The Valley (24 page)

H
e'd figured the Wizard for a night owl, and he wasn't wrong.

“What?” came the bored answer to his quiet knock.

Black took that as permission to enter.

The overhead lights in Bay Two were out, leaving the shadows punctuated only by dusty splays of light rising from a few of the plywood enclosures. Looking left and right he noted that the immediately adjoining hootches were all dark. At least one was emitting snores. He pushed open Brydon's door.

He was lying on his bunk, hands behind his head, staring at the darkened ceiling. No book in sight.

Black brandished the roster, creased and wilted in his hand.

“Who are you?” he demanded.

Brydon exhaled heavily but didn't answer.

“Why aren't you on this roster?”

Brydon closed his eyes. He didn't seem surprised by the question.

“Soldier,” Black repeated, sternly. “Why are you not on here?”

Brydon sighed.

“'Cause I'm a ghost, sir,” he murmured.

“What? What does that mean?”

Brydon didn't open his eyes.

“Means what it means, sir.”

“What are you talking about? Who's Traynor?”

Brydon sighed again and shook his head slightly. Black felt his blood pressure rising and had to remind himself to keep his voice down amidst the warren of open-air hootches.

“Brydon, you can't play games with this,” he pressed. “I remember what you said. You said you'd been at Vega for three months. That's not true. Who told you to lie?”

Brydon said nothing.

“You know what's going on, and you're not telling me.”

Still nothing.

“Why did you say you figured I'd be a captain?” Black asked, urgently. “Why would I be a captain?”

“I think,” Brydon finally drawled, “that I'm all done talking to you.”

Black shook his head in disbelief.

“Soldier, are you seriously invoking your rights against self-incrimination? Don't do it like this.”

Brydon didn't respond.

“Brydon, I'm not after you here,” Black said placatingly. “I don't even think you did anything wrong. Don't make it go ugly on you.”

Brydon opened his sleepless eyes and turned his head to face Black.

“Lieutenant,” he said flatly. “It has been ugly on me for a long time.”

“What?”

Brydon closed them again and lay back.

“Good night, sir,” he said.

“What does that mean?”

Nothing.

Don't ask.

“What's ‘Xanadu'?” Black demanded.

Brydon reacted as though suffering a sudden pain in the abdomen.

“Ohhhhhh . . .” he groaned.

He rolled away from Black, curling on his side like a dog finally released from the beating.

—

You're getting sloppy.

It was the kind of trivial comedy of errors that got soldiers killed in Afghanistan every day.

All the stuff you used to not screw up.

It was a lapse indeed. Poor attention to detail, and poor communication practice. He'd been so focused on names of all the other soldiers in the unit that he hadn't even noticed, as he went through his roster with Corelli, that Brydon's name wasn't on it.

He'd told Corelli,
I need to know how many guys are here right now, today, besides you,
without realizing that the meticulous soldier would take him literally and subtract one from his count to exclude himself. Black hadn't thought to clarify, hadn't noticed there was anything
to
clarify.

That's why Corelli came up with forty-six guys to Black's forty-seven, when in fact both rosters had forty-seven men on them. Black's roster, straight from 3/44's headquarters, was missing Brydon but included the absent Traynor. Corelli's was the reverse.

He roamed the silent corridors and passageways, moving slowly, more than once absently losing his way and having to turn back, his mind following his unguided path. Questions were piling upon questions now, branching beyond his ability to sort them.

And lies upon lies.

He found himself in front of Lieutenant Pistone's hootch. His watch told him it was almost three
A.M
. He let himself in and commenced pacing the room.

Why did 3/44's headquarters believe two facts that weren't true?

Who had tipped off Merrick that he was coming to Vega? Had someone down at Omaha radioed ahead to warn him? If so, why did they tell Merrick and not Pistone, the officer in charge of the platoon?

Everything else, he felt sure, started from knowing this.

He slumped down onto the chair against the wall. His eyes roamed the room, pausing at the footlocker, past the picture of Pistone with his girl in the headlock smiling out at Black, and came to rest on the Celtic journal, gathering dust on the end table.

He sighed. The guy obviously had enough on his young plate dealing with sergeants like Merrick and Caine and a crew of soldiers who had no respect for officers. He didn't need one of his own rooting around through his personal effects.

Stop stalling.

He rose and let himself out for the Porta-Closet. He was so distracted he nearly missed that there was new graffiti text added to the old.

CHUCK
SEES YOU
AT THE END OF THE WORLD

—

On his knees next to the bunk, the picture of Pistone and his girlfriend facedown on the shelf, he tugged Pistone's footlocker out from underneath it.

“Sorry, brother,” he murmured as he tried the lock.

The trunk came open. Why would it be locked? Pistone had had no idea a stranger was going to be living in his space for the next week.

He peered inside. At one end sat a softball and glove that looked like they'd seen little use. At the other, a pair of civilian khakis and a polo shirt sat folded neatly atop a pair of well-worn loafers. Usually people kept one set of civilian clothes buried somewhere in their gear, for when they went on their proper two-week leave back home. As long as you had something to change into from your uniform when you got there, you could buy whatever else you needed.

In the middle was a stack of books, CDs, and magazines. Something large and hardbound sat amidst them. He levered it out, spilling CDs among the clothes. A photorealistic painting of a school, done by an inexperienced hand, adorned the cover.

FAIRVIEW HIGH
CLASS OF
2001

Pistone's high school yearbook. Black found it surprising that he would have hauled it all the way up here.

Glory days?

Surprising and kind of sad. He set the yearbook down and milled among discs and magazines, none of which seemed of interest. He stacked everything neatly on the bunk after inspecting each item, until he got to the very bottom of the stack.

There was a book.

He picked it up. It was a thick paperback whose title wasn't familiar to him. He turned it over in his hands. It had seen some use.

He took a last look in the footlocker to confirm there was nothing else in there he hadn't seen, and began fanning through the pages of the book. Poetry.

At some point about halfway through, the feel of the pages shifted as they ran past and it became clear that it had been heavily read in one part.

He flipped it back over to find the crease in the spine and began fanning pages again, carefully this time, to find the spot. When he turned the book back over he saw that the inner edge of the page in question was cracking loose from the glue in the spine. He looked at the text.

“Son of a bitch,” he told the empty room.

He commenced reading.

When he finished the section, he went to the beginning of the book and started reading about the author of the poems. It was a half hour before he realized he was still kneeling on the concrete floor. He rose and moved to the chair, sitting hunched over, turning pages.

He sat like that another half hour, then closed the book and sat up. He stared at the wall.

After several minutes, he rose and crossed the room. The door to Pistone's hootch had a hasp on the inside.

He locked it as best he could using the remains of the padlock Corelli had cut on the first night. It wasn't much.

He went back to the book and took it to the bunk, where he commenced rereading the dog-eared portion.

In Xanadu did Kubla Khan

A stately pleasure-dome decree

He didn't leave the room when day came a couple hours later. Nor had he slept when the knock came at the door that evening.

H
e paused at the hasp a long moment before lifting the broken padlock out of it and pulling the door open.

Corporal Shannon. Cradling a machine gun.

Black froze.

Shannon scowled down on him from towering heights.

“Word from Sergeant Merrick, Lieutenant.”

Black could see Shannon looking past him at Pistone's room, at the unmade bunk with the yearbook and assorted contents of Pistone's footlocker spread across it. He registered distaste before looking back to Black.

“He says if you want to help find him, now's the time.”

“Find who?”

“If you're coming,” Shannon said, ignoring him, “you'll want to bring a pack for the night.”

“Coming where?”

“To find out what happened to Danny.”

Watch out.

Black didn't hesitate.

“Let me get my stuff.”

“Be at the bottom of Oswalt's stairwell in twenty minutes,” Shannon directed, and turned to go.

Black opened his mouth to speak.

“Yeah, I know you know where the roof is at,” Shannon said, striding away.

Black stood in the doorway and watched him go. As soon as Shannon disappeared around the corner he set out walking briskly in the opposite direction.

—

It took only a minute to locate Caine. A soldier in the CP said he was at the gym, a makeshift little weight room that he and Black had passed on his first night's tour.

He could hear muted drums pounding as he approached. He cracked the door open and the sound sharpened to full assault, distorted guitars thrashing against the singer's distorted growls. This music he recognized as Death Metal. He'd heard other soldiers listening to it back on Omaha and elsewhere. He would rather have tolerated the Wizard's portentous gong rock.

The place was a windowless, sweaty dump, featuring a rusted, mismatched scrap set of the sort of weightlifting gear that found its way up dangerous valleys in Afghanistan and got passed around from unit to unit once there. The stuff looked like it had been reclaimed from Dumpsters and had almost certainly been in Afghanistan longer than any American currently serving there.

Caine was there with three soldiers in camouflage pants and tan undershirts. The uniform of the quick power lift—drop your coat, press iron, return to duty.

The soldiers gave Black only momentary notice as he poked his head around the door. Caine looked at him questioningly.

Black stared back at the sergeant with what he hoped was a nonsuspicious look of significance. He closed the door and headed back the other way, weaving through the outpost's innards and emerging into the darkened backyard.

There was a junior sergeant and two soldiers inside the Taj Mahal when he got there. Damn.

“Beat it,” he declared without hesitation, realizing that in all likelihood he was about to be laughed at.

To his surprise all three rose and exited.

“Sir,” said the young sergeant, nodding once as he passed.

This, Black recalled, was the nice thing about freshly minted sergeants. They still remembered what it was to be lowly soldiers who wouldn't dream of giving attitude to an officer, or anyone else for that matter. The hop-to-it instincts were still there.

Black nodded back and watched them go, switching out the lights as soon as they were gone. Caine arrived a minute later.

“Goddamn it, sir,” he said irritably, standing in the meager light from the open door. “I thought I
told
you.”

He checked behind him and stepped inside the shadowy container, leaving the door open.

“Yeah, I know, you don't want to ‘associate' with me right now,” Black said. “This is important.”

“I'm not talking about that,” Caine shot back in a hoarse whisper. “What are you trying to do to yourself here?”

“What?”

“I thought you said you would cool it and stop snooping around for two seconds.”

Black was taken aback. He answered testily.

“Well, I've been sitting in my quarters all day long doing nothing, all right? This is important.”

“What's important?”

“Merrick wants me to go outside the wire with him.”

This brought Caine up short.

“Where outside the wire?” he asked slowly.

He didn't tell him.

“He said we're trying to find Danny.”

Caine pursed his lips. He exhaled slowly and shook his head.

“Sir, don't go with him,” he said quietly.

“Why?”

“Sir, I know you probably feel responsible for helping find Danny, but I'm telling you, just don't go with him.”

“Why not?” Black insisted. “Tell me something I can use!”

“Damn it, sir!” burst out Caine. “Would you just trust me for one damn minute!”

Black felt his blood pressure rising.

Don't.

“This goes all the way back to the beginning!” he blurted out. “Doesn't it?”

Caine shook his head again.

“Sir,” he said, “I thought I told you to leave that alone.”

“What?” Black demanded. “Leave what alone? I didn't say anything about the beginning before. What are you talking about?”

“Just don't go out there, L.T.”

Black peered at the sergeant, trying to read him in the half-light.

“I'm starting to think,” he said, “that all of you are full of shit.”

He squeezed through the door and disappeared.

“Sir!” he heard Caine call after him, his voice almost pleading.

Black stomped all the way back to his room and jerked the door open. He shoved an extra set of socks and underclothes into a small assault pack. He gathered his body armor and weapons and was ready to go a minute later.

He stood in the middle of the room, motionless.

Just do it.

He checked his watch. He was to meet Shannon in five minutes.

“Oh, damn,” he said aloud, shaking his head at himself in disgust.

He tossed his rifle onto the bunk and picked up Pistone's private journal from the side table.

He opened it. A diary, as expected. He went to the end and ran backward through the blank pages until he reached the most recent entries. He read them back for two pages.

“Oh, damn,” he said again.

He set the book down with a trembling hand. His watch now told him he had three minutes.

He stared at the wall, silent seconds passing.

“Screw it,” he said to no one.

He gathered his rifle off the bunk and pushed his way out the door, leaving the book lying open-faced on the endtable, its second-to-last page showing.

29 October—

Something is up I am still sure of it. I know SFC Merrick's involved but beyond that I know nothing, except how people have been around here.

2 November—

Danny has been acting so shady since the thing. When I asked him about SFC Merrick I thought he was going to jump out of his skin.

A 15-6 investigator is coming next week, probably about whatever all

—

Shannon was waiting at the bottom of the staircase, patrol gear piled on his huge frame, rifle hanging by his side, scowling at Black in the dim glow of the chem lights. He turned wordlessly and headed off down the corridor, past the stairwell. Black followed. He hadn't been this way before.

There were no chem lights here. Shannon switched on a red-lens flashlight affixed to the front of his gear. Its weak glow revealed a windowless stone passageway.

At a corner he cut right, then stopped at a door. He pulled a key from his pocket and unlocked it. Black followed him inside.

A closet, several feet long. A mop and a thin collection of cleaning supplies huddled in the red light. There was a second door at the far end of the room.

Shannon closed and locked the first door behind them and crossed to the other. This one was unlocked. He switched out his flashlight and opened the door. Black smelled fresh air. They stepped through and were outside.

They stood at one of the corners in the structure, in a very narrow channel between the exterior of the house and the large stone wall which ran around the property. The space was about six feet wide, tops.

Black looked up and saw tree branches in the moonlight. This corner of the outpost abutted the woodline.

There was a short ladder standing against the wall. Shannon latched the door behind them and gestured to it with his chin.

“Friendlies on the other side,” he said in a low voice.

Black nodded and slung his rifle. The ladder was just tall enough for him to reach up and sling a leg over the top of the wall. He straddled it briefly, his helmet brushing against pine sprigs.

He swung his leg over toward the outside and shifted his weight to the edge, dropping down and landing heavily on the ground under the weight of all his gear. He bent his knees as he hit. His gloved fingertips touched dirt.

He saw boots. As he straightened he saw Merrick's tall figure looming over him. In the limited light, Black could make out his usual look of disdain.

Black looked around them. Moonshadows slanted through the trees. They had exited the outpost directly into the forest. From where they stood he couldn't see any of the guard posts on the roof, and he assumed they could not see him or Merrick either.

Beyond Merrick stood three other figures. Black squinted. Two were soldiers he did not recognize.

The third was Brydon. He did not look any happier to see Black than Merrick had.

He heard Shannon slide off the wall and land heavily behind him. He appeared to be it. It was a very small patrol group, smaller than regulations would normally allow. Black had no intention of asking why.

Merrick stepped around him and the others, unslinging his rifle and trudging wordlessly into the forest. The others followed suit, spacing themselves into a staggered line behind him.

The forest floor sloped upward and away to their right. It was littered with pine needles. To the left it fell away steeply.

They skirted the mountainside, moving gently uphill as they went. They were running roughly parallel to the path they'd taken two mornings before as they left for Darreh Sin, though that route already sat far below and was quickly being left behind.

Black had fallen in at the back end of the patrol. After about fifteen minutes he stepped up his pace and began passing the other soldiers.

Brydon kept his eyes on the ground as he passed by. Shannon said nothing but kept his eyes on Black.

He arrived at the front and fell in next to Merrick, just as they crossed an opening in the trees that revealed a spectacular moonlit view of the open Valley falling away to their left.

“So do I get to know where we're going?” he asked quietly.

Merrick looked at him.

“To the O.P.”

O.P.
stood for observation post. Outposts like Vega would often establish a smaller satellite station, manned by a few soldiers, on tactically important ground. These were especially valuable for keeping watch on enemy movements in difficult or mountainous terrain where you otherwise might not see your foe before he was right on top of you.

Black hadn't been told anything about there being an observation post associated with COP Vega. There was nothing like that on his maps.

“The O.P.?”

“Yeah, the O.P.”

“What O.P.?”

“O.P. Traynor.”