The Valley (23 page)

“What did you mean, ‘that' bolt?”

Corelli hesitated.

“Corelli,” Black pressed. “Who else's is in here?”

Corelli swallowed hard.

“The Wizard's, sir.”

Now it was Black's turn to look surprised.

“Where?”

Corelli pointed.

“In that locker, sir.”

“He goes outside the wire!”

“He's a medic, sir. Doesn't really need to be shooting people anyway.”

“Is his pistol disabled too?”

“Yes, sir.”

Black chewed on all this.

“How long?”

“Just the last few weeks, sir.”

“Why?”

“I wasn't told, sir.”

Black took his roster and walked to the door. He paused there.

“Thank you, Corelli.”

“Nothing to thank me for, sir.”

“Just your duty, right?”

“Yes, sir.”

His earnestness was painful.

“But you're not going to tell me anything that I don't ask you myself, are you?”

Corelli looked down at his lap.

“Don't be seen leaving here if you can help it.”

Corelli looked up, his face pale.

“Roger that, sir.”

Don't press him any more.

“Corelli.”

“Sir.”

“Who didn't tell you why?”

“Sir?”

“Who brought you the Wizard's bolt?”

Black thought he saw Corelli wince.

“Sergeant Caine, sir.”

Black turned and left Corelli sitting alone at his little table with his paperwork in the pale pool of light.

H
e pushed open the door to the thrumming command post.

The box fan whirred in the corner. Lights winked on radio stacks. The occasional crackle of static echoed down from the dark mountains and found voice in the speaker boxes.

The soldier with the sci-fi novel sat with his elbows on the table, whiling away his usual shift. He was the one Black had hoped would be there. The bored, distracted one.

“L.T.,” he mumbled without interest as he saw Black enter.

Black found it unlikely to the point of near-impossibility that a soldier's name could sit accidentally on the wrong company's roster for months on end. But he decided he was obligated to rule out that possibility definitively, and he knew only one way to do it.

A folding chair sat against one wall next to the empty cot. He took it and plunked it down facing him, across the desk from the soldier. He straddled it, placing his forearms on the seatback.

The kid lowered the paperback an inch or two and looked over it, obviously confused but too cool to show it.

“Evening, sir,” he said with a hint of a smirk.

Black saw deep red in his close-cropped hair. The sun had left a flay of dots across the ridges of his cheekbones beneath crinkled, mocking eyes. Black guessed that more than one smaller kid had lain on his back in a playground somewhere and contemplated the patterns of those freckles up close, tasting blood between pummelings.

He reached across and gently removed the novel from the soldier's hands. He set it facedown and open on the desk. The kid followed it with his eyes.

“Do you know why I am here?”

“Um, here in the C.P. or here at COP Vega, sir?”

“COP Vega.”

“Uh-uh.”

“Then how would you know why I was in the C.P.?” Black asked, annoyed.

The kid shrugged, feigning confusion.

“Just wanting to be clear, sir.”

There was the smirk.

“I'm conducting a fifteen-six investigation. Do you know what that is?”

“Nope,” the kid announced triumphantly.

“Well here's all you need to know,” Black said. “It means I am here on business that supersedes anything your chain of command tells you to do or not to do, and I'm about to give you a lawful order.”

The soldier nodded slowly.

“‘Supersedes' . . .” he said thoughtfully.

“Yeah, and I can tell you know what that means, so spare me. You are ordered not to tell your chain of command that I have been here in this room tonight, or what I did here.”

The kid had nothing to say about that for once. He sat thinking while pretending not to be thinking.

“You can decide whether to follow that lawful order or to violate it,” Black went on, businesslike. “But be aware that if you violate it you will face criminal penalties for doing so.”

“So what you're saying, sir, is that shit really does roll downhill.”

“Are you done?”

The soldier put up his hands in mock surrender.

“Hey, sir, why would I ‘do so'?” he asked. “I'm just a dumb grunt. Officers rule.”

“I need the radio,” Black said.

“Sir?”

“The radio.”

“Uh, which radio, sir?”

“The long-range. I'm calling your battalion headquarters to talk to your S-1.”

The smirk was back.

“Um, no can do, sir.”

“What?”

“Long-range is a no-go.”

“Why?”

The soldier thumbed upward, through the roof to the mountain peaks.

“Retrans tower is down, sir. We can't talk to nobody back on Omaha for shit.”

“What do you mean it's down?”

“Hajji knocked it out, probably.”

“That's impossible,” Black countered. “Sergeant Merrick used the radio to report to your H.Q. that Danny is missing.”

The soldier shook his head, insufferably pleased at seeing a lieutenant so flustered.

“Couldn't-a done it, L.T. Retrans has been down since the attack yesterday.”

All the hair on Black's neck and scalp stood on end. Stars appeared briefly around the edges of his vision. He stared at the kid. The kid stared back.

“I mean, be my guest, sir, if you wanna give it a try,” he said, gesturing with both palms at the long-range radio.

Black stood, feeling a wave of dizziness wash over him. On impulse he reached across the desk for the handset as his host watched him placidly. He could not have been happier to watch Black key the hand mic and fill the speakers with steady white noise as he tried unsuccessfully to hail 3/44's headquarters.

Knucklehead.

He set the mic back on the radio set.

“When is it gonna get fixed?”

The soldier shrugged.

“Whenever they send a team from Omaha to fly up there and set one up again, so it can get taken out again.”

This struck him as pretty darned funny.

“mIRC chat,” Black declared.

The Internet Relay Chat system was an encrypted version of online real-time text messaging systems. Its signal bounced off satellites, and it had rapidly become invaluable to remotely located outposts and their parent units. Someone in a headquarters back at Omaha could sit there on a “merk” terminal—no one knew what the
m
stood for; most assumed it meant “military”—and chat all night, getting nongarbled situation updates from various subordinate units, instead of tearing his hair out trying to talk on seven different scratchy radios.

“mIRC's down, sir, but the commo sergeant's on it first thing in the morning. I mean, unless you wanna go wake him up right now.”

mIRC also was prone to going offline frequently.

“Sat phone,” Black countered.

Most remotely located units kept at least one satellite phone on hand for situations just like this.

The kid blinked at him once.

“Sergeant Merrick does keep a sat phone, sir, but there ain't no satellite for it to talk to way down here.”

He seemed most gleeful of all about that one.

“No line of sight, sir,” he shrugged happily.

He picked up his walkie-talkie.

“I mean, you can try it yourself if you want to, sir.” He held the radio aloft, smiling. “Want me to get him?”

“No.”

“Don't worry, L.T.,” he said as Black turned to go. “Run silent, run deep, right?”

—

He crept quietly up the stairs, stopping this time to listen at the corner until he could hear the snoring from Oswalt's wall hootch. He went by on tiptoe.

He lingered at the roofline, looking this way and that to ensure it was deserted. He walked briskly across the planking, toward the hulking shape of the guard post, and poked his head in.

They were there. He reached in his pocket and proffered the pack of smokes. He had a question for them.

Bosch examined him skeptically with his dark eyes and made no move. The other soldier cleared his throat.

“Um, hey there, sir,” he said.

“What's up?” Black answered.

“Not much, sir, not much,” the soldier said, fingering his machine gun idly.

He looked at his friend, who said nothing, and cleared his throat again.

“Um, listen, sir, I, uh . . .” he rambled.

“Just say it,” Black cut in impatiently.

“Um, sir, I think we can't really be talking to you up here right now, sir.”

Black's brow furrowed.

“Okayyy.”

“Yeah, I mean, you know, sir, we would just get fried for having anyone up here smoking and joking while we're on duty is all.”

“All right.”

“I mean, you saw how ticked Sergeant Caine was the other night when ol' Bosch here wasn't posted on his weapon. That kind of thing, sir. You know how it is.”

Black's eyes narrowed.

“Sure.”

“Not that it's just Sergeant Caine, sir,” the kid added. “I mean, any of the NCOs would go ballistic on us if they caught us up here talking to, um, a visitor, sir.”

“Right.”

Black slid the cigarettes back into his pocket, looking at the soldier closely.

“Sorry, sir.”

“No worries.”

He turned to leave.

“Oh, and hey, L.T.?” said the first soldier.

Black turned back.

“Um, you know how we were telling you about the first night they took this place?”

“Yeah.”

“With the drug lord dude and stuff?”

“Yeah.”

“Um, sir, if you don't mind, maybe don't mention to Sergeant Merrick that I told you that.”

Black looked at him quizzically.

“He doesn't really like to talk about all that old stuff, sir.”

“Okay.”

“Bad times and all.”

“Right.”

He turned again to go.

“Um, and maybe not Sergeant Caine neither, sir.”

Black nodded his assent.

“If you don't mind.”

“Not a problem,” Black answered tersely.

Bosch spoke up for the first time since Black had arrived.

“Best if you just didn't come back up here for a little while, Lieutenant,” he said bluntly.

Black shot the testy kid a look.

“Yeah,” he answered with annoyance. “I got that.”

He snuck back down past Oswalt's hootch, stepping quietly on the stone stairs.

He was learning his way around Vega. He knew a couple different routes back to his own room now. One went outdoors a bit. It was a darker, more secluded way to go.

He took that route, lost in thought.

Danny was gone. No one was looking for him.

A soldier heading in the opposite direction startled him, but they passed one another with mumbled greetings and went each on his way.

Danny didn't get snatched. He wasn't dumb enough to leave himself in a position like that.

He had left of his own accord. Something at Vega was more frightening to him than what was out in the Valley.

“You unleash the Devil, and his work.”

He crossed briefly through open air, the shadowed mountainslopes soaring up above his head, rushing up to meet the black sky. He passed through an entrance back inside, nearly back to his hootch.

“And you bring his servant into my town.”

There were questions that only Danny could answer. One in particular.

“Jesus, L.T., where you been?”

The voice made him jump. He turned.

Caine, lurking in the shadows, much as Black had done while waiting for Corelli. He stepped out into the half-light, wearing no coat, his muscles bulging beneath his tan undershirt.

“Whattaya doing,” Caine asked. “Going for a midnight tour?”

“What do you want?” replied Black.

“C'mon with me, sir.”

He jerked his chin back over his shoulder, down a connecting corridor.

“What for?”

“Goddamn, L.T., can't you be easy about anything?”

“What for?” Black repeated.

Caine exhaled in exasperation and glanced to his left and right.

“Because I can help you, sir, that's why.”

He turned down the darkened corridor.

“Now c'mon,” he demanded gruffly.

He strode away. Black watched him for a few steps before following.

C
aine pulled the heavy door shut on the shipping container, sealing them in darkness. He fished for a flashlight and sent a beam along the floor until he found what he was looking for. He stepped on the power strip with his toe and a thousand Christmas lights winked on.

They hung in icicles from the roof of the container, filling half the airspace above their heads. More strings ran all up and down the wooden interior walls. A klatch of cheap folding lawn chairs huddled around a makeshift card table fashioned low to the ground from M.R.E. boxes and a plywood plank. A mini fridge squatted in the corner with a boom box and a pile of CDs stacked on top of it. More M.R.E. boxes sat piled against one wall, and a case of water bottles next to that.

The walls were dotted with posters and magazine tearouts of women in various stages of undress. At the far end was reserved the place of honor for a large print of an exotic female emerging from the archway of an ivy-lined villa somewhere, a crystal blue pool behind her, wearing only an airy blouse unbuttoned in front, and sheer bikini underpants. Someone had taken a knife and made two small slits in the poster along the string of her panties, through which a dollar bill had been folded and threaded.

Someone's hangout. Probably Caine's, for him and his junior sergeants.

He had led Black down two dark passageways until a patch of moonlight appeared ahead of them. Caine told Black to hang back a moment. He went ahead to the doorway.

“Beat it,” Black had heard him tell someone standing out of sight beyond the exit.

“Roger,” came a bored-sounding reply.

Caine had waited, watching whoever it was go, then waved Black out into a long, narrow open space that ran between one exterior wall of the house and a high stone wall that marked the property's edge. The area was dotted with shipping containers, generators, and water bottle pallets. COP Vega's backyard, more or less.

They'd made their way along, close to the wall, for about fifty yards. The entrance to the container faced the wall of the house, away from the mountainslopes, with barely enough room to open one of its doors halfway. Someone had stenciled the words TAJ MAHAL next to the door.

Now Caine eased himself into one of the lawn chairs and motioned Black to the other. He sat.

“All right, Lieutenant,” he said tersely. “So are you on the level here or what?”

“What do you mean?”

“Are you serious? Are you gonna follow through?”

“Follow through with what?”

“Look, sir,” Caine said impatiently. “I know you're making some moves here. I need to know if you're for real.”

“What do you mean, making moves?”

Caine sighed in exasperation.

“Sir, can we cut the crap here? I'm coming to you, all right?”

Black said nothing.

“I know you're making moves,” Caine said, “and you know you're making moves.”

“You want to tell me why you think that?”

Caine crossed his arms.

“No, I don't. You want to tell me who it was that told you we were scheduled to go to Darreh Sin on Tuesday?”

“No.”

“So there we go,” Caine said. “You don't trust me. That's your job. Now I wanna know if I can trust you here, or if you're just some lieutenant dicking around playing detective and throwing wrenches until he goes home.”

“What do you want to trust me with?”

Caine looked at him a long moment.

“With something fucked up.”

Black regarded the burly sergeant under the glow of the Christmas lights.

“I'm not dicking around,” he answered.

“Yeah, well, we'll see. That's why we're gonna do this one step at a time.”

“Do what?”

Caine leaned back in his chair and reached for the mini fridge.

“You want something?”

He pulled it open revealing rows of sodas and energy drinks, which soldiers drank like water, and several cans of beer.

Caine grabbed two beers and offered one to Black, who shook his head.

“Mm-hmm,” Caine murmured to himself.

Caine swapped them for sodas.

They cracked and drank. Black waited for Caine to speak.

“Look, sir,” he said. “I know I kind of came on like a dick at first.”

He took a slug of soda.

“I don't mean just beating your ass, I mean just the way I came off.”

Black shrugged.

“Seemed like standard N.C.O. to me,” he said, unnecessarily.

Caine shrugged off the insult.

“Yeah, I guess I deserve that,” he said. “Listen, sir, you gotta understand the reason for all that. I couldn't really have you hanging around me or be too, like, associated with you right now.”

“Why not?”

Caine eyed him over the top of the can.

“Because you're not the only person trying to get to the bottom of something around here, that's why not.”

He drank.

“What are you trying to get to the bottom of?”

“Once again, sir,” Caine pressed, “I'd really appreciate it if you could tell me who it was that told you about our patrol schedule right after you'd shown up at the COP out of nowhere.”

“That's not what you're trying to get to the bottom of.”

“No, sir, but I gotta know who here in this unit I can trust and can't trust. Just like you do.”

Black eyed him sidelong.

“Why would an innocent comment by a joe mean you can't trust him?”

“That's my business, sir. You've got your business and I've got mine. We're trying to get an arrangement going here.”

“I don't even know what the hell we're talking about yet,” Black replied impatiently. “And no, I'm not revealing communications made to me in confidence in the course of my investigation. You want an arrangement, then tell me what's going on.”

Caine put the can down.

“Sir, you don't get the risk I'm taking just talking to you.”

“Risk from who?”

The sergeant shook his head.

“I can help you, L.T. But you gotta help me do it.”

“How?”

“Slow your roll, that's how.”

“Slow my roll?”

“Just ease up a minute.”

“Ease up on what?”

“On all this pressing.”

“Pressing?”

“You know what I mean, sir.”

Black sat back and considered.

“So you want me to freeze my investigation,” he said. “That's convenient.”

“Nobody's talking about that,” Caine said. “But you gotta do it right. You start moving into the open like you are, and you're gonna drag yourself into that risk too.”

“I'm not moving anything into the open.”

“Yes, you are, Lieutenant.”

Caine looked square in his eyes.

“Wide open.”

Black regarded the burly sergeant.

“I think you're B.S.'ing,” he said.

“Really?” shot back Caine, finally flashing irritation. “Let me ask you this, sir. Have I asked you word one about what happened back in Darreh Sin?”

“No.”

“No. I haven't asked you, even though it is one hundred percent my sole duty right now to find out what happened and why, so I can protect my soldiers from whatever fucking hornet's nest you stirred up out there. I'm violating that duty right now. But I'm not asking you, because there is something more important, okay?”

“You sound like Sergeant Merrick,” Black replied.

Caine sighed. When he spoke again the edge was gone.

“I know you don't trust me, sir,” he said. “But you gotta try and trust me a little bit. I'll help you get what you want, but you gotta let me take the lead a little.”

Black sat in silence.

Careful.

“Why is Sergeant Merrick directing soldiers to lie about how long they've been here at Vega?” he asked.

“What?”

“He's got soldiers who have been here longer than they're admitting.”

Caine squinted at him.

“How do you know that?”

“Well, for instance, when I went to talk to Specialist Brydon, Merrick was telling him that—”

“Brydon is a part of this platoon,” Caine cut in, “and he's a goddamn good soldier. Now, sir, you know soldiers say crazy things, so if there was—”

“What?” Black cut in.

“What?” Caine repeated.

Black eyed the sergeant.

“I was going to say,” he continued, slowly, “that Merrick told Brydon that I was here from Colonel Gayley's unit. But I know that your guys haven't been back to Omaha but once or twice in the last six months, and when they did go it was for about twenty-four hours and you kept them practically under lockdown.”

“Yeah, I know,” Caine said. “That was for their own good. We started that for a reason. Those guys don't need to get a taste of the FOB life and then come back up here to this hellhole. That fucks with their heads too much.”

“Exactly,” Black answered. “That's my point. There is no way some joe stationed here at Vega, who's only been in theater a few months, knows the name of the commander of some other unit on the other side of FOB Omaha. Unless he's been stationed here for a lot longer than he says he was, back when guys used to get more R&R time back there and actually knew their way around the place.”

Caine shrugged.

“Eh, sounds like you're reading a lot into it.”

“Nope. Brydon acknowledged Colonel Gayley's name without questioning who he was.”

In the yellow light, Caine's face looked as though it lost a little color. He opened his mouth to speak, then closed it.

“I think,” he said finally, “that you are missing the most important thing, there, sir.”

“What's that?”

“I never told Sergeant Merrick you were from Colonel Gayley's unit. I never told him
what
unit you were from.”

The two men looked at one another.

“Then who?” Black asked.

Caine didn't respond immediately.

“I think, L.T.,” he said, speaking slowly, “that this is a good place to call it for tonight.”

He stood from his chair, leaving his soda unfinished on the table.

“Who's Traynor?” Black blurted out.

“Who?”

“Traynor. Jason Traynor.”

“Who's that?”

“That's what I'm asking you.”

Caine looked at him blankly and shook his head.

“Gotta give me more to go on, sir. I don't know no Traynor.”

“Never mind.”

Caine pressed the air between them with his palms.

“I'll find you, sir. Soon. Just cool it for a minute, okay?”

Black looked at the sergeant.

“I'm not dicking around,” he repeated.

“Yeah, I kind of almost believe you, L.T.,” he said. “Just cool it, all right?”

“Right.”

Caine went to the door.

“Wait three minutes before you come out,” he instructed Black. “You don't have to lock it when you go.”

“Okay.”

Caine toed the switch and sent them into darkness. Black heard the door creak open and saw Caine's silhouette above him in the skinny frame of moonlight.

Don't.

“What's ‘Xanadu'?” he asked.

He watched the silhouette turn toward him. He saw it shake its head.

“Oh, sir, just leave that alone.”

Caine went.

Black sat for about a minute looking at the doorway before rising and squeezing out the door. He walked briskly and quietly along the wall of the building, then continued swiftly through the passages toward Pistone's hootch. Something Caine had said had stuck in his head.

He pulled the door to his room shut behind him and went straight for his rucksack, pulling from it the sheaf of paperwork he'd brought with him from Omaha. The mystery roster with Traynor's name on it was at the top of the stack.

He ran all the way to the bottom with his finger.

No way.

By the time he pushed back out through the door he'd forgotten his promise to Caine entirely.