We climbed down the next ladder and found ourselves in a concrete drainage pipe that left me hunched over. The pipe ran straight away for as far as I could see, and I guessed that it led all the way under the village wall and into Sangsar proper. I still couldn’t receive any satellite signals on the Cross-Com, so I just took it off and shoved it in my hip pocket.
The pipe was littered with rocks and lined with a fine layer of sand, but there was certainly no water, so although I’d described it as a drainage pipe, its primary use was clear: smuggling. There were both boot and tire tracks in the sand. They’d brought wheelbarrows into the pipe or other wheeled carts to move their opium back and forth.
I had to get word of this passage back to higher, in the event I didn’t make it back. I’d thought bombing the tunnels we’d found would help stop the attacks on Senjaray, but we’d barely put a dent in Zahed’s clandestine highway. But this pipe, this could be the main artery, I thought.
We were losing our breath, and as we picked up the pace and continued on for meter after meter, I repeatedly glanced over my shoulder to watch the light drift away and the darkness consume the rest of the shaft.
“Are we getting closer?” I asked her.
She looked at me. “Close?”
“Zahed is here?” I asked.
“Soon,” she said.
TWENTY-EIGHT
While we had been considering a major offensive against the Taliban, they had, unsurprisingly, been thinking about the same thing. And unbeknownst to us, they had planned to launch their attack only a few hours after I’d taken my team into the mountains. Call that ironic and interesting timing.
What gave them pause, however, was our placement of the Bradleys in the defile and the firing of that flare. My simple diversion had changed the enemy’s entire battle plan. We later learned that they thought we’d been tipped off, and that had sent Zahed into a state of panic. From what we could gather, he launched a halfhearted offensive, committing only about half of his troops to the fight, while pulling the rest back to Sangsar to help ensure his escape.
But I was unaware of those facts as Hila took me through the concrete pipe. Had I known that Sangsar would be swarming with at least two, maybe three hundred of Zahed’s best trained fighters, I might’ve given the decision more thought.
But I was blithely unaware.
And Hila had assured me that the fat man kept only two or three guards around him at all times.
Not three hundred.
Far ahead, my light finally picked out the edge of the pipe, which led directly into another tunnel, one only about three meters long.
The air was filled by other scents I couldn’t quite discern: incense, cooked meat, burning candles, something. And then I paused, glanced back at Hila. “Here?”
She raised an index finger, and her gaze turned up.
I nodded. The concrete pipe had led to a tunnel that I believed emptied into a basement.
With a gesture for her to remain behind me, I shifted farther into the tunnel, reached the edge, then hunkered down and slowly lifted my penlight.
“Whoa…” The word escaped my lips before I could stop it.
We were in a basement all right, a huge one. Fifteen-foot-high concrete walls rose around the perimeter, and I estimated the depth at more than one hundred feet. The place had been converted into a subterranean warehouse, with long rows of opium bricks, crates of ammunition and guns, and more MREs, along with dozens and dozens of wooden boxes whose contents were a mystery.
I shifted to one box and opened it to find a bag labeled in English: ammonium nitrate fertilizer. I snorted. Fertilizer for making bombs.
At the back of the basement rose a wooden staircase leading up to a door half open, flickering light wedging through the crack. When I looked back, Hila was right behind me. She hadn’t held back like I’d asked.
I glanced up at the wooden planks and ceiling, listened as people shifted and creaked overhead. Hila’s breathing grew louder. I leaned down, grabbed her wrist, and led her along a row of opium bricks, then crouched down at the back.
“Zahed is up there?”
She nodded.
I thought of the Predator, of somehow getting a signal off to that controller, getting him to bomb the whole place while we escaped back through the drainage pipe. Simple. Clean. The only problem was I couldn’t confirm that the fat man was up there. I wanted to see him for myself.
“Is it a house up there?”
“Yes. He stays in a big room.”
“All right.” I didn’t think I could get more out of her, and she wanted to come with me.
“No,” I told her. “You stay here, be quiet, and wait for me… okay?”
She looked about to cry.
“Please…”
“Okay.”
As I stole away, shifting quickly from row to row of crates and opium bricks, I asked myself,
The door at the top of the staircase creaked open, and two Taliban fighters came charging down the stairs with a purpose. I tucked myself deeper into the crates and just watched them jog through the basement and head straight into the tunnel. I looked far down the row at Hila, hidden between two crates now. She’d heard them but she didn’t move. Perfect. That kid had a lot of courage, all right.
I gave myself a once-over and tightened the
The monocle flickered, came to life, but the HUD showed no satellite signal. I was still too deep. I removed and pocketed the unit, then took several long breaths. I checked my magazine, my second pistol with silencer, was ready to rip open my shirt to expose the web gear beneath and the half dozen grenades I carried.
Once more, the door above opened, and three more Taliban fighters came running down and dashed across the basement, on their way toward the tunnel.
I kept telling myself that if I waited any longer, the fat man would be gone. Either he was up there right now packing his bags, or maybe it was all for naught. Maybe he’d already left.
Well, there was only one way to find out.
My arm was stinging again as I hustled up the stairs — a reminder that getting killed was going to hurt. Oh, yeah. I shivered and passed through the door.
A long hallway stretched out in both directions. A living room lay to the left, with tables, chairs, even a very Western-looking leather sofa and flat-screen TV mounted to the wall, all very posh despite the mud-brick walls. Candles burning from wall sconces lit the pathway to my right, where a large kitchen with bar and stools, again very Western, was set up beside another eating area.
Someone shouted behind me. I turned to him, a guy about my age with a salt-and-pepper beard.
He asked me something, then asked me again.
I shook my head. He shoved me out of the way and jogged down the hall. I ran after him. “Wait!” I cried in Pashto. “I need to see Zahed!”
But he kept running. I slowed, reached the edge of the kitchen as something or someone moved behind me. I
