Burial Ground (23 page)

Morton appeared twenty yards away through
the gap between the tents, his silhouette limned in orange from the
flickering firelight. A second later he was gone. Merritt heard the
slurping sound of boots passing through the soft mud behind him as
Sorenson walked the shoreline. With a crackle of dead leaves, he
too disappeared into the forest, leaving Merritt alone with the
roaring fire and the memories that refused to allow him a moment's
peace.

The dry heat of the bonfire metamorphosed
into the roasting sensation of the wicked sun above and the eternal
sand below. After crossing the Dasht-i-Margi Desert, the Desert of
Death, from their staging grounds in Kandahar by chopper, armed to
the teeth with a fresh batch of intelligence and enough firepower
to lay siege to a small country, they wait in their hiding places
in the rock formations surrounding the mouth of the cave until one
hour before sunrise. Upon his commanding officer's signal, they
launch grenades from the MK19 through the stone maw. Muffled thumps
follow, a prelude to the blinding wall of fire that blasts from the
opening. The ground trembles beneath him where he kneels behind a
boulder, assault rifle to his shoulder, rebreathing mask making a
sound like blowing into a coffee tin. Rocks break free from the
mountainside and tumble down toward them. The dust to merges with
the smoke to create an impermeable haze.

And then he hears the screams, the horrible
cries of pain and terror. The sobbing. The mewling of children.

The voices of his brothers whisper epithets
through the earpiece in his tactical communications headset.

That's for the World Trade Towers, you sons
of bitches.

I hope you all burn in hell.

Where's your Allah now, bastards?

They cover the only egress from the warren
of caves until the sun rises. Several men and women, charred and
burning, try to make a run for it, only to be mowed down in the
crossfire, while the screams continue to drift out on the smoke,
diminished in number, but amplified by pain.

Under the blood-red dawn, his commanding
officer gives the order, and they hurl flashbangs into the smoke
and storm through the rock orifice two-by-two. Pebbles shiver loose
from the ceiling. The walls are painted black by the firestorm and
the floor carpeted with charred corpses. Only those still burning
cast a dim glare into the churning smoke. The rata-tat of gunfire
echoes from ahead as he follows the barrel of his rifle deeper into
the twisting stone maze until he enters a domed cavern. Muzzle
flare draws his attention to the left, where a supine form dances
beneath its glare. The cries of the injured subside under the
barrage of bullets. He watches men whom he trusts with his life
taking the lives of the wounded. One after another. Men and women
alike, put down like curs. Through the chaos he sees crates burning
against the rear wall, their contents spilled out onto the rock
floor. They hadn't been filled with munitions or biological agents
as they'd been led to believe, but rather with food, clothing, and
containers of potable water.

He pauses in the middle of the chamber and
surveys the massacre around him. The world begins to spin around
him and the walls close in. There are filthy mattresses in every
corner, linens burning. Bedrolls, books, clothing, a transistor
radio blaring static. They hadn't wiped out an al-Qaida stronghold.
They had murdered a band of refugees that must have fled from
Kandahar when the American armed forces had descended upon them
with weapons blazing.

To his right, he sees a young woman, her
face pale, hair singed to the scalp. Her face is so badly burned
that the flesh has split. Amber sludge oozes from an ulcer beneath
her left eye, an intoxicating shade of blue that betrays her
Northern Afghani heritage. She couldn't be more than eighteen
years-old, a slip of a girl whose thin limbs resemble burnt twigs.
The bleating sounds she makes...the sheer amount of pain...fear...the
panic on her face when the soldier stands over her and points a
rifle down at her forehead...

After that, Merritt's memory becomes as
cloudy as the smoke-filled cave. Something snapps inside of him,
and he only clearly recalls snippets of the following weeks. The
look of surprise on his platoon-mate's face when he had turns his
weapon on him. Stumbling through the tunnels with the wailing woman
in his arms. Calling for help, only to watch her slowly die while
even their medic refuses to administer a single ampule of
anesthetic to ease her suffering. Reliving her death in an almost
catatonic state as the chopper thunders back across the desert.
Blaming himself for failing her and swearing it will never happen
again. Slipping away from the barracks in the middle of night,
knowing they will come after him, but he can't allow them to catch
him. He can never live that life again, not now that he understands
the consequences. From there, he remembers running, and then
nothing but infinite sand and sun, stumbling through villages that
revile him for the dirty fatigues he wears, then finally the
Pakistani port town of Gwādar on the Gulf of Oman, where he trades
his few remaining supplies and his rifle for passage on the first
available freighter, not caring its destination.

Merritt realized he was on the verge of
hyperventilation and focused on slowing his breathing using the
thud of his pulse inside his head as a guide. Tears squeezed from
the corners of his eyes. He wiped them away and tried to think of
something else, anything else. He envisioned the look of pride on
his father's face when he had shipped off to Basic, and the
undiluted love in his mother's eyes that was always present, but
that only led to the remembrance of their cold gray features inside
their caskets the day he had buried them.

He needed to get out of here, get out of his
own head. This was a bad idea. He never should have come. The
feeling of claustrophobia, the sensation of being smothered alive,
overwhelmed him. He needed to leave this godforsaken jungle, to
climb up into the sky where there were no stone walls or
interminable fields of snarled trees. Only then would he be able to
breathe, where the air was crisp and thin and not sweaty with
humidity. His vision constricted from the periphery and he felt the
panic attack swelling within him.

A cool hand settled on his shoulder and he
nearly jumped out of his skin.

"Are you all right?" Sam asked. She knelt in
front of him so she could clearly see his face. "I could hear you
panting from all the way over there in my tent."

He nodded, but only succeeded in shaking the
beading perspiration from his forehead.

"Just try to relax," she whispered. She
gently stroked his cheek. Her soft blue eyes sought his gaze and
held it, binding him to the moment. He placed his hand over hers
and leaned slightly into it. "Everything's going to be okay."

There was genuine compassion in her eyes. No
fear. No judgment.

His breathing slowed as he memorized every
detail: the flecks of gold in her irises; the wily strand of bangs
that curled around her eyebrow and cupped her right cheek; her
slightly parted lips; the nearly unnoticeable crook right at the
bridge of her nose.

She slowly removed her hand from his cheek
and sat down on the mossy stump beside him.

He chuckled nervously.

"You must think I'm a complete
psyche-case."

"We all have our quirks. That's what makes
us human."

Her words were sensitive, her thigh against
his comforting. She could easily have taken this opportunity to
repay him for her earlier frustrations, but instead, she sat
quietly beside him, waiting for him to speak if that was what he
needed, lending quiet support.

The silence was so comfortable that he hated
to break it, but some things needed to be said.

"Thank you," he whispered.

She gave his hand a reassuring squeeze. He
held it a beat too long before releasing it.

"I should be the one thanking you," she
said. "For what you did back there."

"For throwing you down in the bushes?"

She smiled and nudged his leg.

"For taking care of me."

"You don't need to thank me. Any guy would
give his left arm for the chance to duck into the shrubs with you.
Besides, it's obvious you don't need anyone taking care of you. The
way you stepped into the line of fire in the village? That was
downright fearless."

She leaned her head against his shoulder, a
comfortable silence between them.

"Why are you still awake?" he finally
asked.

"Couldn't sleep," she said, but he knew by
the undertone in her voice that it was because she couldn't stop
thinking about what she'd seen in the forest.

He let it drop, and together they sat by the
fire under the edge of the canopy while the jungle around them
slept.

The bonfire snapped and popped. The dim
purple glow of lightning flared on the far horizon.

And from somewhere in the distance came the
haunting
skree
of a hawk.

11:40 p.m.

The changing of the guards had occurred
promptly at eleven o'clock. They were rotating in two hour shifts
to stay sharp until they broke camp at five a.m. and struck off for
the highlands under the blessings of dawn. The coming day would be
physically demanding as somehow, according to their maps, they were
expected to ascend roughly twenty-six hundred nearly vertical feet
to reach their destination high in the Andes beneath the unmoving
shroud of clouds. Rippeth was certain it would take more than a
single day to surmount that task, but he wasn't about to contradict
the men who signed his paycheck. After all, the sooner they were
away from this lake, the better.

The stench from the clearing of death, as he
had come to think of it, had somehow lodged in his sinuses. It was
all he could smell, and the coppery residue lingered on his tongue.
He was no stranger to death. After two tours through Iraq and an
eye-opening black op in Serbia, he figured he had seen about every
atrocity imaginable. Bodies blown to bits in markets and mosques,
rotted carcasses barely covered in mass graves, men tortured for
weeks at a time until they finally broke with what would prove to
be their last breaths. Granted, the clearing had been filled with
only alpaca parts, but the savagery with which they'd been
slaughtered surpassed even the genocidal rampages of the Serbs.
This was a different beast entirely. Men could be monsters, but
they always maintained an element of predictability. Here they were
dealing with the unknown, and, as such, unpredictability was
inherent to the situation. The first rule of engagement was to know
the enemy, and here they didn't understand a blasted thing about
what might be out there in the jungle at this very moment.

Although they hadn't come right out and
discussed it, he and his men were spooked. To survive under the
hostile conditions of war, both declared and undeclared, a soldier
had to develop a sixth sense for danger. Being caught unprepared
was a mortal mistake. All of them felt it. He could see it in their
eyes, in the way their nervous tendencies surfaced, and in the way
they reverted to their rigid military training.

And on top of everything else, his goddamn
hand was killing him. The gauze had long since soaked through and
the injections of lidocaine were about as effective as the two
acetaminophen he popped every four hours. Those rotten savages
would pay if it was the last thing he did.

Fortunately, they had packed for every
contingency. Maybe they had no idea what lurked out of sight, or
what the natives might be willing to do if they found themselves
cornered, but they had definitely brought enough firepower to
muddle their way through any mess.

Colton had instructed them to stay out of
the heavy artillery until the point it was deemed necessary.
Rippeth didn't care what the man thought. As far as he was
concerned, the time to break out the big guns was upon them.

He lingered near the camp, watching the
tents to ensure that no shadows stirred behind the canvas. The fire
had dwindled. All was silent and still as he had hoped. He waited
until Webber reached the southernmost point of his circuit, an
eighth of a mile into the dense forestation, before sprinting
soundlessly toward the pile of supplies. His backpack was beside
the wooden crate where he had left it. He unclasped the main flap
and opened it. As quickly and quietly as possible, he slid back the
bolts that sealed the crate and threw open the lid. The ground
penetrating radar and magnetometer units were disassembled and
packed in molded foam. He carefully extracted the pieces and went
straight for the secret padded inserts hidden beneath, which had
been machined precisely to fit the six FN-SCAR-L/Mk. 16 assault
rifles, and the dozen round M67 hand grenades and AN-M14 TH3
incendiary grenade canisters.

Rippeth loaded one of each of the grenades
into his backpack, and removed one of the SCARs. He placed the
sensing device parts back into the crate, closed the lid, and
latched it. Slinging his pack over his shoulders, he darted back
out of camp with his pistol tucked under his waistband and the
assault rifle across his chest in both hands. It was just small
enough to fit into his rucksack for the coming day's trek if he
sacrificed a few sets of clothes. As long as no one searched the
crate, they would never know he had raided it. At least not until
he had to use the weapons, and at that point they'd all be thankful
that he'd had the foresight to secure them.

And right now his sixth sense was telling
him that he was going to need them soon.

The cry of a distant bird of prey pierced
the night.

He trudged deeper into the jungle and
resumed his watch. The smell of death clung to the entire area. He
was going to have to swing farther away from camp if he hoped not
to have to cross through that vile clearing. The stench alone was
more than enough to keep him on his toes. Add to that the droning
buzz of the black flies and he had to be especially vigilant to
make sure he could hear even the faint snap of a twig under the
ruckus. Didn't those filthy flies ever have to sleep?