I know what I saw. I was there. Twenty-two years I kept my mouth shut because they made us sign papers, but I'm done with that. What are they gonna do, come after a retired contractor with a bad knee and three grandkids? I don't care anymore. People need to know. Summer of 2002. Kandahar Province. I was working with a special operations unit, can't say which one, but you can probably figure it out. We got word that an entire patrol had gone dark. No radio contact, nothing. Just vanished somewhere up in those mountains east of the city. I remember I'd skipped chow that morning because the eggs smelled wrong. Stupid thing to remember, but there it is.
They sent us in to find them. Eight guys total, full kit. M4s, a couple Barrett fifties, the works. We humped up into those mountains for hours. Afghanistan is ancient, you know? And I don't mean old like your grandmother's house. I mean old like the bones of the earth. Something about that place never sat right with me. The locals, they'd dye their hair and their goats this bright orange color sometimes. Never could figure out why. Now I think I know. We found the patrol's equipment first. Scattered around the mouth of this cave like someone had just tossed it. Rifles, packs, comms gear. But no bodies. Not yet. The cave opening was huge. Had to be twenty feet across, maybe more. And the smell coming out of it, that's the thing. It hit you like a wall. Like rotting meat left in the sun for a week.
We took up positions. Standard breach formation. I was on the left flank with Danny Kowalski. Good kid from Michigan, just turned twenty-three. He was telling me about his girl back home that morning. Said he was gonna propose when he got back. smell would have made me turn around - Pete' We started moving toward the entrance, and that's when the ground started shaking. Not an earthquake. Footsteps. Heavy ones. Something was coming out of that cave, and it was big. I thought maybe it was a bear at first, some kind of animal. I was wrong. God, I was so wrong.
[ Story continues in the full game... ]