Page 49 of Whisper

Within hours, Ghasi and Fazl taught Ryan, who’d brought in Jim and Phillip, how to make an Afghanistan satellite dish. Flattened beer cans, completely illegal in the country, were bent around Chinese rebar left over from half-finished reconstruction projects into a crude metal saucer. Odds and ends of wires were strung together, loops tied and twisted into a spaghetti array. Phillip managed to get it linked to their power system, creating a power cord from scratch and connecting it to the generator.

Khan arrived just after evening prayers with his staff and a banquet for the team. They ate together, everyone jovial and exuberant at the thought of the war finally beginning in just a few hours. It seemed impossible that it was all coming together.

They all gathered around the satellite and the boxy, static-filled TV after dark on the roof. Khan’s men watched with binoculars to the south. British commentators from the BBC narrated the anxiety-filled darkness, the patch of black that was Afghanistan on the grainy TV, as everyone waited for the first strike.

“It will be the end of the Taliban,” Khan said. “My forces are ready to move at dawn. Afghanistan will be liberated at last.”

The first flash appeared in the sky, a yellow blink that seared the clouds. Another. And another. Cheers rose, and the team clapped and hugged as Khan’s men criedAllahu Akbarto the sky and held each other as they cried tears of joy.

David wrapped an arm around Kris’s shoulders and held on, not letting go. Kris rested his head on David’s shoulder.

No one said a word.

The revelation of Kris’s secret, the sharing of his burden, his anguish, had bridged them together in a way he hadn’t expected. He’d thought David would discard him, drop him like the trash he was, pull back in revulsion. He was a monster, a murderer. No better than the hijackers themselves.

David had held him through every tear, through every “but”, until he’d exhausted himself, was nothing but a bag of bones and snot. When the moon had set, he’d started to whisper, breathing into Kris’s ear. “I felt like this before. When I was a kid. Something happened. And, I knew it was my fault, all of it. I knew it. If I’d been better, if I’d done something different. But I had to convince myself, I wasn’t the one who pulled the trigger.”

He’d stared at the line of David’s jaw, the scruffy beard there.

“I thought the same after Mogadishu. How many died because I wasn’t good enough? Didn’t do my job right? I failed, and those deaths are on me. Right?”

“That’s not true—” Kris had sputtered, between his sniffles.

“Then it’s not true foryou,either. Not in this.”

David had held him until dawn, when the intrusion of the sunlight forced them out of their shared sleeping bag.

Every night since, David had cradled him as they slept.

Kris didn’t know what that meant. He knew what he wanted it to mean. But he was exhausted, run through with the invasion, strained until he was nearly broken. He didn’t have any bandwidth left to wonder about David, about the way David looked at him. About how his face curled into Kris’s neck in the middle of the night, and how their hands found each other’s when their eyes were closed.

Was it comfort? Simply human need, the pull to connect to someone in their upside-down world? God knew he’d read lip-biting stories when he was a high schooler about soldiers seeking illicit comfort in the arms of their brothers. He’d jacked off to fantasies like that when he was a teen. But now that he was living it—

He just couldn’t puzzle through the mystery of David, not while bombs were lighting up Afghanistan and David was holding onto him like he was a shield against the darkness.

“A month after September eleventh. Here we fucking are.” Ryan and George shared their own hug, muttering into each other’s ears as they hugged like they were grappling.

Khan’s radio chirped.

The first reports from the front trickled in, anxiety-filled Dari from the Shura Nazar spotters.

Khan’s disappointment, his frustration, his look of disgust tinged with exhaustion, hit Kris like a punch to the gut. Even George froze.

“Your bombs have hit only their storage depots! Old staging grounds! Empty compounds! Your bombs have hitnothing!” Khan bellowed in his stilted English. Rage silvered Khan’s eyes, made them shine in the night. “After your mapping! Your insistence that you would destroy the Taliban!”

“They were supposed to hit the front line!” George went pale, as white as the moon.

“Nothing on the front has been hit! The Taliban, al-Qaeda, they are rejoicing at your stupidity!”

“General, this is not what we were told. Our bombers were supposed to strike front line targets. Take out everyone in your way.”

“More American duplicity! Lies!” Khan cursed, but the fight seemed to go out of him. He sagged, sighing as he shook his head. “I put my trust in you Americans time and time again. Always, the same outcome. You never keep your word. Never.”

“No, not always. We’re friends.” George scrambled, reaching for Khan’s hand. Khan didn’t accept. He stayed still, a silent statue. “We brought food. The aid drop, it went great. We can bring more. I’ll schedule more food, more supplies for your people. We are friends, General.”

Khan stared him down. “You will do that, and you will destroy the Taliban like you said you would. Or you will leave my country.”

Days later, and the nightly bombing runs from the US fighters were still weak. Taliban radio intercepts laughed uproariously at the pitiful might of the Americans, the unintelligence of the most powerful nation on earth bombing dust-filled, abandoned shacks into oblivion.