Page 80 of Clive Cussler Ghost Soldier
Juan and Linc held up their end. Linc scored several kills with his big .50-cal Barrett rifle, assisted by Juan’s sharp eyes and the crystal clear glass on his spotter’s scope.
After a short food and water break, the team marched into the jungle for the next cover-and-move module. Three enemy targets high in the trees were missed on the first go, but no hostages were killed. A second try took out all enemy targets and no hostages—a phenomenal result. Plata praised them to high heaven. The squads moved with precision and speed, their combat skills reflecting their high levels of training and experience. Plata and Dragu? offered a few helpful comments and suggestions, but canceled the third run.
Plata checked his watch. “It’s getting late.”
The tired men exhaled a collective sigh of relief. It had been a long day.
The big Guatemalan smiled. “Time to head to the mines.”
An audible groan rippled through the team.
“And be sure to watch your step down there,” Dragu? said. “It could be your last.”
Plata led the way into the mouth of the coal mine. The shafts got shorter and narrower, the air cooler, the farther down they went.
They passed abandoned carts, shovels, picks, and other mining gear. The only lights they had were attached to their rifles. The chances of ricochets and “blue-on-blue” accidents in the dangerously enclosed and confined spaces were enormous. To avoid such a catastrophe, Plata swapped out all of their personal weapons for specialized M4 carbines and Glock 17 pistols designed to fire Simunition ammo—essentially, regular gunpowder cartridges that fired nonlethal “paintball” rounds, but with real-world recoil effects.
Walking in a near crouch beneath the solid ceiling of rock above their heads, they finally reached their staging point and halted. Juan calculated they were down six hundred feet at least. The silence at the moment they stopped was absolute—the kind of silence you only heard in a forest blanketed by heavy snow, he thought. There were six different branch tunnels leading off in several directions.
One of the far walls was partially damp. It was also notably cooler, even cold. No doubt they were now below the surface of the surrounding ocean.
Juan glanced over to a nearby side tunnel. The dark was total—a complete and utter absence of any kind of light. Having spent years in deep water, Juan wasn’t nearly as affected by the prospect of being six hundred feet below the surface. But judging by the shallow breathing and constant upward glances of several others, he assumed their vivid imaginations suffered the terror of thousands of tons of rock crashing down on them at any moment.
For Juan it wasn’t the prospect of a violent death as much as it was the idea of one’s pulverized remains never being found—utterly disappeared from the face of the earth. The line from a mournful Patty Loveless ballad suddenly echoed in his head. “And you spend your life diggin’ coal from the bottom of your grave.”
“Gentlemen, welcome to the gates of hell,” Plata began. A few drops of water fell from the ceiling.
“You know the setup. Kill the enemies, not the hostages.” He hit the timer on his watch. “Now we’ll see what you’re really made of.”
They ran two timed runs, racing off into the separate tunnels without much success. The beams of their swinging gun lights slashed through clouds of choking coal dust and crumbling rock that spattered their bump helmets. Fatigue and fear slowed their steps and dulled their vision. Targets were wedged in alcoves, hidden behind wood supports, or standing on the other side of sudden bends in the tunnels. Most of them remained untouched.
Linc had never felt so cramped and confined in a combat scenario, and even Juan began to sense the suffocating terror of claustrophobia wrapping its icy fingers around his heart.
Plata launched a third and final assault, but it was clear before it began it would fare no better. The four squads had decided to proceed down an unexplored tunnel together in single file, partly because it was wider and taller than the others, partly because they sought the unspoken comfort of other bodies nearby. Mangin, the Frenchman, took the point; Juan and Linc were next in line. The three men were far ahead of the others, whose spirits flagged with each step.
After what seemed like an eternity, Plata blew a shrill whistle in the far distance behind them. The exercise was over. The twelve-man team turned wordlessly on its collective heel and quick-stepped its way back up to the staging point.
Linc could barely make out the light of the man ahead of him. Juan was right behind his friend.
“You okay up there, big man?” Juan whispered.
“Hope they have a hot tub back at camp. Or maybe an ice tub. Maybe both. My back is killing me.”
“Maybe champagne and foie gras, too.”
The sound of cracking rock behind them sent shudders down their spines. They all feared a tunnel collapse more than anything.
But instead of running, Juan and Linc froze in their tracks. Juan whipped around. He flashed his gun light backward.
Mangin was gone.
Juan and Linc looked at each other, then back up the tunnel toward the surface. Everything in Juan wanted to run before disaster buried them alive. Only sheer force of will turned him around.
Juan rushed back, his central nervous system on fire and on high alert. Ten steps back he saw the hole that had opened up and swallowed the Frenchman. He glanced down at the ground beneath his boots, wondering if it was about to give way as well. He threw up a hand behind him.
“Stay back.”
“What’s the play?” Linc asked.
