by Aaron Gwyn
“That all right with you?”
“Yessir,” Russell said.
Wynne nodded. Then he stopped and stood several moments, and they all grew quiet. Russell could hear the horses swishing their tails. The breeze moved the evergreen limbs on the hillside, branches squeaking against each another, a low rustle of pine needles. He motioned them to their respective duties, and they began to cross-level ammunition and ready magazines.
Russell knelt a moment. Then he rose and moved down toward the horses, turned, and looked back over his shoulder. The men were bustling about. He snaked a hand down inside his pants pocket and removed the silver dollar, flipped it spinning into the air, caught it in his palm, and slapped it onto the back of his hand. It was tails and he decided it would have to be three out of five. He flipped a second time and it was tails, and when he flipped a third time, slapped it down, and removed his hand, there was the eagle once again holding the arrows and the branch, wings spread, winking in the sunlight.
The men went up the slope at a shuffle, the seven soldiers traveling single file—bootlaces double-knotted, flashlights fixed to the rails of their carbines, the jostle of ammo and harnesses, and the sound of their huffing breath.
They reached the rock-cut stair that Russell had seen from the valley floor and went running up it, Ox in front of him, his thighs straining the fabric of his fatigues. The steps were carved from sandstone, surprisingly even, though the edges were chipped and he had to take care not to lose his footing. The staircase had been set in a vertical line, but after fifty meters, it angled to the right. They were all sucking wind and Russell’s legs burned, and when they finally ascended the last several steps, they emerged gasping onto a level shelf, and there before them sat the cave.
They moved up quickly and stacked at either side of its entrance. There was a sandstone lintel etched at right angles, and Russell knelt there, studying marks in the rockface made by what looked to be hammer and chisel, hundreds of marks, thousands. He put his gloved hand to the stone, a strange warmth to it even though it lay in shadow, and then breathed deeply to recover his wind. He glanced at the captain crouching on the other side of this doorway into the mountains, eight feet high, three feet wide, perfectly edged and sanded smooth by the weather. Wynne looked back at him and nodded, and then he nodded at Ox. The two of them stood and started in, the others filing in behind.
Twenty meters and they were in absolute darkness. The men began switching on their flashlights, the beams moving along the walls, illuminating the stone floor beneath their feet, a powdered texture against the soles of Russell’s boots. Russell glanced back over his shoulder to see the horseshoe shape of the entryway grow small and smaller, and then the tunnel made a gradual turn and the light of the world was lost entirely.
They went another sixty meters. The corridor had the blank scent of sediment, and then there was a rich, fecund smell. It grew stronger, and Russell could feel a slight breeze waft across his ears. The ground shifted from stone to something else, and his boots made a sticky sound, sucking away from the floor. He lifted his rifle and pointed it above him and saw, in the beam of the flashlight, that the ceiling had risen fifteen, twenty feet and was covered with brown leathery forms, slightly furred. They quivered when struck by the light, and Russell stopped and stood studying them. He blinked and looked down at the floor and then he lifted his rifle and looked again.
Thousands of bats hung from the ceiling with their thin wings closed over their bodies. Russell shrank against the wall and took a knee on the guano-covered floor. He tried to shake the smell out of his head and then looked to see the lights of the men receding down the passageway. He coughed into his shoulder, rose, and hurried to catch up.
The tunnel veered, then veered again, and he heard the captain call “Stairs,” each of the men whispering the word to the one behind. The floor fell away, and Russell pointed the rifle at his feet and began to descend. They went down a flight of steps until they reached a chamber below. Wynne halted the column and they formed up around him. Russell could feel his heart beating against his body armor. He raised his rifle and scanned the ceiling, but there were no more bats. He could still smell them, though he wasn’t sure if this was sense memory or scent. He glanced over at Wynne, whom he could just make out in the glow of the rifle lights.
The captain pulled his radio from his belt and thumbed the talk button.
“Underchild Five, this is Underchild Actual.”
He lowered the radio and waited several seconds.
“Underchild Five, this is Underchild Actual; how copy?”
They waited, but there was no response.
Ox pointed at the ceiling. “Might be the rock.”
The captain nodded.
“Try it again,” Bixby said.
Wynne pressed the talk, but when he did, the radio clicked and he released the button. His brow furrowed. He eyed the men around him. He pressed the button and released it, and the radio clicked again. Then something else clicked from the far side of the room and the men turned in unison toward the noise, beams of light flashing against the rock.
Russell went prone on his stomach. “The fuck?” said someone, but Wynne shushed him.
They lay there or they squatted. Wynne had merely taken a knee. He had his carbine to his shoulder, scanning the walls. Russell watched as the white spheres of light played along the rock, crossing and recrossing one another, merging. He turned off his flashlight and began pushing himself backward, back and to the left, dragging his knees and stomach over the damp stone floor. The others began turning off their lights as well, their beams winking out one by one. The captain’s was the last to go, and when he switched it off, the darkness enveloped them like a shroud.
There were a few moments where all Russell could hear was the blood rushing in his head, and then he heard the captain’s radio click and an answering click came from the utter black ahead of them. Wynne switched on his flashlight, and illuminated against the wall on the far side of the room was the thin form of a man, naked to the waist, gripping a rifle. He raised a hand to his eyes to fend away the light, and as he did, one of the carbines hissed twice through its suppressor and two dime-sized marks blossomed on the figure’s chest, just below his sternum, and a red mist spattered the cave wall. The captain called for them to hold their fire, and the figure came lurching forward, dragging the rifle behind him, eyes luminous. The man made it maybe six or seven steps and then he pitched to one side and lay there, heaving. Russell switched on his flashlight, and then a muzzle flashed about twenty yards to the right and suddenly all was chaos.
The men began returning fire, and another rifle opened up from across the chamber, to their left this time, the noise like a can of spray paint, that dull metallic rattle. Russell thumbed his weapon’s safety and squeezed off a shot, scooted several feet farther back, then rose to a knee and fired again. Rounds were sparking off the rocks and ricocheting inside the hall, and gun smoke drifted in and out of the flashlights. One of the men yelled that he was hit and another was saying “Cease fire, cease fire”—Bixby, Russell thought.
When the shooting stopped, several of the soldiers moved toward the first man they’d killed, and Morgan walked toward the one who’d been firing from their right. Russell watched him kneel there in the darkness for a moment and then turn.
“He’s down,” Morgan said.
“Motherfucker,” said a voice from beside the captain.
It was Perkins. Russell moved up and watched as Bixby helped the man onto his back and began to remove his IBA. He swept his flashlight across the man’s legs and up his torso and stopped when he got to the blood oozing from his neck. Bixby had his trauma kit out and was pressing gauze to the wound, but the gauze soaked through almost immediately and Perkins face was the color of ash. Wynne looked at the man and then he looked over at Ox.
“Make sure we’re all clear,” he said.
Bixby was sprawled over Perkins with his ear to the man’s chest. Russel
l watched him tilt back Perkins’s head and pinch shut his nostrils and begin to blow into his mouth. Watched the medic’s breath expand Perkins’s chest. Watched the chest collapse.
“We got another tunnel here,” Morgan called.
“Blood trail,” added Ox.
Wynne placed a hand on Bixby’s shoulder.
“He’s done, Mother.”
Bixby shook his head.
“Let him go,” Wynne said.
The sergeant sat back on his heels and placed his bloody palms on his thighs. His moustache and beard were frothed with red. Then he reached forward and closed the man’s eyes with his thumb and middle finger, like easing shut the eyes of a doll. Wynne tore the blood-type patch from the strip on Perkins’s shoulder, that unnerving noise of Velcro, the nylon hooks and loops. He slid it into his pocket.
The four of them moved over to the passageway where Ox and Morgan crouched, a narrower passage, low ceiling; they’d have to stoop as they went. Ox flashed the light on his rifle down the mouth of the tunnel. He turned and looked at Wynne.
“How you want to do this?” he whispered.
Wynne shook his head.
“Fatal funnel,” said Morgan.
“Let’s just go,” said Bixby, and the men turned to look at him. “Let’s get it the hell over with.”
“Man of action,” muttered Morgan.
“Gentlemen,” said the captain, and everyone went silent.
A few moments passed.
“There’s something glowing down there,” Russell said.
One by one, they switched off their lights. Russell had thought he’d seen the glare of something, a blush along the tunnel walls. They sat in the dark waiting for their night vision to return, the rods and cones adjusting in their eyes, and Russell had decided he’d only imagined it when he detected, once again, the faintest glow, a flicker of red light.
“See it?” he whispered.
“I see it,” Wynne said.
“What do you want to do?” Morgan asked.
No one answered for several moments.
Then the captain switched on his flashlight, rose, and started down the tunnel. Ox turned on his flashlight and followed. Then Ziza. Then Morgan and Bixby.
Russell crouched, watching their lights move farther down the narrow passage. Terror seized his stomach. He tried to hold it down, but some things couldn’t be held, and he thought, inexplicably, of Sara. The feel of her palm, cool against his head. He thought that she was the opposite of all this, the opposite of squatting inside the mouth of a tunnel in the bowels of a mountain range with your teammate’s blood still wet on your cheeks and fear like an imp on your back. Then he turned on his flashlight and started to move.
They emerged from the tunnel into a long low-ceilinged room. Firelight flickered from pinecone torches wedged into cracks along the sandstone walls. Russell counted eight of them. He counted nine. There were piles of ammo boxes and rows of wooden crates stacked three and four high. Several cots sat in one corner, blankets on the cots, and in the opposite corner, a crude iron cage.
The six of them entered the chamber and came slowly forward with rifles shouldered. Sand ground beneath their boots. The beams of their flashlights moved along the walls and ceiling, among the crannies and nooks, but there were no SEALs here, no prisoners of any kind. There might have been at one time, but there was nothing now except crates and stone.
In the room’s center lay one of the Talibs that they’d shot. He was sprawled on his stomach heaving his final breaths against the floor, fingers dug into the thin layer of grit as though clawing his way across it. His pakol cap lay a few feet behind him, and he wore baggy olive fatigues and black dress shoes, no socks. His shirt was missing, and when the captain stepped up and toed him onto his back, Russell saw two dime-sized holes beneath the man’s left nipple, his rib cage covered in a thick arterial blood. With every breath he exhaled, it welled brightly from his wounds. His eyes were dark and wet. He lay on his back staring up at them.
The captain motioned Ziza over, and the two of them knelt above the man. Wynne told Ziza to ask him where it was.
Ziza nodded. He cleared his throat and addressed the dying man in Pashto. Russell thought he’d speak harshly, but Ziza’s voice was very quiet, very soft.
You couldn’t tell whether the Talib understood him. He closed his eyes and then he opened them. He began mumbling words, or perhaps merely sounds, and Ziza bent closer and put his ear to the man’s lips.
“What’s he saying?” Wynne asked.
“Nothing,” Ziza told him. “Just prayers.”
“No,” said Wynne. He reached across and drew the knife from the sheath on Ziza’s back and showed the Talib its long gleaming edge.
“Do you see this?” he asked the man. “You need to pray to me.”
He motioned for Ziza to translate.
The commando turned and began to speak to the Talib, but suddenly, the Talib coughed. Then he coughed again and blood appeared on his lips. He leaned up on an elbow, grabbed Ziza’s hand, and clutched it tightly. A vein stood out on his forehead. He spoke urgently in his native tongue, panting between the words, then let go of Ziza and lay back against the ground. His face relaxed. He exhaled slowly and there was a rattle from deep within his chest. Ziza reached and placed his hand to one side of the man’s throat. He stayed like that for several moments. Then he looked at Wynne and shook his head.
The captain knelt there. When he rose, he still had Ziza’s knife in hand.
“All right,” he said, turning to face the men, and then his radio sputtered and clicked. Hallum’s voice came through the speaker.
It said, “Underchild Actual, do you copy?”
The men glanced at each other. Wynne raised the radio to his lips.
“Roger, Underchild, proceed with transmission.”
“You’ve got company. Over.”
“Say again,” Wynne told him.
“I say again, you’ve got dismounts moving in from your six. Fifteen, sixteen in number. AKs and RPGs.”
Wynne asked if they were headed to the horses.
“Negative,” said Hallum. “They’re headed to you.”
“Outstanding,” Morgan said.
They stood there in the torchlight.
“Copy that,” said Wynne, and he had just said it when the radio coughed once again and they heard the transmitted noise of automatic-weapons fire. Wynne’s brows furrowed and he keyed the talk.
“Underchild, are you in contact? Over.”
They heard the cackling of rifles. They heard men shouting. One sounded like Wheels, but Russell wasn’t sure.
“He’s got his thumb on the button,” Bixby said.
Wynne glanced at the radio in his hand and he glanced over at Russell. Rifles firing. Men screaming. Static.
Then they were moving, the six of them crouching down the tunnel, then back into the hall where they’d first taken fire, past the body of Perkins, the lights on their carbines flashing the marbled rock walls. When they reached the stone staircase that led up to the passageway, the captain halted. The chamber here was wide enough for three of them to walk abreast and Wynne squatted beside the steps and keyed his radio.
“Underchild Five, how copy?”
“Roger, Underchild. Go ahead.”
“What’s happening out there? Over.”
The voice belonged to Sergeant Rosa. It said, “They’re in contact down below me, Grimes and Hallum. I count three Talibs with RPGs and half a dozen with small arms coming to you.”
Wynne asked him how far out.
“Just started up the slope,” Rosa said.
The captain looked over at Ox, his face lit from beneath like a jack-o’-lantern’s.
“What do you think?” he asked.
“Can’t let them get their rockets off,” said Ox. “They’ll suck out the oxygen and suffocate us.”
“Or burn us out,” said Bixby.
“Or burn us,” Ox agreed.
Wynne
nodded. He said he was open to suggestions.
Ox said, “We need to hit them while we got gravity working for us. I’d sooner be throwing rounds downhill than up.”
“Plunging fire,” said Ziza.
“Exactly,” Ox said.
“We won’t have any cover,” said Morgan. “Not out on that shelf.”
“They get up the slope with those launchers and we’re fucked,” Ox told him. “Bottom line.”
Wynne seemed to consider all of this. He keyed his radio.
“Five,” he said, “we’re moving to engage from up top. Can you get line of sight on our Tangos? Over.”
Rosa told him he could.
“Execute to follow,” said the captain.
“Wilco,” Rosa said.
Wynne slid the radio back in its pouch, turned, and stood. He motioned for Ox to lead the way up the stairs, then fell in behind. Morgan followed, then Ziza and Bixby. Russell went trailing after, gripping his rifle so tightly he couldn’t feel his hands.
They emerged from the cave into afternoon sunlight, taking knees on the sandstone ledge and then proning out on their stomachs to peer over the edge of the shelf. Russell knelt behind Ziza and then duck-walked toward the rock-cut stairs they’d ascended earlier. Wynne and Ox lay of the very brink of the ledge, staring down through their rifle scopes. Russell shouldered his carbine and looked downhill where the stairs angled across the slope’s final stretch, the hillside very steep and, except for the stairs, impassable. He could hear the rustle and clink of gear as Bixby and Morgan got into position. He couldn’t see the Talibs and was reaching for the binoculars in the cargo pocket of his fatigues when he heard the captain unsafe his rifle. Then he heard Ox and Ziza doing the same. He squinted through his carbine’s optic and saw two black turbans come into view. Faces beneath the turbans, then shoulders and torsos.
The captain keyed his radio.
“Execute,” he said.
The lead Talib was completely visible now, running the stairs with his rifle at port arms, about fifty meters out. Russell heard the crack of Rosa’s rifle, and a second later a cavity opened in the center of the man’s chest and he was propelled several feet forward, pitching onto his face. The man behind him turned to look in the direction of the rifle shot, and Russell heard another crack, and this man’s head vanished in a bright burst of red. His body tipped backward and then slid from sight.