African-American, and Latino blood beat them all in the mongrel department. The communications expert kept in shape doing push-ups with his toes wedged to a wall and wouldn’t think of marring his skin with a tat.
Cooper was a serious Marine but quick with a smile. Unlike Mike, who’d grown up herding cattle on a ranch in Colorado, and Taggart, who’d mixed it up on the streets in the Bronx, or Webber, the son of elementary school teachers, Cooper had grown up in luxury—compliments of his Colombian-born model mother and his father’s lucrative export business. Cooper had been a model himself and an actor, but had enlisted in the Marines when a friend had been KIA in Iraq.
Mike had just decided he might have to send Cooper and Taggart to investigate, when his headset crackled.
“Crenshaw to Primetime, do you read me? Over?”
Relieved to finally hear from the big Minnesotan who towered over most of the guys by a good head, Mike answered quickly. “Read you five by five, Crenshaw. Not like you to miss chow. How ’bout a sit rep? Over.”
“Ran into a buzz saw.” The details Crenshaw proceeded to give him on what they’d found made Mike’s gut tighten.
The team had not only spotted Taliban fighters in the village, they’d witnessed a brutal execution of a young woman. And it wasn’t their first kill. Bodies were stacked up like firewood in the town center that was patrolled by Taliban fighters. It appeared the team had stumbled onto a systematic slaughter that was still in progress.
“Seek permission to engage. Over.”
Mike totally got it. Crenshaw and the team wanted to take the Taliban fighters out before they killed any more civilians. But permission wasn’t his to give—their orders were recon only. He had to contact Command Central at the Forward Operating Base.
“Hold for further. Over.”
“What’s going on?” Webber asked from the copilot seat.
The three men had heard only Mike’s side of his conversation with Crenshaw but they all sensed the news wasn’t good.
Mike changed radio frequency and immediately tried to raise the FOB. As soon as he made contact he recounted the situation on the ground, then waited for the radio operator to relay the intel to the commander. He didn’t have to see the other men’s faces in the dark to know they were chomping at the bit to engage. They’d heard his side of the radio commo loud and clear.
Mike listened, his body tense as he received his orders.
“Roger that,” he replied. “Over and out.”
“We going in?”
Mouth tight, Mike answered Taggart with a single shake of his head. “They’re sending air support. We’re to call the chicks back to the roost and return to base.”
Behind him, Cooper swore. “It’ll be sixty minutes before they get gunships up here.”
No one knew that better than Mike. He knew how hard he could push the Black Hawk in this climate and terrain. Crews could gear up in a matter of minutes and aircraft was always at the ready. The distance was the problem.
And air support with civilians in the area, being executed? JDAM smart bombs were wickedly accurate, but not accurate enough to take out a bad guy with civilians within ten or twenty yards.
Puzzled by his commander’s call, but keeping his opinion to himself, he changed frequency again and tried to raise Crenshaw and call them back to the bird.
“He’s not answering,” Mike muttered aloud after several attempts to contact the team leader.
Silence was always bad news.
After several more unsuccessful attempts, he ripped off his headset. He and Webber couldn’t leave the bird, but Taggart and Cooper could.
“Go,” he told them, knowing he couldn’t stop them if he wanted to. Both had already locked and loaded their M-4s. “Keep commo open.”
He watched from inside the cockpit as the two men in full camo gear sprinted in the direction the team had taken, then disappeared from sight in the inky black night. Webber climbed behind the mini, just in case.
Long minutes passed. Mike repeatedly checked his watch. Swore. Waited. Watched. Then caught his breath when the two men emerged out of the dark fifteen minutes later.
“The sonofabitches have them. All of them.” Taggart’s voice was thick with anger and alarm.
“What are we up against?” Mike already assumed that since they’d come back alone, they were looking at big numbers of Taliban fighters. Too big for two men to engage.
He swallowed hard when they told him.
“We can’t leave them there.” Cooper’s face was set hard with determination. “They’ve got them on their knees in the middle of the village square, rifles pointed at their heads.”
Mike told himself that American hostages made good bargaining chips; they’d be foolish to shoot them. On the other hand, dead Americans also added fuel to the radical zealots’ fires.
There was no telling what they would do to them.
He got on the radio again. “I repeat,” he said, attempting to contain his anger after relaying the gravity of the situation and being told to stand down until the base commander could be contacted. “Situation critical. Request permission to engage. Over.”
When the orders finally came down, he was sure he’d heard wrong. They were to return to the FOB. “Say again. Over.”
The radio operator repeated the base commander’s original declaration to return to base, assuring him that gunships were on the way.
Gunships that were still a good thirty minutes from target.
Mike made a decision. “I can’t read you. You’re breaking up. Over.”
Then he cut radio power.
“Shit. You lose them?” Taggart looked anxious.
Mike shook his head. “They called us off.”
Cooper’s face said it all. “That’s bullshit.”
Taggart looked ready to spit nails. “We are not leaving them.”
“You’re right. We aren’t.” Mike looked at Webber.
When the copilot nodded in agreement with his decision to disobey orders, Mike spun up the main rotor.
“Don’t be shy on that mini.” He hitched his chin toward Taggart, who’d climbed back into position behind the gun.
The big turbine engine whined as he glanced over his shoulder at Cooper, yelling to be heard above the roar. “Fire at anything with a turban and a rifle.” He lifted off, hoping to hell they got there in time.
Mike’s stomach dropped as he flew over a final ridge then dove close to the ground, his NVGs casting the confusing and grisly tableau in ghostly green light.
All he saw were bodies. Piles of them. Heartsick, he could make out Crenshaw’s big prostrate form lying facedown in the dirt next to the bodies of several villagers.
“Fuckers!” Taggart roared and leaned on the mini, scattering the Taliban fighters. The cartridge belt pumped out two thousand to six thousand rounds per minute as Taggart strafed the ground.
Mike banked the Black Hawk into a tight turn and looped around, zeroing back in on the village center, sickened and riveted by the carnage. So riveted he didn’t see the ball of fire heading toward them until a split second before Hondo yelled, “RPG! RPG! Break right!”
“Brace!” he yelled—but it was too late.
The bird jolted, lurched sideways, plummeted twenty feet, then spun a hard three-sixty. Fire surrounded the cockpit, filling it with smoke. Coughing and struggling to see, Mike fought the collective, the cyclic, trying to steady the bird. But when he lost control of the rudder pedals, he knew they were going down.
Not like this. Jesus God, not like this. Not with his team already dead on the ground, and the possibility of innocents in the path of the out-of-control Black Hawk.
Behind him, Taggart roared like a wild dog and clutched his leg; Cooper yelled out a prayer. Mike heard it all on a peripheral level as he fought to right the chopper. The crippled bird spun wildly, dipping and dodging, and
