Free The Renegades by Tom Young

get away with otherwise.
    Turning disaster to their advantage certainly sounded like the Taliban. Even when they’d ruled, they’d taken no responsibility for their people’s welfare. No real department of social services. No functioning ministry of agriculture. A government uninterested in governance. Only their militias and religious police took their duties seriously. Beyond that, Allah would provide.
    By the time Parson’s team finished searching the rest of the settlement, night had fallen. A broken cloud layer scudded away to reveal a full moon bright enough to throw shadows. The search found two other murdered parents, as well as the existence of one other missing boy.
    Parson couldn’t quite get his mind around what he was seeing. Disaster relief was hard enough without these assholes coming up with something like this. What God could they imagine they were serving? The problems he faced had changed now. Not just earthquake recovery anymore. He and Gold had a dragon to kill.
    His head still ached from the RPG blast that began the attack on the helicopter. In much of his experience with RPGs, they’d appeared as harmless green pinpoints on night vision, ineffectual arcs in the blackness, fired upward at his aircraft and not even reaching his altitude. But this one had caged his gyros.
    At least the weather was cooperating. Parson knew the Osprey crew would fly back on night vision goggles, but with the clear sky and lunar illumination, they’d hardly need them.
    He worried whether darkness would bring back the bad guys, and he ordered everyone to stay alert. But all seemed quiet. Apparently, the insurgents already had what they wanted.

4
    I n the quiet of night, Gold watched and listened for signs of life. At first she heard only the distant tapping of automatic rifle fire, the music of destruction in sixteenth notes. Some skirmish in the next valley. Closer, she made out the yowl of a cat.
    Parson had sent the rest of the team to bring back the bodies of the imam and the two other villagers killed in the attack on the helicopter. Now he walked ahead of her, safety off on his Beretta. With one hand, Gold took Fatima’s hand; with the other, she held her M4.
    They stopped at a hut where lamplight shone through an oil-paper window. Parson knocked at the door. Gold let go of Fatima and gripped her rifle with both hands.
    “We come as friends,” Gold said in Pashto. “We are Americans. We will not hurt you.”
    From within the home came the sounds of wooden clatter, metallic clinks. Perhaps a grab for a weapon. Gold snapped her fire mode selector to the AUTO position.
    “Leave us,” a voice called from inside.
    “We have with us a little girl of your town,” Gold said. “Her name is Fatima. Her mother is dead. We want only to leave her in someone’s care.”
    “I know no one by that name.”
    “Sir, can you take in this child?”
    “Leave us!”
    Gold moved away from the door, put her rifle back on SAFE .
    “My cousin lives here,” Fatima whispered.
    That did not surprise Gold. Cousin or no, Fatima would be another mouth to feed, and a worthless girl at that. A goat probably carried more value here. She explained the situation to Parson, and he summed it up in his own way: “Bullshit.”
    It seemed not a shred of mercy remained for anyone in Afghanistan, but especially not for females. During previous deployments, Gold had heard of parents selling girls to buy food. Even in antiquity, Afghanistan had been a bad place for women. Gold thought of a nearby historic site, the Tomb of Rabia Balkhi. Rabia Balkhi was a medieval poetess who’d died in an honor killing. Her brother had killed her for having sex with a slave lover, and she’d written her final poem in her own blood.
    Parson and Gold knocked at two other homes. At one, they got no answer, though a cooking fire burned inside. At the other, the answer came: “I will not open my door to infidels.”
    “We’ll just have to take her back with