Good, Dempsey thought. Pilots can’t miss us now.
The old man leaned against the armor-plated side of the truck, sighted over his weapon, and fired two rounds—dropping an Iranian soldier who was sprinting in a low crouch between two rocks.
From behind the Muharram, Dempsey scanned the scene in front of him. The noose was tightening; the first wave of Iranian soldiers was already within two hundred meters. Behind them, another wave of soldiers was advancing at five hundred meters, except they were moving laterally to the wings, undoubtedly directed to conduct a pincer-style flanking maneuver. Back at the end of the dirt road, another two fire teams were already setting up new mortars on either side of the trucks.
The old man barked something in what sounded like Sorani Kurdish, and Farvad translated, “He says there are more soldiers coming,” and pointed to the northern ridgeline. Dempsey could make out three distinct plumes of dust rising over the ridge—which meant three more APCs or troop trucks. Then he looked south and saw two more heavy trucks advancing.
Shit.
Dempsey gritted his teeth, sighted in, and sawed the two new mortar teams to pieces with the Muharram. He slid a box of 12.7 mm ammo toward him with his foot as he let go of the twin grips and raised his rifle. The trucks approaching from the south were still out of range, and whatever was coming from the north was still behind the rising ridgeline. As much as he’d prefer to use the Muharram to mow down everyone and everything in sight, he simply didn’t have the ammunition for that. He picked up the Khaybar, sighted on a soldier peering from behind a rock just beside the road, and fired. The bullet impacted the rock, but the shrapnel must have sprayed the man’s eyes because the fighter pressed both hands to his face and fell backward behind the rock, out of the fight.
“RPG!” Farvad yelled, and Dempsey glanced right to see a streak of smoke and an enemy soldier dive behind a rock after firing a rocket. The RPG impacted fifty yards short, but the track had been perfect. Any closer and the guy would have put the rocket square in the bed of the truck. Dempsey slung his Khaybar and settled back in behind the heavy gun. When the smoke and dust had settled, he squeezed the trigger. The volley of bullets walked up the side of the rock and cut the RPG gunner to pieces in a horrific explosion of red-and-gray gore.
With his peripheral vision, Dempsey noted that the trucks moving from the south were in range now. He swung the Muharram left, sighted in, and squeezed. The first volley was short and left, but he walked the maelstrom of bullets up the lead truck’s front left fender and across the windshield. The truck’s entire left front wheel flew off, and the lumbering beast ground to a halt. The truck following behind slammed into the lead truck, and several soldiers spilled out the back of the first truck and onto the hood of the second. Dempsey resighted and squeezed, pulling the tracer stream across the engine, the cab, and then the side-mounted fuel tanks of the second truck. A puff of smoke burped from the undercarriage, and then the second truck erupted in a brilliant fireball. Like a giant, fiery serpent, the flame leaped to the lead truck and devoured the canvas-covered rear compartment. Soldiers dove and tumbled out of both trucks, most of them on fire. He raked a stream of bullets and tracers waist-high over the ground, cutting down anything that was moving.
Noting a change in the tenor of the big gun, Dempsey released the handles and picked up his assault rifle, giving the Persian Gatling gun a moment to cool.
“You’re about to run out of ammo for the Muharram,” Farvad said, sighting over his rifle and firing, and then dropping the magazine out of the weapon and slamming a fresh one in place. Dempsey looked down and saw the first ammo box empty, only a short strand of the ammo belt left hanging from the gun. He was about to reach for a new belt from the second box when a bullet skipped off the edge of the truck bed, ricocheted off the machine gun, and buried itself in his right thigh.
“Owww . . . Shit, that hurts,” he muttered. He picked up the Khaybar and scanned for targets, his right thigh screaming with pain, but not enough to indicate his femur could be fractured.
He scanned right and left and saw that they had a triple line of Persian soldiers advancing—scurrying between rocks and ditches—and the enemy had closed in much more than he expected. He dropped to his knees, taking cover behind the armored side panels of the truck bed, and began firing at targets.
But there were simply too many.
Bullets pinged regularly off the pickup truck now, but he ignored them, firing over and over—emptying his magazine and dropping it with a clatter to the bed, slamming his last fresh one in place, and releasing the bolt. Without missing a beat, he returned to picking targets and dropping soldiers one headshot after another as they peeked from behind rocks. But for every fighter he killed, four more seemed to materialize, popping up even closer than before. It was like a murderous game of whack-a-mole, and he was losing badly. The nearest soldiers were less than sixty meters from the truck. There were simply too many damn rocks to hide behind. As a three-man team, it was impossible for Dempsey and his companions to keep the advancing horde pinned down. He heard the whistle of an incoming rifle round and then the familiar fleshy thud as it found a target.
The old man to Dempsey’s left grunted and then pitched forward onto the ground.
At first Dempsey thought he was dead, but a moment later the PJAK fighter struggled to both his knees, pulled his rifle up again, and began firing before a new volley of incoming rounds tore through his face and throat, sealing his fate.
Dempsey picked another target, fired, and felt the bolt of his rifle lock back.
Empty again.
“I need ammo or another rifle,” he hollered to Farvad.
“Here,” Farvad yelled, and a rifle clattered in the bed behind him. He belly crawled around the machine gun mount as enemy bullets pinged off the truck’s armor plating. He grabbed the third—and last—Khaybar and checked it. The magazine pouch on the stock held a single spare magazine, which meant he was down to his last sixty rounds of assault rifle ammunition. If he and Farvad could push the front line of soldiers back, then maybe he could get back up on the heavy gun without getting cut to pieces.
Dempsey scanned over the edge of the side panel and saw two soldiers sprinting toward him only ten yards away. He dropped them both with single shots, conserving his ammo as best he could. Four more soldiers were closing aggressively, sprinting from rock to rock, maybe twenty yards away. With five rounds, he killed three of them, the last one making it to another large boulder. He kept shooting, and they kept coming, and soon he was slamming home his final magazine.
The armor plating on the left side of the pickup reverberated with a barrage of enemy gunfire—suppressing fire intended to keep him pinned down and permit more soldiers to advance on them. But instead of dropping prone, Dempsey popped to a tactical knee, unloaded on anything moving—which turned out to be a half-dozen soldiers sprinting toward the truck from the south. He slowed his breathing and time seemed to grind to a halt. His vision was as sharp as he could ever remember, and his aim was as true as if he were using a target designator and not iron sights. He locked his targets one by one and squeezed the trigger: pop pop . . . pop pop pop . . . pop pop . . . pop pop pop pop. He dropped them all while a torrent of enemy rounds whistled past his head and ricocheted off the sides of the truck.
I should be dead . . . which means they want me alive.
He fired three rounds at the boulders behind the fallen soldiers—suppressing the suppressing fire—but, in his peripheral vision, saw a plume of gray smoke and then heard a familiar whistle.
“Mortar,” he yelled and dropped to his belly in the bed of the truck.
The shell exploded somewhere by the front right quarter panel, rocking the truck up on its suspension and sending dust and debris raining down on him from above. He shifted in the cramped space between the Muharram mount and the bed rail—executing the best version of fire-and-move his circumstances would permit—and popped up at the rear of the bed to unload a volley.
In that split second, he saw at least a dozen soldiers advancing inside twenty meters toward the north side where Farvad was sheltering.
“I’m hit,” Farvad cried in a wet, muffled voice. “It’s bad, I think.”
Dempsey popped up, shot a man not five yards from the front of the truck, and dropped down.
“Can you fight?” he yelled over the rail.
“I’ll try,” Farvad said after a beat, his voice stronger but still full of cotton.
Dempsey had less than ten rounds left in his Khaybar, and there were more men than that advancing. Rock by rock, meter by meter, their position would be overrun. He thought about calling Chunk on Farvad’s sat phone—he needed desperately to tell him about the nuke, maybe even pass the coordinates from the tablet device Modiri’s wife had given him—but it was simply too late. He was out of options. It was over. He refused to let them take him alive, and he would take as many of them down with him as he could.
Dempsey stood, heard an animal scream, and, realizing it was him, fired into the line of Persian soldiers as he pedaled backward toward the Muharram. Bullets pinged off the armor siding all around him as he grabbed the twin handles and squeezed. He dragged the line of tracers across the field of men, cutting them down, but there were more behind them. Then the heavy gun abruptly went quiet, and he realized he’d never reloaded. He ducked, grabbed the loose end of a fresh belt of ammo from his last and final ammo box, and fed it into the receiver. Holding the belt with his left hand, he squeezed the trigger with his right, and the machine gun roared back to life. He popped to his feet and unleashed hell, sweeping the barrel in a 120-degree arc across the desert. Advancing soldiers dove and took cover anywhere they could, and those who weren’t able to in time were cut down. He focused fire on a large boulder, watched the stream of .50-caliber rounds chew the rock apart until the two men cowering behind were exposed and then evaporated in a cloud of blood, guts, and bone.
To the west, he saw a newly arrived Sarir APC with a turret-mounted KPV heavy machine gun rolling toward him. The armored vehicle had advanced nearly halfway down the dirt road and was shielding three trucks behind it. But that wasn’t even his biggest problem. A Karrar battle tank advancing across the rocky field—a line of soldiers falling in and ducking behind as it rolled by—would be his final undoing. There was nothing funny about his situation, but Dempsey started to laugh. If they wanted him dead, then the 125 mm gun on the tank’s turret would have evaporated him already. No matter how many Persians died in the process, it appeared they were going to take him alive.
Dempsey turned the gun toward the tank and fired, knowing even the 12.7 mm rounds would bounce off the tank’s thick armor, which they did, like tiny hailstones bouncing off a windshield. He didn’t care. He just held it there, howling a primal scream as fire and metal pummeled the front of the tank. Then the machine gun seized—either overheated or out of ammo—and it was over.
Dempsey dropped to his knees in the bed of the truck, and his fingers found the grip of his Sig Sauer pistol.
I won’t let them take me.
He put the muzzle under his chin, closed his eyes, and . . .
The sound of salvation filled his ears.
He laughed, lowered his Sig, and opened his eyes. A Persian soldier, not five yards in front of him, yelled something at him in Farsi. Dempsey leveled his pistol at the man, squeezed the trigger, and blew a hole in the center of his forehead just as two MH-60M Special Operations Blackhawk helicopters screamed overhead at impossibly low altitude. Fire and smoke streaked out from both sides of the lead helo, and two Hellfire II missiles slammed into the tank. The first hit low and exploded, separating the right track from the chassis. The second hit and disappeared. A muffled explosion followed as the armor-piercing ordnance penetrated the tank and killed everyone inside. Then black smoke poured from every part of the tank. The soldiers behind the tank turned, scattering and scurrying behind rocks for cover.
The second Blackhawk similarly dispatched the Sarir APC with missiles before the turret gunner was able to engage the helo with his KPV heavy gun. With the Sarir now a burning hulk of wreckage, the pilot looped the bird around, and the door gunner began hosing down the semicircular formations of enemy soldiers surrounding the truck. Dempsey picked up his assault rifle and emptied what was left in the magazine into the crowd of fleeing soldiers—out of bloodlust more than necessity—until the trigger went dead. The lead helicopter banked sharply and executed a second pass overhead before flaring and setting down between the pickup truck and the burning house behind him.
Dempsey vaulted out of the truck, leaping over the side rail despite his right thigh screaming in protest, and landed in the dirt beside Farvad. The young Persian’s face was streaked with blood, and there was a large gash in his forehead, just below his hairline, that extended back into his hair, which was matted with wet blood. But it was the dark hole in his right side, just below his armpit, that had Dempsey worried.
“I think I got shot, Corbin,” Farvad said.
“Corbin is my NOC. You can call me Dempsey,” Dempsey said, “and I think it’s shrapnel from the mortar. But don’t worry; we’re going to get you help. You’ll be all right. The best combat surgeon in the world is waiting for you just a short hop away.”
“Thank God you’re on our side,” a familiar voice said behind him, gesturing to the field of carnage with a sweeping hand.
Dempsey turned to face Chunk. “You’re late.”
“Nah, right on time,” Chunk said, clutching Dempsey’s shoulder. Then, dropping his gaze to Farvad, he said, “Looks like your friend needs a CASEVAC.”
Dempsey grabbed Chunk by the shoulders.
“We’ve got a problem, Chunk. There’s a nuke in play,” he said. “It’s headed toward the border. I think it’s Modiri’s last play.”
“Modiri has a nuke?” Chunk said, confused.
Dempsey shook his head.
“Modiri is dead,” he said. “And so is Elinor. But we have to stop that truck.” He reached into his cargo pocket and pulled out the small tablet Maheen Modiri had given him. He touched the screen and it flickered to life.
Thank God it wasn’t damaged.
“The warhead is here,” he said, pointing at the blue dot.
“Understood, but what about your teammate? He needs surgical care,” Chunk said. “Can we stop this nuke with only one bird?”
Dempsey looked at the Blackhawk and its ordnance then back at Farvad. “Yeah,” he said. “We can do it.”
“All right,” Chunk said. “The other bird will CASEVAC your asset. You’re with me, JD.”
Dempsey took a knee beside his Persian ally and put a hand on the man’s shoulder. “Thank you, Farvad, for everything.”
Farvad gave him a thumbs-up and then closed his eyes and laid his head back down in the dirt.
“Let’s go,” Dempsey said, getting to his feet. “I hope you have extra gear for me. It seems I’m all out of bullets.”
They were airborne seconds later, looping around so the door gunner could strafe the remaining enemy fighters as the other helicopter swooped in and landed. Dempsey watched them load Farvad into the second bird. Once the second Blackhawk was airborne, the helos parted company. Dempsey shuffled forward to the cockpit and grabbed the aircraft commander by the shoulder. The Army Major looked up, and Dempsey handed him the satellite tracking transceiver showing the position of the nuke. Next, he grabbed a headset hanging from a hook on the bulkhead and pulled it on. “This is our target,” he said.
“What is it?” the pilot asked.
“A nuclear warhead.”
The aviator pursed his lips and raised a sarcastic thumb. “Awesome.”
“I don’t know if it’s an armored convoy or strapped to the back of a pickup,” Dempsey said. “All I know is that it’s real and the bastards intend to use it.”
“Roger that. Whatever it takes, brother, I’ll do it.”
“Hooyah.”
Dempse
y settled back into the rear. Chunk handed him a SOPMOD M4 and tactical vest with a plate carrier. “Thanks,” Dempsey said, slipping into the vest, but Chunk just stared at him. “What?” Dempsey growled.
“It’s just always so cool working with you, Dempsey,” Chunk said with a crooked grin. “Helicopter crashes, jungle ops with poisonous fucking everything, suicide bombers with heart-rate monitors, wartime INFILS into Iran, and now this. Tactical nukes. It’s a party every day with you.”
“Don’t pretend you don’t love it,” Dempsey said, securing his Velcro panels.
“By the way, did you know you’re shot?” Chunk asked, pointing to a circle of dark blood on Dempsey’s right thigh. “I mean, I know you’re, like, immortal and shit, but just thought you should know.”
“Just a flesh wound,” Dempsey said with a sarcastic smile. “And I don’t suppose I’ll give a shit about it or anything else if a mushroom cloud goes up.”
Chunk shook his head and then proceeded to pack a giant wad of snuff into his lower lip.
“Five minutes,” the pilot said, holding up a hand with his fingers and thumb spread wide.
“Want some?” Chunk asked, holding out the Skoal.
“Hell yes,” Dempsey said, taking the tin. “You only live once.”
CHAPTER 42
Approaching Route 46
Twenty-Five Miles Due East of Zrebar Lake, Western Iran Mountains
Twenty Miles South of the Iraqi Border
June 2
1705 Local Time
Dempsey stared at the serpentine scar that wrapped his left forearm. It was an old wound, pearly white and smooth, all the pink and tenderness bleached away by sun and sea and time. He traced his fingertip along the ridge of the imperfectly healed flesh but felt nothing. Jack Kemper’s compulsion was gone; the tether was severed. This was another man’s scar, from another man’s life . . . a life he was tired of trying to hang on to.
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