And Jesus, after that, forget the mission, the job had just been to stay alive. It was like crawling through the Fourth of July, all the fireworks in the world floating out at you, trying to knock you off.
But this was different. Witherspoon hadn’t thought a lot about the underground. He was Special Forces, Ranger, and Delta, the best of the best of the best. Courage was his profession. But, uh, like, a tunnel? In a mountain? He cleared his throat. Soon he’d have to face the horror of dumping the beam and going to infrared. Ceiling getting real low.
“Hey, man?” Walls’s voice, soft now, its mocking edge gone. “Man, you scared? You ain’t said much.”
“I’m okay,” Witherspoon said.
“Man, this ain’t nothing. In the ’Nam, the tunnels so low you got to crawl through them, you know. And man, them people they shit in those tunnels, they got no other place to shit. And over the years, man, the shit mount. Man, finally, you crawling through shit. You think this is bad, you try crawling on your belly through shit waiting for some gook girl like that pretty number in the other tunnel waiting to stick a razor blade in your throat.”
But this was plenty bad enough for Witherspoon.
He was really having trouble with his … breathing now. The blackness, the closeness of it, the sense of the tomb. And men had died here, hadn’t they? Fifty years back, in this same hole, over a hundred of them.
“Rat Team Baker, do you copy? Baker, this is Rat Six, you guys copy?” The voice was loud in his ears.
“Roger and copy, Six,” said Witherspoon into his Prick-88’s hands-free mike.
“Jesus, you guys were supposed to log in fifteen minutes ago. What the hell is going on in there?” Something in Rat Six’s white voice really irked Witherspoon.
“No sweat, Six, we’re just bumbling along. Hey, hold your water, okay, Six?”
“Let’s stick to radio SOP, Sergeant. You want to tell us what’s up?”
“Affirmative, Six, we’re through the main shaft and we’ve gotten into the lateral and we’re looking for this Elizabeth. The farther out we get, the lower the ceiling is. This tunnel’s drying up to nothing.”
“How’s your pal?”
“He’s doing fine,” said Witherspoon, sensing his partner next to him.
“Roger that, Baker, you guys stick to the schedule now, okay. You let us know anything turns up.”
“So what’s going on there?”
“National Guard guys got their butts shot off, that’s what. These are mucho tough hombres, these guys, Baker, you watch your ass.”
“Affirmative, Six, and out.”
And then Walls said, “Shit, man, I think that’s it.”
His beam flicked out and nailed a gap in the wall, no bigger than a crawl space, low and ominous in the white shine of the bulb.
It was the tunnel called Elizabeth.
“Oh, baby,” said Walls, “have I got a dick for you.”
“Smoke,” said Poo. “Smoke. It’s burning. It’s a fire.”
They could see the column of smoke rising, drifting, on the wind. Several of the neighbors were out on their snowy lawns, staring.
“Herman, why is it burning?”
“It’s an airplane,” Herman said. “An airplane has crashed in the fields and now it is burning. It must be some kind of terrible accident.”
They were in the basement, peering out of the small cellar window. The smoke smeared across the bright blue sky through the lacework of the trees.
“Can we go look at it?”
“No,” said Herman. “I think we’d better stay here. It will be very hot. The firemen will take care of it.”
“Is the man all right?”
“The man?”
“The man that drives the airplane. Is he all right?”
“I’m sure he’s all right. Poo, I’ll tell you, they push a button and the tops fly off and they pop out. Just like toast from a toaster. And they float down to the ground under a big umbrella and they’re all right.”
“Do they get another airplane? If they break their airplane, do they get another airplane?”
“Oh, yes. They get another airplane.”
Just then, the Burkittsville fire engine went crashing by the house, and headed out the road toward the field.
Beth Hummel looked at Herman now. She’d made the connection between the whirling jets and the crashed airplane and her vanished husband and Herman.
“Who are you? What do you want? Why are you here?”
“Please, lady,” he said. “We mean you no harm. Please, okay, you just do what we want, no harm comes to nobody, okay? We’re just guests, for a little while longer, okay. Then everybody’s okay, just fine, super good. Okay?”
“Oh, Lord. Why? Why is this happening?”
“It has to happen,” Herman said. “It has to happen. It’s for everybody’s own good.”
Just then there was a knock at the door. They could hear it from downstairs. It grew louder.
Dick Puller put down the microphone, lit a cigarette. A loud roar rose and beat at them as four medevac choppers rushed overhead to the base of the mountain to pick up the wounded.
“How bad?” asked Skazy.
“He wasn’t making a lot of sense,” said Puller. “I gather it was pretty bad. Of the hundred and forty men in the company, he had confirms on forty fatals sure. Maybe fifty. He said he had a lot of men shot up. The walking wounded got a lot of them off the hill. Not too many guys left untouched. Unit morale shattered. Nonexistent. I told him he had to go back.”
Puller smiled a crooked, sardonic smile.
“And?”
“And he told me to get fucked. His manners aren’t any better than yours, Major.”
“The CO?”
“Didn’t make it back. He was last seen on the M-60, giving covering fire. I don’t even know his name.”
“I think it was Barnard.”
“I think you’re right,” said Puller. He could see the choppers on the ground, far off, their rotors glistening in the bright sunlight, the dust and snow stirring and whirling. Tiny figures rushed around them. Above them, the mountain rose in a rainbow arc, implacable and immutable. The little red and white aerial seemed to wink at them over the black stain of the tarpaulin. They hadn’t even found out what was under the tarp.
“You’ve got to send Delta in now, Colonel Puller. You can’t let them have time to regroup or those men will have died for nothing.”
“They were never ungrouped, Major Skazy. Don’t you understand that yet? Delta goes when I say and not a second before. I’d advise you to back the fuck off, young Major,” said Puller.
He fixed his eyes on Skazy, who met his gaze fiercely.
“When are we going?” the major said, his face impassive, his eyes unlit.
“After dark. We’ve got to let those rats see if they’ve got a chance at opening a back door. We’ve got to get Thiokol time to get us beyond the door of the elevator shaft. I’ll get you your goddamned chance, Major. You have my word.”
He turned and found a seat on a folding lawn chair some thoughtful trooper had pulled out for him. He checked his watch. There was going to be a long night ahead.
“Colonel Puller! Colonel Puller!”
It was Peter Thiokol, his demeanor adolescent and abandoned in excitement, jumping crazily as he ran toward them.
“Who would that be?” Herman demanded.
“I–I don’t know,” Beth Hummel stammered.
“Is it the airplane driver?” Poo asked.
“Mommy, I bet it’s my teacher,” said Bean. “They want to know why I’m not in school.”
Herman pulled Beth close to him.