Trinity: Military War Dog (16 page)

Parwan Province, Afghanistan

N
ight descended with a wolfish devour. Cold and biting, all the winds of Asia seemed to roll over her, ripping at her jacket. Burrowing against the bitterness, Darci pressed her body into an elongated, cuplike formation. Rock and twigs poked into her belly as she settled. She tugged the wool hat down over her ears and lowered her chin so she could recirculate the air she breathed in the hopes of keeping herself warm.

From her small pack, she retrieved the night-vision goggles. Cold against her face, the goggles morphed the darkness into a monochromatic mural of greens and whites. Rocks. Trees. Slopes and rises. All spilling down toward the valley guarded by the mountain range.

The howling wind snapped at her cheeks, but she focused on the distance.

She’d seen them.

Zooming with the NVGs brought the image into sharper focus. Good. She scanned left and counted eight … no, nine—ten! A cluster of ten tents straddling the valley floor near a mud-brick home. Here the two-story structure with a perimeter wall would be considered a mansion. The wealthiest of—

Her lens hit something. Darci hesitated. Retraced the wall. Portions were missing. In a normal village, the wall would’ve been repaired, their “noble” taken care of by the people. Farther down, she could see diagonally from one side of the house through to the other side … and out. Crumbling and spitting mud and plaster from a hole, the wall mocked the white tents flapping outside.

Interesting that there was no rubble pile from the missing section. Which meant it had either been cleaned up—unlikely if they were willing to let the hole go unrepaired—or it had blown. Like from an RPG. Or high-powered rifle.

The thought traced an icy finger down her spine. To make that shot, the attacker would’ve been …
Right where I am
.

If that was true, then the Afghans would’ve had sentries monitoring this spot.

Darci froze and listened. The roar of the wind and the defiant rustle of her coat made it impossible to hear anything. If someone wanted to sneak up on her, she’d be dead and never know. Then she’d never have to feel the guilt again of giving Heath the fake e-mail address.

Swallowing, she pushed her thoughts to the dilapidated “fortress.” No light twinkled through a curtain or blanketed opening.

Abandoned?

She flicked her gaze to the tents. When a glare of white burst through the lens, she resisted the urge to tense. More than a hundred yards from the camp, there was no way they would know she was here. But it still left her feeling naked, more so with the unusually cold night.

The men wore
qmis
, loose-fitting shirts that reached their knees, and
shalwar
, full trousers tied at the waist with a string. Heavy jackets concealed whether or not the men wore vests, but she was sure their
chaplay
, the thick leather shoes, provided little protection against the cold night. At least not the same protection her Columbias provided.

What made her hesitate was the
pagray
. The turbans were not worn high off the forehead as normal—necessitated for touching of the forehead during prayers—but instead they were low and pressed against their brows.

Odd.

Move on
. It was cold, and she’d been gone too long already. Someone—Toque—was bound to notice.

She dragged the NVGs over the camp, counted heads and tents, memorized the layout. Another odd thing. It wasn’t set up like a village, with clusters of tents close together for families. They were all huddled together. Not family-like. More … like the military.

Well, they were Taliban. And she had their numbers and location. Which was what her CO wanted to know. But did a small cluster like this justify the great increase?

Tugging the jacket hood up over her head, she dug down into her coat and retrieved the phone. Capitalizing on the protection of cover from her hood to shield the blue glow from the night and sentries, she turned it on. Punched in her lat-long, her data, and the date and time. Sent it spiraling to the satellite somewhere overhead. Then powered it down, tucked it back in her pocket, and nudged the hood out of the way.

Once again, she used her NVGs to study the valley. The people. The layout. Learn everything she could. Trailing the neon-green along the upper portions of the valley, she traced the hills. The plateaus. Searching for caves and other possible groupings of fighters.

Small for a Taliban camp, this settlement broke too many molds and unsettled her. But analysis wasn’t her job. Recon and reporting were.

“Just tell me what you see.”
Burnett had been adamant that she not put herself in danger. Darci cringed every time he warned her to be careful. She and danger had a love-hate relationship: She loved to avoid it. It hated to miss her. Invariably, it not only found her, but hunted her down. Sort of like Heath.

No, no. Can’t go there. Not now. Not ever
.

“If you don’t go into the cave of the tiger, how are you going to get its cub?”

Darci ordered the voice to shut up, to leave her alone. Going into that camp—or going there with Heath—would not bring trouble to her doorstep. She’d walk into its den!

But if she didn’t, the little inconsistencies about what was happening out here wouldn’t be answered. What if something was going on down there? They were less than two hours from Bagram. From thousands of American troops and their allies.

Darci pushed onto her knees. “Don’t do this.” She tucked the NVGs into her coat and zipped it as she started down the side of the mountain. “This is really stupid,” she muttered.

True. But Burnett had kept her in this job because of the very instincts that had her hustling down into the veritable den of tigers. The night before she left the base, he’d all but vowed to send her packing if she didn’t find something.

Her boot slipped—rocks, pebbles, and dirt dribbled down. She froze, swallowing hard as she waited to see if the wind had carried the noise to the Taliban. Satisfied it hadn’t, she hurried along. Kept herself tucked into the shadow of a cleft that gave protection against the angry wind and the probing eyes of the men down in the settlement.

She scurried along the shelf to where the mountain tiered down to the valley floor with what looked like hand-carved terraces. Once used for farming, no doubt. For her, they served as stairs and a quick path—but also an exposed one.

Squatting at the base amid a tangle of brambles and boulders, she peered over a large boulder toward the far right where a fire roared. Men laughed and talked. If she was caught, they’d kill her. After a brutal gang rape, no doubt.

She squelched the thoughts. No use going there except to remind herself to be quick and careful. No mistakes. In and out. Back to the campsite—

Stupid, stupid, stupid
. If someone figured out she was missing …

Half-bent, Darci sprinted the fifty feet across the open and scrambled up behind the building. Back pressed against the wall, she felt it shift.

Rocks and dirt rained down on her. Dust plumed around her face.

She blinked and choked back a cough. Cautious, she peered around the corner. Laughing continued. So did she. On her feet, she crouch-ran along the wall to the far side where she’d seen through to the other side. Enough would be missing to allow her to gain entry without being noticed. True to her expectations, she found the hole. Glanced over the twelve-inch ledge—and bingo! The debris spread over the ground. Inside.

So, what was going on? Why were the men outside when they could patch this place up and take shelter for the winter and from the coming blizzard?

Darci slunk through the darkness, blinking against a gust of wind that nearly knocked the breath from her chest. Inside the home, she confirmed her suspicions. Empty. Abandoned. She moved to the wall and peered around the cloth that still hung in the window.

A dozen men now gathered around the fire.

Where are the women?

The realization hit her in the gut. No women. This wasn’t a Taliban
settlement
. Her gaze pinged over the men. Laughter barreled up from one side. Two men roughed around, tangling with each other. A pagray tumbled free. The man who’d knocked it loose threw his head back and cackled, his laughter howling with the wind.

The man who’d lost his turban retrieved the length of material from the ground and straightened. Like a dance of demons, firelight flickered over his face, revealing his origins.

Darci sucked in a hard breath.
Him!

            Eleven              

W
hat were the Chinese doing hundreds of miles from their border and dressed like Taliban fighters? Darci jerked away from the window and pressed her spine against the cement-block wall. She slid down, her mind thundering with what she’d just seen. Panic swirled and whirled through her body, overloading it with adrenaline and heat. In particular, what was Tao doing here? And if he was here, then so was …

Oh man. Out now.
“He nearly killed you.”
Ba’s warning haunted her. She had to get out of here before they discovered her.

This was bad. No, no. This went beyond bad. This was Threat Level Red. DEFCON 1. Threat Level Critical. And any other “extreme” world system panic code.

Heart jammed into her throat, she pushed back against the cold cement and stared up through the hole-laden ceiling to the blanket of black.
Don’t do anything stupid
.

Steadying her pulse was the first objective. If she couldn’t get herself under control, she wouldn’t be able to think. To devise a strategy and get out of here alive.

If they found her—

No. She
would
get out of here. Get back up that mountain without being seen. Get the team back to Bagram where there were lots of guns and battalions of men trained to fight.

No go. Chopper wouldn’t extract till morning.

Yet … she felt her pulse slowing, calming. If she could sneak back into the rugged terrain without these men seeing her, then she could hoof it back to camp, night would pass, and the chopper would come. No one would be the wiser, but Burnett would have his information. The team would be safe. She would be safe.