Page 64 of Whisper

“Good luck!” Kris called as the trucks pulled out, skittering on rocks and shale. Jim ducked back inside, but Kris watched the trucks slide along the track and climb the rough trail up the mountain until he couldn’t see their dust cloud any longer.

Chapter 11

Tora Bora, Afghanistan

November 26, 2001

“Just over those rocks. Point the laser down, right on top of them.”

Ryan’s voice whispered into David’s earpiece as he crawled on his belly up the ice-crusted stone of Tora Bora’s tallest peak. He breathed hard through his mouth, trying to suck up all the oxygen in the air. At almost twelve thousand feet, the air was thin and frigidly cold. His nose ran constantly. His lips were cracked, bleeding.

It had taken four days to climb to the al-Qaeda camp at Milawa. Shirzai, Majid, and their rabble of fighters had led them up the shale slopes, through farms that seemed trapped in the Middle Ages, primitive villages and communities that hadn’t seen a foreigner ever. David and his team might as well have been aliens. The Afghan farmers stared at them like they weren’t even human.

Up they’d climbed, farther and farther, passing through the snow line and into shin-deep drifts, at times plunging down to their thighs. Scraggly trees stretched for the sky, and frost clung to the boulders, tree trunks, even their packs and their clothes.

Earlier that morning, Shirzai had led them to an overlook above a valley, beside a mountain peak that cast long shadows over the hills and the farms. They’d been climbing into the peak’s dark hollows for days.

Majid had pointed to a military camp, built into the side of the mountain and covered in snowdrifts. Mudbrick buildings lay scattered along the ridgelines. Flat spaces around the homes looked like fields for crops, now covered in snow. An unused obstacle course squatted between three structures that looked like warehouses or barracks. Lookout posts and gun turrets were manned by guards watching over the valley.

“They do not look up,” Majid had said, smiling. “Only down. This is why we came this way.”

Ryan had barely been able to contain himself. “This is Milawa?” he’d asked. Everyone had seen the shine of his eyes, the bloodthirsty gleam.

“Da,” Majid had said. “Milawa. Al-Qaeda’s base camp in Tora Bora.”

Ryan and Palmer had dispatched them all to observation points above the camp, ringing the mountain’s peak. Cover was sparse, just snow and rocks and scraggly trees. They’d moved slowly, hauling the laser-guided targeting system as carefully as they could.

To call in air strikes, they needed laser-targeted coordinates to feed to their fighter pilots. The jets’ bombs would ride the laser down, a perfect strike.

But in order to paint their targets, they needed to beclose. Especially in the mountains.

David and his partner, Jackson, slid to the boulders perched at the top of a rise overlooking the Milawa camp. They ditched their packs and crouched, peering over the rocks. “We’ve got eyes on,” David radioed back to Ryan. He listened to the other two teams—Warrick and Cobb, Rodriquez and Palmer—ringing the camp report in. He couldn’t see them, but he knew they were there.

“Establishing communication with Bravo Base Camp,” Ryan said. “Time to light them up.”

The radio scratched, signal struggling to bounce back through the mountains to the crumbling shack where Kris and Jim were working. Majid had told Ryan it had once been a school for girls; the Taliban had destroyed it years ago.

And then Kris’s voice crackled across the line. “Team Bravo Forward, come in.”

David hissed. Kris’s voice, a physical ache, like his insides had been scooped out raw. He closed his eyes, holding his breath.Kris…What was happening at base camp? Was Kris safe? He could hold his own, but he and Jim were alone in the dangerous reaches of Afghanistan with nothing and no one around.

He wanted to be there, with Kris. And not just to protect him. He wanted to be at Kris’s side, through every moment. Kris seemed to have a part of him, like a kidney or a lung or his right hand, and David hadn’t even known he’d been missing something integral until he’d met the slender, shivering man with the spiky hair on the runway in Tashkent.

“Bravo Base, we have lasers painted on the al-Qaeda base at Milawa. We are ready for air strikes.” Ryan called out the coordinates, and Jackson turned the laser on, lighting up the center of the al-Qaeda camp.

“Bravo Forward, acknowledge. Will get online with CENTCOM and theater air support. Standby.”

Dead air filled the radio, whistles and pops and crackles. David clung to Kris’s last words, the sound of his voice.

“Bravo Forward, bombers on station in twenty minutes. Hold your position. I will patch the pilots through to you when they’re in range.”

Seventeen minutes later, the adrenaline-infused voice of the bomber pilot broke over the radio, calling out his vector and time to drop.

“So, Bin Laden is here?” the pilot asked.

“We believe so,” Ryan answered.

“For New York,” the pilot said. “Bombs away.”