Page 66 of Whisper
Kris opened his mouth, and David waited for the sound of his voice, the sweet, lilting edge, teasing and powerful in one, a voice that could build or destroy. He wanted to hear his name fall from Kris’s lips, wanted to feel the way his soul shivered whenever Kris looked at him and spoke to him in just that way.
Hushed Arabic spilled from Kris, throaty and guttural. He frowned. It wasn’t right; that wasn’t what Kris sounded like. But it kept coming, harsh Arabic in whispers and hisses, a conversation in two parts that Kris was carrying on by himself.
“What about him?”
“He’skufir. He doesn’t know anything.”
“He dies with the others?”
“Nam.”
Wrenching free of his dream was like falling to earth from space, a rush of flame and fear that ripped him back to reality. David’s eyes flew open, but he didn’t move.
Behind him, and behind a rocky outcropping on the western face of another icy peak in Tora Bora, two of Majid’s fighters, scouts who had slipped forward during the day, whispered beneath the slivered moon. David felt frost on his exposed cheeks, felt his lips crack. He listened.
“What did you tell them?”
“That the Americans were coming. They had to act fast.”
Roaring, David launched from his sleeping bag, flying to the two Afghan mercenaries. He tackled them both, pressing them into the frozen earth and grinding their cheeks into the dirt. “Who did you fucking speak to?”
Both men looked up at David, trembling. Their mouths moved, but no sound came out.
He woke Ryan and the whole camp, and Ryan called Majid to come for his men. The two were stripped of their weapons and boots and tied together, left under guard.
Majid, when he arrived, seemed unperturbed.
“My soldier heard your men say theytalkedto al-Qaeda. What the fuck is going on, Majid?” Ryan fumed.
“These men have family in al-Qaeda.” Majid shrugged. “It is their Pashtun responsibility to give their family a warning before we arrive.”
“More of the Pashtun tribal codebullshit?” Ryan seethed. “Did your men give away our position? Did your men tell al-Qaeda where we are?”
One corner of Majid’s mouth quirked up. “You have no idea how this place works, American. These men here were paid to dig the trenches al-Qaeda now sits in.” He pointed to his fighters. “And this? Where do you think I received this?” One finger traced the scab curving down his cheek, hairline to jaw. “Three weeks ago, I was huddled in a trench on the Shomali. Facing you.”
David watched Ryan’s face go bone white, lose all of its color. David’s heart flip-flopped, squeezed and squeezed until all of his blood was thundering into his muscles, until he was a trigger poised to fire.
“Why the fuck are you here?”
“For the moment, you are our allies. You are paying and paying well. The future has changed in Afghanistan. It makes sense to be here with you. For now.”
Ryan’s gaze flicked to Palmer’s, then to David’s. David could see Ryan’s thoughts, as if projected inside his skull through the windows of his eyes. Did they keep Majid and his men close, despite their connections to al-Qaeda and the Taliban? Or did they cut them loose, run the risk they’d turn right back to Bin Laden?
Breathing hard, Ryan pushed into Majid’s face, staring down the burly, war-ravaged fighter. Ryan, in his Gore-Tex jacket and combat boots, seemed out of place, comically so, against the mujahedeen fighter and the primal Tora Bora mountains. “Youwilllead us to Bin Laden. To his personal caves. At dawn. Do you understand me?”
Majid shrugged. “Da.”
Majid’s scouts led the way to Bin Laden’s caves with David’s rifle pointed at their back.
“There,” one said, pointing to slits cut into the snow-covered limestone. “His caves begin there. They go toward the sun.” He pointed west.
They peered up the mountain. Fighters huddled around fires in front of the slits, and more waited in trenches dug into the dirt and shale. The fighters were cold and bundled in robes and turbans. Weapons lay in stacks, everything from rifles to RPGs.
Ryan pulled out the radio and started calling in air strikes.
It was David’s turn on the radio. The snow kept falling, just enough to slow down air strikes, but not stop them entirely. They’d pushed forward, obliterating cave after cave, and were pushing al-Qaeda and Bin Laden deeper into the mountains.
It was bitterly cold every day, and only getting more so. December had rolled in, sometime between the constant air strikes and the never-ending snow. He dreamed about Kris and the warm field almost every night, the endless waves of green, every shade imaginable. Kris was always at the center, always smiling at him. Always happy. Always warm against his skin.
