Black Site (22 page)

The man moved. He pushed off the wall and began walking toward the patrol, twenty yards in front of him.

The guard called out in Pashto: “Wait.” He kept walking. The flashlights stopped on the road. He continued, clearing the way forward for Raynor. Kolt followed the sentry with his eyes as he stepped up and began a conversation with the three patrolling guards. Kolt had no idea what they were talking about or how long this little get-together would last, but in an instant he decided to go for it. He quickly pulled off his sandals and held one in each hand, dropping the thermal sight into the pocket of his salwar. With a last glance toward the lights in the fog, their beams pointed toward the earth as the men stood and talked, Kolt Raynor rose out of the brush like a runner on the starting block. And in bare feet he ran forward into the darkness, his shoulder never more than a couple of feet off the baked mud wall on his right.

He neared the small door in the wall and kept running, did not look left or right, his entire body tense in fearful anticipation of the shout of a man or the crack of a Kalashnikov. He passed the door and within just a couple of seconds he was behind the long stone barn. The perimeter wall and the barn wall created an alley not six feet wide, with open gates in the barn that gave access to a row of closed stalls inside. Raynor kept running, a little slower now because he could not see his hand in front of his face here in the alley, as the barn shielded all of the ambient light from the sky.

Just a few minutes later he had crossed the main road, fifty yards from the entrance gate. He’d taken the time to account for all the sentries there, to make sure no one was positioned with a good view inside the compound. He crossed the road at a normal pace, his sandals back on his feet and his patoo back on his head. In the wet, hazy distance he was just one of the boys heading between two points at this time of night. No reason for anyone to stress about a single unarmed man walking here.

Raynor made it into the copse of woods behind the latrine. The fog was thick like strings of milky cobwebs between the pines. He lifted his thermal monocle to his eye several times as he neared his destination.

It was ten forty-five—he was fifteen minutes past the start of the bathroom trips. He only hoped one of the prisoners was constipated; otherwise he’d missed the entire thing.

Just then he saw movement through the thermal lens. From around the front of the latrine, a man moved forward, away from the outhouse, his hands fastened in front of him, the armed guard behind him.

Kolt moved forward quickly and quietly, opened his eyes wide to take in all the light he could.

But it was too dark to make out the man in the shackles.

Just then the prisoner turned back to the sentry to say something, and the sentry’s flashlight swept across his face.

Raynor knew him instantly.

It was Spike. Staff Sergeant Troy Kilborn, from Lincoln, Nebraska.

One of T.J.’s teammates.

He looked like he’d lost thirty pounds, but there was no doubt Kolt had found a missing man from Eagle 01.

Yes! I’ve done it,
Raynor said to himself.

But the moment of euphoria evaporated quickly.

Just what had he done? He’d gotten “eyes on,” yes. But that wouldn’t do anyone a lot of good if he didn’t find out where the team was held, if he didn’t ensure they were all together. And he wouldn’t do anyone a damned bit of good if he didn’t make it back out of here.

He closed on the back of the latrine, put his hand out, touched the rough stone wall, knelt down, and checked around the side toward the main house with the thermal monocle. In the distance, fifty yards away or more, three armed men stood at the front of the two-story building. He saw signatures of two more on this side of the roof.

They would not be able to see him here, so he knelt by the side of the latrine. Kept his monocle pointed toward the west, where the next prisoner would come.

Unless that was it for the night.

In seconds he saw a single white blob. In a few more moments it separated into two, as the men in the distance neared. Quickly Kolt moved around to the front of the latrine, pushed open the wooden door, and stepped into the room, shutting the door behind him.

It smelled like shit. Two black plastic buckets sat in a trough dug in the dirt. A three-legged wooden stool in the corner held a lit oil lantern that gave out more shadow than light. Kolt pushed himself tight into the space behind the door, across the eight-foot-square room from the lantern.

He took a few slow breaths in an attempt to calm himself, and he waited.

Within a minute he heard shuffling footsteps in the dirt outside. The quick flare of a flashlight’s beam as it shone through the cracks in the doorjamb and the space through the hinges.

The door opened inward, shielding Raynor, and then it shut.

In front of him the back of a chained prisoner. He did not have to look for more than one-half second. He knew.

It was T.J.

With all his other worries about making this clandestine approach to the property, Kolt hadn’t spent any time thinking about what he would do or say if he actually managed to make contact with one of the boys. Now his knees weakened in terror as he frantically planned the next few seconds. He could think of only one way to be certain that he could do this quietly. He waited until Josh took a full step closer to one of the buckets, and then Raynor took a step forward, reached in front of his friend’s body, and yanked him tight. His hand covered T.J.’s mouth as he yanked him back onto his heels.

Raynor had expected much more of a fight. Back in the old days the two men would train in Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu for hours at a time, and the winner was never predetermined. All things being equal, the two men were almost perfectly matched physically. But the past three years had taken a shocking toll on Josh Timble. His body was thin and bony and his reaction to Kolt’s attack was slow.

Raynor wanted a quick and quiet surrender, but his friend’s instant supplication was disquieting.

For three seconds the two men were locked together in the blackness of the smelly latrine. When Raynor was confident he’d get no noise or fight in return for his sneak attack, he leaned into the other man’s ear and said, softly, “Josh … it’s me. It’s Kolt.”

TWENTY-SEVEN

No response. For a brief but horrifying moment Raynor worried that he’d misidentified T.J. and grabbed some random Paki goon taking a break to run to the john.

No, even in the dim light he could tell this was his old friend. “I didn’t mean to scare you. I’m going to take my hand from your mouth. Just be real quiet, cool?”

A slight nod.

Kolt moved his hand.

T.J. turned around and faced him. Kolt could barely make out his outline in the darkness. Five seconds. Ten seconds. Kolt started to speak again but T.J. said, “I thought you were dead.” Slowly he stepped forward and gave Raynor a weak hug.

Raynor felt bones again under his friend’s dirty pajamas. The shadows in the room only accentuated the deep hollows in Josh’s bearded cheeks, the rings around his recessed eyes—malnutrition had taken a toll on his buddy’s face.

“I thought the same about you, brother.”

T.J. backed up just far enough to reach out a hand. He put it right on Kolt’s face. Confirming that the person in front of him, the person he’d just embraced, was not some sort of dream-state apparition.

“How long can you talk?” Raynor asked.

T.J. shook his head. He was recovering from the shock, albeit slowly.

“Colonel. I need you to snap out of it. How much time do I have?”

“Not long. Couple of minutes.” Even in the darkness Kolt saw the whites of his eyes widened in utter amazement. “You
can’t
be here. They patrol the compound and—”

“I’m here to establish proof of life. We’re going to get you out.” Quickly Raynor grabbed the GPS and fired it up. Began filming with a quivering hand.

T.J. shook his head again. Then he said, “When I leave, the guard will follow me back to the room. There won’t be anyone over here except for the patrols. If you can make it to the northwest corner of the compound, there is a narrow drainage culvert behind the concrete shed. That’s our cell. Sentries don’t patrol down in the culvert. A drain runs from our floor into the culvert. It’s only about three feet long. We can talk through the drain.”

“Okay. I’ll be there as quick as I can.” The two men just stared at each other for another ten seconds. Kolt thought Josh wanted to tell him something.

“Uh … dude?”

“Yeah, brother?”

“I kinda need to take a dump.”

Raynor smiled.
Good ole T.J.
He turned off the video camera. “Who’s stopping you? This latrine isn’t much less private than our trailer.”

“Good point. That place was a shit hole.”

“Still is,” Raynor said, and Josh smiled.

Two minutes later a shackled T.J. left through the wooden door.

*   *   *

It took twenty minutes for Raynor to make it out of the outhouse and back into the little grove of trees, crawl to the wall of the compound, and scurry the eighty yards or so to the northwest corner. As promised, a three-foot-by-three-foot indentation ran the length of the western wall, a dirt drainage ditch to control runoff at the back of the compound during the rainy season. Brush and grass grew wild down here, which Raynor knew would help provide cover from above. He also knew it would hide rats, and he heard tiny footfalls of scurrying creatures all around him in the dark culvert.

He found the pipe sticking out of the mud wall just behind the single-room stone shack. The pipe seemed to be fabricated from empty Russian mortar tubes stuck together. A glow just barely shone through it. A lantern inside the room. Kolt looked inside but could make out nothing for a moment. Then the opening at the far end darkened, and he heard the soft whisper of his old friend through the pipe.

“Racer?”

“I’m here.”

A pause and the sound of shuffling. If anything the tube amplified the sounds of the room. He could hear other voices, excited, behind T.J.’s words.

“They’ll come to lock us down to our bunks in a bit. We don’t have much time.”

“Roger that.”

“I didn’t think you made it out of Waziristan.”

“I would have come after you years ago.… I just found out you guys were alive.”

There was a long pause. “I’m surprised. The Taliban have been showing us off to UAVs for two years.”

“Yeah, I heard. Look, man, we’re setting up a hit on this place. I was sent in to get intel, but we’re going to—”

“Negative. Forget about a rescue. You guys hit this valley and it will be a massacre. The warlord says they are ready for it, and I believe him. They’ve got mobile heavy machine guns hidden in caves around here just waiting for the sound of choppers in the valley. I don’t know how you got in here, but you need to back your ass out the same way. This valley is going to light up like Christmas at the first thump of rotors, and anybody coming in on the road will be chewed up before they can get five klicks from Shataparai.”

Kolt thought a moment. “All right. Then we’re leaving tonight. I’ll find some keys and get you guys out—”

“No. We couldn’t make it out of here together. We’re all weak. Skip, the chopper pilot, is still detoxing from the heroin they’ve been giving us for two years, plus he’s being held in the main building. They always house one of us away from the others so we don’t try and escape. We aren’t walking out of here.”

“Shit,” muttered Raynor. While he sat in the brush of the open drain he heard footsteps above. A steady, relaxed cadence. A sentry patrolling the grounds. In thirty seconds the footsteps receded into the misty night.

“Okay. I’ll report the situation back to Radiance, see what we can come up with.”

“Who is Radiance?”

“Sorry. It’s a private security outfit run by Pete Grauer. They are the ones looking for you. I’m with them.”

“You’re not with the Unit anymore?”

“No.”

T.J. did not respond.

“It’s complicated. Delta knows we’re here. Webber is involved, Monk and Benji trained me for this op, but officially I’m working for Radiance. We got intel that you guys were here. The Agency thought it was either bad intel or another trap, but Grauer figured it was worth sending me in to get proof of life and a feel for the defenses here.”

“Kolt, me and the guys are a commodity. A lucky charm to be loaned out to wear. A get-out-of-hellfire card. There are over a dozen Taliban leaders who can request us. We’ve been on the move for a year and a half. Until we came here, we were always traveling with some leadership group or being used as bait in a trap.”

“But you’re here now. Whatever the risks, we can’t afford to lose this opportunity.”

T.J. spoke again through the pipe. He was more emphatic now. “Promise me you won’t even think of hitting this compound. This whole village is a hornet’s nest. On top of that, a group of Chechens arrived the other day. I don’t know how many—they aren’t staying here in the compound, must be down in the village somewhere. They are trickling in and out of the main gate all day long.”

“What are they doing here?”

“We don’t know, but it’s big. They showed us some U.S. Ranger uniforms to gauge our reaction to them. They were copies, but good copies. Fake weaponry as well.”

Raynor kicked out at the sound of a rat scratching down near his sandaled feet. “They’re going to try and infiltrate one of our bases?”

“That’s what we figure. Where and when, who knows?”

“Damn.” There had been a few small-scale false-flag infiltrations by insurgents during the Afghanistan War, and others during the Iraq War, and they were typically bloodbaths.

“There is an AQ operation in the works. We are guarded by Zar’s men and a unit of Paki Taliban, but AQ foreigners are staying here at the hurja. Zar’s men hate the AQ guys, so they tell me bits and pieces of what’s going on. They say the al Qaeda guys have Zar in their pocket.”

“Zar is al Qaeda?”

“No. Look, Zar is a malik, an important elder in the Tirah Valley, but for us he is just the innkeeper. He’s the one holding us here. He was supposed to keep us here while we detoxed from the heroin over the past few months. He’s fed us well and treated us well, given us the meds we need.”