Quest for Honor by David Tindell Page A

indeed. “He could very well have important intel.”
    “He could at that,” Simons said. He looked again at the message, which had been picked up from the dead drop that morning. It appeared to be a series of gibberish words, hand-lettered in English, but the accompanying paper was the decoded translation his staff had finished just minutes ago. Sudika had used a rather simple code known as the Caesar cipher. Not the hardest cipher to break, by any means, but one that could be used to provide at least a modicum of security in a message. The fact that the terrorist had not used a more complex code told Simons that he was under pressure, probably operating against some sort of deadline. Reinforcing that impression was the insistence that a response had to be received by sunset two days later. That gave Simons just over twenty-four hours from now to get his answer back to the dead drop.
    “I assume we want to respond right away?”
    “Yes,” Simons said without hesitation. “Use the same cipher. Tell him we agree to the meet. But let’s not let him run the entire show. Tell him we must have a response by August first.”
    Klein made a note on a pad. “A little more than two weeks from now. Creating a little urgency, are we?”
    “Why not?” the COS said. “Let him know we’re not going to screw around. I would imagine he doesn’t want to, either. This guy’s pretty sharp, by all accounts, and I think he might be under some time pressure.”
    Klein made a note on his ever-present pad. “Didn’t he go to college in the States? Minnesota, wasn’t it?”
    “Close,” Simons said, standing up. “Wisconsin.”

CHAPTER TEN
    Afghanistan
    F OB Langdon got hit the day after Mark’s visit. Five mortar rounds dropped into the hillside compound just after sunrise, and by the time Solum’s own mortar team was able to respond, two soldiers were wounded and one was dead. Corporal Pat Tracy, a twenty-three-year-old farm kid from Nebraska, was the fourth KIA in the battalion since Mark had taken command. That was four too many as far as he was concerned.
    Mark choppered in that afternoon to see for himself. The outpost had taken some damage, but the men were quickly repairing the breaches in the HESCO barriers that formed the perimeter and had cleared away the remains of the destroyed hooch, where Tracy had been writing a letter home when the round came in through the tin roof. The psychological damage to the men who had survived would be tougher to repair, but getting that job underway was Mark’s responsibility.
    Solum was handling things about as well as could be expected, considering that one of his men had just died. He was all business, making sure the repairs and cleanup work got done, evacuating his wounded and the body of his fallen soldier. Mark’s helo arrived shortly after the evac bird left. The men were grim-faced, but they were holding it together. It would sink in later, and there would be tears shed in the hooches this evening.
    Solum laid out a map of the valley on the table in the cramped hut that doubled as his HQ and his own hooch. “Our intel from the village says the Tals are staging out of this compound,” he said, pointing to a small cluster of buildings about five kilometers west of the nameless village. The outpost overlooked the Afghan town that was about an hour’s trek away. Solum and his men hadn’t ventured further west since setting up the base. Two klicks past the compound was the Pakistan border
    “How solid is the intel?” Mark asked.
    “Pretty good, Colonel,” Solum said. “The chief in the village tipped us off right away to a couple arms caches. I’ve had mounted patrols going out regularly since we set up shop here. I’m a little worried about this village, though. It’s been a week since we’ve been there. I had a patrol scheduled to go through there tomorrow.”
    That didn’t sound good to Mark, either. What was now FOB Langdon used to house a platoon of Afghan