Combat Ops

TWENTY-SIX

For me anyway, there’s a delayed emotional reaction after killing a man. Like most combatants, I’ve trained myself to go numb during the act and let muscle memory take over. I think only of the moment, of removing the obstacle while reminding myself that this man I’m about to kill wants to kill me just as badly. So, I reason, I’m only defending myself. They are targets, a means to an end, and the fragility of the human body helps expedite the process.

That all sounds very clinical, and it should. It helps to think about it in terms of cold hard numbers.

I once had a guy at the JFK School ask me how many people I’d killed. I lied to him. I told him if you kept count you’d go insane. But I had a pretty good approximation of the number. I once got on a city bus, glanced at all the people, and thought, I’ve killed all of you. And all the rest who are going to get on and get off… all day…

Strangely enough, months after a mission, without any obvious trigger, the moment would return to me in a dream or at the most bizarre or mundane time, and I would suddenly hate myself for killing a father, a husband, a brother, an uncle… I think about all the families who’ve suffered because of me. And then I just force myself to go on, to forget about that, to just say I was doing my job and that the guys I’d killed had made their choices and had paid for them with their lives.

I would be just fine.

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: Wait.

“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, No, I don’t trust you.

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, Are you sure?

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 shemagh. Ramirez.

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 over here. I left Treehorn on the machine gun, but I figured I’d come down to warn you.”

“Where are Smith and Jenkins?”

“Still outside the entrance.”

“All right, get back out there.”

“Any luck here?”

“Joey, go…”

He hesitated, pursed his lips. “Yes, sir.”

Brown looked at me and shook his head. Was this some kind of lame excuse to get himself back in the action? We didn’t know. But if he was telling the truth and the Taliban were shifting back across the mountain, then the clock was ticking more loudly now.

Hume edged up to me. “I’ll take the ladder.”

I gave him a nod. He descended, then gave us the signal: All clear for now.

We followed him down to find another tunnel heading straight off then turning sharply to the right.

“Damn, this place is huge,” whispered Hume.

Several small wheelbarrows were lined up near the stacks of opium, and I got an idea. We piled a few stacks into one barrow, and then Brown led the way, pushing the wheelbarrow with Hume and me at his shoulders. We were happy drug smugglers now, and we’d shout that we had orders to move the opium.

We reached the turn and nearly ran straight into a guy heading our way. He started shouting at Brown in Pashto: “What are you guys doing?”

Well, I thought we’d have time to explain. But I just shot him in the head. He fell, and Brown got the wheelbarrow around him while Hume grabbed the guy’s arms and I took the legs. We carried him quickly back to the chamber and left him there. Then we hustled back after Brown and found the tunnel sweeping downward at about a twenty-degree angle. Brown nearly lost control of the wheelbarrow until we finally reached the bottom and began to hear voices. Faint. Pashto.

Maybe it was the adrenaline or the thought that outside our guys would soon be confronted, but I shifted around Brown and ran forward, farther down the tunnel, rushing right into another chamber with about ten sleeping areas arranged on the floor: carpets and heavy blankets all lined up like a barracks.

I took it all in.

A single lantern burned atop a small wooden crate, and two Taliban were sitting up in bed and talking while six or seven others were sleeping.

I shot the first two guys almost immediately, with Hume and Brown rushing in behind me and opening fire, the rounds silenced, the killing point-blank, brutal, and instantaneous.

Killing men while they slept was ugly business, and I tried not to look too closely. They’d return in my nightmares anyway, so I focused my attention on a curious sight near the crate holding the lantern — a pair of military boots, the same ones we wore. I picked them up, placed them near mine to judge the size.

“Warris’s?” Brown whispered to me.

I shrugged. We checked our magazines, then headed on, still pushing the wheelbarrow.

The next tunnel grew much more narrow, and we had to turn sideways to pass through one section. As the rock wall dragged against my shirt, I imagined the tunnel tightening like a fist, the air forced from my collapsing lungs, and I began to panic. A quick look to the right said relief was just ahead.

Brown had to abandon the wheelbarrow, of course, and once we made it onto the other side, the passage grew much wider, as revealed by Brown’s light.

My nose crinkled as a nasty odor began clinging to the air, like a broken sewer pipe, and the others cringed as well. Our shemaghs did nothing to help. I didn’t want to believe that the Taliban had created an “outhouse” inside the cave, but judging from the smell, they might have resorted to that.

I stifled a cough as we shuffled farther, almost reluctantly now. The odor grew worse. We reached a T-shaped intersection, where the real stench came from the right, and I thought my eyes were tearing.

Brown shoved down his shemagh, held his nose, and indicated that he did not want to go down the right tunnel.

And that’s exactly where I signaled for him to go.

He shook his head vigorously.

I widened my eyes. Do it.

And then I began to gag, caught myself, and we pressed on. I held the shemagh tighter to my nose and mouth without much relief.

A voice came from behind us, the words in Pashto: “What’s going on now?”

Hume turned back and Brown raised his light.

It was a young Taliban fighter, his AK hanging from his shoulder as he raised his palms in confusion.

He squinted at us more deeply until Brown directed the light into his eyes.

I couldn’t see, but I think Hume shot him. Thump. Down. The body count was racking up too swiftly for my taste, but the presence of those boots gave me hope.

We left that guy where he fell and forged on toward the terrible stink.

“I can barely breathe,” said Hume.

“Just keep going,” I told him.

The ground grew more damp, and up ahead, about twenty meters, were a pair of broad wooden planks traversing another hole in the ground, the result of yet a second cave-in, I guessed. Just before the hole another tunnel jogged off to the left, with faint light shifting at its far end. At the intersection, I saw that the other tunnel to our right curved upward and the night sky shone beyond — a way out, but on which side of the mountain range? I was disoriented.

And then from the other side of the hole and the planks came two Taliban, rifles lowered but still ready to snap up. They were talking to each other when they spotted me and Brown, and one looked up, shouted something.

I shot the guy who screamed.

Brown fired at the other one… and missed! That bastard took off running and hollering like a maniac.

And from behind us, down in the hole, where the stench of human feces and urine rose to an ungodly level, a muffled cry rose and echoed up across the rock.