Guys like Bunny, Top, and me, we live in a landscape of war. Our lives are defined by it. As a result, we are almost always in a high-alert state. It’s a bitch, it wears at you after a while, but it is what’s required of us and we know that we have the option of turning in our badges and hanging up our guns.
As if.
We ran straight along the valley for two klicks, then split and began climbing the slopes on either side, running from one cover position to the next. We had no idea if the Taliban had scouts or spotters out here and we didn’t want to find out the wrong way.
With every step, the noise sounded less like thunder and more like what it was. Heavy-caliber weapons. Grenades.
As we passed the three-kilometer mark, the sound of the battle suddenly changed.
Fewer gunshots.
More screams.
And soon, all screams.
We poured it on for another half klick and then slowed to a predatory crawl, weapons ready, minds and hearts ready.
The screams continued.
Then the last scream dwindled down to a wet gurgle and faded.
Black towers of oil smoke curled up over the lip of the ridge directly ahead of us. And there, strewn among the rocks, I saw sunlight glinting on brass.
I signaled that I was going ahead and that Bunny and Top should cover me.
The path climbed a short hill that was shaded by the shattered remains of a fig tree whose trunks had been comprehensively chewed apart by gunfire. I ran to the trunk, crouched momentarily behind it, then went over the rise.
And stopped.
The scene below was a tableau in a museum of hell.
Two of the three trucks were burning. From the driver’s window of the lead vehicle, a charred arm protruded, the fingers slowly curling into a fist as heat contracted the tendons.
Men lay everywhere, like islands in a lake of blood. Blood was everywhere. On the ground, on the surrounding boulders, even splashed high on the walls.
Fourteen of them.
The ground was littered with thousands of shell casings and spent magazines. All of the magazines were the banana clips of the AK-47. As I moved down the far side of the ridge, I bent and picked up a shell casing. It was a 7.62 round. From their guns. I didn’t see any shell casings from M14s or M16s.
Nothing moved except smoke wandering on a sluggish breeze.
I heard Top and Bunny coming up on either side of me, fifty yards out. I held my fist up to signal them to stop and hold.
Letting my gun barrel lead, I moved forward, walking among the corpses, looking for signs of life, finding only death.
Then I heard a sound behind the rear truck. I froze, then hand-signaled my guys to move in fast and wide so we could circle the truck from two positions. I ran forward on cat feet, and as I reached the back of the truck I yelled, “Freeze!”
Or something like that.
Whatever I said never got out.
The tailgate of the truck was down and an Afghani was sprawled on the bed, arms and legs wide, eyes wide, chest torn wide. Three men were bent over the corpse. Their arms were crimson to the elbows. Their faces were smeared with blood. Pieces of raw meat hung from their teeth. They heard me and turned.
Their eyes . . .
God almighty, their eyes.
Where eyes should have been were holes torn into their faces and inside those holes . . .
Impossibly . . .
Fires burned inside of them.
Fires.
They froze there, lumps of red pressed to their mouths. Then they hissed at me, showing red teeth that had been filed to dagger points.
Somewhere, a million miles away, I heard Top and Bunny running, yelling.
The three men—if that word even makes sense anymore—dropped the red chunks of meat they held. They straightened. The biggest of them reached past the dead man to a wooden crate that had been smashed open and removed a piece of rock. Then I saw that it was a fragment of carved stone. The fleshy, rounded figure of a woman with a huge belly and breasts. The man pressed his bloody lips to the feet of the figure, then shoved it inside his jacket.
All three of them were staring at me with burning eyes.
In a voice as cold as death, the man with the statue said, “We return what was stolen. We honor the bargain.”
Then I felt myself falling backward with no memory of why I’d lost balance.
Someone was yelling my name. Top? Bunny?
I hit the ground hard on my ass and the shock snapped me out of my stupor. Bunny was right there, catching me under the armpits and hauling me to my feet. Top had his rifle out and was turning to cover the area.
But nothing moved.
There was nothing that could move.
It was the three of us and fourteen dead men.
Absolutely no one else.
“Boss!” yelled Bunny. “Yo, boss, what’s wrong?”
I pointed numbly at the dead man sprawled in the back of the truck. But when they looked all they saw was a corpse.
The world seemed to be falling off its hinges, and I was dangerously close to losing my shit. The three men—things, whatevers—were gone. I could not have imagined them. On the other hand, let’s face it . . . I couldn’t have seen them.
So . . . what the fuck?
Before I could organize my brain so that I could say something that made sense, we all heard a sound behind us. A cough, a soft grunt.
I pushed myself free of Bunny as we all whirled, weapons coming up.
A man knelt on the ground twenty feet behind us, in the midst of all that blood. He wore a cotton shirt in a rough local weave over faded camouflage pants, but the pattern was from the First Gulf War. He was drenched head to toe in blood.
The kneeling man looked down at the ground in front of him.
He slowly raised his head and stared at me with eyes that had grown huge and round with shock. Or maybe it was madness.
He looked at me for a few distorted seconds, then opened dried, cracked lips and said, “Joe . . . ?”
Sergeant Finn O’Leary fell face-forward onto the dirt, making no attempt to break his fall.