by Jack Du Brul
Booker nodded. “As long as all you geologist types have childish senses of humor.”
“We do. That’s our spot.”
Sykes told Ahmad, and the pilot scouted the ground for a suitable place to let them off. They got lucky in that there was a flatland on top of a mountain not four miles from the site Mercer selected. He flew them there after Booker programmed their new destination into the GPS.
Ahmad approached the LZ like he was going to buzz right past it and only flared the chopper at the last second, reining it back like a horse so that it was almost standing on its tail rotor before leveling it out a foot off the ground and at zero indicated airspeed. It was a masterful tactical maneuver, and the men didn’t waste it by congratulating him. Mercer felt like he was being borne by a massive crowd as the men poured from the back of the Mil in a rush to get clear. Seconds later, the lightened chopper sped off again, emerging from a filthy cloud of rotor wash and climbing hard.
When the dust cleared, the four operators were prone on the ground, ringing the LZ and watching the valleys and nearby peaks for any sign their landing had drawn attention. Mercer also stayed put and waited for Sykes to give him the all clear. The whop whop of the receding helicopter faded to silence before the former Delta commando was satisfied they were alone.
Though confident they were secure, the men never stood to outline themselves against the sky as they moved off the flatland and down the crumbly side of the hill. These mountains were among the most seismically active in the world, so that nothing on the surface appeared to have been exposed enough to weather much. All the stones were hard-edged and flinty, like natural knives that would shred unprotected skin without mercy. Apart from all the other gear Booker Sykes had loaned him, Mercer was thankful for the Kevlar combat gloves. He kept his sidearm holstered, but Sykes and the others swept the terrain with the barrels of their weapons in constant arcs that seemingly missed nothing. Sykes took the lead with the others strung out behind him at fifteen-yard intervals. They would bunch up or spread out as the terrain demanded.
For the first part of the trip off the mountain, their descent was a barely controlled slide. The loose rock shifted under their boots, releasing miniature avalanches with every step. It was only when they hit against a larger rock buried in the scree that they could gain some sense of influence over their movement.
But they did not head straight to the valley floor; that was tactical suicide in Afghanistan. They found an old game trail midway down the hill and started moving parallel to the crest and now heading toward their destination. The air remained cold and damp, almost thick enough to be considered a drizzling mist but not quite. It wasn’t even enough to dampen clothes yet, but it didn’t bode well for what might come.
The one trail petered out, forcing them to move along loose rock again, exposed to the opposite side of the valley and anyone with a sniper rifle. The terrain across the valley looked as forlorn and barren as where they were walking. However, Mercer knew a good sniper could dig into almost any background and remain hidden for days. Mercer asked himself if he felt eyes on him, and honestly he wasn’t sure. He walked a little quicker and stooped a little lower.
It took a careful hour to move to within a mile of their target. Sykes called a break and ordered their sniper, Sleep, up to higher ground to get a better look. Mercer scarfed down some more painkillers and water. He was panting hard in the thin air but didn’t feel himself succumbing to altitude sickness. His vision was acute, his head felt fine, and he had no nausea. He felt better, in fact, than on a Saturday morning following a night out at Tiny’s with Harry.
The sniper returned fifteen minutes later. The men hunkered down in the protection of a small grove of stunted pines that clung to the rocks at the very terminus of the timberline.
“The target valley is still a ways off,” Sleep said, the butt of his long gun resting on his thigh. “But we might have a problem. I heard bells.”
Grump cursed.
“What’s that mean?” Mercer asked, though he had a good idea.
“Goats,” Sleep said. “Locals put all kinds of shit on their goats, including bells.”
“And lipstick,” Sneeze joked, “don’t forget lipstick.”
“Direct approach is out,” Sykes decided, guessing the goats, and their human minders, would stay down in the valleys where there was more vegetation. “We’ll keep to the hills and circle around to the head of the valley. That’s our target anyway.”
It took another long hour, moving slowly, always scouting ahead and straining their senses to perceive anything out of the ordinary in the gathering storm. They heard nothing resembling goat bells and collectively decided that the danger was passed. A new problem was approaching; the clouds that were rolling in were black and heavy with rain. If they let loose before the mission was over, Ahmad might not make it back until the storm dissipated, and no one relished the idea of a night spent out in the open.
Mercer pulled his headscarf tighter to keep out the dribbling rain. He had started a slight cough in the past twenty minutes, nothing more than a deep tickle that he could mostly suppress, but the first time one escaped his lips Sykes had looked at him sharply. They both knew what that single inexorable exhalation portended. He also had to admit that the Tylenol was doing little for the pressure building in his head and behind his sinuses.
He was breathing far harder than the others, a fast pant like a dog in the summer heat.
“Slow it, man,” Grumpy said. “Force yourself to take slow, even breaths. That’s it. Nice and deep. Give your lungs time to absorb the oxygen you’ve already taken in rather than suck in O2 that ain’t there.”
A few seconds later, Mercer felt the pressure under his diaphragm ease and the rope tightening around his skull unknot. “Thanks,” he said, feeling a bit more human.
“It ain’t nothing, bro.”
They continued on. Their target valley started wide and then narrowed and steepened, so that sheer cliffs lined its two-hundred-yard width. From what Mercer had seen from the chopper, it would widen out into a circular bowl near where he saw the cleft that looked like human buttocks. If he were to guess, he would assume local shepherds used the protective bowl when the weather turned foul to shelter themselves and their animals. So far there had been no ringing of bells or scent of a watch fire in the misty air, but Mercer had to admit that the strain of being constantly alert for such signs was exhausting. The fighters protecting him could go for days on extended combat patrols, but he was nearly spent after a couple of hours. He had always admired Sykes and men like him, but this experience was boosting his admiration to a new level.
The darkest of the clouds rolled past without shedding their store of rain. Mercer’s woolen outer smock, though heavy with accumulated dew, had kept him warm and dry as such garments had done for hundreds of years in these rugged mountains. They reached the head of the canyon. From here the cliffs were sheer and virtually featureless. Only occasional tufts of grass found a crag in which to root, and there were but a few spots where birds had nested and permanently streaked the stone with their droppings.
Mercer and Sykes hid behind a slab of stone that had sheared off a cliff aeons ago while the men covered them, both studying the ground below for any sign of a cave that Michael Dillman had dubbed the anus of the world. The molded contours of the mountain at the valley’s head and the long vertical crease that ran down it looked even more like a butt now that they were closer. It was flattened somewhat, and a little shaggy with grasses, so Mercer thought of it as a guy’s ass rather than the shapely curve of a woman’s. And just where it would be anatomically on a human, there was a darkened cave entrance where the two lobes of stone met and doubtless inspired Michael Dillman’s anatomical reference.
“I’ll be damned,” Sykes said when he spotted the six-foot-wide cave entrance. He whispered to Mercer, “What now, we put you in a big body glove and lube you up?”
“You are no longer allowed to comment on my sens
e of humor.”
Because of the cave’s height, thirty feet above the valley floor, and the way the cliffs curved, Mercer would not be able to free climb up to it. Also he had to admit that in the thin air he probably didn’t have the strength. There was a flat plateau about fifty feet above and to the right of the cave entrance, and it looked like an easy march up a goat trail to reach it. From there he could rappel down and spider crawl to the cave mouth while the others provided cover. He told Sykes his plan, and after a few minutes studying the terrain through binoculars the former Delta officer agreed.
The trail was just wide enough for them to place one foot in front of the other and walk with their shoulders torqued around, but the grade was manageable and soon the men were eighty feet up the two-hundred-foot cliff face and on the shelf Mercer had seen from the ground. A chunk of stone the size of an automobile engine had broken off the cliff and made a perfect belay point for the safety rope Mercer would pay out as he climbed across to the cavern.
Sykes and Sleep helped with the line while Grump surveyed the entire scene through his sniper scope, and Sneeze did the same over his M-4A1’s optics. There was some passable cover behind other chunks of rock that had dislodged and settled on the shelf over the years, but this was still an exposed position and countersniper procedures were necessary.
While Booker tied off the line, Mercer shucked his pack and quickly hauled out the extra ammo, spare canteen, MREs, and other gear so all he would carry in it for the climb were the rock hammer, the short pry bar, sample bags, and a flashlight.
“I don’t like it here,” Sykes said, giving the rope a final, brutal pull. “Get over there, do your thing, and get your ass back. We are way too exposed for my taste. Got it?”
“What is it you guys say? Hooah,” Mercer replied.
“Hooah,” Sykes called back softly, and Mercer climbed over the makeshift barricade and started down the rock face.
The strain on his arms and legs immediately made him want to cough, but he suppressed the urge and concentrated on his tenuous grip on the stone. It was ice cold and greasy from the rain turning a coating of dust into something as viscous as pond slime. The climb also put added pressure on his abdominal muscles, which were toned into hard bands, but when they tightened on his stomach, it brought the first wave of altitude-induced nausea. The men above kept the rope from getting in his way as he crawled down, and also across the right cheek of the buttocks-shaped formation. The mountain was very young in geologic terms and erosion hadn’t yet smoothed out the face, which provided plenty of hand- and footholds, but still he was racing his own body’s negative reaction to being this high up in the oxygen-depleted air.
As part of his mine rescue work, Mercer was an accomplished climber, even if he never saw it as a thrill sport. He moved surely and steadily, his technique flawless in execution and adherence to safety protocols. His fingers were cold but not yet cramping, and only once did the toe of his boot slip from a knuckle-size projection when he asked it to take his weight. Because of the rock face’s outward curve, he could not see the ground directly below him, which wasn’t a problem, but when the wind picked up, whipping around the horseshoe-shaped valley head, Mercer felt a small stab of concern. It came around so fast that it got between him and the stone and tried to peel him off the mountain with surprising force. He had to tighten his hands into claws and curl his toes to keep a precarious grip on the rock, attempting to press his body back against the face while Mother Nature tried to send him tumbling into the void.
Fighting for every millimeter, Mercer was able to mash himself to the rock in a lover’s embrace. He suddenly gave in to his body’s need, and he coughed so deeply it almost felt like he’d torn tissue. He spat some watery saliva, but it wasn’t stained with blood. That would likely come later.
The wind dropped a minute later and he kept going, ever downward and moving to his left, approaching the cave entrance with each step. Because it was so high off the valley floor it wouldn’t be home to any predators; snow leopards, though rare, still haunted these forsaken mountains, and they were high enough in elevation that bats wouldn’t likely call it home, but there were some large bird species that hunted the Hindu Kush, and Mercer wasn’t keen on encountering one bursting out of the cave as he tried to enter.
He was still five feet above and ten feet to the right of the cave when he paused, pulled a handful of pebbles he’d collected just prior to the climb, and threw them at the shadowy cave entrance. Several pattered down the face of the cliff, but enough found their mark that had a vulture or eagle or other raptor been roosting inside, it would have burst out in a riot of feathers and angered cries.
Mercer finished his descent and soon found himself standing at the cave entrance. The floor was littered with the bones of tiny creatures—mice and voles and other ground mammals that were the favored meal of the indigenous birds of prey. Powdered guano also blanketed the floor while more recent streaks splattered the walls. The cavern remained wide and tall for only a short distance into the mountain before the ceiling dropped and the walls narrowed. Mercer unhooked himself from the line, tying it off around a chunk of stone almost as large as the upper anchor point.
Only ten feet in, and he was down to his hands and knees and needing the flashlight to peer into the stygian blackness ahead of him. There was nothing remarkable about the geology; the mountain was granite of poor quality judging by the numerous cracks and fissures. It wasn’t handling the shock load of so much seismic activity, and if he were to guess he’d have to say the cave would most likely collapse in another couple thousand years.
A further twenty feet in, and he was forced to remove his backpack and push it ahead of him and commando crawl. He saw no evidence that anyone other than the raptors had been here before him. The sandy cave floor showed occasional animal tracks, but no telltale human spoor. This didn’t bode well and Mercer started feeling the first pangs of doubt. He had just been guessing that this cave was what Dillman referenced. They could be miles from the actual target. He moved on, forced even flatter by the constricting rock walls and lowering ceiling. No matter how carefully he crawled, he still kicked up a cloud of fine dust particles that made their way deep into his airways and triggered another coughing fit, only this time the surrounding stone seemed to squeeze in on each spasm and redouble the pain in the delicate oxygen-deprived tissues of his lungs. Each cough was like a full body blow, and no matter what he tried he couldn’t seem to catch his breath. Mercer worried that in seconds his hind brain would overwhelm his logic center and blind panic would ensue. He fought to control himself, to calm down and take easy shallow sips of air, to forget the tons of rock pressing in on him, and the tickle at the back of his throat or the coppery taste of blood in his mouth.
Booker and his team were hanging exposed on the side of a mountain in the middle of Taliban country, and they were relying on him to get the mission done as quickly as possible. He took as deep a breath as possible and forced himself to hold it, forced the muscles around his diaphragm to relax. He held on to that breath until his vision pixelated and dimmed so it looked as if his flashlight was dying and he was being left in the pitch darkness of that Afghan cave. He kept at it until he was moments from passing out, and maybe he even did for a second, but then he let it go, nice and easy, no need to panic. When his lungs were empty he took another, normal breath and this time there were no spasms. The air was still filled with dust, and it irritated his nose and throat but it wasn’t getting so deep as to convulse his entire body.
He was sixty feet into the mountain, and the tunnel remained snug but not impassable. He saw no signs that animals ventured this deep. In fact he saw nothing at all except the futility of what he was attempting. Rather than mourn the loss of Abraham Jacobs as a proper friend should, and attend his funeral and swap stories about a great man with others who had loved him, Mercer had turned Abe’s death into a quest, a personal obligation to find those responsible. Here he was, in the bowels of a des
olate mountain in the middle of one of the most dangerous places on Earth, putting his life and the lives of the others in jeopardy because he couldn’t face Abe’s death head-on. As he had so often in the past, Mercer had taken a tangent when faced with one of life’s roadblocks, and this time it had gone too far afield even to try to justify. Mercer realized the tightness in his throat and the burning behind his eyes had nothing to do with the dust.
Feeling as distraught as when he saw Abe’s crumpled body in the Leister Deep Mine, Mercer shifted so he could start sliding back out of the hole. His light swept across the rough wall and something caught his eye—a smudge on the wall at the very limit of its glow. Unsure about anything, he slithered forward and saw what looked like letters painted onto the wall, as crudely as if they were drawn by a child. It was the black crustiness of the medium that made him realize they had been drawn with human blood.
They read: MD.
14
Michael Dillman. It had to be. Mercer scanned the ceiling of the cave just a few inches over his head, and he saw the rock protrusion where Dillman had hit and subsequently split open his scalp.
Mercer’s doubts evaporated, and he knew now more than ever that he was on the right path—not just the physical trail of the lightning stones, but also the goal of avenging Abe Jacobs. Mercer needed this wrong to be righted. Someone had murdered his friend, possibly for what was to be found in this cave, and Mercer owed it to him to see this through, no matter where it ended and what it cost.
He moved now with renewed vigor, the near hypoxia he’d been experiencing almost forgotten as adrenaline saturated his blood. Mercer squeezed deeper into the tunnel-like passage, forcing his body through the constricted space and allowing his cave training to take over. Fifteen feet farther, and the walls and roof suddenly opened into a chamber about the size of a small bedroom. The ceiling wasn’t quite the standard eight feet, more like six for the most part, but in one corner it had collapsed into a pile of loose stones with a hole above it. No light made it down from the surface, but Mercer could feel air being drawn up through the ceiling as if from a chimney. It was cold enough for him to see his breath.