Two groups of American soldiers, working in concert with some hidden observer, had flanked their position and destroyed the mortar emplacements before they could be used to deadly effect. One of the fire teams had been cut off and annihilated, but the damage was done. With the mortars gone, the insurgents had lost their ability to light the battlefield, to say nothing of having the capacity to rain down destruction from a safe standoff distance.
The battle had begun with a cacophony of shots and explosions, but now, as the various pieces on the chessboard moved to gain strategic advantage, silence dominated the night, with only occasional scattered gunfire—spooked insurgents, shooting at phantoms. The American rifles and machine guns had not been heard for nearly half an hour.
The insurgents, motivated more by impatience than courage, advanced to the site where the helicopters had gone down. Smoke still seeped from the burned-out remains of the Black Hawk helicopters, which had both been completely destroyed with incendiary charges. Using hooded flashlights, they scanned the area and quickly discovered the trail left by the retreating soldiers—a trail of blood from bodies dragged across the dry floodplain. The Americans were fleeing to the old lake monitoring station—the bait that had been used to lure them out into the desert in the first place. The mujahideen set out at dead run, confident that victory was nigh.
There was no sign of activity at the concrete building, but a faint glow was visible inside. The bulk of the fighters spread out, taking up over-watch positions, while a small knot crept forward, their weapons trained on the door. The leader of the group noted the deactivated tripwire, lying on the sand of the entryway. He dug a Russian-made F1 fragmentation grenade from his satchel, pulled the safety pin and lobbed it through the open doorway.
The grenade detonated with a dull thump. The concrete walls withstood the blast, but the explosion blew the metal shutters off the windows, sending them spinning like shrapnel into the night. A column of dust and smoke vomited from the door.
No one inside could have survived, but the insurgents needed to be certain. After waiting a few seconds for the smoke to clear, they rushed inside. A few moments later, one of them emerged and called out with his report.
No bodies. The building was empty.
More of the fighters came forward, as if to confirm for themselves.
That was the moment for which Jack Sigler had been waiting.
He pumped the M57 firing device three times, but once was enough to send a small electrical charge through a fifty-meter long strand of insulated wire and detonate the blasting cap in the M18 Claymore anti-personnel mine.
A storm of steel pellets obliterated the advancing group. At the same instant, the surviving Eagle-Eye snipers reached out with their rifles and started picking off targets of opportunity. The men searching the building rushed out, only to be met by a hail of bullets from the Delta operators concealed in low fighting positions less than a hundred meters away.
Primal fear momentarily overcame fundamentalist zeal; the insurgents abandoned their defensive positions and fled.
Sigler keyed his mic. “Cease fire, I say again, cease fire and move to zero.”
He didn’t wait for confirmation. Everyone knew the plan.
After Beehive Six-Four had gone down, the priorities had changed. Up to that moment, the plan had been to simply stay alive long enough to get everyone out. Survival and victory were the same thing now; staying alive meant defeating this enemy, destroying them completely.
Sigler possessed the ability to think analytically—strategically—even under the worst conditions. His instructors at OCS had quickly recognized his innate talent, and they had sharpened it by running him through increasingly difficult scenarios and simulations. He’d learned how to outwit his opponents, overcome seemingly impossible odds and perhaps the hardest lesson of all, when to gamble with the lives of his men.
Half a world away, observers at Joint Special Operations Command painted a picture of the battlefield from real-time imagery, supplied by the UAV circling overhead. Sigler had divided the survivors into four groups. One group, comprising most of the remaining snipers and the lone surviving crew chief from the downed Black Hawk would fall back to the original objective to disarm the booby-trap and set up an ambush of their own. The rest of them—six men, including Sigler and Aleman acting as spotters—would flank the insurgents and take out the mortar emplacements.
They’d succeeded in accomplishing that task, but one of the forward teams—Jon Foley and Mike Adams—had been cut off during their retreat. The disembodied voice from JSOC had confirmed their deaths.
There were just eight of them left now—four snipers, including Lewis Aleman, whose right hand was broken and useless; one warrant officer from the Night Stalkers; and the three surviving members of Cipher element—Daniel Parker, Casey Bellows and Sigler. They were desperately low on ammunition, and every shot had to count. That was the bad news. The good news was that help was on the way…or so HQ kept telling him.
Sigler sprang to his feet and hurried to the corner of the building to provide covering fire for the rest. Parker appeared beside him, still hauling the M240. A loop of ammunition, about twenty inches long, hung from the feed tray; fifty rounds, maybe less…after that, they might be able to beat someone to death with it.
The snipers had the farthest to run, and before they could reach the relative shelter of the structure, the insurgents seemed to collectively recover their nerve. Sigler heard the low crack of Kalashnikov rifles firing, and then realized that rounds were ricocheting off the cinder block walls behind him. The snipers were zigzagging, trying to stay one step ahead of the incoming fire.
“Move your ass!” Sigler shouted, more out of frustration than anything else, and then he fired in the direction of the muzzle flashes closest to the running men. Beside him, Parker ran out the last of the ammo belt, and then immediately switched to his carbine.
With a howl of divinely inspired ardor, a dozen insurgents broke from cover and started running toward the building, sweeping their AK-47s ahead of them as they ran, firing at random intervals. A round caught one of the snipers in the leg, and he went down in the open. The other man skidded to a halt, trying to reach his fallen comrade, but was driven back by a storm of lead.
Sigler held his ground. Two shots, new target…two shots, new target. Enemy fighters went down, one after another, but not all of them stayed down. Two shots, new target…two shots, new target…
Click.
It wasn’t a surprise. He habitually counted his shots so that he could be ready for a fast reload. The problem was he didn’t have any more magazines.
“I’m out!”
“Well you ain’t getting any of mine,” Parker shouted back, firing with the same rhythm.
Then his weapon fell silent, too.
Six of the original twelve mujahideen were still on their feet, still advancing.
Sigler drew his KA-BAR knife from its sheath. “Danno, let’s teach these assholes that you don’t bring a gun to a knife fight.”
“Foxtrot Alpha,” Parker replied, drawing his own blade—a standard issue M7 bayonet—and standing beside Sigler to meet the charge.
Something popped in the air high above them. For a moment, Sigler thought it must be another flare, but the sound repeated twice more in the space of a second, without any other accompanying fireworks. Just as Sigler started to look up, something big slammed into the ground fifty meters north of their position.
Suddenly, the head of the nearest insurgent exploded like a watermelon at a Gallagher show. A loud report echoed from above like thunder, and then there was another, and another, and one by one the charging fighters went down, their bodies erupting in geysers of blood.
A dark figure dropped out of the sky, landing less than twenty meters from the corner where Sigler and Parker were preparing to make their stand. He wore a black jumpsuit and helmet, but Sigler could distinctly make out a wisp of blond hair sprouting from the man’s chin. The p
aratrooper wielded a pair of enormous pistols, one in each hand, and as he fired them out, the last of the charging insurgents went down.
The newcomer shrugged out of his parachute harness before the canopy could settle around him, then hastened to join Sigler. He kept his pistols aimed in the direction from which the attack had come, but the balance of the enemy forces were well beyond pistol range, even a pistol as massive as the Desert Eagle. When he reached Sigler’s side, they all hastened into the relative safety of the concrete building.
“Heard you guys were throwing a party,” the blond man said, grinning. “Hope you don’t mind us crashing.”
Sigler was almost too stunned to reply. “The more the merrier, but I hope you brought some beer. We’re out.”
One of the other paratroopers stepped forward. “No beer, but we have these.” He passed over a clutch of magazines. “Sonny Vaughn, call me ‘Houston.’ Smiling boy over there is Stan Tremblay—Juggernaut.” He jerked a thumb toward the third paratrooper. “That’s Silent Bob. We’re Alpha team.”
In a rush of understanding, Sigler realized that these men had performed a HALO—a high altitude, low opening—parachute jump. The dangerous technique, which involved jumping out of a jet aircraft from an altitude of 35,000 feet, freefalling for two minutes, and then popping a chute just three hundred feet above the ground, was usually reserved for stealthy insertions into enemy territory, but it was an effective way to get a shooter onto the battlefield in a big hurry.
Alpha team…HALO jump… These guys are Delta.
For the first time since the battle had begun, Sigler felt a ray of hope. He took one of the magazines and reloaded his carbine. “Any more of you guys on the way?”
“Cherry should be around here…” Tremblay started to say, but Vaughn cut him off.
“Cherry burned in. What you see is what you’ve got.”
Sigler remembered the loud impact that had preceded the paratroopers’ arrival. There were no second chances with a HALO jump. You could get hypoxic during the long free-fall, or giddy with nitrogen narcosis… Your hands could freeze… Your chute could malfunction…and that was it. Game over, permanently.
“Aww shit, really?” Tremblay shook his head.
Three men. Sigler’s candle of hope flickered a little. Still, they were Delta operators, and that was nothing to sneeze at.
Parker clapped Tremblay on the shoulder. “You saved our asses with those hand cannons of yours. Is that Alpha standard issue? Jack, you gonna get us some of those?”
Tremblay sucked in a breath and then stoked his grin back to life. “I found these babies just lying around. They were too shiny to pass up.”
“Hang on to them. You’ll probably get another chance to use them.”
Sigler cleared his throat. “If you girls are done fixing your makeup, there’s work to do.”
“Roger that, boss. What’s the plan?”
Sigler had been pondering that very question. The enemy knew where they were, and the odds were good that they were already planning another mass attack. He hastily outlined his defensive plan: two sniper teams on the roof, shooters at every window.
Each of the Alpha team shooters had brought along eight thirty-round magazines, and they divided these so that everyone had at least two full mags. The newcomers had also brought along another five hundred rounds of loose ammunition. Everyone immediately set about reloading empty magazines, but it was a tedious chore, and Sigler doubted very much that enemy would give them time to complete it.
They got about four minutes.
The insurgents had used the brief lull to send a flanking element around to approach from the south. When one of the snipers on the roof spied their approach and started picking off targets, it was like opening the floodgates. The enemy fighters charged like a swarm of warrior ants.
The small concrete building seemed to vibrate with the rising crescendo of gunfire. The Delta shooters were the best in the world at their job, but for every insurgent that went down, five more advanced another ten meters, pouring lead at the defenders. The air was thick with sulfurous smoke and dust; the relentless assault pulverized the concrete walls.
Then a different sound cut through the tumult. There were long eruptions of noise that overpowered the random staccato pops of the AKs and HK 416s. It was the distinctive report of a Browning M-2 .50 caliber machine gun—affectionately nicknamed “Ma Deuce.”
And Ma Deuce never traveled alone.
Someone let out a whoop. “Hot damn. Now it’s a party.”
For a second, Sigler thought it was Jess Strickland, but then he remembered that Strickland had died when the helo blew up.
Must be the blond guy, Tremblay.
He didn’t dare look back. Twenty fighters…maybe more…were attempting to cross the last thirty meters to reach the building. There wasn’t even time to aim; he just kept pulling the trigger.
Out of nowhere, a blocky shape blasted through midst of the charge.
It was a Humvee.
Bodies went flying, and some were crunched under the heavy tires as the armored vehicle rolled to a stop between the besieged structure and the advancing horde. The Humvee’s gunner swept left and right with the .50 cal, but right below him, the rear door flew open and a soldier emerged, waving frantically to the men in the building.
Sigler got the message. “Our ride’s here! Move out.”
The Humvee was the first in a line of five similar vehicles, which had deployed in a semi-circle between the building and the two advancing fronts of enemy fighters. While the turret gunners laid down suppressive fire from their M240B and M2 machine guns, the rear doors on the sheltered side were thrown open to admit the beleaguered defenders. Sigler directed the wounded to the nearest trucks, and then with Parker right beside him, he headed for the front vehicle.
A familiar percussive boom thundered across the desert—an RPG launch. He didn’t see the rocket, but a moment later, the grenade impacted the front end of the lead truck. The high-velocity jet cut into the engine block like a Jedi lightsaber, and the subsequent detonation flipped the Humvee onto its side.
Parker was halfway in the truck when the grenade hit. The force of the explosion spilled him out, and he fell next to Sigler, who had thrown himself flat. The armored vehicle rose above them like a looming wave, and they scrambled to avoid being crushed beneath it. The soldier manning the machine gun was catapulted from the turret and hurled against the side of the building.
Then something extraordinary happened. The soldier sat up, shook his head like a football player trying to shake off a hit and then slowly climbed to his feet and stalked toward the wreckage of his vehicle. He was big, at least as tall as Sigler but broader, and in his full body armor he looked like a walking mountain. He strode past the two Delta operators, glancing their direction as if to verify that they weren’t seriously hurt. Then he went right back to his weapon.
Sigler wasn’t sure what the big soldier expected to accomplish. With the Humvee on its side, the M2 was useless. The heavy machine gun was hanging from its mount like a broken wing, its long barrel jammed into the ground, but the soldier approached it like this wasn’t even a minor inconvenience and pulled the quick release pin on the swivel mount, wrestling the gun into his arms.
Parker whispered something, a name perhaps, and Sigler saw the look of recognition on his friend’s face, but there wasn’t time to ask for clarification. He didn’t know what the walking mountain planned to do with the Ma Deuce—it wasn’t the kind of weapon you could shoot from the hip—but figuring that out wasn’t his problem. He got to his feet and raced to the turret hole in the Humvee’s roof and stuck his head inside to check for survivors.
The vehicle’s only occupant was the driver, who was dazed but alive and apparently unhurt. Sigler could hear rounds plinking off the armored underside of the Humvee, but as long as the insurgents didn’t hit it with another RPG, they were safe for the moment. As he helped the driver extricate himself, he heard the M2
booming again.
The big soldier had somehow braced the gun against the Humvee’s tire, and Parker was right next to him with a spare can of ammunition.
“Leave it!” Sigler shouted. “Time to go.”
Sigler wasn’t sure the walking mountain had heard the order, much less that he would follow it. The guy looked completely zoned in. Sigler had seen soldiers get all jacked-up on adrenaline, screaming obscenities and lost in the fog of war, but this was different. The big soldier reminded him of Schwarzenegger in the Terminator movies—intense but dispassionate, methodical, efficient…unstoppable.
But it was time to go.
There was an incendiary grenade mounted on the Humvee’s center column—a self-destruct measure in case the vehicle had to be abandoned, which was exactly what they were going to have to do. Sigler didn’t bother to remove it from the mount; he just pulled the pin and let it burn.
“Fire in the hole!” he shouted as he ran past Parker.
A tiny supernova erupted inside the vehicle, spilling blinding radiance and intense heat through the opening as the thermate grenade, burning at over 3000 degrees Fahrenheit, vaporized synthetic fabrics and plastic, and set the very metal itself on fire.
The big man just nodded, and then with the same degree of effort that someone might use to drop a hamburger wrapper in a trash can, he stuffed the M2 into the turret and ran after Sigler.
The big guy and the driver piled into the next truck in line, while Sigler and Parker ran for the one behind that. The turret gunners were firing at a cyclic rate, burning through ammo to keep the enemy from shooting any more RPGs, but with everyone aboard, the drivers took off.
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