A figure materialized from the darkness.
I shifted reflexively in front of Treehorn as the figure’s light came up and a second person shifted up behind the first. I was blinded for a second, about to pull the trigger, when the shout came:
“Captain! Hold fire!”
I recognized the voice. Ramirez. His light came down.
I sighed. My beating heart threatened to crack a rib. “Joey, how the hell did you get in here?”
“We saw you get pinned down. So we came back up, pushed through a couple of rocks. It looks a lot worse than it is. It caved in, but up near the top of the pile we found a way in.”
“You all right?” Brown asked, moving up behind Ramirez.
“We’re good. I want C-4 at the intersection. What’s going on outside?”
“Rest of the team’s at the rally point,” Ramirez said. “A couple more Bradleys came up. They put some serious fire on the mountains, so those bastards have fallen back. I think we’re clear to exit.”
I looked hard at Ramirez. “Thanks for coming back.”
He averted his gaze.
That reaction made me wonder if he’d come back only because Brown had spotted us and left him no choice. Or maybe he was trying to get past what had happened and show me he still had my back; I just didn’t know.
I shook off the thought, and we got to work. Within two minutes we had the charges ready.
“You sure about this?” Treehorn asked. “Still got that other tunnel down there where they had the ladder… who knows what’s up there…”
“We can’t leave this open. We need to make it harder for them to cross over without being seen.”
“You’re the boss,” he said. “Bet there’s another exit we haven’t found, anyway. If we get back up here, we can search for that one, too.”
I nodded. “I bet we’ll get our chance.”
We left the intersection and reached the towering wall of dirt and rock, noting the fresh exit created by Ramirez and Brown, just a narrow, two-meter-long tunnel near the ceiling. We’d crawl on our hands and knees to exit. I was concerned about all the rock and dirt between us and the charges, so I gave Brown the order to detonate before we left. He clicked his remote. Nothing. I knew it. We’d gone too far off for the signal to reach through the rock.
But then I wondered if maybe his remote detonator had been damaged by the HERF guns. I’d forgotten about that. We all had.
“I’ll do it,” said Ramirez, removing the detonator from Brown’s hand.
“And I’ll come with you,” said Brown, hardening his tone. “Could go with a regular fuse.”
“I’ll be right back.” Ramirez took off running.
“Go after him,” I ordered Brown. I had visions of Ramirez blowing himself up. “The detonator might not work.”
“Like I said, I’ve got some old-school fuses. We’ll light it up.”
Treehorn began pushing his way through the exit hole. It was just wide enough for the big guy, and he moaned and groaned till he reached the other side.
Then he called back to me, “Hey, boss, why don’t you come out? We’ll wait for them on the other side.”
“You watch the entrance,” I told him. “We’ll all be out in a minute. You scared to be alone?”
He snorted. “Not me…”
From far off down the tunnel came the shuffling of boots, a shout of “Hey!” from Brown. Aw, hell, I needed to know what was happening. “Treehorn, if we’re not back in five, you go! You hear me?”
“Roger that, sir! What’s going on?”
I let his question hang and charged back down the tunnel. When I reached the intersection, I found Ramirez shoving one of the Chinese guys toward me. The guy’s wrists were zipper-cuffed behind his back, and Brown was shouldering the guy’s backpack while he lit the fuse on the C-4.
“Look what we found,” Ramirez quipped. “They dropped a ladder over there, and he came down here for something.”
The Chinese guy suddenly tore free from Ramirez and bolted past us, back into the dead-end tunnel.
Ramirez started after him.
“Fuse is lit,” shouted Brown.
“It’s a dead end, Joey!” I told him.
“Good! He’s a valuable prisoner,” Ramirez screamed back.
Brown cursed, removed his knife, and hacked off the sparking fuse. “I want to blow something up,” he said. “I haven’t got all night.”
I made a face. No kidding.
The unexpected report of Treehorn’s rifle stole my attention. He screamed from the other side of the cave-in: “Got a few stragglers coming up! Let’s go! Let’s go!”
I ran after Ramirez, and I found him at the dead end. The Chinese guy was lying on his back, straddled by Ramirez, and my colleague was pummeling the prisoner relentlessly in the face.
Although the image was shocking, I understood very well where Ramirez was coming from. He needed a punching bag, and unfortunately he’d found one. I wondered if he’d kill the guy if I didn’t intervene. I gasped, grabbed Ramirez’s wrist, and held back his next blow. The prisoner’s face was already swollen hamburger, his nose bleeding.
“What’re you doing?” I yelled.
Ramirez just looked at me, eyes ablaze, drool spilling from his lips. “He wouldn’t come. Now he will.”
I cursed under my breath. “Let’s get out of here.”
We dragged the prisoner to his feet and shifted him forward, and then suddenly the Chinese guy spat blood, looked at me, and said, “I’m an American, you assholes!”
The left hand doesn’t know what the right hand is doing. My father used to say that all the time when referring to middle and upper management and to Washington and politicians. I was no stranger to decentralization, to being on a mission and realizing only after the fact that hey, someone else has the same mission. That my commanders were often not made privy to CIA and NSA operations in the area was a given; that spook operations would interfere with our ability to complete our mission was also a given.
That a Chinese guy we captured in the tunnel would give up his identity was damned surprising.
“I’m CIA!” he added, spitting out more blood. “I needed to bail on my mission.”
“Why didn’t you tell us?”
“Because I know who you are. I can smell you a mile away. Special Forces meatheads. I’m not at liberty to speak to you monkeys.”
I snickered. “Then why are you talking now?”
“Look at my face, asshole!”
“Why’d you run?”
“Wouldn’t you?”
“What the hell are you doing here?”
He smirked. “What’re you doing here?”
I looked at Ramirez. “Cut him loose and help him get outside, then cuff him again.”
“Hey, spooky,” I said, breathing in the guy’s ear. “If you resist, we monkeys will do some more surgery on your face. Got it?”
He turned back and glared.
Ramirez shoved him away. I regarded Brown. “You ready to blow this mother?”
He grinned. “I think this mother is ready to be blown.”
“Indeed.”
The glowing fuse was, for just a few seconds, hypnotic, holding me there, a deer in the headlights. I thought back to those moments when I was the last kid on the playground, swinging as high as I could, hitting that place in the sky between pure joy and pure terror. The teacher would be shouting my name and I’d swing just a few more seconds, flirting with the combined danger of falling off and getting in trouble.
With a slight hiss and even brighter glow, the fuse burned down even more. I wondered, how long could we remain in the tunnel without blowing ourselves up?
“Okay, boss, let’s go!” cried Brown.
I blinked hard and looked at him.
“Scott, you okay?”
I stared through him. Then… “Yeah, yeah, come on, let’s go!”