The Mullah's Storm by Tom Young

see the IR strobe flashing, but the soft, steady clicks confirmed it was working. He placed the strobe on top of the rock wall, concealed by snow except for the lens. Insurance, Parson thought, or at least a grave marker.
    He followed Gold and the prisoner to the door of the first hut, stepped carefully around goat dung. Smoke rose from somewhere in the back of the dwelling, but Parson found no chimney or stovepipe. He unzipped a thigh pocket on his flight suit and pulled out his blood chit. The cloth chit, about the size of a handkerchief, bore a U.S. flag, along with a message in several languages: I am an American flier. Misfortune forces me to seek your assistance. . . . A serial number adorned each corner of the chit. He handed it to Gold.
    “Show them this if you think it will help,” he whispered.
    “It might,” she said.
    Gold knocked on a decaying, wooden door. A rope held it closed, looped through a hole where the knob might have been. The rope had rubbed smooth the edges of the hole, and lines of grain stood out in the planks, the softer wood between the grains beaten out by years of sleet and rain.
    No answer. Gold knocked again. Parson moved back a half step to give himself plenty of room to bring up his weapon.
    An eye appeared at a crack in the door. A male voice spoke from the inside, and Gold answered in Pashto. Parson listened to the conversation flowing back and forth. The way Gold held her M-4, he figured it wasn’t going well. It couldn’t help that she was a woman. But the rope slackened through the hole in the door, and the door opened a crack. Gold offered the blood chit, dangling it from two fingers. Something snatched it inside as if a rush of air had sucked it in.
    A long pause. Then the rope came to life, running through the hole in the door like a cobra until the knotted end smacked against the wood.
    The corners of Gold’s lips turned up almost imperceptibly. She shook her head and whispered, “I’ll be darned.” It was the nearest Parson had ever seen her come to smiling, swearing, or looking surprised.
    “What?” Parson asked.
    “They’re not Pashtuns. They’re Hazaras.”
    “Is that good?”
    “That’s very good.”
    About damn time we had some luck, thought Parson. I don’t understand what’s going on here, but if she likes it, I like it.
    The door groaned open, and a weathered, wrinkled man appeared before them. He stood about shoulder high to Parson, and he could have been forty or sixty. In his right hand he held an ancient bolt-action rifle. Parson recognized it as a British .303 Lee-Enfield. The man made a sweeping motion with his other hand, bade them to come in. He glared hard at the mullah and the mullah glared back. Parson didn’t need translation to decipher the hate.
    As Parson’s eyes adjusted to the dark, he saw two other people in the room. A woman, presumably the wife, tended her cooking over a fireplace. The smoke had no vent but a narrow window. The wife wore a multicolored shawl over her head, not like any burka or abaya Parson had ever seen. She made no effort to cover her face.
    In one corner, a teenage boy sat with a metal plate in his lap. He was breaking a piece of flat naan bread and feeding the crumbs to a mynah bird perched on the back of his chair.
    This is damned weird, thought Parson. Even if they’re friendly, I’m glad I left that strobe outside. Wish Sergeant Gold would tell me what this is all about.
    Gold and the man of the house continued talking. Parson didn’t understand it, but he did notice that Gold kept repeating herself and slowing down. So he understands Pashto, thought Parson, but it’s not his first language. No wonder that conversation through the door took so long and almost came to gunfire.
    The boy held out his finger and the mynah hopped onto it. The teenager disappeared into an adjoining room. He came back with an armful of embroidered blankets and spread them across plank platforms along the wall. Except for the