Mike Maden - River of Gods

They parked the truck in a stand of trees off the road when they saw the first power lines. Pearce knew they would lead to a place requiring electricity. But it took them another two hours of walking until they came to a collection of walled houses, shops, and even a gas station. Cella covered her entire head and face with her knit scarf. She’d also had enough sense to grab a heavy woolen shawl back at the clinic and wrapped it around her shoulders and torso to hide her figure, hunching over a little as she walked to try to conceal her height. The place was a little larger than a village, but hardly a town, let alone a city. One of the shops advertised telephone services in both Pashto and English, so they made their way there.

They entered the shop without incident, and Cella asked for the telephone service since her Pashto was far better than Pearce’s. But the man behind the counter smiled beneath a pair of thick lenses and a bad comb-over and replied in faultless English that they were more than welcome to use the phone so long as they could pay. Pearce got the sense from the proprietor that he was sympathetic to Westerners, so he offered him a stashed one-ounce gold coin for both the phone service and his silence. The man’s smile only got bigger, and he swore secrecy.

Pearce reached a senior CIA field agent in Peshawar, a base of U.S. undercover operations since the days of the Soviet occupation of Afghanistan.

“Can you sit tight where you are for two hours?” the agent asked.

Pearce asked the proprietor if he could accommodate them with a flash of two more gold coins and the keys to their abandoned truck. The shopkeeper nodded violently.

“Yeah, no problem. But don’t drag your feet, either.”

An hour and forty-five minutes later, Pearce and Cella were in an armored Chevy Suburban heading back to Peshawar. When they reached the CIA station, Cella was met by an Italian diplomat who choppered in from Islamabad as soon as her embassy had learned that a Paolini was in need of assistance. Before she left, Pearce asked for a private moment with Cella.

“I’m sorry about everything that happened. I feel responsible somehow.”

“It’s this stupid war. It’s crazy. It will kill you before it’s all over. You should leave. Come with me. Now.”

“Don’t tempt me. I’m probably due for a firing squad as it is.”

“You already have an Italian passport with your name on it. You’re my husband, remember?” She tried to charm him with a smile.

“If I can ever make it up to you—”

“You can. Stay alive. And come find me when this is all over.”

“It’s a deal.”

“And thank you for saving my life.” She threw her arms around his neck and hugged him tight, then leaned back and kissed him lightly on the mouth.

And with that, she left.

Pearce spent the next two days in Peshawar recovering from dehydration and fatigue before he was debriefed and reprimanded, first by the local station’s senior supervisor and then by his unit commander back in Kabul, who ordered him to report back immediately.

Pearce caught the next available Air Force transport flight from Peshawar to Kabul, where he submitted to another two hours of debriefing and another sharp reprimand before a brand-new bottle of Maker’s Mark was cracked open and the two men drank until midnight. Pearce stumbled out of the door with a thirty-day pass in his hip pocket and two big ideas in his head.

Pearce chased down the first big idea the next night, making his way to FOB Salerno in Khost, Afghanistan. He broke into the compound, searching for the private quarters of Colonel J. Armstrong, the unit commander of the airborne outfit responsible for the massacre of Daud’s village.

Pearce’s heavy boot smashed open the bathroom door, where he found the bull-necked officer on his commode with his BDUs around his ankles, savoring a Marlboro while relieving himself. Before the startled officer could react, Pearce shoved the colonel’s own vintage Colt M1911 .45 pistol against his forehead, widening the older man’s eyes with shock.

“Are you out of your mind, soldier?”

“There was a village on the map called Dogar until just a couple of days ago, when your unit burned it to the ground and killed about a hundred friends of mine. I’m going to kill you for that.”

“Then why are we talking?”

“Because I’m going to give you a choice. Tell me how much Khalid was paying you and then I’ll kill you fast and easy with a bullet to the brain. But if you lie to me, I’ll gut you and let you bleed to death in a puddle of your own excrement. Which will it be?”

“Khalid is one of our agents. I was paying him.”

“Why did you attack the village?”

“Khalid said Dogar was a Taliban stronghold, responsible for the gun trafficking in the area. Named a talib called Daud as the number one bandit.”

“You stupid fuck. Khalid is the talib shitting all over us up there. Dogar was on our side. Daud and I were hunting Khalid. That was all on the books months ago.”

“Who is ‘we,’ son?”

“CIA.”

“How the hell are we supposed to know what you spooks are doing down there? We’re Army.”

“Don’t you high-level pricks talk to each other before pulling this kind of shit?”

“As a matter of fact, we don’t. My people don’t talk to yours, and yours don’t talk to mine. Still too much territorial pissing going on between commands. The whole war effort’s turning into a goddamned goat rodeo.” The colonel gestured at his trousers. “You mind?”

Pearce stepped back but didn’t lower the gun. His instincts said the colonel wasn’t lying. Killing a man wasn’t an issue for him, but killing an innocent man was.

The colonel yanked up his pants. “I’m real sorry about your friends, son. Truly I am. And I would’ve put a gun to your head, too, if the shoe had been on the other foot. The only difference is, I would’ve pulled it without jawboning beforehand.”

“Yeah. I’m kind of liberal that way,” Pearce said. He tossed the colonel’s antique pistol into the unflushed toilet, splashing slop onto the linoleum. “But I’m working on it.”

The colonel’s skull flushed red. “My granddaddy carried that Colt from Bastogne to the Remagen bridge.”

“Like I give a shit. Next time, pick up a fucking phone and call somebody before you decide to slaughter an entire village, especially a friendly one.”

Pearce backed out of the door and disappeared into the night without being followed by the colonel, still cursing in his bungalow. That completed his first big idea.

His second big idea was going to be a whole lot more interesting.

Lake Como, Italy

11 January

The second big idea Pearce had the night he left Kabul was definitely better than the first.

It took him two days to make the haul from Khost to Islamabad, where he boarded a Qatar Airlines flight to Milan. He slept for the entire thirteen-hour flight, even during the layover in Dohar.

He was awake and refreshed when he deplaned at one o’clock in the afternoon at Aeroporto Milano Malpensa. To his surprise, Pearce was greeted at the gate by name by a short, barrel-chested man in a turtleneck and sport coat too small for his bulging arms and shoulders. His bald scalp, broad nose, and deep-set eyes reminded him of the famous Italian dictator—if Mussolini had been a cage fighter.