could never understand his leniency toward her and was

entirely jealous of it. As I got older, I didn’t begrudge

my sister anymore. In fact, it took my entire life for me

to realize that Dad was a cynic who simply needed my

sister to remind him of all the beauty still left in the

world.

I wondered if Shilmani had felt likewise about Hila.

As she led me through the next tunnel, I wondered if

he’d be able to look Hila in the eye after what had hap-

pened to her. I knew the culture. I knew what happened

to girls like her. But I didn’t want to believe that.

She held up my pistol, and I had my rifle at the ready

now, with the penlight attached. She led me down two

CO MB AT O P S

293

more tunnels, and we descended yet another ladder into

a small room with crates piled to the ceiling.

“Guns,” was all she said.

“So you came through here?” I asked.

She frowned a moment, then realized what I was ask-

ing. “Yes, yes.”

“Zahed is here? In the mountain?”

She stopped and shook her head.

“No?”

“No.”

“Then where is he?”

“He is in Sangsar.”

My mouth fell open. “Aw, no. That’s no good. What

do you think we’re going to do? Walk right down this

mountain and into the village?”

I guess I had spoken too fast. She frowned in thought,

then finally said, “No, no. We don’t walk. We’ll run.”

She tugged my arm, but I stopped dead.

“We can’t go to Sangsar.”

“Yes, we’ll go!”

“How?”

She made a gesture with her hand. “Under . . .”

“You mean there’s a tunnel that leads all the way

there?”

She beamed at me.

While I was heading off to Sangsar, Brown, Hume, and

Warris, along with the group of girls, were rushing back

through the tunnels, following the beacons we’d left.

294 GH OS T RE CON

The guys were not happy with my decision to free the

girls and attempt to save them, but they obeyed orders

and later told me they would’ve done the same thing. It

was sickening to realize what’d been happening in there.

Warris had told them that my decision to search for

Zahed alone was foolish and indicative of my poor judg-

ment. Brown had told him that saving his sorry ass was

also indicative of my poor judgment. I liked that.

As Hila and I kept moving, I reminded myself that

no, you could not generalize and say that all Taliban

liked to rape young girls, but we could definitively state

that Zahed’s men had taken it upon themselves to estab-

lish a terrible prison for them. The acts were inexcusable

and when I looked at Hila, even for just a second, I

wanted to kill Zahed more than anything. He was, in

my mind, the symbol for all that was wrong with the

country, all that was wrong with the war. And my hatred

burned hotter as she dragged me by the wrist and led me

down the next tunnel.

The emotions were all over the place at that moment.

I felt as though I’d been chasing the fat man all my life,

and soon there’d finally be closure, but then I worried

for Hila and imagined my own death, the gunshot to my

heart, the throbbing pain, the blood seeping into my

lungs.

The passageways grew shorter, each ending abruptly

with another ladder that we took down, always down,

and it was clear we were descending the mountain from

the inside. A lantern lit the passage at each ladder, and

we encountered no resistance. I grew more at ease—

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295

Until at the end of the next passage we spotted a man

coming up a ladder.

Hila fired at him first, the kickback of the pistol star-

tling her. She hit him in the shoulder with the first

round, but the second went over his head and ricocheted

off the wall.

I put two rounds in his chest, and he fell backward

off the ladder. I ran over there, checked below. No other

movement. Thankfully, he’d been alone.

It wasn’t until I started back that I felt the pain in my

arm and stopped, directed a second light down, and saw

that I’d been hit, probably from that ricocheting round.

She saw it, too, and started crying and pointing to

herself, as if to say, It’s my fault.

“It’s okay,” I said. “Just caught me a little. See? In

and out?”

I reached into my back pocket, where I kept a small

plastic bag filled with antiseptic wipes and bandages. I

handed the kit to her. “Fix me up. Quick,” I said.

She nodded and got to work, applying the antiseptic

and the bandage. The wound looked worse than it was, but

it still hurt like a mother. When she was finished, I thanked

her and she grabbed me by the other arm. “This way.”

We climbed down the next ladder and found our-

selves in a concrete drainage pipe that left me hunched

over. The pipe ran straight away for as far as I could see,

and I guessed that it led all the way under the village

wall and into Sangsar proper. I still couldn’t receive any

satellite signals on the Cross-Com, so I just took it off

and shoved it in my hip pocket.

296 GH OS T RE CON

The pipe was littered with rocks and lined with a fine

layer of sand, but there was certainly no water, so although

I’d described it as a drainage pipe, its primary use was

clear: smuggling. There were both boot and tire tracks in

the sand. They’d brought wheelbarrows into the pipe or

other wheeled carts to move their opium back and forth.

I had to get word of this passage back to higher, in

the event I didn’t make it back. I’d thought bombing

the tunnels we’d found would help stop the attacks on

Senjaray, but we’d barely put a dent in Zahed’s clandes-

tine highway. But this pipe, this could be the main

artery, I thought.

We were losing our breath, and as we picked up the

pace and continued on for meter after meter, I repeat-

edly glanced over my shoulder to watch the light drift

away and the darkness consume the rest of the shaft.

“Are we getting closer?” I asked her.

She looked at me. “Close?”

“Zahed is here?” I asked.

“Soon,” she said.

T WENTY-EIGHT

While we had been considering a major offensive against

the Taliban, they had, unsurprisingly, been thinking

about the same thing. And unbeknownst to us, they had

planned to launch their attack only a few hours after I’d

taken my team into the mountains. Call that ironic and

interesting timing.

What gave them pause, however, was our placement

of the Bradleys in the defile and the firing of that flare.

My simple diversion had changed the enemy’s entire

battle plan. We later learned that they thought we’d

been tipped off, and that had sent Zahed into a state of

panic. From what we could gather, he launched a half-

hearted offensive, committing only about half of his