Hawke whirled just in time to see an armored U.S. Army Humvee come flying over the top of the massive dune and go skidding down the face of it, throwing out waves of sand. It was followed by a second, a third, and then a fourth! The four vehicles immediately whirled toward the enemy, raced across the desert, and inserted themselves directly between Hawke's team and the charging Taliban horsemen.
Hatches flew open in the roof of each vehicle, and soldiers manning M240 7.62mm machine guns opened up on the now-terrified horsemen. The Humvee was also equipped with an MK19 40mm grenade launcher now firing a variety of grenades at an effective range of more than two thousand yards. The Americans were launching them into the enemy at a rate of sixty rounds per minute.
The Taliban force, shocked and disoriented, either died in the saddle or turned and ran. Most of them died. The Humvees charged in pursuit of the retreating enemy, and Hawke knew their fate was sealed.
He looked up into the vast blue sky above and thanked whoever was up there. It was over.
Hawke, deeply moved by the courage he'd just witnessed, went around the little compound with Stokely. While Stoke, who had extensive battlefield medical experience thanks to Vietnam, tended the newly wounded, Hawke embraced each man in turn, saying to each, 'Well done. I shall always remember your courage.'
When he came to Sahira, he embraced her, too. He whispered into her ear, 'I told you we'd be all right.'
'I didn't believe you,' she said.
'Frankly, I didn't either.'
WHEN HE WAS SATISFIED THAT EVERYTHING possible was being done to care for his dead and wounded, Hawke left the compound and headed behind the dune to retrieve the body of Harry Brock.
He found Harry lying spread-eagled on his back, high on the back face of the dune next to his satellite radio and his rifle. Blood was seeping from his multiple wounds into the sand. Below him were five Taliban, sprawled on the back of the dune, dead.
'Hey, chief,' Harry said, blinking his eyes in the harsh sunlight and smiling through the pain up at his friend Hawke. Blood was trickling from the corners of his mouth. He seemed to be drifting in and out of consciousness from loss of blood.
'You okay, Harry?'
'Couple of holes, that's all. We beat those bastards?'
'Yeah, we beat 'em, Harry.'
'We don't pick fights, we finish 'em. Ain't that right, boss?'
'That's right, Harry.'
Hawke knelt in the sand, slid his hands under the man, rose to his feet, and started down the wide face of the dune with Brock in his arms. Harry was clearly in pain and, mercifully, he'd passed out again.
'The cavalry showed up, Harry,' Hawke said to his unconscious friend. 'You did your duty. I hope to God you make it, old friend.'
FIFTY-EIGHT
THEY CLIMBED HIGHER INTO THE MOUNTAINS. Fewer men, fewer horses, fewer supplies. The Rat Patrol they'd called themselves. Now, hair stringy, their beards coarse and foul, they'd been reduced to brushing their teeth with their fingers; all of them had begun to reek. The riding, if you could call it that, was nightmarish on the narrow, icy mountain trails. Snow, wind-whipped off the mountains, made visibility poor to nil. The fact that the horses could even keep their footing was miraculous. The cold at this altitude, nearly ten thousand feet, was deadening. Hawke hadn't felt the reins in his hands in hours.
The four Humvees had provided a reassuring escort through the tribal badlands to the foothills of the very mountains where Osama bin Laden was rumored to be hiding. The U.S. Army had also secretly entered Pakistani airspace, sending in a big Chinook helicopter to evacuate the dead and wounded in the tiny compound where they'd made their stand. Hawke had held a brief prayer service for Patoo and the others who had died as the chopper descended out of the red haze of early evening in the desert.
When it came time for Harry Brock's stretcher to be loaded aboard the helo, Brock had insisted he was fit to fight, but Hawke had insisted he clearly was not. Hawke had won that round, mainly because Brock was so weak from loss of blood that he couldn't sustain the argument. He and Stoke had been there when Harry's stretcher went aboard. Both men shook his hand, expressing deep gratitude for all he had done to save so many lives.
'I can't stay and fight?' Brock asked weakly.
'No, Harry,' Hawke said.
'Cuss,' Harry said and disappeared inside the big helo.
THEY'D LOCATED THE MOUNTAIN CALLED Wazizabad using the crude hand-drawn map Stokely had extracted out of the diminutive prison imam. The one who'd waived his legal rights sixteen miles out in the Atlantic off Miami.
The distinct features of the formerly mythical mountain's peak on the map exactly matched what they were all looking at. It was a majestic, threatening thing, a jagged pyramid of rock that scratched the sky, clad in ice and snow, its upper reaches swathed in dull grey clouds and whirlwinds of blown snow.
This, Hawke wanted to believe, meant they were looking in the right place. But the Pakistani imam Stoke had busted in the Glades Prison wasn't stupid. If he'd spent a lot of time in this region, he could have easily drawn the shape of the mountain he remembered most clearly.
He was not a man to give up hope. But they'd been climbing the mountain since daybreak and were now nearing the pinnacle. So far, they'd seen nothing that would indicate the rabbit warren of tunnels supposedly inside this mountain.
An hour later, as the sun was setting, the western skies were turning purple and gold. But just as the temperatures began plummeting, hope rose. They had finally reached something that might be the entrance to a tunnel. They'd almost missed it in the growing darkness. The entrance had been cleverly disguised with boulders, but a ray of sharp sunlight pierced a small fissure in the rock and illuminated what looked to Hawke like the inside of a tunnel.
Hawke raised a hand for the long line of men and horses in his wake to halt. He dismounted, and, with the help of Stoke and Dakkon, began pulling away the heavy boulders that blocked whatever lay beyond. Hawke watched Stoke shoving a huge boulder aside and realized that without his enormous strength, this effort would have been impossible. Soon they'd created a hole large enough for a man to squirm his way through. Abdul was the obvious choice as he was the smallest of the three. Hawke handed him his SureFire flashlight and Dakkon climbed up and disappeared.
A moment later they saw his smiling face looking down at them. He crawled out and dropped to the trail.
'A tunnel, sir! Maybe the mother of all tunnels!'
Hawke ordered more men to dismount and remove all obstacles to the entrance. When the work was finally done, he entered the tunnel alone, his weapon in hand, his finger on the trigger, his SureFire mounted to the bottom rail of his M4. He walked about twenty yards into the darkness, looking at the ground for any signs of activity, recent or otherwise. Hawke knew this was simply the first of many such tunnels they would expect to encounter, since his map indicated the entire top of the mountain was honeycombed with tunnels and caverns both natural and man-made.
But this one would certainly do. Night was falling rapidly and so was the temperature. It had been a very long day, and shelter from the wind and cold beat the hell out of a night outside on the trail.
The nearly frozen, saddle-sore riders were indifferent about where this hole in the side of the mountain might lead. If it took them into the heart of the enemy lair, fine. But all they cared about at this moment was getting off the damned horses and out of the frigid blasts of air that had buffeted them every painful step of the way up.
The tunnel entrance, thank God, was also large enough to accommodate the horses. Hawke had a couple of his men lead them inside, tether them together, then water and feed them an abundant meal of the hay they carried. Hawke saw to it that the shivering steeds were also covered with heavy woolen blankets. He wanted them rested and strong in the highly likely event the team might need to beat a hasty retreat down the mountain.
They all squatted around a small fire and ate, gulping great draughts of warm tea as soon as the animals had been cared for. Then they unrolled the three-part sleeping bags and prepared to bed down on hard rock for the
