I waved him back along the path, and then . . . off to my
left, about twenty meters up . . . a curious sight: another
tunnel entrance. It must’ve been covered up by the Tal-
iban because the rocks nearby appeared freshly shaken
free by the mortars and our C-4 charges.
As we came under a vicious wave of gunfire that
seemed certain to hit us, I rushed up toward the tunnel
and practically threw myself inside.
Treehorn was a second behind me, breathless, curs-
ing, literally foaming at the mouth with exertion.
AK-47 and machine gun fire stitched along the entrance,
daring us to sneak back out and return fire. That was one
dare I would not take. The machine gunner seemed to be
chiseling his initials on the rock face.
I got on the regular radio, found it dead, and realized
that maybe this time the HERF gun had managed to fry it,
too. But then I also noticed the microphone had taken a hit.
I was one lucky man—very close call. That bullet would’ve
caught my side, perhaps even penetrated my spine.
Treehorn directed his light to the tunnel behind us.
“Whoa . . .”
CO MB AT O P S
225
His surprise was not unwarranted.
The uneven intestine of rock swept outward and
curved slowly down. It appeared to go much longer and
deeper than any of the others we’d seen, and I was sud-
denly torn between venturing down to see where it went
and making a break back outside to link up with the
others. The machine gun fire had just died off. The sec-
ond rally point would be just past the Bradley’s position,
along an old dried-up riverbed. Everyone knew it. I
assumed Ramirez would be taking Bravo team there.
But I’d left Smith to look after Hume, who was carry-
ing Nolan on his back, and those guys would need help.
“What do you want to do, Captain?”
I pulled out a brick of C-4 from my pack. “Man, we
need to see where this goes, but we can’t do it right now.
Let’s seal it up behind us and get back outside.”
“Wait a second. Listen,” he said.
Faint cries echoed up toward us.
I pricked up my ears again. “Sounds like . . . a kid . . .”
“I know. What the hell?”
I remembered the girl we’d found during our first
night raid. And though I couldn’t bear the thought of
more children being tortured, we had to leave.
Something flashed behind us, and as I turned, my
arm went up reflexively against the blast. The air whooshed
past us, and only then did I realize I was being cata-
pulted back into the tunnel. The entrance had been
struck dead-on by an RPG. The starlight shining beyond
went black, and I slammed into the floor, shielding my
face from the rocks and dirt dropping all around me.
226 GH OS T RE CON
Then, a strange silence, the sifting of sand, my breath-
ing, the dull echo in my head—
Suddenly the cave roof a few meters ahead came down,
as though a massive boot had stomped on us. I scrambled
backward like a crab and bumped into Treehorn, who had
just turned on his penlight, the beam struggling to pen-
etrate the thick cloud of dust. I winced and blinked.
“You okay, boss?” cried Treehorn.
“I’m good.”
“They blew the goddamned exit!”
“Plan B,” I finally gasped out. “Back on our feet.
Come on, buddy . . .” I began choking and coughing on
the dust.
We got to our feet, his light shining down the tunnel,
mine joining his a few seconds later.
I stole a look back. The tunnel behind us had com-
pletely collapsed. It would take a half a day or more for
us to dig ourselves out.
I tried to stifle my coughing and gestured for Tree-
horn to keep his light low and to move slowly, quietly.
Our shadows shifted across the cool brown stone,
and a faint glimmer seemed to join our light, the flicker-
ing of candles or a lantern, not a flashlight, I knew.
Treehorn paused, looked back, put a finger to his lips.
We killed our lights and listened.
For a moment, I think I held my breath.
The cries we’d heard earlier were gone, replaced now
by footsteps, barely discernible but there. I cocked a
thumb, motioning for Treehorn to get behind me. I gin-
gerly slipped free the bowie knife from my calf sheath.
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227
Seeing that, he did likewise, his own blade coated
black so as not to reflect any light. We held our position,
unmoving, but our curious tunnel guest still seemed
drawn to us.
As he rounded the corner, I slid behind him, grabbed
his mouth with one hand and, with a reverse grip,
plunged my blade deep into his heart. I felt his grimace
beneath my fingers, the hair of his thick beard scratch-
ing like a steel wool pad. The forefinger and thumb on
my knife hand grew damp, and after a moment more he
struggled, then finally grew limp. I lowered him to the
floor. The guy had been holding a penlight, and Tree-
horn picked it up, shined it into the guy’s face.
He was no one. Just another Taliban guy, wrong place,
wrong time. We took his rifle, ammo, and light, then moved
on, the tunnel growing slightly wider, the floor heavily traf-
ficked by boot prints. Voices grew louder ahead, and I froze.
The language was not Pashto but Chinese.
We hunkered down, edged forward toward where the
tunnel opened up into a wider cave illuminated by at
least one lantern I could see sitting on the floor near the
wall. Behind the lantern was a waist-high stack of opium
bricks, with presumably many more behind it.
A depression in the wall gave us a little cover, and we
watched as ahead, Chinese men dressed like Taliban
hurriedly loaded the bricks into packs they threw over
their shoulders. So Bronco’s Chinese connection was a
fact, and I wasn’t very surprised by that; however, to find
the Chinese themselves taking part in the grunt work of
smuggling was interesting.
228 GH OS T RE CON
There were three of them, their backpacks bulging as
they left the cave, their flashlights dancing across the
floor until the exit tunnel darkened.
We waited a moment more, then followed, shifting
past stacks of empty wooden crates within which the
bricks had been stored.
Treehorn was right at my shoulder, panting, and once
we started farther into the adjoining tunnel, I flicked on
my flashlight because it’d grown so dark my eyes could
no longer adjust.
Somewhere in the distance came the continued rattle
of gunfire, but the heavy mortars had ceased. We reached
a T-shaped intersection. To the left another long tunnel.
To the right a shorter one with a wooden ladder leaning
against the wall. I raised my chin to Treehorn, pointed.
He shifted in front of me, rifle at the ready. I pushed
the penlight close to my hip, darkening most of the
beam.
We neared the ladder. I was holding my breath again.
Treehorn took another step farther, looked up—
And then he whirled back, his face creased tightly in
alarm as a salvo of gunfire rained straight down and he
pushed me backward, knocking me onto my rump. We