Page 56 of Whisper

Khan rode at the head of his convoy. Dust spewed up from the Shomali, hundreds of tires and men storming across the dead and haunted plains.

Palmer and his team followed in two trucks. The massive convoy of Shura Nazar fighters rode in a single file toward Kabul. Kris rode in the back of Palmer’s truck, beside David, his scarf tied around his face, sunglasses on, trying to keep out the dust.

As they advanced, they came upon the craters of their bombs, large enough to destroy the entire width of the single road to Kabul. To either side, decades’ worth of mines were buried. Nervous drivers inched forward, trying to stick to the remnants of the road as much as possible and avoid certain death.

Mangled corpses littered the Plain, broken and bloody and fallen across torn black flags, half buried in shattered rock and dust. The Plain, so harsh and gray, desiccated and windblown, was wet with blood, the end of the Shomali’s drought.

Kris’s gaze swept the devastation, the death and destruction.

“Stop,” Khan called over the radio in Dari. “Everyone, stop. We must see to the dead.”

“General… These are the Taliban. And al-Qaeda,” Kris radioed back.

“Leave al-Qaeda to rot. They are apostates, and no longer Muslim. But we will bury our Afghan dead. They are still our people.”

Khan’s men dragged the Taliban together, making piles of corpses. They covered them in rocks and stones, the Afghanistan tomb, and whispered prayers over their graves.

When they restarted, there was no resistance on their drive across the Plain.

Khan’s convoy roared up the hills, heading for Kabul.

In hours, they’d be in the capital. Washington had insisted, again, that Khanstop, not advance into the city. That the UN be allowed to fly in and take over. That Khan not get the victory he’d worked for, had struggled for, for decades, working with Massoud and now on his own.

Kris kept his mouth shut and watched the clouds billow behind Khan’s SUV.

Kabul was a city of dust and ghosts, of blue burqas whispering out of sight.

The city sprawled, dusty streets and cobbled-together buildings, mud huts and cinder block rows of houses lined with rusted steel fences topped with barbed wire. Some houses were empty, ransacked, belongings scattered into the streets. Bloodstains drenched the dust on street corners, but there were no bodies. No movement. No people.

Khan’s army stormed into the city, rolling down the streets in their trucks and tanks. The soldiers honked, cheering loudly, their entrance a celebration.

Kris, David, Palmer, and the rest of the team kept their heads on a swivel. The city was silent, far too silent.

Kris watched empty homes pass by, decrepit streets and blocks of stores and buildings that had burned to ash and the skeletal remains of rebar. The city felt heavy, the weight of thousands of unlived lives and decades of sorrow embedded into the foundation, down into the sewers and into the tangled and broken power lines overhead.

General Khan led his army to the steps of the Taliban’s intelligence headquarters, their former seat of power in Kabul and in Afghanistan. Burned papers blew in the wind. Doors banged, opening and closing on broken hinges.

Khan and his senior command staff exited their vehicles, rifles at the ready. Palmer ordered his men to form a security perimeter, but David stayed at Kris’s side, dogging his footsteps as he followed Khan into Taliban headquarters. Kris watched tears fill Khan’s eyes as he strode up the burned and shrapnel-scarred steps.

He’d done it.

“We came to liberate, not to conquer.”

General Khan issued his orders to the Shura Nazar as he instructed them to maintain peace and order in the capital. Checkpoints cropped up throughout Kabul. Hesitant civilians began poking their heads out from behind their gates. Slowly, men began to congregate on street corners, gazing at the Shura Nazar soldiers and the city with wide eyes, like they were seeing something brand-new, something they’d never seen before.

By afternoon, the bazaar was open again, chicken and goat roasting over open fires inside fifty-gallon metal drums, and limp vegetables and bruised fruit were hawked from every other stand. Kids gathered in clusters, hiding whenever the soldiers would try to say hello. Tangerine sunlight twirled with the smoke and haze over the capital and lapped the mountains ringing Kabul.

Kris and Palmer’s team watched everything from the Taliban’s former governmental guesthouse, their old living quarters. They were woefully outnumbered, the only seven Americans in the city.

“Any word from George?” David leaned against the open window opposite Kris, watching Kabul come alive on the street below.

“Not yet.”

George’s last message had been that he was on the move, breaking down in the Panjshir and taking a chopper to Bagram to set up a secondary headquarters closer to Kabul.

Greasy chicken and diesel fuel mixed with rapid Dari and Pashto, the laughter of children, and cheers that rose from groups of men. Women in burqas moved silently through the crowd.

“I thought they’d take the burqa off.” David frowned.