"Like you wouldn't worry about me."

  "If our situations were reversed? I'd step over you to walk out of here."

  "I'd be fighting you to keep you from carrying my black ass all the way."

  "Just keep telling yourself that, brother," Manny said. He was placing one foot in front of the other in the pool of light projected from the Maglite hung from a lanyard about his neck. He'd grind it out no matter how far they had to get to daylight.

  The ledge broadened out into a wide natural shelf. Priest counted out almost two klicks using his own strides as a meter. He had a string of small Ranger pacing beads slung from his Molle vest by a Prussik knot. He could keep count by touch. The string had two sets of ten beads separated by a square knot. Each time he reached sixty paces he slid a bead in the top row down. That was ten meters. When he got to ten he slid a bead from the bottom down. It was a rough estimate but it would do.

  He yanked the cord to bring Umalt to a stop.

  "Have you been this far before?" Priest asked in Russian.

  "Yes. Many times."

  "Have you been all the way to the end?"

  "Once."

  "Why?"

  "I like to know where things are."

  "Smart boy." Smart enough to keep an eye on, Priest added to himself.

  "You said you were this far many times. What's down here?"

  "Just ahead are supplies. Food. Water."

  "Guns?"

  Umalt did not answer. He shifted his feet and turned back to look at Priest.

  Priest had moved close in the dark. Umalt's eyes grew wide as the tip of a Fairbain dagger touched his cheek. He could feel the ferangi's breath on his neck.

  "Uh huh," Priest said and wrapped the cord tighter around his hand to shorten his prisoner's lead.

  The supplies were another half klick on, down a tunnel that followed the floor of a crevasse. The goods were concealed under tarps to keep them dry in a broad but shallow niche in the rock face. The walls of the cave here were covered in condensation that rolled down the walls to pool in any depressions in the rock.

  Priest sat Umalt on the floor and whipped a fresh flex-cuff around the prisoner's wrists before inspecting the hidey hole. Umalt sat squinting into the dark through the nimbus of weak light from the glo-stick slung behind him. Priest took his Maglite away from him. Even if he could get to his feet without falling he'd never find his way in the dark.

  There were cases of ammo for AKs and grenade rounds for RPGs. Plastic covered rifles and launchers gleamed with oil where they sat on a pallet. There were plastic jugs of water and some MREs in rucksacks. These were taken from the coalition OP these assholes raided. It looked to Priest like this was a fallback position in case the Dude's jihadis had to withdraw. The MREs were part of their get bags. He rummaged around some more and found a pair of unused Camelbaks. They had water and a means to carry it.

  Priest turned the cap on one of the two-liter jugs. No click. They were refilling these jugs from a water source somewhere in the caves. But he'd play it safe anyway. He squatted down and brought the open lip of the jug up to Umalt's lips.

  "Drink."

  The prisoner drank greedily as Priest tipped the jug. The water was good.

  He squelched the PRC.

  It squelched back.

  "Heath. What's your twenty? Out."

  There was audio noise then "---found your glo-stick at an opening. Out."

  "Follow that opening down a half klick or so. I found water. Out."

  "Good news. We're thirsty as hell. Out."

  Priest didn't ask about Manny. He could tell by their progress that they were moving slow. Heath said ‘we,' which meant that they were together. Heath would never leave Levitz' side no matter how hot the shit got.

  He'd wait until they caught up. To kill time he sat down before his prisoner. He tore the cover off an MRE and spilled the contents on the floor.

  "How much further to the way out?" Priest asked. There were crackers and a packet of peanut butter.

  "I don't remember," Umalt lied. His eyes were fixed on Priest's hands. The SEAL was smearing PB on a cracker.

  "Two kilometers? Ten?"

  "Maybe five. Less than five I think." The prisoner licked his lips as the smell of the spread filled the tunnel.

  "Want some?" Priest said and offered the cracker.

  "What is it?"

  "Peanut butter," Priest said in English.

  "Is it pork?"

  "It's not pork, dumbass," Priest said. "It's nuts crushed to a paste. You want some or not?"

  Umalt nodded eagerly. Priest held the cracker in his right hand and Umalt bit half of it away.

  "How hard is the walk ahead?"

  "Only bad in one place," Umalt said thickly, the sticky brown goo smeared over his teeth.

  "Bad in what way?"

  "You must swim."

  Shit, thought Priest.

  The prisoner held his mouth open like a baby bird. Priest dropped the remainder of the cracker into Umalt's mouth then wiped his fingers on the prisoner's shirt.

  Heath and Manny were twenty minutes reaching the storage niche from their last transmission. That put their pace at a klick and change per hour, Priest worked out. But that was over relatively easy passage. If the prisoner was telling the truth, there were some rough spots ahead. They'd deal with that as they came to it.

  Manny leaned against a section of wall where it rose from the floor at a gentle slope.

  "You want to sit?" Heath asked.

  "No, better not," Manny said in a whisper. "I'm better standing."

  "There's clean water and a Camelbak," Priest said. "And MREs in a couple of rucks. I'm taking the other Camel and a ruck."

  Umalt sat looking from one ferangi to another in the vain hope he might understand even part of their exchange.

  "You're moving on?" Heath asked.

  "Prisoner says we have less than five klicks ahead to the exit," Priest said. "We need to get outside this cave ASAP."

  "'Cause it's not just an exit," Manny said weakly.

  "It's an entrance," Priest said. "The assholes outside will use it to check on their buddies. We have to get through the mountain before they get around it."

  "Roger that," Heath said.

  Priest pulled Umalt to his feet and cut the flex-cuffs from his wrists, then shoved him to a stumbling start down the passage.

  "There's HOOAH! bars," Priest said as he spooled out lead for the prisoner.

  "Yum yum," Manny said and forced a smile that could not mask the pain showing in his eyes.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE

  THE VILLE

  They reached the road a hundred yards north of the ghost village.

  Woody and Chili were down in the cover of some scrub pines while Woody glassed the ville for signs of an ambush. Pig was situated up the slope with his SAW trained on the approach through the rocks above.

  The 30x scope on Woody's rifle showed him the unpaved road surface in sharp contrast. The only signs of traffic were the tire tracks of the armored trucks that dropped them off. Was that really only six hours ago? The glow of sunrise over the peaks to the east told him it was.

  No footprints in the soft, sandy soil. No sign of dirt bikes. They'd be exposed crossing the road. The pre-dawn gloom would provide cover.

  "See anything?" Chili shouted. His hearing was still shot.

  Woody clapped a hand over his mouth. Chili nodded. Woody snapped an earbud into Chili's PRC. Chili placed the earbud in his right ear. Woody keyed his own PRC and spoke low into the mike.

  "You read me?"

  Chili gave a thumbs up.

  "Are you tactical?

  Chili gave him the finger.

  Together they moved swift and low along their side of the road toward the village.

  A click in Pig's earbud let him know his brothers were on the move. He stayed where he was and eyed the skyline above him. He closed his eyes and listened. No voices. No footfalls on rock. No tumbling stones. He'd either slowed the bad guys down, turned them back or forced them to find another route.

  The terrain was unforgiving and offered few options. These assholes were smart. They'd know the most likely exfil would be toward the road and the village. They'd also assume, incorrectly, that the evac would have some air cover. That threat, along with Pig's SAW and Claymores, would have them second guessing. But not for long.

  What was going on back at Iron Man? Someone had to register a whole fucking mountain coming down, right? They had to know that they should have heard from the SEALs by now. Priest and his goddamn mission security obsession. Bear was going on the team's own superhuman reputation as bad motherfuckers and wouldn't step in to spoil their play until he was sure they were in it up to their eyebrows. He wouldn't think that their only means of long range comm was buried under a zillion tons of rock.

  Pig spared a glance to the road. Two shapes humped across the road at a dead run for the inky shadows of the ruined hooches. Woody and Chili were out of sight.

  He hefted the SAW and trotted down the slope from cover to cover toward the road surface.

  The two SEALs set up an initial hide in the ville.

  Getting the seventy pound load off his shoulders felt like defying gravity. Woody took his immediate needs from the pack and secured it in the dark corner of the house with the thickest walls. He took a sip from his Camelback and handed the straw to Chili who took a short drag. Woody encouraged him to drink more.

  Chili swallowed hard and was grateful when he heard his ears pop. His hearing was still for shit but the ringing sound was dying away. He could pick out some sounds over the hiss now.

  Woody handed Chili his own M4 rifle. Chili charged the rifle with a fresh mag and snapped the action back. He settled in the dark inside a window and trained the front sight on the roadway through the opening.

  After a check of his WinMag, Woody sat down to assess their situation. He pulled his armored tablet from a pouch on his Molle and reviewed area maps he'd downloaded earlier. The SAT maps showed the village on the switchback roadway. He could see where other roads and goat tracks fed into it from the direction of Pumpkin. The ville itself sat in the crotch of two escarpments with rising altitudes behind it. It was doubtful they could expect attacks from that direction. That was good. The ville had higher elevations that were scalable on three sides. That was bad.

  They could sit it out here but not forever.

  His PRC was set for scan but nothing was happening on any frequency. It was a thin hope that they might pick up transmissions from a passing aircraft and be able to May Day. In country this rough, the jet or chopper would have to be almost directly overhead to pick them up.

  His earbud crackled to life. Chili heard it as well and stiffened, rifle trained on the window opening.

  "Woody?" Pig's voice.

  "We're here."

  "Walk me in."

  "Largest hooch. Still has a partial roof. Your right of the hide we used last night."

  "Warm or cold?"

  "You're warm, asshole." Chili said. "I could spit on you from here. Turn left."

  Pig joined them.

  "You have a sit rep? I just got here myself."

  "Take a look first," Woody handed over the tablet.

  Pig studied the maps.

  "We're in a corner at the bottom of a barrel," Pig said.

  "We can't keep them away from here," Woody nodded.

  "So we go non-linear," Pig said. "This place can't be defended as a position. But we turn it into a maze. Set up snares. Shoot and scoot."

  "You have any more Claymores?"

  "I have two more," Pig handed the tablet back. "I set them right and detonate them by eye for max casualties."

  "It's a labyrinth and we're the Minotaur," Chili spoke up, returning closer to what his mom used to call his ‘church voice' as his hearing improved.

  "Huh?" Woody said.

  "Read a book sometime, dumbass." Chili said.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX

  GOD'S WILL

  Staff sergeant Jeffrey Wynocki was at a loss.

  He was lying back and sweating inside the converted cargo container where he billeted alone along with cases ammo and explosive ordnance. It was sandbagged all around to protect it from mortar fire. The interior was hot as hell. But it was the closest habitat to where the ANA was housed. His job was outreach and nothing in the manuals said that he couldn't outreach from a closer proximity. His bunk rested on stacks of fresh Korans printed by the US Army as gifts for the mostly illiterate locals he met.

  As brigade diversity officer he was uncertain as to his role in the current crisis. Iron Man was on high alert and every active duty soldier was in motion. He felt like an observer rather than a participant and thought he should be doing something.

  He got up after a bit and paced the camp in the dark, unable to sleep while so much was going on around him. Orders were being shouted. Gravel crunched as men trotted to their stations in the dark. Vehicles moved around the med shed where the Afghan wounded were being brought in. His specialty was vital, Wynocki assured himself, but limited in a practical usefulness when it came to real combat situations.

  Whynot needed to choose and implement an appropriate COA (Course Of Action) just as he'd learned at the cultural awareness course he took at Fort Leavenworth. His course instructor, Lieutenant Monsoor Aziz, warned that any cross-cultural activity not include physical contact such as handshakes or pats on the back, or even a reassuring arm grip. Shows of any kind of emotion like sympathy or concern or generosity were seen by Afghan men as effeminate and signs of weakness, or even mental illness. Smiling was not a good idea either as it could be easily misinterpreted as mockery. Laughter was a problem as well and it was best to avoid humor unless the locals laughed first. Never give a local the thumbs up sign either. Pointing was off limits, as well as looking another man in the eye. And those were just the ground rules for interacting with men.

  LT Aziz was stern in his instruction that Westerners needed to be constantly aware of the many, many ways they could offend Muslim men while simultaneously remembering that the culture of Islam was very proud and centuries old.

  The women were a whole ‘nother area of trouble and Wynocki decided it was best to treat them as if they did not exist. The ladies in this society were practically ghosts anyway. Hell, they even dressed like Halloween spooks.

  Then there were all the hadith rules concerning eating and shitting and shoes and cleaning your nose. All of which limited a diversity officer's level of outreach. But S/S Wynocki would soldier on despite the oppressive rules of etiquette these folks lived under.

  Jeffrey Wynocki was driven to his specialty by his own sense of outrage. The horrible depredations suffered by the prisoners at Abu Ghraib incensed him. He was just a lowly corporal in communications at Fort Drum when that news broke. It touched a sense of justice, or injustice, that he'd been unaware of. Mostly the National Guardsmen who humiliated those helpless insurgents reminded him of the bullies he had to suffer back at Cedarbrook High School in Rutland, Vermont. The arm punches in the hallway, the swirlies in the boys room, the choke-outs in phys ed. The grins on the faces of those overbearing assholes in the famous photos were interchangeable with the ones worn by his own tormentors back in ninth grade.

  He was here to make a difference. But right now he wasn't sure what difference he could make.

  He decided on offering his services to the docs and medics in the medical shed. A lot of the Afghan troops came back with wounds from a firefight down on Highway One. It seemed the perfect place for the Americans to bond with their native allies. S/S Wynocki determined that a man at death's door would be open to a friendly hand and a smile. He reminded himself not to actually touch an ANA soldier with his hand and to make certain he didn't actually smile.

  The med shed was not what he expected. The scenes in movies about men wounded in combat were always so hectic with personnel rushing around calling out orders and blood-spattered casualties crying out in pain and terror. The pre-fab hospital unit was surprisingly sedate with medics quietly speaking through interpreters to wounded Afghans either seated in chairs or lying on aluminum frame cots. Wynocki understood this was the triage area. The really bad cases were already in surgery, he was sure. There was no panic or even fear among the soldiers. One man, with head swaddled in bloody bandages, was praying softly where he knelt on the floor. But other than that, the room could have been any suburban walk-in clinic back in the States.

  There was little room to move in the SRO front area and Wynocki was constantly being asked to stand aside or simply shouldered away as the medics and ‘terps moved from patient to patient.

  "Is there something I can help you with, Sergeant?" an LT asked him after a while. The LT was a full doctor and wore green scrubs with the bloody imprint of a man's hand staining the front.

  "I was here to offer any assistance I could, sir," Wynocki smiled as his shoulders hit the plywood wall between two bunks. He was being crowded away by two privates helping an Afghan with a badly burnt leg into a wheelchair. The smell of scorched hair and bacon reached Wynocki's nostrils when the man was moved. He fought down his gorge.

  "Right now you could assist me by getting the fuck out of my hospital," the LT said without expression.

  "Yes, sir," Wynocki said, face reddening. He stumbled over a soldier lying on the floor on his way out. The man growled at him and Wynocki choked off his own stuttered apologies when he remembered that they would only be responded to with contempt. He was out of the artificial light and into the cool dark with eyes hot with humiliation.

  Returning home, he found the door to his container standing open. He recalled shutting it before heading to the med shed.

  The lights were on inside and someone was moving cases from a stack at the rear of the container. The uniform was the forest cammo worn by the ANA.

  "Do you have permission to be here?" Wynocki asked. After his embarrassment in the med shed he welcomed an opportunity to pull rank on someone, anyone. Even one of the locals would do. This was the Army, mister.

  The young Afghan the others called Harry Potter whirled to face him. The same boy he saved from a beating two days ago. What was his name? His real name? In the boy's arms was an open case of canister-type frag grenades. The boy was not surprised. He was not afraid. His face was a mask of undisguised fury.