Despite the downhill travel it still took him the entire morning and into the early afternoon. He skipped the poppy field this time, working his way around the mountain on the tight portion of the trail. He was glad he had bypassed its cliffs and precipices in the dark.
When he knew that O.P. Traynor lay behind him, he cut away from the path to Vega and began descending the ridgelines that would take him where he needed to go. The sun shone clear along the mountaintops and he counted on his constant movement to give him a measure of protection in the open.
He could not see it yet but had committed its location to memory and moved confidently down across the heights. He had traveled these many miles unmolested and was grateful for his luck. He knew what he needed to do, and with a bit more luck could get it done.
Emerging from the trees onto a sun-drenched ridgeline, he saw it ahead. It was such an unusual feature, squatting on a mountaintop in a place its builders knew little of.
He approached the stone building slowly, not wanting to cause surprise. When he got within earshot he shouted.
“Corelli?”
Nothing. He approached. The stone construction was fascinating, the style alien to this land.
The thing was built simply. From this side, up on the ridge, he could see a single door and a small window set to one side of it. It was stout enough to have survived a hundred and fifty years of wind and snow and sun, and looked like it could do another hundred and fifty in a walk.
What plans they must have laid.
“Corelli, it’s Lieutenant Black,” he called as he trotted up to the door.
He peeked inside.
“Hey, Corelli, are you—”
Corelli was there. Black rushed to him.
A deep gash scarred his forehead above his wild eyes. He thrashed against bindings behind his back. His body armor, helmet, and rifle were piled haphazardly in a corner. He jerked his head at Black and tried to speak through his gag, panic in his eyes.
“Hold still,” Black told him.
A stone worktable had been built into the corner of the room. Corelli’s hands were bound behind him tightly and around one stone leg by a pair of sturdy plastic flex-cuffs. Police used these during riots and other mass-arrest situations. Soldiers routinely kept them hooked on their combat gear, for handling prisoners captured in raids or firefights. Black guessed these had come off of Corelli’s person.
On the worktable sat a green military radio set. Its cabinet was smashed, its display shattered. With a rock? A hammer? He turned to Corelli’s bindings.
Corelli bucked against the gag, desperate to speak. Black yanked at it until he’d worked it over Corelli’s teeth and chin.
“Sir, there’s a—”
Black heard the sound and whirled around.
An Afghan girl of ten or eleven stood in the threshold. She wore unusually short-cropped hair and a traditional Nuristani girl’s embroidered black dress. Her eyes shone silver-blue. Black recognized her.
He had only time to wonder what had brought her all the way up here from Darreh Sin, raising a hand in greeting and opening his mouth to speak, before she brought Corelli’s pistol from behind her back and shot Black with it.
The round struck just inside his left shoulder, spinning him and dropping him to the floor. A cascade of stars washed through his vision as his head struck stone. Corelli kicked and howled.
He lay gasping on his back on the cold floor. The ceiling spun. The room went dark and light.
Adrenaline coursing through him, he ordered himself to rise. He could not rise.
Straining, he bent his neck and brought his echoing head an inch off the floor. He peered past his feet.
Through the blurry doorway, speckled in a thousand dots of light, he saw the girl pick herself up off the ground and look about her. Bending to pick something up, she placed it behind her ear and stepped to the threshold. She stood there, eyes ablaze, surveying the scene.
Corelli bucked against his bindings somewhere, shouting at her from a hundred miles away to Stay away from him!
She took two steps and stood over Black. It was a red flower, the thing behind her ear. As she bent down she spoke words he did not understand.
—
She could not believe her luck.
Truly, Father, you have guided my hand today.
It had been an easy call, following the young soldier from his compound, and greatly interesting that he had come to one of the bearded American’s hiding places. Normally he and the other Americans pretended they did not know each other.
When dawn came she’d had to hurry back before Mother missed her. She feared nothing might come of this.
I should not have doubted.
It took all the next night of waiting, until her moment came. Once that was done, dawn again, and again back to Mother. Poor Mother.
She had never slipped away in the daytime. But she had felt certain that this time she must.
You were telling me I must.
Even if it were merely for another prisoner for the talibs it would have been worth it. Worth the risk, though it meant traveling as herself.
But this prize was one she had not anticipated. Not so soon.
The officer.
He lay splayed on the floor before her looking pale and weak, his breathing labored.
The one with the black bar.
The frightened young soldier in the corner heaved and tugged against his bindings and shouted at her in his American tongue. She ignored him and stepped forward, regarding her prey.
The servant. Just as they said he was.
He looked back at her with eyes that kept going unfocused, his rubbered limbs grazing the floor ineffectually like an insect speared to the earth. He looked like he would lose consciousness soon. She had probably shot his heart.
You guided my hand true.
She bent over him.
“Let me be your last living sight, devil.”
She reached for his chest, waving aside his feeble efforts at defending himself. She pinched a corner of the fabric square that bore his mark, and pulled.
It came away easily. She straightened and turned to the thrashing soldier in the corner.
“Don’t worry,” she told him. “You won’t be alone for long.”
She turned and left, heading downhill for home.
Now the talibs will know. There will be no question. They will know who defends this land.
She pocketed the square with the black bar on it. The black bar she had seen in the darkness, cowering in the doorframe of Mother’s home, in the flash of light that took Sourabh to paradise, to wait there for Father.
I hope you were not frightened, Sourabh, while you were alone.
She could see no face that night. Only the bar. Qadir had told her what the bar meant. The officer.
Qadir had told her things she needed to know. Told Tajumal. But there was no more need for Tajumal now.
She was the avenger. Not Qadir, not the young men who hurled themselves uselessly at the Americans. Only her. The bar would be her proof.
They will know who is faithful.
She hurried down over rocks and grasses, planning her explanations for Mother.
Rest, Sourabh. Rest with Father.
As she ran she felt tears run on her face, and she realized they were for joy.
—
In the dream he saw it clearly. Saw that he’d been wrong again. But she told him that was okay, and he was pleased with himself for seeing it now.
He lay on his back looking up at the stone window, and she stood over him. It was not her, but her. She reached and put a hand on his face, and told him not to worry. She told him to rest, there on the soft stone floor. She said he wouldn’t be alone for long.