Landing went as smoothly as could be expected. His Hind was the last to be pushed into the cavern before the fake vegetation was put back in place, sealing them in once again. All the important gear was promptly stowed away and the Marine pickets were quickly dispatched outside.
To say the mood inside the cave was somber wasn’t close to capturing the right word. Everyone in the unit was walking around red-faced, with fists clenched, agitated. Restless. Angry. They had failed, miserably, and now living with that truth had begun.
Returning to the cavern itself was a source of contention, though not verbally. Shortly after leaving the hidden air base, Smitz told them they were now operating under orders contained in something called Contingency #2. Which said, if the first attempt at the raid proved unsuccessful, they were to return to the ingress site and evaluate the situation before pulling out completely.
Had it been put to a vote, it would have been unanimous that the unit just go home. But Smitz was following orders—and the orders said return to the Bat Cave, even if it meant using up the fuel they would need to get out of hostile territory. So that was what they did.
But even this prospect wasn’t foremost on Norton’s mind at the moment. Once his Hind had been stored away properly, he grabbed a blanket and simply lay down on the cavern’s floor underneath the helicopter— and instantly fell asleep.
And for the first time in years, he actually dreamed.
In his dream, he traveled to a small American Midwest town. A place where the fifties never ended. Here, at a grocery store, he met the wife of the gunship’s copilot, Mrs. Pete Jones. She was cuter than her photo and hadn’t aged a day since it had been taken. Norton had sought her out to ask her a question: How had her husband and the three other remaining crewmen of the ArcLight aircraft avoided getting shot in the back of the head? Mrs. Jones replied that Norton must have been mistaken. Her husband had died ten years before, during the Gulf War, and she barely thought about him anymore. So Norton took her back to her house and slept with her. But when he opened his eyes the next morning, he could not wake Mrs. Jones. She was dead herself, a bullet in the back of her skull. She had lain like that all night, bleeding slowly on the bed right next to Norton.
That was when someone began shaking him.
Norton opened his eyes for real and saw one of the SEAL doctors looking down at him.
He was saying: “You want to see this or not?”
Norton stumbled to his feet. He wasn’t quite awake yet. The lights in the cave seemed to be flickering. Everyone he saw seemed pale and drawn, moving like shadows away from him. A rotten smell drifted into his nostrils. He stared at his watch. It read 2350 hours. Could that be right? Had he really slept more than twelve hours?
He shuffled to the rear of the cave, trying to keep up with the SEAL doctor who had roused him. The unpleasant smell grew more intense the deeper he walked into the cavern. Finally he reached an area where the SEAL doctors had one of the nine dead Americans up on a makeshift operating table. They had opened up the man’s body like a side of beef and were performing an on-the-spot autopsy. Delaney, Smitz, and Chou were standing nearby, hands to their noses, eyes watering.
Norton nearly threw up.
“You woke me… for this?’ he barked at the SEALs.
“You’re the senior military officer here,” one replied. “There’s something here you might want to know.”
Norton had never seen a person gutted before, and it was not a pretty sight. The man was torn open from his groin up to the bottom of his rib cage. His stomach and large intestines had been removed and their contents placed inside plastic bags tied with string to the thighs just below his genitalia.
“This man was shot with an M-16,” the doctor was saying, pointing to the man’s slightly shattered skull. “The same type of weapon we were all carrying. Same ammo. Same bore. Same everything. All nine were killed that way.”
Norton felt his stomach do a back flip.
“Now I’m not an expert at this,” the SEAL continued. “But I believe I can tell you some of what this guy ate in the last eight hours or so.”
Norton finally turned away. “I don’t need to know that.”
“Yes, you do,” Smitz interjected.
The doctor had already started poking through the bag containing the contents of the dead man’s stomach, trying to separate the bits of uneaten food from one another.
“Would you believe this guy had a steak about an hour before he died?” the doctor asked. “With some baked potato? Chocolate cake? And scotch?”
Norton gagged. But for the fact that he hadn’t eaten in twenty-four hours himself, he would have lost it right then and there.
“What are you trying to say?” Norton heard himself ask. “That the Gomers fed their prisoners real good before they shot them?”
Smitz just shook his head in disgust. “For Christ’s sakes, Norton, get with the program, will you?” he said angrily. “This guy wasn’t a prisoner.”
Norton protested, “Of course he was! What are you talking about?”
Smitz dragged him away from the autopsy and to the place where the unit’s video man had set up his equipment. Delaney and Chou followed close behind.
“Wake up, will you? Look at this,” Smitz said.
He pushed a button, and the small video setup started a tape rolling. The footage showed the inside of the prison building shortly after the raid.
“Look real close,” Smitz said.
Norton did. The battered insides of the building were clear of smoke when the tape was shot. And it was peculiar, because even though Norton had been there at the time the video camera was capturing these very images, he was seeing many things for the first time. Like a lot of wrecked TVs. And a wrecked Bose stereo system. And many wrecked CD players. And a bunch of busted X-rated videotapes. And several destroyed air conditioners. And many cartons of empty Budweiser cans tipped over.
Now Norton’s head began a slow spin.
At that moment, the SEAL doctor was suddenly beside him again. He was holding a plastic spoon in his hand. It was covered with a black gooey substance, which in turn was covered by a ghastly bloody coating.
“You know what that is?” he asked Norton, not waiting for an answer. “It’s caviar. Caviar! This guy had eaten about a half pound of it about one hour before getting iced.”
Norton reeled back from the horrible stuff.
What was happening here?
His stomach began to flip again. His lungs seemed to collapse. His knees turned to water.
Suddenly Delaney grabbed him.
“Hey, pards, let’s get some air,” Delaney suggested.
With Smitz in silent protest, they walked to the front of the cave, picked up two M-16’s, then passed through the fake foliage and quickly out into the hot night. It was past midnight by now, and the wind blowing across the desert below was kicking up dozens of little sandstorms. To the east, the moon was on the rise. Strange animal noises could be heard echoing nearby.
They walked to the edge of the cliff and beyond where the Marine pickets could see them. They were now facing due east. It seemed as if the entire country of Iraq was spread out before them.
Norton took in a couple of deep breaths. His head began to clear—slowly.
“Something is very, very wrong, Slick,” he was finally able to blurt out to Delaney.
“A grand understatement as usual,” Delaney replied. He was looking a bit pale himself—and worried. This was not a good sign.
“What do you think is going down?” Norton asked him directly. “Tell me.”
Delaney just shrugged. “Well, let’s review,” he began. “They gather us together from the four corners of the earth—to train for a mission none of us is qualified for. Then they give us aircraft we can’t fly. Then they bust our balls to get us over here. Then we spot the target in one recon flight instead of a dozen. We pick out the plane. We land. But it’s not the right plane— and three quarters of the guys we’re supposed to rescue have been freshly killed. With guns and ammo just like ours. And now it appears these guys haven’t exactly been eating bread and water for the last ten years.”