Wild, Tethered, Bound. Stephanie Draven
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kid. “We’re not expecting hostiles.”
“You willing to bet on that, sir?” the surly sergeant whispered.
Nick—whose late-night poker games with enlisted men were getting him into trouble with the brass—just smiled. But in spite of his bravado, Nick was acutely aware that his life was on the line—their staggeredformation alone was a grim reminder that they had to keep outside of one another’s blast radius just in case someone set off an IED.
Getting his bearings, Nick paused beside an old tree with exposed roots all tangled together like bones beneath his feet, and squinted into the dark canopy of leaves. Nick kept imagining trip wires glittering like spider webs in the occasional patch of morning sun. What the hell? Was he bugging out?
That’s when Nick’s sharp-eyed scouts gave the signal up ahead. They’d spotted something. Nick saw it, too. A flash of white amidst the leaves, a blur of limbs in motion, and then it shot skyward into the canopy. Nick told himself it was some bird—no human being could leap into the trees like that. His finger steadied on the trigger nonetheless and a moment later, he heard a woman’s whisper just behind his ear.
“What are you doing in my forest?”
Jesus Christ! Nick spun to face her as a cacophony of shouts erupted from his soldiers. How had she ever gotten this close without his realizing it?
“Put your hands where we can see them!” Nick yelled this in the local language, as it was one of the few phrases he knew how to say in just about every dialect.
The beautiful woman staring down the barrel of his gun should have been frightened, but instead, she calmly and majestically lifted her pale arms, as if she were some kind of goddess. The scouts gave Nick asignal that everything was clear. She wasn’t some kind of distraction for an ambush, so he lowered his rifle and got a closer look at the woman he’d almost put a bullet in.
She wore a short white tribal gown that bared her arms and she looked to be alone and unarmed. Her nut-brown hair flowed freely over her shoulders, and captivating blue eyes peered at him above her cheekbones.
In spite of all his training, Nick could not help but stare in shock. It wasn’t her features that startled him, for many of the local Nuristani were said to have descended from Alexander’s Macedonian-Greek army and some extremely fair. In fact, some of these rugged mountaineers still worshiped ancient gods like Dionysus.
But nothing Nick had learned about their strange local culture could explain her. “Are you hurt?” Nick asked, because he could think of no other reason a lone woman would be wandering these woods, much less without a head covering. When she didn’t answer, he said the only other words he knew in the local language. “I’m Lieutenant Nick Leandros of the United States Marine Corp. We’re here to help. Do you need assistance?”
“Lieutenant Nick Leandros.” She repeated his name with an imperious stare. “What I need is for you to leave my forest.”
She couldn’t possibly be speaking English, but he understood her perfectly well. And from the looks ontheir faces, his men understood her too. Since the translator wasn’t necessary, Nick said, “We’re not here to stay, ma’am, but we do have a few questions.”
“You’re soldiers,” she said, her condemning gaze falling upon each of his men in turn. “So I imagine you’re going to ask me whether I’ve seen the Taliban fighters that exchanged fire with your forces the other night.”
Now the sergeant broke in. “Actually, we’d like to set up a shura with your menfolk—a meeting with local leaders. Where are they?”
“I don’t have menfolk,” the woman snapped and gave Sarge a peremptory glare that silenced him.
For some reason, this only emboldened Nick. “Well, have you seen any jihadists?”
“Sir—” the sergeant started to interrupt with a warning, and Nick knew why. They’d been trained to avoid even talking to Afghan women. It could be considered a grave insult and breed the kind of resentment that fed the insurgency. Yet, the strange woman had started the conversation, hadn’t she? She’d appeared like an apparition and it seemed worth a gamble that she knew something.
Besides, there was something powerfully attractive about her that went way beyond her beauty. Nick was enchanted. It was as if he’d fallen into some kind of web. “The men who fired upon us the other night—we think they’re hiding high up in these mountains. Are they?”
“I only know they aren’t here,” she said, suddenly reaching out long and elegant fingers to caress his cheek. “I don’t usually let soldiers stay in my forest.”
Nick was so surprised by her touch that he flinched away. She must be some kind of madwoman. Beautiful, but cracked. The war did that to people; and after all Nick had seen—all the blood and death—he was halfway down that road himself.
She wasn’t going to tell them anything. She wasn’t working for the Taliban, either; he was sure of it. But that wasn’t going to help her much when the next round of shelling commenced.
It was against policy to warn the locals of upcoming assaults, lest they pass that information on to the enemy, but Nick had seen enough civilians die because they were in the wrong place at the wrong time. He could just about guarantee hostilities breaking out here. “Listen, this isn’t a safe place to be,” he blurted. “You should probably seek shelter in a village for a while.”
“I can protect my forest,” she said simply.
My forest. Why did she keep saying that?
“Sir, shouldn’t we get on with it?” the sergeant interrupted more forcefully.
Nick gave him a sharp look. Was he supposed to just leave this waif in the woods by herself and wish her a good day? On the other hand, what else could he do? There weren’t any psychiatric hospitals in this isolated corner of the world, and even if he couldget help for her, some shrink would just lock her up and put her in restraints.
Nick couldn’t imagine a worse fate, so he reluctantly led his men away.
It was a bleating goat that warned of their approach, and three startled little girls huddled together when they saw Nick’s soldiers and their guns. The oldest of the girls could have been no more than eight, but she picked up a cook pot and wielded it to defend herself and her sisters.
“Whoa, whoa, whoa, it’s okay. Nobody’s going to hurt you,” Nick said, and the translator hurriedly interpreted his words.
Nick fished some Tootsie Rolls from his pocket and held them out to the children. “Where are your parents?”
The littlest girl reached out tentatively and took a piece of candy from Nick’s hand. The eldest still held her menacing cook pot, and the middle sister cried.
“Their mother’s dead,” the interpreter told Nick after a few minutes of questioning. “The father’s a shepherd. They say he’s out grazing the flock.”
Nick’s patrol was supposed to ask about the Taliban fighters, about the nearest villages and about arranging a shura. But right now, all Nick could think about was how scared these little girls were. Given the way the middle one was crying, she’d probably seen soldiers before, and nothing good had come of it.
Crouching down, Nick took a deck of playing cards out of his pack and drew the joker. The girls stared at the card with fascination as he moved his hands over it, and—using an old trick he’d learned in Vegas—he tucked the card into his helmet while making it seem to disappear.
It wasn’t real magic, but the children reacted as if it were. The littlest girl laughed. The middle one stopped crying. The eldest lowered her pot. Card tricks weren’t going to win him a Nobel Peace Prize, but Nick thought he’d made a pretty good start. “Ask them about their older sister, or aunt. Or whoever that blue-eyed wild woman in the woods is.”
“They say she’s a nature