Brad Thor

by The Apostle

  When he had once again exhausted his ammo, he rolled back behind the tire, ejected the spent magazine, and inserted a fresh one. It didn’t take a military strategist to realize that even with very carefully placed shots, they were still going to need more ammo.

  After checking to make sure Fontaine and Daoud had made it safely, Harvath moved to the Land Cruiser’s rear passenger door and flung it open. Even on this side, it was riddled with the holes of bullets that had passed straight through from the other side.

  The seats were shredded, their springs visible in many spots. Harvath pulled the release and tried to flip down the seat nearest him, but it wouldn’t budge. Leaping back from the truck as another barrage of fire literally made it rock back and forth, Harvath hid behind the tire and questioned how much he was willing to risk to get that extra ammunition.

  It wasn’t a tough decision. Gallagher’s truck was a bullet magnet. If he climbed in there again to reach over the seats to get what he needed, he’d be cut to ribbons.

  And if the threat of another RPG hit wasn’t bad enough, Harvath had just been given another very compelling reason to get the hell away from the Land Cruiser. The gas tank had been ruptured and he could now smell gasoline.

  Moving up to the front tire, Harvath motioned to Gallagher and Fontaine that he was ready to roll.

  With his MP5 slung over his shoulder, he waited for their signal, and when it came, Harvath sprinted out from behind the cover of Gallagher’s SUV and ran faster than he had ever run before in his life.

  Despite the cover fire being laid down for him, the dusty road exploded in a hail of enemy gunfire, throwing rock chips and clumps of dirt high into the air. As the bullets snapped and whistled around him, Harvath could almost feel the heat from the tracer rounds chasing him like a lit fuse.

  As he skidded to a stop behind Fayaz’s SUV, it sounded like the world’s largest hornets’ nest had been stirred. All of the enemy gunfire was now being focused on this one rapidly deteriorating piece of cover. Though Harvath was out of breath, he knew they needed to move, now.

  He looked at Fayaz, Daoud, and Asadoulah and saw that they had stripped the dead security men in the SUV of their weapons and were now all armed. Three more guns in the fight. He hoped they were good shooters. With their limited supply of ammo, now was not the time to spray and pray. They were going to have to be dead-on tack-drivers.

  Looking at Gallagher, Harvath said, “You and Fontaine take the Afghans and get moving for that hut.”

  “I don’t think that’s such a good idea,” Gallagher said.

  “Don’t worry. I’m going to create a diversion,” replied Harvath as he nodded toward Gallagher’s chewed-up Land Cruiser. “I hope your insurance is all paid up.”

  “That’s not what I’m talking about,” said Gallagher, pointing at his leg. “I think you’re going to have to leave me here.”

  Harvath flipped up his NODs and looked down. A bullet had torn through Gallagher’s upper thigh and blood was pumping out of the wound. “I need a tourniquet!” Harvath yelled. “Now!”

  “There’s no time,” said Gallagher.

  “Bullshit there isn’t,” he replied. “Fontaine!”

  “Right here,” replied the Canadian, as he appeared with a length of seatbelt he had cut out of the SUV.

  As they positioned Gallagher’s leg to get the makeshift device in position, he leaned forward and Harvath noticed that he had also taken a round through the top of his left shoulder.

  Gallagher must have seen the look on Harvath’s face as he leaned him back against the truck’s rear tire. “What is it?” he asked.

  “Nothing. We need to get out of here.”

  Harvath pulled out a spent magazine, slid it through the seatbelt knot, and used it to tighten down the tourniquet. The old Marine grimaced in pain, but didn’t make a sound. Within seconds the bleeding had stopped.

  Harvath helped Gallagher lie down on his stomach for a superman carry. He placed Daoud between Baba G’s legs to carry them like a wheel-barrow and then motioned Asadoulah and Fontaine to each of his outstretched arms. Fontaine took Gallagher’s right arm because, as he would be required to hook his left arm under it to help carry the man, it would leave his right hand free for shooting.

  Shouldering his MP5 so he could use Gallagher’s LaRue, Harvath positioned himself against the SUV’s back bumper and gave the go command.

  In unison, the three men bent and picked up Gallagher, while Harvath began firing at Massoud’s men on the hillside. With Fayaz in the lead, they began running toward the mud hut.

  As they did, Harvath turned his attention away from their attackers and onto the leaking Land Cruiser.

  When the lucky round finally found its mark, the SUV exploded, sending a brilliant flash and a towering pillar of fire into the night.

  CHAPTER 48

  Whether Massoud’s soldiers knew where they were headed or not, Harvath and his team were dogged the entire way by wildly fired shots, many of which came incredibly close. Winston Churchill’s famous line notwithstanding, there was absolutely nothing exhilarating about being shot at, even if your enemy was missing.

  The run-down mud brick hut the team finally took shelter in only had three pockmarked walls and was missing its roof, but it was definitely a step up in the cover it afforded. Next to a stack of water-filled jerry cans there was nothing better at blast attenuation in the middle of nowhere than a thick mud wall.

  Making Gallagher as comfortable as possible, Harvath checked his wounds again. So far the tourniquet on his leg was working. It was the bullet through his shoulder he was most worried about. Gallagher’s breathing had become labored and Harvath was concerned that he had dropped a lung. Even so, he sought to reassure his friend. “You’re going to be okay,” he said.

  “In that case, why don’t you get me a beer?”

  “As soon as the waitress comes back with my onion rings.”

  Gallagher laughed and coughed up blood, confirming Harvath’s worst fears. If the man didn’t get medical attention soon, he wasn’t going to make it.

  Leaving him in the care of the Afghans, Harvath stepped over to Fontaine, who was keeping watch out of one of the crumbling windows. “They’re going to be on us any minute,” said the Canadian.

  “I know,” replied Harvath. “Let’s get hold of West and have his combat controller call in some close air support.”

  “How are we going to mark our position?”

  “I’ve got a couple of fireflies,” said Harvath, removing an infrared marking beacon from his pocket. It was made by the same Cejay company as his fingerlight and looked like a small plastic ice cube. When snapped onto a nine-volt battery, it emitted an infrared strobe so bright it could be picked up by overhead aircraft and even certain U.S. government satellites.

  Everyone in the Spec Ops community used combat ID marking beacons. It didn’t matter if you were American, Canadian, British, or whomever. The goal was to help ID your position so that you weren’t mistaken for the enemy. They also allowed downed pilots and operators caught in unfriendly territory to be more easily located and rescued. They were a great way to mark a structure you might want to come back to, you could also use them to track a vehicle, and Harvath even had a small spool of trip wire he could use to set one off if someone crept inside his perimeter. The fireflies were the Swiss Army Knife of night operations, and Harvath was glad to have snatched a couple from the Golden Conex.

  Clicking the cubes onto their nine-volt batteries, Harvath placed one on top of the wall at each corner. Then he took up the watch while Fontaine turned on his radio, switched to the Canadian’s frequency, and tried to reach Captain West.

  “I don’t care if it’s a glider with water balloons,” Fontaine said once he had reached the man and detailed their position and situation. “Get hold of J3 Air at Bagram and tell them to send whatever they’ve got. Tell them this is an emergency CAS mission for Roper Six Nine. We’re also going to need a medevac. I’ve got a man do
wn, multiple GSWs.”

  West put Fontaine on hold while he spoke with his combat controller and then radioed the operations and planning unit at Bagram Air Base who were responsible for air support.

  Daoud walked over and stood on the other side of the window from Harvath with one of the AK-47s.

  “Do you know how to use that thing?” asked Harvath.

  “Yes,” replied the interpreter.

  “Good. Single shots only. And choose them carefully. We could be here a long time.”

  Daoud nodded.

  “If you want Mr. Gallagher’s night vision goggles, go ask. He’s not going to be using them.”

  The interpreter began to walk away, but then stopped. “Mr. Gallagher saved Asadoulah’s life. The bullets that hit him were meant for the boy and would have killed him if Mr. Gallagher had not acted. Fayaz too. He is a brave man; a good man. Like you.”

  “You’re mistaken, Mr. Daoud,” said Harvath. “I’m not that brave and I’m not that good.”

  The interpreter smiled. “I think you are. I also think that if we survive this, I will help you find the woman you are looking for. I don’t need any more money from you. You can give mine to Mr. Fontaine.”

  “Don’t worry about Fontaine,” Harvath replied as he tightened his grip on Gallagher’s rifle. “I’ll make sure he gets taken care of. Now go get those goggles. I think I see movement out there.”

  As Daoud walked back over to Baba G, Harvath began to ask Fontaine what the hold-up was, but the Canadian motioned for him to hold on.

  “Roger that,” he said over the radio. “We’ve got two IR strobes on top of our position. There’s at least seventy-five Taliban along the face of the hill two hundred meters directly west of us. In between us and them are three vehicles, two of which are on fire.”

  After listening to the response, Fontaine replied, “Copy that,” and turned back to Harvath. “We’ve got a Spectre gunship inbound.”

  “How long until they’re on target?”

  “Fifteen mikes.”

  “How’d you get the call sign, Roper Six Nine?” asked Harvath.

  “That’s not my call sign,” said Fontaine as he shook his head. “It belongs to someone I know on an American special operations team. He’s got high-priority access and we’ll get bumped right to the top of the list for air support.”

  Co-opting someone else’s call sign was the kind of outside-the-box thinking Harvath could appreciate. Bringing Fontaine along had absolutely been the right thing to do.

  Looking back out the window, Harvath detected movement again. This time, he was certain of it. Massoud’s men were closing in. It was going to be the longest fifteen minutes of their lives.

  “What about the medevac for Gallagher?” Harvath asked as he flipped up his NODs and focused his rifle on a group of Taliban creeping forward. There were only so many places he and his team could have run and Harvath wasn’t surprised at how quickly they had homed in on them.

  “West has permission to disengage and roll his company to our location. They’re going to establish an LZ at the bottom of the road. A medevac bird is right behind the Spectre.”

  “Let’s do this then,” said Harvath, who chose the biggest Taliban member in the approaching pack, took aim, exhaled, and squeezed his trigger.

  As the man’s head exploded in a shower of blood, bone, and pink flesh, his associates hit the ground and began firing their weapons. The fight was back on.

  CHAPTER 49

  When Harvath finally allowed the three Afghans to start firing, he and Fontaine were running desperately low on ammo.

  Enemy tracer rounds lit up the night, and the Taliban machine-gun fire had begun eating away at the little mud hut. Since they retreated to the structure, Massoud’s men had fired two RPGs at their position. One had hit the side of the structure and failed to detonate and the other had just missed, detonating against the sheer rock face behind them with a deafening blast and a shower of splintered rock.

  The first of their weapons to run dry was Gallagher’s sniper rifle. Harvath was now down to half a mag for his MP5 and the AC-130 gunship had yet to arrive.

  Massoud’s Taliban soldiers had moved their heavy, belt-fed machine guns down from the hillside and had set up on top of the road, not far from the burning trucks. Another contingent had split off in an attempt to flank them, but Harvath and Fontaine had immediately put down that attack.

  To his credit, Gallagher repeatedly asked to be propped up in the window so he could get in on the action. He didn’t like being sidelined when they were so outnumbered. The first two times, Harvath told him no, but at the third request, he began to seriously consider it. They were going to be down to fighting with their pistols very soon. Harvath would have given his entire fee for this assignment for a box of ammo or a couple of frag grenades.

  As they began shooting, the three Afghans amazed Harvath with both their discipline and their accuracy, especially the chief elder. This was obviously not Fayaz’s first gun battle. Though they weren’t expert marks-men by any stretch of the imagination, the trio had managed to inflict a respectable number of casualties.

  Even though it felt like they had been fighting for hours, the Afghans seemed to run out of ammunition way too soon. One by one, their weapons fell silent and the men stepped away from their firing positions and sat down. Whether they were simply trying to stay out of the way of Harvath and Fontaine, who were still fighting, or had resigned themselves to what they felt was the inevitable, Harvath had no idea.

  Then his own weapon fell quiet. He leaned his MP5 in the corner next to him and switched to his Glock.

  Fontaine continued to calmly relay their increasing need for close air support to the Canadian combat controller in the armored column that was racing to get to their location.

  Outside the window, Harvath could see Taliban crawling all over. In another minute, they’d be overrun. Raising his pistol, Harvath fired and nailed one of the soldiers in the throat, dropping him gurgling to the ground.

  “One minute,” Fontaine finally yelled when he got word the Spectre gunship was almost on station.

  “We don’t have one minute!” Harvath yelled back.

  Suddenly, there was the sound of a pistol being fired behind them. Harvath and Fontaine spun to see that Gallagher had drawn his Taurus and capped two Taliban who somehow, despite the sheer rock wall their structure’s missing fourth wall opened up to, had managed to breach the rear of their perimeter.

  “Tell the waitress to hurry up with my beer,” Gallagher managed to croak out, before being overcome by a fit of bloody coughing.

  Fayaz tried to relieve Gallagher of his pistol, but the Marine would have none of it. “Get your own gun,” he said, the red froth building at the corners of his mouth.

  The chief elder seemed to understand the joke. Giving the injured man a small smile, he sat down next to him and helped him support the weight of the weapon as they kept watch for any more Taliban who might try to sneak up on them from behind.

  “Thirty seconds!” yelled Fontaine.

  Harvath surveyed the short distance that separated them from their enemy and, double-tapping another approaching Taliban, he yelled back over the sound of gunfire, “This is going to be close.”

  “Fifteen seconds! Everyone take cover!”

  When the heavily armed AC-130 Spectre gunship joined the fight, the effect was obvious, and instantaneous. Specifically designed for ground attack, the heavily armed aircraft was one of the most devastating pieces of weaponry that could be brought to bear on the battlefield.

  When it came to what specific weapons were used, it was “dealer’s choice,” meaning that Harvath was able to relay through Fontaine and the Canadian combat controller exactly what he wanted. Because the Taliban were not only on the hillside, but also rapidly encroaching on their position, Harvath was very precise. Though the Spectre’s 20mm Gatling gun could crank out eighteen hundred rounds a minute, the fire could be wildly inaccurate. Harvath
had been in this position before and he knew exactly what he wanted.

  The thirteen-person crew of the Spectre, call sign Flash 22, announced their arrival to the party with two ear-splitting 105mm M102 howitzer rounds fired directly into the top of the rocky hillside. It had exactly the effect Harvath had hoped for—a rock slide that sent a mob of Taliban tumbling ass-over-eyelids downhill in a panicked hundred-yard dash to get to safety.

  When the Taliban started running, that’s when Harvath’s second request was put into action.

  In the space of thirty seconds, the Spectre’s rapid-fire, single-barreled 40mm Bofors cannon rained down a deadly hail of devastating rounds. Taliban soldiers were sliced in half, their bodies left to peel off and collapse in two different directions. Limbs were scattered in multiple directions and the entire hillside, as well as all of the earth up to only a few meters from the structure where Harvath and his team were taking cover, was completely shredded. It looked like a stampede of ten thousand horses, all shod with razor blades, had come barreling through and had cut down everything in their path. The only thing left behind was the smell of burnt earth and charred flesh hanging in the air.

  High overhead, the AC-130 flew in a racetrack-like orbit.

  “The Spectre is going to stay on station, right?” asked Harvath as he crept back to the window with his Glock and peered out with his NODs.

  “Are you kidding me?” said Fontaine. “Flash 22 has a brand-new crew. This is the first time they’ve loosed any steel on the Taliban. Half of them are probably uploading the video of that first volley to their MySpace pages right now.”

  “So we’re good for another rake?”

  “We can have as many as we want tonight until they either run out of ammo or run out of fuel. My money’s on their running out of ammo. Are you seeing anything out there I need to draw their attention to?”