27
HARDER!” RANDI SHOUTED over the sound of rotor blades chopping the air behind her. Deuce and the medic threw their full weight on the levers dug in beneath the boulder pinning Billy Grant and raised it a few critical centimeters.
“Sorry about this,” she said, grabbing him beneath the shoulders and heaving back. He let out a stifled scream and looked like he was finally going to lose consciousness from the pain, but she managed to get his leg clear before the boulder slammed back into place.
Arterial blood spurting from his leg suggested that they’d done the right thing leaving the stone in place until the evac arrived. Randi dropped to her knees and pressed a hand against the wound while the medic put a tourniquet in place.
“I’ll clamp it when we’re in the air!” he shouted, indicating for them to lift the injured man. “Now let’s get the hell out of here!”
Randi felt the same guilt she always did when one of her people was injured and remained silent as they slid him through the open door of the chopper. The leg would never be the same, assuming the docs were even able to save it. She should have anticipated the grenade. She should have held Billy back…
Deuce jumped in behind the medic and Randi looked up at him for a moment before backing away a few steps.
“Where are you going?” he said. “Get in the chopper!”
She shook her head. “You guys go. I’ll find my way back.”
“Now, hold on, Randi. We were under orders to get the sons of bitches who attacked your base. And by my count, the a*shole behind that rock was the last one.”
“Yeah. But there’s something else I want to check out.”
Deuce rolled his eyes and said something she couldn’t hear over the accelerating rotors, then jumped out with his gear.
“Seriously, Deuce—go with Billy. I’ll be fine.”
He waved at the pilot who immediately lifted the aircraft off the ground and began gaining altitude. They watched it recede into the horizon, not speaking until it was out of sight.
“So what the hell am I doing here, Randi?”
“I said I could handle it.”
“Yeah, like I’m going to go back and tell everyone I just left you. If you got killed, I’d never live it down. Now tell me what we’re interested in here, because it looks like the middle of nowhere to me.”
She didn’t respond immediately, instead turning her gaze to a cliff about twenty kilometers away. The sheer rock was pockmarked with tiny caves starting at about the sixty-meter mark and becoming more plentiful above. She focused on the largest and highest of them, finally pointing.
“Remember the survivor from Kot’eh I told you I caught up with?”
“The one you took down outside his village?”
She’d given Deuce—and everyone else—a less-than-honest report about what had happened. When Fred Klein was involved, it was always better to let go of as little information as possible.
“He told me—”
“Hold on. You talked to him?”
“Did I not mention that?” she said innocently.
He scowled deeply. “Must have slipped your mind.”
“Well, he told me that they put the heads in that top cave.”
“Oh, no, no, no. Sarabat again? That was three months ago, Randi. Let it go already.”
“I did let it go,” she said, reattaching the damaged XM25 to her pack and slipping the straps over her shoulders. “But now here we are. I figure it’s karma.”
“Karma my ass. I don’t suppose you’ve noticed that the sun’s going down and the terrain between here and there is pretty much one crappy scree field after another.”
“We have about another hour of good light. We’ll use it and then hunker down until dawn.”
He looked at her like she was a slow child. “Are you kidding? We’ll be standing at the mouth of that cave in three hours. Maybe less.”
She shook her head. “I left behind my night-vision gear so I could bring the rifle.”
He made a show of running a hand through the short hair just below his carbon-fiber helmet. The studs screwed into his skull were clearly visible—colored the matte black that had become fashionable with combat soldiers. “Pull yourself into the twenty-first century, bitch.”
She scratched her nose with an extended middle finger. “Then you’re on point, Ginger.”
* * *
IN THE END, Deuce’s time estimate was a little on the optimistic side—though Randi had to admit that it was her fault. For one of the first times in her life, she was experiencing what it was like to be the weak link.
They were now standing five meters from the mouth of the cave and the last four hours had been some of the hardest of her life. There was no question that Deuce was younger and stronger, but normally her experience still allowed a slight edge. The addition of his Merge, though, had put an end to that. He’d negotiated the loose, off-camber slopes like it was broad daylight, leaving her to stumble around trying to follow his footsteps in the dim starlight. Thank God the climb from the top of the ridge down to the cave had been easy—a track wide and flat enough for the Taliban to get their carts down. Otherwise, she’d have had to swallow her pride and hold on to him. Or more likely, refused and ended up a lump of broken flesh on the valley floor.
“What’s the plan?” Deuce whispered, pulling his rifle in front of his chest.
“I don’t see a lot of ways to get fancy. We’re just going to have to poke our head in—”
“And see if it gets shot off,” he said, finishing her sentence.
“I’ll go first,” Randi volunteered, removing her pack and fishing out a small flashlight.
“What the hell is that?” Deuce said. It was too dark to read his expression, but she could see the exasperated shaking of his head.
“It’s a flashlight. Night vision isn’t going to work inside—there’s not enough light to amplify.”
“Heat?”
“Not going to help keep you from falling in a hole,” she said, unwilling to admit that while it wouldn’t pick out natural obstacles, thermal imaging would be extremely effective at picking out anyone lying in wait for them. But she wasn’t sending him in first. Billy was already down on her watch and if anyone else took a hit in this particular wild goose chase, it was going to be her.
He brought up a shadowy hand and tapped a small box on the side of his helmet. It wasn’t as seamlessly integrated as the other systems, suggesting that it was a new addition. “Active infrared. Invisible to the naked eye—meaning your eye, not mine—and good to about ten meters.”
“Look, I don’t care about all your electronics, Deuce. I’m going first.”
He let out an audible breath. “Bullshit, Randi. But this is the last time I’m wet-nursing you. When we get back to base, you need to hop a transport to Kabul and get Merged up.”
She swore quietly under her breath as he started toward the cave. They both knew he was right. Not only would her flashlight be obvious to anyone inside, it would be a dinner bell to the local Taliban.
If she had her way, wars would still be fought with swords—a weapon of skill that forced you to look in the eye of the people you killed. But the world didn’t go backward and now her distrust of overly complex combat technology was endangering not only her, but also the people who counted on her.
Randi pulled her sidearm and inched up behind Deuce, stopping when he held a hand out. She assumed he was running a countdown on his fingers, but she couldn’t see them well enough to be sure.
He jerked his head into the cave for a split second and then stood staring into the darkness. She was about to ask him what the hell he was doing, but then realized that he’d taken a heavily enhanced photo and was now examining it in the empty air.
“I think we’re good,” he said before easing into the cave with her holding on to his shoulder.
“How deep is it?” she said, now completely blind.
“Dunno. Can’t see the back. The ground’s pretty flat, though. Just stay with me.”
It turned out to be larger than she expected and they took multiple turns as they inched along. At first, there was nothing but their quiet footfalls for her senses to key in on, but then she caught of whiff of rotting flesh.
“You getting that?” she said.
“What?”
“You mean that thing doesn’t smell for you?”
“Oh, wait. Yeah. Now I’m getting it.”
Another two sharp bends and he came to a stop sudden enough to cause her to run into the back of him.
“What?” she whispered in his ear.
“I’m picking up something on heat. Range is twelve meters.”
“Human?” she said, gripping her pistol a bit tighter.
“No. It’s barely above background temp. Can’t really get a shape.”
The stench was fairly strong now, suggesting a possibility. “Bacteria create a little heat when they’re breaking down flesh. Any chance it’s our pile of heads?”
She felt him shrug and then start creeping forward. After a few seconds, he stopped again. “That’s them. We’ve found your goddamn heads.”
Randi slipped the flashlight from her pocket and held it up, knowing he’d be able to see it. “If I use this, is it going to screw up your vision?”
“Pull yourself into the—”
“Twenty-first century. I know, I know,” Randi said, switching it on.
She was no expert on head piles, but to her calibrated eyeball it looked like all seventy or so adult male inhabitants of Sarabat. The skin of the visible ones had been dried into leather by the mountain air. She knelt, looking into the empty eye sockets of a heavily bearded face staring up at her. The smell and heat must have been coming from deeper in the pile where moisture still existed.
“Come on, Randi. Let’s get out of here. It’s just a bunch of heads.”
She grabbed one by its long hair and shone the flashlight on it. Why were they here? And who paid those mercs to wipe out Kot’eh?
She set the head back down but then saw a strange glint in the hair. When she leaned in for a closer look, her breath caught in her chest.
“Randi, seriously,” Deuce said. “I’m leaving before I throw up. If you’re this desperate for a souvenir, why don’t you just take one?”
She slipped off her pack and opened the top to dump her non-essential gear.
“Jesus,” Deuce whined as she shoved the decaying head inside. “I wasn’t serious…”