Page 22 of What Remains (John Worthy #3)

The next two hours and fifty minutes were spectacularly uneventful.

In fact, now that the present urgency was past, a deepening torpor crept through his body.

The feeling was similar to the letdown after a code or trauma case.

A body could only be on high alert for so long.

So, he shifted a lot in his seat, widened his eyes, wished the Humvee had a radio.

Wished Kazim spoke better English or seemed more inclined to conversation.

Which the boy didn’t and wasn’t. Every time he flicked a look, the kid was making like a Marine: alert, head on a swivel, the whole nine yards, except for those brief moments when their gazes locked and the boy gave a sharp nod, as if to say on it, boss .

Which was probably fine. After all, the kid wasn’t going to see him after this evening and there wasn’t a single conversational gambit which came to mind that was safe.

He couldn’t even joke around: Say, how about those Yankees?

Nothing for it, but to stay awake. But, man, I’d settle for a couple Red Bulls. Now he understood why Flowers had needed all that caffeine. Better jacked than bone-weary. Should’ve grabbed a thermos of coffee. Or something. The Humvee didn’t have even a radio for distraction.

He was feeling a letdown, that was all, and wasn’t that normal?

After all, everything was pretty downhill after this.

Their biggest hurdle would be getting past the Panjir Pump and into the base, but he thought that given the lack of problems leaving , slipping back with a passel of kids ought to be a cakewalk.

Seriously, look, how quickly and efficiently Mac had gotten Drummond to the rendezvous.

A guy like Mac would never leave anything to chance.

Drummond, he sensed, would also make sure their way back in was smoothed.

The guy would pass on the message that they were all due in at such and such a time and then that would make it to Mac’s command.

Ah, but that did raise an interesting thought. Did Mac have a command? He must. Yeah, Mac was CIA. Unless he was a very special type of CIA?—

“John!”

“What?” More of an automatic exclamation than a true question.

He was so startled, his heart catapulted into the back of his throat and his arms gave a convulsive jerk, sending the Humvee into a swerve.

In the next instant, he felt then heard the tires go from a relatively smooth surface to the jolt and grumble of rock and hardpack.

Swearing, he brought the vehicle back onto the road, eased up on the gas then braked.

“What?” Rounding on the boy, he inserted a hint of steel. “What the hell ?—”

“Look!” Leaning forward, Kazim jabbed a finger to the right. “There!”

“What?” The huge orange ball of the setting sun hung off his left shoulder. Scanning the flatland to his right, he recognized the ruins of the village amidst dried-up irrigation ditches, all splashed the color of dried blood. “Where? I don’t see anything that doesn’t belong?—”

The boy cut him off. “Not there . Other way, look, here, here ! On Kohe Koran!”

He recognized the name of the mountain Flowers had pointed out that morning.

Squinting, he ran his gaze along the base and up-slope but saw nothing but folds and ridges and scrub.

“I don’t understand,” he said, perplexed, fighting a new wave of exhaustion as the adrenaline spike of apprehension and surprise faded. “What am I supposed to be seeing?”

“You don’t see ?” The boy sounded incredulous. “You don’t see wolves ?”

Wolves? Right, hadn’t Flowers spotted a whole pack? The man had known what to look for; John didn’t and then Flowers said…

Oh, for pity’s sake. Reaching past the boy, he popped the glove box, pawed past the flare gun and spare cartridges, and dragged out the binos he’d used that morning.

“Okay, okay, hold your horses,” he said, feathering the focus.

As the view shifted from fuzz to sharp clarity, he counted six lanky forms trotting west, toward the setting sun.

That tallied with what Flowers had said about the pack.

“Okay, I see them.” He lowered the binos. “So what?”

“They run away .”

Run away? “I don’t understand.”

“They go wrong way. You no see that?”

“Well, yeah, I see them, but…”

The boy cut him off. “They going back home . Why they do? Wolf come out night. Need eat. But they run back .”

“I—” he started then stopped. My God. Now that the boy had spelled it out, he realized Kazim was right. “You’re saying they’re running from something.”

“Yes, yes.” Although Kazim was anything but relieved. “Something make them run.”

Or someone. “Oh, no,” he said.

“Yes,” Kazim said. “Bad men coming.”

He thought Kazim was right. Worse, whoever was headed for the others was coming from a direction where they wouldn’t be seen.

The cave entrance looked south and southwest. Unless Mac had posted someone out in the open to keep an eye on their blind side, they wouldn’t know anyone was coming until it was too late.

If someone’s coming, I have to warn the others. But he also needed to know what he was warning them against. Not only that, I have to figure out how. Because their radios would be off. Mac had been clear about that. So, how?

First things first. “Listen, I have to get us atop this next rise to see into the valley and east of the aqueduct. If something is coming, they need an idea of what that is.”

“Bad men.” The boy’s knuckles whitened as Kazim tightened his grip on his Kalashnikov. “Bad men come take us away. Come kill Shahida.”

God, I hope you’re wrong. He also hoped no one would see them just yet. Getting them atop the next rise meant they’d be silhouetted against the sky. There would likely be sun dazzle caused by light bouncing off the Humvee.

They also had another problem. Driver would undoubtedly have one of his men watching for their return. For all John knew, everyone was clustered at the entrance. So, they’d see the Humvee stop. Would they reach the wrong conclusion? Think that they were the enemy?

Can’t just sit here. Besides, time was running out. They needed to load the boys into their vehicles and beat feet.

Dropping the Humvee into gear, he slowly rolled the vehicle to the top of the next rise.

Once there, he stopped again and released a held breath.

So far, so good. He spotted tire tracks to the right where they had all turned off the main road earlier than day.

Raising the binos, he glassed the valley floor.

The entrance to the defunct aqueduct jumped into focus and he saw now not two, but three boxy vehicles nosed toward the entrance.

So, Shahida’s back. That was good news. There was movement at the entrance as a man stepped into the open.

A split second later, he was joined by another tall, slimmer person.

Driver and Mac. He was too far away to make out actual facial features; although he could tell from their posture that they were looking at one another.

Driver seemed to arguing. Neither had looked in their direction.

“You see?” Kazim prompted. “Bad men?”

“No.” Another thought occurred to him then. If they did spot the Humvee, Driver and Mac might assume that they were hostiles. Otherwise, why wouldn’t their vehicle simply keep coming? Even as he thought this, he spotted both blobs turn his way and then one rush back into the cavern.

Crap. He had no idea what kind of weapons Driver had stashed back there.

With his luck, they’d lob an RPG or something.

But wouldn’t they check first? Maybe that’s what Driver was doing: running back for binos.

If he was, then Driver would have a bead on him .

He might be able to use that to his advantage to warn them.

If there’s even something to warn them about .

“You see?” Kazim said again. “You see the men coming?”

“I’m looking, I’m looking.” Got to make this quick.

Aiming the binoculars northwest toward the cavern’s blind side, he squinted against glare bouncing off the mountain.

For several agonizing seconds, he saw absolutely nothing.

The wolves had vanished. Nothing else stirred, not even the hint of a breeze.

Forcing himself to move slowly so as not to miss anything was agony, but he did so, trailing his gaze over scrub and rocks, brown scree and rubble, the deep folds carved from the mountain by centuries of runoff and wind, and then the startling swaths of green which marked the spring.

A few white stalks of some plant swayed in the breeze.

Had he seen those this morning? He couldn’t recall, but someone back at the airport once had pointed those out amongst the grasses and plants lining the perimeter of the airport.

That soldier said they were…was that it? Wild licorice, that was it.

Wait a minute . He’d just seen something that set off a small ping of alarm.

What was it? He glassed the same area on the blind side again, though more slowly, as he dredged up what he’d seen in the same area that morning.

Burnt rock and khaki scrub and sun-bleached scree, the emerald-green of that literal oasis in the middle of all this desert.

All that was the same. What was not the same were?—

Those patches of white. Plants which he thought were flowering licorice. They had not been there this morning. Even if they had been and were now only being stirred by a breeze, nothing else was moving. But these plants were.

Because they had legs.