Page 26 of What Remains

“Water sounds awfully close.”

“Probably because it is. This isn’t a natural cave system. Roundabout noon, things start getting pretty toasty, enough so the walls sweat. Probably accounts for why there aren’t any rooms branching off to the right. You don’t want to crack something open and then get a flood. But overall, pretty comfortable. See this?” Flowers pointed his light to a rocky lip a little over head height. “Shelves chiseled out of stone. Just the right height for a lantern or flashlight.”

John spotted another opening to his left, the top of which reached shoulder-height. “What’s that?”

“Ah, that’s an interesting place. Come on, we got a few minutes.”

They ducked through into another room which reminded John of the four-man cabins he’d slept in as a Boy Scout. “Bedroom?”

“That’s what I’m thinking. Look here, though.” Flowers played the beam of his flashlight along one wall. “See them?”

“Wow.” He wasn’t expert enough to know if what he was seeing was Arabic or Persian. “What language is that?”

“Pashto. You got a name and look, see here?” Flowers reached a finger to trace a deep curve and stellate divot gouged from stone. “Ten to one, that’s a crescent moon and star.”

“Meaning?”

“Meaning I think the guy died. You find crescents and stars on grave-markers. Plus, this is the east wall of this particular chamber. Gravestones always face Mecca.”

“Someone from the village that used to be here?”

“I don’t think so.” Flowers moved the flashlight’s beam down to another marking. “Look at this word here.”

“More Pashto?”

Flowers shook his head. “Arabic.”

“You read Arabic?”

“Naw, but I recognize the word. It’sshaheed.”

“What’s it mean?”

“Martyr. And those three little divots just underneath that? They represent three drops of blood. Sort of standard Taliban practice. We’ve found these in a lot of other rooms.”

“So, Taliban lived here.”

“Yup, and probably other squads and armies before them. Great place to hide. You wouldn’t believe how many chambers there are. We explored some and it’s almost like this underground city. We found a couple bullets, a cooking pot, old fuel cans, some clothes further back. Probably a lot of other stuff we haven’t seen. I mean, the complex goes on forever. In fact.” Flowers snapped his fingers. “Know what it reminds me of? Vietnam. The guys who went into VC tunnels.”

“Tunnel rats.” Dare had told him about those men. There was also a famous novel series featuring a homicide detective who’d been just such a soldier.

“Yeah, only the tunnel was called something else.”

“Black Echo.” Long after he’d become John Worthy, the books were made into a TV series but updated. Instead of Vietnam, the detective had been Special Forces in the First Gulf War. The very first episode referenced that black echo, too. Which had pissed him off because there were no tunnel rats in the First Gulf War. Vietnam vets deserved better.

“My grampa was in ‘Nam. He said when they come on these tunnels,” Flowers said, “they made the small, wiry guys go in, see if there were any VC. As in they had to go in there, no flashlight, no light and hope there wasn’t a VC waiting with a knife or a wire to strangle ‘em with.”

“That’s messed up.”

“Certainly messed up Gramps. Anyway, this complex is like that. A little further along this one corridor, there’s an actual seep, kind of this spigot punched into the rock. It’s plugged now, but from this trickle of water that comes through and the way the wall sweats? Pull a couple stones, you might get more than just a dribble.”

“Sounds kinda dangerous.” He hated to think what might happen if something jarred that plug loose. If this complex was even a tenth as extensive as Cu Chi, there were likely dozens of these plugged spigots. “You don’t worry about flooding?”

“A little, but the guys who drilled this complex must have worried about the same thing. Here and there along the corridors, you find these…well, I guess you’d call them escape hatches.”

“Which are?”

Crooking a finger in afollow megesture, Flowers snapped on a flashlight then led him further down the corridor. “You ever watch the originalStar Trek?”

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