Wynne's War (26 page)

They made camp that evening in the sheltered basin of a pine-covered hillside and waited for the scouts. The captain had told them no more fires, so they kept stand-to in the twilight and then in the dusk, and when night fell they sat on their saddle blankets with their sleeping bags around their shoulders. It was cold without a fire and so black Russell could barely make out the forms of the men silhouetted against the stars. Wheels was seated there beside him.

He leaned closer and said, “The hell are our scouts s'posed to find us in this?”

Russell didn't know. He said maybe they were accustomed to it. Maybe they had faculties the Americans didn't.

“I hope to Christ they got faculties,” said Wheels. “Faculties and a spotlight.”

When they woke the next morning, the scouts had yet to return. Wynne conferred with Ziza, then Bixby, then ordered the men to mount up and break camp. The sun rose and the day was hot and bright, the hillsides steaming around them, the trees shimmering in the heat. Russell pulled his ball cap out of his right rear saddlebag and snugged it over his head. He wished he'd brought another pair of sunglasses, but mid-afternoon clouds rolled in from the east and the air smelled suddenly of rain. The goat trail they followed grew steep, and as they ascended a wooded slope, the horses began to nicker and blow. Fella dropped to a slow walk, stepping nervously, and then she just stopped. Russell started to touch his heels and put her forward, but the muscles along her neck had gone tense; he reached to stroke a palm along her neck. He leaned and spoke to her, chucked up and started her walking. The riders crested the rise and went winding among the pines.

They descended the far side of the hill and rode down into a stand of plum trees and cedar, and it was there they found their scouts.

Ziza was riding just behind the captain, and he was the first one to see. He called out in his native tongue, his voice rising from its usual gruff baritone to a high-pitched wail. He leapt from his mount and went sprinting forward, the captain shouting to him, the horses beginning to sidle and lurch. Russell glanced up and saw two bodies suspended upside down from the limbs of an enormous oak, naked except for the
taqiyah
caps on the crown of their heads. The corpses were maybe twenty yards away, but he could see that their throats had been slit in gaping red smiles, their genitals cut away. There were cuts and bruises along their legs and torsos, the skin in places almost black. Ziza had reached the tree, and he knelt there below them in the dirt. He'd vouched for these Afghans, had bullied and berated them every day of their journey, and now he wept inconsolably. Some of the riders were starting to dismount and grab their weapons, and others sat their horses, pale as if seasick, their faces drained of blood. Billings had begun to ride toward the scouts, but Russell raised his voice.

“Keep the horses back,” he said. “They don't need to see this.”

Wheels was just behind him. He said none of them did.

“He's right,” Rosa said. “You don't want to walk the rest of the way, I'd get the animals as far back as possible.”

“We might need to hood them,” said Russell.

“We should absolutely hood them,” Rosa said.

The captain had turned his stallion to listen.

“Robbie,” he said, “you and Russ take them over to that shelf. At least you'll be upwind.”

Russell pulled the reins softly and began to lead the others away, ducking limbs, monitoring the ground for sinks. They reached the moss-covered shelf on the hillside, strung the picket line, and began to tie off, Russell talking to Fella the entire time, telling her she'd be all right.

When they walked back down the hill, the captain had tethered his stallion to the slender trunk of a plum tree and was kneeling beside Ziza, speaking to him in hushed tones, nothing that Russell could hear. The men had their rifles at the ready, and Ox had taken Morgan and Perkins to set up a perimeter. Russell went slowly toward the hanging bodies, the hairs on his arms electric. He cradled his carbine close to his chest and glanced around at the trees, but it was all a blur of branches and trunks, nothing distinct; he couldn't seem to frame anything, couldn't seem to keep the world from trembling. He leaned against a cedar and stared at the scouts.

He'd been briefed on what would happen if he was captured by the Talibs, what they called “the Afghan way”: castration or disembowelment, followed by decapitation. Whoever had tortured their scouts had decided against the latter, but on closer inspection, Russell saw that these men had been scalped. Flies swarmed their bare skulls and crawled over the ropes from which they dangled. It was like watching a movie, with sight the only sensation, no sound or smell. Then the wind shifted and there was that sharp metallic scent, the noise of Ziza weeping. Everything rushed in on him, and Russell bent forward and vomited.

Then Wheels was there beside him.

“Russ,” he said very softly, “c'mon.” He kept his eyes lowered, and Russell wondered if he'd even looked. He glanced toward Wynne and Ziza and saw that Billings was standing there behind them, staring up at the scouts with detached, academic interest.

He pointed at the bodies.

“How long you think it took them to give up everything they knew?”

Wynne turned to regard him, still kneeling, one hand on Ziza's shoulder.

“Francis,” he said.

“Don't ‘Francis' me,” said Billings. “Don't even start. Those men were tortured. You can bet they spilled their fucking guts. Assume the Talibs know who we are, how many we are. Assume they know where we're—”

He was interrupted mid-sentence. One moment Ziza was genuflecting beneath the bodies of his countrymen with his back to Billings, and the next he'd turned and sprung at the lieutenant, driving his head into Billing's stomach, capturing the lieutenant's legs and locking his arms around the backs of Billings's knees, knocking him to the ground, then passing to Billings's right side, throwing a leg over and straddling the larger man's chest. The entire maneuver took maybe two seconds, and now Ziza sat mounted on the lieutenant, striking him with elbows. He'd gotten in three or four solid hits before the captain managed to wrangle him off Billings, grabbing the short Afghan and pulling him away. The men stood watching. They didn't seem to know whether or not to intervene and likely felt the same as Russell, that, if anything, the lieutenant had gotten off easy. He lay there on the ground staring up at the tree limbs, the scouts' desecrated bodies dangling like nightmare ornaments. The lieutenant blinked several times and tried to raise himself on an elbow, then seemed to think better of it and collapsed back against the dirt. He was cut just below the left eye and high on his forehead, Ziza's sharp elbows having split the skin. Wynne handed the Afghan off to Rosa, who'd come up to try to lend a hand and now led Ziza off into the trees, the commando cursing in Dari or Pashto, they sounded much the same to Russell. The captain walked up and stood over Billings.

“You all right?” he asked.

Billings didn't answer. He lay there feeling the bridge of his nose, testing it with his fingers, first one side, then the other.

Wynne watched. Then he toed him with his boot. “Can you get up?”

Billings nodded.

“Then get up,” Wynne said. He reached and extended a hand, but Billings didn't accept it.

He said, “I suppose you think I had it coming.”

“What do you think?” the captain asked.

 

The men buried their scouts in a common grave and built a sandstone cairn against wolves and wild dogs. Ziza said a prayer in Pashto, hands at waist level, palms toward the darkening sky. They withdrew half a kilometer into the hills to make a cold, fireless camp, and when they woke the next morning, Billings and his horse were gone. The men gathered around the captain in the half-light of dawn and tried to determine how to proceed.

“They know we're out here,” said Wynne. “If the lieutenant was right about anything, he was right about that.”

“Fuck the lieutenant,” said Ox, and Rosa wanted to know what Billings thought he was doing.

“He thinks we're poor company,” said Rosa, “wait'll the fuck-knuckles that strung Haashim and Abdullah get ahold of him.”

Wynne watched Rosa a moment. He admitted he and the lieutenant had their disagreements, but he didn't want him falling into enemy hands.

“No shit,” said Rosa. “Francis would give up his own mother if he thought it'd save a hair on his head.”

“My concern,” said Wynne, “is the mission. We always knew the risk. We never had any guarantees. I'd like to hear where everyone is with this.”

The men sat staring for several moments, some at the captain, some at the ground.

Then Bixby said, “In terms of whether we ought to continue?”

“In whatever terms you want,” Wynne said. He motioned toward Rosa.

“Given our situation,” said the young sergeant, “I think it's just as likely we get in contact doubling back as going on ahead. I'd rather do what we came to do.”

“Or give it a fucking try,” said Ox.

“Exactly,” said Perkins.

Morgan spoke next, said he felt the same way, and then Ziza asked if they were willing to consign American POWs to the same fate as that of their scouts.

The men seemed to consider this. Wynne looked over at Wheels and Russell where they sat on their saddle blankets.

“What's your opinion?” he said.

Russell hadn't expected to be included in the discussion, and glancing at Wheels, he could tell that neither had his friend.

“Captain,” he told him, “I don't have one.”

“Why's that?” said Wynne.

Russell shook his head. “I don't feel qualified. I don't know the ins and outs.”

Wynne turned his attention to Wheels.

“What about you, Corporal?”

Wheels didn't answer. He just pointed at Russell as if to say he was with his friend.

Bixby cleared his throat. He said, “Captain, we've lost our scouts. We've lost Lieutenant Billings.”

“What's your point?” said Wynne.

“Just playing devil's advocate.”

“How about playing mine?”

“When haven't I?” Bixby said.

“Sir,” said Russell.

The captain turned to look at him. He told him to go ahead.

“Can I ask your opinion?”

“Of what?” Wynne asked.

Russell cleared his throat. He stroked the palm of one hand across his beard.

“I know you can't say whether or not they got our prisoners in this place we're headed, but let's say that they do. What are the chances of us getting them out?”

The captain glanced up at the paling sky and examined the sliver of moon that sat on the horizon's edge, growing fainter with each passing moment. Then he looked back at Russell.

“I don't think in terms of chances,” he said.

 

They rode along a loose talus trail between crumbling slopes that went towering on either side of them. Mid-morning, the trail narrowed and the rock rose sheer on both sides, so that they traveled an alley of sandstone, red layers of frozen sediment, white layers of passing seasons, centuries of them marbled there, and the face of the rock smooth as if polished by hand. Perhaps at one time this had been a river, or perhaps it was merely the wind that, for millennia, had scoured the surface with grains of quartz and feldspar. Russell rode past and, reaching, trailed his fingers against the rock wall, cold as ice to the touch and almost as slick. The clop of the horses' hooves echoed in the pass, and the sound bounced from wall to wall. There was no breeze and the air smelled very clean, and Russell thought this was a story that ought to be handed from father to son, but he couldn't see how that would be possible, and he couldn't help thinking of Sara. He'd grown used to pushing these thoughts away, but now they wouldn't leave: Sara and a farmhouse. Sara and children and a porch. Sara at a table with steam rising from dishes and a sense that there were others and all of them were his. She was his and the children were his, and he knew this daydream was distant as the stars.

The walls fell away and they emerged into bright sunlight, a low range of mountains to the north like an enormous shadow. The slope started at the horses' feet, and in the distance there were holes in the mountainside that Russell studied for several seconds. Then he lifted his binoculars and stared through the right eyepiece. What had looked like holes were actual entryways, and he could see a flight of steps cut into the rock, leading to black arches. He reined Fella to a stop and his stomach fell. He opened his mouth to say something, but the other riders had already seen. Wynne sat his horse with the rifle scope to his eye, and if he was concerned about seeing what Russell saw, he didn't say it. Wheels was about thirty meters behind, both hands shading his eyes and looking very gravely at the mountains. Russell turned the horse and put her forward. He'd gone a little giddy. The air smelled of cotton and straw.

To the south there was a small solitary hill covered in pine trees, and the horsemen made for it, Wynne riding in advance of the others, his golden stallion held to a fast trot and his carbine braced upright upon his thigh. The riders reached the hill's far side—an island in this field of panic grass and nettle—dismounted in a grove of evergreen and began tethering the horses, tying off on stakes. They gathered and knelt around Wynne, and the captain addressed them in a calm voice.

Wheels and Russell, he said, would stay with the horses and pull security. Rosa would climb the hill to provide overwatch. Wynne and Bixby would lead the rest of them to the entrance in the mountainside—Ziza and Ox, Perkins, Hallum, and Morgan—and they'd see if this was, in fact, an enemy stronghold, and if there were, in fact, prisoners of war.

The captain turned and glanced at something on the hillside above him. He stared several moments and bit his lower lip.