2024-04-09 01:56
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<p>Ten years ago, the early morning haze over the entrance to the Tal Bez Valley hid a detachment of Special Forces Soldiers. There wasn't a day that passed Mike Mason didn't think about that quiet calm. Always, that calmness led to gut-wrenching heartbreak for Paul. Alcohol and rage seared the image of his brother's death into the depths of his soul.</p> <p>Twenty-four hundred years earlier, at that same approach to the Tal Bez, Alexander the Great anticipated victory in the coming battle of the enemy. Mike felt that confidence as he prepared to enter the Tal Bez. Afghani guerrillas waited patiently for elaborate ambushes in place, ready to destroy the invaders. These soldiers from different times gathered at the same valley entrance to fight an enemy whose tactics had barely changed in two thousand years. That day would end in a devastating defeat for both commanders. Alexander, to Mike's mind, got off easy. He died a couple of years later. Mike lived that day over and over again, unable to forget it was his fault Paul was there. It was his fault Paul was dead.</p> <p>Out of the past, an old teammate gave him an in to Taliban controlled Afghanistan and the resources to locate Baabaa Hotak. What Mike's teammate didn't know, Baabaa Hotak was a student of history. He was aware of Alexander's defeat in the Tal Bez, and he knew Alexander's diseased army was not defeated solely by goat herders turned soldiers. A smallpox outbreak before the battle left hundreds of dead from the humbled army; unceremoniously abandoned and ignominiously dumped in a plague pit. 2,000 years later, a live strain of the infectious disease waited to be found, harvested, and weaponized. Hotak is ready to put his global plans into action.</p>
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