“Hoo boy. Got us a tunnel,” he said. “One long, mean mothafucking tunnel. Party time coming, Jack.” He smiled; his teeth were very white and he radiated an electric confidence.
The man Teagarden had explained. This black soldier knew tunnels also; he’d been in them in her country, spent a long time in them. He was a great tunnel fighter.
He now winked at her.
“Me and this lady,” he said to the others, “we the whole show now. This old-time stuff for us, right, pretty lady?”
Yes, it was true. Black men had come into the tunnels too. She had killed black men. They were as brave as any of them.
She smiled, but it wasn’t much of a smile.
“Okay,” said an officer, opening a case, “what we got here is the original 1932 map of Number Four. Shit, this was some operation; you look back through the trees, you see that gap? That’s where the railroad went. Some of the old track is still there. And the foundations from some of the buildings are still here. Anyway, as we figure it, this shaft’ll take you in maybe five hundred feet. Then you get to what they call the lateral tunnel, the connector that held all the actual mining shafts together. There were five deep mining shafts they called Alice, Betty, Connie, Dolly, and Elizabeth. Betty, Connie, and Dollie were the bitches: they caved in. But Alice and Elizabeth ought to still be there. And they should be in pretty good shape, although nobody can say for sure, because sometimes there’s shaft erosion based on moisture, earth shifts, anything. So you head on back through them maybe one thousand feet. Anywhere beyond that point you may run into intersections with the water flues from over the years. We called around to a batch of mining engineers. They think the flues ought to be passable, though it’s going to be real tough going. Uphill all the way. Anyway, if you get close enough to the installation, you’ll hear ’em; the ground is a great conductor. Your target would be the exhaust shafts of corrugated metal that run out of the silo. If you reach those shafts, you let us know. We’ll get a Delta unit here in two minutes, and you can take ’em in the back door.”
“What we do if we run into any little strange men in there?” said the small black soldier.
“Just like in ’Nam, you waste ’em. But there won’t be anybody in there except ghosts. Ghosts don’t bite. You all set?”
“Yes, sir,” said Teagarden.
“Okay, I want a radio check the first two hundred feet. Call signs: You’re Alpha, Witherspoon; Teagarden, you’re Baker. I’m Rat Six, okay? Any questions. Miss Phuong, any questions?”
Phuong offered a tight little smile but shook her head no.
“Okay, and God bless you,” said the officer. “We’re all praying for you.”
“Let’s go to tunnelsville, you peoples,” said the small black man with another of his smiles.
And they began to enter the smoky shaft.
Darkness swallowed them.
Puller could hear the unsureness in the National Guard captain’s voice. It was close to panic.
“Th-there’s a lot of smoke from up ahead, Delta Six,” the man was saying from up on the mountain. “We can’t see too good.”
“Bravo, this is Delta Six,” Puller said, staring in frustration at the white hump a mile before him. “Are you taking fire?”
“No, sir. At least they’re not shooting at us yet. I think they’re waiting to see if the planes are coming back. There was a lot of gunfire on that mountain, Colonel.”
“Bravo, you’ve got to move now. The longer you wait, the harder it’s going to be. You’ve got to get your people into the assault line and get them up the hill.”
“Colonel,” said Skazy, “let me get up there. I can—”
“Shut up, Major. Bravo, do you read?”
“Some of the men don’t want to leave the trucks.”
“Christ, he hasn’t even got ’em out of the trucks yet,” Puller said to no one in particular.
“Bravo, this is Delta Six.”
“I copy, Delta.”
“Look, son, let me talk you through this, okay? I’ve been on a few hill jobs in my time.” Dick’s voice was reassuring, authoritative. He’d take this guy in and make him his and make him perform.
“Yes, sir,” came the voice, all thought of Commo protocol having vanished. “We’ve been on exercises for years. It’s just so — so different.”
“In combat, confusion is normal, son. Okay, you want to cross your line of departure, if possible, with platoons abreast and squads abreast within the platoons. You want the squads in column rather than file, so that you can respond instantly with a broad front of heavy fire if you make contact. Got that?”
“Yes, sir.”
“Your sergeants ought to be able to handle the men,” said Puller, knowing that sergeants may be ornery, bassackwards assholes, but they were the gears that made an army — any army — operate.
“Get your sergeants involved directly. Brief them with the officers and speak to them directly. You want to minimize levels of interpretation, and your officers are probably too distant from the men. The men are going to want the reassurance of the familiar.”
“Yes, sir.”
There was silence from the mountain. The seconds ticked by. Dick lit another cigarette. Its harshness somehow soothed him. Around, several of the Delta officers stood with binoculars.
“He should have picked out his LD and hit it from the trucks running,” said one.
“Yeah, and he should have been tied in with Air,” said the other, “and gone on the dime.”
Sure, they were right. But they were wrong too, Puller thought. Unblooded troops need to be coaxed and nudged; nurtured. You need a mother for your first fight, and a daddy for the next hundred. Then you need a body bag or a shrink.
The National Guard officer’s name was Thomas Barnard and he knew he was in way over his head. The volume of gunfire during the aerial attack had upset him greatly. He was, furthermore, not exactly sure who awaited them; the order from the Governor had simply obligated them to emergency duty at the disposal of the United States Army under a phase four (“nuclear emergency”) alert at the specified locale. The unit had been very close to the end of its two weeks of active duty, and the men were not happy to clamber aboard trucks for the hour drive from Fort Richie to this godforsaken spot.
And they were furthermore baffled to detruck and discover themselves in the middle of some movie. These were mainly young blue-collar workers from the Baltimore area who had signed up because the weekend a month and the two weeks a year of low intensity army games added a nice little chunk of bucks to a parched family budget. Now they had stumbled into a little war. It was particularly intimidating to be issued large amounts of live ammunition and grenades. It had put a chill through the men, the grenades especially; in training, live grenades are treated with the awkward care of nuclear weapons because they are so dangerous. Now they were handed out like candy bars by grinning, loosey-goosey commandos. It scared his guys. None of them had a particular desire to be Rambo.
“Okay,” Barnard told his NGOs and his officers with a transparent heartiness, “let’s get ’em spread out, platoons abreast, through the trees.”
The guys just looked at him.
“Tom, the fucking professionals are sitting on their asses down there. Why are we the ones up here? I heard machine guns. Those guys on that mountain have missiles.”
“Phase four nuclear emergency. We’re working for them now, not the Governor. If they say we go, we go. Ours not to etc., etc. Look, the head guy told me those planes laid so much hurt on our friends up the bill, our big problem was going to be matching up body parts. So let’s get humping, huh, guys?”
“Lock and load?”