Ground Zero(46)

Her mother had been right. She had brought death to them all.

Still in a daze, she caught up to Taz and the guard.

“Is everything all right?” Taz asked from inside the burqa. “Where’s Reshmina? Is she all right?”

“I’m here,” Reshmina said. “They blew up my house with a rocket.”

“Who blew up your house? Not the Americans,” he said defensively. “Not if your dad told them I was somewhere in the village. They would never fire a missile into the village if they thought I was here.”

The Taliban, then. They had blown up her house, trying to get at the Americans. The Americans who shouldn’t have been there in the first place.

Not just any Americans, Reshmina realized. One in particular. The Taliban had fired at her house on purpose because Pasoon had told them Taz was there.

Reshmina felt like she was sinking. Like her body was still standing, still moving down the steps, but her spirit was draining out of her, leaving her hollow and empty inside. That her brother had finally gone to join the Taliban shouldn’t have surprised her. All the boys did eventually. That was the path Pasoon had been headed down, long before today.

But to have pointed out his own home to them, with his own mother and grandmother and brother and sister in it, knowing the Taliban would shoot a missile at it? How could the brother she loved have been so heartless? So evil?

PAK-PAK-PAK-PAK!

Bullets hit the wall beside them, spraying them with bits of concrete and rock. They all ducked, and Reshmina scanned the rooftops. There—a Taliban fighter with an AK-47!

The guard next to Taz whipped the rifle off his shoulder and shot back.

PAKOW. PAKOW.

PAK-PAK-PAK!

Taliban bullets struck the guard, and he fell to the ground, dead. Reshmina screamed. She put her hands over her head, bracing for the bullets she knew were coming for her next, but then— T-koom. T-koom. T-koom.

—an American soldier on a nearby rooftop fired back, and the Taliban fighter fell.

Reshmina started to call out to the American soldier, to tell him Taz was with them. But at the same moment, from the other side of the steps, came the sound of another AK-47. PAK-PAK-PAK. The American soldier on the rooftop immediately took cover and traded bullets with his unseen attacker above the line of frightened villagers heading down the stairs.

“Come! Follow my voice! Hurry!” Reshmina yelled to Taz. Their only hope was to make it to the safety of the caves, and then wait out the fight.

K-THOOM! K-THOOM! K-THOOM!

Huge blasts rocked the village above them, and three more houses exploded in clouds of rock and splinter. Reshmina didn’t know if it was Taliban RPGs or the American helicopter. Or both.

“Don’t look! Go! Go!” an elderly man behind them cried.

People bottlenecked at the bottom of the steps, but soon the survivors were out onto the small path that led along the river. A few people ran in the direction of Asadabad, just trying to get as far away as quickly as possible, but more of the villagers followed Reshmina and her family down toward the caves. The entrance was small, and overgrown with brush, but they were all able to squeeze through. Even Taz.

And then, at last, they were in the dark, ancient caves underneath the village.





Sprinklers rained down from the ceiling of the underground mall, and in seconds Brandon was soaked through to the skin.

He squinted, trying to see in the rain and the darkness. There were burn marks around the blown-out elevator doors by the stairs, as though giant balls of flame had blasted down all the way from above. There was no fire that Brandon could see, but the sprinklers still ran. The water on the floor was ankle deep.

Port Authority and New York City police guided people toward the exit to Church Street on the other side of the mall. Brandon didn’t need directions. He knew this mall like he knew his own neighborhood. There was the familiar coffee shop to his left and the Banana Republic just ahead on the right. Beyond that would be the Gap, and the Speedo store where Brandon liked to laugh at the male mannequins in their skimpy bathing suits. Farther along, he knew, was the Duane Reade where he and his father bought cough medicine and snacks, and a Sbarro where they sometimes grabbed a quick slice of pizza before heading home.

“Keep moving!” a policeman called through a bullhorn.

The mall looked very different than it had that morning. The main hallway was like a gushing aqueduct during a storm, but the electricity was still on in the stores. TVs ran, music played, and lights glowed. But there was no one there. No clerks, no salespeople, no cooks, no customers.

For the first time in Brandon’s life, the mall felt incredibly garish. The lights were too bright, the music too happy. And the things for sale: Designer jeans. LEGO sets and plastic dinosaurs. Sunglasses and necklaces and greeting cards and remote-controlled cars. How could anybody care about all that stuff? How could any of that matter when there were people flying planes into buildings? When there were people trapped and burned and broken and jumping and dying?

How could any of this ever matter again after what Brandon had seen?

A woman near them stopped and cried, and Richard put an arm around her shoulder.

“Come on. We gotta go,” he told her. “It’s going to be okay.”

They came to an intersection. To the right were more shops. To the left, past the Borders bookstore, were stairs down to the subway and the escalator up to Church Street. Straight ahead of them was the Warner Bros. Store, with its Bugs Bunny and Daffy Duck statues outside the entrance.