by Tom Young
“Spectre’s on station,” the AWACS answered. “I’m standing by to copy your position.”
That would work, Parson thought. An AC-130 gunship. Helicopters couldn’t land right now, but that monster could sure as hell orbit overhead and lay down some fire. However, it depended on where the gunship was on station. Parson transmitted his coordinates.
“Bandsaw copies all,” the AWACS responded. “Be advised Spectre Six-Four is about eighty miles from your position.”
Parson did some mental math. The gunship could head toward him at about four miles a minute, depending on the aircraft’s drag index. So it would take maybe twenty minutes to arrive, plus whatever time the crew needed to spot the target and set up on a firing run.
“Thanks for the help,” Parson said. “We’ll be here.” For a while. The wind blustered strong as ever. Through the blowing dust, Parson saw a distant, dripping figure climb from the canal and take cover behind a boulder. Then another, clad in black. And another, and another.
He gestured to Rashid. Parson pointed two fingers at his own eyes, pointed downhill, then held up four fingers. Rashid nodded, scanned left to right. He spoke in Pashto, and the crew chief shifted the PKM slightly, held his finger over the trigger of the big machine gun.
“Are you seeing what I’m seeing?” Conway asked. He was so focused on the enemy that he hadn’t noticed Parson’s signal to Rashid.
“Yeah,” Parson said, “and I’m worried about the ones we don’t see.”
The insurgents who’d come out of the canal held their positions. The terrorists were too far away to hit with the M4 and the crew chief’s door gun, let alone Parson’s sidearm. And the longer they stayed put, the more he worried about bad guys coming from other directions. Though Parson and the others had a nearly unobstructed view of the valley below, the mountain’s folds offered little visibility to the sides. Above, the top of the ridgeline loomed just a hundred yards or so uphill, with everything behind it obscured.
Reyes made one more check of his patients, then stepped out of the helicopter, holding his Beretta. He lowered himself behind the stone barricade Parson and Conway had built. Even with every able-bodied man now in a fighting position, Parson’s de facto fire team seemed a thin force for repelling committed jihadists. Nothing for it but to keep a good watch, and when the shooting started, try to keep them pinned down until air support could get here. The radio would be more important than the guns.
“Spectre’s inbound,” Parson told Reyes. “You can call in a strike better than I can, so you take the radio.” PJs weren’t forward air controllers, but they knew how to make an emergency call for fire.
“Yes, sir,” Reyes said. He took the PRC-152 and the headset from Parson. Reyes also retrieved a smoke flare from his tactical vest and prepped it. He removed the plastic cap from one end and pried up the pull tab. It was the same kind of flare Parson had elected not to use earlier, but he did not object. If it became necessary to mark their position so a gunship could lay waste to everything around them, sparks would be the least of their problems.
A flicker of movement down in the valley caught Parson’s eye. He turned his head to see a man dart from behind a boulder, run several yards, dive for the ground. The insurgent carried an AK-47. Another man leapfrogged ahead of him, holding what looked like a grenade launcher.
“All right,” Parson said. “Here they come.” He thumbed the safety on his pistol, placed an extra magazine on the stones in front of him.
The dog gazed down at the valley floor, sniffed the air. She growled, whirled, and barked, teeth bared at something behind her.
Parson turned and looked up at the top of the ridge. The wind stung his eyes. He saw figures crouching above him. There was a glint, or maybe a flash. And the smoking trail of a rocket-propelled grenade.
14
Gold still kept contacts with the Afghan National Police. She had spent a tour helping run a literacy program for new recruits, and she decided to see if anyone knew anything about this Lieutenant Aamir and his kidnapped son. At the moment, she could do little else to help Parson.
After several phone calls, she finally reached Sergeant Baitullah in Kabul. He had lost both feet in last year’s bomb attack on the police training center, but the police needed reliable people so badly, they let him stay on in a desk job.
“Salaam, my teacher,” he said. “It is good to hear your voice.”
“And yours, Baitullah. I have missed you and your classmates.” She especially missed the ones she could never talk to again.
“How may I serve you, teacher?”
She told him about Parson and Rashid, the Mi-17 forced down, Lieutenant Aamir.
“Kidnapping was a curse upon this land long before Black Crescent,” Baitullah said. “True Muslims consider it among the foulest of sins because it is a sin against family.” Gold listened closely to his voice, the cadence of his words. He sounded more self-confident than she’d ever heard him, in command of information. His tone thawed just a little of the ice in her heart, made her feel perhaps not all her efforts were wasted. “I must check our records on these crimes,” he added. “Sadly, there are many.”
Baitullah promised to call back after he did some research. Cell phone service was still intermittent; she could only give him a landline number that would ring on a field telephone in command post. If we were both Taliban, Gold mused, he could just turn loose a pigeon.
She was taking a walk with Fatima when Baitullah called back. The Giant Voice speakers strung around the base crackled and hummed, then announced: “Sergeant Major Gold to command post. Sergeant Major Gold, please come to command post.”
Gold brought Fatima with her. The girl seemed excited as she looked around at the computers, telephones, and radios. Perhaps she thought this strange facility could somehow bring back her brother. Gold felt a twinge of regret; she’d been so careful not to encourage false hope.
When she picked up the phone, Baitullah sounded regretful, too.
“I can find nothing on Lieutenant Aamir,” he said. “I presume he has not reported the crime.”
“He probably has not,” Gold said. Parents who suffered a kidnapping could not count on swift and skillful response by Afghan authorities, so they usually cooperated with abductors.
“These events often end badly,” Baitullah said. “In 2011, the insurgents hanged the eight-year-old son of a police officer. The officer had refused to give the terrorists a police vehicle.”
Gold knew of that case. She didn’t want to talk about it.
“What about Lieutenant Aamir himself?” she asked. “Is there anything to suggest terrorist ties?”
“Nothing. His record was clean until now.”
A promising career ruined, then, in addition to everything else. A tragedy within a tragedy.
“Thank you for your help, Sergeant Baitullah,” Gold said. “I will keep you informed.”
“Allah’s blessings upon you.”
Outside, gusts roughed the tents of the refugee billeting and the medical teams. The sky took on a beige tinge with the dust lifted into the air. To escape the wind, Gold took Fatima to the chow hall. The serving line had closed for lunch and would not open for dinner for another hour, so Gold took two pint cartons of orange juice from a refrigerator. She opened one for Fatima, inserted a straw, and sat with her in the empty dining tent. Overhead, a cloth plenum rumbled with air from the ventilation system.
“Were you talking on the telephone about my brother?” Fatima asked.
Gold thought for a moment. “I was talking with the police about another boy taken from his home. We are also trying to find your brother. But I must tell you we can make no promises.”
A tear slid down the girl’s cheek, but after a moment she seemed to compose herself. She examined her straw, then placed it back in the carton and took another sip of juice.
“Do you have a brother?” Fatima asked.
“I do not,” Gold said. “I am an only child.”
/> “Do you live in a big house in America?”
“I live in what we call an apartment, near a military base. It is only a little bigger than your house.” But palatial by comparison, Gold thought, with its electricity and central air. Luxuries this child might never have.
“Why does your husband let you come to Afghanistan?”
Gold smiled. “I have no husband.”
“Then you must get one,” Fatima said. “I wish we could go to America together, after we find Mohammed. I could marry the giant soldier who carried me to the helicopter, and you could marry your pilot friend.”
Gold wanted to laugh and to break down in tears all at once. She did neither. Instead she said, “Fatima, in my world, women have other choices. They don’t have to get married. They can learn things, get jobs. If you get the chance, I want you to go to school. That might be hard. Be careful, but be brave.”
Fatima looked Gold directly in the eyes, no tears now. “How did you learn to read?” she asked.
“I went to public schools where I grew up. Then I joined the Army, and they sent me to a special school to learn your language.”
“Was it hard to learn my language?”
You bet it was, Gold thought. Pashto had seven vowels, some with no equivalent in English. Emphasis on a consonant could change the meaning of a word.
“Learning Pashto was difficult,” Gold said. “Your people are very poetic, and they use language in different ways from English speakers.”
Fatima smiled. Afghans of any age seemed to like hearing their native tongue was challenging but rich. To compliment someone’s language was to compliment something deep within them. Even kids understood it.
The girl slurped the last of her juice through the straw. When Gold took away the empty carton, Fatima kept the straw and placed it in a pocket of her dress.
“If you go away,” Fatima asked, “what will happen to me?”
“I must be honest with you, Fatima,” Gold said. “Sooner or later, I will have to go away. But I will try to look out for you.” Gold knew of a few options. UNICEF might help, or perhaps one of the private charities working in the country. The Afghan Child Education and Care Organization had done good work. Deciding the best choice would take time and the approval of higher-ups.
Gold walked with Fatima back to the refugee tents. At her cot, Fatima said, “Please come back again and talk to me.”
“I will, Fatima,” Gold said. “I enjoy talking to you very much.”
She felt another pang of regret as she left Fatima in the tent—alone and with nothing to occupy her but a straw. Gold returned to command post to see if there was news of Parson and the Mi-17 crew.
“He’s been talking to AWACS,” the duty officer said.
So at least he was still alive, as far as anyone knew. Probably giving well-considered orders in not too well-considered phrases, Gold imagined. Patience was not his strong point.
“How does the weather look for getting them out of there?” Gold asked.
The duty officer pointed to a whiteboard with a forecast written in hieroglyphics only aviators could decipher. Gold felt a flash of annoyance. She wouldn’t expect this guy to speak Pashto. Why did he think she could read his technical language? Irritation was a rare emotion for her; concern for Parson was getting to her. Maybe she was even channeling a little of his personality.
She took a deep breath, glanced again at the forecast. Someone had circled part of it with a dry-erase marker. That portion read BECMG 1719 30020G30. Gold pointed to it.
“What does that mean?” she asked. The duty officer turned in his swivel chair.
“Oh, that means between seventeen hundred and nineteen hundred Zulu time, the winds will come from the northwest, and they’ll drop to twenty knots, gusting to thirty.”
“Can the rescue crews fly in that?”
“It’ll suck, but they’re going to try.”
“Sir,” Gold said, “I work for Lieutenant Colonel Parson. I’m his interpreter. I want to ride on the first chopper that goes out to get him.”
* * *
The grenade sailed over Parson’s head and detonated behind him. The blast so overwhelmed his eardrums that he heard no boom, just a grinding sound like a knife on a whetstone. With both hands, he raised his pistol and began firing at the enemy above him. Instinct and muscle memory took over. He had no conscious thought of aim and trigger pull, yet he felt the Beretta recoiling in his grip.
Beside him, Conway fired the M4 on semiauto. He unleashed not a burst of rounds but a series of pops, each shot aimed. One of Conway’s empty cartridges flipped into Parson’s flight suit collar. Parson swatted the hot brass away from his neck.
The insurgents scattered and dived. One of them spun to his right as if hit. That must have been from Conway’s disciplined fire, Parson figured. He didn’t think any of his own rounds had connected.
Rashid and his crew chief shot in the other direction. Plunging fire from their PKM door gun kept the terrorists below them pinned down. Their tracers rained into the valley like neon sleet. Parson saw one burst streak to a boulder that shielded a jihadist. The tracers bounced off the rock and angled upward until they burned out and vanished. Sputters of the enemy’s AK-47 fire died down, flared again.
The rock barricades provided Parson’s team good protection from rounds fired up at them from the valley. But the stone offered no cover from the enemy firing down on them from the ridge.
A few feet to Parson’s left, Reyes opened up with his handgun, firing toward the ridge. He tried to use the Mi-17 as a defilade, but he had to come from behind cover to see his target. When the Beretta’s slide locked back, Reyes ejected the empty magazine and reached into his vest for a spare. Just as he began to reload, he stumbled backward and fell.
Parson lunged toward him. He feared he’d see blood spurt from a chest wound or from Reyes’s mouth. But the PJ only coughed.
“Are you all right?” Parson shouted over the gunfire.
“Yeah, but that felt like I got kicked by a mule.”
Body armor, Parson realized. Thank God. Reyes slammed a new magazine into his weapon, clambered up on his knees. Released his slide and fired uphill.
“If we don’t get some help in here, we’re fucked,” Conway said.
“I know it,” Parson said. “Make ’em keep their heads down as long as you can.”
So this is what it means to be flanked, Parson realized. He was no infantryman, but he knew things had gone wrong in a hurry. If the bad guys were only in the valley below, he’d have the upper hand, literally—covering his target from an elevated position. But some of the enemy had come around behind him. Taking fire from two directions, he occupied not so much a fighting position as a kill zone.
Conway’s dog huddled beside the Mi-17, tail between her legs, shaking. Bullets cracked from both upslope and down, and the animal flinched with each round. Wailing came from inside the helicopter. Aamir cried out in words that were incomprehensible to Parson except Allah.
Parson caught a glimpse of an insurgent’s head and shoulder behind an outcropping uphill. He fired two shots. The man ducked below the outcropping. Parson had heard of coalition squads getting into fixes like this. The only way out: Keep the enemy at bay with small arms and wait for air support. The battle’s outcome depended on who ran out of ammunition first.
He fired once more, emptied his Beretta. Thumbed the magazine release and let the spent mag clatter to his feet. Inserted a full magazine and kept firing. Odors of burned gunpowder wafted in quick snatches, ripped away by the wind.
The sound of Reyes’s voice murmured under the staccato snaps of the M4 and the deep rips of the PKM. The PJ had holstered his pistol and was speaking into his headset.
“Spectre Six-Four,” he said, “this is Golay One-Eight. I have an emergency fire mission. Target is riflemen to the immediate northwest and southeast of my position.”
Maybe help would get here in time. Rashid and the crew chief stopped firin
g their door gun, scrambled to feed a fresh belt of cartridges. Parson almost told them they were doing it wrong until he remembered they were working with a PKM. Unlike most crew-served weapons he’d seen, the Russian-built PKM fed from the right and ejected to the left. Parson turned to look downhill. One of the black-clad gunmen advanced, zigzagged to take cover in a gully. Parson raised his weapon, pulled the trigger. Dirt flew from the lip of the gully.
“Request strafing attack,” Reyes continued. “Friendlies are all within four meters of the Mi-17. Will mark my position with orange smoke.”
The man in the gully rose again, sprinted forward. Parson squeezed off three shots. The man stumbled, dropped his AK. He collapsed face forward, but then he rolled to his side and reached for his rifle. Parson steadied his hands on the stone berm he’d helped build. Took aim at the insurgent’s center mass. Pressed the trigger. The man jerked, but still held his weapon.
All right, Parson thought, maybe you got body armor, too. He aimed for the insurgent’s head, missed. Just a puff of dust by the man’s neck. Fired twice more and the man went limp.
Amid the shooting, Parson listened for aircraft engines. He strained to pick up the sound of turboprops, but he heard only the rush of wind, shouts in Pashto, more shots. All the firepower in the world couldn’t help them if it didn’t get here quickly. He’d brought only two fifteen-round magazines for his Beretta, and he’d already used more than half of the last one. Conway had emptied at least one thirty-round mag, and Parson didn’t know how much ammo the crew chief had for the PKM. Rashid racked the bolt on that weapon and sprayed more fire among the insurgents below. Geysers of dirt spewed upward as bullets flayed the ground.
A sense of hyperalertness came over Parson as he watched for jihadists trying to move closer. The air itself seemed granular, as if he tasted each molecule as he inhaled. Time clicked by in distinct half-second increments. A man on the outcropping above raised his grenade launcher. Parson aimed, focused on his pistol’s front sight centered in the notch of the rear sight. When he fired, he felt everything that resulted: the leap of the muzzle, the cycle of the slide, the extractor kicking out the empty brass, the weapon closing itself with firing pin poised over a new primer, hammer at full cock.