Knife (9780698185623) (13 page)

T
he teams got the three Scars alive from the quilted city raid without having to fire a shot. Shaw and Dalonna posted up on one roof with Barnes while Hagan and Cooke did the same with Bear. Mike and Ohio led the raid. Slausen and Massey entered after them, rendering aid to a little girl with a bad fungus on her leg and an older woman who had gotten knocked around some during the entry.

The morning after the raid Massey woke up Shaw in their tent.

“Rocks,” Massey said.

Shaw was lying on his bunk with his hands over his eyes. Massey had his hands on his hips and blocked the door of the tent from view. Shaw could hardly see anything. Then Massey kicked the door open and light flooded the tent. He repeated himself. When Massey said
rocks
the second time, Shaw remembered the two boys. He hoped he hadn't hurt them. Blinded them for life or anything like that. Brain damage.

The boys had been on an adjacent roof, just a stone's throw from Shaw, their hands straddling the lip of the parapet. They kept raising their heads and watching the target house. At first Shaw thought they might be combatants, holding rifles and RPGs, maybe strapped with a vest. He'd had his safety off and his laser painted over their little heads. They were a couple pounds of finger pressure from having their hair and skulls and futures split all over the roof in the humid air. But he'd taken a gamble. He had a feeling they were just kids horsing around, but as he'd gotten into bed after the raid, he'd been troubled. He wondered if he'd let himself hope for that scenario without good reason. The neighborhood was run by dangerous cells and the civilians were known to shoot at foot patrols from their windows or roofs and then go back to their magazines, TV, meals, or prayers. A warning shot might have been more appropriate. But he saw two kids horsing around. So he flicked on the safety, had Cooke cover the spot with his own laser from another roof, and grabbed a handful of gravel and rocks. Then he flung the handful at the boys and they disappeared. They had sharp cuts on their soft foreheads, but they were alive. If the boys had worn suicide vests, the target house and the men inside it—not to mention the sniper teams and their attachments—could've all been killed. They could've detonated before the rocks hit their heads. Guys could've died. Still, Shaw had been right.

“You threw rocks.”

Shaw sat up. “Yeah. I feel kinda bad about it.”

Massey sat on the edge of the bed. “Hell, those rocks could've been rounds. They wouldn't have had sore heads to deal with this morning. Nice throw.”

“Hopefully I just hit the bigger one.”

Massey raised his eyebrows. “There were two of them, right? You played short in high school. Don't kid yourself. You hit them both.”

Shaw thought about the smaller head. The boy was probably not even ten yet.

“Aw, hell. Want to feel good about yourself?”

“I'm not going into a bathroom stall with you.”

“Get fucked,” Massey said. “Follow me.”

•   •   •

T
he sun was up, but it wasn't too hot. The sky was blue, the clouds cotton balls. The two of them kicked up dust clouds with their boots and scattered gravel with each step. They watched birds flying overhead on gun runs between outposts and the FOB. They walked outside their compound, over the gravel arteries linking their compound to the conventional ones, and came to a large concrete structure with a façade decorated with bullet holes. A large wooden sign nailed to posts set in the ground declared
Combat Support Hospital
.

Massey looked at Shaw.

“You been to the CASH?”

“No. And I kinda hoped to keep it that way.”

“It used to be a school. Maybe a factory. I don't know. Now it houses most casualties in the region before sending them out of the country or back home.”

“Hell, Mass. It's a little early to see anyone blown apart.” An Apache screeched overhead and then sped off on its gun run. “Not the best field trip.”

“Not too early to be a wiseass, though?”

“Fair. My apologies. I'm enjoying myself. Truly.”

“Don't be a pussy.”

Massey opened the door and they walked up three wooden planks making a half-decent effort at being steps. They entered a small waiting area. Metal folding chairs spanned one wall half the width of a football field and the receptionist's desk manned the wall opposite. The lights were bright and the air smelled of rubbing alcohol, hand sanitizer, and packaged gauze. Tear-drained screams and muffled cries were creeping through closed doors down multiple hallways. Shaw felt a headache coming on, a rumbling in his stomach. He thought of the little girl in the poppy fields and the one he saw on the news.

“Mass, I don't feel like seeing any kids all blown to hell.”

Massey shook his head. “We're seeing our friend. He'll be happy to see us.”

A tall blond in fatigues and a crew cut guarding the hallway nodded to Massey and pointed down the hallway. He carried a rifle and wasn't shy about pointing it at them. They followed his finger down the hall.

“Third door on the left from the end,” the guard said.

There were ten rooms on both sides of the walk. Instead of doors, there were stained bedsheets hanging down from the frames to the floor. Most of the sheets were pulled aside and brown streaks ran the length of the floor. Blood or mud. Likely both. In one of the rooms there was a boy asleep with bandages on the stumps that used to be his legs. In another, a bearded man staring out the door with ragged hair, tubes coming out of his legs and face. Other doorways led to a girl sitting up in bed staring at a wall and a grown man and woman huddled over a form Shaw couldn't see on a table. He noticed the loudest screams were coming from entryways with their sheets drawn. The sheet doorways did not muffle the cries very well.

“I'm gonna get something sent over for all these kids,” Massey said. “This place is too depressing.” He stopped at an entryway with the sheet drawn, third on the left from the end, just as the guard had said. “Here's our guy.”

He pushed the sheet aside and motioned for Shaw to walk inside.

The walls of the room were made of thin wood and were unpainted, so the notches and rings of the cut stood for wallpaper. A light shined bright from the ceiling and there weren't any windows. The room was hot and stuffy. On the bed was a boy in oversized, mismatched hospital scrubs. He wore bright green bottoms and a blue checkered top. He stared at Shaw, his head never moving off the pillow.

“Looks better with clothes on, doesn't he?” Massey said.

He entered behind Shaw and waved at the boy in the bed. The boy had red welts around his neck and wrists where the chains had been. When he saw Massey he smiled and raised his hand off the bed slowly. It was a good smile, slight and without teeth, but genuine. His eyes were partly closed. He looked relieved, like he'd gotten good news after getting mostly bad for some time.

“They gave him a job.”

Shaw looked at the boy. He was looking only at Massey. Someone had washed him. His black hair was glossy and bright and his skin looked clean.

“Who did, and doing what?” Shaw asked.

“Here at the CASH. He'll clean up for them. Wash the sheets, sweep the floors, and stuff like that.”

Shaw nodded.

“They said he could sleep on a cot in the main bay.”

The boy never took his eyes off Massey.

“That's good, Mass.”

The boy shifted in the bed with his head on the pillow. His mouth tightened and his eyebrows rose. He took in a breath of air, like he would speak, but let the breath go, and the smile crept out again on his lips.

•   •   •

T
he Scars from the city raid were more valuable than any bomb materials that might've been found. All three of them were in fact former members of al-Shabaab. This they freely admitted. Each Scar was from a different region of Africa, one even had British citizenship, and the tentacles of their networks within those regions spread deep into the terrorist lifeblood. The information gleaned from the raid could spark raids on nearly every continent of the globe.

Intel had grilled the Scars continuously since the night they were picked up. Nearly three days and nights without sleep. Scar1 and Scar2 hadn't spoken a word, but Scar3 started talking. Scar1 and Scar2 got sent to an off-site center for further questioning, but Intel kept Scar3 around. They promised to let him see his daughter, the girl Massey had treated with penicillin for her leg fungus—apparently he traveled to the meeting with his wife and daughter—and he started talking about a small village in the mountains. He said he'd used the village to smuggle in new recruits and refit old ones.

After the teams had gotten the 4, the CO told them about the area. It was an isolated sustenance area, full of goat herders and mountain folk, which meant the only traffic coming and going was temporary. Not a normal part of life. Scar3 told Intel he'd personally used the area to pick up and drop off people and supplies twice in the last year. Apparently foreign fighters mixed with the local population and it wasn't clear where allegiances lay or what kind of balance the two groups had struck up together.

“Intel thought it was worth finding out,” the CO said. “So you're here.”

Sitting in the briefing room, Shaw thought about Scar3. He'd probably hung his head over a table after he'd been kept awake for days without sleep. Shaw wondered what Intel had said that had gotten him to spill his guts. Shaw had sat next to Scar3 in the GMV. His tank top had sagged loose on his frame and his chin touched the overgrown hairs on his chest. One of his nipples hung flaccid and sad from his chest, like that of a mother who'd nursed for too many years. He was an orchestrator of suicide bombings. And a father who just wanted to see his daughter again.

The op would be a ball-buster.

There were only the ten of them in the brief. Shaw's team and Mike's. The CO stood in front of them, blown-up images of the mountain pass printed on sheets and tacked to the whiteboard behind him. He had a red laser pointer in his hand. He highlighted multiple possible insertion points to the village, narrow trails breaking off the main pass, but there was only the single pass to get through and then a single exfil point. The pass started high in the rock and the trails splintered off like fingertips of lightning. They lost elevation until they funneled into the large village. In the village there were smaller structures with thatched roofs made of straw, mud, and tree limbs.

“We'll need rucks packed for four days,” the CO said. “But keep in mind the choppers can't get to you after the infil until the exfil. The pass is too narrow. Unless we pull out.”

Shaw wrote down “food for five days” on his printout. “Batteries, ammo, and water for eight.”

“The village and surrounding area is to be considered hostile. Intel's let me know some of the fighters likely have families settled there, so we can't count on getting a welcome. The bird will drop you off a couple klicks south of the draw leading to the pass. We're not sure how the comms will hold up in the narrow straits, so you're freed from command decisions. No checks or need to confirm. We'll keep an eye on you from the sats as long as we can. Just get to the village and the 47 will grab you for the exfil. We can try supporting fire in the pass, but any brought in will be danger close. Regardless, we'll have a Spooky circling the entire movement and we'll get to you if we can. We'll pick you up right in the damn village unless it's too hot.”

Hagan had a whole horseshoe of dip in his lower lip. He looked like he had packed too much and had a nicotine crash, or didn't like the thought of walking fifty to sixty klicks to the village. It was probably both. He looked like he might get sick all over the printouts.

“I could use a walk,” Cooke whispered. “Damn GMVs are coffins.”

Dalonna had a question.

“Sir, women and children?”

“Yes. Likely.”

Cooke raised his hand.

“Sir. What are we looking to accomplish?”

The CO took his time. He nodded to himself with a hand curled into a fist, propping up his chin. The men all shifted in their seats.

“Recon, then capture or kill. Intel's let on that recent foot traffic corroborates Scar3's claims. There's a good deal of movement and we could be tapping a major access point from neighboring countries. If we can find HVTs or FAMs there, we will want to talk to them. If we don't, we don't. Regardless, you guys are cleared to engage as necessary.” He traced the village on the map with his hand. “Scar3's been the first target to mention the village but Intel dug through past findings from SSEs and was able to link numerous HVTs to the area. This could be a major hub for numerous cells operating in-country. Transparency? This could be big. We don't know how big, but it's got potential. We need eyes on before we know what we've got.”

The CO let the operators digest what he'd told them and the teams sat studying the map printouts. The rocks looked like some of the canyons of Utah and California they'd been through in the summers on training hops. No one had any more questions.

“There's no popping hot on this. We're moving out in three days, regardless of the weather. If we're lucky, the weather will be shit and no one else will be out. Rain or snow would be nice. We're off the green until then so the days are yours.”

The room was quiet.

“All right. It'll be a bit of a walk, but mostly downhill. So there's that.”

Then he left and none of the men did for a while.

•   •   •

T
he few days they had off preparing for the walk flew by in a flash of day and night shoots, rucking around the FOB, and sweating out in the gym. Coverage on the increasing bombings in the region spanned the news among reports of the World Series, and Hagan put up 375 on the bench a few times. The guys made him stop there because he was prone to bullheadedness and they didn't want anyone hurting himself before the walk just to hit 400. The teams pored over satellite images of the area. They had at least a guy or two on the drone feeds watching the village around the clock. There was movement in the area—heavy at times, with women and children walking the mountainsides and village grounds. Other times movement was sparse or nonexistent. It seemed like the whole village would wash over the area like a flood one moment and then disappear into the rocks the next.