Never Forget: A Novella in the Echo Platoon Series (11 page)

They had walked about fifty feet when the tunnel crossed another one just like it, offering them three ways to go. Santa turned to the right. “Almost there,” he said.

Curtis couldn’t ignore the rising certainty that they were asking for trouble. “We ought to go back,” he insisted, slowing his step.

Santana glanced over his shoulder at him. “You gonna be a pussy when we’ve come this far?”

“Shut up,” Curtis ordered, giving him a shove.

“It’s right up here, anyway.” Santana’s voice echoed in the chamber. “Look.” He shone his light along the wall, and Curtis caught sight of a grill at knee level blocking the entrance to a smaller tunnel. A lock, shiny and new, kept the grill shut. As Santana approached it pulling out his screwdriver, Curtis wondered if he wasn’t telling the truth, after all.

Ignoring the lock, Santana popped the penlight between his teeth and applied his screwdriver to the hinges on the other side. When the screws lifted right out, Curtis realized Santana had done this before. He dropped the screws into his pocket, gave the grill a yank, and pulled it off its hinges. Leaving it dangling by the lock, he reached into the eighteen-inch opening, grabbed hold of something that sounded heavy as Santana dragged it closer. Then he swung the object into the bigger tunnel and shone his penlight down so Curtis could see.

What he saw was a big plastic container like the kind sold in Walmart for storing wrapping paper.

“Go ahead,” Santana invited, on a told-you-so note. “Open it.”

“Is it full of snakes or something?”

“I told you. Guns.”

“No way.”

“Yep. And there’s another one just like it.” He nodded at the opening. “Lift the lid.”

His friend’s confidence had Curtis tugging off the snug-fitting lid. Santana angled his light under the covering so he could see.

Curtis’s eyes widened. He’d seen something similar just the other day—a bucket filled with all kinds of handguns. This was exactly the same, only the container was longer, the guns were bigger, and there were a lot more of them.

“These are all AR-15s,” Santana said, picking up one of them and hefting it in the crook of his arm. “The other box is full of M-4s. I looked them up. You know how much one of these babies goes for? They’re two grand apiece, man. We must be lookin’ at fifty thousand dollars sittin’ right here!”

A shiver traced Curtis’s spine. “Don’t point that at me. How’d they get here?” he wanted to know.

“I don’t know,” Santana answered a tad too quickly.

“How’d you find them?” Curtis pressed.

Santana pretended to aim the rifle at him. “Don’t worry about it. Promise me you won’t tell nobody.”

“I promise,” he said, quickly.

Satisfied, Santana swung the rifle over his shoulder and pressed the lid tightly onto the plastic tub.

“You’re going to take that?” Curtis’s question came out in an embarrassing falsetto.

“Big deal. It’s just one. They got like thirty here.”

“You need to put it back,” Curtis insisted.

“Don’t tell me what to do. You just jealous ’cause you don’t have one. Here, hold this,” he added, thrusting the rifle at Curtis while he heaved the big box back into the smaller tunnel.

Recoiling from the gun he was holding, Curtis wondered if he could go to jail for this. These guns had to be stolen and now his fingerprints were on this one.

Santana jammed the grate back onto its hinges and threaded the screws back in their holes with nimble fingers. He tightened down the screws with his screwdriver.

“We gonna wait ’til it’s dark,” he said, putting it away and grabbing the rifle out of Curtis’s slack grip. “Then I’ll walk home and hide it in my room.”

“What are you going to do with it?”

“Sell it. Watchu think?”

“How?” Curtis asked.

“On the internet, dumbass. Come on, let’s get out of here.”

All too eager to exit the dank enclosure, Curtis turned and started blindly forward. His toe struck a can which ricocheted loudly off the cement wall before splashing into water. They arrived at the place where the pipes intersected, and he turned left, relieved to see a glimmer of daylight up ahead.

Perhaps he should tell his mom about Santana’s discovery. He didn’t want his friend getting into trouble, but these weapons were proof of a crime, and even though his mom didn’t work civilian cases, he’d been taught the value of evidence when it came to convicting bad guys.

Yep, as soon as he was alone again, he would text her. Rusty would bring her home right away—Curtis knew him well enough to know that. What he’d seen tonight was freaking him out.

Chapter Eleven

‡

S
TARING INTO THE
leaping flames of their bonfire, Maya listened to Rusty’s rendition of the horrific battle that had claimed Ian’s life. With the wine they’d shared loosening his tongue, he divulged more than he otherwise might have, she was sure, explaining why the Marines had been sent up Gilman Ridge in the first place—to rescue an Army Corporal who had wandered away from his battalion and been grabbed by the Taliban.

It was supposed to have been a quick and easy rescue, but Intelligence had failed the Marines, causing her husband’s platoon to stumble into an enemy force ten times the size of their own. The only support close enough to help in a timely fashion had been Rusty’s squad consisting of four SEALs who’d just completed their own mission.

“And so we created a diversion, hoping to draw attention away from the Marines and onto us,” Rusty added. “What happened, instead, was that another wave of Taliban came running out of some caves to the east, and we were caught squarely in the middle, with no way out. The Marines took a heavy toll, and one of my guys sustained a chest wound. The Taliban pounded us with rocket launchers, grenades, gunfire, everything they had. They mortared the hell out of us, until we all ended up in the same place, behind an outcrop of boulders.”

Picturing it in her mind’s eye, a lump grew in Maya’s throat. The breeze blowing in off the ocean dried her tears before they could fall.

“Would you like me to stop?” he asked, his voice gravely with emotion.

It couldn’t be any easier for him to relive the event than it was for her to hear about it, but she shook her head all the same. “If you can talk about it, then I want to know.” She wasn’t sure it was for the best for Rusty to dwell on the horrors he’d lived through, but she felt she owed it to Ian to know what he’d gone through.

Rusty pressed on. “When our gunner was hit in the head, I figured we’d be overrun within minutes.” His gruff voice seemed to blend with the roar of the waves crashing and retreating only yards away. “But then Ian took over the M240 machine gun, and I’d never seen anyone fire that weapon with such precision. Our rounds were running out. Every bullet had to count. He must have cut the enemy in half. Suddenly, we actually had a chance of holding out until the air support could reach us.

“By then there were just seven of us left with the others dead or bleeding out all around us. The extraction helicopter was within sight when a grenade came bouncing down the hill. And damn if it didn’t roll right into the space where the seven of us were holed up. It landed closest to Ian. I expected him to snatch it up and toss it over the boulders, but he knew how long it had been rolling. He knew there wasn’t time. He looked right at me with this resolve that I’ll never forget. And then he threw himself face down on top of it.”

The picture in her mind was so vivid, Maya clapped her hands over her eyes. The pain that had lessened over the years returned with the same devastating force that had leveled her when she’d been informed of her husband’s death. If not for Curtis, who’d been four at the time, she might have sunk irreparably into depression. Instead, she’d kept busy, and day by day, year by year, her loss got easier.

Rusty’s shoulder brushed hers, letting her know that he’d shifted closer. His powerful arm encircled her, drawing her gently to him. Her shoulder fit neatly under his arm. With Ian’s countenance still fresh in her mind’s eye, she turned toward Rusty’s offer of consolation and pressed her face against his neck, breathing his fresh sage scent. Laying her hand against his chest, she registered the steady thump of his heart, taking comfort from it.

“I’m sorry,” he said into her ear.

It was oddly comforting to know that Rusty had been there in Ian’s last moments. She’d known about Ian sacrificing himself to save the others. But she’d never thought to consider that if the grenade had rolled next to Rusty, he’d have done the exact same thing. She now knew he would have. And knowing that made it impossible to resent him for surviving. Ian had wanted the other men to make it out.

She lifted her head abruptly. “Wait, what happened to the others?”

Rusty’s gaze swung toward the horizon, already swallowed up in darkness. His thumb stroked her upper arm absently as his thoughts traveled to another place and time. “Two caught bullets right after Ian died. The others were hit by shrapnel when a mortar blew up behind us on our way to the helo. I got them all onto the Blackhawk, but they didn’t survive the blast.”

She envisioned the risks he’d taken to try and save the last four. What an awful burden to have been the lone survivor.

Realizing that their mouths were only inches apart, Maya succumbed to the urge to comfort him. She leaned closer, closed her eyes, and touched her mouth to his.

His lips molded warmly to hers. Heat and desire flooded her instantly as their mouths slowly fused. His tongue stroked between her parted lips, and she lost herself to the wave of desire that crashed over her, pulling her into an undertow so fierce that she forgot to breathe.

She’d spent a decade in a sexual drought, lonely and—yes—resentful that death had taken her husband and life partner from her. Suddenly, her heart and body were being quenched at the same time, making the drought seem worthwhile in the face of such a sweet reawakening.

*

“
W
HAT’VE WE GOT
here?”

The unexpected question startled Curtis into backing up. He collided with Santana, who held the AR-15 across his chest as he followed on Curtis’s heels.

Three dark figures detached themselves from the tunnel wall, blocking the light of the exit. In the next instant a flashlight flared to life, pinning him and Santana in its blinding beam.

Curtis raised an arm to shield his eyes, and the pale face of a stranger, followed by two more men, one harder to see than the other, swam out of the darkness.

“Santana!” the darkest figure exclaimed. “What the hell you doin’ here?”

Curtis recognized the pitch and dialect of Santana’s uncle. A modicum of relief slowed his pounding heart.

“He’s helping himself to our stash, is what he’s doing,” the first man accused in an angry voice. Shoving Curtis out of his way, he snatched the AR-15 out of Santana’s grasp. Then he grabbed Santana by the scruff. “You know this kid?” he asked, turning to Will.

Santana’s uncle heaved a sigh. “He’s my nephew. He must have followed us the other day.”

“You followed us?” the man demanded, giving Santana a shake.

“Yeah,” Santana admitted, his voice suddenly tremulous.

The man’s eyes glittered in the dark as he assessed the situation. Curtis made out a thin scar at the corner of his mouth.

“Grab the other kid, Will,” he ordered. The scar made it look like he was leering. “They’ve seen our stash. We can’t let them leave.”

His ruthless words penetrated Curtis’s consciousness slowly. By the time Uncle Will siezed his arm, it was too late to bolt past the two men blocking his way and run for it. What had Scarface meant by
can’t let them leave?

“Come on, Tom. They ain’t gonna tell no one,” Uncle Will protested.

“Shut up, you idiot. You just told them my name. You think with the investigation going on we can afford to let them go? You
are
a stupid mother fucker.”

Uncle Will seemed to expand in size, shrinking the narrow space. “Don’t you talk that way to me. I’m the one who came up with a place to hide our shit. If we did things your way, we’d be sittin’ in jail right now.”

“Yeah, great hiding place,” the third man scoffed. Spanning the tunnel with his arms, he blocked the only escape route. “It’s so good that a couple of kids managed to find it.”

“Listen,” Will insisted. “Santana is family. Let him go, and I promise you, he’ll keep his mouth shut.” His tone implied that he’d personally see to that. “But the other kid just happens to be the son of the investigator working for NCIS.”

Startled to hear his mother mentioned, Curtis met Uncle Will’s dark, glittering gaze.

“No shit!” Scar-faced Tom turned his flashlight onto Curtis, who flinched from the glare. “He’s that Schultz bitch’s son?”

The lanky third man let his arms drop slowly.

Curtis sucked in a sharp breath. What did that guy just call his mom?

“I told you she lived just up the road from me,” Uncle Will said.

“Well, shit,” Tom breathed. “Ain’t that something?”

The sour taste of dread filled Curtis’s mouth as he realized the untenable situation he was in. His mother had to be investigating these men. That made him a very serious liability. Even if they moved their stash of weapons somewhere else, Curtis had heard enough to testify against them. The only way to avoid answering for their crimes was to make sure Curtis never told anyone—which meant they were going to
kill
him.

He fought the sudden, overwhelming need to urinate.

“So what do we do?” The third man asked, his tone conveying a clear reluctance to do anything drastic.

“We shoot him and leave him here,” Tom proposed.

“Please,” Curtis whispered, about to embarrass himself.

“He won’t tell anyone,” Santana insisted.

Tom ignored them both. “We shoot him dead,” he continued. “It’s the only way to guarantee his silence.”

“Now look,” Uncle Will’s tone became serious. “It’s one thing to smuggle guns. It’s a whole ’nother thing to kill somebody. I don’t want no part of this.”