Without Fear

by Col. David Hunt

  She stared in surprise into the rear interior of the broken Caravan—a mess of twisted metal, seats, and luggage.

  And the bomb!

  Clearly strapped into the rear cargo compartment.

  Vaccaro could almost touch it, until she pulled back on the control column, trying to dislodge the nose of the Warthog from the Cessna’s tail as both planes dropped to the bottom in a deadly embrace.

  * * *

  The shock from the impact dislodged Mani’s seat from its anchors on the floor, sending him crashing into the control panel, while Zahra fell against her harness and the Cessna dove toward the riverbed.

  Zahra leaned back, dazed, but conscious enough to see the sea of stones rushing up at them.

  “Mani!”

  But the Saudi was gone, his dead eyes staring at the floor, a wide gash on his forehead where he had struck the panel full force.

  Mustering savage control, Zahra reacted just as he had trained her in case of emergencies, pulling on the yoke, but the Cessna was unresponsive. Lowering flaps, she shoved the throttle to the forward stop. The turboprop screamed, pushing a gust of air over the increased airfoils in the wings, but instead of breaking the fall, the wings mysteriously began to rock.

  “What the hell is happening?” she screamed, as the bottom of the ravine filled her windscreen.

  * * *

  Vaccaro kept the rear pressure on the control stick, trying to break the Cessna’s lock by banking the wings, but the Warthog’s nose was jammed deep in the other plane’s guts, embedded in the aluminum fuselage. Even so, she managed to pull up their combined masses several degrees, shallowing the angle just enough to avoid a head-on crash.

  The planes collided against the riverbed, hard, the Cessna’s propeller stabbing the creek, chopping into the layer of river stones before the tips bent backwards. Its nose landing gear collapsed on impact, tearing away, while rocks milled the main fuselage.

  But that did the trick.

  The Cessna broke off from the Warthog’s nose and slid forward and to the side, spinning on its belly while the wings were ripped from the fuselage, rivets popping like a machine gun. The fuel inside them ignited while the cabin hurtled away from the flaring inferno, flipping sideways and into a line of boulders lining the eastern wall.

  The Warthog gouged the ravine behind the Cessna, parting river stones as she slid right through the Cessna’s burning wings. For an instant, as flames licked the canopy, Vaccaro considered ejecting, but the realization that the rocket booster under her seat could send her crashing into the canyon walls kept her hands on the control stick and throttles.

  Thousands of stones hammered the armored canopy as she slid past the fire and continued beyond where the Cessna had wrapped itself around a large rock. And that’s when she remembered the turbofans, still thrusting the heavy jet as it carved a track in the ravine. But the plane’s armored skin, combined with its hardened steel and titanium frame, kept it from breaking up like the Cessna.

  Still, the stress taxed the structure, rattling its very armored fabric to the brink of its design limit, and the turbofans sucked in rock and debris, which tore at the fins whirling at thousands of revolutions per minute.

  The engines exploded just as she slapped the controls to shut them down, igniting the canyon behind her, orange and yellow-gold flames licking walls of black granite. The dual blasts tore off the Warthog’s tail, and the ensuing shock wave hurled the main fuselage like a damn Frisbee. She was spiraling in a cloud of sparks, the ravine’s walls swapping places.

  Until she struck something hard, unyielding.

  145

  Judgment Day

  QUAI KOTAL. SULAIMAN MOUNTAINS. SOUTHERN AFGHANISTAN.

  Zahra crawled out of the fuselage, cringing in pain and dragging her broken leg across the riverbed, where she found a stick good enough to use as a crutch. She limped away from the Cessna and past the remains of the Warthog.

  Don’t stop.

  Get out of here.

  She pushed herself to keep going, continuing around the next bend in the ravine, leaving the fires behind, moving as fast as she could, trying to gain as much distance as possible from a place that would be crawling with NATO forces shortly.

  Unfortunately, NATO was no longer her primary enemy.

  Many figures emerged from behind boulders along both canyon walls.

  Tall and thin, their loose clothes, bearded faces, and a mix of Kalashnikovs and RPG launchers were visible in the orange twilight glow of the flames reflecting on slick canyon walls.

  But it was their condemning stares that made her gut twist with raw fear, as they surrounded her and pointed at her exposed head, her tight clothes.

  “I’m Zahra Hassani,” she said, forcing her mind to ignore the pain from her broken leg. “I’m with … the sheikh.”

  The men remained impassive, until one of them picked up a rock from among the millions lining the bottom of this ravine.

  The others followed his lead.

  “No!” she said. “You don’t understand! I’m with—”

  The first blow came from behind, overwhelming. Colors exploded in her mind as she trembled while falling on her side and urinating on herself.

  But she still managed to put her left hand up while reaching with her right for her suppressed Ruger and shouting, “No! Stop! Please! I’m—”

  The second rock struck her shooting hand, and she watched in horror as her fingers bent at unnatural angles and the pistol skittered away.

  She tried a final plea, just as rocks rained on her from all sides, pummeling her as she cried out and tried to shield her face with her arms. But soon her arms were as useless as her broken leg, shattered under the brutal punishment.

  And they didn’t stop.

  Wouldn’t stop.

  Couldn’t stop.

  The law was the law.

  And as she lay there, scourged, paralyzed by inconceivable pain, no longer able to even whimper, a man approached her, holding a large rock with both hands.

  The last thing Zahra would ever see was the insurgent raising the rock high above his head, eyes as dark as the sky while he recited a verse from the Koran.

  146

  Elevator to Hell

  QUAI KOTAL. SULAIMAN MOUNTAINS. SOUTHERN AFGHANISTAN.

  “Danny! Lower! Now!” Stark shouted.

  Martin idled the power to the turbines, shifting the cyclic to the left while applying opposing rudder and lowering the collective.

  The Black Hawk banked nearly sideways as it plunged nose-first into an impossibly narrow opening, the fifty-three-foot-diameter rotor barely clearing the vegetation growing off the precipice.

  “Hijo de puta!” shouted Gonzales from the copilot seat, hanging on to his restraining belts.

  Stark grabbed an overhead handle, bracing himself while cringing at the downward acceleration, his stomach rising to his throat as the helicopter free-fell into the canyon.

  “That little man has issues!” shouted Larson, still strapped to one of the fold-down seats, as the whole craft dropped into the chasm, almost on its side. “Right, Mickey?”

  The maneuver made Hagen open his eyes, blinking as he realized they were plummeting sideways.

  Stark kept his big frame locked in the doorway between the cockpit and the cabin, staring into the darkness through one of the open side doors, where the side gunner hung on to his anchored M240D machine gun for dear life.

  The combined team strapped into their side seats in the rear clutched their weapons while Martin let gravity do its thing, squeezing them through an opening for what seemed to Stark like an eternity, until the canyon opened up.

  Adding power and collective while centering the cyclic and rudders leveled out the helicopter, transitioning into a controlled descent.

  “Nice move, cabron!” Gonzales shouted.

  Martin grinned again, dropping to just a hundred feet above the uneven bottom.

  “Hold it here!” Stark ordered, reaching for one of the
coiled 40mm ropes on the side of the Black Hawk and tossing it overboard before grabbing a pair of heat-resistant gloves.

  “Steady, Danny!” he shouted, looking out toward the bend in the canyon behind them, where he had seen muzzle flashes firing at the Warthog a moment ago. Those rebels were down there somewhere, probably racing this way.

  MP5A1 strapped behind his back, he jumped, the rope wedged between his thighs and clutched with both gloves. Using the combination to break his fall, he dropped the hundred feet to the rocky bed in ten seconds.

  He moved out of the way and aimed his weapon toward the bend to cover Wright, who followed him a few seconds later, then Larson, Hagen, Ryan, Monica, and Sergei. Kira remained in the helo with two of her guys to provide covering fire along with the side gunners.

  Stark led the way, taking off in the direction of the fires near the crashed planes, leaping over rocks and fallen logs and skirting burning pools of spilled gas from the Cessna’s severed wings. The flames lit up the ravine, boiling clouds of orange flames and smoke. Martin hovered behind them, finally reaching a spot wide and level enough for the helo.

  “Try to set it down here!” Stark said into the MBITR, concerned about the relatively easier target the hovering Black Hawk made to any insurgents emerging from the turn in the canyon. But once it was on the ground, they could form a defensive perimeter to guard it until it was time to leave.

  A moment later Martin settled the Black Hawk gently over the riverbed, the rotor wash kicking up a cloud of debris.

  Kira climbed out and limped toward them, followed by her other two Spetsnaz soldiers.

  “What the hell?” Stark shouted. “You’re in no shape to—”

  “Janki mishka!” she screamed over the rotor noise, glaring at him with those catlike eyes crowning her pronounced cheekbones. “I have my orders!”

  “Fine!” he shouted, stretching two fingers like a snake’s tongue at her and Wright. “But you and your team are with me! You too, Captain! Chief, Mickey! That way!” he said, pointing in the opposite direction, where he expected the Taliban to emerge at any moment. “Shoot at anything that moves, and tell those gunners, too.” Then, turning to the snipers, he said, “You two, up on those boulders! Cover both ends of the pass.”

  Without waiting for a response, Stark and Wright took off while Kira, flanked by her team, tried to keep up, soon reaching the Cessna fuselage.

  Stark went in from the massive hole in the rear, MP5A1 leading the way, and located the device a moment later.

  “Kira! Your baby!” Stark screamed, taking a moment to stare at the damn cylindrical object that had everybody on edge. It was still strapped to the aluminum floor. Scrambling to the cockpit, he found a pilot dead. His seat had come loose during the crash, crushing him into the control panel. The copilot seat was empty.

  Running back to the cabin, he found the Russian operative kneeling by the device. “You’ve got this?”

  “Da! Go!” she screamed, giving him a thumbs-up before shouting in Russian at her men, who started releasing the straps.

  “Let’s go, Captain.”

  Stark and Wright rushed down the creek, past the Warthog’s engines, which were still ablaze, illuminating the gorge—just as the pass came alive with muzzle flashes from beyond the A-10C’s fuselage. At the same time, gunfire broke out behind them, from that rear turn in the ravine. AK-47s were immediately countered by M4 carbines, UMPs, the Black Hawk’s M240Ds, plus Larson’s Browning.

  Stark frowned.

  The enemy was closing in from both ends of the pass.

  He aimed the MP5A1 at the distant figures closing on the Warthog’s nose, their rounds hammering the armored skin and canopy, sparking off into the night.

  He pulled the trigger just as Wright did, laying suppressing fire downrange from the downed jet, left to right, while screaming into his MBITR, “Ryan! Got eyes on the Tangos beyond the Hawg?”

  The response came in the form of .50-caliber rounds zooming overhead, tempering the attack. Two rebels snapped back on impact.

  Stark and Wright didn’t let up, augmenting the counterattack by unloading their magazines, forcing the rebels back, catching their running silhouettes in their slack clothing disappearing behind boulders. But sometime during their hasty retreat, someone managed to fire an RPG.

  “Get down!” Stark screamed, diving for cover alongside Wright. But the warhead arced not toward them but toward the A-10C’s cockpit, scoring a direct hit.

  The nose exploded in a radial pattern of metal and orange flames licking the night. The armored canopy shattered and the cockpit was set ablaze.

  “Laura! No!” Wright shouted, getting back up and running toward the smoldering wreckage while Stark covered him, firing his MP5A1 at distant figures, forcing them down. Ryan assisted from his vantage point, .50-caliber rounds singeing the air a few feet above them.

  They reached the A-10C a moment later, but the fire was too intense, the heat blistering, even from a dozen feet away.

  Wright tried to get closer, but Stark grabbed him from behind.

  “Let me go!” the marine captain shouted.

  “She’s gone, soldier!” Stark replied, his arms wrapped around Wright. “She’s gone!”

  “Laura!” Wright screamed again, as rounds pounded the rocks to their right, and both men immediately dove for cover. Two rebels emerged from behind the blaze, AK-47s pointed at them.

  But as Stark and Wright brought their weapons around, multiple reports thundered from behind a line of boulders lining the western wall, the rounds smashing into the heads of both rebels.

  Stark and Wright looked up at the source of the shots.

  And right there, standing larger than life, Captain Laura Vaccaro appeared from behind a mound of rocks, right hand clutching a dark pistol.

  Her long red hair swirling in the breeze, she shouted from behind a large boulder she was using for cover. “Hello, boys! What took you so damn long?”

  Before Stark could reply, a small-caliber round ricocheted off his helmet. Just as he realized someone was taking potshots at them with a suppressed weapon using subsonic ammo, Vaccaro made a face, grabbed her shoulder, and shouted, “Someone just nailed me with a peashooter! And on the same damn spot!”

  “Ryan!” Stark shouted, emptying another magazine in the general direction of the hidden insurgent as Wright got Vaccaro and they took off toward the Black Hawk.

  Stark spotted the figure dashing across the ravine in a deep crouch, less than twenty feet away. As he lined it up in his sights, a .50-caliber round whooshed overhead, striking the figure’s center of mass.

  Nice shot, he thought, using the night vision scope to confirm the kill.

  Several muzzle flashes ignited from behind the dead rebel, pounding the boulders around him.

  “Ryan!” he screamed again.

  “I’m on it, Colonel!”

  A volley of .50-caliber shells seared the air above him, along with Monica’s .338 rounds, while Stark swapped magazines and fired as he moved backwards, reaching the Cessna fuselage. He was pleased to see that Kira’s team was already hauling the device out of there with some makeshift stretcher.

  “Everybody to the helo!” he shouted, running backwards behind Vaccaro and the Russians while Wright doubled back to join him, laying down more suppressing fire, swapping magazines again.

  Last one, Stark thought, pulling the bolt to chamber the first 9mm round.

  Martin was already in a hover just a foot off the ground, the Black Hawk’s dual turbines roaring over the noise of the firefight.

  Kira and her team heaved the weapon on board before jumping in, followed by Vaccaro and Wright, while the side gunner worked the M240D. The combined vibrations of their rattling guns, plus the turbines and rotor, shook the fuselage to its core. On the other side, Ryan, Monica, and Hagen also climbed aboard, while Larson and the second side gunner covered them, unleashing insane barrages of mixed-caliber hell.

  Sitting on the edge of the cabin, next t
o the gunner, Stark continued firing. The noise was deafening, the smell of gunpowder and exhaust fumes as overarching as the quivering of his body as he operated the MP5A1 in full automatic fire. Wright stood behind him, emptying two more magazines, hot casings raining over the cabin’s floor.

  “Danny! Get us out of here!” Stark shouted, dropping his empty MP5A1 and grabbing Martin’s Heckler & Koch, firing every round before rushing to the cockpit after verifying that everyone was on board.

  Martin responded by jamming the collective and twisting the throttle. The Black Hawk leaped skyward in gut-wrenching fashion while the side gunners, plus Larson and Wright, continued firing into the muzzle flashes at both ends of the ravine.

  Rounds pinged the armored underside of the helicopter as Martin shoved the cyclic forward and rose five hundred feet—as far as he could go, given the narrowing canyon walls above him.

  “You mind, Gonzales?” asked Martin.

  Sitting in the copilot seat, Gonzales released a load of 70mm Hydras into what remained of the downed Warthog, leaving nothing for the Taliban to parade, and in the process scorching the bottom of the ravine, tempering rebel action.

  “Thanks!” Martin shouted

  “No problem, amigo!” Gonzales replied, before opening the dual GAU-19 Gatling guns on any remaining resistance as Martin accelerated through the smoke and flames.

  The Black Hawk soared above the riverbed, rushing down the twisting canyon, leaving the flaming wreckage behind.

  Stark once more anchored himself in the opening between the cockpit and the cabin. Everyone else found a seat and strapped in as Martin banked and twisted the Black Hawk, picking up forward speed.

  They finally reached a section of the pass wide enough to climb another few hundred feet between the walls, almost to the top of the pass.

  “Hang on!” Martin shouted, gathering enough momentum to bank the Black Hawk while pressing opposing rudder, reversing the maneuver he had used to dive into the narrow gully.

  Stark clutched the sides of the doorway as the helicopter once more turned nearly on its side, presenting a narrower rotor profile to the soaring walls, clearing the pass, and rising into a clear sky that was stained in shades of orange by a sun barely looming on the eastern horizon.