by David Poyer
Graciadei brightened too. “Okay if I put that out to the crew?”
Dan nodded. As the 1MC spoke, cheers resounded from the repair parties on the hangar deck.
He leaned back, fingering his chin. Trying to grab the lizard-tail of an idea as it flicked around a corner of his mind.
The enemy carrier.
Wounded, trying to withdraw …
Focusing all their attention on it …
“Come here,” he told Jamail, and beckoned Graciadei back as well. He lowered his voice. “Just between the three of us … let me try an idea out on you.”
8
In the Tien Shan Mountains
ALL that day it came down in the same fine crystals they’d seen back in the POW camp. Not in a way Teddy had ever seen it, even in the White Mountains, what he’d thought of as high-altitude powder. But this air was even drier than Afghanistan’s, apparently. It just didn’t snow in any way he thought snow should be.
Lying up, they spent the daylight hours huddled close as maggots in a cleft between massive jagged rocks. The cavern was freezing, but it sheltered them from the wind. They could have managed a fire, between his stone and steel and the twisted grass Major Trinh collected at every opportunity, but aside from that scant tinder there was nothing else to burn. They hadn’t seen a tree since the escape.
Teddy lay shuddering in his rags, staring up at the blue-black sky as hour after hour oozed past. Only seldom did his eyelids drift closed. But one of the men on either side of him always chose just that moment to turn over.
Then, somehow, they dragged themselves out from the rocks, and began climbing again.
Since leaving the prison camp days before, they’d walked by night single file, navigating by the stars, which were brilliant and close, more than bright enough to hike by, even across this rough ground. Obie let Fierros lead, since the pilot seemed to have a clear idea where he was going. Keeping the North Star on his right, he’d pick out a peak or an escarpment ahead, then line up on it until the lay of the land concealed it, or they got lost in one of the gullies they mostly followed. Then he’d halt them and crawl up to where he could catch the guiding star again.
They straggled on all night this way, trying to ignore the howls of wolves, now far away, now closer. Toward dawn they started looking for another cave, or a narrow enough ravine that they didn’t have to worry about overhead cover.
Which worried Teddy more and more as he dragged along. Now and then the whine of a distant motor echoed among the precipices in such a way they couldn’t actually tell where it was coming from. The Chinese had drones too. Would they use them for tracking escaped POWs? He had his doubts, but it was possible. Better not to take chances. At least not for the first few days.
Now, as dawn approached once more, they hugged the dark side of a rugged, twisting valley, clambering awkwardly among huge black boulders that lay tumbled from the heights far above like dice thrown by titans. The slabs were shattered into slanting prisms of dark rock. He staggered as he climbed, slid, climbed again. At each step pain jarred up from his ruined leg. A bedroll was lashed over one shoulder. Over the other, the nylon tow strap. A rope belt carried the screwdriver, the chert axe, and a cloth bag that had once held food.
They climbed past the point where their legs died to all sensation, past where the cloths binding their feet were soaked with blood and pus. Past when their hands were scraped raw from grasping at sharp flint to avoid falling. Long past when they’d staggered and fallen time after time, until the sensation of falling was as familiar as that of walking, and they simply let go and collapsed, buckling into the rough gravel and lying for long seconds until one of the others cajoled them up with weary, angry curses.
And then came the gray shaking radiance before the sun. Vu, in the lead just then, beckoned from beneath a fallen monolith. Under which they crawled, and fitted themselves together, and passed nearly instantaneously from numb exhaustion into the unconsciousness which lives next door to death from starvation.
* * *
THE lobby of the old Team building, at Dam Neck. Blue tile. Folding chairs. Teddy was standing in front of the sandwich machine, trying to decide between egg salad and tuna. “Sumo” Kaulukukui, his old swim buddy, was there with him. “Got change for a five?”
The Hawaiian thumbed through his billfold. “What, it won’t take a five?”
“Tried that. Fucking machine rejects it.”
“Stick it in the other way. Sometimes they like that.”
The feed sucked the bill in and considered, humming to itself, then unreeled the bill like an outthrust tongue. “Shit,” Kaulukukui said. “Your money’s no good here, Obie.”
Teddy eyed the sandwiches through the glass. One butt-stroke of the pistol on his hip would break it. He licked his lips. “God, that fucking egg salad looks good.” He could taste the eggs, glistening and chilled. Taste the cool rich mayo. The nice fresh thick bread. But the tuna looked good too. Made with chunky white albacore, not the cheap stuff.
“Huh. That’s on whole wheat,” the other SEAL observed.
“You ain’t helpin’ me here, fatass.” He stared into the machine, unable to make the choice.
But was there really a choice to be made?
And who, exactly, was making the choice?
* * *
THEN somehow he was in the White Mountains. Back in the Parachinars, sprawled in the snow, with a rifle butt in his shoulder. The Dragunov was too long and too heavy, the angles on it all wrong. The snow was coming hard and every time a gust whipped it up he couldn’t see anything, just milling glitter like stirring dark green paint mixed with chrome sparkles. “Got the four guys in front? And the flank guards?”
“Yeah. I saw ’em,” muttered Sumo, beside him. “We gonna take ’em?”
“No. Just foot soldiers. Who’s behind ’em? Anybody back there?”
“Don’t think so. I don’t see any … wait.” Then the big soft hand tightened on his shoulder. Squeezed once. Again. A third time.
Three targets. Teddy swung the scope left. The soft whine of the infrared scope died. He jiggled the rifle. The scope buzzed, powering back up, and the mountainside came on again in green and black but fizzy, like licorice-and-pickle soda. He eased left again.
He crawled deep into the scope and there they were. Three centaurs, horses’ bodies and men’s torsos and heads, wavery as if sealed away under murky green glass.
“Turbans,” Kaulukukui whispered. “Capes. Shorty AKs. That’s his bodyguard.”
“Check. On the lead?”
“Check.”
“See these guys behind them?”
“Roger. On horses.”
Teddy scoped them. The one in the middle, shoulders slumped as if tired, still sat taller in the saddle. Then more snow blew in, but he didn’t think he was wrong. If he hadn’t dropped and broken the fucking SR-25 … the night sight on it had imaged clear as crystal, laser-ranged out to a thousand yards.
The scope he did have was buzzing and cutting off, and he was close to losing consciousness.
He could just let them go by. Trade their lives for his own.
Only … the mission wasn’t to lie here and let the bad guys walk past.
If it were just him, he’d make the shot. It would be fun. The way he wanted to go out.
Trouble was, he wasn’t alone up here. Somehow it was different, when you were telling others to lay down their lives.
Of course he’d seen guys die before. Good guys, like Sumo.
Wait a minute.
He groped out a hand. No one lay to his left. He stared, trying to force a jagged piece into his mind that somehow, no matter which way he turned it, would not fit.
When he got his eye back to the scope, there they were. There he was, nodding along on a horse that looked dead on its feet as one of the bodyguards flailed at its flanks with a stick.
The bearded man who’d killed so many. Who’d happily kill even more.
Unless Teddy Ob
erg nailed him, here and now.
A burst of snow left him with only a seething speckle like boiling oatmeal. He grunted, maintaining pressure on the trigger, not breathing.
Then the snow parted and there he was again, haloed for an instant as the beams of his guardians swept back and forth. Teddy exhaled a little more and the crosshairs rose to quarter the chest. The last ounce came out of the trigger. He corrected left for the wind as the snow-veil closed again.
The rifle slammed into his shoulder.
But he’d missed.
What did that mean?
His action hadn’t been a choice. It had been a chance.
What was the difference between a choice and a chance?
Was there a difference?
* * *
TEDDY’S eyes snapped open.
He stared into the fading light without hope, without thought. Grabbing after something he’d understood just for a moment, then had lost.
When the shadows grew long, the valley dim, Trinh finally crept out. Stone scraped steel. After many minutes the scraping stopped, and he blew on the crimped grass. The smell of burning and a faint blue smoke filled the gap in the rock.
They shared a steel bowl of warm water. “White tea,” the Viets called it. Melted from the snow that collected in the depressions. Teddy swallowed it hungrily, wishing there were more. It trickled into a hollow place under his breastbone, and sank as if into desert sand.
Then they rose and stretched, buckled on their meager possessions, and lurched once more, groaning, into the march.
Fierros led. Stocky once, lean now, with his quilted blanket torn into a makeshift poncho and another piece of ragged cloth formed into a hood. He carried the AK they’d taken from the girl guard.
Next walked Major Trinh. Shorter than the American pilot, and older, but he kept up. He’d torn his blanket into long strips, wound puttee-fashion around legs and body. He carried a heavy stick strapped across his back by a braid of the tough grass he seemed to be able to fashion into anything he liked.
Ten yards behind came his slight shadow, little Vu. The dark-faced Viet enlisted had imitated his senior with strips of blanket, but had found another blanket as well. Teddy suspected, but wasn’t sure, it had been the dead Phung’s. This seemed risky, who knew what the little fucker had been sick with, but then, they’d all slept huddled together back at 576. So what the hell. Whatever Phung and the other inmates and guards had died of, he hadn’t gotten it. Not yet, anyway.
The last red streaks slit the sky, succeeded by purple, lavender, then velvet gray. A salt-sprinkle of stars appeared. Gradually the ragged band emerged from the rocky valley into a more open land. As they left the sheltering mountains Teddy felt naked. He limped faster. Then faster still, forcing his legs into painful motion. The wooden brace slipped and slid on sand and loose rock. He almost pitched over, but caught himself with an agonizing twist of the hip. Vu flinched away and grabbed the hilt of his bayonet as Teddy hobbled furiously past. Trinh blinked, raising an eyebrow. Teddy panted, limping ever faster. “Toby,” he muttered. “Ragger. Fierro!”
The figure ahead halted in its tracks. Turned its head. “Fuck you want, Obie?” it hissed.
“Where the hell’re you going?”
Fierros pointed. “Down there. West. Like we said.”
Teddy squinted. Downhill. Undulating slightly, but falling away in what looked like miles of sand hills. In the far, far distance, orange lights twinkled. A long line, sparkling and wavering. Above them small blue lights were moving. Circling, it looked like. The black bowl of starry sky curved down over them. A road? A barrier? They crouched and studied the lights, motionless, for some time, Trinh considering them through the binoculars they’d taken from the guard shack.
“What are those moving lights?” Teddy asked him. “Can you make ’em out?”
“No. I don’t know.”
“Birds? Drones? Planes?”
He lowered the glasses. “Too far away.”
“Hell of a lot of activity down there,” Teddy muttered. “For the middle of fucking nowhere.”
Fierros said tentatively, “Where there are lights … there are people.”
Teddy frowned. “I thought we were sticking to the mountains.”
“No, we were headed west.” The airman jerked a thumb over his shoulder. “But we done ran out of mountains, unless you want to go north now. And where there are people, there’s going to be food.”
“We can’t move in the open, Toby. They’ll spot us in a second, come daylight. Maybe at night, too, if they have anything up with IR scanning. That’s why we were sticking to rough terrain.”
“It’s been a week. We’re at least a hundred miles away. They’ve got better things to do than look for four escaped POWs. And we’re out of food.” The airman glanced at the Viets, who’d caught up. “Right, guys? We gotta put something in our bellies besides white tea. Or just lie down and not get up one morning.”
They stood debating it. Teddy thought it was too soon to figure the authorities had stopped looking for them. In wartime, special units were assigned to track down escapees. “Also, we aren’t just ‘escaped POWs.’ We killed a guard. If we’re captured, they’ll line us up and shoot us. While they video it, as a warning, to the other POWs.”
Vu muttered something in Vietnamese. “What did he say?” Fierros demanded.
“He said, ‘Perhaps they will give us hot rice before they shoot us,’” Trinh translated.
Fierros yelled, “Look, fucker! The way these valleys run, if we go back in it might be thirty, fifty miles before we see another breakout to the south. We’ll starve before we get out!”
“We could shoot something,” Teddy said. “Besides, we’ve got to hit a village sooner or later.”
“Shoot? Shoot what? There’s nothing out there! We haven’t even spotted a road, much less a village.”
“Okay, Okay—impasse.” Teddy turned to Trinh. “Major? You guys get a vote here. The desert or the mountains? We gotta decide. And we gotta do it now.”
The two Viets conferred in an undertone. At last Vu spread his hands, apparently leaving it up to the officer. Trinh grimaced. Looked at the desert. Then bowed his head. “If it’s up to me … the mountains.”
Fierros’s face fell. He fingered the stock of the AK. Then nodded heavily. “Majority rules, I guess. Maybe we’ll get lucky.”
As they turned away, Teddy threw a glance over his shoulder at the dancing lights. Remembering, vaguely, something from his dream. Something about a choice not being a choice … no, that wasn’t it.
He hoped they were making the right decision.
* * *
THEY backtracked uphill again and followed the next valley north. Very slowly.
Teddy figured he was starting to get the layout. All these streams were dry now because it was winter. But in spring they must be torrents. You could see that from the way the sand, even rocks, lay tumbled and shoaled. Snowmelt must rage down out of those huge snowcapped peaks that walked with them. The Tien Shans. They had to find another valley headed west, the way they’d done before.
They followed the dry stream bed, flanked by rising, dry, dun-colored banks of what looked like hardened sand sculpted into weird formations. Here and there toppled and twisted gray trees were seemingly frozen into the hardened soil. They could have been centuries old, or thousands of years. The sand the men scuffed through was grayish black, grainy, and heavy. It didn’t feel as if anything had ever lived in it. When they buried themselves in it for a day, at the base of a bluff, it felt to Teddy as if he were already dead.
The next night the valley of the dry river curved back and forth, and for a while he was afraid they were heading east again, but at last it did seem to curve more westerly than not. The mountains rose, towering to blot out the stars ahead.
But the tiny figures barely moved now.
Their legs dragged. Their feet barely scuffed over the ground.
They staggered, propped on stic
ks broken from the entombed and mummified trees.
That night they found bushes, and risked building a fire. Teddy felt exposed, but they huddled around the flames and then the glowing coals all that day, sucking the heat as if it were food. Picking through their rags for the last few lice, and eating them greedily. Vu dug into the stream bed and found dirty water a foot down, which they strained through cloths and sucked up.
Picking the lice, exploring his body, Teddy was appalled. His swollen stomach protruded as if he were eight months pregnant. His once-muscular arms and legs were shriveled; he could trace the bones under the skin. His penis and balls had all but disappeared, sucked back into his groin as if to nourish more essential organs. The damaged leg was withered, shrunken, the foot curled in on itself. Clearly, he was never going to walk on it again.
* * *
HE woke that night to absolute silence, save for the low crackle of the dying fire. And a hoarse panting somewhere out in the dark.
When he threw a dead bush on the fire and it blazed up, eyes glowed back like live coals.
He shook the others awake. They snatched up bayonets, knives, the single rifle, and stared back from their blanket cocoons.
The wolves lay just outside the circle of firelight, tongues lolling, watching the men unblinkingly, muzzles resting patiently on their extended forepaws.
When the dawn came, the wolves were gone.
* * *
THE next morning they rose while it was still dark, and began walking.
Picking their way during the day felt dangerous at first, but it was easier on their feet and legs, and took much less energy. They were able to see better paths. Gradually, as they continued to climb, more rocks littered the gorge they followed west. Now and then what might have been old trails led up the banks. They saw cloven tracks, goats or sheep, and wolf tracks. But they didn’t see any actual goats or sheep. Nor any villages. Once they stumbled on what might have been a road, ruts from wheels, but it led due north. Which wasn’t where they wanted to go … not to Siberia.
