Page 4 of What Remains (John Worthy #3)

An hour later, the sun was up and revealed an eerie landscape: a vast expanse of semi-arid flatland edged with high, largely barren peaks.

The colors were a monotonous study of browns and reds.

The area must once have been farmland, John thought, if the occasional cluster of tumbledown structures and long troughs of defunct irrigation canals were any indication.

“Where are we?” he asked.

“Central Hindu Kush, north of Kabul. This is practically the only area in the whole country where the Taliban aren’t in control, but that’s mostly because no one lives here.”

“Why is that?”

“Look around you, man. There aren’t any rivers or even tributaries worth talking about in this area.

They once had aqueducts, though, until the Russians took them out way back in the eighties.

The aqueducts in this region were fed from the runoff of that big monster of a mountain to the right.

” Flowers pointed. “ That’s Kohe Koran.”

He studied the mountain a moment, trying place why it look so different from others he’d seen. Then, as his eyes picked out specks of green topped by smears of white. “Why is there vegetation there and not anywhere else?”

“Ah.” Flowers held up a finger. “Excellent question, Grasshopper. What you’re looking at is wild licorice.”

“Where’s the water coming from?”

“Think about it a second. Just because the water supply to the villages got smashed, that doesn’t translate into no water at all.

There’s a small spring there, a pool that stays filled most of the time.

We figure the spring’s fed by the alternative track the water took after the aqueduct was destroyed. ”

“So why didn’t people stay?”

“I don’t know, but I might leave if I’d been a target.”

“But if there’s plenty of water, are you saying they couldn’t rebuild or re-configure the aqueduct to bring the water to them?”

“Guess not. But their loss is our gain.” Squinting through the windscreen, Flowers grinned. “You want to see something interesting, I got a pair of binos in the glove box there. Grab ‘em and glass the base of the foothills.”

Popping the compartment, John rummaged through a couple MREs, a box of bullets, packets of chewing gum. Flowers’s binoculars had slid to the back and as he reached for them, he spotted a flash of orange plastic, which he fished out. “You carry a flare gun?”

“Sure. Never know when you need to signal someone. All the paratroopers carry ‘em. Radios get busted, you know, and sat phones…You ever see the movie they made of that book, the one about the guy whose team gets wiped out? Starred the guy with the hamburgers.”

Hamburgers? “You mean, Mark Wahlberg? Lone Survivor ?”

“That’s it. Remember the scene where that guy trying to vector in the choppers has to get out in the open, so the phone connects? And then he gets shot? That’s what I mean. If he’d had a flare, he coulda just fired it off. Sometimes the best tech is the lowest.”

“You ever use this thing?”

“Naw, man, don’t you see, that’s why you pack it. It’s like an umbrella.”

“It never rains when you carry one.”

“And only rains when you don’t, that’s right. That flare gun is like an umbrella. I’ve never had to use it.” Flowers flashed a grin. “I re-load and switch out that cartridge every three years. Keep a couple spares. So far, though, knock on wood.”

“If you say so.” Slotting the flare gun back into the glove box, he pulled out Flowers’s binoculars. “Where should I look?”

“To the right. Glass those foothills over there, at the base where the shrubs and that spring are. You watch, you’ll see movement.”

Squinting through the binoculars, John spotted something long and brown loping along the near flank of a solitary crag. He adjusted the focus, and the figure of a wolf coalesced and sharpened. “Wow. I didn’t know they even had wolves here. How did you see them? I can barely make them out.”

“I know where to look? They’re like clockwork. Plus, when they start moving, they stand out against the green. Same pack runs heads east toward the spring every morning. They’ll go back out to the west again at night.”

“There’s game?”

“Enough, I guess. Rodents, marmots, stuff like that.”

He watched as five more wolves emerged. The largest trotted up and nosed the lead as the remaining four rubbed and exchanged playful nips. “Looks like a family.”

“More than likely. Mom and Pop out with the kids for a little stroll. Everyone talks about the alpha male? That’s a buncha hooey. Most packs are held together by the dominant female .”

“They’re really quite beautiful.”

“ I know. What’s weird is how much people here hate them.

Think they’re evil and unclean. Except, get this.

Wolves are also supposed to be protectors.

There’s this old myth. Might just be Iraqi, but what I heard is people believe that it’s good luck to have a wolf hanging out at your door.

That way, come night, it can see the fingers of evil jinn coming up out of the ground from their version of hell. ”

“That’s pretty wild.”

“Isn’t it? Anyway, that wolf will eat the jinn’s fingers and the family’s safe for one more night. And yet they treat wolves and dogs like they’re scum. That always burns me up. Like, who would kick a dog? Where my family’s from, dogs and wolves…they’re like a man’s brothers.”

“Where’s that?”

“Michigan. The Upper Peninsula. We lived on Superior. Couple kids in my class were Ojibwe.”

“Yeah?” His heart did a queer little flip, and he couldn’t help the alarm bell that suddenly clanged at the back of his brain. Michigan was next door to Wisconsin where he had been sent to start a new life as John Worthy. “Me, too,” he said. “Small world, man.”

“Isn’t it?” Flowers agreed. “Anyway, we used to hang out. They were just, like, you know… kids. They didn’t live on a rez or anything, though. They said they were city Indians. You know any kids like that in school?”

“A couple.” He needed to steer Flowers away from talk about his history. “So, what’d you use to be? Before the Marines?”

“You fishing for information, Doc?”

“Yeah, maybe. To borrow a couple lines, who are you really, and what were you before? What did you do, and what did you think, huh?”

“Ah.” Flowers grinned. “Channeling Humphrey Bogart.”

He was impressed. “You know your movies.”

“Are you kidding? Casablanca is a classic. My grandparents used to watch it. Now that was one beautiful film, and a complete accident. No one really knew what they had until the thing opened and then everyone went Casablanca-crazy…oh, oh.” Flowers suddenly straightened out of his relaxed slouch.

“Shoot, now see you got me talking, gonna miss my turn, hang on.”

Flowers hooked a right. The turn took them from the packed earth that was the road and onto rougher ground. As the Humvee crunched over rocks and mounted a rise, John spotted two distant dust plumes. “There are our people,” he said.

“Yup. Toward that defunct village down there.”

“I see it.” An array of blocky structures were snugged at the base of a soaring, largely barren peak.

Other than the few green patches of the foothills, everything was brown or yellow or red: barren rock and patches of gnarly scrub clinging to thin soil.

Squinting into the sky above the peak, John spotted large birds circling on an updraft. “Vultures?”

“No, probably steepe eagles. Beautiful birds. They tend to hang where there are people.”

“Why is that?”

“Because where you got people, you got water and livestock. Baby goats, baby lambs make for easy pickings. Mice, too. Green stuff’s mostly wild almond and a variety of pistachio tree, but again, they’re kinda starved for water.

You look down at the buildings there, well…

what’s left of them, and you’ll see the old riverbed. ”

The riverbed was an undulating, deep furrow which meandered between the near edge of the buildings and wide, regular swaths of nearly level brown earth.

He noticed, too, that instead of heading for the village, the other Humvees in their convoy had veered off toward a large, oval depression in the earth.

“What is that?” he asked. “Is that a crater?”

“No, old collection lake. All aqueduct systems in this area had them.” Flowers pointed their vehicle down a steep slope. “Hold on. Gets rough from here on out.”

That was an understatement. As they bounced and jounced along, he shouted over the ping and pong of stones striking the undercarriage, “D-d-dried up n-now, t-t-too?”

“Pre-he-he-he-ty much!” Flowers had the wheel in a death grip, his knuckles tenting his skin white. “You get a little bit down at the very b-bottom in sp-spring.”

“An-and the r-r-rest…” he began then stopped as the Humvee caromed onto level ground and the bouncing ceased. “The rest of the system? It’s still here?”

“The karez?” The other vehicles had thrown up so much dust and red grit, Flowers was hunched over the wheel and squinting.

“Yeah, we figure that original system tapped into a massive underground reservoir. We’re talking hundreds of millions of gallons.

Like having the Mississippi flowing next to your window.

Break the glass and you’d be in trouble. ”

“Where’s all that water going?”

“Right now, back underground. Some has made its way to the surface, though.”

“Like the spring where the wolves are.”

“Exactly. In fact, it’s practically around the corner.

When you’re in the access tunnel, you can hear water through the wall.

A lot of water gushing through there. We figure the same missile strike that destroyed the original aqueduct weakened the rock right next to this tunnel.

Because, you know, you drill into stone, adjacent rock cracks and gets weaker. ”

“Sounds like a flood waiting to happen.”

“Only if there’s a missile strike. But this area’s not active and we stay off comms, so no one’s the wiser.

In fact, the water’s why it’s such a nice hiding place.

Stays pretty cool inside even when it’s hot enough to fry an egg on a stone.

Anyway,” Flowers said as he swung them around the dead lake, “remember what I said. Not a word about what I told you about our lieutenant or Shahida or anything, man.”

“Cross my heart.” John drew an X over his left chest. He left out the hope to die part.

No point tempting fate.