The Towers

by David Poyer

  He’d been turning it the wrong way, it had come off, and was now lost somewhere. “Fuck,” he whispered through lips he couldn’t feel anymore, with a tongue that didn’t want to move.

  Beside him he felt a familiar reassuring presence. Turned his head, and there he was, almost invisible in the dark, but he could just see his outline. Bulky, but not fat. Not fat at all. The big Hawaiian a mass of supple muscle. “Sumo. Where the fuck you been?”

  “Right here now, haole.”

  “About fucking time. Gimme a hand with this. Can you—”

  He wasn’t sure who actually did it, him or his teammate, but they got the wire connected and bent to the scope. It hummed as it powered up. The field of view came on. It was much narrower than that of the goggles. The image was dimmer and spherically distorted. “Don’t jiggle it or it’ll come loose,” Kaulukukui breathed into his ear.

  “Spot me in, Main Meal. Talk me in.”

  “Thought you weren’t gonna shoot.”

  “I’m not. Just do what I fucking tell you, all right?”

  Teddy crawled into the scope, setting the butt into his shoulder and fitting his right hand around the pistol grip. The rifle felt too long and too heavy, and the angles on it were all wrong. But he’d fired Dragunovs in training, and they were accurate as long as you knew what you were doing and didn’t push the range. A range finder was on the reticle, but he ignored it and just tried to figure out what he was seeing. The snow was coming harder. Every time a gust whipped it up, he couldn’t see anything at all, just distorted milling fireflies, like dark green paint mixed with chrome sparkles being stirred around and around. “Got the four guys in front? And the flank guards?”

  “Yeah. I saw ’em,” said Sumo. “We gonna take ’em?”

  “No. Just foot soldiers. Anybody behind ’em? Anybody back there?”

  “I don’t think so. I don’t see any … wait.” The space of a breath. The space of another. Then the big, soft hand tightened on his shoulder. Squeezed once. Again. And a third time.

  Three targets. Teddy searched behind the point, but didn’t see anything. He swung the scope left and the humming died and the picture faded. He jiggled the rifle. The scope buzzed, powering back up, and the mountainside came on in green and black but fizzy like licorice-and-pickle soda. He eased slowly left again and lowered the barrel.

  There they were. Shifting ghosts, three of them. He blinked snow from his eyepiece and cheeks and crawled in deep, and there they were. Lit, not steadily, by their own heat—the scope wasn’t sensitive enough for that—but only fitfully now and then by what looked like illumination from the goggles of the others. Three centaurs, horses’ bodies and men’s upper torsos, wavery as if sealed far away under murky green glass.

  “Turbans,” Kaulukukui whispered. “Capes. Shorty AKs. His bodyguard.”

  “Check. On the lead?”

  “Check.”

  “See these guys behind them?”

  “Roger. On horses.”

  Teddy didn’t answer, scoping them. He didn’t think he was imagining it, but the one in the middle, though slumped as if tired or wounded, sat taller in the saddle. Then the snow blew in, but he didn’t think he was wrong. The middle horse was bigger, yes, but its rider was still taller than the others. He couldn’t tell anything more, though. If he hadn’t dropped the fucking SR … the night sight on it imaged clear as crystal, laser-ranged instantly out to a thousand yards.

  But he didn’t, and the scope he did have was shorting out and cutting off, and he was close to losing consciousness. He could let them go by, the way he’d let the first four pass. Trade their lives for his own.

  Only … the mission wasn’t to lie here and let the bad guys walk past.

  It didn’t matter what happened to him. If it was just him, he’d make the shot. Take out as many as he could before they knocked him down. It would be fun. A buzz. The way he wanted to go out.

  Trouble was, he wasn’t alone up here. Somehow it was different when you were the one telling them to lay down their lives.

  He’d seen guys die before. Good guys. Like Sumo.

  Wait a minute.

  He turned his head, then put out his hand. No one lay to his left. He stared, blinking snow out of his eyes. Trying to force something jagged inside his head that somehow, no matter which way he turned it, would not fit through the hole. The snow was velvet soft and cunt warm under his belly. The pain was gone. He felt as if someone had jammed a syrette of morphine into him.

  He was back at the Polo Lounge with Loki and Hanneline and Salena Frank and Sumo too. And a red-haired older woman he didn’t know, and he didn’t think how strange it was they were all there together, Sumo in the tentlike sweat gear he always wore working out. Then Teddy recognized the woman. His grandmother, so beautiful, such fine bones, and they were talking about how the movie would be made at last. Better than any other war movie ever made. Production values out of this world, and he felt good, really good, and Sumo was grinning too. “Your mother will be proud of you,” Hanneline said, and she looked so pleased, and reached out to put her hand on his.

  Only her fingers were cold as liquid nitrogen, and she shook him until he cried out, and his side hurt like Christ’s on the cross and he was lying full length in the snow freezing and hammering his side with his fist and his face was frozen to a rifle butt with blood. “… the fuck,” he muttered. “What do we do? Fuck if I know.” He wanted to tell whoever was hitting him to fuck off. Instead he blinked and tore his cheek off the stock with a pain that felt as if his skin was flaying off. He got his eye back to the scope.

  And there they were, there he was, filling the objective, nodding forward on the horse that looked dead on its feet, snow up to its withers, shoving its way uphill as one of the bodyguards flailed at it with a stick.

  The man who’d killed so many. Who’d kill so many more.

  Unless he, Teddy Harlett Oberg, nailed him. Right here. Right now.

  He got the range off the reticle, corrected for the horse, corrected for the target’s height. Held off for wind. Flicked off the safety, remembering it was on the right side like on an AK. Took a deep breath and let it out. Another, and let it out. Took up the slack in the first stage of the trigger.

  A burst of snow wiped out the image, leaving him with only a seething speckle like boiling green oatmeal. He grunted, maintaining pressure on the trigger, not breathing. Then the snow parted and there were the three figures again, the central one haloed for an instant with an unearthly radiance as the beams of his guardians swept back and forth across him. Silhouetting him for his hunter. Teddy exhaled a little more and the crosshairs rose to quarter the chest region. The last ounce came out of the trigger. And the rifle, held perfectly still with his cheekbone welded to the stock and hand welded to the pistol grip and left arm thrust out supporting the fore end, went

  click.

  He lay rigid, following the sway of the upper torso with the crosshairs in case the round was a hangfire. Then cursed and worked the bolt. The dud ejected and buried itself in the snow. Then the wind came and snow whipped up all around him in a furious microburst. Fuck, fuck. Green frothed opaque between him and the target as he searched desperately to reacquire. Bad ammo. No telling how old, or how many times it’d been frozen and scorched, soaked and dried out. Too much gun oil killed primers. But the rounds that had killed Doc and wounded Moogie hadn’t been duds. And Teddy had two left.

  He lined up and waited. When the shadows swam up again, he exhaled, and slowly, so slowly, squeezed the trigger again.

  Click.

  “Son of a bitch,” he muttered, counting it off, waiting out the hangfire. One thousand. A solid wedge of pain was forcing itself between the lobes of his brain like a white-hot hatchet head. Two thousand. One more fucking round. The last. Could it be the rifle? Broken firing pin? Lubricant, congealed in the utter cold? If so, he couldn’t do anything about it. All his gear was in his ruck. Three thousand. He ejected and fed once more and stead
ied down, his whole being concentrated in the green. He breathed in. The snow veils wavered and fluttered. He breathed out. Nothing. He breathed in. Couldn’t see. Then he could. He breathed out. His finger tightened. Then he couldn’t.

  Then the bowed figure loomed silhouetted in tinted light, bent over the pommel, and he corrected the slightest bit to shade left for the wind just as the veil closed again, the snow seethed, blotting out sight.

  The rifle slammed into his shoulder. The scope flickered, but stayed on. As the boom rolled back from the crags, he caught a distorted glimpse of the riders to either side spurring to close up, gesticulating savagely. Heard high, peremptory shouts. Answering cries echoed from the flankers. The scope came back down from the recoil and he searched for the man he’d fired at. Wanting to see him sliding down, wilting. Dying in the snow. But couldn’t see anything. Just seethe, and darkness.

  And that was it. No surprise left now. Close enough to hear where he’d fired from, if they hadn’t actually seen the muzzle flash. Any minute, they’d be up here. And there they were. The gritty grind of feet on loose rock, scrambling up the scree. Harsh calls back and forth. The hoarse cries of angry, frightened men.

  Teddy Oberg laid the rifle aside and reached for his pistol. But instead of the SIG’s grip, his numbed, unfeeling fingers stuck something hard and irregular. A mass of frozen blood attached to his side. Frozen solid, over the weapon. His hand instantly diverted and slid his thin-blade out.

  Never jam on you, or run out of ammo. A voice in his ear. Calm. Determined. Sumo’s? Or from farther back, the long chain of warriors who’d trained him and formed him? He couldn’t remember. But it didn’t matter.

  He’d lost his way. But he’d found the trail again.

  He rolled on his side and tried to sit up, but couldn’t. So he just lay there, looking into the dark, waiting for them to come for him, out of the snow.

  The Afterimage

  Tora Bora

  DAN was bent, panting, trying to force oxygen into his blood to go on, when he caught sight of the cluster-bomb module. The size of a Pepsi can, the hue of a ripe banana, it was caught between the rock he was standing on and the next one, wedged at an awkward cant that must have convinced the fuze it hadn’t quite hit the ground. Slowly, he shifted his weight off the rock and stepped to the next one. Bent again, trying to catch his breath.

  The air was much thinner than at Bagram, and bitter cold. He had to stop and wheeze each time he climbed even a small hill. Their wizened, tiny guide, an old man with a stained beard and skin like weathered fiberglass, stopped each time to squat and wait. As they trudged on again, the elder skipped from rock to rock like a goat, the torn blanket over his shoulders flapping, pointing and chattering each time he noticed an abandoned rifle, unexploded munition, abandoned pack.

  Dan and Laughland and Belote were here for a Sensitive Site Exploration, joining the intel people picking over the ground for documents. Meanwhile the local boys wandered amid the goats and submunitions, picking up shrapnel and shell casings to sell for scrap. Dan rested again, hands on knees, looking up at the mountains and trying to imagine getting up such a grade with pack and rifle. Only a little more slope, and you’d need climbing gear to scale these traverses. The ground was rubble, shattered quartz-glittering rock punctuated with scrawny bushes tall as a woman, the lower branches nibbled to rattling sticks by goats.

  One of the attacking warlords had turned or been bought off. Just as the militias started to push forward at last, he’d announced a cease-fire for negotiations. That night, as far as anyone could judge, hundreds of AQTs had drained out of the valley like dirty water through a suddenly unplugged drain. East into Pakistan. South into the Parachinar. Scuttlebutt had it a SEAL team had been caught in that movement, taking heavy casualties. JSOC was considering strikes farther south at Zhawar Kili, another stronghold where the faithful had gathered. But Big Army was folding its tents all over the country. As far as Faulcon was concerned, this war was over.

  The lower half of a disarticulated corpse lay in the shelter of a rock. Starting to rot, by the old-garbage smell. Someone had gotten its boots and pants, leaving the pale, rain-washed, callused soles of its feet turned to the sky.

  The old man cheeped from the mouth of a cave. Belote stood with him, looking sour. He had a scarf wrapped around his head under the pakul hat, a field jacket over his fur vest. An unlit cigarette dangled from his lip.

  “What’s he yelling about?” Dan asked, bending again to wheeze. No question, his lungs weren’t what they’d been. The ground was littered with empty Kalashnikov cases, as if someone had fought from this position for a long time.

  “He says this was his cave. The Sheik’s. His nephew saw him here. Short life to him, he says. Everyone hated him for bringing the Americans and their bombs.”

  True? Or what he thought they wanted to hear? A week ago their guide could’ve been piloting Arabs through the passes, singing a different tune. Dan looked around for wires or strings. The old man handed him a rock. Dan weighed it blankly.

  “For mines,” Belote supplied. “Toss it in.”

  After four stones had thudded uneventfully onto the cave floor, Dan bent and crab-walked in. Rough rock arched overhead. The cavern, or tunnel, curved downward into darkness. He got his flash out and shone it ahead.

  At the very end lay a closet-size grotto with a worn sleeping bag, empty potato-chip bags, a ragged, dirty towel, dead flashlight batteries, and a clay lamp that, when he bent closer, still smelled of some kind of sweet oil. He almost picked it up, but didn’t like the way the sand had been smoothed over around it. Bin Laden’s? Doubtful. Yet he lingered, looking around the cavern, trying for some sense of the man who might have slept here. Fanatical, ascetic, evil; yet he still had to admire his determination. If only those who said they desired peace were willing to give up as much to achieve it.

  When he backed out into the light again, breathing hard, the old man had found a ragged, damp book. Belote flipped through it, then handed it to Dan. The text was in Arabic, partly handwritten, held together by brass brads. Dan turned the pages. He couldn’t read it, but the diagrams were perfectly clear. How to destroy bridges, power lines, dams, aircraft. How to rig a car as a suicide bomb. A hand-careful schematic in colored pencil showed how to build a suicide vest. Other movements had produced similar documents. Anarchists. Communists. The IRA. The Red Brigades. The art of destruction and terror, to be inflicted on the innocent.

  It had never worked for long, no matter how charismatic. The lust to destroy was inherent in man. But so was the will to fight back, to protect the fragile structure of give-and-take that, however imperfect, men settled for. And called peace.

  He handed it back to Belote and lifted his face again to sheer rock and blue-black sky.

  Their quarry had escaped. But he could not feel justified in saying anyone was at fault. Where empires go to die, Provanzano had called Afghanistan. The most remote battlefield on earth. Too high, too cold, too rugged, too far from the wellsprings of US power. And most of all, too vast. Its valleys and mountains had swallowed army after army; never defeated; simply outlasted by those patient enough to hide. Here bin Laden’s supporters and friends had hidden and fed him, then spirited him away to some new bolt-hole.

  But we’ll get him, Dan thought. No question of that.

  It was just a matter of time.

  Prince Georges County, Maryland

  Blair’s father held the car door, courtly as ever. Her mother had a headache and had stayed home. It was Blair’s first time out of the house, except for visits to doctors. She’d avoided all her old friends. Avoided even church, though her mother had tried to persuade her to go.

  She didn’t want to face anybody she knew. Face them. Yes, exactly. She understood bitterly now just what that meant.

  “Coming, kiddo?” Checkie said. Still holding the door.

  “Maybe I shouldn’t—”

  “You need to walk, honey.”

  She took a deep
breath. Then another, glancing past him toward the bright lights, the high rose walls, the gay logos atop the buildings, each designed to be recognizable from miles distant. “That’s okay, Dad. Why don’t you go ahead? Here’s what I need: Chanel Teint Innocence fluid number forty-five Rose. Or Cream Compact number forty-five Rose. Either Laura Mercier Secret Camouflage SC-2, or LM Silk Crème Foundation—”

  His raised hand halted her. “Whoa! Hold on! I’ll get the wrong size, or something. Like when I used to send your mom to the hardware store. But, hey, I’ll go in with you. Come on, kiddo.”

  She started to say again that she didn’t want to. Then bit down on the whining and seized the side of the door. Hauled herself up. The cold air was scented with the snow melting in piles in the corners of the lot. The cars all had American flags magnetized on their sides, or zip-tied to the aerials. She turned her head away as people streamed past. Older couples. Young mothers with strollers. Two teenaged girls, laughing, wearing what looked like secondhand bridal dresses.

  “They’re not looking at you, honey,” Checkie said. “Nobody is. See? Nobody here knows you, anyway.”

  Standing on trembling legs, she touched the corner of her right eye with the tip of one finger. Drew it back and down, tracing the numbness. Like touching dead flesh. Dead, but still warm. Oh, the doctors were happy. They said the grafts had taken. But her face didn’t feel the way it used to, and she certainly didn’t look like the self she remembered. The autografts flamed and itched. She had to rub cream in twice a day to keep them from contracting. Her ear was … just … ugly. She was growing her hair longer, to cover it; but she could feel it, a nerveless, reddened nubbin, folded and warped. A small but hideous deformity. They said her hip was healing too, but it hurt like sin whenever she put the slightest weight on it.