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

and the police station, which would be constructed directly north of the defile so that locals could best defend them from attack.
    Our replacement Cross-Coms arrived, but I was hesi tant to have the guys use them until we pinpointed the source of the disruption.
    I assigned Ramirez and Beasley to maintain surveil lance on Bronco, who’d been spending a lot of time with landowner Kundi, water man Burki, and a few more of the elders from Senjaray and the other towns in the dis trict.
    Bronco hadn’t gone over to Sangsar, as I suspected he would. Ramirez told me that the engineers had assessed the damage we’d caused to the bridge and estimated it would take four to six months to complete repairs. We wouldn’t be in country long enough to see that happen, I assured him.
    One night I took a four-man team into the mountains to run some long-range surveillance via Cypher drone and make another attempt to lure out the Taliban and their disruption devices. Nolan flew the drone in low enough for them to have heard and seen it, but there was no response.
    “Ghost Lead, this is Jenkins. Suggest we move in past the wall, over.”
    The guys were trying to goad me into a close recon of the village, but they always did that. They’d grown rest less and longed for the sound of gunfire. They didn’t need good intel or just cause—just a clear night and full magazines. I was supposed to think responsibly.
    “Negative. Hold position.”
    “You’re not listening to Harruck, are you?” Ramirez whispered to me from his position at my elbow.
    “No reason to swat the hornets yet,” I said.
    “I don’t know, boss. Something’s gotta give.” I glanced over at him; he was right.

    The next morning, Marcus Brown woke me from a sound sleep. There was trouble out in the old poppy field where the Army engineers had proposed to drill the next well.
    Kundi was there, causing a big ruckus, as were Har ruck, Anderson, and a half dozen other engineers and construction supervisors.
    Brown and I drove out there, and Harruck pulled me aside and told me I “wasn’t involved.”
    “That’s fine. So I’ll just watch. And listen,” I told him, my tone making it clear that I wasn’t going any where.
    “So what’s the bottom line?” one of the Army engi neers asked Kundi.
    “That’s it,” said Kundi, who was waving his hand over the broad area within which the drilling would occur. About fifty yards to the south lay the base of the foothills—a mottled brown moonscape of pockmarks and stones rising up toward orange-colored peaks. “You cannot put the well here. Over there, on the other side of the field, yes.”
    “But we’ll have to drill a lot deeper over there,” said the engineer.
    Kundi shook his head.
    “Why not? Is this some kind of sacred ground?”
    Kundi frowned and looked over to Burki, who in turn cast a quizzical glance at Shilmani, whom they’d obviously  brought along to translate. He did, and Kundi nodded vigorously. “Yes, yes. God is here!”
    I turned to Brown. “You know what God wants? He wants ground-penetrating radar and metal detectors all over this area.”
    Brown nodded. “Hallelujah.”

    A couple of days later, Harruck caught up with me in the mess hall and wanted an explanation for my request to have a team go out into the field with radar units and metal detectors. I’d had to put in those requests through regular Army channels, Gordon had told me, so Har ruck’s interference came as little surprise.
    “Kundi’s hiding something out there,” I said.
    “So what if he is?” Harruck asked. “If we instigate him, the agreement goes south.”
    “We need to have a look.”
    “We’re telling him we don’t trust him if we got guys sweeping the ground out there.”
    “Tell him I lost my watch.”
    “Don’t be an ass, Scott. Who knows why he doesn’t want a well over there? Maybe he plans to grow cannabis there, plant cherry trees, who knows? So we move the well to the other side of the field.