The Ghosts and the Traitors
Road to Shibar Pass, 10:15:47 AFT
“You are one lucky son of a bitch, you know that?” the Tribe warrior shouts to Tarasov as he drives the Humvee along the bumpy, curving road at reckless speed. When they’d set out on their way to the pass in the vehicle bearing the name MULLAH MOWER, the driver had introduced himself as Lance Corporal Bockman. His face is red from the strong sun. “I’ve only seen this once – it was a rag-head with long blond hair. He came all the way from Germany to join the Taliban. The women admired his looks for a while, but then tore him to pieces anyway. But you… not only did she save your ass, defying the big man’s will, but she even picked you for Nooria!”
“The Beghum must be a very important woman.”
“You can say that about the Colonel’s ex, yes!”
“What?”
“What what? I thought you got that already, partner. She was the Colonel’s woman. Still is, to some extent. The Bhegum’s the only one among us who can take him on. Okay, the Top too, but in different matters...”
“But this makes me –”
“Yes, you can consider yourself the chosen man of the big man’s stepdaughter, whatever degree of kinship that is!” The warrior shakes his head as if he were talking about something that’s hard to believe.
“Now I understand her attitude,” Tarasov shouts back, grinning. Yes, she is used to having things done her way, he thinks. All my bones are aching. “But I can’t complain. She can be cute if she wants to.”
“That’s none of my business, partner… and that’s not what makes her special anyway.”
“She does like doing strange things… But what do you mean?”
“Well, it’s been a while ago… One day we went on a rag-head hunt with Lieutenant Ramirez. Now, Lieutenants are cocky sorts and Ramirez wandered off to check out a cave on his own. Turned out it was crawling with jackals. The beasts tore his armor off in seconds. By the time we dragged him out, he had more poisonous bites on his body than hair on his ass. But the healer fixed him up in less than a day… Tellin’ ya, that girl ain’t natural.”
“Then how come she couldn’t heal her own face?”
“Once you have acid sprayed on your skin there’s no skin left to restore, is there?”
“I guess not. Anyway… it was strange too that she only told me her name this morning.”
“That’s good for you. Because if she hadn’t told you her name, it would have meant that you failed to impress her. You’d have ended up back in the Pit by midday… and no woman would have saved your ass then!”
“Do you have many such weird customs?”
“More than you could ever imagine.”
For several minutes, Tarasov watches the barren mountains, remembering the previous night and that same dawn, when Nooria had explored every inch of his body in the candlelight. “How did you get this big scar on your chest?” “That was a snork.” “What is a snork?” Something very bad and smelly.” “And this?” “That was a boar.” “You are very ugly, you know? We make a nice couple, soldier.” He remembers her giggles when she called him as ugly as herself. He tried to convince her about how wrong she was about herself by kissing her scar, only to be pushed back to the mattress for another round of pleasuring her.
Oh dear. Will I ever see her again?
“Can I ask you something? The two prison guards, Hillbilly and Polak… why do they refer to each other as ‘brother’?”
“They go way back, ages. The ‘brothers’ were among the first retainers of the big man, way before the nukes went off. Originally they’d been military police. Guess who they were after… Anyway, for one reason or another, they’d hated each other’s guts in the beginning. Then, during a patrol, they got themselves into a really bad clusterfuck. Those who made it out alive started to call each other ‘brother’, and the two of them have been best buddies ever since… especially nowadays, when they are the last ones still alive from that band of brothers.”
“I see… And what about you? You are not one of the Lieutenants, nor a Hazara boy,” Tarasov casually remarks to the Lance Corporal. “You must also be a newcomer, or how to say. What brought you here?”
“California ain’t what it used to be no more,” Bockman replies. The grin leaves his face. “Life is safer here… Anyhow, when I heard about the Tribe, I heeded the call.”
Tarasov is taken by surprise. Not even Degtyarev and the SBU, and even more so, not even the Stalkers in the New Zone, had heard much about the Tribe.
“Heard about the Tribe? How? Where?”
“Now listen up, partner… just because the Beghum asked me to take you to the Pass, you shouldn’t think we’re friends. Clear enough?”
“Enough.”
“We’re cool then. Yippee!”
“Hey, what are you doing? You are driving straight into an anomaly!”
“Oh yeah!” Electrical emissions crackle outwards and explode under the Humvee with a row of sharp, crashing thunder, but to Tarasov’s astonishment nothing happens to the vehicle.
Lance Corporal Bockman gives him a triumphant smirk. “State of the badass art… pimped by yours truly!”
Shibar Pass, 11:10:39 AFT
Tarasov watches the dust cloud disappearing behind a hill as the Humvee returns to the Tribe’s stronghold, far away beyond the canyons and mountains to the west, and opens his PDA.
The map shows a valley to the south of his position where the ruins of Bhegum Madar’s village supposedly lie hidden amongst the overgrown vegetation. The valley appears mostly green, just like on the display, but the digital map fails to reveal the red and blue, pulsating areas that look to Tarasov like dense anomaly fields. The path marked on the PDA tells him to find the village first, and from there guides him to a trail leading up to a plateau overlooking the valley.
He unslings the Vintorez from his shoulder. When he was reunited with his gear that morning, he’d found that someone had cleaned and applied a strange, antistatic substance to the gun metal that repelled even the finest particles of dust. Now, switching the safety catch off, Tarasov starts walking towards the valley, his eyes ceaselessly scanning the surroundings.
Jackals yelp from a short distance. Hiding behind a rock, he observes them fighting over something that looks like a body. Indeed, it had to be some kind of food: the mutants were so intent upon it that they remained unaware of his presence. The major cautiously raises the rifle. Two jackals become startled as he hits the first, and even the last one runs away after the second victim falls too. He fires again. The yelp abruptly ends.
A bumpy, broken tarmac road leads into the forest. On the roadside, a blue sign stands with white Pashtu and Latin letters. The latter have all but disappeared, blasted away by many bullet holes, but the number 2 is still visible.
I hope that is the correct distance to the village.
Keeping close to the low mud walls lining the road, he cautiously moves on. The trees have grown so high that their foliage intertwines above the road, forming a kind of tunnel. Rays of light seep through and illuminate the dense vegetation.
Tarasov sees a vibrant spot ahead, as if the cracks in the tarmac emanate steam. Approaching within a couple of feet, he notices that it’s not the only occurrence: the whole road looks like a landscape of miniature volcanoes.
Small but lethal, Tarasov thinks as he tosses an empty pistol shell into the closest anomaly and watches it evaporate with a fizzing sparkle. He switches on his detector and bright lights appear on the green display, indicating many anomalies. It also indicates one green dot deep inside the anomaly field.
Too far. Damn it, I could use another artifact.
He sees a single whole mud brick lying on the ground near to a wall and, guided by sudden inspiration, kicks more bricks from the dilapidated wall before throwing them in the direction of the indicated artifact to form a path. Cautiously stepping on it, he makes his way through the anomaly field and finally reaches the spot where
a small spherical object gleams in one of the cracks. The Geiger counter’s ticking gets faster as he crouches down to pick the artifact up, the indicator reaching almost into the yellow area.
I’ll need to ask Nooria if she knows more about this one.
The Geiger counter’s indicator drops back to a safer level when Tarasov puts the artifact into the container on his belt and, after a few leaps, he is out of the anomaly field and free to move on.
The undergrowth becomes more dense as he proceeds until the road narrows into a path. Tarasov ducks as something moves not far from him and he raises his weapon, waiting. The bushes rattle again, as if something large and heavy has moved behind them. A little distance away, a mutant appears, and for a moment Tarasov and the hind look into each other’s eyes. Spooked, the creature gracefully leaps back into the forest, leaving Tarasov to sigh with relief before pushing on once more.
After a protracted period of more watchful sneaking, an ochre ruin appears. Once it must have stood directly on the road, but now high bushes hide most of it from view. Looking around, Tarasov sees the ruins.
The village at last.
Ruined Village, 13:46:02 AFT
Tarasov is creeping deeper into the ruined village when he hears a noise so strange that at first he doesn’t believe his ears. All the same, he stands still, listening, but hears only the beat of his heart and the Geiger counter’s slow ticking. But then the sound comes again.
No way. It cannot be.
But when the sound arrives a third time, there seems to be no doubt: it is the faint noise of someone crying.
Damn, this place is creepy.
A glance at his radiation meter assures him that the area would be too dangerous for anyone to enter without a protective suit and helmet. But the crying is there, somewhere deep among the overgrown ruins.
I better check it out instead of turning my back on it. This place reeks of danger.
Following the cry, he reaches an opening in the forest that must have once been the central square of the village. The wreck of an American truck stands in the middle of the area, its tires having rotted away long ago, the bullet-riddled windows opaque with dust and age. The absence of Tribe-like decoration tells Tarasov that it must have been destroyed during the Bush wars.
I can probably skip checking this one out.
His compass tells him that the trail to the plateau should be close. Turning to face that direction, Tarasov hears the crying getting stronger. A human figure suddenly appears in a dark hole that was once a window, passing by so quickly that he wishes he could rub his eyes under the helmet’s visor. The crying is louder, clearer, and Tarasov realizes it is a child sobbing. Unable to bear the sound of the disconsolate voice, he takes one step closer… and sees a man standing by the next ruin. He is about to call out, but then notices details other than the long white gown that the silent stranger is wearing and his grey beard. The major falls back a step as he realizes that the man’s eyes are missing, together with the top of his skull. The beard grows red from the blood that now pours out from his wounds. Gasping, Tarasov ducks and raises his gun, as if he could hit an apparition with a translucent body.
There are no ghosts. But this is one. But there are no ghosts.
Undeterred by the fear crawling under his skin, he steps closer. Now he sees the crying child, sitting on the ground, sobbing, tugging on the dress of a dead woman with a still fresh wound on her chest. The child looks up at him and Tarasov sees a hole in its head. The apparition raises its hand as if showing a way and, as the major involuntarily looks in the direction shown, a group of people appear, shuffling ever closer, with the row of ruins faintly visible when their bullet-riddled and mutilated bodies should be blocking them from view.
Instinctively, he grabs a grenade from his armor and throws it towards the group. It falls through them and detonates without having any effect on them. The crying becomes so loud that Tarasov feels as if he could touch its source. Turning his head to locate where the sound is coming from, he switches on his headlight and steps to the door of the house where the child first appeared. The fresh body of a woman lies in front of it. There is no visible wound on her body, but blood streams from between her legs.
Pulling all his courage together, Tarasov kicks the door in.
The blood-curdling howl is almost a relief after the sobbing. A human-like mutant stands in the headlight’s beam, its unnaturally long arms scything towards him as if throwing something, but it is no weapon or projectile that hits him, only more images of dead people, their wounds heavier and their bodies more horrifically mutilated with each step he takes.
Tarasov aims his weapon and fires. He has barely emptied half the magazine when the mutant falls, its limbs writhing in agony before becoming still. The crying continues, so the major takes out his pistol and fires more shots into the creature’s head. Now, the crying weakens, and finally disappears, leaving only the buzzing sound of flies in the filthy room.
He grins triumphantly.
That was a nice try, but don’t threaten a whore with a dick or a Spetsnaz with corpses.
But as he exits the house, his knees tremble so strongly that he has to sit down. Only now does he realize that the most horrifying thing about this experience was not the sight of wounds and corpses, but the natural way they appeared. They had been nothing but apparitions, yet all of them had been in realistic poses: the dead woman’s hand reaching out for a wooden beam as if to help herself up; the child grabbing her dress as if it was a tangible thing; one of the dead men stepping over some bricks lying on the ground… It was as if he had just seen the eerie reenactment of something that had actually happened here.
The Colonel’s words come back to Tarasov’s mind: “It was… marvelous. After that, no shots were fired from the village anymore.” Now, confronted with what the Colonel’s idea of warfare could mean in reality, Tarasov now views him in a different light, and the respect he had for his brutal philosophy vanishes.
It is odd, though… he only hinted at a firefight. He said nothing about slaughtering civilians and rape. What the hell is it that the Bhegum wants me to find here?
He moves on. The trail leading upwards is steep, but he can soon see over the dark green foliage as he climbs higher and higher up the path.
Reaching the hilltop, he sees a cluster of trees with a large vehicle among them. Looking through the binoculars, he zooms in to identify the wreckage of a white van with a broken satellite dish on the top. With his weapon held ready, Tarasov approaches the wreck.
It was an unusual car, obviously civilian but heavily armored. Behind the tarnished windshield he sees a white sign with the word PRESS on it, written in huge letters. The bullet-riddled doors are locked and show the signs of several attempts to pry them open from the outside.
That car was like a tank… but somehow whoever was after these guys must have gotten inside, because there are no survivors here for sure.
He looks around. Close to the wreck, the heavy branch of a tree almost reaches the ground. Carefully balancing his weight, Tarasov climbs up it. After a few steps, he can comfortably leap over onto the top of the van.
They cut a hole in the weakest part… too small for a man to climb through, but big enough for a grenade. Now how can I get inside?
A closed hatch lies next to the satellite dish. Taking his pistol, he reaches through the hole and fires, aiming towards the hatch as best as he can. After a lucky shot the hatch moves, as if its lock has been suddenly released. After that, it is easy to force it open. Leaving his bulky backpack outside, Tarasov lets himself slide down into the compartment.
Three grimy skeletons appear in the dim circle of his headlight, their clothes long rotted away, along with their flesh. Without knowing what he is looking for, he rummages amid the debris. A camera lies on the ground alongside a broken laptop and he picks them up. The computer is nothing more than garbage now so Tarasov lets it fall back to the ground, where it breaks into small pieces. Some
thing shiny falls out, a CD or DVD, and when he leans down to pick it up, his headlight falls on a tiny orange object amongst the bones of one of the skeleton’s hands. Upon closer examination, the major realizes it is a pen drive.
Climbing out through the shaft, he seeks a safe spot where he can have a closer look at his loot. Behind a boulder, hidden from any hostile sight, he plugs the device into his PDA.
Now let’s pray it’s not encrypted… Ah! It seems to be my lucky day indeed.
A folder system appears on the screen. Some are labeled in a script he recognizes as Arabic, but most of the folders have English names. There is one titled DIARY, but only one message is readable.
July 2, 2006. Kabul. Hooked up with Gardi and Hetherington at the Mustafa Hotel over a few cans of contraband Heineken. Those boy scouts still dream about being embedded with a USMC unit. Had to listen to their endless lectures over ethics again. Gardi was quite happy with his photographs of Medecins sans Frontiers turning an old prison into an asylum. I couldn’t care less about such BS. They just can’t understand that the real story is on the other side.
He opens ARCHIVE. It’s empty. Switching to a folder titled MISSION REPORTS 07/2006 brings more success: a few readable files appear on the screen.
08.13. AM, July 6, 2006. ISAF’s new rules of engagement make it difficult to provide the coverage that our peak-time audience is seeking. Phyllis hopes to find local sources to get behind the scenes. She better do it, otherwise we’ll all lose our jobs.
09.24. PM. July 14. Phyllis came up with a new source today. The idea is pretty risky but if it works out we’ll have a really big story. We leave tomorrow morning. I hope Mahmud and Phyllis know what they are doing.
11.30. PM, July 15. If I hadn’t got my fucking divorce to deal with I’d not go along with this, but I need my damned salary to pay that bitch. Fucking English legal system, robbing bastards… Anyway, this is our chance to land the scoop of our lives. The source has prepared everything. We only need to wait till morning and then keep the camera rolling.
01.57. PM, July 16. That was one hell of a show. The Yanks took the bait and were busted as soon as they arrived in the village. And we got the whole thing on tape! We wanted to move in quickly after they left but the source didn’t let us. For our own security, he said. But when we eventually saw it… shit! Chuck-Up Central. Anyway, the only thing that counts is that the suckers have now their second My Lai coming.
02.43 PM, July 16. Something is not OK. While Phyllis was arguing with the source about money I saw the mujahedin dragging their fallen from the ruins. I also saw a shepherdess approaching the village. I grabbed my camera to take a photograph of her face when she saw what had happened – it would have been my WPP winning shot - but then the mujahedin wanted me to photograph a dead civilian. As I went there he moved and they just shot him in the head. Could it be that… it’s too late now, we have already transmitted the footage. Should be on air tonight. The shepherdess ran away though, and with her went my chance to take the photograph of a lifetime. I’d better check on Phyllis now, it looks like their argument is getting out of hand.
03.55 PM, July 16. Shit shit shit! I can’t believe I am part of this. They fucking drove the villagers away before the battle! They fucking shot them after the Yanks left, then arranged their fucking corpses. They even raped a woman, at least that’s how it looks…That’s why we had to wait and that’s why they demanded extra payment. We want to drive away like hell but those bastards have blocked the road. We are now hauled up in the van. Phyllis is desperately calling the bosses to sort this mess out.
13.25 PM, July 16. We’re fucking screwed. They’re not letting us go. We wanted to ask ISAF for help but our comms are down because those bastards climbed up and smashed our antenna. I just hope the hatch will hold...
Tarasov removes the pen drive and carefully puts it away, thinking deep, dark thoughts
This explains a thing or two… Bhegum Madar was right. I must take this intel to the Colonel.
He is about to close his PDA when a LED indicates that somebody is calling him. He switches to the helmet’s intercom.
“Tarasov here.”
“At last! I have been calling your for two days. Where have you been?” Captain Bone’s voice sounds anxious, even terrified.
“It’s a long story. What’s up?”
“We came under attack yesterday. It was the damned Chinese during the day and the dushmans by night, but now they’ve joined forces! Major, you need to collect all Stalkers from the Ghorband area and relieve us!”
“That’s bad news…” The events of the last couple of days have kept him so preoccupied that Tarasov had almost forgotten about Bagram and the Stalkers. Then his soldiers come to his mind. “What about my men? They should be assisting you, Bone.”
“They are but we lost two of them already. Many Stalkers too.”
“What? Who is dead from my squad?”
“I don’t know their fucking names and I don’t care to, either. The only thing that counts is that you get all the men you can assemble in the west and help us! Now!”
Tarasov hesitates. If Bone is panicking, the situation must be dire. But he also has to deliver the pen drive to the Colonel. “How long can you hold out?”
“One and a half days, two perhaps. We are already running low on ammo but they just keep coming!”
“There aren’t many Stalkers in Ghorband. What am I supposed to do with a dozen men?”
“Every Stalker and bullet counts. Bring everyone you can gather or we are done for... including your precious soldiers.”
“I’ll do what I can.”
Tarasov receives no reply and he looks toward the north where the road, invisible in the vibrating heat, forks to the west and east. To the west, there is an opportunity to restore the honor of the Colonel and his Marines, because what he found has made it clear that they had been lured into a set-up and hadn’t committed the crimes they had been charged with. To the east lay the strong chance that he would die in a futile attempt to protect Bagram, or even before getting to it, taking the white van’s secret with him to the grave. Go east, and he might be able to help the Stalkers and his soldiers as they fight for their lives. Go west, and they would surely die horrible deaths.
Nooria is to the west. My men to the east. Where do I go now?
Then an idea comes to his mind, so daring that he himself doubts it could ever succeed.