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know, keeping up with child support payments and insurance, so I need it all.”
    The office assistant considered her comment and said, “I understand. I’ve had to deal with some of the same stuff.”
    “ We have to stick together, don’t we?” Melanie commented as the lady handed her the paperwork in an envelope.
    On the ride back from the doctor, Amanda asked her mother, “What was that all about?”
    Melanie, seemingly occupied with driving, said, “Hmmm? What was what all about?”
    “ The doctor visit. Did they figure anything out?”
    “ We still don’t know. In the meantime, though, you’ve got to stay healthy, Amanda. Your lipids are terrible. So we’ll keep doing these visits as long as we need to.”
    Amanda stared out of the window to her right as her mother returned her to the school parking lot. She could feel her mother’s eyes on her as she wondered what the hell lipids might be and what it might mean if they were “terrible.”
    “ Don’t you worry about anything. We’ve got the party tomorrow night. That’s what you need to be focused on.”
     
     
     
     
    CHAPTER 3
    Northwest Frontier Province, Pakistan
     
    Friday Evening
     
    Mullah Rahman had led his team into the cave after he watched the second helicopter explode early Friday morning. He wasn’t certain about the first one, but there was no question about the second one. The Balkan operators had done well.
    Indeed, very well.
    As they had made haste through the labyrinth from one side of the mountain to the back, through nearly a half mile of complex tunnels, dead-ends, and guarded posts, Rahman made the decision that they would keep going until they were deep inside their Pakistan sanctuary.
    So they walked, carrying their wounded and their spoils of victory, until nightfall. Now they rested in a small village several miles from where the combat took place. Rahman directed his men to conduct triage, secure the prizes from the landing zone, and reload their ammunition quickly.
    The snow had been deep on the top of the mountain but they had been descending most of their trek and now were in relatively bearable temperatures for May. The small village was nondescript with several adobe huts that had been reinforced with mud and straw over the years and now could withstand a 500-pound bomb. He walked into the structure where the wounded were being treated by a team of two doctors. Both men had thick, untrimmed beards and wore scrubs, surgical gloves and surgical masks. The doctors’ compliance with Sharia law was as important as saving lives, thus the long, unsanitary beards.
    On the first table, he saw one of his Pakistani Taliban fighters bleeding from a severed leg. Rahman himself had tied the tourniquet, which the doctor had loosened, but he doubted the young man would survive. On the second table he saw Commander Hoxha, who had taken several shrapnel wounds to the chest. Blood was blowing in bubbles from the right lung as the doctor had removed the battlefield dressing and now worked furiously to patch the sucking chest wound.
    Rahman looked at Hoxha’s gear, piled in the corner on the dirt floor. He saw the tactical vest with empty AK-47 magazines, the AK-47, and an M4. Hoxha had radioed in to Rahman that he had captured an American rifle, always a prized possession of Al Qaeda and Taliban fighters. Often these weapons hung over the fireplaces of Muslim fighter homes the way American Civil War muskets hung over mantels in Virginia. Rahman picked up the M4 with all of its high tech gadgetry. He popped out the magazine, which still had several rounds packed against the spring. He pulled back on the charging handle and ejected a solitary 5.56 mm round which tumbled across the room.
    “ Not in here,” the doctor working on Hoxha called over his shoulder to Rahman.
    Rahman nodded and left the operating room, moving into the room he used as his headquarters when they were operating from this village.
    He sat on the rug cross-legged