“But . . .”
“Don’t argue, just go. Now, after me!”
Cougar walked back down the flight of stairs, quickly and silently, leading with his shoulder, arm extended and gun pointing down, at the ready. They heard a crack as the men kicked in Zalmay’s door. Before reaching the landing on the third floor, Cougar motioned for Zalmay to jump over the rusting railing onto the next flight down, so he wouldn’t be seen from the hallway. Zalmay clambered over and vaulted down, but his foot slipped on the metal, and his arm smacked painfully on the railing below. A hollow, metallic sound echoed up the stairwell. They heard voices and then the sound of the two men running out of the apartment.
“Go!” said Cougar. “I’ll hold them off!”
Zalmay nodded and started down. He leapt down the stairs two steps at a time, one hand clutching the keys and the other the strap of his knapsack, which was slung over his shoulder and slammed against him with every step.
Gunshots, three sets of them, blasted through the hallway upstairs; the single reports from Cougar’s Glock were answered by volleys of fire from the two men’s semiautomatics. He slowed down and for a split second considered going back to help his friend. Honor demanded it. But no; Cougar had told him to go on ahead, so that is what he would do. He had learned that the honorable thing to do was not always the right thing. He pressed on, and an inchoate, wordless prayer for his friend’s survival formed in his mind.
Zalmay raced into the dusty night air, easily spotting Cougar’s beat-up jeep, parked at a hasty angle to the building, the headlights left on like the still-open eyes of a dead ox. He pulled the door open and swung into the driver’s seat, tossing the knapsack onto the seat beside him. He fumbled to slide the key into the ignition and then turned it; the engine rumbled to life. Gunshots reverberated from inside, but now they came from much closer. Cougar had made his way down the stairs. Zalmay leaned over to unlatch the passenger door and then kicked it wide.
Cougar burst out of the building. He stopped just long enough to shoot out one of the front tires of the men’s sedan. Then he ran over and hurtled into the jeep’s passenger seat, pulling the door shut as he did in one fluid motion, yelling, “Go, go, go!” Zalmay saw the two men appear at the door as he hit the gas. They sped off under a barrage of bullets. Several slammed into the back of the jeep, making dull, metallic thunks, and one shattered the rear window. Zalmay mashed the pedal to the floor. The sound of gunfire slowly faded in the distance and then stopped altogether.
“Are you okay?” Zalmay asked, his eyes on the dark dirt road. “Were you hit?”
“Still in one piece,” Cougar said, with ragged breath and looking back. “You?”
“I am fine. Are they behind us?”
“They won’t be getting far. Not in that car.”
Zalmay exhaled. “Where are we going?”
“Turn here.” Zalmay turned the jeep into a narrow side street. “We’ll take the inner roads, just to be safe,” Cougar added. “It’s best to make sure we’re not easy to follow.”
Zalmay breathed deeply, trying to calm his frantically beating heart. “Where are we going?” he asked again.
“Highway One, toward Kabul,” said Cougar, shuffling through his duffel bag.
“We are going to Kabul?”
“You’re going to Kabul,” Cougar replied pointedly. “And then out of the country.”
“You are not coming, then?” Zalmay said, trying his best to hide his anxiety and disappointment. Cougar did not respond, and Zalmay didn’t press it. He knew the answer already.
“I need you to bring something with you when you go,” said Cougar.
He reached into a pocket and produced a small black plastic chip, no bigger than his fingernail: a camera’s memory card. “You know what’s in there?” Cougar said.
“Is that what those men were after? The photographs?”
Cougar nodded. “This, and you.”
“How did they know?”
“I tried to transfer them electronically, and the files were intercepted. That’s how they knew to look for us. Now I can’t get them through from here—they’re watching every single connection. It needs to be carried out of here. And you’re going to be responsible for getting it to the US and into the right hands.”
“America . . .” he said in a whisper barely audible over the engine’s growl. Through everything that had happened, the dream of going to that Promised Land had never left his mind. But he had never allowed himself to fully believe it was possible. To hear Cougar say it now suddenly made it a reality.