The Last Mission Of The Seventh Cavalry. Charley Brindley

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      When the two elephants came abreast of Alexander, he didn’t see any signs of an ambush, and the two women didn’t look threatening. He stepped out from behind the tree and raised his hand in a friendly gesture.

      “Hello.”

      The woman nearest him uttered an exclamation.

      “Maybe these people have never seen army helmets.”

      Alexander took off his helmet and brushed a hand over his buzzcut. The two women looked at each other and said something he couldn’t understand.

      “Now you’re really scaring them, Sarge,” Kawalski said. “Put it back on.”

      “Very funny.”

      The women looked down at Alexander but made no attempt to stop their animals. The first elephant was about seven feet tall at the shoulder, and the other three feet taller, with ears the size of the doors on an eighteen-wheeler. His rider was a slim young woman with auburn hair. The woman on the smaller animal was similar, but her hair was blonde. Both had some sort of emblem or mark on their faces.

      A few yards ahead, Lojab came out of the brush. He removed his helmet and bowed low, then straightened and smiled at the blonde.

      “Hello, madam. I seemed to have misplaced my Porsche. Can you direct me to the nearest McDonald’s?”

      She smiled but said nothing. He watched her rock back and forth in an easy, fluid motion, perfectly synchronized with her elephant’s movements, like an erotic dance between woman and beast. Lojab walked along beside the animal but then found he had to jog to keep up.

      “Where are you ladies headed? Maybe we could get together tonight for a beer, or two, or five.”

      She spoke three or four words, but nothing he could understand. She then turned her attention back to the trail ahead.

      “Okay.” He stopped in the middle of the trail and watched her reach to push a tree branch out of the way. “I’ll see you there, at about eight.”

      “Lojab.” Karina came up to stand beside him. “You’re pathetic.”

      “What do you mean? She said to meet her tonight at Joe’s Bar and Grill.”

      “Yeah, right. What city? Kandahar? Karachi? New Delhi?”

      “Did you see their tattoos?” Joaquin asked.

      “Yeah, on their faces,” Kady said.

      Joaquin nodded. “They looked like a devil’s pitchfork with a snake, or something like that.”

      “Incoming elephant,” Kawalski said.

      “Should we hide, Sarge?”

      “Why bother?” Alexander said.

      The third elephant was ridden by a young man. His long sandy hair was tied at the back of his neck with a length of leather. He was bare to the waist, his muscles well-toned. He looked at the soldiers, and just like the two women, he had a bow and quiver of arrows on his back.

      “I’ll try a little Spanish lingo on him.” Karina removed her helmet. “Cómo se llama?”

      The young man ignored her.

      “A qué distancia está Kandahar?” She looked at Sergeant Alexander. “I asked him how far to Kandahar.”

      The elephant handler spoke a few words, but they seemed to be directed more to his animal than Karina.

      “What did he say, Karina?” Lojab asked.

      “Oh, he couldn’t stop to talk right now. He had a dental appointment or something.”

      “Yeah, right.”

      “More elephants on the way,” Kawalski said.

      “How many?”

      “A whole herd. Thirty or more. You might want to get out of the way. They’re spread out.”

      “All right,” Alexander said, “everybody get on this side of the trail. Let’s stick together.”

      The platoon didn’t bother to hide as they watched the elephants go by. The animals ignored the soldiers as they grabbed tree branches with their trunks and chewed them while walking along. Some of the animals were ridden by mahouts, while others had handlers walking beside them. A few smaller elephants followed the herd, without anyone tending them. All of them stopped occasionally, pulling tufts of grass to eat.

      “Hey, Sparks,” Alexander said.

      “Yeah, Sarge?”

      “Try to raise Kandahar on your radio.”

      “I did already,” Sparks said. “I got nothing.”

      “Try again.”

      “Right.”

      “Did you try your GPS T-DARD to see where we are?”

      “My T-DARD has gone retard. It thinks we’re on the French Riviera.”

      “The Riviera, huh? That would be nice.” Alexander looked around at his soldiers. “I know you people were ordered to leave your cellphones in the barracks, but did anyone happen to accidentally bring one along?”

      Everybody pulled out their phones.

      “Jesus!” Alexander shook his head.

      “And it’s a good thing, too, Sarge.” Karina tilted her helmet up and put the phone to her ear. “With our radio and GPS on the blink, how else could we find out where we are?”

      “I got nothing.” Paxton tapped his phone on a tree trunk and tried again.

      “Probably should pay your bill.” Karina clicked out a text message with her thumbs.

      “Nothing here,” Joaquin said.

      “I’m dialing 9-1-1,” Kady said. “They’ll know where we are.”

      “You don’t have to call 9-1-1, Sharakova,” Alexander said. “This is not an emergency, yet.”

      “We’re too far away from the cell towers,” Kawalski said.

      “Well,” Karina said, “that tells us where we’re not.”

      Alexander looked at her.

      “We can’t be on the Riviera, that’s for sure. There are probably seventy cell towers along that section of the Mediterranean coast.”

      “Right,” Joaquin said. “We’re somewhere so remote, there’s no tower within fifty miles.”

      “That could be ninety percent of Afghanistan.”

      “But that ninety percent of Afghanistan never looked like this,” Sharakova said, waving her hand at the tall pine trees.

      Behind the elephants came СКАЧАТЬ