NIGHTFALL ON THE Khyber brought an icy wind. They were at over three thousand feet in elevation in the middle of the Spin Ghar Mountains. Known as the Silk Road, the Khyber Pass had been a strategic military route for centuries. Yet one wouldn’t know it from looking at the punishing terrain and awe-inspiring beauty.
Ali had parked the pickup in a small camp and hidden it under a camouflaged net covered with leaves and twigs. The camp was made up of three small tents, the kind Boy Scouts might take to a campout. A communal fire roared in the center.
“What is this place?” Luke asked.
“Rest stop for our passengers. Brothers who do this work create this.” Ali sounded proud, as if he really were a tour guide showing off a state-of-the-art rest area. “You go warm yourselves by the fire, I’ll make tea for us.”
Alessa didn’t know what to expect from the other “passengers” crowded around the fire pit. No one introduced themselves but they gave each other polite nods. There were two obvious Westerners, a woman with red hair tucked underneath a loosely draped scarf and a thin, brown-haired man with lines etched into his forehead.
“Fantastic view right over there, but be careful where you walk.” The redheaded woman was British. In the darkness, the light from the fire flickered across her face, giving it an orange glow.
Amine and Reza stepped in the direction indicated by the redhead so Luke and Alessa followed. There was almost a collective gasp. Both Amine and Alessa lifted their veils so they could get a proper look. They were on a precipice that dropped into a valley between the arid slopes. The full moon reflected off the rock face, outlining the vast mountains around them and the narrow, serpentine road that cut, impossibly, between them.
“Kipling’s sword cut through the mountains,” Reza said.
“Rudyard Kipling?” Alessa clarified.
He nodded, turning toward her, and for the first time, Alessa got a full look at him. He was nearly six feet tall, his dark eyes accentuated by long black lashes. He had a mop of curly hair and an easy smile that did little to hide the terror that was plain in his eyes.
He didn’t seem to mind that Alessa’s veil was off, so she didn’t bother to lower it.
“Yes, he described the Khyber that way.”
“An apt description.”
“For centuries now, armies have used this Silk Road to conquer more territory and land. Each one takes something for themselves but leaves us with nothing.”
The despair in his low voice tore at her. She didn’t want to get into an argument about politics with Reza, but she understood what he was trying to say.
“I hear you are an architect?”
He nodded. “I came home to help with the rebuilding. I came to make a better Afghanistan.” He sounded weary and defeated. Alessa wanted to find words to give him hope and comfort. But Luke cut in before she had a chance.
“We’re going to have to climb upward to get to Londi Kotwal, and then go across the mountain.” His voice was businesslike, and irrationally, Alessa missed the deep warmth it had held when they were sitting in the back of the pickup.
She’d thought about opening up and telling him about Aidan, but hadn’t been able to bring herself to say the words out loud. How could she explain that she had fallen for a married man? After what Luke had shared about his family life. While she didn’t sense any malice toward his mother, the deep disappointment had been clear in his eyes. Alessa didn’t want him to judge her.
It wasn’t as if she’d never thought about Aidan’s wife, but Aidan had shown her the divorce papers she’d sent. It was perhaps the moment when Alessa and Aidan had truly gotten close, sitting together on a moonless night at a lookout post. It was the first time Alessa had shared a connection with someone, talked about her own past and let another human being comfort her. But how could she explain that to Luke without coming across as a home-wrecker?
“What about the old railway?” Reza asked. There was a railway track that the British had built in the 1920s to ensure efficient transportation to India.
“It flooded about a decade ago and is in bad shape. Besides, it’s so heavily used now that we might as well invite someone to come kidnap or rob us,” Luke explained.
Alessa had looked at the satellite pictures of the railway. It was still used by smugglers and human traffickers. The latest intelligence was that the track was passable, but when Luke had asked Ali about it, Ali had insisted that recent rockfalls were blocking sections. The track would have been the easy way across, dropping them into a valley near Londi Kotwal, the border town to Pakistan. Alessa wasn’t sure whether Ali was steering them to, or away from, the safer path.
“So are you two CIA or military?” Reza’s tone was matter-of-fact. Alessa couldn’t fully see Luke’s face but pictured him raising his brow. But they were away from Ali, out of earshot of anyone but the four of them. Luke answered in the predictable way. “What makes you think we’re CIA or military?”
“Your accent slips in and out and your English is too good. We don’t speak like you do. What do you Americans call it...like the local way of saying something.”
“Slang?” Alessa supplied, then shut her mouth.
“Exactly. See, these are words that don’t come easily to our lips.” Reza smiled broadly. “You don’t have to tell me. To be telling the truth, I hope you are what you call those...” He waved his hands in a Karate Kid wax on, wax off move. “That way you can protect us if something happens.”
All of them laughed, desperate to ease the tension. “I do not know if we can trust Ali. He seems like a good person but you never know of a person’s circumstance,” Reza said.
They all nodded. Even if Ali’s intentions were good, any number of things could change his perspective. If he were faced with being hurt or killed, his priority would likely be to save himself, not to protect any of his “passengers.”
“I don’t know the pass. Once we get into Pakistan, I can be more helpful.” Luke said. Alessa smiled at him. It was hard to know who to trust, but in this moment, the four of them were allies and it was best to know where everyone stood.
“I need to sit,” Amine said suddenly and all three of them went to grab her. Alessa and Reza helped her to a rock.
“It’s all right, I think it’s just the baby kicking, nothing to be concerned with.”
Reza locked eyes with Alessa, the plea clear in his big brown eyes. “Don’t worry.” Alessa said. “We will get her across.”
Reza peeled back Amine’s burka sleeves and the sleeves of the shirt she was wearing underneath. Amine shook his head at him but he continued undeterred. Alessa’s stomach dropped and a knife-like pain twisted inside her gut. Amine’s arms were covered in bruises and the telltale circular wounds of cigarette burns. Some had barely scabbed over.
Reza peeled back the top of her burka veil so more of her hair was showing, then turned her head. Alessa couldn’t help the gasp that escaped her lips. Despite the cold mountain air, her entire body heated. It wasn’t the first time she’d seen such a bad burn behind the ear but it had been a while since she’d come face-to-face with one.
“Her husband and father-in-law did this to her. That’s what we’re running away from.” Reza said with barely suppressed anger.
Amine was studying her hands, her lashes wet.
“You know you don’t deserve this,” Alessa told her. “There is nothing you’ve ever done or will ever do in your life to deserve this.” Amine continued to look down so Alessa kneeled in front of her and clasped her hands in her own. “Amine, you must believe me—the men who do these things, they are weak men. That’s why they do it in places where they don’t have to look at the harm they’ve caused.” She knew that was why Amine’s face was unmarred. Alessa’s mother wore long sleeves and full pants, even on hot days, but her face was always perfect.
“I try so hard, every day, to do it right.” Amine sobbed.
Alessa put an arm around her. “You could’ve been the perfect human being and nothing would have changed what they did. This is about their weakness, not yours. Trust me, I know.”
Amine raised her eyes to Alessa’s and once again the two women held hands. Alessa made a silent promise that she would get this woman to safety, no matter the cost.
“You are brave to leave them,” Alessa said.
Amine shook her head. “It wasn’t me. My brother tricked me.”
Alessa glanced at Reza, who stared at his feet. “What was I to do? Leave her there until they murdered her? She would not come with me.”
Amine let go of Alessa’s hand and muttered, “It is my fate to be in that household, and now that I am cursed like that, it is my duty to honor my husband and family.”
Alessa’s breath stuck in her throat. The words were different, but the sentiment was the same one she’d heard from her mother. A sense of obligation to stay, a misguided notion that things would get better. Perhaps even a sense that she somehow deserved it. This was a conversation she’d had so many times in her life that her chest hurt just looking at Amine. She stood.
“It’ll never happen to you again,” Luke whispered softly, but his words cut through her. While she knew he was right, a part of her irrationally feared her mother’s life. She was terrified of ending up in the same situation as Amine, unable to see when it was a bad situation. It had almost happened with Aidan.
Reza crouched down and cupped his sister’s face. He spoke to her in a dialect that Alessa didn’t understand but she could translate the desperation in his voice. The shine of Amine’s tears reflected the moonlight. She murmured something to her brother, then he shook his head and stood.
“There is no use. She thinks because I studied in America that I have become too Western in my thinking, but that is not true. This is wrong.”
He stepped away from Amine, who sobbed quietly. Alessa shot him an encouraging look. She admired his courage in trying to get his sister out. That he had studied abroad accounted for his lack of concern about the women not being veiled, and the physical affection he showed his sister.
Luke let go of Alessa and approached Reza. “You’re doing the right thing. If she were my sister, I’d get her as far away as I could, then make sure the man who did this pays.” Luke’s menacing tone reminded her of when he’d interviewed her for the unit. He’d asked if she needed help with her father.
Amine continued to cry. Alessa didn’t move to comfort her. What was the point? She had once tricked her mother into visiting her, then presented her with a plane ticket to Italy. Alessa had spent everything, all the money she’d saved, to put down the deposit for an apartment and pay for the flight. Her mother had flatly refused. Alessa’s internet research, which proclaimed that once you got the victim away from the abuser, they could think more clearly, was flawed. It hadn’t worked with her mother. She’d offered up a way out and her mother had flatly refused. She understood all too well what Reza was trying to do, but it wouldn’t work with Amine. And the situation presented yet another problem for them: Amine’s cooperation.
As if he’d read her thoughts, Luke tugged on her arm and they stepped out of earshot of the siblings. He spoke quietly through the comms system.
“We have to let Reza handle this. I’m going to check on the rest of the team. Cover for me.”
Luke couldn’t exactly pull out his fancy satellite phone. While many people had smartphones, no one would have a cell signal here and the light from the phone would attract a lot of attention. Feigning a call of nature, Luke walked into the brush.
After a while, Reza left Amine and came and sat beside Alessa. Sensing he needed something else to focus on, Alessa turned to him. “Where did you study?”
Reza brightened at the question. “Ohio University. I got a scholarship to go there for four years to do my studies in architecture. It was the best time of my life. I wish I could have stayed.”
“But your student visa expired?”
He nodded. “Yes, I could not find a job to sponsor an H1 visa for me. Besides, it was time to come home. I was a married man and my wife was waiting. My father needed me to earn money for food and to pay his debts.”
“Is that why he married Amine to that awful man?”
Reza nodded. “She was married to him when I was in America. She was only fifteen, but my father owed her husband and father-in-law too much money. Her husband...” Reza shook his head in disgust. “The man was forty years old. She was just a child.”
“Your father is also to blame in this.” Alessa couldn’t help it. This was a story she’d heard many times, and in every version, the father of the girl was couched as a victim.
“I agree. I cut off ties with my father when I returned and first went to visit Amine. They would not even let me see her, saying that it was improper for us to meet. I am her brother! But I was not going to be turned away. I got the help of a female cousin, who arranged a secret meeting. That time, Amine pretended she was happy and everything was well. It was my cousin who pushed her sleeves up and showed me her arms, and that is when I knew.” He paused, as if to compose himself. “I went to talk to her husband. He said Amine was making things up, then sent some men to beat me. They warned me to stay away from Amine. I have always respected my father, but he told me we must consider Amine a sacrifice. Tell me, would you ever sacrifice your own flesh and blood? Your own sister?”
The words burned through Alessa’s ears and ones uttered years ago, when she first joined the army, came back to her.
“Lessi, you’re going to leave me all alone?”
“Julia, it’s temporary—as soon as I make enough money in the army, I’ll come get you out and then we will live together and you’ll never have to come home.”
Julia had been fifteen when Alessa joined up. At the time, all Alessa wanted was to get as far away from her father as soon as she possibly could. He hadn’t touched her since she was fourteen, since she’d taken up martial arts, but that hadn’t stopped him from taking out his anger on her mother in front of Alessa. It was a show of power, to demonstrate to her that while she could defend herself, she couldn’t protect her mother. Alessa had felt guilty leaving Julia behind, but as a minor herself, she’d had no choice.
After her first two years in the army, Alessa had gone back for Julia, with an offer to petition to adopt her, but Julia wanted none of it. She was seventeen and had plans of her own for when she turned eighteen. So Alessa had done what came easy; she’d agreed to pay for Julia’s college, a way to assuage her guilt and not think about what had happened to her baby sister in her absence.
“I think this is a tough situation,” Alessa said noncommittally when she realized Reza was waiting for a response. She could plainly see the anguish in the young man’s expression and wanted to tell him not to blame himself, to be happy that nothing worse had happened to his sister, that he’d gotten her out in time. But she couldn’t say any of those things. They were not out of harm’s way.
* * *
LUKE FOUND AN outcropping in the rock and sat down. The mountains rose up behind him; the precipitous valley below was mostly dark with a few twinkling lights. The road through the mountains wasn’t very wide, barely enough to let two cars pass in some spots. There was no guardrail on the other side, just the dark abyss, shadowed in the moonlight. He leaned against the smooth side of the rock he’d found to hide him from the camp and powered up his phone. A voice startled him.
“Hey!”
“Rodgers! What’re you doing here?” Luke couldn’t see him well so he turned his cellphone to shine the light on Rodgers. The man was dressed in local clothes, dirty and a little torn just like Luke’s.
“Boots and I ran into some trouble and got separated. I was cutting across Khyber on my own hoping to run into you.”
Luke’s stomach hardened. This was not good news. Rodgers was the most senior operative on the team and Boots was very good. Even if they had run into trouble and lost each other, there were ways of reconnecting, including tracking the other team member on their GPS.
As if reading his mind, Rodgers whispered, “Boots’s GPS has him at a stationary location, but he’s not there. I looked for the phone and watch but couldn’t find them and didn’t want to spend too much time loitering.”
It was a neat explanation. Too neat. But what choice did Luke have? He didn’t know if it was Boots he couldn’t trust or Rodgers. Ali was ready with glasses of tea when they got back to the campfire. He admonished them for wandering so far away and proclaimed their tea cold and possibly ruined for drinking. Luke insisted on taking the glass from the man anyway and took a sip. The tea was nice and warm, a perfect drinking temperature. There was a tendency for tea to be served boiling hot in the region. If it wasn’t hot enough to burn one’s tongue, it was too cold.
“Who are you?” Ali studied Rodgers.
Luke explained that he was a wanderer they’d found on their walk. “He wants to make a deal with you to join our group.”
Ali pulled Rodgers aside and negotiated a fee. Luke heard the entire conversation through the comms. Rodgers protested, bargained, then finally settled on a fee that was slightly higher than what Luke had paid. Ali scuttled off to make Rodgers some tea. Reza and Amine had taken a seat by the fire. Their conversation looked intense, so Luke, Rodgers and Alessa took a seat a few yards from the blaze. Alessa had her veil back on and turned her back to them. Luke and Rodgers positioned themselves so it looked like they were just hanging out, not necessarily talking to each other. Luke explained Rodgers’s appearance to Alessa.
“I don’t see Boots on the GPS, but Dan, Steele and Dimples are across.” Alessa had pulled out the phone under the cover of the burka.
“What should we do, boss? I can go back and try to find Boots.”
Luke wished the right answer would magically appear. His gut told him he should send Rodgers back for Boots, but what if he then put Rodgers in even more danger? What if Boots was a traitor and that’s why he was missing? His brain was firing a number of scenarios at him, none of which amounted to sending Rodgers back. But something told him Boots wasn’t in trouble. Either Rodgers had ditched him or Boots had separated himself. If Boots had been captured, he’d have found a way to get them a message.
“No, until he gets in touch, we continue.”
The panic button on Boots’s phone would send a signal to a server back in the States, which would then send an automated message to the team’s phones. If the members were out of range, the message would come when they reconnected. If Boots had lost his phone, there was a backup protocol he could use from a payphone. That was assuming Boots was alive and hadn’t lost his phone.
“What’s the play?” Rodgers asked.
Luke took a breath. “We stay with Ali but the first sign that he’s turned, we break and go our own way.”
They sat in silence, Luke wondering whether any of these were the right call. He was going with his gut on Ali. He had to. He didn’t have enough information on the guy to make a strategic decision. Luke had to decide based on their brief meeting whether Ali would stab them in the back and get them killed. To Luke, the guy seemed as honest as a human smuggler could be.
“I’m not sure about Ali.” Alessa said softly after a while. Luke swallowed and waited, let the silence hang between them.
“He’s been extra chummy with the other guides at the camp here.”
“That’s normal,” Luke replied evenly. “The camp is set up by a group—they need to coordinate logistics, make sure they all take different routes.”
“Or gang up on the rest of us.” This time Rodgers spoke up. Luke stopped himself from taking a sharp breath. When the comms were on, you could hear every inhale and he didn’t want the team to know he was sweating this. What was the answer? He may have already lost Boots; he couldn’t lose more of his team. Especially not Alessa. What’s the right call here?
“We continue with the plan. Like I said, stay vigilant and first sign of trouble, we bail.” His voice was firm. Feelings for Alessa couldn’t play into any decision he made. She was a soldier in his command; that was all.
Ali came toward them, motioning with his hands that they had to go. They all hurried behind him. Reza and Amine seemed to have reached some sort of understanding. He held his sister’s elbow, a little awkwardly through the cloth. She wasn’t resisting, although Luke didn’t expect her to. He thought about the way Alessa had stiffened like a steel plate when Reza first showed them Amine’s bruises, the way she’d backed away as if just by being close to them, her own wounds were opening. He thought about the man that had done that to Alessa and a rage unlike any he’d ever felt heated his blood. She was walking behind him and he resisted the urge to look back and make sure she was okay. A soldier in my command. Nothing more.
They would be trekking through arid, mountainous terrain. Biting cold air mixed with dust stung his face. So far the walk was easy, but he knew it would get treacherous as they made their way toward the Khyber Pass.
He toggled the comms on his watch so he could talk to Alessa privately. “Just you and me. You okay?”
“Are you seriously asking me again?”
“How’s your shoulder?”
There was a long pause. “I’m fine,” she said tightly.
“I’m going to find an opening when we can ditch the group.”
“Why?”
“I think we’ll be safer on our own.” It was a gut feeling and he was going to trust it.
“Shouldn’t Rodgers be in on this conversation?”
“I don’t want to give him a heads-up.”
“You don’t trust him?” she said incredulously.
“Would you?”
“Yes! Rodgers wouldn’t betray us.”
Luke bit his lips and tamped down on the flare of jealousy that burned in his chest. Alessa and Rodgers had gotten close working together; had she developed feelings for him?
As if reading his mind, Alessa’s voice came through reassuringly. “Rodgers is like a brother to me. I know him well enough to know he’s a good man, and he’s loyal to the unit.”
“I see some flashlights around the bend, maybe two clicks from us.” Rodgers’s voice was crisp on the comms.
Luke kept his eyes peeled and toggled his comms back so he could talk to everyone.
“I see them.” Alessa’s voice came through at the same second he saw the lights. They kept moving, Luke surreptitiously keeping track of their progress on his watch. The uneven, winding terrain made it difficult to count steps.
The lights were stationary. That meant they were walking into a trap. Luke took inventory of the weapons he was carrying and began formulating a plan. Lights were highly suspicious, especially in an area that was well known for not having a reliable electrical grid. They weren’t car headlights, and if people had money for oil or battery-operated lamps, they were likely too rich to be domiciling in a harsh mountain cave.
They inched closer to the lights. By now the whole group had seen them and Luke noticed Reza and Amine slow their steps. Ali on the other hand seemed to quicken his pace.
Luke knew now that his gut was nothing to go on. He’d obviously been wrong to trust Ali. As they approached, the smuggler waved, no doubt letting whoever was waiting know that he’d brought fresh targets.
Luke didn’t need to check with Alessa and Rodgers to know they’d be ready to fight. The team had trained for this scenario—even Alessa.
Just as they rounded the corner which would bring them face-to-face with whoever held the lights, Alessa’s scream came through on the comms. She had tripped and was about to plummet to her death.