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  “Unless the complaint is on one of them.”

  “On the ANP?” KD hadn’t noticed any issues between the Afghan police and army personnel. But then, she’d only been in Afghanistan a short while.

  Mouton nodded. “If it’s local, and we report it to the ANP, they just tattle to the husband or father or brother or fifth cousin twice removed, and the woman gets beat up worse. Happens a lot. It’s a fucked-up system, and not kind to women.”

  KD studied the stern profile of the woman beside her. “Yet you keep coming back. Why?” KD wasn’t sure she wanted another tour in Afghanistan after this one ended. As a cultural support team member, she would be stationed here for a year. But after that, she wouldn’t mind rounding out her service résumé elsewhere. Like most other West Point graduates, she dreamed of ending her career in the Pentagon with a chest full of metals and laurel leaves on her cap.

  “Like my daddy say when our pirogue get caught in a fast-moving current,” Mouton said in answer to KD’s question. “ ‘Trow out de anc.’ ‘Anc got no twine on it,’ I tell him. He say, ‘Trow it out anyway. Might do some good.’ That’s all we can do here, Lieutenant. Keep tossing out the anc and hope someday it’ll do some good.”

  KD didn’t know what to think of that. Not all of the captain’s colorful stories were easily understood, especially when told in a Cajun accent.

  Gravel crunched under their boots as they left the mess and followed the bright lights toward the inner gate. Since it was early spring, the breeze sweeping down from the mountains was still cool and not too dry. But in two months, they’d be sweating under their gear and choking on dust. A lot like northwest Texas.

  But tonight, it was cool and quiet except for the moan of wind gusts along the eaves of the concrete buildings and the flap of canvas on the soft-sided structures. Occasionally a scrap of tune, low laughter, or voices drifted past, but mostly everything was tucked in for the night.

  Hickock had once been a Soviet stronghold, well fortified and almost medieval in appearance with its concrete watchtowers and sturdy fencing. Like most FOBs, it was built in two concentric circles, each fenced and gated.

  The outer circle contained a helicopter pad, a munitions and fuel depot, vehicle parking, barracks for the Afghan National Police, and a local bazaar that sold trinkets, questionable dried meats, local wares, and a variety of illicit drugs such as hashish, valium, uppers, downers, pain meds, cocaine, and anything derived from the poppy. Afghanistan produced over 80 percent of the world’s heroin.

  The inner circle contained living quarters for American soldiers and contractors, various offices and meeting areas, the mess hall, a small detention center connected to the MP barracks, a communications center, and a medical facility. Any unauthorized person coming through the inner gate was thoroughly checked for firearms and explosives before being escorted by two heavily armed soldiers to their stated destination. The local translator, or terp, for their team, Samira, often came through the inner gate, but she was never armed and had to be escorted, as well. That she hadn’t requested entrance but had asked for the captain, instead, was curious to KD.

  As they neared the grim-looking tower by the inner gate, an MP pointed to where Samira and the local woman were waiting.

  “I am sorry to get you out again,” Samira said as they walked up. “This is Azyan.” She nodded to the woman beside her, draped head to toe in black cloth except for the open area around her eyes. Samira wore a hijab, or scarf around her head, but didn’t cover her face. “Azyan’s son, Tajamul, was taken from her home. She wants him back.”

  “Taken by who?” Nataleah asked.

  “Captain Asef Farid.”

  “The commander of the ANP unit?”

  Samira nodded.

  “You fucking with me?”

  “No, ma’am.”

  Mouton looked at KD. They’d both been briefed about Asef Farid. Volatile, cruel, violent, and also the son of a powerful local poppy grower and suspected Taliban sympathizer, Khalil Farid, a vengeful bastard if there ever was one. The villagers were terrified of him. “Shit.” The captain turned back to Samira. “Can’t she just go get him?”

  “She tried. Farid hit her. Many times.” At a nod from Samira, Azyan pulled aside her scarf to show a split lip and a bruised cheek. She pushed up her sleeve to show more bruises. When she started to lift her hem, Mouton waved her to stop.

  “I get it. The guy’s an asshole. But it’s a local matter. We can’t interfere.”

  The Afghan women looked at each other then back to Nataleah.

  “Lutfan,” Azyan whispered in Dari, the language spoken by most of the villagers. It was one of the two-dozen words and phrases KD knew. Please.

  A long pause, then Nataleah asked, “Why did Farid take the boy? He is a boy, right? Not a grown man?”

  Samira and Azyan spoke for a moment, then Samira said to the captain, “Taj has eight years. Farid is using him for jensiyat. Sex.”

  “Shit.”

  KD was horrified. Pederasty had always been a problem in Afghanistan. When the Taliban was in power, they had forbidden it. But now that their control had slipped, the practice was growing in popularity again, especially in rural and mountainous areas among powerful tribal leaders and the Afghan police. They even had a term for it. Bacha bazi. Boy play.

  At the mandatory cultural briefing KD had attended when she’d first arrived, she was told to look the other way, since bacha bazi was considered a local cultural issue. The Afghan Minister of Interior Affairs, who oversaw the ANP, had attempted to crack down on the abusive practice, but because of bribery and the villagers’ fears of police retaliation, charges were never brought. Afghanistan was one of the most corrupt nations in the world, and KD often wondered if the place was worth all the blood and treasure lost trying to bring it out of the dark ages.

  “I can talk to him,” Mouton finally agreed. “But that’s all. I can’t force him to give up the boy. Make sure Azyan understands that.”

  Samira translated, then nodded to Nataleah. “She understands.”

  Mouton told her to take the woman close to the ANP barracks and wait while she found a couple of SF guys to go with them. “If we get the boy out, she and her son should disappear for a while,” she warned Samira. “There could be payback.”

  After the two Afghan women left, the captain and KD headed back to the women’s barracks in the inner FOB. “We really doing this?” KD asked, worried about the look-the-other-way directive.

  “I got to try. Somebody’s got to stand up for the kid. But you shouldn’t go with me. No use fucking up your career, too.”

  “You’re not going without me, ma’am,” KD said firmly.

  Nataleah gave her a small but grateful smile. “Okay, but keep your mouth shut. You’re just there to witness. We don’t want to look like we’re hunting for trouble, so we won’t suit up, either.”

  Outside the female barracks, she stopped. “No rifles or armor. Just our sidearms and Kevlar vests. And headscarves, instead of helmets. No use showing disrespect even if he is an asshole. Get my vest and scarf, too, while I round up a couple of bored SF guys to go with us.”

  “Yes, ma’am.”

  Minutes later, in hijabs and vests, KD and Captain Mouton walked through the inner gate again, this time trailed by two Special Forces soldiers in full combat gear. KD hadn’t been on patrol with either of them, but she’d seen them around. They seemed like okay guys.

  As they passed the ANP quarters, Samira stepped out of an alley. “Farid’s hut is two past the barracks,” she said in a low voice. “Down there, on the right.”

  Mouton looked where Samira pointed, then back at the ANP barracks. They were standing halfway between the two on a dark, deserted street.

  She turned to the SF guys. “Good line of sight to both the hut and the barracks. One of you could stay here with the women, while the
other covers the back of the hut. What do you think?”

  “You sure you don’t want us to go inside with you?” the older soldier asked.

  Mouton shook her head. “I don’t want it to look like a confrontation. If this goes south, the less you know the better. Just cover us if something goes wrong.”

  The soldier nodded in agreement, waved the Afghan women to follow him, then the three of them slipped noiselessly into the darkness of the alley.

  Trailed by the other soldier, a short, wiry Hispanic, KD followed her captain toward the hut. On reflex, she rested her hand on the butt of her handgun and scanned the shadows. This would be a great place for an ambush. The soldier with them must have sensed it, too. She could feel the tension in him. No scuffling or small talk. Just silent, watchful movement, loaded rifle held at the ready across his chest. She was grateful he had her back.

  Farther down at the end of the street, the booths at the bazaar were draped and shuttered for the night. An insurgent could be watching and waiting behind any one of them, but KD saw no movement or signs of life.

  Lamplight shone through the half-closed front shutters of Farid’s concrete hut. From the rear of the building came the sound of a child talking in a high, panicky voice. Maybe crying.

  At Mouton’s nod, the Hispanic soldier silently peeled off and disappeared into the shadowed gap between buildings. After allowing him time to set his position behind the hut, the captain stepped up to the wooden door and knocked.

  A short wait, then a dark, bearded man wearing a robe and sandals yanked open the door. He said something in Dari, then saw they were American. “What do you want?” he demanded in a barely civil tone.

  “We’d like to talk to you for a moment, Captain Farid,” Mouton said politely.

  The Afghan hesitated, leaned out to study the empty street, then reluctantly motioned them inside. Turning away, he walked over to a desk in front of the back wall. “I am surprised to see two unescorted females out at night,” he said in a contemptuous voice as he filled a glass with water from a dented metal pitcher. “Why have you come?”

  Mouton planted herself directly across the desk from him. He didn’t appear to be armed, but she was wise to stand out of arm’s reach of a man who thought nothing of brutalizing women. And children.

  KD moved up behind her and to the right so her gun arm was free and she could watch both Farid and a curtained doorway on the side wall. Since she didn’t see the boy in the front room, she assumed he was somewhere in the back. She hoped he could speak enough English to hear them through the thin drape and understand why they were there.

  “I’ve received a request, Captain Farid,” Mouton said. “The mother of the boy you are holding wants him back. He is needed at home.”

  The police officer’s face twisted with fury. “What boy?” He threw the arm not holding his glass wide, the sleeve of his robe whipping like a wing. “I see no boy.”

  Something about the man seemed off to KD. He acted anxious. Hyper. His eyes were so black she couldn’t tell pupil from iris. Maybe he was high on drugs. It was a problem with some of the local police.

  “I thought I heard someone crying,” Captain Mouton said. “Perhaps he’s in the back room. Lieutenant Whitcomb, go check. He might need help.”

  “Ne! No!” the Afghan ordered. “You have no right!”

  But KD was already pushing aside the drape.

  Voices rose behind her.

  She ignored them and scanned the room.

  A heavy square table beside the drape. On another wall, a cabinet with a tarnished mirror above it. In the center of the room, a rumpled bed with a length of chain around one leg, and beside it, wall-mounted hooks from which hung an ANP uniform, various clothing, and lengths of rope. No rear exit, only a single small window with open shutters six feet up on the rear wall. No boy.

  Then she heard movement inside the cabinet.

  She moved toward it. “Taj,” she whispered. “Aya suma englisi yad daren? Do you speak English?”

  She opened the cabinet door.

  A boy with tear tracks down his dirty cheeks shrank away. He was bruised, his face battered, dried blood at the corner of his mouth and around his wrists.

  “Tajamul,” KD said, trying not to frighten him more than he already was. “Your mother—maadar—waits out back.” She pointed to the window. “Watan. You go now. Raftan watan. Go home.”

  Voices in the front room rose to shouts, threats.

  The boy began to cry.

  Desperate to get the child away before Farid came looking for her, KD pulled Tajamul from the cabinet and carried him, kicking and crying, to the window on the back wall.

  Glass shattered on the other side of the drape.

  Shit! Arms straining, KD lifted the struggling boy toward the narrow opening.

  Suddenly the top of a helmet appeared just above the sill. “What the fuck’s going on?” the Hispanic SF soldier whispered up to her.

  “Take him!” KD flinched when a gun went off in the front room.

  “Fuck! What was that?” The soldier tried to peer over the sill into the room behind KD and the boy. “I don’t have a shot!”

  “Just take him!” KD cried and shoved the boy out the window just as the sound of a second gunshot bounced off the walls of the concrete hut. Grabbing her Beretta, she started to turn.

  A deafening boom and she slammed face-first against the wall. Fire exploded low in her back. Her left leg gave way. She slid down, rolled onto her left side, and lay gasping in pain and terror.

  Farid stood in the doorway, smiling.

  “No,” she said. But no sound came out.

  Vibrations in the plank floor as he walked toward her.

  God please no.

  He stopped two feet away, pointed his gun down at her. “Infidel,” he said, his eyes dark and gleaming above his beaked nose and black beard.

  The Beretta was still in her hand. With all the strength she had left, KD raised it and squeezed the trigger. Two gun blasts in close succession.

  A spray of warm blood.

  Then she sank into darkness.

  CHAPTER 2

  Richard was so weary after leaving the hospital in Germany, he dozed on and off through most of the flight from LRMC to Bagram Airfield, Afghanistan, arriving just after noon, local time. Despite wearing earplugs and drinking four bottles of water, after traveling nearly twenty of the last twenty-four hours aboard noisy transports, he had a pounding headache and felt like he’d lost half his hearing. But he’d managed to sleep some, so he was good to go. And hungry.

  After a quick meal in the Bagram Airfield officer’s lounge, he showered and changed into his ACUs, then donned the armor and weaponry required when entering a combat zone—armored vest, SIG M11 handgun in a drop holster on his right thigh, K-pot helmet, rifle strapped over his shoulder. Making sure the lanyard holding his CID badge was in place, he picked up his duffle and hurried out to the helicopter waiting to take him on to FOB Hickock.

  Another noisy, jostling ride, which would undoubtedly add a queasy stomach to his pounding head and ringing ears. But at least he would be back on solid ground. For a while.

  God, he hated flying. Almost as much as he hated this latest assignment. There was something fishy about it. Not the least of which was the timing . . . coming a day after his request for leave.

  He was almost thirty years old. He’d been in the army since he’d graduated from Washington State University eight years earlier, and had been in CID for the last six. He liked the investigative aspect of the job and was good at it—collecting and analyzing criminal intelligence. What he didn’t like was having to fly all over the world to do it.

  It was time for a change. Either within the army, or in a new direction altogether. And with his re-enlistment date coming up, now was the time to make his move.

  He reac
hed into the duffle at his feet and pulled out his copy of the DA 31 Request for Leave Form, the original of which Chief Warrant Officer Stranton should have approved several days ago. The delay troubled Richard. He didn’t like Stranton and sensed the feeling was mutual. The chief was new to his post and determined to prove himself at CENTCOM. Richard wouldn’t put it past the prick to deny leave just because Richard had forgotten to cross a T on the request. After scanning the form for errors and finding none, Richard slipped it back into the pouch on his duffle.

  He’d requested a month. Four weeks to figure out if he was ready to commit to another tour of service, or if he should cut the cord and leave the army for good.

  And do what?

  He’d considered and rejected joining the FBI. Too political. Same with big metro police departments, especially with the intense media scrutiny lately and the open season on cops. Homeland Security would require too much time in DC or New York. Not his favorite cities. He was more of a small-town guy.

  He had no reason to go back to his hometown in Washington state. His parents had sold their home and hardware store to move into a retirement community in Tucson. They rarely communicated anymore anyway. What separated them couldn’t be undone, and he had given up trying. He was on his own to do whatever he wanted, wherever he wanted to do it.

  Maybe somewhere west of humid Alabama and east of bankrupt California. Something with a state CID or county sheriff’s department. Maybe the US Marshals Service or the Texas Rangers. Not that he knew anything about Texas or Rangers. But it sounded interesting. A good change of pace. And not much flying. He was tired of chasing down scared, battle-weary soldiers.

  But first, he had to complete this latest assignment, one that was shaping up to be a lot more complicated than the usual drug, suspicious death, missing armaments, or AWOL situations. One American officer dead, another critically wounded—both female—and a captain in the Afghan National Police shot to death in his own quarters. No apparent motive.

  Why had two female army officers gone at night to the residence of the commander of the local unit of the Afghan National Police? Drugs? Sex? Bartering stolen weapons? And who shot whom?