“Not yet.”
“Do you see an intersection?”
“Yeah, we do.”
“All right, we’re coming at you. Hold fire.”
I think we got another ten meters, maybe fifteen before it all went to hell.
The two guys dogging us from behind attacked again, and Nolan and Ramirez were on their bellies, cutting loose with salvos that ricocheted off the back walls. I dove forward, just behind Treehorn, who in turn spotted two guys rounding a corner from the intersection.
Before they could open fire, he blasted them with his first shot, just as Warris and Brown were coming up behind them.
Warris clutched his leg, having caught some of the buckshot, then looked to his right and saw something. I lost him for a second in the shadows as his gun rattled and then Brown appeared for a second in my light and was as quickly lost.
But then his shout came loudly up the tunnel: “Grenade!”
The Taliban were suicidal fools to drop a grenade inside the tunnel, and as Brown dove back from where he came, the blinding flash made me blink and drop my head. I gasped as the explosion tore through the tunnel ahead, my ears ringing loudly, the shattering rock and streaming sand barely discernible as debris pelted us and Ramirez and Hume kept firing to the rear.
I lifted my head, my face already covered in dust, the beam of the penlight thick with more dust as the ground reverberated a second time… and then Brown once more hollered, “Cave-in! Get back! Cave-in!”
FIFTEEN
I’d read some accounts of Marines and other Special Forces operators who’d dropped into Afghanistan just after 9/11. They’d discussed how difficult it was to flush the enemy out of the labyrinth of caves and tunnels that lay along the border with Pakistan. One Special Forces operator from the storied group known as “Triple Nickel” had described the tunnels as “great intestines of stone” that were, in fact, “part of the innards of some ancient warrior who’d died millennia ago.”
That was damned poetic. I would describe them as damp, dark holes that made perfect burial grounds, like the catacombs of Europe. They smelled and foretold of death and were the setting of many of my nightmares.
Ramirez ceased fire, reached out, grabbed something, threw it. I realized those fools behind us had tossed in another grenade. I didn’t know where Ramirez got his reflexes, but I wasn’t complaining.
“Get down!” I screamed, but my order was lost in the second explosion, this one much louder, the debris striking more fiercely as up ahead, a flurry of gunfire also vied for my attention. Smith, Brown, and Hume were advancing toward the intersecting tunnel where the explosion had occurred, and they were engaging more troops.
The air grew thicker as the ceiling collapsed and heavy rocks and earth poured in from above. Ramirez rose and began running back as pieces of the ceiling the size of truck tires came down and split apart across the floor. The stench of the explosives and the choking dust had me coughing, along with the others, and my eyes burned as I turned forward and called, “Brown? Brown?”
I couldn’t hear myself screaming through the echo of the explosion. I finally staggered to my feet, and, dragging a gloved hand along the wall for balance, I moved forward to find Brown, Hume, and Smith about four meters down the intersecting tunnel to my right. A wall of rocks and sand blocked the entire path, and the guys were covering their faces and letting their penlights play over the obstruction.
“Where the hell’s Warris?” I asked, swinging around.
Brown shook his head.
“What?” I cried, growing even more tense. “Is he dead?”
“I don’t know. He was on the other side when the grenade went off.”
I got on the radio, tried to call him, nothing. “Wait,” called Smith, pressing his ear against the rock while Ramirez and Nolan approached to cover us.
“I hear something,” Smith added. “Sounds like him! He’s calling for help.”
“Are you sure?” I asked.
“Yeah, I’m sure.”
“All right, start digging,” I said.
“We’ll cover the back tunnel,” said Ramirez, waving Nolan after him.
“Do it,” I said.
“Bad night,” said Brown, grabbing the first large rock he could find and groaning as he lifted and threw it aside. “Very bad night.”
“We’ll be here for hours,” said Smith. “And they’re probably massing for us outside.”
“We’ll need backup,” Brown said.
“You guys are right,” I said. “Go back down there, tell that private we need a digging team out here and two rifle squads. Then get right back.”
As they were about to leave, Ramirez and Nolan opened fire on the tunnel ahead, and I remembered only then that all other exits had been blocked by the caveins. There was only one way out.
Brown realized it as well and said, “Guess, we ain’t going anywhere… yet!”
“All right, everybody, mask up!” I said. I didn’t like it, especially within the confines of the tunnel, but the Taliban guys were ready for us, so we had no choice. I fished out a couple of CS gas canisters and let them fly down the tunnel.
We waited as the gas hissed into a thick fog, and then we rushed forward, enveloped in the smoke, Brown and Smith covering our rear, Treehorn and Ramirez up front.
“How deep does this go?” I said aloud, though no one could hear me. We ventured on at least another hundred meters, then turned to our left and saw an opening and the faint stars beyond.
Treehorn and Ramirez moved up front and signaled to me that they’d check it out.
I gave them a thumbs-up and kept back with the others. They reached the opening, a narrow leaf-shaped break in the stone, and shifted warily forward. Both men vanished for a second, then Ramirez ducked back inside and waved us on.
We emerged on the mountainside facing Sangsar, and all the booming from inside the mountain had not gone unnoticed. Lights burned from the houses nearest the wall, and two pickup trucks loaded with Taliban were already bouncing across the desert, en route to us. I ripped off my mask, as did the others, and then said, “There’s got to be another entrance. Warris must be looking for it, too.”
I whirled around, faced the ridgeline, got my bearings, and waved the rest of the team up, toward a cluster of outcroppings that looked promising.
We got there in a hurry — because several Taliban had already reached the ridge just below us and had opened fire. With dirt popping at our knees and making us grimace, we reached a broad wall of stone and ducked behind it. I waved my team on, one after another, and we all huddled behind the rock.
“We got a problem,” said Ramirez. “Even if we find the other entrance, we already know it’s a dead end. And if we all go in there, they could pin us down, drop in some grenades, and that ruins my plans to marry a supermodel.”
“Mine, too,” said Smith with a wink.
“All right, Joey, me and you go up and look for the entrance,” I told Ramirez. “The rest of you set up here along the rocks. See if you can hold them for a just a couple of minutes.”
I rushed forward with Ramirez on my heels. We ascended through a steep passage that reminded me of a vacation I’d taken to go hiking in Sedona, Arizona. Ramirez spotted the tunnel exit before I saw it, and we both came across the top of the next outcropping and headed toward a narrow seam in the rock. We got within ten meters when a Taliban fighter appeared.
Again, Ramirez put his lightning-fast reflexes to work and gunned down the guy before I could blink. We rushed forward now, coming around him, and came up on both sides of the entrance. I looked at him, raised three
