Black Storm (31 page)

And he had not made a sound. Till so much later it was dark above him, someone had let down a bucket.

He had never seen her again.

He remembered all this now, what despite all his
remembering he had not remembered for so long. And the slick interior of a steel conduit became the cold rough stone of a well, and he himself became again a terrified child. So that when he felt something sharp pressing into his side he first tried to push it away, to slide past. But it hung fast to him, and he struggled with it, there in the cold, in the darkness. Till at last there was no more breath, not in all the world. Till he saw her face again in the circle of sky, looking down, calling down to him with the gentle voice he remembered so well.

He smiled in the darkness, remembering. At last.

They climbed out half an hour later, clambering slowly out into a trunk that looked like a copy of the one through which they'd entered. It was narrow and vertical and dark. Folding himself around the pipe exit, standing upright on shaky knees, Dan closed his eyes in exhausted relief. He'd been in combat, he'd had to abandon ship, but just now he didn't think either experience had been as terrifying as just crawling through that pipe.

“Give me a hand with his legs,” hissed Sarsten. Dan flinched, and bent to help pull Vertierra's unresisting body out into the trunk.

He'd glided through the water trap pretty easily, though his heart had been going about a mile a minute. Diving was different than going headfirst and without any air supply into the darkness. But knowing there was a way through, having it passed back mouth to mouth that Gault was okay on the other side, made it possible to trust the team and go.

But the RTO hadn't made it. Sarsten had pulled him through by main force after the flailing had stopped, clearing the way for Dan. He didn't know what had gone wrong. The only evidence of struggle was a rip in the sergeant's trousers.

Looking into Tony's narrow dark visage, unknown to him five days before, now more familiar than his own bat
tered swollen face would probably be, he felt suddenly like smashing things. How could human beings keep thinking war was a solution? As long as one man could become a god, then other men would die. As long as the Saddam Husseins and Hitlers, the Stalins and Maos and Pol Pots, could demand sacrifice, the sacrifice would continue. As Jake had died, and now Tony. As they all might, and thousands more with them in the Mother of All Battles that was about to start.

He looked on the slack, lifeless cheeks, and knew that in seconds or minutes or hours, he could be dead as well.

But wasn't that always true, every day you opened your eyes?

And what did that tell you about life?

He wrapped his arms around the sergeant's wet body and boosted him up, with Sarsten and the others pulling from above, until the limp burden rose. Then Dan turned and bent again and gave Nichols a hand up.

 

AT THE
top Gault crouched in a narrow underground space that was concrete on three sides and on the top, and earth on the fourth side, looking down at Vertierra. The gaunt Indian features looked relaxed, free at last. For a moment he envied him. He looked at Sarsten, then put his mouth to the other's ear. “Okay, what happened?”

“I don't know. I felt him jerking, on the line. I was pulling, it was taut, but I slacked off when I felt that. Figured he might be snagged and need slack to back up. Then after a couple of seconds I pulled again. I felt him come, but when he got to me he wasn't breathing. I couldn't get to him to do mouth-to-mouth.”

Gault nodded, then jerked his gaze away. He couldn't fixate. They were on the objective. He had to improvise, adapt, and overcome. Find this thing, or confirm it didn't exist, and get the word back.

He looked around, taking deep breaths to regain control. The only way out seemed to be a black gap that
opened at the top of the earthen wall, a foot-wide aperture with darkness on the far side. He started stripping his weapon, shaking the water out.

Nichols clambered up out of the trunk, then stopped, gaping down at Vertierra. He looked questioningly at Gault, who shook his head somberly.

When the doc came up and saw Vertierra, she immediately went to her knees and started clearing the sergeant's airway. Gault put his mouth close to her ear, conscious of the darkness around them as if it had ears. Murmured, “He drowned. Sarsten pulled him on through.”

She nodded, still holding the RTO's wrist, intent on his face. Then gently replaced Vertierra's wrist on his chest.

All this time Gault had been reassembling his MP5. He finished and worked the bolt, stripping a round into the chamber. He checked the safety, then stood for a quick look down the tunnel. His flash only illuminated the first few feet, shining over a lip of earth to show pipes and cables stretching away. He felt a breath of warm air welling up from it. It felt good on his chilled skin.

“Listen up,” he whispered. “We're tactical from here on in.” He told Nichols, “You and me, we'll do a quick recon. The rest of you, strip your weapons out and wring out your uniforms. Total quiet! Make sure you get all the water out of the suppressors and the barrels. We'll be right back.”

A moment later he and the corporal were on their way, up and over, kicking back the dirt with elbows and knees, weapons cradled ready in their arms.

 

F.C. FOLLOWED
the gunny, wondering what they were getting themselves into now. He hadn't minded the pipe that much. Tight quarters, but it was restful and a couple of times he'd nodded off, waiting there for Lenson to get moving ahead of him. The doc took it hard, though. She tried to keep it down but he'd heard her
sobbing behind him. So he'd talked to her, tried to get her attention off where they were. Asked her where she was from, where she learned to rappel so good, stuff like that. Just to get her mind off it.

Then they'd started moving again, and Lenson had passed the word back they'd have to hold their breath for a while. That was okay with him. He had no trouble with it. But Tony did, it looked like. It had rattled him some seeing him lying there all slack and wet. But not a whole lot. Maybe he should be more shaken up about it. He and Tony had been in the platoon together for three years now. But hell, he was totally exhausted, asleep on his fucking feet. Zoned. At the stage where you just kept walking, even if your buddy wasn't next to you anymore.

But you couldn't go into a tactical situation like that. So he tried to talk himself back into the mindset. Be the hunter, not the victim. Keep your situational awareness. Take rounds and return fire. It was getting harder to snap back into it though. It was also dark ahead, a void opening on the far side of the lip. He didn't like the look of that at all.

The gunny gave him a halt signal, and he held up. Gault squeezed through a narrow gap, following some cables, and disappeared. The scrape and clack of falling rock and sliding earth came from the other side, and then silence.

After some minutes, a low mutter: “Come on through.”

When F.C. scrambled over the lip, the ground fell away. He slid downward a few feet on loose dusty-clay-smelling earth and stones and came to rest on a hard floor. Crouched there in the darkness, he reached inside his blouse for his goggles. They were wet, of course, but the AN/PVS-7s were waterproof as long as you didn't submerge them so far the pressure breached the seals. Three feet, was what he'd heard. He turned them on and the corridor ahead rose into existence out of the black, but so dim, with so little ambient light for the goggles to
magnify, that ahead of him Gault was reaching up to flick on his IR illuminator.

Then all at once it was flooded with the invisible light, and he swiveled his head, going to a tactical stance, weapon to his shoulder, finger off the trigger, knees bent. Looking along the barrel, so all he had to do was drop his head and his eye would find the sights.

They were in a bunkerlike corridor six feet wide and eight feet high, so long he couldn't see the end. Pipes and wires ran along the overhead and both walls. They ranged from an inch or two, like water pipes, to one huge insulated mother three feet across. The air was still and dry and loaded with a penetrating heat that made sweat break on his forehead. The walls were concrete. The floor felt gritty under his boots. There were fluorescent blocks overhead every few yards, but they were dark.

He caught Gault's signal and slid back to cover him. Two-man team. Shuffling forward, more like a slide than a run. Head steady, lead with the weapon. Easing his boots down carefully, trying to keep it quiet even though the grit crunched like sand. The corridor seemed to be deserted, but there might be people not far away. Microphones were a possibility too.

Door, Gault signaled. F.C. saw it to their right, a two-leaf that looked like it opened out. It was ajar.

They moved into the drill, a little rusty, but both knowing how it ought to go from weeks at Combat Town. He remembered the concrete block buildings, like a little abandoned village, and the room-clearing drills. The hours in full gear, sweating, fighting your way up stairwells and across roofs while you sucked the choking haze of the navy smoke floats the staff used to cut down their vision. Drilling till it went smooth as a machine. Gault went to one knee and edged in, and F.C. thought, Right corner, and shifted his weapon to his left shoulder. Gault flicked the door open with his suppressor and went in, low, head and weapon searching to the left, and F.C. went in after him aiming to his strong side around the jamb.

His barrel pointed at stacks of old air conditioners and broken toilets. They stood piled against the walls, nearly to the ceiling: old Fedders and White window units, broken grilles hanging off them. And old commodes, cracked, broken, discolored. Then he saw in the emerald light of the IR that the floor was covered with snakes.

He sucked in his breath, finger twitching toward the trigger, before he saw they were just power cords, uncoiling over the floor from the busted air conditioners. The room smelled like old cement and rat piss. Gault's infrared beam glared around, throwing weird writhing shadows that seemed about to jump out at them. Then it glared back toward him, making his screen fluoresce and waver, and the gunny jerked his head backward toward the door.

Five meters down the corridor, the whir of electric motors behind another door. They double-teamed it, high-low, and found themselves covering a pump room. Gault put his mouth next to F.C.'s ear. “So why aren't the lights on?”

He thought, Because it's dark out, and they don't want to get bombed if there's a light leak. “Blackout?” he murmured.

“Maybe. Let's get the rest of the team up.”

They trotted back to the lip, boots squishing as the water drained down into them off their battle dress, and the gunny low-crawled up the bank. F.C. turned to cover the corridor behind them. It still made him uneasy. They hadn't gone that far down it. It had to lead somewhere. At some point, they were going to run into somebody. Who would it be, and who'd shoot first?

Then he told himself, There's not going to be any shooting. Nobody knows we're here. We'll check it out, confirm there's nothing here, and head back. Make that squirt transmission—they were all trained to operate the radio; the RTO was better at it but they could work it without him—and head back for the extract.

Down on one knee, he held the darkness prisoner before the sights of his M16.

 

WITH GAULT
and Nichols gone ahead, Dan had occupied himself tearing his weapon down as directed. He looked doubtfully at the rounds in his magazine. They were supposed to be sealed, waterproof. He sure hoped so.

When the gunny reappeared, he motioned them brusquely to their feet. “Turn those lights off,” he told them. “We're going in tactical. There's a steam tunnel on the far side.”

“What's a steam tunnel?” Maddox asked him.

“A utility tunnel. Takes steam from a central boiler to the other buildings in the hospital complex. Looks like they've got other stuff running through it too. Power, phone lines, water, maybe natural gas. Okay?”

“Right, I just wondered—”

“I figure if there's anything here, it'll either open off this corridor, or there'll be a side-route way to get to it. We'll go in quick and quiet, in the dark. IR, no visible light. I want the attachments to stay back here, with their safeties on and their mouths shut. Sarsten, you hang with them. If we find anything, I'll be back. Commander, come with me a minute.”

They nodded, and he pulled his legs up and over and disappeared.

Dan scrambled up after him and down about fifty yards of low-ceilinged, dirt-sided crawlway. He noticed that the new cable, the one he'd figured for fiber-optic, ran off to his right. Then it disappeared, zagging away into the dark. He felt his way after the others. Then he sensed open space, though of course he couldn't see a thing.

Gault's voice, next to his ear. “Commander.”

“Yeah.”

“Here's the plan. Give us one hour. If we're not back
by then, take charge and retrograde. If you hear firing, assume command and pull out. Make sure they can't follow trail back to the river crossing. Understand what I'm saying?”

“I think so.”

“Let's hear it.”

“Give you one hour, then get back across the river. Erase our tracks behind us. Same if I hear firing.”

He felt the hand clamp his shoulder, then let go. Heard the three marines sliding down the far side, into some dark space filled with echoes.

He wished he'd said good luck. Checking his watch, to start the hour's wait, he saw it was nearly midnight. They didn't have much time. If they found anything, they were going to have to clear the area, fast, and call in the strike. Before 0400. And, he hoped, be out of the city by then too.

 

BLAZE FELL
in behind F.C., turning his goggles on and trying to swallow his fear. Seeing Vertierra die was a shaker. That was two, fucking
two
guys down. He'd never been on a patrol where they'd taken casualties.

On the other hand, he'd never been in a war before. This is it, boy, he told himself. On the fucking objective. Fucking Baghdad, Iraq. You better fucking forget about scoring and start thinking about saving your ass. He touched the Glock for luck, put his MP to his shoulder, and concentrated on backing up the others.

They went down the corridor fairly fast, not running, but moving in the shuffle, head down to the weapon, weapons pointing everywhere they looked. It reminded him of a passageway on a ship, cramped and crowded with pipes. Heat like when he'd gone down to the engine room once, on a float, on the
Okinawa
. Down there the sailors worked in T-shirts or bare chests, skin shining with sweat, and after a couple of minutes you were ready to go back to troop berthing. Sweat was running down his
face now, but he kept his head down and his eyes front. Doors along the way. Gault checked each one, F.C. covering him, Blaze covering the corridor while they were inside. Then they popped back out, swept the passage, and moved to the next.