Page 55 of Whisper

After three Daisy Cutters, Hajimullah, his horseback fighters, and the CIA team charged. Kris watched from above through his binos. Taliban survivors, stunned by the blast, crawled toward their weapons, bleeding from everywhere—their eyes, their ears, their mouths. Wailing, they tried to fight, firing wildly and without aim at the charging Shura Nazar.

Hajimullah’s men rode them down.

Outside Mazar-e-Sharif, Hajimullah roared over the radio, broadcasting to the Taliban, “I have the Americans!” he shouted. “They brought their death ray! Surrender, or you will die!”

The remaining Taliban fell over themselves to be the first to surrender.

November 10, Hajimullah entered Mazar-e-Sharif on horseback. David followed Kris into the city on horseback, finally used to the cramped, stiff saddle. They watched as Hajimullah marched his fighters to the Blue Mosque, the holiest mosque in Afghanistan and a place of pilgrimage.

“Ali, the Prophet’s cousin, is buried there.” David breathed in slowly, staring wide-eyed at the mosque. “It’s a holy site in Islam.”

“Do you want to go in?”

David flinched, squirming down the left side of his body. “I don’t think I can,” he whispered.

Kris sidestepped his horse until he was alongside David’s. Their horses snorted, nipping at each other’s faces. Afghans flooded past them, following Hajimullah to the mosque, cheering and celebrating. Out of sight, he squeezed David’s hand, laced their fingers together.

Kris’s radio chirped. “Jammer Three, Jammer One. Come in.”

George, calling from headquarters in the Panjshir. The signal was weak, scratchy over a dozen repeaters and mangled towers. “Go ahead Jammer One.”

“Great job with Mazar. General Khan wants you both at the Shomali front, ASAP.”

The Taliban collapsed, from Mazar-e-Sharif to Taloquan and all the towns in between. The Shura Nazar chased them down across the northern front.

Kris and David joined Khan on the Shomali Plain, and the last front line against the Taliban. Finally, they were reunited with Captain Palmer and the rest of David’s Special Forces team as they waited for the bombing to shift to the Shomali. Palmer greeted David with a handshake and a quick, backslapping hug. “Great job, Haddad. You hanging in there?”

“Yes, sir.”

Kris thought having Captain Palmer and the rest of the team back, surrounding David, wouldchangethings. Would change whatever they had fallen into. He expected David to shy away from him, shift his focus, turn to his team and forget whatever he’d made with Kris.

But the first night, David laid Kris’s sleeping bag right next to his in the middle of the team’s dug-in fighting position. As the stars came out, David’s arms wrapped around him and his face tucked into the back of Kris’s neck.

Other members of the team also huddled close together, spooning their sleeping bags in rows to share warmth. Maybe it was just that, just the cold and nothing more. Maybe everything was in Kris’s mind.

He felt the squeeze of David’s arms around his waist.

November 21 dawned a perfect morning, crisp and clear, edged with frost and the scent of snow, but covered by an endless blue sky, so clear Kris thought he could see the curvature of the earth that encapsulated Afghanistan. He and David were up at daybreak, used to the rhythms of the muezzin and morning prayers after being embedded in the Shura Nazar for weeks.

Khan drank tea with Kris, watching over the Shomali. “After Mazar-e-Sharif, after Taloquan, you promised the Shomali Plain would be next. That you would break the lines and I would lead my people into Kabul.”

In the distance, Kabul was a muddy smudge, a blur of brown and smog. “They’re coming, General. The bombers are on their way.”

They watched the fighters and the bombers fly in, streaks of contrails dragging behind triangles of black and grey and brown. They watched the sky ignite, saw the flash of bombs and heard the roar of the eruptions. The earth quaked, and the skies split, jets breaking the sound barrier after they’d dropped their ordnance and bugged out back to their bases and their carriers.

In the silence after the attacks, they could hear the echoing screams of the Taliban and al-Qaeda, burning, suffering, and dying in their foxholes.

As each bomb dropped, Shura Nazar fighters fired their rifles into the sky. Captain Palmer and his men watched the bombs drop through their scopes, confirming targets hit and destroyed and marking each on their maps.

Kris saw the reflection of the bombs, of the destruction, in the shine of David’s eyes. The backs of their hands brushed.

George’s call came midmorning. “Jammer Three, come in.”

“Go, Jammer One. What is it?”

“Kris, we just got word. It’s happening. The Taliban are completely collapsing. They’re evacuating Kabul. We’ve got togo, push hard,now.”

Khan heard every word. Kris hadn’t seen a man look so joyful, so ecstatic, ever in his life. “We move out, now!” He shouted up and down his lines and over the radio. His fighters took over, repeating his orders from foxhole to foxhole. Trucks zipped out from the rear, loaded with machine guns and fighters.