Then, when Yaqub had finished his war with the Westerners, he would join his father there.
But such a sin would surely have left him bound for
Jahannam
, also known as “That Which Breaks to Pieces” and “Blazing Fire.”
Now, though, his father’s course was nearly run, and he would end it as a warrior.
Quietly, gently, Yaqub dressed his father and prepared for him to meet Jonathan Sebastian.
PIKE, WITH CHO AT HIS HEELS,
fell into position along the alley wall only a short distance from where Bekah and Zeke were locked into place. The sun baked into them, and sweat coated Pike’s body under his camo and armor. He held his M4A1 canted at the ready and maintained radio silence.
Since yesterday, Marine visibility in the city had picked up. The word coming down from the brass had promised nothing but long days ahead and an escalated threat level. The Marines had been ordered to push back—and push hard. Pockets of terrorist activity continued to flare up around Kandahar like spontaneous combustion. There was too much of it to assume it was coincidence. Whatever had started yesterday was still rock and roll in the city.
Several of the Marine units had been detailed to round up and investigate suspected tango sympathizers. The list was long, and the work had turned into a logistical nightmare for the American military. The Afghan people knew that the American soldiers would be pulling out soon, leaving them with whatever problems remained, and many of them had resented the Marines’ heavy-handed intrusions into their affairs from day one.
The Marines’ police action had, so far, triggered a half-dozen shoot-outs as tangos either got caught red-handed on the premises
or took advantage of the situation to attack small groups of American military. The violence was mounting, turning more swift and bloody. The day hadn’t even reached noon yet.
Pike paused beside the scarred metal door to a small-engine repair shop midway down one of the long alleys in Kandahar. A covered peephole was the only feature on the door. The business was located behind a butcher’s shop, and the alley was filled with the stench of spoiled death in the nearby trash bins.
Cho fell into position on the other side of the door. Clutching his weapon tightly, Cho looked nervous, but he was holding it together well. A lot of the sass and vinegar had left him since the action yesterday. Picking up corpses could do that to a man.
Pike glanced at Cho.
The other Marine nodded.
Looking past Cho, Pike held up a hand to Bekah and Zeke. Another team was behind Pike, ready to provide immediate backup if things turned ugly. Afghan National Police contingents waited in support positions at either end of the alley.
Bekah waved Pike to continue.
Pike tried the door and discovered that it was locked. He checked the sign posted on the alley wall beside the door. He couldn’t read the particulars, but the business hours were easy enough to decipher. The shop was supposed to be open. Clattering and clanking and voices inside the shop offered proof that several people inside were working.
Bunching his left hand into a fist, Pike banged on the door. The work and the voices quieted on the other side. Pike banged again, with more authority this time.
A voice spoke on the other side of the door, but the words were in Pashto and Pike only understood a few. He translated “Go away” just fine.
Holding his assault rifle in one hand, Pike pulled a small plastic
explosive charge from his ammo rack. He figured he already knew how this was going to go down.
“American soldiers. Open up.”
The man repeated his command, more insistently this time.
“Back away from the door. Do it now.”
The peephole slid open just enough to reveal the man’s eyes briefly; then the wicked snout of a small pistol shoved through. The man fired at once, but the angle was wrong and the bullets only thudded into the opposite wall.
Pike swept the M4A1’s barrel against the pistol barrel and knocked the weapon away. He slapped the explosive charge onto the door, sealing the adhesive side against the metal. He toggled the three-second detonator and dodged back, turning to shield his face.
“Fire in the hole!”
The shaped explosive was small, and the resulting blast was sharp but quickly faded. A few metal fragments clinked out into the alleyway, but Pike knew more of them had ripped inside the room. The door sagged on its hinges, coming partially open. Pike shoved the muzzle of the M4A1 into the gap and flung the door open.
Peering inside the room, Pike spotted three men down on the floor. The one nearest the door had caught the majority of the blast. Shrapnel gleamed across his bloody back, and he wasn’t moving—either dead or rendered unconscious from the explosion. The other two men tried to get to their feet. Blood covered the face of one of them. The other appeared to be only shaken up because he tried to point a pistol at Pike.
Taking aim, Pike squeezed the trigger and put a three-round burst into the man’s chest. The man staggered back into some kind of drill press. Man and machine went down in a tangle of limbs and electrical cords. Pike got off another clean shot just before the second man finished taking aim.
Sweeping the room with his gaze, Pike noted that at least ten men had been working inside the shop. The survivors had split up, three of them running to the north end of the building and four to the south. Pike entered the room behind his weapon, staying low and taking cover from the surrounding lathes and other machinery. The dull hum of electrical motors vibrated through the room.
“Bekah.” Pike reached for a section of three-inch pipe lying on a nearby table. When he upended the pipe, nails, screws, and broken glass tumbled out along with a mixture of coarse, ash-colored gunpowder.
“Here, Pike.” Her voice sounded like it was being filtered through cotton, and Pike knew that was the result of the explosion.
“They were closed for business today because they were making bombs. You’ve got gunpowder and other ordnance scattered through this place. You’ll want to be careful.”
“Roger that.”
“Tangos split up. Three north and four south. I’m leaving two dead in this room. Third guy’s incapacitated.”
“We’ve got your back.”
Pike knelt next to the unconscious tango, then pulled a zip tie from his gear and secured the man’s hands behind his back. He took the M4A1 into his hands as he stood. Cho was behind him, holding a solid covering position, showing no signs of stress.
“We’re headed south,” Pike announced into the radio.
“Roger that.”
Pike moved forward, staying behind his rifle, following the gun sight as he hunkered down. He reached the open doorway at the back of the room, pressed up against the frame, and peered through. A narrow hallway separated the machine shop from the furniture shop at the other end of the long building.
Footsteps sounded to the left and he gazed in that direction,
spotting a short flight of stairs that led to the second floor. Ambient light from the door gleamed from the oily black finish of a machine pistol in the hands of the tango crouched at the top of the stairs.
Pike yanked his head back an instant before a stream of bullets chewed into the doorframe and scattered wood splinters like confetti. Dropping to one knee, Pike waited till the firing stopped, guessing that the man had run through his weapon’s magazine. Leaning around the door, Pike aimed at the top of the stairway, found the tango shoving a fresh magazine into his machine pistol, then fired two three-round bursts into the man.
Caught by the rounds, the tango flopped backward and the weapon spilled down the stairs. Pike ejected his partially spent clip and swapped it out for a fresh one so he would be at full capacity when he went up the stairs.
“You can scratch one of the four we’re pursuing.”
“Roger that.” In the machine shop, Bekah and Zeke were closing in on the north door. The third team of Marines occupied the machine-shop doorway in a holding position.
Staying crouched but moving fast, Pike entered the hallway and started up the steps. At the top, he paused briefly to place his fingers against the downed tango’s throat. There was no pulse.
The stairwell opened into another hallway lit by a single window at the far end on the east wall. Two doors were on the north and three on the south. No one was in the hallway. Curtains fluttered in the open window.
Pike moved rapidly down the hallway, shifting the assault rifle from side to side slightly, staying loose and ready to lock onto any target that presented itself. He kept to the left side of the hallway so Cho had a clear field of fire on his right.
Cho’s voice was whisper-thin and tight when he spoke. “Nobody’s up here.”
“Keep your eyes peeled. These guys didn’t just disappear.” Pike tried the doors as he passed them, turning the knobs, but none of them were open. Cho did the same on his side but got the same results.
At the window, Pike peered out. A fire escape ran like a crooked snake up the side of the building, reaching from the alleyway to the fourth floor and the rooftop beyond. Across the alley, a few people stared from the windows of their apartments at Pike and at the rooftop. Evidently something up there had captured their attention.
The blowing curtain brushed against Pike’s face and scraped at his stubble. Sharp reports of gunfire came from below. He briefly worried about Bekah and Zeke, then put them out of his mind. He had his own mission to deal with, and he knew from past encounters that she was capable of taking care of herself.
“They had to have gone out the window.” Cho stood to one side, covering the window and their backs.
“Yeah, but you gotta wonder if anybody’s laying back waiting for us.” Twisting, turning his back to the window, Pike leaned out backward so he could peer up through the fire escape.
No one lingered at the rooftop’s edge, which meant the men he was chasing were enhancing the lead they’d gotten.
Pike stepped out onto the fire escape and started up just as a group of Afghan National Police rounded the alley and caught sight of him. Some of them brought their rifles to shoulder and took aim.
CURSING, PIKE POUNDED
up the fire escape and hugged the side of the building as he shouted, “American! American! Marine!” He cursed again, over the radio frequency now because a handful of bullets peppered the stone wall nearby. “Captain Zarif, tell your men on the east side of the building to stop firing. They’re shooting at friendlies.”
A command in Pashto immediately followed, and the Afghan National Police in the alleyway lowered their weapons.
“My apologies. Many of the men, they are still nervous under fire.”
Pike ignored the captain and continued up the fire escape. He checked the windows on each floor as he passed them. All of them were closed and locked, but verifying that cost time, potentially putting him farther behind his quarry.
At the top of the fire escape, Pike remained hunkered down and peered out onto the roof. Beyond the other side of the building, two men fled across the adjoining structure while a third man was getting to his feet.
“Bekah, I’m in pursuit of the last three.” Pike heaved himself up and onto the roof. “They’re escaping across the building to the west.” He ran, Cho following him immediately.
“Roger that. I’m sending Nathan and Jelani after you.”
Pike ran, driving himself forward. Dressed in full battle armor, he
hoped he didn’t hit a soft spot in the roof. He’d heard stories of other Marines who had ended up in someone’s living room while in pursuit of a tango. “They’re going to have to catch up in a hurry.”
The third man on the other side of the building caught sight of Pike and Cho and started yelling at his companions. A moment later, he whirled around with a rifle in his hands.
“Affirmative.” Bekah sounded distracted. Gunfire blasted into her broadcast, burying her continued response.
Pike dropped to one knee next to the rooftop’s edge and took shelter from the thin wall that ran around the building. Bullets from the tango’s weapon ripped through the air and tore through the thin wall. One of the rounds glanced off Cho’s body armor, causing him to stagger to one side.
With the open sights centered over the tango, Pike squeezed off three rounds one at a time, following his target as the man moved in search of shelter. Pike was certain he hit the tango with all three rounds, and one of them had to be the kill shot because the man crumpled to the rooftop and lay still. Pike pushed himself up, surveyed the eight-foot gap between the buildings, then backed up a few feet to give himself a running start.
“Come again, Bekah. I lost transmission.” Pike slung the assault rifle across his shoulders to free up his hands.
“I said we need to take one of these men alive if possible. You copy?”
“Copy that.” Pike wasn’t happy about it, but he understood. The Marines were severely lacking information about Yaqub’s operation. He sprinted forward, knowing the eight-foot distance wouldn’t have been a problem normally, but carrying a full pack and weps made the jump potentially disastrous.
At the roof’s edge, Pike planted his right foot atop the low wall and pushed as hard as he could. The wall broke beneath his weight,
crumbling into pieces and costing him leverage, and he knew his jump was going to come up short.
As Pike hurtled through the air, he couldn’t help thinking of all the times he and Petey had dodged death when they were kids out on their own. In those days, death had seemed to sit on their shoulders, waiting for the slightest misstep so they could be pulled down. No matter how close it got, they’d always laughed about it later, acting like they had never been scared at all.
The day Petey had died, though, he had been afraid. Pike remembered that now as he threw his hands out in an attempt to reach the other building before gravity claimed him and pulled him to his death. That fear in Petey’s eyes had been the worst thing Pike had ever witnessed. He had seen Petey drunk and flying on mushrooms at different times, had seen him angry, and had even seen him lost in painful memories from his childhood. All of those things Pike remembered. They were all pieces and parts of Petey, things that had gone into the making of his friend.
But the fear in Petey’s eyes was what Pike remembered most sharply. That memory cut hard and deep as a motorcycle chain, and it was in Pike’s mind as he fell. He thought that was the final straw, that the weight of the memory would drag him down, just short of the other building.
“No pain without gain.”
Petey had changed the old saying around to suit him. It had been his way of telling Pike that he wasn’t going to take chances unless there was a profit involved.
“You don’t put your head on the chopping block for free, bro.”
Pike felt certain that if Petey could see him now, his friend would laugh at him and tell him he was an idiot.
Pike’s fingers closed over the rooftop’s edge. The building had the same kind of low retaining wall as the structure he had leaped from. As his chest banged into the wall and his chin painfully scraped the
stone, the wall tore away under his left hand. Pieces of wood dropped into the alley.
Grimly, feeling as though his right shoulder was about to separate, Pike held on and desperately flailed with his left hand till he secured purchase. He was dimly aware of Cho sailing over him and thudding onto the roof a few feet ahead of him and to one side. By the time the other Marine had gotten to his feet, scrambling to get back to Pike, Pike had levered himself onto the roof.
Cho stared at him. “Oh, man, I thought you were going to eat it when I saw that wall give way underneath you.”
Adrenaline still thrummed through Pike, but it was an old friend and his drug of choice. He pulled his assault rifle into his hands and scanned the roof. “Talk about it later. Move out now.” He ran forward.
On the other side of the building, the two surviving tangos had taken the fire escape.
With his shoulder burning as if it were on fire, Pike ran. “Bekah, the tangos are heading down the fire escape on the adjacent building. North side. Do we have anybody there?”
“I’m getting someone there now.”
Captain Zarif cut into the channel. “I have men headed there now.”
“Roger that, Captain.” Bekah sounded out of breath. “Remember, our orders are to bring in prisoners to question.”
“I understand, Corporal Shaw.” The ANP captain sounded put out. He hadn’t been happy to learn that he would be taking orders from a corporal. But the local police were working as support, not taking charge of the operation. “Rest assured, you will have our full cooperation.”
Reaching the fire escape, Pike peered down and spotted the two men already on the second-story landing. A few men and boys were in the alley, all of them evidently from surrounding businesses and curious about the nearby gunfire. Pike figured they were probably
wondering if they should take cover or vacate the area before they got caught up in the violence.
When the gawkers spotted the two Marines clambering down the fire escape in pursuit, they immediately pulled back inside nearby buildings or to recessed doorways. By that time, Pike was in motion, rapidly descending the steps.
Closer now, Pike noticed that one of the tangos wasn’t a local. The coloration of the man’s skin was too fair. His black hair was cropped short, and he wore a neatly trimmed goatee. His Western-style clothes marked him as different too.
What was he doing with the tangos? That thought barely registered in Pike’s mind before the two men reached ground level. The man with the goatee turned and pointed a pistol at Pike as he reached the second-floor landing. The pistol spat three quick shots. One of them spanged off the fire escape railing. The other two slammed into Pike’s chest, flattening against his armor but still feeling like hammer blows over his heart.
The guy was good. Pike swung over the railing and made the ten-foot drop to the ground. His knees screamed from the height with all the extra weight he was carrying, but he remained standing. The move caught the guy with the goatee off-balance, but he tracked his pistol onto Pike. A bullet split the air beside Pike’s head and skimmed off the side of his helmet.
Holding his position, Pike opened fire from twenty feet away. His rounds chewed into the man’s lower legs, knocking his feet from beneath him as a group of Afghan National Police came into view at the end of the alley fifty feet away.
The other man tried to stop before he reached the police. Realizing that he had no chance, the man started to throw his pistol away, but a hail of gunfire slammed into him before the weapon left his fingers. He fell to the ground on his back, sightless eyes staring up at the midday sun directly overhead.
The man with the goatee had a Russian accent, or it might have been Eastern European. The intonation was something definitely from that neck of the woods. He cursed and reached for his fallen pistol, but his fingers remained just short of reaching it.
Stepping forward, Pike kicked the pistol away. Still cursing, the man held up his hands in surrender, staring hard at Pike with wide blue eyes. Blood from the man’s wounded legs spread over the cobblestones. None of the wounds appeared to be gushing, so Pike felt certain he hadn’t hit the femoral artery. There was little chance of the man bleeding out.
Cho joined Pike just as the Afghan policemen surrounded them.
Pike took a step back, away from the arriving policemen, and waved to Cho. “Keep an eye on that guy.”
Cho nodded.
Turning to face the alley, splitting his attention between both ends while staying alert, Pike keyed the radio. “Bekah.”
“Yes.”
“We’re secure here.”
“Good. We’ve got these men too.”
“Are all yours Afghan?”
“They look like it. Why?”
“Got a guy here that sounds Russian. Doesn’t fit in with the locals. Didn’t Heath mention in his debrief that Yaqub was doing business with some Russians?”
“Yes.”
“Maybe we got one of the guys that—”
“Hey! What are you doing?” Cho sounded angry and defensive. “Back off! Back off now!”
Pike turned around just as Captain Zarif shot the Russian between the eyes. The Russian had been struggling against the Afghan National Police, but his body went slack and those blue eyes stared vacantly.
“Why did you do that?” Cho moved toward Zarif, but one of the policemen standing nearby grabbed his arm and prevented him from reaching his target.
Stepping forward, his rifle resting across his body so he could pull it into play, Pike grabbed Cho’s shoulder and tugged the Marine back.
“He shot him!” Cho pointed at Zarif. “Guy shot him and there was no reason to do it!”
Captain Zarif was in his early forties, a hard-faced man carrying extra weight from living well. His hair and beard were salt-and-pepper. Four small, irregular scars lined the right side of his round face. He turned his flat, hard-eyed gaze on Cho and held the pistol pointed at the Marine.
“Back away, American. You should thank me for saving your life.”
“Saving my life?” Cho shook his head. “No way. The guy didn’t have a weapon. He was just lying there.”
“Really?” Zarif sneered contemptuously. “Then how do you explain this?” He nudged the dead Russian’s left arm aside to reveal a short fighting dagger lying on the ground. “Like I said, you should thank me for saving your life.”
“That guy didn’t have no knife.” Cho shrugged free of Pike. Pike let him go, but he pushed Cho back slightly with his body. The Marine was scared and mad and embarrassed, a volatile concoction that was just waiting to make an even bigger mistake. “One of your guys put that there.”
Zarif spoke coldly. “Careful with what you say. I will have you brought up on charges. You may not be under my supervision, but you will respect my position.”
“I know how to deal with a—”
Pike stepped in front of the other Marine. “Step off, Cho. Watch my six.”
Furious, Cho quieted and moved back. “I got you, Pike.”
Moving slowly, Pike closed on the dead Russian. The Afghan National Police remained in place, blocking the way, but Pike never broke his stride. He locked his eyes on the captain. “That’s our prisoner. We’re not leaving here without him.”
One of the soldiers spoke up hotly. “You will not tell us what to do, American. This is our country. You will remain respectful.”
Pike kept walking and held Zarif’s gaze. “Our. Prisoner.” From the corner of his eye, Pike saw a Marine Humvee roll into the alley. A machine gunner stood on deck behind the big .50-cal.
Zarif spoke quickly in his native language. His men stepped back, leaving the dead Russian and the other man.
Pike gazed down at the Russian, aware of Zarif and his men walking away.
A moment later, Bekah joined Pike. “What’s going on?”
Pike pointed to the dead man. “Zarif killed our prisoner to keep him from stabbing Cho.”
Face stained with sweat and dust, Bekah looked up at Pike. “You don’t think that’s what happened?”
“The Russian was right-handed. We closed on him, he drew on us, fired real quick, real accurate.” Pike touched his body armor, reaching through the material to dig out one of the flattened rounds. He juggled it in his palm, still feeling the residual heat. “You tend to remember somebody like that shooting at you. He was right-handed. The captain claimed he was pulling the knife with his left hand.”
“Doesn’t mean he didn’t.”
“Yeah, I know.” Pike pointed at the dead man, indicated the way the man’s pocket had been turned inside out and a few coins littered the alley. “I don’t think he picked his own pockets before the captain shot him either. Would have been even harder after he was dead.”