died, as though plucked from this earth by the hand of God. As they dropped, so did morale, while the paranoia grew to a fever pitch.
Mitchell took aim but held his fire, watching through his crosshairs as Diaz fired her first shot.
The lead Taliban fighter hit the snow, sending the others to their bellies and wishing they had ice picks to dig cover. They shouted about a sniper, and one gave orders for them to get up, but several others protested.
'Ramirez? Brown? Get to the chopper!' Mitchell ordered.
'Sir, even with the suppressor, if I fire again—'
'I know, they'll spot us. Once they're back up, I'll need one more shot.'
'Roger that.'
Mitchell stole a few seconds to consult the drone's intel one last time before he sent it flying back toward the border, where it would be retrieved by support personnel.
'Oh, man,' he said aloud. Ignorance was bliss. He wouldn't even tell Diaz how many insurgents were about to reach the hilltop.
'Looks like they're getting ready to come up,' said Diaz.
Mitchell crouched down beside her. 'The second you fire, we're gone. Ready?'
'Yeah, hang on. Almost have the shot. Almost…'
A muffled bang came from Diaz's rifle, and the subsonic round traversed the hillside before the Taliban fighter in its path could blink again.
He toppled. Mitchell and Diaz wasted no time breaking from the trees.
'That all you got?' Diaz asked, jogging alongside him. 'Move it!'
Mitchell smiled to himself. 'That's three beers. Last one for the insult.' He picked up the pace, boots now slipping across those hidden rocks and sheets of ice.
Near the bottom of the hill the grade grew steeper, forcing them to sidestep down to reach bottom.
Mitchell stole a look back over his shoulder.
What he saw left him breathless.
Finally, they started across level ground and into a field of scree, the broken and eroded rocks creating yet another challenge. Mitchell slowed to avoid several larger stones to their left.
'Come on, sir, we're almost there,' hollered Diaz.
'I hear you,' Mitchell answered. 'Just don't look back.'
THIRTEEN
'Oh my God,' said Diaz.
'I told you not to look back,' said Mitchell.
'Saying that made me look back.'
'Me and my big mouth.' Mitchell tightened his grip on her wrist.
The Black Hawk, outlined in green on Mitchell's HUD, was churning up a storm that quickly enveloped them, ice particles needling into Mitchell's nose, ears, and cheeks.
He'd take the pain, because all that rotor wash helped conceal them. The Taliban fighters in pursuit, who'd come in a long stream across the top of the hill like a Roman army, had just lost sight of their targets.
But in a last-ditch effort, they fired anyway, rifles popping and echoing behind them as Mitchell and Diaz shifted to the left, around the external fuel tank and reached the open bay door. Brown was there to accept Diaz, and Mitchell spun around and returned fire until Brown called, 'Captain!'
Mitchell turned back, just as one of the minigun operators collapsed forward on his gun, blood pooling down his face and neck. 'Portside gunner's down,' Mitchell cried.
'Captain, get on that gun,' snapped the pilot.
With rounds sparking and clinking off the chopper as he climbed aboard, Mitchell cried, 'Go! Go! Go!'
Brown and Ramirez had already unbuckled and were lifting the wounded gunner from his seat, and Mitchell immediately slid into his place, two-handing the Gatling gun and utilizing the AIM-1 laser pointer as he guided the six barrels back onto the hillside. He shifted his aim once more, easing the weapon left as the chopper pitched forward and gained altitude.
Showtime. He began hosing down the insurgents as they leapt forward, crashing onto their bellies to avoid his bead. Tracer rounds flashed from the spinning barrels like glowing arrows fired from a hundred bowmen until they burned out at 900 meters.
At the same time, all those hot brass casings were funneled out from the gun through a tube mounted on the fuselage, and as the pilot brought them around, they left long trails of clinking and tumbling brass in their wake.
The gun's reverberation sent chills rushing up Mitchell's spine. It was hard to imagine that he was firing roughly fifty bullets per second. He needed to carefully select his targets, too, since he only had 4,000 rounds of linked ammo in the box before he'd have to reload.
But the pilot didn't seem to care about that. 'Come on, Captain, keep up that fire!'
Mitchell obliged, sewing a jagged seam in the hill, his HUD and the AIM-1 putting him on those red diamonds that quickly turned white as his hailstorm of fire left behind walls of flying dirt and snow and death.
As he and the other gunner maintained fire, Ramirez and Brown worked on Saenz and the wounded guy, though they were probably using hand signals since the racket inside the helicopter made voice communication impossible.
Reminding himself of all the good people who had been lost in Waziristan, Mitchell kept the minigun on target, drawing more lines through hordes of fighters before the Black Hawk rolled right and descended over the hill, on a course due east for the border.
He released his white-knuckled grip on the gun and slumped in his seat. Every muscle ached. He could sleep for a year.
A hand came down on his shoulder. It was Ramirez, who pointed to the wounded gunner, then to Saenz, and flashed a thumbs-up; both guys would make it.
Mitchell nodded and, as Ramirez returned to his seat, directed his attention to Rutang, still barely recognizable beneath his swollen face. The medic had been through several lifetimes' worth of combat, and Mitchell had been proud of his comeback after his battle with depression and stress. He'd gotten off the propranolol and was managing to be a good father. Mandy had had that second baby, a boy, who Rutang had said definitely resembled the FedEx guy.
As Mitchell sat there, growing numb from the cold and exhaustion, he wondered what would happen to his friend. Could Rutang bounce back yet again?
The Black Hawk set down on a small, deiced pad on the outskirts of Bagram Airbase in Kabul, Afghanistan. Mitchell asked Diaz if she would stick with Rutang, and they, along with Saenz, Vick, and the door gunner, were transferred to HMMWVs and driven off to the army field hospital. Mitchell took Brown and Ramirez with him to be debriefed by Major Susan Grey and the company commander, Lieutenant Colonel Harold 'Buzz' Gordon.
They met inside a drafty, dimly lit Quonset hut used to store aircraft parts and loaned out to the Ghosts by the air force. Grey, bundled up and red-nosed, welcomed them with an uncharacteristically warm smile and led them over to a cluster of desks cast in the burnt orange glow of portable heaters positioned on the floor.
Lieutenant Colonel Gordon was leaning back in a chair, a notebook computer balanced on his lap. He squinted in thought and spoke softly into a boom mike with attached earpiece. He was speaking with
