Termination Orders(14)

“Throw him into the fire,” said one of the Taliban with practiced authority, pointing at Faqeer’s body.

Zalmay was shocked. Cremating a body was forbidden, a grievous sin. His heart burned with rage against these thugs. He knew that this was equally intolerable to the villagers—even more so, since their honor would compel them to protect their guests. But they did not move; instead, he saw, their heads hung in shame. Zalmay remembered the bullet holes on the sides of the houses. This village had seen their share of misfortune, and war, apparently, had broken their will.

As his underlings moved to carry out the order, this new leader pulled Malang aside and conferred with him. Malang spoke and then pointed directly at Zalmay. So much for not attracting too much attention to myself, he thought. The man walked toward him, and Zalmay spoke a quick prayer under his breath.

The man stood in front of him, commanding, “On your knees!”

Zalmay complied, trying to hold steady while clinging to whatever desperate hope he could find.

“You were with the pig that shot our brother?”

Zalmay tried to speak but was frozen, the barrel of the man’s Kalashnikov inches from his face.

“Speak!”

Zalmay couldn’t. Another man said, “Shoot him!”

The man raised his rifle and prepared to fire. Zalmay shut his eyes and braced for the bullet, the end of everything. But it never came. Instead, Zalmay heard shouting.

He opened his eyes and saw that Mirzal had stepped forward defiantly, preventing anyone from moving Faqeer’s body. Despite his shortness, Mirzal’s silhouette against the bonfire seemed tall and proud. One of the thugs yelled for him to step back, but that just prompted Gorbat to step up to stand beside him.

Emboldened, the villagers came forward to stand with them, one by one. The insurgents shouted, “Back! Back!” But the villagers moved forward instead, edging the armed men back toward their trucks.

The man who had his rifle on Zalmay turned to deal with this new situation. The armed men were shouting and motioning for the villagers to step back, but they would not. They continued to advance.

Zalmay realized that all the thugs were distracted. If he took off at a sprint, he could probably make it far enough into the darkness to get away from the armed men and then run back to the highway. All he had to do was dash out of there.

Instead, he stood up and walked to stand by his hosts, facing the men with guns. Zalmay saw that most of the men seemed uncomfortable, unwilling to actually open fire. All but the man who had almost killed him, the one who seemed to be in charge. His cruel face seemed murderous in the flickering firelight.

“Swine!” he said. “Step back, or you die!”

Zalmay knew this was not an empty threat, and so did everyone else. But nobody faltered, nobody stopped. Whatever they were grasping on to, whether it was their honor and hospitality or just being tired of the thuggery of the Taliban, the people of this village were willing to die that night. And Zalmay was prepared to die with them.

At least he would die on his feet. He braced himself, ready for it this time. The cruel man raised his rifle, and the others followed suit. All he had to do was give the order, and then—

There was a pop! of a gun from the darkness beyond, and the insurgent’s head erupted, splattering red onto Zalmay’s face. The man fell to the dust. Almost immediately, there were three more reports, and three more Taliban collapsed. The rest, realizing what was happening, turned around and started shooting wildly into the darkness. The villagers dropped to the ground to avoid incoming gunfire. The thugs, shooting ineffectually into the darkness, continued to drop. They tried to run, but bullets caught up to every one; soon, they all had dropped like flies.

That’s when Zalmay noticed that the square was surrounded by men in desert camouflage, wielding M-16s and shouting at everyone in broken Pashto, “Stay down! Stay down!”

Americans.

They had been saved by the Americans.





CHAPTER 7


Less than three hours after they left the Morgan home, Plante was ushering Dan Morgan into the CIA’s New Headquarters Building. Called the George Bush Center for Intelligence, it had been added to the original building in the nineties. It was a complex of steel and glass that always made Morgan think of a shopping mall, with its flower gardens, arched entrance, and blue glass. It brought to mind the last time he had seen Plante, when he had come down to tender his resignation as an operative (even if, officially, of course, he had never worked for the CIA).

Plante had been Morgan’s handler and usually his only contact in the CIA, summoning him whenever he was needed. Plante had accepted his resignation without much protest. He gave Morgan no grief, other than reminding him that the confidentiality agreements he had signed at the beginning of his service still held. Then Plante wished him well in his new life, and that was, Morgan thought, the end of it.