Tom Clancy's Ghost Recon: Combat Ops by David Michaels Page A

out and started after us.
    The private, whose name I’d already forgotten, and I  charged down the street after the wiry guy, who sprinted like a triathlete. We reached the next intersection, glanced around at all the laundry spanning the alleyways, and the kid was gone.
    “I’m sorry, sir,” said the private. “Yeah. Call it in.”
    As the private got on his radio, I walked back toward Shilmani, who threw his hands in the air and yelled, “It won’t be a big attack now. It’ll be this. Every day. Day after day. Until they wear you down.”
    “I get it,” I answered. “But I’m pretty tough. We’re tough. They don’t torch one Hummer and expect me to go home. No way, pal.”
    “This is not the war you expected. This will never be the war you expected.” He spun on his heel and jogged back toward Burki and the truck, now sagging under the weight of water jugs.
    We left the alley and returned to the small crowd watching our truck burn. That was two Hummers I’d lost since coming to Senjaray. I was cursed.
    The private told me at least three other patrols had also been attacked in a coordinated effort by Taliban residing inside the village. Shilmani was, of course, right. We’d be harassed and terrorized, even as we tried to help.

    I was in my quarters, reviewing all the data Army intel ligence had gathered from the aforementioned Predator drones, when Harruck arrived. He stood in the doorway with the XO at his shoulder.
    “Next time you head into town, I’ll need you with a more heavily armed escort,” he said tersely.
    “Next time I’ll ride my bike. Then again, they might try to blow that up, too.”
    “Well, there it is, Scott. Before you got here, my patrols were attacked two, maybe three times at the most. Now it’s begun.”
    “You know, I actually considered what you said— putting the word out to Zahed. But I can’t even find a way to do that.”
    “You can’t stop trying.”
    “I want to meet with Kundi and the provincial governor—what the hell’s his name again?”
    “You mean the district governor. Naimut Gul,” he said. “And they call the meeting a shura . And there’s no reason for you to meet with either of them. I’m taking care of all that, and within the next week I’ll have a document signed by all twelve elders.”
    “You going to get Zahed to sign it, too?”
    He just glared at me. “I assume you spoke to Bronco?” “You think I wouldn’t?”
    Harruck grinned weakly. “He’s no help. I’ve already tried. His buddies in Kandahar handle our prisoners, and that’s about the extent of it. I think they’re working on something with the opium trade that goes way over Zahed’s head.”
    “Have you tried tailing him?”
    “Who? Bronco? I don’t have the resources.”
    “I do. Maybe I’m not your biggest problem here, Simon. Maybe he is . . .”
    “The agency’s got its own agenda, no doubt. I even heard a rumor about the NSA having field agents out here, but I think my mission is too damned simple to be on their radar.”
    “You never know . . .”

    I spent about a week laying low and examining imagery from the drones, trying to pick out Zahed among the thousands of people living in his village. Twice, I’d thought I’d seen him in the bazaar, but I couldn’t be sure. A half dozen Army intelligence analysts back home were doing the same thing, but I always thought a guy behind a desk somewhere in Virginia might not notice the same things as a grunt in the sand.
    My Ghosts continued to pose as regular Army and help with defenses along the defile leading down into Senjaray. Harruck’s patrols were harassed by gunfire a few more times, but no one was hurt, and the attackers, after firing a few rounds, fled before they could be caught. I contended that teenagers sympathetic to the Taliban were to blame.
    Anderson, along with the Army Corps of Engineers and a half dozen other aid groups, began moving in building materials and breaking ground for the school