The Valley (21 page)

But one thing was clear. It had been the right call, not following the bearded one as he left the American compound before dawn that morning.

I was tempted, Father.

But what could be learned that was not already known? That the man was an American warrior who roamed the valleys trying to turn the peoples against one another, to sow discord and doubt? That was nothing new.

That he came and went from the American compound like a jackal in the night? That he stowed away gear and radios in strange places? No one knew these things but Tajumal.

And I will see to that.

No, the wiser course had been to wait and see what else emerged from the Americans' base. To rush straight to town afterward, to be waiting for the chief when he woke. To tell him that the real prize approaches.

The chief was a boisterous weakling, unwilling to lead his people to the true faith, to the true guardians of the valley.

Even Qadir, who sucks up to him, can see that. Even Qadir knows where to keep his true loyalties.

It was no surprise that the chief did nothing, that he let the prey escape.

Yet now he attacks the Americans at their fortress afterward, all day and all night. There was no reason in this. But there was, at least, an explanation.

You wish it to be me who is your vessel, Father. My fragile form to do your work.

Tajumal was to take the prize. The true devil.

And now I have seen you.

H
eavy pounding on the door startled him awake.

He sat up in the pitch-dark and pushed the light on his watch. 0812. He'd slept for several hours.

Pounding again. The door rattled against the hasp, slim shafts of light flashing in from the hallway. He stared at it a few moments, reminding himself that he was prepared for this.

His bare feet found the pair of flip-flops on the concrete floor and slid themselves in. He rose from bed in his PT uniform and crossed the black room as the pounding continued. He found the latch with his fingers and cracked the door, which pushed itself the rest of the way open forcefully.

“Where is he?!”

Caine. Shouting.

Black squinted at him, bleary.

“What?”

“What did you do to him!?” Caine cried, agitated.

This was not the person or the question Black was expecting.

“What?” he repeated dumbly.

“Danny!”

Black shook his head to clear it.

“What are you talking about?”

“Where the fuck is Danny?”

“What are you talking about?” he repeated.

“Danny the fucking 'terp! Where is he?”

“You can't find him?”

“No, we can't fucking find him!
Where is he?
”

None of this made sense to Black.

“How would I know? Where'd you see him last?”

“With you!”

“He hasn't been with me—” he began, then realized what Caine was talking about.

“You mean when we came back from the patrol?” he asked.

“Yeah, when we came back from the patrol!” shouted Caine.

“That was almost twenty-four hours ago!”

“No shit, sir!”

Black wheeled around and crossed to his sneakers, which were sitting, laced, near his ruck on the floor. He grabbed them and began yanking them on over his bare feet, standing on one leg in an inverted trapezoid of light from the hallway.

“What are you doing?”

“I need to see Sergeant Merrick,” Black declared as he jerked the second shoe on. “Where is he?”

“Sir, he's gonna ask you the same quest—”

“Excuse me,” Black said, pushing past him. He let the door swing shut behind him and stalked off down the hallway, leaving Caine at his doorway calling after him.

He accosted the first soldier he saw and demanded to know where Merrick was. The kid directed him to the chow hall. Black stalked past, weaving his way right and left through the slapdash compound, reeling.

—

Merrick saw Black as he pushed through the door to the chow hall.

“Where's Danny?” he demanded.

“What do you mean Danny's gone?” Black demanded simultaneously.

“What?” they both replied at once.

“Where. Is. Danny?” Merrick repeated.

He stood amidst a gaggle of soldiers, where he'd been giving his morning instructions again.

“I don't know where he is!” Black shot back. “Is it true that no one's seen him since we came back from the patrol?”

“No one but you, Lieutenant.”

“I didn't see him!”

“Actually, sir, you said you saw him off barfing someplace, so if you'd tell us where that is we'd really appreciate it.”

“I didn't see where he went! How can you not have accountability of him?”

An audible sucking in of breath from among the soldiers.

“
Excuse
me?” Merrick said sharply.

“Have you checked the entire outpost?”

“Have I
checked the entire outpost?
”

“Yeah!”

Merrick looked at Black like this was the most outrageous question he'd ever been asked.

“Yes,
sir,
” he replied contemptuously. “While you were asleep in your rack I did in fact
check my entire outpost.
”

A couple of the soldiers hazarded snorky little giggles. Black persisted.

“Did you search his room?”

“I don't root through a man's things, sir,” Merrick said disdainfully. “I opened his room. He's not in there.”

“Well, how did he get out?”

Merrick gave the soldiers a
Can you believe this guy?
look.

“He disapparated like Harry fucking Potter!”

More snorks.

“There's no force field, sir,” Merrick went on, exasperated. “If he wanted to leave he could've gone over a wall without anyone seeing him.”

Black didn't like the sound of that.

“Why would he want to leave?”

Merrick looked at him pointedly.

“You tell me, sir.”

Black ignored this. He kept thinking of Danny alone in the mountains.

“Have you reported him missing?” he asked Merrick.

He felt foolish as soon as he'd said it.

“Have I reported—”

Merrick turned bright red. Soldiers shifted uncomfortably.

“Yes,
Lieutenant,
I have reported to my chain of command that my Department of Defense
civilian contractor linguist
has gone
missing in Afghanistan!
”

No one chuckled that time.

“And I am sure,
sir,
” Merrick went on, “that they will be interested in talking to you in the course of their
own
investigation into what happened to him.”

Black's thoughts raced. Something occurred to him.

“What if he got grabbed?”

“If he got what?”

“Grabbed. Sergeant Caine said guys have made it onto the COP before in U.S. uniforms.”

That one gave Merrick pause. Things had been chaotic for many hours, including deep into the darkness. Danny had last been seen close to the gate, and no one knew where he had been after that.

Merrick's theatrical façade of contempt seemed to fall away a bit, for just a moment.

“Unlikely but not impossible,” he conceded tersely.

“So who would want to come onto the COP and grab him?”

Up went the façade again.

“Once again, sir,” he said pointedly, “you tell me.”

Everyone looked at Black in silence.

Stop dodging.

He cleared his throat.

“Give us the room,” he said to the empty air, suddenly aware of how difficult it is to appear authoritative while wearing shorts and a T-shirt with sockless sneakers.

A couple of the younger soldiers started haltingly for the door. The rest looked to their platoon sergeant, who was still looking at Black.

“Go,” Merrick said.

They scampered out.

Merrick watched them go. When the door closed behind them he turned back to Black.

“No more bullshit, sir,” he said. “Let's have it.”

Black swallowed.

“No.”

“What?”

“I'm not divulging confidential communications from my investigation.”

“What?”

“You need to tell me what's going on.”

“What are you talking about?”

“You need to tell me,” Black repeated quietly, “what's going on.”

Merrick's brow furrowed in confusion.

“Uh, what's going on, sir, is that the soldiers are gone now, so you can tell me what happened with you and Danny in Darreh Sin, so maybe I can figure out why he left my outpost and where the hell he is.”

“That's not what I'm talking about.”

Merrick looked at him like he was a crazy person.

“Okayyyy,” he said, losing patience. “Then what
are
you talking about, sir?”

“Sergeant . . .” Black said, shaking his head.

“Sir,” Merrick shot back, mimicking his tone.

“I'm talking about the Valley.”

“The Valley.”

“You need to tell me what's going on with your platoon and this valley.”

“My platoon and this valley,” Merrick repeated blankly.

“Yes.”

“
I
need to tell you.”

“Yes.”

Merrick stared at him in silence. Black stared back, waiting.

Finally Merrick stepped around him and went to the door. There was a hasp on the interior of it so that the door could be locked from within. He flipped the hasp around shut and turned the eyebolt so no soldier wandering by could get in.

He turned around and strode back to Black, his mouth pinched in rising anger.

“All, right, sir,” he said. “I'm going to tell you the situation with the Valley. Are you ready?”

“I'm ready.”

“
You
are the situation in the Valley, sir.”

Black said nothing.

“You are here and you're in over your head.”

“Sergeant . . .”

“And you are
fucking
up!” Merrick spat. “You have been at my outpost less than seventy-two hours. You have disrupted my operations and placed my entire platoon in danger. You have directly caused four casualties, including two on my sniper team, which nearly didn't make it home.”

“Sergeant . . .”

“And you are
lucky,
” Merrick drove on, “that those injuries were minor, which is a goddamned miracle, and you are
lucky
that I have not confined you to Lieutenant Pistone's quarters under
guard
for the duration of your stay here to keep you from getting any of my soldiers killed.”

“None of that is—”

“Now,” Merrick said, cutting him off, “you've obviously got some idea in your head that you're on to some kind of deep mystery here, because you are talking a bunch of cryptic talk about this valley and how ‘something's going on.'”

He spoke quickly, eyes flashing contempt.

“I don't
know
what you are talking about, sir, and honestly I don't
care,
because you are a lieutenant, and lieutenants always think that they know something that the rest of the world doesn't know and needs their help to figure out.”

Black took a breath to respond but Merrick kept talking.

“Now you can tell me what that big idea in your head is, or don't tell me. Like I said, I don't care, because I don't pretend to know what goes on in officers' heads. What I
do
care about, and what I
will
do, is fulfill my responsibilities.”

He let that hang in the air a moment.

“So now it's time for
you
to listen to
me,
sir. Are you listening?”

“I am listening.”

Merrick stepped in very close to Black.

“This is what's going to happen,” he said, in clipped, barely restrained tones. “You are going to stop playing whatever games you are playing and recognize exactly the situation you are in, which is that you are an inexperienced junior officer operating outside your level of tactical competence and endangering the lives of soldiers.
Your
only responsibility
as
an officer now is to give me all the information I need to
un
fuck what you have
fucked
up. So now,
sir,
it's time to open your mouth, and there's not going to be any dicking around, and you are going to tell me
exactly
why that shitshow happened back there so I can figure out how to
fix
it.”

Merrick waited, seething. Black swallowed again. He didn't break away from Merrick's gaze.

“You're bluffing,” he said.

“What?”

“You're trying to change the subject and scare me off.”

Merrick's eyes went wide.

“I'm doing
what?!
”

“This isn't about what happened in the town and you know it,” Black said.

Merrick appeared to be speechless.

“That's a ‘friendly' town?” Black went on, gathering momentum. “How come there were no males between fifteen and fifty? Why were the children looking at us like we were the bogeyman?”

“Now, that's not—”

“That's not a normal town,” Black said, feeling his face flush. “And it's not because of a goat. Don't tell me this is about some damned goat!”

“It's
not
about a goat!” Merrick shot back, finding his voice. “It's about whatever you did to get us bombed for half the night!”

“Bullshit!” Black heard himself shout in the sergeant's face. “This isn't on me!”

Yes it is.

“Something happened in that town,” Black said angrily, “or happened in this valley, and
you
know what it is!
You
sent me and Danny in there!
You
had the obligation to tell
me
what I needed to know, so don't talk about
my
responsibilities!”

“Nothing happened in that town except you!”

“Stop bullshitting me!”

“No one's bullshitting you! You're making stuff up to cover your ass for fucking up!”

He's right. Tell him.

Black took a step backward from the sergeant.

“This,” he said, finding himself suddenly calm, “is all on you.”

No it's not.

Merrick lost it.

“FUCK you, Lieutenant!” he hurled at Black, red-faced and shaking. “You tell me what you did!”

He was more or less screaming now.

“You're going to
tell
me what you did, and then you're going to go back to your quarters and sit there and you're not going to do one more FUCKING THING until you leave MY FUCKING OUTPOST!”

“Why,” Black asked in a quiet voice, “are you directing soldiers to lie to me about how long they've been at COP Vega?”

Merrick stopped short.

“What?”

“Why are you telling soldiers to lie to me about how long they've been here?”

“Why am I
what?!
”

“Just tell me what's happening, Sergeant.”

Merrick's enraged mouth hung open, his face inflamed, flabbergasted.

“You're not going to lock me up,” Black continued coolly, “because you're a sergeant first class and you know what obstructing an investigation would do to your career.”