7
Khost Province
Afghanistan
YOU! I KNEW IT.”
Randi flashed her most innocent smile as Dr. Peter Mailen squinted menacingly at her.
He’d just celebrated his fiftieth birthday but still looked pretty good, with thick, sandy hair and a mustache that he thought made him look like Magnum PI. That probably also explained the Hawaiian shirt peeking from beneath a canvas apron that had faded to the same color gray as the tile walls, but lacked the scattered bullet holes.
“Took you long enough,” Randi said. “Did they row you over in a dinghy?”
She skirted past a wall of plastic covering a hole made by a mortar round the week before. The goal was to keep the impromptu morgue cool, but it wasn’t working quite well enough to beat back the creeping stench of decay.
“The cargo hold of a plane. Nothing like spending endless hours bouncing around with nothing but ten thousand bottles of water to keep you company.”
She shook her head sympathetically and wandered up to a gurney containing a body covered with a bloodstained sheet. “I specifically told them first class.”
“I’m a doctor, Randi. I work with live people.” He pointed to the tag wrapped around a toe that was starting to darken from the bacteria working on it. “And while I want to be clear that I’m not an expert in this particular area, the guy on this table doesn’t seem to qualify.”
“Come on, Pete. You’re a genius and I trust you to be discreet. That’s why you’re here.”
His expression softened perceptibly. Mailen had always been a sucker for flattery and beautiful blondes—weaknesses Randi had no qualms about exploiting. Besides, it was true. He really was a genius. The fact that he hated doing something he was so good at was just a nasty twist of fate. And not her problem.
“Tell me what you found out and I promise you more legroom on the way home.”
“And a stewardess?”
“Long legs and pouty lips.”
Other than a suspicious frown, he didn’t move—obviously wanting to display a respectable amount of defiance before caving. She’d flashed another sparkling smile and waited for him to decide when honor had been served. It was the least she could do after dragging him from his cushy gig in DC to a crumbling morgue in the middle of nowhere Afghanistan.
They stared at each other for longer than she would have predicted, but he eventually let out an exasperated breath and whipped back the sheet. The chest cavity of the headless body had been opened up and Randi crinkled her nose as the smell intensified.
“I can’t believe you flew me out here for this, Randi. Did they tell you we took fire on the way?”
The story she’d gotten from the pilot was that they’d seen a rocket contrail a good thirty miles away, but she still managed to conjure an expression dripping with empathy.
“I could have been killed,” he mumbled to himself as he scanned a pad full of his own illegible handwriting. “Saw my life pass right before my eyes…”
“The body, Pete?” she prompted.
“Well, if you look very closely you’ll see that his head is missing and there’s a bullet in his chest.”
“Everyone’s a comedian. Which killed him?”
“The bullet. He was dead when he was decapitated.”
“Toxicology?”
“Spotless. Not so much as an aspirin.”
“You’re sure,” she said, still bothered by the strange behavior she’d reconstructed from the battlefield. Killing field, really.
“I wouldn’t have said it if I wasn’t sure. And why are you so interested in this guy, anyway? It’s not like the Afghans have never decapitated anyone before.”
“Sure, they’ll occasionally hack off a head or three. But this was different. It was every man in the village. And it looks like they didn’t try to defend themselves. Not at all.”
His irritated expression faded a bit as he pondered that scenario. “How many?”
“Seventy give or take.”
“Did you bring me one?”
“A head? No. It looks like they carted them away.”
“So this wasn’t some kind of ceremonial mass execution. They actually wanted the heads.”
“Seems like it, but I don’t know why. Maybe they’re working on a jihadist promotional video. But something about this feels wrong to me.”
“Well, it was obviously incredibly important to them.”
“Why do you say that?”
“Because they planned ahead. The spine was sawed through first before they finished the job with a serrated knife. And heads aren’t light. Seventy of them would be upward of six hundred pounds.”
“How long to saw off a head? Hanging around after doing something like this would be risky.”
“Hard to say exactly.”
“Is there a body around here that no one’s using? And a saw?”
“No, Randi. Besides, we’re not talking very long. This wasn’t a handsaw. The chipping suggests a powered circular saw.”
Randi looked down at the mutilated body and tried to work through what she was being told. “Look, I’m pretty sure I know who’s responsible for this—there’s a neighboring Taliban village that the people of Sarabat have been going at it with probably since before Jesus. But it’s hard to imagine them stopping by the local Sears and buying a battery-powered saw. Last I heard, they didn’t even have the electricity to charge it.”
“Who knows why people do the things they do,” Mailen said with a shrug. “It’s a crazy world.”
“That’s not helpful. Why this? And why now? After a couple thousand years of back-and-forth, the Taliban just roll in with no special weapons and kill everyone without taking a single casualty?”
“Who cares? Pretty soon Afghanistan’s just going to be a bad memory and a few yellowing pages in a history book.”
“I need to know, Pete.”
“That’s easy to say. But how exactly are you going to find out?”
“I figure I’ll go ask them.”
“Them? You mean the Taliban? I’m not sure they’ll be all that happy to see you.”
“Maybe not. But this is the kind of thing that keeps me up at night.”
Mailen threw the sheet back over the body and began pulling off his apron. “As your doctor, I’d advise you to buy one of those Dresner units instead. I hear they make you sleep like a baby.”