Page 36 of Whisper

Khan let go of Kris’s hand and stood. “Let us begin this survey. The sooner we get it done, the sooner you begin dropping your bombs.”

Khan led them to a convoy of trucks in the courtyard and guided Kris and Haddad to the back of his truck, giving the signal to move out. As they drove, Haddad started taking photographs, snapping pictures of the fortifications on the hills, dug into the mountains above, and across the dreary plains toward Kabul.

“Our front lines are not what you imagined, yes?” Khan twisted around in the front seat. For Haddad, he spoke in his heavily accented English. “It never is, for you. From the West. Journalists, they come sometimes. They are disappointed. We are no savages, guerilla fighters around campfires, shivering as we starve.” Khan laughed.

On their right, the hills bled upward into the northern mountains. Khan’s soldiers had fortified positions running up the slopes, embedded fighting positions, machine gun placements, and antiaircraft positions. Bunkers ran along the ridgeline. “We own the high ground here. The hills, the mountains. We have built bunkers in place and have solid firing positions for miles across the Plain. Our lines run down into the Shomali, across Bagram Airfield.”

“With the high ground, you can see all of the Taliban movements in the Shomali?” Kris asked as Haddad took more photos.

“Everything they do, we see. We have tanks and artillery. To keep them in place. If they break out of the Shomali and try to cross our lines—” Khan grinned. “They will be destroyed.”

“You’re organized, you’re armed, you have the high ground. Why do you not attack?”

Khan sighed. The truck bounced and swerved, weaving and climbing along the hillside. He slipped back to Dari. “We hold them in place. But they hold us in place as well. I do not have the men or the arms to mount an attack. I only have the strength to repel their attacks and hold the Taliban out of the Panjshir.” Khan nodded to Kris. “This is where you come in. Why we have invited the Americans to help us.”

“We have a common enemy, General.”

“The people of Afghanistan have been enemies of the Taliban for years,agha Gul Bahar. But now the Taliban are your enemy, too. The Taliban killed thousands of Afghans for years before they killed your Americans.”

Kris kept his mouth shut. The taste of ash filled his mouth, acrid smoke that seemed to fill his soul. He closed his eyes, rocking sideways as the truck slipped past a boulder in the road.

They pulled to a stop at the base of a winding hillside track. “We go up.” Khan pointed to the steep, narrow track zigzagging past boulders and through low scrub. They’d continue on foot to the crest of the ridge overlooking the Shomali. “The front is there. We will follow the front and plot your maps. Come!”

Kris struggled to keep up with Khan. He slid out on the loose dirt, the rocky soil, falling to his hands to steady himself. They were climbing a mountain, but the base was already at almost ten thousand feet of elevation. He felt like he was sprinting up the Rocky Mountains. Each breath seemed thin, as though there wasn’t enough air left in the world for him to survive.

Haddad followed behind, carrying their pack. Kris heard his grunts, his labored breaths, his soft curses under his wheezes. He wanted to offer to share the load, carry the pack for half of the climb. If he did, he’d die, though. He would tip over backward and slide to the bottom of the hills or collapse like a tin can under the weight of the pack. He wanted to do more, be more, especially for Haddad. But it was all he could do to cling to the dirt and keep climbing, following behind General Khan, who roared up the mountain like it was his morning walk.

It probably was.

Finally, they arrived at the top. Khan politely waited, looking away as Haddad pulled out his canteen. He offered it to Kris first. Kris refused, and Haddad downed half the bottle as Kris hovered beside him, breathing hard with his hands on his hips. Haddad passed over the canteen and wiped his face, dripping with sweat.

“You okay?” Kris muttered, after drinking. “That was…”

“Awful.” Haddad chuckled. “That was terrible.” He spat in the dirt, rolled his shoulders. “But I’m good.”

“You shouldn’t have repacked everything. You shouldn’t have had to carry everything up by yourself. I can carry my own weight.”

Haddad’s gaze pierced him, again seeming to look right through him. “I know you can. I didn’t do this because I thought you were weak. I wanted the General to see you right. To treat you the right way.”

“What way is that?”

“As the leader. The man in charge, and the expert. I’m just your muscle here.”

“Sergeant—”

“No rank. Not here, not now.”

Khan called out, “Are you ready to carry on?”

Haddad raised his eyebrows, waiting for Kris.

“Yes, General.” Kris turned away from Haddad and joined Khan. From above, the Shomali was a blurry mess of brown, all the shades of brown Kris had ever seen, from oily tar to dusty, smog-filled air choking the distance. Kabul was a smudge, a rub of dirt on the horizon, surrounded by fallow, empty farmland and desert. Dirty snow rose on the Hindu Kush to the east.

“This is the eastern end of my front lines.” Khan spoke in English and waved over the ridgeline, the Shomali Plain below. “We will follow the front to the west. You will see our positions and those of the Taliban. You can see them now, in fact.”

“Can they see us?”

He waved his hand in the air, a vague,kinda-sortagesture. “They like to shoot off rounds of artillery if they think strange things happening. They are sometimes lucky.”