The Towers

by David Poyer

  Teddy waited. He hadn’t heard any firing for a while. But he didn’t want to move until—

  Four rapid pops from an M4. Distant and trivial-sounding, but distinct. And a glimmer, just a glimmer, through the blowing snow, the falling, twisting white veils. A flare?

  He saw the silhouette no more than ten yards off. Cupped by the col, it was sitting in the half shelter of a rigged tent.

  Teddy was sliding his pistol out of the holster when something ripped through his side and a heavy impact flung him half-turned into the ground. But he’d sagged backward at the hit, trained to reflex through hours of hand-to-hand. His attacker kept going, expecting resistance, and toppled over him, shouting. He twisted as he fell, stabbing down into Teddy’s leg, but he’d cleared the SIG, and as the muj got to hands and knees Teddy fired two rounds into his face at close range, the powder-flash illuminating dark eyes and heavy black beard with ruddy light once, then again.

  Leaning back in the snow, he brought the handgun around stiff-armed and fired five more rounds through the flapping fabric of the tent, spacing them from left to right in the dying light of the declining flare. He instantly rolled left, ignoring something flappy and loose in his side. Came up and fired three more rounds, aiming down. The illumination glimmered out. He grabbed for his SureFire. The thing was so bright it blinded and disoriented. Once he hit the button, it would wipe out his night vision and make him a target for anybody within fifty yards. He aligned it with the pistol, aiming at where the shelter had been. Went to his combat-shooting crouch and hit the button.

  The world burst into a searing glow reflected by falling snow all around. From it a dying man with a white beard and heavy black brows looked into his eyes. Teddy held his gaze for a fraction of a second that stretched out as if they were exchanging life stories. His seamed leathery face looked as if it had seen sorrow and loss. Slowly, he turned a hand toward Teddy and opened his fingers.

  A small green spheroid rolled into the snow.

  A green spheroid.

  A grenade.

  Without his thought the pistol blazed until it clicked empty. But the muj had already fallen forward, over the grenade. A second ticked by. Then another.

  It didn’t go off.

  Teddy stood shaking, realizing only then he should’ve hit the deck. He clicked the light off and sank to his knees. Hellish pain throbbed in his head and shoulder. When he fingered his side he felt warm, slick blood. Knife, or bayonet—the guy had ripped through uniform and gear into his flesh.

  Somebody calling, down in the pass? Was that a voice? He made sure the old muj under the tarp was dead. Checked the grenade, unfolding the body gingerly and rolling it aside. He looked at it in the glow of the thumb-shielded Surefire. The pin was still in. He clicked the light off again and crept to the edge and peered down. Not much to see, just darkness and snow. Then the call came again. “Obie. Y’ up there?”

  Moogie. “Up here,” Teddy howled. Without night vision, no one was going to hit him based on sound.

  “All secure down here. Got the last one.” A pause, then the radioman added, “Mud Cat took a bullet, too.”

  Teddy didn’t answer. Eventually Knobby Swager’s high voice added the information that the Louisianan had been shot in the hand. “We got a tourniquet on it, though. Two more mujs down here, both dead,” Swager yelled.

  “Too fucking loud. Keep it down, I can hear you.” Teddy lay feeling warmth spreading from his side and leg. Getting drowsy. He grabbed a handful of snow and rubbed it into his face and shouted down, “Bring me a dressing. Use the eastern slope. Less gradient.”

  Swager rogered and Teddy put his head down and just breathed for a while. His leg was going numb. Thermal undies, black fleece, and still going hypothermic. But they had the pass. Not in great shape, but they held the position. And he didn’t feel that bad. In fact, he felt almost comfortable, lying here in the soft snow. The wind felt warmer too.

  A stir, scraping, from down the bank. His SIG jumped into his hand. But it was only Swager, cursing as he negotiated the last few steep yards, thrashing and falling. The baby SEAL collapsed beside Teddy. “Jesus. How’d you get up here, Chief?”

  “Took the shortcut.”

  “You okay?” Hands grabbed him, landing first, Teddy hoped by accident, on his ass. He pushed them off. “Sorry.”

  “I need a Kerlix.”

  “You hit too?”

  “Knife wounds. Not too bad, but I’m leaking hydraulic fluid.”

  “Funny, Chief.” Swager pulled Teddy’s coat up and the cold bit his chest and stomach. He closed his eyes, breathing short and hard as Swager worked on his wounds. Then opened them again and stared into the dark. Taking inventory.

  Two unwounded shooters left. Two wounded but still able to defend themselves, at least. O’Brien and the Doc dead. No air support. Getting low on ammo. Also, he’d managed to lose his rifle. So far Swager hadn’t noticed. For some reason, having the newbie pick up on that worried him more than the prospect of bleeding to death.

  “Okay, you’re patched.” Swager tugged the jacket down. “Doesn’t look too hairy, Chief.”

  Teddy closed his eyes again, then gathered his strength. He rolled over onto hands and knees, getting ready to struggle to his feet. A crackle in his ears; his MX, fading as the cold ate the batteries, but back on. “Obie. You there?”

  He hit the transmit button. “Yeah. That you, Cat?”

  “Take a gander out to your front,” the faint voice murmured. “I think there’s somebody headed our way.”

  24

  TEDDY lay full length, listening past his own harsh, wheezing breath. The snow-laden wind howled through these lonely crags like the souls of those who’d just died here. Then, beneath that, came a low bumping detonation, stripped of all higher frequencies by distance. A JDAM or iron bomb going off miles away, down in the valley of the black dust. Where the vise was closing on the architect of horror. The sad-smiling beanpole who’d sent thousands to their deaths, who would cost his own people and religion many more thousands; whose vision had changed the world. Just as other evil madmen had redirected history.

  But maybe he wasn’t down there.

  Maybe he was trying to escape.

  A muffled jingle reached his ears. He crouched like a cat, gloves splayed in the snow. Every sense tuned to where the smoky wind crept over the mountains and speeded up, funneled by the pass.

  A jingle?

  What the hell would jingle? Santa Claus? His fucking reindeer?

  He shook his head violently. Concussion or not, he had to focus. Something was bearing down on them. And he had wounded guys who were not going to last much longer, and maybe he wouldn’t either. But that didn’t matter. He was the chief. He was supposed to get his team back in one piece.

  A hand on his shoulder, a hiss in his ear. “Hear that?”

  “Yeah. I hear it.” He tried his MX, but dropped it, cursing; it had gone out again. An intermittent failure was more frustrating than a full-blown fuckup. “Who’ve you got, Knobby? Is Moogie still on satcom? We need more shooters. Got to get the word out we got wounded here. We need extract.”

  “Wait one … he’s trying, but he doesn’t have anybody. His batteries are dead, he says.”

  “Fucking great. How’s his legs?”

  “He’s losing blood. Mud Cat’s stable. They can man the pig, base of fire, but they can’t move without help.”

  Two shooters, two KIA, two immobile wounded. Great. He squeezed his eyes closed, fighting the desire to drift off. He could lie here and bleed and just freeze.

  Or he could follow through, like a fucking Tier One operator. Get his guys off the mountain before they bled out and froze. But he couldn’t help feeling events were rolling over him. The fucking altitude. The fucking cold. A fucking SA-7 gunner who’d gotten lucky enough to have a fucking Chinook plunk down right in his sights. And a fucking retirement-age career sniper, who’d nearly on his own fucked up what remained of the squad pretty goddamn tho
roughly before Teddy had put him down. No question, they were not in the best of fighting shape here. Without dependable radio contact, they couldn’t coordinate fire support, even when daylight came. Might not even be able to coordinate extraction. No, that would happen no matter what. The rest of Echo would be back for them. They still had ID panels and flares. No man left behind. But it might be days before a helo could exfil them, if this storm got worse.

  And meanwhile something out in the storm was moving steadily closer. “Tough fucking titty! Tell them I want that pig up. As close under the east-side ridge as he can get. I want their back right up against that elevation, so no one can work around behind them. Copy?”

  “Got it, Chief—”

  “And keep it down, the wind’s our way but they’re listening too.” He paused. “Knobby—you didn’t think to get their NVGs? Doc and Vaseline?”

  “Uh, no, Chief. Sorry.”

  “How about your claymore? Did you police that up, or leave it—”

  “Uh, sorry. I can go back—”

  “No. Forget it.” The last thing Teddy wanted now, with whatever it was out there coming closer every minute, was to split up the few shooters he had left. Be nice to have a claymore, though.

  Nice to have a lot of things he didn’t have anymore. Like his SR-25. Lying somewhere at the bottom of the cliff. If it hadn’t just kept on going, slid all the way down the fucking mountain into Pakistan. Seemed like something happened every mission. In Ashaara the fucking scope, busted to shit on the HALO landing. This time, his rifle.

  His rifle.

  Wait a minute. He had a rifle.

  It just wasn’t his.

  “Okay. Okay,” he muttered, and turned in the snow to backtrack along the col in the dark. Too weak to stand. On all fours, like a dog. He caught the crack of flapping canvas yards off and homed in on that until he collided with the collapsed tent.

  The old sniper was still sitting like a Buddha statue. Already, in the few minutes since Teddy had shot him, his body had frozen solid, as hard to the touch as the sharded rock it sat on. Teddy reached for his SureFire, then reconsidered. This was an old mujahideen route. Whoever was coming would be watching the ridge, alert for the faintest glimmer, the slightest sign of an ambush. He slid the flash back into its pouch. He just hoped they didn’t have some kind of recognition signal worked out.

  Could he hooker them in close enough to take them? Maybe. The ridge was a good shooting position. Mainly it depended on how many were out there.

  He didn’t even want to think about what would happen afterward. So he didn’t.

  His searching, outstretched fingers hit something hard.

  He pulled the long, icy-cold length of Russian wood and steel toward him and checked it by feel. Magazine inserted. Scope attached. A thin wire led to the old man. Teddy patted the rigid corpse down and found a heavy object under its coat. The battery that charged the light-sensitive plate. He found another magazine in a bandolier, but it was empty. He broke the one out of the rifle and fingered icy cartridges with wooden fingers. Two? Three? No more than three. He felt around the corpse, under the tent, but came up with nothing more. He unplugged the battery and thrust it inside his own jacket and zipped the fleece closed on it.

  As he crawled back, voices blew toward him on the wind. He had to stop and pant, face down in the snow. He fingered his side. The dressing was hard, the blood either dried or, more likely, frozen. His leg, where the muj had stabbed him on the way down, was numb, a dead log he dragged as he crawled. Again he felt the siren call of unconsciousness. Defeat.

  Fuck that! He forced himself up and alligator-elbowed the last few yards to collapse beside Swager again. He groped for the second class’s ear, but was silenced by Swager’s mitten on his mouth.

  Something being pushed into his hands. It whined. His lifeless fingers finally recognized the NVGs. He made sure the illuminator switch was off, passive mode only, and raised them to his face.

  Shifting veils of green against black. The blinking red dot that meant the power was getting low. Then, off to the left, the searching beam of an infrared illuminator. It looked just like one of their own. Scavenged and sold, or looted and passed from hand to hand. He studied it as it shifted here and there. Still some distance away, but nearing. He shut the goggles off and handed them back.

  “Okay, Knobby, listen up. You’re going to take Mud Cat and Moogie back to Denver.” The primary-extract LZ, fifteen hundred feet down the mountain and offset to the west of the trail down from the pass.

  “What? Hell, no, Chief—”

  Teddy reached out and got him by the throat. “What was that?”

  “I mean—wait a fucking—wait.” Swager broke his hold; Teddy must be getting weaker than he’d thought. The petty officer coughed. “The extract LZ. You want me to—”

  “Now you’re hearing me. We don’t have enough shooters left to hold this pass. Two or three hostiles coming through? Maybe. But any more, we’re just gonna get rolled up. You take the wounded back to Denver. I’ll stay here. If an HVT shows, I’ll zip him. If it’s just your rank and file, I’ll let them traipse on past, let the Paks dustpan and foxtail ’em up. Copy?”

  “I’ll come back, Chief. Get them down to the LZ, then come back for you.”

  Teddy wavered, then gave in. Swager wasn’t going to get two wounded men fifteen hundred feet down the mountain, then trek back up, until after dawn. And this would all be over before then. One way or the other. At dawn there’d be Coalition eyes on the pass anyway, Predators or air. As long as he bottlenecked it during the storm, they’d have accomplished the mission. “Okay, you do that. But your first priority’s getting Moogie and Cat down to where we can call in the CSAR.”

  Swager hesitated, then rogered up. He gripped Teddy’s shoulder, which didn’t seem to hurt as much as a few hours earlier. Started to leave, but Teddy pulled him back. “Leave me the PVSs.”

  “Oh, yeah. Sorry.”

  Teddy felt the goggles thrust into his hands. Then the second class was gone, a fading shuffle of boots and sliding rock going down the slope.

  * * *

  HE lay for a good long time, every sense strained toward the pass. Wondering if he’d imagined the illuminator beam. He didn’t think so. Maybe whoever was coming up the pass had turned back. The storm was getting worse. Every few minutes he had to squirm out from under a fresh fall of snow. If only he had his ruck. His poncho was in his ruck. But he didn’t.

  Oh, well. What the fuck, over.

  At last he set the goggles to his head and turned them on again, keeping numb fingers well clear of the illuminator button. Shading them from the blowing snow, he peered into the night.

  Shifting ghosts in black jade distance. He fumbled at it and the tubes flashed but didn’t clear. Good as he was going to get, apparently. They were dying too. Everything was going hypothermic in the altitude and cold. He coughed and lightning shot through his head. He squeezed his eyes shut, then forced them open and peered again.

  Four men in line abreast waded toward him through the snow. He couldn’t make out more, not with passive alone, just the white, spotty infrared of heat. He almost hit the illuminator but remembered in time. If they had IR, it would be just like shining a spotlight. Their heads seemed misshapen, but not the way helmets would look. They were well spaced out, maybe five yards between each man.

  He shifted the field of view left, knowing what he’d probably see, and there they were: two men separated from the main body. More, only barely visible, off to the right. Flank security, patrolling fifty or sixty yards uphill as the party came up the draw. The four in front were walking point. He studied them for a few seconds, then passed the goggles back to Swager. “See ’em?”

  “We can hammer ’em, Chief. Get ’em between us and hammer ’em.”

  Then Teddy remembered. Swager wasn’t there. But hadn’t he answered?

  He whispered, “We won’t get ’em all. And they’ll roll up Moogie and Mud Cat. Just stand the fu
ck fast. This isn’t the main body.”

  Now he could hear the crunch of boots and low voices. The jingle came again, cutting through the snow-laden air with a spooky clarity. It did sound like sleigh bells. They couldn’t have a sleigh. Could they? He shook his head again, wishing he could think. But everything was going fuzzy, soft, warm. Then rolling over, going to sleep … he bit his lip savagely, dug his fingers into the clotted flap between his eyes. He gagged on a near-scream, but the mists cleared a little.

  When he looked up again, the snow was coming down so hard he had to continually blink it off his lashes. Damn. The wind was freezing his eyeballs. Let ’em go by, he decided. He could get one, maybe a couple, but those he missed would wheel and come up the pass and get Moogie and Mud Cat. “Then we’ll have two more KIA,” he whispered.

  No, now he remembered. Swager was moving them out. They should be below the pass by now. Headed for the exfil point. Well, then, they’d come up here and roll him up. He was outnumbered and immobile and almost out of ammo. So he’d let them pass. The Paks could deal with them. Demonstrate their committment.

  The decision made, he felt relieved. “Just watch ’em go by,” he whispered. He started to tell Sumo to pass that over the net, to hold fire. But Sumo wasn’t there either. He pulled the rifle up closer, felt to the end of the long, spindly barrel and dug around to get any snow or dirt out of it. Then pushed up snow in front of his position and settled the lower handguard. He pulled the battery wires out of his jacket and started connecting them to the terminals on the scope. This simple operation proved extraordinarily difficult. He kept losing the wires or forgetting what he was doing. Finally he got one looped where it seemed to be supposed to go and started to tighten the nut down. He turned it and turned it, wondering why it didn’t tighten. Then felt nothing between his fingers.