“He didn’t even know me,” said Cole. “Three days.”
“But we know you now,” said Load. “We voted you our abun.”
It meant “father” in Arabic, but it had come to mean “boss-man” among the Special Ops troops that went in-country in the Middle East.
Cole didn’t waste time arguing when he was only talking to one guy anyway. “I think we go in dusk,” he said. “Some daylight, but gone before we unload the truck. The seven of you come in with only two cars. We rendezvous low on 48. To unload the ordnance. We don’t want it to look like a parking lot, and we don’t want to try to take this U-Haul up a winding mountain road. You go in first, Load, and pick the spot, out of sight from the valleys with the lakes.”
“And you come in right before dusk?”
“With no lights, once I’m on the road.”
“Anybody asks you,” said Load, “you’re going up to Hager Lake and Jennings Falls.”
“With a truck full of furniture and dishes?” asked Cole.
“Tell them your friends have the fishing tackle and cameras.”
“My plan is not to get challenged,” said Cole.
“Go with that one,” said Load. “Better plan.”
Cole’s timing went well enough. The sun sank below the ridgeline fairly early, but there was still light in the sky when he found the entrance to road 48 and pulled off. Other cars were using headlights, but it wasn’t particularly odd that he wasn’t yet.
He was a little bothered by the sign warning about a dangerous, narrow, unpaved switchback road. But with any luck, he wouldn’t have to negotiate any of the tight turns.
He was half right. The truck ground along in low gear to the first switchback, and there was Load, greeting him like an old fishing buddy. But there was the tricky maneuver of going straight when the road curved, backing up the higher part of the switchback, and then making a scary little hairpin turn to get the truck pointing down the hill and the back of it pointing into the trees. Several times it felt like the truck was going to tip over, which would have been inconvenient. But finally it was done.
They used the last shreds of daylight to load the furniture and boxes off the truck, take out the weaponry, and conceal it in the trees. Then, with only one lantern inside the truck, and with a bit of cursing, they loaded all the furniture and boxes back onto the truck so it wouldn’t be so obvious to a curious forest ranger or rebel scout that the important stuff had been taken out of the truck and nobody cared what happened to the furniture.
Then, in the dark, they changed into their camo and put their civilian clothes in big Ziploc bags. They put on their vests and packs, loaded and hefted their weapons, and then started up the road, picking different spots to conceal their civvies and then memorizing the spots.
“Just in case we return alive,” said Arty cheerfully.
“Sometimes your sense of humor is actually funny,” said Benny. “I hope I’m there next time it happens.”
After that they were quiet, except for the occasional low click of the tongue to draw their attention to something—a turn, an impediment in the route. They stayed close to the trees. There was light enough from a sliver of moon to see where they were going, but that meant enough light for them to be seen. But they stayed with the road, since in the dark all they could do among the trees was crash around. Flashlights were out of the question. If there were sentries anywhere, flashlights would alert them like the blinking lights on airplane wings.
At the third switchback, a track led off to the southwest—road 4820. They followed it around the mountain for a little over a mile. In the stillness of the evening, they could hear a waterfall below them, though the trees were too thick for them to see down to the surface of the lake they knew must lie below them. Then there were a couple of switchbacks. When they came to a third one, they finally left the road and proceeded only a few dozen yards into the trees between
the legs of the hairpin turn.
The ground sloped; they found the most level spot. Cole, whose alarm watch was already on vibrate, assigned Mingo and Benny to the first watch, Mingo upslope, Benny down.
Three hours later, Cole’s alarm woke him. In turn, he woke Drew, and they went together to relieve Mingo. Leaving Drew where Mingo had been, Cole and Mingo went to relieve Benny. Cole remained on watch while Mingo and Benny went back to the main camp to sleep.
Another three hours. There was only a faint breeze now and then, but it was a chilly one—this far up in the mountains, July didn’t meant what it meant down in the lowlands. But they had dressed for it.
There were things to be seen and even smelled, but mostly Cole listened. He had to learn the natural sounds in order to be able to distinguish unnatural ones. Animals aren’t as quiet as most people think. Humans don’t hear them because the din they make themselves masks all smaller sounds. But squirrels are not silent as they move through brush or leaves. The stooping of an owl; the screech of small prey; the padding of an animal’s footsteps through the night.
Something larger. Probably a porcupine, thought Cole. Whatever it was, it got close enough to catch Cole’s scent; then it hustled away in another direction.
His alarm went off again. Summer nights were short at this latitude—about nine hours—but it was still dark. It hadn’t taken them all that long to walk up the road.
Cole returned to the camp and wakened Cat and Babe. Tonight Arty and Load got the full night, though Cole knew by now that for Arty, sleep was never all that deep. Babe once told him that Arty spent most of his nights reliving dark passages through Al Qaeda tunnels in Afghanistan. He never woke screaming, but he slept with a constant alertness, as if in his sleep he still knew he could find an enemy lurking in crevices anywhere.
“First light,” he reminded Cat and Babe. They went up and relieved Drew first; Cat stayed and Drew went with Babe to the downhill post before he returned to camp.
Their watch was less than an hour long. First light meant the first glimmer of lightening in the eastern sky. But Cole had used the time to catch more sleep. Soldiers learned how to sleep whenever the opportunity presented itself. Like any other people, they needed eight hours or more to be at peak. But in the presence of the enemy which, for all they knew, they were right now—adrenalin made up for the lack of sleep. Besides, even at half of their peak alertness, Cole knew these soldiers were sharper than most people. Sharp enough to still be alive despite all their enemies had thrown at them in the past.