Combat Ops Read online

  The tunnel was similar to all the others we’d encountered, about a meter wide and two meters tall, part of it naturally formed, but as we ventured deeper we saw it’d been dug or blasted out in various sections, the walls clearly scarred by shovels and pickaxes. Soon, we shifted along a curving wall to the left, and Brown called for a halt. He placed a small beacon about the size of a quarter on the floor near his boot. My Cross-Com immediately picked up the signal, but even if we lost our Cross-Coms, dropping bread crumbs was a good idea in this particular network. We all had a sense that these tunnels were some of the most extensive and vast in the entire country, and finding our way back out would pose a serious challenge.

  Brown looked back at me, gave a hand signal. We started up again.

  In less than thirty seconds we reached a fork in the tunnel, with a broader one branching off to our right. Brown placed another beacon on the floor. I took a deep breath, the air cooler and damper.

  “Man, I got the willies,” whispered Hume.

  “You and me both,” Brown said.

  After aiming his penlight down the more narrow tunnel, Brown studied the footprints in the sand and rock. Both paths were well-worn. No clues there.

  I pointed to the right.

  Brown looked at me, as if to say, Are you sure?

  I wasn’t. But I was emphatic. I wouldn’t split us up, not three guys.

  Dark stains appeared on the floor as we crossed deeper into the broader tunnel. Brown slowed and aimed his penlight at one wider stain. Dried blood.

  And then, just a little farther down the hall, shell casings that’d been booted off to the sides of the path gleamed in Brown’s light.

  We shifted another twenty meters or so, when Brown called for another halt and switched off his light. If you want to experience utter darkness, then go spelunking. There is nothing darker. I’d lost the satellite signal for the Cross-Com, so I just blinked hard and let my eyes adjust. Brown moved a few steps farther and then a pale yellow glow appeared on the ceiling about five meters ahead, the light flickering slightly. My eyes further adjusted, and Brown led us another ten or so steps and stopped. He pointed.

  A huge section of the floor looked as though it’d collapsed, and the rough-hewn top of a homemade ladder jutted from the hole. The light came from kerosene lanterns, I guessed, and suddenly the ladder shifted and creaked.

  My pulse raced.

  We crouched tight to the wall as the Taliban fighter reached the top. He was wearing only a loose shirt and pants, his hair closely cropped, his beard short. He was eighteen, if that. Tall. Gangly. Big Adam’s apple.

  Brown signaled that he had this guy. I wouldn’t argue. Brown was in fact our resident knife guy and had saved his own ass more than once with his trusted Nightwing blade.

  I winced over the crunch and crack, the scream muffled by Brown’s gloved hand, and the slight frump and final exhale as the kid spread across the tunnel floor and began to bleed out. The diamond black knife now dripped with blood, which Brown wiped off on his hip.

  We examined the kid for any clues, but all he had was a rifle and the clothes on his back. Brown edged forward toward the ladder and glowing lanterns below. Then we all got down on our hands and knees and crawled forward. Once we neared the lip of the hole and the ladder, we lowered ourselves onto our bellies, and I chanced a look down.

  The chamber was circular and about five meters in diameter, with piles of rock and dirt along one wall where, indeed, the collapse had occurred. The opposite wall was stacked from floor to ceiling with more opium bricks wrapped in brown paper, and beside those stacks were cardboard boxes whose labels read MEAL, READY-TO-EAT, INDIVIDUAL. DO NOT ROUGH HANDLE WHEN FROZEN. U.S. GOVERNMENT PROPERTY. COMMERCIAL RESALE IS UNLAWFUL. There had to be fifty or more boxes. We’d seen MRE trash littering the tunnels earlier, but I’d had no idea they were smuggling in so much of the high-carb GI food. I wondered if Bronco was helping these guys get their hands on this “government” property.

  Before we could shift any closer and even descend the ladder, someone rushed up behind us. We all rolled to the tunnel walls. Then, just as I was bringing my rifle around and Brown was switching on his penlight, a Taliban fighter rounded the corner and held up his palm. “Hold fire!” he stage-whispered.

  He pulled down his shemagh. Ramirez.

  Brown cursed.

  Hume swore.

  I’m not sure how many curses I used through my whisper, but more than four.

  We spoke in whispers:

  “You didn’t answer my calls,” Ramirez said.

  “We’re cut off down here,” I answered, slowly sitting up as he crossed to me. I put a finger to my lips. “What?”

  “The two Bradleys are pulling out of the defile.”

  “Why?”

  “I don’t know. They wouldn’t answer my calls, either.”

  “Aw, Simon must’ve woke up,” I said. “Damn it.”

  “I contacted the Predator. He’s still got a way better sat image than we do. He said the guys are moving back over here. I left Treehorn on the machine gun, but I figured I’d come down to warn you.”

  “Where are Smith and Jenkins?”

  “Still outside the entrance.”

  “All right, get back out there.”

  “Any luck here?”

  “Joey, go . . .”

  He hesitated, pursed his lips. “Yes, sir.”

  Brown looked at me and shook his head. Was this some kind of lame excuse to get himself back in the action? We didn’t know. But if he was telling the truth and the Taliban were shifting back across the mountain, then the clock was ticking more loudly now.

  Hume edged up to me. “I’ll take the ladder.”

  I gave him a nod. He descended, then gave us the signal: All clear for now.

  We followed him down to find another tunnel heading straight off then turning sharply to the right.

  “Damn, this place is huge,” whispered Hume.

  Several small wheelbarrows were lined up near the stacks of opium, and I got an idea. We piled a few stacks into one barrow, and then Brown led the way, pushing the wheelbarrow with Hume and me at his shoulders. We were happy drug smugglers now, and we’d shout that we had orders to move the opium.

  We reached the turn and nearly ran straight into a guy heading our way. He started shouting at Brown in Pashto: “What are you guys doing?”

  Well, I thought we’d have time to explain. But I just shot him in the head. He fell, and Brown got the wheelbarrow around him while Hume grabbed the guy’s arms and I took the legs. We carried him quickly back to the chamber and left him there. Then we hustled back after Brown and found the tunnel sweeping downward at about a twenty-degree angle. Brown nearly lost control of the wheelbarrow until we finally reached the bottom and began to hear voices. Faint. Pashto.

  Maybe it was the adrenaline or the thought that outside our guys would soon be confronted, but I shifted around Brown and ran forward, farther down the tunnel, rushing right into another chamber with about ten sleeping areas arranged on the floor: carpets and heavy blankets all lined up like a barracks.

  I took it all in.

  A single lantern burned atop a small wooden crate, and two Taliban were sitting up in bed and talking while six or seven others were sleeping.

  I shot the first two guys almost immediately, with Hume and Brown rushing in behind me and opening fire, the rounds silenced, the killing point-blank, brutal, and instantaneous.

  Killing men while they slept was ugly business, and I tried not to look too closely. They’d return in my nightmares anyway, so I focused my attention on a curious sight near the crate holding the lantern—a pair of military boots, the same ones we wore. I picked them up, placed them near mine to judge the size.

  “Warris’s?” Brown whispered to me.

  I shrugged. We checked our magazines, then headed on, still pushing the wheelbarrow.

  The next tunnel grew much more narrow, and we had to turn sideways to pass through one
section. As the rock wall dragged against my shirt, I imagined the tunnel tightening like a fist, the air forced from my collapsing lungs, and I began to panic. A quick look to the right said relief was just ahead.

  Brown had to abandon the wheelbarrow, of course, and once we made it onto the other side, the passage grew much wider, as revealed by Brown’s light.

  My nose crinkled as a nasty odor began clinging to the air, like a broken sewer pipe, and the others cringed as well. Our shemaghs did nothing to help. I didn’t want to believe that the Taliban had created an “outhouse” inside the cave, but judging from the smell, they might have resorted to that.

  I stifled a cough as we shuffled farther, almost reluctantly now. The odor grew worse. We reached a T-shaped intersection, where the real stench came from the right, and I thought my eyes were tearing.

  Brown shoved down his shemagh, held his nose, and indicated that he did not want to go down the right tunnel.

  And that’s exactly where I signaled for him to go.

  He shook his head vigorously.

  I widened my eyes. Do it.

  And then I began to gag, caught myself, and we pressed on. I held the shemagh tighter to my nose and mouth without much relief.

  A voice came from behind us, the words in Pashto: “What’s going on now?”

  Hume turned back and Brown raised his light.

  It was a young Taliban fighter, his AK hanging from his shoulder as he raised his palms in confusion.

  He squinted at us more deeply until Brown directed the light into his eyes.

  I couldn’t see, but I think Hume shot him. Thump. Down. The body count was racking up too swiftly for my taste, but the presence of those boots gave me hope.

  We left that guy where he fell and forged on toward the terrible stink.

  “I can barely breathe,” said Hume.

  “Just keep going,” I told him.

  The ground grew more damp, and up ahead, about twenty meters, were a pair of broad wooden planks traversing another hole in the ground, the result of yet a second cave-in, I guessed. Just before the hole another tunnel jogged off to the left, with faint light shifting at its far end. At the intersection, I saw that the other tunnel to our right curved upward and the night sky shone beyond—a way out, but on which side of the mountain range? I was disoriented.

  And then from the other side of the hole and the planks came two Taliban, rifles lowered but still ready to snap up. They were talking to each other when they spotted me and Brown, and one looked up, shouted something.

  I shot the guy who screamed.

  Brown fired at the other one . . . and missed! That bastard took off running and hollering like a maniac.

  And from behind us, down in the hole, where the stench of human feces and urine rose to an ungodly level, a muffled cry rose and echoed up across the rock.

  TWENTY-SEVEN

  I charged after the guy who’d sprinted away, my heart drumming in my ears. The tunnel curved abruptly to the left and then made an abrupt right turn. The guy reached a ladder at the tunnel’s dead end and started up it. I shot him before he made it halfway, and he came down with a heavy thud, shaking and raising his hands in surrender. Under different circumstances, I might have taken him prisoner. Instead, I shot him again, then swung around, saw the lantern lighting the path in one corner and more stacks of opium, along with crates and boxes of ammunition.

  Someone shouted a name, then asked, “Where are you?” in Pashto.

  I stole a quick breath, glanced up.

  There, framed by the hole in the ceiling, was a man leaning down, his bearded face glowing in the lantern. I gritted my teeth and shot him, too, in the face. He came tumbling down and crashed onto the first guy. He was older, gray beard, his body trembling, nerves misfiring.

  Still riding the massive wave of adrenaline, I mounted the ladder, which I guessed led into another chamber. I was about to reach the top and turn around when someone rushed into the tunnel below, startling the hell out of me.

  “Boss!” Brown whispered.

  I came down two rungs, my heart palpitating. Brown was waving at me to come back, his teeth bared.

  “What?”

  He mouthed the words: We found him!

  During my first tour in country, my team captured an Afghan policeman who’d been working secretly as an interrogator for the Taliban. He shared with us the orders from his boss: “I want you to torture them with methods so horrible that their cries of agony will scare even the birds from their nests, and if any one of them survives, he will never again have a night’s sleep.”

  This guy described in vivid detail the creative methods he and his comrades employed to slowly and systematically kill their prisoners. The generous use of electricity, insects, water, and clubs would’ve made even the most iron-stomached soldier grimace as he listened to the tales.

  Consequently, when we found Warris, my imagination had already run wild . . .

  But I’d forgotten they wanted him in good condition. They still wanted to negotiate, and I’m sure Zahed was heavily influenced by the company he kept, otherwise Warris would have been much closer to death. I took one look past the planks, and in the tiny shaft of light created by Brown, I grimaced tightly.

  Warris was sitting naked in a foot-high pool of water, urine, and feces. He’d been gagged, his hands cuffed behind his back, and when he saw us, saw me remove my shemagh, his eyes lit with recognition. He struggled to his feet and began crying. His face was bruised and battered, but otherwise he had all his appendages and could still move.

  I’d never seen a soldier, especially one from my own unit, look as helpless and pathetic, and I suddenly didn’t care what he said about me—politics and bullshit be damned. We were going to get him out of there, out of tunnels, out of that godforsaken country.

  We’d brought about fifty feet of paracord in one of the packs, but we didn’t need it. Hume rushed back to fetch the ladder. The hole was about nine feet deep, the ladder about seven feet long, so we’d get him out the easier way. With Hume standing guard, Brown and I lowered ourselves down the ladder, and I descended to the bottom rung, just above the cesspool. I could barely look at Warris. “It’s all right, buddy. We’re getting you out of here.”

  I removed his gag, and he swallowed and said, “Thank you.” He began crying again. “I won’t forget this.”

  “Don’t worry about it.”

  “But Scott, I can’t lie about it . . . about what happened. I can’t live with myself if I do that . . .”

  My tone hardened. “You know what I think? I think that if I save your ass right now, and you still turn me in, that’ll be harder to live with than just lying. And really, all you have to do is keep your mouth shut. That’s it. You think about that . . .”

  He bit his lip, then suddenly nodded.

  “Can you climb?”

  “I think so.”

  “Then let’s move.”

  They’d used a pair of our plastic zipper cuffs, and, with a penlight in my mouth, I carefully sawed through them. With that done, I started up the ladder, and he ascended behind me. I ordered Hume to go fetch some clothes from one of the guys we’d killed, along with an extra shirt to use as rag. God, we needed to wipe him off. He reeked. Hume hurried away, and once we pulled Warris out, he backhanded the tears from his eyes and said, “I’ve been down there most of the time. They cleaned me up to make the videos. I’ve barely had anything to eat or drink. I’m dying.”

  “Easy, we’ll get you something,” whispered Brown. “They got MREs down here.”

  Within two minutes, Hume came dashing back with the clothes and a concerned look. “I heard some crying up there,” he began, cocking a thumb over his shoulder. “You know what I’m thinking . . .”

  “Give me that goddamned ladder,” I barked.

  “Captain, do we really have time for this?” asked Brown.

  “Indulge me for three minutes,” I said. “While you clean him up and get him dressed.”

>   I dragged the ladder back up to the next hole in the ceiling, ascended, and stepped into another chamber with more boxes of MREs. A narrow tunnel led to a second, even wider area where a few lanterns burned brightly.

  My mouth must’ve fallen open.

  Girls ranging in age from perhaps twelve or thirteen up to seventeen or eighteen were dressed in tattered clothes, bound and gagged, and sitting along the wall, a few sleeping, others staring blankly at me, and a few more crying through their gags.

  At the far end of the room was a sleeping area piled high with pillows and blankets, and I shuddered as I imagined what went on there. Zahed would, of course, deny any wrongdoing; he could blame it all on his men, argue that in some respects he did not have control over them. And, of course, he’d be lying. He allowed this to go on, and in doing so, created a nightmare for the parents of these poor girls.

  I caught a blur of movement from the corner of my eye, and then from a tunnel exit near the back came another fighter. I raised my silenced pistol and put two rounds in his heart. I wanted to put fifty.

  I whirled back, lowered my shemagh, and in Pashto said to the girls, “I will help you.”

  One girl in particular fought more violently against her binding and gag. As I crossed to her, she began to look familiar, and then, with a start, I knew she was Shilmani’s daughter, Hila. I heard him screaming again, “They took my daughter!”

  They’d tied up the girls with cheap nylon rope and gagged them with scarves. I untied Hila’s gag, and she moved her mouth, licked her lips, and began to speak in a rapid fire that I didn’t understand.

  “It’s okay . . .” I said in a soothing tone.