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.
