by Scott McEwen
“Cynthia, back that off.”
The Air Force lieutenant zoomed out, and they saw that the truck was burning. Gil, Steelyard, and Crosswhite were falling back, leapfrogging north through the rocks and trees toward the dead horse, where there would be no cover at all. Two more pickup trucks loaded with fighters raced out of the village, many of the men in back firing wildly over the top of the cab as the trucks careened along over the rugged terrain.
Couture stole a glance at Captain Metcalf. “Looks like this is it, Glen. I’m sorry.”
“Yes, sir.” Metcalf mopped his brow with an olive drab handkerchief.
The room had fallen silent as a tomb minutes before in the instant Big Ten was struck by the RPG. No one had dared to even breathe as the huge plane slewed out of control temporarily, only to nose up again seconds later, banking left like a fighter plane to snare the balloon line and snatch Sandra from the Valley of the Shadow. Then, minutes later, the message came that she was safely aboard the gunship, and everyone in the room had shouted in triumph and disbelief, high-fiving and backslapping one another.
Admittedly, that had been the single most exciting moment of Metcalf’s life.
Now—just over three minutes later—he found himself at the lowest moment of his career. He was about to watch three terribly brave men gunned down in the open without so much as a ditch for cover. Tragically, this was not an unheard-of occurrence within the Special Forces Community. Brave men—like Sean Bordeaux and his Rangers—had been caught out and shot down a number of times in Afghanistan, more times than most of the American public realized or cared to hear about, but this time Metcalf was going to lose a close personal friend.
He and Steelyard had found themselves knee-deep in the shit together more than once during the Cold War. He owed his life to Steelyard, in fact, having been shot through both legs during the First Gulf War, riding over Steelyard’s shoulder for more than a mile across the desert to make their rendezvous with another SEAL unit. It sickened Metcalf, and it shamed him that he could do nothing more for his friend in return than to watch him die on television, as if it were a Tom Clancy film, from the safety of a climate-controlled office in downtown Kabul.
“At least they can go out knowing she’s safe,” he said, speaking as much to himself as General Couture.
The pickup trucks were rapidly approaching Steelyard and the others now, and the enemy force to the west was across the river and charging through the almond orchard. The screen was full of muzzle flashes. In a matter of seconds, it would be all over.
Couture turned away from the screen. “I don’t think I care to watch, to be honest.”
Metcalf’s gaze never wavered, his eyes fixated on the screen. “With respect, General, you must . . . we owe it to them.”
61
AFGHANISTAN,
Panjshir Valley, Bazarak
From a thousand yards farther up the road, Forogh and his uncles could hear the shooting. When they saw the balloon go up, Forogh ran for his horse, shouting for everyone to follow him. They were needed to provide cover for the extraction.
But Orzu refused to let his men ride any closer to the battle.
“We can’t risk getting that close,” he said. “There’s no cover back there. If the HIK knows we helped the Americans, we’ll be hunted. We’ll never be able to go home. You said he was supposed to meet us here, at the edge of forest. Why did he change it?”
Forogh shrugged and shook his head. “You’ve been in battle, Uncle. You know things sometimes go wrong. Listen to the shooting. He needs our help!”
Orzu still refused to jeopardize his men. He ordered them all mounted up and ready to leave. Once they were mounted, they sat on their horses listening as the battle continued to rage a thousand meters away. Then the plane suddenly went soaring overhead for the second time, trailing the woman behind it from the end of the rope.
“There!” Orzu shouted over the roar of the engines. “She’s away! He didn’t need our help. We can go now.”
The sound of the shooting began to intensify, and they heard the explosions of RPGs down in the pass.
Forogh reined his horse wildly around. “Listen to that!”
Orzu caught the bridle of Forogh’s horse. “Stay here, Nephew. You’ll be killed if you go back there.”
“It’s my life to lose! Let go of my horse.”
“Why?” Orzu said, letting go of the bridle. “Why risk your life for a man you owe nothing?”
Forogh brought his saddle even with his uncle’s and looked into his eyes, the first signs of dawn beginning to show in the east. “Because he would do it for me! Now . . . what would Massoud do if he were here?”
62
AFGHANISTAN,
Panjshir Valley, Bazarak
Gil grabbed Steelyard under one arm. Crosswhite grabbed him under the other, and the two of them dragged him as fast as they could through the trees toward the pass where the horse carcass lay.
Steelyard was hit bad in the gut, a portion of his intestine hanging out of his lower back. “Leave me!” he shouted in agony. “I’m finished.”
They ignored him, increasing their pace. Gil was pumping blood from a leg wound, and he could feel that his lung had begun to collapse. He could see that Crosswhite was in great pain, too, realizing now that he’d been hurt more badly upon landing than he’d previously let on.
“Is that hip fractured?” he asked, panting heavily against the collapsing lung.
“Bet your ass it is,” Crosswhite grunted. “Don’t know how the fuck I’m still standing. Won’t have to worry about it much longer, though. Whattaya think—this far enough?”
Gil stole a glance over his shoulder. “Good a place as any. Those fuckin’ trucks’ll be up our ass any time now.”
They stopped and set Steelyard down against the last tree between them and the wide open spaces.
“Get the fuck outta here!” the older man said. “I’ll hold ’em off.”
“I hear ya, John Wayne.” Crosswhite put his HK .45 in the older man’s hand. “Hey, Gil, you think this is what Custer felt like?”
Gil laughed and got down on his belly beside the tree, taking shots at the enemy with an AK-47. His night-vision monocular was dead; he had no idea why. He supposed it had been struck by a bullet, but there was no time to check. He didn’t know if the strobe on his helmet was still functional or not, but it hardly mattered now. They’d be dead long before their evac arrived . . . if it was even coming.
Crosswhite got down on the other side of the tree to fire his M4.
A group of eight men broke from the almond orchard, firing on the run. Gil hurled a grenade at them, blowing them off their feet. A couple of them bounced back up, but Steelyard was up on his knee, firing the pistol. He put one down, and Crosswhite killed the other. A wild firefight broke out between them, and the enemy now occupied the orchard. Steelyard took a round to the shoulder and fell over backward. There was nothing that Gil or Crosswhite could do for him but keep as low as they could and pour on the fire.
“Truck!” Gil shouted, shifting his fire as the driver hit the brakes fifty yards away. Men leapt out of the back. One with an RPG took a knee and fired. The rocket struck the ground behind them, and both men felt the shrapnel rip into them. Steelyard’s body bounced off the tree and flopped over onto Gil’s legs. Two more men dashed from behind the truck with RPGs and took aim.
“Reloading!” Crosswhite shouted.
“Fuck—me, too!”
Crosswhite let out a maniacal burst of laughter as he raced to beat the grenadiers. His laughter swept through Gil like a stiff morning breeze. “The only easy day was yes—ter—”
Their world was engulfed by the unholy, all-consuming roar of multiple Pratt & Whitney engines, F-15 Strike Eagles flying snake and nape over the valley, dumping their combined payloads of napalm and thousand-pounders danger close to the trio’s position, obliterating the attacking forces to the front of their line.
Gil and Crosswhite we
re lifted from the ground, the air sucked from their lungs by the vacuum created by the exploding napalm, the blood vessels in their eyes ruptured by the thudding shock waves that hammered the earth, knocking them senseless.
In the fiery glow that shone through the blood in his eyes, Gil was crawling away from the heat on his hands and knees, feeling the burn of his shrapnel wounds, the scorching fire biting at the seat of his ass . . . and the twisting of his trachea from the tension pneumothorax. Crosswhite leapt to his feet, caught fire, and dropped back to the ground, screaming and rolling to put out the flames. Gil threw himself onto Crosswhite’s head to protect his face, beating his uniform with his hands. Neither man thinking, driven by instinct alone to escape the heat, they half crawled, half dragged each other away, but it was no use. They couldn’t see where they were going, and they couldn’t breathe because of the petroleum fumes that filled their lungs.
63
AFGHANISTAN,
Kabul, Central Command
“Is that them?” General Couture was asking. “Is that them?” Due to the heat of the burning napalm, the infrared camera feed from the UAV was impossible to make out, so the operator had switched the feed coming in from a satellite to an unfiltered lens generally used for daytime observation. By the light of the fire, they could see two men crawling past the flames where globs of napalm had splattered the ground, partially blocking their retreat up the pass.
One of the figures jumped up to run, caught on fire, and fell back down, attempting to roll out the flames. The other figure jumped onto his head and began beating at the flames to smother them out.
“That’s them, General,” Metcalf said quietly, dominating the nausea he felt in his stomach. He knew that Steelyard was dead. The RPG had struck the ground right behind him. His body had probably absorbed the majority of the blast, enabling Gil and Crosswhite to survive long enough to be bombed by their own people.
“Go! Go!” Couture muttered, watching the two figures struggling along. “Get up and run! Run—don’t give up!”
Something on the infrared UAV feed caught the attention of the Air Force lieutenant. She switched the view to the bigger of the two screens without asking the general. Twenty mounted horsemen were riding south from the Khawak Pass toward the wall of fire that shielded the Americans from the view of the village.
“Now they come!” Couture said, throwing his hands up. “A day late and a dollar short. Fucking hell—what have you people been waiting for?”
The major stood up at the back of the room, calling, “General! The president is on the line, sir.”
Couture went to the back of the room and took the phone. “Yes, Mr. President?”
The president didn’t waste any time coming to the point. “What’s happened, General? Do we have her or not?”
“Yes, sir. She’s aboard an AC-130J as we speak, bound for Bagram Air Base. She’s been shot, but we’ve got our top surgeons standing by on the tarmac. The medic aboard the aircraft reports that her vital signs are weak but stable. It sounds like she should make it, Mr. President. That’s all I can confidently say at this time, sir.”
There was a long pause before the president spoke again. “Okay,” he said with a resigned sigh. “Provided she makes it, General, this is how we’re going to play it . . . for the good of all. You will prepare an operational brief within twenty-four hours detailing the plans for this operation. It will be entitled Operation Earnest Endeavor. Is that clear?”
“Yes, Mr. President.” Couture was still eyeing the screen. The riders were halfway to where Gil and Crosswhite lay motionless in the road, fire burning all around them, but something was wrong, what were all of those heat signatures in the forest north of the valley sweeping down through the Khawak Pass?
The president continued, “You will submit the brief to my military advisor Tim Hagen, who will then submit it to me for my approval. I will approve the brief as of twenty-four hours ago, and that will be the official story of how this mission was carried off. Understood, General?”
“Cynthia!” Couture shouted into the room. “Upper right of the screen, sweeping south in the trucks! Who the hell are those people?”
“General Couture,” the president said over the phone. “Did you understand what I—”
“I’m going to have to ask you to stand by a moment, Mr. President. We’ve got a situation developing here.” He set the phone down and stepped into the com center as the aerial shot panned around to the north to show a column of more than twenty vehicles racing down from the Hindu Kush toward the Panjshir Valley loaded with men. “Oh, Jesus.”
64
AFGHANISTAN,
Panjshir Valley, Bazarak
Gil felt himself borne up from the ground, hands pushing him into the air. He heard the urgent shouting of men over a very great distance. No, not distant. Close . . . but it was as though he were hearing them from beneath the water. The blood ran from his ears, and suddenly he could hear their voices clearly, chattering away in a language he did not understand. The enemy had him, and now they were carrying him over their heads as a trophy of war, shouting in glee over their victory.
He struggled to draw his pistol, but a hand caught his wrist. The orange glow of the fire receded with the heat, and he was swallowed by darkness. He felt cold air against his skin where patches of his uniform had been burned away, then came to rest again against the hard ground. Ice cold water poured over his face, washing away the blood to clear his vision.
“Gil!” someone was shouting into his face. “Gil, can you hear me?”
For the first time, he realized that his ears were ringing like church bells, but, yes, he could hear the voice. The dim face came into focus. Forogh was kneeling over him, shaking him by the shoulder, showing him the PRC-112.
“Gil! I need your authentication code! There isn’t much time! Your people will shoot us!”
Gil opened his mouth to speak but found that he could not talk above a whisper, his trachea twisted. “Roll me onto my bad side,” he croaked.
Forogh put his ear close to his lips. “Say it again, Gil.”
“Roll me to my wounded side. Can’t breathe!”
After a quick examination, Forogh found that Gil was bleeding from the right side of his back. He rolled him onto that same side to keep the blood from draining into the good lung.
Gil felt some relief at once and was able to speak with a bit more force. “Typhoon Actual,” he said. “Authentication . . . Whiskey-Whiskey-X-ray-Five-Zero-Five.”
“I’ve got it,” Forogh said, preparing to key the radio.
“Find Steelyard,” Gil croaked. “Steelyard!”
“We have him, Gil. I’m sorry—he’s dead.”
Forogh keyed the transmitter. “Hello! I am calling for Typhoon Actual . . . Whiskey-Whiskey-X-ray-Five-Zero-Five! . . . I am his interpreter! Typhoon is badly wounded and needs a medevac! Over!”
Another sortie of F-15s swept into the valley to the south. The mountains erupted in orange-black roiling pyroclastic clouds of fire, and the blasts of thousand-pound bombs echoed like thunder.
Forogh called out again, but no one answered.
His uncle Orzu appeared at his side, holding the reins of his horse as the rest of the men held their defensive perimeter. “We need to leave,” his uncle said. “We’re not safe here. The Americans will mistake us for the enemy.”
“We have to let them know!” Forogh insisted. He spotted the kit box from the STAR system and dropped the PRC-112, running back toward the flames. Inside the box, he found a flare gun and a standard strobe light. He ran back to his uncle. “This will be enough.”
His uncle gave orders for the three Americans to be brought along.
Forogh mounted up. “Put that one up here with me,” he said, pointing down at Gil.
Crosswhite came to, howling in pain when they tried to sit him up on a horse, his fractured hip unable to take the strain. So he was draped over the animal’s shoulders, the same as Steelyard, and they gall
oped north back toward the original extraction zone.
When they arrived, they put the Americans on the ground, and Forogh activated the strobe.
“Our job is done,” his uncle said. “I can’t risk my men being killed.”
“Thank you, Uncle.” Forogh offered his hand.
“You trust them?” his uncle said, jutting his chin back toward the valley, where the last of the American aircraft was flying away to the south.
Forogh shrugged. “I am in the hands of Allah, Uncle. I trust him.”
His uncle nodded and shook his hand, turning to order his men north into the mountains. That’s when they both saw for the first time the column of vehicles racing south down the pass, bristling with rifles and RPGs. Without headlights, the trucks had drawn to within two hundred yards, unseen in the dawning light. Forogh and his uncles were caught between the enemy to both the north and the south, with nowhere to run but a short box canyon to the west.
“Allah, be merciful,” Forogh muttered.
“This is no time for mercy, boy.” Orzu turned in the saddle, bellowing to his clan. “Ride! Put your backs to the wall! We will see if the Americans are still a friend of the Tajik!”
More than twenty horses bolted across the shallow river into the box canyon. The trucks came speeding toward them, bullets whizzing through the air and ricocheting off the rocks. An RPG exploded against a boulder, and one of Forogh’s cousins was thrown dead from his horse.
Slouched in the saddle behind Forogh, struggling for every breath, Gil drew the 1911 and forced his eyes open, turning to fire at the enemy.
The horsemen rode into the box canyon and dismounted among the rocks. The firing fell off for a moment as the trucks slid to a stop on the far side of the Panjshir River and the HIK unloaded, taking up positions of their own as they began to maneuver aggressively toward the canyon.
Orzu was shouting orders to his men, putting them where he wanted them. Finally, when there were not enough rocks or positions of cover for them to fall back to, he ordered the horses formed into two separate phase lines of a dozen each. Then he ordered them all shot in place.
