As they descended the hill, the tunnel became more and more sodden as rainwater ran down the walls. The ground above was becoming heavier with every hour under the soaking monsoon rains. Manny doubted these skinnies were much in the way of engineers, and the rattan and slat ceiling and walls visibly bulged in places, rain streaming through the lattice.

  The pair came to a place where the tunnel dropped sharply and they had to let their weapons hang from their combat slings and press their hands to the walls to maintain balance. The slope settled out to a less treacherous grade after fifty feet of hard going. On the uncertain surface beneath him, Flame had been unable to maintain his space behind Manny. He reached out and tapped Manny's shoulder.

  Flame pointed the way ahead of them and gave a shrug that Manny took as "Where the hell are they?" If this was the only escape route from the Young-El compound then why hadn't they run into more of them? With all the shit going down in Tombstone they should have run into more skinnies looking for the exit.

  Their answer came another twenty yards on.

  The tunnel fell away at a steep angle where it was filled with water. And the level of swirling black muck was rising.

  Manny handed off his M4 to Flame and stripped off his night-vision, torso armor, and webbing. He kept only his combat knife, Colt .45 auto, and a pencil flashlight; this, he clenched in his mouth.

  Flame watched as Manny waded into the water to his waist, ducked his body, and vanished into the pool of mud.

  Manny kept a hand on one wall for guidance and half-swam/half-walked along the tunnel. The water was the color of coffee with cream and the flashlight did little more than create a yellowish glow before his eyes. He bit down on the power button and turned the light off. Grit stung his eyes in the complete darkness so he shut them. God knew what kind of bacteria was floating here but he had shots for that; and besides, being buried alive or drowning were more immediate concerns.

  His hands felt the walls of the tunnel turning away to the left. This was the dogleg turn he saw on the sat photos from Langley. He was getting close to the bottom of the hill; the fence around the compound would be another fifty to sixty yards on from there.

  It was maybe a minute and half since he entered the water and took his last breath. Manny stuck one hand up to the ceiling. No clearance there to sneak a breath. The water touched the top. The tunnel was full. He could push on another thirty seconds but risked reaching the point of no return; when he had gone too far to have enough air left in his lungs to get back to Flame. He'd keep going and hope the tunnel came up out of the water before his body starved of oxygen. It was like the last stealth swim at Little Creek. Fuck that, this made the last training swim seem like doing laps at the Y.

  His head began to pound along with his pulse, and he willed his heart to slow down just as he'd been taught at Coronado and the secret swim school at MacDill with the PJs. His throat burned as the muscles there constricted. His chest ached like someone was standing on it. He opened his eyes momentarily and could see a faint bluish glow in the cloudy water ahead of him. Manny kicked forward and the glow grew to fill the tunnel before him from side to side. Through the rhythmic thunder in his head he could hear the distorted muffle of voices; loud voices in argument.

  Four skinnies were having a shoving match in the tight confines of the tunnel in the light of a fluorescent camp light. In Malay they spat words of blame and rage at one another.

  "Who will be the first to swim?"

  "It should be you, Tari!"

  "Why me?"

  "Look at this shitty tunnel you built!"

  "With no help from you, sisterfucker!"

  "She is at least better looking than your sister!"

  The exchange was interrupted by a series of deep booms from beneath the water of the flooded tunnel. Tari took two fat slugs through the thigh and abdomen and fell shrieking, knocking over the camp lamp and throwing the tunnel into under-lighted gloom. Other bullets impacted the ceiling above the four. A figure streaked with mud and breathing with a throaty rasp exploded from the water and drove a knife into the throat of Biza, the largest of the four, just under the chin. The point of the blade entered Biza's brain and a twist of the assailant's wrist turned him into a lifeless sack of bones.

  Manny used his new kill as a ram and slammed into the other two as they raised their Kalashnikovs. Tari was rolling on the mud floor howling wordlessly and clutching his gut where blood streamed from the wicked tear of the through-and-through wound from Manny's Colt. His thigh was broken clean by the slug that struck it. An AK erupted on full auto and filled the close quarters of the tunnel with ear-crushing noise.

  With his shoulder pressed tight into the face of one of the skinnies, Manny drove his knife deep into the guts again and again in a series of rapid upward thrusts. The man clamped teeth hard into Manny's shoulder either as a last defense or a reaction to the torture of being disemboweled. The skinny fell and Manny fell with him. A blow struck Manny's shoulder with a numbing shock. He turned, slipping in the greasy pile of entrails that had burst from the dead man beneath him. The tunnel filled with an overpowering shithouse stench. The final skinny was swinging his empty AK back to bring the butt down once more.

  Manny struggled to brace himself but slipped again and again on the tunnel floor, slick with blood and slurry. The skinny with the AK thumped the steel buttplate on Manny's chest and the SEAL gasped with the sudden renewal of pain to his already agonized ribs. Manny fell fully prostrate and tried to crabwalk away from the skinny, who was bringing the butt back again for another swing.

  Behind the skinny, Manny could see Flame emerging from the swirling muddy water, teeth gleaming white in a mad grimace. Flame held his shotgun in his fists; his bandana removed and shoved in the end of the barrel to keep the water out.

  The final skinny was flung atop Manny in tatters as a load of double ought took him full in the back from only six feet away. Manny's range of hearing was reduced now to a sharp ringing in both ears by the new aural assault from the big-gauge pump gun. He struggled from under the twitching form of the final skinny and threw the ruined man to a side wall of the tunnel. Flame finished off Manny's first victim; cutting the skinny's final scream short with a knife driven through the base of the skull where it joined the spine.

  Flame mouthed words as he removed foam protectors from each ear. Manny could only look at him and try to respond to what he imagined Flame was saying. Flame gave him a light slap across the face and placed a bloody finger to Manny's lips. Manny was shouting his responses, unable to hear his own voice after the trauma his eardrums had just taken.

  The pair sat with their backs to the tunnel wall among their slain, and gave themselves a few minutes for their lungs to recover before going on.

  CHAPTER 40

  There were more shooters out on the streets of Tombstone now. Skinnies climbed out of windows on the far wall and slipped from the doorway of the main building. The tight collection of shacks provided cover and let them move from position to position unseen. Pig could send rounds through the flimsy sheds and nail a few, but he had to conserve ammo for now. He used snap shots and short bursts to keep them off the open area between the shacks and the fence line.

  The shooters had approximated Pig's general position more closely and were sending rounds his way with increased accuracy. Even an RPG that looped uselessly overhead to impact in some treetops uphill from him. He had to stick and move, fire a burst to keep their heads down and scoot to another hide.

  His earbud came alive.

  "Movin' up on your right, Pig." It was Heath, breathing hard.

  "What do want from me?" Pig asked.

  "Lay down some suppression," Heath's voice rasped. "Chili and me are gonna work in close to the perimeter and take the fight to them."

  "Where's everybody else?" Pig asked, and trained his SAW through a gap in a thick fall of vines. He laid the front bead where he last saw the asshole with the rocket launcher.

  "Manny and Flame are in a tunnel we found. They're heading for Tombstone. We move in when they let us know their position."

  "And Re-Pete?"

  "Didn't make it."

  Pig winced hard. He cleared his eyes and focused on the turf to one side of the largest building. A skinny holding the slender structure of a grenade launcher stepped from cover and pointed the bulbous projectile on its end uphill, toward Pig's last hide. Pig let out a long breath and sent a series of bursts down range that caught the skinny and threw him back against the wall of the shack, minus a leg. The skinny depressed the RPG launcher's trigger as he folded and the fat grenade blasted away in a near vertical path skyward.

  Suddenly, Tombstone was alive with skinnies running every which way to escape where they estimated the grenade might land. Pig swept the field left and right and picked off at least two before the rest gained cover and the RPG landed and exploded on impact, sending gouts of mud thirty feet in the air. One of the skinnies was screaming as he dragged himself toward the tractor shack by the strength of his arms alone. Pig waited to see if any of his cousins came out to help him. When it was clear there were no good Samaritans currently residing in Tombstone, Pig walked rounds over the mud toward the crawling figure and turned the skinny into a dancing puddle of blood.

  "That was for you, Re-Pete," Pig said under his breath, and rolled aside to find a new vantage point to give his brothers the cover they'd need.

  * * * * *

  The fence at the northeast corner of the compound was made up of posts and boards rather than mesh wire. It was a blind spot for the compound's defenders and Heath and Chili used it to their advantage. They were delayed a bit by having to pick their way around an IED wired over the approach trail. It was marked down by Flame on a Spider-Man pad.

  They crept to the edge of the tree line and listened for Pig to begin working the downrange. An extended chain of fire from inside the fence was punctuated by the heavy thud of Pig's response followed by an earth-shaking explosion from within the fence.

  Chili took that as his cue and sprinted low over the fifty yards of mown perimeter with Heath covering the open section of fence to the south with his M4. Uphill, the big SAW continued to hammer the compound in bursts separated by a few seconds of silence. Pig was shooting and scooting. A heavy cloud of chemical stink from the detonated RPG drifted through the rain, providing even more cover.

  Closer to the fence line, Chili slid on the grass to lie on his side against the boards. He pulled bricks of Semtex from a vest pouch and slapped one at the base of each of three timber support posts where they entered the ground. He split a triple strand of detonation cord and inserted an end into each brick. The give-and-take of the firefight went on above him. Some rounds splintered the boards above his head. No more followed. Strays. Panic shots.

  Chili trotted backwards, stooped over, and unspooled the det cord as he moved. He stopped halfway to the tree line. He threw himself flat on the grass chop and connected the cords to a simple hand switch. Contacts firmly in place, he thumbed the cover from a plastic switch and buried his head behind his crooked arm before tapping the switch. The triple blasts were nearly simultaneous and Chili was up and charging forward into the thick fog left by the blasts. He knew without turning around that Heath was close on his heels.

  The section of blasted fence was hanging in long shards and Chili met it with his shoulder and his full weight and was through into the streets of Tombstone in a shower of smoking shards. He ran to one side and laid suppression down toward the buildings as Heath leapt through the fresh gap in the fence and into the compound.

  Together they made their way toward the right and around some leaning shacks set near the main building. Pig was working over the compound yard to their left with what sounded like aimed shots that were abruptly cut off. Maybe Pig was on the move again. Fire from skinnies in the other positions within the compound stepped up. Much of it was going uphill. Between volleys they could hear the gasoline generator alongside the main building chugging away.

  Chili and Heath were guns-up and moving in a crouch. They caught a skinny armed with an SKS rifle trotting toward them in a narrow lane between a row of sheds and the barracks building. The man's eyes popped wide at the sight of the two big men with black with green faces suddenly appearing before him. The skinny was cut down by center shots; the crack of the M4s blending with the general noise of indiscriminate fire coming from all over the compound.

  Mud kicked up around the SEALs' boots. An AK was firing from a window set in the block wall of the barracks. Chili returned fire and the shooter dropped from sight.

  Heath trotted for the barrack's southeast corner and caught a skinny kneeling there, struggling to work the jammed action on his AK. Heath took him with a double-tap to the chest and the skinny dropped to the mud with a grunt. Moving closer, Heath finished him with a head shot, and leaned against the corner of the wall and exchanged magazines.

  Firing a long burst at the windows of the south wall, Chili ran to join Heath and cover his six as they both made their way around the building toward the entrance doors. They leaned close to the wall and scanned the untidy row of shacks standing less than ten feet from the barracks on three sides. Even with the skinnies they'd already taken down, it was easily a five-to-one fight waiting for them inside. Could be more if the building's cellar and tunnel were packed with even more pissed-off skinnies. The odds could be shaved in their favor if Manny and Flame could make their way through the tunnel to the back door.

  "Welcome to the O.K. Corral," Chili said under his breath, as they neared the southeast corner.

  * * * * *

  Pig stood as the explosion at the fence line ripped the air with a sharp triple crack of thunder. He was moving downhill, to what looked like a natural shelf that could provide him a perfect vantage post, and a flatter trajectory for the SAW. He needed to pick his shots now. The SAW ate ammo in a hurry, and he already felt lighter for all the box magazines he'd spent. He fired single shots as he went, and kept the front post trained on the tractor shed where at least three skinnies sought cover after the runaway RPG went flying.

  The hill sloped steeper here with gushing rivulets of rainwater tearing the earth from around massive tangles of tree roots. Pig's boots slipped on a sodden root and his legs went out from under him. He hugged the SAW close as he tumbled down the rest of the slope to crash onto the shelf of rock. His side burned like fire where the steel frame of the SAW slammed hard into him during the fall. He knew what broken ribs felt like from the ones he busted in training during Hell Week back at BUD/s. Moving was not a good idea as he could easily puncture a lung and drown here in his own blood.

  Fuck good ideas and caution. His bros were on the line and counting on him to provide cover. He squeezed his eyes shut and clenched his teeth tight as he expelled his lungs empty before cinching his vest straps tighter. A low moan escaped him as he slowly drew in his breath and jerked on the tabs on his flanks. He allowed himself one precious second of pity before getting on one knee, and then one boot and trained the SAW down toward the compound in time to see four skinnies running with AKs up, around to the back of the barracks building.

  CHAPTER 41

  "You followed me," Manny said in gasps.

  "You were taking too long," Flame said, and hawked up some mud.

  Manny sat up in the dark and tossed his Colt aside. It was a desperate, bonehead play firing the .45 from under the water. The barrel was belled out at the end, stopping the action from sliding back to ready-fire position. Taking another shot with it was impossible, and with the barrel and action filled with sludge, he risked having it blow up in his hand. He picked up a discarded AK and a canvas bandolier of magazines off the skinny he'd skull-fucked with the combat knife.

  Flame pulled the camp lamp from the mud and shined it up the tunnel with his shotgun trained down the beam. There was no going back. The tunnel was filling behind them. Already the water was lapping up on the corpses of the skinnies they shared the space with.

  "Tombstone is maybe forty yards on from here." Manny rubbed his eyes with the back of his hand. They felt raw and burned. He knew from experience he broke a few blood vessels there with the prolonged swim. His head still pounded and his shoulder and chest ached where the skinny had struck with the Kalashnikov stock. The ringing in his ears was subsiding and he moved his jaw to reset the pressure in his head. He fought down a wave of dizziness. Flame would be in better shape even after swimming the dogleg. Suck it up. March on.

  Flame replaced his ear foams and handed a pair to Manny. Even with the foam in, Manny's ears were filled with ocean roar and a persistent ringing tone underneath.

  His back scraping the ceiling, Flame made his way forward down the beam of the camp light. He held the shotgun by its pistol grip with the front bead trained at the center of the lamp's beam. Manny followed six paces behind, with the AK's barrel held low.

  They moved like this, silent and focused, as the tunnel straightened and the slope flattened out. This was the straightaway to the center of the compound and ended beneath the largest building in Tombstone.

  A shadow blocked the beam of light ahead for a scant second, and Flame let fly with a pattern of double ought and dropped to his belly on the floor, covering the lamp with his body and throwing the tunnel into blackness. Manny fired the AK over Flame's prone body and his green tracers gave the tunnel interior an eerie glow as they looped down the tunnel's length.

  There was a sudden thump ahead of them that they could feel more than hear and, for an instant, the walls and floor of the tunnel warped and shifted violently. Clumps of wet, heavy mud rained down on them and both men rushed forward as fast as the tunnel's confines would allow.

  The wavering beam of the camp light showed that the tunnel had collapsed ahead of them. It simply ended in a sloping wall of muck. Without pause or conversation, they began to dig with their hands. Flame set the camp light and shotgun aside and started clawing mud back between his legs like a dog. Close behind him, Manny moved each pile behind him. Even as he made enough of an opening to allow his shoulders in, the new hole collapsed under the weight from above.