The Valley (22 page)

“Sir,” Merrick seethed, “you need to get out of this room
now.
”

“Just tell me before I find out on my own.”

Merrick screamed so hard his eyes squinted shut.

“GET OUT!”

Black turned and went.

The door slapped shut behind him. He stomped down the hallway, unsure where he was headed, his mind circling.

Danny. Gone.

What did you do?

Around the corner a metal wastebasket sat against the wall. He kicked it as hard as he could. It spun down the corridor, pinwheeling paper waste.

—

Tajumal scampered down the rocks and boulders of the steep ridgeline, making an easy silhouette against the dark skyline but not caring. Giddy.

I knew you would lead me to no harm tonight, Father.

This had been another tough choice, whether to follow the blasphemer as he fled the Americans' base during the fighting, or to take the chance and continue as planned. Tajumal had continued as planned.

And you did not let me fail, Father. You carried me in your blessed arms.

It had been a difficult task, as expected. It had almost seemed impossible, the prospect of getting all the way to the mountaintop, and back again, before daylight. Before Mother awoke.

The peoples of the valleys were born climbers. Goat blood in their veins. But this had been the hardest, fastest climb of Tajumal's young life. And there had been no guarantee of success at the mountaintop.

But you always called me clever, Father. And so I am.

It had been simple, really. Almost as simple as dealing with the equipment of the bearded one, the American warrior who scavenged the mountains for the souls of the people.

This was larger, but presented little problem. Unscrew some cables from what was obviously a very large battery package and throw them off the mountainside.

Once again, with no weapons or explosives, Tajumal had accomplished what Qadir and his rifle and his blustering ideas could not do.

And now the most important part rested safely in Tajumal's pocket. A little metal cylinder with points on each end that joined with the ends of the cables, so when they went together they looked like girls' parts fitting together with boys' parts, as ridiculous an idea as that seemed.

That piece was proof.

Now the talibs will know.

The Americans would come and fix their equipment. But that would take time. Enough time for Tajumal.

And soon the officer will know.

P
rivate Corelli.”

The voice made Corelli jump, again. He turned to his right and saw Lieutenant Black step from the shadows. The taciturn young officer's face wore the same taut, furrowed expression, almost a slight scowl, that seemed to be a permanent feature even when he wasn't actually scowling.

“Sir!” he exclaimed, snapping to attention.

He'd been on his way from the latrine back to the CP to finish out his shift and go to bed. Black had emerged from between two abandoned lockers that had been placed against the wall in the breezeway. Corelli wondered how long the gloomy lieutenant must have been standing there lurking in the dark waiting for him.

Black waved off his formalities and made no small talk.

“You're the armorer, right?”

“Yes, sir,” Corelli answered, moving his feet apart and placing his hands behind the small of his back.

The lieutenant bore into Corelli with his dark, searching eyes and spoke tersely.

“As fifteen-six investigating officer I am lawfully ordering you to support my investigative efforts.”

“Sir?” Corelli said hesitantly, not sure what was going on. Had the lieutenant thought he'd been untruthful?

“It means you have to help me and you can't say no.”

“Sir, I . . .”

“Well,” Black said, without malice, “you can say no, but you'd face charges for refusing a lawful order.”

“Sir,” Corelli stammered. “No! I mean, of course, yes, I will help you, sir.”

“When is your shift over?”

“Twenty-one hundred, sir.”

“Where's the armory?”

Corelli told him. The lieutenant seemed to understand his directions. He was finding his way around.

“Meet me there when your shift is done.”

“Roger, sir.”

The lieutenant turned to go, then stopped and looked at Corelli again with those eyes.

“Don't tell anyone you're meeting me there.”

“Yes, sir,” said Corelli.

He hadn't been planning to.

The lieutenant turned and strode away into the night. Corelli watched him go, repeating in his head the promise he'd made to himself.

—

Black found the door to the armory unlocked. Corelli was already in there waiting for him.

It was one of the most basic Army rules: Every weapon of any kind is to be in someone's actual physical possession, or locked away in a secure place, at all times. There were always extras, so every outpost needed a designated armory to store weapons, scopes, and night-vision gear that weren't in use.

They'd picked a good room for the purpose. One of the thicker wooden doors in the place; windowless cement walls lined with lockers and weapons racks.

A folding table sat in the middle with a folding chair on either side of it. A metal desk lamp provided the only illumination. Corelli hadn't turned on the fluorescents, leaving most of the room in shadow. No light, Black had noted, escaped from beneath the door as he approached.

Corelli was in the chair behind the table. He rose when Black entered. Black waved him down, pulled the door shut behind him, and took the other chair for himself.

“Did you tell anyone you were coming here?” he asked Corelli.

“No, sir. Just like you said.”

“Did anyone see you come here?”

Corelli looked at him questioningly.

“I don't think so, sir.”

“How long have you been the armorer?”

“Just about the whole time I've been here, sir.”

“Which is how long?”

“Um, like I said before, just about four months, sir.”

“What happened to the last armorer?”

“He got wounded right after I got here, sir, and got shipped out.”

“Why did you get made the armorer?”

“Um, Sergeant Merrick said he could tell I was smart, sir. Mostly I don't think anyone else wanted the job.”

Both those things were probably true. The armorer was responsible for keeping track of a lot of identical pieces of equipment. He needed a tolerance for paperwork, the patience to do a lot of counting and a lot of reading and writing of names and serial numbers, and the attention to detail to not screw it up.

Mostly he had to be diligent. Corelli struck Black as diligence personified.

“You have records of all weapons assigned to all personnel in this outpost?”

“Yes, sir.”

“And you keep records of all sign-outs and turn-ins.”

“Yes, sir.”

“Are your records accurate?”

“
Yes,
sir,” answered Corelli with what sounded like a touch of wounded pride at even being asked such a question.

That was a good sign.

“Okay,” said Black, producing a stapled pair of pages. “You are going to help me verify this roster against your records.”

“Sir?”

“I want to know every last soldier that is stationed at this outpost and what his job is,” Black told him. “Besides you and Brydon and Shannon, obviously.”

In the small sheaf of materials that Gayley had provided Black before he left Omaha was a computer printout from 3/44's headquarters. It purported to be a roster of everyone stationed at COP Vega, including arrival dates and the dates people came and went on leave.

Black had no idea how accurate it was, but knowing what he knew about Army units' slipshod recordkeeping habits, and knowing how violent and fluid the situation was in the Valley, he had reasons to be skeptical.

That's where Corelli came in. The armorer kept track of all the weapons, which meant the armorer kept track of all the people.

Corelli nodded.

“Too easy, sir.”

It was Black's favorite piece of Army slang. Everyone picked it up at basic training from the drill sergeants who harangued them as they learned and mastered basic soldier tasks.
You cannot screw this up, privates,
they would say as they showed the trainees how to seal a gas mask or find the north star
. It is Too. Easy.

“All right,” he told Corelli. “Let's run it down.”

Corelli grabbed his roster.

“Derek Chen,” Black began.

They ran it down. Black would read a name. Corelli would confirm that that soldier was in fact stationed at Vega and would tell whatever he knew about the guy's job in the platoon, where his guard shifts were, and which bay he slept in.

Several, he explained, were out on weeklong patrols in the mountains and only came back to refit briefly before heading out again. They would be tricky to link up with before the week was out, but Black decided to worry about that later.

After each name he would have Corelli cross that person off his armorer's roster, so that when they reached the end Black would know if anyone had been left off of his own printout. After that he would have a complete list of every man he was going to find, face-to-face, and where he could find him.

Seven names in they hit the first discrepancy.

“Robert Dale,” Black read.

“Um, he's K.I.A., sir.”

“Oh.”

Black drew a line through the name on his roster.

Several more names down was another soldier who had been killed since Black's roster was last updated. As they ran through the list there were several more guys wounded seriously enough to be evacuated from COP Vega more or less permanently. Black lined them out.

“Jason Traynor.”

They were just a few from the bottom.

“Who, sir?”

“Traynor.”

Corelli shook his head.

“No, sir.”

“Huh?”

“That's no one here, sir.”

“What do you mean?”

“There's no one at Vega named Traynor, sir.”

Black looked at the name on his roster, brow furrowed.

“Probably your roster is just really outdated, sir,” Corelli offered. “That could be a guy who was here before I ever came to Vega, so I never knew him.”

That didn't make sense to Black.

“Well, yeah,” he countered, doubtfully. “But you'd have heard guys talking about him.”

Corelli looked pained.

“Kind of depends on the guy, sir. Maybe he was a new replacement who got killed before he really got, uh, settled into the platoon.”

Black stared at the entry, picturing a young man with no friends, dying among strangers in the mountains of Afghanistan.

His eye drifted across the row. His finger followed.

“Negative,” he said flatly.

“Sir?”

“He went on leave.”

“What?”

Black fingered the end of the row, where there were two columns titled
R&R OUT
and
R&R RETURN
.

Corelli leaned over, looking confused.

“When, sir?”

“Six weeks ago.”

He turned the page so Corelli could see.

“Returned from the States a month ago,” Black said, pointing out the entry.

Corelli shook his head.

“Can't be right, sir. I was here before that, and there's never been any Traynor here since I've been here.”

That didn't make sense. Black knew how these printouts were generated. The unit's administrative office back on Omaha kept master records of every soldier in the battalion and where he was assigned. That office was the last word on who was assigned where, and any changes or reassignments. It was their business, the kind of thing they spent their days keeping track of.

Even if there were an error, when a soldier left FOB Omaha to go on R&R leave it would be caught. Soldiers waited for their flights in a little departure shack next to the airfield. The last thing a soldier did before stepping through the doorway and onto the tarmac to get on the helicopter was to show his or her ID and swipe it through an electronic reader that sat next to the doorframe.

That information was recorded electronically and transmitted back to the administrative office of each unit, where it was used to populate the date fields on the roster. It was a final, official record of who came and went from FOB Omaha. Once the card is swiped, the soldier is in the custody of the aircrew, and once he's dropped off at his next stop he's on his own until he signs back in from leave.

Those rosters were used daily for all manner of purposes, and each company had to verify them monthly. No error could last more than a couple weeks. If the roster said that Jason Traynor was in the unit, someone named Jason Traynor was in the unit.

Black clutched the sheet in his hand and held it in the air before Corelli, who shrank from it.

“This roster is generated by your battalion's S-1 shop,” he said sternly. “Are you trying to tell me that the S-1 doesn't know who is in your company?”

Corelli opened his mouth but nothing came out.

“You can't B.S. me on this, Corelli.”

“Sir, I'm not—”

“Who's Traynor?”

Corelli looked back at him, eyes wide.

“I don't know, sir!” he protested.

“Corelli!”

“Sir!”

Corelli shook his head, hands up. Black looked at him closely. Corelli squirmed and looked elsewhere.

Black slapped the sheet back down on the table.

“Run down the rest,” he ordered.

They finished the last few names without discrepancies.

“Now count,” Black demanded. “I need to know how many guys are here, right now, today, besides you.”

Corelli ran down his roster.

“Forty-six, sir.”

Black counted his own, top to bottom.

“And I get forty-seven,” he said irritably, shoving the paper away from him.

He sat back in his chair and looked at Corelli.

“Which accounts for Traynor,” he said, casting an eye at the young soldier. “Whoever the hell Traynor is.”

Corelli looked here and there helplessly.

“Private,” Black said, staring at him closely. “It is very important that you tell me the truth here.”

Corelli caught Black's gaze and returned it.

“Sir,” he said, without flinching this time, “I would not tell you anything that was untrue.”

Black looked him up and down. He sighed.

“No,” he said quietly, “I don't think you would.”

Corelli seemed to relax a little.

“Sir,” he said, “can I ask a question?”

“What is it?”

“Why do you need to know every person who's here?”

“So I can be sure I have talked to every soldier on this outpost.”

Corelli stared at his lap.

“Oh.”

He said no more.

Black's gaze roamed the shadowy armory, along the weapons racks and lockers. There was a set of metal shelves along one wall. An Army-issue brown towel was spread across one, with small spare parts laid out across it. Firing pins, recoil springs. In the middle sat a bulkier item, cylindrical and made of black metal. Black recognized it as the bolt carrier from a rifle. The primary mechanism required to make the thing fire.

He pointed at it.

“Is that Oswalt's?”

“Sir?”

Corelli looked surprised.

“C'mon, Corelli,” he said patiently. “I know Oswalt's special.”

It was not all that uncommon, back on the FOB, for leaders to remove the bolt from or otherwise disable the rifle of a soldier known to have mental health issues or suspected of being suicidal. Lessened the chances of him hurting himself, or someone else, and it was less humiliating than taking his rifle away entirely. Until his buddies found out, of course, which they always did.

“Yes, sir,” Corelli answered. “That one belongs to Oswalt.”

Black hadn't heard of taking the bolt from a soldier out in the field, which would seem to defeat the purpose of him being in the field at all. But it didn't sound like Oswalt was allowed to go out on patrols anyway.

“How long?” he asked.

“For Oswalt, since I've been here, sir.”

Black nodded. He gathered up his roster and began to stand up. He stopped.