The Mullah's Storm Read Online Free PDF Page B

leaving his fingers and thumb free to move. Gold wrapped more cloth over the sticks and secured the splint with medical tape.
    “Good work,” Parson whispered. “Let’s go. We’ll try to stay in the trees. If we run into villagers, we’ll just have to take our chances.”
    “Charlie Mike,” Gold said.
    “How’s that?”
    “Army talk. CM, for continue mission.”
    “You got it,” Parson said, trying to sound better than he felt. He realized this soldier Gold was, professionally, a distant cousin. The Army and the Air Force had different cultures and lingo. However, as a C-130 crewman he’d had more contact with the Army than most blue-suiters. He had air-dropped many loads of paratroopers in exercises, and he admired their warrior spirit. Sometimes on the run-in, doors open, red light standing by for green light, he’d heard them psyching themselves, chanting and growling. Nowadays it wasn’t unusual for a load of about sixty airborne troops to have one or two women. They weren’t infantry; they were admin, medical, or interpreters. But they were all part of the airborne division. And he noticed Gold wore jump wings.
    He took his handkerchief from his pocket, still wet with the prisoner’s spit.
    “Tell him to open his mouth again,” Parson said.
    The mullah obeyed, and Parson tied the gag, this time not so roughly.
    “He seems cooperative today,” Gold said.
    “Wonder why?”
    “Maybe inshallah. Whatever happens is the will of God. Or maybe he thinks what we’re trying to do is hopeless.”
    Or maybe he’s seen enough of his own captives made to suffer, thought Parson, that he knows he doesn’t want to be on the receiving end.
    Parson took a compass bearing, surveyed his surroundings. Tendrils of mist ghosted through the trees, branches laden with snow. He heard nothing but his own breathing and the faint clink of chains as Gold and the prisoner moved. Well, navigator, he said to himself, find your way.
    He walked uphill from the stream, hoping to disappear into woods and underbrush. Boulevards of pines provided some cover, but little other vegetation grew in the crumbling shingle rock beneath the snow. When the three had gained some elevation above the creek, Parson looked back on where they had spent the night. He felt relieved to see that the snow cave did not stand out at all, though the tracks leading from it were pretty apparent. But the placement of other tracks across the stream unnerved him. The insurgents he’d seen through his night-vision goggles had come a lot closer than he’d realized. Inshallah.
    The three continued up the rise until it flattened into a narrow plateau. The pines gave way to terraced fields now left to nature, planted in what Parson guessed were apricot or mulberry trees. Survival instructors had briefed him about food sources in country, but most of those sources came in summer. The old fruit trees stood bare like ranks of skeletons, broken branches glazed with ice. Parson could hardly imagine them ever sprouting leaves and bearing fruit. This Afghan winter seemed permanent, designed to extinguish life in all its forms.
    The heavier snow he’d seen in the distance advanced across the valley and began showering the orchard. The flakes blurred the vista across the fields, and it seemed to Parson as if he were looking through gauze. He avoided the open mulberry grove and kept to the woods. The pines gave way to junipers at the edge of the field, and the junipers grew in stands closer together and provided better concealment. Parson headed northeast, roughly back toward Bagram. He held little hope of walking that far, but he thought it made sense to go in the direction of a big American base. The nearer they got to it, the more likely they’d run into friendlies.
    After a time they stopped to catch their breath and let the mullah rest. It was snowing so hard now that the flakes made a hissing sound as they sheeted against Parson’s coat. He leaned against a poplar