Page 62 of Whisper

David, too, seemed exhausted. Looked exhausted. His eyes were sunken, deep, dark circles lining their orbits. His bags had developed bags, a double-layer paunch of exhaustion that aged him beyond the young thirties he was. Dirt creased in the furrows of his face, the lines of his frown and his cheeks above his beard. He smiled, though, as Kris sipped his coffee. “We built a fire out back and boiled some water. And—” He passed over an energy bar from an MRE. “Breakfast.”

“Mmm, I actually miss the eggs fried in ghee and seared goat.”

“You mean the shoe leather?”

“I thought it was a bit like jerky.”

David laughed. “Remember pancakes? And French toast?”

“Mmm… There’s this diner on the Lower East Side, in my old neighborhood. Made the best pancakes. It was island flavor, a Spanish fusion hole-in-the-wall. The pancakes had a piña colada twist to them. Pineapple and coconut, with guava syrup and sliced mango.”

“That sounds so fucking amazing.” David’s eyes were burning, miniature suns spinning in the blackness of space. “We’ll have to go there when we get back.”

Kris’s smile faltered. “David—”

“Everybody, listen up!” Ryan barked. “Gather around.”

Frustration filled David’s gaze. He held out his hand, helping Kris stand. “Later, we’ll talk,” he said softly.

“We’re moving out.” Ryan crouched in front of a map of Eastern Afghanistan, Jalalabad, and the Pakistan border. “Everyone but Caldera and Jim. We’re moving into the mountains with Shirzai and Majid.” He tapped on a village, high on the side of the tallest mountain. “Milawa, here, above the snow line. That’s where al-Qaeda’s base camp is. We need to get eyes on. Find him there.”

David had gone ripcord taut, his spine straightening, muscles clenching, when Ryan said Kris wasn’t deploying forward.

“Caldera, Jim.” Ryan glared at Kris, then addressed Jim. “You both will maintain Team Bravo base camp. We’ll be able to radio you, but no farther. You’re our link to the outside world. Kabul, CENTCOM, Langley, everything.”

“What about translation? On the mountain, you’re going to need someone who speaks Dari.”

“Majid speaks fluent Russian. He did time in a Siberian gulag for drug smuggling across the border during the Soviet invasion. I’ll provide translation for the forward team. Caldera, you’ll provide translation for the base camp.”

He couldn’t argue with that, much as he wanted to scream and shout and rail at Ryan for leaving him behind. For taking David into the mountains. Separating them.

They hadn’t been separated at all in this war. Not once. Every mission, every moment, they’d been together. The longest they’d gone apart was seven and a half hours in Kabul. And now David was going into Tora Bora, into the den of al-Qaeda, to hunt Bin Laden… alone.

It wasn’t like Kris was David’s vanguard of personal security and safety. David’s entire team was with him, and Kris wasn’t a Special Forces soldier. Ryan was. He knew how to move, how to fight. Kris was a graduate of The Farm at Langley, and he could field strip an AK-47 and put it back together in under a minute, but he was no James Bond.

But… the thought of being away from David’s side, especially now, at this moment, at this juncture, when everything they’d all planned for, worked for, had struggled and sacrificed for, was lining up like a constellation before them all…

He didn’t want to be apart from David. Not in the quiet mornings, sharing terrible coffee, and not in the heat of combat, the electric chaos of battle. What did that say about him?

God, he’d gone and done it. He’d fallen for a teammate.

What was David going to say to him before Ryan interrupted?

“Caldera? When is Shirzai due to arrive?”

Kris shook his head, scattering thoughts of David as far into the corners of his mind as he could. “He said he’ll come down from the village after morning prayers.”

“He’ll be here soon, then.” Ryan stood, folding the map. “Everyone, get ready to move out. Once we go up the mountain, we’re not coming down until we have Bin Laden’s body.” He nodded to Palmer. “Captain, would you like to address your men?”

Palmer stepped up, reminding his team to check and recheck their gear, and then do a complete weapons and ammo inventory. Kris watched as David’s expression hardened, turned to stone.

After, he had to coordinate with Ryan and Jim on radio frequencies and secured channels and mandatory report-in times. By the time they were finished, Shirzai and Majid were rumbling down the track, dust rising behind their trucks in a thick cloud.

Kris searched for David as his teammates repacked their gear and loaded their ammo into their combat vests, snapped their helmets into place, and fixed their radios and throat mics. They’d painted their faces with lines of dark camo paint and had transformed from the men Kris had joked around with, had laughed with, to fierce hunters.

He spotted David slipping out back to the rocks behind their base camp.

He followed.