Apostle (31 page)

T
he room was tiny. So tiny, in fact, that Julia Gallo could not even stretch all the way out. Instead, she sat on the dirt floor with her legs drawn up and her arms wrapped around them while she balanced her head upon her knees.

Other than the two wool blankets Zwak had brought her, the only other item in the room was a plastic bucket she was expected to use for her bodily functions. Upon hearing the door slide open, only her heart twitched, the rest of her body was too sore to move.

“Julia,” said a voice in the darkness. “Julia Gallo.”

Julia was certain that she was dreaming. Either that or she was finally losing her mind. Besides Zwak, only one other person had been to see her, and he had spoken English with a thick, almost Eastern European accent to ask her four very strange questions about her past. The man had then asked her other questions about Zwak and the boys who had accosted her, but this was definitely not his voice. This voice sounded American. It sounded like home.

Bending down, Harvath lifted the woman’s head from her knees and looked at her face. Even through his goggles, with her hair wrapped in her hijab, he could tell it was her. “Julia,” he repeated. “My name is Scot. Your mother sent us to get you. We’re here to take you home.”

Home.
She didn’t want to allow herself to believe it. “Home?” she said. The men’s faces were disguised by something, almost as if they were wearing masks.

“Yes,” replied Harvath as he slipped a hand underneath her arm and helped her to stand. “Are you okay? Can you walk?”

Gallo quickly realized that she wasn’t dreaming; this was in fact real. “Yes,” she stammered. “I think so.”

“Good. You must remain absolutely quiet and do everything I tell you. Do you understand?”

“Yes,” said Julia.

Harvath looked at Fontaine, who had slipped into the room behind him and closed the door. “We’re ready to go.”

Fontaine nodded and turned around and cracked the door. Glancing outside, he quickly popped his head back in and said, “We’ve got a problem.”

“What is it?” asked Harvath.

“We’ve got one of Massoud’s guys making a beeline straight for us. What do you want to do?”

“Maybe he’s going to one of the other structures.”

“Negative,” said Fontaine. “He’s on his way here and he’s going to see that bolt is missing.”

Harvath unslung his MP5, handed it to Fontaine, and pulled out his knife. “I’ll take him when he comes in. You protect Dr. Gallo.”

“Roger that,” replied Fontaine, as he gently maneuvered Julia into the corner and then stood between her and the door.

No sooner had they done that than Harvath heard footsteps outside. There was the sound of a hand on the outside of the door and then silence. Whoever was out there had discovered that the peg that held the door closed was missing.

Whether the person was hesitant or confused, seconds passed and nothing happened. Finally, the door began to creak open.

Harvath tightened his grip on the knife and prepared to strike.

The door opened farther and as it did, fading starlight and the dying rays of the moon spilled in. As it opened more, the figure of a man holding a rifle was cast in silhouette.

Just a foot more,
thought Harvath as he angled the blade of his knife.

The man moved cautiously and continued forward. When the barrel of his rifle was within striking distance, Harvath lunged.

He grabbed the weapon and pulled the man off balance and into the tiny room. Wrenching the rifle from the man’s hands, he let it drop to the ground and slammed him up against wall. With his hand covering the man’s mouth Harvath pulled the blade back and prepared to strike, but then stopped.

He had felt something wrapped around the barrel of the man’s weapon. It had felt like
tape.
Baseer had said Massoud’s brother carried an AK-47 with its barrel wrapped with blue tape to let everyone know it wasn’t a functioning firearm.

Sheathing his knife, Harvath held the man tight against the wall and whispered for Fontaine to close the door.

As the door closed, Julia said, “Please. He’s mentally challenged. Don’t hurt him. He protected me.”

Looking over his shoulder at Fontaine, he said, “Shred those blankets. We’ll tie him and gag him.”

As Fontaine used his knife to cut the blankets in strips, Harvath held Zwak against the wall and kept his mouth covered. The man’s entire body was trembling. Harvath once again thought of the SEAL team that had been discovered by the Afghan goatherds. If he knew one thing about combat it was that you could never second-guess what another man had done unless you’d been there with him. He was thankful that he wasn’t faced with the same predicament they were.

If they acted fast enough, he hoped, they could be gone before anyone noticed Zwak was missing. He had also given Baseer, the chief elder of Massoud’s village, his word that if he encountered Zwak, he would do everything he could to make sure no harm came to the man.

Once they had Zwak gagged, they tied his hands behind his back and then laid him on the floor and hogtied him.

As they did, Zwak began crying. Julia Gallo bent and stroked the side of his face. She spoke reassuringly to him with her limited Pashtu and thanked him once again.

Once she had finished, Harvath took his MP5 back from Fontaine, clicked his IR strobe onto a battery, and said, “Let’s get the hell out of here.”

M
ullah Massoud Akhund woke up earlier than usual to the sound of his stomach growling. He rolled over and looked at the empty pallet on the floor beside him. Zwak must have gotten up to check on the American woman. He was like a child with an injured bird, and Massoud feared he had grown too attached to her.

The Taliban commander also feared that his brother was holding a grudge. Zwak had not said a word to him since he had arrived at the mountain camp. Massoud knew his brother was angry at him for taking away his basketball shoes, but that was before the Russian had explained what had really happened with Elam Badar’s son, Asadoulah. Even though Massoud had promised to return the shoes once they were back home, Zwak still wouldn’t speak to him. But it wasn’t just the loss of the shoes that had wounded his pride.

In order to cover their tracks, Simonov had insisted Zwak wear a burka, just like the American woman, as they made the drive to the summer grazing pasture. Massoud understood the Russian’s logic. He also understood why Zwak had felt emasculated. Some of the soldiers had teased Zwak afterward and though the Russian had reprimanded them harshly, Zwak felt ashamed and the stern rebuke of the soldiers did nothing to repair his bruised ego.

Massoud wondered how much his brother had slept during the night, if at all. Though he might have stepped outside to relieve himself, he was most likely checking on the woman. He was incredibly protective. Massoud wondered if his brother understood that he felt exactly the same way about him. That was why he found so many important jobs for him to do.
Whether he did or whether he did not
, reasoned the Taliban commander,
Allah knew.

Rising from his thin bedroll, Mullah Massoud stepped past the sleeping soldiers crammed one on top of the other, quietly opened the door, and slid outside. They had much to do today and he knew he wouldn’t be able to fall back asleep. Besides, it was good for his men to see him up so early. It would set a good example.

He walked toward the small hut they were using to hold the woman and looked for Zwak. Except for when he slept or when he prayed, he had not been far from the woman the entire time she had been their prisoner.

Massoud walked around the building and, not seeing his brother, wondered if maybe he was inside with the woman. He knew the two had developed a relationship. And while he didn’t think it was wise, he found it difficult to discourage his brother from speaking with her. He knew what his duty was and he also knew that no matter how much kindness she showed him, she would never be able to charm Zwak into setting her free. He was all too aware of the shame that would bring on the entire family. It was far beyond having your basketball shoes taken away or being forced to disguise yourself in a burka.

Completing a full turn around the little outbuilding, Massoud stopped at the door, wondering if Zwak might be inside, but then saw that the wooden peg that held the door locked was firmly in place. Zwak had to be either at the latrine or in the cookhouse trying to get something to eat before morning prayers.

Feeling the urge himself to urinate, Massoud headed toward the trench. If Zwak was there, he hoped that sleep had softened the stone in his heart and that he might be ready to talk.

One of the strange ironies of night was that it always seemed coldest right before the first rays of the sun pierced the darkness to touch the earth. The Taliban commander pulled his
patoo
tighter around his shoulders and readjusted the angle of his AK-47.

Looking up as he walked, he regarded the stars and almost believed he could see them twinkling out one at a time, like tiny lamps being extinguished in the sky as daylight arrived to relieve them. Shifting his eyes away from the sky and back to the path he was walking, he saw something. Though his mind raced for an alternative explanation, he knew even from this distance what he was seeing; dead bodies.

The fear that they had been discovered was surpassed by an even greater fear.
Was one of them his brother?

Abandoning all concern for his own life, Massoud charged toward the mass of corpses. Two of the bodies were face up with bullets through their heads and he could immediately see that neither was Zwak. Though the third man was obviously too tall to be his brother, Massoud still bent and rolled him over. The lifeless eyes of his lieutenant stared up past him.
Where was Zwak?

While the kitchen seemed an obvious place to look, Massoud’s instincts as a commander were starting to take over and his gut drew him back to the storage hut. If the men from Elam Badar’s village had come to make war, they could have begun by quietly taking out the sentries, but that’s not what was happening here. This was about the woman. It was a rescue attempt of some sort; he could feel it. And if he was right, the moment she was safely away, the skies would open and all kinds of hell would rain down upon them.

Gripping his AK-47 now, Massoud ran back to the hut, pulled the peg from the lock, and pushed open the door. It took his eyes a moment to adjust, and then he saw his brother bound and gagged on the floor.

The Taliban commander bent down, removed his brother’s gag, and set to work on the strips binding his wrists and feet behind his back.

“No crying,” he ordered. “Not now, Zwak. What happened?”

The admonition had no effect.

Massoud withdrew a small knife and cut him loose. Helping Zwak to his feet, the Taliban commander grabbed his brother’s face in his hands and held it. “It is okay, Zwak. No one is going to hurt you,” he said. “You need to show courage. You need to be a warrior now and tell me. Where is the American woman?”

The mentally challenged man’s breaths came in short, sharp stabs. “They took her,” he managed to choke out.

“How many?”

“Two.”

The first thing that came to Massoud’s mind was that he had been sold out. Someone in his organization had double-crossed him so they could ransom the woman back themselves. “Did they speak? Did you hear their language? Was it Dari? Pashtu?”

“Na,”
said Zwak. “They spoke her language. English.”

Massoud’s heart began pounding even faster, and he willed himself to calm down. That could mean anything. “Did you see their faces?”

“Na,”
repeated the mentally challenged man. “They had no faces. Only mouths,” he stammered as he pantomimed holding a pair of binoculars up to his eyes.

Night vision goggles,
thought the Taliban commander. Had he been sold out to an ANA commando unit? Or worse, had the Americans somehow found them and sent in a special operations team?

As quickly as the thought entered his mind, Massoud pushed it away. If this was the work of the Americans, he and his men would be dead by now. Once they recovered the woman, they would have come into the camp and killed everything that moved.

That was another thing; he had not heard any helicopter. Whoever had done this could have only come in via vehicle or by foot.

Removing his cell phone, Massoud turned it on and stepped nearer to the doorway to get a signal. Though many new towers had been built in Khogyani, reception, especially at the mountain camp, could be spotty.

Holding the phone outside, he was finally able to lock on to a tower. Remaining in the shadow of the doorway, he called down to his roadside checkpoint nearest the village.

A man named Mohambar answered on the third ring. The connection was terrible.

“No,” the sentry shouted into his phone. “Only the three trucks from Dagar a half hour ago. We have seen nothing since.”

“And where are those trucks now?’ asked the commander.

“Please repeat?”

“Where are those trucks now?”

“Still at the camp with you.”

That had to be it.
After ordering his men not to let anything pass, Massoud disconnected the call and slid the phone back into his pocket. He didn’t need to press his brother any further. The bodies of the men outside were still warm. Considering the temperature, they couldn’t have been dead long. Whoever was behind this had to be connected to those trucks. He had to act fast. They couldn’t be allowed to leave.

Making Zwak promise to stay put, he rushed back to the building he’d been sleeping in and woke four of his most trusted bodyguards. Together they moved quickly to the structure next door, where the commander nudged the Russian awake with the toe of his boot.

Rubbing his eyes with the heels of his hands, Simonov sat up and said, “What’s going on?”

Massoud signaled for him to be quiet and whispered, “We have a problem.”