And that’s exactly where I signaled for him to go.

He shook his head vigorously.

I widened my eyes. Do it.

And then I began to gag, caught myself, and we

pressed on. I held the shemagh tighter to my nose and

mouth without much relief.

A voice came from behind us, the words in Pashto:

“What’s going on now?”

Hume turned back and Brown raised his light.

It was a young Taliban fighter, his AK hanging from

his shoulder as he raised his palms in confusion.

He squinted at us more deeply until Brown directed

the light into his eyes.

I couldn’t see, but I think Hume shot him. Thump.

Down. The body count was racking up too swiftly for

my taste, but the presence of those boots gave me hope.

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283

We left that guy where he fell and forged on toward

the terrible stink.

“I can barely breathe,” said Hume.

“Just keep going,” I told him.

The ground grew more damp, and up ahead, about

twenty meters, were a pair of broad wooden planks tra-

versing another hole in the ground, the result of yet a

second cave-in, I guessed. Just before the hole another

tunnel jogged off to the left, with faint light shifting at

its far end. At the intersection, I saw that the other tun-

nel to our right curved upward and the night sky shone

beyond—a way out, but on which side of the mountain

range? I was disoriented.

And then from the other side of the hole and the planks

came two Taliban, rifles lowered but still ready to snap up.

They were talking to each other when they spotted me

and Brown, and one looked up, shouted something.

I shot the guy who screamed.

Brown fired at the other one . . . and missed! That

bastard took off running and hollering like a maniac.

And from behind us, down in the hole, where the

stench of human feces and urine rose to an ungodly

level, a muffled cry rose and echoed up across the rock.

T WENT Y-SEVEN

I charged after the guy who’d sprinted away, my heart

drumming in my ears. The tunnel curved abruptly to

the left and then made an abrupt right turn. The guy

reached a ladder at the tunnel’s dead end and started up

it. I shot him before he made it halfway, and he came

down with a heavy thud, shaking and raising his hands

in surrender. Under different circumstances, I might

have taken him prisoner. Instead, I shot him again, then

swung around, saw the lantern lighting the path in one

corner and more stacks of opium, along with crates and

boxes of ammunition.

Someone shouted a name, then asked, “Where are

you?” in Pashto.

I stole a quick breath, glanced up.

CO MB AT O P S

285

There, framed by the hole in the ceiling, was a man

leaning down, his bearded face glowing in the lantern. I

gritted my teeth and shot him, too, in the face. He came

tumbling down and crashed onto the first guy. He was

older, gray beard, his body trembling, nerves misfiring.

Still riding the massive wave of adrenaline, I mounted

the ladder, which I guessed led into another chamber. I

was about to reach the top and turn around when some-

one rushed into the tunnel below, startling the hell out

of me.

“Boss!” Brown whispered.

I came down two rungs, my heart palpitating. Brown

was waving at me to come back, his teeth bared.

“What?”

He mouthed the words: We found him!

During my first tour in country, my team captured an

Afghan policeman who’d been working secretly as an

interrogator for the Taliban. He shared with us the

orders from his boss: “I want you to torture them with

methods so horrible that their cries of agony will scare

even the birds from their nests, and if any one of them

survives, he will never again have a night’s sleep.”

This guy described in vivid detail the creative meth-

ods he and his comrades employed to slowly and system-

atically kill their prisoners. The generous use of electricity,

insects, water, and clubs would’ve made even the most

iron-stomached soldier grimace as he listened to the

tales.

286 GH OS T RE CON

Consequently, when we found Warris, my imagina-

tion had already run wild . . .

But I’d forgotten they wanted him in good condi-

tion. They still wanted to negotiate, and I’m sure Zahed

was heavily influenced by the company he kept, other-

wise Warris would have been much closer to death. I

took one look past the planks, and in the tiny shaft of

light created by Brown, I grimaced tightly.

Warris was sitting naked in a foot-high pool of water,

urine, and feces. He’d been gagged, his hands cuffed

behind his back, and when he saw us, saw me remove my

shemagh, his eyes lit with recognition. He struggled to

his feet and began crying. His face was bruised and bat-

tered, but otherwise he had all his appendages and could

still move.

I’d never seen a soldier, especially one from my own

unit, look as helpless and pathetic, and I suddenly didn’t

care what he said about me—politics and bullshit be

damned. We were going to get him out of there, out of

tunnels, out of that godforsaken country.

We’d brought about fifty feet of paracord in one of the

packs, but we didn’t need it. Hume rushed back to fetch

the ladder. The hole was about nine feet deep, the ladder

about seven feet long, so we’d get him out the easier way.

With Hume standing guard, Brown and I lowered our-

selves down the ladder, and I descended to the bottom

rung, just above the cesspool. I could barely look at War-

ris. “It’s all right, buddy. We’re getting you out of here.”

I removed his gag, and he swallowed and said, “Thank

you.” He began crying again. “I won’t forget this.”

CO MB AT O P S

287

“Don’t worry about it.”

“But Scott, I can’t lie about it . . . about what hap-

pened. I can’t live with myself if I do that . . .”

My tone hardened. “You know what I think? I think

that if I save your ass right now, and you still turn me in,

that’ll be harder to live with than just lying. And really,

all you have to do is keep your mouth shut. That’s it.

You think about that . . .”

He bit his lip, then suddenly nodded.

“Can you climb?”

“I think so.”

“Then let’s move.”

They’d used a pair of our plastic zipper cuffs, and,

with a penlight in my mouth, I carefully sawed through

them. With that done, I started up the ladder, and he

ascended behind me. I ordered Hume to go fetch some

clothes from one of the guys we’d killed, along with an

extra shirt to use as rag. God, we needed to wipe him

off. He reeked. Hume hurried away, and once we pulled

Warris out, he backhanded the tears from his eyes and

said, “I’ve been down there most of the time. They