Soldier's Heart Part Four: Brotherhood Protectors World

by Ilsa J. Bick

  Too spent to speak, Tompkins pointed to a vest pocket. Digging out the leather muzzle, she called to Six. As she fitted the muzzle over the dog’s head, she felt Pederson’s breath on her left ear. “How long?” he muttered.

  She kept her voice low, too. “Fifteen minutes, I hope.”

  Pederson frowned. “Don’t misunderstand. I’m not complaining, but that’s too soon.”

  “Not if the captain warned them ahead of time.”

  “Warned them?” Kate turned to find Amir, wreathed in shadows. He’d been so quiet, she’d forgotten he was there. Where had he come from? “How could he do that?”

  “Ah...” Hell. Working Six’s paws through the loops of a harness—just in case; she sincerely hoped none of them were going up to an evac via a tether—she said, “Well, we have routine check-ins, you know.”

  Pederson, clueless as ever, said, “But it’s not standard operating procedure to send out gunships when someone misses a check-in. It’s usually several hours and even then, it’s a bureaucratic night—”

  “Let’s not look a gift horse in the mouth.” She tried to soften it with a smile. “Okay? By the way,” she said, unlimbering her rifle, “let me see that arm. How is it?”

  “A little deader than it was twenty minutes ago,” Pederson said, though he grimaced when Kate checked the wound. “All right, I felt that. As if I’m in the next room, but that hurt.”

  “Sorry.” Actually, she’d known her poking might hurt, but anything to get Pederson off the gunship track. Amir wasn’t Gholam, but she didn’t see any reason to let this go any further, either. Pederson wasn’t a dumb guy. Follow his logic then he could blurt out that Jack must’ve warned Stanton at the very least—which meant help of a different sort might be on the way. Pushing to a stand, she offered the doctor a hand. “We got to go.”

  Tompkins held up a shaky thumbs-up. “Hooah.”

  “You will have to explain that someday. No.” Amir waved Pederson back. “I will take him. You should conserve your strength. Come on, Tompkins.” Tompkins had at least half a foot on Amir, but the smaller man was nimble and strong. Not limping as badly, either. “Let us make tracks,” Amir said.

  “You guys go.” Where was Gholam? She should never have let the guy out of her sight. She thought about calling, but every instinct rebelled against shouting. They might be safe at the moment, but they were surrounded by an enemy. “Be there soon,” she said.

  She waited. After seven minutes, though, she sighed and ducked inside.

  Tompkins had said this particular tunnel, though plenty wide, was not as high as the others and much rougher. He wasn’t kidding. The ceiling pressed down, and she winced as her helmet banged against stone. A taller person would have some real trouble here, but most villagers were small and wiry. Maybe for them, this wasn’t a big deal. The way was lit, though, and from the faint flickers of IR through her goggles, by more than one lantern.

  Streaks of soot blackened the ceiling above the remnants of old fire circles. In more than a few places, she spotted the gray pebbles of petrified poop. Somehow fitting. Gholam was a stubborn old goat. Though now, she wondered if she’d been right. So far, he’d done everything one might expect and nothing even remotely suspicious. Maybe she’d been wrong.

  Doglegging a right, she felt a slight breeze on her right cheek. An opening somewhere? Or just the cave breathing.

  But then, she heard something carried on that light breeze.

  A voice.

  Chapter 16

  Dead Man

  She stuck to the left wall, but she was still wet after ten minutes and soaked after fifteen. It took her only three, however, to realize this wasn’t an evacuation shaft. For one thing, no ladder, no steps, no rail, nothing for a person to really grab onto. For another, the cut, uneven and boxy, was crisscrossed with a lattice of old narrow beams, more than likely for use by tough-scrabble, whip-thin miners who would’ve needed something upon which to perch and brace themselves as they worked this particular portion of the seam.

  But the tracker was on, and she was committed now. Way up there at some point she couldn’t yet see there was light and the outside world. The way up was the way out.

  It was also narrow and very sheer. She felt like a chimney sweep going up a chute that was sometimes straight, more often crimped. She couldn’t use the waterlogged beams, which meant she had to stick to shimmying over slick, sharp stone that bit and clawed and slashed. Her gloves were useless, too clumsy, and soon her left hand and arm were bloodied. Jagged hooks of stone snagged her clothes, rucked up her parka, raked her skin. There was a ripping sound as a pant leg caught on a narrow spur and when she looked down, she spotted a glimmer of metal and carbon fiber from the knee all the way down the shin.

  Jack, who’d been quiet, said, “If that were skin and muscle under there, you’d have laid that leg open. You might want to reconsider this.”

  “No.” If she went back, what was their next move? Continue on? This led to the surface. She just had to reach it. The passage had collapsed down so much now that water, forced into a slimmer conduit, plunged over the rock harder and faster the way a river does when diverted into a deep and narrow gorge. It was like trying to crawl up a falls but with no curtain of water behind which to duck. Icy water gushed in directly in front of her face to flood over her body. Gasping, she hung her head to gulp air as water pummeled the back of her head and fell in thick, glassy curtains on either side of her face.

  Where was the exit? The light was definitely brighter now, less blue and gray and more white, though with all this water, she couldn’t smell much other than the metallic edge of fresh snow and new ice. She couldn’t see an opening, either.

  What she did see and didn’t like: that lattice of beams petered out only two feet above. That silvery light came from even higher. It also shone through at an angle instead of spreading into a spray of wide soft shafts the way light sometimes pierced clouds. Instead, the light lasered across rock from right to left. She’d felt the change as she’d gone up, too, how the tunnel gradually canted. In another few feet, she’d be slithering along on her belly in a low crawl.

  “A shelf?” Jack asked.

  “Be my g-g-guess.” Whomever had worked this seam left a pocket, and time had done the rest.

  She made it to the topmost beam before she had to lose the parka. The tunnel was just too narrow and the parka too bulky and sodden. She didn’t realize until she got the parka off that the arms were shredded. Soppy clumps of fill mushroomed from rips like the stuffing of a sorry old sofa worn down to threads. The synthetic skin on her right arm wouldn’t tear, but deep-crimson streaks painted the left, and she was stunned to see several long gashes deep enough to reveal glistening meat. The coat showed rents all the way down the back, too, from the shoulders to the waist. Crimping her left elbow, she reached around and crept her fingers over her spine and along her hips. Wet but also sticky. When she pulled her hand back, she watched as blood washed away in a swirl.

  I got cut. A lot. By nails, by stone. I got cut and I didn’t feel it?

  “Yes, and there are several on your butt, too,” Jack said. “I don’t know if you’ve noticed, but your pants are practically in ribbons. Your thighs are getting cut, too.”

  What? She wormed her hand down to check. He was right. How could she be getting so dinged up and not know?

  “Because you’re that cold. You’re tough, honey, but you’re running out of time. Come on, move, get going.”

  It’ll be fine. I’ll be all right. Once I’m out, I’ll get warm. She might almost be happy to see Vance’s people then thought she really might be delirious. A nice toasty fire, that’s all I’ll need. Letting go of her coat, she watched the ruined garment drop like a shot before remembering, too late, about An. The girl would probably have a freak-out when her coat landed, might even think Kate had slipped. But then the coat fetched up and splayed on a beam.

  One disaster averted. She got moving, made her way past the last se
t of beams. The passage had narrowed until it seemed no wider than a straw. Water chugged, welling up around her chest to the underside of her chin. She managed a choking breath and then another before water splashed into her throat and she started to cough, spluttering and spitting.

  It was the angle. The incline was changing, becoming more horizontal, and she thought of how gutters worked, siphoning water toward sewer grates. Reaching forward with both arms, she clawed for handholds, found them, and then dragged herself forward toward that light which was growing brighter and brighter. Her shoulders were jammed against the roof of the seam which only seemed to press down more and lower itself around her more and more. If she’d had toes to curl and dig in and help push her along, she would have used them. For once, her artificial feet, usually so powerful, were of no help. Worse, they were stuck in blocky boots she didn’t really need at all and wore for show. Stupid move. The thick, blocky heels kept banging rock and getting hung up. Could she undo the laces, kick them off? Still hanging on with her right, she wriggled her left arm down as far as she could but couldn’t crimp her body to the side or draw up her knee. She gave it up. She had more immediate problems. Water gushed onto and around her face, flowed up her nose. She could breathe only in tiny, sipping gulps the way slowly suffocating goldfish, stuck in a tank whose pump is on the fritz, suck air at the surface.

  Above, she spotted a rocky lip over which water spilled. Like a sluiceway. The lip was not precisely a right angle, either, but close. That was all right. She was already on an incline. All she had to do was get her chest over the lip and hinge at the waist, and it would be like Tim Robbins muscling his way out of Shawshank through a sewer pipe.

  Stretching as far as she could, she raked at the rock with fingers curled into claws, gasping as needles of pain stabbed the battered flesh of her left hand. Almost there. She pulled, muscles cramping, the cords of her neck taut as wires. Rock tore and scraped her forearms, stripping skin from her left, though not her right. The pain was tremendous, like a burn. She heaved herself up in one convulsive movement then felt the breath leave in a gasp as her skull collided with stone. Water flowed into her mouth and she began to retch. That made her slip and she fell back a good foot before catching herself with her knees.

  She wedged there, gagging and spitting. Low ceiling because of the bend. She coughed again. Hadn’t considered that. She was like an ant trying to negotiate the sharp bend in a straw.

  She aimed a look at the light playing over the rock above her head. Before she banged her head, she’d caught a glimpse of the opening, a bright eye that was probably a lot wider than it seemed at a distance. Maybe another hundred feet and then she was out. If she could get her chest up and over, all she had to do was kick her way onto the sluiceway and then work her way upstream. Like an eel. An apt description, too, because the sluiceway was tight, only just big enough for her shoulders and head with perhaps four inches of clearance. She didn’t allow herself to dwell too long on what she’d do if that opening were just a slit in stone. She didn’t think that was much of a possibility anyway. Too much light, and there was all this water.

  “Could be you’re going to come up in a streambed,” Jack said. “If you do, count yourself lucky it hasn’t iced up.”

  Even she wouldn’t make it up a sheer curtain of ice without spikes. She wondered where she would come out. It would take a while to get her bearings, but if she could find the box valley or, better yet, the sun was out, she’d have a fair sense of where to go next.

  If Vance’s people don’t find me first.

  Reaching again, she fluttered her legs. Her boots banged stone. Muscling herself up and over, she crimped at the waist and flopped. Parting around her chest, water rose in icy fans to splash her ears and gurgle under her raised chin. Just a little bit more. Scooching forward, she felt her shirt catch and tug at her throat. Buttons popped. Another tug as her pants caught on the lip and refused to let go. Damn it. Bracing with her right, she managed to work her left hand to her waist where she found the snap and popped it. Then, clamping the zipper between two fingers, she pulled until she felt a hitch as the zipper’s metal teeth uncoupled. All she needed was a little slack, and she got it.

  Almost there. She wormed forward a few more inches as cold water bathed her hips and thighs—and then she stopped.

  But not because she wanted to.

  No. A clot of panic, red and hot, swelled in her chest. She tried hitching her hips again. She tried pulling with her arms. She tried both. But the result was the same, no matter what she did.

  She was stuck.

  Chapter 17

  Afghanistan

  A voice?

  Oh boy. She froze. All the hairs on her neck spiked. Her hands moved to rest on her rifle…which wasn’t there. The hell? When had she put it down? Getting Six ready, that’s when. And then I checked Pederson and got distracted. But she did have her Glock, not standard-issue, but Jack was lenient that way—and thank God, the Army had finally gotten it through its head that medics needed not only to defend their patients but themselves.

  She waited another few seconds, trying to figure out what to do. Shooting the guy because he was talking to himself was not high on her to-do list, but she really didn’t think he was anyway. For one thing, no clickety-snick of that camera app. For another, this really sounded like one end of a conversation.

  “Chup sha!” Gholam snapped. Pashto for be quiet. He wasn’t loud, but she heard the ferocity. Another long string of what was really only so much gibberish. Pissed about something. She caught a few more words, “waderega” and “wulim.” Stop. Shoot. Maybe he was ticked off they were shooting at him? Or that the Americans were getting away? He was ordering them to stop shooting or to shoot to stop them?

  But I was right not to trust him. She shot a quick look the way she’d come. Although there were lanterns, they were spaced far apart, like someone was having a garden party but was too cheap to spring for enough Chinese lanterns so you could actually see something. The lanterns’ light was quickly gobbled up by the deep shadows here. That also meant, however, there was little, if anything, to backlight her, and she had the advantage of her night vision. Plastering herself against stone, she listened, waited, eased around, hugging the wall.

  Darker here. Why? Raking a gaze over the walls, she spotted an empty iron hook then looked down and caught the faint residual luminescence of a lantern. Gholam had doused the lanterns in this tunnel, the better to discourage anyone from coming this way.

  The smart play was to go get someone. She might have done that, too…if not for the fact that Tompkins said goatherds used this once upon a time. That meant other people could, too. A chill shivered up her spine. There was someone else here? Already? Some of Gholam’s friends had come in a back way? What if even more now knew what they planned and were circling around to the front?

  Leave. Go tell Jack. But tell Jack what? She didn’t know or have anything. Still, she might have left if Gholam hadn’t moved from behind a bend and she caught that silver glow. He was on his phone. Of course. A cell wouldn’t work in all this rock, unless there was a way to get a signal out—and she felt a breeze, which meant a vent or, perhaps, an actual exit.

  Which meant Gholam knew these tunnels. Gholam also knew they were being jammed, but only intermittently, while he could use the local network.

  If she could get that phone, that would be proof enough. There’d be a time stamp and duration. There might even be texts, though would that do them any good? Yes, they had Amir. He could translate.

  Her big advantage—surprise. The rubber cups around her eyepieces meant there was no stray light from her NVs. She was still well enough back to be invisible. But she was one person. For all she knew, Gholam was talking to other guys already here or on the way. Taking down Gholam now would eat up time she didn’t have.

  Gholam rattled off something else. The only word she recognized was paramzaka. That meant weapons. You’ve heard enough. Go. Raising up on the balls
of her feet, she pivoted soundlessly, took two quick steps then heard a resounding metallic clang as her boot collided with one of the lanterns. She tripped, falling to a knee. In the tight space, her helmet smashed into a rock wall, knocking the helmet and goggles askew to clatter to stone.

  “Who’s there?”

  Shit! Her heart slammed into her ribs. Gasping, she turned a quick look over a shoulder then winced as a spear of light from Gholam’s cell pinned her like a bug on cardboard. In the backwash she saw his face register first shock and then rage.

  He came for her.

  If she’d been thinking, she’d had rolled, grabbed her pistol, shot the bastard. She might have even managed to hit him. But the distance was short, and drawing a weapon when a guy trying to murder you is bearing down would be tough for someone who wasn’t panicked.

  Get up, get up! Clawing her way upright, she bolted for where she thought the entrance must be, but the cell’s light had blinded her. Disoriented, she smacked into stone, a hard whack. Pain exploded in her face. Her vision blinkered, white spangles bursting in the darkness, and she reeled as a spume of warm blood sprayed from her broken nose.

  In the next second he had her, tackling her like a linebacker, bearing her to the tunnel floor. She opened her mouth to yell, but a fist clubbed her head hard enough her vision stuttered. Stunned, she struggled to get an arm up, but he flipped her over and dropped onto her chest. Tacking down her shoulders with his knees, he clamped his meaty hands around her neck. Already choking on her own blood, now she could draw no air at all. A surge of horrible, unthinking panic blasted through her veins. She could feel her hands batting and slapping at his back, his arms, but she couldn’t reach to tear at his hands or even score the backs of his hands with her nails. It wouldn’t have made a difference even if she could. He was just too big, and she was already hurt. Bucking, she tried heaving him off. He rode her, saying nothing. He’d dropped his cell, which was still lit, so she saw him only as a huge, hulking shape and then not at all as orange-red spangles bloomed before her eyes. Her chest was tight, a bright burn, and her pulse was frantic, wild, thudding in her ears faster and faster, harder and harder as her heart tried desperately to drive every precious molecule of air to her brain. Dimly, she was aware that her legs were drumming against stone. She was losing it; she knew it, and then she wasn’t thinking anymore as her consciousness slewed, her world collapsing the way an iris closes down against the light.