Black Storm (28 page)

“What are you suggesting? You want us to turn around and go home?” He rubbed his face. The cold separateness, the numbness was ebbing. Now he could feel; but what he felt was ineradicable guilt and desperate fear. He didn't want to be captured again. He wouldn't be able to stop babbling. He'd do anything to avoid the Electric Walkman again. If there was anything they didn't know, he'd tell them. He'd make it up. Sign things. He wasn't proud feeling this, but it was the truth. Maybe that was why he was looking forward to the river. He could let go, just let go, and he wouldn't have to feel anything ever again.

Looking at him, Maddox said, “You know, you're still in shock.”

“Not anymore.”

“You think you're okay, but there are aftereffects. You're going to carry them for a long time. Maybe for the rest of your life.”

He cleared his throat and put his hands over his eyes. White hot lightning spiked through his vision, and he uncovered them quickly. “I'm all right. Look. We're
not
at the objective. Not yet. We've got to at least try and find it. If we can go back and honestly say we looked and there's nothing there, it's scuttlebutt, a rumor, that frees the CINC to act. Otherwise he's got to keep in the back of his mind that Saddam's got some kind of hole card, some last-ditch terror weapon that if the Allies push him too far, he'll use.”

Maddox said angrily, “How many lives is that worth? You heard this bozo. He's fucking clueless. A concrete warhead? Come on.”

Dan said, “The Manhattan Project probably had a lot of clueless gofers too. Guys who only saw their little piece of the tail fin or the left hand frammous nut to the number three packing gland or whatever. That's how security compartmentation works. It doesn't mean this thing doesn't exist. And a concrete warhead sort of makes sense. With a nose plug, and a central tunnel.” He rubbed his face again, trying to convince himself more than her. “So the plug burns through, then air pressure blows whatever's inside out the back in a plume. Dispersal, see? Whatever's inside gets air-mixed and scattered, instead of plowing into the ground and getting buried. Actually it'd be pretty clever, wouldn't depend on a lot of circuitry, stuff we can fry or jam.”

“So you think it could be real?”

He shrugged. It was hard arguing with her, because he wanted to go back too. He
desperately
wanted to go back. He didn't want to cross this stormy river. Those ominously silent buildings gave him the same feeling he'd
had as a kid, following the reluctant Frodo toward Mordor to destroy the mysterious Ring that the Dark Lord, Sauron, needed to complete his power. But they just couldn't stop three hundred meters short of what they'd come so far to find. It was perfectly clear to him that in the cold equations of intelligence, all their lives would be well spent finding out exactly what lay over there. If there was nothing,
nada, rien, nichevo,
that would be precisely as important as if it was actually some hellish weapon, some horror of chemistry or biology or physics twisted to the purpose of mass death.

Faced with that need to know, his own terror and all their lives were not enough to balance against it.

“Whatever I think, we've got to go,” he told her. “If you don't feel it's necessary, stay here. I might not know exactly what I'm looking at, but if it's there, I can target it. And that's really all they need.”

He was turning away when she gripped his arm. She brought her face so close he could smell her breath, like ripe apples amid the putrid breath of the sewer. She said, “If the rest of you are going, I am too.”

“Gee, this is just like arguing with my ex-wife. You just said there's nothing there.”

“That's what I think. But if I'm wrong, I need to see it. If it's something Fayzah Al-Syori's managed to petridish, we have to find out exactly what it is.”

“But there's still probably nothing there?”

“That's my call, yeah,” she said.

“All right,” Dan said. “So let's go see the gunny. Now that we agree.”

 

GAULT WATCHED
them as they came up. Vertierra was up at the grate bars. The
scrape, scrape
of his wire saw underwater was just audible. He wondered what they'd decided. He guessed they'd go for it. There was really no other choice.

“Well?” he said.

“He doesn't give you much to go on,” Lenson said. “But it sounds like there might be something there. Or there might not. The only way to find out is to go in and look.”

He looked to Maddox. She nodded darkly, and Gault said after a moment, feeling the irrevocability and doom of the words, “All right then. The sergeant says he'll be through this grille pretty soon. I'll go out first. Just sit tight till I get back.”

 

HALF AN
hour later Gault decided it was time. Vertierra had edged back by then, carrying the sawed-through length of grate bar. He told him to put it in a side drain, and to smear the cut edges with mud so they didn't gleam. He pulled off his load-bearing vest and bush hat and gave them to Blaisell. He left his MP5 and his NVGs behind too. Held his .45 a moment, then handed it over as well. Reluctantly, but knowing that if the AA troops saw him, a pistol wasn't going to help. The only thing he could do then was lead them away from the others. He wouldn't come back, but they might be able to keep on.

Feeling strangely light, he ducked and slid between the smooth cold bars, out into the river sliding by. It tugged at him, but he lingered there, anchored by one hand. Looking upward, over the outflow.

He couldn't see the gun, but he could hear the men. He heard music too; it sounded like a cassette recorder, with a man singing, the caterwauling, falsetto Arabic that sounded strange at first to Western ears, but that after months in Saudi did not strike his ear now as exotic or foreign. It was just music, with the same mixture of sadness and longing and joy he heard in Merle Haggard or Tanya Tucker or Tammy Wynette. Then he saw a flicker, and pushed himself out and started drifting downstream, watching firelight reflected off some sort of overhead cover. A tent flap or a piece of metal; they'd screened it
from the air. But that was good news. For men staring into a fire, the dark would be hard to penetrate.

And the dusk was gaining fast. Light was fading from the sky. Maybe, he thought again, he should wait for full night. One faint light, he couldn't tell from what, glowed out across the river. Aside from that the city was blacked out. He thought again, with a chill, how empty it seemed. But he knew it was only a seeming. There were probably more troops per square meter in the capital than anywhere else between here and Kuwait. Saddam took his security seriously.

While this went through his mind, the current was trucking him downstream. The farther out he got, the faster he could feel it taking him. The Tigris was anything but clean, but after the stone crap-stink of the sewer it felt wonderfully refreshing, flowing around and under his filthy battle dress. When he guessed he'd gone twenty yards, he began swimming slowly, keeping his arms underwater, back toward the bank he'd just left.

A few seconds later his knees brushed concrete. He low-crawled a few feet up on the slanted concrete. It was slick and stinking, as well it should be, he thought, downstream of a sewer discharge. He lay there for some minutes, looking and listening, till he was sure no one, no sentry or picket, or just some stray soldier come down to take a leak, watched from the bank above.

He low-crawled very slowly up the slope; waited; and then began his slow wriggling traverse. The wind brought the music to him clearly again. A woman was singing now. He remembered Baghdad Betty. He hadn't caught the program where she warned her audience how Bart Simpson was raping their women at home, but guys had told him about it. He smiled faintly in the dark.

Eventually he found the manhole, by ramming it with his head. It was raised a little above the sloping level of the bank. He rested by it for a time, listening to the music and the night, then lifted an arm and worked his fingers
around the edge. He found a thumbhole and tried it. No good. He tried prying it up with his knife. The blade snapped off. He shoved the useless hilt carefully back in a pocket and tried prying with his fingers some more. He must have loosened it, because this time it lifted, just a bit, and then his muddy wet swollen fingers slipped and it fell back with a clang.

He waited, tense with dread, but the music must have covered the sound. No one came to investigate. But sooner or later, they would. He couldn't lie out in the open forever. A flare, a curious sentry with a flashlight, a fisherman; sooner or later compromise was inevitable.

He rolled up and over it like a predatory starfish mounting an oyster, braced himself over the lid, levered it up, set it aside. Swung his legs in, and carefully and quietly and quickly lowered himself with his arms until he felt iron rungs beneath his searching toes.

The trunk was very narrow and completely dark. That was okay. He didn't need a lot of space, and he didn't need any light at all. He went down and down till his boots splashed. More water. He looked up, at a circle of black outlined by greater blackness. Only someone peering straight down would see his light. He turned it on, masking all but the faintest bleed of scarlet with his cupped hand.

 

OKAY,
but what about the lads on the gun?” Sarsten smiled slowly. “Want me to make some more martyrs?”

Gault said no. They were here to recon, not fight. Killing men on guard would only lead to a search. They would follow the way he'd gone already: into the water, downstream, then a short crawl to the manhole. Nichols and Blaisell would overwatch as they moved down the embankment. Everything they didn't need, canteens, web gear, everything except the chemical gear and their weapons, would stay here, cached in the side drains. They'd cross, recon for no more than two hours, then
return to the garage and squirt transmit their report from there.

Sarsten's voice murmured as he explained it to Ted. The Iraqi protested, voice going high. The SAS murmured again, and he subsided, though Gault saw his eyes shining in the dark.
“Ma-arif asbah,”
he said.

“What's the trouble?”

“This fucking
manyouk
says he can't swim.” The sound of a slap.

“Goddamn it, Sarsten, knock off hitting him.”

“He's making too much noise. The major says he doesn't know anything. Why are we taking him with us, anyway?”

“Because I said so. Tell him to float on his back and you'll tow him. All right, follow me,” he said, and slid out between the bars.

He reached the manhole first and lay beside it in the dark until they all joined him. He could hear Ted gasping and whimpering, then another smack of flesh on flesh. Well, maybe it would motivate the guy. He raised his head slightly and saw the dancing firelight.

A plane droned somewhere far off, and he tensed. Then a firework rose slowly and detonated above the city.

Shouts, yells, the sudden explosion of an engine starting. He heard the clanking sound again as the plane drew closer. Gault grabbed the body closest to him and pushed it toward the manhole. Two figures held back, swaying together. They writhed for a few seconds, then one went limp.

Arcs of fire rose, crisscrossing, and the hammer and stutter of automatic guns swelled and grew into a discordant cacophony. He couldn't hear the aircraft anymore, only the guns. Then a renewed clanking, a shout of command, and a ball of flame lit the whole embankment, catching him as he levered himself over and dropped into the trunk. The blast clapped his ears, making them sing, and smoke and paper fragments blew past. His groping
boots found the topmost rung, kicking something soft, and he grabbed the cover and dragged it over his head. It fell into place with a clang as the battery settled into steady firing,
pa-pam, pa-pam
.

The trunk was about thirty inches wide. Just enough for him to slide and wriggle downward past others clinging to the rungs. Then someone clicked his flashlight on and he was face to face with Ted. The Iraqi was hanging by his arms, thrust through the steel ladder rungs. By his motionless, open eyes and protruding tongue, he was quite plainly dead.

Below him Sarsten murmured, “He was trying to yell for help. The first chance he had, he'd have given us away.”

Gault looked into the dead eyes. They stared back without expression. “You son of a bitch. We needed this guy.”

“Like hell we did. He didn't know a thing.”

“I told you to leave those decisions to me.”

“There wouldn't have been any decisions if he'd gotten to shout at that AA crew. And you said, if he kept making noise, to slot him.”

“I didn't say that.”

“You absolutely
did
say that, mate. And my squaddy here heard you. Didn't you, Denny lad?”

Blaisell said, “Uh, yeah. I guess. Right, Gunny. Didn't you?”

Gault was too furious to speak. He climbed over the others, slid past them as they clung to the rungs. His stomach was knotting on itself. Not just at Sarsten's homicidal disobedience. His repeated insubordination, his refusal to leave the team. But now he was pulling Blaisell into his orbit, like some murderous dark star. And added to all that, like multiplying his anger by his dread, was what he had to do now. And he had to do it first. No one else would unless he led the way.

He got to the bottom and clicked his flash on and swung it around.

The trunk, thirty feet beneath the surface. It ended in an inch or two of water on the floor, a thick bundle of cables, and, leading off to the side, a black circular opening only an inch or two wider than a big man's shoulders.

Shining his light down it the first time, he'd seen the interior recede, curving into the darkness. The cables took a wide bend in and then followed it, laced tight against the curving overhead with cable straps.