Not that he figured that stubborn son of a bitch was going to listen.
* * *
Todd spun the stupidly heavy turret around to get the minigun facing forward. With Jake down in the middle, and their dumb-ass commander going out there to die with him, strings of high-explosive 40mm grenades were not exactly the precision kind of fire he wanted to be putting out there right now.
After he got it spun, he reached back to grab the tablet with the drone video and set it where he could see it again.
And what he saw at Kwon’s OP made his heart skip a beat.
“Luke Fucking Kwon. You are dead if you stay there. Displace – NOW.”
* * *
Kwon had much bigger problems and didn’t have time to look down, but he knew what he’d see if he did: his position was starting to be overrun from below. The herd was arriving. Death was waiting for him below just as much as it was coming for him up here.
Yeah, he could probably still fight his way out if he climbed down now.
But there was absolutely no way that was going to happen – not while Brendan was running alone through the open under fire. And he knew there was basically only one way he was getting out of this tree now.
He didn’t bother answering Todd this time.
He had too much to do on the rifle.
And his crowning moment of badass was at hand.
* * *
Todd quickly panned over to the center of the courtyard with the drone camera. And the picture there didn’t do his heart any good whatsoever.
He could make out Brendan doing his Forrest Gump routine, blasting through no-man’s land – though he was still too far to the east, Todd’s right, to make out directly from out of the turret.
But moreover, and much worse, he could see all the enemy elements maneuvering in on Jake’s little dug-out home in the dirt. Never mind that the shooters repopulating the walls would probably do him in before those on the ground could get there.
In part using the overhead view to tell him where he needed to be shooting, Todd started putting blistering minigun fire into every position that was putting fire on his team sergeant. But he couldn’t hit them all, and he definitely couldn’t get a look at all the maneuvering units, so he got on the radio while he engaged.
“They’re circling in on you, Jake. And I can’t support you. You’re going to be overrun in about a minute if you stay put. You’re gonna have to move. Seriously.”
He put his left hand back on the minigun.
And he made every round count.
Mogadishu Mile
The Stronghold - Jake’s Shell Crater
A streaking RPG detonated on the very rim of the dirt dugout that was Jake’s only cover from the storm. They were digging him out. And then they were going to bury him there.
He’d gotten his ravaged lower limb taped into something like a solid pillar.
And he knew he was going to have to try to break out.
The exploding RPG sent a shower of dirt over his head, not to mention shrapnel into his boots. But he wasn’t worried about that right now. He wasn’t even worried about himself. He keyed his mic.
“Kwon, Jake. Listen to Todd and the Captain. It’s time for you to go.”
His tone made it clear: dad was back. You could sass mom for a while. But eventually dad came home from work. And the tomfoolery was at an end.
“Roger that. Wait out.”
Jake clenched his jaw. “Climb the fuck down, Kwon – that’s an order.” He could feel the physical resistance – and thought he knew what the cause was. “Look, I’m fine here. I don’t need you shooting to protect me.”
“I know you’re fine – you’re under cover. I don’t give a shit about you right now.”
Jake wrinkled his brow. Kwon wasn’t staying on station to protect him.
He was doing it for Brendan – who was even now running like a madman through the open to get to Jake’s pinned-down position.
And Jake had to swallow hard at that.
He knew, everyone on the team knew, that Kwon was totally loyal to him – and would die for him in an instant. That went without saying. But now he was keeping his ass hanging out in the AK and RPG storm for Brendan.
Just as Brendan was running through hell to get to him.
All divisions in the team had somehow been forgotten.
The nearness of death made their differences fade to nothing.
They were all brothers again.
* * *
Brendan didn’t even feel the pain in his shot-through foot anymore.
It was almost certainly the adrenaline, which always dulled pain.
And nothing flooded an exhausted system with adrenaline like a solo run across open ground through a whipping, slashing rain of AK and RPG fire. He felt a round pluck at his sleeve, and another banked off his helmet, hitting hard enough to make his vision go double. Explosions geysered the earth ahead and behind as he ran through falling showers of dirt, thanking God he wasn’t faster than he was, which would have put him at the impact point at the right second to kill him.
He didn’t bother firing or trying to chuck grenades now.
There were too many targets, and his only chance was to get through all this, and he needed all his concentration to stay on his feet and running.
And he knew the only protection he had… was from above.
He could feel Kwon’s shooting taking the very worst of the heat off him.
And, once or twice, he could even see it.
As particularly fearless or vicious al-Shabaab guys would break cover to intercept him, they would immediately bowl over, faces hitting the dirt, due to precision shooting from above.
Brendan kept his chin tucked in and his legs pumping.
It was a long-ass run.
* * *
A single RPG hit the trunk of Kwon’s tree, barely five feet below him and just around to the side. With this one, he got hit with some casing and wood shrapnel. Amazingly, he got smacked with a chunk of bark in his right eye – the wounded one. It wasn’t moving fast enough to penetrate the bandage, but still smarted like hell.
Jesus, he thought. The trees have really got it in for me.
But at least it wasn’t his good eye.
He kept his head down, dropping targets as fast as he could acquire them. At any given second, it seemed like there were ten guys who were about to kill Brendan – and he could only engage one at a time. In a controlled panic, he shot and shot and shot, and at every instant expected to see Brendan fall.
But somehow he stayed on his feet.
As against this, the fire Kwon himself was taking counted for nothing.
Everything was about doing his job. And not letting his teammate down.
Even now – when he caught an AK round in the right arm, and then another creased his cheek. He knew there were a-S guys crowding the south and east parapets, competing to see who would get him first, whooping and cheering, and he felt like Kevin Costner in Dances With Wolves, riding in front of the Confederate lines and giving the rebs a free shot.
In Kwon’s case, though, it wasn’t because he wanted to die.
It was because he was determined that someone else live. And he had a job to do, and it required shooting past those guys on the parapets, down onto the ones trying to kill his team captain.
He’d seen a couple of RPGs streaking down toward Bren from one of the guardhouses but couldn’t see the shooter – however, he knew where the guy had to be standing, and he tried a bank shot through the open firing port and off a wall, then tried another – and saw the rocket-man tumble out the front.
Wow, he thought. That actually worked.
It was a trick he’d only read about, from when Delta operator Don Hollenbaugh defended a rooftop in Fallujah, after most of the forty Marines he went in with were wounded. Eventually, he’d been the last guy on top of the building – and prevented it from being overrun by moving among all six defensive positions and singlehandedly
keeping 150 attackers at bay.
He had reportedly made some bank shots on insurgents he couldn’t see.
Thanks, Master Sergeant Hollenbaugh, Kwon thought. Credit where due.
Focusing down on the courtyard again, he saw two robed and armed guys break cover and swing around into Brendan’s rear. They were either determined or desperate. Tracking them, panning smoothly, willing his aim to stay steady in the midst of the lethal chaos and violence that surrounded him, Kwon fired once, then a second time.
And his bolt locked back – empty mag.
He saw both the pursuers go face down in the dirt.
And then he saw Brendan leap into Jake’s hole and out of sight.
Kwon smiled as he pulled his eye back from the scope.
And suddenly he could see, to either side of the scope, and in the middle distance, the billowing back-blast of what was now a properly coordinated RPG volley. They were streaking into his patch of forest in a great airborne wave, and the fat slow rockets only moved about a hundred meters a second – so Kwon could actually see the one that was going to get him.
He didn’t close his eyes, but just watched it come in, his face the exact same mask of warrior calm it always was.
There was nowhere for him to go anyway.
Nowhere but home.
* * *
Seeing Brendan miraculously make it to Jake’s position alive, Todd pulled his eye back from the minigun sight to glance down at the video screen – just in time to see a great blast of flame and smoke and debris go shooting out the back of Kwon’s sniper hide.
Todd couldn’t believe it.
General Kwon was gone.
And still there remained a shitload of fighting between the rest of the team and any possible moment when they might get to grieve for him.
All Todd could do now was dish out some payback.
And try to make sure his brother hadn’t died for nothing.
Alamo
The Stronghold - Godane’s Escape Tunnel
“This is it,” Baxter said. “Last stretch, then we’re out.”
It had been a long and dicey exfil from the underground cells to here. Between gunfights, tunnel collapses, double-crossing al-Shabaab rescuers, more collapsed tunnels that had to be detoured around, not to mention hiding out from roving bands of the enemy, they’d been underground a while.
Now, they were finally on a long straight section of tunnel.
“Wait a minute,” Kate said. “Out where?”
“Outside the walls.” Baxter now realized she’d stopped and he turned back to face her. “This is Godane’s emergency escape passage. It gets us out of the Stronghold. As to where it comes out, I have absolutely no idea, but we’ll deal with that then…”
Kate somehow didn’t like this. But, then again, it wasn’t her plan. And it was probably bad manners to second-guess her rescuers.
The path slanted upward and in a few more minutes they reached a wooden door, tilted forty-five degrees, like a cellar door. Not having any good idea what they were going to find on the other side, they adjusted their grips on their rifles. Baxter unlocked and unbarred the door, then slowly pushed it up and open. He was having to push it through a thicket of brush and foliage, put there to conceal the entrance.
When they both clambered up top, Baxter went right, so Kate went left.
“Clear left,” she said.
When there was no response, she knew there was something wrong.
She spun around again, rifle to her shoulder. Baxter also had his weapon raised – and pointed in the face of a very large and muscular Somali man.
One who Kate recognized: al-Sîf.
He didn’t look good – banged up and scuffed, and seeming to favor one side. He had several open slash wounds, where it looked like he had tried to stop the bleeding by packing them with dirt. He had some sort of tree branch, evidently an improvised club, stuck in his belt – and dripping black gore from its end.
But he was also holding a tan rifle with a big scope to his own shoulder – pointing it right back in Baxter’s face.
Every nerve in Kate’s body told her to fire – to act, to operate.
But she could see al-Sîf’s finger curled around his trigger. And, as useful a tool as her M4 was, she also knew it wasn’t a magical device for turning people off. It was just a mechanical tool for putting holes in them. And however carefully she put holes in this guy, she was unlikely to end him before he fired.
And his muzzle was pressed against Baxter’s forehead.
Now the two of them began to rotate, al-Sîf leading, their weapons staying right in each other’s faces. When they had turned 180 degrees, al-Sîf began to climb through the door to the tunnel, never lowering his weapon.
As he moved to pull the door closed again, he paused, smiled at Baxter, and said: “You are a very strange white man.”
Then he closed the door.
And just like that he was gone.
* * *
It was only when they were alone that Kate realized they weren’t alone at all – there were also dead moving through the forest, and more than a few. They hadn’t noticed the two living people yet.
Thank God there was no firing, Kate thought.
The two of them moved a few meters away to the cover of a thick tree and hunkered down to regroup.
Now Kate heard one big reason the dead were paying no attention to them – the thick and heavy firing and explosions from behind the walls of the Stronghold. They were following that. And the fact that so much fighting was still going on in there suddenly made Kate not very enthusiastic about being out here.
Giving Baxter a look, she wordlessly turned her team radio on. It had been in her vest all this time but they’d been too far underground. Now Kate could hear, up close and personal, her teammates fighting for their lives back inside.
She stood up and spared exactly three words for Baxter.
“I’m going back.”
As she started to move out, Baxter grabbed her arm. He briefly considered telling her that they were all there to get her out – and if she went back inside that would kind of defeat the purpose. But he quickly realized what Brendan had earlier: she wouldn’t give a shit. So he tried another tack.
“They’re picking us up outside.” He stood up and peered around. “We’ve got to find our way to the road that leads out of here to the south… The good news is I think we’re already on the south side. And the road should be that way. We’ve got to be there when the others come out.”
Kate squinted, considered, and listened to a few more seconds of firing and explosions. They weren’t slackening in the least.
She pulled her arm free and headed out.
“Goddammit,” Baxter muttered.
He watched her back disappear.
Then he looked around at the vague menacing convergence of increasing numbers of dead moving through the forest, some stumbling but many running. And what flashed through his mind was a scenario where he had to stab one who noticed him, then shoot another – and then quickly became a one-man singularity out here in the forest alone.
And he could also hear for himself: the firing inside was still going full-bore.
“Goddammit,” he said again, dashing over and getting to the tunnel door just as she was pulling it closed again.
Instead, he shut it behind both of them.
They were both going back.
* * *
Jake and Brendan lay side by side, trying to stay underneath the murderous sheets of fire that streaked over their heads and smashed into the dirt around them. They were also trying to stay in a corner of the shell hole that kept them covered from the enemy on the walls that Todd and Zack couldn’t suppress.
They were in a very narrow corner, and it was shrinking.
“Good job, sir,” Jake said. “Now we’re both here in the goddamned Alamo.”
Brendan snorted in amusement. “The Alamo had walls and a roof.”
Jake was prett
y sure all Brendan had accomplished was keeping him from having to die alone.
Which, actually, was worth everything.
* * *
With Baxter navigating, and with fewer jihadis alive to bother them down below, he and Kate made their way back to the building with the north gun truck in a few minutes. They climbed the stairs to ground level then picked through the wreckage until they reached the vehicle.
The minigun up top was still firing – until it ran dry.
Zack was just turning around to reload when Kate knocked on the side of his turret, and he almost jumped out of his skin. He dropped down inside, opened the door, and glowed with relief. Baxter, his best friend, was still alive.
And, somehow, against all the odds, they had rescued Kate.
She did not herself look relieved. “Sitrep,” she said.
Zack shook his head. “I’ve gotta get the minigun back up. Get in here, help me reload, and I’ll tell you.”
As Kate nodded and climbed in after him, Zack started to put her in the picture.
And it wasn’t good. Both their leaders were pinned down out in the open.
* * *
Both Jake and Brendan knew they couldn’t live long in the position they were in. They were going to have to make a breakout.
Brendan looked over at his team sergeant. “Can you walk?”
“I’ll manage.”
Brendan nodded. Then, inexplicably, he smiled. Eyes gleaming from out of his dirt-, soot-, and blood-streaked face, he said, “Wait a minute – you didn’t see Lefors out there did you?”
Jake couldn’t help but laugh. He got the reference – Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid, 1969. Unfortunately, these were Butch and Sundance’s last lines before running out to be gunned down by half the Bolivian army. “Lefors? No.”
Brendan nodded. “Oh, good. For a moment there I thought we were in trouble.”
Then a voice came on the radio they really didn’t want to hear.
“Jake, Bren, Kate. Stay put. I’m moving to you.”
Wingman
The Stronghold - Middle of the Courtyard
Zack tried his damnedest to stop her. Ditto Baxter.
Ditto Todd and Jake, both shouting at her over the radio.
Arisen : Nemesis Page 38
