Read The Mullah's Storm Online
Authors: Tom Young
The Mullah's Storm (28 page)
But now he had empty brass in his firing chamber. Raising his arm to rebolt the rifle could give away his position. He was alive because they didn’t know exactly where he was.
Parson considered what to do. Then he turned his rifle, slowly, slowly, onto its right side. That put the ejection port toward the ground. Using his right knuckles, he lifted the bolt by millimeters until he felt it release. Hooked two fingers around the bolt, tugged it. That hurt his wrist, and he ground his teeth. He gave the bolt a short jerk. That hurt even worse. But it made the extractor pop the expended cartridge onto the snow. The casing gave off an odor like metal hot from welding.
Parson put the heel of his hand against the bolt and pressed it forward. He heard satisfying steel-on-brass rasps that told him the carrier had picked up a fresh round. He closed the bolt, turned the rifle upright, peered through the scope again. All right, he thought, who else wants to play?
Nobody. Nothing rose along the rise except the batting of mist. Parson expected rifle fire to sputter at any moment. He heard only faint whispers among the troops. Then the single cough of one of their M-203s.
The grenade sailed from its launcher just a few feet from Parson. It arced over the rise like a burning cigar stub tossed away. When it exploded, the ground jolted his chest as if he’d been kicked.
He looked through the scope again. He saw twigs missing from the sapling, lashed by shrapnel. Drifting smoke. Nothing else. Cantrell low-crawled through the snow toward the jihadist Parson had shot. Parson forced himself to watch closely and help cover Cantrell. If an insurgent came over that rise to fire at the SF commander, the team would have only about half a second to shoot first.
Parson’s crosshairs floated just above the crest of the hill. If it moves, it dies, he thought. But nothing appeared except the scouring snow. It ground at what little of his face remained exposed, and ice collected between his fingers as he held his weapon.
Cantrell reached the corpse. He stopped, seemed to watch and listen. Got up on his knees and pointed his rifle. Swept with the barrel. He did not fire. Then he slapped the ground beside him in apparent frustration. Snow sprayed from underneath his glove. He motioned for the team to move up.
Parson picked himself up off the ground, careful about his rifle’s muzzle. He didn’t think he had lain sprawled long enough to get cramped, but his legs tingled with the return of blood. His toes had been numb for days, and now they had no feeling at all. Time flowed strangely in combat, he decided. Sometimes it trickled away like water; sometimes it froze up and clotted like slush.
He stumbled forward, examined the man he’d shot. It wasn’t Marwan. That disappointed him a little, but he hadn’t expected to take down Marwan that easily. He did not remember the face of the dead guerrilla from among his former captors. A steel-wool beard and cheeks tough as the leather of a knife scabbard. A scar across the bridge of the nose, punctuation in a life story now ended. Probably just some ex-goat herder who’d volunteered for martyrdom. Parson almost felt sorry for him, poor ignorant bastard and his short and miserable existence. But he also wondered, What might this guy have done to me if he’d had the chance? When Parson looked over the hill, he saw lines of bootprints leading away. No other bodies, no blood trails.
“Fuckers gave us the slip again,” Cantrell said.
“All save this one,” Najib said. “Major Parson has improved the odds somewhat.”
Not by enough, Parson thought. If this comes down to attrition, we’ll all freeze to death before anybody wins. He looked at Gold. She shrugged. Then she took a water bottle from her pocket, drank, handed it to Parson. He didn’t feel thirsty, but he took a few sips anyway and returned the bottle to her.
“How are your fingers?” he asked.
“Better. What about you?”
Parson wasn’t sure what to say. What about me? “I’ll manage,” he said.
“You’re doing all right.”
Parson took that as a compliment. He was impressed that after all she’d been through, she was thinking outside of herself enough to keep an eye on him.
The insurgents’ trail led out of the plain and into a pass lined by hoodoos: looming pillars of rock carved by millennia of wind, rain, and snow, and by the narrow river that spluttered through the gorge. The terrain made Parson nervous. He didn’t have to be an infantryman to see that every few yards offered a perfect kill zone for an ambush.
The tracks led to a spot where the insurgents seemed to have stopped and stood for a few minutes. Sets of bootprints faced each other. Other marks suggested gear moved around.
“What the hell are they doing?” Cantrell asked.
“The mullah’s tired,” Gold said. She pointed to a drag mark among the tracks leading away from the spot. Something about a foot and a half wide had plowed a smooth path through the snow. Parson had to think for a moment. An improvised litter. They must have rolled a blanket between two sticks to make a stretcher to carry the old man. Good, he thought. That’ll slow them down.
The team followed the tracks and drag mark along the river. Parson scanned the bluffs above him, though he knew the first sign of a trap would be a bullet or an RPG. Couldn’t see much but clouds, anyway. Scuds of fog flowed over a lobe of the ridgeline and sank downhill like silt. He tried to listen closely, but the rumble of water over a cataract downstream made the effort pointless.
The gurgle of the water’s passage and the sissing of the snow seemed to blend into a slow rhythm, hints of song. In the dark of his fatigue, Parson imagined it as music. But the tune did not bring comfort. It came in a minor key, something dire and mournful, like an ancient ballad of war. Then his mind lost the pattern, and the sounds separated back into mere snowfall and splashes.
The lack of sleep hurt more now. The lead weight expanded inside Parson’s head. Every sound annoyed him; every thought required physical effort. It felt like the worst hangover and the highest fever he’d ever suffered.
He wondered whether the others fared any better. Gold scanned the terrain around her as she hiked. Still alert, then. The snake-eaters looked like this was all business as usual. Parson hoped he could keep it together and not let anyone down.
Snow pellets ground like grit as they fell against the left side of his hood. When he checked his compass he saw that the wind had shifted several degrees, but he didn’t know whether to trust that reading. Canyon walls created all kinds of backflows, swirls, and eddies. Doesn’t matter anyway, he thought. We just have to follow the enemy’s tracks until someone else gets killed.
The tracks angled close enough to the river that Parson could see the current rushing white across rocks. He was hungry enough to wonder whether the stream held any fish, but he knew the team couldn’t stop for that. Fishing was a survival skill for a noncombat environment.
He remembered one particular time when he’d gone fishing. Another survival situation, of a sort. It was after his father’s death in the Gulf War. He went to the San Juan River, where cold waters flow through the New Mexico desert. One afternoon he saw a school of big rainbow trout rising to take insects on the surface. He paid out flyline and made a long roll cast to put a Royal Coachman near the feeding rainbows. It fell short, so he waded nearer. Another cast, and it, too, fell short. He waded ahead, keeping his eyes on the rising trout. He felt the breeze and smelled the earth scent of the riverbanks, and he tried to think of nothing else. But something felt wrong with his footing as he waded ahead. He looked down, and through Polarized sunglasses he saw that he was standing on the edge of a deep pool cut by the current. Another step would have drowned him. He could swim, but not in flooded chest waders. He backed away from the pool, more sure than ever that even in the quietest, most peaceful settings, it was a world of danger and loss.
The insurgents’ trail veered away from the river and up a ridge to the north. The bootprints beside the drag mark turned sideways and choppy in places, apparently where the insurgents carrying the mullah had struggled to haul him along. As Parson slogged uphill, he wished he’d picked up a walking stick somewhere. But only stunted hawthorns grew on this incline, nothing with branches big enough for a staff. A crusting of snow clung to Parson’s legs and formed knots of ice around the zipper tabs of his lower pockets. Najib and Cantrell stopped to study the map again.
“They wouldn’t go uphill in this shit without a reason,” Cantrell said.
Najib examined the chart. Snowflakes speckled it, and he blew on it to clear them away. “They are heading northeast now,” he said.
“I don’t see any village in that direction,” Cantrell said.
“There is none,” Najib said. “The only thing I can remember in this region is an old fort. Perhaps they have cached supplies there.”
Gold looked over their shoulders. “What do you think?” Cantrell asked her.
“That would give them a good place to rest,” she said. “And fight us off.”
Najib folded the map. “In better times I have fished the river down below that fort,” he said. “I caught an enormous Pabdah catfish, and my mother made it into
korma-e-mahi,
a fish stew.” Najib looked into the distance and spoke softly, as if he knew he was describing something that could never happen again.
korma-e-mahi,
a fish stew.” Najib looked into the distance and spoke softly, as if he knew he was describing something that could never happen again.
Without another word, he picked up his shotgun and moved on. As he led the troops along the guerrillas’ trail, the slope lifted them into the clouds. Mist enveloped them in the dying light.
CHAPTER NINETEEN
J
ust before full darkness, Parson noticed fine snowflakes spiraling down like white dust motes. That was an improvement. All day, pellets had come straight at him, hard and sharp, little ice flechettes driven by the wind. He removed the handkerchief frozen around his face. The stiff cloth had started to chafe at his cheeks, causing more discomfort than it prevented.
ust before full darkness, Parson noticed fine snowflakes spiraling down like white dust motes. That was an improvement. All day, pellets had come straight at him, hard and sharp, little ice flechettes driven by the wind. He removed the handkerchief frozen around his face. The stiff cloth had started to chafe at his cheeks, causing more discomfort than it prevented.
Something was changing in the storm system, but he dared not hope for flyable weather. Ice fog still drifted across the peaks. When Parson looked through his night-vision goggles, the mist glowed like ectoplasm.
Gold walked near him. He couldn’t see her well when he wasn’t using the goggles, but the crunch of her boots comforted him. He slung his rifle over his shoulder and carried his pistol in his left hand. Parson was so exhausted he couldn’t remember why his right wrist hurt.
He thought he heard more boots next to him, the snow crackling with the footsteps. Then a voice that said, “Hey, nav.” Despite the darkness, when he looked around he saw his crew.
Fisher tromped along with his helmet in his hand. He still wore that little unauthorized patch across the pen pocket on his left sleeve, the one that read: FDNY. Jordan kicked at the icy crust and smiled when some of it sprayed onto Parson. Luke and Nunez threw snowballs at each other. They wore only their flight suits.
Parson stared, too tired to be startled. “Aren’t you guys cold?” he asked.
“Nah, we’re fine,” Fisher said.
“What are you doing here?”
“Just came to say hello,” Nunez said.
“And thanks,” Luke said.
“That’s it?” Parson asked.
“What do you want?” Jordan said. “A bottle of Crown?”
“Maybe later.”
“I’m afraid we can’t stay that long,” Fisher said.
“I thought I’d never see you guys again,” Parson said.
“New assignments,” Jordan said. “You know how it goes.”
“We’ll catch you at debrief,” Luke said.
“Hey, this is Sergeant Gold,” Parson said. “She’s—”
Parson turned toward Gold. When he looked back, the crew was gone. Swirling clouds, unbroken snow.
He took a knee, breathed hard. Felt his throat clench. Gold touched his shoulder.
“Did you see them?” he asked.
“Who?”
“You know. My friends. From the plane.”
“You’re badly sleep-deprived,” she said. “It makes you see things.”
Parson didn’t know how to take that. Did she mean it makes you see things or
see
things? He didn’t believe in ghosts, but in every ghost story he’d ever heard, the dead returned to make a demand or issue a warning. The crew did nothing but offer moral support. And that was just like them.
see
things? He didn’t believe in ghosts, but in every ghost story he’d ever heard, the dead returned to make a demand or issue a warning. The crew did nothing but offer moral support. And that was just like them.
“Don’t fuck with me,” Parson said.
“I’m not,” Gold said. “Let’s go, sir. This mission is about what we can do for the living.”
Snowflakes twisted to the ground like cold pinfeathers. Parson felt them settling on his eyelashes. He blinked and then strained to stand, every tendon and muscle fatigued. With nothing left to move him but his obligations, he shifted his Colt from his left hand to his right, felt the twinge of pain. Switched on the NVGs and looked around to get his bearings. He saw Najib and Cantrell conferring in the lee of a boulder. When they moved on, he turned off the goggles and followed.
The team crossed the ridgeline’s summit. Atop the peak, with nothing on either side except blackness, Parson felt deprived of his senses, as if all that existed was the cold and the ground where he stood. Whenever the soldiers stopped, the silence was so pure he heard only his own breathing.
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