My shoulder burns with pain. I roll on my side. A piece of glowing-hot shrapnel has torn my uniform and embedded itself in my flesh. I press my thumb against it and flick it aside. My skin and the fabric of my uniform are smoking.
Thirty feet downhill, I turn back, raise my rifle. Taliban are struggling to cross the barren gap.
Fire. One man goes down.
Fire. Miss.
Fire. Miss. The bullet whines off rock.
Motherfucker.
I’m shooting offhand, my breathing labored. I lurch against a tree, peg the rifle to the bark.
Fire. Hit. The Taliban fighter slams against the rock face, tumbles. Other Taliban withdraw to the safety of the woods. More AK47 fire zeroes in on me. RPGs streak through the air, rocket motors crackling.
I turn and melt into the forest. The tree line behind me is blasted into splinters. The concussion knocks me to my knees and elbows. I stagger to my feet, run like hell.
13
The Bridge to Lanat
Kagur-Ghar
Tuesday, 1500
Every breath is agony. I key the mike on my squad radio.
“Five-Five Actual, this is Five-Five Sierra.”
I’m gasping in the thin air.
“Go ahead, Sierra,” Koenig says.
The team will have heard the gunfire and explosions. In these otherwise quiet mountains, there is no missing them.
“Shahzad main body twenty minutes behind you. One hundred and fifty men. AKs, PKMs, RPGs, SAMs, mortars. Repeat. SAMs and eighty-two mike-mike mortars.”
“We can’t move any faster.”
“Get across the bridge. I’m coming fast, make sure you don’t shoot me.”
Shahzad knows we’re making for the bridge. He knows if we get across, we’ll blow it. It’s a rope bridge, poorly maintained. There has been a bridge of one form or another over that ravine for hundreds of years. The warlord’s logical move is to blow it before we get there.
“Five-Five Sierra, is that you?”
Ballard. Forget stealth. I’m making as much noise as I can so Ballard will hear me coming.
“Yes,” I gasp. “Hold your fire.”
I make my way downhill on the forested slope to the lower tree line. A shadow figure waits for me, silhouetted against the sunlit stones and lighter vegetation of the opposite slope. Ballard peers at me through his birth control glasses.
“Breed,” he says.
“They’re fifteen minutes behind me,” I say. “Twenty, tops. We can make the bridge before they do.”
Ahead of us, Lopez and Grissom are hurrying along the trail. Grissom has one hand on Lopez’s right shoulder.
“I’ll stay with you,” I say to Ballard. “If they catch us, you and I will hold them off.”
“Roger that.”
Eight years ago, I crossed that bridge. I remember it well. Thrown across a great ravine, two hundred yards long, six hundred feet deep. A rope bridge, it hung from four great wooden pillars on either side of the gorge. Pillars forged from pine trees, topped at fifteen feet, the bark scraped clean from their trunks. The bridge was eight feet wide. The ropes that held it were as thick as my thigh.
There’s a sound like a jet taking off, or a rocket being fired. An explosion ahead of us, around the curve of the mountain.
“Mortars,” Ballard says.
“Five-Five Sierra, this is Five-Five Actual.”
Koenig.
“Go ahead, Actual.”
“We see the bridge. They’re shelling us.”
“Get across. Cover from the other side.”
“How the hell are they directing fire?”
Shahzad’s mortars are indirect-fire weapons. The gunners can’t see the explosions from around the curve of the mountain. Someone has to spot the fall of their rounds and direct the mortarmen to walk their fire into the target. Right away, I know where the observers are hiding. The patrol on the opposite mountain has a clear view of the bridge.
“They’re spotting from Parkat,” I shout. “Get moving.”
More rushing sounds. Incoming mortar fire. Shahzad figures his artillery will catch us before his men. The mortar rounds burst in sets of two, one on top of the other.
“Shahzad’s trying to destroy the bridge,” I tell Ballard. “Come on, we have to cross.”
We round the curve of the mountain. The slope has been leveled from the tree line, and the southern approach is a flat clearing.
Our team races for the bridge. Takigawa is first across. He hurtles pell-mell over the swaying bridge, his boots clattering on the planks. A brace of explosions rock the near approach. Koenig and Trainor hurl themselves to the ground. They are showered with dirt and rock.
Koenig gets to his feet and sprints across the bridge.
Another rushing sound. A loud whoosh. Not too different from the sound of an RPG being fired, but a hundred times louder. Another explosion in front of Trainor. A geyser of earth and rock. One of the supporting pillars is hit. It cracks like a tree split by lightning.
Trainor, caught trying to rise, is blown flat by the concussion. Debris and fragments of rock shower her prone figure.
“Fuck.”
It’s Lopez. He and Grissom have thrown themselves flat on the rocks.
“Breed, the bridge.”
Ballard’s pointing, but he doesn’t have to. The ropes have been torn from the split tree trunk. The bridge hangs from two pillars on the far side, but only one on this side. The long sweep of planks tilts sharply from halfway across the gulf, to our edge of the chasm.
“Trainor, Lopez.” I wave to get their attention. “Forget it. Get back here.”
“We’re fucked,” Ballard says.
“Maybe not.” I work the angles as more mortars land on the clearing. Lopez and Trainor each grab one of Grissom’s arms and drag him away from the bridge.
I key my squad radio.
“Five-Five Actual, this is Five-Five Sierra.”
“Go ahead, Sierra.”
“The bridge is impassable. We have to make for Landing Zone Three.”
“How?”
“We have to descend to the valley, cross to Lanat, and climb from there. You can either continue to LZ Two, or meet us at LZ Three.”
Standard operating procedure. Before any operation requiring exfil, several
