City of Screams Read Free Page A

live ones.”
    He was glad to have the Rangers at their backs. He didn’t trust the professor or the locals here, not even the Afghani trainees under his care. Out here, loyalties shifted in less than a second. Hell, that Shansabani king had lost his kingdom because he couldn’t even trust his own daughter.
    He turned from the ruins and stared at a pair of CH–47 Chinook helicopters that sat a kilometer away, snow collecting on their blades, positioned at the edge of the neighboring town of Bamiyan. They had a team of investigators questioning the townspeople. They were all fighting the night.
    He turned off the camera. He’d study the video later, but for now he wanted to think, to feel the scene.
    What could he tell by the setting? Someone had attacked the archaeologists with a brutality he’d rarely seen. Blood was everywhere. It looked like a knife fight, not a gunfight, blood arcing out in thin spatters from a flurry of cuts, not single blotches as from a bullet wound. But the sheer amount of blood made it hard to be sure.
    Who had done this . . . and why?
    Had the Taliban taken some religious affront to the work here? Or maybe opportunists in town grabbed the researchers as a part of a ransom scheme that got out of hand? Or maybe the professor was correct—superstitious tribesmen had killed them because they feared what the researchers might disturb here. He hoped the Rangers were having more success than his team, because he didn’t like any of these answers.
    By now, the ice mist had grown thicker, the snowfall heavier, slowly erasing the world around them. Jordan lost sight of the choppers, of the distant town of Bamiyan. Even the neighboring ruins of Shahr-e-Gholghola had almost vanished, offering mere peaks of rubble and ruin.
    It was as if the world had shrunk to this small village.
    And its bloody secrets.
    The professor took off his glove and bent to pick something up.
    â€œStop!” Jordan called. “This is still a crime scene.”
    The professor pointed to a scrap of sea-green fabric frozen in a pool of blood. His voice shook. “That’s Charlotte’s. From her jacket.”
    Jordan winced. There were so many senseless, savage ways to die. “I’m sorry, Professor Atherton.”
    Jordan looked from the professor’s anguished face down at his own hands. His right hand was twisting his gold wedding band around and around on his ring finger. A nervous habit. He let the ring go.
    Heavy footfalls, rushed and determined, sounded from his left. He swung around, freeing his weapon—a compact Heckler & Koch MP7 machine pistol.
    The shadowy form of McKay appeared out of the mists, trailed by Azar, his Afghan trainee.
    â€œSarge, look at this.”
    Jordan shouldered his weapon and waved McKay forward.
    The corporal closed in and used the bulk of his body to shield his Nikon camera from the blowing snow. “I took pictures of some tracks I found.”
    â€œFootprints?”
    â€œNo. Look.”
    Jordan stared down at the tiny digital screen. It showed a trail of bloody tracks across a snow-crusted stretch of rock. “Are those paw prints?”
    McKay scrolled through a few more shots, showing a close-up of one of the prints. “Definitely an animal of some sort. Maybe a wolf?”
    â€œNot wolf,” Azar interjected in stilted English. “Leopard.”
    â€œLeopard?” McKay asked.
    Azar huddled next to them and nodded. “Snow leopards have lived here for thousands of years. Long time ago they were a royal symbol for this place. But now, not so many are left. Maybe a few hundred. They attack farmers’ sheep and goats. Not people.” He scratched his beard. “Not enough rain this year and early winter. Maybe they came down here to look for food.”
    That wasn’t even a threat Jordan had considered before now. He felt better thinking that animals had attacked the archaeologists. Animals could be