Zeb anticipated Pasha’s move and started scanning the side of the road once they hit the highway.
‘What?’ Meghan asked as she swerved their Range Rover to avoid a pothole.
‘Tracks. Something that will conceal our marks. We need to get off the road—’
‘Yeah,’ Beth called from the back. ‘Pasha’s on the move. Leaving Sori. He’s an hour behind us.’
‘We ambush him, here?’ Bwana asked in their comms channel.
‘No, Bwana,’ Beth made a face. ‘We can’t touch him until—’
‘Yeah, I know.’
‘Why did you ask, then?’
‘To annoy you.’
Meghan led their convoy off the road half an hour later, down a dusty track that led to an abandoned village. They took cover in its ruins while Beth launched her drone.
‘Taliban did this,’ Zeb said, tightlipped, while Chloe checked out the ruined buildings. ‘They hid with the villagers when the Afghan army was combing for them. They opened fire on the soldiers and several civilians were killed in the shootout that followed.’
‘You were there?’
‘Yeah. I was tracking the warlord who was hiding here.’
‘What happened to him?’
I got him with my long gun, when the army left.
‘He’s out there, somewhere.’ Zeb looked into the distance. ‘He’s fertilizer by now.’
‘Pasha will reduce us to that,’ Beth called out impatiently, ‘if you don’t stop squawking.’
‘You see him?’ Chloe looked over her shoulder at her screen.
‘That blip?’ The younger sister pointed. ‘That’s got to be him.’
They spread out in the abandoned houses, with their HKs and Barretts trained on the approach road.
In case Pasha decides to enter the village.
‘Two Toyota Hiluxes,’ Beth announced after a while. ‘Twenty shooters in total. Pasha’s in the first one, sitting next to the driver. All of them armed, acting as if they own the road.’
‘No one will challenge them,’ Zeb commented. ‘Not even the cops or the army.’
‘They’re turning in here?’ Roger drawled.
‘Nope, they’ve gone past. Let’s give it half an hour and then we’ll start.’
‘Did you see them anywhere?’ Pasha growled.
‘No, sahib,’ Faroukh radioed back from the rear vehicle. ‘We passed only trucks and some villagers’ old cars. They must be far ahead.’
‘Be alert. The Americans might set a trap.’
‘I don’t think they will, sahib. They wouldn’t have brought you back.’
‘You can’t trust them,’ the terrorist said darkly, unwilling to concede that his subordinate had a point.
Miles of terrain rolled past, but the untamed wilderness didn’t register on the Taliban chieftain. He was thinking of the American women. I will have them, he thought to himself fiercely.
‘Chahar.’ He heard the name as his men discussed it.
That’s where the Americans stopped Bakhtiar. Rage rose in him. Assaulting women was a Taliban man’s right. He began to utter a curse when a thought occurred to him.
‘We’re still in Badakshan, aren’t we?’
‘Yes, sahib,’ a soldier replied.
‘Those villagers would have heard of me.’
‘There’s no one in Badakshan who hasn’t heard of you.’
‘We’ll stop there on our return. It’s time we taught those villagers a lesson.’
He smiled evilly when his men cheered.
The Americans will walk into my trap in Chahar.