All Lines Black

by Dalton Fury

  “Plan B,” Kolt shouted into his mic. “Fall back. Slap, get the guys off the hill.”

  “Fall back where?” Slapshot countered. “You know something I don’t?”

  “Do it,” he shot back. “Back to the compound.”

  Slapshot’s reply was brutally short and brutally obscene, but he followed with a rapid-fire burst of orders to his men. From his position halfway across the road, Kolt could see his mates giving ground, moving in short bounds, taking turns covering each other. They were all moving, which was a good sign, but before he could breathe a sigh of relief, he saw one of them stumble and roll uncontrolled down the slope.

  Fuck!

  “B-Wings’s hit,” Digger called out, and then bounded up and was sprinting across to where the wounded operator had finally come to rest. The others fired up at the machine guns, providing suppressive fire to buy their comrade time to make the traverse. Their suppressed weapons would make it harder for the crows to zero in on their position, but not impossible. Every second they stayed in the open multiplied the risk.

  Digger flattened out next to B-Wings, and then broke squelch. “He took one just under the plate. Left side.”

  Kolt winced. Abdominal wounds were nasty under the best of circumstances, but pinned down with help at least half an hour away, if they could get it at all, the prognosis was dire.

  A moment later, however, Digger called out again. “Moving. Cover us.”

  Then he and B-Wings, the latter evidently moving under his own power, popped to their feet and charged the rest of the way down the hill.

  B-Wings was from Shaft’s team. He’d come over from Fifth Group shortly after Kolt’s return to the Unit, bringing along his codename and his reputation for having an iron gut—both acquired after an infamous food-related dare one night at Huske Hardware House Brewery. Kolt hoped his operator’s gut really was made of tough stuff, but it was more likely the pain-killing and stimulative effect of adrenaline that fueled B-Wings’s run.

  “Back to the compound,” Kolt repeated. He trained his red dot on a spot slightly above the flashing muzzle of the machine gun on the right and fired several controlled pairs. The enemy firing position was just about at the effective range of the weapon, but luck on the battlefield cut both ways so there was always a chance of scoring a hit. When the magazine ran out, he switched it for a fresh one but instead of throwing any more rounds away, he crawled over to the unmoving form of the Syrian and resumed dragging the man, this time back the way they’d come.

  Someone—Kolt couldn’t tell who—caught up to them and grabbed ahold of the captive’s other arm, expediting the retreat. More rounds impacted the road around them. A few even struck the long sidewall of the compound, suggesting that the crows perched on the hill knew where they were and what they were attempting.

  Kolt waited until he was through the wall and clear of the funnel before trying to gain some semblance of control. He counted heads, coming up two short. “Slap, you still with me?”

  “You’d be lost without me, boss,” Slapshot said, but Raynor thought he sounded like he was speaking through clenched teeth. “Stubbed my toe, but I’ll be there in a sec.”

  Kolt wondered what his friend meant by “stubbed toe.” Was he trying to gloss over a serious injury? Three years earlier, Slapshot had nearly bought it during a pursuit of a terrorist trying to smuggle man-portable SAMs into the United States. He’d spent weeks in a medically induced coma and months in rehab. In true Delta fashion, he’d gotten right back on the horse, but in Kolt’s experience, close calls could either make you gun shy, or make you think you were invincible.

  Slapshot definitely was not gun shy.

  “Well get your ass in here.”

  Even as Raynor said it, two more figures passed through the gaping hole in the wall: a limping Slapshot, assisted by Trip Griffin. As the former hobbled toward him, Kolt could see a dark stain spreading across Slapshot’s left thigh.

  “Please tell me this is the start of your plan,” the sergeant major said. “We’re red on just about everything but water. Hell, probably that, too. When’s our ride getting here?”

  Kolt shook his head. “Last I heard, they’re heading for the exfil point.”

  “Kolt—”

  “They’re half an hour away, Jason. We aren’t going to be able to stay here that long.” He didn’t add that he wasn’t entirely sure he could convince Webber to send in the cavalry, or if he did, that the CG would back the play. “We need to make our own luck,” he finished.

  Slapshot turned his head, surveying the badly scuffed team. Shaft was bent over B-Wings, cutting away the wounded man’s uniform to lay bare his injury. Some of the others were nursing minor hurts as well. He looked back at Raynor. “I’m all ears, brother, but I don’t think walking out of here’s an option.”

  “You’re right,” Kolt said, and smiled for what had to be the first time in a long time. “We’re driving.”

  * * *

  Kolt and Slapshot gazed past the house at the pair of Toyota Corollas parked nearby. A scattering of pockmark dents showed where the vehicles had caught a few stray rounds during the initial assault, but their overall functionality was not Slaphshot’s primary concern.

  “We’ll never fit.”

  “We will,” Kolt said, confidently.

  Several years earlier, during one of his many and frequent visits to Afghanistan, Kolt had witnessed the carrying capacity of a nearly identical vehicle while riding along with an Afghan National Army convoy through Oruzgan Province. The ANA troops had decided to stop and search an approaching vehicle, and to Kolt’s astonishment, eleven Afghan males—ranging in age from midteens to wizened old men—had emerged from that single car. Granted, they were all scrawny as hell, but Kolt felt certain that his dozen assaulters could squeeze into two cars with only a modest degree of discomfort.

  “Gonna be like friggin’ clown cars,” Slapshot muttered, shaking his head. He turned back to the group. “All right, who aced the GTA course?”

  Kolt couldn’t recall the last time he had attempted to hotwire a car in the Unit’s boneyard. One of the drawbacks of sitting behind a desk was that he missed out on a lot of the repetitive skill-building that kept his shooters occupied during training cycle. Fortunately, the old Toyotas would have none of the sophisticated antitheft safeguards that were factory standard on most newer-model cars in the Western world. And they might even get lucky and find the keys under the visor.

  While Slapshot dealt with the logistics of appropriating the two vehicles, Kolt put in his too-long delayed call to the JOC.

  He didn’t ask about why nobody had spotted the enemy force blocking their way to the extraction point, nor did he advise command about their current sorry state. Kolt was interested only in one thing. “Request BDA on the Hellfire strike, over.”

  “That threat appears to be neutralized,” Webber replied. “But there’s movement on the hill to the west. At least forty crows, headed your way.” And then, as if reading Kolt’s mind, he added. “They’re spread out so we can’t get ’em all with another shot from the Reaper. Some of them are heading north, toward the main entrance. You’ve got a minute, tops, before they come knocking.”

  “What about the east side?”

  This time, there was a pause. “There’s some activity, but it looks disorganized. Might just be nosey neighbors wondering what the hell’s going on.”

  Kolt didn’t believe that for a second. In this part of the world, the innocent bystanders, what few were still in the city, knew better than to venture out into the street when bullets were flying. But there were probably plenty of ISIS fighters in the city who weren’t read in on Abu Hamam’s little plot and had no clue that American commandos were about to roll through their hood.

  “One other thing,” Webber continued. “Your lift asset is en route.”

  “Roger,” Kolt said. He resisted the urge to ask about the QRF. If Webber hadn’t volunteered that information, it probably meant that
Hawk and the Rangers were still spinning on the ground, in which case calling for them would be an exercise in futility. “Noble Zero One, out.”

  He relayed the news to Slapshot, who in turn put a verbal boot in the ass of his hotwire experts. Digger went to work on the gate, which had been knocked askew by the Hellfire blast on the street outside, but was still hanging by one twisted hinge.

  One of the Corollas roared to life but the other refused to turn over.

  “Fuck it!” Slapshot yelled. “If you’re wounded, get in. Everyone else is a straphanger.”

  “That includes you,” Kolt told him.

  “Hell yeah, it does. Who do you think is driving?” He eyed Kolt’s prisoner. “I suppose we have to make room for that piece of shit, too.”

  “He can ride in the back,” Kolt said, trying to sound indifferent as he steered the Syrian toward the rear end of the car. He wasn’t in the mood to explain why he wanted to keep Abu Hamam alive, and it was a secondary priority anyway . . . but he wasn’t going to leave the Syrian behind and he sure as hell wasn’t going to execute him.

  He dumped the hog-tied form in the trunk, while the rest of the team made a few last-minute modifications to their ride—removing the doors and smashing out the windshield and rear window to give those riding inside a clear field of fire and make it easier for the rest of the team to hang on.

  “Foxtrot until we’re clear of the gate,” Kolt advised. It would be hard enough for Slapshot to maneuver the little car without the weight of the entire team of fully-kitted operators plus one Syrian dirtbag. “Digger! Blow it!”

  “Fire in the hole!” Digger yelled, and then pulled the quick-release pin and activated the dual shock tube initiator wired to the charges on the hinge. There was a loud bang, and the iron gate fell back into the courtyard amid a cloud of smoke and dust.

  Kolt jogged ahead, quickly slicing the pie at the gatepost—the coast was clear—before venturing outside ahead of the vehicle. He could just make out a few distant figures, dressed head to toe in black, which in no way camouflaged them from his NODs, moving slowly down the distant slope. He kept his red dot on them but checked his fire. He had a feeling he was going to need every bullet before the night was through.

  The Corolla emerged a few seconds later, easing into the open. Slapshot cranked the steering wheel hard to the right, threading the needle between the wall and the blast crater left behind after the AGM strike. There was surprisingly little debris in the street, and no human remains that Kolt could see.

  “All aboard!” Slapshot called out.

  Racer picked up and range-walked alongside the slowly creeping Corolla, carefully stepping up onto the bottom of the door frame and curling his right arm around the angled front post. He slapped the top of the car with an open palm. “Go!”

  Slapshot, wisely, did not stomp the pedal to the floor. Instead, he eased forward, allowing the outboard operators a chance to make any necessary adjustments before giving the Toyota a little more gas.

  Kolt felt the breeze against his face as they picked up speed. They headed east, away from the advancing mass of fighters, and unfortunately, farther away from the extraction point, but now that they had wheels, detouring around the enemy position was doable. During their initial infil, they had crossed a main north–south thoroughfare less than three hundred meters from Abu Hamam’s compound, and according to Kolt’s satellite photo there was another main road half a klick to the north that would take them back to the old riverbank. From there, they might even be able to pick up one of the old dirt roads leading out into the desert, putting them that much closer to the pick-up site.

  “Twelve o’clock.”

  Slapshot’s shout pulled Raynor back into the moment and he immediately spotted movement on the road ahead. Men, a dozen or so, were milling about in the road, squinting into the darkness at the strange sight rolling toward them. Every one of them was armed with an AK.

  “So much for nosey neighbors,” Kolt muttered, then shouted. “Blow through!”

  He shifted to get a better shooting position, but before he could loose a single shot, the men in the road started dropping, felled by precision double-taps from Kolt’s mates. One of them let out a pained yelp and the rest scattered to the roadside before attempting to return fire.

  But they did return fire.

  Muzzle flashes bloomed in Kolt’s NODs like little supernova eruptions. The reports were loud, even with his ear pro. The Corolla’s chassis rang with multiple impacts. He tilted his head to the right, trying to keep the damaged side of his ballistic helmet facing away from them, and got his weapon up to return fire.

  The helmets and the armor wouldn’t make any of them invincible. It was a near-certainty that some of those incoming rounds would find flesh and blood—his or one of his mates’. The HK on the other hand, had the power to stop the assault permanently.

  He fired into one of the muzzle flashes, adjusting his aimpoint as the target came closer.

  The crow slumped forward.

  And then they were through. Kolt twisted around, looped his left arm around the upright post, and aimed his weapon one-handed at the remaining targets. He snapped off a couple more shots, then held on tight as Slapshot began steering into the turn. He felt someone inside the car grab ahold of his vest, pulling him close against the exterior, and it occurred to him to check the road behind them to verify that none of the other operators riding outboard had been lost.

  All bodies still present and accounted for. Alive, dead, or somewhere in between, was harder to say. He hadn’t been hit, at least he didn’t think so. Firefights did funny things to the nervous system. He’d been hit by bullets and frag more often than he cared to think about. Sometimes you felt it—the mule kick of the impact, the almost transcendent burn of hot metal tearing through muscle—and sometimes you didn’t feel a thing. A more comprehensive assessment would have to wait until they were a lot farther from the kill zone.

  He was about to look back again, to see if any of the surviving enemy were attempting to pursue, when the Corolla lurched violently. He tightened his grip on the upright post, but the sudden change in momentum tore him loose, catapulting him forward ahead of the Corolla. He landed hard, half tumbling, half sliding several meters down the road.

  The pain was immediate and intense, especially in his lower back, and in that instant, he was certain that he would never walk again.

  Then he saw the Corolla shudder to a stop behind him, smoke pouring from under the hood, and knew that was the least of his worries.

  FOURTEEN

  Slapshot was kneeling over him. “Kolt! Still with me, brother?”

  Raynor tried to answer, but for a few seconds, the words refused to come out. Finally he managed a grunt, and then caught his breath again.

  He had overestimated the severity of his injuries. He was banged up and the pain in his back was excruciating, but mostly he had just gotten the wind knocked out of him. He knew from experience that he would feel a lot worse in the hours and days to come.

  If he survived that long.

  “I’m . . . good.” He rolled over, and as they high-crawled back to the stalled Corolla, Slapshot went to work putting the pieces back together.

  Kolt struggled to manage all the information he was getting. The names of the wounded, the severity of their injuries. How many mags they had left . . . not nearly enough. The status of their equipment . . . not good. His own helmet had come apart like an eggshell during his tumble, taking his NODs and ear cups with it.

  The details mattered, and it was his job to keep it all straight, to find order in the chaos and save his guys, but no amount of juggling was going to change the fact that all their lines were black.

  We’re fucked, he thought, staring at his mates as they dragged their torn and battered bodies around to the front of the stricken Corolla, seeking a defensible position. The car was done, the engine block shot to shit by a burst from an AK. Now, the only thing it was good for was stopping bulle
ts, and it probably wouldn’t even be much good for that.

  We’re fucked, he thought again. Somebody fucked us.

  The realization snapped him out of his haze.

  Somebody wanted us to fail . . . sent us here to die.

  “Slap, we need to get off the street!”

  “No shit,” growled the sergeant major, but he looked away, scanning the buildings to either side of the road, looking for a place to hole up.

  Kolt left him to that task and started moving again, crawling along the side of the Toyota. Without his NODs, Kolt was practically blind, but it looked like the street behind them was clear for the moment. As he passed the driver’s seat, he reached in and worked the trunk-cover release. The sound of the latch releasing seemed unnaturally loud. He continued to the rear of the vehicle, reached into the trunk, grabbed ahold of Abu Hamam by the arms, and unceremoniously dragged the “precious cargo” out into the open. The Syrian was alive—enough so to grunt at the rough treatment—and as far as Kolt could tell, uninjured. Kolt was going to do whatever it took to keep him that way.

  “Clear!” someone shouted, and then Slapshot called out, “We’re moving!”

  Raynor peered in the direction of the first shout and saw one of his assaulters standing beside the door to a structure about fifty meters farther down the street, waving the rest of the team on. The exodus had already begun, with the walking wounded assisting or just plain dragging their incapacitated mates toward shelter. Kolt joined the line, pulling the Syrian along behind him.

  He had just reached the door when the assaulter called out a contact alert and fired into the darkness behind Kolt. Without the added ear protection of his ear cups, Kolt could hear the soft chuff of the suppressed weapon and the metallic clicking of the bolt sliding back and forth. Two shots. Two more.