Tom Clancy's Ghost Recon: Combat Ops (28 page)

“But Scott, I can’t lie about it . . . about what hap pened. I can’t live with myself if I do that . . .”

My tone hardened. “You know what I think? I think that if I save your ass right now, and you still turn me in, that’ll be harder to live with than just lying. And really, all you have to do is keep your mouth shut. That’s it. You think about that . . .”

He bit his lip, then suddenly nodded. “Can you climb?”

“I think so.” “Then let’s move.”

They’d used a pair of our plastic zipper cuffs, and, with a penlight in my mouth, I carefully sawed through them. With that done, I started up the ladder, and he ascended behind me. I ordered Hume to go fetch some clothes from one of the guys we’d killed, along with an extra shirt to use as rag. God, we needed to wipe him off. He reeked. Hume hurried away, and once we pulled Warris out, he backhanded the tears from his eyes and said, “I’ve been down there most of the time. They cleaned me up to make the videos. I’ve barely had any thing to eat or drink. I’m dying.”

“Easy, we’ll get you something,” whispered Brown. “They got MREs down here.”

Within two minutes, Hume came dashing back with the clothes and a concerned look. “I heard some crying up there,” he began, cocking a thumb over his shoulder. “You know what I’m thinking . . .”

“Give me that goddamned ladder,” I barked.

I dragged the ladder back up to the next hole in the ceiling, ascended, and stepped into another chamber with more boxes of MREs. A narrow tunnel led to a second, even wider area where a few lanterns burned brightly.

My mouth must’ve fallen open.

Girls ranging in age from perhaps twelve or thirteen up to seventeen or eighteen were dressed in tattered clothes, bound and gagged, and sitting along the wall, a few sleeping, others staring blankly at me, and a few more crying through their gags.

At the far end of the room was a sleeping area piled high with pillows and blankets, and I shuddered as I imagined what went on there. Zahed would, of course, deny any wrongdoing; he could blame it all on his men, argue that in some respects he did not have control over them. And, of course, he’d be lying. He allowed this to go on, and in doing so, created a nightmare for the par ents of these poor girls.

I caught a blur of movement from the corner of my eye, and then from a tunnel exit near the back came another fighter. I raised my silenced pistol and put two rounds in his heart. I wanted to put fifty.

I whirled back, lowered my
shemagh
, and in Pashto said to the girls, “I will help you.”

One girl in particular fought more violently against her binding and gag. As I crossed to her, she began to look familiar, and then, with a start, I knew she was 
Shilmani’s daughter, Hila. I heard him screaming again, 
“They took my daughter!”

They’d tied up the girls with cheap nylon rope and gagged them with scarves. I untied Hila’s gag, and she moved her mouth, licked her lips, and began to speak in a rapid fire that I didn’t understand.

“It’s okay . . .” I said in a soothing tone.

She surprised me. “Thank you. I . . . what they did . . .

I cannot see my family again . . .” “You speak English?”

“My father taught me.”

I grinned weakly in understanding. “Okay. That helps. All I know is, we’re going to get you out of here. All of you. Do you understand?”

“Yes.”

“Can you tell them for me?”

She nodded. I finished cutting her arms and legs free. She stood and spoke rapidly to the girls, who all began nodding. Brown came rushing into the chamber, took one look at the girls, at me, and said, “Jesus Christ.”

“We’re getting them out.” “Are you kidding me?” “Nope.”

“Aw, this has really gone to hell! We came here for Zahed, and we’re going home with them!”

Hila turned back to face me. “You came here for Zahed?”

I leaned over and nodded slowly.

She glanced away, a pained look coming over her face. “He is very bad man.”

She pursed her lips, glanced back at the girls, as if thinking it over, then said, “I know where he is . . .”

All the intelligence assets of the U.S. government had been unable to locate the fat man, in part because the intelligence they gathered was being corrupted by Bronco and his associates. Nevertheless, I would never, for the life of me, bet that the location of my target would be spoon fed to me by a teenaged girl who’d been taken prisoner.

When I reflect and calculate the odds of what had hap pened, how I’d met Shilmani, how Hila had come to rec ognize me, what had happened to her and how she’d come to learn where Zahed was located, I could only blame fate.

Or the merciless universe.

Because if I hadn’t listened to her, if I’d just dragged them out of the cave and gotten out of there, I would’ve only had to deal with keeping Warris quiet—

And not the rest of it.

“Help me cut ’em free,” I told Brown. “Come on, come on.”

The words escaped my lips, and not two seconds later, the chamber quaked and dust fell from the ceiling.

“What the hell?” Brown gasped.

“Captain!” cried Hume. “I hear gunfire coming from somewhere outside! And mortars!”

“We have to move now, Scott!” added Warris. “We’re coming! We’ve got some girls up here. They’re

coming down. We’re getting them out!”

“They made us drink wine,” she told me as I cut another girl free. “They made us do things.”

“I know. It’s okay.”

“No, it’s not okay. I am filthy. I am not a woman any more. I am a dog.”

I looked at her, grabbed her hand. “You’re not a dog.” “But I can never go home.”

She started removing the gags from the remaining girls and reassuring them, while the guys kept scream ing for me to come. The final two girls dashed off.

“All right, get them and Warris out of here. Ramirez and the rest of Bravo should be waiting for you,” I told Brown.

“What about you?”

I lifted my chin to Hila. “She knows where Zahed is.” “Boss, what if she’s wrong?”

I widened my gaze on Hila. “Are you sure?”

She gave an exaggerated nod. “I hate him. He was the first one to have me. I know where he is.”

“Oh my God,” Brown muttered under his breath. “I’m going with her.”

“Not alone,” said Brown. “You fight with your buddy.”

I shoved my silenced pistol into Hila’s hand. “That’s right. She’s my buddy.”

She looked at me, scared, the weight of the pistol causing her shoulder to droop.

“You’re crazy,” said Brown. “This is crazy!”

“Just listen to me, Marcus. I need you to protect 
Warris. I need you to get him out. I’m worried about Joey, you know that.”

“I know, boss. I won’t let Joey do anything stupid.” “Good. ’Cause I’m betting Warris won’t talk.” “Me, too. He owes us. Big-time.”

“All right, so when you get out, contact Gordon. Tell them to track my chip. You’ll know where I am.”

“Will do.” He thrust out his hand. “See you soon, you crazy mofo.”

I gave him a firm handshake. “Thank you, Marcus.” Then I turned to Hila. “Which way?”

My father raised three sons and a daughter, and my sister Jenn was unquestionably Daddy’s little girl. The old man was a hardcore disciplinarian with us boys, but my sister could get away with bloody murder. As a kid I could never understand his leniency toward her and was entirely jealous of it. As I got older, I didn’t begrudge my sister anymore. In fact, it took my entire life for me to realize that Dad was a cynic who simply needed my sister to remind him of all the beauty still left in the world.

I wondered if Shilmani had felt likewise about Hila. As she led me through the next tunnel, I wondered if he’d be able to look Hila in the eye after what had hap pened to her. I knew the culture. I knew what happened to girls like her. But I didn’t want to believe that.

She held up my pistol, and I had my rifle at the ready now, with the penlight attached. She led me down two 
more tunnels, and we descended yet another ladder into a small room with crates piled to the ceiling.

“Guns,” was all she said.

“So you came through here?” I asked.

She frowned a moment, then realized what I was ask ing. “Yes, yes.”

“Zahed is here? In the mountain?” She stopped and shook her head. “No?”

“No.”

“Then where is he?” “He is in Sangsar.”

My mouth fell open. “Aw, no. That’s no good. What do you think we’re going to do? Walk right down this mountain and into the village?”

I guess I had spoken too fast. She frowned in thought, then finally said, “No, no. We don’t walk. We’ll run.” She tugged my arm, but I stopped dead.

“We can’t go to Sangsar.” “Yes, we’ll go!”

“How?”

She made a gesture with her hand. “Under . . .” “You mean there’s a tunnel that leads all the way 
there?”

She beamed at me.

While I was heading off to Sangsar, Brown, Hume, and Warris, along with the group of girls, were rushing back through the tunnels, following the beacons we’d left.

also indicative of my poor judgment. I liked that.

As Hila and I kept moving, I reminded myself that no, you could not generalize and say that all Taliban liked to rape young girls, but we could definitively state that Zahed’s men had taken it upon themselves to estab lish a terrible prison for them. The acts were inexcusable and when I looked at Hila, even for just a second, I wanted to kill Zahed more than anything. He was, in my mind, the symbol for all that was wrong with the country, all that was wrong with the war. And my hatred burned hotter as she dragged me by the wrist and led me down the next tunnel.

The emotions were all over the place at that moment. I felt as though I’d been chasing the fat man all my life, and soon there’d finally be closure, but then I worried for Hila and imagined my own death, the gunshot to my heart, the throbbing pain, the blood seeping into my lungs.

The passageways grew shorter, each ending abruptly with another ladder that we took down, always down, and it was clear we were descending the mountain from the inside. A lantern lit the passage at each ladder, and we encountered no resistance. I grew more at ease—

Hila fired at him first, the kickback of the pistol star tling her. She hit him in the shoulder with the first round, but the second went over his head and ricocheted off the wall.

I put two rounds in his chest, and he fell backward off the ladder. I ran over there, checked below. No other movement. Thankfully, he’d been alone.

It wasn’t until I started back that I felt the pain in my arm and stopped, directed a second light down, and saw that I’d been hit, probably from that ricocheting round.

She saw it, too, and started crying and pointing to herself, as if to say,
It’s my fault
.

“It’s okay,” I said. “Just caught me a little. See? In and out?”

I reached into my back pocket, where I kept a small plastic bag filled with antiseptic wipes and bandages. I handed the kit to her. “Fix me up. Quick,” I said.

She nodded and got to work, applying the antiseptic and the bandage. The wound looked worse than it was, but it still hurt like a mother. When she was finished, I thanked her and she grabbed me by the other arm. “This way.”

We climbed down the next ladder and found our selves in a concrete drainage pipe that left me hunched over. The pipe ran straight away for as far as I could see, and I guessed that it led all the way under the village wall and into Sangsar proper. I still couldn’t receive any satellite signals on the Cross-Com, so I just took it off and shoved it in my hip pocket.

We were losing our breath, and as we picked up the pace and continued on for meter after meter, I repeat edly glanced over my shoulder to watch the light drift away and the darkness consume the rest of the shaft.

“Are we getting closer?” I asked her. She looked at me. “Close?”

“Zahed is here?” I asked. “Soon,” she said.

While we had been considering a major offensive against the Taliban, they had, unsurprisingly, been thinking about the same thing. And unbeknownst to us, they had planned to launch their attack only a few hours after I’d taken my team into the mountains. Call that ironic and interesting timing.

What gave them pause, however, was our placement of the Bradleys in the defile and the firing of that flare. My simple diversion had changed the enemy’s entire battle plan. We later learned that they thought we’d been tipped off, and that had sent Zahed into a state of panic. From what we could gather, he launched a half hearted offensive, committing only about half of his troops to the fight, while pulling the rest back to Sang sar to help ensure his escape.