ADVENTURES THROUGH TIME (2025 Edition) by Michel Poulin - HTML preview

CHAPTER 4 – OP ATTENTION

 

13:49 (Afghanistan Time)

Saturday, October 27, 2012 ‘A’

Herat International Airport

Afghanistan

Nancy was dog tired after nearly three days of air travel and three stopovers as she was finally able to disembark with her kit and weapons from the C-27J twin propeller transport aircraft that had brought her from Kabul to Herat. She was however resolved to make this third and last operational tour for her in Afghanistan count, rather than simply going through the motions, like too many did. Even though only two weeks had officially gone by since she had accepted to serve another tour in Afghanistan, she was in reality back from a full four months spent training her new Time Patrol members in 3384 and chasing after new recruits. Added to the ten months she had spent fighting in World War Two and to the fact that she was now fully trained in the use of her special implants and mastered her supernatural powers as a Chosen of The One, it all made her a vastly more experienced and effective soldier than she already had been before. She was also fully committed to use that experience to the maximum to help train the recruits of the Afghan National Army, or ANA, who were due to assume in a bit over a year the full responsibility for defending their country from the Taliban extremists.

Carrying her big military backpack, a kit bag, her guitar case, her tactical vest, Kevlar helmet, C7 rifle and her personal GLOCK 17L pistol in its leg holster, she walked towards the nearby air terminal, which was guarded by a mix of Afghan policemen and NATO soldiers. She was met inside the terminal by a Canadian master corporal who presented himself to her while saluting her.

‘’Captain Laplante, I’m Master Corporal MacDonald, sent by Major Parr to bring you to Camp Arena. I have a vehicle waiting outside.’’

‘’Thanks, Master Corporal.’’ said Nancy, saluting back. ‘’Lead on!’’ MacDonald was about to take her kit bag from her to help her but she shook her head.

‘’I’ll carry my stuff, Master Corporal: one man, one kit.’’

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MacDonald smiled in appreciation at seeing she was not one of those paper-shuffling staff officers who had to be pampered around and took their personal privileges very seriously. Not saying another word, he then led Nancy through the terminal building, to an armored G-WAGON light vehicle parked on the other side, with a corporal waiting behind the wheel. After short presentations with her driver, Nancy piled her kit in the back of the vehicle before taking place on the rear bench seat. The driver then started his engine and started rolling away from the terminal, heading south on the main Herat-Kandahar highway. Nancy took that time to examine the local terrain: it was arid, like much of Afghanistan, with the city of Herat and its surrounding villages to the north of the airport forming a green oasis in the middle of the brown landscape. The main Herat-Kandahar road they were following south towards Camp Arena was on a flat plain but large mountains dominated the terrain to the Southwest and Southeast of Herat. Camp Arena itself was situated eight kilometers south of the airport and 700 meters off of the highway. It was quite a large facility, with close to fifty buildings of various sizes surrounded by a defensive perimeter wall one kilometer to the side and further protected by watch towers spaced regularly around the wall. Nancy knew that it was home to the headquarters of NATO’s Regional Command – West and of the Italian contingent in Afghanistan, which had responsibility for the western provinces of the country. That was where she was going to replace the unfortunate Captain Lebowski as the second most senior Canadian trainer of Afghan Army recruits in Herat. Things were however not going well in Afghanistan and she knew it too well. Due to a series of unfortunate incidents involving American soldiers during the last year, relations between the Afghan people and NATO troops, especially American troops, were very tense. This was going to greatly increase the difficulty of her new job. However, she would enjoy a distinct advantage over everybody by having an advanced hindsight of what was to come, thanks to having been able to review historical reports from the future before coming here.

The G-WAGON soon turned east off the highway, following a straight road leading into Camp Arena. It had to stop at the western entrance to the camp, where Italian soldiers were supervising Afghan soldiers guarding the gate. The Canadian vehicle was however quickly waved through and it drove towards a series of prefabricated white buildings, finally stopping in front of one of them. Master Corporal MacDonald got out with Nancy and pointed the entrance of the building.

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‘’This is the building housing the offices of the Canadian training team in Herat, Captain. Major Parr is going to see you right away.’’

‘’I’m not going to even have the time to drop my kit first at my quarters, Master Corporal?’’ asked Nancy, surprised. MacDonald seemed embarrassed as he answered her.

‘’My understanding is that you are not going to stay in Camp Arena, Captain. In fact, I was told to wait here with my vehicle to drive you off after your meeting with Major Parr.’’

Now getting angry, Nancy however didn’t bark at MacDonald, who obviously had little say in whatever was going on.

‘’Very well, Master Corporal. Show me to Major Parr’s office.’’ Making sure first she had her travel and mission orders on her, Nancy followed the junior NCO inside the building. She was soon introduced into a cramped office where a Canadian Army major with a balding head was sitting behind a desk. The major got up and saluted Nancy back when she presented herself in military fashion, then walked around his desk to shake hands with her.

‘’Captain Laplante, welcome to Herat! I’m Major Rick Parr, head of the Canadian training team at RMTC-West.’’

‘’Sir, let’s cut the small talk and go to the main point, if you will allow me. I was just told that I was not going to stay here in Camp Arena. What is going on, sir?’’ Parr seemed short on words at first, evidently embarrassed. Nancy noticed that his eyes avoided her eyes as he answered her.

‘’A decision was taken just two days ago by the commander of RMTC-West, Colonel Westwood, to assign you as a mentor to a group of female Afghan Border Police recruits due soon to start training at the Shouz police training center, instead of working here.’’

‘’Why, sir?’’ asked Nancy in a hard tone, taking out her travel and mission orders and showing them to Parr. ‘’I was asked to replace on an emergency basis Captain Lebowski here in Herat. I took an unpaid leave period of eleven months from my civilian job in order to be here, thinking that my services were urgently needed to train Afghan soldiers. Now you are telling me that some American colonel decided on his own to ignore my mission orders from Ottawa and to reassign me to a post normally fit for a sergeant? Who the hell is that Colonel Westwood and what right does he have to treat me like this?’’

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‘’As I said, Captain Laplante, Colonel Westwood is the commander of the NATO training organization for Western Afghanistan and he is from the United States Army. He decided that having a female officer train Afghan soldiers for combat was not appropriate.’’

‘’WHAT? AND YOU LET HIM DO THAT, SIR?’’ shouted Nancy, enraged. Parr didn’t rebuke her for that, a sign that he realized how wrong the situation was. He simply shrugged his shoulders while answering her in a subdued tone.

‘’I did protest his decision, but to no avail, Captain. Furthermore, he is supported by Lieutenant General Partridge, the overall commander of the NATO Training Mission in Afghanistan.’’

‘’Is that because of Afghan sensitivities or because the U.S. Army still refuses the right to its female soldiers to be part of combat units, sir? If it is for the second reason, then I would ask by what goddamned right they are imposing American domestic prejudices on a NATO joint mission? Did you pass on a protest to Ottawa, which just spent thousands of dollars flying me in on an emergency basis?’’

‘’I have sent emails up the chain of command to Ottawa, but it could be a while before I get a reply, Captain. Anyway, your new position in Shouz will be an important one, as training female Afghan police officers has a high priority right now.’’ Nancy stared hard at Parr, not impressed by his answer.

‘’Major, I have already done two of my past seven overseas operational tours in Afghanistan and was decorated for bravery on the battlefield while in Kandahar Province in 2007. I speak fluently both Pashto and Dari, am a 5th Dan black belt in karate and am a World-class combat pistol shooter. I also am a war correspondent and have seen more wars than that Colonel Westwood of yours could ever see in his whole career. I find his decision not only to be illegal and unjust, but also to be stupid and an insult to me and to the Canadian Army. If you deem that you can’t help reverse this arbitrary and highly questionable decision, then I will live with it and give my best in Shouz, but know that I will lodge an official protest through my regional headquarters in Montreal and that I will pursue it all the way to the Chief of the Defense Staff if need be. Right now, I will need a written confirmation that my position in Afghanistan was changed, and on whose official authority. I am not going to leave for Shouz simply on the strength of a verbal order which could be rephrased at will for future purposes, sir.’’ This time, Parr tensed up at her calculated insult. He however knew too well that she was right to be incensed and that Westwood was in the wrong. Taking a file out of his

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‘in’ basket, he opened it and sifted through it, then pulled out three pages and showed them to Nancy.

‘’These are the emails pertaining to your change of position, Captain. I will now go make copies of them for your use. I won’t be long.’’

While Parr was gone from the office, Nancy did her best to calm down and order her thoughts. This was a very bitter pill to swallow, especially considering the long pause to her civilian career she had taken voluntarily so that she could come on this tour, thinking rightly that her talents were truly needed here. On the other hand, she still could do some good in Shouz, if she was not dropped there simply like an unannounced fifth wheel. By the time Parr returned in the office and handed her three pages, she had mostly resigned herself to that move.

‘’What position exactly will I fill in Shouz, sir?’’

‘’I already discussed that with Lieutenant Colonel Ruggieri, the deputy commander of RMTC-West. You will be the senior NATO mentoring officer for the training of female Afghan police recruits who follow an eight-week basic patrolman course in Shouz. The female training staff there was seriously understrength there and certainly could use you, Captain. You will have with you as fellow NATO trainers an Italian Carabinieri lieutenant and an American Military Police sergeant, while the Afghan course staff had only one senior lieutenant and two sergeants. A female patrolman course loaded up to now with 28 recruits is scheduled to start on Monday, November fifth, in a week. Master Corporal MacDonald and Corporal Reed are standing by to transport you this afternoon to Shouz. Do you need anything before you leave, Captain?’’

‘’Yes, sir! I will need to top up on ammunition and will also need some local maps. Are there modern NATO portable radios in Shouz that I will be able to use?’’

‘’Uh, I don’t believe that they have much there in terms of modern radios. You can however sign for a handheld encrypted set here before departure. You will be able to get ammunition and maps at the same time. Master Corporal MacDonald will guide you to the quartermaster before leaving with you for Shouz. Do you have any more questions before you go?’’

‘’Not at this time, sir.’’

‘’Very well, then. Go get your ammunition, radio and maps and good luck in Shouz, Captain.’’

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Nancy then saluted Parr, who saluted back, and left his office. She found Master Corporal MacDonald still waiting outside, near the G-WAGON. Nancy pointed an index at him.

‘’We have to stop by the quartermaster for a few things, Master Corporal. Then we will leave for Shouz.’’

‘’Understood, Captain.’’

16:25 (Afghanistan Time)

Office of the female training staff

Afghan Border Police training center

Shouz, Herat Province

Afghanistan

Carabinieri Lieutenant Maria Garibaldi was reviewing the training schedule for the impending course, to be started in a week, when one of the Afghan female instructors, Sergeant Aziza Kaker, entered the office and went to speak excitedly in Dari with Senior Lieutenant Maryam Shirzai. The two of them then left the office in a hurry, leaving Sergeant Jennifer Cummings to look with puzzlement at Maria Garibaldi.

‘’Gee, I wonder what got those two excited like that, Lieutenant.’’ Maria, who didn’t speak Dari any more than the American sergeant did, could only shrug while getting up from her chair.

‘’There is only one way to know, Sergeant: let’s go see by ourselves.’’ Cummings also got up and followed Maria outside of the prefabricated building. There, they saw Senior Lieutenant Shirzai shake hands with a tall female officer who seemed to have just arrived in the camp, judging by her kit on the ground besides a Canadian vehicle. Maria smiled on seeing the Canadian officer.

‘’Ah, that should be the Captain Laplante whom we were told about earlier this morning. If she really can speak Dari and Pashto, then we sure could use her help here for the next course. Let’s go meet her, Sergeant.’’

Nancy was still exchanging pleasantries in Dari with the senior Afghan female instructor in Shouz when she saw two more women approach her. One was an Italian lieutenant of medium height but with a very sexy body and a stunningly beautiful face and eyes framed by black hair. The other was a tall, solidly built American sergeant with

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a baby face and short blond hair. Nancy finished her exchange with Shirzai before facing the two newcomers, who stopped two paces from her and saluted her. She saluted back, then shook hands with them, speaking first in Italian, then repeating herself in English.

‘’Hi! Captain Nancy Laplante, freshly arrived from Montreal.’’

‘’Lieutenant Maria Garibaldi, of the Carabinieri.’’

‘’Sergeant Jennifer Cummings, 701st MP Battalion.’’ Nancy then put back on her big backpack and grabbed her kit bag and guitar case.

‘’Would you know by chance where I am supposed to lodge here, Lieutenant Garibaldi?’’

‘’Yes, Captain: you are in fact going to share my cabin. I will guide you to it. It is actually quite comfortable and is equipped with air conditioning, although we are more in need of heating now.’’

‘’I’ll be with you in a second, Lieutenant.’’ said Nancy before turning again to face Maryam Shirzai and Aziza Kaker to speak to them in Dari. ‘’I would be pleased to have tea with you and the other instructors after supper, Lieutenant Shirzai. We need to get to know each other if we are to work together.’’

‘’It will be a pleasure for me and my two sergeants to attend, Captain.’’ said the Afghan woman, pleased at seeing that Nancy was completely fluent in Dari, a rarity among NATO instructors and mentors in Afghanistan. Nancy then went to follow Maria Garibaldi, with Jennifer Cummings tagging along. Maria spoke to her in good but accented English as she guided Nancy towards a small prefabricated building about fifty meters away.

‘’You seem to be quite fluent in Dari, Captain. Are you also as fluent in Pashto?’’

‘’I am, Lieutenant. I also speak fluently Italian, Spanish, German, Russian, French, Arabic, Urdu and Serbo-Croat, plus notions of a few more languages.’’ Maria nearly stopped dead in her tracks then, while Jennifer’s jaw dropped wide open.

‘’That…that’s incredible! You must have a special talent for languages, Captain.’’

‘’I do, Lieutenant. I also have a knack for ending up in the most insane places around the World.’’

Jennifer Cummings laughed at that.

‘’Well, you certainly ended in another one this time, Captain.’’

‘’And how insane exactly is this place right now?’’

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Maria understood from her changed tone that Nancy was now serious and alluding to the local security situation. She thus lowered her voice as she answered.

‘’The local area around this camp is reasonably calm for the moment, but the Taliban have a solid network of informants and spies all around, while Farah Province, to our immediate South, has gotten quite dangerous in the last months. The Taliban are trying to take back that province, especially in the district of Bala Buluk next to us. Unfortunately, the American Marine battalion which was based in Farah Province was recently withdrawn, creating quite a hole in the security situation there that the Afghan army and police are now trying desperately to plug. However, the Afghan security forces are losing a lot of people there, and about everywhere else in the country.’’

‘’Is it due to deficient training, deficient equipment, deficient morale or lack of popular support?’’

‘’A mix of everything, really. However, the Afghan recruits we have been getting in the last months can’t be faulted for not being motivated. If properly supported, they will fight, and fight hard.’’

‘’And the female Afghan recruits?’’

‘’They are the most motivated of all, Captain, since they have the most to lose if the Taliban return to power. They also have often to face the hostility and

incomprehension of much of the population, which looks negatively at women going around in public while unescorted or accompanied by men not from their families.’’ Nancy nodded her head: she already knew all that but had wanted to see if her new subalterns really understood the present situation. That Italian lieutenant certainly seemed to be on top of things. As for the American sergeant, she was still an unknown quantity. They were soon at the entrance of the cabin assigned to her. Letting Maria enter first; Nancy then dropped her kit in the middle of the small bedroom shown to her by the Italian. She next sat wearily on the bed.

‘’God! All these changes of time zones muddled my brain. I would have liked to discuss right now the situation concerning the training here, but I am afraid that I would not sound too coherent.’’

‘’Maybe you should have a short nap, Captain.’’ suggested Maria Garibaldi. ‘’I can come back in one hour, so that you can have supper.’’

‘’A good plan, Lieutenant. Please do that. By the way, who is the camp commandant here?’’

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‘’Colonel Najibullah Amin, of the Afghan Border Police, Captain. The senior NATO officer is Major Vincente Rambaldi, of the Carabinieri.’’

‘’Then, could you tell both of them that I will go pay my respects to them at supper time.’’

‘’With pleasure, Captain. I will be back in one hour.’’

Maria then left the cabin with Jennifer, to go back to the office building occupied by the international staff. As they walked together, Jennifer Cummings glanced at Maria.

‘’So, what do you think of this Captain Laplante, Lieutenant?’’

‘’Well, she certainly is an incredible linguist, something we could use to good effect here. She also seems to believe in this mission, contrary to some of the civilian contractors here that are only interested in their fat paychecks.’’ Jennifer didn’t contradict Maria on that, knowing herself how true that was.

At precisely five thirty, Maria returned to her cabin to wake up Nancy, only to find her already sitting on the edge of her bed, rubbing her eyes. Nancy gave her an apologetic smile.

‘’I had set up my watch’ alarm, just in case. Just give me five minutes to dress, then I will follow you to the mess.’’

As Nancy, who was wearing only her bra and panties, got up and turned to grab her combat uniform, Maria was able to see how muscular she was for a woman. Then, she saw a number of what looked like scars from old wounds over her buttocks and legs, plus a bullet scar on her left upper arm.

‘’My God! What happened to you? You are covered with scars.’’

‘’I am a war correspondent in civilian life: it can be quite a dangerous job most of the time. If you want, I can talk further about that during supper.’’

‘’That would certainly interest me, Captain.’’

Nancy then smiled to her as she was putting on her trousers.

‘’Please, call me simply ‘Nancy’ when in private. Can I call you ‘Maria’?’’

‘’Please do, Nancy. We Italians are not very big about strict military discipline.’’

‘’Thanks, Maria. Do the Afghan staff eat at the same mess as the international staff?’’

‘’Actually, no, for practical reasons: the Afghan and international kitchens are separate, so not to risk contamination of Afghan rations by un-Islamic products like pork. I have to say that I am partial to ham myself.’’

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‘’Me too! I also am a big fan of bacon in the morning. Then, we will visit the Afghan mess before we eat, so that I can first present my respects to Colonel Amin. I am already overdue for that.’’

‘’Colonel Amin will understand the delay, Nancy. The Afghans themselves are not exactly models of punctuality.’’

‘’Still! I would rather start here on the right footing.’’

Once dressed, Nancy left her rifle locked in the special locker made to secure weapons that was fixed to a wall of her bedroom, keeping only her pistol with her. Going out of the cabin with Maria, she let the Italian woman point to her the various installations of interest in the camp, which was contained within a defensive perimeter wall that was roughly 500 meters to a side and was made of a thick earthen berm topped by barbed wire. They walked past the building used by the international staff, heading towards those used by Afghans and finally entering one extremity of a long building. Maria spoke to Nancy as they got through the door and entered a relatively small room.

‘’We are now in the Afghan officers’ mess. Colonel Amin is sitting at the head of the table to our right.’’

‘’Thank you! Just wait near the door: I won’t be long.’’

All the Afghans present had now fallen silent, looking at the newcomers. Nancy noted quickly that a small table in a far corner was used by Senior Lieutenant Shirzai, who seemed to be the only female Afghan officer in the camp. Walking to the officers’ table, Nancy stopped three paces from Colonel Amin, a short but solidly-built man with a short beard, and saluted him, speaking in Dari.

‘’Captain Nancy Laplante, Canadian Armed Forces, newly assigned as mentoring staff to the female recruit patrolman course, Colonel. I am sorry that I didn’t present myself earlier, sir.’’

Amin, agreeably surprised to see a NATO officer show him proper respect, got up from his chair and saluted back. Nancy did not offer her hand for a shake, knowing that Afghan customs dictated that women were not supposed to initiate physical contact with unrelated men. She also noticed at that time that a man sitting near Amin wore the insignias of a military imam and was closely examining her with a reserved expression. Amin did not shake hands with her but smiled as a greeting.

‘’Thank you for coming, Captain Laplante. I was told only today about your coming. You do speak a good Dari, I must say.’’

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‘’I can also speak fluently Pashto, Urdu, Arabic and a few more languages, Colonel. This is my third operational tour in Afghanistan. I am also a war correspondent in civilian life and did many trips to your country to do reports in the past years. As well, I happen to be an expert in martial arts and in pistol shooting. I will be happy to help train your female recruits to the best of my abilities, Colonel.’’

‘’And your help will certainly be appreciated here, Captain Laplante. Canada has always proved to be a steadfast and respectful friend of Afghanistan. Welcome to Shouz. May I present you my officers and aides, starting with our Imam, Wahid Nayeddin?’’

Nancy bowed the Islamic way to salute the Imam.

‘’Salaam, Imam Wahid!’’

‘’Salaam, Captain Laplante!’’ replied politely Wahid. After the round of

presentations was completed and Nancy had left the mess with Maria, Wahid looked at Najibullah Amin.

‘’I must say that this woman seems well versed in the proper customs of Islam, Colonel. She is also the first foreigner I have seen here that can speak both Dari and Pashto.’’

‘’She certainly is out of the norm…and more respectful to us than most other foreign staff.’’

Amin did not need to mention names, as Wahid and the other Afghan officers present knew well which international staff member truly respected them and which ones didn’t.

Going back to the group of buildings reserved for the international staff, Maria guided Nancy to a large rectangular, prefabricated white building.

‘’This is the combined mess, cafeteria and kitchen for all the international staff of the camp. One word of caution before we go into the cafeteria: watch out for Captain Gino Vinetti, another Carabinieri officer on tour here. He is an incorrigible playboy and likes to think that he is irresistible to women.’’

That made Nancy grin widely.

‘’Is he good-looking?’’

‘’Like a young Marcello Mastroianni, but even better.’’

‘’Oooh! I will definitely have to meet him, then.’’

Maria laughed at that, then opened the door of the cafeteria for Nancy. They entered a good-sized room half filled with tables, at which about thirty men and women were sitting

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and eating. Jennifer Cummings was there as well, eating her supper in the company of three other women and two men in American uniforms. Maria, after waving and smiling at Jennifer, then led Nancy to one of the tables, where five male Italian officers and NCOs were eating. She whispered to Nancy as they were still a few meters from the table.

‘’Captain Vinetti is the first one on the left, facing us, while Major Rambaldi is next to him on his left.’’

‘’Target acquired and locked on!’’ replied Nancy, who could see that Vinetti was already smiling while eyeing her from head to toe. This time, Maria opened the presentations, speaking in Italian to Major Rambaldi, a tall but thin man in his early forties.

‘’Major Rambaldi, may I present you Captain Nancy Laplante, newly arrived in the camp to take over the female patrolman course.’’

Rambaldi got up and bent over to shake hands with Nancy over the table.

‘’Welcome to Shouz, Captain.’’ he said in English, to which she replied in fluent Italian.

‘’Thank you, Major. I have to say that I was supposed at first to serve in Herat, but I will certainly give my best here.’’

‘’I have heard about what happened in Herat concerning your assignment, Captain. I must say that you were treated by some in a rather cavalier way. However, their loss is my gain, judging from your linguistic talents. You do speak Italian with a rather quaint accent from the North, Captain.’’

Nancy smiled at that: Rambaldi definitely had a good ear, having detected her Renaissance Milanese accent, where her past incarnation as Karl Beck, a German mercenary chieftain of the 17th Century, had learned his Italian.

‘’My Italian teacher was from Milan, sir. He was also a bit old-fashioned.’’

‘’I see! But please, have supper with us, Captain.’’

‘’With pleasure, Major.’’

Going with Maria to the service counter, Nancy grabbed a tray and a plate and got served some veal with potatoes and carrots before returning to the Carabinieris’ table. To the delight of Captain Vinetti, she sat opposite him, with Maria sitting facing Rambaldi. Nancy had to concede that Vinetti was a truly handsome man, with looks worthy of an Italian movie star. She thus smiled warmly to him.

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‘’While I do not wear an alliance, I have to warn you that I do have a boyfriend of a rather impressive stature, Captain. Feel free however to give me your best shot during my tour in Shouz.’’

While Vinetti broke in a grin, Maria giggled at her words, like a few others around her.

‘’Well, this tour certainly just got more interesting, Captain Laplante.’’

‘’Please, call me ‘Nancy’.’’

‘’And call me simply Gino, Nancy.’’ said Vinetti, now the image of suavity. At a neighboring table, two Italian NCOs exchanged knowing looks.

‘’A week, tops!’’ whispered one of the Italian, making the other shake his head.

‘’I say two days at most. A bottle of Chianti on this.’’

‘’Deal!’’

At Jennifer Cummings’ table, one of the female army clerks eating with her bent forward to ask her a question in a low voice.

‘’Isn’t she the reporter that we saw about a month ago on CNN during a news report from Afghanistan?’’

‘’It could well be, Louise. I will know more about her tonight: she wants me to have tea with her, Lieutenant Garibaldi and the Afghan female trainers, so that we could get to know each other better. She can speak tons of languages, including Dari, Pashto and Arabic.’’

‘’An egghead?’’ said a male MP staff sergeant in a derisive tone. ‘’Why waste all that time learning other languages when English is already the standard worldwide?’’ Jennifer gave him a dubious look: she was of the firm opinion that it had been a mistake to send John Wainwright here, or anywhere in Afghanistan. The Army was however short of personnel for overseas tours and had overlooked, or ignored, the fact that Wainwright was a certified redneck with barely hidden contempt for Afghans, or any other non-Westerner. He also firmly believed that women didn’t belong in combat, or even in the Army. He was however of a higher rank than her and she could not openly rebuke him for his views. Wainwright then noticed the way she was looking at him and made a mean smile.

‘’What’s the matter, Cummings? You don’t like what I say?’’

‘’No, and I suspect that neither will Captain Laplante.’’

‘’I don’t work for her, so screw her opinion.’’

A civilian police trainer eating at a nearby table heard that and eyed him with reprobation.

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‘’Sergeant Wainwright, you’re talking shit again. She is an officer and you will pay the proper respect due to her, or I will report your attitude to Lieutenant Hooper. I happen to have met Captain Laplante before, at a combat pistol shooting competition near Dallas three years ago, and she cleaned my clock then, taking second position overall. As a war correspondent, she has seen more of war than you will ever see, so cut your crap!’’

Wainwright glared at the civilian but didn’t reply. Gerald Morton was a big, tough and highly experienced police officer from Texas who had been a SWAT team member for years. He also was the head international instructor on police techniques and combat shooting and had the power to have Wainwright removed as an instructor, something that would definitely look bad in his personnel file and may even cut any possibilities for future promotions for Wainwright.

19:57 (Afghanistan Time)

Female instructors staff office

Shouz Afghan Border Police training center

Senior Lieutenant Maryam Shirzai had her two NCOs, Sergeants Aziza Kaker and Jamilla Noori, sit on extra chairs already brought in the small office, then sat at her desk, facing Maria Garibaldi and Jennifer Cummings. Nancy Laplante was not in the office, however, prompting her to look at Maria and ask in her laborious English.

‘’Where is Captain Laplante? This is the agreed time, no?’’

‘’She went to get a tea service. She should be back anytime now.’’

‘’But she could have asked a servant to bring it from the kitchen?’’

‘’I thought so myself, but she replied to me that she wanted to do it the proper way, according to Afghan customs.’’

Impressed, Maryam translated that to her two police sergeants. She was just finishing speaking when Nancy entered the office, a large tray with a steaming tea pot and six cups on it. She put the tray on top of Maria’s desk and bowed in succession to each of the other five women, speaking in Dari, then in Italian and English.

‘’Let’s have tea together in the traditional way, so that we can talk together in friendship.’’

She then served herself each woman, starting with Maryam Shirzai and ending with herself. With a cup of hot tea in hand, she sat on the last empty chair and waited for all

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to have taken their first sip of tea. She then spoke in Dari, looking at the three Afghan women.

‘’I may be senior in rank here, but this is an Afghan facility in your country, while me, Lieutenant Garibaldi and Sergeant Cummings are here to support you, not to tell you what to do. Senior Lieutenant Shirzai, I acknowledge you as the sole commander of this course.’’

She repeated herself in English as the Afghan women exchanged stunned glances: up to now, the international staff had assumed itself to be in effective control of how training was to be conducted, often showing a paternalistic attitude towards the Afghan training staff. On their part, Maria Garibaldi and Jennifer Cummings were equally surprised but did not object as Nancy spoke again to Maryam.

‘’I have just reviewed quickly the course schedule and the required curriculum from the Afghan Border Police program. What I propose to you is that we respect the present curriculum but also that we improve in depth various course training points, with our help. I am a high-level master in a martial art technique called karate, as well as in combat shooting techniques, especially with pistols. Lieutenant Garibaldi is an expert in police investigative procedures and arrest techniques, while Sergeant Cummings is well trained in the use of a police baton. If you wish so, you could use us to actually give the instruction in those specialties, which would allow you and your two sergeants to teach the points touching specifically Afghan law, border and checkpoint procedures and how to handle family and women-related crimes. This way, you will be able to minimize the use of male instructors with your recruits, especially in the matters of unarmed combat and weapons training, which require actual physical contact between instructors and recruits. I am sure that Imam Wahid would appreciate that last point.’’

‘’He certainly would, Captain.’’ replied Maryam, her mind racing through what Nancy had said. ‘’I am sure that he would approve of such changes and recommend them to Colonel Amin. Just this would be a huge improvement in my mind. I will speak to both Imam Wahid and Colonel Amin about this tomorrow.’’ Nancy nodded her head, then translated what had been said for the benefit of Maria and Jennifer before returning to Dari.

‘’I have identified a number of time periods that could be used for extra shooting practices. In the present situation in Afghanistan, shooting proficiency is unfortunately becoming more and more critical for the survival of your police officers. I will try on my part to obtain extra ammunition for those extra practice sessions. If you would permit

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me, I would also like to inspect in what state the weapons allotted to your recruits are and, if possible, improve on them, as I am quite knowledgeable in weapons.’’

‘’I see no problems with that, Captain. In fact, obtaining sufficient ammunition for our police officers is never easy. If you can find a way to improve on that, I would be most grateful and so would Colonel Amin.’’

‘’Thank you, Senior Lieutenant Shirzai. Would you like us to review together the course schedule in detail now, with the input of all present here?’’ Maryam felt like a breath of fresh air had blown through the office: this was turning to be so different from the way past courses had been conducted.

‘’I would love to, Captain.’’

20:34 (Afghanistan Time)

Sunday, November 4, 2012 ‘A’

Female instructors’ office

Shouz Afghan Border Police training center

Watching Maryam Shirzai as she answered her telephone, Maria Garibaldi knew at once that it was some bad news. After a few clipped phrases, the Afghan police woman slowly put down the receiver and looked at Maria with sadness.

‘’Soldiers have found our missing recruit: she was murdered by the Taliban while on her way to Shouz. I…I’m going to inform Nancy and Colonel Amin of this.’’ Maria then felt as well sadness come to her as Maryam left the small office: it was a cruel end for the dreams of a young and brave young woman who had gone against the prejudices of most of her compatriots in order to serve her country. Out of the 31 female recruits who had been expected at first, three had changed their minds at the last moment, most probably because of threats against them or their families, and one was now confirmed dead. That left 27 recruits, who had already arrived in Shouz. It wasn’t much but, for a country like Afghanistan, with its misogynist rules and the terror spread by the Taliban, it said a lot about the courage of those 27 women. They would start their eight-week course tomorrow and Maria, like the other female instructors, was resolved to give the best of herself for them. The six days since the arrival of Nancy Laplante had brought many changes and improvements to the course preparation, including the arrival two days ago of a stock of extra ammunition for rifle and pistol practices, thanks to some contacts Nancy said she had with some higher NATO staff left unnamed. By sharing

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some of that extra ammunition with Colonel Amin, for the use of his male recruits, Nancy had ensured that the ammunition for female recruits would not simply be seized by other instructors and had gained even further Amin’s support. Even Imam Wahid was approving of her initiatives, as they would ensure that minimal physical contact would be made between male instructors and female recruits, a very sensitive subject in a country where extremely strict, not to say sexist rules, governed the interaction between men and women. Wahid had also been impressed by the respect shown by Nancy to Islamic customs and practices and by her deep knowledge of those customs, in sharp contrast with the attitude of many of the other international staff members. That however did not mean that Nancy had played the subservient female, far from it.

Deciding to call it a night, Maria got up from her chair and put her desk in order before leaving the office and going to her cabin, intent on taking a shower before going to bed. She found Nancy sitting cross-legged on the floor of her bedroom, her eyes closed and in a classic meditation pose. She still wore her white karate practice suit, complete with black belt with the five golden bars denoting a fifth Dan master. Everybody in the camp was by now accustomed to see her practice daily her karate routine late in the evening. The incredible agility and speed shown during those practices had in turn helped convince many doubters and detractors to treat her seriously as a fighter. Nancy then opened her eyes and looked at Maria.

‘’In case you were going to ask, Maryam did inform me about our missing recruit. I was praying for her soul.’’

Maria nodded, then went to get a set of clean clothes, her soap box and her towel. Seeing that, Nancy got up from the floor and went for her own things.

‘’If you are going to the showers, then I will go with you: I had quite a rigorous practice tonight. Don’t forget your pistol: you know the camp rules.’’

‘’Yeah, yeah! Is that to keep the Taliban away or to stop Gino Vinetti from spying on us in the showers?’’

‘’Both!’’ replied Nancy as she grabbed her own pistol and slid it in her karate suit’s belt.

Walking out of the cabin together, the two women lazily walked towards the showers building, situated in one corner of the square occupied by the facilities of the international staff.

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‘’The American presidential elections are in two days. Who do you think will win, Nancy? Obama or Romney?’’

‘’It’s a hard call right now, Maria. They are nearly nose to nose right now. Unfortunately, the Republicans still have a good chance to win: voters’ memories are so fickle these days, plus there are about as many religious nuts in the United States as here in Afghanistan. What can you expect from a crowd that still believes that the Earth is only a few thousand years old?’’

‘’I have to recognize that some of those American politicians and preachers can be quite extreme in their opinions. And what do you think will happen with Iran?’’

‘’That will depend on what the Israelis will do, actually. They have refrained up to now from striking Iran, but if Romney is elected President, they might just see that as a green light for getting the support of the…’’

Seeing Nancy suddenly fix her eyes in one direction, Maria looked that way, but saw nothing unusual at first.

‘’What is it, Nancy?’’

‘’That Afghan soldier walking towards the female recruits’ barrack: he keeps looking left and right and is walking quickly, as if he doesn’t want to be seen.’’ Now noticing in the semi-obscurity of the camp the said soldier, still a good fifty meters away, Maria had to quickly agree with Nancy.

‘’He effectively is acting suspiciously. Maybe he’s a voyeur who wants to go spy on our recruits.’’

‘’I don’t think so, Maria.’’ said Nancy while grabbing her pistol. ‘’Get your pistol ready, just in case: we are going to check that man out.’’

Grabbing her Beretta 92 pistol, Maria pulled its slide, loading a 9mm bullet in the chamber, then followed Nancy, who was now hurrying towards the female recruits’ barrack. That barrack had been set apart from the other Afghan barracks, on the edge of the square occupied by the international staff, to keep the women as widely separated from the Afghan men as possible. Maria and Nancy were still about thirty meters away from the Afghan soldier, who was now at one of the entrance door of the female barracks, when the man noticed them coming towards him. Instead of running away, as Maria would expect from a voyeur caught in the act, the soldier instead opened the door of the barrack and, holding it open with his body, grabbed something at his belt and brought it to his mouth, as if to bite in it. Nancy then stopped cold in her track and raised her pistol while shouting in alarm.

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‘’GRENADE!’’

She then shot twice with her GLOCK 17L. Hit first in the torso, the man staggered and dropped what he had in his right hand. The second bullet hit him in the heart, making him crumble face down on the ground. Nancy then forced Maria to get down just before an explosion from under the soldier made his body jump in the air a good meter. While Maria hesitated then, Nancy got up and resumed her run, getting to the mangled body in a few seconds, then moving gently something on the ground with one foot while shouting something in Dari at the female recruits now screaming inside the barrack. Regaining her courage, Maria resumed her run and joined Nancy, her pistol at the ready. She then saw that a grenade, with its safety pin still in place, was near Nancy’s feet.

‘’He had two grenades with him?’’

‘’Yes!’’ answered Nancy, her jaws tight. ‘’He was going to throw them inside the barrack, one after the other, which is why he was using his teeth to pull out their safety pins. If he would have succeeded, he could have caused a real carnage among our female recruits. Stay here and watch that grenade: I will go inside to reassure our recruits.’’

Nancy then entered the female barrack, leaving Maria alone near the mangled body of the attacker and its unexploded grenade. By now, shouts of alarms were resonating around the camp and a number of men were coming out of various buildings, weapons at the ready. Gerald Morton, the civilian senior police advisor, was the first to arrive, a GLOCK pistol in his right hand.

‘’WHAT HAPPENED HERE?’’

‘’Me and Nancy saw a marauder near the female barrack and went to check him out, Mister Morton. He was about to throw a grenade inside the barrack when Nancy shot him. He then fell on his primed grenade and was blown up. He had with him a second grenade, which is here, still with its safety pin in place.’’ Morton looked down at the body and at the grenade, then swore.

‘’Fuck! That bastard is one of our male recruits. He must have been a Taliban infiltrator. God knows how many more there could be in this camp.’’ He then knelt beside the grenade and, after carefully examining it visually, picked it up and showed it to Maria.

‘’Don’t worry: it is still safe. This is a Pakistani-made 84-P2A1 hand grenade, a type frequently used by the Taliban. It has a lethal radius of about twenty meters. With two such grenades, that bastard could have butchered your female recruits.’’

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After excitement, then fear, anger and hatred came next to Maria, who kicked with one booted foot the head of the dead infiltrator.

‘’The filthy, cowardly bastard! How could these Taliban pretend to do God’s work? I wish that they would all drop dead.’’

More armed instructors were by now arriving on the scene, including Major Rambaldi and Senior Lieutenant Shirzai. Maria repeated her story to them, causing many jaws to tighten at the implications of the failed attack. Nancy was coming out of the female barrack as Colonel Amin and Imam Wahid Nayeddin were arriving at a run. She took on her to brief the Afghan commander, making him look down with anger at the dead attacker.

‘’An infiltrator! I will order an immediate search by my instructors of the male recruits’ barracks, to look for more grenades or explosives. You have just averted a horrible bloodbath, Captain Laplante. Well done!’’

‘’Thank you, sir. If you don’t mind, I will resume my trip to the showers with Lieutenant Garibaldi.’’

‘’Go ahead, Captain. My men will take care of the rest.’’

Nancy was about to leave the scene when Maryam Shirzai touched her arm, making her stop and look at her.

‘’Thank you for saving my recruits, Nancy.’’

In response, Nancy smiled down gently at the Afghan woman.

‘’It was a pleasure, Maryam. I calmed them down, but they still could use some more comforting words from you. I will see you again tomorrow morning, at the welcoming parade.’’

That parade, which Nancy attended on the sidelines with Maria Garibaldi and Jennifer Cummings, to let the spotlight on the Afghan staff, was a standard affair, with a number of speeches from senior officers and the passing of basic information about the course. The 27 female recruits were then led by Maryam Shirzai and her two sergeants to the quartermaster, to be kitted out in uniforms and field kit, then to the infirmary, for a quick medical check. At lunch hour, however, Nancy started applying another novelty of hers, going to eat with Maria Garibaldi and Jennifer Cummings in the company of the recruits and their Afghan female staff, in order to reinforce group cohesion. While Maryam Shirzai welcomed that move, it surprised to no small degree the recruits, while a

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few of the international staff, on hearing about this, made snide comments about Nancy ‘turning native’.

The second novelty Nancy did that day was a public demonstration of a high-level karate kata routine in the middle of the camp’s parade square. Watched by all the

Afghan recruits and most of the staff, Nancy, dressed in her white Ji4, did the routine that had earned her her fifth dan, complete with high kicks and lightning-quick punches. She completed that routine with a plank and brick breaking demonstration, attracting a concert of disbelieving exclamations when she broke in two a concrete block with her fist while letting out a paralyzing kiai scream, then smashed in succession through two thick wood planks, one with her fist and the other with her left foot. More than a few around the parade square were left with their jaws hanging down, while others, notably the women present, cheered her on as she bowed to salute the crowd at the end of her demonstration. Many men went afterwards to check how solid the planks and brick she had broken were in reality, with a few hurting their knuckles by trying themselves to punch them.

07:01 (Afghanistan Time) / 21:01 (Washington Time) Wednesday, November 7, 2012 ‘A’ / Tuesday, November 6 Afghan mess hall, Shouz police training camp

Nancy was with the other female staff, eating at a table next to the long table used by the female recruits, when a piece of news from the Kabul Central Radio Station echoed around the mess hall. Listening carefully to the words in Dari, she finally threw up her arms in triumph, prompting a question from Maria Garibaldi.

‘’What? What is going on?’’

‘’Barak Obama was just proclaimed the winner of the United States presidential elections, by a hair. Well, Jennifer, if you are a Democrat, now is a good time to cheer up.’’

The American MP replied by doing a thumbs up signal.

‘’Right on! I will have to drink to that tonight.’’

Maryam Shirzai listened to them, not sure what to make of it.

4 Ji: Two-piece loose outfit used for martial arts practice.

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‘’Uh, is this man being elected President of the United States good for Afghanistan?’’

Nancy replied to that with a wry smile.

‘’Well, he is certainly better in that respect than his opponent, Mitt Romney. For one thing, Romney and his party were much more partisan of attacking Iran if it didn’t put a stop to its nuclear program than Obama was. However, even with Obama in place, the chances that Israel will now attack Iran to destroy its nuclear installations are still high, since the Israelis hope that such an attack by them will push the United States into backing them up militarily. Now, guess what country borders Iran and is hosting a sizeable number of American troops? One hint: American troops have left Iraq nearly a year ago.’’

As Jennifer Cummings swore, thankfully in English, Maryam Shirzai frowned as she thought that over.

‘’I see! Do you think that the Iranians would attack the Americans in

Afghanistan?’’

‘’Not unless they are attacked first. The Iranian leaders may be radicals, but they are not stupid. They know that they would have a hard time simply defending their airspace against any resolute Israeli or American airstrikes. Defending their borders would be even more problematic, since about every Sunni Muslim country around them is hostile to Iran. They won’t try to invade Afghanistan if they are attacked, but I expect them to spread mayhem among their enemies by letting loose surrogate groups, like Hezbollah, and supporting other groups opposed to Israel and the United States.’’ Nancy could have said a lot more but didn’t, as it would have touched the subject of the possible reactions of the American forces based in Afghanistan and of the other NATO forces in the country, and she didn’t want to discuss that in front of Afghans. Either way, the picture of things to come could become ugly. In fact, she knew from having seen historical data from the future that it WAS going to turn ugly, and very much so.

That she was not alone in that train of thoughts was proven that night at the cantina used by the international staff, when about everyone present discussed the election results and speculated on what could be next. Jennifer Cummings, looking quite worried, went to her as Nancy was watching with Maria Garibaldi and others the CNN news channel, retransmitted via satellite to the television set of the cantina.

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‘’Nancy, I have a bad feeling about Iran and what is to come.’’ she said in a low voice.

‘’And you should, Jennifer.’’ replied Nancy, also in a low voice so that they could not be heard, except by Maria Garibaldi. ‘’An Israeli strike on Iran, with possible direct American military support, is still very possible.’’

‘’And what could happen to us here, then?’’

Nancy didn’t even have to use her future hindsight to answer her, as she had analyzed and predicted such a scenario for months now as a war correspondent.

‘’At the minimum, I expect parts or all of the American forces in Afghanistan to be ordered to regroup and form a defensive barrier along the Afghan-Iranian border…if an air attack on Iran occurs or is imminent. At the worst, they could be ordered to launch strikes against Iran from Afghanistan, using airpower and special forces troops.’’

‘’But,’’ objected at once Maria Garibaldi, ‘’the rest of NATO would not go along with that, especially if Iran is attacked first. Too many people in Europe remember the supposed weapons of mass destruction which had been claimed by Washington to be in Iraq, claims which were used to start a war that we now know to have been unjustified.’’

‘’You are right, Maria, and this could have the potential to blow apart the NATO mission in Afghanistan, unfortunately.’’

Maria’s face darkened as she saw how ugly this could become.

‘’Nancy, I sincerely hope that you are wrong about this.’’

‘’I wish so too, Maria.’’ replied Nancy gloomily. ‘’I am not a warmonger and never will be. I saw too much of war in my life to wish it on anyone. However, wishful thinking is of no use where international affairs are concerned.’’

Jennifer Cummings looked at Nancy with near dread.

‘’And the Israelis? How likely are they to attack Iran?’’

‘’Very, unfortunately. Their leaders have been anxious for months to attack the Iranian nuclear facilities before the Iranians could produce a bomb. That they have not yet done so is a near miracle. Polls in Israel have been showing for months that the Israeli electorate, while averse to a first strike on Iran if not supported by the United States, would be squarely in favor of a strike if assured of American support. Further, the successes of their ‘Iron Dome’ anti-rocket defense system against rockets fired by Hamas from Gaza have given them what I would call a false sense of invulnerability from Iranian and Hezbollah rockets. All this is to say that things are now hanging by a thread, a very thin thread.’’

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Maria then realized something that she didn’t like at all.

‘’But, the Afghans? What will become of them?’’

Nancy closed her eyes for a moment and took a deep breath before answering.

‘’They will have to deal with the Taliban alone, or with the support of whichever members of the NATO mission in Afghanistan are left in country after the balloon goes up. That is why our present job has become even more critical and urgent.’’

15:10 (Afghanistan Time)

Friday, November 30, 2012 ‘A’

Rifle range, Shouz Afghan Border Police training center

Nancy examined the target at which one of the female Afghan recruits had been shooting with her AK-47 assault rifle from a distance of fifty meters, then patted her shoulder in encouragement, speaking to her in Pashto.

‘’Well done, Lailoma! You are making quick progress: all your bullets are now in the target. Continue to control your trigger pull and your breathing and you will do great. You may patch up your target.’’

‘’Thank you, Captain.’’ answered the small woman, smiling with pride. Nancy then went to the next recruit, standing in front of her target. Nancy took a few minutes to finish inspecting the results for all the 27 apprentice shooters, seeing in general encouraging progress compared to a week ago. She then had the recruits return to their firing positions in order to shoot another ten rounds of slow, deliberate fire. With NATO troops, she would have gone more quickly to practicing rapid firing, but she knew how green those women were. She would rather use the limited training ammunition available to teach them how to be accurate in slow, semi-automatic fire mode, rather than do like some other instructors who had their students fire half of the time in automatic mode. That may have been fun for the recruits, but Nancy eyed that as being only a waste of ammunition that also encouraged poor firing discipline.

Finally, with the Sun low on the horizon and due to disappear in one hour, she concluded the shooting session and had her recruits dismantle and clean their rifles on folding tables, under the supervision of their female Afghan instructors. Forty minutes later, everything had been packed away in their lone truck, with both the instructors and recruits walking back in two ranks to the nearby camp. She found Maria Garibaldi

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waiting for her near the recruits’ barrack. Even though Nancy already knew what was up, she made a show of appearing content as she went to her.

‘’We had a good practice session today, Maria: the girls are doing some good progress.’’

Maria nodded but did not smile.

‘’Nancy, Kabul Radio has just announced that a number of Iranian nuclear facilities have been attacked from the air. The news are still fragmentary, however, and it is not clear who did it, or what is the extent of the damage. I’m afraid that it is all starting to unravel.’’

‘’We will see, Maria. For the moment, and until we get more detailed news, let’s continue concentrating on teaching our recruits. We will see tonight what CNN news has to say about that.’’

Nancy and Maria were not alone in listening to the CNN channel on the television at the cantina that evening. In fact, about every member of the international staff came to the cantina to listen to the news. What finally became known for sure was that a large air flotilla of Israeli combat aircraft had attacked at least half a dozen Iranian nuclear sites, causing significant damages and killing many Iranian nuclear technicians and scientists. While spokesmen at the White House and Pentagon were denying any prior knowledge of the Israeli strike and refused to comment about possible American reactions to this new crisis, the Iranian leaders had been much less timid in their answers to reporters, announcing that ‘Israel would disappear under a rain of Iranian missiles and that its ally, the United States, would also pay for its support of the Jewish state. Understandably, that made a number of American staff members in Shouz either nervous or apprehensive about the near future. Jennifer Cummings, who remembered Nancy’s predictions, was particularly upset by the news, storming out of the cantina while raging about ‘another stupid fucking war’. Lieutenant Denis Hooper, the senior American officer in Shouz, got up to go after her but Nancy blocked his way firmly, staring hard at him.

‘’Let her be, Hooper! Sergeant Cummings has ample reasons to be upset about this latest stupidity.’’

‘’Stupidity?’’ exclaimed the Military Police officer in an aggressive tone. ‘’What the hell would you know or understand about this? She’s my business anyway.’’

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He then tried to push her out of his way, only to find himself bouncing back violently against the wall of the cantina with a resounding ‘THUD’. Nancy then glared at him.

‘’Wrong, Hooper! She’s under me here, which makes her my business. We are part of a NATO assistance joint mission here, and not of some American battle formation. As for understanding what is going on concerning Iran, I have a master’s degree in international relations and nine years spent either covering or fighting wars that are telling me that this is one war that didn’t need to happen.’’ Hooper, still reeling from the brutal slamming and stunned by her strength, saw that all the non-Americans, along with a couple of American civilians in the cantina, were eyeing him with reprobation. Not wanting to lose face publicly like this, he tried to posture further and shook an angry finger at Nancy.

‘’My superiors will hear about your interference in this matter, Laplante.’’ In response, Nancy showed him the miniature Canadian flag on her shoulder.

‘’I don’t give a hoot about what your American superiors would think about this. I’m a Canadian officer, part of a NATO team helping to train Afghan policemen, and I was protecting a member of my team from being harassed. In case you didn’t understand yet, the other countries which are part of NATO are the allies of the United States in this mission, not its servants. Now, you will fucking sit back in your chair and try to educate yourself further about World affairs, Lieutenant. Maria, can you change the channel to the BBC News, so we can get a more balanced coverage?’’ Maria Garibaldi grabbed at once the television’s remote-control unit and switched channels, putting on the BBC, which unsurprisingly was also talking about the Israeli strike on Iran and the possible fallouts from it. Realizing now that he was both outnumbered and outranked, with Major Rambaldi being present and having done nothing to stop Nancy Laplante, Hooper sat back reluctantly while avoiding the eyes of the others around him.

14:52 (Afghanistan Time)

Sunday, December 2, 2012 ‘A’

Office of the female training staff

Shouz Afghan Border Police training center

Nancy, who was working on requisition forms for the female course while the recruits were attending a Dari literacy class under the supervision of Maryam Shirzai,

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looked up from her paperwork, then got up at attention when Major Rambaldi entered the office. To Nancy’s and Maria’s surprise, Rambaldi closed the door of the office before speaking, looking upset.

‘’I was just notified by encrypted message from NTM-A headquarters in Kabul of a most unsettling directive: all the American military personnel attached to the various branches and training teams of the NTM-A are being ordered to pack up and join up with the American combat units engaged in Operation ENDURING FREEDOM in Afghanistan. In the case of the American soldiers in Shouz, a helicopter will come pick them up tonight at eight O’clock, to fly them to the American base in Herat, where they will be reassigned to Task Force Raider West.’’

Nancy’s face hardened, while Maria protested, indignant.

‘’But they can’t do that, sir! This is a NATO joint mission. For the Americans to pull out like this will mean that many Afghan police and army units will lose their mentoring teams. It could unravel the whole training and mentoring program.’’

‘’I know and I agree, Lieutenant. However, it seems that there is nothing we can do to reverse this decision.’’

‘’Does that mean that the American lieutenant general who was in command of NTM-A had the decency to pass his command to his NATO deputy commander, after ordering such a gutting up of the mission, sir, or are the Americans pretending to stay in charge of NTM-A?’’ asked Nancy in a bitter tone. Rambaldi shook his head at that.

‘’I don’t know about that. As soon as all the American military staff has been advised by me, I will place an urgent call to NTM-A West headquarters. However, I suspect like you do that this will create quite a political stinker in the various NATO capitals.’’

‘’Maybe you should ask Colonel Amin afterwards what the Afghan government thinks of this, sir.’’ suggested Nancy. ‘’Maybe he could inform us of the reaction of his government on this.’’

‘’A good idea actually, Captain. Now, where is Sergeant Cummings?’’

‘’At the quartermaster, sir, drawing the equipment for a class on baton handling she was due to give in half an hour.’’

‘’Then I will inform her directly of her new orders. Will you be able to take over her class from her?’’

‘’I will do it, sir.’’ volunteered Maria. ‘’I’m trained on baton techniques, but Nancy isn’t.’’

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‘’Excellent! Until further notice, we will do our best to go on without our American military personnel. Thankfully, our American civilian contractors were not ordered out as well. I would have hated to lose Mister Morton as well.’’

‘’Oh, I’m sure that Gerald will have a few choice words to say about this.’’ predicted Nancy with a wry smile. Rambaldi looked at her, hesitant, before asking her a question.

‘’Captain Laplante, you are a trained intelligence analyst and an experienced war correspondent. What do you think will happen next?’’

‘’In and around Iran, plenty, sir. However, what we have to worry about here is what the American pullout towards the Iranian border will mean for the internal security situation in Afghanistan. This is the second time that the Americans will have dropped the Afghanistan mission in mid-stride to go fight a useless war, after leaving once to go invade Iraq. The Taliban would be stupid not to use that golden opportunity to retake some lost ground. When they do, it will be the Afghan soldiers and policemen who will pay for the Americans’ myopia.’’

Rambaldi’s shoulders sagged in discouragement at those words. Without saying another word, he then left the office, followed by Maria Garibaldi.

Nancy, Maria and the other international staff members, along with Colonel Amin and his officers, were standing around the limits of the parade square when the American heavy helicopter sent from Herat landed. As the dozen or so American soldiers due to board the helicopter were getting ready to walk to it, Nancy went with Maria to go exchange a last handshake with Jennifer Cummings.

‘’Good luck and be careful, Jennifer. We will miss you.’’

‘’I will miss you too, Nancy. And you too, Maria. Promise me that you will write me. You do still have my home address, I hope?’’

‘’As well as your email address, Jennifer. I will keep it preciously. Don’t forget to send me emails as well.’’

‘’I will.’’ said Jennifer, near tears, before kissing each of them on the cheeks. She then had to pick up her kit and follow the others into the helicopter. Four minutes later, the big machine took off in a whirlwind of dust, soon disappearing in the night sky. Nancy made a silent prayer to The One for the safety of Jennifer before returning with Maria to their cabin, her heart heavy.

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17:09 (Afghanistan Time)

Monday, December 3, 2012 ‘A’

Office of the female training staff

Nancy was greeted by a happy smile from Maria when she entered their office, back from directing a pistol shooting practice for their recruits. Maria then waved a message in her right hand.

‘’There is some good news, Nancy. Read this!’’

Grabbing the message, Nancy saw that it had been sent by the NTM-A headquarters in Kabul, addressed to all the NTM-A branches and sub-units in Afghanistan. It didn’t take long before she whooped with approval at the content of the message.

‘’NTM-A is now under the command of its former deputy commander, a Canadian major general. He says to go on with the mission and to persevere with professionalism and dedication. YES! That is what I wanted to hear. If I wasn’t under a dry policy, I would go drink to that at the cantina tonight.’’

Maria gave her a malicious smile then.

‘’And you think that WE Italians are on a dry policy? We wouldn’t be caught dead without at least one bottle of Chianti in our kit. Maybe we could celebrate this discreetly in our cabin, along with a few more people.’’

Nancy smile turned into a grin.

‘’Will Gino be there too?’’

‘’Gino would never miss a little party, Nancy, especially one where there are women.’’

‘’Then, count me in.’’ said Nancy, before becoming serious again. ‘’Any news about the situation around Iran?’’

‘’Yes, and they are mostly bad.’’ replied Maria, her smile disappearing as well. ‘’If I can believe BBC International Radio, Israel has started to be bombarded by thousands of long-range rockets fired by the Hezbollah from Lebanon, while shorter range rockets have been fired by Hamas from Gaza. There are unconfirmed reports that Iran fired some heavy long-range missiles towards Israel, but the Israelis claim to have been able to shoot them down. However, independent reports state that casualties and damages are increasingly rapidly inside Israel, while Lebanon has been hit by heavy Israeli airstrikes.’’

‘’What about the Persian Gulf and the Americans?’’

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‘’Despite saying that he was saddened to see that a war could not be averted, President Obama has put all the American forces in the Middle East area and in the Indian Ocean on full alert and has ordered the U.S. Navy to ensure that the Strait of Hormuz stays open to tanker traffic. For the moment, however, there are still no words about any American airstrikes on Iran.’’

‘’Hmm, that’s about on par with what I expected for the first phase of this war.’’

‘’The first phase?’’ said Maria, suddenly alarmed.

‘’Yep! This is only the beginning of this war, Maria. From now on, it may evolve in a way nearly impossible to predict accurately, depending on every move, counter-move, mistake and misunderstanding made on one side or the other as the war goes on. It may escalate eventually all the way to nuclear strikes on Iran, or it could die down in a couple of weeks and turn into prolonged underground hostilities via terrorist attacks and covert special forces strikes. The one thing that I can predict with some assurance is that there will be no real winners in this, only losers.’’

‘’You are not exactly reassuring, Nancy.’’ said Maria, pouting, making Nancy shrug and smile.

‘’Welcome to conflict analysis, Maria.’’

15:28 (Afghanistan Time)

Thursday, December 13, 2012 ‘A’

Parade square of the Afghan Border Police training center Shouz, Herat Province

Colonel Najibullah Amin looked worried as he watched the 27 female recruits load up with their weapons and backpacks in two of his trucks. In fact, thought Nancy, Amin had been looking worried ever since the American military mentors had pulled out eleven days ago. He however had many good reasons to worry constantly. With all the American forces in Afghanistan now massed along the Iranian border, Taliban attacks around the rest of the country had multiplied and become increasingly bolder. That was especially true in the northeastern provinces adjacent to the Pakistani border and in the South, in Kandahar province, where the Americans’ departure had created huge holes in the security network. It had not helped that many of the European countries which were part of the NATO mission had refused to redeploy their troops to fill those holes, citing national restrictions on the employment of their troops in Afghanistan. Some, like the

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German contingent, already known for its timid rules of engagement, had in fact started quietly to pack up their heavy equipment and ship it back home, despite the cajoling and protests from other contingents and NATO capitals. Only a few of the NATO contingents, notably the British and Canadian ones, had readily responded to the calls for help from beleaguered Afghan army and police units, keeping their mentoring staff embedded with Afghan units involved in fighting the Taliban. Some others, like the Italians, had refused to redeploy but, at least, continued to fight the Taliban in their assigned sectors.

Nancy, accompanied by Maryam Shirzai and Maria Garibaldi, went to Colonel Amin as the recruits were finished loading, coming to attention in front of Amin and saluting him. Nancy however let Maryam Shirzai report to the colonel.

‘’We are ready to leave for our practice night patrol march, Colonel. We should be in Bala Buluk by next morning, where we will practice roadblock and checkpoint procedures with the local police contingent.’’

‘’You have advised the Bala Buluk police chief and the district police chief that you will be in their sector tonight, Lieutenant Shirzai?’’

‘’Yes sir! In return, Chief Khudaydad and Major Basir have promised to keep discreet about our night patrol, to avoid any security leaks which could warn the Taliban of our presence. All of us are wearing steel helmets, to differentiate us from the turbaned Taliban and avoid fratricidal shootings. The area we will be marching through at night is anyway deserted, with very few isolated houses and farms in our path until we actually approach Bala Buluk. Captain Laplante and Lieutenant Garibaldi will help the recruits with their map navigation and have night vision goggles, while I and Captain Laplante have radios to stay in contact with the camp, or contact the Bala Buluk police station if need be.’’

‘’Very well, Lieutenant. May Allah be with you and your recruits during your march.’’

‘’Thank you, sir.’’

The three women then saluted Amin again and turned around to go to the two waiting trucks. Amin still felt worry as the trucks started rolling and left the camp, turning south on the nearby Kandahar-Herat highway to head towards the nearby district of Bala Buluk, which was part of Farah province. His daughter Lailoma was part of the 27 recruits, and so were the daughters of Major Basir and of Chief Khudaydad. Amin finally returned to

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his command post as the Sun was close to settling down and as the two trucks were now out of sight.

Nancy, sitting in the cab of the second truck, kept a watchful eye around as they rolled on the highway at a good speed, watching for any telltale sign of a hidden roadside bomb. There was little traffic on the road, one of the consequences of the renewed Taliban offensive and precarious security situation. Nancy had advised Maryam Shirzai not to overload her recruits, but also to carry a good amount of ammunition and water, plus rations for a day, mindful of the average fitness level of their recruits. Nancy and Maria had given the example, carrying only their body armor vests, small patrol packs and their Kevlar helmets with night vision goggles, plus of course their weapons. Nancy also carried a reserve of parachute flare launch tubes and signal flares, in case night illumination or visual signals were needed during the night march, plus two radios.

The first part of their move was completed without incident and the 27 female recruits and their five female instructors got out of the two trucks after a drive of thirty kilometers which brought them inside the district of Bala Buluk and about 25 kilometers north of the town of the same name, their final destination. They would now have to walk the rest of the distance, mostly along dry riverbeds and flat, arid plains. Nancy went to Maryam as she was organizing her recruits in a single file.

‘’Lieutenant Shirzai, the Sun is going to set soon. If you wish so, we could take some distance from the road, then stop for evening prayers at Sunset. Me and Lieutenant Garibaldi will then keep watch during your prayers.’’ Maryam smiled in approval, happy that Nancy proved yet again her understanding and respect of Islamic customs and practices.

‘’That sounds like a good plan, Captain. Thank you for the offer of watching.’’ She let her two sergeants complete a check of their recruits, then led the platoon of women westward, away from the road for about 200 meters before stopping once in the middle of a dry riverbed.

‘’Alright, girls! The section leaders will now examine their maps and establish our current position. Me and Captain Laplante will then check your findings. I want everybody to know and understand where we are now and where we are going before we resume our march. No use of white lights will be made from now on.’’

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The map checks took about ten minutes, most of the recruits being quite new at the art of map reading and field navigation, with many being mostly illiterate on top of that. Finally, with both Nancy and Maryam satisfied that the designated section leaders had the correct heading set on their compasses and knew where they were and where they were going, the Afghan women lined up and turned towards the Mecca before kneeling for the evening prayers. Nancy used the prayer time to scan visually the region around them before the Sun disappeared for good under the horizon. The ground was arid, with hardly any vegetation visible anywhere, and was quite flat, except for a mountain mass to the West and another to the South. From her position, she could see no artificial lights at all and not a single house. This night was a new Moon, thus was going to be very dark, something that would make the march more difficult for the recruits. The air, already fresh, was cooling rapidly and temperatures this night promised to be close to the freezing point. That didn’t bother Nancy as a Canadian, but Maria was already shivering in her Italian combat coat. The impending march would however warm her up. The Afghan women then finished their prayers and lined up again for the march. Seeing that it was going to be very dark soon, Maryam Shirzai ordered her recruits to hold the backpack of the person in front of each of them, then gave the command to march. Maryam, to whom Nancy had loaned her personal handheld night vision scope, was in second position in the column, just behind the Afghan woman holding a compass and a map and doing the field navigation. Maria Garibaldi, who had both a set of night vision goggles and a rifle night sight on her Beretta SC-70/90 carbine, had the tail position, where she would be able to check for any possible followers and to ensure that none of the recruits accidentally went astray. As for Nancy, she took a position fifty meters to the front and left of the column, scouting on the flank nearest to the highway, where any threat was most likely to come from. Her C7A2 assault rifle, a Canadian-made, improved variant of the American M16, had been customized by her before leaving Canada, using parts bought a few years ago on the civilian market in the United States. The main things she had changed were the forward hand guards, which had been replaced with commercial models equipped with picatinny rails which allowed for the fitting of more varied sights than the standard rails provided with the C7A2. Tonight, to supplement the AN/PVS-14 night vision monocular goggles attached to her helmet, she had removed the usual Elcan 3.4X optical sight and had installed on the rails of her rifle hand guards a holographic sight on the top rail, a PAQ-

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4C infra-red laser dot sight on the right-side rail, a SureFire tactical rifle flashlight on the bottom rail and an EOTech red dot sight on the left side rail. To top this, Nancy had added on the muzzle of her rifle a sound suppressor bought in Texas. Contrary to what many neophytes would believe, the goal of such a suppressor was not to make it silent, far from it, but it made it much more difficult for an enemy to spot her from the flash and the bang of her rifle. Apart from all this, she wore a headset under her helmet that was connected to the small radio tuned to the frequency used by the patrol, plus had a second, bigger radio tucked inside her small backpack, tuned to the general frequency of the Afghan police in the Bala Buluk district. Her personal handheld radio scanner unit and a GPS satellite navigation handheld unit completed her electronic equipment. Thus equipped, Nancy started walking at an easy pace, mindful of the fact that the Afghan recruits had no night vision equipment and could barely see past a few paces in front of them.

Because of the darkness and of the inexperience of the recruits, the march was slower than expected and they took a good ninety minutes to cover the first five kilometers, despite the fact that the ground was mostly flat and denuded. Maryam Shirzai then called a short halt, time to change the woman in charge of map navigation and letting the others rest a bit. With no farm, house or other people encountered yet on their way, the column resumed its advance after fifteen minutes, continuing south towards Bala Buluk. They did a total of four such five-kilometer stages, changing the navigators and resting a bit at each stop, before stopping around midnight as planned about four kilometers north of Bala Buluk, in view of the few lights from the villages surrounding the town. The goal was to let the recruits have a few hours of sleep before crossing the mostly dry Farah River, which ran East-West and formed the northern boundary of Bala Buluk. They would then enter the town at Sunrise and arrive at the district police station, where they would help the local police to run checkpoints during the day. No campfires were allowed and the women, after eating a ration cold, went to sleep rolled in wool blankets, while Nancy and Sergeant Jamilla Noori stood the first watch.

02:46 (Afghanistan Time)

Friday, December 14, 2012 ‘A’

Patrol bivouac site, four kilometers north of Bala Buluk

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The time to wake up Maria Garibaldi and Sergeant Aziza Kaker, so that they could take the second watch, was approaching when the sight of multiple lines of tracer bullets in the night sky over Bala Buluk caught the attention of Nancy. Patting the shoulder of Sergeant Noori to show her the tracers, Nancy then made sure that her larger radio set, tuned to the frequency used by the district police force, was on and functioning properly. By now she could hear the faint but distinct noise from a heavy exchange of fire coming from the town. A flash and a boom after a few seconds then told her that someone was using as well a mortar or a rocket launcher. Now sure that something bad was happening in Bala Buluk, Nancy walked to Maryam Shirzai, still sleeping among her recruits, and shook her gently. The Afghan woman woke up with a startle when touched, but calmed down on seeing Nancy bent over her in the darkness.

‘’Uh, is it time to go already?’’

‘’No, it is only two forty-five in the morning, but a heavy firefight just started inside the town.’’

‘’In Bala Buluk?’’ asked Maryam, waking up fully and throwing away her wool blanket to get up. She then watched and listened to the firefight for a few seconds with Nancy and Sergeant Noori before giving a worried look at Nancy.

‘’It seems to come from the area of the district police station. The Taliban must be attacking it and it looks like they are in strength. Did the Bala Buluk police station send a radio call?’’

‘’Not yet. Do you want me to try to raise them on the radio?’’

‘’Please do.’’

‘’Then, in the meantime, I suggest that you get hold of our three recruits who are from the Bala Buluk district, apart from waking the others up as well: they may be able to give us some details about the setup and location of the police station in town.’’

‘’A good idea, actually. Tell me as soon as you could contact the police station.’’

Nancy had to do repeated calls in Dari on her backpack HF radio before a male voice answered her in an unsettled voice.

‘’This is the Bala Buluk station. Who is calling, over?’’

‘’I say again, this is Patrol Shirzai, from Shouz. We are presently north of your location and can see a firefight inside Bala Buluk. What is your situation, over?’’

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‘’We are under heavy attack by at least 200 Taliban armed with machine guns, RPGs and mortars. Our compound perimeter is still secure but we are receiving very heavy fire and are sustaining a growing number of casualties. Can you help us, over?’’

‘’Wait one, Bala Buluk!’’ said Nancy before turning her head and shouting towards Maryam Shirzai. ‘’Lieutenant Shirzai, the Bala Buluk police station is under heavy attack by at least 200 Taliban armed with heavy weapons and is asking for our help.’’

Maryam Shirzai was suddenly confronted with a most difficult decision. She had only a total of 32 armed women with her, including herself, most of them inexperienced and only partially trained, to go fight an enemy vastly superior in numbers and also more experienced. However, if she decided not to intervene and withdraw, that would leave the policemen in Bala Buluk alone to face a grim fate if overwhelmed and captured. She then turned towards Fatima Malyar, Hanifa Khudaydad and Mohammadezai Basir, the three recruits originating from the Bala Buluk district.

‘’What can you tell me about the district police station and the force inside it?’’ Mohammadezai Basir was the first to answer, stepping forward.

‘’My father, Major Abdul Basir, is the district police chief, Lieutenant. I know the police station well: it is surrounded by a high concrete brick wall and has four corner watch towers, also made of concrete bricks. The last time I was there a few weeks ago, the station held about seventy policemen, plus three foreign police advisors, one Canadian and two Italians.’’

‘’What surrounds the police station? Is it in the open or in the middle of the town?’’

‘’It is near the eastern extremity of the town, just beside the road leading through town to the city of Farah, to the West. Mud houses and compounds surround it but there is an open space of between 200 and 500 meters between the wall of the station and the other buildings, except on its north side, where houses stand on the opposite side of the street. If I may add, Lieutenant, I can tell you as well that the river we have to cross to get in town is nearly completely dry at this time of the year. It will start to fill up in only about a month, with the Winter rains. I can guide the patrol to a fording point I know well.’’

‘’Excellent!’’ said Maryam before looking back at Nancy, who had approached her. ‘’What do you think, Captain? Would we be able to help the police station with our patrol?’’

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‘’If we don’t help the police station, then it will most probably fall to the Taliban, with its garrison then massacred. The Taliban know that most of the forces that could have reacted to help the station are now gone, sitting along the Iranian border, thus they will attack relentlessly and may even put siege to the station until it falls. If we do go and help, we may sustain heavy casualties, in view of the inexperience of our recruits, unless we are very crafty about our attack plan and can take the Taliban by surprise. The girls will however have to show strong fire discipline and use only slow fire, both to be more accurate and to save their limited ammunition. We just can’t go rushing in and simply hope for the best.’’

‘’Shouldn’t we call Shouz to ask permission first, Lieutenant?’’ asked Sergeant Kaker. Maryam didn’t get angry at her for that, as Kaker was correct according to normal command procedures. She however shook her head.

‘’We will advise them, so that they could in turn try to get help from the helicopters based in Herat, but I am resolved to go help the police station, unless Colonel Amin formally orders me not to intervene. Any relief column sent from Shouz would arrive too late and could as well be ambushed by the Taliban with roadside bombs.’’

‘’Make that last point a probability, Lieutenant.’’ said Nancy, grim. ‘’Such a large Taliban force as the one attacking Bala Buluk right now would have set up at least a couple of ambush points along the main highway, to catch and delay any relief column. The Taliban may be intolerant bastards, but they are not stupid.’’

‘’Point taken, Captain. Tell Bala Buluk that we will come to their aid and do what we can. Then call Shouz and advise them of the situation. In the meantime, I will prepare the patrol for combat.’’

‘’You got it, Lieutenant.’’ said Nancy before resuming in Italian for the benefit of Maria Garibaldi what had been said in Dari. The Carabinieri woman’s eyes suddenly widened as she remembered something.

‘’Oh my God! Brigadiere Falcone: he’s in Bala Buluk. He was one of my instructors at the military academy.’’

Nancy nodded once in understanding.

‘’Then, we all have good reasons to go help the police station in town, Maria. Your rifle night sight is zeroed in, I hope?’’

‘’Yes, it is.’’

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‘’Then you will certainly have plenty of opportunities to use it tonight. I will now have to make a couple of radio calls.’’

02:53 (Afghanistan Time)

Bala Buluk district police station

‘’MAJOR! MAJOR! A POLICE PATROL FROM SHOUZ IS ON ITS WAY!’’ Major Abdul Basir, the police chief for the Bala Buluk district, snapped his head around to look at his excited radio operator, who had just run out of the command post.

‘’How big a patrol and when can they be here?’’ asked Basir, who had been running towards a hard-pressed section of their perimeter wall.

‘’They are of platoon size, sir, and said that they should be here in about two hours. Uh, there is something else, sir.’’

‘’Yes?’’ asked Basir, getting impatient with his radio operator.

‘’They have women with them, sir. One of them was the one talking on the radio.’’

For a moment, Basir was frozen by the surprise of hearing this. He however regained his composure quickly, pressed on by the urgency of the situation.

‘’That detail is not important, Corporal. Return to your radio and keep an ear opened for that patrol.’’

Basir then resumed his running, soon climbing a set of narrow stairs and setting foot on the walkway used by the defenders of the police station to fire from the top of the wall at the Taliban fighters. There, he found one of his foreign advisors, a Canadian policeman, busy exchanging fire with the extremists hidden along the mud houses on the opposite side of the street, and patted his shoulder in encouragement.

‘’Good news, Corporal Blake: help is on the way. Spare your ammunition, though: they will be here only in about two hours.’’

As Basir went off to go see his men and pass the news, William Blake made a grimace while ducking under the wall parapet to avoid a spray of bullets: the enemy certainly didn’t show any sign of running out of ammunition.

North of the town, which actually was more like a very big village, with cultivated fields attached to nearly every mud house, Nancy had now taken the lead of the patrol, in order to go faster in the total darkness with the help of her night vision goggles. She

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however kept her pace measured and moderate: the last thing she wanted was for the policewomen to enter a fight in an exhausted state, when they were already heavily outnumbered and outgunned. The Afghan women, knowing full well what was at stake and also fueled by their hatred of the Taliban, didn’t complain about the accelerated pace and kept up with Nancy. Despite the darkness, they did good time, arriving on the north bank of the Farah River after only a bit more than one hour of march. As promised, Mohammadezai Basir was able to guide the patrol across the mostly dry Farah River at a point where water came up at most to their calves. Nancy then drew a bearing on the departure flashes and detonations from the enemy mortar firing at intervals from the eastern extremity of the town on the police station. Careful not to approach any house and having Maryam Shirzai enforce noise discipline along the file of Afghan policewomen following her, Nancy cautiously covered the last kilometer to the enemy position. The near total darkness, helped by the constant noise from the firefight around the police station, now played fully in the patrol’s favor. With visibility from the naked eye reduced to mere meters and with the Taliban notoriously lacking in night sights, Nancy possessed a huge advantage on the enemy with her night vision goggles and various electronic rifle sights.

At about four thirty in the morning, with Sunrise still two and a half hours away, the patrol finally came to the main road passing East-West through the town. What Nancy saw through her night goggles less than one hundred meters away to their right made her pause. Parked rather haphazardly in a dirt field behind a group of mud houses were over thirty pickup trucks of the kind the Taliban favored to travel around. With a load of about ten men per truck, that meant an even bigger enemy force than the one they had expected. Also behind the mud houses on the other side of the road, she could see an enemy mortar crew of five men around a single medium caliber mortar, plus a group of bearded and turbaned armed men discussing besides the corner of a house. She could see as well four more Taliban lying on their belly on the roof of the same house, manning and firing what looked and sounded to her like two PKM medium machineguns. Returning her attention on the group discussing behind the house’s corner, Nancy had the distinct impression that she was looking at Taliban commanders with their bodyguards. In fact, two of the Taliban were armed with sub-compact AKSU-74 assault rifles, a model which was often the weapon of choice of Taliban commanders. Scanning carefully the pickup trucks parked behind the house, she could see only two

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enemy sentries who seemed rather relaxed and chatted between themselves. Turning towards Maryam Shirzai, who was crouched near her, Nancy described to her what she had just seen, making her grimace.

‘’Over 300 Taliban fighters here? That’s a lot for the few of us, Nancy.’’

‘’Not if we can engage them separately in manageable groups and while using the effect of surprise. Just taking out that mortar and two machineguns would already help tremendously our men in the police station. Killing those suspected commanders would also be nice. I have a plan to propose to you.’’

‘’Go ahead, Nancy.’’

Nancy spoke for a minute, with Maria Garibaldi and Maryam’s two sergeants listening as well. At the end, Nancy got a collection of head nods, while Maryam spoke with more assurance now.

‘’This sounds like a good plan. Alright, Nancy, start your covert approach while I lead the patrol into firing position. May Allah be with you, my friend.’’

‘’And may Allah be with you all.’’ replied Nancy before disappearing in the night, running in a crouch.

Nancy actually cheated a bit while she was approaching the two Taliban sentries watching over the parked fleet of pickup trucks: she used her power of levitation to silently float above the ground while advancing. The two men never heard or saw her before one was stunned by a touch of her left hand, while the other was then stabbed in the throat by Nancy’s commando knife. She then gave the coup de grace to the two men with her knife. Now walking normally but still hiding between the trucks, she made her way to one pickup truck which was parked with its headlights pointed directly at the Taliban fighters behind the mud house. Quietly opening the driver’s door, she looked inside and smiled: as she had expected, the ignition key had been left in the contact. Reaching out, she turned partially the key in the ignition, opening the electrical circuits of the truck, then spoke with a low voice in her patrol radio.

‘’Nancy to Maryam: I am in position and ready.’’

‘’Understood. I will need another minute to finish positioning our girls.’’

‘’Okay! Advise me when ready. Remember: semi-automatic fire only and aimed shots, to conserve our ammunition. I will take care of the machine gunners on the roof of the house.’’

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After some tense waiting, Nancy finally got the word from Maryam that she was ready to open fire. Acknowledging that, Nancy then turned on the headlights of her pickup truck, switching them as well to high beam. The Taliban fighters behind the house, now bathed in intense white light, instinctively covered their eyes or turned their heads away at first, frozen in place like a group of deer caught in the beams of an oncoming car while crossing a road. Now presented with perfect targets at less than forty meters of distance, the 31 women of the patrol opened fire with one massive volley on the fourteen Taliban standing behind the house. While some of the women still managed to miss their intended targets, all of the extremists went down with that volley. At the same time as the policewomen opened fire, Nancy got out of the pickup truck and aimed her rifle at the four Taliban on the house roof, who were partially illuminated, using her holographic sight. Placing the red reticule of the holographic sight on the chest of one of the machine gunners, who was getting up to see what was happening, she fired once, dropping the man. She then fired three more bullets in quick succession, killing or wounding the four men on the roof. In the meantime, the patrolwomen fired a second volley, aiming at the Taliban fighters who were still moving on the ground and finishing them off without mercy. With all the extremists now down, Nancy reached again inside the truck she was leaning against and closed its headlights before speaking on her radio.

‘’Enemy all down! Run to the house and secure the grounds.’’ She then went herself at a run towards the house, but went towards one pickup truck parked alongside the rear wall of the building, using it like a stepping platform to jump on the rooftop in three steps. She found two of her targets still moving and crying in pain. Without remorse, she finished them with bullets to the head: with lots more Taliban to fight, the patrol could not afford to get encumbered with prisoners at this stage of the fight. Looking around the rooftop, she saw two PKM Russian-made medium

machineguns resting on their bipods along the western parapet of the roof, with many ammunition boxes near them and more boxes, empty, discarded on the roof. That pleased Nancy, as the PKM was a good, dependable weapon capable of providing heavy, sustained support fire, something which could become crucial for the police patrol in this fight. She thus grabbed the two machineguns by their carrying handles and brought them to the eastern edge of the rooftop, where the patrolwomen could grab them after climbing in the back of the parked truck. She did a few more trips to carry as well the still full ammunition boxes, then searched the four dead gunners, taking their rifle magazines and their grenades. With her pockets full, Nancy returned to the eastern

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edge and jumped in the back of the truck pulled alongside the house, then transferred the captured machineguns and ammunition down from the roof. As discussed

previously with Nancy, Maryam and her policewomen were also busy gathering the captured enemy weapons and ammunition, filling at the same time their pockets with AK-47 rifle magazines and all the grenades they could find. Maryam, in a happy mood, came to see Nancy as the latter was stepping down from the pickup truck with a PKM.

‘’Your plan worked perfectly, Nancy. We did not suffer any casualties. I also believe that we killed somebody important. Come with me.’’ Following Maryam, Nancy soon was looking down at the bodies of what she had believed to be a command group. Using a flashlight, she examined the dead faces of the two men armed with AKSU-74 sub-compact rifles, then smiled with contentment.

‘’Well well well, isn’t this that old bastard of Mullah Hayatullah Khan, the Taliban military commander for the Farah province? And besides him is that old fart of Mullah Sultan, the ex-Taliban governor of the province.’’

‘’Are you sure?’’ asked Maryam, not believing their luck. Nancy nodded slowly her head at that question.

‘’I did two previous tours in Afghanistan as a military intelligence officer and have seen numerous times the wanted list of top Taliban commanders, Maryam. These are Mullah Khan and Mullah Sultan alright. Their presence here tonight makes sense, in view of the unprecedented scale of this Taliban attack. The Taliban were probably aiming to seize back control of this district tonight, profiting from the withdrawal of the American forces from Farah province. We should load those two corpses in a truck, so that no retreating Taliban could make them disappear afterwards. This could be a big propaganda coup against the Taliban, Maryam, and I will make sure that your women will be credited for it…without being named publicly, of course.’’ Maryam nodded her head at that, reassured. She knew too well what could happen to a policewoman that would be publicly identified…or to her family.

‘’Thank you for thinking about that, Nancy. What do we do next?’’

‘’We should use two or three of those captured trucks and load into them all the ammunition and water we can find here or in other trucks, so that we could bring them afterwards to the police station. The Taliban must have kept their ammo reserves here, with their fire support group. If you find boxes of grenades, keep them close and handy: they could make a big difference in the coming fighting. Remove also the keys from the ignition of the trucks we won’t use and hide them under the rubber carpets of each

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vehicle, so that the Taliban won’t be able to quickly flee into them. In the meantime, me and Maria will go stand watch on the roof, in case some Taliban start wondering about what happened to their commanders. Oh, you better hold on to this as well.’’ Nancy, bending down, grabbed a handheld radio which had been hooked to Mullah Khan’s web gear and gave it to Maryam.

‘’By listening on the enemy command frequency, you may be able to know in advance what to expect, Maryam.’’

‘’A good idea again, Nancy. Decidedly, you think of everything, don’t you?’’ Nancy smiled in the darkness, showing the white of her teeth.

‘’Let’s say that I have seen a lot of wars in my life. Well, you better get your girls to work: the Taliban attacking the fort may react soon to us.’’

‘’Right!’’

As Maryam gathered her policewomen to pass her orders, Nancy signaled to Maria Garibaldi to approach her. The Italian, who had just fought her first ever battle, was still flush with excitement.

‘’This did go even better than I hoped, Nancy. What do we do next?’’

‘’We both go on the rooftop to watch the Taliban while Maryam’s girls gather the captured ammunition in two trucks. I suspect that the extremists attacking the police station will soon wonder why they are not receiving orders by radio anymore.’’ Using the parked truck as a stepping platform, Nancy and Maria went to take lying positions along the western edge of the roof and used their night vision goggles to observe the battle around the police station, 600 meters away. While it was evident that the policemen inside the station were still resisting, the Taliban fire had slackened noticeably, prompting a remark from Nancy.

‘’The enemy must be wondering what happened here. We probably can expect soon a large patrol or even a counter-attack force to head this way. You watch the road while I watch the houses bordering the road on its northern side.’’

‘’Got it!’’

About ten minutes later, Maryam’s voice came on the patrol radio frequency.

‘’Nancy, this is Maryam: a Taliban commander has just ordered one of his subordinates to come check out our position.’’

‘’Understood, Maryam. Keep most of your girls working on the loading and transfer of ammunition and water, but send Sergeant Kaker and five girls take position

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along the main road with the two captured machineguns. Me and Maria will stay on the rooftop and snipe at the enemy and fire illumination flares as needed to help our machine gunners.’’

Nancy then resumed her watch with Maria. It took another fourteen minutes before she saw some movement behind houses bordering the northern side of the road, about 250 meters away.

‘’I see them, Maria. A group is advancing behind the cover of the houses on the north side of the road, 250 meters to our front. They will now have to advance in the open, however: there are no more houses between them and us. I will advise Maryam, then fire a paraflare.’’

‘’I am ready for them, Nancy.’’ Replied the Italian woman, pointing her Beretta SC-70/90 and looking through its night sight. On her part, Nancy called Maryam by radio and alerted her about the advancing Taliban force, then waited two more minutes, time for the Taliban group of about fifty fighters to be completely in the open, before preparing a parachute flare. Opening both ends of the thin tube and pointing it up at a 45-degree angle, she pulled on the launch chord, firing off the small rocket with a loud ‘POP’. Maria then fired her first shot in the still dark night, downing the Taliban fighter at the tail of the enemy column. Three seconds later, an intense point of white light lit up high in the sky, just above and slightly behind the advancing Taliban. Now well silhouetted in open terrain, the Taliban fighters found themselves suddenly the targets of a withering machinegun crossfire. Over a half dozen Taliban fell under the hail of bullets, the others then hastily going down in the dirt to find any cover available. Their response fire proved however totally ineffective, not seeing where precisely the machinegun fire came from. Nancy then joined the firefight, taking calm, slow aim at a Taliban and killing him with a bullet to the head. She and Maria had time to kill or wound four more extremists, while Sergeant Kaker’s two machineguns shot down another eight Taliban, before the paraflare burned out, returning the area to obscurity. Nancy waited until the surviving Taliban fighters decided to withdraw and got back up to run away, then fired a second paraflare. The extremists threw themselves to the ground again, but not quickly enough to avoid another machinegun burst that downed four of them. Nancy and Maria then resumed their sniping fire, while the PKMs kept firing short bursts to keep the Taliban fighters down. With their numbers dwindling steadily, some of the Taliban panicked and got up to sprint towards the cover of the nearest houses, only to be shot

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down by the machinegun fire. The second paraflare then burned out but no Taliban dared get up this time, staying in the shallow ditch alongside the main road.

A minute later, Maryam’s voice came back on the radio.

‘’Maryam to Nancy. That Taliban reconnaissance party just called for help from their main force. The Taliban commander near the police station is going to send a strong force in a hook around our right flank, staying behind the cover of the houses along our flank. I am now going to reposition my girls to cover that flank.’’

‘’A good move, Maryam. Have them take position as much as possible on rooftops, from where they will have better fields of fire and can better throw grenades at the enemy. Make sure they have plenty of grenades with them. Me and Maria will reposition ourselves as well.’’

Once this was said, Nancy got up from her prone position on the rooftop and signaled Maria to follow her.

‘’The enemy is going to attempt a right flank attack against us in a few minutes. We are moving out to new positions. You’re okay, Maria?’’

‘’I’m fine, Nancy. I now have a total of six Taliban fighters on my score sheet. And you?’’

‘’I stopped counting a long time ago, Maria.’’ replied Nancy. ‘’Follow me!’’ Coming down from their rooftop, the two women then ran in a crouch towards the main road, invisible to the Taliban in the obscurity. Stopping first by the position occupied by Sergeant Kaker and her two machineguns, Nancy patted the shoulder of the Afghan NCO.

‘’Well done, Sergeant. We are going to take position on our right flank but will continue to watch your front and fire paraflares as needed. Your job is to cover this road and stop any Taliban advance along its axis.’’

‘’Understood, Captain Laplante.’’

Leaving the six policewomen, Nancy crossed the road with Maria, soon finding Maryam Shirzai as the latter was busy placing her policewomen on the rooftops of the houses on their right flank, where they would be able to cover the 200 meters of open terrain separating them from the next row of mud houses.

‘’Ah, Nancy! Where are you going to put yourself this time?’’

‘’Where the enemy will not expect us, Maryam: on the roof of one of those houses across from these open fields. From there, we will be able to snipe at the enemy

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and, hopefully, catch him in the rear as he tries to assault your force. I would need four of your girls to accompany us, with as many grenades as they can carry.’’

‘’You got them!’’ replied Maryam before turning around and raising her voice. ‘’Sergeant Noori, send me four women with two crates of grenades.’’ Maryam then smiled at Nancy.

‘’As you had predicted, the parked trucks contained the ammunition, water and food reserves of the Taliban, including dozens of crates full of grenades and dozens of RPG rockets. We will have enough to create a nasty rain for those Taliban bastards.’’

‘’That’s the spirit, Maryam.’’ replied Nancy, smiling as well.

As soon as the four women selected by Sergeant Noori had joined them, carrying between them two wooden crates, Nancy led her small team across the open ground, using an irrigation ditch as cover. As they were approaching the next row of houses, Maria spoke up with alarm.

‘’Nancy, I can see with my goggles some movement to our left, about 200 meters away. The enemy is already advancing along this row of houses.’’

‘’The bastards reacted quickly enough, I have to give them that.’’ said Nancy while still advancing in a crouch. ‘’Let’s pick up the pace a bit, so that we could take position before they are here.’’

Hurrying up, she covered the last thirty meters before the first house, followed closely by the five other women. She however ignored that house and walked to the next one, which was the most westerly of this group of houses. Once at that mud house, Nancy made one of the policewomen go down on her hands and knees, while another policewoman was told to lean with her back to the mud wall and to join her hands in front of her belly. Nancy stepped on the first woman’s back, then put one foot in the joined hands of the second woman before climbing on her right shoulder and reach the roof, pulling herself up. Once on the roof, she offered her hand down.

‘’Your turn, Maria.’’

Maria followed her example and was soon besides Nancy on the rooftop. Both then grabbed in succession the two crates of grenades and the four Afghan policewomen, pulling them up to the rooftop. Nancy then hurried to the western edge of the roof, in time to see in her night vision goggles a long column of Taliban fighters approaching cautiously along the rows of houses.

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‘’Damn! They are already less than 150 meters away. Let’s open these crates of grenades as quietly as possible.’’

That was less easily said than done, the crates being secured by sturdy steel wires twisted and sealed together. Nancy had barely the time to distribute grenades to the four Afghan policewomen while giving them quick instructions before they had to lay prone and be silent in order not to be located. Covering her mouth and radio microphone with one hand, she spoke in a low voice while activating her radio set.

‘’Nancy to Maryam. The enemy is already at the foot of the house we are using. My group will first throw grenades, then I will fire a paraflare when I will judge the enemy to be in an ideal position for us to shoot.’’

‘’Got it! Good luck, Nancy.’’

Nancy did not reply to that, instead cautiously raising her head to look with her night vision goggles above the parapet. Her heart accelerated at the sight of the swarm of Taliban fighters now massing right under her, with a Taliban chieftain giving orders to his men and sending them forward along two irrigation ditches. That Taliban however stayed in hiding near the house, keeping as well with him a group of four men armed with RPG-7 anti-tank grenade launchers, plus one man armed with a light machinegun. Careful not to make any noise, Nancy backed off from the parapet and joined Maria and the four Afghan women, whispering instructions to them in Dari, then in Italian.

‘’Bibi, Zakia, you get ready to throw grenades at the two columns that have started advancing towards the main road. Carmela, Lailoma, you will throw grenades on my command at the Taliban on my side of the roof. Maria will then start sniping in the back of the advancing columns while I fire a paraflare. Don’t be cheap with the grenades, unless I tell you to stop throwing them away. Any questions? No? Then take positions along the parapets.’’

The six women then cautiously crawled back in two separate groups to the parapets, bringing along their crates of grenades. Once back in position, Nancy prepared in advance for launch a paraflare and laid two grenades in front of her, then raised her head to check on the enemy. The Taliban assault columns were now well on their way along the ditches, their tail already ten meters away from the house, while the RPGs and light machinegun group had taken position behind a low earthen wall maybe five meters from the house. Meanwhile, the noise and flashes from the fight around the police

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station continued. She then looked at Carmelia and Lailoma, speaking to them in a whisper.

‘’Two grenades each in succession, to our front and five meters away. Pull the pins out but hold on to the spoons until you see me let go my own grenade spoon, then throw your grenades.’’

Grabbing a grenade, Nancy rolled on her back and raised high her hand holding the grenade as a signal to the three other women to get ready. When six arms were up with grenades, Nancy made a deliberate move and pulled the safety pin out, then let fly the spoon and threw away her grenade, imitated by the others. As the first grenades were still flying in the air, Nancy grabbed quickly her second grenade, pulling out its pin and throwing it. The first grenade was exploding below her as she grabbed her paraflare tube and pointed it skyward at a slight southward angle. The ‘POP’ of the launch was nearly inaudible in the middle of the grenade explosions and the screams from men being mauled by the blasts and fragments. As the four policewomen kept priming and throwing grenades, Nancy raised her rifle and shot the nearest Taliban still up when her paraflare lit up the sky. Maryam and the rest of the patrol then opened fire as well, targeting the two advancing columns of Taliban, which were now caught in the open and plainly visible. Enemy losses climbed quickly under the deluge of bullets and grenades, with the Taliban unable on their part to locate exactly the positions of the police patrol in the dark. Many of them didn’t understand that Nancy’s group was in their back until the detonations from Maria’s assault rifle were heard. Nancy’s suppressed rifle was for its part much harder to locate, giving her a deadly edge over the Taliban fighters. After emptying a first magazine in semi-automatic mode and reloading quickly, Nancy could not see any more surviving Taliban on her side of the house, where the ground was strewn with dead or gravely wounded men. She thus told Carmelia and Lailoma to follow her at a crouch to the southern parapet, where Maria, Bibi and Zakia were engaged in a ferocious fight with the tail of the two Taliban assault columns. Seeing that her paraflare was about to die out, Nancy prepared and launched a second paraflare, while Carmelia and Lailoma started using their rifles, saving the grenades they still had left for the moment. With bullets being fired haphazardly in their direction by the trapped Taliban fighters, Nancy used again her rifle to reply, using her holographic sight and concentrating on any extremist who tried to flee by leaving the ditches and running across the field.

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The patrol suffered its first casualty a minute later, when Bibi Nayebaba got up to be able to thrown her grenades farther and was hit just after throwing a grenade. Nancy was however engaged at that moment in a mad firefight with a group of Taliban trying to rush back towards the mud house and could not help the policewoman. A flash followed by a loud explosion against the wall of the house then told her that an RPG gunner was now targeting them. Looking in the direction the flash had come from, she soon found the said gunner, who was frantically reloading his rocket launcher. A carefully aimed shot killed the man at a distance of a hundred meters. Then another Taliban ran to the rocket launcher, intent on using it. Nancy shot him as well, along with the two men who also tried to grab the RPG-7. The second paraflare then died out, returning the field of battle to obscurity. Nancy was however out of paraflares. Flipping down her night vision goggles, she shouted an order in Dari to the Afghan policewomen of her group, followed by words in Italian.

‘’GO BACK TO THROWING GRENADES, LADIES. ME AND MARIA WILL DO THE RIFLE SHOOTING. MARIA, USE YOUR NIGHT SIGHT FROM NOW ON.’’ Giving the example, Nancy switched on her infra-red laser dot sight, which projected a green dot invisible to the naked eye but very much visible through her light intensification goggles. Then lining up the green dot on a Taliban running towards the house, she shot him in the chest, dropping him. The next minutes went on for seemingly an eternity, with Nancy tense as a steel bar and ignoring the bullets flying past her head while shooting Taliban after Taliban. On her side, Maria was no slouch either, her night sight having more range and accuracy than Nancy’s laser dot sight and allowing her more distant shots. The Italian woman had just shot down her eight enemy when two pairs of vehicle headlights appeared at the southern end of the field, where Maryam and her patrol were, and switched to high beam, illuminating again the Taliban caught in the middle of the field. Maria understood at once who it was and shouted with joy.

‘’WELL DONE, AZIZA!’’

With the light now provided by the two trucks brought forward by Sergeant Kaker and one of her policewomen, Maryam Shirzai’s group was able to resume accurate fire on the back of the Taliban. Their fire was then dramatically augmented by the two PKM machineguns of Sergeant Kaker’s section, which were firing from the back of the two pickup trucks driven to the edge of the field. Their situation now an impossible one, trapped in the open from two sides, the Taliban survivors gave up the fight and started fleeing left and right in utter disorder. Neither Nancy nor the Afghan policewomen were

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however ready to show mercy to men who were willing to mutilate or kill little girls for the supposed crime of attending school. They kept up their fire until they had no more targets in their sights, with only a handful of Taliban escaping their wrath and fleeing away in utter panic.

With that fight now over, Nancy was free to go check on Bibi, lying in the middle of the rooftop. Checking for a pulse, Nancy closed her eyes for a moment, grieving, when she found none. She was soon joined near Bibi’s body by Maria and the three surviving Afghan policewomen, who could only cry over their dead friend and comrade. They were still grieving when Nancy received a radio call from Maryam Shirzai.

‘’Maryam to Nancy. The Taliban have fled the field. How are you doing at your end?’’

‘’This is Nancy. We have lost Bibi, but the rest of us are okay. How about your group?’’

There was a moment of silence before Maryam replied in a subdued voice.

‘’We have sustained two wounded at our end, thankfully not critical cases. However, the police station is still under attack and in danger of falling. I believe that we should go lend more help there, even after this victory here.’’

‘’I concur! However, there is no point in rushing into what could turn into an ambush, without knowing where the enemy is precisely. I am going to send back to you my four remaining women, who will also carry back Bibi’s body. In the meantime, load your women into a few trucks and take with you the trucks full of ammunition and water, along with the bodies of the two dead mullahs, then wait for me to report back by radio. I am going on foot alone to go do a reconnaissance of the area around the police station.’’

‘’Alone? But, that’s too dangerous, Nancy.’’

‘’On the contrary, Maryam: I will be more effective like that, with my night goggles and sights. Trust me, my friend. I will see you later.’’

Nancy then looked at Maria Garibaldi.

‘’Take Bibi’s body with you and return with Carmela, Zakia and Lailoma to Maryam’s group. She will prepare a truck convoy to go towards the police station. Be prepared to block the retreat of the remaining Taliban if they decide to come your way. In the meantime, I will go forward on foot reconnaissance. Please don’t object: I know perfectly what I am doing. I will keep in touch by radio.’’

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Nancy then took the time to pocket some extra grenades before jumping off the roof and disappearing into the night in the direction of the police station. Carmelia Ghousdin watched her go with near religious fervor.

‘’What an incredible woman. I hope that she stays safe.’’

Retracing the route taken by the now exterminated Taliban counter-attack force, Nancy went at a near run, using to the maximum the advantage given by her night goggles. At one point, one Taliban survivor from the fight actually crossed path with her and, thinking she was another surviving comrade, and waited for her, even calling to her in Pashto.

‘’Are any others with you?’’

‘’Just me and judgment day.’’ replied Nancy before shooting the man dead with her suppressed rifle. She took a few seconds to collect more grenades from the dead man before continuing on towards the police station. Fifteen minutes later, she was approaching the main road, with the police station 200 meters to the West. She had now only a few dispersed farms and the houses lining the main road between her and the station, but she could also tell that she was getting very close to the main enemy force, judging from where the firing came from. She would have to be very cautious from now on, especially when considering that stray fire from the police station would be as dangerous to her as it was to the Taliban. At least, the policemen inside the station were not showing any sign of giving up. Using again her powers of Chosen of The One, Nancy silently levitated up to the rooftop level of the building she was closest to, ready to fire on any Taliban that came in sight of her. That roof proved empty. Walking silently across the roof while crouched, she looked cautiously down over the parapet to check the alley between her and the next compound. What she saw there was a group of maybe fifteen Taliban fighters, resting, smoking and drinking water while sheltered from the fire from the police station. Putting down her rifle, Nancy took out two grenades and pulled their safety pins out with her teeth while holding the spoons in place. Letting the spoons fly off, she then counted down three seconds before dropping the grenades down in the alley, with ten meters between the grenades. Pulling away her head and covering her ears, she waited for the two grenades to explode, then grabbed her rifle and flew across the alley, landing on the next roof and ignoring the screams of pain from below. While that rooftop was also deserted, the same could not be said of the courtyard of the compound the house was part of. One quick look with her night vision

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goggles showed her a long row of bodies, their heads and torsos covered by wool blankets, lined up in the courtyard, with a pile of weapons stacked nearby. It was now evident to her that the fierce resistance of the policemen in the nearby station had cost a lot of casualties to the Taliban. Nancy saw as well in a corner of the courtyard what looked like an Afghan family, with four adults and seven children huddled in a corner under the guard of two Taliban fighters. Nancy understood why they were outside and not in their house when two extremists carried out of the house the body of a comrade, to then place it at one end of the line of corpses and do a short prayer over it before covering it. The Taliban must be using this house as a first aid station for their wounded. The flash from the back blast of an RPG-7 firing its rocket at the police station then briefly illuminated the area. One of the children of the Afghan family, a small boy, was looking up at that moment and suddenly pointed towards Nancy’s position while shouting to his parents.

‘’Hey, who’s that?’’

Nancy withdrew quickly from the parapet, swearing at her bad luck, but she was too late: the two guards watching the family had looked up at the boy’s exclamation and had seen her, as they next shouted alarm cries to their comrades. Not having much choice left now, Nancy activated her implanted time distorter and went into phase shift, basically creating her own bubble of accelerated time around her. Now completely invisible to others around her and moving a thousand time faster than normal, Nancy flew off the roof she was on and went westward for 200 meters, past the last of the Taliban attack force, before landing on the roof of a mud house bordering the main road. Crouching down behind the eastern parapet, she came out of phase shift and cautiously looked towards the police station and the houses nearest to it. The roofs of those houses were all occupied by Taliban fighters pouring continuous fire at the station but what alarmed Nancy was the sight of a large group of extremists which had covertly approached the station and was lined up directly against the foot of the perimeter wall. Two of the extremists were seemingly busy setting up what looked like a large explosive charge against the wall, probably to blow an entry hole in it. Making her mind quickly, Nancy lined up one of the two men working on the charge in her sights, placing an infra-red green dot on his back before pressing the trigger of her rifle. The suppressed noise from her shot was lost in the earsplitting firefight between the Taliban and the policemen, but her aim proved true, with her target collapsing in the dirt. Before the second man working on the charge could get over his shock, Nancy shot him as well, then started

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methodically shooting down the Taliban fighters lined against the wall, starting with the tail end ones. Some of the Taliban finally caught on what was happening and frantically looked around to try to locate the sniper murdering their group. Nancy then changed tactics and grabbed two of her grenades, pulling their safety pins out with her teeth and then throwing them towards the Taliban assault group. Thrown with inhuman strength, the grenades flew for 120 meters before rolling on the ground at the feet of the horrified Taliban fighters. They however exploded before they could react, slaughtering half of the assault force. Two more grenades followed, causing yet more casualties to that group. Now decimated and missing their leader and their explosives experts, the survivors broke ranks and ran across the main road, to the relative safety of the houses on the northern side. The policemen manning the walls of the station saw them and were able to shoot down a few of the fleeing Taliban fighters before they could disappear in the narrow alleys, leaving behind over twenty of their own dead or gravely wounded.

The reports from the survivors of the assault force, along with the panicked stories from the mere handful of fighters from the counter-attack force who had returned, made the sub-commander left in charge of the Taliban in Bala Buluk contemplate grimly his options. His three superiors were now dead or missing, he had lost his mortar support and his force, numbering originally close to 400 fighters, was now down to a mere 160 men. Worse, he knew next to nothing about the new enemy force that had appeared from the East, apart from the fact that some enemy soldiers apparently equipped with night vision devices were roaming his immediate area, killing methodically his men with near impunity. Added to that was the fact that the police station was still resisting and it made for a grim picture for him and his men. His big problem was that, even if he decided to withdraw now, he would have to do it on foot, the enemy having apparently captured their fleet of pickup trucks. That option was however less than satisfactory: they had crossed over forty kilometers of desert countryside from their departure base to come here and capture this district. On foot and in this frigid weather, his retreating column would suffer heavily, both from the weather and from enemy air attacks. The Afghan Air Force now had a number of armed helicopters based in nearby Shindand which could cause him no end of grief. Another option was to disperse his men around the houses of Bala Buluk and lay low for a few days. That, however, would rob him of any way to keep control of his surviving men and would allow time to the enemy to bring in reinforcements and do a detailed cordon and search operation to find

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his men one by one. The sub-commander finally decided that he needed to take back his trucks, so that he would at least have a reasonable chance to save what was left of his force. He had time to give a series of short orders around before a grenade rolled at his feet, coming from a nearby rooftop. It exploded before he could throw himself down, shredding him to pieces, along with his two bodyguards.

Now leaderless, the surviving Taliban fighters decided to follow their last received order: to take back by force their trucks at the East end of the town. Unfortunately for them, Nancy was still hiding among them and warned Maryam Shirzai by radio of the Taliban intentions. The Border Police patrol thus had time to reorganize and reposition itself to face the incoming Taliban advance. With a dozen pickup trucks brought forward between houses to illuminate on command the 600 meters of open ground between the police station and their position, the policewomen greeted the disorganized Taliban assault with a murderous fire. The jubilant policemen inside the district police station, seeing the extremists caught in plain view of the station, added the fire from their machineguns to that from the policewomen. A smaller group of Taliban fighters that had decided more wisely to do a flanking move along the northern side of the main road was followed covertly by Nancy, who shot down one by one the extremists of that group, appearing only long enough to shoot, then disappearing into the night. The last Taliban from that group died before he could get near the truck park defended by the policewomen. As for the survivors now trapped in the middle of an open field, they finally surrendered as Sunrise came, out of ammunition and completely dispirited. Their shock and rage at seeing that mere women had been fighting them nearly convinced them to continue the fight, but the shooting of the loudest mouths by Nancy calmed them down long enough for the policemen from the station to come arrest them and tie them up. A detailed search for bodies and weapons later that day turned out a total of 291 Taliban fighters dead and another 65 wounded. Only 31 Taliban survived intact to be taken prisoners, while hundreds of weapons were seized, along with impressive quantities of ammunition and explosives and 34 pickup trucks.

Nancy and Maria were present when the Afghan policewomen of the patrol joined up at last with the Afghan policemen of the police station. While the district police chief and deputy police chief, along with the city police chief, whose daughters were part of the patrol, greeted the policewomen with open arms, the other Afghan policemen

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were decidedly cooler in their welcome. Nancy, fuming about that, understood that those policemen felt somewhat shameful that women had saved them, something that would hurt their manly image. At least, she and Maria were welcomed warmly enough by the three foreign police advisors inside the police station. Maria in particular was hugged tightly by Brigadiere Umberto Falcone and Caporete Rinaldo Vecchio, while Corporal William Blake of the Royal Canadian Mounted Police vigorously shook hands with Nancy, a big grin on his face.

‘’Captain Laplante, we owe you and those women our lives. Your patrol did a fantastic job. I still have a hard time believing that such a small group as yours could do so much damage to the Taliban.’’

‘’Correction, Corporal Blake: this was Lieutenant Shirzai’s patrol, not mine. Me and Maria were just there to assist and advise her.’’

‘’Well, it certainly wasn’t a bad thing that you were around, Captain. God, this is going to hurt the Taliban seriously, especially since you killed Mullah Khan and Mullah Sultan.’’

‘’Those were effectively important Taliban commanders. A lot of justice was done today. With luck, this could hurt badly the reputation of the Taliban and discourage many from helping them here in Bala Buluk.’’

‘’That would certainly be nice to see, Captain. I just hope that this battle won’t mark you as a special target for the Taliban.’’

‘’That would be typical of those intolerant cowards indeed: If you can’t kill someone in combat, murder him or her with a bomb or an assassin’s bullet. I promise you to be vigilant at all times, if that could reassure you.’’

‘’It does, Captain.’’ said gravely Blake while looking into her eyes.

It didn’t take very long before the story of the battle for Bala Buluk started spreading around, along with stories about Nancy’s exploits and vaunted tactical genius, as told by the Afghan policewomen. Three foreign news teams, one each from Al Jazeera, the BBC and Paris Match, showed up before the end of the day, in time to film the long lines of Taliban corpses before they could be buried in a common grave. The Afghan district police chief was too happy as well to show to the reporters the huge inventory of captured enemy weapons, equipment and ammunition. While they were able to interview and photograph the Afghan policewomen, they did so with the women wearing scarves and sunglasses to hide their faces and no family names were given.

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That was in sharp contrast to the way they reported on Nancy and Maria, who posed with faces fully visible for the reporters. That Nancy was herself a war correspondent and thus was well known by her foreign colleagues just made the articles about her more detailed and voluminous. The three news teams had to stay overnight in Bala Buluk, due to the onset of obscurity, but a promise by the district police chief to let them document the house-to-house search to be started the next morning convinced them to stay for another day.

10:23 (Afghanistan Time)

Saturday, December 15, 2012 ‘A’

Afghan police road checkpoint

Downtown Bala Buluk

‘’So, Peter, what is going on along the Iranian border?’’ asked Nancy to the BBC reporter standing near her. That reporter was covering with his cameraman and a Paris Match photo journalist the work of the Afghan police road checkpoint she was helping supervise in downtown Bala Buluk. The British reporter made a sardonic smile.

‘’Not much, frankly. Things have died down quite a lot around Iran after the initial hoopla. The one place that is still hot is Israel: it still gets its daily dose of rockets from the Lebanese border area and from Gaza, while the Israeli Air Force is kept quite busy retaliating with punitive airstrikes. The Israelis attacked Iranian nuclear installations only on two separate days, while the Americans have yet to bomb Iran even once. In turn, the Iranians, while vocal, have not attacked yet any American warship or tanker and the Strait of Hormuz is still open to traffic. It seems that President Obama is still reluctant to wage war with Iran and that the Iranian mullahs are doing their best not to give him any excuse to attack them.’’

‘’So, the only real loser in all this is Israel, the state that started it all.’’

‘’Right! And World opinion is not tender with Israel presently. Even the American public, stung by the jump in oil prices caused by this crisis, is generally critical of Israel. With some luck, this crisis may cool down and peter out in the next few weeks.’’

‘’Hmm, just pray that the Israelis don’t decide to go nuclear on Iran. Things could then get much worse.’’

The British looked at her with a mix of amusement and respect.

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‘’Why do you persist in working for such a puny organization as CONFLICTS MAGAZINE, Nancy? You are too good a war correspondent to be wasted like this. I am sure that the BBC would be most happy to hire you. Hell, even that Paris Match scandal sheet would probably jump at hiring you.’’

Jean Marsant, of Paris Match, made an obscene gesture at Peter, making him and Nancy brake out in laughter. The BBC reporter then became serious again and looked at Nancy.

‘’About your present publisher, Nancy, I have heard rumors that CONFLICTS MAGAZINE is in financial trouble and may fold in the coming months. You seriously should start looking for a more serious, solid employer, Nancy, and I am not saying that in order to recruit you for the BBC.’’

That made Nancy look intensely at the British.

‘’What exactly did you hear about CONFLICTS MAGAZINE, Peter?’’

‘’Well, my own editor told me that it was running in the red, and this for many months already...’’

While that information was particularly unsettling to her, an approaching pickup truck then caught the attention of Nancy, concentrating her back on her security duties. Two men sat inside the cab, while three other men, all bearded and wearing turbans, stood in the back, looking over the cab’s roof. What had attracted her attention was the dark aura of the men, along with their thoughts, which were full of hatred as they stared at her. The truck was now about twenty meters away and about to go around the vehicle forming the first obstacle of the police chicane. The road checkpoint was manned by six Afghan policemen, supplemented by two policewomen from the Shouz patrol tasked to search women and children. Peter Farnsworth noticed her tense up and glanced at the approaching truck before signaling to his cameraman to get ready to film.

‘’Nancy is sniffing something. Be ready to roll, Charlie, just in case.’’ Jean Marsant heard that and raised his digital camera as well as Nancy started to walk quickly towards the pickup truck. She undid as well the safety strap of her pistol’s speed holster, a gesture which prompted Farnsworth to give an urgent order to his cameraman.

‘’Start rolling now, Charlie, and get behind some cover as well.’’ Farnsworth was activating his microphone, remotely connected to Charlie’s camera, when the pickup truck suddenly accelerated, while one of the men standing in the back took out an AK-47 assault rifle from behind piled up vegetable crates and started shouting, imitated by his two companions.

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‘’ALLAH U AKB…’’

POW POW POW

Peter watched, incredulous, as Nancy took out in a flash her pistol and shot three times, all in less than two seconds. The three men in the back of the pickup truck then either fell out of the vehicle or collapsed on the floor of the truck. The driver, still unaware that his companions were dead, started speeding through the chicane, swerving wildly and making the Afghan policemen jump urgently out of the way. Nancy then shot a fourth time, killing the driver with a bullet in the forehead. Now out of control, the speeding pickup truck slammed violently into the second police vehicle forming the chicane and came to an abrupt stop. The passenger in the cab quickly recovered from the shock and, throwing his door open, ran out of the vehicle, heading towards a nearby alley between two mud houses. Seeing Afghan policemen raising their rifles to shoot down the fugitive, Nancy shouted at them in Dari as she started sprinting after the Taliban.

‘’DON’T SHOOT! I WILL TAKE HIM ALIVE!’’

Followed by the BBC video camera and the Paris Match still camera, Nancy accelerated at an incredible rate, soon attaining Olympic record-setting speeds and catching up quickly with the fleeing Taliban. She soon entered the alley behind the fugitive, zooming by incredulous Afghan civilians either passing by or sitting in the dirt while selling various wares and produces. She could easily have shot the man, having still her pistol in her right hand, but was resolved to take him alive. Once only one step behind the man, she dropped down on one foot while sweeping her left leg in front of her, swiping the Taliban’s legs from under him and making him fall hard face first in the dust. Quickly getting back up, Nancy took the time to holster back her pistol and secure it before approaching the shaken Taliban, who had slid to a stop just short of an old man and a young boy selling hard-boiled eggs contained in baskets. Grabbing him by his collar with one hand, Nancy forced the man back up with apparent ease, then threw him face-first against the mud wall on the other side of the alley, manhandling him as if he was a simple rag doll.

‘’So,’’ she said to him in Pashto with hatred in her voice, ‘’how does it feel to have to fight against someone who can fight back, instead of mutilating and killing young girls and women? Show me how much of a man you really are.’’ The Afghan civilians witnessing that scene held their breath then: for an Afghan man, doubting his courage and manhood was about the biggest insult one could make,

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especially when it came from a woman…and an infidel at that. The Taliban turned red with anger and took out from under his robe a knife before rushing at Nancy while screaming his rage. A lightning kick made the knife fly from the man’s hand before she stepped aside, letting him crash against the mud wall behind her. Forcibly turning the extremist around, Nancy then held him solidly by his collar with one hand and started slapping him in the face repeatedly with all her strength, making the Taliban’s head snap left and right.

‘’So you are supposed to be superior to me because I am a woman? How superior do you feel right now, you bastard?’’

After administering six resounding slaps which left the man wobbling on his feet, Nancy pushed a piercing karate scream while hitting the Taliban’s forehead with the open palm of her right hand. Her adversary bounced again against the mud wall before falling face down to the ground like a log. As the civilian witnesses watched her in stunned silence, Nancy grabbed the man again by his collar and raised his head and torso from the ground just enough to be able to drag him, still using only one hand. Nancy came out of the alley with the unconscious Taliban, with cameras still filming and photographing her. Going first to the police sergeant in charge of the roadblock, she threw unceremoniously the Taliban on the ground in front of him.

‘’I believe that you may want to put this piece of garbage in jail, Sergeant.’’

‘’Uh, certainly, Captain.’’

As the sergeant called to him two policemen and tied the hands of the Taliban in his back, Nancy went to Zainab and Hanifa, the two policewomen assigned to the checkpoint.

‘’You are okay, girls?’’

‘’Yes, Captain.’’ said Hanifa Kakar while looking at her with wide eyes and a smile. ‘’You truly made that Taliban bastard look like a weak fool.’’

‘’That was the point I was trying to make, girls.’’ she said with a wink.

Peter Farnsworth, who had gone to check out the crashed pickup truck, saw to his astonishment that Nancy’s four shots had all been head kills. He also saw that rifles and grenades had been hidden in the truck and made sure his cameraman filmed those before going towards Nancy. Even with her prior reputation, what she had just done was truly incredible and was certainly going to make prime news tonight on the BBC. With

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his cameraman filming from a few paces away, he raised his microphone as he stopped in front of her.

‘’Nancy, this was quite a demonstration you just did. Why did you become suspicious of those men in the pickup truck?’’

‘’Call it instinct mixed with experience, Peter. Those men glared at me in a way not normal for simple farmers.’’

‘’But then you shot four of them with single bullets to the head, plus caught and beat with your bare hands the fifth one. Some would say that a woman couldn’t do that.’’ That got Peter an intense look from Nancy.

‘’By some, you mean misogynists like the Taliban, who think that women are worthless, inferior beings, or certain NATO officers who say that combat is not the business of women?’’

Peter could easily figure out which NATO officers she was alluding to: the American forces had been refusing official combat roles to their women for decades, often using rather hypocritical or even downright misogynistic arguments to justify their stance, while sending the same women in conditions which amounted very much to combat. Maybe someone here in Afghanistan had ticked off Nancy by demeaning her combat capabilities. If that was the case and he could find out about it, it could make for a juicy side report.

‘’Nancy, you have been known for years to be a top war correspondent and an extraordinary linguist. You just showed that you could speak Dari and Pashto. How many languages do you actually speak or read fluently?’’

‘’I both read and speak fluently French, English, Spanish, German, Russian, Italian, Arabic, Pashto, Dari and Serbo-Croat. I also speak to some degree Iranian Farsi, Japanese, Mandarin Chinese and Creole. I always had a talent for languages and have a near perfect memory, plus an I.Q. of 153.’’

‘’But, that’s genius level, Nancy!’’

Nancy gave Peter a critical stare.

‘’Yet, I am supposed to be inferior because I am a woman, according to even the official policies of the present Afghan government.’’

‘’Many could say that you are an exception, Nancy.’’ replied Peter, trying to milk out the most out of this interview by playing the devil’s advocate. If she was irritated by that, she didn’t show it.

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‘’I agree that I am an exception in many ways, Peter. However, I have arrived at what I am now through hard, constant training and self-studies. Most women could improve themselves the same way.’’

‘’So, you do not owe the level of expertise in pistol shooting and unarmed combat you just displayed to your Canadian Forces military training?’’

‘’Hardly! Suffice to say that I am ranked third overall, irrespective of sex, in North American competitive combat pistol shooting, while I rank first overall in metallic silhouette target shooting. I also am a fifth Dan black belt in Kyokushin karate and number two female karateka in Canada. In terms of rifle shooting, while I am not as good with a rifle as with a pistol, I still would qualify as a sniper.’’

‘’That is quite impressive, Nancy. And you have been as well a war

correspondent for, what, about seven years?’’

‘’Nine years now.’’ corrected Nancy. ‘’I have thus plenty of experience on the battlefield, both as a war correspondent and as a reserve military officer. If you want to talk about truly meritorious women, I would suggest that you mention in your report the brave Afghan policewomen who fought with me and performed admirably, despite the fact that they have not even completed their training yet.’’

‘’I will certainly feature them in my report, Nancy.’’

Peter Farnsworth went on interviewing her for another minute, then let his place to Jean Marsant, who smiled while asking her a question in a hopeful tone, using French.

‘’Could I ask you to take a few poses for me, Nancy, apart from answering a few questions?’’

‘’As long as you don’t ask for nude poses, Jean. You better make it quick, though: I can see our Al Jazeera colleagues coming at a gallop.’’ Turning his head, the French photographer swore on seeing a car coming from the police station and bearing an Al Jazeera sign in its windshield.

‘’Merde! Alright, let’s get to it! Could you lean against the police car here, with your pistol in plain sight? Good! Now, give me a nice smile…’’

12:07 (Israel Time)

Sunday, December 16, 2012 ‘A’

Russian restaurant-terrace

Downtown Tel Aviv, Israel

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Victor Medveyev was quite fond of this little restaurant-terrace which served Russian and Ukrainian specialties in downtown Tel Aviv: it gave him a taste of his native land, which had been all but inaccessible to him for the past five years. Victor reflected with bitterness on the events of five years ago as he sat at one of the tables near the television set placed above the service counter. His arms trafficking business out of Kyiv, in the Ukraine, had been going very well until that day of September 2007, when the Russian federal police had succeeded in unmasking him, probably with the help of an informer. The Russians had then convinced their Ukrainian counterparts to let them have him. He had then barely managed to escape arrest, fleeing with only the content of his personal security safe and a suitcase. He had however lost nearly everything else: his house, his cars, his main bank account and his hidden stocks of illegal weapons. Fortunately, as the cautious man he was, Victor had put away some money in various anonymous foreign bank accounts, including one here in Tel Aviv. His bad luck however followed him to Israel, as the Russian authorities had contacted the Israeli Mossad. Caught and arrested as he was arriving in Israel, Victor had then escaped deportation and jail by making a deal with the Israeli secret service: tell the Mossad everything he knew about his past customers and arms deals in exchange for permission to stay and live his retirement in Israel. However, even after five years, a Mossad agent still came to see him from time to time to ask questions about certain past deals or contacts Victor had used. Today was such a meeting time.

Thankfully, today seemed to be a relatively rocket-free day for Tel Aviv…up to now. After two weeks of bombardment and thousands of heavy rockets fired at Israel from South Lebanon, the Hezbollah seemed to be finally running out of rockets, to the relief of the stressed-out Israeli citizens. However, that did not mean that the country was at peace, far from it. The Lebanese-Israeli border was presently a battle zone, as was the areas around the Gaza Strip, while the occasional Iranian ballistic missile still fell on Israel. Terrorist attacks against Israeli and American citizens and interests around the World had multiplied since that crucial day when Israel had decided to strike at the Iranian nuclear facilities. To add to the regional chaos, the crisis in Syria had turned months ago into a full-scale civil war, with President Assad still stubbornly refusing to step down or give away any of his powers. Victor reflected mentally on how much money he could have made as an arms merchant in the middle of such a situation.

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The arrival of his Mossad contact then took him out of his thoughts. Rising from his chair, he shook hands with the lean young man dressed like a university student.

‘’Hello, Ben! It is a nice day today…and a quiet one.’’

‘’Yes, thankfully.’’ replied the Mossad agent before sitting down facing Victor. Both men refrained at first from talking business, looking instead at the menu and ordering some red wine. They were just finished giving their order to the waiter when a piece of news appearing on the television set caught the attention of both men: reports from Afghanistan were now quite rare, due to the more urgent situations in and around Israel and Iran. The Mossad agent made a face when the report, a retransmission of a BBC video, showed rows upon rows of dead Taliban fighters lying in the dirt near an Afghan police station in Bala Buluk.

‘’Wow! The Taliban sure got clobbered hard there. I can’t say that I am sorry for those bastards, though.’’

‘’Me neither.’’ Said Victor truthfully. The video then switched to the scene of an Afghan police checkpoint in Bala Buluk. Victor, who was taking a sip of his wine, then froze when a tall female Canadian officer appeared on the video, walking towards an approaching pickup truck. The action on the video then went in a flash, leaving the Mossad man open-mouthed, while a group of four female Israeli soldiers sitting at a nearby table shouted in joy while watching the Canadian woman catch and beat up the surviving Taliban.

‘’Did you see that piece of pistol shooting? She also beat up that Taliban as if he was only a kid. I must get the name of that Canadian, just to tell my wife about it.’’

‘’That…that’s her!’’ stuttered Victor, nearly spilling his glass of wine. ‘’She hasn’t aged one bit!’’

The Mossad agent looked at him with incomprehension.

‘’What are you talking about, Victor?’’

Victor didn’t answer then, listening and looking at the rest of the video as a BBC reporter interviewed the Canadian officer, a tall, athletic and beautiful woman of maybe thirty with black hair and green eyes. At the end of the video, Victor sat back, pale.

‘’That’s impossible! She should look twenty years older now.’’

‘’You are not making much sense, Victor.’’

Still looking shaken, Victor stared at the Mossad agent.

‘’Ben, twenty years ago in Kiev, in 1992, I sold sixty silenced AS Val rifles and a large stock of corresponding ammunition to a young woman, who gave only ‘Nancy’ as

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her name. I never saw that woman again afterwards…until now. That Captain Nancy Laplante is the same woman who bought those AS Val rifles from me in 1992.’’

‘’But, that’s impossible! This Captain Laplante appears to be at most in her early thirties. She would thus have been around ten years of age in 1992.’’

‘’I had her undress then to prove that she had no microphone or recording device on her. She had the body of a fully grown woman in 1992, the same she has now. Her voice is also the same. I can prove this to you, Ben.’’

‘’How?’’

‘’When I came to Israel in 2007 and was arrested, I had with me copies of the video recordings taken by security cameras hidden in my house in Kiev. Whenever I conducted a business deal in my private office, I recorded the discussion, as an insurance against bad customers and as a possible way of blackmailing them if need be. Those records include my two meetings with this Nancy Laplante. Your Mossad has had these recordings since 2007 but, despite considering the case of these AS Val rifles a priority, never could identify her.’’

‘’I could see why those rifles would be considered hot items, even today: they would be perfect weapons for terrorists, like Hezbollah operatives.’’ said Ben, thoughtful. He then took out his cell phone and composed a number, then spoke in it.

‘’Ari? This is Ben. A piece of news just played on television, a report made by the BBC in Afghanistan about a stinging defeat suffered there by the Taliban. Part of that report was an interview with a Canadian Army female officer, a Captain Nancy Laplante. I want you to get a copy of that BBC video right away, especially the part showing Captain Laplante. I will come by in about one hour to review it and compare it with something we have on file… Yes, do that!’’

Ben then closed his cell phone and smiled to Victor.

‘’You and me are going to review a couple of video recordings together, Victor, but not before we can enjoy our meal. After all, one should not let good goulash be wasted.’’

‘’Indeed, Ben.’’ said Victor weakly, his mind still in turmoil.

16:19 (Israel Time)

Mossad headquarters

Tel Aviv, Israel

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‘’This better be good, Ben.’’ said Moshe Eshkol, head of the counter-terrorism branch of the Mossad, as he entered the large imagery laboratory of the headquarters building. ‘’This was my first day off with my family this month.’’

‘’I know, sir, but I believe that we have stumbled onto something quite, uh, stunning.’’ said respectfully Bennie Kellerman. ‘’To make a long story short, one of our informers alerted me to a certain Captain Nancy Laplante, a Canadian Army officer presently serving in Afghanistan, who may have clandestinely bought in the past sixty Russian AS Val silenced assault rifles, along with over 100,000 rounds of ammunition.’’

‘’Wait a minute!’’ said Eshkol, stopping abruptly. ‘’My daughter just showed me a YouTube video about this Laplante, as she was shooting up some Taliban fighters in grand style. The thing is going viral on the Internet. Miriam joked to me that we should get her as an agent. Now you are telling me that she is involved in illegal arms trafficking?’’

‘’Maybe much more than that, sir. The problem is that this case about the clandestine sale of AS Val rifles dates back from 1992. We have video files of it.’’ Before Eshkol could say that it didn’t make sense, Ben explained in detail what Victor Medveyev had told him, then sat Eshkol down and showed him the security camera recording taken in Kiev in 1992, then the video from the BBC taken in Afghanistan, using Eshkol’s office computer. At the end, Eshkol was left stunned and confused.

‘’But, but this is impossible! This Nancy Laplante could not be a grown woman in 1992. Could she have an older sister, or a lookalike?’’

‘’We are checking on that right now, sir, but she officially is an only child and her parents died in a car accident when she was sixteen, according to her official biography. I would be ready to say that the Nancy Laplante seen in 1992 in Kiev and the one seen now in Afghanistan are the same person, sir.’’

‘’How could this be?’’ protested Eshkol. Ben hesitated before answering. He and a number of analysts had looked at this from all the possible angles. The problem was that their consensus was now that the only possible explanation left was an impossible one.

‘’Sir, as crazy as this may sound, the only explanation we could see to this, if indeed the same woman appeared in both videos twenty years apart, is that this Nancy Laplante went back in time to 1992 to buy these rifles.’’

Eshkol gave him an annoyed look.

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‘’Have you guys fallen in with the extra-terrestrials, black helicopters and tinfoil hats crowds or what? You have nothing more serious as a possible explanation than time travel?’’

‘’I’m sorry, sir, but no. You can imagine the ramifications if this would be proven to be true, sir.’’

‘’Well, I certainly would not be ready right now to go to the Prime Minister with this, Ben. He has enough on his plate already without having to listen to such stories. I however agree with you that this Captain Laplante may be hiding something. For one thing, she is way too good in combat for a simple military intelligence reserve officer. Maybe she is in reality a covert action operative, although I can’t see why those Canadian boy scouts would need such a killing machine. Ben, I will put you in charge of digging up everything you can about this Nancy Laplante. Form a team and don’t hesitate to go to Canada to investigate her in depth. Unfortunately, Afghanistan is a bit too hot for our agents to go there and investigate her on the spot. Report back to me once you have more solid information on her.’’

‘’Yes sir! What if we can prove that she is a time traveler?’’

‘’Then, this case would become way bigger than what my pay grade has the right to handle. Get me facts, Ben, just facts.’’

18:05 (Pakistan Time)

Taliban safe house

City of Quetta, Northern Waziristan

Pakistan

If looks could kill, then the old television set resting on a small table would have been vaporized under the hateful glares of the five bearded and turbaned men present in the lounge of the large house. When the local evening news had finished airing the syndicated video from the BBC taken in Bala Buluk, one of the bodyguards of Mullah Mohammed Omar went to switch off the television set on the demand of his leader. The graying, one-eyed leader of the Taliban was silent for a moment as his subalterns present waited respectfully. He then spoke in a firm, definite tone.

‘’The Devil lives in this woman infidel. It is the sacred duty of all believers to kill that woman wherever she is to be found. The believer who will kill her will be assured of

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a place in paradise. If she can be captured and brought to me for my judgment, then the better.’’

‘’It will be done, O Commander of the Faithful.’’ said his military commander, Abdul Quayyum Zakir. ‘’We will spread the word to all the believers. She will get no rest where faithful ones are present.’’

18:17 (Afghanistan Time)

Field camp of the United States Task Force Raider West Area of Herat City, Herat Province

Afghanistan

Erik Johnson, followed closely by his longtime partner Dean Price and by the five other men of their team, was happy to enter the warmth of the large modular tent assigned to their unit. To nearly all the occupants of this camp, they were supposed to be from a special forces unit simply known as ‘Special Group Six’. In reality, Johnson, Price and the 27 other men of Special Group Six were highly trained members of the Action Division of the Central Intelligence Agency, or CIA. Wearing no rank or unit insignias and no name tags, the men of the Action Division were tasked with executing armed clandestine missions deep inside foreign territories, missions which could be denied and kept anonymous and which often could be labeled as illegal under American or international law. Such missions took dedicated, resolute men ready to fight and die without the official support or acknowledgement of their country. Erik Johnson and Dean Price were such men, but they were much more than simple combat automatons or assassins ready to die without discussion. They were men of exceptional abilities, with expertise in many domains, and could as well speak a number of foreign languages. In Erik Johnson’s case, apart from being a top-notch sniper and an expert paramedic, he could speak without accent both Russian and German. Dean Price, a big and powerful man, was a demolitions expert and top pistol shooter who could have qualified as a racing car driver or as a top culinary chef. He also could speak French, Spanish and Creole, thanks to his family origins in Louisiana.

Taking off his backpack and load-carrying vest and putting them down in a corner of the big tent, Erik Johnson let his men make themselves comfortable and walked to the back of a command and communications van attached to one side of the modular tent.

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His local superior, Ben Mullen, was waiting for him, sitting inside the van with a radio headset on. Mullen took off his headset when Erik got at the foot of the ladder leading up in the van.

‘’So, how was your mission in Iran, Erik?’’

‘’A bust! Our informant and guide never showed up. I hope that this doesn’t mean that our informant was arrested.’’

Mullen nodded his head, a grim expression on his face.

‘’A most possible reason, unfortunately. That initial Israeli airstrike seems to have helped rally the common Iranian people to the cause of the mullahs. Many of our past sources have dried up, or have squarely turned hostile towards us.’’

‘’That was predictable, and should have been taken into account, Ben.’’ replied Erik firmly, having argued that exact point in the past at CIA headquarters in Langley, Virginia. ‘’How did our other team do on their own mission?’’ Mullen hesitated for a moment, trying to find the right words for what he had to say.

‘’Allan’s team was ambushed at the rendezvous point by a large group of

Pasdarans5. Their last transmission was that they were down to two men and surrounded and that they were going to use their last grenades. It now seems that our whole informants’ network in Northeast Iran has been turned or eliminated. I am thus going to cancel all other missions inside Iran until we can assert more fully the situation.’’

‘’Fuck!’’ swore Erik, upset, while banging his fist on the truck. ‘’You know as well as me that it will take years to rebuild our network in Iran. And Allan’s team counted our sole Farsi-speaking man. How the hell are we going to be able to operate covertly inside Iran if we can’t even speak or read the language?’’

‘’I am well aware of this, Erik. I am going to send a short report to Langley now. Go relax, have a bite to eat and then go sleep for a few hours. I don’t expect to send teams out for the next few days, at the least.’’

‘’Very well, Ben. You will have my detailed mission report tomorrow morning.’’

Joining the men of his team at a table near a television set hooked to a satellite dish and which showed the CNN news channel, Erik passed to them the words about the other team’s fate. It took them a moment to digest the news, with a visibly upset Dean Price finally speaking up to Erik.

5 Pasdarans: Iranian Guardians of the Revolution. The armed security forces protecting the rule of the Iranian clergy.

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‘’So, a whole team has just been wasted because those idiots in Langley wouldn’t believe what we field operatives were telling them. Now, you are telling us that we are going to sit down and do nothing, Erik?’’

‘’Look, Dean, I believe that Ben is correct in putting a halt to our missions inside Iran. There is no sense in risking more men if our contacts and information are unreliable.’’

‘’Damn!’’ said Dean, resting his chin in one hand, with his elbow on the table. ‘’When I think that we stopped chasing after those Taliban bastards just to end up here on the border and find ourselves useless. Those damn Israelis really had to come and bomb Iran, didn’t they?’’

One of the crypto specialists attached to the group, who was eating at the next table, got his nose up from his plate then to look at Dean.

‘’Well, if you want one piece of good news, Dean, it seems that the Afghans are not doing too badly against the Taliban lately. This Friday, they inflicted a severe defeat to those bearded bastards in Bala Buluk and killed hundreds of them.’’

‘’Hundreds?’’ said Dean, surprised but pleased. ‘’How did they manage that?’’ The specialist, smiling, pointed at the television set, which other men were watching.

‘’I will let you watch the video about it. CNN is about to replay it in a few minutes. You should see the statuesque Canadian chick who was with those Afghans at the time.’’

‘’A Canadian chick?’’

‘’Yeah, their embedded mentoring officer, I believe. She shot up four Taliban

with her pistol, right on camera, in a way Bat Masterson6 would have been proud of.’’

‘’A Canadian female officer who shoots like Bat Masterson…’’ said thoughtfully Dean Price. ‘’It can’t be…’’

‘’It can’t be who, Dean?’’ asked Erik, suddenly curious. The crypto specialist then interrupted them by exclaiming while pointing the television set.

‘’THERE! You want to watch this, guys.’’

Looking at the television, Erik had to say that the first pictures he saw cheered him up: Afghan policemen were guarding long lines of corpses which were being described as Taliban fighters killed while attacking the district police station in Bala Buluk during the

6 Bat Masterson: Famous sheriff of the American Far West renowned for his extraordinary skills at pistol shooting.

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early morning of Friday. The number of Taliban losses given in the report made Dean open his eyes wide.

‘’Nearly 400 Taliban fighters either dead, wounded or captured? That is indeed a significant victory.’’

He then listened with the others around the table at the BBC account of the battle, learning that an Afghan police patrol had intervened in time to take the Taliban in the rear and throw their attack into confusion. Then, the scene changed from a field strewn with corpses to that of an Afghan police checkpoint in Bala Buluk. Dean shot up from his chair the moment he saw the female Canadian officer being filmed in action by the BBC team.

‘’FUCK! IT IS NANCY!’’

Dean however managed to keep silent from then on, until the end of the interview given by Nancy. Quite a few of the men made complimentary remarks about the nice body curves of the said Nancy, with Erik Johnson finally able to ask Dean.

‘’You know this Captain Nancy Laplante, Dean?’’

‘’Sure I do, Erik! We destroyed together a motel bed while we were both attending the 2010 Houston Combat Pistol Championship. In fact, she nearly beat me during that competition, apart from giving me a run for my money in bed. She’s quite a gal, I must say.’’

‘’I see!’’ said Erik, who could not help smile. Dean Price was widely known as being the biggest skirt-chaser in the CIA, bedding about every woman he could…when not on duty. ‘’This Nancy Laplante seems quite impressive. Her linguistic talents in particular are extraordinary. What can you tell me about her?’’

‘’Well, when I saw her in Houston in 2010, she was just returning from a six-month tour in Afghanistan. You heard her on that news interview about her language and fighting qualifications, which are already impressive by any standards. From what she told me in Houston, she visited about every war-torn area of the planet as a war correspondent, apart from serving many tours as a peacekeeper with the Canadian Forces. However, if you are thinking about possibly enlisting her in the CIA, forget it, Erik: she is the ultimate goodie-two-shoes. She would not hesitate to run inside a burning house to save a child, but don’t ask her to murder someone for political reasons.’’

‘’Too bad! She would have made a prime candidate, apart from being a nice-looking girl.’’

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‘’That she is!’’ pronounced Dean Price with finality, smiling.

02:31 (Montreal Time)

Thursday, December 20, 2012 ‘A’

Nancy Laplante’s condominium

Boucherville, Province of Quebec

Canada

Bennie Kellerman felt a bit disappointed as he and his three agents finished searching methodically Nancy Laplante’s condominium suite, on the second floor of a quite ordinary-looking residential building in the quiet suburban town of Boucherville, south of Montreal. They had looked everywhere in the four-room suite, while being careful to replace everything as it was. While comfortably furnished, nothing screamed of extravagant luxury or of hidden revenues earned from illicit occupations. An impressive quantity of books and magazines, many dealing with military affairs, geopolitics and history, denoted a person of learning, while the various sports gear and outfits also told of someone who took care of her body as much as of her mind. Bennie thought that this woman would have been an interesting one to meet, if not for her possible involvement in illegal arms trafficking. Judging from her choice of reading, this Nancy Laplante may be classified as a liberal or a humanist, but she also was definitely a feminist. About her intimate life, Bennie could find very little, except for a framed set of table-top pictures showing a powerful, handsome man and an extremely beautiful teenage girl, both smiling for the camera. While the man could obviously be a boyfriend or a lover of Laplante, the role of the girl was less clear. Was she a good friend, someone being sponsored by Laplante, or a family relative? Laplante was supposed to be still single, and was an orphan from a single child family. Bennie had found nothing which could put names on those two persons, something that was by itself a bit strange. He had found no personal letters which could have come from the man or from the teenage girl, while Ben’s computer expert had looked through the electronic mail in Laplante’s computer and had found no telltale mail about the two mystery figures, apart from finding nothing that could be connected to arms trafficking. How could you have two loved ones, dear enough to Laplante to keep their pictures on her bedside table, with whom she never exchanged letters or emails? Something was definitely wrong

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here. However, without more clues, the only thing Ben could do was to take pictures of those portraits and hope to identify them later from other sources.

Ben was about to leave the big bedroom when he felt something under the sole of his left shoe as he walked on the thick rug. Bending down and using his flashlight, he saw a small metallic object shine under the light, half hidden by the fibers of the rug near a dresser’s leg. Picking it up, he examined closely the thin, round object with the help of his flashlight: it was some sort of coin. It had probably fallen from a pocket or purse, unnoticed by Laplante or a visitor. It was however unlike any he had seen before and was incredibly heavy for its minuscule size. Then, Ben saw what he believed to be the year of production and smiled to himself.

‘’Gotcha, Miss Laplante!’’

09:20 (Afghanistan Time)

Thursday, December 27, 2012 ‘A’

Parade grounds, Afghan Border Police training center Shouz, Herat Province

Afghanistan

Nancy, like Maria Garibaldi, was wearing her dress uniform with medals for the graduation parade of her class of policewomen, instead of her usual combat uniform. The 23 Afghan female recruits who were present on parade, along with their three Afghan female instructors, were also in their blue-gray dress uniforms with caps over their head scarves. The three recruits wounded during the fight in Bala Buluk sat near the dignitaries, while a small table held a blue cushion on which rested the service hat of Bibi Nayebaba, killed in Bala Buluk. Nancy had seen countless graduation parades and other ceremonial parades during her reservist career but this one meant much more for her and she felt a lump in her throat as Colonel Amin spoke to the proud policewomen: those Afghan women had braved threats of death simply to enroll and were going to have to survive during the next years in a poisoned atmosphere of public disapproval and Taliban wrath, even though they had proven that they deserved much better than that.

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After giving to each policewoman their course certificate, Colonel Amin then called forward four of the graduates, plus their three Afghan female instructors, then read proclamations describing their feats of bravery and valor during the night fight in Bala Buluk, before pinning on them the Afghan medal of the Order of Military Gallantry, or Nishan-I-Shuja’at, in either fifth, fourth or third class. Then, to Nancy’s surprise, Colonel Amin called her and Maria forward after dismissing the Afghan women he had just decorated. Walking at a parade step to Amin with Maria, she stopped two paces in front of him and saluted, with the colonel saluting back both women. He then read another proclamation, first in Dari, then in English.

‘’Captain Nancy Laplante and Lieutenant Maria Garibaldi, you have dedicated yourselves in the past weeks and months to teach and guide the brave Afghan policewomen we have just honored, sparing nothing to help them and their instructors. You have also helped lead them during a desperate and heroic fight to save the policemen of the Bala Buluk police station being attacked by the Taliban. You showed remarkable feats of courage and resolve in the face of an enemy that enjoyed overwhelming numerical superiority. Your leadership in combat was an inspiration for our policewomen and your valor in turn saved many lives among our policemen and policewomen. For these acts, and for your true dedication in helping Afghanistan build its security forces in the face of the Taliban threat, I am honored to bestow upon Captain Laplante and Lieutenant Garibaldi the Nishan-I-Shuja’at, Third Class.’’ Those present around the parade square applauded while Amin pinned on the two women the small medals with black, red and yellow ribbons. As he finished pinning the medal on Nancy, Amin whispered to her.

‘’Please come see me after the parade, Captain: I have some news from Kabul for you.’’

‘’Yes, Colonel!’’

Once Amin was finished, he stepped back and saluted Nancy and Maria, then dismissed them. Once they were back to their original positions, Amin concluded the parade with a few more words and then left for the officers’ mess with his aides. That let Nancy and Maria mingle with the now celebrating Afghan policewomen and their instructors. Nancy made a point of hugging warmly each of the female graduates and wishing them well. She also went to see the three women wounded in Bala Buluk, who were going to graduate as soon as they would be fully healed, hugging them as well and giving them words of encouragement. Excusing herself after that with Maryam Shirzai and Maria

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Garibaldi, Nancy then walked to the officers’ mess, where Colonel Amin was waiting for her with an officer of the Afghan National Intelligence Service. Going to a small office with Nancy and the NIS major, Amin closed the door behind them before looking gravely at Nancy and speaking to her in Dari.

‘’Captain Laplante, I am afraid that Major Tajak, from the NIS, has some bad news for you. Major?’’

Tajak, a big man with a square face and short beard, nodded once to Amin, then looked Nancy in the eyes.

‘’Captain Laplante, our services have learned an unsettling news about you about a week ago. It seems that, following the televised interview you gave after the battle in Bala Buluk, Mullah Omar, the spiritual leader of the Taliban, has pronounced a fatwa, or religious edict, against you. This fatwa declares that you are the Devil personified and that it is the duty of all believers to kill you wherever you are. By now, this fatwa is known through much of Afghanistan and Pakistan and is starting to spread among other Muslim nations, notably Yemen and Saudi Arabia.’’ Tajak and Amin then anxiously waited for her reactions. Nancy didn’t show fear or worry at Tajak’s revelation, instead looking calmly back at the NIS officer.

‘’Thank you for the warning, Major. You can tell your superiors that this fatwa will not stop me from continuing to help your government form its security forces. As for those who will try to kill me because of this fatwa, they may find quickly enough that God is not on their side.’’

Tajak, like Amin, was impressed by her calm answer and smiled to her while nodding in respect.

‘’You are indeed a woman of great courage, Captain. May Allah keep you safe and cover you with his blessings.’’

‘’Thank you, Major.’’

Tajak then saluted Nancy as a mark of respect, getting her to salute back before he left the room. Now alone with Amin, Nancy spoke to him in a low voice.

‘’Colonel, I would appreciate if this be kept confidential from the rest of your staff as well as from the other international staff. There is no point in making them worry about this.’’

‘’What if your government learns about this and tries to pull you out for your own safety?’’

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‘’Then, I will tell them to shove their worries up their asses.’’ replied Nancy, meaning it.