by John Renehan
The bombardment of Vega continued for fourteen hours, deep into the night.
—
“Doing some rule-breaking again, there, sir?”
He offered the pack of smokes. They took. He checked his watch, which read 0212. He’d taken four minutes to get from his room to the roof.
It was quiet again. The sky was crystal-clear black and shining with stars. There was no fog in the Valley tonight.
Everyone lit up.
“How’s your investigation going, sir?” asked the first soldier.
Black shrugged noncommittally.
“No one wants to talk.”
“Huh,” the soldier said.
He inhaled and doused the butt of the machine gun in smoke.
“That’s weird, sir.”
“How come?”
“Well, I mean, just talking to you, you just sort of seem like the kind of person dudes would normally trust to talk to, sir.”
“Oh.”
The soldier took another long one.
“Like the kind of person dudes would wanna confess all their sins to.”
A breeze blew through the window. Black noticed for the first time that without the fog to blanket the sound, he could just hear the river way down below. It must have been moving pretty good in that stretch.
He didn’t like the sound. Didn’t like the feeling of it being so close to where he slept.
They smoked for a while in silence.
“You’re lost in thought, L.T.”
He startled. The first soldier was looking at him.
Black cleared his throat.
Don’t push it.
“Was just thinking about what it must’ve been like.”
“What what must’ve been like, sir?”
“When you first came,” Black said idly. “I heard it was like this when you guys first took this place.”
“Like what?” asked the soldier. “Clear?”
“No. Quiet. Like they just abandoned it and you guys just took it over and set up shop.”
The soldier’s brow furrowed.
“Who told you that, sir?”
Black hesitated.
“Nobody. Dude back at the FOB.”
“Yeah, well, that dude’s fucked, sir.”
The soldier sent a ribbon of smoke out the side of his mouth. “It most definitely was not abandoned.”
“What happened?”
“When the first squad came up here, that fucking chief was waiting for them with his boys and they were locked and loaded. Knock-down drag-out. But they killed his ass. They took the house and held it for, like, two weeks until they brought assets up here and built this place.”
Black nodded.
Maybe not.
He smoked for a minute before noticing something in what the soldier had said.
“Chief?” he asked.
“Yeah,” said the soldier. “The drug chief guy.”
“I thought it was the new Taliban governor or whoever up here.”
“No, it was the fucking local drug lord guy. Kingpin and shit.”
“You sure?”
“What I’m sayin’, sir.”
“Huh,” Black said noncommittally.
“That’s why he fought so hard,” the soldier said. “All the fricken’ dope he had up here.”
“Heroin?”
“Hells yeah, sir. Like, thirty bricks in the house. A Taliban woulda burned that shit in a heartbeat.”
“What’d you guys do with it?”
“Burned it!” the soldier exclaimed, laughing. “Ironic, right, sir? Allies with the Taliban.”
“Right.”
“Like we said. Welcome to the Valley, sir.”
Black smiled.
“You guys were both here then?”
“No way,” said the soldier. “There’s hardly anybody from those dudes left here. Me and Bosch’ve been here, what, seven months? That all’s just how we heard it.”
“Heard it from who?”
“Sergeant Merrick.”
Black took a pull on the cigarette and sent a cloud out the window. He stared out the window a full minute before speaking.
“What,” he asked the joes, “do you guys think of Sergeant Merrick?”
Bosch spoke up for the first time.
“What the fuck do you mean by that, sir?”
Black finished his smoke and left, out across the planks to the stairwell. He paused, just below the roofline, listening. Then he continued on down, past Oswalt’s wall hootch. It was pitch-dark inside.
“Evening, sir,” came the voice from behind the curtain.
Black jumped and nearly tripped on the stairs.
“Evening, Oswalt.”
“Watch your step, sir.”
“Roger that,” Black said over his shoulder and kept walking.
He had been careful going up, and now he was careful going down. He did not want to encounter anyone.
He had sat alone in Lieutenant Pistone’s room for fourteen hours, through the periodic thump of mortar and rocket fire and the constant hail of bullets, coming in and going out. He was smart enough to know not to go running around the outpost trying to help. To know that as long as their attackers, whoever they were, were firing on the place from up in the hillsides and not actually breaching the compound on foot, he needed to stay out of the way and let the soldiers and their sergeants do their jobs.
He did not want to see the wounded, or hear their screams. One had been carried down the hall past his closed door, which was plenty for him.
He had needed to think.
Now he wanted to get back there. Because he knew now that he wasn’t going to be making his paperwork and going home. Knew now that he was an idiot. Knew that he knew nothing except that nothing was going to go right for the next five days.
He stopped at the Porta-Closet near his hootch. By now he had read every entry in the scrawled field of graffiti.
Except he hadn’t. He was about to turn and leave when one caught his eye. It was way down at the bottom, below the others, on one of the few bare patches of wall remaining.
He bent to see more clearly. It was only two words. It was definitely new since before he had left on the patrol to Darreh Sin.
CHUCK
SEES
This time in the dream it was him looking out the window, at himself, clawing up at the ground to get to himself, and failing. A gentle hand came to rest on his shoulder. He shrugged it off as he pawed at the window frame, trying to climb through.
—
Lying on Mother’s roof, Tajumal was confused. Much of this made little sense.
But one thing was clear. It had been the right call, not following the bearded one as he left the American compound before dawn that morning.
I was tempted, Father.
But what could be learned that was not already known? That the man was an American warrior who roamed the valleys trying to turn the peoples against one another, to sow discord and doubt? That was nothing new.
That he came and went from the American compound like a jackal in the night? That he stowed away gear and radios in strange places? No one knew these things but Tajumal.
And I will see to that.
No, the wiser course had been to wait and see what else emerged from the Americans’ base. To rush straight to town afterward, to be waiting for the chief when he woke. To tell him that the real prize approaches.
The chief was a boisterous weakling, unwilling to lead his people to the true faith, to the true guardians of the valley.
Even Qadir, who sucks up to him, can see that. Even Qadir knows where to keep his true loyalties.
It was no surprise that the chief did nothing, that he let the prey escape.
Yet no
w he attacks the Americans at their fortress afterward, all day and all night. There was no reason in this. But there was, at least, an explanation.
You wish it to be me who is your vessel, Father. My fragile form to do your work.
Tajumal was to take the prize. The true devil.
And now I have seen you.
PART THREE
17
Heavy pounding on the door startled him awake.
He sat up in the pitch-dark and pushed the light on his watch. 0812. He’d slept for several hours.
Pounding again. The door rattled against the hasp, slim shafts of light flashing in from the hallway. He stared at it a few moments, reminding himself that he was prepared for this.
His bare feet found the pair of flip-flops on the concrete floor and slid themselves in. He rose from bed in his PT uniform and crossed the black room as the pounding continued. He found the latch with his fingers and cracked the door, which pushed itself the rest of the way open forcefully.
“Where is he?!”
Caine. Shouting.
Black squinted at him, bleary.
“What?”
“What did you do to him!?” Caine cried, agitated.
This was not the person or the question Black was expecting.
“What?” he repeated dumbly.
“Danny!”
Black shook his head to clear it.
“What are you talking about?”
“Where the fuck is Danny?”
“What are you talking about?” he repeated.
“Danny the fucking ’terp! Where is he?”
“You can’t find him?”
“No, we can’t fucking find him! Where is he?”
None of this made sense to Black.
“How would I know? Where’d you see him last?”
“With you!”
“He hasn’t been with me—” he began, then realized what Caine was talking about.
“You mean when we came back from the patrol?” he asked.
“Yeah, when we came back from the patrol!” shouted Caine.
“That was almost twenty-four hours ago!”
“No shit, sir!”
Black wheeled around and crossed to his sneakers, which were sitting, laced, near his ruck on the floor. He grabbed them and began yanking them on over his bare feet, standing on one leg in an inverted trapezoid of light from the hallway.
“What are you doing?”
“I need to see Sergeant Merrick,” Black declared as he jerked the second shoe on. “Where is he?”
“Sir, he’s gonna ask you the same quest—”
“Excuse me,” Black said, pushing past him. He let the door swing shut behind him and stalked off down the hallway, leaving Caine at his doorway calling after him.
He accosted the first soldier he saw and demanded to know where Merrick was. The kid directed him to the chow hall. Black stalked past, weaving his way right and left through the slapdash compound, reeling.
—
Merrick saw Black as he pushed through the door to the chow hall.
“Where’s Danny?” he demanded.
“What do you mean Danny’s gone?” Black demanded simultaneously.
“What?” they both replied at once.
“Where. Is. Danny?” Merrick repeated.
He stood amidst a gaggle of soldiers, where he’d been giving his morning instructions again.
“I don’t know where he is!” Black shot back. “Is it true that no one’s seen him since we came back from the patrol?”
“No one but you, Lieutenant.”
“I didn’t see him!”
“Actually, sir, you said you saw him off barfing someplace, so if you’d tell us where that is we’d really appreciate it.”
“I didn’t see where he went! How can you not have accountability of him?”
An audible sucking in of breath from among the soldiers.
“Excuse me?” Merrick said sharply.
“Have you checked the entire outpost?”
“Have I checked the entire outpost?”
“Yeah!”
Merrick looked at Black like this was the most outrageous question he’d ever been asked.
“Yes, sir,” he replied contemptuously. “While you were asleep in your rack I did in fact check my entire outpost.”
A couple of the soldiers hazarded snorky little giggles. Black persisted.
“Did you search his room?”
“I don’t root through a man’s things, sir,” Merrick said disdainfully. “I opened his room. He’s not in there.”
“Well, how did he get out?”
Merrick gave the soldiers a Can you believe this guy? look.
“He disapparated like Harry fucking Potter!”
More snorks.
“There’s no force field, sir,” Merrick went on, exasperated. “If he wanted to leave he could’ve gone over a wall without anyone seeing him.”
Black didn’t like the sound of that.
“Why would he want to leave?”
Merrick looked at him pointedly.
“You tell me, sir.”
Black ignored this. He kept thinking of Danny alone in the mountains.
“Have you reported him missing?” he asked Merrick.
He felt foolish as soon as he’d said it.
“Have I reported—”
Merrick turned bright red. Soldiers shifted uncomfortably.
“Yes, Lieutenant, I have reported to my chain of command that my Department of Defense civilian contractor linguist has gone missing in Afghanistan!”
No one chuckled that time.
“And I am sure, sir,” Merrick went on, “that they will be interested in talking to you in the course of their own investigation into what happened to him.”
Black’s thoughts raced. Something occurred to him.
“What if he got grabbed?”
“If he got what?”
“Grabbed. Sergeant Caine said guys have made it onto the COP before in U.S. uniforms.”
That one gave Merrick pause. Things had been chaotic for many hours, including deep into the darkness. Danny had last been seen close to the gate, and no one knew where he had been after that.
Merrick’s theatrical façade of contempt seemed to fall away a bit, for just a moment.
“Unlikely but not impossible,” he conceded tersely.
“So who would want to come onto the COP and grab him?”
Up went the façade again.
“Once again, sir,” he said pointedly, “you tell me.”
Everyone looked at Black in silence.
Stop dodging.
He cleared his throat.
“Give us the room,” he said to the empty air, suddenly aware of how difficult it is to appear authoritative while wearing shorts and a T-shirt with sockless sneakers.
A couple of the younger soldiers started haltingly for the door. The rest looked to their platoon sergeant, who was still looking at Black.
“Go,” Merrick said.
They scampered out.
Merrick watched them go. When the door closed behind them he turned back to Black.
“No more bullshit, sir,” he said. “Let’s have it.”
Black swallowed.
“No.”
“What?”
“I’m not divulging confidential communications from my investigation.”
“What?”
“You need to tell me what’s going on.”
“What are you talking about?”
“You need to tell me,” Black repeated quietly, “what’s going on.”
Merrick’s brow furrowed in confusion.
“Uh, what’s going on, sir, is that the soldiers a
re gone now, so you can tell me what happened with you and Danny in Darreh Sin, so maybe I can figure out why he left my outpost and where the hell he is.”
“That’s not what I’m talking about.”
Merrick looked at him like he was a crazy person.
“Okayyyy,” he said, losing patience. “Then what are you talking about, sir?”
“Sergeant . . .” Black said, shaking his head.
“Sir,” Merrick shot back, mimicking his tone.
“I’m talking about the Valley.”
“The Valley.”
“You need to tell me what’s going on with your platoon and this valley.”
“My platoon and this valley,” Merrick repeated blankly.
“Yes.”
“I need to tell you.”
“Yes.”
Merrick stared at him in silence. Black stared back, waiting.
Finally Merrick stepped around him and went to the door. There was a hasp on the interior of it so that the door could be locked from within. He flipped the hasp around shut and turned the eyebolt so no soldier wandering by could get in.
He turned around and strode back to Black, his mouth pinched in rising anger.
“All, right, sir,” he said. “I’m going to tell you the situation with the Valley. Are you ready?”
“I’m ready.”
“You are the situation in the Valley, sir.”
Black said nothing.
“You are here and you’re in over your head.”
“Sergeant . . .”
“And you are fucking up!” Merrick spat. “You have been at my outpost less than seventy-two hours. You have disrupted my operations and placed my entire platoon in danger. You have directly caused four casualties, including two on my sniper team, which nearly didn’t make it home.”
“Sergeant . . .”
“And you are lucky,” Merrick drove on, “that those injuries were minor, which is a goddamned miracle, and you are lucky that I have not confined you to Lieutenant Pistone’s quarters under guard for the duration of your stay here to keep you from getting any of my soldiers killed.”
“None of that is—”
“Now,” Merrick said, cutting him off, “you’ve obviously got some idea in your head that you’re on to some kind of deep mystery here, because you are talking a bunch of cryptic talk about this valley and how ‘something’s going on.’”