GILGOT
PAKISTAN
JAVON ANTHONY COULD SEE the dim dawn sky. His wrists and ankles were tied with tape, and his arms were stretched and bound behind him, but he was neither blindfolded nor gagged. He lay in the open bed of a Toyota pickup truck, his breath ragged and raspy, as the vehicle jolted along a rutted track. Anthony groaned and shifted position to get more comfortable. Jake Henderson lay beside him. A bearded man sitting on the edge of the truck bed noticed the sergeant was awake and kicked Anthony in the head and on the shoulders. The kicks were vicious but without much power, since the man wore leather sandals and not boots. Sergeant Anthony moaned and rolled with the impact and decided to at least pretend to be unconscious again. He wanted water. That could wait. He heard the guard laugh as he delivered a final kick.
The stutter of gunfire and joyful yells shook him fully awake an hour later. The guard was standing now, shooting his AK-47 into the empty sky. Other rifles and pistols joined the shooting, and the cheering grew. Anthony could not sit up but could see the edges of some buildings. The guard reached down and, with a call of delight, swept up a young boy who had stretched out his hand. The kid landed nimbly in the truck. He was about ten years old, and his eyes opened wide when he saw the sprawled forms of Anthony and Henderson. “Hallo?” he asked with a grin, poking Anthony in the thigh with a finger. “Hallo?” Then the boy spat in the sergeant’s face. The glob of wetness splattered on his forehead.
The truck slowed and came to a stop. Anthony heard the mutter and clatter of an approaching crowd as people came to the vehicle and looked into the back, a sea of hostile faces. The kid stood up and pointed at the bound soldiers. “Hallo!” he blurted out, using the only English word he knew. The phrase rippled back until the whole mob was chanting in unison as if giving a football cheer. Hallo… Hallo… Hallo! They understood that the word meant the Americans had arrived. A few men reached in and punched Anthony. The truck began rocking on its tired springs, and a few rocks sailed into the bed and rattled against the metal.
The tailgate dropped with a clatter, and hands grabbed Anthony’s ankles and pulled him out of the truck, hurling him to the hard dirt and knocking the wind from him. Anthony gasped, trying to suck in some air while being mauled. He thought his life was about to end in being torn apart by a screaming mob, but more guards arrived and pushed the civilians away. They stood him up on wobbly legs. A moment later, both he and Jake Henderson were hauled away by the guards. They were dragged up a slight incline for about a hundred yards, then propelled through a large door and into a small mud-walled building with a dirt floor. The door slammed shut and was locked. Outside, down the hill, the mob howled in derision, “Hallo!”
THE NAME OF MUHAMMED Waleed was known far beyond his mountain camp in Waziristan. He had spent his entire life battling the enemies of Pakistan and Islam. Now in his fifties, he had ascended from being a naive but extremely bright product of the madrasah, or religious school, in his hometown to being an outstanding college student in France and then to fighting his bloody way upward to take over leadership of the Taliban. Though it had been on the verge of extinction after the American-led coalition threw it out of Afghanistan, Waleed had created a safe haven in the mountains of Pakistan and reorganized the force, unit by unit, and brought it back to strength, ready to fight again, and no longer just in Afghanistan. It seemed that his fierce eyes could see everywhere.
Waleed had learned of the arrival of the two American prisoners almost as soon as the trucks had threaded through the rugged border from Afghanistan and entered the long valley that emptied into Pakistan’s tribal areas, the desolate Waziristan. When the trip terminated at the village of Gilgot, they were still out on the high plain, about eight miles from the border and the same distance from the major town of Wana. That was only fifty miles from his stronghold. Waleed had given advance approval of the raid and the murder of the American solider, but the kidnapping of the other two took him by surprise. Bringing the Americans back into Pakistan represented a threat to his overall plans. They should have been killed in Afghanistan, where open conflict raged.
The United States could be counted on to apply immense pressure for the government in Islamabad to rescue and retrieve those soldiers. Waleed summoned his advisers, the council of longtime comrades he called the Wise Ones, and asked, “What should we do about this situation in Gilgot?”
“Once more, the instigator was Fariq, nephew of Mustafa Khan, the village headman,” replied one senior counselor. “He led the attack team into Afghanistan and helped capture the Americans. For unknown reasons, he decided to keep them alive and bring them home. His proud uncle now plans to honor him with a celebration.”
“Fariq is an ambitious boy,” observed Waleed.
“Very ambitious,” agreed the counselor. “Perhaps too much so.”
“I believe those American prisoners will not survive long in Gilgot. That will certainly draw more attention to this area by the Americans and the other Crusader countries. The prisoners could be of better value to us in the future.”
“Yes, Leader. On your word, we can go and take them. It would be no trouble.”
Waleed crossed his arms and lowered his head until his bushy beard pressed against his chest while he thought things through. “We need to keep Mustafa Kahn happy, too. He safeguards the area well for us. Please let him know that I send him congratulations and the blessings of Allah, the most merciful, for having such a brave young fighter in his family. Offer him twenty-five thousand American dollars for the soldiers.”
“He will not accept that amount.”
“Let him set a price, then. The main thing is to keep the Americans safe until they can be put to a maximum use. Spilling their blood in Gilgot would be a useless gesture to satisfy the pride of a headstrong youngster. Be quick about this.”
The Wise One was correct. The offer was made and rejected, but instead of a counteroffer, there came a polite invitation to the esteemed Muhammed Waleed to attend the celebration in two days’ time and personally meet the warrior nephew, Fariq. Not accepting the deal was a veiled insult to the authority of the Leader.
“Inshallah,” said Waleed. God’s will. He had everyone leave the room because he wanted some time alone to pray to Allah for guidance-and to make a private call to a very old comrade.
JAKE HENDERSON WAS A good-looking kid from Petersburg, Virginia, who had been considered a hound dog in high school for the way he had always sniffed after the girls. He liked women, and women liked him. Being in the Army had not changed the broad smile on his chiseled face. The touch of a woman, just the idea of the touch of a woman, usually propelled Jake into high gear. For the only time in his life, two women were pawing his skin, laughing, and he was scared to death.
“What are they doin’, Javon? Why they bathin’ me and not you?”
Sergeant Anthony shook his head. “Guess you stink more,” he said, feeling that something awful was in store.
Both men had been regularly beaten by guards for the past two days, more out of sheer brutality than to elicit information, and had expected another dose of fists and feet when the door had opened and two women carried in buckets of water and folds of cloth. Two guards accompanied them and hauled Jake to his feet, then sliced away the twisted tape that bound him and stood back to let the women work. All had dour smiles as they pushed him to stand in the middle of a square of oilskin. Then one woman used a pair of scissors to cut away the soiled uniform and his filthy underwear. Their boots had been taken the first day, and now Henderson’s stinking socks were removed. All of the discarded clothes were thrown into a corner, leaving Jake stark naked.
The women soaped and bathed him, scrubbing away the caked-on dirt with a bar of soap that smelled of flowers. A bucket of water doused his head, and the scissors came back to trim his hair and beard. Henderson stood as still as possible, but the chill of the water made him start to shiver. As the younger of the women shampooed his hair, the older one carefully cleaned the dirt from beneath his nails. As she bent to do his toes, her eyes roamed to his penis, which was shriveled almost to invisibility, as if it were trying to hide. She said something in her language, and the guards laughed; then the younger woman used soap and water in and around his crotch, allowing her fingers to rest longer than necessary on the penis. Instead of sexual attraction, Jake’s only feeling was one of horror. He whimpered, and the older woman made soothing tut-tut sounds and told the younger one to stop playing with the prisoner. Big towels were used to thoroughly dry him, and a sweet-smelling oil was massaged deep into the aching muscles.
Javon Anthony finally began to understand. The morning had been filled with noise outside their hut, even music and laughter lifted from the town square at the foot of the hill. When the door opened, he caught glimpses of the square, where colorful thin banners waved atop tall poles. As the hours had passed, he watched the crowd grow in the town square, and traveling merchants selling items at stalls. The guards were cheerful.
The younger woman needed several trips to gather the discarded clothes and cleansing items, and Jake Henderson was given a pair of new white jockey shorts before a guard clamped on handcuffs. This time, they put him in a chair, as if trying to keep him clean, and secured him tightly.
At a small bench beside the door, the older woman unwrapped a dark roll of cloth and exposed three long knives of varying sizes. One was a broad butcher-style blade, while the second was a long serrated knife that ended in a perfect point, for use in cutting joints. The third was slender and slightly curved with a tiny hook on the end, which was used for detail work in skinning animals. “They’re going to cut off my dick and balls!” Henderson screamed to Javon and started urgently thrashing in the chair.
The woman picked up the biggest blade and moved to Jake’s right side, putting her palm against the simple red tattoo on his bicep, the word “Jen,” short for Jennifer, his fiancée. At a nod, both guards seized him, and she placed the shining sharp edge against his flesh and rocked it gently, top and bottom, then side and side, cutting a rectangle around the tattoo. The slices barely broke the skin and caused little pain and only a thin trace of blood. The younger woman stepped forward and pressed a small cloth on the wound to dry it while the elder returned to the bench and exchanged blades. She held up the little knife with the hook and examined it in the sunlight that streamed through the window before returning to work. With the guards struggling to hold the victim steady, she hooked a corner of the opened skin and peeled it toward her, slid the blade beneath the tiny flap, and pressed the ribbon of flesh against the steel with her thumb. With a slow pull, she ripped the rectangle away from the fatty membrane beneath while Jake Henderson screamed in agony and genuine terror. His eyes were huge. “Javon! They’re going to skin me alive!”
The woman held up the piece of skin like a prize and dangled the tattoo before Jake’s eyes. Satisfied with her work, she said something, and the younger woman rushed forward again and applied ointment and a thick bandage. Remarkably little blood oozed from the wound. The older woman had returned to the bench and slowly wiped, polished, and sharpened her knives before rolling them up and tying a knot in the small leather strap that held the bundle together.
Outside, Javon Anthony could hear the merriment increasing as he prayed for his friend, who remained tied to the chair, mumbling incoherently, sounding like he was going mad with fear.
The door opened, and six of the terrorists who had taken them prisoner came inside, laughing with a fat man with a thick gray beard. The old man approached Jake Henderson and bent forward, hands on knees. He spoke with a thick accent. “Hallo, American. I am Mustafa Khan, the leader of defense forces in this area. In a few minutes, we will be called to the town square. I shall walk down the path beside my nephew, the courageous Fariq, who led this especially trained team of strong fighters in Afghanistan. People have come from all around to pay them honor today for their deeds on the battlefield. Then we will bring you to the square, and Fariq will personally give you over to the women as a symbol of his victory. It will be quite a sight. Afterward, we shall have a feast.”
“Fight them, Jake! Fight back!” Anthony screamed, somehow lurching up from the floor, only to be knocked back down again by the guards. “Fight the bastards! You goat-fuckers are all dead men! Hurt him like that again and the United States will destroy this fucking dirty village, and I’ll see you in hell!”
Mustafa Kahn walked over and slapped his cheek hard. “Your time will come, black man. Just not today. Be patient.”
THE PREVIOUS DAY, THE United States had unexpectedly received information on the captives from a very reliable source, and early that morning an unmanned Predator robot plane had been launched to carry out a reprisal raid. The aircraft coasted without detection into a circular pattern nine thousand feet above the village of Gilgot, too high to be heard, and its controllers back at Bagram Air Base in Afghanistan scanned the target zone with an infrared camera. Clear shots of the cluster of buildings came onto the command screen in real time and confirmed the nugget of information, that an American was to be sacrificed during a celebration honoring the terrorists who had kidnapped two soldiers and slain a third. The camera also provided a close-up picture of the small building where the prisoners reportedly were being held.
With that confirmation, the order was given without a second thought. Two Hellfire air-to-ground missiles slid off the rails beneath the drone. Pushed by solid-propellant rocket motors, they tore away on flights of their own, homing in along the invisible path of a reflected laser beam.
The Hellfires appeared seemingly from nowhere in the clear sky and crashed into the center of the village, and the twin impacts of their twenty-pound blast-augmented warheads exploded almost simultaneously with terrifying thunder. The hut on the hill saved the lives of those inside, but the small building seemed to leap on its foundation when it was socked by a gigantic concussion wave, then a shower of debris. Mustafa Kahn struggled to the door in time to see a huge and pulsing orange-red fireball consuming his village.
Behind him came the maniacal laugh of Sergeant Javon Anthony, who was rolling from side to side. “Told ya, motherfucker! Tried to warn your stupid ass. There goes your fucking party. Big storm headed over the mountains, straight for this shithole, and you and your pissant nephew gonna die hard!” The laughing continued until the guards beat him unconscious.
WARLORD MUSTAFA KAHN WOULD never learn how his village had been discovered as the hiding place of the prisoners. He staggered among the bodies, hearing the cries of the injured and seeing the devastation spreading from the big crater on the northern edge of the square. He had failed to protect his people, the worst thing that could happen to a tribal leader. He did not want a follow-up missile strike, which would either kill him outright or ignite a rebellion that eventually would have children kicking his severed head around like a ball. Even while Kahn spoke the usual promise that Allah would take the ultimate revenge on the Americans, he was regarding his nephew and his friends as objects worthy only of his scorn, filthy things that had brought doom to Gilgot. The six young fighters were transformed into a commodity. Mustafa Kahn believed he had sacrificed enough to show them honor and protect his own dignity. Now they had to go.
He reestablished contact with the esteemed Taliban chieftain Muhammed Waleed to say that he would welcome a price of twenty-five thousand dollars for each American soldier in his possession, and that he would throw in the half-dozen brave heroes who had captured them as a bonus. The deal was accepted, and three highly polished SUVs arrived that night to whisk away all of the men, who had been traded like a herd of camels. The young fighters were glad to leave Gilgot with their own skins intact.
Mustafa Kahn finally could relax, count the money, and consider the overall episode to have been a profitable venture. He had long been eyeing a beautiful falcon whose owner and trainer was asking about twenty-five thousand dollars for the graceful bird. Now he could buy the falcon, share about ten thousand dollars among the villagers who lost family members in the missile attack, and still have another fifteen thousand left over. He also had curried favor with the powerful Muhammed Waleed, the leader of the Taliban.