Moore shook his head. “They know we’ve got satellites and Predators up there. They’ll just dig in. You watch.”
“I’m a little frightened,” Rana confessed.
“Are you kidding me? Relax. We’ll be fine.”
Moore gestured to the AK-47 slung over his shoulder and patted the old Soviet-made Makarov holstered at his side. Rana was also carrying a Makarov, and Moore had taught him how to fire and reload the sidearm.
They found a shallow cave along one of the hillsides and half buried the entrance with some larger rocks and shrubs. They remained there as night fell, and Moore began to slowly doze off. He caught himself twice falling asleep and asked Rana to remain awake and keep watch. The kid was tense anyway, and was happy to keep an eye out.
The energy bar he’d eaten earlier wasn’t agreeing with him, and it brought on some vivid dreams. He was floating on an ink-black sea, crucified against an endless expanse of darkness, and suddenly he reached out a hand and screamed, “DON’T LEAVE ME! DON’T LEAVE ME!”
He shuddered awake as something pushed over his mouth. Where the hell was he? He didn’t feel wet. He was panting, couldn’t catch his breath, realized that was because his mouth was in fact being covered by a hand.
Through the grainy darkness came Rana’s wide eyes, and he stage-whispered, “Why are you yelling? I’m not going anywhere. I’m not leaving. But you can’t yell.”
Moore nodded vigorously, and Rana slowly removed his hand. Moore bit his lip and tried to recover his breathing. “Whoa, sorry, bad dreams.”
“You thought I was going to leave.”
“I don’t know. Wait. What time is it?”
“It’s after midnight. Almost zero dark thirty.”
Moore sat up and switched on his satellite phone. A voice mail was waiting: “Hey, Blackbeard, you worthless sack of flesh. We’re mounting up. ETA your backyard, twenty minutes.”
He switched off the phone. “Listen. You hear that?”
Samad was awakened by a hand on his shoulder, and for a second or two he lost his bearings; then he remembered they were inside the farmer’s house. He sat up on the small wooden bed. “There’s a helicopter coming,” said Talwar.
“Go back to sleep.”
“Are you certain?”
“Go back to sleep. When they come, we’ll be annoyed that they woke us up.”
Samad went over to a small table and tied a rag across his face, suggesting that he’d lost an eye — not an uncommon sight in this war-torn part of the country. It was a simple disguise, and he’d learned during his days as a bomb-maker that the more simple the bomb, the idea, the plan, the greater the chance for success it had. He’d proven that theory to himself time and again. A rag. A war wound. A bitter farmer pulled from his sleep by foolish Americans. That’s all he was.
God was great!
The twelve-man ODA team fast-roped down from the hovering chopper as a translator addressed a few of the tribesmen who’d stumbled half-asleep from their houses to stare up and shield their eyes from the rotor wash. The translator spoke loudly via the Black Hawk’s booming public address system: “We’re here to find two men, and that is all. No one will be harmed. No shots will be fired. Please help us to find two men.” The translator repeated the message at least three times as Ozzy’s team hit the deck, one after another, then fanned out in pairs, rifles at the ready.
The drop zone was a clearing near a row of homes about two hundred meters away from the walls of the chief’s fortress, and Moore met the young Special Forces captain and his chief warrant officer in an alley between houses. They waited a few seconds until the Black Hawk banked hard and thumped away into the darkness, navigation lights flashing as its pilot steered back for the secure landing zone a few kilometers away, where they’d wait for Ozzy’s call to extract them. Landing the chopper in the village and having it remain there while the team went to work was simply too dangerous.
“You remember my sidekick, Robin?” Moore asked, directing his penlight at Rana.
Ozzy grinned. “How you doing, buddy?”
Rana frowned. “My name’s Rana, not Robin.”
“It’s a joke,” said Moore. He faced the chief warrant officer, a guy named Bobby Olsen, aka Bob-O, who took one look at Moore and pretended to scowl. “Are you the CIA puke?”
Bob-O wore the same look and asked the same question every time they got together. For some reason he took evil delight in ribbing Moore every chance he got. Moore raised his index finger and jabbed it into Bob-O’s face, about to launch his retort.
“Okay, you knuckleheads, we can stow that,” said Ozzy. He raised his brows at Moore. “It’s your party, Blackbeard. I hope you’re right.”
Ozzy’s team had been well trained in the art and science of negotiating with the tribesmen, and their fieldwork had allowed them to put classroom theory and mock scenarios into practice. They’d learned the language, had studied the customs, and even had small all-weather cheat sheets folded and stored in their breast pockets in case they were caught off guard in a social situation. They were, in their humble opinion, ambassadors of democracy, and while some might consider that notion silly or cheesy, they were the only contact with the Western world many of the tribesmen would ever have.
Moore, Rana, Ozzy, and Bob-O were about to cross a rutted dirt road lying parallel to the mud-brick homes when two salvos of automatic-weapons fire echoed off the mountains. The gunfire struck Moore breathless. Bob-O cursed.
“Raceman, who fired those shots?” Ozzy barked into the boom mike at his lips as Moore and Rana crouched beside the house.
Bob-O was on his radio at the same time, yapping at the other teams, demanding information.
More gunfire resounded, the cadence and pitch notably different. Yes, that fire belonged to Ozzy’s people, their Special Forces Combat Assault Rifles (SCARs) sending 5.56- or 7.63-millimeter responses to the enemy’s ambush. Two more volleys followed. Then a third. Then five, six, maybe seven, AK-47s answered, the gun battle about a half-dozen houses away.
Moore pricked up his ears. To fire an AK-47 you loaded your magazine, moved the selector lever off the safety, pulled back and released the charging handle, took aim, and fired — quite a few moves to fire a single shot. But if you moved the selector to the middle position, you had full auto and could lean on the trigger until you emptied the magazine. Basic gun operation, but the point was this: During any gun battle, Moore first listened for the enemy’s location and then tried to determine if the enemy was trying to conserve ammo. He heard it every time — either full auto, which often meant that each combatant had multiple magazines at his disposal, or single shot, which suggested that the enemy was trying to make every round count. Sure, this wasn’t a foolproof assessment, but more times than not his assumptions had been correct.
When a group of Taliban unleashed full automatic-weapons fire, you’d best assume the worst: They were well stocked with ammo.
Moore faced Rana and said, “Don’t do anything. Just hold tight here.”
Rana’s eyes lit up the alley. “Oh, don’t worry. I’m not going anywhere.”
“Neo and Big Dan, you get up into the hills on the south side. Raceman’s got fire over there,” Ozzy was saying as he peered around the corner, then gestured for Moore and Rana to follow him. Moore edged up beside the captain. “How’s it looking?”
“We got about eight, maybe ten, Tangos so far. I’m calling in for an Apache to give these suckers some pause.”
Ozzy was referring to the AH-64D Apache Longbow, the Army’s premier attack helicopter armed with an
