Page 65 of Whisper

They could see it, when it hit. The bombs fell like cars, like rotund VW Bugs, screaming from the sky and slamming into the camp. The mountains had been peaceful, serene, almost beguiling in their lassitude, if David didn’t think too much about how they crawled with men who wanted to murder every American on the planet. When the bombs fell, the air split, cracking like the earth’s crust had broken in half. Huge walls of dirt leaped into the sky. Buildings blasted apart, trees shredded into toothpicks. Mangled trucks and tanks flew in every direction. Even where they were, high above the camp, David and Jackson ducked down, taking cover.

“Fuck yeah,” Jackson cheered, rising up to watch the chaos below. Dozens of al-Qaeda soldiers had been blown apart and killed, parts of their camp destroyed, and the survivors moved in a daze. Some tried to help their fallen, their wounded. Others ran for cover. Leaders emerged, trying to rally their fighters to defend up and down the slopes around their camp. Fighters still alive in the lookout posts wildly fired down the mountain and into the air.

Blood spread through the snow in Milawa, pools of it. Screams rose, cries in Arabic, shouts and prayers and screams of fear and rage and anguish.

“Haddad, translation.”

Swallowing, David started translating the agonizing last words of their enemy.

They called in air strikes for almost sixty hours straight, obliterating the Milawa camp and the valley. Ryan kept them going, calling in air strikes every two hours until the valley wasgone, wiped from the earth. They didn’t sleep until daytime on the third day, while Shirzai and Majid kept watch.

Broken bodies, blood-drenched snow, and upturned mountain lay scattered for miles. Craters dozens of feet deep swallowed all light, holes that seemed to reach for the center of the mountain.

By the third day, it was obvious.

“There’s nothing alive down there,” David radioed.

“Think we got them all?”

“No. We saw fighters escaping into the mountains. At night, between the strikes, they could have moved hundreds of fighters without our knowledge. OBL probably moved out that first night.”

“Which direction did they all head?”

“East. Toward Pakistan.”

Shirzai and Majid sent small teams of scouts forward while everyone recombined in the remains of the Milawa al-Qaeda camp. They clambered in and out of craters, pulling out debris, checking bodies.

David went with Ryan, picking through the burned and shattered remnants of the warehouse, the training facility and barracks at the end of the camp. Military manuals on how to build bombs and IEDs. Close-quarters urban combat. Infantry tactics, weapons, evasion, and counter-interrogation tactics. Chemistry textbooks, including formulas for chemical weapons and poisons.

“Jesus,” Ryan breathed. “This is a Goddamn professional training system. They could have churned out thousands of fighters, all educated in how to fucking kill us.” He threw one of the manuals, hurling it into a patch of bloody snow.

David flipped through page after page of chemical formulas. The recipe for anthrax sat in his hands.

Printed fatwas blew on the ground. He grabbed one, read it. His eyes ground over an Arabic word,takfiri, over and over again.Takfiri, takfiri, takfiri.

Apostate.

His stomach squeezed, like a black hole had opened inside him and was sucking him away, belly button first.

Bin Laden’s body was not in the remains of Milawa’s camp.

It took three days, but the scouts found al-Qaeda’s deepest mountain hideout, stretching across three peaks.

Ryan and Kris got on the radio with George in Kabul, poring over the maps they each had, trying to triangulate Bin Laden’s specific position, and his next move.

“He’s going to try for the tribal belt in Pakistan. It’s as lawless as any place on the planet. He can disappear there.” Kris’s voice made David’s bones ache.

“How do we stop him from getting there?” Ryan, covered in dirt and buried in the mountain, relied on Kris and George to guide them all.

“We have to plug the passes. Pakistan says they’re staging thousands of soldiers in the mountains, blocking the routes from Afghanistan, but we’re not seeing it on the satellites. Langley says the back door to Pakistan is still open.” George sounded dog-tired, like he hadn’t slept in days.

“What about CENTCOM? Can’t they deploy Rangers into the mountains? Behind al-Qaeda?” Kris asked.

“I’ve got the request in. The military is running the show now. CENTCOM has been silent so far. I’ll push harder.”

“We can’t let him get away, George.” Ryan’s voice shook. David saw his knuckles go white around the radio, saw his arm tremble. “Wecan’tlose Bin Laden.”

Kris smiled down at David, sunlight wreathing his spiked hair, crinkles framing the pinch of his eyes. They were warm, basking in sunlight and lying in a field of green grass. Green, everywhere he looked, lush with life. The air was thick with humidity, a weight that filled every space between them, the inches between their lips and eyes and smiles. He was going to kiss Kris,finally, and Kris was happy. Smiling, laughing, deliriously happy that they were there, together, and David was about to kiss him. There wasn’t a shadow anywhere. Not a question or a doubt. He felt certainty like it was solid thing, an organ in his body that had been lost sometime, somewhere, but was back where it belonged, now.