“Ah, too bad,” the soldier said. “The cave has been closed to make repairs in the facility and to build a new entryway and restaurant. It will be open in two months.”
“Ah, then we must make the return trip,” the driver said. “Thank you for saving us the extra miles. We’re in your debt.” He turned the car around, drove past the curve, and Farrah looked at Franklin.
“The obvious lie by the soldier makes me more certain the bombs are in this area,” Farrah said.
“Could I make a suggestion, Farrah?” Franklin asked.
She smiled, then sobered. “Yes, of course.”
“We should put out some scouts and do a patrol and see what we can learn.”
“Five miles?”
“We train in the desert, Farrah. All we need is one of those canteens we put on board and we’ll be fine. You drive back down this road and check back with us along here every six hours. Five miles is about an hour for us to get in the area. Then slower finding out what we need to know. Khai and I will go.”
“I will go too,” the guard from the backseat said. “I grew up not far from here. I know the country. I must go.”
Farrah scowled, then lifted her brows, and her pretty face smiled. “Yes. It seems the only way. The three of you go and we’ll check along this road every six hours. It’s now eight A.M. We’ll be back here at two P.M.”
The three men eased out of the car and each took a half-gallon canteen. All had hats, and the drab colors of their clothes would blend in well with the mostly barren ground. They could see no buildings in any direction.
Franklin held out his hand to the guard. “I’m Franklin,” he said.
The man shook his hand. “I’m Syed Durali, former major in the Army. Now I work for Farrah.”
“Good. This is Khai. He’s a SEAL too. Let’s get moving.”
They went out a half mile from the road, then turned toward where the roadblock was. There was no cover whatsoever, so the men moved out another quarter mile before passing the roadblock. Then the SEALs settled into a ground-eating jog. The Afghan kept up with them. He nodded.
“You men are in good condition.”
They jogged for what Franklin figured was four miles, then slowed to a walk. The low hills were bare, offering nowhere to hide. They moved more cautiously as they came over a small rise, and on the roadway saw another roadblock. As they watched while lying in the sand, two military vehicles came up the road, paused at the roadblock, then took the left-hand turn and proceeded down a dirt track that Franklin hadn’t seen before. The trucks were coming their way, and would pass less than three hundred yards away from them. The men remained motionless until the rigs had passed.
“Looks like that is the direction,” Khai said. The guard pointed the way the trucks had vanished, and they turned and ran that way.
There were more small gullies and some hills here. Once they climbed up the closest one, they came over the top and stopped.
Twenty yards in front of them stood a soldier with an automatic rifle aimed at the three of them.
20
“Halt,” the Afghan soldier barked. “Do not move. Hands up. What are you doing here?”
“Frankly, we’re lost,” the local man, Syed, said. “We strayed off the road chasing a snake, and now we don’t know where the hell we are. Can you help us?”
They waited. The soldier looked confused.
“I heard no vehicle. You didn’t walk here twenty miles.”
“Decoy him,” Franklin whispered to Khai.
Syed waved. “Hey, soldier. We did drive in. Right over there behind that little dune. Our car. See it?”
Syed pointed and took several steps to the side. The soldier turned that way, confusion showing on his face.
“Hey, I said don’t move,” the soldier yelled. He looked at Khai, and in that instant, Franklin surged forward. By the time the soldier saw his mistake and tried to swing his rifle back to cover Franklin, the SEAL was on top of him, smashing him to the ground, jolting the rifle from his grasp. Franklin’s hands went around the man’s throat stifling his scream.
“Why are you on guard here?” Syed shouted at the man. He had come up and knelt in the dirt and sand beside the downed soldier.
“Orders. The captain told me to watch this area.”
“Are there other guards along here?”
“For a mile or two, then the road leads to the caves.”
“How many soldiers?”
“Fifty.”
“What are you guarding?”
“They didn’t tell us. Just said do it.”
“Are there any scientists inside the caves?”
“Yes, but they don’t tell us what they are doing.”
“How far to the caves?”
“Two miles. There are guards all along the track of a road in the sand.”
“Did trucks go in and come out?”
“Yes, at first. Now only the scientists, who go back to some town for the night.”
“Is Osama bin Laden at the caves?”
The guard snorted. “No, he is an enemy of the state. He would not be here.”
“That is what your officers have told you?”
“Yes, of course. They tell us what is important to know.”
“Do you know anything more about the caves or what the truck brought in?”
“I know nothing of the caves.”
“Then we don’t need you anymore.”
Before Franklin saw the intent, Syed drove a slender six-inch blade into the soldier’s heart. His eyes glazed for a moment, then went wide. He tried to scream, but by then the nerve endings were collapsing. His heart stopped beating, and soon all nerve synapses ceased to function.
Franklin nodded. “Yes, now let’s bury him somewhere out of sight. At least cover him up. He’ll be missed on guard check. We need to get closer to those caves.” Franklin had been surprised by Syed’s move. But it was all they could do. No way the soldier could be tied up and left. He couldn’t be a prisoner. He simply had to die.
Khai knelt beside the others. “How close are we to the caves? Sounds like they have a lot of firepower against our one rifle and forty rounds.” Khai had stripped the ammo pouches from the soldier, and checked the magazines for the AK-74, the newer version of the old Kalashnikov rifle.
“All we have to do today is to get close enough to evaluate their guard force, check for a quick way into the cave, and figure out if we two can do the job or if we call in more of our men,” said Franklin.
“Wish we had the Bull Pup and those twenty-mike-mike rounds,” Khai said. “We could blow everybody up on the outside, put a dozen exploding rounds inside, and then mop up and blow the damn warhead and be out of this rat hole.”
“Coulda, woulda, bubba. We don’t got them, so let’s move on up and see what we can find.”
Franklin angled them a quarter mile away from the track of a road to the north here, and kept a close watch for more guards. They spotted them every half mile, but had no trouble going around them at that distance.
Another twenty minutes of hiking, and they came to a slight rise. They bellied down and looked over the top. Below them, less than a mile away, was a small valley with a gleam of water from a stream. On the far side of the water they could see the black holes in the side of the cliffs that must be caves. In front of two of them were freshly erected combat wire fences. These antipersonnel fences were usually about three feet high in the center, and had series of laterals out six or seven feet on both sides. Hard to jump, impossible to crawl under, and tough to walk through.
Near the two active caves sat a truck that looked like it had the old quad-fifty machine guns mounted on it. In back of the quads and the fence were what looked at that distance to be a series of trenches connecting well-placed foxholes.