“Go after him,” I ordered Brown. I had visions of Ramirez blowing himself up. “The detonator might not work.”
“Like I said, I’ve got some old-school fuses. We’ll light it up.”
Treehorn began pushing his way through the exit hole. It was just wide enough for the big guy, and he moaned and groaned till he reached the other side.
Then he called back to me, “Hey, boss, why don’t you come out? We’ll wait for them on the other side.”
“You watch the entrance,” I told him. “We’ll all be out in a minute. You scared to be alone?”
He snorted. “Not me…”
From far off down the tunnel came the shuffling of boots, a shout of “Hey!” from Brown. Aw, hell, I needed to know what was happening. “Treehorn, if we’re not back in five, you go! You hear me?”
“Roger that, sir! What’s going on?”
I let his question hang and charged back down the tunnel. When I reached the intersection, I found Ramirez shoving one of the Chinese guys toward me. The guy’s wrists were zipper-cuffed behind his back, and Brown was shouldering the guy’s backpack while he lit the fuse on the C-4.
“Look what we found,” Ramirez quipped. “They dropped a ladder over there, and he came down here for something.”
The Chinese guy suddenly tore free from Ramirez and bolted past us, back into the dead-end tunnel.
Ramirez started after him.
“Fuse is lit,” shouted Brown.
“It’s a dead end, Joey!” I told him.
“Good! He’s a valuable prisoner,” Ramirez screamed back.
Brown cursed, removed his knife, and hacked off the sparking fuse. “I want to blow something up,” he said. “I haven’t got all night.”
I made a face. No kidding.
The unexpected report of Treehorn’s rifle stole my attention. He screamed from the other side of the cave-in: “Got a few stragglers coming up! Let’s go! Let’s go!”
I ran after Ramirez, and I found him at the dead end. The Chinese guy was lying on his back, straddled by Ramirez, and my colleague was pummeling the prisoner relentlessly in the face.
Although the image was shocking, I understood very well where Ramirez was coming from. He needed a punching bag, and unfortunately he’d found one. I wondered if he’d kill the guy if I didn’t intervene. I gasped, grabbed Ramirez’s wrist, and held back his next blow. The prisoner’s face was already swollen hamburger, his nose bleeding.
“What’re you doing?” I yelled.
Ramirez just looked at me, eyes ablaze, drool spilling from his lips. “He wouldn’t come. Now he will.”
I cursed under my breath. “Let’s get out of here.”
We dragged the prisoner to his feet and shifted him forward, and then suddenly the Chinese guy spat blood, looked at me, and said, “I’m an American, you assholes!”
The left hand doesn’t know what the right hand is doing. My father used to say that all the time when referring to middle and upper management and to Washington and politicians. I was no stranger to decentralization, to being on a mission and realizing only after the fact that hey, someone else has the same mission. That my commanders were often not made privy to CIA and NSA operations in the area was a given; that spook operations would interfere with our ability to complete our mission was also a given.
That a Chinese guy we captured in the tunnel would give up his identity was damned surprising.
“I’m CIA!” he added, spitting out more blood. “I needed to bail on my mission.”
“Why didn’t you tell us?”
“Because I know who you are. I can smell you a mile away. Special Forces meatheads. I’m not at liberty to speak to you monkeys.”
I snickered. “Then why are you talking now?”
“Look at my face, asshole!”
“Why’d you run?”
“Wouldn’t you?”
“What the hell are you doing here?”
He smirked. “What’re
I looked at Ramirez. “Cut him loose and help him get outside, then cuff him again.”
“Hey, spooky,” I said, breathing in the guy’s ear. “If you resist, we monkeys will do some more surgery on your face. Got it?”
He turned back and glared.
Ramirez shoved him away. I regarded Brown. “You ready to blow this mother?”
He grinned. “I think this mother is ready to be blown.”
“Indeed.”
The glowing fuse was, for just a few seconds, hypnotic, holding me there, a deer in the headlights. I thought back to those moments when I was the last kid on the playground, swinging as high as I could, hitting that place in the sky between pure joy and pure terror. The teacher would be shouting my name and I’d swing just a few more seconds, flirting with the combined danger of falling off and getting in trouble.
With a slight hiss and even brighter glow, the fuse burned down even more. I wondered, how long could we remain in the tunnel without blowing ourselves up?
“Okay, boss, let’s go!” cried Brown.
I blinked hard and looked at him.
“Scott, you okay?”
I stared through him. Then… “Yeah, yeah, come on, let’s go!”
Brown and I had just cleared the other side of the passage when the explosion reverberated through the ground like a freight train beneath our boots.
Treehorn was still near the tunnel’s edge, the stars beyond him. He was crouched down, his rifle raised high. “Still out there,” he said. “Just waiting to take some potshots at us.”
“We need to get those Bradley gunners to help suppress that fire so we can make a break,” I said.
“How?” asked Treehorn. “No comm.”
“What’re you talking about?” I said. “We’re the Ghosts. If we were slaves to technology we’d never get anything done. Watch this, buddy…”
I fished out my penlight and began flashing SOS.
“Are you serious?” he asked me.
“As a heart attack, bro.”
Whether the Taliban to our flank and above us could see the tiny light, I wasn’t sure, but I continued for a full minute, then turned back to the guys.
And then it came: a flashing from one of the Bradleys.
“What’re they saying?” asked Treehorn.
“I have no clue. I don’t remember my Morse code. But we are good to go. So listen up. I’m going to make a break. I’ll draw the first few rounds. You guys hold off a second or two, then get in behind me and we’ll take the path to the east. Those Bradley gunners are ready, I’m sure. Got it?”
“Why don’t we send out the spook to make a break?” asked Brown. “He wants to run away so badly.”
“Hey, that’s a good idea,” I said. “You want to go, spooky?”
“I like your plan better,” he said, licking the blood from his lips.
“I figured you would. Hey, you don’t happen to know a guy named Bronco?” I wriggled my brows.
“Yeah, he’s my daddy.”
“Well, let’s get you home to Papa.” With that, I bolted from the cave, drawing immediate fire from the Taliban behind our right flank. I had no intention of getting hit and practically dove for the next section of boulders that would screen me.
Once the Taliban had revealed themselves by firing at me, the Bradley gunners drilled them with so many
