Dead or Alive - Tom Clancy [9]
There was more light ahead, flickering. Candles, probably. Maybe the gomers needed a night-light, like Driscoll’s young kids. Still the cave floor was devoid of clutter. Somebody had cleaned this place up. Why? Driscoll wondered. How long ago?
He kept moving forward.
The next turn was to the left, a shallow, sweeping turn in the limestone rock, and at the next turn, a lot of light—relatively speaking. Without the PVS-17s it would have been a dull glow at most.
That’s when he heard noise. Snoring. Not too far forward. Driscoll wasn’t moving fast, but now he slowed a bit. Time to be careful. He approached the turn, weapon foremost, turning, turning, turning slowly.
There. That’s what he was looking for. Semifinished lumber. Plain old untreated two-by-fours, and those didn’t grow out of the ground. Somebody had carried them in here from civilization, and that somebody had used a saw to cut them and shape them to size.
Sure as hell, somebody lived here, and it wasn’t just a temporary bolt-hole. That was a damned good sign for this cave.
He started to get excited, could feel the tingle of it in his belly. That didn’t often happen to First Sergeant (E-8) Sam Driscoll. His left hand motioned for his companions to close up. They closed to an interval of maybe three meters and followed his lead.
Double-decker bunks. That’s what the lumber was for. Eight of them he could see. All were occupied. Six bunks, six gomers. One even appeared to have a mattress, the blow-up plastic kind you could buy at Gander Mountain. On the floor was a foot-powered air pump. Whoever that one was, he liked sleeping in comfort.
Okay. Now what? he asked himself. It wasn’t often that he didn’t know what to do, and more often than not he advised his company commander at times like this, but Captain Wilson was stuck on a hilltop ten miles behind them, and that put Driscoll in command, and command was suddenly pretty damned lonely. Worst of all, this wasn’t the last room. The cave went on forward. No telling how far. Oh, shit.
Back to work.
He eased forward. His orders were fairly simple, and for that purpose he had a noise suppressor for his pistol. This he now drew out of his web holster. Moving forward, he reached the first sleeping man. He put his Beretta next to the man’s head and squeezed off the first round. The suppressor worked as advertised. The sound of the cycling pistol action was far louder than the report of the shot itself. He even heard the brass cartridge case rattling on the stone floor with its small, toylike tinkling clatter. Whatever the guy had been dreaming about was now as real as hell. The guys sleeping on the lower bunk went the same way.
It occurred briefly to Driscoll that in the civilian world this would be considered pure murder, but that wasn’t his worry. These guys had thrown their lot in with people who were making war on his country, and it was their fault that they hadn’t mounted a sufficient guard on their quarters. Laziness had consequences, and war had rules, and those rules were hard on those who violated them. Inside of three seconds, the remaining men were dispatched. Maybe they’d get their virgins. Driscoll didn’t know. Nor did he especially care. Nine bad guys down and dead. He moved forward. Behind him, two more Rangers were following, not too close but close enough, pistol up in one case, M4 carbine in the other for overwatch, just like it said in The Book. The cave turned to the right a few feet ahead. Driscoll pressed on, taking time only to breathe. More bunks, he saw. Two of them.
But neither of these was occupied. The cave kept going. He’d been in a bunch of similar caves. A few had stretched on for as much as three, four hundred meters. Most didn’t. Some were mere walk-in closets, but this wasn’t one of those, either. He’d heard that some, in Afghanistan, went on for half