Without Fear

by Col. David Hunt

  She reached the outcrop where she had been hiding and dove feetfirst into the recess still cushioned with the parachute as flames and debris engulfed the entire clearing above her.

  But she lunged too fast, and instead of landing inside the recess, she bounced off the parachute and began to roll down the steep incline.

  Shit!

  The hill, the flames, the exploding helicopter, and even the damn moon and the stars swapped places as she tried to stop her fall, hands reaching wildly around her, fingers scratching at rocks, at dirt, at exposed roots, but nothing seemed to work.

  Vaccaro caught a glimpse of the flaming wreckage also careering down the face of the mountain, off to her far left, as her shoulders, elbows, and knees stung while rolling out of control. The spinning increased in a dizzying whirl, her eyes losing focus, her vision darkening as she felt branches around her, above her.

  The canopy of trees swallowed her, and she fell through it, until the side of her head hit something.

  Hard.

  And everything went black.

  * * *

  Pasha landed on his butt from the massive blast of his own creation.

  The acoustic energy shook the entire mountainside as parts of the helicopter flew in every direction, some slamming right into the trunk of the stone pine where he hid in a crouch, hands over his head.

  A massive section of a blade shot deep into the woods, impaling with ridiculous force a wide trunk a dozen feet from him, the noise deafening.

  But the blast ended as abruptly as it had begun, except for the ruckus created by the flaming wreck vanishing from view as it slid down the side of the mountain.

  Grabbing his Dragunov, he stood and raced around the side of the wide trunk, cruising past a couple dozen pieces of the flaming wreckage littering the clearing while the flare spewed the last of its smoke and crimson light.

  Pasha dashed past it all as his men emerged from the woods with far more caution. He reached the spot where he had seen the woman jump just moments ago, peering beyond the bundled parachute and down the gorge, catching a glimpse of her figure landing on the canopy and disappearing below it.

  The main wreckage had also crashed through the same trees, but some two hundred meters to her left, setting part of the narrow woods on fire.

  He trained the powerful Leupold Mark 6 night vision scope of his new rifle on the spot where the woman had disappeared. The quality of the 18x magnification in its 44mm optics was simply outstanding, and he now understood why bin Laden favored it. He carefully scanned the crystal clear picture of the treetops, searching for any break in the canopy that would give him a clean shot.

  Dammit, he thought, slinging the rifle a moment later while barking commands to his men. Pointing at the spot where the pilot had vanished, he ordered his four best climbers down the sharp grade while the rest of his men headed for the same switchback trail they had used on the way up.

  Before he left, and as his rock climbers began their descent, he gave the spot where the pilot had disappeared a final glare, his hand reaching for the pesh-kabz.

  I am not through with you yet.

  56

  Knife to a Gunfight

  SULAIMAN MOUNTAINS. SOUTHERN AFGHANISTAN.

  She hurt like hell.

  That meant she was still alive, though she wasn’t certain how.

  Rolling off her side, Vaccaro sat up, cringing at the pain in her ribs, glancing at the Laco Trier, the luminous hands of which told her she had been out for just a minute or two.

  Slowly, she flexed her arms and legs, but nothing seemed broken. Standing, while ignoring the scrapes on her knees and elbows, she reached for the MBITR strapped to her vest, but her fingers came in contact only with wires and broken plastic.

  She pulled it free and sighed. It was crushed, and so was her emergency locator beacon, no longer transmitting her location. When she reached down for the Colt, her fingers sank inside an empty holster.

  For the love of—

  Scraping noises brought her eyes up, beyond the ragged treetops. Her gaze narrowed in the moonlit twilight, which was enhanced by red and orange splashes on the precipice from the burning wreckage off to her far left.

  Slowly, figures materialized on the mountainside, four of them descending quickly, scaling with athletic ease down the rocky incline, roughly three-quarters of the way down from the ledge. AK-47s slung across their backs.

  They would be here in under a minute.

  Not much of a running start, she thought, realizing that they certainly had the upper hand by being familiar with the terrain—and armed—while all she had left was her SOG knife, still strapped to her left leg.

  A knife to a gunfight.

  Way to go, Laura.

  If she had the Colt, she could pick them off while they were still away.

  She looked down at her empty holster again, eyes shifting back to the spot where she had fallen.

  It can’t be far from here, she thought, remembering how she had secured it with a Velcro strap before working the flare.

  She looked back up, keeping an eye on the incoming threat while searching frantically in whatever light filtered from—

  There!

  She spotted its stainless steel polish glistening in the darkness.

  Thank you, Dad.

  Reaching down for it and thumbing the safety, she aimed it at the foursome almost on top of her, about to reach the trees, lining up the closest one.

  Realizing that the moment she fired she would lose her element of surprise, Vaccaro exhaled slowly and pulled the trigger. The report thundered across the range.

  The man screamed and fell into the trees. The others swung their heads in his direction, but she had already switched targets, firing on the second climber and scoring a second hit.

  As he dropped noisily through the trees, breaking branches before landing almost in front of her, Vaccaro shifted her aim, but the last two had already figured out her scheme and had taken their chances by jumping onto the closest trees. She could hear them up on the branches ahead of her but had no clear line of sight. And she knew that firing without a clear target would only telegraph her position, allowing the insurgents to train their AK-47s on her muzzle flash.

  She sought the cover of a wide trunk while keeping her Colt out of sight. The same glistening steel that had allowed her to find it was now a liability.

  Vaccaro hated her odds. Two against one, Kalashnikovs versus her Colt, plus the threat was likely battle-hardened warriors. However, neither had opened fire, meaning they didn’t have a clear line of sight either.

  And that gave her an idea.

  Picking up a rock, she tossed it as hard as she could toward the other side of the ledge before swinging the Colt in the general direction of the noise made by the insurgents up in those branches.

  A moment later the rock struck the ground and rolled noisily across it.

  Fire erupted from the adjacent stone pine, the muzzle flashes clearly visible as they directed their aim to the origin of the noise.

  But she was already pointing their way, and with a minor shift, she fired at the closest muzzle flash before switching targets and firing again at the second one, her reports lost in the rattle of the Russian guns.

  An insurgent screamed and fell, crashing headfirst onto the ground. But there was silence from the last man as darkness once more shrouded the ledge.

  She moved back, slowly, trying to use the whistling wind to mask her movements, the Colt held in her right hand but pressed against her chest and covered with her right arm, shielding it.

  She came up to one of the men who had fallen through the trees, his Kalashnikov still behind his back. She knelt and pulled the weapon free while also noticing a transceiver radio strapped to his chest, stained in his blood. She snagged it and secured it in place of her MBITR.

  Standing, she holstered the Colt and verified that the AK-47 was loaded and had a round in the chamber before deciding to move back, to get away from the c
learing. Perhaps it was now best to cut her losses and—

  The blow to the side of her face made her legs quiver, give, and she fell, dropping the Kalashnikov while rolling away and also reaching for the Colt, aiming it up at a threat.

  She saw the boot at the last second, and her hand throbbed from the impact. She let go of the semiautomatic, realizing what that meant. The bastards would capture her alive—would do to her shit she couldn’t even start to imagine.

  Her right hand reached for her SOG knife, but a kick to her solar plexus killed that initiative and any other impulse she might have had to fight back. She curled up, trying to breathe, her mind growing—

  Another kick lifted her off the ground, nearly bending her in half, sending her crashing against a rock. Punch-drunk, scourged, her body taxed to its limit from the ejection followed by the fall and now this beating. Her vision quickly tunneled as tears blurred the dark world around her, though not before she saw the toe of a boot swinging toward her face.

  But the blow never came. Instead, Vaccaro thought she heard the mechanical sound of a suppressed weapon, followed by rounds striking flesh.

  And then silence.

  She curled up on her side, struggling to breathe, her thoughts pushed to the edge of her mind as darkness like none she had ever experienced swallowed everything.

  57

  Role 3

  KANDAHAR AIRFIELD. SOUTHWESTERN AFGHANISTAN.

  “Temp ninety-nine-point-six!”

  “BP eighty over thirty-five! He’s losing too much blood!”

  “Pulse fifty-two!”

  The screams and the wailing woke him up. And that light, very bright, and right over his face, stabbing his retinas.

  Blinking, John Wright tried to avoid staring at the long fluorescents overhead as shadows walked past him in apparent haste.

  What the hell?

  Slowly, with effort, he raised his head, realizing he was on a gurney parked on the side of the trauma unit. All sorts of medical personnel, men and women wearing desert camouflage fatigues or green scrubs stained with blood, plus masks and blue gloves—also bloody—huddled over another gurney a dozen feet away.

  Wright managed to sit up, eyes focusing on what he now recognized were members of the Kandahar Role 3 medical treatment facility, designed to tackle anything Afghanistan threw their way.

  He took a deep breath, rapidly getting his bearings, noticing an IV pumping fluids into his right forearm. But it was the groaning and wailing that ripped his attention back to the man writhing in obvious pain while surrounded by doctors and nurses.

  Their hands wielded a variety of tools, mostly scissors, as they cut off sections of the man’s bloody uniform and removed field tourniquets. Finally, two nurses stepped away to grab wads of sterile pads from a nearby shelf, exposing what remained of the soldier’s thighs, a mangled mess of shredded tissue, bone fragments, and dirt.

  “Look at me, son!” one of the doctors shouted.

  “Mama! Mama!” the kid screamed, eyes closed. “Home! I want to go—”

  “Take a deep breath!” the same doctor shouted. “And keep your eyes on me! On me, soldier!”

  Wright stood with difficulty and pulled the IV off his arm. A nurse, trying to keep the soldier’s head down, shook her head at Wright, who recognized the kid trying to look down at his own legs, apparently not realizing he was also missing his entire right arm and part of the shoulder, still clamped taut by a field tourniquet. It was Corporal Franklin, and the last time Wright had seen him he was running straight into the daisy-chained mines.

  Franklin turned his head and for a moment locked eyes with Wright.

  “I’m sorry, Captain! I’m so sorry! I screwed up! Oh, God! I really … screwed … this … up…”

  The anesthesiologist finally worked his magic and sedated Franklin, ending the jerky movements and the screams while three separate surgical teams went to work on what remained of his maimed limbs. Then a fourth team emerged to work on his mangled groin.

  Wright fought hard to shake the anger boiling inside him. This could have all been prevented with better intelligence, and he planned to get to the bottom of this—

  “Captain Wright! Over here, sir! Captain!”

  Wright looked over and spotted Sergeant Eugene Gaudet walking toward him.

  Working through the dizziness, he asked, “What’s the damage besides Franklin and the gunny?” He stretched a thumb at the operating table.

  A full head of dark hair covered most of Gaudet’s forehead, and he ran a hand through it while taking a deep breath before saying, in his Cajun accent, “Two gunshot shoulder wounds. Not critical. The rest are mostly cuts and bruises, Captain. Besides Sergeant Bronkie, Franklin, and the two marines who got shot, you’re next in line, sir.”

  Wright considered that for a moment while looking about the room and the adjoining hallways, which were lined with more gurneys filled with more GIs, most either unconscious or moaning. Equipment blinked and beeped all over the place. IVs fed fluids and other concoctions via clear tubes into arms, legs, and even necks, while a small army of men and women—a combination of doctors, nurses, and medics—moved about with purpose. Some pushed gurneys and carts, others wheelchairs, some discussed the information on their clipboards or tablets, and most wore stethoscopes around their necks. But everyone seemed one hundred percent focused on their respective tasks.

  “You saved us today, sir,” Gaudet added. “You got us out of that bloodbath largely in one piece. It’s all in my initial field report.”

  Wright made a face. “You wrote it already?”

  “Just some scribbled notes, sir. Nothing fancy. Colonel Duggan met us here, and you were … well, indisposed.”

  “How long have I been out?”

  “About an hour, sir. Took them awhile to get to Franklin. The Tallies have been busy today on several fronts, and believe it or not, there were a few worse cases ahead of him.”

  “Christ Almighty,” Wright whispered. “Let’s give them some space,” he added, stepping away from the trauma unit and into a hallway that led to the large front lobby.

  The modern 70,000-square-foot facility with its thick, rocket-resistant walls, looked out of place in the middle of the dusty base. But given the number of wounded—and the severity of their injuries—NATO had decided to upgrade the Role 3 facility from its original plywood and canvas version and staff it with the best trauma equipment and personnel that money could buy. Once patched up and stabilized, the wounded streaming in from the field would be shipped off to Role 4 or 5 facilities in Germany or the United States for extended care and rehab.

  “Assemble the rifle platoon by”—Wright checked his watch—“nineteen hundred. I want to have a word with the guys.”

  “Ah, sure, of course, sir, but shouldn’t you ask a gunnery sergeant from one of your other rifle platoons? I’m just a squad lead.”

  Placing a hand on Gaudet’s shoulder, he said, “Not anymore. Certainly not after today.”

  Before Gaudet could reply, Wright tapped his watch and added, “Nineteen hundred, Gunny. Ticktock.” And he started to walk away.

  “Where are you going, sir?”

  “To have a word with the colonel.”

  * * *

  Wright found Colonel Duggan behind his desk at Marine Corps headquarters, a pair of small rectangular glasses balanced on the tip of his nose as he browsed some document.

  He looked up over the rim of his glasses, frowned, and said, “Your ass should still be on that gurney, son. I think you’ve seen enough excitement for one day.”

  “I’m good, sir,” Wright replied, standing there while controlling a flaring headache and ignoring the ringing in his ears. He knew Duggan was right, of course. But that didn’t make the situation any better. Vaccaro was still out there. On the way over here, he’d stopped at the communications building next door and had heard the final transmission from the rescue helicopter. He had also watched the short live stream feed from one of the Chinooks’
rear-facing combat cameras. Although a bit grainy and hazy from the flares, the image of Laura Vaccaro running away from the RPG blast was clear enough to conclude she may have survived.

  “Just would like an asset over the area, sir. She’s out there. I know it.”

  “Please tell me that your request has to do with the fact that she was able to buy your team time to get the hell out of that mess, and nothing else, right? And now you want to pay her back?”

  “Affirmative, sir. Absolutely nothing else.”

  “Good answer. I don’t have to tell you that the whole thing was one giant clusterfuck and that General Lévesque is livid that we lost a whole Canadian crew and a helo in that rescue attempt. And I also shouldn’t have to tell you that before we agree to deploy another helo her way we will have to make damn certain she isn’t being used as bait again.”

  “Thus my request for a high asset, sir.”

  Duggan sat back and reached for a handwritten page, its edges smeared in dry blood. “Sergeant Gaudet’s initial report. You did right by your men, son.” Then, leaning forward and dropping his voice a bit, he added, “A bit stupid on the heroic side if you ask me, but still … you have some balls and rock-solid instincts.”

  “I still lost my gunny, and one of my men was hit hard by multiple IEDs in a confined area. Plus two marines got shot in the shoulder, but they’ll be all right.”

  “Yeah,” Duggan said, pointing at the piece of paper. “I read that. How’s Corporal Franklin?”

  “Just left him in the OR, sir. I think he’s gonna make it, but lost both legs and an arm … and maybe his balls.”

  Duggan closed his eyes.

  “He’s nineteen, sir.”

  “Dear Lord,” Duggan mumbled, before picking up Gaudet’s note and waving it at him. “Your sergeant. He’s a keeper.”

  “Yeah, about him. I’d like to bump him up to replace Sergeant Bronkie. Give him another stripe.”

  “Consider it done,” Duggan said, making a note. “Just get me the paperwork. What else?”