Part 2 — The Mountain Was Only the Beginning
Part 2 — The Mountain Was Only the Beginning
The engineers arrived at 0830.
By then, the nine men had been awake for nearly twenty-four hours.
Nobody looked particularly interested in their arrival.
Henry sat against a slab of granite, his boots stretched out in front of him, while a young engineer lieutenant climbed toward the summit with six men carrying demolition equipment.
The lieutenant reached Henry and stopped.
“Captain.”
Henry looked up.
“Morning.”
The lieutenant glanced around.
“So this is Anvil?”
Henry nodded.
The lieutenant looked toward the silent machine-gun positions.
Then toward the valley.
Then back at Henry.
“I was expecting more people.”
“You’re looking at them.”
The lieutenant gave a nervous laugh.
Henry didn’t.
After a few seconds, the young officer realized he wasn’t joking.
“Right.”
He cleared his throat.
“We’ve been told to disable the heavy weapons and establish a defensible access route.”
“Do it.”
The lieutenant looked toward the cliff.
“You came up that?”
Henry nodded.
“All nine of you?”
“Yes.”
“How?”
Henry pointed toward the rock.
“Carefully.”
The engineer stared at him for another second.
Then he shook his head.
“Right.”
He turned to his men.
“Let’s work.”
Henry watched them go.
Hayes sat beside him.
“Think he’ll try it?”
“Absolutely not.”
“Smart man.”
For several minutes they watched the engineers prepare.
Then Finch appeared with another cup of tea.
“Got something for you.”
Henry accepted it.
“What?”
Finch nodded toward the engineer lieutenant.
“Apparently the Major wants us back at the FOB.”
Henry sighed.
“Of course he does.”
The helicopter arrived shortly after noon.
The engineers remained on Anvil.
The nine men loaded their equipment into the aircraft.
Nobody spoke much during the flight.
The valley spread beneath them.
From the air, the ridge looked almost harmless.
A line of stone.
A few trenches.
Some dark scars where explosives had struck.
Nothing that explained why an American major had originally requested an entire company.
Hayes looked through the window.
“You know what bothers me?”
Henry looked over.
“What?”
“That we were right.”
Henry raised an eyebrow.
“About what?”
Hayes pointed toward the ridge.
“Everyone keeps saying it was impossible from the front.”
Henry smiled faintly.
“It was.”
“So the map wasn’t wrong.”
“No.”
“The plan was.”
Henry looked back toward the valley.
“Exactly.”
Back at the forward operating base, Major Caldwell was waiting.
He stood outside the operations tent with his arms folded.
As Henry approached, Caldwell looked over the nine men.
All of them were exhausted.
Dust-covered.
Some bruised.
None seriously injured.
Caldwell shook his head.
“You’ve made me look stupid.”
Henry stopped.
“I didn’t intend to.”
“That somehow makes it worse.”
Hayes smiled.
Caldwell ignored him.
“Come inside.”
The briefing room was colder than before.
A fresh satellite image covered the main screen.
Caldwell pointed at another ridge.
“This is your next problem.”
Nobody moved.
Henry looked at the map.
Then at Caldwell.
“You’re joking.”
“No.”
The new objective was farther east.
A narrow ridgeline.
Two kilometers of exposed approach.
Multiple enemy compounds.
An old communications station.
And something else.
A logistics route.
Henry stepped closer.
“What do we know?”
Caldwell’s expression changed.
“Less than we should.”
Henry looked at him.
“That usually means bad news.”
“It is.”
Caldwell changed the image.
A convoy appeared.
Six trucks.
Two technicals.
Several armed escorts.
They were moving toward the mountain.
“Two nights ago, one of our reconnaissance drones picked this up.”
Henry studied the photograph.
“What are they transporting?”
“We don’t know.”
“Then why is it important?”
“Because every time that convoy moves, something disappears.”
Henry looked up.
“What?”
“Fuel.”
The room went quiet.
Caldwell continued.
“Three forward positions lost power within forty-eight hours of these convoys passing through. Communications went down. Patrols were attacked. Then the convoy vanished.”
Henry examined the map.
“Where does it go?”
“That is what we need to find out.”
“And you want us to take the ridge.”
Caldwell shook his head.
“No.”
Henry waited.
“I want you to follow the convoy.”
Hayes looked at him.
“That sounds considerably worse.”
“It is.”
That evening, the nine men sat around a folding table.
No map had been finalized.
No route had been approved.
Only one instruction had been given.
Find the convoy.
Henry studied the photographs.
The trucks moved mostly at night.
They followed mountain roads.
They stopped at abandoned villages.
Then disappeared into terrain where satellite visibility became unreliable.
Reed pointed at one image.
“This bend.”
Henry looked.
“What about it?”
“It’s wrong.”
Hayes looked over.
“Wrong how?”
“Road is too narrow.”
Reed tapped the image.
“These trucks are too large to use that route.”
Henry leaned closer.
“Maybe the image is old.”
“No.”
Reed enlarged another photograph.
“There.”
A tire track.
Fresh.
Leading away from the road.
Toward the mountain.
Henry studied it.
The convoy wasn’t using the road.
They were leaving it.
Going somewhere hidden.
Finch smiled.
“Here we go again.”
Henry looked at him.
“No.”
Finch’s smile faded.
“What?”
“We don’t climb.”
Hayes raised an eyebrow.
“That sounds unlike you.”
Henry pointed at the image.
“We let them climb.”
At 0200, the team was moving again.
But this time they weren’t attacking.
They were hunting.
They left the base without helicopters.
No artillery.
No support.
Only the nine men.
Their objective was simple.
Follow the convoy.
Find its destination.
Come back alive.
The mountain road below them was silent.
Reed moved ahead.
Collins stayed high on the left.
The others followed in staggered formation.
Three hours passed.
Nothing.
Then Reed stopped.
Raised his fist.
Everyone froze.
He pointed downward.
Engine noise.
Very faint.
Henry lowered his night vision.
A convoy appeared below.
Six vehicles.
Two armed trucks.
Exactly as expected.
The men watched.
The convoy stopped.
An insurgent stepped out.
Then another.
Then several more.
The trucks turned toward a rock wall.
Henry frowned.
Nothing was there.
Then the rock moved.
Not the rock itself.
A section of it.
A concealed gate opened.
The convoy disappeared into the mountain.
Henry stared.
“That’s our answer.”
Hayes whispered.
“Underground.”
Henry nodded.
He reached for his radio.
Then stopped.
The convoy had entered.
The gate closed.
The mountain became silent again.
They had found the destination.
But now they had a bigger problem.
There was no obvious entrance.
No secondary road.
No guard tower.
No way to know how deep the tunnel went.
And somewhere beneath the mountain, something valuable enough to protect was being moved.
Henry looked at Collins.
“Can you see inside?”
Collins shook his head.
“Not from here.”
Henry looked toward the mountain.
“Then we’ll have to get closer.”
They moved at dawn.
The team approached the concealed entrance from two directions.
No gunfire.
No alarm.
The closer they got, the more obvious the security became.
Cameras.
Motion sensors.
Buried communications equipment.
Power cables running into the rock.
This was not a temporary hideout.
It was infrastructure.
Henry crouched beside one cable.
“That’s new.”
Hayes looked at it.
“How can you tell?”
“Too clean.”
Finch gave him a look.
“That’s your professional assessment?”
Henry nodded.
“Yes.”
A faint sound came from inside the mountain.
A mechanical vibration.
Generators.
Heavy ones.
Whatever was underground required serious power.
Henry looked at the entrance.
Then at his men.
“We don’t go in.”
Hayes blinked.
“We don’t?”
“Not yet.”
Henry pointed toward the cables.
“We follow them.”
They traced the line through the rocks.
It led away from the main entrance.
Toward a secondary position.
A ventilation shaft.
Henry crouched.
Air was moving.
Warm air.
Carrying fuel fumes.
Something was beneath them.
Reed looked down.
“There’s a tunnel.”
Henry nodded.
“How deep?”
Reed checked the equipment.
“Can’t tell.”
Finch smiled.
“That sounds like an invitation.”
Henry ignored him.
Instead, he pulled out the black notebook.
Opened it.
Wrote three words.
New objective: determine contents.
Then closed it.
He looked toward the mountain.
“We go in tonight.”
Nobody argued.
But none of them noticed the tiny red light on the far ridge.
Someone else was watching.
And this time, the enemy knew exactly where the nine men were.
