The staccato drumbeat of AK47 fire continues from the village. The Talis don’t know what they are shooting at. All they have to key on are the last muzzle flashes they saw from Koenig and Lopez. This is random, searching fire. Its sound rises and falls in waves as it sweeps over an area. Aimed fire sounds deliberate. Single shots or short bursts directed by an intelligence that wants to kill you.
Slowly, the AK47 fire dies. Taliban wearing man-jams, leather vests, and chest rigs packed with magazines run across the terrace. They converge on the goat trail.
I lay the sight on the first man to reach the trail. Exhale slowly, break the shot. There’s a supersonic crack, but no muzzle flash. The action cycles, ejects the spent brass. The Talib crumples.
The next man hurdles his friend’s body and runs onto the trail. He’s wearing a vest with a double pack of AK47 magazines across his chest. They could deflect the round. I aim for his face and fire. The man’s head snaps back and he drops his rifle.
The remaining Taliban press themselves against the rocks on the side of the terrace. They can guess where the sniper fire is coming from, and they hurl a torrent of automatic fire against my position. Aimed fire, now. Short bursts. Bullets snap overhead and whack into tree trunks.
Koenig and Lopez run past me.
I check the tritium dial on my watch. From this vantage point, I can hold off the Taliban. But—I want a ride off this mountain. Five minutes should do it. Hubble and Ballard are holding another defensive position half a click further along the trail.
Clutch the M110 to my chest. Displace, crawl to another tree fifteen feet away at the edge of the tree line. Prone, I cover another Talib running onto the trail. Fire. The man pitches forward onto his face. Shift my aim, shoot a Talib firing from the side of the terrace. He drops his rifle, falls sideways.
Displace. Crawl to another tree. More Taliban emerge from houses built higher on the mountain. They swarm the mountainside. No goat trails there, but these mountain men were born to climb. They walk on gradients that would freeze the blood of a lowlander.
They are executing a vertical envelopment. If they attack along the goat trail, I hold the high ground. If they approach from the mountainside, they attack from an elevated position. They want to do both at once.
I pick off one of the men on the mountainside. He screams and tumbles, arms and legs stretched out. He crashes into the rocky slope once, twice, then lands on the terrace a hundred and fifty feet below.
How many are there? Maybe thirty. The gunfire can be heard for miles. Alerted, Shahzad’s main body can bring another hundred to the fight.
Despite the vertical envelopment, my position is superior to that held by Hubble and Ballard. I can improve our odds by thinning the Taliban ranks.
Muzzle flashes from the mountainside and the terrace. The Taliban are moving again. Fast. Across the mountainside, without the benefit of a path. And over the goat trail from below.
I shoot another Talib on the mountainside, then the lead man on the goat trail. Bullets from above and below splinter the tree trunks around me. Whacking sounds like giant hammers driving nails into the wood. Chips of bark rain down. Again, I displace. I never fire more than two shots from the same location.
They’re getting close. I shift my fire. For every round I send along the trail, I fire two at the mountainside. An elevated position is the greater threat.
“Five-Five Charlie, this is Five-Five Sierra.”
“Five-Five Charlie.” Hubble’s voice.
“Am withdrawing to your poz. Estimate thirty Taliban behind me. Say again, thirty. Twice fifteen.”
“Roger that, Sierra.”
I fire twice more, lower my NODs, run like the devil.
A trail. Inside the forest, I make out crushed vegetation where Koenig, Lopez, and the team have passed. I run full tilt, can’t be bothered to look behind me.
“Five-Five Sierra.”
Fuck protocol. “Go ahead,” I gasp.
“That you, sounding like a herd of elephants?”
“Got maybe two hundred yards on them.”
“Withdraw through us, Sierra.”
Can’t bother to answer. The trail curves, following the contour of the mountain. I run past the blocking position. Hubble and Ballard are invisible, tucked behind cover. They picked a key bend in the trail, where it shifts from an uphill slope to a level contour. When Taliban reach them, once again our men will be fighting from an elevated position.
I’m through the tree line, and onto the eastern slope of Kagur-Ghar.
The sky is lightening. I raise my NODs and stop for breath.
“Five-Five Actual, this is Five-Five Sierra.”
“Go ahead, Sierra.”
“You at LZ One?”
“Affirmative. Come on in.”
I follow the tree line. There, I make out Koenig and Takigawa. Koenig is standing. Takigawa is on one knee, weapon raised to provide security. Grissom is leaning against a tree while Lopez tends his wound. Trainor kneels next to them.
Can’t call this an LZ. Loggers pared back the tree line for fifteen yards from the edge. Our plan had been to use det cord to blast a proper landing zone. No time for that now. There’s just enough space for a Black Hawk to land and extract us.
Behind me, I hear gunfire and the boom of explosions. Claymores, bound to trees, detonating. Scattering steel ball bearings over interlocking arcs. The blasts shred Taliban charging Hubble’s position. Our men must be displacing, withdrawing to the LZ.
I make my way to Lopez and Grissom. “How is the colonel?”
“Round grazed him,” Lopez grunts. “Skull may be fractured, and he has a concussion. He needs proper medical care.”
Head shots don’t always kill people. The toughness of the human skull will amaze you. The target must be hit “On The T.” A bar between his eyebrows and a vertical support running down the line of his nose
