Abbottabad,
Pakistan
February 1, 2011, 0917 Hours Local
Time
The news spread through Pakistan like a wildfire. All about the nest of spies at the American Consulate in Lahore and the CIA cockroach who had killed two innocent Pakistanis out of pure racist spite. And the three other American dung beetles who had killed a third brother—run him down in cold blood—as they raced in their Land Cruiser Prado to the scene to rescue the first cockroach. And how the Pakistani authorities had stood up to the Americans and were holding the American assassin in jail even though the other three had made it to the consulate and had been illegally secreted out of the country. And how all over the country tens of thousands of Pakistanis in cities, towns, and villages north, south, east, and west had demonstrated their righteous hatred for the United States, a nation of dogs, cockroaches, and vermin. Demonstrated even in Abbottabad, where the hand-lettered signs read “Stone the American CIA cockroach to death” and “Amerika, Nation of Murderers.”
Even Waseem the tearoom owner had closed his business long enough to join in the previous day’s protest. He couldn’t help but chortle to the beggar about the arrest of the American double murderer and how it had caused the United States great embarrassment throughout the Muslim world. It was a sure sign of things to come.
“Thus will the Infidels be brought down,” he said as he offered Charlie Becker a second sweet cake to go with his tea.
“God bless you, brother.” Charlie took the cake and stuffed half of it in his mouth. It had been a cold night, and Charlie’s entire body ached. His stumps, especially, were sore. And he had a rash on his ass from sitting all day on the fricking dolly.
It was on days like this he missed his legs—even the prosthetic ones. He’d lost his ability to step over things on the street that he now had to muscle his dolly around. The simple act of taking a leak was a cumbersome, drawn-out process. And there was the constant, gnawing, dull sense of . . . loss.
Then Charlie thought, What crap! Okay, he’d lost his legs. He knew Soldiers and Marines who’d lost more—their lives. He might have been killed in that tunnel. Never seen his grandchild. Never gone back to work. Never had the chance to give something back for all that America had given him.
Charlie considered his time as a Soldier a paid fellowship. He got to travel. He got to learn languages. He got to meet interesting individuals. And of course he got to break things and kill people. All in all a great life.
And his legs? Yeah, he missed them.
And yes, today was one of those days he would gladly have given his left nut for some Aleve. But he was a beggar. And beggars, he knew, couldn’t be choosers. Or possess over-the-counter American pain relievers.
Besides, he was a Ranger. And Rangers Drive On sans complaints. In fact, during his rehab, Charlie had often worn a baseball cap to his physical therapy sessions that read “NO SNIVELING.”
Words to live by.
And so Charlie fed his sugar jones instead of his pain jones. And was okay with that.
“God is great, Brother Shahid,” Waseem told Charlie as he watched the beggar chew. “He works in mysterious ways to protect us, even if it requires sacrifice.”
“He does indeed, brother,” Charlie replied. He displayed his ruined hands. “Sacrifice is what he requires of us, and sacrifice is what we willingly provide.”
“We willingly provide because God is great, brother,” Waseem sing-songed.
God is indeed great, Charlie Becker thought—but maybe, so is Langley. Charlie couldn’t be sure, but he guessed that CIA had something to do with the fact that over the past two and a half weeks, the ISI surveillance teams had been withdrawn from Abbottabad.
Gossip at the mosques had it that the detested Americans were engaging in provocative activities in the Frontier provinces. That they’d been seen in Miram Shah and Shawa and near Peshawar, too, selecting targets for the unmanned but armed Predator drones that killed from above. But ever since the murdering assassin had been caught, there hadn’t been a single drone attack anywhere in Pakistan. Allahu Akbar. God is great!
Whatever the truth of the matter with regard to Predator strikes (or the lack of them), Charlie was also hugely relieved, because for the past five days he’d seen no sign of ISI activity anywhere near Valhalla Base, an info-bit that he had burst-transmitted the previous afternoon. He knew—he’d received a coded message at the dead drop he checked when Valhalla Base pinged him to do so—that new equipment would be arriving soon, along with one or two new personnel. Given the current situation, there was a better-than-good chance that everything would be accomplished well under the ISI’s persistent radar blanket.
All in all, the news was good. Which made Charlie, who’d had twenty-six years as an Airborne Ranger, sixteen of them as a senior NCO, nervous. He had done Grenada, El Salvador, Panama, Mogadishu, and Iraq and was entitled to wear combat jump wings, a Silver Star, a Bronze Star with Combat V device, and three Purple Hearts, so he knew from experience that it was right after the good news arrived that the situation generally went south.
But for the moment, anyway, things were okay. Valhalla was safe; ISI and its bloodhound Saif Hadi al Iraqi were long gone. He’d had a nagging, seed-under-the-gum-line sensation for the past few days that something wasn’t quite right, as if his feng shui was out of balance. If indeed he’d ever had feng shui. But today that discomfort had blessedly evaporated. He’d even been given an extra treat. Charlie gave silent thanks for small blessings.
He stuffed the last of the sweet pastry into his mouth, handed the cup back to Waseem, and wiped his lips with his sleeve. “God be with you, brother.”
“And with you, Brother Shahid. May God grant you the blessing of watching an American die.”
That remark certainly changed Charlie’s mood. “He has already done that, my brother,” he responded grimly, for once telling the Pakistani an absolute unvarnished truth. “He has allowed me to watch Americans die more than once.”