when we were ambushed—done in the undisciplined spray-and-pray method—their shooting has been focused.
Deacon yells, “Covering fire!” and it’s my turn again. I pick up the pace and keep running, and I hear a snap as a bullet goes over my head, way too close for comfort. Before us is the same monotonous landscape of rocks, scrub brush, and boulders, and then a small hill comes into view. I skid to a halt near Deacon and fire off another three-round burst, and the action of my M4 snaps back into the open position, meaning my thirty-round magazine is empty.
“Reloading,” I call out. I insert a fresh magazine into my M4 and let the bolt snap back into position.
Deacon yells, “Why the hell are you still here? Move it!”
I fire again, and I hear the satisfying yelp of one of our attackers getting hit. I scan, look for more targets, and say, “Move where? They’re going to outlast or outflank us eventually, Elizabeth. We can’t run forever.”
She fires again. “You got a better idea?”
I tap her shoulder, point to the nearby hill. “Yeah. I go up there, set up overwatch, and keep them busy while you get away.”
She mutters an obscene phrase and says, “Get away where?”
“To your Agency friends across the border,” I say. I dig into the side pocket of my pants and pull out the circuit board I recovered from the cracked bricks and rubble. I press it into her hand. “This,” I say. “There’s a serial number on it. Get it analyzed, find out who in hell had this ordnance and why it was used here. Walk back the cat, find out what you can. We don’t have much time left. Gul told us about a coup. Maybe he’s exaggerating, maybe he’s not. The U.S. is not Bolivia…yet.”
“John—”
I see movement, fire off another three-round burst, then give her a hard stare. “Can I trust you, Elizabeth? Trust that you’ll follow this up and do the right thing for the country, not just for you and the Agency?”
She looks like she’s going to spit at me. Then she looks at the circuit board.
Secures it in a pocket.
“You sure as hell can,” she says.
“Outstanding.”
We both put another set of three-round bursts down. I say, “That’s evidence, and it’s got to get back to the States. You’re it. I’ll hold ’em off as long as I can.”
“John—”
“Damn it, you silly bitch, go! Every second you delay, they gain ground on us. Move!”
She nods, opens a magazine pouch, removes two thirty-round magazines, and hands them over. Then she gives me a quick and hard kiss on the lips. “It’ll take time for transport to get to the base,” she says. “I’ll be waiting for you.”
“Thanks,” I say. “Haul ass.”
Deacon hauls ass, and I resume firing.
Chapter
92
The president looks at the document, frowns, and pokes a finger at it like it’s a raw piece of chicken presented to him as lunch.
“Martial law?” he asks.
