The Valley (20 page)

They burst from the forest, drenched and muddy, onto a paved road two hundred meters from the finish. They stagger-sprinted the final distance, Black's friend panting at him to keep going while one of the instructors creeped along beside them in a pickup truck, taunting them through a bullhorn that they weren't going to make it.

They made it, with just over a minute to spare. Fellow trainees gawked at the picture of them crossing the line, covered head to toe in mud and secrets. No one asked them what happened. Most of them had their own secrets.

The instructors would have called it cheating. Black and his friend called it taking care of your buddy. Black had considered it one of the most unlikely coincidences of his life, to find his friend that night, out of a hundred other trainees, in the vastness of the dark course, and decided it must have been fate. What happens on the night course stays on the night course.

They never talked about it with each other afterward. Soon after they graduated, Black's friend was tapped by the intelligence community for unspecified and increasingly spooky work which had left Black knowing little of his whereabouts and dependent mostly on the occasional and unpredictable e-mail like the one he'd gotten before leaving FOB Omaha.

But on that night, they had been equal, and equally raw. It was the other occasion Black could remember, when he felt he'd seen his friend as he really was, behind the puckish mask.

This
run, Black decided as he hauled himself upward from Darreh Sin, was worse than that night on the course. Worse than any other exorbitant physical punishment dreamed up by the instructors at Fort Benning.

But not the worst one you've done.

It was all he could do not to fall back into the range of Caine's taunts and torments. He refused to do that.

Danny, who was not conditioned as a soldier, struggled mightily. He wheezed and huffed alongside Black, saved only by his slight frame and the fact that he carried no weapons or gear beyond a helmet and stripped-down body armor vest.

After an eternity on the track they began clawing their way up the steep final slopes, tripping along the high trail. More than one guy slipped on its surface and slid down several feet, having to haul himself back up to rejoin the group.

At last the gate to the courtyard came into view up ahead. The lead soldiers were staggering through it.

Merrick and another sergeant stood on either side of the gate, panting and counting as guys came through. His eyes burned into Black as he and Danny stumbled past.

“Eighteen, nineteenDon'tFuckingGoAnywhereLieutenant, twenty . . .”

Inside, soldiers had scattered across to the overhangs around the perimeter, tearing open body armor and gulping for breath. Helmets clattered to the tiled breezeway floor as guys walked in circles, red-faced with hands on hips, or tried to make their trembling hands twist canteens open. Others' legs buckled beneath them and they went to their knees, palms on concrete, heads hanging.

Black made for the nearest overhang, pulling the Velcro open on his vest. Danny, coughing and dry heaving, followed him to the breezeway but didn't stop. Black watched him disappear around a corner, bent at the waist and making horrible gurgling noises.

He turned and saw the last of the soldiers come through the gate, followed by Caine giving a sweaty thumbs-up as he passed Merrick. That would be everyone except the sniper team. Merrick had sent them along the high ridges to provide cover. They would take more time to get home.

The courtyard perimeter was now filled with confused and gasping soldiers, cursing through wheezing breaths and asking one another what was going on. Caine wove his way among them toward Black.

“What the fuck happened?” he demanded. “Where the fuck is Danny?”

“Barfing.”

The effort of saying it nearly made Black do it.

Merrick was right behind Caine, sweating profusely and walking fast.

“Clean up this clusterfuck!” he spat in Caine's direction, sweeping his hand across the smatter of indisposed soldiers and hastily off-loaded gear littering the courtyard.

He pointed at Black without slowing.

“Come,” he said flatly, stalking past him.

Merrick led the way off the breezeway through a narrow channel formed by blast barriers, then under overhead cover to a doorway. He kicked it open and stomped inside, leaving the door to clatter in Black's face as he stumbled through on fluttering legs.

They were in someone's hootch. Probably one of Merrick's junior sergeants. He wheeled on Black, who was bent at the waist and gasping for breath.

“All right, sir,” he said, still winded himself and looking down at the sorry-looking Black like a furious parent demanding answers from a naughty child. “We're back at the COP. What the fuck was that shitshow?”

In the dim of the hootch a shower of bright twinkles washed across Black's vision and he felt the floor tilt dizzily. He ordered himself not to be sick to his stomach in front of Merrick.

“No,” he panted.

“What?”

Black pushed through the cramps clenching his abdomen and forced himself upright. Sweat stung his eyes as he stood to his full height and looked up at the sergeant.

“I am not telling you anyth—”

It was at that moment that the first of the mortar rounds crashed to earth on the grounds of COP Vega, filling the hootch with deafening sound and sending everything in it flying off shelves and tables. The sound of automatic weapons fire followed immediately.

“Get back to your hootch!” Merrick shouted at him, wheeling out the door toward the courtyard.

Black followed.

The courtyard was the expected tumult, shouting soldiers scooping up helmets and weapons and stamping off toward the myriad doorways and passageways leading to the various parts of the outpost. Merrick stood in the open courtyard, shouting into a radio about the sniper team that was still outside the wire.

As Black ran down the breezeway another mortar round impacted just outside the gate, heaving earth over the wall into the courtyard and momentarily deafening everyone still in the open. He saw Merrick rise from a protective crouch and stalk toward one of the exits leading back into the innards of the COP.

Black found the right passage and barreled into it. He pounded up steps and around corners, weaving his way through the outpost as explosions shook the walls and the ground beneath him shuddered. Soldiers stomped past in every direction and ignored him. He lost his way and turned around, then lost it again. The place was a maze.

As he circled and circled again amidst the crashing chaos, he heard only the words of the chief of Darreh Sin, over and over, as he had towered over Black and Danny.

You sneak into my valley like a snake at midnight,
he had said, slowly, seething.

And you unleash the Devil, and his work.

He was brandishing the brick of heroin in a gnarled, muscled hand. His voice was louder now, his face red.

And you bring his . . . his servant into my town.

Danny kept translating, involuntarily, eyes wide, hands clutching the arms of his chair, as the chief's voice rose to a shout.

I SHOULD KILL YOU ALL NOW!

The brick squashed through the middle in his grasp, but Black and Danny were already out of their upturned chairs and stumbling for the door. There was no more translation as the chief hollered further horrors at them. The brick in its pieces had struck the wall next to the doorway as Black blundered through after Danny, and as the door clattered shut behind him he'd heard one of the chairs shatter against the wall.

The bombardment of Vega continued for fourteen hours, deep into the night.

—

“Doing some rule-breaking again, there, sir?”

He offered the pack of smokes. They took. He checked his watch, which read 0212. He'd taken four minutes to get from his room to the roof.

It was quiet again. The sky was crystal-clear black and shining with stars. There was no fog in the Valley tonight.

Everyone lit up.

“How's your investigation going, sir?” asked the first soldier.

Black shrugged noncommittally.

“No one wants to talk.”

“Huh,” the soldier said.

He inhaled and doused the butt of the machine gun in smoke.

“That's weird, sir.”

“How come?”

“Well, I mean, just talking to you, you just sort of seem like the kind of person dudes would normally trust to talk to, sir.”

“Oh.”

The soldier took another long one.

“Like the kind of person dudes would wanna confess all their sins to.”

A breeze blew through the window. Black noticed for the first time that without the fog to blanket the sound, he could just hear the river way down below. It must have been moving pretty good in that stretch.

He didn't like the sound. Didn't like the feeling of it being so close to where he slept.

They smoked for a while in silence.

“You're lost in thought, L.T.”

He startled. The first soldier was looking at him.

Black cleared his throat.

Don't push it.

“Was just thinking about what it must've been like.”

“What what must've been like, sir?”

“When you first came,” Black said idly. “I heard it was like this when you guys first took this place.”

“Like what?” asked the soldier. “Clear?”

“No. Quiet. Like they just abandoned it and you guys just took it over and set up shop.”

The soldier's brow furrowed.

“Who told you that, sir?”

Black hesitated.

“Nobody. Dude back at the FOB.”

“Yeah, well, that dude's fucked, sir.”

The soldier sent a ribbon of smoke out the side of his mouth. “It most definitely was not abandoned.”

“What happened?”

“When the first squad came up here, that fucking chief was waiting for them with his boys and they were locked and loaded. Knock-down drag-out. But they killed his ass. They took the house and held it for, like, two weeks until they brought assets up here and built this place.”

Black nodded.

Maybe not.

He smoked for a minute before noticing something in what the soldier had said.

“Chief?” he asked.

“Yeah,” said the soldier. “The drug chief guy.”

“I thought it was the new Taliban governor or whoever up here.”

“No, it was the fucking local drug lord guy. Kingpin and shit.”

“You sure?”

“What I'm sayin', sir.”

“Huh,” Black said noncommittally.

“That's why he fought so hard,” the soldier said. “All the fricken' dope he had up here.”

“Heroin?”

“Hells yeah, sir. Like, thirty bricks in the house. A Taliban woulda burned that shit in a heartbeat.”

“What'd you guys do with it?”

“Burned it!” the soldier exclaimed, laughing. “Ironic, right, sir? Allies with the Taliban.”

“Right.”

“Like we said. Welcome to the Valley, sir.”

Black smiled.

“You guys were both here then?”

“No way,” said the soldier. “There's hardly anybody from those dudes left here. Me and Bosch've been here, what, seven months? That all's just how we heard it.”

“Heard it from who?”

“Sergeant Merrick.”

Black took a pull on the cigarette and sent a cloud out the window. He stared out the window a full minute before speaking.

“What,” he asked the joes, “do you guys think of Sergeant Merrick?”

Bosch spoke up for the first time.

“What the fuck do you mean by that, sir?”

Black finished his smoke and left, out across the planks to the stairwell. He paused, just below the roofline, listening. Then he continued on down, past Oswalt's wall hootch. It was pitch-dark inside.

“Evening, sir,” came the voice from behind the curtain.

Black jumped and nearly tripped on the stairs.

“Evening, Oswalt.”

“Watch your step, sir.”

“Roger that,” Black said over his shoulder and kept walking.

He had been careful going up, and now he was careful going down. He did not want to encounter anyone.

He had sat alone in Lieutenant Pistone's room for fourteen hours, through the periodic thump of mortar and rocket fire and the constant hail of bullets, coming in and going out. He was smart enough to know not to go running around the outpost trying to help. To know that as long as their attackers, whoever they were, were firing on the place from up in the hillsides and not actually breaching the compound on foot, he needed to stay out of the way and let the soldiers and their sergeants do their jobs.

He did not want to see the wounded, or hear their screams. One had been carried down the hall past his closed door, which was plenty for him.

He had needed to think.

Now he wanted to get back there. Because he knew now that he wasn't going to be making his paperwork and going home. Knew now that he was an idiot. Knew that he knew nothing except that nothing was going to go right for the next five days.

He stopped at the Porta-Closet near his hootch. By now he had read every entry in the scrawled field of graffiti.

Except he hadn't. He was about to turn and leave when one caught his eye. It was way down at the bottom, below the others, on one of the few bare patches of wall remaining.

He bent to see more clearly. It was only two words. It was definitely new since before he had left on the patrol to Darreh Sin.

CHUCK
SEES

This time in the dream it was him looking out the window, at himself, clawing up at the ground to get to himself, and failing. A gentle hand came to rest on his shoulder. He shrugged it off as he pawed at the window frame, trying to climb through.

—

Lying on Mother's roof, Tajumal was confused. Much of this made little sense.