Bones of the Lost

even unfriendly. Calculating? If so, calculating what? What angle was there to play? Why would Blanton’s goal, or that of NCIS, be any different from mine? From Welsted’s?
    Probably nothing. Blanton had made it clear he didn’t like moving outside the wire. Maybe he was spooked. God knows I felt removed from my element. Everyone was keyed up. Still, I couldn’t shake the feeling of his cold, appraising eyes.
    The Humvee hit a VCP, a vehicle checkpoint that was nothing more than a cement pillbox. A pair of soldiers sat on folding chairs, sweating though the sun was barely up. One rose and trotted over, aviator shades hooding his eyes.
    Welsted presented some documents. The soldier scanned them, then bent for a better view of the Humvee’s interior.
    “NCIS?”
    Welsted tipped her head toward Blanton.
    “Anthropologist?”
    This time I got the nod.
    The tinted shades swiveled my way. Lingered several beats. More hostility? Impossible to tell, since I couldn’t see the guy’s eyes. Did they figure I was there to buttress the prosecution of Second Lieutenant Gross? Paint him as a murderer? Stir up the locals once again and make everyone’s job harder and more dangerous?
    The soldier waved us through.
    “We’re nearly there.” Welsted spoke without turning her head. “The village isn’t much to look at. Typical of the sort you’ll see in this province. Herding, some small-scale farming. Under normal circumstances you wouldn’t find any open resentment.”
    “We aren’t going in under normal circumstances.”
    “No, Mr. Blanton, we are not.”
    Blanton’s jaw went rigid. Was the friction due to the same jurisdictionaljockeying I was used to seeing in Charlotte and Montreal? Army versus Navy? Military versus civilian? I found the thought strangely calming.
    No one spoke for a bumpy five or six minutes. Then, “I won’t call these people ignorant, because that’s wrong, not to mention potentially dangerous.” Welsted squinted at the heat-shimmer rising at the horizon.
    “But the life they lead is simple. We make a point of respecting their customs, insofar as they don’t interfere with our own objectives.”
    “Which are?” I asked.
    “Objective one is to protect the free world. Objective two, our specific goal in this operation, is to make sure that United States personnel acted properly in the pursuit of objective one.”
    After several more miles of nonconversational hitching and swaying, Sheyn Bagh took shape in the distance, a compound of squat stone structures enclosed within a low stone wall on three sides, backed up to a very steep hill on the fourth.
    Welsted was right. The place wasn’t much to look at. Unless your taste in architecture swung toward stark minimalism. But the setting was otherworldly.
    Sheyn Bagh lay at the foot of a prominence, the south side of which rose sharply, maybe two hundred feet, to a mesa studded with oddly shaped boulders. The slope, more cliff than hill, was composed of peculiar, peaked formations that resembled upright ladyfinger cookies of differing heights. In the hazy morning light I could make out tiny holes in the rocks, like honeycomb. As we drew nearer those holes became doorways, windows, and staircases.
    I was about to pose a question when Welsted explained.
    “Half the village is built into the hillside. The rock is sturdy enough to provide a solid foundation, but porous enough to tunnel into.”
    “Maybe that’s how Osama went to ground.”
    “These towns are like icebergs.” As usual, Welsted ignored Blanton’s comment. “Only a small percentage visible.”
    We drove through a gap in the wall and stopped in what probably served as the village green. At an opening between two low buildings, a goat raised its head, bleated, and clop-clopped slowly toward the Humvee.
    Shotgun’s fingers tightened on his rifle. Bringing the barrel intoview in the window, he shouted in what I assumed was Pashto. A kid, maybe ten or eleven, ran forward and dragged the goat back toward the alley from which it had emerged.
    “Bastards shove explosives up the asses of their barnyard pals.” Blanton’s voice sounded taut.
    Shotgun shouldered open his door and got out. Welsted followed.
    A trio of men approached wearing clothes the color of the desert itself. Striped kaffiyeh wrapped their heads. Sandals covered their dusty feet.
    One man was taller than the others. One had a mole above his beard shaped like a daisy. All three were lean, their faces pitted