In his hands he held not an AK-47 but a fully armed FIM-92 Stinger missile system, a leftover from the days when the Americans had armed the mujahideen.
The forest thinned as he approached the wide mountainside clearing, the smell of cordite and burned flesh pungent from the air support that had demolished the team he had deployed earlier to cut off the enemy retreat.
He cringed at what he saw left in the wake of that A-10 attack. It looked apocalyptic, with entire tracts of forest cut down and mixed with turned-up soil, rocks, broken rifles and machine guns, and body parts—lots and lots of them.
Entrails were splattered everywhere, some still smoking. He stared at carnage on a level he had never seen, even in his worst battles, and the sight fueled his anger, his determination to find a way to exact revenge for this abomination.
By the time he and his men reached the clearing, however, the rescue helicopters were long gone.
But not the jet, he thought, watching it circle overhead. Not the doer of this terrible deed.
Shouldering the launcher and holding its pistol grip with his right hand, he went through the steps required to ready the weapon—steps he had memorized eons ago when fighting a different enemy. For an instant he even recalled practicing with a wooden mock-up alongside his older brother.
Unfolding the antenna and removing the front-end cap, he raised the sight assembly in front of his right eye while ignoring the steps related to the IFF system. He did not need a machine to tell him whether the circling Warthog was friendly or foe.
Releasing the Stinger’s safety and actuator, he activated the battery coolant unit while listening to the gyro spin-up noise telling him the weapon was operational. Using his left hand, Pasha put a finger over the Uncaging button while the index finger of his right hand caressed the trigger.
Aiming the launcher at the circling Warthog, he waited for the system’s high-pitched, steady sound, signaling that the missile’s infrared seeker had located the A-10’s superhot exhaust plume.
45
Narrowing Choices
RED ONE ONE. SULAIMAN MOUNTAINS. SOUTHERN AFGHANISTAN.
She remained circling at two thousand feet while the Chinooks completed their extraction run and headed back to KAF at full speed.
“Bravo Niner Six, Red One One. RTB,” she said, deciding that she had pushed her luck probably as much as she should for one day. Plus, she had gotten confirmation that Wright was aboard one of the choppers.
She stared as their distant silhouettes vanished while she followed a bend in the mountains.
“Red One One, Bravo Niner Six. Copy. RTB.”
But as she began to turn the Warthog to an easterly heading, a new alarm screeched in her cockpit, and unfortunately it wasn’t another malfunctioning system.
It was a missile warning.
Someone had achieved a lock on her bird.
She pushed the throttle, but the A-10 responded sluggishly on one engine.
The alarm’s pitch increased.
“Red One One under attack. Missile,” she said calmly while working the problem, cutting hard left, heading in the direction opposite from the Chinooks’ course. The last thing she needed was to draw the missile to one of those helicopters already safely out of sight.
Heading straight west while dispensing flares, Vaccaro shoved her single engine into full afterburners and dropped the nose.
Airspeed shot to three hundred knots as the ground filled her windshield. She pulled up and turned right, following the contour of the mountain for nearly a minute.
The missile was momentarily distracted by the flares but quickly reacquired her, due to her relatively slower speed, locking on to her single exhaust plume.
“Dammit.”
“Red One One. Bravo Niner Six. SitRep. SitRep.” KAF came on the radio asking for a situation report.
“Hold on, boys. A little busy here,” she replied, the rugged terrain rushing beneath her as she shot diagonally up the face of the mountain, her altimeter reading ten thousand feet. She released more flares, before swinging the control forward and to the left, now accelerating down the side of the mountain at a ninety-degree angle to the incoming missile.
She watched her airspeed inch past 430 knots, dangerously close to the never-exceed speed of the Warthog, shooting away as fast as possible with one engine, assisted by gravity.
But even that wasn’t fast enough to distance her bird from the countermeasures.
Thirty seconds later, the missile detonated twenty feet from her tail.
The cloud of shrapnel expanded radially, tearing into the armor plating protecting her surviving turbofan. The blast pierced through, riddling the skin with dozens of dime-size holes, damaging the arrays of stainless steel blades rotating at thousands of rpm.
Warning lights and alarms warned of her starboard engine losing pressure and overheating.
“Lost second engine. Repeat. Lost second engine and—”
The turbofan detonated behind her in a cloud of fire, spewing flames and smoke, narrowing her choices.
“Red One One, Red One One. SITREP.”
For a moment, Vaccaro thought of her father. Then she reached for the ejection handles that would activate both the canopy jettison system and the ACES II seat ejection.
Replying with more calm than she felt, she said, “My fun meter’s pegged, boys. Punching out. Would like a helo and a driver ASA—fucking—P.”
The instant she pulled on the handles, Vaccaro initiated the miniature detonation cord embedded within the armored canopy, shattering it milliseconds before the first stage of the ejection seat ignited.
The windblast took her breath away as the solid propellant shot her out of the dying Warthog like a cannonball before the second stage took over, sending her on a parabolic flight away from the flaming wreck.
The last thing she saw before passing out from the g-forces was her Warthog in a steep bank, caught in a death spiral to the ground, until its right wingtip struck the side of the mountain and it exploded.
* * *
Pasha stared at the distant canopy blossoming over the western rim rock as he lowered his empty launcher tube.
His men cheered in unison.
But he didn’t. His eyes followed the parachute being carried away by the mountain’s prevailing westerly winds, and in his mind he saw a similar parachute on this very mountain long ago.
Pasha remembered the tactics employed by Akaa to reach the fallen pilot, and he recalled in particular the calculated damage he and Akhtar had inflicted on that Soviet—not to kill but to horrify, for a lifetime.
The canopy may have been of a different color and the pilot of a different nationality, but the enemies of Islam all bled and cried the same way when subjected to the steel of a pesh-kabz.
Pasha stared at the enemy pilot, who couldn’t be more than a few miles away.
I am not through with you yet.
46
Lady Luck
RCAF CHINOOK 06–03765. SULAIMAN MOUNTAINS. SOUTHERN AFGHANISTAN.
“Where the hell is she?”
Wearing a green David Clark headset he had taken from Gaudet, Captain John Wright had stumbled into the cockpit the instant he had come around, fueled by pure adrenaline and anger after hearing from Gaudet that Vaccaro had been shot down.
“She went down about four miles west of the compound, sir,” replied the copilot, a lieutenant with the Royal Canadian Air Force, briefly turning his helmeted head to look at Wright over his left shoulder.
Staring at his own reflection on the mirror tint of the man’s visor, and ignoring just how bad he looked—he felt even worse—Wright said, “So? Go get her!”
The pilot, another RCAF lieutenant, shook his head while the copilot pointed at the fuel gauges. “No can do, sir! We’re halfway to KAF already with a full load of soldiers, plus wounded, and very low on fuel. Barely have enough to make it back!”
“You don’t get it!” Wright replied, struggling to find the right words,
since he couldn’t make this personal. “That woman saved our bacon out there! How the hell you think you were able to reach that LZ? We all owe her!”
“We know that, sir! But we can’t go back! Another helo is being dispatched!”
“She’s neck deep in Tallie country! There’s no time for another fucking helo! We need to turn this bird around and get her the hell out of there now!”
“And I’m telling you we don’t have the fuel for that!” shouted the pilot. “Take it up with General Lévesque, eh?”
“Dammit!” Wright said, yanking off the headset and heading back to the cabin, with Gaudet in tow.
“You gotta sit down, sir!” the sergeant said over the noise of the dual rotors.
“I don’t have time to fucking sit down!”
Gaudet just stared at his face and frowned.
“What the hell are you looking at, Sergeant?”
“Your eyes, sir! They’re so dilated … I think you have the mother of all concussions!”
“What I have,” Wright retorted, the dizziness forcing him to sit down before he stretched an index finger to the west, “is a downed American pilot who just saved our ass and who is about to be taken by those mother—”
Wright paused when his vision narrowed and he saw dark spots.
He took a deep breath. He couldn’t pass out. Not yet. Not now, when she needed him to fight for her, to find a way to get her out of there.
“Speaking of saving your ass, sir!” Gaudet said. “Who was that guy that brought you back?”
“Hell if I know, Sarge,” Wright said, shaking his head at the mysterious .50-caliber suppressing fire that had allowed him to make a run for the LZ, and at the ghostlike figure that had scooped him up from the forest floor as if he weighed nothing.
“Well, I’ll take it, sir. Sometimes lady luck’s on our side. Hopefully some of it will rub off on that pilot.”
Lady luck.
Wright stared at the mountains projecting to the west, fighting the increased light-headedness that made him close his eyes, thinking of his platoon’s “lady luck”—currently some twenty miles away beneath the canopy of pine trees.
Fighting for her life after saving their lives.
The dizziness rocketed, kindled by the physical abuse he had endured combined with the horror sweeping through him at the thought of Laura Vaccaro in the hands of those barbaric assholes.
As his vision continued to close up, as his eyelids became unbearably heavy and the deafening rotor noise faded away, he prayed that somehow—some-fucking-how—someone found her before the enemy did.
Somehow.
Then he collapsed. But Gaudet caught him, laying him on the floor.
The last thing he heard as everything went dark was his sergeant screaming for the medic.
47
Trading Value
SULAIMAN MOUNTAINS. SOUTHERN AFGHANISTAN.
Nasseer Niaz ignored the jolt of pain stabbing his jawline as he reached the edge of the gorge in time to see the parachute blossom after the ejection seat’s short parabolic flight. A moment later, a blast echoed up the mountain, a column of smoke billowing skyward, marking the crash site.
Massaging the swollen gum around his diseased molar with the tip of his tongue, Nasseer observed the camouflaged canopy as it veered in the breeze along the southern face of the mountain, its pilot motionless, perhaps injured, or worse. And just above the crash site, an eastern imperial eagle searched for prey while contemplating the havoc below, its massive wingspan riding the thermals in wide, lazy circles.
The Shinwari warrior considered the opportunity, weighing the risks against the benefits. This was, after all, Taliban country, and though his soldiers were battle hardened, any unnecessary exposure could telegraph his presence.
Like going after a downed American pilot.
On the other hand, delivering that pilot to the Ba’i meant advanced weapons, like the Javelin missile, certainly a cut above the M32s he had negotiated for the laptops, smartphones, and the dead Canadian soldiers.
As Nasseer made his decision, Hassan and the rest of his team reached the wide ledge, followed by his trainer wielding one of the new grenade launchers.
“Will you help us, Aaron?” Nasseer asked. “Will you help us secure that pilot?”
“That’s not your kind of war, Nasseer,” Aaron replied, loading shells into one of the M32s and walking up to the edge of the plateau. He was a tall man, and as broad as Hassan.
Nasseer didn’t respond.
“See that smoke?”
Nasseer turned to see the distant haze coiling high above the trees.
Aaron used the M32 as a pointing device. “That area will be crawling with Taliban within the hour. Why on earth would you want to be anywhere near it and risk getting burned?”
Nasseer gave him a slight shrug.
At his silence, Aaron added, “Your strength comes in your ability to operate without being seen, using the intelligence that we provide, yes?”
Nasseer couldn’t disagree with his trainer’s logic, but he chose to ignore him, turning to keep an eye on the descending canopy, which looked about three or four miles away, an easy hour’s hike, or less.
“Look,” Aaron continued, “this is the best time to hit their hideouts, especially the rebel camp marked on our map—while they’re away chasing a lone pilot for bragging rights.”
Nasseer almost laughed. That was certainly no rebel camp. It was a very large and well-protected Soviet concrete bunker from the 1980s that would require much planning and firepower to breach.
But Aaron always lived up to his promises, providing training and intelligence on enemy positions, which made Nasseer’s raids much more effective—and safer, given his much smaller and nimbler force. Their arrangement was a win-win for both Aaron—wherever he was from—and the Shinwari, using their combined skills to put a significant dent in the Taliban.
Aaron had arrived yesterday after traveling nonstop from Jalalabad aboard one of Nasseer’s supply trucks. He was claiming to have broken one of Osama bin Laden’s own cousins, who had pointed him to that old Soviet compound.
“Besides,” Aaron added “that pilot looks dead.”
“Maybe … maybe not,” Nasseer finally said, tilting his head while massaging his bearded jaw, working a thumb into the base of the damn molar. “Either way, the Javelins are worth the risk.”
With a heavy sigh, Aaron looked at Nasseer, then at the parachute, then back at the Shinwari fighter. “Fine, but we’re taking the pilot with us. We need to hit our objective first—and as soon as possible. Then you can go back to the base and trade, okay?”
Nasseer considered that for a moment. Aaron was always fair, and he could tell that this mission was of high importance to his people, and it was apparently time sensitive.
With a single nod, the Shinwari chief gave the order to his men, and they headed single file down the incline as the parachute sank beneath the trees.
48
Flash of Destruction
COMPOUND 57. SULAIMAN MOUNTAINS. SOUTHERN AFGHANISTAN.
He opiated before leaving the headquarters that had been his home for nearly two years. Feeling the burst of alertness that always swept his mind following chemical absorption, Mullah Akhtar Baqer gave the compound a final glance, anger boiling in his gut.
He really didn’t want to leave. This was not only his center of operations but also the perfect location to nurse the device back to health as soon as the replacement parts in Dr. Khan’s list arrived from bin Laden. The basement lab was ideal, with its clean room and all the necessary tools for the feisty professor to fulfill his obligation. On top of that, his leaving added a complication to the delivery of the replacement components. The plan called for the courier to head here so the professor could get the bomb functional before taking it to a predetermined location, where a plane would fly it out of the country.
However, he didn’t know if the message he had already dispatched to bin Laden would allo
w for a change. And that meant that Akhtar would have to leave a party in the area to meet up with the courier, in case the courier showed up here, to get the replacement components up the mountain to his new hideout.
But the immediate priority was to move the bomb. NATO knew of the existence of this place, and soon it would likely become the target of Hellfire missiles, though he hoped for a ground assault instead. Betting on the ground assault, his men were rigging enough daisy-chained charges outside the compound to deter anyone foolish enough to come near the place.
Down the mountain, Pasha had been successful in turning back the initial assault, though not without taking heavy losses. The Americans were at least temporarily out of his way, airlifted back to their walled base at Kandahar, opening a window of opportunity for his escape.
“All set?” the mullah asked Dr. Khan, who knelt by the device secured to the makeshift carrier resembling an ambulance stretcher.
The professor was tweaking and adjusting, his skinny face buried in the guts of the weapon. Without lifting his head, he said, “In a moment.”
“Professor, we do not have a moment.”
That prompted the man to look up from his work. “Then make one, yes? It isn’t ready to be transported yet.”
Akhtar sighed. The scientist continued to test his patience, but then again, the man had his priorities straight, placing the welfare of the weapon above all else—if for no other reason than the sake of his family back in Islamabad.
Just as I demanded of him.
“Five minutes, Professor,” Akhtar said, holding up the fingers of his right hand, walking away before the professor could protest.
He reached for the encrypted Russian radio clipped to his partug pants and brought it to his lips while depressing the Talk button and asking, “Do you have him?”
After a moment of static, Pasha’s voice crackled through the handheld device. “We’re in pursuit.”
“And we’re moving out.”
“Copy that. Out.”
Akhtar put the radio away. Keeping chatter to a minimum was key to survival in this region, where American planes flew constantly, monitoring the airwaves. With luck, anyone listening and able to break the encryption would get nothing from the brief conversation. And with even more luck, his brother just might be able to catch the American pilot for interrogation before rescue crews reached the crash site. Aviators were typically privy to tactics and even to strategy, which his thousands of fighters in the Kandahar region could use.
Without Fear Page 23