Free Down Range (Shadow Warriors - Book 2) by Lindsay McKenna Page A

these Afghan clothes. It will fool our enemy.” He handed Jake a set of dark brown clothes to wear over his cammies and H-gear.
    “Ah, we’re going hajji,” Morgan teased Reza, taking the black wool cape, brown vest and black turban. They were large enough to fit over all her gear. Going hajji was slang the operators used when they wore Afghan clothing. It would help them fade into the population, harder for the Taliban to spot them at a distance.
    Reza put his hands on his hips, critically assessing them. He went over to Morgan and adjusted the black turban covering most of her red hair. Along with it was a woven blue-and-white Shemagh scarf, identifying her as a Shinwari tribesman, which she would wear over her lower face so she couldn’t be recognized so easily as a woman by the enemy. “A man would wear the turban like this….” He grinned in apology as he tweaked how it was to sit properly on her head.
    Morgan nodded and thanked him. Jake definitely looked like an Afghan. His beard was well started and the dark brown color of the rolled cap on his black hair would fool everyone. Reza checked him out carefully. He arranged the vest a little more across Jake’s powerful chest. Probably trying to hide it, Morgan thought.
    “You pass inspection,” Reza told them. He pointed to the packhorse. “We go undercover, Wajiha. If the enemy sees us through their binoculars, we look like a family selling shoes.” He tapped the tarp, a black silhouette of a shoe that had been painstakingly hand painted on the material. It had his name above it, announcing he was a cobbler. “They will think we repair and sell shoes, going from one village to another.”
    “Brilliant,” Morgan said. Reza had been a cobbler all his life. And he regularly rode from one end of this valley to the other, stopping at each village along the way once a month. In the winter, he remained home and fashioned shoes and boots he would sell to villages the following spring.
    Morgan checked the tightness of the cinch on her fourteen-hand-high horse. Everything seemed okay, and she mounted and arranged the long, draping cape and vest that would hide her uniform and her pistol. Over her left shoulder, she carried an AK-47 in a sling so it was readily available if she needed the weapon. The disguise wasn’t perfect, but it would fool the enemy at a distance. “Let’s go,” Reza said. “We have twenty miles to reach the first village.”
    Jake mounted, grimacing. He hated these wooden saddles. The Special Forces guys rode them all the time. They had scarred asses, too. He shoved some of his wool cape beneath the saddle to give him some added padding and protection.
    “God, I don’t think I’ll be able to dismount by the time we get there,” Jake groaned. He heard Morgan’s husky laugh. She seemed very comfortable in her leather saddle, back straight, shoulders squared, riding like someone who had done it all her life.
    “Don’t worry,” Morgan said, chuckling. “I’ll haul your sorry ass off that saddle tonight.”
    Jake grimaced as they started out at a leisurely walk beside one another. “Hey, this isn’t funny. The last time I had to ride in one of these damn torture traps, I got a nail puncture right there.” He jabbed a finger at his right cheek.
    “Oh,” Morgan said, trying to look serious, “did you have your tetanus shot updated before we left Hawaii?” She saw Jake grin a little. She enjoyed the unexpected camaraderie. Who else got nail wounds in their butt? No Purple Hearts were given out for them, either.
    “Yeah, I got another shot, plus a round of antibiotics for my ruck. I also got rid of that damn saddle I had to ride last year and traded it in for a better-made one. Cost me five hundred U.S. dollars from an Afghan horse trader, but it was worth it. I should have held on to it.”
    Morgan laughed and then relaxed as they rode. She was back into swiveling her head, paying attention to the least little thing that seemed to