Chapter 2

I was stupid and as a result, I wound up naked and tied to a filthy bed, my ribs making breathing difficult, my eyesight a little off due to the concussion that was making my head scream, and my face was bleeding and beginning to swell. No, I had been stupid yet again and made the head idiot angry. All I wanted was a story. Contacts gotten through my father and his family assured me that the Taliban warlord in Marjah would give me a face-to-face interview, no strings attached. I should have been safe enough as a member of the press with a name as generic as my exiled grandfather could come up with when he and his family fled in the mid-80's. They were members of a miniscule minority group (called the Karasihirbazlar by the Uzbeks, Kyrgyz, and other Turkic nomads who overran the region from the steppes from time to time) in the northern provinces who were neither Muslim nor Christian but something older, more native. Legends said that they were the reason the British had so much trouble conquering Afghanistan in the 19^th century and the reason that the Czarist Russians did not get far even further back. But we were a dying people even before the Soviet Russians invaded. The last King used us as mystic advisors, as his ancestors had before him. When he fell, so did the prestige of our tribe. The Hazara and other Pashtun tribes hated us and the Soviets had racial and historical fears which made us go even deeper underground than we wanted to. Some few stayed, but the rest met and agreed it was time to find a way to get out. The elders found a way to be very useful to the American CIA and when the Soviets fled in 1989, so did we.

It is usually very hard to hide an entire people, but as I said, we were a dying people. There were only five hundred and three of us to hide and the CIA went to a fair amount of trouble to spread us out in small communities on the outskirts of Denver. We wound up in places like Aurora, Highlands Ranch, and Castle Pines, with one or two families over in Mountain View. Most took new names that reflected where we came from, with my grandfather coming up with the ever-so-creative Afghani for our last name. They settled down and achieved the American dream, with very little help from either our government benefactors or the use of our unusual gifts. We were educated, intelligent, and inventive. Business ventures and artistic gifts allowed most of our families to thrive in our new homeland. But to some of us, the old country called siren-like. I was one of those unfortunates.

I graduated in the top five percent of my high school in Aurora and went on to the Columbia School of Journalism so that I could go back and see what had become of my forefathers' land. I had to stay out of Afghanistan while it was in the hands of the Taliban, but after September 11^th, my publisher and editor got together and had me plucked from the central market in Peshawar (where I was tracking weapons flowing into Afghanistan) and sent me into the Northern Alliance's territory to follow the invasion by the U. S. Well, calling that an invasion is a little grandiose. It was mainly a bunch of CIA cowboys riding with the Northern Alliance (United Islamic Front) and some Special Forces warriors. The rest was mostly just the Northern Alliance sweeping in after U. S. airstrikes and the Taliban wetting themselves and fleeing. Don't get me wrong, there was plenty of fighting, but it was mainly just a reversal of fortunes in the Afghan Civil War that had been going on since the Soviets left. The Taliban had just not been smart enough to finish off the Northern Alliance and had let them survive in the tiny portion of northern Afghanistan that they were holding on to.

Fast-forward almost a decade and the U. S. had not been smart enough to take out the Taliban and they had gone into Pakistan to lick their wounds, recruit, train, and rearm, and they were back. Offensives by the British in 2009 in Helmand Province had me rushed from Iraq and the mission there winding down to cover the British and Afghanis trying to clear strongholds in Helmand. Rumor of Operation Moshtarak started making the rounds as well later that year. With an influx of U. S. troops and confirmation of an offensive aimed at clearing Marjah, I was first assigned to embed with a Marine company but that was scrapped. At loose ends, I started hunting up a story and got what I thought was an interview with one of the Taliban commanders in Marjah itself. What I did not know was that the commander was an old school Pashtun warlord and knew very well who my grandfather was. He met me only to watch the fear on my face when his men beat me before trussing me up and spiriting me away from his stronghold.

Even though I was terrified about what they were going to do to me once the truck stopped moving, I could not help but worry over the photographer I had roped into this stupidity. He was just some dumb, young Canadian kid looking for his spurs in combat journalism. He was kind of cute, in that bumbling, puppy dog kind of way. Even as I tried taunting my way into a quick death, foregoing the gang rape I saw in my bleakly short future, I kept hoping they did not kill the kid.

The savage I was taunting roared, slamming his AK to the floor and ripping at the belt holding the threadbare brown trousers up. My brain froze with a fear unlike any I had ever known. Almost ten years jumping from hot spot to hot spot in Asia and I had never been this afraid of anything. I was about to close my eyes and try to take my mind elsewhere when I felt purpose, deadly serious purpose tinged with righteous anger. And then the door exploded inward, bouncing off its hinges to reveal a very large figure dressed in U. S. military camouflage. The figure was holding an M-4 assault rifle and three others stormed in behind him. Something wet splattered on my bare legs and I looked down, seeing that they were sprinkled with blood and bits of brain that had come out the hole in my would-be rapist's head. A short, nasty little fire fight broke out with me just trying to stay as still as possible and not get shot.

Then silence.

Now, what happened after the silence gets sort of patchy for me because of the concussion and shock beginning to set in. But one thing was very clear: the feeling of purpose that emanated from the one who was in charge of the American soldiers. I remember seeing signs that they were Rangers, but all of their name patches were missing and they mostly referred to each other by rank or nickname. Sarge. That is what they kept calling the one with the heavy fate. He gently approached me and cut the ropes binding me to the bed. He then got the blanket that the Taliban thugs had swept to the floor when they tied me down and wrapped me in it. I began shaking with the pain and the relief and the shock.

"It's okay, ma'am, we won't hurt you," was what that strong, deep voice told me with such a thick accent that I realized he was speaking Pashto. "My medic is coming and he will check you over."

I remember him calling for a Specialist O'Malley on the comm. I am pretty sure I thanked him for his concern, but I won't swear to it. I tried to get his name, to properly thank him, but he just smiled and shook his head. He asked me who I was and I told him. I could almost hear all the swear words he wanted to say but he was contained and purposeful. Much too disciplined to start swearing randomly. The feel of his arm around my shoulders as he held me upright waiting for the medic was cutting through the shock and making me feel things entirely inappropriate to the situation. I think that may have been behind his reluctance to give me his name. Despite my feelings, the pain was making a comeback and my face was swelling to the point of screaming for attention. Another man ran in the front door and stopped, surprised and happy to see his lieutenant lying dead just in front of the doorstep.

My hero got up and went to whisper with the man and then the medic started very carefully giving me the once over. He wrapped my ribs without blushing or ogling me, splinted my ankle, and bandaged what he could bandage before giving me the weakest pain pills he had with an apology over their weakness. He told me we might have to walk out of here and they might need me conscious and lucid for that.

For a long while, Sarge was not in the house but looking at something his men had found in the barn. He was heading back from looking and talking to their commanders when they roused me from the stupor that shock was putting me into and began helping me dress, partially in my own clothes and partially in the dead lieutenant's clothes. It was probably a good thing I was numb with shock or that would have freaked me out more than it did. It was plain as they were dressing me that there was no way I was walking anywhere. The thrill of pleasure I got when the Sergeant came back in and told me that they would be walking to an evac site some miles away and he would be carrying me in his arms was shocking to me. I tried to contain myself, but it was a loosing battle. For most of that long night, I was snuggled in the very strong arms of my savior, only being carried in the even taller and bulkier Private Ustinov's arms for a short time before being reclaimed by the Sergeant. He, Ustinov (and I only found out his name much, much later), kind of reminded me of Dolph Lundgren in Rocky, but with red hair, not blonde.

I was drowsing on the ground in a depression somewhere north of Marjah when I heard the thwap-thwap of a helicopter. I was loaded on the chopper first and then the mummy-wrapped body of the dead lieutenant. I don't remember how they got the body here and, as we flew away, that bothered me. Bothered me enough that I spent the trip thinking hard about it and missing the opportunity to collect names so I might track down the so-interesting Ranger Sergeant that saved me. Somewhere between being picked up and arriving where we were going, I fell asleep again.

The next thing I remember is a light in my eye and a British Army doctor asking me if I hurt when he touched my head in various places. I spent the day and night in a bed being watched so I would not fall asleep in between being run through a battery of tests. They found out I had four broken ribs, a broken ankle, a moderate concussion, minor internal bleeding that required emergency surgery when they finally realized what their tests were telling them. Of course, that meant more time in the hospital, more tests, more doctors. Somewhere in all that, I thankfully don't remember where, they performed a sexual assault kit. When I woke up in the hospital after the surgery, there was a nice woman from the military version of SART (Sexual Assault Response Team). She assured me that although it appeared I had not been raped, the team that rescued me reported what they saw and that it was likely I would have some of the same mental symptoms of a rape victim. I assured her that other than being heartily glad that my own stupidity did not get me killed and guilt over the death of the young lieutenant and possibly my photographer, I was fine.

I did try to get her to help me find out the name of the Sergeant who saved me, but she had "no clue as to what you are talking about" and neither did any of the nurses, doctors, or U. S. Marine Intelligence people who came to talk to me after I was feeling better. Some of them had completely blank faces of people who do not lie very often but were ordered to do so when they told me that, including the nice woman from SART. They wanted me better and out of the bed they needed (for some reason they did not air evac me to Landstuhl, Germany or elsewhere) and the Marines wanted information that could help them in their upcoming offensive, though they categorically denied that was why they were talking to me. The offensive was not a secret, but the fact that they were talking to me was, apparently. I was feeling better and had a clean bill of health, aside from the broken bones, and was striking out in finding my savior so I allowed them to check me out of the hospital. I went in search, on crutches, of two people: my photographer and Specialist O'Malley, the Ranger medic.

In the two weeks or so that I was looking, I found that my photographer was safe and in Pakistan, after being given a complete, if unintentional, look behind the Taliban defenses and supply lines. And about the time I thought I was getting close to O'Malley, Operation Moshtarak kicked off fully, sending most of the people I wanted to talk to into Marjah. It was about that time, too, that my editor back in London found out what had happened and he and my publisher in New York yanked my funding in an effort to get me home. Sighing and hoping for better luck in Washington, I acceded to his wishes and hopped a plane out of Afghanistan.

On the long flight home I wrote up an article detailing my ordeal, which my print editor ate up and not only published in full but sold to papers around the world. I made quite a lovely sum on that, so I guess it was worth it beyond meeting who I was sure was my fate, my future. It is one of my people's gifts that we know immediately whom we will marry as soon as we meet them. I was pretty sure I had met my mate. As soon as I was finished in New York with my editor, I got on another plane and went home to Aurora.

I had hoped to sneak into town and rest for a few days before heading to DC to start bugging my sources in the Pentagon for information on my Ranger Sergeant. I should have known my family better than that. There must have been three bus loads of Afghanis waiting outside the tunnel at my gate. My mother was the only one I had told and only because I did not feel like taking a cab with my face still looking like Mike Tyson had gone at it for twelve rounds and still needing a cane to get around. My mother, of course, told my father, who told my five brothers, who told their wives, and so on and so forth. I have not been home for longer than a week since I graduated and got a job as a war correspondent, so my family was suitably happy I was going to be home. And to tell the truth, seeing my extended family was why I was home and had plans to stay over the Spring Break after going to DC. But to see all those happy faces go from overjoyed to see me to either horrified or raging mad was a let down. My mother and grandmother folded me into a fierce though gentle hug after I squealed about my ribs, demanding to know who had hurt me whilst the menfolk stared at my face with looks that told me their shot guns and rifles would be properly oiled tonight. I demurred from telling the story in the crowded Denver Airport so they bustled me to baggage claim and then to the fleet of trucks and SUVs that would take me to the family compound outside Aurora. While my brothers and sister all had their own houses, grandpa did well enough in business to die a semi-rich man. My father did well enough in business to go from rich to wealthy and retire at fifty-six. He bought a defunct farm on which he had built a sprawling family headquarters from which he managed the clan's investments. There were enough rooms that we could all come home at the same time and nobody had to sleep on the couches except the kids. I figure by the time dad dies we will be the richest family in Aurora, if not the entire Denver area. And three of my brothers and my sister are only adding to it.

So, there we all were, sitting around the large dining room table sipping wine or beer with everyone looking at me. I slowly told my story to reproachful looks from my grandmother and dad when they learned of me trying to use old family ties to get a story in Afghanistan. "I thought we taught you the family history better than that, girl!" muttered my father, shaking his head. The fierce joy in everyone's eyes when they learned of the fate of the six Taliban thugs was scary. I could feel the righteousness of their fury flare. And it was not satisfied with those deaths. "What of the Taliban commander you tried to interview?" demanded my eldest brother Ahmad. Shrugging my shoulders and telling them that the city was under assault by the U. S. Marines was not a good enough answer. I had a feeling some strings would be pulled to find out the commander's fate and I did not want to know. When I ended my story, my mother looked at me for a long minute or two to the point of creeping me out.

"What? Why do you stare at me like that, mother?" I demanded.

She smiled knowingly, her face lighting up with the beauty that drew my father to marry her when they were still in high school. "You have met him, haven't you? The soldier was the one, isn't he?" she asked fervently. I could have tried to deny knowing what she was talking about, but my sister had a similar smile on her face as she rubbed her only slightly bulging belly. She was pregnant with her second child.

Sighing, I nodded slowly. "I think so. But there is a problem, I do not know who he is," I told her, a little embarrassed.

She giggled, making me gape at her with astonishment. "That is a problem, but I know you. You will find him. And if you don't, ask for help. Your grandfather had friends in unusual places and they have kept in touch with your father. If you run out of leads, ask him to help and he will find this man for you," she said with a loving, almost puppyish look at my father who smiled even as he blushed from the adoration on her face.

When the kids came home from school that afternoon, my brothers and sister brought them all over to the compound and we had a feast. I was suitably mobbed, shocked at how big some of them had gotten since I was home last Summer. That night I slept and dreamt of him. Nothing specific, more like my mind or the Fates were taunting me. I kept having that dream and consulted my grandmother about it. She had been a sort of herbwitch for our community. Someone we brought our troubles and problems to and she fixed. My sister was slowly inheriting her gifts and place in our little tribe, but I still went to grandma with all of my problems. Kind of hard to ask advice of someone for whom you changed diapers and bottle fed as a teenager.

After grandma heard me out, she smiled and took my hand, stroking it. I could feel her pushing her magic into me, probably to speed my healing. "Your Fate is simply making sure you remember what you are supposed to be doing. As long as you don't try to deny your love for this stranger, the dream will remain as it is. As you get closer to finding him, it will change, perhaps showing him to you in ways that will further your search. It all depends on whether you are gifted in that way. You showed remarkably few gifts as a child, but then perhaps we did not know how they would manifest," she said mysteriously, shaking her head. "Perhaps you are as good at getting out of trouble as you are because they are strong but ethereal. Intangible to tests but known by the Fates. How your dream changes as you get closer will be interesting, Shameera. Make sure to let me or your sister know how the search goes. It may be that searching is, in fact, your gift."

Visits with my grandmother were always confusing and always required a cup of tea with my mother afterward. I would sit down with her and talk out all my grandmother said and we would analyze it together. She always helped me to at least accept the mystery that was my grandmother. As my sister grows older, she has started to talk like my grandmother enough that I do not talk about my life or problems with her. It only gives me headaches and I love my sister enough not to want to associate that with her.

I stayed in Aurora for almost two months, making calls, to Pentagon sources and people I knew who were back from Afghanistan, from there to try to find someone with the access I needed. Rangers were Special Operations and that was always hard to get information about. Most of my really good sources in that arena required face-to-face grilling for good info; otherwise they would just blow me off. When the kids went back to school, I started talking about heading back east and Washington. A friend of mine was in Iraq and was going to let me use her apartment while I was there.

Since I had one name and a nameless Ranger unit for my starting point I started with a friend I made in the Joint Special Operations Command, hoping that since Moshtarak was going to be a Marine operation, that JSOC was who was running the Rangers that saved me. I got nowhere fast and things slowed from there. I decided to concentrate on O'Malley. After all, how many O'Malleys could there be in the U. S. Army Rangers who was a medic of the E-4 rank at this time. It did not take me long to find where he was born, went to high school, and went to basic training. I talked to his mother and she told me that she thought he was somewhere in Central America, but that she was never very sure where he was exactly. Given the crappy state of affairs in Mexico and the U. S. government's tendency to involve itself in hemispherical affairs, he was probably somewhere on the Mexico-U. S. border helping kill drug lords or train Mexican Special Forces and military. Not much else was flaring in Central America now that Honduras had settled down post-election. I asked Mrs. O'Malley to ask her son to give me a call when he next talked to her and moved on. I was just about to hang up with her when she asked if I had talked to O'Malley's Army buddy, Sergeant Jackson. Sergeant! Surely it was not this easy! I asked if she knew his first name and she told me it was something French sounding, Jean or something like that. I thanked her and hung up.

Jean Jackson? Or maybe Sean with a thick Louisiana accent, like the black guy that was carrying the comm unit. And if you are a communication specialist in the Army, chances are you would have gone through school at Ft. Gordon. It took a lot of time, nearly six months of phone calls and covert meetings with people who are not supposed to talk with the press without permission before I found out Ranger Staff Sergeant Sean Jackson was coming home to Shreveport after being injured somewhere in Africa. It was not serious, but he was due for some time stateside anyway so they sent him home with a one month pass. When I got to the address I had for Jackson in Shreveport I was laughingly told that Sean was not a city kid but a bayou boy who occasionally visited his "pappy when he brung 'is fool self home from de wars." Otherwise he lived with his mother near Thibodaux.

It was hotter than a sauna in Thibodaux in early September and I was not a happy camper. Neither was Sergeant Jackson when he saw me walking up his drive from my rented Jeep. "What you do here, cherie? An' how you fin' me?" he demanded from the porch of an old plantation house. How a Sergeant in the Army was staying in such a grand and historical house was beyond me. Nothing I had on Jackson hinted of money in his background. This was a classic Louisiana planter's house and was probably on the historical landmarks register. It was surrounded by several acres of fruit trees, mainly figs with some pomegranates and lemons on the higher ground, and in the distance you got a glint of sun off of bayou waters.

"O'Malley's mother and a friend who heard you were home on injury leave," I told him with a slight smile. "Mind if I sit with you, Sergeant?"

He sighed. His arm was in a sling and there were some superficial cuts and scrapes on his face and neck. He was lounging on a swing next to a table that held a pitcher of what looked like sweet tea and a half eaten sandwich. Jackson settled back in the swing with a wince and nodded me to the chair on the other side of the table. He picked up his sandwich and took a bite, probably trying to gather himself and his thoughts, putting the barriers back up now that a civilian/reporter was here.

"So, cherie, wha'chu doin' here in de bayou in de middle of de summatime?"

"Looking for someone," I told him plainly, something telling me that nothing but the truth was going to do with this man. "Are you going to help me or are we just going to talk around each other before I take my leave?"

He grinned, putting the sandwich back down. "Aw, cherie, I wish you was lookin' fer me. You is pretty an' smart t' have gotten dis far, an' you gets t' de point insteada tap dancin' 'round me," he said with a friendly warmth in his eyes. His look was examining, seeming to take me in and see everything about me. "Yous lookin' a sight betta den when we pass you off t' de Brits. You was bad hurt an' glad is I dat de Sarge whacked dem san' fleas. De world be a betta place widout dem."

His accent got thicker the more he relaxed so it took my brain a minute to figure out what he said but his mentioning the Sarge gave me the opening I needed. "The Sarge, what is his name, Jackson?"

He shook his head sadly, making my heart sick as I thought that meant he was not going to help me, which would mean this was a wasted trip. "You got it bad, doncha cherie? He was worried 'bout dat, too. Dat's why he say no names, when we was wit' you and on de way out t' de choppa," he said sagely, a look in his eyes not unlike my Uncle Davi. Uncle Davi was the shrewdest reader of people I ever met. He is the reason my father could retire so young. Uncle Davi was the family fix-it man. He swears it is just his knowledge of people and how they think, but my siblings and I all agree it was something more. We could never get away with anything around that man. Jackson had that same kind of aura about him as he looked at me, his black eyes and swarthy face penetrating in their intensity. "Tell me why you look for de Sarge, and maybe I help you, maybe no'. An' don' try leavin' anyting out, eider!"

I thought about lying, but like I said, this was Uncle Davi all over again. I learned that lesson by the time I was eight. So, I told him about my family and what I thought happened when I saw the Sarge back in that farmhouse in Afghanistan. He just sat there nodding, politely taking it all in without judgment.

When I was finished, I sat there watching his expression for some hint of what he was thinking. Finally he smiled and shook his head, saying, "Woowee, cherie! You got yoself a stranger fam'ly den me! An' a damn shame 'tis dere ain't much more I can do dan give you a name t' go from here on, too!"

"Thank you, Sergeant Jackson," I said with my body practically vibrating with eagerness.

Jackson shook his head. "You lucky he so partic'lar 'bou' his name, oderwise you might no' get much more dan his las' name, cherie," he said with amusement richly coloring his tone.

I frowned. "What do you mean?"

"He one o' dem Feinians, you know, Irish folk. Firs' dime I mess his name up, acuz o' my accen', he say, 'My name is Sergeant Con Devlin of the O'Neill Devlins, and you will remember it if I have to run you into the dirt!'" the young black man said with nearly perfect inflection and tone from what I remember the Sarge having. "'Parently he got mucho Irish ro'lty in 'is ancestors. Ask 'im when you got 'im alone an' have time, what Con stands fo'. It'll give you a laugh. I know it did me when he fin'ly tol' me."

I left with a very common Irish surname and a very odd first name. Con usually is short for Connor in the Irish, but Jackson's amusement at it hinted that whatever Sergeant Devlin's first name was, it was not something so common as Connor. There also seemed to be the hint that it was not just Conn, which I had heard of before. A minute to commune with my laptop and I was frustrated again. No Con Devlins, no Sergeant Con Devlins, no Sergeant Devlins. Or at least, no Sergeant Devlins that had to do with the U. S. Army Rangers of today.

So I was on my way to Fort Benning, GA. This was turning into an Odyssey. Here was hoping the Cyclopes don't get Poseidon to waylay me now that I was close to the end.

I got to go from hot and humid and wet to hot and humid and dry. Georgia had been in a drought for much of the last decade, with a year here and there to moisten things up. While this was a wetter year than past years, Georgia was still pretty dry. And of course, the second my plane landed in Atlanta, it started raining. Having packed for Louisiana, I was prepared with an umbrella in my luggage. I ventured forth to get another rental and hit the road for Columbus on the Georgia-Alabama border. I-85 to I-185 and about an hour and change later and I was trying to talk my way on to Ft. Benning. The gate guards were impressed with neither my press pass nor the story I concocted about a profile of Rangers home from the wars. I wound up in the chief of security's office. He must have liked my bullshit, unlike his men, because he let me go with an escort. A young woman of about twenty-four, short brown hair, brown eyes, and tanned skin got in my rental Buick with me. Her name was Giovanna and she looked like one. Her folks were probably still struggling with Italian accents, if I read her right. She gave me directions to the 3^rd Ranger Battalion's headquarters building. Once there, I tried to finagle my way into simply getting information on Sergeant Devlin, but the 75^th Rangers' Regimental Commander got wind of my presence and sat me down to grill me on my intent.

I must have pinged his bullshit radar because the look he gave me clearly stated that he was not buying what I was selling. Seeing I was not getting anywhere, I told him about being rescued by Rangers and was doing the story because I was grateful to the unknown Rangers for saving me from my own stupidity. His eyes softened fractionally and he asked me to give him a minute. He left the office, leaving me with a now staring Giovanna. A couple of minutes and the Colonel returned with a slight smile on his face.