Also by David L. Robbins:
Souls To Keep
War of the Rats
The End of War
Scorched Earth
Last Citadel
Liberation Road
The Assassins Gallery
The Betrayal Game
Broken Jewel
For the stage:
Scorched Earth (an adaptation)
The characters and events portrayed in this book are fictitious. Any similarity to real persons, living or dead, is coincidental and not intended by the author.
Text copyright © 2012 David L. Robbins
All rights reserved.
No part of this book may be reproduced, or stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without express written permission of the publisher.
Published by Thomas & Mercer
P.O. Box 400818
Las Vegas, NV 89140
ISBN-13: 9781612186061
ISBN-10: 1612186068
To the selfless men of CSAR, combat search and rescue.
To Sherrie Najarian, for whom I have searched, and by whom I have been rescued.
“That Others May Live”
motto of the USAF pararescue Guardian Angels, known as the PJs
Contents
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
Chapter 27
Chapter 28
Chapter 29
Chapter 30
Chapter 31
Chapter 32
Chapter 33
Chapter 34
Chapter 35
Chapter 36
Chapter 37
Chapter 38
Chapter 39
Chapter 40
Chapter 41
Chapter 42
Chapter 43
Chapter 44
Chapter 45
Chapter 46
Chapter 47
Chapter 48
Chapter 49
Chapter 50
Chapter 51
Chapter 52
Chapter 53
Chapter 54
Chapter 55
Chapter 56
Glossary
Acknowledgments
About the Author
Chapter 1
2010
On board HH-60 Pedro 1
Hindu Kush
Afghanistan
The earphones in LB’s helmet buzzed.
“Where’d he go?”
LB lay still. He’d stretched out on the Pave Hawk’s vibrating floor and wasn’t going to give up his spot just because the pilot sounded a little edgy. These helo jocks were good, and what little they didn’t know about the valleys and mountains of Afghanistan, multiple arrays of electronics could tell them. GPS, FLIR, Inertial Nav—the cockpit up front shimmered with green gauges, digits, and shifty electronic lines. LB lay in the back of Pedro 1, comfortable. He had his own job to do once they reached the village. He lolled his head to the side to glance out the window, into the canopy of high blue over the serrated edges of the Hindu Kush.
Beside him, Wally couldn’t help himself; he had to look. He rose to his knees, pivoting to get a peek out the windshield. The moment he did this, Doc’s boots filled in the vacated space.
Wally’s voice sizzled over the intercom. “Whoa.”
In that moment, the squall socked away the sky and mountains. The floor under LB’s rump and rucksack shook as their copter disappeared into the fat, blowing mist.
Around LB, everyone—the flight engineer, back-end gunner, even old hands Doc and Quincy—peered out the windows. This wasn’t a fascination with weather, how thick a whiteout nature could whip up at nine thousand feet in the Afghan mountains. The men were on the lookout for Pedro 2, the other Pave Hawk on the mission, with its own giant rotating blade somewhere, invisibly, close by.
LB couldn’t enjoy having the floor all to himself if no one was competing with him for it. The others had noses pressed to the windows like pooches, paying him no mind. The pilots and engineer continued their radio chatter. Even in their clipped speech over the intercom, LB deciphered some nerves. He slid back against the door, shoving himself to a sitting position, and shouldered beside young Jamie to get a gander at the storm.
“Whoa is right.”
The HH-60 blasted through the squall at 120 miles per hour. Snow and sheets of fog streaked by in hurrying, purling ghosts of opaque white. Visibility ramped down to zero.
The air frame rattled, suspended beneath the spinning rotor. The HH-60 was built for rugged, not smooth, flying. She was neither sleek nor pretty. The aircraft was designed to be hard to bring down, not much else. Left and right, mountain peaks and sheer walls zoomed by, completely obscured. Somewhere in this same blank morass flew Pedro 2, another HH-60.
“Ringo 53, Pedro 1,” the pilot called to their HC-130 fuel plane cruising two thousand feet overhead, above the storm. “You got eyes on?” “Negative, Pedro 1. Blind on your position.”
LB muttered, “Shit.” The intercom picked this up.
Wally shot him a cool rebuke from behind his Oakley shades.
LB ignored him. Wally was a captain and a CRO, but that didn’t have much juice up here, where all their tails were equally on the line. On his knees, LB squirmed between Doc and Quincy. He stuck his head into the narrow alley between the engineer and back-end gunner for a clear view of the cockpit.
LB didn’t look out the windshield or at the gauges and flowing emerald lines on the heads-down display. He was interested not in computers or satellites right now, but in the pilots, the hands on the controls.
He’d been in this situation before, a year ago in southern Afghanistan, Paktika Province. Same drill: high altitude, sudden whiteout, PR mission. The air force after-report said the copter pilots lost spatial orientation only minutes after being swallowed whole in clam chowder clouds. They stopped trusting their instruments, got hesitant, and decided to abort. They banked the Pave Hawk out of the mission flight path. In the thin air at ten thousand feet, the rotor couldn’t generate enough lift. The HH-60 sank into the unseen side of a mountain. The blades sheared into catapulting pieces in every direction; the fuselage slid backward, then somersaulted into five barrel rolls down the slope. Many miracles occurred in those tumbling moments. When the dented hulk of the HH-60 finally came to rest against a stone hut, in the dust, smoke, and adrenaline, no one had a single broken bone or even a gash, just a lot of bruises and some puking. Wally was there, too; he held up his breakfast burrito and emptied coffee mug. He earned himself a new call sign that morning: Juggler.
Today’s storm raged in northeast Afghanistan; the conditions were lousy all over this country. LB studied the men in the cockpit for situational awareness. Were the pilots keeping it together? The squall tossed them around, but Pedro 1 was built to take enemy fire; it could stand a good buffeting. In his twelve years as a pararescueman, LB had seen men and machines outperform any reasonable expectation, go far past what could be decently asked of flesh or metal. He’d been present, too, when machines failed and men broke.
It was always a coin toss what was going to happen.
Wally sidled next to him. He made an okay sign with fingers and thumb, asking how LB was holding up. LB made a sour face. Wally bent his helmet’s mike close to his lips so the pilots could hear him clearly.
“How we doin’ up front?”
“The terrain’s taking us up another thousand. Not happy having to climb in this soup.”
“Stay with it, guys. We’ll make it.”
The helicopter lurched in a stomach-churning jump over a wind burst. Pedro 1 was giving her all. Young Jamie blew out his cheeks, no fan of roller coasters. Wally turned on the four PJs, sticking out an upturned thumb. Doc and Quincy looked to each other. Both were experienced soldiers—Doc a former marine, Quincy come over from the SEALs. Neither had been in a crash. Jamie was the newest PJ. This was just his second PR mission. He waited for the others.
Wally waggled the thumb, asking for a vote. As much as LB enjoyed frustrating Wally’s attempts at leadership—they agreed they’d been together too long—he was the first to stick up his own thumb. This time, Wally was right on the money. The safest thing to do in these conditions was to press forward, fly the flight plan loaded into the instruments, prepped for in the briefings. As long as Pedro 1 stayed airborne and performing along this route, and Pedro 2 did the same, they should rely on their avionics. Flying white blind was not as big a risk as losing confidence and faith.
The blowing ropes of fog and snow drew Doc and Quincy to one last, agonized glance out the windows before they voted thumbs-up. Red-cheeked Jamie made it unanimous.
Wally turned forward, toward the cockpit.
“We got a vote back here, Major. We want to push through. There’s a kid up ahead. He needs to meet us.”
The pilot pivoted enough to eye Wally, with LB beside him. Jamie, Doc, and Quincy came to their knees so the pilot could see the entire team.
The pilot’s lips parted to speak. He closed them, nodded, and returned to his instruments and the storm.
Smartly, Wally slid to sit on the shivering floor before the others could grab all the legroom. The PJs settled in with lowered chins and folded arms to await the consequences of their vote. LB kept on his knees. Wally lifted his chin to him, in thanks for the support. LB hit him on the shoulder, too hard.
The weather broke like a fever, after enough shaking and sweats to exhaust everyone in Pedro 1. The perfect sky and troublingly close cliffs reappeared with only a dozen miles left to the village. LB stayed on his knees, watching the pilots until the clouds parted and Pedro 2 corkscrewed out of the mist fifty yards ahead, right where they’d been thirty minutes ago when the storm stole them.
Wally thanked the pilots. He cast another thumbs-up around to the PJs, but no one came out of their own hunker to respond. LB sometimes felt bad for Wally and his sunny demeanor, his cheerful brand of leadership that often fell flat. Not this time. LB was sore and tasting the bile in his throat from the thrashing of the squall. He wanted to be on solid earth, even Afghanistan’s stony ground.
The pair of choppers barreled through a long, deep valley, carved between sheer slopes along the northern ridge of the Hindu Kush. Pedro 1 and Pedro 2 poured on the speed, beating at the flimsy air to put some distance between them and the squall rolling up behind them.
The pilot crackled over the intercom. “Figure fifteen minutes on the ground, boys. That system’s funneling right down the valley. I don’t want to be here when it hits.”
“Roger that.” Wally tapped his wristwatch at the PJs to keep an eye on the time.
The back-end gunner shoved aside his window. He lowered his visor and put both hands on the .50 caliber. On the left, Pedro 2 slowed and stood off, hovering high above a rocky creek carving through the valley. Pedro 1 surged forward.
LB secured his gear and med ruck, his M4 carbine. He unplugged his helmet from the HH-60’s intercom and jacked into the team’s radio comm on his Rhodesian vest.
He pointed at Wally. “Juggler, radio check.”
Wally responded. “Lima Charley. How me?”
“Loud and clear.”
One at a time, LB made contact with the others until all had transmitted and received. Each team member checked his own radio the same way.
Pedro 1 slowed, hovering several hundred meters shy of the LZ. Out of the copter’s rear, a liquid gush blew from the tank release valve as the pilots dumped two hundred pounds of weight to accommodate the passengers they’d come to retrieve. At eleven thousand feet, every extra pound had to be accounted for and balanced so the chopper, after setting down, could fight its way back into the air.
LB rose to his kneepads. The others did the same in a circle. The chopper descended quickly, squeezing another pinched look from Jamie. Out the window, a stream coursed, swollen with winter runoff from snowy peaks on all sides. The HH-60 zoomed in low over the creek, then halted in midair while the pilots final-checked the landing. With an ease missing from the rest of the flight, the chopper touched wheels down.
The PJs unclipped their cow’s tails from the floor, and Quincy slid back the door. The back-end gunner swept the barrel of his .50 cal across the waiting village elders. Wally hit the cold ground first. LB and the rest formed up behind him, crouching beneath the spinning blades. Dust and small stones whipped at their boots. The elders’ dark chapan coats and beards wavered on the rotor wash.
LB lengthened his strides to pass the much taller Wally, raising a hand to the locals. A younger one, in a blue pakul hat to match his long frock, stepped forward. This one’s beard was the shortest, the hand he extended the least thick. Wally and Doc arrived beside LB. Jamie and Quincy spread out, attention on the first huts of the village a hundred yards off, the steep terrain rising behind it, and the sere shrubs along the stream.
“Welcome to Rubati Yar,” the young man shouted in English. “I am teacher.”
LB pulled off his glove to clasp the offered hand. Wally did not remove his sunglasses.
LB asked, “Where’s the boy?”
“Come.”
Wally nodded, stepping back. He rested a hand on the M4 carbine slung at his chest, near the trigger. LB motioned Doc to follow.
The teacher led them away from the stream, up a pebbled trail into the village. Rubati Yar was made up of a few dozen stacked-stone shacks, corrugated tin roofs, stave sheds, and goat pens clinging to a flat patch on the side of a mountain. One cinder trail ran beside the water ten kilometers downhill, leading west to the poppy fields of the Khumbi Khulkhan highlands. Twenty miles east sprawled Pakistan, twenty to the north lay Tajikistan.
In this sparse, far corner of Afghanistan, a boy had stepped on a land mine.
Yesterday a marine LRP team, walking this high-altitude stream, had been flagged down by the villagers of Rubati Yar. They showed the marine captain a boy in rough shape. Half his foot was blown off; black flesh framed the wound. The marines put in a call to Bagram Air Base for an air evac. The PJs spun up at first light.
LB labored for breath climbing the hundred-yard path into the village. Behind him, the river valley thrummed with the beating rotors of Pedro 2 hovering a mile off, the slowing blades of Pedro 1 near the stream, and high above, the circling HC-130 that would refuel both copters on the return to Bagram. Pausing to catch his wind, LB gazed south, where the squall crawled after them over white and russet peaks.
Doc passed him on the path. Four years younger than LB at thirty-six, Doc was the second-oldest PJ in the unit. Doc smacked him in the back on a Kevlar plate. Both men hauled almost a hundred pounds of medical supplies, weapons, communications, and armament up into the village. A breath at this height was a lot less nourishing than one at sea level.
“S’matter, old man?”
Doc ran marathons. LB lifted weights.
The Afghan teacher held out an arm, signaling that the walk was almost over. The boy’s hut lay just ahead.
Chickens scattered from their pecking at the corners of the village. A black-clad woman faded into the
darkness of her hut, eyeing the passing PJs. Boys stood in doorways, dressed like little beardless men in the same woven coats and hats as their elders. Their hands, too, had begun to take on the roughness of this land, their eyes the mistrust, inheritances of such isolation. LB made no gestures, nothing to be misinterpreted. He closed in behind the teacher and Doc through the ancient alleyways of the village to a waiting open door.
The teacher entered first, bowing in greeting. Doc followed, LB behind him.
Inside, a dirt floor lay under threadbare prayer carpets. The window frames held no glass, only shutters. LB imagined the cold this household endured most of the year on the side of a mountain, night broken by homely candles, meals, and heat from a mud oven.
The boy lay in a cot on goatskins. The teacher moved to stand beside the father, who did not come forward to greet the Americans. Deeper in the shadows of the hovel, peering around the father, hid two women, drawing veils across their faces below the eyes. One, the younger, crooked an arm over her distended belly, pregnant. The teacher explained that these were the man’s wife and widowed daughter.
Doc advanced first. The mangling of the boy’s left foot didn’t seem so bad until LB flicked on his flashlight. He caught his breath.
The outer half of the boy’s small foot had been sheared off. From toes to heel, the wound ran jagged as if bitten by teeth, not a forgotten land mine. The part of the foot the kid had left was bloated and purpled. The swelling carried into his calf. In places, the dying flesh had ruptured. A pasty pale green ooze let off a cloying, putrid stench, the signature of wet gangrene.
LB aimed the flashlight where Doc put hands on the boy. He slid his med ruck to the ground and, not pulling the light from Doc, dug in for antibiotics and morphine.
Doc laid a bare palm to the boy’s forehead to feel the elevated temperature of sepsis, then to the quickened pulse in his neck. Doc folded back the hem of the boy’s long robe, exposing the whole leg. Swelling and necrosis stopped below the knee, but were headed that way. Gingerly, Doc wrapped his fingers around the calf and squeezed. The boy moaned on the goatskins. He brought young hands over his face to cover his pain. The calf creaked, filled with gas by the bacteria devouring the foot. In the corner of the hut, the father cringed. Behind him, both women quietly cried.
The Devil's Waters Page 1
