by Tom Clancy
“How deep does this go?” I said aloud, though no one could hear me. We ventured on at least another hundred meters, then turned to our left and saw an opening and the faint stars beyond.
Treehorn and Ramirez moved up front and signaled to me that they’d check it out.
I gave them a thumbs-up and kept back with the others. They reached the opening, a narrow leaf-shaped break in the stone, and shifted warily forward. Both men vanished for a second, then Ramirez ducked back inside and waved us on.
We emerged on the mountainside facing Sangsar, and all the booming from inside the mountain had not gone unnoticed. Lights burned from the houses nearest the wall, and two pickup trucks loaded with Taliban were already bouncing across the desert, en route to us. I ripped off my mask, as did the others, and then said, “There’s got to be another entrance. Warris must be looking for it, too.”
I whirled around, faced the ridgeline, got my bearings, and waved the rest of the team up, toward a cluster of outcroppings that looked promising.
We got there in a hurry—because several Taliban had already reached the ridge just below us and had opened fire. With dirt popping at our knees and making us grimace, we reached a broad wall of stone and ducked behind it. I waved my team on, one after another, and we all huddled behind the rock.
“We got a problem,” said Ramirez. “Even if we find the other entrance, we already know it’s a dead end. And if we all go in there, they could pin us down, drop in some grenades, and that ruins my plans to marry a supermodel.”
“Mine, too,” said Smith with a wink.
“All right, Joey, me and you go up and look for the entrance,” I told Ramirez. “The rest of you set up here along the rocks. See if you can hold them for a just a couple of minutes.”
I rushed forward with Ramirez on my heels. We ascended through a steep passage that reminded me of a vacation I’d taken to go hiking in Sedona, Arizona. Ramirez spotted the tunnel exit before I saw it, and we both came across the top of the next outcropping and headed toward a narrow seam in the rock. We got within ten meters when a Taliban fighter appeared.
Again, Ramirez put his lightning-fast reflexes to work and gunned down the guy before I could blink. We rushed forward now, coming around him, and came up on both sides of the entrance. I looked at him, raised three fingers. On three, two, one—
We rolled away from the wall and rushed inside, him dropping to one knee to shoot low, me on my feet, standing tall to strike high.
And there, standing before us, like a lost puppy, was Warris’s private, the kid who’d driven him up to the mountain. He clutched his pistol and just looked at us, trembling. He had to be just eighteen, and thinking about buying his first shaving kit . . .
“Dude, what the hell are you doing here?” asked Ramirez.
He lowered his weapon. “I heard the shooting. I came up to help.”
“You had orders to stay there,” I said.
“Didn’t seem like anybody was obeying orders.”
I snickered. “What’s your name?”
“It’s right here on my uniform.”
I ripped off the Velcro-attached name patch and read the word: Hendrickson, then shoved the patch back at him. “All right, junior, you just got promoted to Special Forces. Did you see Captain Warris on your way in here?”
“No, sir.”
I cursed. “But this tunnel cuts through the mountain?”
“It does, sir.”
“Any bad guys in there?”
He almost laughed. “Not when I came through, sir.”
“All right.” I was about to turn back to Ramirez when a series of explosions rocked the mountain, and just a few seconds later the rest of the team came sprinting up toward the entrance.
A breathless Nolan reported, “RPGs. They’re moving in fast. We need to move now! Got twenty or thirty coming up. It’s going to get hairy, boss.”
“Gotcha. Everybody? This is Private Hendrickson. He’s in charge. Where do we go to get out of here, Private?”
The kid looked around and nearly passed out from the weight I’d just dumped on his shoulders. After blinking hard he finally said, “Follow me.”
We dropped in behind him, as the shouts of the Taliban rose behind us. Ramirez set two more CS canisters just outside the entrance to delay them, while Brown and Smith hung back to plant a small amount of C-4 on a remote detonator, which they confirmed still worked.
Once they rejoined us about fifty meters down the tunnel, they detonated the charges. Twin thunderclaps shook the walls around us, and I imagined a cave-in that would help in our escape.
We came around another long curve and reached an intersecting tunnel. “You go down there?” I asked Ghost Leader Hendrickson.
“No, sir.”
“Ramirez?” I called. “The rest of you hold here.”
We hustled down the intersecting tunnel, which grew so narrow at one point that we had to turn sideways just to pass through. Then it opened back up and filtered into a broad chamber. To our left was a pile of rocks and dirt—the cave-in where Warris had been. We were on the other side now. No sign of him. My light played over the floor. Nothing. No evidence.
“Well, he ain’t here,” groaned Ramirez.
I tried calling Warris on the radio again. No answer.
Consequently, I stood there, wiping dirt off my nose and cheeks. “How am I going to explain this shit?”
“When we get out, we need to get on the same page,” Ramirez said. “And we need to buy the kid.”
“What’re you talking about?”
“He overheard everything. He’s a problem.”
“Whoa, Joey.”
“Scott, Harruck wants to burn you. Warris is MIA. This is way out of control.”
“I know. Let’s just get out of here, then we’ll talk to the kid.”
“All right, but what happens if he decides to burn us, too?”
“We’re not going to do anything to him. Don’t even imply that, all right?”
“If you say so . . .”
We returned to the intersection, where Treehorn told me he’d heard voices from the tunnel behind us. The C-4 had not sealed up the tunnel, damn it. The Taliban were climbing over the debris and coming.
“Get some more ready,” I told him. “We’ll blow the exit.”
The group charged forward, with the kid leading the way. He burst through the exit and quickly turned left, coming along a very steep ridge, where he almost lost his balance and tumbled down the mountainside. For a dark moment, I wished he had.
Treehorn and Brown planted the charges. We rushed along the ridge and ducked behind a jagged section of rock that shielded us up to our shoulders.
“Just wait for the first guy because you know the rest are right behind him,” I said.
Too late. Three guys came bursting out of the entrance, and while Ramirez and Nolan took them out, Brown triggered the explosives. A chute of rock-filled smoke lifted as the deep boom resounded, the vibration working its way into my boots.
“Aw, hell,” said Smith, pointing up at the ridge lines high above the cave.
At least twenty or more fighters had already cleared the summit and were coming down. They obviously knew a shortcut to get up there, and as they ascended they opened fire on us, the incoming dropping like hail and forcing us tight against the rocks.
About fifteen meters to my left were Ramirez and the kid, huddled against the rock. And I’ll never forget how it all looked—
The silhouettes of my two men as Ramirez popped up from behind cover and cut loose with two salvos from his own AK-47 . . .
The lightning-bug flashes of muzzles drawing a jagged line across the mountain . . .
And the next moment, as I blinked and looked again at Ramirez, who pulled back from the rock, fired up at the Taliban again, then turned his rifle on Private Hendrickson.
My mouth opened.
I thought for a second that Ramirez had seen me. Everyone else was engaging the enemy
now, complete chaos all around us, with only me, the conscience of our team, shouldering the stone and watching as Ramirez pulled the trigger and put three rounds in the private’s back, dropping him instantly.
He immediately huddled to the rock and screamed, “He’s hit! Hendrickson is down! Nolan! I need a medic! Medic right now!”
I dodged over to Ramirez’s position and rolled the kid onto his side. He didn’t move. I checked for a carotid pulse. No, he was dead.
“I’m sorry. I tried to cover him.”
I was beginning to lose my breath.
My men were fiercely loyal, all right.
Agonizingly loyal.
Another spate of incoming drove both of us to the rock, and Ramirez faced me with a blank stare.
SIXTEEN
I thought I knew everything about Master Sergeant Joe Ramirez. His parents had emigrated from Mexico and had held fast to the old ways. They’d raised him in North Hollywood, California, and had kept him on the straight and narrow path. He was a devout Catholic, an altar boy, a Boy Scout.
In his teenaged years he’d become a computer hacker and had almost gotten busted for identity theft, but he’d been taken under the wing of a detective who’d persuaded him to join the Army. His older brother Enrique had enlisted, and I’d met him—nice guy, quiet demeanor, and a good soldier, as reported by many of his superiors. Ramirez followed in his footsteps.
It wasn’t long before he was tapped for Special Forces, and he now had more experience in Afghanistan than any of us. Two tours as an Army Ranger plus some shorter ops. Old man Gordon had handpicked the kid himself to become a member of the Ghosts, and Ramirez had done a great job when I’d taken him to Waziristan and, later on, into China. He was one of the most levelheaded guys I’d ever served with and the last person on earth I’d thought capable of murder. He was the epitome of an outstanding soldier.
And he’d become my good friend.
“Joey.” I gasped.
“I’ll get him out of here,” he said. “Just have them cover me. I can see the Hummer down there!”
Before I could do anything, he scooped up Hendrickson’s body and started shakily down the mountain. Nolan came running up and cried, “Wait!” He was already sloughing off his medic’s pack.
“Too late,” I said. Then I raised my voice. “Everybody, fall back! Fall back! Let’s go!”
We started a serpentine descent, following the ridge lines and those areas where the outcroppings provided some slight cover from the Taliban behind us.
Treehorn and Brown covered our withdrawal, retreating only when they spotted a guy shouldering an RPG. They vacated their position only seconds before the rocket struck, heaving fiery flashes and pulverized rock.
At the foot of the hills we were met with a curious sight: About a half dozen Afghan National Army troops had driven up in a truck, and beside them was Bronco. He waved me over and cried, “Let’s go, Joe!”
“What the hell are you doing here?”
“We’re the cavalry. We’ll cover you.”
“How’d you know we were out here?”
He rolled his eyes, then climbed back into the truck as the Army troops dropped to the ditches and began firing on the advancing Taliban.
“Why are you doing this?” I asked.
“I like it when people owe me,” he said.
The rest of my guys came darting over and, using Bronco’s truck for cover, returned a few more salvos before breaking off to make one last run for the Hummer.
Two more vehicles pulled up, a big Bradley and another Hummer, and rifle squads bolted out: the security team from the construction site.
I talked to the sergeant there, handed over the fight, and jogged back to the Hummer. The earlier wounds in my leg began throbbing again.
Harruck confronted me before I could climb out of the Hummer.
I barely heard what he was barking about. I just spoke over him: “Warris was cut off from us during a cave-in and he’s missing. He might’ve been captured by the Taliban.”
“Say again?”
I did. His jaw fell open, then: “Well, isn’t that goddamned convenient for you!”
“My mission is to capture Zahed. I can and will do that without interference. Our mission tonight was completely within my rights.”
“I sent him up there to relieve you of command.”
“I know. But we got attacked.” Not exactly a lie. Not the full truth, either. “His driver was also killed on the way out of there.”
“And what did you gain?”
I looked back to the Hummer, and Nolan got out, carrying one of the HERF guns.
“This is how they’ve been knocking out our Cross-Coms. Also, I’ll be sending you a rough map of the tunnel complex they’ve got up there. We need a team to blow it up, otherwise they’ll plan their offensive against your school and police station.”
He studied the HERF gun, then faced me. “Are you really trying to help me?”
“Simon, I understand where you’re coming from. I don’t have to like it. With the all crap going down in Helmand, I bet Gordon can’t spare another guy to come out to relieve me. If they got Warris, you need to let me work on that, work on taking out Zahed.”
“And we’re back to square one, with you stirring up the nest and me crying foul.”
“I don’t know what to tell you. I’ll be filing my report. You can read it. You can suggest I’m relieved of command all you want. But I’ll fight you all the way. Keating knows I get results. Hard to argue with that.”
I turned around and walked back toward the truck before he could reply.
At the comm center, Colonel Gordon told me that they’d received a good signal from Warris’s GFTC. Every Ghost operator had a Green Force Tracker Chip embedded beneath his arm. The GFTCs were part of the Identification, Friend or Foe (IFF) system so we knew who was who on the battlefield. Warris was being moved, but the colonel said that Warris’s chip suddenly went dead. Either they’d taken him to a deep cave where the signal was blocked, or they’d cut the chip out of his arm and found a way to deactivate it. If they knew about our Cross-Coms, they might’ve known about our chips . . .
Back in our billet, I collapsed onto my rack and just lay there a moment, staring at the curved metal ceiling. The guys were removing gear, groaning about aches and pains, and recounting moments from the battle. I glanced over at Ramirez, who was sitting on his bunk, shirtless, with his face buried in his palms.
We both knew the talk was coming.
But all I wanted to do at that moment was sleep. So I draped an arm over my eyes and found myself back in the tunnels, as Warris confronted me with a band of Taliban at his shoulders.
“See, Scott, you never know who’s working for who. I work for the Taliban. And so does Harruck. In fact, the whole Army’s in bed with them, everyone except you. You’re the only idiot who didn’t get the memo.”
I wrote my report in the morning, hating myself with every word I typed. I lied about the time of the attack and about me resisting Warris’s attempts to take my command.
But more important, I lied about Private Thomas Hendrickson’s death. He’d been shot point-blank in the back, but no one would question that. An AK-47 had been used, and seasoned Special Forces operators were vowing that the kid had been in the wrong place at the wrong time. Hendrickson was a private, a cherry, with barely any experience. That he’d gotten killed would hardly raise a brow. I couldn’t help but do some morbid research on the kid. And what I’d learned just broke my heart.
After a few conversations with the others, I felt certain that no one else had seen Ramirez shoot the kid.
At breakfast, Ramirez avoided me like the plague, and then, afterward, I asked him to join me on a ride up to see the construction site.
Oh, he knew it was coming.
“Maybe we should talk about this elephant in the desert,” he said.
I couldn’t help but snort. “The elephant? You mean the one being ridden by a murderer?
”
He slammed the door on the Hummer, and I drove. We left the main gate and headed about halfway down the desert road, and then I pulled off to the side, and we just sat there in the growing heat. I was reminded of the times when my dad was mad at me and would take me out for a drive and a talk. In fact, it dawned on me only then that I was doing the same thing . . .
After breakfast, I’d put in a call to my sister and brothers and was still waiting to hear back on Dad’s condition. I could only pray for an improvement.
“Scott, before you say anything, can I talk?” Ramirez’s voice was already cracking.
“Go ahead.”
“As soon as you started having problems with Harruck, he came to me and Matt, set up a conference call between us and the battalion commander. Basically, they were trying to recruit us as spies and allies. They were trying to convince us that our mission was going to do more harm than good here.”
I chuckled darkly. “I’m not surprised.”
“You know what we told them to do with that offer . . .”
“Good.”
“But still, they put a lot pressure on us. I don’t think Matt ever caved in, but I know they’re gunning for you and gunning hard. Not sure if you’ve made an enemy upstairs or what, but I started thinking that maybe this whole mission to get Zahed is just a way for them to get rid of you.”
“Whoa, now you’re getting paranoid.”
“Scott, I don’t think I could do this without you. If you’re gone, I’d just drop out of the Ghosts. I would. I wouldn’t trust anyone else.”
“That’s crazy. But Joey, listen. None of this is justifying what you did—and do you really understand what you did?”
He lowered his head. And my God, he began to cry.
Special Forces operators never say quit. And we certainly do our best NOT to cry.
“He was going to burn us,” he said. “I could tell. I just snapped. And I did it.”
“Did you know anything about him? About how his dad fought in the first Gulf War, about how he’d come from a long line of military guys? Did you know he had a girlfriend who’s pregnant?”
