Page 55 of What Remains

“That’s right. We’re not the only ones with eyes in the sky. Best guess is Mac said too much, but he’s only human and some bad shit was going down. We figure they didn’t bother with Mac and Flowers because an armed chopper was on the way. To be honest, I’m surprised whoever was listening in didn’t try to take the chopper down. But I don’t think killing moreAmericanswas on the agenda. Might explain why they didn’t bother Meeks or his kids.” Driver paused. “They were gunning for Shahida, Worthy.Shewas the one with a target on her back.”

My God. All those poor boys…“How would they know to listen?”

“To our comms?” Driver aimed a forefinger. “You, when your meet with Drummond was arranged.” He paused. “Before you start beating yourself up about this, remember: the entire caravan was three shooters short. I wasn’t there and neither were you or Roni.”

“I’m not sure that makes me feel a whole lot better. All those kids died.”

“Ah.” Driver cocked his head. “Did it ever occur to you they might not have?”

“What?” A jolt of surprise. “No, I just assumed.”

“Which makes an ass out of you and me. But think about it. Those kids were property, which Shahida stole.” He paused. “Mac is the only guy who thinks they were all taken prisoner and are still alive. He just can’t convince the higher-ups.”

“Prisoners for what? To fight?”

“Doubt it. No one’s fighting the Taliban.”

“Then, what? Let the kids go back to their old lives?”

“Passed around for pervs? It’s not impossible, but I wouldn’t put my money on that, not with what Mac has figured out over time. What happened has stuck in Mac’s craw. The way he’s pored over maps, worked out travel times and coordinated withthe intel on the ground that he’s gotten, he’s convinced he’ll find them all. The boys, Shahida. Even Musa.”

He opened his mouth, closed it again, then asked, very carefully, “Why are you using the present tense? When you’re talking about Mac and…” He pulled in a quick breath. “Oh, my God. Yourmission. Are you here to?—”

But he never did finish that thought.

Because, from somewhere outside, came the sharp, crisp snap of weapons fire.

And then, a half later, just as they’d finished hastily packing up, Driver’s satellite beacon began to shrill.

POYA: THE SECRET ANNEX

1

As always,before doing anything in these early morning hours, Poya listened. Safer that way. His sleeping area was cordoned off by a woolenshyrdaksuspended from the yurt’s ceiling. In turn, the shyrdak was anchored to the many layers of wool and felt that made up the yurt’s floor. When he’d first seen it, Poya thoughtpup tent.Minus one side, of course. Which meant that anyone could poke a head around the shyrdak’s edge. That made the arrangement dangerous if he got careless and forgot to listen to make sure no one else was up yet.

The hour was very early. True dawn wouldn’t happen for another hour and a half. From experience he knew neither Amu nor Amu’s mother-in-law, Bas, would stir until then. But as Baba once said,Assume makes an ass out of you and me.Then, at Poya’s baffled expression, Baba added,It’s a much better joke in English.

Now, he heard only the familiar crackle of banked coals in the pot-bellied oven in the yurt’s center and the faint boom of thebad-e Wakhanslamming against the dwelling’s felt-covered reed walls. Between windy gusts, he picked out Amu’s soft, steady sleep-breathing punctuated by Bas’s deeply nasal snores. Amu’s mother-in-law spent a lot of her time snoring. When shewas awake, Bas smoked her pipe. When her pipe was done, she fell into a deep sleep. When Bas woke, she repeated the process with maybe a break for a meal or to wash.

And why did Bas dream her life away? That one was easy. All seven of Bas’s children were dead. That included her youngest daughter, married to Amu, who’d died in childbirth.

That happened in 2021, an awful year. Not only had the Americans abandoned the country, the winter which followed was brutal and bitter. People starved. Or froze to death. That happened to five of Amu’s six children, including the ten-month-old baby boy whose birth killed Amu’s wife.

The only child of Amu’s to survive was a sixth child, a son.

Who, it seemed, was missing.

2

Pickingup languages had never been hard. Baba used movies and turned learning into a game. Poya might first watch a film dubbed in Pashto before progressing to subtitles, and finally to the film in its original language. Most often this was English, but they also watched films in French and German. Russian.

At the time, Poya assumed all this was just for fun. Now, he understood what Baba had been doing: teaching Poya the art of disguise. The art of eavesdropping and blending in. Of being easily forgettable. Of holding oneself still and being so ordinary that everyone else nattered on with no more thought for you than they’d spare for, say, a tablecloth. Or servant.

In other words, Baba taught Poya how to spy.

With Amu’s people,he played stupid. He made mistakes on purpose. A trick, this: people gossiped more if they thought you were an idiot. When the other men in the clan gathered in Amu’s yurt to drink tea and chew balls of hardqurut, Poya fixed his expression into a studied neutral. Even when the men madecomments aboutthe boy, he didn’t look up and never turned around. Instead, he would stare into the middle distance and tongue his own ball of salty, dried yak cheese from one cheek to the other—and listen.

Which was how he learned about Amu’s lost son, Hamzad.

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