by John Renehan
“All right, sir,” he said, turning to Black. “You and me.”
“What?”
“Let’s play hooky.”
“Where are we going?”
“You can water up right there,” Merrick said, pointing to a stack of water bottles outside the radio room. “Come or don’t come.”
He grabbed a couple bottles and started trudging up the steps, stopping and turning back halfway up to see if Black was coming. Black bent and took a couple bottles for himself, shoving them in his cargo pockets.
At the next level up, Merrick led him into a steep, almost vertical chute running up among the rocks. They climbed between boulders and used tree branches to ascend. After about fifty feet they emerged from the brush into open air and moonlight.
Black experienced the same rush of vertigo as when Caine first took him onto Vega’s roof. They were on top of the mountain, more or less, standing on the highest ridgeline.
The ground was bare up here, and the view phenomenal. Looking to his right, Black saw the ridgeline rise gently toward a large cluster of trees surrounding the summit. But for that fact, he would have been able to look down in all directions.
Opposing mountain faces loomed, bathed in moonlight and shadow, their peaks at or below the height where Black and Merrick stood. Somewhere beneath them, the river and Darreh Sin. Somewhere behind, COP Vega.
Merrick stopped and motioned Black to him. He poured his bottles into the water pouch Black wore over his back. Black did the same for him. Merrick stomped the empties flat and shoved them into his pack, turning wordlessly and starting down the back side of the mountain, opposite O.P. Traynor.
The way down this side was as dry and spare as the way up the other side had been lush and wooded. Scrub brush, dirt, and crumbled stones made it as inviting as a coral reef compared to the forest through which they’d traveled from Vega. Far below and to their left, the thin silver ribbon of the river glistened in the moonlight.
They descended for about twenty minutes, mostly in silence except where Merrick would point out old Soviet land mines near the trail. As they got lower on the slopes the foliage picked up a bit, finally offering some welcome cover. Black had felt uncomfortably naked on the moonlit mountain face.
They reached a shelf in the land that was well covered with trees and brush. Merrick stopped at the edge of it and knelt behind a fallen log. Black knelt beside him and looked down.
They had descended to just above a long, wide draw which sloped upward to their right. A creek ran down it to their left.
Across the draw, maybe a mile distant, there was a pass making an opening in the opposing mountainslopes. Beyond it Black could dimly make out a lush area of low, flat land nestled in the high hills. Grassy expanses alternated with thick copses of trees.
Black was fairly certain that this was the draw and the creek he had seen rising up from the main river, from Darreh Sin. Which would mean the sheltered land across the draw was . . .
“The Meadows,” he said aloud.
Merrick nodded and took off his pack.
“You want your answers, sir?”
Black looked at him uncomprehendingly.
Merrick rooted inside and produced a hefty piece of equipment, which he handed over. It was a high-powered thermal scope. Detached from a weapon, it was a handy nighttime telescope.
Black took it and switched it on. He put it up to his eye and watched the world go green.
Scanning across the flatlands of the Meadows, he could make out many dwellings in and among the trees, or right out in the open grasslands. Goats and livestock glowed warm in the sight, idling or sleeping outside the homes.
The place looked sheltered and inviting. If you had to live in Afghanistan, he thought, this wouldn’t be a bad place to do it.
It didn’t take him long to identify what it was Merrick wanted him to see.
Figures moved along the far right edge of the land, where the grass gave way to the higher slopes. Terraced growing fields were planted at the margins, and the figures moved among them, bending and squatting. What looked to be goats stood near a shack at the edge of the crops.
Black clicked the scope to its highest magnification and squinted at the men and their crops.
“Poppies,” he said finally.
“Correct,” Merrick answered.
“Harvesting the latex.”
“Yes.”
“For opium.”
“And morphine and heroin, yes.”
Black scanned his memory banks for the briefing materials he’d once received on the heroin trade in Afghanistan.
“I thought they harvested it in the mornings,” he said.
“They do.”
“Why are they doing it in the middle of the night?”
“I don’t know.”
Black pulled back from the eyepiece and looked at the sergeant in the dark.
“I think,” Merrick said pointedly, “that maybe they don’t want the Taliban to see them.”
This didn’t make sense to Black.
“Well, the Taliban knows there are poppy fields all through here,” he said.
“Right,” Merrick declared. “Taliban’s everywhere in this Valley, even when you don’t see ’em. Even when the locals don’t see ’em. Make no mistake, and don’t forget it.”
“So if the Taliban doesn’t like them growing for heroin, why don’t they come in here and destroy the fields?”
“Who says the Taliban doesn’t like them growing for heroin?”
Black looked at him questioningly.
“Yeah, I know, sir,” Merrick said. “The Taliban doesn’t like drug use. Officially.”
“Officially?”
Merrick looked pained.
“It’s not simple here, Lieutenant. The Taliban knocked out the poppy harvest in this country for about one year here. One. Before we showed up. And even then I don’t believe for a second that there weren’t pockets of it, way up in crappy places like this, or higher up still. The Taliban that are left might dream of those old days again, but for now they know they can’t do shit about it. They don’t have the numbers or the force to knock it all out. So if someone is making big cash off this shit, then they want a piece. We never know who is making deals, who is getting shook down or intimidated. We don’t know jack.”
“Okay.”
“Maybe these guys want to clear the fields and move the stuff through the Valley when the Taliban isn’t looking, so they don’t have to pay their cut.”
“Okay.”
“I think.”
There was the pointed phrase again.
“Or maybe these dudes are hiding from one of the other clans in the Valley. Maybe they’re being hustled by the tribe over the fucking hill and they’re trying to sneak a little out on the side before the official harvest tomorrow.”
“Okay.”
“Or maybe a hundred other things. Are you getting the point?”
“No.”
Merrick looked irritable.
“The point, Lieutenant, is I don’t fucking know.”
“Right.”
“And neither do you.”
“Right.”
“Get it?”
“No.”
Merrick sighed impatiently.
“You asked me what is going on in the Valley,” he said. “I don’t know what the hell is going on. Whether it’s drugs or any other thing. That’s the point.”
He aimed a finger across the draw.
“This is what’s going on. This and every other goddamn thing that we don’t see and we don’t understand and never will.”
He turned back to Black.
“This is their Valley, sir. These are their problems and their feuds. This is their bullshit. We could stay here twenty years and we’re not gonn
a get to the bottom of it. Not even halfway. Get it?”
“I get it.”
“Bottom line,” Merrick continued, “I don’t know and I don’t care, sir. The Army makes me deal with this town and these meadows because bad fuckers come through here and because we’re supposed to try and see if friendly works better than ‘fuck you’ up here. Beyond that, I have no interest in this village or the next one or the next one. I care about keeping my soldiers alive. That’s my job, not worrying about who is stabbing who in the back over heroin or who’s gonna get their fair share of free water once we leave, or whose daughter is gonna get married off to which fat fuck for how many goats, or any other goddamn problem they have with each other that we’ll never know about.”
Black regarded him in the moonlight.
“Is that why you have an O.P. up here that your command doesn’t know about and half your platoon doesn’t know about?”
Merrick flashed surprise but quickly composed himself.
“What makes you think,” he said coolly, “that my command doesn’t know about it?”
He looked at Black with an expression that indicated he was going to say nothing more on the subject.
“And now, sir,” Merrick said, pointing across the draw at the Meadows, “I am going to go into this place, because even though he is not one of my soldiers, Danny is my responsibility, and some of the people I have unfortunately come to know there might know what happened to him. Might. I have no fucking clue if they will or won’t, but seeing as how I don’t know shit about this place it is the only guess I have.”
The façade of theatrical hostility was falling away again, though what replaced it was no less cold or off-putting.
“I am going in there alone, because there is no way in hell that I am going to risk my soldiers again after what you caused in Darreh Sin. But seeing as how I’ve now shown you everything that I don’t know, and seeing as how you already put my entire platoon in danger, I would really like it if you gave me one piece of information to help me possibly keep from getting myself killed, which is what the fuck happened with the chief?”
Black stared out at the Meadows.
“What happened had nothing to do with Danny,” he said quietly.
Why are you lying?
“Sir,” said Merrick. “You might have noticed that we are out here alone in the middle of godforsaken nowhere.”
Black had slung his rifle over his shoulder when he took up the scope. He now realized at the same time as Merrick did that his hand was sliding slowly in the dark to his pistol butt.
“Oh, for God’s sake,” Merrick said with disgust. “If I was going to waste you, do you really think I would show you all of this first?”
Black felt his face flush in the dark.
“What I am saying is you may have noticed that I have both violated regulations and risked myself and risked my men to bring you all the way out here on a sightseeing tour to convince you that I need to know what you know. Feel free to tell on me when you get back to Omaha and are getting fat in the chow hall with Colonel Gayley. But in the meantime, as long as we’re out here together on the ass end of shitty, do you think maybe you could cut the crap and reciprocate a little bit?”
Black fingered the night scope. Merrick waited.
“The chief said that we had brought the Devil into his town,” he answered at last, “and brought his servant too.”
Merrick was quiet for a long moment.
“You’re right,” he said at last. “That probably has nothing to do with Danny.”
He held out his hand for the scope. Black passed it back.
“I’m assuming you can find your way over the mountain and back to the O.P. without a map,” Merrick said.
Black cocked his head, catching the odd tone in the sergeant’s voice.
“Yeah, I know your situation,” Merrick said flatly.
Black’s mouth opened, then closed.
“Do you need me to hold your hand?” Merrick asked disdainfully.
“No.”
“I would hope not.”
He shoved the scope into his pack.
“I’ll be back soon.”
Merrick stood and shouldered his pack.
“Who was Traynor?” Black asked.
It was not an unnatural question. Outposts were routinely renamed after someone who died there, usually under heroic or tragic circumstances, or both.
Merrick’s reaction betrayed nothing out of the ordinary.
“He got killed up here when we first laid in the O.P.”
He offered nothing further. Black nodded and turned upslope.
It took him more than twice as long to ascend the steep mountainside as it had coming down. He felt even more naked than before, moving in the moonlight with his back to the Meadows. About halfway up he was able to cut to his left a bit and enter a wooded area that ran all the way to the summit. It was a minor detour, and it made him feel better.
Near the top he cut right, making his way through the trees and down along the gently sloping ridgeline. He emerged into the open and found where he and Merrick had climbed from the wooded chute. He lowered himself between the boulders and made his way back down to the O.P.
Stepping from the rocks onto the system of platforms and steps and ladders, he looked about himself. There was no one in sight. He heard muted laughter above him, which he assumed was Shannon and the others up in their boulder cave.
He trudged down a level to the radio room and stuck his nose in. Brydon was sitting on the floor with his back against the wall, reading a magazine and pretending Black wasn’t there.
A very young private Black didn’t recognize sat at the radio desk nearby. The kid’s name tape read CHEN. Black was trying to figure out how he knew that name when a familiar voice came from his side.
“Uh, hey, sir.”
He turned. Seated on a stool in the far corner was the soldier from the guard tower at Vega. His friend Bosch sat next to him. They were the ones he’d heard greeting Brydon before.
Both soldiers looked stunned to see Black. Even the sullen and punchy Bosch registered surprise behind his usual scowl.
Black crooked his head in confusion and raised his hands: What gives? The first soldier cleared his throat, surprise turning to discomfort.
“Uh, yeah, so it turns out we’ve got an O.P., sir,” he said glumly.
Black realized where he had seen Chen’s name. The soldiers on the roster that Corelli had said were out on a weeklong patrol.
“Guess you learn something every day,” the soldier continued.
Black fought a sinking feeling.
“When did you guys get here?” he asked.
“Just yesterday, sir.”
“Why you guys?”
“Guess it was just our turn, sir,” the first soldier answered moodily.
Bosch, who’d been staring at the floor, raised his head.
“Well, who sent y—” Black began.
He stopped when he saw the look in Bosch’s eyes.
Footsteps tromped on the deck outside. The toothy-grinned soldier poked his head in, looking a little glassy-eyed.
“All right, boys,” he began, then saw Black. “Oh, hey there, L.T.”
Black nodded. Toothy continued.
“Hey, guys, we’re just headin’ up to the fishbowl for a smoke. Wanna come?”
He doffed an invisible cap toward Black.
“Invites to you too, of course, sir.”
The awkwardness in the air caught up to him. He surveyed the glum crew and drove on through.
“C’mon, then, all y’all, let’s go.”
“What’s the fishbowl?” Black asked.
“Aw, sir, it’s the best place for a smoke in the whole world. C’mon, ya gotta come.”
He waved everyo
ne out.
“All right, fine,” said the first soldier, climbing off his stool.
No one looked happy. The cajoling continued.
“C’mon, you too, Doc. Hey, Chen, you chill out here at the radio, all right?”
The kid nodded. Low man on the totem pole. Everyone else roused themselves without enthusiasm.
“That’s right. C’mon, Doc. All right, then, sir.”
Black followed him out onto the deck.
24
They’d had to climb a series of ladders then squeeze up through a narrow, vertical gap between boulders to get there. But the kid was right.
The fishbowl was a flat slab of rock, a natural ledge maybe twenty-five feet across, surrounded on three sides by granite and on the fourth by open air. The edge of the slab dropped off into nothingness, with the vastness of two mountains looming side by side across the Valley.
Several collapsible camp chairs sat in a semicircle, arrayed around what Black at first thought was a standard cigarette butt can but then realized was a cylindrical metal wood burner. Someone had stacked a pile of miniature log cuts against one of the rock walls. A couple had been tossed into the burner and were now aflame.
Two soldiers were already up there, lounging in chairs before the fire.
“Damn, Hill,” said one, seeing their glazed-over tour guide emerge from the boulders.
Hill. A hundred percent hillbilly and his name was actually Hill.
Another name Black remembered from the roster. Another kid out on a “weeklong” patrol.
“You do enough tokin’ for one d—”
The soldier stopped when he saw Black.
“What’s up, there, sir?”
The kid and his buddy looked very familiar. It took Black a moment to put it together, what with the two not being covered in camouflage face paint.
“You guys are on the sniper team.”
He’d last seen them at the trailside above Darreh Sin, during the mad slog back to COP Vega.
“Hooah, sir,” said the kid. “In the flesh.”
Merrick had said the snipers nearly didn’t make it “home.” This, apparently, was home.
Everyone sat, Brydon choosing a chair at the far end of the semicircle and placing himself glumly in it. Hill passed around a pack of smokes. They all lit up.