ing, the dull echo in my head—

Suddenly the cave roof a few meters ahead came down,

as though a massive boot had stomped on us. I scrambled

backward like a crab and bumped into Treehorn, who had

just turned on his penlight, the beam struggling to pen-

etrate the thick cloud of dust. I winced and blinked.

“You okay, boss?” cried Treehorn.

“I’m good.”

“They blew the goddamned exit!”

“Plan B,” I finally gasped out. “Back on our feet.

Come on, buddy . . .” I began choking and coughing on

the dust.

We got to our feet, his light shining down the tunnel,

mine joining his a few seconds later.

I stole a look back. The tunnel behind us had com-

pletely collapsed. It would take a half a day or more for

us to dig ourselves out.

I tried to stifle my coughing and gestured for Tree-

horn to keep his light low and to move slowly, quietly.

Our shadows shifted across the cool brown stone,

and a faint glimmer seemed to join our light, the flicker-

ing of candles or a lantern, not a flashlight, I knew.

Treehorn paused, looked back, put a finger to his lips.

We killed our lights and listened.

For a moment, I think I held my breath.

The cries we’d heard earlier were gone, replaced now

by footsteps, barely discernible but there. I cocked a

thumb, motioning for Treehorn to get behind me. I gin-

gerly slipped free the bowie knife from my calf sheath.

CO MB AT O P S

227

Seeing that, he did likewise, his own blade coated

black so as not to reflect any light. We held our position,

unmoving, but our curious tunnel guest still seemed

drawn to us.

As he rounded the corner, I slid behind him, grabbed

his mouth with one hand and, with a reverse grip,

plunged my blade deep into his heart. I felt his grimace

beneath my fingers, the hair of his thick beard scratch-

ing like a steel wool pad. The forefinger and thumb on

my knife hand grew damp, and after a moment more he

struggled, then finally grew limp. I lowered him to the

floor. The guy had been holding a penlight, and Tree-

horn picked it up, shined it into the guy’s face.

He was no one. Just another Taliban guy, wrong place,

wrong time. We took his rifle, ammo, and light, then moved

on, the tunnel growing slightly wider, the floor heavily traf-

ficked by boot prints. Voices grew louder ahead, and I froze.

The language was not Pashto but Chinese.

We hunkered down, edged forward toward where the

tunnel opened up into a wider cave illuminated by at

least one lantern I could see sitting on the floor near the

wall. Behind the lantern was a waist-high stack of opium

bricks, with presumably many more behind it.

A depression in the wall gave us a little cover, and we

watched as ahead, Chinese men dressed like Taliban

hurriedly loaded the bricks into packs they threw over

their shoulders. So Bronco’s Chinese connection was a

fact, and I wasn’t very surprised by that; however, to find

the Chinese themselves taking part in the grunt work of

smuggling was interesting.

228 GH OS T RE CON

There were three of them, their backpacks bulging as

they left the cave, their flashlights dancing across the

floor until the exit tunnel darkened.

We waited a moment more, then followed, shifting

past stacks of empty wooden crates within which the

bricks had been stored.

Treehorn was right at my shoulder, panting, and once

we started farther into the adjoining tunnel, I flicked on

my flashlight because it’d grown so dark my eyes could

no longer adjust.

Somewhere in the distance came the continued rattle

of gunfire, but the heavy mortars had ceased. We reached

a T-shaped intersection. To the left another long tunnel.

To the right a shorter one with a wooden ladder leaning

against the wall. I raised my chin to Treehorn, pointed.

He shifted in front of me, rifle at the ready. I pushed

the penlight close to my hip, darkening most of the

beam.

We neared the ladder. I was holding my breath again.

Treehorn took another step farther, looked up—

And then he whirled back, his face creased tightly in

alarm as a salvo of gunfire rained straight down and he

pushed me backward, knocking me onto my rump. We

both went down as yet another volley dug deeply into

the earth.

I imagined a grenade dropping to the foot of the lad-

der, and my imagination drove me onto my feet, and

Treehorn clambered up behind me. I stole a look back

and saw the ladder being hoisted up and away. We raced

back to the intersection and moved into the other tunnel.

CO MB AT O P S

229

I kept hearing an explosion in my head, that imaginary

grenade going off over and over.

The beam of my penlight was jittering across the

walls and the floor until I slowed and aimed it directly

ahead.

Still darkness. No end to the tunnel in sight.

I stopped, held up my palm to Treehorn. “This could

be one of the biggest tunnel networks in the entire

country,” I whispered.

“Yeah,” he said. “Goes all the way to China.”

I grinned crookedly at his quip, then started on once

more, turning a slight bend, then eating my words.

The tunnel abruptly dead-ended. Unfinished. In fact,

the Taliban still had excavation tools lining the walls:

shovels, pickaxes, wheelbarrows . . .

I looked at Treehorn.

“Well, I ain’t digging us out of here,” he groaned.

I put my finger to my lips. Footsteps. Growing closer.

T WENTY-T WO

Working as a team leader in an ever-changing environ-

ment with ever-changing rules and restrictions becomes,

as my father once put it, “an abrasive on the soul.” Hav-

ing toiled many years in the GM plant and enjoyed as

many years out in his woodshop, Dad was a man who

celebrated predictability. He did repetitive work at the

plant, and when he created his custom pieces of furni-

ture, he most often worked from a blueprint and fol-

lowed it to the letter. He felt at peace with a plan he

could follow. He always taught me that practice makes

perfect, that repetition is not boring and can make you

an expert, and that people who say they just “wing it”

are hardly as successful as those who plan their work and

CO MB AT O P S

231

work their plan. He told me he could never do what I

did, though, because he would never find satisfaction in

it. He needed something tangible to hold on to, sit on,

photograph, admire . . . and he needed a plan that would

not change. My father was a curmudgeon to be sure.

We’d argue about this a lot. But when I slipped off

into my own little woodshop to produce projects for my

friends and fellow operators, I understood what Dad was

trying to tell me. You cannot replace the satisfaction of

working alone, of listening to that voice in your head as