for some wealthy family, and insist on coins for payment.
Omar would have to help as well. He had not been cut, but he was old enough. Since the New Year, only my mother's stubbornness had kept him closeted with the little ones.
In the evening, men in turbans and business suits arrived, along with a woman painted like a bride and wearing the first sari I had seen. I had to avert my eyes from her uncovered skin. She took us upstairs to a cool room with blue walls adorned with photographs of elderly but beardless men, and a breezy veranda overlooking a garden.
Another woman brought us sweet rice and a curry thick with cream and yellow peas. Using barely comprehensible English, the first one told my brothers and me to eat our fill, then unroll sleeping mats from the lacquered chest over there and take a nap.
My mother nodded.
As the senior male, the decision of whether to obey the stranger's orders was mine, but a man worthy of being called Pakhtun does not contradict his mother. Especially among strangers. I bowed to she who had so gracefully guided my decision.
While settling Mohammed with his bowl, I looked back.
Our mother was being led away.
A virtuous widow, alone with strangers outside her home? I ran after them, protesting this indecency.
They stopped me at the door. They thrust something soft at me, used it to push me back into the room, and shut the door.
I looked at the thing in my hands. A plush yellow stuffed toy. A teddy bear.
Our helo took the straight route southeastward from Bagram, mostly paralleling Highway 1 and the river flowing along the northern flank of the highway. Below us, trucks raced at top speed along the highway, leaving us behind, but Mike said the convoy wasn't going all the way to Jalalabad. Nor were we important enough to requisition a plane.
For the first hour or so, Echo busied himself with a computer, its screen shrouded so that the only light emission reflected off his face. Mike and Oscar napped. Napping sounded like a wise use of my own time, but it didn't happen.
I wanted to inventory my packs, especially the medical kit, but our sitting compartment was too cramped. I'd be in everyone's way and would interfere in their sleep. Nor could I disassemble and clean the M4 they'd issued me. It was a cut-down M16, easier to maneuver from horseback but plenty enough weapon to keep me from standing out in a crowd of soldiers. I kept looking out the window instead, even when there was nothing to see out there in the night.
After a while, a convoy on the highway below caught up with us and passed in the same direction, slit-eyed truck after slit-eyed truck, giving the feeling we were flying slowly backward.
Way ahead of us, the road suddenly lit up. A monstrous brass chrysanthemum bloomed, its petals lighting and outlining a floating truck.
The noise hit then, hard enough to shake the helicopter.
Our helo rose, lifting quickly out of the light and passing to the south of the fire.
"Poor fuckers,” Echo said.
Mike's lips moved. A prayer?
What was wrong with me, that I hadn't prayed?
I stood and took the two steps of pacing the cabin allowed, partly so I could stretch—a sailor learns to stretch in spaces so tight most men cramp up thinking about them—and partly to sneak a peek at Echo's screen. He had a chess game in progress. Huh. I would have picked some zombie apocalypse shoot-'em-up for a guy like him. When I went back to my seat, Oscar moved his feet for me.
I muttered thanks. He nodded.
The helo returned to paralleling the highway, but kept moving higher and lower. Basic maneuvers to deny an easy target to anyone with a rocket launcher.
Had the truck fallen prey to a rocket or a set bomb? I peered back toward the fire, but trucks were all around it now, presenting too many lights and shadows in too many broken-up pieces to show what was going on.
A line of trucks stretched out ahead of the mess. So either the convoy had divided so some troops could effect a rescue
Omar would have to help as well. He had not been cut, but he was old enough. Since the New Year, only my mother's stubbornness had kept him closeted with the little ones.
In the evening, men in turbans and business suits arrived, along with a woman painted like a bride and wearing the first sari I had seen. I had to avert my eyes from her uncovered skin. She took us upstairs to a cool room with blue walls adorned with photographs of elderly but beardless men, and a breezy veranda overlooking a garden.
Another woman brought us sweet rice and a curry thick with cream and yellow peas. Using barely comprehensible English, the first one told my brothers and me to eat our fill, then unroll sleeping mats from the lacquered chest over there and take a nap.
My mother nodded.
As the senior male, the decision of whether to obey the stranger's orders was mine, but a man worthy of being called Pakhtun does not contradict his mother. Especially among strangers. I bowed to she who had so gracefully guided my decision.
While settling Mohammed with his bowl, I looked back.
Our mother was being led away.
A virtuous widow, alone with strangers outside her home? I ran after them, protesting this indecency.
They stopped me at the door. They thrust something soft at me, used it to push me back into the room, and shut the door.
I looked at the thing in my hands. A plush yellow stuffed toy. A teddy bear.
Our helo took the straight route southeastward from Bagram, mostly paralleling Highway 1 and the river flowing along the northern flank of the highway. Below us, trucks raced at top speed along the highway, leaving us behind, but Mike said the convoy wasn't going all the way to Jalalabad. Nor were we important enough to requisition a plane.
For the first hour or so, Echo busied himself with a computer, its screen shrouded so that the only light emission reflected off his face. Mike and Oscar napped. Napping sounded like a wise use of my own time, but it didn't happen.
I wanted to inventory my packs, especially the medical kit, but our sitting compartment was too cramped. I'd be in everyone's way and would interfere in their sleep. Nor could I disassemble and clean the M4 they'd issued me. It was a cut-down M16, easier to maneuver from horseback but plenty enough weapon to keep me from standing out in a crowd of soldiers. I kept looking out the window instead, even when there was nothing to see out there in the night.
After a while, a convoy on the highway below caught up with us and passed in the same direction, slit-eyed truck after slit-eyed truck, giving the feeling we were flying slowly backward.
Way ahead of us, the road suddenly lit up. A monstrous brass chrysanthemum bloomed, its petals lighting and outlining a floating truck.
The noise hit then, hard enough to shake the helicopter.
Our helo rose, lifting quickly out of the light and passing to the south of the fire.
"Poor fuckers,” Echo said.
Mike's lips moved. A prayer?
What was wrong with me, that I hadn't prayed?
I stood and took the two steps of pacing the cabin allowed, partly so I could stretch—a sailor learns to stretch in spaces so tight most men cramp up thinking about them—and partly to sneak a peek at Echo's screen. He had a chess game in progress. Huh. I would have picked some zombie apocalypse shoot-'em-up for a guy like him. When I went back to my seat, Oscar moved his feet for me.
I muttered thanks. He nodded.
The helo returned to paralleling the highway, but kept moving higher and lower. Basic maneuvers to deny an easy target to anyone with a rocket launcher.
Had the truck fallen prey to a rocket or a set bomb? I peered back toward the fire, but trucks were all around it now, presenting too many lights and shadows in too many broken-up pieces to show what was going on.
A line of trucks stretched out ahead of the mess. So either the convoy had divided so some troops could effect a rescue
Similar Books
Sliding Void
Stephen Hunt
Star Wars: The Force Unleashed II
Sean Williams
Man On The Run
Charles Williams
Thunder in the Blood
Graham Hurley
The Hindi-Bindi Club
Monica Pradhan
Riverkeep
Martin Stewart
Absolution - The First Book Of The Vampire Immortalis Trilogy
Elizabeth Mitchell
TITAN
Kate Stewart
Trouble In Triplicate
Rex Stout