And slammed into something—a corner of rock, a stalagmite, something—and rebounded hard. A yell of pain and surprise escaped his throat before he could stop it, and the finger of his right hand, with all the efficacy of a deliberate Judas, slipped inside the trigger guard and jerked.
The single gunshot sounded louder than all the bombs in the world. Magnified by the cave’s acoustics, bounced and banged around, it sounded like a barrage.
Finn dropped to his knees, both dazed by the impact and aghast at what he’d done.
After the last echo faded, there was one second of absolute silence, and Finn prayed with all of his might that the Taliban hadn’t heard the yell or the shot. It was a stupid prayer, without any possibility of being answered. There were no gods that tolerant or forgiving.
Outside there was a chorus of yells in Pashto, and the world was shattered by the sound of AK-47s opening up.
And then the screaming began.
14
ECHO TEAM
He told us the rest, too.
About crawling through the darkness. About the pain of wounds he was positive had torn him nearly to pieces.
About things that crouched around him in the shadows.
Things that laughed at him.
And he told us about the woman dressed like a village boy, but who revealed a hideous and monstrous face when she pulled away her scarf. Flesh that was livid red and a nose that seemed composed of clay.
At this, Bunny glanced at me over Finn’s head. The boy we had encountered had been flash-burned and his nose was covered with mud. Bunny’s raised eyebrow questioned this. Had Finn, dazed as he was, also come across this boy and misunderstood what he was seeing?
I gave Bunny a small nod. Had to be a mistake.
What else made sense?
“How’s that explain the shell casings?” I asked.
Finn looked perplexed. “I . . . don’t know. I didn’t see any of the fight. But they had to have fought back. The fight went on and on. Fifteen minutes at least. Maybe twenty. Christ, Joe, the guns never stopped. Neither did the . . .”
His voice trailed off.
“Neither did what?” I said, prompting him.
Finn shook his head, and for a moment I didn’t think he was going to answer. One emotion after another crossed his features, each giving his facial muscles a twist and leaving some damage behind. There was doubt and anger and deep uncertainty there, but the most dominant expression was that of fear.
“Joe,” he said in a wretched voice, “I don’t know what happened. I only know what I told you.”
The wind was picking up and blowing like a tribe of banshees through the high mountain passes. It was a cold and terribly lonely sound, and I could have done without the chill it sent crawling up my spine.
“And your men, Finn?” I asked. “You said they were gone? Gone where?”
Tears were running down Finn’s face now. Instead of answering my question, his story jagged in a different direction. “I tried to find them. I did a one-man ambush and killed two Taliban drug runners and took their Jeep and some clothes. Drove all over. Looked everywhere. I was in a dozen little towns. There are places you can go, you know? The CIA spooks showed me last time I was in-country, and I knew some from my own tours here. Back-alley places. Off the radar. Black marketeers, all sorts of brokers and wheeler-dealers. I put the word out that I was looking for my men. I guess . . . I guess I made it pretty clear that I’d do anything to get them back.” He paused. “Couple of times I had to hurt some guys. Informers who worked for the Taliban who tried to sucker me.”
I nodded.
“Then I wound up in this little town and found the right guy. He said he could get my guys back.”
“And . . . ?”
The tears rolled down his face.
“He took me to someone who offered a deal,” he murmured.
“What kind of deal?” asked Top.
“Me for them,” said Finn. “Blood for blood, bone for bone, heart for heart.”
It was at that moment that I realized Finn O’Leary was insane.
As he spoke these words, I was looking deep into his eyes and there was absolutely no doubt that he believed what he was saying.
“What’s that mean?” asked Bunny. “Blood for blood and all that shit? What’s it mean?”
Finn didn’t answer him. He stared vacantly into the dirt. “The funny thing is . . . I used to think that you had to be dead in order to go to hell. But . . . that’s not true at all.”
We tried to ask more questions, but Finn was done for now. He went away somewhere deep inside his own head. Top cut him loose, and he lay down on his side, drew his knees up to his chest, tucked his head down, and closed his eyes. Like a terrified child going to sleep.
It was one of the most chilling things I’ve ever witnessed. It was so inappropriate a thing in so odd a place that it scared the hell out of me.
And saddened me.
I nodded to Bunny to keep watch; Top and I stood up and walked a few paces away to where we could speak privately.
“What was that all about?” asked Top. “Beginning to wonder if our boy’s lost some muscle tone.” He tapped his forehead as he said this.
“I think so. PTSD or something. I don’t know if it’s worth trying to get anything else out of him right now. Clearly, though, he’s tearing himself up with guilt about the mistake he made in the tunnel.”
“If he got three men killed, then it’s going to be a damn hard mistake to live with. He was tight with those boys.”
“I know.”
It was tragic, but we’d both been at this game long enough to see it happen before. Sometimes a guy can be Captain Terrific for five years, then the next day he wakes up and all his marbles are in the wrong bag. It happens, even to guys as tough as Finn.
But seeing him like this was hard.
And I still had the other thing to deal with—maybe evidence of the mental lease expiring on my own acre of sanity. The three things I’d seen tearing the man in the truck apart. Creatures in the shapes of Rattlesnake Team, but with eye sockets filled with fire devouring the guts of an enemy combatant.
Did I tell Top or keep it to myself?
If I was losing it, would that mean I’d get my own guys killed?
Tough questions.
The sun was tumbling through the sky toward the western mountains.
Finn said, “Can I have my gear back? This deep in Indian country, I feel naked without at least a sidearm.”
“Listen, brother,” I said to Finn. “You’re acting freaky, so let’s keep things in neutral for a while. If you act cool, then we can talk about guns.”
He considered me for a moment, then nodded. “Yeah, sure, Joe, whatever you want.” Then he snaked a hand out and caught my arm. “But . . . please find my guys. I can’t leave them out here. I can’t.”
I hesitated, because it was a hard promise to make. If the Taliban had taken them, and if somehow their RFID chips had shorted out, then it could have taken a hundred men a thousand years to search all these caves. We’ve been looking for the Taliban for only a dozen years. You know how we find them? Informants tell us. Or we spot a caravan, something like that. But when they go to ground inside these caves? They can hide there without being seen until the mountains crumble to dust.
I gave his hand a reassuring squeeze. “We’ll do our best, Finn. You know that.”
With that, I got up and walked away. After a few minutes, Top followed me. He made sure we were out of earshot before he spoke.
“Earlier,” Top said, “you heard a scream through the radio, right?”
I hesitated. “I heard something.”
“And right then, the radios and all the electronics went dead.”
“Yup.”
“Kind of weird,” he said.
“Uh-huh.”
“The timing of everything, I mean.”
“Uh-huh.”
“It’ll be night in a couple hours. No rad
io. Hallucinations and shit.”
“You going somewhere with this, First Sergeant?”
He spat into the dust. “Cap’n, I got nowhere to go that makes any sense at all. And that is the problem.” He cocked his head sideways at me. “Finn’s lost his shit. Now you’re hearing stuff Bunny and me ain’t. Look me in the eye and tell me I don’t have to worry about you, too.”
This was the conversation an NCO and an officer can only have where there’s a lot of history, a lot of trust, and no one close enough to hear.
I turned to him. “Whatever I heard, I heard,” I said. “Maybe it came over my mic and not yours, but I heard it. We’re going to leave it at that. I’m not going over the edge.”
And yet I didn’t tell him about seeing Rattlesnake Team.
Why not?
Top studied me for a five count, then he nodded.
I said, “I think I want to take another look at the town square and the cave while there’s still enough light to see.”
He was still looking at me. “Want company?”
“No. Stay here with Bunny and keep an eye on Finn.”
I left him there with Finn and Bunny and went back to the valley. I stood for a long, long time looking at the blood. The placement and amount of the blood fit the scene as Finn had described it. Except that it didn’t explain the missing bodies, the lack of any evidence of return fire, or what happened to Finn in that cave. I slung my rifle and drew my sidearm, turning on the small light that was mounted forward of the trigger guard.
The open mouth of the cave was only rock and sand and some dead snarls of creeper vine, but I paused just outside, still in the sunlight. But the sunlight was growing weaker as the day ground on toward twilight. I did not want to be out here past sunset, but the best ETA for our helo was still two hours and change.
Would Bug pass along a request for that timetable to be moved up in light of the electronics and communication being out? Maybe. Knowing him, he’d pass along a recommendation that our mission was way off the radar, even for our own military. My boss could send in more black-ops shooters, and then only if he had anyone on deck. When we’d set out for this mission, we were the only backup. The mission sensitivity made it less likely there would be any standard military assets deployed to save our own asses. If we failed, that would mean that the canister of pathogen was unaccounted for. Best clean-up option then would be to carpet the area with fuel-air bombs and turn this region into the valley of the shadow of death in point of fact.
I clicked on the flashlight and the narrow beam rose in harmony with the barrel of my gun as I pointed them both into the cave. With slow and very deliberate steps, I moved out of the down-slant of sunlight and stepped into the shadows under the mountain.
The cave was already very dark, and I moved the flashlight beam over everything—sandy floor, boulders, crenellated walls, craggy ceiling. No motion—not a bat, not a sand mouse, not even blowflies.
At ten yards, the cave still had enough light for me to see, but with every step beyond that point, visibility diminished to only those things the flashlight’s beam picked out. Until you’re in the dark, in a place you know to be dangerous but whose nature you aren’t sure of, you really don’t appreciate the fear of the dark. So many things can hide so easily there.
I moved forward and the darkness closed around me.
It was surprisingly cold, surprisingly damp. Like the way you’d imagine a dungeon would feel. Clammy and wrong.
Immediately, a part of my mind said, Fuck this.
Seriously, I wanted to turn right around and run the hell out of there.
Yeah, I said run.
Understand something here—I don’t spook easily. Usually when something’s weird and violent and mysterious, I want to go grab it by the throat, wrestle it to the ground, and wail on it until it makes sense. A somewhat Neanderthal approach, I grant you, but it’s worked for me in a lot of very bizarre situations.
This one, though, had a different feel to it.
I didn’t get the impression that a mixed group of Taliban and al-Qaeda thugs were lurking behind a rock ready to spring on this blue-eyed, blond-haired agent of the Great Satan. Nor did I have the feeling that Doctor Doom or Lex Luthor was watching me on video cameras from the safety of a secret lair, one hand stroking a white cat, the other holding a detonator that would send Mama Ledger’s favorite son to see Jesus on a mushroom cloud.
Without understanding a single thing about what was going on—or what was inside that cave—I knew for sure that this was not going to be anything I’d faced before. Don’t ask me how I knew that. But I was absolutely sure.
And that scared the living shit out of me.
Icy lines of sweat trickled down my back and my mouth kept going dry.
I moved deeper into the cave, leaving all traces of daylight behind. We’d brought night vision gear with us, but the electronics on that were as fried as the computers and radio.
The path was more obstructed than I expected, with rocks thrusting out over the sandy walkway and a few unexpected deadfalls. A man running in the dark would be in serious trouble.
Sweat stung my eyes and I dragged a forearm across my face.
And that’s when the voice spoke.
“You won’t find what you’re looking for.”
15
ECHO TEAM
I spun and crouched, bringing the pistol around in a two-handed grip.
A figure stood five feet behind me.
“Freeze!” I bellowed. “Show me your hands . . . show me your fucking hands!”
The figure slowly raised its arms to either side, standing cruciform in the stark white of my flashlight.
It was the boy.
Dressed in the same clothes, with the same small bloodstain over the heart and the same kaffiyeh on his head with the scarf wrapped all the way around so that all I could see were his eyes.
But that’s not what was making my heart pound like thunder in my chest.
The voice hadn’t been a boy’s.
It had been the voice of a woman.
An old woman.
“Turn around!” I snapped. “On your knees! Now!”
The figure—boy or woman, in this light I could no longer be sure—did not move.
I took a single threatening step forward. “Turn around, or so help me, I will kill you.”
“You must listen to me, Captain.” The words were spoken in a whispery and uninflected English. No trace of an accent.
It took a full second for the impact of that to hit me.
The boy still spoke in that old woman’s voice, but she’d called me Captain.
I don’t wear captain’s bars. None of my team wears a rank or unit patch. No one in the DMS ever does when they’re in the field.
So how in the wide blue fuck did this little freak know what I was?
I made sure my voice was controlled. “Who are you?”
“I need to give you a message, Captain.”
The figure stood there, arms still out to the sides. I ran the light over his face. The eyes were as dark as holes. The burned flesh around them was puckered and raw.
“I won’t tell you again,” I warned him.
“I have something you want. You have something I want. I wish to complete my end of the bargain.”
“You are going to shut your fucking mouth,” I said sharply. “Right now.”
I took another step forward and reached a careful hand out to do a gentle pat-down. It didn’t matter that Bunny had already searched the kid. It didn’t take all that long to pocket a pistol or strap on a C4 vest. The body inside the robes was as thin as a scarecrow, and dust plumed out from the dry cloth.
The flesh between my shoulders twitched and contracted, because even though the shape my eyes saw was a boy, the shape my hand touched was not. The hips were wider, the waist narrower, and there were breasts. Huge, pendulous, drooping nearly to her waist.
My hand recoiled as if it had a mind of its own. Recoi
led in horror and disgust.
“What the . . . ?”
I raised the pistol and pointed the barrel ten inches from the dark eyes, and with my other hand, I tore open the front of the robe.
There was a flash of something.
The world seemed to go red, as if the whole cave was washed with a crimson floodlight. I had a split second’s look at the body revealed beneath the robe.
Definitely not a boy.
It was a woman’s body. Bloated in spots, emaciated in others, with those huge breasts and skin that was puckered and blistered from furnace heat. Her eyes flared wide and she swiped at me with one hand.
Or . . . with what had been a hand.
The fingers were wrong somehow. They’d . . . changed. They were too long, each joint stretched to an unnatural length, and there seemed to be an extra joint. Or . . . segment. Like the segmented legs of some disgusting pale bug.
I saw—but in no way could prevent—that elongated hand from slapping my pistol. The gun went flying, end over end, and struck a wall.
Then the second hand wrapped itself around me—around my face and throat. The segmented fingers seemed to be able to completely encircle my head so that I was caught in a net of bony fingers weirdly hot to the touch. I heard my own skin sizzle; I could smell it burning.
I screamed, but then the woman . . . thing . . . whatever in God’s name it was . . . lifted me completely off the ground and yanked forward so that my face was an inch from hers. She tugged away the scarf, and I now saw what Finn must have seen—the face of an ancient woman, hideous and disfigured, with a nose either covered in clay or composed of it. Small fires seemed to ignite in her dark eyes, and when she smiled, her lips curled up and wide—wider than is possible—until row upon row of jagged teeth were exposed in a leer.
I saw all of this from the reflected light of the fallen gun.
When she spoke, her voice was a rasping wrongness. If a reptile tried to force human speech from a mouth that had never been constructed for it, I believe that’s how it would sound.
“We have what you want,” she said, and her breath stank of rotting eggs. Like methane or sulfur. It made me want to vomit, but I fought it back. Just like I fought back the scream that wanted so badly to burst from my chest.
Four Summoner’s Tales Page 30