moved on, the tunnel growing slightly wider, the floor heavily trafficked by boot prints. Voices grew louder ahead, and I froze.
The language was not Pashto but Chinese.
We hunkered down, edged forward toward where the tunnel opened up into a wider cave illuminated by at least one lantern I could see sitting on the floor near the wall. Behind the lantern was a waist-high stack of opium bricks, with presumably many more behind it.
A depression in the wall gave us a little cover, and we watched as ahead, Chinese men dressed like Taliban hurriedly loaded the bricks into packs they threw over their shoulders. So Bronco’s Chinese connection was a fact, and I wasn’t very surprised by that; however, to find the Chinese themselves taking part in the grunt work of smuggling was interesting.
There were three of them, their backpacks bulging as they left the cave, their flashlights dancing across the floor until the exit tunnel darkened.
We waited a moment more, then followed, shifting past stacks of empty wooden crates within which the bricks had been stored.
Treehorn was right at my shoulder, panting, and once we started farther into the adjoining tunnel, I flicked on my flashlight because it’d grown so dark my eyes could no longer adjust.
Somewhere in the distance came the continued rattle of gunfire, but the heavy mortars had ceased. We reached a T-shaped intersection. To the left another long tunnel. To the right a shorter one with a wooden ladder leaning against the wall. I raised my chin to Treehorn, pointed.
He shifted in front of me, rifle at the ready. I pushed the penlight close to my hip, darkening most of the beam.
We neared the ladder. I was holding my breath again. Treehorn took another step farther, looked up—
And then he whirled back, his face creased tightly in alarm as a salvo of gunfire rained straight down and he pushed me backward, knocking me onto my rump. We both went down as yet another volley dug deeply into the earth.
I imagined a grenade dropping to the foot of the ladder, and my imagination drove me onto my feet, and Treehorn clambered up behind me. I stole a look back and saw the ladder being hoisted up and away. We raced back to the intersection and moved into the other tunnel. I kept hearing an explosion in my head, that imaginary grenade going off over and over.
The beam of my penlight was jittering across the walls and the floor until I slowed and aimed it directly ahead.
Still darkness. No end to the tunnel in sight.
I stopped, held up my palm to Treehorn. “This could be one of the biggest tunnel networks in the entire country,” I whispered.
“Yeah,” he said. “Goes all the way to China.”
I grinned crookedly at his quip, then started on once more, turning a slight bend, then eating my words.
The tunnel abruptly dead-ended. Unfinished. In fact, the Taliban still had excavation tools lining the walls: shovels, pickaxes, wheelbarrows…
I looked at Treehorn.
“Well,
I put my finger to my lips. Footsteps. Growing closer.
TWENTY-TWO
Working as a team leader in an ever-changing environment with ever-changing rules and restrictions becomes, as my father once put it, “an abrasive on the soul.” Having toiled many years in the GM plant and enjoyed as many years out in his woodshop, Dad was a man who celebrated predictability. He did repetitive work at the plant, and when he created his custom pieces of furniture, he most often worked from a blueprint and followed it to the letter. He felt at peace with a plan he could follow. He always taught me that practice makes perfect, that repetition is not boring and can make you an expert, and that people who say they just “wing it” are hardly as successful as those who plan their work and work their plan. He told me he could never do what I did, though, because he would never find satisfaction in it. He needed something tangible to hold on to, sit on, photograph, admire… and he needed a plan that would not change. My father was a curmudgeon to be sure.
We’d argue about this a lot. But when I slipped off into my own little woodshop to produce projects for my friends and fellow operators, I understood what Dad was trying to tell me. You cannot replace the satisfaction of working alone, of listening to that voice in your head as it guides you through a piece of furniture. There was great beauty in solitude, and I sometimes wondered whether I should’ve become a sniper instead of a team leader. The exquisite artistry of making a perfect shot from a mile out deeply intrigued me.
Oddly enough, I was pondering that idea while Treehorn and I stood in that tunnel, completely cut off. I wished I’d had the luxury of only worrying about myself instead of feeling wholly responsible for him. When I was a sergeant, my CO would tell me that I’d get used to leadership but it would never get any easier. I doubted him. I assumed I’d find a comfort zone. But there isn’t one. Not for me. There’s a happy place of denial that I go to when things go south, but I can only visit there for short periods before they kick me out.
Thus, the big sniper was at my shoulder, in my charge, and I swore to myself I would not get him killed.
A figure materialized from the darkness.
I shifted reflexively in front of Treehorn as the figure’s light came up and a second person shifted up behind the first. I was blinded for a second, about to pull the trigger, when the shout came:
“Captain! Hold fire!”
I recognized the voice. Ramirez. His light came down.
I sighed. My beating heart threatened to crack a rib. “Joey, how the hell did you get in here?”
“We saw you get pinned down. So we came back up, pushed through a couple of rocks. It looks a lot worse than it is. It caved in, but up near the top of the pile we found a way in.”
“You all right?” Brown asked, moving up behind Ramirez.
“We’re good. I want C-4 at the intersection. What’s going on outside?”
“Rest of the team’s at the rally point,” Ramirez said. “A couple more Bradleys came up. They put some serious fire on the mountains, so those bastards have fallen back. I think we’re clear to exit.”
I looked hard at Ramirez. “Thanks for coming back.”
He averted his gaze.
That reaction made me wonder if he’d come back only because Brown had spotted us and left him no choice. Or maybe he was trying to get past what had happened and show me he still had my back; I just didn’t know.
I shook off the thought, and we got to work. Within two minutes we had the charges ready.
“You sure about this?” Treehorn asked. “Still got that other tunnel down there where they had the ladder… who knows what’s up there…”
“We can’t leave this open. We need to make it harder for them to cross over without being seen.”
“You’re the boss,” he said. “Bet there’s another exit we haven’t found, anyway. If we get back up here, we can search for that one, too.”
I nodded. “I bet we’ll get our chance.”
We left the intersection and reached the towering wall of dirt and rock, noting the fresh exit created by Ramirez and Brown, just a narrow, two-meter-long tunnel near the ceiling. We’d crawl on our hands and knees to exit. I was concerned about all the rock and dirt between us and the charges, so I gave Brown the order to detonate before we left. He clicked his remote. Nothing. I knew it. We’d gone too far off for the signal to reach through the rock.
But then I wondered if maybe his remote detonator had been damaged by the HERF guns. I’d forgotten about that. We all had.
“I’ll do it,” said Ramirez, removing the detonator from Brown’s hand.
“And I’ll come with you,” said Brown, hardening his tone. “Could go with a regular fuse.”
“I’ll be right back.” Ramirez took off running.
