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Bronco.
The old spook shook his head. “Joe, you’re wasting
your time. If you take him in, I’ll get him released—all
because your people haven’t even contacted you yet.
What a joke.”
I raised my pistol even higher and began to lose my
breath. Bronco was right. It was all just a game. I could
bring in Zahed, and yes, they probably would get him
released. Nothing would change.
The satellite phone tucked into my back pocket began
to ring.
“So I guess you know the rest,” I tell Blaisdell, as she
scrutinizes me with those lawyer eyes flashing above the
rim of her glasses.
She glances down at my report. “Yes, it’s all here.” She
sighs. “I don’t want you to have any unreasonable hope.
You admitted what you did right here. In addition to the
obvious charge, they’re going for dereliction of duty . . .
failure to keep yourself fully apprised of a fluid tactical
situation . . . conduct unbecoming an officer.”
“What was I supposed to do? Lie? I’ve done enough
of that already. And there were witnesses.”
“Let me ask you. Do you think what you did solved
anything?”
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309
I take a deep breath and look away. “I don’t know. I
just don’t know.”
“The report tells me what you did. It doesn’t say how
you feel about it.”
“How do you think I feel? Ready for a party? Why
does that even matter?”
“Because I’m trying to see what kind of an emotional
appeal I can make. Unless somebody decides to take a huge
risk, to go out on a limb for you, then like I said, I don’t
want you to have any unreasonable hope at this point.”
“Unreasonable hope? Jesus Christ, what do you peo-
ple expect from me?”
“Captain. Calm down. I’m still recording, and I’d
like you to go back and finish the story. If there’s any-
thing you might’ve left out of the report, anything else
you can remember that you think might help, you have
to tell me right now . . .”
I served with a guy named Foyte, a good captain who
wound up getting killed in the Philippines. I was his
team sergeant, and he used to give me all kinds of advice
about leadership. He was a really smart guy, best-read
guy I’d ever met. He could rattle off quotes he’d memo-
rized about war and politics. He always had something
good to say. When he talked, we listened. One thing he
told me stuck: If you live by your decisions, then you
have decided to really live.
So as I stood there, staring into the smug faces of the
310 GH OS T RE CON
two Central Intelligence Assholes, and looking at Mul-
lah Mohammed Zahed, a bloated bastard who figured
that in a few seconds I’d surrender to the futility of war,
I thought of Beasley and Nolan; of my father’s funeral;
and of all the little girls we’d just freed in the tu
thought of Hila, lying there, bleeding, waiting for me,
the only person she had left in the world. And I imagined
all the other people who would be infected by Zahed’s
touch, by the poison he would continue to spread through-
out the country, even as one of our own agencies sup-
ported him because they couldn’t see that the cure was
worse than the poison.
How did I feel about that?
I desperately loved my country and my job. If I just
turned my back on the situation because I was “little
people,” then I was no better than them.
Lights from the first helicopter pa
lage wall behind us, the whomping now louder, the
reactionary gunfire lifting up from the ground.
My satellite phone kept ringing. I figured it was Brown
or Ramirez, so I ignored it.
A roar came from the troops somewhere out there,
and a half dozen RPGs screamed up toward the chopper,
whose pilot banked suddenly away from the incoming.
Zahed began to smile. Even his teeth had been whit-
ened. The CIA had pampered his ass, all right.
Bronco was about to say something. Mike had his
gaze on the helicopter.
The trigger came down more easily than I had antici-
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311
pated, and my round struck Zahed in the forehead, slightly
off center. His head snapped back and he crashed back into
the Mercedes and slid down to the ground, the blood
spray glistening across the car’s roof.
Bronco and Mike reacted instantly, drawing their
weapons.
I shot Bronco first, then Mike.
But I didn’t kill them. I shot them in the legs, knock-
ing them off their feet as I whirled and sprinted back
toward the shattered window. My phone had stopped
ringing.
“You’re going down for this, Joe! You have no idea
what you’ve done! No idea!”
There was a lot of cursing involved—by both of us—
but suffice it to say I ignored them and climbed back
into the bedroom, where Hila lay motionless.
I was panting, shaking her hands, gently moving her
head. I panicked, checked her neck for a carotid pulse.
Thank God. She was alive but unconscious. I dug the
Cross-Com out of my pocket, activated it, changed the
magazine on my pistol. I gently scooped up Hila, slid
her over my shoulder, then started out of the room, my
gun hand trembling.
“Predator Control, this is Ghost Lead, over.”
A box opened in my HUD. “Where you been, Ghost
Lead?”
“Busy.”
“CAS units moving into your area, over.”
“Got ’em. Can you lock onto my location?
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“I’ve got it.”
“Good. I need Hellfires right on my head. Every-
thing you got. There are no civilians here. I repeat, no
civilians. We got a weapons and opium cache in the
basement. I want it taken out, over.”
“Roger that, Ghost Lead. I still have no authoriza-
tion for fires at this time, over.”
“I understand, buddy. Tell you what. Give me ten min-
utes, and then you make your decision—and live by it . . .”
“Roger that, Ghost Lead.”
With a few hundred Taliban fighters to defend the
village, I had a bad feeling that they’d manage to either
move or simply secure all those weapons and opium.
Better to take the cache out of the picture—blow it all
back to Allah. I wasn’t sure how committed Harruck’s
Close Air Support was, either.
I had considered for the better part of two seconds
taking Hila straight outside and trying to link up with
one of the choppers, but the place still swarmed with
Taliban. I’d rather take them out one or two at a time in
the tu
descended the stairs.
“Ghost Lead, this is Predator Control. I’ve just received
an override order. I have clearance to fire. But I will lose
the target in four minutes, fifteen seconds, over.”
“Let the clock tick,” I told him. “But don’t miss your
shot. I’m getting the hell out of here.”
“Roger that, Ghost Lead. Godspeed.”
I nearly fell down the staircase near the bottom,
caught my balance, then turned toward the tu