He snorted. “Not me . . .”
From far off down the tunnel came the shuffling of
boots, a shout of “Hey!” from Brown. Aw, hell, I needed
to know what was happening. “Treehorn, if we’re not
back in five, you go! You hear me?”
“Roger that, sir! What’s going on?”
I let his question hang and charged back down the
tunnel. When I reached the intersection, I found Ramirez
shoving one of the Chinese guys toward me. The guy’s
wrists were zipper-cuffed behind his back, and Brown
was shouldering the guy’s backpack while he lit the fuse
on the C-4.
“Look what we found,” Ramirez quipped. “They
dropped a ladder over there, and he came down here for
something.”
The Chinese guy suddenly tore free from Ramirez
and bolted past us, back into the dead-end tunnel.
Ramirez started after him.
“Fuse is lit,” shouted Brown.
“It’s a dead end, Joey!” I told him.
“Good! He’s a valuable prisoner,” Ramirez screamed
back.
Brown cursed, removed his knife, and hacked off the
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235
sparking fuse. “I want to blow something up,” he said.
“I haven’t got all night.”
I made a face. No kidding.
The unexpected report of Treehorn’s rifle stole my
attention. He screamed from the other side of the cave-
in: “Got a few stragglers coming up! Let’s go! Let’s go!”
I ran after Ramirez, and I found him at the dead end.
The Chinese guy was lying on his back, straddled by
Ramirez, and my colleague was pummeling the prisoner
relentlessly in the face.
Although the image was shocking, I understood very
well where Ramirez was coming from. He needed a
punching bag, and unfortunately he’d found one. I won-
dered if he’d kill the guy if I didn’t intervene. I gasped,
grabbed Ramirez’s wrist, and held back his next blow.
The prisoner’s face was already swollen hamburger, his
nose bleeding.
“What’re you doing?” I yelled.
Ramirez just looked at me, eyes ablaze, drool spilling
from his lips. “He wouldn’t come. Now he will.”
I cursed under my breath. “Let’s get out of here.”
We dragged the prisoner to his feet and shifted him
forward, and then suddenly the Chinese guy spat blood,
looked at me, and said, “I’m an American, you assholes!”
The left hand doesn’t know what the right hand is doing.
My father used to say that all the time when referring to
middle and upper management and to Washington and
politicians. I was no stranger to decentralization, to being
236 GH OS T RE CON
on a mission and realizing only after the fact that hey,
someone else has the same mission. That my commanders
were often not made privy to CIA and NSA operations in
the area was a given; that spook operations would interfere
with our ability to complete our mission was also a given.
That a Chinese guy we captured in the tunnel would
give up his identity was damned surprising.
“I’m CIA!” he added, spitting out more blood. “I
needed to bail on my mission.”
“Why didn’t you tell us?”
“Because I know who you are. I can smell you a mile
away. Special Forces meatheads. I’m not at liberty to
speak to you monkeys.”
I snickered. “Then why are you talking now?”
“Look at my face, asshole!”
“Why’d you run?”
“Wouldn’t you?”
“What the hell are you doing here?”
He smirked. “What’re youdoing here?”
I looked at Ramirez. “Cut him loose and help him
get outside, then cuff him again.”
“Hey, spooky,” I said, breathing in the guy’s ear. “If
you resist, we monkeys will do some more surgery on
your face. Got it?”
He turned back and glared.
Ramirez shoved him away. I regarded Brown. “You
ready to blow this mother?”
He grinned. “I think this mother is ready to be blown.”
“Indeed.”
The glowing fuse was, for just a few seconds, hypnotic,
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237
holding me there, a deer in the headlights. I thought back
to those moments when I was the last kid on the play-
ground, swinging as high as I could, hitting that place
in the sky between pure joy and pure terror. The teacher
would be shouting my name and I’d swing just a few
more seconds, flirting with the combined danger of fall-
ing off and getting in trouble.
With a slight hiss and even brighter glow, the fuse
burned down even more. I wondered, how long could
we remain in the tunnel without blowing ourselves up?
“Okay, boss, let’s go!” cried Brown.
I blinked hard and looked at him.
“Scott, you okay?”
I stared through him. Then . . . “Yeah, yeah, come
on, let’s go!”
Brown and I had just cleared the other side of the pas-
sage when the explosion reverberated through the
ground like a freight train beneath our boots.
Treehorn was still near the tunnel’s edge, the stars
beyond him. He was crouched down, his rifle raised high.
“Still out there,” he said. “Just waiting to take some pot-
shots at us.”
“We need to get those Bradley gunners to help sup-
press that fire so we can make a break,” I said.
“How?” asked Treehorn. “No comm.”
“What’re you talking about?” I said. “We’re the
Ghosts. If we were slaves to technology we’d never get
anything done. Watch this, buddy . . .”
238 GH OS T RE CON
I fished out my penlight and began flashing SOS.
“Are you serious?” he asked me.
“As a heart attack, bro.”
Whether the Taliban to our flank and above us could
see the tiny light, I wasn’t sure, but I continued for a full
minute, then turned back to the guys.
And then it came: a flashing from one of the Bradleys.
“What’re they saying?” asked Treehorn.
“I have no clue. I don’t remember my Morse code.
But we are good to go. So listen up. I’m going to make
a break. I’ll draw the first few rounds. You guys hold off
a second or two, then get in behind me and we’ll take
the path to the east. Those Bradley gunners are ready,
I’m sure. Got it?”
“Why don’t we send out the spook to make a break?”
asked Brown. “He wants to run away so badly.”
“Hey, that’s a good idea,” I said. “You want to go,
spooky?”
“I like your plan better,” he said, licking the blood
from his lips.
“I figured you would. Hey, you don’t happen to know
a guy named Bronco?” I wriggled my brows.
“Yeah, he’s my daddy.”
“Well, let’s get you home to Papa.” With that, I
bolted from the cave, drawing immediate fire from the
Taliban behind our right flank. I had no intention of
getting hit and practically dove for the next section
of boulders that would screen me.
Once the Taliban had revealed themselves by firing at
me, the Bradley gunners drilled them with so many
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