“Roger that, Five-Five Sierra.”
“Sierra out.”
I hand the handset back to Ballard. “Let’s get moving north,” I say. “Follow the contour of Kagur-Ghar, stay inside the tree line.”
“What about the SAMs?” Trainor asks.
“We’ve never lost a fast-mover to SAMs. Lost a lot of helos.”
Koenig shoulders his ruck, reasserts his authority. “Hubble, you’re point. Takigawa, slack. I’ll follow. Breed and Trainor behind me. Lopez, watch Grissom. Ballard, rear guard. Let’s go.”
“One more thing,” I tell him.
“What the fuck, Breed.”
Takigawa and Hubble continue to fire. Taliban throw themselves to the ground.
“We can not stay here,” Takigawa says.
I reach into a side-pocket of my ruck, pull out an infrared strobe.
“It’s getting too light for that,” Koenig snaps.
“Maybe not,” I say. “If it is, no harm done.”
I set the strobe at the edge of the tree line. Where the forest is dark, but the strobe can be seen from the air.
“Let’s move out,” Koenig barks.
We set off at a fast pace. Koenig’s team is hard and fit, but Grissom and Trainor are another matter.
Marching with a sixty-pound ruck is a familiar feeling. I’ve distributed the gear about my body. The heavy pack hangs from my shoulders on thick, padded straps. I feel the weight of its contents pressing against this side and that. The spare batteries for my radio and NODs, stripper clips of 7.62 mm ammunition to replenish the magazines I carry. Six in the belly-rig of my plate carrier, four in a side-pocket of the pack. Two quarts of water, plus the canteen on my pistol belt. I take the NODs from my half-shell helmet and store them in a pouch, left side of the plate carrier.
The burden sways gently with my body, and my gait adjusts to the movement. Hiking over rough country with heavy gear is like riding a bike. Do it enough, and your body develops a sense of balance. It’s light enough to see now, though the shadows inside the tree line are deep. When we step onto bare slope, the glare to the east is blinding.
Trainor strides between me and Koenig. She moves over the rocky trails with the sure-footedness of a mountain goat. A lithe economy, as though she is used to hiking in these mountains. She wears standard-issue digital camouflage and level three body armor. The clothing she was captured in. No rifle, no helmet. Muslim fighters always make female captives wear headscarves. To humiliate them, and render them compliant with Sharia law. Like a cowboy’s kerchief, she wears the headscarf loosely knotted at her throat.
She hasn’t lost fitness during her eighteen months captivity. I have some sense for the capabilities of women in cultural liaison roles. They are no slouches, but Trainor seems a cut above, despite her small size. Five-seven, maybe a hundred and thirty pounds.
The colonel is going to be a problem. I think back to my conversations with Stein and Anthony. Grissom is the mission. Grissom is the peace deal.
Grissom is sucking shit through a straw.
He’s a big guy, six feet tall. Military intelligence. Wounded, but looks strong enough to march on his own. Wobbly, but not because of his injury. He’s having trouble negotiating the rocky terrain, the woods with gnarled tree limbs. The colonel has not developed the balance one acquires from long hours humping over rough country. That makes his stride inefficient. He will tire quickly.
Where did Trainor develop that balance? The facility of movement over mountains. What was her eighteen months in captivity like?
Five minutes have passed. Ballard’s high-frequency radio crackles. “Five-Five Sierra, this is Dog One.”
I stop, allow Lopez and Grissom to pass. Ballard holds the handset out to me. High above us, a dark speck. Occasionally, the speck glints in the dawn sunlight. “Go ahead, Dog One.”
“Confirm grid reference unchanged.”
“Confirmed, Dog One. Have deployed IR strobe, edge of forest.”
We stop and look back. Taliban are crossing the LZ in a long file. Damn, I wish they were bunched up. I’ll take what I can get.
“I see the strobe,” the pilot calls. “Right on the grid.”
“Roger that,” I tell him. “Approach east to west. Say again, east to west. Guns and bombs on target. Give me everything you’ve got—on the strobe.”
“Copy, east to west. On the strobe.”
“They’re crossing the LZ right now. You’re cleared hot.”
“Copy, cleared hot.”
The speck grows in size as the aircraft dives on the mountain. It’s a silver cross, a fuselage with straight, blunt wings. An A-10 Warthog loaded with bombs and napalm, armed with a 30 mm rotary cannon.
There’s a whistling whine as the jet closes on the mountainside. The Taliban lift their faces to the sky, point at the angel of death. The Gatling gun spews fire, and the landing zone is obscured by flying rocks, splintered trees and body parts. Broken tree branches are indistinguishable from human arms and legs whirling through the air. Close in, you might hear the wet slap of bloody flesh falling to earth. Two five-hundred-pound bombs and two drop tanks filled with jellied gasoline detach from the plane’s wings.
The mountain erupts with the explosion of the bombs. The rock shelf is blasted from the face of the mountain. Great gouts of rock, earth, and shattered trees spurt from the slope. An instant later, the napalm explodes, covering the mountainside with a strip of orange flame. Greasy black smoke boils into the sky.
The A-10 climbs away. From the forest, another SAM streaks skyward. The Taliban waited to give the missile’s seeker head the best view of the jet’s hot exhaust.
“SAM on your six.”
A burst of decoy flares pop from the A-10’s tail. The plane breaks hard left and the missile zeroes in on the brilliant orbs.
“Let’s go,” I snap. “We have to make time while they’re sorting out that mess.”
“Five-Five Sierra,” my radio crackles. “How’s that look?”
“Out-fucking-standing, Dog One. How about another guns pass?”
“Five-Five Sierra, roger that. There’s more help behind me.”
“Thank you, Dog One. Watch out for those SAMs.”
“Too easy, Sierra. Good luck.”
The A-10 strafes the landing zone again before it departs to the
