The Valley (17 page)

“I don't know, I figured maybe a satellite connection or something.”

The kid just shook his head, exhaling.

“Ain't no satellite to talk to from here, sir,” he said.

He thumbed upward, indicating the steep mountainsides rising above them.

“No line of sight.”

Black nodded.

“Ain't no M.W.R. ever been up this valley,” the soldier declared, “or ever gonna be up this valley, sir.”

That stood for Morale, Welfare, and Recreation, which was the Army term for the makeshift little recreation centers you found on every FOB—Ping-Pong, TV, board games, Internet—and for all Army initiatives taken in the name of M, W, and R, like getting satellite uplinks to remote posts so joes could check in back home.

“Who's Danny trying to pick up on his antenna?”

“Danny,” the kid scoffed. “Danny's crazy, sir. Freaking 'terp. Thinks he's gonna get his hajji music all the way up here.”

He shook his head again.

“No point,” he said. “No one to listen to, no one to talk to.”

The other one, the mustachioed Bosch, nodded slightly.

“Only way we're ever gonna send an e-mail,” the soldier finished, “is for them to hurry and get us the fuck outta this bitch.”

“How long you guys got left?” Black asked.

The soldier made a
How the hell am I supposed to know?
gesture.

“Hell, we ain't even supposed to be here now.”

“What do you mean?”

“I mean this post ain't even supposed to be here, sir. Supposed to be closed.”

“Where'd you hear that?”

“The L.T. told us,” the soldier answered.

“Pistone?”

The kid nodded.

“Came back from the FOB one time and said that Battalion told him this place was scheduled to be shut down. COP Heavenly too.”

The soldier hocked up a deep wad from his throat and spat it through the window.

“Said it's part of a ‘strategic realignment' or some bullshit. I don't remember what he called it, but the point is, we're retreating. Giving up on this fucking valley.”

“I didn't know that.”

“Yep, sir,” the soldier said. “This base is abandoned. We just ain't abandoned it yet.”

“Why not?”

“Assets got diverted. They were all ready to move us out and dismantle this place and then at the last minute Brigade said they needed all the engineer equipment and the backhaul trucks and all that for some big fight they were having in another valley. So they said, ‘Sit tight, we'll be back for you soon.'”

“How long ago was that?”

“Three months.”

“What?!”

“That's right, L.T. Three months and we ain't heard shit.”

He spat again.

“Not even ‘We haven't forgotten about you.' Fucking radio silence.”

One of the worst sins in the Army, Black had always thought, was leaders failing to pass information down to their lowest subordinates. Too many people seemed to think that hoarding information, then doling it out like pieces of Halloween candy, made you a strong leader.

He wondered at what point in the chain of command, from the sergeants who directly supervised these guys all the way up to the colonel in charge of their battalion, the communication had broken down.

“But of course we can't just hunker down like smart people and ride it out,” the kid said, agitated. “We gotta ‘Keep On With The Mission.' We gotta keep going out on the trail, go on our goddamn patrols, fucking clear out Sniper Town every other day, cruise the town, get
shot
half the time, so . . . what? Maybe someday we interdict some fucking hajji wannabe suicide bomber? Like they don't know any other goddamn way around this valley.”

After his speech he seemed to calm himself. He took a long drag, killing the last of the smoke.

“Welcome to the land of the lost, sir. We are a platoon without a purpose.”

“When was your unit in Iraq?” Black asked out of nowhere.

The kid looked at him, startled.

“How'd you know that, L.T.?”

“‘Hajji,'” Black offered.

It was a holdover term more common to Iraq. In Afghanistan you'd hear “muj,” for
mujahideen.
Among other things.

“Oh-three,” the soldier answered.

Black nodded.

“Hey, sir,” the kid said. “Hajji is hajji, whatever shitty country he lives in. We go there, we go here, we go all around the world and hajji's always the same. He lives in shit and lets it go to shit, and we keep coming around like we're gonna fucking fix it for him.”

Bosch watched his friend rant while allowing smoke to fan upward from his mouth.

“Hajji don't surf,” he deadpanned.

The first soldier snorted a single laugh and flipped the butt out the window.

“So here we are, sir,” he said. “Remember us when they remember us, I guess.”

That hung in the air for a bit.

“Heck,” the soldier said unconvincingly, “maybe they won't hit us anymore because they know we're leaving.”

Black said nothing. Bosch just looked at his friend with something between exasperation and pity.

“How long since you guys got back to the FOB?” Black asked.

“Shit,” the first soldier spat. “Whattaya say, Bosch? Like, two months?”

Bosch tipped a jutting chin upward in a barely perceptible nod.

“Even that,” the soldier went on, “was bullshit. That wasn't no trip back to the FOB. Kept us locked down in the barracks there, practically. Did laundry, which was a joke 'cause our shit's gonna be all nasty in a week anyway. Took us over to chow in a group. Thought they were gonna march us over there in formation like basic training. Same for the PX and the Internet café. Didn't get to get out or do shit. Then twenty-four hours later, it's ‘Back on the trucks' and we came back up here.”

“How come?”

“Ask our leadership, sir. Wanted us to ‘stay focused' or some bullshit. FOB Omaha may as well be stateside. I couldn't find my way around that place to save my life. Couldn't even tell you what freaking units are there.”

The fog was all the way in and slowly rising again.

“What's ‘Xanadu'?” Black asked.

“What's what?”

“Xanadu.”

The soldier looked at him blankly. Black looked at Bosch, who shook his head.

“Never mind.”

Black took a last drag on his cigarette.

“I'm not supposed to be here either,” he said.

The soldier seemed confused.

“What, like, here at Vega, sir?”

“No. Up here in this guard post.”

“Oh.”

Black tossed his smoke out the window and turned to go. Bosch spoke up.

“Guess we got something in common, then, L.T.”

He stopped and looked. Bosch had turned back to his weapon.

Black stepped out into the night. Danny was there at the far corner of the roof again, wrestling uselessly with his antenna.

I
n the dark of the morning the soldiers in the courtyard were gray shapes huddled in shadow. They milled close together all around the edges of the muddy square, keeping under the overhangs. Under cover. Silence punctuated by snaps of equipment clips, rustling of uniform fabric as gear was adjusted over it.

Several guys had headphones on, eyes closed, humming and thrumming in their own worlds. Tinny little cacophonies whispered into the quiet around them as they tranced out, beating back thoughts. Others fidgeted and fingered black weapons or rocked from foot to foot. Sergeants, off in corners, spoke in low tones. No one smoked out here.

Black pushed the button on his wristwatch. Amber light told him 0532. The sky hadn't started to turn yet, but soon. The fog lapping at the shores of COP Vega was thinning and ready to recede.

Black saw Corelli standing nearby, ears free, thumbs hooked in his gear, staring off into the night. Shannon lurked further down the breezeway, a small mountain studded with combat equipment, murmuring to his buddies and ignoring Black.

No one, to be sure, appeared to be paying any direct attention to Black. But he had developed a highly sensitive radar for being glanced at and whispered about, and it was pinging loudly. He did not imagine anyone was particularly glad about having this lieutenant's errand grafted onto their already hazardous patrol.

As his eyes adjusted he saw a larger gaggle of people gathered at a far corner of the courtyard. They huddled around someone tall, someone who was not dressed like a soldier. Black turned to a kid who was standing near him, fidgeting.

“Who's that?” he asked quietly.

The soldier shook his head and shrugged and seemed to find a reason to move away and fidget somewhere farther from Black.

“That's the Monk, sir,” came a large, quiet voice from behind him.

He turned. Oswalt, the big soldier from the hole in the wall.

“Morning, sir.”

Oswalt smiled down on him. He wasn't wearing gear.

“Morning,” Black answered quietly. “Who's ‘the Monk'?”

“Oh, he's a spooky-spook guy, sir. A snake-eater.”

“What he's trying to tell you,” murmured Caine, appearing from nowhere, “is that he's special forces.”

Black turned. Caine was geared up and ready. Danny stood next to him in the dim light.

Black squinted across the courtyard at this Monk person.

“He looks like a hobo.”

“
Speeeecial
forces, sir,” answered Caine.

Black nodded. Not your run-of-the-mill green beret.

“Ours?”

He meant: Army superelite, or someone else's superelite. Caine just shrugged.

“We ain't privileged to know. Shows up every now and then to charge batteries or borrow some wet wipes or whatnot, but . . .”

He held his hands up in the
Your guess is as good as mine
gesture.

“C'mon,” he said. “Come say hi.”

He strode along under the overhang. Black and Danny followed.

“See you, Oswalt,” Black said over his shoulder.

“See you, sir. Good luck.”

Caine had said nothing so far about Merrick showing up in his place the day before. By Caine's demeanor Black could have forgotten that he'd slammed Pistone's door in the sergeant's face the day before. Maybe Merrick told Caine to cool his jets and let it go, though that hardly seemed likely.

They worked their way around through milling soldiers to the far corner of the courtyard. There, talking to a couple of junior sergeants and a couple of joes, was a man dressed in a traditional Afghan
budzun
cloak, with a loose brown linen scarf wrapped high around his neck and a rolled, woolen Chitrali hat on his head.

He was about Black's age. He was not large, but tall and well muscled, as was apparent even through the cloak. Black could make out no sign of weapons or equipment beneath his garments, though he figured something must be there. The man's hair fell somewhere between dark blond and sandy brown, with a matching “beard” struggling to cover his lower face in scrubby curls. What remained showing, which was most of it, was a sun-browned visage of angular peaks and valleys that would be tough for most people to place—something strikingly, ethnically European, something from a black-and-white photo-scrum of schoolboys from a hundred years before. Probably a mix of a couple of things.

Bosch, from the guard tower the night before, was there. He wasn't geared up for the patrol, probably because he'd been on duty all night. He'd apparently come down after his shift to chat with the Monk.

They were shaking hands as Black and Caine approached. Bosch turned to see them, stuffed his hands in his pockets, and roamed away scowling at the ground.

“Hey, bro,” said Caine, walking up. “How's it going?”

“You know,” the man said noncommittally.

He extended a hand languidly and they shook.

“This is Black,” Caine said, gesturing. “Came up from the FOB for the weekly package deal.”

The man turned to Black and locked eyes as he extended his hand. It was an oddly formal gesture—thumb up, palm vertical, chin tilted, arm crooked ninety degrees at the elbow, the rest of him rock-straight like a chipper businessman from a silent movie.

“Lieutenant,” he said, a wry grin on his face.

“Pleasure,” Black answered slowly, examining his beard.

The Monk nodded with mock significance and clasped his hand. Caine cocked his head at the strange display.

“Anyway, guys,” the Monk continued breezily, ignoring Caine's look, “maybe, like, two weeks?”

“Sure,” one answered, clearly enamored of the guy.

“All right,” he said, nodding. “Guess I'm out, then.”

He seemed ready to go, then thought of something. He turned to Black.

“Hey, bud. You're just here a few days, right?”

Black nodded.

The man fished deep in his garments and came out with a tattered-looking Ziploc bag. He peeled it open and produced a wrinkled little envelope. The kind about big enough for an index card or a piece of folded stationery and that's it. He held it out to Black.

“Mind mailing this for me when you go back down?”

Black took the envelope and held it up in front of his face in the dark. A handwritten address in blocky letters crowded the front. Turning it over, he could just make out a series of hand-colored hearts romping across the seal.

“Don't worry, L.T.,” the Monk chuckled. “There's no stamp on it, so you're not mishandling mail or whatever.”

He flashed a grin at the rest of the guys.

“I know how you officers worry abo—”

He cut himself off.

“Hey, you mind buying me a stamp too?”

He gave a mock-guilty wince.

“Sorry.”

“Sure,” Black replied, looking at the envelope.

“Cool. Thanks a mil. Been carrying that sucker for weeks.”

He looked at the assembled guys and feigned sheepishness.

“My chickie will be so happy.”

The Monk stuck his hands in his
budzun
pockets and made to go.

“All right, dudes. Thanks again. Take it easy.”

He turned and trudged across the damp ground toward the gate.

“Wow, sir,” said Caine dryly, for the benefit of the assembled joes. “Carrying supersecret mail.”

The soldiers chuckled, but Black could tell they were actually a bit envious of him being asked to perform a simple task by the mystery warrior, a man so hard and cool he didn't even care if anyone saw him handing off a love note to his girl.

Black pocketed the wilted envelope, and the soldiers wandered off.

“Why's he ‘the Monk'?” he asked Caine.

“Just what the bubbas call him. Lives like a monk in the mountains. Nobody knows his name, obviously.”

“What's he do?”

Caine shrugged.

“Eats rocks and tries to figure out where the bad guys are coming from and why every last fucker in this valley seems to want to slit every last one of our throats.”

“Where's he sleep?”

“Fuck if I know. Up in trees, down by the river. Probably in a lot of shitty shacks.”

“How's that work?”

“What I'm saying,” Caine said impatiently, “is that he probably does a lot of hookah-smoking with a lot of dumb locals in their crummy little houses and asks them why their cousin hates the infidel so much when there's perfectly good Taliban here to be pissed off at.”

“Yeah, I get that,” Black said, showing his own annoyance. “I'm saying, he's white.”

“You ever see a Nuristani guy, L.T.?”

Black was not happy to admit he hadn't.

“A bunch of 'em look white, or half-white. They aren't the same as regular Afghans, like, ethnically. Got some white-guy Caucasian mixed in there somewhere.”

Black had never heard anyone mention this down on FOB Omaha.

“Why do you think I wanted you to speak English when I kicked your ass the other night?”

“Huh,” Black said, recalling this. His jaw still hurt.

“Yup,” Caine nodded. “That's why some of these Valley guys can shave their faces and slip right inside an American unit before anyone figures out they're wearing our uniforms. And a white dude can do some halfway decent blending in around here once he grows a beard and puts on shitty clothes.”

“Well,” Black replied, “so what happens when the Monk guy has to actually talk to people?”

“Yeah, they know he's not from here once they talk to him,” Caine said. “Shit, the 'terps don't even know all these crazy Valley languages, besides ‘hello' and stuff. Just Pashto. But you can still do a lot of traveling without attracting a lot of attention.”

“So they know he's military?”

“I doubt it. He's probably got a good cover story, like he's some crazy Euro hiker tourist guy or something. You know, walk across Afghanistan, live with the locals, write a book about it.”

“He told you that?”

“Hell, no. He doesn't tell us shit. I just figured. That's probably why he only comes and goes from here in the dark and when it's foggy.”

Black took this all in.

“Where do the Caucasian genes come from?”

“Funny you ask,” said Caine, happy to be asked. “Lost Roman legion.”

“What?”

“What I said. Roman army came here fighting and a whole legion never came back.”

Black hadn't heard any of this either.

“Dudes spread their seed,” Caine said, sprinklering the Valley with a sweep of his arm, “and now the people are all mixed up.”

“Huh,” said Black again.

“Yup,” Caine said, pleased with himself. “Yeah, I see you looking at dumb ol' Sarge Caine that way, L.T. Ol' Sarge knows a thing or—”

“Caine.”

It was Merrick's voice, behind them and a few steps away.

Caine turned. Merrick motioned him over with his head. He registered Black's presence but said nothing.

“Stay here,” Caine said to Black and stepped away.

“He means Alexander the Great,” came a heavily accented voice from Black's other side.

He turned. It was Danny. He wore the standard, stripped-down linguist's patrol uniform: a set of cast-off fatigues with a U.S. flag but no rank, and a helmet with no camouflage cover, night-vision fittings, or other accoutrements.

He stuck his hand out. Black shook it.

“How's it going?”

“Hey, man, how are you?” said Danny.

“I'm good. What was that about Alexander the Great?”

“When he was talking about the Roman legion,” Danny explained, “they never come here. The British, they come here a lot later, but the Romans was never here. He's talking about Alexander the Great.”

“He was here?”

“Yeah, man, he fought near here, he fought the
kafiri.
”

Black knew this word, from Kourash back on the FOB.

“Unbelievers,” he said.

Danny smiled and nodded.

“Yes, L.T. Good. The infidel who do not accept the book.”

When Danny said “L.T.” it sounded different from the joes. It sounded more like a straight term of respect. He wasn't in the Army, so he wasn't going to say “sir
.”
Apparently “L.T.” was as close as it got.

“So Alexander's soldiers married the women here.”

Danny weighed a Little of This and a Little of That between his hands.

“Eh, nobody knows. This is theory. Many theories.”

So Danny knew a thing or two too.

“You know why I'm here this week?” Black asked him.

Danny stuck his hands in his pockets and nodded.

“Yeah, man, investigation. Cool. Whatever I help, I help.”

“I think today's patrol is mostly for me. To talk to the chief in Darreh Sin.”

“Mmmm,” said Danny appreciatively. “He's big man, good man. Good man to talk to.”

“Okay.”

Caine reappeared.

“We're going,” he said quietly. “You stay with Danny and me, sir. And don't crowd me.”

“Got it.”

Around the edges of the courtyard, beneath the overhangs, soldiers had clumped into squads, charging weapons and putting headphones away. The murmured chitchat had gone quiet.

Beginning at the end closest to the gate, one soldier at a time stepped out from beneath cover and walked across the wet ground and through the egress point. The next would follow, leaving a good twenty-five or thirty feet between them. In this way the area under the overhangs was steadily emptying. They obviously had the routine down.

The first to go out, Black noted, was Merrick. This was unusual, the senior person on a patrol placing himself at the front of it, where he could be shot first or step on a bomb.

“Where are you from?” Black whispered to Danny as they waited their turn.

“Kabul.”

His father, Danny explained quietly, had come from a minor Kabul family to become a big deal in the old Afghan army, before it splintered into squabbling militias. He hated the Taliban but from what Black gathered he had figured out how to make his way in the new Afghanistan. He was a businessman now, and expected his sons to make their own way like he had.