Reflexively, Mitchell started toward her, ordering Ramirez and Brown to hold position and cover him. Twice he nearly dropped himself on patches of ice hidden beneath the snow.
He reached her, fearing the worst. Slowly, he took her by the shoulders, rolled her gingerly onto her back.
She blinked, began coughing.
Mitchell sighed in relief. "Now you owe me two beers," he said, then seized her hand, helped her to her feet. Together they started back up the hill, with Ramirez and Brown above them.
They forged onward, back toward the trees, the snow deepening to shin height and topped with a thick ice crust.
Mitchell's calves and hamstrings soon burned. He thanked every PT instructor he'd ever had for forcing him to go farther than he ever thought possible. That kind of training paid off in spades during combat.
They began making better time and came within a stone's throw of the trees, but then Brown reported enemy contact: "I see six at the top of the hill. Make that seven! They're following!"
"Alicia, I'm not kidding now," said Mitchell. "We need to move!"
"Yes, sir!"
They charged together for the trees. Once there, they paused to catch their breath.
"We need you now," he said, cocking a brow.
She took up her rifle and inspected it for damage from the fall. "I'm good."
"Take out the first guy, and that'll get 'em thinking twice."
"Watch me."
Being on the wrong end of a well-coordinated sniper attack was most soldiers' worst nightmare. Men simply 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
NORTHWEST WAZIRISTAN
AFGHANISTAN-PAKISTAN BORDER
JANUARY 2009
"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 the man himself, General Joshua Keating, whose gritty voice crackled all the way back from the United States Special Operations Command (USSOCOM) in Tampa, Florida, and was loud enough for even Mitchell to overhear. Gordon was polite to the general, who was gunning to become commander of all of USSOCOM, but near the end of the conversation, his tone turned a little dark as he said, "Your patience is appreciated, sir."
Mitchell liked Gordon, whose white crew cut was trimmed weekly because being squared away was, in his words, the way God intended him to be. Mitchell appreciated Gordon's old-school tactics and belief that people made the difference. Technology only enhanced their skills.
There were some in the Special Forces community who were beginning to argue that putting boots on the ground had become too risky, too damaging, and too wasteful.
Gordon would refer to them by certain body parts and brush off their further assertions like lint from his sleeve. He was fifty-four years old and liked to say, "I was too old for this crap twenty years ago. You can imagine how much I'm enjoying it now."
The colonel said his good-byes, then suddenly bolted from his seat and shook each of their hands, saying, "Gentlemen, excellent work out there. Excellent. Please, have a seat."
"Sir, if you don't mind, I'll stand," said Mitchell as Brown and Ramirez flumped into chairs.
Gordon frowned. "I know, Scott, you're pissed about those insurgents at the pickup zone."
Mitchell shrugged. "I assumed they were on a rat line, holing up in the caves."
"We're still working on that, but you're probably right. We didn't pick them up until you were already at the zone. More air support would've turned it into a fiasco."
"What about the recovery mission? Still on?"
The colonel winced. "It's been delayed until those insurgents are out of there. On top of that, we got another front moving through. Wind speeds are too high. We'll need to wait till that passes--at least eighteen, maybe twenty hours."
"I'd like to be on that team."
"I know you would, but that maniac Wolde in Ethiopia has got his eyes set on Eritrea, and I suspect higher will want you there. I already want you there."
"Guess we're sleeping on the plane--again."
"Captain, we appreciate you helping field-test the new Cross-Com," said Major Grey. "We'll need your evals ASAP, though I hear we're still three to four years out before full implementation."
"That's a shame, because that's a damned fine system and a great piece of equipment."
"Yes, it is--for many reasons. Now, Captain, I do have a question. I was playing back your HUD recordings, and I noticed you corrected the sergeants when they were evacuating agents Vick and Saenz."
"That was our fault," Ramirez blurted out. "The medic was the most seriously wounded. We should have evaced him first."
Grey barely turned toward Ramirez, who was already swallowing and lowering his head. "Sorry, Major. Just thought you should know."
"I already know."
"Uh, to answer your question, Major, yes, I did correct them," said Mitchell.
"Why?"
Mitchell thought a moment. He could answer carefully, or he could get it all off his chest. "Let's back up a moment. I fought to be assigned to this mission. It was no secret that one of my best friends was out there. You knew I'd bring him home, and to be honest, I was going to make sure he got on that chopper--first. He was the most seriously wounded, and I didn't see a problem with that."
"Even though agents Vick and Saenz might have intelligence that is far more helpful than anything Sergeant McDaniel might have gathered? They've been operating along the border for a long time--much longer than your . . . friend."
"That's speculation. Those spooks might have nothing. And even if they have--"
"Once they've been treated, they'll be questioned."
"Yes, but they'll only give you so much. We all salute the same flag, but don't forget their paycheck--and bonuses--come from Langley."
Lieutenant Colonel Gordon sighed in disgust. "Major Grey, to be quite frank, I don't give a rat's ass what order the captain used for his evac plan. In my book, that's trivial. Point is, they all got out. End of story. And to be honest, I would've done the same damned thing."
"Thank you, sir." Mitchell narrowed his gaze on Grey and thought a curse.
Grey quirked a brow. "I just find it curious."
Outside the hut, on their way back to the field hospital, Mitchell stopped and turned to Ramirez and Brown. "You guys think I made a mistake?"
"Absolutely not," said Ramirez. "And don't let Howitzer get to you, sir. She was born pissed off."
"What about you, Marcus? You don't look so sure."
"I don't think it was a mistake, but . . ."
"But . . ."
"You know they're breathing down our necks, watching everything we do. If you show any bias at all, they know about it. That's all I'm saying. We've always been clear where we stand with you, sir."
Mitchell nodded. "It's the old reminder: don't let it get personal. I know. And if it were anybody else . . ."
"You did the right thing, sir," Ramirez said. "You heard the colonel. And what the hell did they expect? If they were so worried about you showing bias, they would've denied your request to lead this mission. Come on."
"Yeah. Well, there's no love lost between us and the CIA, and this didn't help. I think that's Grey's problem. I've put her in an awkward position."
"Like you said, we're all on the same team," said Brown. "Those spooks will figure that out. And they'll get over it."
It took another fifteen minutes to reach the hospital, and once there, Brown and Ramirez went off with Diaz to grab something warm to drink while Mitchell checked on Rutang.
To his surprise, Rutang was sitting up in bed, awake, an IV already in. A nurse there said they'd already drawn blood and that they'd had him scheduled for X-rays because of the blunt trauma to his head and face.
"Yo, Tang, what's up?" asked Mitchell in his best spirit-lifting tone.
"Scott, I think I'm done. Stick a fork in me."
"Whatever they drugged you with is wearing off. Your eyes look good."
"Don't change the subject. I told you, I'm done."
"Done with what? Filling your bedpan?"
"Between this and the Philippines . . ."
"Uh, let's see, you've had two missions that went south out of what, a hundred? It's like plane travel. You only hear about the crashes."
"That's what my cousin keeps telling me. The bastard just made colonel, too."
"Good for him. But we're talking about you."
He closed his eyes. "When they were beating me, I just kept thinking about Mandy and the kids, about how selfish I am for wanting to do this and how they were going to lose me--when this is the time they need me most. Everybody warns you about having a family."
"That's a cop-out."
He snapped open his eyes. "Then why is everybody single or divorced? Look at you."
Mitchell made a face. "Rutang, this isn't the time for career decisions. You focus on recovery."
"Yeah, whatever." He glanced away.
"Listen to me, bro. They'll come in here tomorrow, and they'll ask you a million questions. And can you do me a favor?"
"What?"
"Just don't be a wise guy. Answer the questions. The people I work for are not very patient."
"W
ho do you work for?"
"Those very impatient people."
Rutang rolled his eyes. "I won't embarrass you. And there is something I need to tell them. It's small, but you never know. When the captain's team got close to the arms dealers, they got out the big ear and eavesdropped on a conversation. They heard 'em say 'Pouncing Dragon' a couple of times."