Rules of Betrayal Read Online Free PDF

nine-year-old wisp of a girl with fine black hair and doe eyes that bore a hole into Jonathan’s conscience the first time he saw her. He knew nothing more about her, whether she was in school or knew how to read, if she enjoyed embroidering or was a tomboy who played soccer. Amina couldn’t talk, and Afghan parents didn’t discuss their children with strangers. None of this mattered. As a surgeon, all Jonathan needed to know was evident the first time he examined her. He’d taken one look at her wounds and sworn that he would help her.
    Amina lay sedated on the operating table. There was no respirator to ensure a steady flow of oxygen, no blood gas machine to monitor the anesthesia in her system, and no readily available blood should she hemorrhage. He didn’t even have scrubs or surgical masks. He had only his skill, generic pharmaceuticals, and what the Afghans called “God’s will.”
    “Where do we start?” asked Hamid.
    “With the face. It’s the most difficult and will take the most time. We do it while we’re fresh.” The temperature inside the clinic hovered at a damp fifty degrees. Jonathan massaged his fingers in an attempt to rub away the chill. “Okay, then, it’s eight-fifteen by my watch. Let’s do it. Scalpel.”
    He rolled the instrument between his thumb and forefinger, examining the child’s features, plotting his steps. There was a hole the circumference of his pinkie beneath her jaw, where the bullet had entered, and a much larger wound where the bullet had exited, destroying most of the girl’s upper palate and nose. Amina was not a victim of war, at least not in the usual sense. She was a victim of carelessness,and a culture where automatic weapons were as common in homes as brushes and brooms.
    A month earlier, while playing with her older brother, she had picked up her father’s AK-47 and used it as a crutch or support, placing both hands over the barrel and resting her chin on her hands. No one knew what happened next, whether her brother pushed her or inadvertently kicked the rifle. All that mattered was that there was a bullet in the chamber, the safety had become dislodged, and somehow the trigger had been pulled, firing a 7.62 mm copper-jacketed bullet through Amina’s hands, through the soft flesh beneath her jaw, and into her mouth, where it passed through the palate and into her sinus cavity, striking bone (thus saving her life) and altering its trajectory ninety degrees, after which it left her skull, tearing away most of her nasal cartilage and flesh.
    The tragedy didn’t end there.
    Still traveling at near its initial velocity, the bullet continued on its new azimuth and struck Amina’s brother in the temple, entering his brain and killing him instantly.
    The procedure would represent a test of Jonathan’s skills. He had no illusions about the result. He could never restore Amina’s beauty. The best he could hope for was a face that would not provoke gasps and might one day help her find a husband.
    An hour passed. Outside, the sounds of battle rose and fell, long periods of silence interrupted by staccato bursts of machine-gun fire and the thud of mortars and grenades. Each progressive clash brought the fighting closer.
    “Clean up some of that blood,” said Jonathan.
    Hamid dabbed the wound with gauze, looking up from the girl every few seconds to gaze out the window. “Haq’s reached the village.”
    “If he comes, he comes. There’s nothing we can do about it. I need you here. Not just your hands but your mind.”
    Jonathan concentrated on cutting cartilage from Amina’s ear and using his scalpel to pare it into a slim strip that would define her nose.
    A shell landed one hundred meters away. The building rocked, loosing a veil of dust. Amina’s father clasped his arms to his chest butsaid nothing. Jonathan leaned closer to the girl, driving the noise and distraction from his consciousness. Somewhere beyond his world, a woman wailed, but he did not hear