by Chris Mooney
'We know anything about the terrain?'
'Woods. Lots and lots of woods. We're going to fly in and scope it out using FLIR thermal imaging. Never seen it in action before.'
'It's good, unless you're going into an area with fog or poor visibility, like tree cover.'
'FLIR won't pick that up?'
'Depends,' she said. 'It'll probably pick up warm spots as opposed to hot spots — the thermal image of the target won't be entirely clear.'
He broke out in soft laughter.
'What?'
'You are one goddamn remarkable woman, you know that?' He raised his hands, still laughing. 'I mean, Christ, how many women look the way you do and can kick the ass of every guy in this room and also know the specs on FLIR?'
She smiled back, and it eased some of the tension. 'Thank you.'
'You're welcome.' He stood and pointed across the table to a guy with a shaved head and a square jaw. Marine, she thought. The only thing he was missing was a cigar jammed into his mouth.
'That's Knowles,' Sergey said. 'He's heading up the operation, and he'll brief you.'
'You said "we" a moment ago. Are you coming along?'
Sergey nodded. 'Jack too. He's already dressed.'
'Does Casey have SWAT training?'
'He has training.'
'That's not the same thing, Sergey, and you know it.'
'Of course I know it. Jack knows it too. But he wants to be on the ground if you find his wife and daughter.'
'You think that's wise, given what's on the video?'
Sergey knew what she meant. She saw it in his eyes.
'Jack's not stupid, Darby. He knows the score. If the bodies of his wife and daughter are in those woods, he wants to be the one to bring them home. And that's the least I can do, given what the man's put on the line for the Bureau.'
Darby nodded. 'Any news on their signals?' she asked.
'Nothing.' He shook his head, sighing. 'Sandwiches and stuff are on the table in the corner. Dig in now. You could be in for a long night.' The FBI helicopter was perfect. Two sliding aft doors had enough room to allow two to three people to rappel from either door. The cabin, specially lengthened, had an internal rescue hoist and passenger seats that, if detached, could accommodate the six stretchers stored in the back.
Right now there was plenty of space to spread out. Darby took a rear seat, the pleasant roar of the engine throbbing through her limbs. The men filed inside, along with Casey. She didn't look at him. She didn't want to see whatever might be on his face, didn't want that in her head right now.
Sergey had climbed in next to the pilot. The team leader, Knowles, slid both aft doors shut, then pounded twice on the wall behind the pilot.
The copter lifted off the ground. ETA was thirty minutes. Nobody spoke.
Having already checked and prepared her weapons, Darby closed her eyes and meditated, wanting her mind clear for whatever was waiting for them in the darkness.
75
Knowles's gruff voice barked across her headset: 'Mount up, people.'
Darby stood, crouching forward, and grabbed an O-ring on the ceiling for balance.
'Our FLIR picked up a collection of warm spots,' Knowles said. 'These images aren't clear because of our current distance from the site and because of the tree cover. We don't want to risk flying in for a closer look and alerting anyone who may be down there waiting for our arrival. These warm spots aren't moving.'
Nobody said it but everyone was thinking the same thing: bodies. Buried bodies. A possible mass grave site.
'Bravo One, McCormick and Farrell,' Knowles said. 'We're dropping you south of the target. Proceed ahead a thousand metres to what appears to be a clearing. Bravo Two, Clark and Reggie, we'll drop you north of the location. All of you are to treat this as though you're stepping into a potential hot zone. In other words, be aware of traps. Take nothing for granted. We'll be monitoring the area and radioing updates. Make sure you all do the same. Questions?'
There were none.
Knowles gripped the side door handle. Darby reached down and grabbed the thick rope with her gloved hands.
The aft door slid open. Cold wind rushed inside the cabin and the engine roared against her ears as she moved to the opened doorway, which looked out on a black sky peppered with bright stars. She affixed the rope to her harness, threw the dangling end out of the copter and stepped outside, on to the railing. Got her boots planted firmly and, gripping the rope, leaned backwards into the air, waiting for her partner, Farrell.
She gave her zip-line a final check. Looked good. She flipped the night-vision goggles down across her eyes and in the bright ambient green glow of light saw that Farrell had got himself into position. A bend of the knees and she pushed herself off the railing, falling through the awful dark, her stomach jumping with anticipation and worry.
She kept her grip steady as she whisked past leaves and tree branches. She saw the rushing ground, slowed her descent and hit it softly. She released the rope, and as it climbed back up and into the air she noticed she could barely hear the copter above the wind whistling through the trees and shaking the branches.
Her partner hit the ground a moment later, a little more roughly. He stumbled and she had to help him release his zip-line.
Standing behind a tree, she scanned the surrounding area, saw nothing but trees and leafy ground. They searched the flat and bumpy areas ahead, and then the trees and ground and boulders for any moving shapes.
She hand-signalled to Farrell and he nodded and stepped out from behind a tree. Up came his HK submachine gun with a silencer and flash suppressor. They fell into step with each other, their backs nearly touching, and moved forward in a two-by-two formation, checking the ground before each step, the dark forest lit up by their night-vision goggles, the wind camouflaging the sounds of twigs and branches snapped by their boots.
It was slow work. Several minutes later she heard Clark from Bravo Two whisper over her headset: 'Command, this is Bravo Two. We've discovered a path east of the clearing. Permission to investigate.'
'Permission granted,' Knowles replied. 'Proceed, Bravo Two.'
Ten more minutes and up ahead she spotted the clearing she had been instructed to reach.
Definitely man-made. Someone had removed the trees and stumps in a space roughly the size of a basketball court, the ground covered with snapped branches, some looking as if they had been stabbed into the ground and -
Darby took another few steps before hand-signalling to Farrell to stop. She pointed ahead to the clearing and Farrell looked down the length of her arm and she heard him mumble, 'Jesus.'
She called it in: 'Command, this is Bravo One. I have a partial visual on the clearing. I'm seeing at least three hands sticking out of the ground. They don't seem to be moving, but I won't know until I get a closer look.'
A short pause, and then Knowles replied: 'Acknowledged. We don't have a visual so walk us through it. Proceed with caution. I repeat, proceed with caution.'
You don't have to tell me twice, she thought. The whole scene smacked of a Grand Guignol performance, only she wasn't dealing with theatre of the macabre. These hands belonged to real people, not actors. These people weren't pretending to be dead, they were dead.
Jack Casey's wife and daughter flashed through her mind and Darby wondered with a sickening dread if one or both had been buried somewhere up ahead. She advanced slowly, a single word worming its way through her thoughts: trap.
These people worked too hard to remain hidden in the shadows — and had done so successfully — so why would they bury their victims with their hands sticking out of the ground for us to find?
Two tight, bright beams emerged at the opposite end of the clearing — the path Bravo Two had mentioned. She could see Clark and Reggie sweeping the beams of their tactical lights across the ground.
Clark's voice spoke over her headset: 'Command, we've come across a hatch of some sort. It's covered in… a camouflage blanket you could
call it. It's made of these fake leaves, like the kind my wife buys at craft stores. I don't know how else to describe it.'
Darby reached the edge of clearing and saw a sea of hands sticking out from underneath the dirt — there were dozens of them hanging in the air, lifeless.
'Hatch is locked with a padlock and chains,' Clark said. 'The chain's got some slack so I think we can lift it up enough to take a look and see what's down there.'
Darby glanced at the path. The black guy, Reggie, lifted up the hatch — a big door mounted against the earth, the top covered by a camouflage blanket of fake leaves. She heard a rattle of chains as the door rose about a foot and then came to a jarring stop.
Clark, down on his knees, moved his tactical light through the foot-long gap.
'There's a ladder,' Clark said. 'Goes down to a hall made of stone.' Coughing and gagging sounds followed, and then he said, 'Christ it reeks like an outhouse. I'm seeing candles inside lanterns and they're hanging on the stone walls.'
Darby thought about the walls behind Sarah Casey's Plexiglas cell as Knowles said, 'Anyone down there?'
'Negative, Command. If we're going to go down there, we'll need bolt cutters.'
'I've got them,' Darby said. 'Standby, Bravo Two. Command, I've reached the clearing.'
Darby clipped her weapon to the front of her vest. Straight ahead she spotted a set of hands, the thin wrists bound together by rope, the fingers crooked, broken.
She flipped up her night-vision goggles. She covered her mike as she leaned into Farrell and said, 'Give me some light.'
Farrell turned on the tactical light mounted underneath his HK and focused the beam on the bound hands. Darby leaned forward and grabbed the wrists. She pulled hard, then staggered and tumbled sideways against the ground.
76
'Bravo One,' Knowles said, 'what's your status?'
Darby sat up. 'Command, I'm holding a set of hands that have been severed at the forearms. Someone just stuck them in the dirt.'
'What about the body, any sign of it?'
'Stand by.'
She got on her knees, moved to the spot where she had pulled the hands and dug through the earth.
'Command, I'm not seeing a body, just several bones.'
'And these other hands? Any survivors?'
'Unknown. Farrell and I will split up, check each one and see who's alive. There're at least a dozen or more here.'
'Bravo Two, assist Bravo One and search for survivors.'
Farrell moved to her left. Darby walked to the next pair of hands, grabbed the wrists and this time pulled up a body. Down on her knees, she stripped off her gloves and then brushed away the dirt from the neck and checked for a pulse on the cold skin.
Standing, she turned on her tactical light and saw a shaved, scarred head. The emaciated body was covered with fresh and old scars, fresh and healing wounds — and there were no eyes, the sockets scorched and blackened as if they had been burned away. Like Charlie Rizzo, like Darren Waters, this victim had been castrated.
She swiped her forearm across her forehead. 'Command, this is Bravo One. I have one male vic, deceased.'
Clark had pulled up a body and was checking for a pulse. His partner, Reggie, was kneeling on the ground, digging.
She moved on to the next set of hands when Clark said, 'I have a young female vic, deceased, with blonde hair.'
Darby felt as though her stomach had been rolled across shards of glass. Please don't let it be -
'It's not Sarah Casey,' Clark said. 'Vic appears — '
Screaming cut through the air and she whipped her head around, bringing up her weapon. In the beam of her tactical light she saw Reggie writhing on the ground, his gloved hands working furiously at something wrapped around his knee — the clawed metal jaw of what she was sure was a bear trap. It had clamped around his left thigh and shin, trapping his leg at a 90-degree angle. His knee had been spared. He must have knelt on the ground and triggered the trap's spring with his knee.
Clark had bolted over to help his partner. Darby ran too, Reggie's screaming and painful blubbering as loud as gunshot reports against her ears. The hands sticking out of the ground were bound by rope at the wrists. She dropped to her knees and helped Clark prise away the trap, her bare fingers slipping across the rusty metal jaws slick with blood.
Out of the corner of her eye she thought she saw the bound hands move. Darby turned to them and saw moving fingers.
Reggie slid his shredded mess of a leg out of the trap. Darby got to her feet, wrapped her hands around the wrists and pulled.
77
A dirty oxygen mask covered Taylor Casey's mouth and nose; a tube ran from the bottom of the mask into the ground. Her body swayed, limp and useless, and Darby pulled her out of the hole and laid her back against the solid ground. She checked for a pulse, found one and removed the mask.
Blood bubbled from her nostrils and the woman's left eye and her entire forehead were swollen. Darby remembered the video, snapshots flashing through her mind — the woman strapped to the operating table and her eyelid being pulled back and the grimy hand holding the long, surgical ice pick — and she yelled over the awful howling:
'I have Taylor Casey, need immediate EVAC.'
'Stand by,' Knowles replied.
Darby stood perfectly still by the woman's body as new sounds filled the woods: the rattling of chains and thumping. She turned along with Clark, who had his HK back in his hands. He swung the tactical light in the direction of the noise — it was coming from the path — and she saw a tangled mess of pale arms reaching out from underneath the hatch. Hands gripped the edge of the hatch, trying to push it up. Emaciated bodies and scarred faces with shaved heads and frightened eyes, oh Christ there were dozens of them fighting to escape through the gap and they were screaming and howling.
'Command,' Darby yelled. 'We're going to need additional support. We have people trapped down here, underneath a hatch.'
A spotlight came from high in the air directly in front of her, from the fast-approaching Huey, and it lit up the clearing. In the space left by Taylor Casey's body Darby saw skeletal remains, bones and skulls stacked on top of each other.
The Huey hovered over the treetops, its engines drowning out the awful howling. Leaves kicked up and spun around her in the powerful wind, and she caught sight of a shadow rappelling down a rope. Looked up and saw the heavy orange stretcher swinging underneath the copter's black steel belly, being lowered by a rescue hoist.
Now Farrell screamed over her headset, his voice nearly drowned out by the copter's engine. 'Command, this is Bravo One. We have a possible IED situation.'
Darby turned around holding the woman's limp body and almost dropped her when she saw Farrell standing at the edge of the clearing, his hand gripping a nest of multicoloured wires that ran in different directions, each one disappearing underneath the ground where she stood.
Clark had Reggie on his shoulder and was making his way around the edge of the clearing, heading to where Jack Casey now stood. Darby, wary of any additional bear traps, backtracked.
Knowles said, 'Can you disarm it?'
'I have to find it first,' Farrell said, staring down at the wires in his hand like they were a puzzle he could solve.
Casey had already unbuckled the straps for the stretcher. He wore a combat helmet but not night-vision goggles, and his face was pinched into a fist, his eyes wet. He took his wife from her hands. Darby held the stretcher to keep it steady and Casey's face broke when he saw her. His stomach hitched and the tearing sound that erupted from his mouth rode down her spine like a bolt and made her want to turn and run.
Casey didn't seem to know what to do with his hands. She went to work buckling the straps around his wife while Reggie sat on the ground, hissing in pain and putting pressure on the bleeding wounds of his shattered leg. Clark helped secure the rope to Reggie's harness and then he secured himself.
Darby reached around her back for the bolt cutters.
'I'm coming with you,' Casey yelled, and his face nearly broke again. 'My daughter could be somewhere down there. If she is, I want to be the — '
The explosion came east of their position, a low, thunderous boom from deep within the ground. She heard trees splitting and the night sky bloomed with dirt and rock and wood.
The helicopter started to climb, while Reggie and Clark tried to climb up the swinging ropes. Casey turned to look at his wife's stretcher, saw it dangling in the air and almost seemed to want to grab it, as if he could keep her safe. Darby took his arm and pushed him north, screamed at him to run like hell.
A second explosion, closer, like God's mighty fist had punched up from underneath the ground, sending up earth and stone and splintering trees high into the air. The copter's searchlight crossed through the woods directly in front of her and she sprinted, trying to see the terrain up ahead, trying to commit it to memory. Branches whisked past her face and her hands released the clips of her tactical vest so she could cast off the additional weight. Another explosion and the force of it rocked the ground and she stumbled sideways against a tree. Darby regained her balance quickly and sprinted, as debris rained down through the woods. BOOM, another explosion, too close, from the clearing packed with bones, it had to be. The shock wave slammed into her and sent her spinning into darkness.
78
Darby's eyes opened to a tunnel of bright light, the heavenly kind people reported in near-death experiences. She didn't see God, though, just a big hand holding a medical penlight directly above her right eye.
The light shut off and the hand moved away and she saw slants of revolving blue and white and red lights moving across a scratched white metal ceiling. A helicopter roared somewhere outside and when it died she heard beeping sounds and, from the south, voices.