The Last Mission Of The Seventh Cavalry. Charley Brindley

what right?” Lojab asked. “Some kind of medieval migration?”

      “If it’s a reenactment,” Joaquin said, “where’s all the tourists with their cameras? Where’s the TV crews? The politicians taking credit for everything?”

      “Yeah,” Alexander said, “where are the cameras? Hey, Sparks,” he said into his communicator, “where’s your whirlysplat?”

      “You mean the Dragonfly?” Private Richard ‘Sparks’ McAlister asked.

      “Yeah.”

      “In her suitcase.”

      “How high can she fly?”

      “Four or five thousand feet. Why?”

      “Send her up to see how far we are from that Registan Desert, “Alexander said. “As much as I’d love to hang around here and watch the show, we still have a mission to accomplish.”

      “Okay, Sarge,” Sparks said. “But the suitcase is in our weapons container.”

      Chapter Three

      The soldiers gathered around Alexander as he spread his map out on the ground.

      “What’s the cruising speed of the C-130?” he asked Airman Trover, a crewman from the aircraft.

      “About three hundred and thirty miles per hour.”

      “How long were we in the air?”

      “We left Kandahar at four p.m.” Trover checked his watch. “It’s now almost five, so about an hour in the air.”

      “Three hundred and thirty miles,” Alexander whispered as he drew a wide circle around Kandahar. “An hour to the east would put us in Pakistan. In that case, that river we saw is the Indus. One hour to the west, and we’d be just inside Iran, but no big rivers there. An hour to the southwest is the Registan Desert, right where we’re supposed to be, but no forest or rivers in that region. An hour to the north, and we’re still in Afghanistan, but that’s arid country.”

      Karina looked at her watch. “What time you got, Kawalski?”

      “Um, five minutes to five.”

      “Yeah, that’s what I have, too.” Karina was quiet for a moment. “Sarge, there’s something haywire here.”

      “What is it?” Alexander asked.

      “All our watches tell us it’s late afternoon, but look at the sun; it’s almost directly overhead. How can that be?”

      Alexander looked up at the sun, then at his watch. “Beats the hell out of me. Where’s Sparks?”

      “Right here, Sarge.”

      “Check that GPS reading again.”

      “It still says we’re on the French Riviera.”

      “Trover,” Alexander said, “what’s the range on the C-130?”

      “About three thousand miles without refueling.”

      Alexander tapped his pencil on the map. “France has to be at least four thousand miles from Kandahar,” he said. “Even if the plane had enough fuel to fly to France–which it didn’t–we would have to be in the air for over twelve hours–which we weren’t. So, let’s cut the crap about the French Riviera.” He looked around at his soldiers. “All right?”

      Sparks shook his head.

      “What?” Alexander asked.

      “See our shadows?” Sparks asked.

      Looking at the ground, they saw very little shadowing.

      “I think the time is about twelve noon,” Sparks said. “Our watches are wrong.”

      “All our watches are wrong?”

      “I’m just telling you what I see. If it’s really five in the afternoon, the sun should be there.” Sparks pointed to the sky at about forty-five degrees above the horizon. “And our shadows should be long, but the sun is there.” He pointed straight up. “On the French Riviera, right now, it’s noon.” He looked at Alexander’s scowling face. “France is five hours behind Afghanistan.”

      Alexander glared at him for a moment. “All right, the only way we’re going to settle this is to find our weapons crate, dig out that toy whirlysplat of yours, and send it up to see where the hell we are.”

      “How are we going to find our crate, Sarge?” Lojab asked.

      “We’re going to have to find someone who speaks English.”

      “Her name is ‘Dragonfly,’” Sparks muttered.

      “Hey,” Karina said, “here comes more cavalry.”

      They watched two columns of heavily armed soldiers pass on horseback. These horses were larger than any they’d seen so far, and the men wore iron breastplates, along with matching helmets. Their shoulder protection and wrist guards were made of thick leather. Round shields were slung across their backs, and each man carried a long sword, as well as daggers and other knives. Their faces, arms, and legs showed many battle scars. The soldiers rode with bridles and reins, but without stirrups.

      It took almost twenty minutes for the cavalry to ride by. Behind them, the trail was empty all the way back to a point where it disappeared around a copse of young Aleppo pine trees.

      “Well,” Lojab said, “finally, that’s the last of them.”

      Alexander looked down the trail. “Maybe.”

      After the passage of forty elephants, hundreds of horses and oxen, and over a thousand people, the trail had been worked down to pulverized dirt.

      A horse soldier galloped by on the opposite side of the trail, coming from the front of the column. The platoon watched the rider pull his horse to a skidding halt, then turned to ride beside a man who’d just come around a turn in the trail.

      “That must be the guy in charge,” Lojab said.

      “Which one?” Karina asked.

      “The man who just came around the curve.”

      “Could be,” Alexander said.

      The man was tall, and he rode a huge black charger. Twenty paces behind him was the tall officer with the scarlet cloak who’d ridden by earlier, and behind the officer rode four columns of horsemen, wearing shiny bronze breastplates and matching helmets. Their scarlet capes fluttered in the breeze.

      The man on the warhorse trotted along as the scout spoke to him. He never acknowledged the messenger’s presence but seemed to listen intently to what he had to say. After a moment, the man on the charger said a few words and sent the messenger galloping away toward the front.

      When the officer came abreast of the Seventh Cavalry, his horse pranced sideways as both he and his rider studied Sergeant Alexander’s platoon. The officer showed more interest in them than anyone else had.

      “Hey, Sarge,” Karina said on her comm, “remember that four-star general who came to Camp Kandahar last month to review the troops?”

      “Yeah, that would be General Nicholson.”

      “Well, I’ve got a feeling I should come to attention and salute this guy, too.”

      The man on horseback sat ramrod straight, and his polished bronze helmet with a red mohawk of boar’s hair on top made him look even taller than his six-foot-two height. He wore a tunic like the others, but his was made of a red silk-like material, and it was sewn with fine double rows of white stitching. The strips of his leather skirt were trimmed in silver, and the hilt of his sword was inlaid with silver and gold, as was the scabbard of his falcata. His boots were made of tooled leather and came up over his calves.

      His saddle was covered with a lion hide, and the horse wore a heavy breastplate, along with leather armor on its front legs and a thick silver plate on its forehead. The horse was high-spirited, and the man had to maintain pressure on the reins to restrain him from galloping