The Valley (19 page)

Women headed uphill too, veering off in a different direction from the men. Black followed their path with his eyes and saw that the lower hillsides were terraced for crops. The usable land must have been extremely limited in a landscape like the Valley's.

Beyond the immediate buildings, sprightly children tore around corners after one another. Black heard Danny speaking behind him and turned. The linguist had broken off to the side and intercepted one of them, a boy of twelve or so whom he apparently knew.

After a perfunctory embrace he spoke a few words to the child, who nodded once before turning and jogging away uphill, past Black and the rest of the patrol, waving here and there to a soldier he knew. Past Merrick, who trudged on purposefully, straight through the heart of town, making no effort to interact with anyone.

None of the adults seemed to pay them much attention regardless. Caine waved or nodded to people here and there. These overtures were received with what Black could only read as tolerant disinterest, a sort of blankness. The rest of the soldiers seemed to follow Merrick's lead and kept to themselves, scanning the distance and climbing the hill.

Danny had fallen in beside Black, who looked over his shoulder at the line of guys behind him. Corelli was two soldiers back, making his way up. He stared straight ahead as he went, both hands on his rifle, eyes fixed on some invisible point before him.

A scrum of children playing chase came tearing around a close corner and nearly ran smack into Black and Danny. Seeing the soldiers they skidded on the brakes, coming up short. They looked up at the two men wide-eyed.

Danny gave them a smiling wave and greeting in a language that didn't sound like Pashto. The children just stared at him and Black and began backing up toward the houses, nearly tripping over one another.

A girl in a loose head scarf and dark robe with brightly colored, ornate stitching at the cuffs and hem stepped forward from the gaggle and looked up at Black. Her eyes were such a bright blue they almost looked silver. She smiled and reached under her scarf and pulled a red flower from her short-cropped dark hair, offering it to Black. He reached down and had just taken it before an older boy smacked her head and sent her scampering away.

Black poked the flower's stem through the nylon webbing on his body armor. Danny and Caine had been right. The people were striking. He saw red hair and fair skin mingled among the more traditional Afghan types.

They seemed . . . healthy. Hearty. He was used to Afghans who looked like they could use a good meal. They shook your hand like a wisp of willow. There was no doubt these Valley people were deeply impoverished by Western, or even Afghan, standards. But the hard mountain living had done something to them. They held an intense energy within themselves, even when still.

The patrol was nearing the slopes. The houses spread out ahead of them around a patchy clearing of grass and dry dirt.

Black figured this for the center of town that Brydon and Corelli had spoken about. At the far end of it, nestled against the hill, sat what was obviously the chief's house.

It was nothing impressive except by the standards of the town. It had two floors and its walls were smooth, neither stone nor stucco, with heavy woodwork including a wooden balcony on the second story. It too had no fence, and as they entered the clearing Black saw a middle-aged man in a gray robe standing before it. He turned to Danny and raised his eyebrows:
Him?

Danny shook his head.

Merrick had come to a stop in the middle of the clearing. Soldiers spread out briskly to take up security positions at regular intervals around the fringes. Townspeople here and there cast glances over their shoulders, curious what was going on.

Merrick motioned Caine to him. Black and Danny hung back.

Black could hear little of what was said between them except Merrick saying, “You.” Caine turned and waved Black and Danny forward.

They strode across the grass and dirt to where the two sergeants waited.

“Okay, Lieutenant,” said Merrick irritably. “We're here.”

He gestured about himself as though at a total loss.

“What are your orders?”

It was a war-movie line. No one said
What are your orders?
in the actual Army, unless they were sending the message that Merrick was now obviously sending:
You wanna come here and play investigator? Fine. This whole thing is yours, SIR. Anything that goes wrong is on you.

Black ignored the provocation.

“You know why we're here,” he answered, letting his weariness with the sharp-elbowed sergeant creep into his voice.

“One half hour,” Merrick said tersely. “One minute more and you can walk back by yourself.”

Black was considering what to say in reply to this when Caine stepped forward and put a hand on his shoulder.

“All right, then, sir,” he said, gently turning Black away from Merrick. “I'm sure we'll have plenty of time.”

“No, you won't,” Merrick said sharply. “Half an hour, Caine.”

Caine turned and gave Merrick a look as he ushered Black around the tall sergeant and toward the house.

“Don't worry about it, L.T.,” he said as they crossed the clearing away from Merrick.

He stepped into the lead, letting Black and Danny follow him.

The man waiting in front of the chief's house stood rock still and watched them as they approached. His robe was plain, but the flattened little hat was roped in ornate blues and silvers. His face was sun-lined and his short beard showed touches of gray, though Black figured him for early forties, tops. Black slung his rifle over his back and removed his gloves, stuffing them in a pocket.

Caine stepped up to the man and placed a hand over his heart.

“Salaam alaykum.”

The man returned the greeting with a blank face and leaned forward for a perfunctory embrace. He looked over Caine's shoulder at Black as he did so. Danny stepped forward next and repeated the ritual, adding a few words in Pashto. Along with Dari, it was the closest thing there was to a
lingua franca
in the province, whose remote valleys hosted five Nuristani languages in many subdialects.

The man shook his head as he responded and waved a hand as though to say
No, no, not a bother.
His face looked like it most certainly was a bother.

Black guessed that Danny was apologizing for asking to meet the chief on such short notice. Probably the first word the chief had gotten was from the boy Danny sent scurrying up the hill.

Danny turned and indicated Black, speaking again to the man in Pashto. The man nodded curtly.

“Salaam.”

He turned without another word and walked up a little stone path to the chief's house. They followed.

“Chief's brother,” Danny whispered to Black. “Cranky.”

The man strode to the door and pulled it open, shouting two words into the threshold. He stood to the side and held it open, frowning. He raised his chin and looked into the distance as they passed.

Caine went first, then Danny, then Black. He was immediately impressed.

The place was deceptively spacious and unexpectedly well appointed. Smooth tan walls rose from a dark tile floor to a lofted second story, leaving a high ceiling over the great room in which they stood. Natural light spilled down from an opening in the second-floor roof. Music filled the room from somewhere—a scratchy monophonic recording of a woman singing joyously in yet another language Black did not recognize.

On the floor before them lay a broad rug in a roughly Persian design. Dark tapestries hung on the walls. A squat, expertly crafted table in pitch-dark wood sat in the middle of the rug. Around it at leisurely intervals were arranged several high-backed chairs in the same wood, with seats of leather cross-strapping. In the tallest of these, facing the doorway, sat the chief. He rose as they entered and spread his hands wide.

He was tall, nearly as tall as Merrick, and impressively built. Beneath his light tan robes stood a man of obvious prowess. He was strapping and vital where his brother seemed clenched and mild, and despite his gray whiskers he looked as though he could jog to the nearest mountaintop on a whim. His eyes shone silver over bladed, wax-brown cheekbones as he extended ropy arms out before him, beaming toothily as though these foreign intruders were his dearest friends.

“Sergeant,” he said in deeply accented English, stepping forward to Caine and drawing him into an embrace.

He turned to Danny next and greeted him in Pashto, squeezing him around the middle like a tube of toothpaste. Stepping back, he looked expectantly past the two of them at Black.

Danny spoke a couple of sentences while gesturing toward Black, who heard his name spoken. When he finished, the chief stepped forward.

“Lieutenant,” he said in deeply accented English.

“
Salaam,
” Black choked out as he too was crushed in a muscled embrace.

The chief stepped back again and spoke to the three of them, gesturing broadly with his arms as he did so.

“Welcome again, my friends, to my home,” Danny translated for him. “And welcome to Lieutenant Black, a new friend through the blessings of God.”

Black smiled awkwardly and nodded.

Still looking at Black, the chief inclined his head toward Danny and spoke a couple of sentences, eyes twinkling. Danny chuckled and turned to Black.

“He says the last officer who comes visit him is a captain, and he hopes he has not offended the U.S. Army.”

He meant the Civil Affairs guy. Black forced a laugh, which the chief returned.

“Breaking your balls, L.T.,” said Caine, grinning.

“I explain,” Danny told them, and began speaking to the chief again in Pashto.

The chief's brow furrowed and he asked a question.

“The other lieutenant,” Danny said, “he says he has not seen in many days. He asks where he is today? I tell.”

Black listened while Danny explained. The chief apparently took great interest in the concept of R&R leave. At the end, he smiled pleasantly and spoke in measured tones, looking at Caine as he did.

Danny registered surprise.

“Um, this is . . .” Danny began, flustered, hands circling.

“This is . . .” He searched for the word. “Nervous?”

He found it.

“Awkward.”

“What's up?” Caine asked.

“Um, the chief, he says . . .”

Danny looked at the floor and cleared his throat.

“If you do not mind, Sergeant Caine, he asks if he talks to the lieutenant alone.”

Caine's face went blank a moment.

“Uh, yeah,” he said, brightening unconvincingly. “Yeah, sure. No problem.”

Black looked at Danny, confused. Danny looked at the chief. The chief looked at Black.

I
like this,” said Black to the chief as he sat in the chair.

He motioned with his hand to indicate the music. Danny translated. The chief grinned.

“This is music of my people,” Danny relayed. “Very old. Before Islam comes this place.”

“Her voice is beautiful.”

Black wondered if any American had ever asked the chief about his music. The chief smiled and nodded. He said something to Danny, who nodded and chuckled something in reply.

“He says the young officer has good taste,” Danny told an expectant Black. “I tell him you are scholar. Man of history.”

A thought struck the chief. He waved Black back out of his seat—
come, come—
and led him around the chairs to a far corner of the room, near a bright window. He gestured proudly to a wooden cabinet in the corner, chest high with a drawer at the bottom, a fabric opening overlaid with wooden scrollwork in the middle front, and an open lid on top. As he approached, Black realized it was a large and clearly very old record player.

It was gorgeous. Rose-stained woodwork with careful piping carved along the rim. A removable crank protruding from a metal notch in the side. A real mechanical phonograph. The amplification horn must have been hidden in the cabinet beneath the turntable. The woman's voice rang out strong and full from behind the fabric opening.

He bent and inspected the metal badge screwed behind the turntable. EDISON, it read. MODEL C200. Black guessed 1920s. What it was doing far up this Nuristani valley in a house on a mountainside he could only guess.

He realized that he had his nose practically to the side of the player. He straightened, embarrassed.

“This is a beautiful piece of equipment,” he said to Danny. “Can you ask him where he got it?”

Danny did so. It was obviously what the chief had been waiting for. He beamed, hands on his hips, and spoke a single word.

Even Danny seemed surprised.

“Russians,” he said in wonder.

When the Soviets invaded and occupied Afghanistan in the 1970s, the chief explained, his valley and those all around it were the site of a great deal of heavy fighting. Nuristan, he said, had been the first province to mount a successful revolt against the communists and expel them.

“From this fire,” Danny translated, “all Afghanistan catch the fire. All Afghan people see people of Nuristan defeat the Russian army. All Afghan people fight Russians.”

The chief spoke directly to Black next, his eyes shining.

“All times in history, all peoples love Nuristan land and Nuristan beauty. All peoples want have Nuristan for his own land. Alexander and Greek man, British man, Russian man. All man try.”

His gaze bore into Black.

“All man fail.”

Black shifted uncomfortably.

“Now Taliban man,” the chief went on, through Danny. “He will try. He will fail. Valley belongs only to God. And we keep for him.”

Black nodded. The chief brightened.

“The officer forgets his question,” came the translation. “Where I get this player? I get this from Russian
big
general.”

Black's eyebrows went up in surprise, which the chief clearly loved seeing.

“Fancy H.Q.,” he went on. “Far down valley. Food, alcohol, music.”

With a sweeping arm he cast all these aside like toys. Then he shrugged.

“I steal in night,” he told them matter-of-factly, “and burn H.Q.! I carry player all way to my home, on my back, like a donkey.”

The chief laughed heartily at his own exploits. Black and Danny joined in.

“But do not tell Talibs about the record player,” he admonished them, flashing mock concern. “Music make them very mad!”

More laughs as he gestured them graciously to their chairs. Black took one of those arrayed before the chief's chair.

Danny sat opposite him, looking uneasy. The chief approached and sat, clapping his hands twice as he did so.

From a rear room appeared a boy of ten or twelve bearing a silver tray. On it were three silver cups filled with something amber. Tea, Black presumed.

The boy, who wore a simple black tunic, offered the tray to the chief first, who directed him to Black. The boy turned his dark eyes to Black and watched his face silently as he took a cup. Black thanked him in Pashto. The boy said nothing and turned away.

Danny was next, followed by the chief. Black sipped at his tea, which was scalding. The boy disappeared without a word.

“My friends,” began the chief, through Danny, “I thank you for coming to my home, and I hope I can help you with any problem that you have.”

Black looked instinctively at Danny, who had been looking uncomfortable the entire time since Caine had left. He reminded himself that it is bad form to talk to your translator when really you are talking to the other person.

He turned to the chief and cleared his throat.

“
Sardar,
” he began, doing his best to recall from his phrasebook how to address an elder. “Thank you for graciously taking the time to see me in your home. And I apologize for coming to you this morning with so little, uh, notice in advance.”

He waited while Danny translated. The chief smiled and nodded tolerantly.

“I hope,” Black continued, “that we also can help you with any problem that you might have, whether it is a big problem or a small one.”

He realized that he was sweating. The chief was still smiling and nodding. Black sipped his tea and set it down. He cleared his throat.

“And I hope that you will accept this small . . . token of my appreciation for your time today.”

His hand was already in the first-aid pouch on his body armor, from which he'd removed the aid kit before leaving on the patrol that morning. In a smooth motion he pulled Smoke Toma's brick of heroin from it and placed it in the center of the tea table before them.

Danny's eyes widened.

Black sat back calmly in his chair. Toma, Black now understood, had been a hundred percent right. The chief clearly found him pleasant enough as far as Americans go, and obviously enjoyed holding court with easily impressed young officers.

But he just as clearly didn't take Black seriously as someone who could help him in any real way with his complaints. The chief surely recognized that if the Army had cared, they wouldn't have sent someone of even lower rank than the captain whom the chief had complained to in the first place. In the chief's eyes, by sending Black they were more or less telling him to go shove his problems. He had politely said as much to Black himself.

The chief wanted to do business, get relief for his frustrated people. Now he would know that he could do business with this young lieutenant after all.

Danny had gone rock-still and pale as a ghost. He tried to stammer something, but it couldn't quite form itself into words.

The chief's gaze too was fixed on the brick, sitting there in the middle of the table between them like a baby elephant. The big man moved slowly from his chair, rising wordlessly to his full height and turning his gaze down on Black.

—

Goddamn fuck
was the sole thought on Sergeant Caine's mind as he stood in the middle of the clearing, scanning the hills and fidgeting.
Fuck fuckity fuck.

He heard the chief's door clatter shut.

That was fast.

He turned. Danny had emerged, with Lieutenant Black behind him.

Caine was momentarily impressed that Black had been able to finish his business with the chief so quickly. That thought fled when he saw how fast the two were moving.

“Yo, Merrick!” he called over his shoulder, keeping his eyes on the lieutenant and the 'terp hurrying toward him. Both looked pale.

—

Black pulled up to Caine, with Danny close on his heels.

“We've gotta go,” he said.

“What?” asked Caine.

“We have to go
now,
” Black answered, agitated.

Merrick had come jogging up the clearing.

“What are you talking about?” he cut in. “What happened?”

“We'll talk about it back at the COP. We have to go!”

“Bullshit,” Merrick shot back. “What the fuck did you do?”

Merrick turned to Danny and began to demand an explanation but stopped when he saw the linguist's ashen face. Danny nodded urgently.

“Fast, Sergeant,” he said.

Merrick and Caine looked at one another. Something unreadable passed between them. Merrick hesitated no more.

He turned on a heel and raised a hand in a rallying sign. He moved briskly downhill, head curled down as he spoke into the radio handset that was affixed to his body armor below his collarbone.

Caine wheeled around and whistled to get the attention of those who hadn't seen the signal.

“Go with him,” he said tersely to Black, pointing at Merrick.

Danny and Black fell in behind Merrick while Caine lingered behind to roust everyone into action and make sure no one missed the word. Soldiers on the perimeter looked around themselves, confused, then scrambled to their feet as they saw what was happening. The patrol congealed, forming itself up again into a long, staggered line and falling in on Merrick, who had deliberately slowed his pace to something almost nonchalant.

They moved slowly through the middle of town. Heads swiveled right and left and craned upward to the mountainsides. Black could hear soldiers asking one another tensely what the fuck was going on? The plodding pace was unbearable.

They passed the houses on the lower slopes. Women and children watched them go wordlessly.

The lead soldiers reached the riverside and cut left through the grass and shade trees, back the way they'd come. Merrick, still ambling along, hung back at the bottom of the slope. He waited until the rest of the soldiers, one by one, had passed him.

The instant the last man had reached the flats and was out of sight of the town, he broke into a run. He didn't stop.

The rest of the confused patrol followed suit. It was more of a jog, really, but with the amount of gear, ammunition, and weaponry everyone was carrying, it was no joke.

They ran all the way along the riverside to the slope leading up to the promontory. Sergeants hassled and harangued panting soldiers as the patrol scrabbled up the pebble-strewn ground. In the woods at the top, they commenced running again, tripping through the trees to the dirt track.

The sniper team was there, waiting, eyeballs starkly white against green-smeared faces. Merrick peeled off to meet them. After a few hurried words of instruction they turned without a word and began scrambling up the mountainside, straight up from the track. Merrick and the rest of the group continued on around the bend, back toward Vega the way they'd come.

They had made little noise moving steadily down through the hills to the village. Now the patrol was a huffing, shambling clatter of equipment slugging up the track below the funny stone building.

Guys by that point were truly sucking. Those carrying machine guns or other heavy weapons suffered the worst. Boots scuffed the ground; rifles hung downward from dangling limbs. More than one vomited. They were too fatigued even to peel off to the side of the road to do it.

Caine, who alone among them all seemed to take the physical challenge in stride, stayed at the rear to ensure no one fell behind.
Get up the goddamn hill! Get up it!
he screamed at them, issuing a series of encouragements and threats as he deemed necessary. These ranged from conjuring graphic images of the various sexual liberties and favors the soldier in question would have earned from his wife or girlfriend if he made it to the top of the hill to a simple promise to shoot the guy's balls off if he didn't pick up the pace. How Caine kept this up while hauling himself and his gear uphill Black was not sure.

Black himself suffered as much as anyone. He had kept himself in shape, but Vega sat multiple thousands of feet higher than FOB Omaha, and he had not spent the past several months moving through the high mountains carrying loads of fighting gear. He wasn't remotely acclimated.

As he stumbled upward, lungs burning and boot toes stubbing the dirt trail, his thoughts escaped. Circled back to a night at Fort Benning, at OCS. Their final land navigation test. Three hours to find three of five points, out there in the night somewhere. It was “go” or “no-go.” Fail the test, fail the school.

Ninety minutes in, near the far western edge of the sprawling course, he found his friend. The smartass, crouched over a rumpled, waterlogged map with his red-lens flashlight. He was sucking.

He had no points. Drew a bad set, scattered far and wide and virtually impossible in the wet February conditions on the course. The only point he'd gotten close to had been underwater.

Black had found only one of his points. They were both gonna get a no-go.

They looked at each other and said: Not gonna happen
.
They replotted their points and ran. They ran both sets together.

At nineteen minutes to spare, his friend was still short one. They roamed a valley bottom in circles, running out of time. Over a mile of thickly wooded mountainous terrain lay between them and the finish line.

Go
, his friend told him.
Get home in time.

No way
, Black replied, and as he turned to argue he saw the signpost, the point, over his friend's shoulder not ten feet away. They punched his paper and they ran.

Ran like madmen, barreling through the pitch-black forest, tripping over roots, bumping into trees, and falling into streams. His friend wore the Army's famously ugly “birth control glasses,” and they were so smeared with fog and sweat that he stuffed them in a pocket and ran without them. At one point they climbed over a series of felled logs, one after another, before switching their flashlights on and finding themselves in the middle of a vast clearing filled end-to-end with cut trees. They had to backtrack and go around. They drove on without hope.