Until the next kill. The next nightmare. The next guilt trip. And the cycle would repeat.
The all-American hero has dirt under his nails and blood splattered across his face…
And so it was with that thought — the thought that I would suffer the guilt later — that I raised my silenced pistol and shot the first guard in the head.
A perfect shot, as assisted by my Cross-Com.
I had but another second to take out the other guy, who, of course reacted to his buddy falling to the ground and to the blood now spraying over his face.
He swung his rifle toward me, opened his mouth, and I put two bullets in his forehead before he could scream. His head snapped back and he dropped heavily to his rump, then rolled onto his side, twitching involuntarily.
A slight thumping resounded behind us. One. Two. Treehorn reported in. Guards at the heavy gun were dead. “Roger that. You man that gun now, got it?”
“I’m on it,” he answered. “Big bad bullets at your command!”
I waited outside the entrance while Smith and Jenkins dragged the bodies back up the path and tucked them into a depression in the mountainside.
By the time they returned, Ramirez and his group were coming down to join us. I held up an index finger:
“Predator Control, this is Ghost Lead, over.”
“Ghost Lead, this is Predator Control, go ahead.”
“Do you see any other tangos near our position, over?”
“We do see some, Ghost Lead, but they’re on the other side of the mountain, moving toward the Bradleys. You look clear right now, over.”
“Roger that. Ghost Lead, out.”
Now I would piss off Ramirez. I looked at him. “You, Jenkins, and Smith head back up. Man the same positions as the guards you killed.”
“What? That wasn’t part of the plan,” Ramirez said, drawing his brows together.
“It is now. Let ’em think nothing’s wrong. Brown? Hume? You guys are with me. Let’s go.”
I left Ramirez standing there, dumbfounded. No, he wouldn’t get his chance to get near Warris, and I’d just told him in so many words,
Brown took point with a penlight fixed to the end of his silenced rifle. I forgot to mention earlier that none of us liked the limited peripheral vision offered by night-vision goggles — especially in closed quarters — so we’d long since abandoned them during tunnel and cave ops. Moreover, if we were spotted, the bad guys wouldn’t think twice about shooting a guy wearing NVGs because he was obviously not one of them. It was pretty rare for the Taliban to get their hands on a pair of expensive goggles, though not completely unheard of. As it was, we’d offer them at least a moment’s pause — a moment we’d use to kill them.
The tunnel was similar to all the others we’d encountered, about a meter wide and two meters tall, part of it naturally formed, but as we ventured deeper we saw it’d been dug or blasted out in various sections, the walls clearly scarred by shovels and pickaxes. Soon, we shifted along a curving wall to the left, and Brown called for a halt. He placed a small beacon about the size of a quarter on the floor near his boot. My Cross-Com immediately picked up the signal, but even if we lost our Cross-Coms, dropping bread crumbs was a good idea in this particular network. We all had a sense that these tunnels were some of the most extensive and vast in the entire country, and finding our way back out would pose a serious challenge.
Brown looked back at me, gave a hand signal. We started up again.
In less than thirty seconds we reached a fork in the tunnel, with a broader one branching off to our right. Brown placed another beacon on the floor. I took a deep breath, the air cooler and damper.
“Man, I got the willies,” whispered Hume.
“You and me both,” Brown said.
After aiming his penlight down the more narrow tunnel, Brown studied the footprints in the sand and rock. Both paths were well-worn. No clues there.
I pointed to the right.
Brown looked at me, as if to say,
I wasn’t. But I was emphatic. I wouldn’t split us up, not three guys.
Dark stains appeared on the floor as we crossed deeper into the broader tunnel. Brown slowed and aimed his penlight at one wider stain. Dried blood.
And then, just a little farther down the hall, shell casings that’d been booted off to the sides of the path gleamed in Brown’s light.
We shifted another twenty meters or so, when Brown called for another halt and switched off his light. If you want to experience utter darkness, then go spelunking. There is nothing darker. I’d lost the satellite signal for the Cross-Com, so I just blinked hard and let my eyes adjust. Brown moved a few steps farther and then a pale yellow glow appeared on the ceiling about five meters ahead, the light flickering slightly. My eyes further adjusted, and Brown led us another ten or so steps and stopped. He pointed.
A huge section of the floor looked as though it’d collapsed, and the rough-hewn top of a homemade ladder jutted from the hole. The light came from kerosene lanterns, I guessed, and suddenly the ladder shifted and creaked.
My pulse raced.
We crouched tight to the wall as the Taliban fighter reached the top. He was wearing only a loose shirt and pants, his hair closely cropped, his beard short. He was eighteen, if that. Tall. Gangly. Big Adam’s apple.
Brown signaled that he had this guy. I wouldn’t argue. Brown was in fact our resident knife guy and had saved his own ass more than once with his trusted Nightwing blade.
I winced over the crunch and crack, the scream muffled by Brown’s gloved hand, and the slight frump and final exhale as the kid spread across the tunnel floor and began to bleed out. The diamond black knife now dripped with blood, which Brown wiped off on his hip.
We examined the kid for any clues, but all he had was a rifle and the clothes on his back. Brown edged forward toward the ladder and glowing lanterns below. Then we all got down on our hands and knees and crawled forward. Once we neared the lip of the hole and the ladder, we lowered ourselves onto our bellies, and I chanced a look down.
The chamber was circular and about five meters in diameter, with piles of rock and dirt along one wall where, indeed, the collapse had occurred. The opposite wall was stacked from floor to ceiling with more opium bricks wrapped in brown paper, and beside those stacks were cardboard boxes whose labels read MEAL, READY-TO-EAT, INDIVIDUAL. DO NOT ROUGH HANDLE WHEN FROZEN. U.S. GOVERNMENT PROPERTY. COMMERCIAL RESALE IS UNLAWFUL. There had to be fifty or more boxes. We’d seen MRE trash littering the tunnels earlier, but I’d had no idea they were smuggling in so much of the high-carb GI food. I wondered if Bronco was helping these guys get their hands on this “government” property.
Before we could shift any closer and even descend the ladder, someone rushed up behind us. We all rolled to the tunnel walls. Then, just as I was bringing my rifle around and Brown was switching on his penlight, a Taliban fighter rounded the corner and held up his palm. “Hold fire!” he stage-whispered.
He pulled down his
Brown cursed.
Hume swore.
I’m not sure how many curses I used through my whisper, but more than four.
We spoke in whispers:
“You didn’t answer my calls,” Ramirez said.
“We’re cut off down here,” I answered, slowly sitting up as he crossed to me. I put a finger to my lips. “What?”
“The two Bradleys are pulling out of the defile.”
“Why?”
“I don’t know. They wouldn’t answer my calls, either.”
“Aw, Simon must’ve woke up,” I said. “Damn it.”
“I contacted the Predator. He’s still got a way better sat image than we do. He said the guys are moving back
