Page 61 of Whisper
Naji didn’t answer.
He drove them through the winding Jalalabad streets and turned south, out of the city. The sun slipped behind the Spin Ghar mountains, behind sheets of ice and snow along the peaks. The countryside plunged into darkness, more quickly than Kris was used to. There wasn’t a hint of electricity in Nangarhar Province, not a light bulb for miles and miles. The truck’s headlights flickered and faded, stretching to the dusty road just in front of their tires and no farther.
“Where are we going, Kris?” Ryan’s agitation was tangible, his jaw muscles clenching hard. “Where the fuck are we going?”
Naji wouldn’t answer.
They pulled off the dirt road and bounced over the rough, rocky track of the Afghanistan hills. Shale slipped beneath their tires. Ice crusted the edges of the truck’s chipped windshield.
Hours later, Naji pulled up to a blasted, half-bombed brick building, squatting against the base of the mountains, nestled in the flinty foothills. The truck’s dim headlights caught on the figure of a lanky man in a salwar kameez and camouflage jacket, a bandolier, and a turban. He clutched an AK-47 and watched them drive closer, never blinking. Fighters in turbans, their faces covered, loitered around the blasted building.
Over the team’s radio, Palmer ordered his men to raise their weapons, to take cover.
“What the fuck is happening, Kris?” Ryan vibrated next to Kris in the truck. Kris could smell his fear, the stink of his adrenaline.
Naji pointed to the man, the leader. “Shirzai,” he said. “Our commander.”
“It’s our ally.” Kris put his hand over Ryan’s, fisting his handgun. He radioed the team. “This is Shirzai. Our contact.”
When the trucks stopped, Kris was the first out, striding with Naji to Shirzai. “As-salaam-alaikum,” he said, one hand over his heart.
“Wa alaikum as-salaam,” Shirzai responded. He eyed Palmer’s men, and Ryan and Jim, hanging back. “These are your fighters?”
“The rest of our fighters are up in the sky. The Air Force and the Navy.”
“Ahh, yes.” Shirzai smiled. His narrow face, hawkish with a beaked nose, creased in deep lines. “Your bombs.” He pointed up. His smile disappeared the next moment. “Your men will stay here. I have fighters guarding this place. The rest of my men, and Majid’s men, have pushed into the mountains. They are in the villages.” He pointed to the mountains, rising above them like claws ready to slash at them, destroy everything in a moment. Only the peaks shone, starlight reflecting off shimmering tips.
“Majid?” Kris asked.
“Another warlord. He will need one hundred thousand from you. Cash. Tomorrow.”
Kris sighed. American foreign policy, again. “Nam.” Yes. “But not tomorrow.”
Shirzai gazed at the darkness, squinting. “The Arabs have gone up the mountains,” he said. “Into the Black Dust.” The Black Dust. Also known as Tora Bora.
Kris’s heart pounded. “We need to go up there. We need to find Bin Laden. You will you take us? Up into the mountains, to where we can find them?”
“Yes. Yes, we will do this for you. Tomorrow, we will go up the mountains.”
Daybreak dawned crisp and frigid, the frozen air shivering snowflakes in a dry dusting around their shattered forward base. It had been a long, chilly night.
Shirzai had left with Naji the night before, disappearing on a bouncing track that took them up into the foothills. Ryan had kicked into command gear, throwing his weight right and left, barking orders at Jim and Kris and Palmer to get their forward operating base up and running. Palmer and his men had done what they could to reinforce the decrepit building. Everyone managed to catch a few hours of sleep before dawn, Palmer and his men keeping watch.
Instead of the wail of the muezzin and the call to prayer, Kris woke to Ryan and George going back and forth over the radio.
“How confident are you in the situation there? In Shirzai and his alliance?”
“We’ve met Shirzai so far, and we’re rendezvousing with Majid, another warlord. We’re at the foothills of Tora Bora. Bin Laden is here. I know it,” Ryan insisted.
“Take a forward team into the mountains. I want eyes on this al-Qaeda camp where he’s hiding out, and on his fighters. As soon as you do, radio back. I’ll bring the entire air power of the US military down on that camp.”
“Yes, sir.” Ryan clicked off the radio.
David appeared at Kris’s elbow, a thermos of hot coffee in one hand. “Morning.”
The war had gone so fast, so furious, that Kris couldn’t remember getting more than four hours sleep in one stretch since before they had landed in Afghanistan. Since before September 11. He felt like something the subway had run over and dragged for three stops. David’s morning cups of shitty instant coffee, thick like tar and bitter enough to make his molars scrape together, were manna from heaven.
“Thanks.”
