“Eyes front,” the sergeant seated next to me barked over the din of the road noise and the truck’s engine.

I spotted something about the size of a large suitcase in the dusty road, and I steered around it without slowing down. As we passed, it was painted desert sand, and it was empty; likely another part of the gift the Taliban had received from the United States Government.

“How far,” came the shout from the truck’s bed, where a half-dozen people, three Afghan dissidents and three members of my team, clung to the bed for dear life as I pushed the pickup as hard as it would go.

“We’ll be there in fifteen,” the sergeant, a dark-complected woman with a Boston accent called out loudly. She held her own ex-Soviet AKM in her left hand, while mine was stuffed down by her left leg. Like the rest of us, she was late of the US Army, with three tours here to my two.

I raced northwest down the Kabul-Bagram Airport Road toward Bagram itself. We had no intention of passing through the city, since it absolutely crawled with Taliban jihadists and their supporters. Instead, we would turn onto another road that would take us east of the base to the entrance on the northeast side. There, we were supposed to have a C-130 waiting for us. That was the plan.

The plan had been hastily thrown together by several American businessmen who’d wanted to rescue a group of Afghani businessmen and their immediate families. Altogether, there were six locally acquired pickup trucks, along with twenty of us to evacuate forty people. We’d arrived at Kabul International on one of the last inbound flights and contacted the group an hour later. They’d bought, or stolen, the weapons and vehicles, and they provided us all with clothing. We were all dark-complected, a mishmash of Mediterranean-descended people who would pass a cursory inspection.

Of the soldiers, only three of us spoke broken Dari, and some of us knew a few words of Pashto. The Afghans we were transporting all spoke excellent English, so we weren’t worried about communicating with the locals we ran across.

The right turn came up, and I followed the two trails of dust ahead of me as we raced for the base. Off to my left, we could see the fixed defenses were mostly abandoned now, but they were still an impassable barrier for us to enter the base and reach the runway.

“Seven klicks to go,” the sergeant reported. “Keep your eyes open!”

We rolled past an imposing facility on our left that was even more heavily fortified than the base perimeter. A shot-up sign next to the closed gate explained why. “Parwan Detention Facility” it read in English and at least three other languages. Wonderful. Next to the prison, there were tall walls that formed a laager for vehicles stationed near the base entrance. “Two klicks to the turn-off,” the sergeant announced.

I glanced to my right, where I could see a group of houses two hundred meters east-northeast from the base turnoff road. I turned my attention ahead and to the left, and I noted that the entrance road had no natural cover for the four hundred meters to the base’s inner gate.

The hair on the back of my neck stood up, and I looked right to see a pair of flashes, the glint of sunlight off glass optics. “Two o’clock, four hundred,” I yelled.

Something zipped past my face, and the sergeant swore as the windshield shattered in front of her. “Keep going,” she called into her radio. “Don’t stop for anything!”

The next minute was one of the most harrowing of my life. I’d done one combat tour in Anbar Province, but I’d neve been as exposed to enemy fire as we were here. I heard a scream from the truck bed as I approached the corner, and one of the trucks ahead of me nearly overturned as a bullet found a tire.

The intersection was finally here, and I slowed down to take the turn. At that instant, the truck leapt and rolled to my side as a deafening explosion erupted almost under the front bumper. The truck crashed down onto its side, slamming me against the driver’s door, and knocking me out.

When I woke up, I could hear bullets smacking against the truck’s underbelly. One buzzed by my head, exiting the roof, and I went into motion. The windshield was completely shattered, so I grabbed up my AKM and crawled out of the wreckage. The truck had landed in a shallow ditch, and I crawled into it and looked around.

The last two trucks had stopped to pick us up, and I stood up and ran out of the ditch. At that moment, something smashed into my right ankle, and I flopped down on my face. I saw at least one person in the truck take a round, and I tried to rise. Hot agony lashed through me as I tried to put weight on my leg, and I collapsed again. I looked up at the truck. “Go!” I screamed. “GO, GO, GO!”

The driver floored it, and the truck roared off in a cloud of dust with bullets chasing it like angry hornets. I low crawled to the south side of the road, where the cover was a little better, and rolled into the ditch. From there, I could see that four gunmen had scrambled to the top of the earthen berm protecting the laager and were preparing to fire on our beleaguered convoy.

I leveled my rifle, resting my forearm on the bank, and opened up on them with short, controlled bursts. The first two men went down before they even knew they were under fire. The third man died as he turned toward me, and the fourth gunman got off a long burst before my shots found him. His shots had gone high, and I took a moment to reload one of my two remaining magazines. My rucksack with the rest of my ammo and gear was in the truck, and so I had only the items I’d strapped to my load carrier. It wasn’t an ideal arrangement to go out with such a small ammo load, but I’d elected to give out more ammo to those guarding our charges.

I rolled slightly to my right, and pure agony shot up my right leg. I shifted onto my left side, not daring to sit up, and looked at my right foot. It was a bloody mess; the bullet had entered just above the boot top, and a mass of tissue and bone showed through the hole in my pants. Whatever had hit me was no mere rifle bullet, and I was slowly bleeding to death. I took out my single combat dressing, a tourniquet, and a pack of clotting agent. I’d had some experience using these items under fire, and it took me only a minute of work to bind the injury. I had one morphine auto-injector, but I was afraid to use it while I was under fire.

The convoy rolled onward toward the base’s main gate, and so the fire stopped. I’d been here once before, and I remembered that there was another gate that led to the laager. The ditch here was shallow, so it wouldn’t hide a standing man. Since I was only capable of crawling, that didn’t hinder me. Painfully, I made my way toward the entrance.

A moment later, I spotted a small vehicle headed my way – from the laager. My heart sank. If there were more gunmen, I was done. My team wouldn’t risk the civilians further by coming back for me. This was something we’d discussed during the mission briefing, but it was something that none of us wanted to contemplate. So, I lifted my rifle and aimed at the vehicle as it approached.

As it approached, I blinked in surprise. It was an old, ex-Soviet panel van, a U-A-Z, or something like that. When I looked at the driver, I could see a black-clad figure in the seat, with only their eyes uncovered. A woman? It stopped next to me, the side door opened, and, indeed, a woman peered out at me. “Get in. Now!”

Her English was excellent, and she sounded young. I struggled to rise and climb in, and she stepped down to brusquely drag me into the back. There were only two seats up front, the rest of the interior was empty. She slammed the door behind me and scrambled into the driver’s seat.

“Where are you taking me?”

“Somewhere safe, where your friends can find you.” She backed and turned the van, and then sped back the way we came. The ride was excruciating, as every bump transmitted pure hell though my shattered ankle. Still, I had to stay alert, and so I propped up my bad leg with my good one and rode it out.

We rocked to a halt after taking a series of turns, and I’d caught glimpses of the barriers, stacks of rusting containers, and the occasional abandoned vehicle as she drove through the maze-like laager. “Wait here.” She opened the door, and I saw her run ahead of the van. She opened a roll-up door in a portable building, scrambled back to the van, and drove us inside. Stopping the engine, she climbed out, closed the roll up door, and opened the side door. “Don’t shoot me.”

“I don’t know, you look pretty dangerous to me.” My grin was drawn by the throbbing in my ankle.

“Asshole. You’re hurt. Come with me.”

“My name is Thomas, though I also answer to Asshole, on occasion.”

“Can you walk, Thomas?”

I safed the rifle and slid over to the doorway. “No, my right leg won’t take any weight. The ankle is gone, and it’s really painful.”

“We need to go about fifty meters. Can you do that if I help you?”

“Apparently, there isn’t another choice. I will make it.”

So, with her half-carrying me, I hopped the promised fifty meters, passing through the building we’d parked in, across a connected building, and into a small office in a third building, where the front had partially collapsed, and had never been repaired.

The young woman, and I’d revised her age down to no more than her mid-teens based on her slim figure under the bulky clothing, opened yet another door and led me into a neatly appointed room with a single bed to one side. “Lie down here, Thomas.”

I gingerly sat down and swung my undamaged leg up first, followed by the injured one. “Will they find us here?”

“Soon enough, yes, but not for a while. We are well hidden here.” She pulled back her head covering, revealing her face and head. She was, in a word, gorgeous – and she was a very young teen.

“Uh, how old are you?”

“I will turn fifteen in a month. Would you like some water?” She stood and went to a water dispenser she’d scavenged from somewhere on the base.

“Yes, please. What’s your name?”

“I am Nasreen.” She poured water into a Styrofoam cup and handed it to me.

I drank greedily, tipping the cup up as I drained it. “Thank you,” I said as I handed it back to her.

“Can you call your friends? We don’t have much time.”

“I could, but we agreed to not come back for anyone. It’s too dangerous now that the Taliban is in charge.”

She sighed and sat down heavily in a chair. “You are my only way out of here, Thomas.”

I struggled to sit up straighter and propped my back against the wall behind the head of the bed. “Well, that answers the question of why you helped me.”

“Yes, that is true. I also saw that you shot the four men who were looking for me, and that you had women and children in your trucks. I also saw the soldiers at the gate, what few are left, and the airplanes that came for you all.”

I thought for a moment. “What will happen to you if you cannot leave?”

“I am destined to be a Taliban leader’s wife. I speak English, you see. It is not what I want, and I would rather die. This will be worse than death, and there is no escape once the Westerners leave for good.”

I nodded in understanding. I’d seen enough of how the Taliban treated women and children to fuel my nightmares for years. “I can’t do much to help you with one leg, Nasreen. The pain is getting worse, and I only have one dose of morphine.”