He stepped out under the crystal-black vault of stars. The dark mountainsides soared above, ridges mingling with sky. Open ground fell away before him.
With dawn coming soon, only about half the guys had pulled their night-vision goggles down as they left Vega. Black preferred his natural eyesight when he could make do with it. He squinted and located Caine to his right, moving away across the hillslope. He kept his spacing and followed.
The patrol headed downslope only a short distance then cut right along a barely visible trail laden with pebbles and slick in places from still-wet ground. They traveled along just above the fringes of the fog, which visibly receded below them as they went.
No one spoke, save for the whispers of traffic he could make out periodically over Caine’s radio in the dark ahead of him. Beyond Caine, shadowy soldiers stretched into the distance in a staggered single file.
He looked behind him and saw Danny, ambling along, hands in pockets. He grinned and gave Black a small wave. Behind him more dark shapes, pointy with black weapons.
After a half mile or so skirting the flanks of the mountainside, the trail began to bend downward. The trees gathered closer and the going got slower. They picked their way along steep, lightly wooded ground.
A half hour in, Black looked upward and saw that the sky had started to turn. Not dawn, but the half-light that is neither day nor night. Goggles were coming off and being stowed away in kit bags.
The narrow trail wound around trees and among boulders, steep at first. As they descended it grew more shallow, finally bottoming out and widening into a broad dirt track running through a narrow offshoot of the Valley proper, a sort of tributary ravine with forested walls. To Black it felt like walking on one of the logging roads back at Fort Benning.
The trip down had taken time. Morning was in full flare by then, emerging to a cloudless sky. The ridgeline on their right was closer above them at this point, perhaps a few hundred feet. Sun shafts were cresting it and striking the higher valley slopes opposite.
The patrol moved at a slow but steady pace. Soldiers’ heads swiveled this way and that, up and down the slopes, searching the shadows with the practiced routine of a unit that was used to being attacked.
Caine had slowed his pace and fallen back a bit closer to Black.
“Hey, L.T.”
He turned and ambled backward as he spoke.
Black gave him an upward nod of the chin: What’s up?
Caine thumbed up and over his shoulder, toward the lower ridges on the right.
Black’s eyes tracked upward.
“All the way up, sir. Up top.”
He saw. Perched along the ridgeline, between two slightly higher crests. An odd box-shaped structure.
“Binos?” Caine asked.
Black shook his head.
Caine came closer. He dug in a pouch and produced a little pair of field glasses. Black took them and craned skyward.
It was the size of a large shack, but made of stone. The brilliant morning light hit it sideways from beyond the ridges and colored one side a blazing orange. He couldn’t make out any doors or windows.
“Blockhouse Signal Mountain,” he murmured.
“What?” asked Caine.
“Nothing.”
He handed the binoculars back to Caine, who was looking at him funny.
“What is it?” he asked the sergeant, nodding his chin up the slopes.
“Some old British shit from a long time ago. They used to be here. Like, their colonies and stuff.”
He stepped up his pace a bit and started moving back to his spot.
“Thought you might be interested, L.T.”
Black nodded. He squinted back upward, but his angle on the ridge slopes was changing as the patrol traveled and the little structure was already mostly obscured.
“Telegraph,” came Danny’s quiet voice from behind, startling him.
Black turned. Danny had moved up within a few feet behind him.
“What?”
“This is the . . .”
He cranked his hand in a circle before him, looking for the words.
“Great Britain, she had the telegraph, in the, the . . . network. All world.”
Black vaguely recalled reading about this once, about the worldwide telegraph network laid in the second half of the nineteenth century, largely constructed by the British across their many imperial possessions.
“How old?”
“Eighteen, maybe eighteen-seventy? Eighty?”
The time frame made sense. Right when the world was getting connected.
“So what’s that thing?” he asked. “Some kind of . . . hub?”
“Yeah, man. Telegraph tower. End the line. End the network. They build, all way, they stop here.”
Black didn’t understand why there would be any part of that network here in Afghanistan. He said so.
“This, remember, Pakistan is India those days. British.”
“Well, yeah, but . . .”
He trailed off before he said it.
Black knew they were close to the border with Pakistan, but not that close. Danny saw him processing the information. His eyes twinkled.
“Lines on map, these come, these go,” he said wryly, turning his palms upward in a Who’s to say? “Yesterday’s line, today’s line, tomorrow’s line. British man draws lines.”
He stuck his hands back in his pockets.
“Afghan man, he knows his land.”
Danny faded back to his place before he could be shooshed and scolded by Caine.
Black found it fascinating that the British had built telegraph infrastructure all the way to the Afghanistan border, or what was then more or less the border. They must have still had some optimistic hope for further expansion.
The road bent to the right ahead, around the mass of the mountain. The patrol instead continued straight, off into the trees.
Beyond the road the ground sloped slightly upward. Soldiers ahead fanned out to the left and right through the woods, forming a security perimeter. Black followed Caine as he moved straight ahead.
The trees thinned ahead of them, the morning light becoming more brilliant as it filtered through. Looking to his left and right, Black saw that the land sloped downward in each direction. He sensed that they were walking onto a sort of promontory.
Caine stopped after a hundred meters or so. He put a boot up on a felled tree trunk and stretched, looking back over his shoulder and motioning Black forward. Danny came up and joined them.
They were at the edge of the woodline, on a promontory as Black had suspected, looking down on a recessed flank of the valley. Forested slopes ran down to the river, which would soon be catching direct sunlight. A lesser tributary, something more than a creek but less than a river, joined it from a subsidiary valley rising away to the right. Between the river forks and the hills, nestled along the lower slopes in a crook in the land, was a village.
“Darreh Sin,” Caine said, handing over the binoculars again.
It was probably a mile and a half away in a straight line, maybe three hundred feet below them. It wasn’t much. A few dozen homes, tops, most looking to be the usual hybrid stone-and-log constructions common to the area. Some creeped up the slopes, piled almost one on top of another. He could make out a few people here and there, out and about, mostly moving toward the river.
“It’s small,” Black said.
Caine shrugged.
“Yeah,” he said.
He watched Black peer through the binos.
“This one’s ‘friendly,’” he said, wagging quotation marks in the air with the hand that wasn’t holding his weapon.
“The others farther up the Valley, not so much.”
“Huh.”
“Everyone’s gotta decide how to deal with the Taliban his own way, I guess.”
Black watched the little dots heading toward the river. Women, as far as he could tell.
He pointed toward the little tributary valley. It looked like it led to higher ground.
“What’s up there?”
“That’s the Meadows.”
“Meadows?”
“Sort of a flat place up in there,” Caine explained. “Lotsa grass, shady trees. Little nook in the mountains. More farms in there. Houses.”
“You guys ever go there?”
“Not much,” Caine answered. “It all falls under this same chief and the same council. The Meadows is just, like, the suburbs of this town.”
Black craned the binos around but couldn’t see far up the side valley.
“Anyway,” Caine said, “Sergeant Merrick’s taking a squad out now. Get some chow if you want.”
He pointed as he started digging in his pack. Merrick and a line of soldiers had assembled fifty yards or so to their right.
“Route clearance?”
“Yup.”
Probably they had encountered booby traps and snipers along the way in the past. On terrain like they were traveling on, there were only so many different ways to get where you wanted to go. It was easy for an enemy to plan for American forces using a particular route. Merrick probably wanted to shake the trees a bit and rattle whoever might be out there into going away or fighting.
Black heard noise in the brush to his right and turned. A smaller group of four soldiers in heavy camouflage appeared from the trees and spoke briefly to Merrick. When they were done, they trudged back toward the dirt track, where it continued on beyond the bend in the mountainside. Two carried long-barreled sniper rifles.
They would be heading to positions where they could see Merrick and his squad as it made its way across the Valley floor and along the river—and see anyone else who might be watching them. Merrick’s group disappeared downslope.
Black wandered back in away from the woodline. Those soldiers who hadn’t taken up positions on the perimeter were scattered throughout the area. Some took a knee. All huddled close to trees, looking this way and that into the distance. They rooted in cargo pockets for little packets of M.R.E. crackers and cookies. These they tore open with their teeth and ate with one hand, the other on their weapons. Sergeants moved periodically among them to make sure no one was getting groggy during the lull.
The patrol had left so early that probably no one had eaten much of anything. Black hadn’t either, but he’d had the presence of mind to raid an M.R.E. case that was sitting in the courtyard for the purpose. He sat down on a rock and pulled out a tan Spaghetti with Meatballs packet. It was a prize among M.R.E. entrees. He tore it open and ate it cold with the standard-issue plastic spork.
Danny wandered over and situated himself nearby, squatting on his haunches with his back against a tree. They chatted quietly.
An hour passed with little other talking, except when a nearby soldier asked Black to repeat his Chuck Norris joke. It had made its way through the outpost and was now famous in its lameness.
Caine’s radio chirped nearby, startling him. The sergeant, sitting on a log, looked like he’d been getting a bit groggy himself. He stood and unclipped the handset from his body armor, walking toward the edge of the wood line to survey the valley below.
He came back a minute later, speaking in low tones into the radio. Soldiers in the woods around them rustled to life and climbed to their feet.
“Time to go, L.T.,” he said. “They’re gonna meet us down there.”
They traveled the same route Merrick had taken. The downhill going was dodgy at first, loose dirt and pebbles slipping away beneath their sliding boots. As they descended, the slope lessened and grass came up underfoot. They emerged into clear sunlight. Soon they were traveling along reedy green flats near the river.
Black was surprised by how lush it was here, compared with the arid terrain of so much of the country. Flowering shade trees overhanging with shrubs springing up around them, everything subsisting on the nearby river water. It was, frankly, beautiful.
A squat building of timber and stone sat ahead among a clustering of trees between the trail and the river. It looked like it had several rooms in it. Black turned back to Danny questioningly.
“This . . .” Danny searched for the word. “Birth house. Babies, momma.”
He explained how in Nuristan villages children were born in a special building outside of town where they and their mothers would stay for a few days.
“Medicine is bad,” he said. “Many die.”
Past the birthing house they found Merrick and his squad. He turned wordlessly and pressed forward. After another hundred yards or so he turned and bore right, uphill. Caine and the rest of the patrol followed. They were now directly downslope of the village, which Black could see above them through the remaining trees.
Two dark-haired women came downhill, heading toward the river. One wore a black garment somewhere between a dress and a robe, which went down to her ankles. The other’s was similar but brown. Both wore embroidered blue scarves around their necks in a light fabric, which they loosely curled up and around the backs of their heads. They kept their eyes on the ground as the soldiers passed and moved on toward their business.
The patrol pressed upward and reached the outskirts of the village, passing the first mud homes as they climbed toward the hillslopes. Outside one a boy of about fifteen in a goatskin vest bent to lace a hide boot. He straightened as they passed. Caine gave him a small wave good morning. The boy watched them impassively from behind green, studying eyes.
More homes appeared on each side. Some were more or less huts. Some were made of stone and logs, and others almost entirely of skillfully crafted wood. A couple had more than one story to them. Smoke from morning hearths trickled upward from more than one.
None of them had fences or barriers around them, despite being built in some cases very close to one another. He’d never seen that in Afghanistan.
People came and went on their morning business. Silver-haired men in gray and black cloaks trudged uphill, squat Chitrali hats or checked keffiyeh scarves protecting them from the sun. Probably heading toward the slopes where their goats grazed.
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.