[Prologue from Asset in Black]

On the high steppes of Afghanistan’s Kunar province, northeast of Kabul on the Pakistan border, even in summer the nights are always cold.

The American who slipped through the 0100 dark with the Afghan rebel mujahedin—the freedom fighters—had been colder, recently, farther north in Badakhshan where the Soviets were using chemical warfare on the mountain people of the Hindu Kush. His body was acclimated to the harsh climate; he shouldn’t have been shivering as he scrambled with the rebel band down treacherous slopes toward the Russian garrison at Bari Kot.

The chill the American felt had more to do with his gut instincts than the weather. His name was Cordell Hunt; he was an American adviser without portfolio, in Afghanistan as an agent of a mercenary, multinational risk consultancy that did for the American government what it didn’t dare do for itself. If Hunt was caught by the Soviets, he was on his own—the company that had hired him couldn’t help him; the American government wouldn’t help him.

And his gut was telling him there was something very wrong about this night action against a Soviet position. The Afghan Pushtuns called such a night action shubkhun—“blood in the night.” Hunt’s instincts were telling him there would be plenty of that.

He shouldn’t have come along—he wasn’t supposed to go raiding; he was supposed to unite the fractured militia groups and the Afghan Loi Jirga—the tribal council—so that he could put together an arms conduit for them; he was supposed to verify the use of chemical/biological weapons by the Soviets in the Kush; he was supposed to find out if the Afghans would consider responding in kind.

Yet here he was, sliding down a final arroyo, squinting at the lights in the Russian camp and trying to keep his balance with a full kit, including ninety rounds of ammo, strapped on him and a Kalashnikov assault rifle in one hand. In front of him, he could make out the gray-turbaned head of the unit’s malik—the man who had challenged Hunt to prove himself by risking his life on this sortie. Behind were a dozen mujahedin with scavenged weapons, including a new Soviet shoulder-borne rocket launcher for which they had only three shells and which only Hunt, who read Cyrillic, had any chance of using effectively against its makers without the luxury of practice rounds.

But that wasn’t why his hands were numb and his gut was ice cold.

On the trail, something had happened that felt so wrong to him that if this had been his mission, he’d have scrubbed it on the spot.

They’d met another traveling party on the narrow, mountainous trail and its leader had called out, “Mandanaresh,” which meant “Do not be tired.” When mountain travelers met, it was a commonplace greeting; when mujahedin met, it was the only greeting. But there was something unusual about the other party, something that the leader of Hunt’s band confirmed when he answered, “Tashukor”—a mere “Thank you”—rather than responding in kind.

Now, as they came down onto relatively flat ground where barbed wire was strung, Hunt told himself that his suspicions were unfounded—that the Kunar malik couldn’t be a Soviet sympathizer; that what he’d heard was just happenstance, not a confirmation of a setup; that the operation against the Soviet camp wasn’t being blown from inside.

But he couldn’t convince himself of it.

Around him, pebbles rattled as the rest of the Afghan fighters came down the slope, whispering excitedly.

One mujahed tapped him on the shoulder. “Malik, the weapon,” the freedom fighter murmured, his teeth flashing in the dark as he handed Hunt the long tube of the rocket launcher. The fighter had called him “malik”—“headman”—and this nickname, which the mujahedin had given to the American, was at the root of Hunt’s difficulties with the group’s leader. If it hadn’t been for the rebel girl, Nasta, who kept smoothing things over, Hunt and the Kunar malik would have settled things between them long ago; but this was no time to think about Nasta.

Hunt hefted the rocket launcher, settling it on his shoulder, adjusting the infrared sight he’d adapted from the rifle he’d brought with him into Afghanistan.

When Hunt was ready, the mujahed, behind him, loaded it, then stepped smartly aside as he’d been trained, one of the two reserve rockets already in his hands.

Before Hunt in the dark, the rebels were spreading out, cutting wire and preparing to cut power lines; from Hunt’s right and left, the sounds of men checking clips and of bolts sliding home were all that could be heard.

Hunt knew the position of the munitions depot by heart; he could draw a map of the compound in his sleep.

He waited for the leader’s signal—a wolf’s howl.

When it came, Hunt fired the rocket, knees braced against the shock and sound, head buried in the crook of his arm, then hit the dirt as it arced toward the munitions dump.

Nonetheless, the shock wave from the explosion buffeted him; the concussive roar of assorted munitions going up deafened him.

He never got back to his feet. Well before the ringing in his ears lessened, Hind helicopter gunships descended on them out of the black night, spewing cannon fire and antipersonnel explosives.

Hunt had time only to grab the man next to him, pull the mujahed down by the ankles, and bury his own head in his arms before the ground around him began to shudder with near-miss explosions and he was showered with clots of dirt and shattered rock and the occasional wet debris of a human body blown apart.

Just as he took his arms away from his head and neck to grab his rifle and shoot back at the gunships, now swooping with blinding searchlights while their gunners kept the mujahedin pinned, something exploded right beside him and the back of his head came off in a blinding shower of multicolored sparks.