The Valley (13 page)

Most hated the nighttime runs. Black loved them. He loved the challenge of finding a way through the dark. Loved the mental discipline involved. Being alone in the woods at night scared the hell out of him.

Some trainees were shooting the breeze after a session one night, warming up around a burn barrel. One of the guys told the others how he had been at the bottom of a shallow valley looking for one of his points. He'd been blundering around in circles where the infernal signpost was supposed to be, not finding it, losing momentum, starting to feel the woods close in.

He looked up and in the dim light he saw a fog bank at the top of the rise. A real fog bank, like in a movie, coming slowly down the slope toward him. It was like a living thing.

He turned around and ran. Literally ran away from it. He saw it coming and his response was so instant and visceral he forgot all about finding his point and just bailed out, tripping over logs and branches, to get away from the thing. When he told the story he didn't even bother trying to pretend that he hadn't nearly peed himself.

He took some ribbing over that. But now, staring out at the ghostly layer before them, Black knew exactly what the guy had been talking about. He realized he'd have run too.

The closer the fog layer got, the quieter the Valley sounds seemed to get. Even the animals seemed to retreat from it. Black crossed his arms against the cooling air. No wonder the people who lived in the Valley were scared of it.

“You're right about the fog,” Black said finally. “It's creepy as hell.”

“Yeah, right, sir?” said the soldier. “Sick of looking at this shit.”

He blew out a long jet of smoke.

“What time is it?” Black asked.

“Oh-dark-thirty,” the first soldier muttered without looking at his watch.

Oh-dark-thirty.
From the way military times were stated. Oh-four-hundred. Oh-six-hundred. Oh-dark-thirty was a time of night that was obnoxious even by Army standards.

Oh-dark-thirty was what it had been the very first morning at OCS. They'd all been up until the wee hours the night before, slogging through inprocessing stations, scribbling out paperwork hunched over in one-piece desks ripped off from an elementary school, standing in sleepy lines to get needles in the arm. Finally to their bunks for what seemed like fifteen minutes. Then metal trash cans clamoring down the hallways in the dark. Their instructors, saying good morning in the middle of the night.

Off into the January woods. A “terrain run,” the instructors called it. Streams to slosh through. An obstacle course tucked away in a lonely glade, sodium lamp atop a pole casting orange shadows on their struggling forms. Sprints up and down a paved hill overlooking a sprawling airfield. Hand-to-hand fighting in icy puddles. Then back into the black trees.

Hours later, they emerged exhausted onto a dewy field in the morning half-light. A mile-long running track awaited them. The instructors' final joke on their charges. Everyone twice around for time, fast as you can go. Miss the standard and you're out, “recycled,” to wait around for weeks and hope to make it into the next class.

He ran. The first half mile, his shins burned and pains shot from his back down through his legs. The next half mile he decided to quit. In the last mile his body limbered and he ran like the wind.

He stumbled through the scrum of trainees huffing beyond the finish line and found his friend. The wiseass who would one day send him novelty lamps and witty e-mails. He stomped up to Black and they threw a spontaneous arm around each other's shoulders:
We're actually here
. It was one of only two times Black could remember when his friend had dropped his wry, cultivated façade and allowed himself to be seen.

“Well, anyway,” Black said, stubbing out his cigarette. “Probably get going.”

“Take it easy, L.T.”

“Yup.”

He was turning to go when Bosch spoke up.

“Hey, L.T.,” he said. “So why the fuck are you really here?”

Black told them about the 15-6.

“Wow, sir, you weren't lying,” said the first soldier. “That is
some
bullshit.”

“Like I said.”

The soldier appeared to be thinking about something.

“Well, then I guess it's lucky me and Bosch weren't in Darreh Sin that day, right, sir?”

“Why's that?”

“Well, 'cause if you're the fifteen-six officer, then we're not supposed to be shooting the shit like this, right?”

Black stuck his hands in his pockets and shrugged.

“Damn, sir,” the kid said. “You really don't give a fuck, do you?”

He made for the stairwell, moving briskly across the pallets. He was almost there when he caught the movement.

Just a shadow moving against a shadow. He stopped and squinted.

A man squatted in a parapeted corner of the roof, back to Black, working intently at something. Black fell to a crouch, fingering his pistol, before he was able to make out that the man was wearing American camouflage fatigues.

“Who's that?” he called in a stage whisper, feeling mildly foolish.

The man whirled around, startled, and had to put a hand out to keep himself from toppling over.

“Danny! Danny!” he whisper-called back, holding his palms high in the dark. “Chill, man!”

His voice was heavily accented. Black trotted in a crouch over to where he was, squatting next to him just below the top of the roof-wall.

The man shrank back, eyeing him uncertainly. He was slender and olive-skinned, deep ochre eyes set in a narrow and inquisitive face topped by scrubby black hair. Black guessed him at about thirty. His slight frame struggled to fill the fatigues, which were blank except for a tape over his left breast that said U.S. ARMY, and another over his right that said DANNY.

“You're the 'terp,” Black stated.

Any platoon having regular contact with Afghan people would have an interpreter—a 'terp—embedded in it. Most were Afghan guys who risked a great deal for the good pay that came with working as a contractor for the Americans.

Most used a false name, usually a Western one. It wasn't so much courtesy as self-protection. Didn't want Americans accidentally spitting out a real name in front of some dude who might come back later and slit the 'terp's throat and his family's too if he found out who the guy was and where he was from.

The guy nodded and stuck out his hand.

“Danny,” he said, stating the obvious.

Black shook it, seeing Danny examining his own rank and name tapes.

“I'm Black,” he offered.

Danny furrowed his brow. He clearly knew enough about the Army to know that there wasn't room in one platoon for two lieutenants.

“You are the new L.T.?” he asked.

Black shook his head.

“I'm just here a week.”

“Okay, man,” Danny said, nodding again. “Cool.”

'Terps were generally pretty traditional guys. Danny didn't pry further than what was offered.

Black looked past him. A metal radio antenna rod had been fixed in place in the corner, extending up into the air above the edge of the wall. At its top was a wire lattice antenna that looked like the kind of thing you'd see on the roofs of houses in old pictures from the sixties and seventies. A cable ran from its base down through a crack in the roof's stonework. To Danny's room, Black presumed.

“What're you trying to pick up?” he asked.

Danny turned and scowled at the antenna.

“Radio,” he grumbled. “Nothing, man.”

“Can't you just get some music from the guys here?”

Danny shook his head.

“I try to get my music,” he said. “Afghanistan music.”

He jerked a thumb over his shoulder.

“I buy this from guy in Valley who says we got little radio up here. I put it here, I move it over there, I . . .”

He searched for the word while wringing the neck of an invisible antenna stand.

“. . . adjust it every day.”

“You get anything?”

Danny threw his hands up.

“Nothing!” he nearly shouted, then caught himself and ducked down, glancing up at the hillsides and smiling sheepishly.

“I didn't mean to scare you before,” Black offered apologetically.

“Heh,” Danny chuckled, waving him off. “I thought you shoot me.”

There was a mirth to his voice when he spoke. A mischief.

“Sorry,” Black said.

“Don't worry, man.”

“Well,” Black said. “I guess I'll see you.”

“Okay, L.T.,” Danny replied. “You need anything, I help.”

Black nodded.

“Thanks.”

He trotted back across the roof and into the stairwell, leaving Danny to wrestle with his antenna.

—

Down the hillside, rocks skittering away underfoot. Into the fog. Sandals finding the trail. A young boy's form, invisible in the white night, gliding fluidly amidst the hazy shapes of trees and bushes. Left here, around that one, duck low there. Greeting them like old friends.

Cowardly Qadir and his rifle probably ran away an hour ago. Probably took the high trail, up and over the long way, just to avoid the silly mist. He may as well take his clothes off and run around on top of the mountain so the Americans' silent plane can blow him up.

Palms on sandstone, up and over a familiar boulder. Bounding into the gray, feet finding purchase, moving efficiently downhill.

Qadir and his devils and demons. He is as foolish as the farthest and highest of the mountain people, clinging to their superstitions and blasphemies from a thousand years ago. He should just go live with them and stop bothering me.

The noise of the river coming into hearing.

How can I fear fogs and nonsense, Father, when I walk by your side with every step? When I share your true faith?

The sound of water rippling over stones.

When I know the true devil?

Fifteen minutes walking blind on the river trail, then up the slope a ways and over the draw, down into the gentle depression in the land.

Qadir and his stupid boasting. Slitting throats and widows wailing and all his silliness. He knows nothing of strength. He knows nothing of me. He would be too stupid to understand if he did. I will show him strength.

Sandals wet on the mountain grass. Dirt and pebbles at the threshold. Through the curtain, past Mother's room, blanket in hand and back out the door. Hands on the cold stone, up and over the edge onto the roof.

I sleep closest to you, Father. No false devil troubles my sleep.

Tajumal lay back on the thatched roof under the threadbare blanket, basking in the enveloping mist, and dreamed warm dreams of cruel vengeance.

A
w,
FUCK,
Caine!”

The man who had just been introduced as Sergeant First Class Merrick threw his little green government-issue hardcover notebook down on the table. It landed square on the surface with a nice clean smack. Soldiers' curious heads rose and swiveled across the tiny plywood-walled chow hall.

Merrick was tall and lean, a straight line with angular mantis limbs. His face matched the rest of him, long and taut, fur-brown hair shorn close in a stark-cornered frame around it, hard brows angled over a pair of examining, intelligent, nearly black eyes. He exuded scowling competence.

He'd been standing among a gaggle of soldiers and junior sergeants, dishing out instructions for the day. He was not pleased to meet Black.

“Why didn't you tell me about this bullshit?” he was demanding of Caine.

“What do you mean, tell you?” Caine shot back defensively. “I didn't know! Nobody knew except Lieutenant Pistone, and he didn't tell me shit.”

“Well, then where the fuck is
he?
He should be nearly awake by now.”

He didn't mean it in a flattering way.

“At Omaha. Remember? Left on last night's run.”

Merrick threw up his hands.

“Well, no problem!” he said sarcastically. “Now we've got a whole new lieutenant already!”

He stubbed a thumb at Black, without looking at him, and continued raving.

“Who the fuck sent him up here?”

“Your battalion commander,” interjected Black, who was wearying of being talked about in the third person.

Merrick ignored him.

“I'm not doing this,” he said to Caine, pointing a finger at his chest. “I'm not wasting one hour of one fucking soldier's day on it.”

“Sergeant,” Caine said placatingly, using Merrick's rank as a nod to the pecking order. “He got
assigned
the fifteen-six. He doesn't have any more choice in it than we do.”

“Well, hooray for him,” Merrick shot back, speaking quickly and precisely. “I don't have time for a bullshit investigation of my soldiers
in the fucking field
while they have jobs to do. He can talk to them all he wants when they get back to the FOB, if we ever get back to the fucking FOB.”

“Look,” said Caine, lowering his voice. “The L.T. and I talked last night. He just wants to knock it out and do what he has to do and get it done.”

He turned to Black.

“Right, sir?”

“I don't give a fuck how he
feels
about it,” Merrick snapped, and finally turned his sharp gaze to Black.

“Look, sir,” he said. “I appreciate that you don't
want
to take up my joes' time with a stupid investigation, and I appreciate that you didn't
assign yourself
the fifteen-six. But I don't care. I'm sure you've noticed since your arrival that we are busy up here staying alive.”

Let him huff and puff, Black figured.

He knew a lot of it was for the benefit of Merrick's soldiers, several of whom were now watching intently from their tables. Merrick was a senior sergeant who'd been in the Army a minimum of twelve to fifteen years. He had to know he was obligated to assist an investigating officer. Or else he knew it but didn't care because he was confident that he was untouchable up here in the Valley, that he could do whatever he wanted and deal with it another day.

Either way, Black figured he may as well find out now. If it was the latter then he could go sit in Lieutenant Pistone's hootch for the rest of the week and go home and tell Gayley he'd been obstructed. Then some major would get assigned the 15-6 and it wouldn't be his problem anymore.

Merrick continued venting, stepping in closer to Black.

“Do you know when my last K.I.A. was, sir?”

“No, I don't.”

“Five fucking days ago. You know when was the last one before that? Three days earlier. And I will probably have either more casualties or another goddamn K.I.A. to deal with by tomorrow. So I'm sorry,
sir,
but I don't have time for bullshit.”

Black knew from enough experiences with enough aggressive sergeants that the
You don't speak to me that way!
approach would be a loser in this situation. He also knew that to back down completely would be death.

“Neither do I,” he said evenly.

Merrick's eyes hardened and he spoke slowly.

“What does
that
mean, sir?”

The two men stared at one another. The joes stared at both of them.

Let him backtrack.

“It means,” Black answered calmly, “that I've got better things to do than schlep up here and waste my time and waste your time. But that's what I got told to do, and
I'm sure you've noticed
I'm in the Army, so here I am.”

Black raised his palms in a
So what are we gonna do here?
gesture.

Merrick scowled at him for about a solid ten seconds. Finally he turned to Caine, who was looking at the two of them doubtfully.

“Wow,” he said in an utterly unimpressed voice. “A lieutenant with balls.”

He leaned slightly to one side and spoke past Caine toward the gaggled soldiers at their tables.

“Get out.”

The soldiers leaped to their feet and beat it.

Merrick turned back to Black and stared at him some more for good measure while the joes were filing out. At last the room was empty.

“Hey, sir,” he said. “So was Sergeant Caine right when he said you are planning to knock this thing out with a minimum of bullshit and get out of my hair?”

“Only what I have to do,” Black answered blandly.

“Well, hooray,” Merrick said dryly, turning to Caine. “He's only gonna do what he has to do.”

He had capitulated. He didn't like it, but Black could see that he knew his responsibilities. He had just been trying to feel out whether he could scare Black off. Standard for senior sergeants who disliked officers snooping around their business.

Merrick turned back to Black and swept his arm through the air, indicating the entire outpost.

“Then please, sir,” he said sarcastically. “Be my guest. My house is your house.”

“I won't steal anything,” said Black, sarcasm-ing him right back.

Merrick just stared at him blankly.

“So what first, sir?” he said in an
Okay, fine, YOU tell ME, then
tone of voice.

“I want to go to Darreh Sin,” Black said flatly.

Merrick's features froze. He eyed Black as though Black had made him a bargain and then cheated him out of all his money. His gaze darkened.

“Darreh Sin,” he said, looking at Black through hard eyes.

Black just shrugged.

“Talk to the chief,” he said as though it were the most obvious thing in the world.

“What's the chief got to do with anything?” asked Caine.

“Can't talk to the dude with the bullet hole in his house until I talk to the chief, right?”

Merrick's eyes visibly narrowed. Despite his volatile manner, he seemed like the more well-schooled and people-savvy of the two sergeants. He looked at Black as though he were trying to figure out just who he was dealing with.

“Sir,” he said, his own voice low and controlled. “We just finished having a conversation about how you're going to conduct your trivial chickenshit business in the least disruptive manner possible. What makes you think I am going to gear up a special patrol and put my guys on the line just to walk you down to the town to talk to someone who's not even an American about something that didn't even happen to him?”

Black waited for Caine to chime in. Caine said nothing and looked at the floor.

“You don't have to send a special patrol,” Black said breezily. “You guys go down there every week, right?”

Merrick looked at him closely.

“Who,” he said slowly, “gave you information about troop movements?”

Troop movements.
Merrick had used the big-boy term favored by senior officers who gave Operations Security briefings. “Disclosing troop movements,” even inadvertently, was your classic Army security violation. The kind of thing that got soldiers court-martialed and journalists tossed out of country.

Black ignored the question and tried to look confused.

“It's not a secret around your outpost,” he said.

Caine kept staring at the floor.

“What's the problem?” Black asked innocently. “You guys are scheduled to go down there tomorrow, right?”

He saw Caine's head jerk toward him in surprise. His mouth opened, then closed.

Merrick very slowly turned his clenched and reddening face toward Caine. Caine looked like he had wanted to blurt out
I didn't tell him about tomorrow!
but thought better of it.

Merrick, unhappy but stuck, stepped in very close to Black.

“Lieutenant,” he said quietly. “Don't make me regret not telling you to go fuck yourself and your investigation.”

“It's not my investigation,” Black said tiredly. “It's the Army's investigation.”

“Oh,” said Merrick, looking into his eyes. “Then go fuck yourself, Army.”

“I'll pass on the message.”

Caine took that as his cue.

“Hey, sir, why don't we get moving?”

“Good idea,” Black said breezily, looking at both him and Merrick. “I want to talk to your guys today anyway, before we go out to the town tomorrow.”

Before a rapidly reddening Merrick could say anything in response or otherwise burst a blood vessel, Caine cut in and put a hand on Black's shoulder.

“All right, then, sir,” he said, gently steering him toward the door. “C'mon, we'll sort that out.”

Black stepped in front of him and led the way out into the hallway, where curious soldiers lingered, waiting for the chow hall to open up again. The plywood door smacked shut behind Caine. The joes pretended not to look at him and Black as they passed.

“Wow, L.T.,” Caine said sarcastically. “You make friends good.”

Black ignored it.

“Brydon, Shannon, and Corelli,” he said.

“What?”

“Those are the three I want to talk to today.”

They kept walking. Caine appeared to be thinking over the names.

Is he smart enough to get it?

“Corelli because he's the shooter,” Caine began slowly, as though talking to himself. “Brydon because he's the medic, and Shannon because he was the dude closest to the shooter.”

“Yup.”

Caine seemed to recognize that this was a bare-minimum request that would cover all the required bases and get the maximum paperwork value out of interviewing the minimum number of soldiers.

“All right, L.T.,” he said finally. “Cool.”

He thought for a moment.

“All three of those guys are on guard shift until sixteen hundred. You can talk to them at their rooms after that.”

Black took note of the fact that Caine knew the three soldiers' schedules from memory and didn't have to pull out a little green notebook or crumply piece of paper with the daily shifts on it. He was on top of what his guys were up to.

“Sounds good,” he said.

“Corelli you know from last night,” Caine said as they walked. “Seems like a pussy, but he's all right.”

“Okay.”

“Shannon you won't like, and he won't like you.”

“All right.”

“Brydon,” Caine went on. “That's the Wizard.”

Black cocked his head.

“Weird kid,” Caine said. “Grumpy, like you. Doesn't talk. But he'll put his ass on the line for any man here. No fear.”

Black nodded.

“You ever put your ass on the line for someone, L.T.?”

Black ignored the question.

“The Wizard?” he asked instead.

“You'll see.”

Black waited for Caine to ask him who it was that told him the patrol was scheduled for the next day, but Caine said nothing. Maybe he figured he and Black were even, after Black had covered for him back in the chow hall.

They had arrived at his room. Black opened the door.

“I'll be back here at sixteen hundred to get you,” Caine said.

Black turned back, standing in the threshold.

“Remember what I told you about being here to do a job and go home, Sergeant?”

“What? Yeah, I . . .”

“Then why don't you spare me the extra bullshit?”

Caine was startled.

“What? What bullsh—”

“You should just thank me,” Black interrupted, “for covering for you in front of Big Daddy.”

Caine reddened.

“‘Big Daddy'?”

Why are you antagonizing this guy?

“And don't think I didn't notice that you set me up to look like a jerk in front of all the joes back there.”

“What? Sir, no one set you—”

Black closed the door in his face.