Ross had come up with the plan after analysing the positions of the mortars, and while it was half as glamorous as 30K’s run and governator maneuver, they needed to trade demigod status for deception.
However, if 30K was the designated pack mule, then he’d argued that he and only he got to push the button. Ross had been fine with that.
‘Ghost Lead, 30K here. I’m at the end of the wall. Charges set.’ The image displayed in 30K’s HUD showed each of his charges as flashing red triangles nestled tightly against the wall. Just on the other side were the mortar teams, and 30K literally shivered with anticipation. ‘On your mark,’ he told Ross.
‘Roger, on my mark. Pepper? What do you think?’
Silence.
‘Pepper, this is Ghost Lead. SITREP!’
‘Here, boss, sorry. We’re clear. Ready to blow.’
‘Okay, 30K. Mark.’
The remote detonators had all been set to the same frequency and would trigger the charges simultaneously. If for whatever reason a charge failed to go off, Pepper, 30K and Ross would take up the slack, moving in to finish off those crews.
30K had transferred detonation control to his Cross-Com, through which he could now issue a voice command. He took a long breath, braced himself, then opened his mouth to speak tersely into his boom mike.
‘Wait, wait, wait!’ cried Pepper. ‘We got dismounts coming up the street, heading right toward you, 30K.’
He couldn’t see them at first, but a squint and second look quickened his pulse. They were shifting between the parked cars – at least two squads in desert camouflage fatigues, either Harak or Yemeni Army, he just couldn’t tell, and there were no IDs appearing in his Cross-Com.
‘Pepper, I got ’em now. Ten, maybe twelve guys. Are they friendlies?’ 30K asked.
‘Dunno.’
‘I’m checking,’ said Kozak.
‘We got no choice,’ hollered Ross. ‘30K? Blow that wall right now!’
FORTY-FIVE
While Sun Tzu might’ve been proud of their plan, he would’ve also told 30K to get his most deceptive and cunning hide out of there because by the time 30K opened his mouth and gave the command, ‘Detonate charges,’ those squads up the road were sprinting toward him –
And suddenly he was wrenched back to Army boot camp, listening to some instructor shout in a sarcastic lilt how no plan ever survives the first enemy contact, and that plans B and C usually go to shit within the next five minutes.
These were not glib statements devised by operators trying to scare new recruits; they were annoying facts often accompanied by gunfire at your feet and your buddies clutching their necks while blood oozed through their fingers.
And so here they were. They’d planned to ambush the mortar teams in one fell swoop. A one-man op. Bada bing, bada boom, as Kozak might say. They had not planned on dismounts making a sweep right into the zone.
And so with an almost reckless abandon, 30K turned tail and ran – just as the ensemble of explosives resounded with a tune so catastrophically glorious that he found himself smiling from ear to ear.
What a rush!
Unable to stop himself, 30K hazarded a look back, and dear God, it was a rapturous sight that would’ve brought any firecracker-addicted kid to his knees, his eyes welling up with tears as he experienced a glimpse of fiery nirvana while Beethoven’s 9th Symphony played by a live five-hundred-piece orchestra floating in midair blared in the background:
Ten bricks of PE4 had lifted ten separate tornadoes of shrapnel and stone that blew through the cemetery toward the mortars. It was through one particular gaping hole in the wall that 30K watched as the explosions tore through men and launch tubes alike, silencing guns and mangling flesh, the blast waves sling-shotting bodies across the cemetery toward the first rows of gravestones, the men now like puppets, scarecrows, ragdolls with limbs torn off by sinister children, heads lolling to one side, helmets tumbling.
A data box from Kozak opened in 30K’s HUD and showed him the overhead view from the drone, every mortar taken out, the teams splayed across the cemetery in a breath-robbing canvas of carnage, every man dead or dying.
But their victory celebration would have to come later. Sorry, Bubba, return the kegs, tell the strippers to go home, DVR the game and we’ll catch it another day –
Because those dismounts were charging toward the cemetery like bees defending their nest, the swarm of red blips appearing in 30K’s HUD and gaining on him.
‘Ghosts, back to the van now!’ ordered Ross. ‘Do not engage those dismounts. Just get back to the van!’
At the moment the wall exploded at ten separate locations, the mortar team farthest away from Pepper had just loaded a round.
As the blast wave struck that mortar, knocking it sideways, the round burst from its launch tube, only it wasn’t headed skyward on its intended trajectory.
Pepper had instinctively lowered his rifle and raised his hand.
Struck by a pang of utter helplessness that rendered him like a buck in the headlights, Pepper only had time to gasp and blink – the better part of two seconds –
As the round flashed across the cemetery and hit the minaret, just below the balcony.
He was in denial, he knew, telling himself that the shell had detonated much farther below than it really had, that he was going to be okay now, that the stone floor would not give way beneath his feet –
Until it did.
And he plunged some five meters down on to the crumbling staircase, along with hundreds of pieces of plaster and stone, his boots hitting hard, knees flexing a second before he fell on to his rump, looked up, saw another shower of stone superimposed against a field of stars plunging straight toward him. He rolled on to his side, covering his face with arms, as the rest of the wall began to collapse, shards of rock striking like roundhouses and right hooks into his arms, legs and chest, the minaret still shaking, the dust hissing, another section of wall breaking loose –
And burying him alive.
Ross had held back at the van with Naseem, while 30K had made the demo run, Kozak had engaged in some close quarters recon while providing drone intel, and Pepper had served as sniper and overwatch. They’d parked the van between the mosque and the cemetery, beneath a cluster of trees opposite the main parking lot –
So when that minaret had been struck by mortar fire, Ross knew instantly that Pepper was in trouble.
He screamed in vain over the radio, but Pepper did not reply. ‘30K? Kozak? Rally back on the mosque.’
Naseem threw the van in gear, whirled around, and raced through the parking lot, arriving just outside the minaret, where the dust was still rising from piles of stone that had fallen from the shattered tower and now blocked the main door.
Ross was out of the van before Naseem hit the brakes. He bounded up on to the shards of concrete and carefully picked his way across them, climbing down the other side to reach the wooden door whose knob and lock had been smashed off.
Seizing the door, Ross shoved hard, but it would only open a few inches, shit. It was blocked from the inside by more stone.
Ross cupped his hands around his mouth, pressed his face into the gap between the wall and the door, and cried, ‘Pepper, you hear me? Pepper?’
The voice was faint, distant … but there. ‘I hear you, boss. I can’t move.’
‘Hang on, bro! We’re coming to get you!’ Ross stepped back then threw himself against the door. The son of a bitch still wouldn’t budge.
‘You got any more charges?’ asked Naseem, reaching the top of the stone pile.
‘No, but if I use a grenade, those dismounts will be here in a few seconds.’
Just then Kozak and 30K came charging up. Kozak immediately consulted the drone’s remote while 30K struggled for breath and managed, ‘Dismounts still coming. Don’t think they saw us. Not sure. In the cemetery now.’
‘Pepper’s trapped inside,’ said Ross. ‘Can’t get the door open.’
‘Let me try,’ s
aid 30K, leaning over to pick his way across the mound of rock.
‘It’s blocked from the inside.’
‘Sir?’ called Kozak. ‘Just got word. Those dismounts are Republican Guard.’
‘Then let me talk to them,’ said Naseem. ‘I’ll stall them while you try to free your man.’
‘All right, do it,’ said Ross as 30K hopped down beside him, then gave the door a tentative shove. Like Ross, he stepped back and drove his shoulder into the door, groaning loudly, the effort to no avail.
‘Screw it, we gotta blow it,’ he said.
‘No,’ said Ross. ‘Too loud, and the explosion could shift the rubble and make it worse.’
30K stepped back and glanced up at the minaret, estimating that there were some ten meters to the jagged hole where the mortar had detonated. ‘Maybe we can rig up a hook and some paracord – but if he’s hurt, we gotta get him out through this door.’
‘Gotta be another way in. Maybe through the mosque,’ said Ross.
‘How ’bout you search for that while I rig up a cord?’ 30K suggested.
Ross turned to Kozak. ‘Keep the drone close. Cover us. And I want to know what Naseem is doing.’
‘You got it, Captain.’
Ross teetered across the pile of rubble, then jogged around the minaret toward the main mosque.
It might have been a selfish thought, and his hands trembled in frustration over it, but of the three men in his charge, Ross liked Pepper the best. Sure, that was almost like a father favoring one child over the rest, but he and Pepper had been on the same page from the get-go, and Pepper already had some admiration for Navy SEALs. They were about the same age, same generation, and Pepper was far more patient than the others. They just clicked.
Damn it, Ross would save this man. Or he would die trying.
They were up to their knees in the clear, warm water of Squaw Creek Reservoir, the Texas sun hanging low on the horizon, their shadows long across the riprap lining the shore.
They were exactly as he’d remembered them, dressed in full combat gear and wearing the fatal wounds that had ended their lives – Joe Joe, Tommy, Louis, Big Dan, Howie, Franklin and Radiator. Seven friends who’d all been there with him, bass fishing and beer tasting, brothers in arms enjoying some R & R before they had to leave the world and head back into the shit. And they were calling Pepper home now –
Or at least he was imagining they were, lying there, buried under the rock, feeling sorry for himself, half pissed off and half embarrassed, each breath a little harder than the last, his relationship with God suddenly a little keener, his guilt over being a half-assed Christian sending a shudder up his spine. This was definitely not the way to go, although being killed by a mortar blast sounded infinitely more heroic than being done in by a pizza-induced heart attack.
He’d purchased a small tract of land near the reservoir and had planned to build a retirement cabin there. He’d shown his buddies his dream lot, and they had agreed that this was the life. Or the death, in their case now. They’d taken over his little retirement getaway for some permanent R & R in the afterlife, and the bastards weren’t even paying rent. Now they wanted Pepper to join them. Time for the landlord to come home.
He shifted his right ankle. He could move that. He fought against the pressure on his left arm, and it budged. Well, shit, he was a long way from death, one hundred thousand miles at least, especially if he got the old ticker tuned up. Time to quit feeling sorry for himself.
‘Pepper?’ came 30K’s distant, hollow-sounding voice. ‘I’m coming up to get you, old man. Thirty seconds.’
Pepper closed his eyes and began muttering the lyrics from his favorite Hank Williams, Jr, song, ‘Long Gone Lonesome Blues,’ and by the time he reached the end, he heard two voices much closer now: Ross and 30K.
He was almost home free, and that was good because the pressure on his ribs was unbearable now, his breath growing shorter by the second.
‘Roger that, Kozak,’ said Ross. ‘We’re almost there – and yeah, I know we’re out of time …’
‘Pepper, can you hear me?’ called Kozak.
‘Yeah,’ he said, barely recognizing his own voice. ‘I’m here. Over here.’
‘Captain, I see him,’ called 30K. ‘He’s right down there.’
The whomping of the helicopter came on much too suddenly, and by the time Pepper sensed that 30K was near, the drumming of rotors made the rock vibrate, the wash seeping in through the cracks to blast dust into his eyes.
FORTY-SIX
Ross had found the secondary entrance to the minaret through the mosque, but the door there had also been blocked. He did manage to pry it inward enough to squeeze through, just as 30K had reached the hole in the tower and was staring down the stairwell.
But as 30K had dropped a second rope and was preparing to scale his way down toward the staircase – and Ross was about to climb his way up over the gauntlet of jagged stone – that helicopter had rumbled overhead, and Ross had activated his Cross-Com and HUD to see what the hell was going on. He patched into Kozak’s drone and was cursing not two seconds after viewing the map floating in his HUD:
The dismounts had finished their sweep through the cemetery and were heading toward the mosque. Whether Naseem had spoken to them or not didn’t matter anymore. They were coming, and Ross needed to get the team out of there.
Their second problem was the chopper, a MIL Mi-24D Hind known by Russian pilots as the letayushchiy tank, or the ‘flying tank.’ The Yemen Air Force had approximately fourteen of these attack helicopters in service, and this ‘D’ variant had two separate cockpits for the pilot and gunner.
A single 12.7mm four-barrel Yak-B machine gun jutted from under its nose turret, while four 57mm rocket pods were mounted beneath stubby wings. Ross didn’t bother scanning the bird’s additional weapons. The fact that CAS (Close Air Support) had arrived was bad news if you were running a clandestine operation and trying to make a swift and silent escape.
The gunship wheeled overhead as though its crew were going to lower a rescue line –
But then it suddenly pitched forward and raced off, its machine gun blazing.
Ross’s HUD switched to drone video piped in by Kozak, who’d redirected the UAV to a higher position so they could see the gunner’s target.
A convoy of four Panhards operated by the rebels had come racing up the street toward the cemetery, with more troops running alongside them, several carrying RPGs on their backs.
‘You better hurry up, boss, because the fight’s coming to us,’ called Kozak.
‘I hear you,’ said Ross, then he started his way up the staircase, clutching chunks of stone and checking each new position for good purchase, his boots slipping over the dusty rock, his flashlight now Velcroed to the side of his helmet, the beam cutting through the dust motes like a light-saber. The sweat was burning his eyes, and he grimaced over the taste of plaster.
30K was coming down the inside wall with the speed and agility of a man who’d been bitten by a radioactive spider, and Ross couldn’t help admiring the operator’s youth and unwavering sense of purpose. He, too, was burning with the desire to rescue his buddy, and he reached Pepper a few seconds before Ross did.
Only Pepper’s left boot was visible; otherwise, he was completely buried by chunks of rock, and one by one, Ross and 30K worked together to uncover him. They cleared away his face and legs, but the largest section of stone, about two meters square and a half meter thick, was lying across the sergeant’s back, and it seemed the only thing that had saved him from not being crushed to death was that he’d been slammed and tucked into one of the stairs, with the staircase itself absorbing most of the kinetic energy.
‘Explosion hit the mortar, and the damned thing went off right in my face,’ Pepper explained. ‘What are the odds? What kind of shitty bad luck is that?’
‘I told you, Pepper,’ 30K began, prying free another stone from the man’s shoulder. ‘You gotta start living on the straight and
narrow like me. You need to stop tempting fate.’
‘Oh, Jesus, you hear this, Captain? This from the monster of mayhem.’
‘How you feeling?’ asked Ross. ‘I mean breathing.’
‘It’s rough,’ said Pepper. ‘I’m jammed in here really good. We need to find my Remington, too. We ain’t leaving without it. I dropped it somewhere.’
‘I see it up there,’ said 30K. ‘Don’t worry, we’ll get it.’
‘You think anything’s broken?’ asked Ross.
Pepper snorted. ‘Just my ego.’
Ross exchanged a mild grin with 30K, then shook his head at the piece of wall pinning their colleague. ‘Any ideas?’
‘I got a frag,’ said 30K. ‘Let’s just blow it off of him.’
‘Wait, hold on,’ groaned Pepper.
‘Relax, bro, I’m just kidding,’ said 30K.
‘Ghost Lead, it’s Kozak. Are you done in there? The chopper’s engaging the rebels, and Naseem’s boys are moving up on them. We need to be out of here yesterday.’
‘All right, Pepper, you think if we can lift this thing a little bit, you can try sliding out? There’s no time to get a rope in here and try hauling up the rock. We gotta move, all right?’
‘You lift it, boss, and I’ll get my sorry ass out. What’re you waiting for?’
Ross gave a nod to 30K, and they positioned themselves side by side, backs to the edge of the stone, hands locked under the edge, triceps ready to fire up and take some serious pain.
‘On three,’ said Ross.
‘Aw, just pull on it,’ said 30K –
And bang, they got to work, grimacing and groaning in agony as the stone began to lift, an inch, two inches, three, as Ross shouted:
‘Can you move?’
Pepper gasped through his exertion. ‘Not yet. Little more.’
30K exercised his right of free speech, drawing deeply into his vocabulary of four-letter words to create an R-rated mantra that would’ve had conservative blue-haired grandmothers clutching their hearts and fainting right in the middle of Father Thomas’s homily.
Suddenly, sans any fanfare or even a word from Pepper, he drew himself out from beneath the stone, then finally cried, ‘Clear!’