by Tom Clancy
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.
TWENTY-SEVEN
I charged after the guy who’d sprinted away, my heart drumming in my ears. The tunnel curved abruptly to the left and then made an abrupt right turn. The guy reached a ladder at the tunnel’s dead end and started up it. I shot him before he made it halfway, and he came down with a heavy thud, shaking and raising his hands in surrender. Under different circumstances, I might have taken him prisoner. Instead, I shot him again, then swung around, saw the lantern lighting the path in one corner and more stacks of opium, along with crates and boxes of ammunition.
Someone shouted a name, then asked, “Where are you?” in Pashto.
I stole a quick breath, glanced up.
There, framed by the hole in the ceiling, was a man leaning down, his bearded face glowing in the lantern. I gritted my teeth and shot him, too, in the face. He came tumbling down and crashed onto the first guy. He was older, gray beard, his body trembling, nerves misfiring.
Still riding the massive wave of adrenaline, I mounted the ladder, which I guessed led into another chamber. I was about to reach the top and turn around when someone rushed into the tunnel below, startling the hell out of me.
“Boss!” Brown whispered.
I came down two rungs, my heart palpitating. Brown was waving at me to come back, his teeth bared.
“What?”
He mouthed the words: We found him!
During my first tour in country, my team captured an Afghan policeman who’d been working secretly as an interrogator for the Taliban. He shared with us the orders from his boss: “I want you to torture them with methods so horrible that their cries of agony will scare even the birds from their nests, and if any one of them survives, he will never again have a night’s sleep.”
This guy described in vivid detail the creative methods he and his comrades employed to slowly and systematically kill their prisoners. The generous use of electricity, insects, water, and clubs would’ve made even the most iron-stomached soldier grimace as he listened to the tales.
Consequently, when we found Warris, my imagination had already run wild…
But I’d forgotten they wanted him in good condition. They still wanted to negotiate, and I’m sure Zahed was heavily influenced by the company he kept, otherwise Warris would have been much closer to death. I took one look past the planks, and in the tiny shaft of light created by Brown, I grimaced tightly.
Warris was sitting naked in a foot-high pool of water, urine, and feces. He’d been gagged, his hands cuffed behind his back, and when he saw us, saw me remove my shemagh, his eyes lit with recognition. He struggled to his feet and began crying. His face was bruised and battered, but otherwise he had all his appendages and could still move.
I’d never seen a soldier, especially one from my own unit, look as helpless and pathetic, and I suddenly didn’t care what he said about me — politics and bullshit be damned. We were going to get him out of there, out of tunnels, out of that godforsaken country.
We’d brought about fifty feet of paracord in one of the packs, but we didn’t need it. Hume rushed back to fetch the ladder. The hole was about nine feet deep, the ladder about seven feet long, so we’d get him out the easier way. With Hume standing guard, Brown and I lowered ourselves down the ladder, and I descended to the bottom rung, just above the cesspool. I could barely look at Warris. “It’s all right, buddy. We’re getting you out of here.”
I removed his gag, and he swallowed and said, “Thank you.” He began crying again. “I won’t forget this.”
“Don’t worry about it.”
“But Scott, I can’t lie about it… about what happened. I can’t live with myself if I do that…”
My tone hardened. “You know what I think? I think that if I save your ass right now, and you still turn me in, that’ll be harder to live with than just lying. And really, all you have to do is keep your mouth shut. That’s it. You think about that…”
He bit his lip, then suddenly nodded.
“Can you climb?”
“I think so.”
“Then let’s move.”
They’d used a pair of our plastic zipper cuffs, and, with a penlight in my mouth, I carefully sawed through them. With that done, I started up the ladder, and he ascended behind me. I ordered Hume to go fetch some clothes from one of the guys we’d killed, along with an extra shirt to use as rag. God, we needed to wipe him off. He reeked. Hume hurried away, and once we pulled Warris out, he backhanded the tears from his eyes and said, “I’ve been down there most of the time. They cleaned me up to make the videos. I’ve barely had anything to eat or drink. I’m dying.”
“Easy, we’ll get you something,” whispered Brown. “They got MREs down here.”
Within two minutes, Hume came dashing back with the clothes and a concerned look. “I heard some crying up there,” he began, cocking a thumb over his shoulder. “You know what I’m thinking…”
“Give me that goddamned ladder,” I barked.
“Captain, do we really have time for this?” asked Brown.
“Indulge me for three minutes,” I said. “While you clean him up and get him dressed.”
I dragged the ladder back up to the next hole in the ceiling, ascended, and stepped into another chamber with more boxes of MREs. A narrow tunnel led to a second, even wider area where a few lanterns burned brightly.
My mouth must’ve fallen open.
Girls ranging in age from perhaps twelve or thirteen up to seventeen or eighteen were dressed in tattered clothes, bound and gagged, and sitting along the wall, a few sleeping, others staring blankly at me, and a few more crying through their gags.
At the far end of the room was a sleeping area piled high with pillows and blankets, and I shuddered as I imagined what went on there. Zahed would, of course, deny any wrongdoing; he could blame it all on his men, argue that in some respects he did not have control over them. And, of course, he’d be lying. He allowed this to go on, and in doing so, created a nightmare for the parents of these poor girls.
I caught a blur of movement from the corner of my eye, and then from a tunnel exit near the back came another fighter. I raised my silenced pistol and put two rounds in his heart. I wanted to put fifty.
I whirled back, lowered my shemagh, and in Pashto said to the girls, “I will help you.”
One girl in particular fought more violently against her binding and gag. As I crossed to her, she began to look familiar, and then, with a start, I knew she was Shilmani’s daughter, Hila. I heard him screaming again, “They took my daughter!”
They’d tied up the girls with cheap nylon rope and gagged them with scarves. I untied Hila’
s gag, and she moved her mouth, licked her lips, and began to speak in a rapid fire that I didn’t understand.
“It’s okay…” I said in a soothing tone.
She surprised me. “Thank you. I… what they did… I cannot see my family again…”
“You speak English?”
“My father taught me.”
I grinned weakly in understanding. “Okay. That helps. All I know is, we’re going to get you out of here. All of you. Do you understand?”
“Yes.”
“Can you tell them for me?”
She nodded. I finished cutting her arms and legs free. She stood and spoke rapidly to the girls, who all began nodding. Brown came rushing into the chamber, took one look at the girls, at me, and said, “Jesus Christ.”
“We’re getting them out.”
“Are you kidding me?”
“Nope.”
“Aw, this has really gone to hell! We came here for Zahed, and we’re going home with them!”
Hila turned back to face me. “You came here for Zahed?”
I leaned over and nodded slowly.
She glanced away, a pained look coming over her face. “He is very bad man.”
“Yes, he is.”
She pursed her lips, glanced back at the girls, as if thinking it over, then said, “I know where he is…”
All the intelligence assets of the U.S. government had been unable to locate the fat man, in part because the intelligence they gathered was being corrupted by Bronco and his associates. Nevertheless, I would never, for the life of me, bet that the location of my target would be spoonfed to me by a teenaged girl who’d been taken prisoner.
When I reflect and calculate the odds of what had happened, how I’d met Shilmani, how Hila had come to recognize me, what had happened to her and how she’d come to learn where Zahed was located, I could only blame fate.
Or the merciless universe.
Because if I hadn’t listened to her, if I’d just dragged them out of the cave and gotten out of there, I would’ve only had to deal with keeping Warris quiet—
And not the rest of it.
“Help me cut ’em free,” I told Brown. “Come on, come on.”
The words escaped my lips, and not two seconds later, the chamber quaked and dust fell from the ceiling.
“What the hell?” Brown gasped.
“Captain!” cried Hume. “I hear gunfire coming from somewhere outside! And mortars!”
“We have to move now, Scott!” added Warris.
“We’re coming! We’ve got some girls up here. They’re coming down. We’re getting them out!”
As Brown freed the girls, Hila told them where to go, and one by one they took off running.
“They made us drink wine,” she told me as I cut another girl free. “They made us do things.”
“I know. It’s okay.”
“No, it’s not okay. I am filthy. I am not a woman anymore. I am a dog.”
I looked at her, grabbed her hand. “You’re not a dog.”
“But I can never go home.”
She started removing the gags from the remaining girls and reassuring them, while the guys kept screaming for me to come. The final two girls dashed off.
“All right, get them and Warris out of here. Ramirez and the rest of Bravo should be waiting for you,” I told Brown.
“What about you?”
I lifted my chin to Hila. “She knows where Zahed is.”
“Boss, what if she’s wrong?”
I widened my gaze on Hila. “Are you sure?”
She gave an exaggerated nod. “I hate him. He was the first one to have me. I know where he is.”
“Oh my God,” Brown muttered under his breath.
“I’m going with her.”
“Not alone,” said Brown. “You fight with your buddy.”
I shoved my silenced pistol into Hila’s hand. “That’s right. She’s my buddy.”
She looked at me, scared, the weight of the pistol causing her shoulder to droop.
“You’re crazy,” said Brown. “This is crazy!”
“Just listen to me, Marcus. I need you to protect Warris. I need you to get him out. I’m worried about Joey, you know that.”
“I know, boss. I won’t let Joey do anything stupid.”
“Good. ’Cause I’m betting Warris won’t talk.”
“Me, too. He owes us. Big-time.”
“All right, so when you get out, contact Gordon. Tell them to track my chip. You’ll know where I am.”
“Will do.” He thrust out his hand. “See you soon, you crazy mofo.”
I gave him a firm handshake. “Thank you, Marcus.”
Then I turned to Hila. “Which way?”
My father raised three sons and a daughter, and my sister Jenn was unquestionably Daddy’s little girl. The old man was a hardcore disciplinarian with us boys, but my sister could get away with bloody murder. As a kid I could never understand his leniency toward her and was entirely jealous of it. As I got older, I didn’t begrudge my sister anymore. In fact, it took my entire life for me to realize that Dad was a cynic who simply needed my sister to remind him of all the beauty still left in the world.
I wondered if Shilmani had felt likewise about Hila. As she led me through the next tunnel, I wondered if he’d be able to look Hila in the eye after what had happened to her. I knew the culture. I knew what happened to girls like her. But I didn’t want to believe that.
She held up my pistol, and I had my rifle at the ready now, with the penlight attached. She led me down two more tunnels, and we descended yet another ladder into a small room with crates piled to the ceiling.
“Guns,” was all she said.
“So you came through here?” I asked.
She frowned a moment, then realized what I was asking. “Yes, yes.”
“Zahed is here? In the mountain?”
She stopped and shook her head.
“No?”
“No.”
“Then where is he?”
“He is in Sangsar.”
My mouth fell open. “Aw, no. That’s no good. What do you think we’re going to do? Walk right down this mountain and into the village?”
I guess I had spoken too fast. She frowned in thought, then finally said, “No, no. We don’t walk. We’ll run.” She tugged my arm, but I stopped dead.
“We can’t go to Sangsar.”
“Yes, we’ll go!”
“How?”
She made a gesture with her hand. “Under…”
“You mean there’s a tunnel that leads all the way there?”
She beamed at me.
While I was heading off to Sangsar, Brown, Hume, and Warris, along with the group of girls, were rushing back through the tunnels, following the beacons we’d left. The guys were not happy with my decision to free the girls and attempt to save them, but they obeyed orders and later told me they would’ve done the same thing. It was sickening to realize what’d been happening in there.
Warris had told them that my decision to search for Zahed alone was foolish and indicative of my poor judgment. Brown had told him that saving his sorry ass was also indicative of my poor judgment. I liked that.
As Hila and I kept moving, I reminded myself that no, you could not generalize and say that all Taliban liked to rape young girls, but we could definitively state that Zahed’s men had taken it upon themselves to establish a terrible prison for them. The acts were inexcusable and when I looked at Hila, even for just a second, I wanted to kill Zahed more than anything. He was, in my mind, the symbol for all that was wrong with the country, all that was wrong with the war. And my hatred burned hotter as she dragged me by the wrist and led me down the next tunnel.
The emotions were all over the place at that moment. I felt as though I’d been chasing the fat man all my life, and soon there’d finally be closure, but then I worried for Hila and imagined my own death, the gunshot to my heart, the throbbing pain, the blood seeping into my lungs.
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The passageways grew shorter, each ending abruptly with another ladder that we took down, always down, and it was clear we were descending the mountain from the inside. A lantern lit the passage at each ladder, and we encountered no resistance. I grew more at ease—
Until at the end of the next passage we spotted a man coming up a ladder.
Hila fired at him first, the kickback of the pistol startling her. She hit him in the shoulder with the first round, but the second went over his head and ricocheted off the wall.
I put two rounds in his chest, and he fell backward off the ladder. I ran over there, checked below. No other movement. Thankfully, he’d been alone.
It wasn’t until I started back that I felt the pain in my arm and stopped, directed a second light down, and saw that I’d been hit, probably from that ricocheting round.
She saw it, too, and started crying and pointing to herself, as if to say, It’s my fault.
“It’s okay,” I said. “Just caught me a little. See? In and out?”
I reached into my back pocket, where I kept a small plastic bag filled with antiseptic wipes and bandages. I handed the kit to her. “Fix me up. Quick,” I said.
She nodded and got to work, applying the antiseptic and the bandage. The wound looked worse than it was, but it still hurt like a mother. When she was finished, I thanked her and she grabbed me by the other arm. “This way.”
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.