Combat Ops

TWENTY-ONE

Alex Nolan was a smart-aleck kid from the streets of Boston who’d become a senior medical sergeant with the Ghosts. He often looked like a geek, but when he opened his mouth, wow, he was all attitude fueled by an insatiable curiosity and great intellect. He was even a Mensa member. Still, there were times when he could throw a switch and be the most caring and sympathetic operator on our team. The last time we were in Afghanistan, I’d seen him spend hours with sick villagers. He’d always ask the same question: “Are your animals sick, too?” When you operated in third-world countries and people became ill, you could sometimes trace the problem back to their livestock.

With the letter to Matt Beasley’s family still fresh on my mind, I couldn’t believe I had to write another one. I wasn’t used to losing operators, especially two on a single mission.

We’d been all over the world, working on operations far more taxing than this one. And while they kept telling me this situation was complicated, on the surface it seemed much safer when compared to the operation I’d run in China, penetrating deep into the heart of the country to take out a cabal of rogue generals. Hell, we’d had a hundred chances to be captured or killed and had slipped past every one of them.

Now we’d been charged with nabbing one fat-ass terrorist, and I’d already lost two good men, some of the most valuable personnel in the U.S. Army. I was already feeling burned out, like a has-been operator who’d gotten his men killed.

With my own eyes burning, we rushed outside the tunnel and I ordered the guys to set off the charges. Thumbs went down on wireless detonators, and the multiple booms echoed, as though someone were kicking over a massive drum set that clattered and crashed off a giant stage. I could only hope our charges had swallowed some of the insurgents inside.

I led Alpha team along a rocky path that descended sharply to our left. Ramirez and his team would take the path to the right. I didn’t want us together in case the guys on this side of the mountains had mortars, too. And to be perfectly honest, it was convenient to have Ramirez away so I didn’t need to watch my back.

RPG fire arced like fleeing fireflies, and two cone-shaped denotations rose skyward as though the Taliban had ignited a massive bonfire to celebrate their victory over the infidels.

“All right, Treehorn, cut it loose!” I ordered.

The sniper’s gun boomed, and his rounds came down like God’s hammer, decisive, deadly, dismembering all in their path.

But the Taliban were quick to answer.

Gunfire cut a line so close to Hume that he tripped and fell forward with Nolan’s body draped over his back.

We rushed to help him back to his feet, and that was when muzzles flashed from the ridgeline about fifty meters above.

I raised my rifle as the red diamonds appeared in my HUD to help me lock onto the four targets.

The camera automatically zoomed in on one fighter raising a HERF gun toward me — and that was when my HUD went dead.

I might’ve cursed. Either way, the HERF blast was my cue to open fire, and Smith joined me. We drilled those bastards back toward the wall, while Hume got Nolan down onto the lower portion of the path. I wasn’t sure if we’d hit any of them, but we’d bought some time.

Smith ceased fire, tugged free a smoke grenade, then tossed it up there a second before we both double-timed after Hume.

Treehorn’s gun spoke again. And then again. He was the reaper. His words were thunder.

About twenty meters east of the now-burning Bradley, an insurgent lay on his belly, directing machine gun fire up near Treehorn, who returned fire, hitting the guy. The gun went silent — but only for a few seconds as that fighter was replaced by another, who quickly resumed showering Treehorn.

“Cover Hume. Get down the rocks and hold there,” I ordered Smith. He nodded and hustled off.

I jogged back up the path toward Treehorn’s perch much higher along the ridge.

He took one last shot, then bolted up and joined me. I waved him back along the path, and then… off to my left, about twenty meters up… a curious sight: another tunnel entrance. It must’ve been covered up by the Taliban because the rocks nearby appeared freshly shaken free by the mortars and our C-4 charges.

As we came under a vicious wave of gunfire that seemed certain to hit us, I rushed up toward the tunnel and practically threw myself inside.

Treehorn was a second behind me, breathless, cursing, literally foaming at the mouth with exertion.

AK-47 and machine gun fire stitched along the entrance, daring us to sneak back out and return fire. That was one dare I would not take. The machine gunner seemed to be chiseling his initials on the rock face.

I got on the regular radio, found it dead, and realized that maybe this time the HERF gun had managed to fry it, too. But then I also noticed the microphone had taken a hit. I was one lucky man — very close call. That bullet would’ve caught my side, perhaps even penetrated my spine.

Treehorn directed his light to the tunnel behind us. “Whoa…”

His surprise was not unwarranted.

The uneven intestine of rock swept outward and curved slowly down. It appeared to go much longer and deeper than any of the others we’d seen, and I was suddenly torn between venturing down to see where it went and making a break back outside to link up with the others. The machine gun fire had just died off. The second rally point would be just past the Bradley’s position, along an old dried-up riverbed. Everyone knew it. I assumed Ramirez would be taking Bravo team there.

But I’d left Smith to look after Hume, who was carrying Nolan on his back, and those guys would need help.

“What do you want to do, Captain?”

I pulled out a brick of C-4 from my pack. “Man, we need to see where this goes, but we can’t do it right now. Let’s seal it up behind us and get back outside.”

“Wait a second. Listen,” he said.

Faint cries echoed up toward us.

I pricked up my ears again. “Sounds like… a kid…”

“I know. What the hell?”

I remembered the girl we’d found during our first night raid. And though I couldn’t bear the thought of more children being tortured, we had to leave.

Something flashed behind us, and as I turned, my arm went up reflexively against the blast. The air whooshed past us, and only then did I realize I was being catapulted back into the tunnel. The entrance had been struck dead-on by an RPG. The starlight shining beyond went black, and I slammed into the floor, shielding my face from the rocks and dirt dropping all around me. Then, a strange silence, the sifting of sand, my breathing, the dull echo in my head—

Suddenly the cave roof a few meters ahead came down, as though a massive boot had stomped on us. I scrambled backward like a crab and bumped into Treehorn, who had just turned on his penlight, the beam struggling to penetrate the thick cloud of dust. I winced and blinked.

“You okay, boss?” cried Treehorn.

“I’m good.”

“They blew the goddamned exit!”

“Plan B,” I finally gasped out. “Back on our feet. Come on, buddy…” I began choking and coughing on the dust.

We got to our feet, his light shining down the tunnel, mine joining his a few seconds later.

I stole a look back. The tunnel behind us had completely collapsed. It would take a half a day or more for us to dig ourselves out.

I tried to stifle my coughing and gestured for Treehorn to keep his light low and to move slowly, quietly.

Our shadows shifted across the cool brown stone, and a faint glimmer seemed to join our light, the flickering of candles or a lantern, not a flashlight, I knew.

Treehorn paused, looked back, put a finger to his lips.

We killed our lights and listened.

For a moment, I think I held my breath.

The cries we’d heard earlier were gone, replaced now by footsteps, barely discernible but there. I cocked a thumb, motioning for Treehorn to get behind me. I gingerly slipped free the bowie knife from my calf sheath.

Seeing that, he did likewise, his own blade coated black so as not to reflect any light. We held our position, unmoving, but our curious tunnel guest still seemed drawn to us.

As he rounded the corner, I slid behind him, grabbed his mouth with one hand and, with a reverse grip, plunged my blade deep into his heart. I felt his grimace beneath my fingers, the hair of his thick beard scratching like a steel wool pad. The forefinger and thumb on my knife hand grew damp, and after a moment more he struggled, then finally grew limp. I lowered him to the floor. The guy had been holding a penlight, and Treehorn picked it up, shined it into the guy’s face.

He was no one. Just another Taliban guy, wrong place, wrong time. We took his rifle, ammo, and light, then 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 ain’t digging us out of here,” he groaned.

I put my finger to my lips. Footsteps. Growing closer.