“Aye aye, Sergeant. Oorah, Phelps.”
“Oorah,” the woman mutters.
“Ammo’s on its way. Keep an eye to seaward. Phelps, get this hole dug deeper.”
Hector nods, fastened again to his bottle like a baby to a nipple. The private eyes him, then unsheathes an entrenching tool. The sand caves in nearly as fast as she shovels it out. But she keeps working, piling it up in front of them.
Faintly, out of the sea-mist, voices are shouting. Many voices, raised in what sounds like pleading.
Hector drains the first bottle and flips it over his shoulder. Eyes the second, but doesn’t open it. He sets up the Pig and slaps in a belt. “The King fucks the Queen,” he mutters.
“What?” says the private. She stops digging, looks at Ramos. Then at the sea, then back at the blood-caked, dirt-smeared, crazily mumbling gunner.
“M’name’s Sheeda,” she says tentatively.
“Safety on ‘F,’” Hector says. “Bolt to the rear.”
“What?”
“Double link at the open end. Free of dirt and corrosion.”
The shouting from seaward is growing louder. The private resumes digging, faster now.
“The sear holds the bolt open,” Hector mutters. He slots the charging handle back and flips up the cover assembly. Ensures the feed tray, receiver assembly, and chamber are clear. He slaps it down and pulls the cocking handle again. Where’s Troy? Oh yeah. Troy’s dead. Orietta. Pruss, too. Smalls. Hern. All dead.
“Gun one, Condition One, ready to fire,” he slurs.
She frowns. “What?”
“Now listen up. We only got the one barrel. You’re gonna pour that water on it, once I start firing, got that? Pour it on. Don’t matter if it gets in the action. It’ll cook out. But you got to keep that barrel cool. Hear me?”
She nods, looking scared. He swings the muzzle this way and that, making sure the bipod’s dug in. Should be on a tripod in a fixed position like this. Somewhere, during the night, the optic has disappeared too. Doesn’t matter. “Fucking optics gonna go south on you,” he mutters. “Learn the fucking irons. Fuck the Queen.”
“Huh?” Phelps looks concerned. Then shrugs as she slides into the hole next to him. “Whatever.”
He barely notices. Out in the mist, dim figures are taking shape. They wade forward through the uneasy surf. They call out, voices plaintive, hands in the air. They stagger like zombies as they advance. Only a few carry weapons.
“Open fire,” someone yells.
The Pig jackhammers his shoulder as other guns along the beach open up too. He traverses, picking out clusters. Geysers of white spray burst up. Those few who still carry weapons throw them away, raise their hands too. They cry out, pleading, but he keeps firing. Under the impacts they wilt, spin, drop, sink back into the sea. The water turns red beneath the silver mist. Screams reach them. The other guns fall silent. Someone grabs his shoulder, but he shakes it off and keeps firing.
“Cease fire. Cease fire,” comes down the line. A few rifle shots crack out, then they too cease.
But Hector Ramos keeps firing. Traversing. Firing again, as a few belated figures coalesce from the sea-mist, staggering, wounded, some with only one hand stiffly raised.
“What are you doing?” Phelps screams into his ear. “They’re surrendering. Cease fire. Stop!”
But he fires that belt out and reaches for the next. She grabs his wrists to keep him from loading it.
Then others are standing above them. The sergeant who assigned her. An officer. Hector whispers something to the ghosts around him. “What did you say?” the woman screams over the ringing in his ears.
“You got to learn,” he mutters.
“What?”
“Learn to hate. Learn to kill. Bring your buddies back. Make sense of it later.”
“He’s fucking lost it,” the officer says. “Get him out of there. Phelps, take the gun.”
Someone helps him out of the fighting hole. He sways, head bent, hands to his face. Mind echoing. Lightning in his head. He tears off his helmet and throws it into the surf. Where the bodies bob and wash. So many. Where did they all come from? But before he can ask, the hands lead him away.
22
So here they were, back in the mountains after all. The mujahideen, or whoever they were, the guys who’d raided the marketplace, had blindfolded Teddy and Fierros after getting out of town. Taken their rifles. And covered them with heavy sacks of sand. Then rode for jolting miles, upgrade. The road surface had changed from asphalt to what sounded like crush and run, then gravel, and finally ungraded rock. Jolting from side to side, the pickup had climbed the last few kilometers with motor straining.
Ordered out, the two captives, or hostages, or whatever they were now, had had their blindfolds checked and tightened. But — and Oberg had taken this as a good sign — no one had yet offered to tie their hands. Instead, someone had thrust a piece of bread into them. He’d gnawed it hungrily. Thick fried dough, sweetened with honey and garnished with nuts. It had to be what angels ate in heaven.
“Hao,” he grunted. Nice. Then, in an undertone, “Fierros. Ni zai ma?”
“Horosho’.”
Oh yeah. Right. They were supposed to be Russians hunters. Or at least ethnic Russian Tajiks.
Teddy was rethinking that now. That had been in case they ended up in official Chinese hands. Maybe Russian wasn’t the right way to play it with these guys. Or even Tajik.
Of course, that depended on exactly who their captors were.
They climbed a rocky path for what felt like hours. The air grew cool. Evening, or they were really gaining altitude. Maybe both. He grew weak, dizzy. He could hear the airman’s harsh breathing ahead, making heavy weather of it too, but didn’t dare ask for a break. They might get a permanent rest. With a bullet to the head.
The entrance to the cave was so low they had to crawl in on hands and knees. Straightening, Teddy grunted as rough hands jerked the blindfold off, taking some of his hair with it. Suppressing a yelp, he blinked into the guttering orange light of torches.
The cave went back into darkness. Bats twittered and squeaked far above. Down here camping gear, camp beds, and tables of rough wood were scattered across water-eroded limestone.
To his left spilled a tumbled mass of masonry and statuary. Dozens of ancient Buddhas lay toppled and shattered, their heads scarred and gouged into facelessness. The rock itself had been carved, obviously centuries before, into a haunting, eye-seducing frieze of… Dancers? Gods? Demons? Whatever they once had been, their images had been hammered apart in a lynch-mob ecstasy of destruction. When he looked down, his feet were shuffling through a crushed mass of ancient parchments, trodden in with centuries of bat excrement.
Ahead, in the direction they were being shoved, the same black banners as had flown from the pickups were draped behind a stone lectern that looked as if it had stood in the same place for at least a thousand years. A book lay open on it, with a Kalashnikov propped against one side. Teddy was pretty sure the book wasn’t The Lord of the Rings.
He turned his attention to the men shepherding them forward, senses sharpened by the knowledge that in the next few minutes he would live or die depending on what his captors decided. The men were all young, and all black-bearded, or trying hard to grow beards and mustaches. Bandy-legged, but with the suggestion they were going to be husky lads. They had the flattish features and darker coloring of the crowd that had oohed and aahed watching the red-clad dancers, not the look of the more slightly built, lighter-complexioned security troops.