Down Range

Chapter Six

Morgan tried to tame her excitement as the Night Stalker pilots landed the MH-47 helicopter at the Afghan village of Margha. It was barely dawn, and out the window, she spotted thin Reza in his wool cap, baggy pants, vest and coat, waiting near the few mud houses still left standing. Her heart broke for the Afghan. This had been his home. The place he lost his wife and five children to Khogani’s raid. It had to be painful for him to stand where his life had once been.

Within minutes, the helo was down, kicking up clouds of dust, grit and small rocks into the air as they rapidly disembarked with their weapons and gear. Once they cleared the helo, Jake gave the pilot the okay to take off via the radio. The helo powered up, the thunder of the powerful engines heard for miles across the long, fertile valley that was just awakening for the day.

“Reza!” Morgan shouted, hauling her gear to where the Afghan stood. Reza was five foot six, lean, his skin tobacco-brown from thirty-five years spent in these rugged mountains. The Afghan’s face was deeply etched, smile lines deepening around his eyes and mouth as he stepped forward.

“As-Salāmu ’alayki, Wajiha,” he said, bowing to Morgan as she dropped her gear. The ancient greeting meant “Peace be upon you.” He formally hugged her and then chastely kissed each of her cheeks. Long ago, he’d given her the name of Wajiha, which meant “beautiful one” in Pashto.

His greeting was a very warm, loving welcome bestowed upon family members only. Morgan had been injured trying to save his family. A man was never supposed to hug a woman in Islamic culture, but Reza felt strongly she should know how grateful he was for her willingly putting her life on the line to try to save his youngest child from Khogani’s slaughter.

“Wa ’alaykumu s-salāmu wa rahmatu l-lāhi wa barakātuh, Reza.” Morgan returned the ancient greeting in Pashto. It meant “May peace, mercy and blessing of God be upon you.” She hugged him and placed a kiss on each of his bearded cheeks. And then she grinned, threw her arms around him and squeezed the hell out of the wiry Afghan. He pounded her happily on the back of her Kevlar vest, enthusiastically welcoming her.

Jake walked over, watching the warmth between them. He smiled, glad to see Morgan happy. Her face, even in dawn light, was suffused a pink color. It was her eyes, wide with affection for the Afghan guide, that touched him the most. Jake dropped his gear and Reza released Morgan.

“As-Salāmu ’alayka, Lieutenant Ramsey,” Reza greeted him, placing his palm across his thin chest. “Welcome. I am Reza. I will be your guide.”

Jake returned the proper Pashto greeting and then thrust out his hand to the short, wiry man. Reza eagerly took it, pumping it up and down with unbounded earnestness.

“Come, both of you.” Reza gestured for them to follow him into the nearest mud home that had a huge hole blown through one side of it. “We must hurry. Taliban watch us from the mountains.”

Morgan entered and saw four small, hardy horses munching on some dried grass. One of them had a Western saddle on its back. The other two had the typical Afghan saddle made of wood and nails covered with a rug. The fourth animal was a packhorse.

“Hey, you remembered,” she told Reza, pointing to the Western saddle.

“Of course, Wajiha. You told me to look after your saddle, and I did. You promised to return, and here you are.”

Morgan choked up as she saw tears of gratefulness come to Reza’s eyes. He was the only survivor of his destroyed village. Her smile disappeared as Jake entered. Moving to the Afghan, she pulled the Velcro pocket open on her Kevlar vest and retrieved a number of photos.

“Just a minute, Jake,” she called.

Jake nodded his response, leaving them as she went to Reza’s side and spoke to him in a low voice. He couldn’t hear what she said in Pashto, but the look on the Afghan’s face was one of surprise. Tears began to trail down his high cheekbones as he took the photos from Morgan. She placed her arm around the man’s shoulders, pointing to each one, telling him something about it.

Jake felt like an outsider and busied himself appraising the four animals. They were small bay horses with black manes and tails. Horses in Afghanistan always looked short and stocky, but then Jake knew they ate whatever the barren, rocky mountains gave to them, which wasn’t much.

He heard Reza sob. Turning, he saw the man clasping the photos to his breast, his other hand pressed against his face, crying openly. He gave a quizzical look, but Morgan held up her hand into a fist. It was a signal that said, “stop.” Jake respected the sign and remained with the animals.

Reza got ahold of himself after five minutes, carefully tucking the plastic bag of pictures inside his dark brown wool vest. His eyes were bright, his face in anguish as he bowed and profusely thanked Morgan.

The Afghan picked up the lead rope of the packhorse and led him outside, wiping his eyes with the back of his sleeve.

“What was that all about?” Jake asked, concerned. Morgan wiped her eyes and then turned to face him.

“I had taken pictures of his family and many others who lived here,” she said in a strained tone. “I always take photos wherever I go. I thought Reza would like photos of his five kids and his wife.” Her voice broke. “It was the least I could do…. He loved his family so much….”

Morgan drew in an uneven breath. “I was in this area with two different black-ops teams. Reza doted on his children, and my God, how they loved him in return. His wife was the sweetest, kindest person you would ever meet. If a widow who was starving and begging for a meal came to their door, she’d be welcomed and fed. A lot of the villagers won’t feed widows because food is so scarce.” Morgan rubbed her cheeks dry and gave him a broken smile. “It feels good to do something kind in return for him, Jake. Reza is the epitome of the Islamic belief of living your life through your heart.”

Jake nodded, far more touched than he expected. The fact Morgan would think to bring photos back to Reza made him want to reach out, pull her into his arms and simply hold her. A well of suffering rose through Jake as he stood on the brink of doing just that. Dragging in a breath, he shoved all his needs down deep within himself. In an effort to lighten the moment, Jake said, “Sounds like you read Rumi, the Sufi poet?”

Her brows rose. “You know about Rumi?”

“Sure,” Jake said, pretending his pride was hurt. “I might be a country bumpkin of sorts, but I am widely read.” SEALs tended to be voracious readers about foreign countries they worked in.

Morgan felt his warmth and care in that moment. “Now it’s my turn to apologize.”

“Don’t worry about it.” Jake gestured to the three horses. “That one has an American saddle on it.”

Morgan saw him eyeing it with great interest. “Yes, and it’s mine. I brought it over three years ago. I got sick and tired of my butt being carved up by nails and wood splinters in my behind from those damned Afghan saddles.”

He put his hands on his hips and nodded. “Why didn’t I think of that?”

“You didn’t ask me,” Morgan pointed out, untying the reins to her gelding and leading it out of the house.

Jake grinned. He untied the other two horses and led them outside. To the east, the Hindu Kush sat like silent, powerful giants, a pink dawn outlining the very tops of the snow-covered peaks. Reza had just finished packing their gear and threw a dark brown tarp over the contents. With more light, Jake could see it was a long, narrow valley, green and fertile. A river ran through it, providing irrigation so that the villages would have water for their crops.

Reza smiled and tied the lead line of the packhorse to the back of the saddle on the horse he was going to ride.

Jake saw Morgan already on the sat, satellite, phone to J-bad, calling in and letting Vero know they’d made contact with Reza and were now going to head south through the valley. She was efficient, he decided, watching her place the sat phone in the leather saddlebag behind the cantle of her saddle.

Jake gave Reza a radio headset to wear. They would each wear the headgear and be on the same frequency so they would always be in contact. The send-receive was good for up to a mile.

“We good to go?” he asked, walking over to her.

“Four square. Vero sounded relieved.”

“I imagine.” Jake looked around, always uneasy about being out in the open. Taliban and al Qaeda operatives lurked and hid in the scree slopes of every mountain that surrounded this valley. The only thing that they couldn’t do was shoot at them because the distance was too far. Jake was sure they had glass, binoculars, on them. The Taliban would pass the intel along to other Taliban spotters in the area via radio transmissions.

Reza walked up. “You must know that a goat herder from Dor Babba—” and he pointed south “—saw Khogani yesterday at the snow line with twenty men.”

Jake nodded. “And we’re headed that way?”

“Yes,” Reza said. He had a huge pile of clothes draped over his saddle. “Now, you and Wajiha must wear these Afghan clothes. It will fool our enemy.” He handed Jake a set of dark brown clothes to wear over his cammies and H-gear.

“Ah, we’re going hajji,” Morgan teased Reza, taking the black wool cape, brown vest and black turban. They were large enough to fit over all her gear. Going hajji was slang the operators used when they wore Afghan clothing. It would help them fade into the population, harder for the Taliban to spot them at a distance.

Reza put his hands on his hips, critically assessing them. He went over to Morgan and adjusted the black turban covering most of her red hair. Along with it was a woven blue-and-white Shemagh scarf, identifying her as a Shinwari tribesman, which she would wear over her lower face so she couldn’t be recognized so easily as a woman by the enemy. “A man would wear the turban like this….” He grinned in apology as he tweaked how it was to sit properly on her head.

Morgan nodded and thanked him. Jake definitely looked like an Afghan. His beard was well started and the dark brown color of the rolled cap on his black hair would fool everyone. Reza checked him out carefully. He arranged the vest a little more across Jake’s powerful chest. Probably trying to hide it, Morgan thought.

“You pass inspection,” Reza told them. He pointed to the packhorse. “We go undercover, Wajiha. If the enemy sees us through their binoculars, we look like a family selling shoes.” He tapped the tarp, a black silhouette of a shoe that had been painstakingly hand painted on the material. It had his name above it, announcing he was a cobbler. “They will think we repair and sell shoes, going from one village to another.”

“Brilliant,” Morgan said. Reza had been a cobbler all his life. And he regularly rode from one end of this valley to the other, stopping at each village along the way once a month. In the winter, he remained home and fashioned shoes and boots he would sell to villages the following spring.

Morgan checked the tightness of the cinch on her fourteen-hand-high horse. Everything seemed okay, and she mounted and arranged the long, draping cape and vest that would hide her uniform and her pistol. Over her left shoulder, she carried an AK-47 in a sling so it was readily available if she needed the weapon. The disguise wasn’t perfect, but it would fool the enemy at a distance. “Let’s go,” Reza said. “We have twenty miles to reach the first village.”

Jake mounted, grimacing. He hated these wooden saddles. The Special Forces guys rode them all the time. They had scarred asses, too. He shoved some of his wool cape beneath the saddle to give him some added padding and protection.

“God, I don’t think I’ll be able to dismount by the time we get there,” Jake groaned. He heard Morgan’s husky laugh. She seemed very comfortable in her leather saddle, back straight, shoulders squared, riding like someone who had done it all her life.

“Don’t worry,” Morgan said, chuckling. “I’ll haul your sorry ass off that saddle tonight.”

Jake grimaced as they started out at a leisurely walk beside one another. “Hey, this isn’t funny. The last time I had to ride in one of these damn torture traps, I got a nail puncture right there.” He jabbed a finger at his right cheek.

“Oh,” Morgan said, trying to look serious, “did you have your tetanus shot updated before we left Hawaii?” She saw Jake grin a little. She enjoyed the unexpected camaraderie. Who else got nail wounds in their butt? No Purple Hearts were given out for them, either.

“Yeah, I got another shot, plus a round of antibiotics for my ruck. I also got rid of that damn saddle I had to ride last year and traded it in for a better-made one. Cost me five hundred U.S. dollars from an Afghan horse trader, but it was worth it. I should have held on to it.”

Morgan laughed and then relaxed as they rode. She was back into swiveling her head, paying attention to the least little thing that seemed to be out of place, and she constantly perused the dirt road for any suspicious IEDs or wires that might have been strung across it to kill them.

Morgan felt at home, in a way. Pressing her hand to the pocket on her Kevlar vest beneath the Afghan clothes, she felt the one photo she hadn’t shown Reza. She always carried a photo of her daughter, Emma. Maybe later, when they were alone and Jake wasn’t around, she would share it with her dear Afghan friend. There wouldn’t be many opportunities because a sniper team was joined at the hip.

That night, in the first village, they spent it out in a goat barn. Jake hated the odor. There were no windows in the building, and the potent goat-dung odor was choking him, making his eyes water. He wanted to go outside, but Morgan cautioned against it. Reza was sleeping just outside the door of the mud building, their horses’ lead ropes tied to his ankle, snoring away.

Jake sat up on his bedroll, cursing softly. Morgan was six feet away, sleeping near the door. “How the hell can you sleep in this stink?”

Drowsily, Morgan opened her eyes. “Ramsey, shut the hell up, will you? I’m whipped. Isn’t your ass tired enough to fall asleep?”

Jake sat up, scowling. The goats were all lying down, crowded next to one another in a small, wooden corral a few feet away from him. One bleated at him. He never took off his boots, but he had laid his Kevlar vest next to his rifle in case he needed them. “Hell, no!”

“Gawd,” Morgan mumbled, rubbing her face. “We’ve got friggin’ jet lag, we haven’t slept in twenty-four hours and you’re wide-awake. If you’re going to bitch all night, get out of here. Go sleep outside with Reza.”

Amazed she could handle the foul, intense odor, Jake got up, jerked his sleeping bag off the dirt floor and muttered, “I’ll do that.” He headed for the door. He could barely see Morgan, milky slats of the full moon leaking light into the barn.

“You need to stay in here,” she growled, throwing out her hand and grabbing his lower pant leg so he couldn’t leave. “You know better, Jake. Now, get a grip, will you?”

He halted, her hand strong on his pant leg. Looking down, he snorted. “I’ll die of asphyxiation by dawn if I don’t get out of this hellhole. Then you’d feel guilty.”

“Oh, stop the drama, Jake. Sit down. We’ll talk. Maybe that will make you drowsy. Once you’re asleep, you won’t smell this crap.” She jerked twice on his pant leg. “Sit!”

After he dropped his sleeping bag next to hers, Jake walked over and picked up his rifle and Kevlar. Placing them near his head, he lay down. Morgan was six inches away. He swore he could feel her body heat. He placed his hands behind his head and muttered, “This sucks.”

“What a whiny baby,” she grunted, sitting there cross-legged, looking down at him. Jake’s face was deeply shadowed, but she could see those icy gray eyes and saw he was really upset. “I thought you’d be griping about your ass, not the goat smell in here.”

Mouth quirking, Jake enjoyed looking over at Morgan. The moonlight was soft. He could barely see the freckles sprinkled across her cheeks. “My butt aches like hell, but who’s going to listen to me bitch about that? And—” he raised one brow, his voice deepening “—just for the record, SEALs don’t whine.”

Morgan shook her head. “I swear. A man can be eighty years old and still be a sulky fourteen-year-old teenager when he wants to be.”

“I’m not sulking.”

“Are you going to be like this the rest of this mission, Ramsey?”

There was a teasing glint in her eyes. Her mouth was soft and relaxed, more like her old, feisty self. Had Morgan rebounded from the emotional meat grinder he’d put her through in Hawaii?

On the flight here, Jake had run out of options on how to try to atone for his past behavior. His way of helping would be hauling her into his bed and loving her. He knew Morgan wouldn’t approve of those tactics at all. In fact, she’d fight him. He smiled a little. “This barn and the goat smell isn’t a five-star quality hotel over here in the badlands, is it?”

Clasping her hands around her drawn-up knees, Morgan shook her head. “There isn’t even a one-star in this poor country. At least you have a roof over your head. If it was raining, you’d be happy to be in here.”

“Well, the sky’s clear and it’s not raining.”

She sighed. “I love rain….”

Hearing the wistfulness in her soft voice, Jake decided to make a daring request. “Tell me a bedtime story, Morgan. And then I’ll let you go back to sleep.”

She tilted her head, as if seriously considering his request.

“What kind of story? Jack and the Beanstalk, so you can visualize yourself climbing out of this barn?” She gave him an evil laugh.

Her laughter went straight through his heart. Morgan rarely laughed, and in truth, there hadn’t been much to be happy about, either. “You know, I’ve missed hearing you laugh. It’s the most beautiful sound I’ve ever heard.”

Morgan’s smile instantly dissolved as she heard the sincerity in his voice.

For a moment, Jake wanted to reach out and graze her clasped hands wrapped around her knees. Her hair was loose, framing her face. She looked so damned feminine in such a rough, godforsaken place. And yet, he was glad she was here. “Okay, the story I want to hear is about your family. Tell me about your mom and dad.”

Morgan instantly scowled, suddenly wary. “Why?”

“There you go again. Accusing me.”

“You always have a reason for any question you ask, Ramsey. Remember? I know you too damned well.”

He held up his hands. “Okay, guilty.” He tucked his hands behind his head once more. “Seriously, I’d like to know, Morgan.”

“Why?”

“Because I want to understand you better is all.” That was the truth, and Jake could see she was surprised by his honesty. “Look,” he argued equitably, “you accused me of never asking you about your growing-up years or your folks. Now I am. Are you going to gig me on that, too?”

Morgan rubbed her brow. “Ramsey, I never know when to trust you or not,” she griped, moving and lying down on her sleeping bag. She used the saddle for a pillow. Laying her head on it, facing him, Morgan jerked the thick wool cape over her body. He was giving her that little-boy look she could never resist. And she knew damn well he was doing it on purpose. So, what was the downside of telling him? Morgan didn’t see any.

“Okay,” she growled, “but so help me God, Jake, if you fall asleep in the middle of my telling you, I’ll never say anything about my family again to you.”

“Fair enough,” Jake murmured, grinning and meeting her dark, serious gaze. For a moment, he thought he saw laughter in her eyes. Morgan sighed loudly. “Nothing has changed about you.”

His grin increased. “Thank you. Now, tell me about your growing-up years. I want to know.” And Jake really did, but he didn’t ask himself why. Why was it so important to him now?

Chapter Seven

“My mother is Cathy Fremont. My father is Jim Boland. They were part of a military grand experiment two decades ago.” Morgan tilted her head. “Do you remember that conflict between Laos and Thailand that erupted?”

“Yeah, tempest in a teapot, as I recall.”

“It was more than that.” Morgan frowned. “The military wanted to see if women could handle combat. Major Louise Lane, a woman Marine, had a senator who sponsored her ideas. He had enough power to persuade the Joint Chiefs of Staff to create a volunteer group of military women to form a company. It was called the WLF, Women’s Liberation Forces. They then went over with a brigade of Marines out of Camp Pendleton.”

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