Page 550 of Lodestar

Eagle Eyes:I’m calm, I’m calm. What’s up?

Lodestar:You heard of someone called Dost Mohamed Khan?

Eagle Eyes:DMK, sure. Blew his brains out on a top-secret mission.

Lodestar:That’s impossible.

Eagle Eyes:Nah. Watched his skull shatter through my scope… No surviving that.

Lodestar:I killed a Dost Mohamed Khan in London. A few years back. We can’t both have killed the same fucking man!

Eagle Eyes:Sure we can.

Lodestar:What?! O.O

Eagle Eyes:DMK was a patrilineal name.

Lodestar:Meaning there are a fuck ton of men called that?

Eagle Eyes:Yup. But they’re specific to a certain family in the Kembesh region in Afghanistan.

Lodestar:This is going to give me a headache.

Eagle Eyes:Look at it this way, they were all Taliban. Whoever you killed, he deserved to die.

Lodestar:Nothing is ever that simple.

Lodestar:Why would a soldier, dying on the field, tell his boyfriend to ask you about him?

Eagle Eyes:Huh. I don’t know. Which ‘field’ did he die on?

Eagle Eyes:I mean, the DMKs (that’s what we called ‘em) were asswipes. They were the dicks who got some mustard gasfrom their ancient armory and sprayed it over the battlefields of Kamor.

Lodestar:Dude, that was THEM?

Eagle Eyes:Yeah. One fam. I’m telling ya. All. Fuckin’. Douches. This is strictly on the DL, btw, Lodestar.

Lodestar:Figured that out myself. What was your mission? Take out the leader?

Eagle Eyes:Great-Grandpa DMK, yup. Alleged ties to Bin Laden himself and, they say, friends with a bunch of oligarchs in Russia. They were the ones who fed guns through Pakistan into Afghanistan.

Lodestar:Russian oligarchs?

Eagle Eyes:Yup. You know they had their mitts all over Afghanistan.

Lodestar:You remember the names of those Russians?

Eagle Eyes:Jesus, we’re talking intel from years back, Star. If I remember, I’ll let you know, K?

Lodestar:For sure. Appreciate that.

Eagle Eyes:As for the soldier telling his partner to ask me about DMK, I can only think it’s because Kembesh was the gateway for Russian arms. Who was the brother?

Lodestar:Dominic Ellis.

Eagle Eyes:Ah, shit. Good man. Fucking brilliant soldier. I loved being attached to his squadron. You said Nic told his partner? Maverick, right? They tried to cover it up, but Nic’s PTSD was fucking horrific by the time Kembesh hit. TBH, I loved the man but it’d have been either enemy fire or his own bullet. That’s how fucked he was.

Lodestar:It’s criminal that the higher-ups didn’t let him retire.

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