Honor Reclaimed (HORNET #2)

Chapter 3

CHAPTER 3

AFGHANISTAN

As the sun sank behind snow-frosted mountain ridges in the distance, Phoebe Leighton raised her camera and stared through the lens. Her finger hovered over the shutter release, but she didn’t snap the photo. It wasn’t the right shot. Not yet.

The valley below was dry and cold with the approaching winter and the pink-gold rays of the sun caught on particles of dirt in the air, streaking the sky with wide dust motes. Shadows cast by the mountains lengthened, spilling darkness over the valley. Still, she waited. She didn’t know what for—never did until she saw it.

There.

A lone farmer trudged up the hillside to the skeleton of an abandoned tank left over from the war between the Soviet Union and the Mujahideen fighters. A scruffy herding dog with crooked ears and a black muzzle bounded in his wake. When he paused to tie the animal up to what was left of the main gun, her gut told her that was the shot she’d been waiting for. She pressed the shutter release and snapped several quick photos in succession.

Dramatic. Haunting. A dichotomy of past and present, perfectly representative of this beautiful, rugged country caught in a war between tradition and modernization. This was why she had come to Afghanistan— to capture these fleeting moments that told a deeper story.

Lowering the camera, she stared past the man and his dog at the village. Somewhere down there, a very brave sixteen year old girl was standing up for her rights, rights that little girls in America took for granted. Already Phoebe was amazed by young Tehani Niazi and she had yet to meet her.

“You ready? We don’t want to be up in these hills after dark.”

Phoebe glanced over her shoulder at Zina Ojanpera, a Finnish relief worker who planned to take the girl to a shelter in Kabul. Zina was a pretty woman with long pale blond hair and vivid green eyes made all the brighter by the red and gold scarf wrapped around her head.

On impulse, Phoebe lifted her camera, her gut telling her this was another photo she’d been waiting for.

Snap.

Against the backdrop of the rocky, ragged landscape, Zina was a striking picture. A collision of east and west—just like the war that had ravaged this country for far too many years.

Zina made a face. “I really wish you wouldn’t do that.”

“Then stop being so freaking gorgeous. I mean, seriously, nobody should look like a runway model after trekking through the mountains for three days.” Phoebe tucked her camera away in her bag and adjusted her own scarf to recover the mess of kinky, frizzy red hair that she’d given up trying to tame two days ago. “All right. Let’s go meet Tehani.”

Zina nodded and led the way back to their guides, two of the local district’s police officers, who waited impatiently with their little caravan of horses. Phoebe wasn’t entirely comfortable on horseback but there were no roads in this part of the country so the only available mode of transportation had four legs and hooves. And a horse was definitely more preferable than a donkey.

“I’m glad Tehani’s family contacted us,” Zina said as they guided their mounts down the hill. “It’s progress at least. They could have just as easily forced her to go back to her husband.”

Sixteen years old and already married. It was disgusting and happened far more than the rest of the world knew. But maybe Tehani’s story will be the one to finally reach Western ears. Maybe this brave girl would be the vehicle for change.

“Thanks again for inviting me along,” Phoebe said, pulling her mount up alongside Zina’s mare. “I really appreciate it.”

“No, the appreciation is mine. I admire your work and what you’re trying to do for these women. You tell their stories with no bias, no agenda. Honestly, it’s refreshing. Nowadays, journalism is almost as corrupt as—well, the Afghan government.”

“ My work? Girl, I’m just a story teller. It’s your work that’s making the difference here. Girls like Tehani wouldn’t have anyone to turn to if not for you. The things your group has accomplished in such a short time are amazing. Courageous. Selfless. And that’s why I take your picture. When I look at you, I see all that and I want my audience to see it, too.”

Zina’s cheeks filled with a pretty shade of pink and dammit, she wished she had her camera out. Talk about selfless—a photo of that fleeting moment would have perfectly captured the essence of Zina Ojanpera and the women’s shelter she’d single-handedly founded.

Oh well.

Some moments were too perfect to capture in a photo.

Phoebe scanned the mud homes as they emerged into the village by the community well. The houses were almost stacked one on top of each other, often with little more than a blanket covering each front door. Still, this wasn’t a sleepy place with everyone tucked up inside out of fear. Kids raced up and down the hill, kicking a ball. Mothers sat in doorways watching their older children with weary eyes while soothing fussy infants and sewing. In front of one of the homes, old men huddled together around a well-loved chess board, smoking and laughing. She didn’t see many able-bodied men and assumed they were up in the hills with their goats. Or, possibly, they had joined the Taliban. Or, even worse, they had become opium runners.

How many of these exhausted women were opium widows? She hated to guess.

“Here we are,” Zina said after a quick conversation with their police escorts and stopped her horse in front of one crumbling house. A man stood in the doorway, his skin tanned and winkled, leathered from the unmerciful Afghan climate. He eyed them both with suspicion.

“ Salaam alaykum ,” Zina said and dismounted. Phoebe followed suit, but let the relief worker take the lead. She was only here to document what happened and did her best to fade into the background.

“Are you here to take my sister?” the man asked.

Phoebe felt her eyebrows climb toward her hairline. Sister? Wow. She’d pegged the man for an uncle from the looks of him.

She lifted her camera. “May I?” she asked in Pashto.

He eyed her with open suspicion, but then his face lit up when he spotted the camera. He nodded and grinned, striking a pose against the door. His gap-toothed smile showed his youth in a way that his weathered looks couldn’t.

Snap.

“We’ve come from Kabul. From the women’s shelter,” Zina explained.

The old-looking young man nodded, his smile vanishing. “She will be safe there.”

Their conversation started drawing attention from the others in the village. The group of old men had stopped laughing and watched them with disapproving frowns.

Under the weight of their stares, Tehani’s brother shuffled his feet nervously. He motioned to the house. “Come. It’s not safe to talk here.”

The main room was small with an ornate carpet spread over the floor and pillows scattered along the walls. A woman sat on one pillow, her chador wrapped around her head to cover all but her eyes. In her lap sat a toddler boy, watching everything with innocent fascination. She poured chai into small cups and passed them out to everyone in the room. Usually the chai ritual included small-talk before getting down to business, but they were apparently nervous enough to eschew that part of the custom.

“My wife, Darya,” Tehani’s brother said. “And son. I am Nemat. I will get Tehani. We’ve been hiding her.” He disappeared through a doorway draped with a floral-printed sheet.He had a pronounced limp, which probably explained why he was still in the village when so many of the other men were missing. He had a disability that kept him close to home, and Phoebe wondered what he did for work.

Phoebe took the opportunity to ask the woman if she would mind having her picture taken. Darya nodded, but was shy about it and wouldn’t look directly at the camera. Nothing usable for the story, but the photos would make nice additions to Phoebe’s personal collection.

Nemat returned with a girl in a stained and torn red dress. Uncovered dark hair swung around her shoulders and she appraised everyone in the room with one sweep of dark eyes much too world-weary to belong to a girl her age. Unlike her sister-in-law, she wasn’t shy. She strode right over to Zina and lifted her chin in a gesture of defiance.

“I am Tehani. I don’t want to be married,” she said in Pashto. “I want to go to school, to learn, to have a future beyond being a wife to that horrible man.”

“You will,” Zina replied in the same language, her face lit up with delight.

Oh, now there was a shot…

Phoebe lifted her camera. Snap.

Tehani’s gaze shifted to the camera and in that instant, she looked so very young and vulnerable. “Are you taking my picture?”

“I am,” Phoebe said, also in Pashto. “Is that okay?”

“I don’t know. What are you going to do with it?”

“Show it to other girls like you who are in bad situations so they don’t give up hope, so that maybe they will speak up for themselves.”

Tehani thought about it for a moment, then a brilliant smile crossed her face. “I like that.”

“I thought maybe you would.”

“I want to help other girls like me.” She again turned to Zina. “Can we leave tonight?”

“Tomorrow morning. Your brother has agreed to host us for the night.”

She nodded and focused on Phoebe again. “What about my husband? Will you tell other people about his crimes? About the bombs?”

“Shh,” Nemat scolded, his easy brotherly smile dissolving into an expression of real fear. “I told you not to speak of that.”

Phoebe glanced over at Zina, who sank her teeth into her lower lip and even though she stayed silent, she didn’t need to voice her worry. Her expression said it all.

Crap. This conversation was going nowhere good. Phoebe knelt down to the girl’s level. “What bombs, Tehani?”

“Lots of bombs, but?—”

“We will not speak of this anymore,” Nemat declared, his voice rising with panic.

Tehani frowned at her brother. “I will so speak of it. Zakir died trying to warn the American soldiers. He told me it was very important.”

Heart pounding high in her throat, Phoebe set down her camera and focused all of her attention on the little girl. “Who is Zakir?”

“I don’t know for sure. I think he was an American soldier pretending to work for my husband. He helped me escape, but he might be dead now.”

An undercover American? Bombs? This story was clearly much bigger than a child bride seeking freedom.

“Shh!” Nemat said. “Tehani, enough. We do not speak of it. Do you want your aunt and baby cousin to be killed? Do you want me to be killed? After we’ve protected you?”

“No, I’m sorry.” Tehani’s expression crumpled, tear filling her eyes as she shook her head. “I only wanted to help. I don’t want anyone else to die.” She turned her pleading gaze to Phoebe. “My husband used to strap bombs to us. Sometimes, they were active, but most of the time, they were not. We never knew for sure, but when he tired of one of us, he’d send us somewhere and blow us up. He still has other wives.”

Phoebe wanted to reach out and hug the girl, comfort her, but wasn’t sure enough of the local customs and didn’t dare overstep her boundaries. At least not until Tehani was safe at the shelter in Kabul. Then all bets were off.

“You did help,” she assured. “Just by telling us about it, you helped.”

“I think we had better leave tonight,” Zina said in English, and Phoebe nodded. As dangerous as it was to be out in the mountains at night, from the sounds of things, it was a hell of a lot more dangerous to stay in this village any longer than they had to.

It didn’t take long to pack Tehani’s things. She had little more than two dresses and a few head scarves, one of which she used to cover her hair. She also carried a stained folder that she refused to part with, as well as the vest she’d been wearing when she made her escape. Someone had removed the explosive material, but still, the sight of the vest was like a kick in the stomach, leaving Phoebe breathless as she photographed it.

Zina tried to convince Nemat and his wife to join them, but he steadfastly refused.

“My wife is pregnant. She cannot make such a journey. I will not allow it.”

Nemat’s wife merely averted her gaze to the floor and said nothing, offered no opinion of her own, but Phoebe caught a glimpse of longing in her expression before she dipped her head.

As they said their goodbyes, pity swelled in Phoebe’s heart for the young woman, who really wasn’t all that much older than Tehani. Maybe eighteen and already married with a baby and another on the way.

She didn’t speak again until they were headed out of the village with their police escorts and Tehani hiding underneath the burqa Zina had donned.

“It’s a vicious, never-ending cycle, isn’t it?” she asked in English. “That poor girl is pregnant again, and she’s barely an adult herself.”

Zina gave a heavy sigh that moved her shoulders. “You can’t save everyone, Phoebe.”

But that didn’t stop her from wanting to try. Her fingers tightened on her horse’s reins, the old leather creaking in her grip. “Who is Tehani’s husband?”

Zina’s head turned, but because of the burqa, her expression was unreadable. “She won’t say, and I don’t want to know. Neither should you. That kind of information will do nothing but put us and the shelter at risk.”

Phoebe nodded. She knew that. But, dammit, she hated this feeling of utter impotence. “If he’s as powerful as I think he is, people need to know he’s dangerous.”

“These villagers already know.”

“But what about the rest of the world?”

“If it doesn’t affect them directly, most people won’t care. You know that. It’s human nature.”

As they crested the hill by the ancient tank where the dog was still tied, Phoebe brought her horse to a halt and glanced back at the little village. None of this sat right with her and, gut churning, she took out her camera.

Snap. Snap. Snap .

That old cliché about a picture being worth a thousand words was absolutely true. The awe-inspiring power of a photo was one of the reasons Phoebe had given up her career muckraking for a tabloid, where she’d been on the fast track after writing a controversial piece about one of the country’s war heroes. Her marriage had been falling apart at the time, but that didn’t matter because Phoebe was finally getting the attention she’d thought she deserved. Never mind that her article launched an investigation and villainized a man who hadn’t deserved it.

The thought sent a familiar stab of guilt through her, and as she tucked her camera away, she pulled out the magazine cover she kept in her bag as a reminder of why she’d turned to photography in the first place. A reminder of Kathryn Anderson, the ambitious, heartless journalist she used to be, and why she’d separated herself from that person by going back to her maiden name and adopting her middle name as her first.

She ran her fingers over the crinkled print of Seth Harlan kneeling at the grave of one of his fallen men. He looked… haunted. Alone. And she’d done that to him, had turned the world against him with her words.

The first time she’d seen the cover, it had been like having a duct tape blindfold ripped off suddenly—painful, disorienting, frightening. She’d gone home that day, taken a hard look at herself in the mirror, and hadn’t liked what she’d seen at all. She’d called and quit her job right then, and somewhere along the way, she’d found her true calling.

Photographs had the power to make even the most dogmatic of people change their minds. Pictures made people laugh. Cry. Feel. And, yes, even care when they normally wouldn’t.

She looked up from the magazine cover and watched as the last rays of sunlight played over the village. Zina was probably right. The world didn’t care about Tehani or girls like her, but she could change that, couldn’t she?

All it would take is the right photo.

And she knew better than anyone the power of photography.