Just then, from the road above, a flashlight’s beam illuminated the trees. Another beam tracked to the east, to Driscoll’s left. The lights searched the hillside haphazardly, searching perhaps for anyone who’d fallen from the escaping truck.
Sam did not move; there wasn’t much he could do but hope the beam didn’t settle on him as he lay there. If nothing else, he wanted his hand on the grip of his Glock 17 pistol, but even accomplishing that small feat would involve more movement than he was prepared to make.
The lights passed over him, and then stopped on a point on the hill to his left and another twenty yards on. Men on the road began shouting now, there was no question but that they had seen something.
And then, movement right where the flashlight beams had settled. A lone SSG commando, the man who had been in the back of the truck with Driscoll when it ran off the road, stood up and opened fire with his M16. He must have been tossed out as well, but he’d now been spotted, he knew it, and he had no choice but to go loud. Driscoll saw that the man was wounded; blood covered his clothing and gear and shone in the white light beams centered on him.
Sam could have stayed right where he was, but he did not even consider it. He rolled up to his knees, drew his Glock 9-millimeter pistol, and opened fire on the men above. By doing this he knew he was risking the chance that the Zarrar soldier would shoot him in the back in surprise at the sudden movement and noise, but he decided to put his trust in the training and instincts of the commando and concentrate on killing as many of the Haqqani forces as possible.
With his pistol, he dropped both of the men holding flashlights, hitting one in the thigh and the other center mass. Others on the road dove for cover, giving Driscoll a second to turn toward his colleague in the SSG. “Head for those trees, ten yards at a time!” he shouted, and the young soldier looked back over his shoulder, found the copse halfway down the hill, and then turned and ran back ten yards. While he did this, Sam fired a few pistol shots up the hill, then when the SSG man laid down suppressive fire, Driscoll leapt to his feet and began running down toward the trees himself.
They moved in a leapfrog fashion — bounding ten yards, then providing supporting fire for the other, as they hurried for the relative cover of the trees below them. More than once either Sam or the SSG sergeant fell during his descent, slowing the process and giving the men above a near stationary target at which to shoot.
They made it to within twenty yards of the trees when the slide of Driscoll’s Glock locked open after firing the last round. The Zarrar commando was bounding past him at just that instant. Sam pulled his last full pistol mag from his belt and slammed it into the gun’s grip, and then dropped the slide, chambering a roamberingund.
Next to him he heard the soldier grunt loudly, then the man pitched forward and tumbled to the ground. The American fired seven rounds up toward the road, then spun and ran to help his wounded comrade. He dropped to the ground next to the commando’s still form, and he found the back of the soldier’s head completely sheared away by a well-placed AK round.
The man had died instantly.
“Fuck!” Sam shouted in frustration and anguish, but he could not stay here. The sparks kicked up by impacting jacketed bullets in the rocks around him encouraged him to move his ass. Driscoll grabbed the rifle off the dead man and then crawled, rolled, and slid the rest of the way to the trees.
The Haqqani network fighters wasted no time in targeting the woods where Driscoll had sought cover. Kalashnikov rounds tore into the trunks and limbs of the mulberry and fir and sent leaves and needles raining down like heavy mountain snowfall. This forced Sam to drop down onto his belly and crawl as fast as possible to the other side of the little copse. It was only thirty yards across and thirty yards deep, so he knew he could not hide out here for long.
Sam found a spot behind a thick tree trunk and he took a moment to check his body for injuries. He was slick with blood; certainly he’d caught shrapnel from kicked-up rocks on the hillside and cuts from head to toe falling out of the truck and rolling down to his current cover.
He also checked his gear, or what was left of it.
The rifle he had confiscated from the dead soldier was an older M16. A good gun with a nice long barrel, great for hitting targets at distance, though he would have preferred his scoped M4 lost up on the hillside. His three remaining M4 mags in his chest rig would work in the M16, and for this he was grateful. He reloaded his new rifle with an old magazine, and then he moved to another position, this one right at the southern edge of the grove.
Here he thought over his options. He could surrender, he could run, or he could fight.
He did not consider surrender for a moment, which left two options, run or fight.
Driscoll was a brave man, but he was a pragmatist. He had no problem hauling ass if that was his best option for survival at this point. He peered out of the woods and checked to see if there was any escape route possible.
A grenade, possibly fired from an RPG launcher, exploded thirty yards behind him.
He peered out across the valley now; a sliver of moon shone through a break in the clouds, casting a faint glow across the dry limestone riverbed that ran off to the east and west. The rock field was fifty yards wide at the floor of the valley, and anyone leaving the grove where he had sought cover would be exposed to the guns above him on the road for several minutes before he could find more cover.
No way Sam was going to slip away into the night. He couldn’t run down to the riverbank and try to run away. It would be suicide.
Driscoll decided then and there that he wasn’t going to go out with a bullet in the back. These trees would be his Alamo. He would face his enemy and fight them, make as many of them pay as he could before their sheer number did him in. Slowly, and with some reluctance, he hefted his M16, stood, and headed back up through the woods.
He’d not made it ten yards before chattering AK fire sent more leaves on top ofves on t him. He dropped down on his knees and fired blindly through the cover, dumped half a magazine downrange to put any heads down, then he regained his feet and ran up, charging toward the enemy.
A group of six Haqqani men had made it halfway down the hillside from the road. They’d been sent down by their leaders to search for the soldier who would certainly be hiding under a rock in the trees. Sam knew he surprised them by breaking out of the trees in front of them, his rifle on his shoulder and flames and smoke spewing from it. As they returned fire, along with a firing line of men on the road above, Driscoll dropped onto his heaving chest, sighted on the flashes of their Kalashnikovs, and fired three-round bursts until his magazine ran dry. He knew he’d taken out at least two of the men, and four remained, so he rolled onto his hip, pulled a mag out of his chest harness, and began reloading his gun.
Just then he saw a larger flash of light up on the roadside. Instantly he recognized the wide flash of an RPG taking flight, and in another instant he realized the missile was going to hit right where he lay.
With no time to think, he vaulted to his boots, turned, and leapt back toward the trees.
The grenade hit the ground just behind him, exploded in fire and light, and blew American operative Sam Driscoll end over end, sending hot sharp shrapnel into his body and tossing him into the woods like a discarded rag doll.
There he lay facedown and motionless while the Haqqani descended on his position.
38
President Ed Kealty had spent virtually all of the past two weeks on the campaign trail. There were five swing states that Benton Thayer felt could go either way, so Kealty canvassed them in Air Force One. This morning he went to a church in Grand Rapids, Michigan, and then headed to a wind-turbine plant for lunch and a quick tour. He then flew to Youngstown, Ohio, for a rally before shooting east for a dinnertime black-tie affair in Richmond, Virginia.
