City of Screams (3 page)

With his H&K pistol in hand, Jordan led his two men toward the targeted house, feet silent in the newly fallen snow. He was confident his weapon had enough firepower for whatever hid in this house. Still, he kept looking over his shoulder, wishing he had more ammunition.

As Azar kept his weapon fixed on the window, he and McKay approached the door. They slipped to either side and readied themselves. Jordan glanced over and got a silent confirmation from his teammate.

Upon Jordan's signal, McKay stepped up and kicked the door in.

It burst open with a loud crack of wood.

Jordan ran low inside, weapon at his shoulder. McKay kept post, standing higher, sweeping the room with his own gun.

The home was a single room with a small table, a corner stone oven, and a pair of straw beds, one large and one small. Empty. Just as the Ranger search team reported. Cooper had been wrong, which both surprised and relieved Jordan. He should have known—

“Don't move, Sarge,” McKay said from the doorway.

He obeyed, hearing the urgency in his teammate's voice.

“Look slowly up. At your eight o'clock.”

Jordan shifted his eyes in the direction indicated, barely moving his head. He followed the mud-brick wall to where it met the thatched roof. Half hidden by a rafter, a pair of eyes shone back at him, as if lit by an inner fire. A rustling of straw whispered in the quiet room as the hidden watcher slipped deeper into the nest of thatch, a perfect hiding place, using the musty, stale straw to mask any scent.

Smart.

Jordan slung his weapon back and lifted his empty arms.

“It's okay,” he said softly, gently, as if he were encouraging a skittish colt. “You're safe. Come on down.”

He didn't know if his words could be understood, but he hoped his tone and mannerisms made his intent plain.

“Why don't you—”

The attack came suddenly. The shadowy lurker leaped from the rafters, coming down with a rain of dry thatch. McKay's weapon twitched up.

“Don't!” Jordan warned.

He caught the diving shape in his arms, recognizing the simple need in that falling form. He had been raised with a passel of brothers and sisters, and now nieces and nephews. Though he had no children of his own, he knew that plain desire. It went beyond language and country and borders.

A child needing comfort and reassurance.

Small arms clasped around his neck, a soft fiery cheek pressed against his own. Thin legs wrapped around his waist.

“It's a little girl,” McKay said.

A
terrified
little girl.

She quaked in his arms, shivering with fear.

“You're safe,” he assured her, while silently hoping that was true. He turned to McKay. “Bring Cooper and the others inside.”

McKay dashed out, leaving Jordan alone with the child. Jordan guessed the girl was no more than ten. He crossed to the table and sat down. He unzipped his coat and wrapped it around her, cradling her thin form against his chest. Her small body burned against him, feverish through the pajama-like garment she wore. He read raw terror in her every twitch and soft sob as she hovered at the edge of shock.

What had she seen?

He hated to treat this small child as a witness, especially in this state, but she might have the only answers to what really happened here.

The other men crowded into the small room, which only made the girl cling more tightly to him, her eyes huge upon the newcomers. He squeezed as much reassurance as he could. Her small round face, framed by black hair parted down the middle, constantly glanced at him, as if making sure he didn't vanish.

“Leopard tracks all around the house, Sarge,” Cooper said. “It's like they had a dance party out there.”

Atherton spoke from the door. “She's the cook's daughter. I don't know her name.”

The girl looked at Atherton as if she recognized him, then shrank back against Jordan.

“Can you ask her questions?” Jordan asked. “Find out what happened?”

Atherton kept his distance from the girl. He rapped out questions as if he wanted to get through them as quickly as possible. His eye twitched madly. She answered in monosyllables, her eyes never leaving Jordan's face.

Holding the girl gently, Jordan noted the two Afghanis standing by the smaller of the two beds. One man knelt down and picked up a pinch of white powder from the dirt floor and brought it to his lips. It looked like salt and from the squint and spit probably tasted like it, too.

Jordan noted that a whitish ring circled the bed, and a cut rope hung from one bedpost.

The two Afghanis kept their heads bowed together, looking from the circle of salt to the girl. Their eyes shone with suspicion—and not a small amount of fear.

“What's that about?” McKay whispered to Jordan.

“I don't know.”

Atherton answered their question. “According to folklore, ghosts or djinn often attack someone as they sleep, and the salt holds them at bay. The mother probably believed she had to protect her child, what with them working within the shadow of Shahr-e-Gholghola. And perhaps she did. Things happen out here in the mountains that you cannot believe when you are safe in the city.”

Jordan kept himself from rolling his eyes. The last thing he needed was for the professor to start spouting nonsense. “What did the girl say happened here?”

“She said the team had a breakthrough yesterday.” He tapped his cast and grimaced. “I missed it. Anyway, the tunnel they had been digging had broken into a cache of bones. Both human and animal. They were to begin removing them in the coming days.”

“And what about last night?” Jordan asked.

“I was just getting to that,” Atherton said with a pique of irritation.

He returned to questioning the girl, but Jordan felt her body stiffen. She shook her head, covered her face, and refused to say more. Her breathing grew more rapid and shallow. The heat of her body now burned through his coat.

“Better leave it for now,” Jordan said, sensing the girl retreating into shock.

Ignoring him, Atherton grasped her arm roughly. Jordan noticed a loop of rope dangling from her slender wrist. Had she been tied to the bed?

Atherton's words grew harsher, more insistent.

“Professor.” Jordan pulled his hand off her. “She's a sick and traumatized little girl. Leave her alone.”

McKay drew Atherton away. The professor retreated from the girl until his back was flat against the mud wall and then stared at her as if he, too, were afraid of her. But why? She was just a scared little girl.

The girl glanced up at Jordan, her body burning up in his arms. Even her eyes glowed with that inner fire. She spoke to Jordan, pleadingly, faintly, before slipping away.

How long had it been since she had eaten or drunk anything?

“That's enough for now,” Jordan said to McKay. “Let's get her to medical help.”

He took out his water bottle and coaxed her to take a sip.

The girl whispered something so softly that Jordan couldn't make out the words, if they were words and not just a sigh.

The professor's face blanched. Atherton glanced to the two Afghanis, as if to verify they had heard her words, too. Azar backed toward the door. Farshad to the bed, stepping within the ring of salt, bending to fix the area where he'd picked up the salt a moment before.

“What?” Jordan asked.

“What the hell's going on?” McKay echoed.

Atherton spoke. “That last bit the girl just said. It wasn't Hazara dialect. It was Bactrian. Like from the recording.”

Was it? Jordan wasn't so sure. He wasn't sure she'd said anything and, if she had, that the professor would have been able to hear it. He had listened over and over again to that taped SOS. The words at the end certainly hadn't sounded like what the girl had just said. He remembered those words, deep, guttural, sounding angry:
The girl is ours.

The voice had reeked of possessiveness.

Maybe it was her father . . 
.

“What did she say just then?” Jordan asked. He felt a rising skepticism toward the professor. How could a ten-year-old girl speak a language that had been dead for hundreds of years?

“She said,
Don't let him take me back.
”

From beyond the mud-brick walls of the home, a ululating yowl pierced the mists.

A moment later, it was answered by another.

The leopards.

Jordan glanced toward the window, noting that the sun had set during the last half hour, falling away suddenly as it did in the mountains. And with the sun now down, the leopards had come out again to hunt.

Azar darted for the open door, panicked. Farshad called after him, clearly imploring him to come back, but he was ignored. The man vanished into the snowy darkness. A long stretch of silence followed. Jordan heard only the soft
hush
of falling snow.

Then, after a minute, gunfire burst out, followed by a piercing scream. The cry sounded both distant and as close as the dark doorway. It rang of blood and pain and raw terror. Then silence again.

“McKay, secure the entrance,” Jordan barked out.

McKay hurried forward and shouldered the wooden door closed again.

“Cooper, try to reach that Ranger battalion parked over at Bamiyan. Tell them we need assistance. Pronto.”

As McKay trained his weapon toward the door, Jordan shifted away from the table, to the floor, drawing the girl with him. She clung to his side, breathing hard. He freed his machine pistol and kept his sights on the window, waiting for the cats to come through.

“What now, Sarge?” McKay asked.

“We wait for the cavalry,” he answered. “It shouldn't take them too long to get those birds in the air.”

Cooper shook his head and lifted their radio unit in his hand. “I'm getting no pickup. Just dead air. Makes no sense, not even with this storm.”

Atherton looked at the little girl as if she had knocked out their radios. Jordan tightened his grip on her.

“Does anyone hear that?” McKay asked, cocking his head slightly.

Jordan strained, then heard it, too. He waved everyone to stay quiet. Out of the darkness, through the fall of snow, a whispering reached them. Again it sounded both close and distant at the same time. No words could be made out, but it set his teeth on edge, like a poorly tuned radio station. He remembered thinking earlier that nothing surprised him anymore. He'd have to revise that. This whole situation had him surprised right out of his comfort zone.

“I think it's Bactrian, too,” Atherton said, his voice taking a keening, panicked edge. He crouched like a frightened rabbit near the stone oven. “But I can't make anything out.”

It didn't sound like a language at all to Jordan. Maybe the shock of the day had caught up to the professor. Or maybe it wasn't even Bactrian on the tape.

Farshad crouched beside the salt-ringed bed. He stared daggers at the child, as if she were to blame for all of this.

“Remember what I translated from that desperate radio call?” Atherton's glassy eyes stared past Jordan's shoulder at nothing. “Those last words.
The girl is ours
. They clearly want
her
.”

The professor pointed a trembling finger at the child.

Whispers out in the night grew louder, taking on a gibbering sound, a chorus of madness just beyond the edge of hearing. It felt as if the words ate through his ears, scratching to get inside his skull. But maybe those were just normal leopard noises. Jordan had no idea what a leopard was supposed to sound like.

Atherton clamped his hands over his ears and crouched lower to the floor.

Farshad barked out words in Pashto, his native language, and raised his rifle at Jordan, at the girl. He motioned toward the door with the tip of his weapon. Between the pantomime and the bit of Pashto that Jordan understood, the message was clear.

Send the girl outside.

“Not happening,” Jordan said grimly, staring him down.

Farshad had gone red-faced by now, his dark eyes wild. He shouted again in Pashto. Jordan made out the word
djinn
and something like
petra
. He kept repeating the word over and over again, shoving his weapon belligerently toward Jordan each time. Then a round fired and blasted dirt near Jordan's knee.

That was enough for his men.

Defending him, Cooper and McKay fired their weapons at the same time.

Farshad fell back across the bed, dead before he hit the girl's straw mattress.

The child cried out and buried her face in Jordan's chest.

Atherton moaned.

“What was Farshad yelling at the end?” Jordan asked. “That word
petra
.”

Atherton rocked slightly, never lifting his face. “An old Sanskrit word, used by both Buddhists and local tribes people of this region. It translates as
gone forth and departed
, but it usually means demonic ghosts, those still craving something, unsettled spirits.”

Jordan wanted to scoff at such a thing, but he couldn't find the words.

“Farshad believed the girl is possessed by an escaped djinn and that the ghosts of the mists want her back.”

“What I photographed out there,” McKay said, “those looked like
leopard
prints, not
ghost
prints.”

“I . . . I don't know.” Atherton kept rocking. “But perhaps he was right. Maybe we should send the girl out there. Then they'll leave us alone. Maybe she's all they want.”

“Who wants?” Jordan spat back. He wasn't going to send the girl to her death.

As answer, a heavy weight hit the thatched roof overhead, raining down dry straw. Jordan swung his machine pistol up and fired through the roof. His men followed suit, the blasts deafening in the small space.

A screeched yowl—not pained, just angry—met their efforts, followed by a scrambling retreat. It didn't sound injured—just pissed. Was the creature out there attempting to draw their fire, to lure them into wasting ammunition?