Page 1 of Trapped

Chapter One

Cash Baker heard the chatter of a Kalashnikov, then another weapon returning fire. The sound was familiar in the craggy brown hills of a country where warlords ran rampant over the land, fighting each other for prestige and territory.

The sun played over the top of his helmet, and sweat crawled down his back under his flak jacket. For a man who’d grown up in . . . Grown up in . . .

He struggled to remember the place where he’d spent his childhood. He had to have come from somewhere. But he couldn’t bring it into focus. Not the name. Not his house. Not his neighborhood. And panic tightened his chest. Then he reminded himself that the past wasn’t important right now. He had to focus on this village. These people.

They knew who had come here to harvest the viscous latex fluid from the immature poppy plants, then ship the darkened, slightly sticky mass called opium to middlemen.

He caught a flicker of movement to his right, but it was only a woman peering out from the doorway of her stone house.

Her whole body was hidden by a burka—a blue robe with a face screen that allowed her to view only a narrow slice of the world. But he saw her small hand clutching the wooden doorframe. In her other hand she held a metal box with a crank. She let go of the woodwork and began to turn the crank. As she did, music started playing. It sounded foreign and exotic, something the men might dance to on a village feast day or at a wedding celebration. It should have been pleasant. But it sent shivers along his spine.

“Stop,” he pleaded, wanting to clamp his hands over his ears. “I mean you no harm,” he added, feeling like a Star Trek character who had landed on an alien planet and was trying not to screw up the prime directive.

The woman eased back into the shadows beyond the doorway, but the tune kept grating at him until he strode away, scanning the street for trouble.

A few houses away, a group of six men with dark beards, loose- fitting shirts, and white and black turbans stepped into view and stood facing the American soldiers.

They ranged in age from early twenties to fellows with lined, weather-worn faces who looked like they were in their seventies. But he suspected they were decades younger.

Life in . . . Again, his mind drew a blank. And then it came to him. He was in Afghanistan. Tramping through the back of beyond, where there were no passable roads. Trying to cut off the source of funding for the Taliban.

“We won’t punish you. We just want to know who harvested the opium,” Lieutenant Calley said.

Calley?

Was that right? Or was that someone from another conflict, decades ago?

“Damn,” he muttered.

“Quiet. Don’t interrupt,” Calley ordered.

Cash’s head swung toward the man. “You don’t give the orders. I’m the Major. You’re the Lieutenant.”

“But I’m better at the language. That’s why I’m handling the questioning.”

“Yeah. Okay.” He focused on the scene. Everything seemed normal. But something bad was going to happen. He felt it all the way to the marrow of his bones.

The villager doing the talking took a step back, his eyes darting away for a moment. “We don’t know the men who came for the opium,” he insisted.

“But you watched them work.”

Somehow Cash could understand perfectly what the guy was saying.

“There were a lot of them. They said they would kill us if we interfered.”

“Uh huh,” Calley muttered.

Cash saw him reach for his gun. “Don’t!”

“I know how to get them to talk.” Calley pulled out his sidearm and shot the old man.

A sick feeling rose in Cash’s throat. “What the hell are you doing?”

“Defending myself.”

“No. You started it.” Cash backed away in horror. “Stop. Stop,” he kept pleading, but Calley had gone mad.

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