Free Farishta by Patricia McArdle Page A

likely never see again. I could do that just as well in D.C.
    I declined her invitation and spent the evening alone in my hooch recalling the four New Year’s Eve celebrations Tom and I had shared as husband and wife. Even in Sana’a and in war-torn Beirut, he would put on his tux and I would slither into the long, black-sequined dress I’d picked up at a thrift shop in D.C. We usually went out with friends, but that last year in Beirut, embassy personnel were under curfew after a car bomb had exploded near our neighborhood. It was the best New Year’s Eve ever. We downed our last bottle of champagne, danced for hours to Sinatra, eventually disposed of the tux and the dress, and made mad passionate love until dawn.
    I was disappointed that I couldn’t start the New Year in Mazār-i-Sharīf, but was also so totally exhausted that I didn’t hear Sally come in after her evening of revelry with the DEA boys.

ELEVEN
    January 3, 2005 ✦ MAZĀR-I-SHARĪF AIRFIELD
    I finally made it to Mazār on a chartered flight with one of the embassy’s two-engine, eight-seat contract planes piloted by a pair of young South Africans, who chatted amiably while looping around the jagged white peaks of the Hindu Kush. After a quick stop in Bamiyan and another in Herāt to drop off a Department of Agriculture veterinarian, we touched down in Mazār just after one P.M. following a stomach-churning, corkscrew landing.
    The faded lime green airport terminal, a crumbling relic of 1960s-era U.S. foreign aid, looked abandoned. Across the southern horizon, the snow-capped mountains loomed like frozen sentinels. To the north, the flat, salt-encrusted desert rolled empty and featureless toward the Amu Darya River and the high steppes of central Asia.
    There were no airplanes or equipment on the runway and no people except for two young British soldiers in camouflage uniforms, smoking cigarettes and lounging against a battered white Toyota Land Cruiser that was idling near the empty terminal.
    Unlike the American soldiers and Marines I had seen on duty in Kabul, these men were not wearing helmets or body armor, just heavy jackets and floppy hats to protect their eyes from the intense glare of the winter sun.
    The pilots cut the engine only long enough for me to deplane and unload my suitcases and equipment. They wished me well, closed the hatch, and taxied away, leaving me standing alone with my pile of gear at the far end of the runway.
    Both soldiers took final drags on their cigarettes, crushed them under their boots, and climbed slowly into their vehicle. Long before my two-man welcoming party drove up to where I was waiting on the tarmac, the South Africans were in the air and on their way back to Kabul.
    “Welcome to Mazār, ma’am, I’m your vehicle commander, Lance Corporal Franklin Fotheringham,” said a tall, unsmiling, and very muscular young soldier with a large olive-green assault rifle slung over his shoulder. He had just the beginnings of a ginger beard, and his youthful face offered a stark contrast to the weapon he was carrying.
    “That,” he said, pointing at his equally young, but much thinner, dark-haired companion, “is your driver, Lance Corporal Peter Jenkins.”
    Jenkins nodded in my direction. “Just so you know, ma’am,” he added in a thick Cockney accent, “the lads don’t call your vehicle commander Fotheringham. Everyone calls him Fuzzy.”
    Fuzzy had nothing to add to this piece of information. He and Jenkins were clearly showing me only enough courtesy to avoid being accused of rudeness. While disappointing, this only confirmed my expectations about how I would be greeted upon my arrival at the PRT.
    Fuzzy effortlessly tossed my suitcases and body armor into the back of the Toyota with his free hand. “You can leave your Kevlar and your helmet in the boot of your vehicle, ma’am,” he said. “You won’t be needing those things up here.”
    “This vehicle is mine?” I asked. No one had mentioned that I