Sniper Elite Read Online Free PDF Page B

the Hindu Kush even a Muslim woman was worth less than a good packhorse. And Sandra was a Catholic, quite possibly the next worst thing to being a Jew.
    In her heart, she believed that her best chance of being brought out alive would lie with the men she flew for, men within the special forces community itself, men who would not easily stand for one of their own being left to languish for an indefinite period without a concerted effort to locate and bring her out before it was too late.
    The door was suddenly kicked off its hinges and fell to the floor. In stalked a bearded man she had never seen before wearing a pakol , the ethnic headgear of the Afghan people. The man seemed violently angry as he stalked over to the bed and reached for the hem of her gown. She didn’t resist him at first, believing that he only wanted to check the gunshot wound to her thigh, but he jerked the garment clear up past her waist, and another man came from behind him, pinning her shoulders to the bed.
    She screamed and kicked, clawing for the bearded man’s eyes, managing to gouge her thumb deep into the socket before the second man chopped her in the throat, temporarily collapsing her esophagus. The bearded man grabbed his eye, reeling away from the bed as more men came into the room shouting. They sat on her and tied her down. Then they ripped away her gown and left her naked, still gasping for air.
    The men laughed while poking and prodding her. She closed her eyes and willed herself not to scream, knowing that would only excite them more.
    The bearded man was not laughing. He shoved the others out of the way and stood over her glowering, his right eyeball bloody. He shouted into the other room, and a man with a video camera came in, ordering the others out. Then the bearded man dropped his trousers and climbed onto the bed with her, cursing her in a language she did not understand, and that’s when she began to scream.
    TEN MINUTES LATER, the man with the beard, whose name was Naeem, sat on a table in the next room trying to keep his head still as a young woman missing most of her nose examined his eye.
    â€œYou are lucky,” she said quietly. “Any closer to the retina, and she might have blinded you.”
    Naeem pushed her away. “Don’t tell me I’m lucky, Badira. Tell me what needs to be done for it.”
    â€œThere are medicines to put in the eye,” she explained, “but none that we have here. All you can do is wear a bandage over it while it heals.”
    â€œFine. Cover your face,” he ordered in disgust and got up from the table.
    Badira backed away, obediently lifting the bottom of her hijab up over her mutilated nose so that only her eyes were showing. She was not forced to wear a chadri or a burqa around the village because she was a nurse and her husband was dead. Her husband was the one who had cut off her nose shortly after their marriage for refusing to wear a burqa. Mercifully, he had been killed by an airstrike near the Pakistani border a few years later. Their marriage had been an arranged affair, as were 75 percent of all Afghan marriages.
    An older man stepped into the room from outside, and the otherTaliban men began to bristle, but Naeem settled them. “Never mind, old man. It’s done.”
    The old man’s name was Sabil Nuristani, and he was the titular head of the village. “Now you must take her far away from here.” he insisted. “Otherwise, they will send men here to kill us all.”
    â€œNo!” Naeem snapped. “We will show them the video, and then they will pay to get her back. They have paid before.”
    â€œYou had better use your head,” Sabil cautioned, stepping deeper into the room. “Kohistani hasn’t given his approval for a ransom demand. He only said we were to—”
    â€œAasif Kohistani does not command here!” Naeem shouted. “Hezb-e Islami does not command here! I command here! We