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.
She surprised me. “Thank you. I… what they did… I cannot see my family again…”
“You speak English?”
“My father taught me.”
I grinned weakly in understanding. “Okay. That helps. All I know is, we’re going to get you out of here. All of you. Do you understand?”
“Yes.”
“Can you tell them for me?”
She nodded. I finished cutting her arms and legs free. She stood and spoke rapidly to the girls, who all began nodding. Brown came rushing into the chamber, took one look at the girls, at me, and said, “Jesus Christ.”
“We’re getting them out.”
“Are you kidding me?”
“Nope.”
“Aw, this has really gone to hell! We came here for Zahed, and we’re going home with them!”
Hila turned back to face me. “You came here for Zahed?”
I leaned over and nodded slowly.
She glanced away, a pained look coming over her face. “He is very bad man.”
“Yes, he is.”
She pursed her lips, glanced back at the girls, as if thinking it over, then said, “I know where he is…”
All the intelligence assets of the U.S. government had been unable to locate the fat man, in part because the intelligence they gathered was being corrupted by Bronco and his associates. Nevertheless, I would never, for the life of me, bet that the location of my target would be spoonfed to me by a teenaged girl who’d been taken prisoner.
When I reflect and calculate the odds of what had happened, how I’d met Shilmani, how Hila had come to recognize me, what had happened to her and how she’d come to learn where Zahed was located, I could only blame fate.
Or the merciless universe.
Because if I hadn’t listened to her, if I’d just dragged them out of the cave and gotten out of there, I would’ve only had to deal with keeping Warris quiet—
And not the rest of it.
“Help me cut ’em free,” I told Brown. “Come on, come on.”
The words escaped my lips, and not two seconds later, the chamber quaked and dust fell from the ceiling.
“What the hell?” Brown gasped.
“Captain!” cried Hume. “I hear gunfire coming from somewhere outside! And mortars!”
“We have to move now, Scott!” added Warris.
“We’re coming! We’ve got some girls up here. They’re coming down. We’re getting them out!”
As Brown freed the girls, Hila told them where to go, and one by one they took off running.
“They made us drink wine,” she told me as I cut another girl free. “They made us do things.”
“I know. It’s okay.”
“No, it’s not okay. I am filthy. I am not a woman anymore. I am a dog.”
I looked at her, grabbed her hand. “You’re not a dog.”
“But I can never go home.”
She started removing the gags from the remaining girls and reassuring them, while the guys kept screaming for me to come. The final two girls dashed off.
“All right, get them and Warris out of here. Ramirez and the rest of Bravo should be waiting for you,” I told Brown.
“What about you?”
I lifted my chin to Hila. “She knows where Zahed is.”
“Boss, what if she’s wrong?”
I widened my gaze on Hila. “Are you sure?”
She gave an exaggerated nod. “I hate him. He was the first one to have me. I know where he is.”