‘We’ll need Rehan to take us to the site,’ Zeb told Faroukh. ‘Where he found the body.’
‘You know where Pasha is?’ the chieftain’s eyes sharpened.
Is he disappointed or excited? It was hard to discern the Taliban man’s expression.
‘We’ll know what happened when we get there,’ Zeb replied evasively. He squinted at the sun and calculated rapidly. ‘It’s still early in the day. If we go right now, we can return before dark.’
Faroukh stared at them as if he could read their minds and then nodded. ‘Take Rehan. But,’ he gloated, ‘you won’t go alone. Some of my men will come with you.’
‘Let me go, sahib,’ Bakhtiar thrust himself forward with a glare at the Americans. ‘I will take three men with me.’
‘Yes,’ the chieftain smiled evilly. ‘Go with them. Make sure they don’t play any tricks on us.’
‘I’ll watch them closely, sahib.’
‘Only the three of you?’ Faroukh raised his eyebrows.
‘There will be more,’ Zeb replied shortly. He didn’t miss Bakhtiar’s smirk or the whispers he exchanged with the three men with him.
Rehan went to his house and returned with a collection of water bottles and food stuffed in a bag.
‘For all of us, khanom,’ he said bashfully when Meghan looked at him questioningly.
‘That was not needed, Rehan,’ she said, giving him a kind smile.
‘It’s expected of us, khanom, when we go with the Taliban.’
Zeb’s lips tightened at that, as he followed the farmer into the village. He half-turned his head and took in Bakhtiar’s bunch of men, who were following close behind.
‘They aren’t coming to help us,’ Beth murmured.
‘Yeah.’
They went through the village and reached the cliff edge where Pasha had flung himself off.
‘What—’ Zeb gasped when Rehan threw himself off the edge. ‘There’s no snow anymore!’ He hurried to the edge and gaped at the sight of the farmer sliding down the mountainside.
‘Tarpaulin,’ Bakhtiar explained smugly. ‘Painted to look like the cliff. Beneath it is cotton and sponge. Lots of it. Your American drones haven’t spotted it.’
Zeb shook his head in silent admiration at the Taliban’s ingenuity as he slid down the tarp.
‘Low tech beats high tech.’ Meghan dusted her hands on her cargo pants when she regained her balance at the bottom.
‘Always,’ he agreed. ‘Can you see a body anywhere?’ he asked softly as the Taliban gathered themselves several feet away. ‘I threw the guard off the cliff from the top.’
They looked around casually but couldn’t spot the dead soldier and hustled to catch up with Rehan.
‘He’s probably buzzard food by now,’ Beth whispered.
‘Yeah.’
They stopped for a water break after going a mile deep into the valley. Zeb nodded in silent thanks when Rehan offered him a canteen, drank deeply and wiped his lips. A twig cracked in the trees surrounding them.
Bakhtiar and his men stiffened and peered through the woods. They froze a moment later when a dark shape moved and Bwana came into view.
‘Don’t touch your guns,’ the operative grinned. ‘Accidents might happen, and you might get shot.’
The terrorists watched silently as Bear and Chloe came out of their cover and gave Zeb and the twins their HK416s.
‘This wasn’t the agreement,’ Bakhtiar said sullenly.
‘Agreement?’ Zeb chuckled. ‘We didn’t have one. When did I say it would be just the three of us going with Rehan and you?’ He discreetly inserted the earpiece that Chloe handed over in a palm brush and double-clicked his mic to check their comms were working.
‘Let’s go.’ Rehan couldn’t hide his wide-eyed look as he took in the new arrivals. ‘We can’t spend too much time here.’
Zeb nodded as he swiftly introduced his friends to the farmer but deliberately didn’t extend the courtesy to the Taliban soldiers.
‘I bet he calls for reinforcements,’ Meghan murmured in their comms channel when Bakhtiar fell behind and raised his radio.
‘I hope he does. Roger and Broker are following us?’
‘Yeah,’ Chloe confirmed. ‘From behind, at a distance.’
Rehan took them through the depths of the Wakhan Corridor Nature Refuge, over dry river beds and past thickets and sheer mountainside.
‘You come this far each day?’ Bear grunted as he climbed over a fallen tree.
‘Yes, sahib,’ Rehan smiled. ‘I’m a Wakhi. This land is my land. Here, it’s just me, the sky, the mountains and my goats. No Taliban, no terrorists, no killings, no rapes. Here, I am free.’
Zeb knew his friends were struck by the farmer’s simple eloquence. He sensed Bwana’s thoughts as the operative glanced back at the soldiers.
‘We’ll take them out,’ he promised, ‘but not yet.’
‘Won’t they shoot us from behind?’
‘No. Not until we return with Pasha.’
They went deeper into the thin finger that extends from Afghanistan’s northeastern region, a sliver of land named the Wakhan Corridor, which borders three other countries. Finally, Rehan came to a halt.
He scanned the surrounding mountains and nodded.
‘Here.’ He pointed to the dry river bed. ‘I found him here. Facedown.’
‘He brought us to the same place,’ Bakhtiar said, using his sleeve to wipe his sweat. He drank from his water canteen. ‘There’s nothing here. How are you going to find Pasha?’
‘Give us space,’ Zeb told him as he checked out the surrounding terrain. ‘Move!’ he snapped when the warlord hesitated.
Bakhtiar swore under his breath and stumbled back, drawing his men with him, when Bwana turned casually in their direction. There was nothing random about the way his HK was trained on them.
Zeb took Rehan’s bag from the farmer and opened it to bring out the locket and the shoes.
‘What do these tell you?’
His friends inspected the gear and shook their heads, baffled.
‘Looks like they tell you more than they do us,’ Meghan said drily.
‘To our left is Tajikistan, to our right is Pakistan, and straight ahead, barely ten miles away, is China.’
‘Yeah, we know that,’ Chloe grouched. ‘We’ve had that discussion several times.’
‘Those shoes aren’t native to the Wakhan Corridor or Badakshan Province. You’ll find them only in one place.’
‘Where?’ Beth demanded.
‘That locket,’ he ignored her, ‘isn’t something available in a store.’
‘What’s so special about it?’
‘That’s an employee number stamped on it.’
Bwana took it from his hands and studied it in the light. He passed it on to Chloe and crossed his arms across his chest. ‘This dead person was some company employee? Is that what you’re getting at?’
‘Yeah—’
‘The workers in this place are the nature reserve staff,’ Beth scowled into the distance. ‘And from the illegal mining operations.’
‘And the logging outfits,’ her sister added.
Zeb nodded as he side-glanced at Bakhtiar. The Taliban men were grouped together, angrily, some distance away. None was paying attention to the operatives. Wakhan Corridor was famous for its lapis lazuli and other semi-precious stones. Despite the government ban on mining it in the region, unlawful businesses had done just that. Even the Taliban’s gotten into it, he thought bleakly. They’ve found mining the stone is as profitable as opium smuggling. The terrorists used the neighboring villagers to staff their operations and used the profits to buy weapons.
‘Why would such outfits equip their staff with identification like that?’
That stopped his friends in their tracks. They looked at one another, and then Beth exploded.
‘This has gone on long enough,’ she complained, hands on her hips. ‘Spit it out. Everything you know.’
‘Our dead man worked in a government agency.’ Zeb raised his hands defensively when Bwana made a threatening move at him.
‘Which one?’
‘MSS.’