by David Poyer
“We must not give up our guns,” Jusuf said. “Without weapons, we will no longer be free.”
Teddy nodded. “I don’t disagree, my friend. But as I said, that is one path.”
“And the other?” Guldulla asked.
Teddy shrugged. “Continue the battle, but reach out to our friends in Saudi, in Afghanistan, in Pakistan. Arm all the people, not just our fighters. And send martyrs to the cities, to Beijing, Shenzhen, Tianjin, Guangzhou. Carry the terror to the Han where they live. Where they now feel safe.”
Jusuf glanced quizzically up from under shaggy brows, and Teddy knew what he was thinking. This was the course the Hajji had pushed. The old fighter who named himself Qurban, the Sacrifice. He’d called for all-out jihad, with himself as their leader. Teddy had killed the al-Qaeda veteran hand to hand, knife to knife, in the doomed and failed attack on the missile sites that the Allies had called Operation Jedburgh. It had been al-Nashiri or himself, in those final desperate moments.
Teddy had lost an eye, but his opponent had lost his life. Pried out of his throat with the sharp edge of the same titanium brace he now wore, strapped to his torture-damaged leg.
He shook himself back to the present. Smoke filled the room, obscured the rock walls, milled in a dense obscuring cloud. He waved it away from his face, coughing, and said angrily, “It was the wrong strategy before. When we needed American ammunition, food, and equipment. We needed their shining gold, and they were generous with it. But maybe it is the right strategy now.”
The younger muj looked doubtful, but said nothing. Guldulla said mildly, “Do you truly think things have changed so much? That your friend Vladimir will abandon us, now their war is done?”
Vladimir was the cover name for their CIA handler. Teddy gave them a sardonic smile. “Do you think America truly cares what happens to us? We were their tools. To attack the Han from behind while they fought them in front. Now that Beijing has surrendered to them, they’ll have no further use for us.
“Learn from Vietnam. From Afghanistan, and Iraq, and Syria. The Shiites, and the Kurds. I have seen this before, with my own eyes. They are loyal friends so long as we are useful to them. After that, we will be sacrificed.”
Jusuf leaned forward. “But if we fight? Align ourselves with al-Qaeda, or ISIS, the Caliphate—and fight?”
Teddy sat silent. Casting back to a moment two years before. High on a mountain, starving, freezing, after weeks on foot wandering after the escape from camp … he’d been visited by something.
Or Someone.
He still had no explanation for what he’d experienced. Divine visitation? Dream? Revelation? Hallucination? But he still remembered the message.
There is no such thing as choice, the Voice that could not be questioned had told him.
No such thing as chance.
You have always done My Will.
You are My creature, and you cannot do other.
Trust Me, and I will never forsake you.
“Lingxiu?” Guldulla murmured tentatively, and Teddy Oberg came back shivering from that high, sere memory. Nothing else in his life had mattered since then. He’d been called, and he had to answer. He had his orders. From Higher.
Any SEAL could understand that.
He nodded, and compressed his lips. “It is well. All will be well, if it is the will of Allah.”
“Allah’s will,” the others muttered, gazes downcast.
Teddy sipped tea and gestured for more. Once again, the heavyset woman slave stepped forward. He said, “If we choose total jihad, we can look for supplies from our friends in Pakistan and Saudi. Perhaps even from Iran. There will be money and arms from somewhere, I am certain.
“But if we take that road, we must become merciless. We must kill many innocents, and spread terror. Become devils in the eyes of the world. We must make our war so bloody and cruel and long, so expensive in money and men, the Han will be happy to let us depart from them.
“That is the hard road. It will cost many lives. And may take many years. But there is no path in between. We must take one or the other. And we have to decide soon. The CIA man will be here tomorrow. We need to choose by then.”
He was glancing around at their faces when the warning console beeped again. They all stared at it. Jusuf turned a dial, frowning, watching the screen. “The other valley,” he said at last. “Not ours.”
“Wait a minute,” Teddy said. “Which valley? The north valley again?”
“Not this time, Lingxiu. The south one this time.”
He lifted his head, suddenly penetrated by an icicle of unease. A drone, one valley northward. Now another, this one to the south … “Alert your men,” he snapped, and hoisted himself awkwardly to his feet.
* * *
OUTSIDE, the sky above the mountains was hard and glossy, a dark blue like fired porcelain. He shaded his eye and searched it, adjusting the Claymore slung over one shoulder, then the captured carbine slung over the other. Up the valley, then down, toward the desert that stretched away to the far south.
Then, far off, he saw it. No, them.
Tiny glints, high up, far off in the high blue. Not even specks yet. Just faint, disappearingly brief glints of reflected sunlight.
“Antiaircraft stations!” he shouted, in English. The men knew this command. Around him the rebels rose from between the rocks, evacuated open patches of ground, and spread out, manning weapons. Jusuf, behind him, jerked the charge cable out of the antidrone gun. Other rebels shouldered Stinger launchers and rocket-propelled grenades, or hastily set up machine guns atop sheltering rocks.
Teddy held out a hand. The heavyset woman he called Dandan, though that wasn’t her real name, handed him a set of binoculars. They were CIA-furnished, gyrostabilized and with an infrared capability he didn’t need in this hard bright sunlight. He aimed the glasses and pressed the stabilize button.
Z-10s. Gunships. Coming in fast, welded together in the tight wedge formation the Internal Security quick reaction teams used in these tight mountain passes.
The black sharkshadows flushed bad memories. Woody Island, with Echo Four caught in the open. The rotor wash blasting down brush and trees, the miniguns blazing like the fiery mouths of dragons. And again, in the passes to the west, when ITIM had attacked pipelines and power lines. Too many mujs had died under the guns of aircraft like this, or maybe even these same machines.
When he lowered his binoculars five degrees, there they were: the fatter, lumbering bumblebee-outlines of troop transports, flanked and escorted by smaller midge-shapes; escort drones.
Not just a strike. This was a major raid.
Which meant that somehow, the Han had known they’d be here.
He lowered his glasses and bawled orders. A young muj spoke rapidly into a cheap walkie-talkie, passing orders for the downvalley post to open fire, for other crews to take their assigned positions, for the young boys who carried ammunition to assemble at the caves. If he could draw the enemy’s attention down the valley, persuade the transports to land where it was more open, the enemy would have to fight their way uphill to reach them, and spend longer in the kill zone.
But even as he shouted the Z-10s bored onward, roaring over him, before pulling up in tight chandelles that brought them heart-stoppingly close to the gray granite walls of the canyon. Despite himself, he bared his teeth in admiration. Flying like that took balls. These guys were pros.
But in the next seconds the gunships had come around and were bearing down on him. As if they knew exactly where he would be standing.
He limped-ran clumsily for a nest of five huge granite boulders, realizing the helos were aiming for the shepherd’s hut behind him.
A spear of white fire jabbed down from the lead attack ship. The hut exploded into black smoke, fire, and thousands of rock fragments and metal shards. Something hit the back of his sheepskin coat as he dove, hard, sending him rolling into the shelter of the boulders.
Dandan, beside him, was pressing something into
his hands. His carbine, which he’d apparently dropped when he was knocked down. His back felt numb, as if someone had just scourged him. But it didn’t hurt yet. Maybe he’d gotten lucky and the heavy sheepskin had stopped the fragment. At least it hadn’t set off the half kilo of explosive in the mine strapped to his back. He seated the mag with the heel of his hand, charged the carbine, and popped up to fire.
And found himself looking up into the barrels of the miniguns. Gazing, at a range of about two hundred yards, directly into the face of a pilot, one who stared back intent behind a slanted and no doubt bulletproof slab of glass above the already flaring muzzles of the pylon-mounted Gatlings.
Explosions ripped down the valley. Cannon shells, the bursts walking directly toward him as the three aircraft hurtled forward.
“No windage adjustment necessary,” Teddy muttered. He aimed right at the pilot, adjusted slightly upward to allow for bullet drop, and fired out the full magazine, holding the chattering rifle tight, letting the recoil drive it straight back into his shoulder. The little bullets were high velocity, but too light to hammer through the windscreen. Still, if he could place a couple in front of the guy’s nose, maybe crack his gunsight, it might discourage him from making such a low pass next time.
Teddy wanted him higher. Not so high he was out of the canyon, but not too low, either.
The turbines crescendoed into a terrific howl, magnified and confined by the encircling cliffs. Black blurs slashed overhead like flying sabers. Then they screamed off down the valley, canting and jinking. Flares arched out from their sides and fluttered outward in graceful burning waterfalls of white fire, drawing off the heat-homing Stingers that leaped from the rocky floor of the ravine to chase after them. Most of the hand-launched missiles followed the flares, detonating against the cliffs with hollow-sounding cracks and flashes.
But one ignored the distractions, homing relentlessly on the tail-end gunship. The helo pilot, picking up his pursuer, or hearing an alarm, pulled nearly straight up, trying to outclimb it.
The missile’s fiery booster-trail bent in midair like a hot steel wire, went up the helo’s tailpipe, and vanished in a balloon of tangerine-and-licorice flame out of which the forward end of the Z-10 emerged, still climbing. Momentum, plus the force of the explosion, drove it perhaps another hundred feet up before it faltered, nosed over, and pitched down and out of sight down into the valley to the east. It was succeeded by a huge burst of black smoke and a thunderous, crackling detonation like a major thunderstorm played in fast-forward.
Teddy eyed the transports next. They were touching down, lurching, heavy-bodied and awkward as they picked out landing sites. Sinking out of his sight line down the slope of the valley. But within seconds, black-clad security troops would be pouring out of them, heavily armed, aggressive as ground wasps. Their Level 4 ceramic body armor would stop dead the 7.62 projectiles from the AKs most of his insurgents were armed with. The enemy had helmet-to-helmet comms and were drilled for combat with irregulars. His snipers, up on the flanks with the scoped Remington M40s the CIA had sent in, would take a toll, slow them down. But they wouldn’t stop them.
Not outnumbered five to one, the way he quick-figured the odds. Two to one, in a position like this, he could’ve stonewalled the attack. Held them, and maybe even counterattacked.
But not at five to one, against trained troops with this level of air support.
In other words, he didn’t have a frickin’ chance in hell today. A pitched battle would end with all his guys wiped out. Their only hope of survival lay in retreat.
As they’d had to so many times before … so many, he was getting pretty fucking tired of skedaddling. For a second that felt like a minute, crouching amid the boulders while Jusuf tracked a buzzing, jinking drone with his antidrone projector, Teddy debated taking a stand anyway. Dying in place. Pulling off an Alamo. Earning a place in history.
The drone flipped and destroyed itself against the face of the cliff. And Teddy muttered, “Forget it.” Maybe the Big War was over. But if ITIM was wiped out, the Turkmens would never be free. All his guys would have died for nothing. And the Han would rule, forever.
A fighting withdrawal. The toughest option tactically any leader could face. If your troops lost their heads, or if you lost control, they’d all be wiped out.
Fortunately, he’d drilled his guys too.
He passed the command over the radios, and stood, arm-signaling it to those within sight. Two young boys scrambled past, ducking amid the rocks. They hugged green ammo boxes to their chests, headed for the front line.
Incoming spattered around him, blasting white scars into the rocks and filling the air with orange sparks and gritty dust. The noise was deafening. One of the boys buckled, dropping his box and crumpling to the gravel of the valley floor. The other looked back, hesitated; then picked up his companion’s burden along with his own and scrambled on, crouching as more fire cracked and zinged off the rocks. Teddy ducked too, then edged around the boulders, to get the rear guard organized and returning fire.
Which they already were. His machine guns were chattering, in short bursts, the way he’d trained them, aiming fiery arcs down the valley. Pouring heavier slugs into the black-clad troops. The crack of grenades, the stutter of AKs, and the sharper barks of the high-velocity Chinese rifles rose from the front line. Smoke blew up the valley past him, the odor of burned powder and battle. Teddy snapped into the radio, “Peel!”
He couldn’t see it, but noted the effect as his frontline guys reacted. Alternating left and right, each fighter retreated a few steps, then stepped out to the side. As the defense melted backward, keeping up the volume of fire, the offense saw what looked like more and more fighters joining the battle. And no troop, no matter how well supported, wanted to advance into strengthening opposition. Meanwhile the defense kept moving backward, and from a steadily widening front with cleared fields of fire poured it on. The heavier cracks of the M40s continued, deliberate and steady. As the enemy line advanced, they’d expose their flanks, then their backs, to the snipers, who were sworn to hold in place and die for Allah.
Teddy permitted himself a tight grin. A nod to Jusuf, four paces off. If his guys kept their heads, conserved ammo, and didn’t get overrun, they could pull back all the way up the valley like this.
He stood fast as the mujs scrambled past, looking white-eyed to the rear. They caught his glare, his pointing arm, and turned to fire once more as he slapped in another magazine and fired it out, trying to pick his targets as black helmets bobbed amid the rocks.
But then what?
A renewed howl at the far end of the valley grew, swelled, became deafening even over the crackle of fire, the staccato clatter of both sides’ MGs. Black raptor silhouettes rose over the curve of mountain, hurtling toward them at incredible speed. Rockets streaked downward. They shattered boulders, throwing huge stone fragments and human bodies end over end. Gatlings lit with a tearing flame, raking the floor of the ravine and sending projectiles ricocheting crazily all around it like red-hot, lethal popcorn. One hissed past Teddy’s ear and cracked into the ground, blasting a hole a yard across and pelting him with a lashing of gravel.
Once again, just as they had before, the aircraft chandelled up after they passed over. He shaded his eyes after them. Were they coming back down valley again? Yeah. They were.
He waited as the specks shrank, hovered, turned. Then they began to grow again, headed back down the narrow, cliff-walled valley. A little higher than they had the first time.
In fact, just about where he wanted them.
Teddy yelled to Jusuf, “Lariat!”
As the lead gunship swept overhead, in a blast of hot air, exhaust, noise, and kicked-up grit, fire lanced down from the high cliffs on either side. Figures in baggy pants and shalwar kameez popped up, balancing tubes atop shoulders.
Then the RPGs lanced out. More slowly than usual, it seemed. Aimed not directly at the helos, but ahead and above them.
Spi
ndly black lines untwisted in the air, trailing the rocket-propelled grenades. They were thin, but far stronger than they looked. Braided Kevlar guy wire, looted from the Han cell towers his men had blown up.
The cables seemed to hover lazily, to drift through the air for a heart-stopping moment.
Then they dropped.
Directly into the spinning rotors of the lead aircraft.
The Z-10 snagged two of the falling lines in midair. They both came instantly taut, rigid, leading back to where they’d been bowlined off to projections of solid rock. The first line snapped at once, its cut-free grenade tumbling end over end to burst harmlessly in the air. But most of the line itself disappeared, wound instantly into the fiercely rotating rotor head and swash plate assembly like the string into a yo-yo.
The head assembly seemed to freeze for an instant. Then it jerked violently and exploded, shooting parts and detached blades flying off violently in all directions.
The other line held. Like a horse suddenly yanked back by the reins, the helicopter reared backward, nose pointing up and to the right. The two gunships following it pulled up radically, nearly colliding in midair, and still firing, though now their weapons aimed harmlessly into the sky.
The second cable quivered, elongating under the massive strain, but still didn’t snap. The tail boom swept downward, and the tail rotor of the lead gunship brushed a jagged rock.
The tail rotor disintegrated. The aircraft twisted madly, like a hawk caught in a net. Still snagged in the line, the gunship’s forward momentum brought the now swiftly disassembling tail boom around beneath it.
With stubs of its rotor blades still flailing loosely around the smashed hub, the machine flipped in midair. Rotating like a gymnast in a twisting back layout, it collapsed out of the sky directly onto the oncoming security troops in a massive bloom of black smoke and then bright saffron fire that carpeted the ground in flame, flying parts, and the electric arc flashes of onboard ammunition cooking off.
“Orqaga qayting. Chekinmoq,” Teddy yelled into the little radio. Time to get the hell out. He fired out what was left of his magazine, aiming over the flames that now blanketed the whole lower end of the canyon, and limped as fast as he could back toward the cleft in the rock he’d pretagged as their fastest way out in a pinch. Always leave yourself an escape route … This one was barely wide enough for two men abreast, but that very constriction meant a rear guard could hold it while the rest of the rebels escaped. A second exit a half-klick up the valley debouched to the northward.