Cameron, Marc - Tom Clancy's Shadow of the Dragon

If it had been anyone else, Captain Brock might have nailed him to the wall until he gave up more than that, but Roy Grant was different. Instead of BDUs or the khaki tacticool pants and polo shirt many of the SAC/SOG guys wore under their rifle plates on missions, Grant had on tan shalwar kameez, the traditional baggy trousers and thigh-length shirt of Afghanistan. Brock and his men sometimes dressed the part as well, when the mission called for it, but generally preferred good old American load-bearing gear. Besides, it was difficult to truly fit in unless you skipped a shower or two and carried around a shitstick like the locals. Brock preferred toilet paper, but Grant went native, the whole shebang, stick and all. You couldn’t blame him. The dude was by himself enough that he needed to blend in to the fabric of Afghanistan. At first, Brock thought it would be unpleasant to ride next to a dude like that on a chopper, but the whole country smelled like woodsmoke and a sewer fire, so he didn’t really notice. Grant spoke fluent Pashto and worked outside the wire enough that the dark beard and local dress had become part of his persona. From a distance, the only way to tell him apart from a local was his propensity to carry around a cup of coffee from the Green Beans on Bagram.

The two men could have been brothers. Both were tall, runner-fit, with workman’s hands and dark, grizzly-bear beards like many of the guys at Camp Vance. As OGA spooks went, Grant was a good shit. Brock wasn’t even sure if that was the guy’s name. He looked like a Roy Grant, but then, this was headquarters for Combined Joint Special Operations Task Force, or CJSOTF—home for both white operations and the more secretive black ops—hence the highest percentage of beards per acre than on any other U.S. military base on the planet.

Brock’s five-year-old son had recently told him via Skype that he looked like a caveman. Brock had agreed and said he wouldn’t have been surprised if a bunch of velociraptors came stampeding over the desolate mountains beyond the base. The brainy little shit had set his dad straight about “humans and dinosaurs not living during same period.”

Brock missed that kid—but if he had to be away from home, this was the place.

When op tempo was high, Camp Vance was crawling with U.S. Special Forces A-teams like Brock’s, along with Marine Recon, Air Force combat controllers, Navy Special Warfare DEVGRU, Delta Force, Task Force Orange surveillance operators, air ops guys from 160th SOAR, operators with British Special Boat Service and, of course, the spooks from CIA Special Activities Center/Special Operations Group. The atmosphere was often like a reunion when the SAC/SOG came in from training. More often than not, the Agency recruited its fresh meat from among the active duty ranks operating at Camp Vance.

Half the guys there could have been named Roy Grant.

At the moment, Captain Brock and his six-person split-A, or half his Alpha team, were dressed in full battle rattle, gunned up and ready to go in the back of a Sikorsky UH-60 Black Hawk, piloted by two of the Task Force Brown guys from the 160th. Brock had flown with these two before and trusted them to put them where they needed to be, and, more important, to come back and get them when the work was done. The other half of the split, led by Brock’s second-in-command, Warrant Officer Morales, was aboard an identical chopper. Morales had the team sergeant with him. Peplow, the 18F—intelligence sergeant—acted as Brock’s second in Morales’s absence. Once they were on the ground, the team could merge back into one, or remain split—depending on what Grant had in store. Sergeant Peplow had noted when they boarded that both choppers were wearing stub-wing tanks, indicating a mission likely greater than the Black Hawk’s combat range of around three hundred and seventy miles.

Four of Brock’s five men carried M4 rifles with EOTech sights, six thirty-round magazines, SIG Sauer M17 nine-millimeters, four pistol magazines, thermite grenades, radios, PVS-14 night-vision goggles, ear pros, assorted knives, chemical light signaling spinners, food and water, blood chits, medical pouches, and, among other gear, next-generation poncho liners that helped hide their heat signature. Morales called it the “woobie of invisibility.” Townsend, the weapons sergeant, carried the same basic loadout, but instead of an M4, he carried an FN SCAR-H in 7.62 NATO.

Captain Brock waited for Grant to get buckled in, then tapped his headset. “Okay. Let’s have it.”

Grant gave him a thumbs-up.

“We’re heading toward the Wakhjir Pass.”

“To China?”

“In that general direction,” Grant said. “Two MQ-9s started that way …” He checked his G-Shock. “Twenty-one minutes ago.”

Peplow, the 18F, cocked his head. “The Chinese have troops stationed at a Tajik base less than twelve clicks south of the border. They’ll spot the Reapers and us, even if we fly nap of the earth, scraping our gear on the valley floor …”

“Maybe,” Grant said. “Maybe not. We’ll be in Afghan airspace, and the Afghans are on board with our trip, being a rescue mission and all.”

Brock gave the CIA officer a wary side-eye. “A rescue mission?” He shook his head and settled back in his seat. “You should have led with that.”

The pilot in command, an Army warrant officer named Avery, half turned from the right seat. The engines were already whining, and he spoke over the intercom, doing one last safety check with his crew chief.

All good in back and gauges in the green up front, he lifted off.

“As rescue missions go,” Grant said, “this one is … unique.”

51

Chavez groaned, staring into the trees behind the hotel. “Are you seeing this?”

The young woman they believed to be Medina Tohti led her Han Chinese friend to two saddled horses she’d apparently left tied to the top of a corral. A half-dozen trail horses from the hotel concession munched hay off the muddy ground inside the fence, ignoring the two saddled animals outside. All of them were Mongolian ponies, short and stocky, still woolly from a long winter.

Medina climbed aboard a small bay, the man on a slightly larger sorrel the color of a new penny. He spoke nonstop as he brought his horse up to walk beside the woman’s, illustrating various points by waving his hands or shaking his index finger.

Medina listened dutifully, fur parka ruff tilted to one side, taking in every word as they clomped down the muddy trail to disappear into the dusky forest.

Chavez breathed out hard, blowing a cloud of vapor, sounding like one of the horses. “I was never a cavalry soldier.”

Yao started for the corral the moment the two riders were out of sight. “Didn’t you ever go to summer camp?”

“I grew up in East L.A., mano ,” Chavez said. “Our summer camp was trying not to get jumped walking to the corner stop-and-rob.”

“These are trail-ride horses,” Yao said. “We’ll probably have trouble getting them to go.”

All the animals looked to have been fed and watered and turned out. The wranglers, too, had gone home for the night. The saddles were all locked up in a wooden shed, but that didn’t matter. They didn’t have time for that anyway.

“Mounted operations …” Chavez muttered, picking what he hoped was the gentlest of the beasts—a cow-hocked gray with winter fuzz around the muzzle that made it look like a bearded old man.

Yao found a lead rope and attached it to the halter of a stout little mouse-colored horse, forming makeshift reins. Facing the animal’s ribs, he put both hands on its back and then pressed himself up, throwing a leg over.

“Damn it!” Chavez said, trying to follow suit, but resorting to using the rails to climb aboard, even with the short horse.