Ted Bell - Warlord

The four Humvees had provided a reassuring escort through the tribal badlands to the foothills of the very mountains where Osama bin Laden was rumored to be hiding. The U.S. Army had also secretly entered Pakistani airspace, sending in a big Chinook helicopter to evacuate the dead and wounded in the tiny compound where they'd made their stand. Hawke had held a brief prayer service for Patoo and the others who had died as the chopper descended out of the red haze of early evening in the desert.

When it came time for Harry Brock's stretcher to be loaded aboard the helo, Brock had insisted he was fit to fight, but Hawke had insisted he clearly was not. Hawke had won that round, mainly because Brock was so weak from loss of blood that he couldn't sustain the argument. He and Stoke had been there when Harry's stretcher went aboard. Both men shook his hand, expressing deep gratitude for all he had done to save so many lives.

"I can't stay and fight?" Brock asked weakly.

"No, Harry," Hawke said.

"Cuss," Harry said and disappeared inside the big helo.

THEY'D LOCATED THE MOUNTAIN CALLED Wazizabad using the crude hand-drawn map Stokely had extracted out of the diminutive prison imam. The one who'd waived his legal rights sixteen miles out in the Atlantic off Miami.

The distinct features of the formerly mythical mountain's peak on the map exactly matched what they were all looking at. It was a majestic, threatening thing, a jagged pyramid of rock that scratched the sky, clad in ice and snow, its upper reaches swathed in dull grey clouds and whirlwinds of blown snow.

This, Hawke wanted to believe, meant they were looking in the right place. But the Pakistani imam Stoke had busted in the Glades Prison wasn't stupid. If he'd spent a lot of time in this region, he could have easily drawn the shape of the mountain he remembered most clearly.

He was not a man to give up hope. But they'd been climbing the mountain since daybreak and were now nearing the pinnacle. So far, they'd seen nothing that would indicate the rabbit warren of tunnels supposedly inside this mountain.

An hour later, as the sun was setting, the western skies were turning purple and gold. But just as the temperatures began plummeting, hope rose. They had finally reached something that might be the entrance to a tunnel. They'd almost missed it in the growing darkness. The entrance had been cleverly disguised with boulders, but a ray of sharp sunlight pierced a small fissure in the rock and illuminated what looked to Hawke like the inside of a tunnel.

Hawke raised a hand for the long line of men and horses in his wake to halt. He dismounted, and, with the help of Stoke and Dakkon, began pulling away the heavy boulders that blocked whatever lay beyond. Hawke watched Stoke shoving a huge boulder aside and realized that without his enormous strength, this effort would have been impossible. Soon they'd created a hole large enough for a man to squirm his way through. Abdul was the obvious choice as he was the smallest of the three. Hawke handed him his SureFire flashlight and Dakkon climbed up and disappeared.

A moment later they saw his smiling face looking down at them. He crawled out and dropped to the trail.

"A tunnel, sir! Maybe the mother of all tunnels!"

Hawke ordered more men to dismount and remove all obstacles to the entrance. When the work was finally done, he entered the tunnel alone, his weapon in hand, his finger on the trigger, his SureFire mounted to the bottom rail of his M4. He walked about twenty yards into the darkness, looking at the ground for any signs of activity, recent or otherwise. Hawke knew this was simply the first of many such tunnels they would expect to encounter, since his map indicated the entire top of the mountain was honeycombed with tunnels and caverns both natural and man-made.

But this one would certainly do. Night was falling rapidly and so was the temperature. It had been a very long day, and shelter from the wind and cold beat the hell out of a night outside on the trail.

The nearly frozen, saddle-sore riders were indifferent about where this hole in the side of the mountain might lead. If it took them into the heart of the enemy lair, fine. But all they cared about at this moment was getting off the damned horses and out of the frigid blasts of air that had buffeted them every painful step of the way up.

The tunnel entrance, thank God, was also large enough to accommodate the horses. Hawke had a couple of his men lead them inside, tether them together, then water and feed them an abundant meal of the hay they carried. Hawke saw to it that the shivering steeds were also covered with heavy woolen blankets. He wanted them rested and strong in the highly likely event the team might need to beat a hasty retreat down the mountain.

They all squatted around a small fire and ate, gulping great draughts of warm tea as soon as the animals had been cared for. Then they unrolled the three-part sleeping bags and prepared to bed down on hard rock for the night, with hopes of getting some much needed rest. Having survived the Taliban attack, and climbing ten thousand grueling feet up a frozen rockpile on horseback, they were nearing the point of exhaustion.

So were Stokely and Hawke, but they could not responsibly bed down without a more complete recon of the tunnel to make sure their squad was safe, at least for the night. Stoke had the powerful SureFire lighting system mounted on the bottom rail of his weapon, too, and they used the powerful beams to make their way cautiously, deeper and deeper into the mountain called Wazizabad.

After about a mile without incident, they came to a fork. The tunnel to the left led downward, while the one to the right angled up. They decided to place guards here on four-hour shifts. The team would return the next morning and see where the upward-leading right-hand tunnel might lead them.

"I'm feeling we're close," Stoke said to Hawke, as they trudged back to the mouth of the tunnel. "You feel close, boss?"

"I will. When I'm staring at this murderous bastard over the sights of my gun."

"I don't see how the Rat Patrol will ever find this baby-killing a-hole Rashad, boss. This damn mountain is just one big maze. You took science class just like me. You put rats in a maze, they get all disoriented and shit trying to find the cheese. I hope you've got an idea how we're going to navigate this maze because I sure as hell don't."

"Yeah. I do have an idea, Stoke."

"You plan to share it with the grunts?"

"Sahira will lead us right to him, Stoke. Trust me."

"Sahira? How does she know any more about this place than we do?"

"She doesn't."

"Oh. Well, that clears that up. I guess I can just relax now. About finding a damn needle-nosed prick in a haystack, I mean."

"Yeah, Stoke, actually you can."

Stoke couldn't see Hawke's face in the darkness, but he knew the man had a big grin plastered on his kisser.

"Stoke, do me a favor. Find two good militiamen and post them on guard back at the fork. They'll be relieved in four hours by two more. Tell them my radio will be on all night if they see or hear anything out of the ordinary."

"Aye-aye, skipper."

Weary of bloodshed, wind, and weather, Hawke climbed into his military sleeping bag and was instantly asleep. Peace on earth, at least until tomorrow.

HAWKE, SAHIRA, AND STOKELY WERE up at first light. The rising sun flooded the cave mouth with rose-gold light. The three began unloading weapons and equipment chosen by a very accommodating Special Forces weapons specialist at Shamsi AFB. The first item they uncrated was Sahira's tracked UGV. This unmanned, remote-controlled ground vehicle, about the size and shape of a child's pedal car, was essentially guns, cameras, and sensors on tank tracks.

Although it was not widely known, there were currently more than six thousand combat robots in use in Iraq and Afghanistan. The model Sahira had requested was one she had helped to design. It was a British combat-bot, one specifically for tunnel warfare. It had sensors that could detect and analyze poison gas and bacterial agents. It was also designed to detect radioactive materials, which was the reason she needed it for this mission.