Booker nodded. “As long as all you geologist types have childish senses of humor.”
“We do. That’s our spot.”
Sykes told Ahmad, and the pilot scouted the ground for a suitable place to let them off. They got lucky in that there was a flatland on top of a mountain not four miles from the site Mercer selected. He flew them there after Booker programmed their new destination into the GPS.
Ahmad approached the LZ like he was going to buzz right past it and only flared the chopper at the last second, reining it back like a horse so that it was almost standing on its tail rotor before leveling it out a foot off the ground and at zero indicated airspeed. It was a masterful tactical maneuver, and the men didn’t waste it by congratulating him. Mercer felt like he was being borne by a massive crowd as the men poured from the back of the Mil in a rush to get clear. Seconds later, the lightened chopper sped off again, emerging from a filthy cloud of rotor wash and climbing hard.
When the dust cleared, the four operators were prone on the ground, ringing the LZ and watching the valleys and nearby peaks for any sign their landing had drawn attention. Mercer also stayed put and waited for Sykes to give him the all clear. The whop whop of the receding helicopter faded to silence before the former Delta commando was satisfied they were alone.
Though confident they were secure, the men never stood to outline themselves against the sky as they moved off the flatland and down the crumbly side of the hill. These mountains were among the most seismically active in the world, so that nothing on the surface appeared to have been exposed enough to weather much. All the stones were hard-edged and flinty, like natural knives that would shred unprotected skin without mercy. Apart from all the other gear Booker Sykes had loaned him, Mercer was thankful for the Kevlar combat gloves. He kept his sidearm holstered, but Sykes and the others swept the terrain with the barrels of their weapons in constant arcs that seemingly missed nothing. Sykes took the lead with the others strung out behind him at fifteen-yard intervals. They would bunch up or spread out as the terrain demanded.
For the first part of the trip off the mountain, their descent was a barely controlled slide. The loose rock shifted under their boots, releasing miniature avalanches with every step. It was only when they hit against a larger rock buried in the scree that they could gain some sense of influence over their movement.
But they did not head straight to the valley floor; that was tactical suicide in Afghanistan. They found an old game trail midway down the hill and started moving parallel to the crest and now heading toward their destination. The air remained cold and damp, almost thick enough to be considered a drizzling mist but not quite. It wasn’t even enough to dampen clothes yet, but it didn’t bode well for what might come.
The one trail petered out, forcing them to move along loose rock again, exposed to the opposite side of the valley and anyone with a sniper rifle. The terrain across the valley looked as forlorn and barren as where they were walking. However, Mercer knew a good sniper could dig into almost any background and remain hidden for days. Mercer asked himself if he felt eyes on him, and honestly he wasn’t sure. He walked a little quicker and stooped a little lower.
It took a careful hour to move to within a mile of their target. Sykes called a break and ordered their sniper, Sleep, up to higher ground to get a better look. Mercer scarfed down some more painkillers and water. He was panting hard in the thin air but didn’t feel himself succumbing to altitude sickness. His vision was acute, his head felt fine, and he had no nausea. He felt better, in fact, than on a Saturday morning following a night out at Tiny’s with Harry.
The sniper returned fifteen minutes later. The men hunkered down in the protection of a small grove of stunted pines that clung to the rocks at the very terminus of the timberline.
“The target valley is still a ways off,” Sleep said, the butt of his long gun resting on his thigh. “But we might have a problem. I heard bells.”
Grump cursed.
“What’s that mean?” Mercer asked, though he had a good idea.
“Goats,” Sleep said. “Locals put all kinds of shit on their goats, including bells.”
“And lipstick,” Sneeze joked, “don’t forget lipstick.”
“Direct approach is out,” Sykes decided, guessing the goats, and their human minders, would stay down in the valleys where there was more vegetation. “We’ll keep to the hills and circle around to the head of the valley. That’s our target anyway.”
It took another long hour, moving slowly, always scouting ahead and straining their senses to perceive anything out of the ordinary in the gathering storm. They heard nothing resembling goat bells and collectively decided that the danger was passed. A new problem was approaching; the clouds that were rolling in were black and heavy with rain. If they let loose before the mission was over, Ahmad might not make it back until the storm dissipated, and no one relished the idea of a night spent out in the open.
Mercer pulled his headscarf tighter to keep out the dribbling rain. He had started a slight cough in the past twenty minutes, nothing more than a deep tickle that he could mostly suppress, but the first time one escaped his lips Sykes had looked at him sharply. They both knew what that single inexorable exhalation portended. He also had to admit that the Tylenol was doing little for the pressure building in his head and behind his sinuses.
He was breathing far harder than the others, a fast pant like a dog in the summer heat.
“Slow it, man,” Grumpy said. “Force yourself to take slow, even breaths. That’s it. Nice and deep. Give your lungs time to absorb the oxygen you’ve already taken in rather than suck in O2 that ain’t there.”
A few seconds later, Mercer felt the pressure under his diaphragm ease and the rope tightening around his skull unknot. “Thanks,” he said, feeling a bit more human.
“It ain’t nothing, bro.”
They continued on. Their target valley started wide and then narrowed and steepened, so that sheer cliffs lined its two-hundred-yard width. From what Mercer had seen from the chopper, it would widen out into a circular bowl near where he saw the cleft that looked like human buttocks. If he were to guess, he would assume local shepherds used the protective bowl when the weather turned foul to shelter themselves and their animals. So far there had been no ringing of bells or scent of a watch fire in the misty air, but Mercer had to admit that the strain of being constantly alert for such signs was exhausting. The fighters protecting him could go for days on extended combat patrols, but he was nearly spent after a couple of hours. He had always admired Sykes and men like him, but this experience was boosting his admiration to a new level.
The darkest of the clouds rolled past without shedding their store of rain. Mercer’s woolen outer smock, though heavy with accumulated dew, had kept him warm and dry as such garments had done for hundreds of years in these rugged mountains. They reached the head of the canyon. From here the cliffs were sheer and virtually featureless. Only occasional tufts of grass found a crag in which to root, and there were but a few spots where birds had nested and permanently streaked the stone with their droppings.
Mercer and Sykes hid behind a slab of stone that had sheared off a cliff aeons ago while the men covered them, both studying the ground below for any sign of a cave that Michael Dillman had dubbed the anus of the world. The molded contours of the mountain at the valley’s head and the long vertical crease that ran down it looked even more like a butt now that they were closer. It was flattened somewhat, and a little shaggy with grasses, so Mercer thought of it as a guy’s ass rather than the shapely curve of a woman’s. And just where it would be anatomically on a human, there was a darkened cave entrance where the two lobes of stone met and doubtless inspired Michael Dillman’s anatomical reference.