by Tom Clancy
“Ghost Lead, this is Brown! We are taking fire inside and out, over!”
“Roger that,” I said. “Move in. Flush them out!”
“He’s right,” said Warris. “Let’s move in!”
Like I needed his confirmation.
The tunnel was barely two meters high, about three meters wide, but it grew more narrow as we stepped over the guy Treehorn had shot.
Pops and booms echoed from somewhere deep in the tunnel, telling me that yes, Bravo team’s tunnel was, in fact, connected to ours.
“Look at this,” said Ramirez, crouching down beside the dead guy. In the dirt lay an odd-looking rifle with a funnel-like barrel.
“I know what that is,” said Nolan. “HERF gun for sure. Like EMP. High-energy radio frequency. Just what I thought. Works better in close quarters. They must’ve been very close when they zapped us the first time.”
“But look at this thing. Seems homemade,” said Ramirez, lifting the gun up to his penlight.
“They didn’t make ’em up here, or even in the town,” I said. “Somebody’s supplying them — somebody who knows they’d need them. Like the CIA. Pack up that gun. Let’s go!”
Ramirez shoved the gun in his backpack, and we began to work our way along a curve that dropped sharply. I had to hang on to the wall to prevent sliding forward for a few meters.
Ramirez was pulling up the rear now, keeping his rifle pointed back while shuffling to keep up with us, the thin beams of our penlights playing like lasers over the walls.
Treehorn remained up front, ready to blast the hell out of anyone who tried to confront us. He stole a quick glance back at me, and I’d never seen his eyes as wide. The sergeant was wired to the moment, and I had every confidence in him.
“Mitchell, this is Warris. We dropped two tangos. Picked up a gun of some sort. EMP, over.”
“Same here,” I answered. “Keep moving in, but call out if you see our lights.”
“Roger that.”
I noticed how Warris wouldn’t refer to me as “Ghost Lead.” What a fool… I wondered why he hadn’t called Harruck to “tell on me” yet. Then I thought, he’s just a kid and wants a little action, that’s why he’s delaying the call. What a bigger fool!
And then, before he could say contemplate anything else, Ramirez opened fire behind us. We hit the dirt, and I whirled back, along with Nolan, to add our fire and drive back a pair of fighters who vanished behind the curve.
“Keep moving!” I ordered.
“They’re still back there,” warned Ramirez.
“That’s why you keep watching,” I said.
The air grew dank as we descended even farther. Trash appeared along the walls — discarded wrappers, even some bottles of soda, along with MREs, which had obviously been stolen from U.S. and coalition forces.
“Looks like an intersection coming up,” said Treehorn. “Two tunnels.”
“Warris, do you see us?”
“Not yet.”
“Do you see an intersection?”
“Yeah, we do.”
“All right, we’re coming at you. Hold fire.”
I think we got another ten meters, maybe fifteen before it all went to hell.
The two guys dogging us from behind attacked again, and Nolan and Ramirez were on their bellies, cutting loose with salvos that ricocheted off the back walls. I dove forward, just behind Treehorn, who in turn spotted two guys rounding a corner from the intersection.
Before they could open fire, he blasted them with his first shot, just as Warris and Brown were coming up behind them.
Warris clutched his leg, having caught some of the buckshot, then looked to his right and saw something. I lost him for a second in the shadows as his gun rattled and then Brown appeared for a second in my light and was as quickly lost.
But then his shout came loudly up the tunnel: “Grenade!”
The Taliban were suicidal fools to drop a grenade inside the tunnel, and as Brown dove back from where he came, the blinding flash made me blink and drop my head. I gasped as the explosion tore through the tunnel ahead, my ears ringing loudly, the shattering rock and streaming sand barely discernible as debris pelted us and Ramirez and Hume kept firing to the rear.
I lifted my head, my face already covered in dust, the beam of the penlight thick with more dust as the ground reverberated a second time… and then Brown once more hollered, “Cave-in! Get back! Cave-in!”
FIFTEEN
I’d read some accounts of Marines and other Special Forces operators who’d dropped into Afghanistan just after 9/11. They’d discussed how difficult it was to flush the enemy out of the labyrinth of caves and tunnels that lay along the border with Pakistan. One Special Forces operator from the storied group known as “Triple Nickel” had described the tunnels as “great intestines of stone” that were, in fact, “part of the innards of some ancient warrior who’d died millennia ago.”
That was damned poetic. I would describe them as damp, dark holes that made perfect burial grounds, like the catacombs of Europe. They smelled and foretold of death and were the setting of many of my nightmares.
Ramirez ceased fire, reached out, grabbed something, threw it. I realized those fools behind us had tossed in another grenade. I didn’t know where Ramirez got his reflexes, but I wasn’t complaining.
“Get down!” I screamed, but my order was lost in the second explosion, this one much louder, the debris striking more fiercely as up ahead, a flurry of gunfire also vied for my attention. Smith, Brown, and Hume were advancing toward the intersecting tunnel where the explosion had occurred, and they were engaging more troops.
The air grew thicker as the ceiling collapsed and heavy rocks and earth poured in from above. Ramirez rose and began running back as pieces of the ceiling the size of truck tires came down and split apart across the floor. The stench of the explosives and the choking dust had me coughing, along with the others, and my eyes burned as I turned forward and called, “Brown? Brown?”
I couldn’t hear myself screaming through the echo of the explosion. I finally staggered to my feet, and, dragging a gloved hand along the wall for balance, I moved forward to find Brown, Hume, and Smith about four meters down the intersecting tunnel to my right. A wall of rocks and sand blocked the entire path, and the guys were covering their faces and letting their penlights play over the obstruction.
“Where the hell’s Warris?” I asked, swinging around.
Brown shook his head.
“What?” I cried, growing even more tense. “Is he dead?”
“I don’t know. He was on the other side when the grenade went off.”
I got on the radio, tried to call him, nothing. “Wait,” called Smith, pressing his ear against the rock while Ramirez and Nolan approached to cover us.
“I hear something,” Smith added. “Sounds like him! He’s calling for help.”
“Are you sure?” I asked.
“Yeah, I’m sure.”
“All right, start digging,” I said.
“We’ll cover the back tunnel,” said Ramirez, waving Nolan after him.
“Do it,” I said.
“Bad night,” said Brown, grabbing the first large rock he could find and groaning as he lifted and threw it aside. “Very bad night.”
“We’ll be here for hours,” said Smith. “And they’re probably massing for us outside.”
“We’ll need backup,” Brown said.
“You guys are right,” I said. “Go back down there, tell that private we need a digging team out here and two rifle squads. Then get right back.”
As they were about to leave, Ramirez and Nolan opened fire on the tunnel ahead, and I remembered only then that all other exits had been blocked by the caveins. There was only one way out.
Brown realized it as well and said, “Guess, we ain’t going anywhere… yet!”
“All right, everybody, mask up!” I said. I didn’t like it, especially within the confines of the tunnel, but the Taliban guys were ready f
or us, so we had no choice. I fished out a couple of CS gas canisters and let them fly down the tunnel.
We waited as the gas hissed into a thick fog, and then we rushed forward, enveloped in the smoke, Brown and Smith covering our rear, Treehorn and Ramirez up front.
“How deep does this go?” I said aloud, though no one could hear me. We ventured on at least another hundred meters, then turned to our left and saw an opening and the faint stars beyond.
Treehorn and Ramirez moved up front and signaled to me that they’d check it out.
I gave them a thumbs-up and kept back with the others. They reached the opening, a narrow leaf-shaped break in the stone, and shifted warily forward. Both men vanished for a second, then Ramirez ducked back inside and waved us on.
We emerged on the mountainside facing Sangsar, and all the booming from inside the mountain had not gone unnoticed. Lights burned from the houses nearest the wall, and two pickup trucks loaded with Taliban were already bouncing across the desert, en route to us. I ripped off my mask, as did the others, and then said, “There’s got to be another entrance. Warris must be looking for it, too.”
I whirled around, faced the ridgeline, got my bearings, and waved the rest of the team up, toward a cluster of outcroppings that looked promising.
We got there in a hurry — because several Taliban had already reached the ridge just below us and had opened fire. With dirt popping at our knees and making us grimace, we reached a broad wall of stone and ducked behind it. I waved my team on, one after another, and we all huddled behind the rock.
“We got a problem,” said Ramirez. “Even if we find the other entrance, we already know it’s a dead end. And if we all go in there, they could pin us down, drop in some grenades, and that ruins my plans to marry a supermodel.”
“Mine, too,” said Smith with a wink.
“All right, Joey, me and you go up and look for the entrance,” I told Ramirez. “The rest of you set up here along the rocks. See if you can hold them for a just a couple of minutes.”
I rushed forward with Ramirez on my heels. We ascended through a steep passage that reminded me of a vacation I’d taken to go hiking in Sedona, Arizona. Ramirez spotted the tunnel exit before I saw it, and we both came across the top of the next outcropping and headed toward a narrow seam in the rock. We got within ten meters when a Taliban fighter appeared.
Again, Ramirez put his lightning-fast reflexes to work and gunned down the guy before I could blink. We rushed forward now, coming around him, and came up on both sides of the entrance. I looked at him, raised three fingers. On three, two, one—
We rolled away from the wall and rushed inside, him dropping to one knee to shoot low, me on my feet, standing tall to strike high.
And there, standing before us, like a lost puppy, was Warris’s private, the kid who’d driven him up to the mountain. He clutched his pistol and just looked at us, trembling. He had to be just eighteen, and thinking about buying his first shaving kit…
“Dude, what the hell are you doing here?” asked Ramirez.
He lowered his weapon. “I heard the shooting. I came up to help.”
“You had orders to stay there,” I said.
“Didn’t seem like anybody was obeying orders.”
I snickered. “What’s your name?”
“It’s right here on my uniform.”
I ripped off the Velcro-attached name patch and read the word: Hendrickson, then shoved the patch back at him. “All right, junior, you just got promoted to Special Forces. Did you see Captain Warris on your way in here?”
“No, sir.”
I cursed. “But this tunnel cuts through the mountain?”
“It does, sir.”
“Any bad guys in there?”
He almost laughed. “Not when I came through, sir.”
“All right.” I was about to turn back to Ramirez when a series of explosions rocked the mountain, and just a few seconds later the rest of the team came sprinting up toward the entrance.
A breathless Nolan reported, “RPGs. They’re moving in fast. We need to move now! Got twenty or thirty coming up. It’s going to get hairy, boss.”
“Gotcha. Everybody? This is Private Hendrickson. He’s in charge. Where do we go to get out of here, Private?”
The kid looked around and nearly passed out from the weight I’d just dumped on his shoulders. After blinking hard he finally said, “Follow me.”
We dropped in behind him, as the shouts of the Taliban rose behind us. Ramirez set two more CS canisters just outside the entrance to delay them, while Brown and Smith hung back to plant a small amount of C-4 on a remote detonator, which they confirmed still worked.
Once they rejoined us about fifty meters down the tunnel, they detonated the charges. Twin thunderclaps shook the walls around us, and I imagined a cave-in that would help in our escape.
We came around another long curve and reached an intersecting tunnel. “You go down there?” I asked Ghost Leader Hendrickson.
“No, sir.”
“Ramirez?” I called. “The rest of you hold here.”
We hustled down the intersecting tunnel, which grew so narrow at one point that we had to turn sideways just to pass through. Then it opened back up and filtered into a broad chamber. To our left was a pile of rocks and dirt — the cave-in where Warris had been. We were on the other side now. No sign of him. My light played over the floor. Nothing. No evidence.
“Well, he ain’t here,” groaned Ramirez.
I tried calling Warris on the radio again. No answer.
Consequently, I stood there, wiping dirt off my nose and cheeks. “How am I going to explain this shit?”
“When we get out, we need to get on the same page,” Ramirez said. “And we need to buy the kid.”
“What’re you talking about?”
“He overheard everything. He’s a problem.”
“Whoa, Joey.”
“Scott, Harruck wants to burn you. Warris is MIA. This is way out of control.”
“I know. Let’s just get out of here, then we’ll talk to the kid.”
“All right, but what happens if he decides to burn us, too?”
“We’re not going to do anything to him. Don’t even imply that, all right?”
“If you say so…”
We returned to the intersection, where Treehorn told me he’d heard voices from the tunnel behind us. The C-4 had not sealed up the tunnel, damn it. The Taliban were climbing over the debris and coming.
“Get some more ready,” I told him. “We’ll blow the exit.”
The group charged forward, with the kid leading the way. He burst through the exit and quickly turned left, coming along a very steep ridge, where he almost lost his balance and tumbled down the mountainside. For a dark moment, I wished he had.
Treehorn and Brown planted the charges. We rushed along the ridge and ducked behind a jagged section of rock that shielded us up to our shoulders.
“Just wait for the first guy because you know the rest are right behind him,” I said.
Too late. Three guys came bursting out of the entrance, and while Ramirez and Nolan took them out, Brown triggered the explosives. A chute of rock-filled smoke lifted as the deep boom resounded, the vibration working its way into my boots.
“Aw, hell,” said Smith, pointing up at the ridge lines high above the cave.
At least twenty or more fighters had already cleared the summit and were coming down. They obviously knew a shortcut to get up there, and as they ascended they opened fire on us, the incoming dropping like hail and forcing us tight against the rocks.
About fifteen meters to my left were Ramirez and the kid, huddled against the rock. And I’ll never forget how it all looked—
The silhouettes of my two men as Ramirez popped up from behind cover and cut loose with two salvos from his own AK-47…
The lightning-bug flashes of muzzles drawing a jagged line across the mountain…
And the next moment, as I blinked
and looked again at Ramirez, who pulled back from the rock, fired up at the Taliban again, then turned his rifle on Private Hendrickson.
My mouth opened.
I thought for a second that Ramirez had seen me. Everyone else was engaging the enemy now, complete chaos all around us, with only me, the conscience of our team, shouldering the stone and watching as Ramirez pulled the trigger and put three rounds in the private’s back, dropping him instantly.
He immediately huddled to the rock and screamed, “He’s hit! Hendrickson is down! Nolan! I need a medic! Medic right now!”
I dodged over to Ramirez’s position and rolled the kid onto his side. He didn’t move. I checked for a carotid pulse. No, he was dead.
“I’m sorry. I tried to cover him.”
I was beginning to lose my breath.
My men were fiercely loyal, all right.
Agonizingly loyal.
Another spate of incoming drove both of us to the rock, and Ramirez faced me with a blank stare.
SIXTEEN
I thought I knew everything about Master Sergeant Joe Ramirez. His parents had emigrated from Mexico and had held fast to the old ways. They’d raised him in North Hollywood, California, and had kept him on the straight and narrow path. He was a devout Catholic, an altar boy, a Boy Scout.
In his teenaged years he’d become a computer hacker and had almost gotten busted for identity theft, but he’d been taken under the wing of a detective who’d persuaded him to join the Army. His older brother Enrique had enlisted, and I’d met him — nice guy, quiet demeanor, and a good soldier, as reported by many of his superiors. Ramirez followed in his footsteps.
It wasn’t long before he was tapped for Special Forces, and he now had more experience in Afghanistan than any of us. Two tours as an Army Ranger plus some shorter ops. Old man Gordon had handpicked the kid himself to become a member of the Ghosts, and Ramirez had done a great job when I’d taken him to Waziristan and, later on, into China. He was one of the most levelheaded guys I’d ever served with and the last person on earth I’d thought capable of murder. He was the epitome of an outstanding soldier.