by Joshua Hood
“Steeler Base, this is Variable 1, I read you loud and clear,” a voice replied over the speaker, attached to the side of the radios.
“Variable 1, identify.”
“Steeler Base, Variable 1 and 2 are a flight of F-15s bearing 328 degrees out of Qatar. How copy?”
“Good copy, Variable. We have lost contact with all elements in the vicinity of AO Mosul.”
“Yeah, we can’t get anyone on the horn either. Request sitrep.”
“Tell them to stay out of the area until we figure out what in the hell is going on. Someone get on the horn with Centcom and see if we have any satellites in the area.”
Anderson had experienced commo problems during an operation before, but never to this extent. He was totally cut off from what was going on with his men on the ground. Yet the fact that he could communicate with assets outside of the battle space led him to believe that the commo problem was local.
“Sir, David Castleman is on the horn,” an NCO said, handing him the phone.
That was the last person he expected to hear from. He snatched the phone and pressed it to his ear. “Go for Anderson.”
“I don’t have time to go into it,” David informed him, “but I’ve learned that al Qatar has a jammer that he’s hooked into the cell phone towers.”
“How do I kill it?”
“You knock one out, and the others will fail.”
“Are you sure? Where did you get this intel?”
“I just finished having a chat with Jacob Simmons. He didn’t speak very highly of you or of General Vann. When I get back, we are going to have a little chat. Won’t that be nice?”
Anderson slammed the phone in its cradle. He felt his skin go cold as he turned to his men.
“Sir, are you okay?”
“We need an electronic countermeasure bird on station. Tell them to jam all the cell traffic coming out of Mosul,” he ordered.
“We are going to need clearance.”
“That doesn’t matter right now. Just make it happen,” he ordered, moving to his chair and taking a seat.
He knew he needed to focus on the operation, but the room was suddenly spinning. If David Castleman knew, he was screwed. The colonel lowered his head between his knees, hoping he didn’t pass out.
CHAPTER 57
* * *
In a matter of moments, the drop zone had been transformed into a cauldron of death. The wrecks of the C-17s burned brightly against the backdrop of the savage firefight, casting dancing shadows across the open terrain and, in the process, negating the night-vision capabilities of the paratroopers.
Everything that could have gone wrong had done so in the blink of an eye. For the time being, Renee realized, no one was coming to the rescue.
The last decade of war had given the military a false sense of security in its almost total reliance on technology. But now, without air support, GPS, radios, and the ability to evacuate the wounded, the paratroopers were forced to fight through the fog of war like their forbearers at Normandy.
Noise and light discipline were thrown out the window. Seasoned NCOs bellowed orders over the staccato bursts of machine gun and small-arms fire. Company commanders were forced to send runners across the kill zone in search of squad leaders and platoon sergeants. Amid this chaos, the paratroopers went back to their roots, banding together in small groups as they pressed the attack.
“Ammo. Ammo,” the 240 Bravo gunner yelled as he began laying suppressing fire onto a fighting position to his east. Renee lay flat on the ground to his left while an RPK returned fire at almost point-blank range.
The gunner fired a long burst, showering a wave of white-hot shells down her back. Most of them hit her battle shirt, but the ones that found skin stuck to the sweat running down her back, giving the sensation that she was lying in a pile of fire ants.
Tearing her eye from the optic of her HK, she tried to shake the burning brass free. Another burst of fire snapped overhead, and she was forced to bury her face in the sand.
To her right, Renee could see that the linked 7.62 feeding into the 240 was growing shorter by the second. The position needed more ammo. She used her elbows to propel herself backward and went in search of more ammo.
The ground was littered with torn bodies, discarded equipment, and the billowing canopies of unsecured chutes. Some men yelled for medics, while others rushed forward to get into the fight, only to be cut down by shrapnel from exploding RPGs or machine gun fire. The fighting had lost all of the sexiness that most of the men had come to expect from twenty-first-century warfare. They were experiencing combat at its most basic, cruel level, and while some were able to push through, others simply shut down and waited to be killed.
A group of paratroopers gathered around an 81 mm mortar system that the gunner was snapping into action. He secured the bipod legs to the cannons with a metallic snap and quickly mounted the sight. Meanwhile, his team leader struggled with a handheld mortar ballistic computer.
“Fuck this piece of shit,” he fumed, throwing it to the ground. Two of his soldiers yanked high-explosive rounds out of their plastic tubes.
“I need 7.62 ammo,” Renee said, coming to a knee.
“Well, I need a beer. If you find one let me know,” the sergeant said calmly.
The gunner feverishly spun the elevation knob attached to the bipod, raising the mortar toward the sky.
“Guess we are both out of luck,” she said as an errant round ricocheted off the tube.
“Ahhhh, fuck,” one of the men yelled, dropping the mortar round he was holding to clutch his face.
“Malone,” the squad leader yelled, moving over to his soldier.
“My face—they shot my face off,” the paratrooper screamed.
“Dude, you’re good,” the gunner said, pulling the man’s hands away from his wound, revealing jagged cuts but no significant damage.
“Buss, get back on the fucking gun. I’ve got this,” the squad leader commanded.
“Shit,” the gunner cursed, pulling away from his wounded squadmate and moving behind the mortar.
Renee pushed ahead, yelling in vain for ammo over the cacophony of the battle unfolding around her.
The fighters guarding the airfield’s perimeter used grazing fire to keep their attackers’ heads down. The only tactic they cared about was pouring fire into the ranks of paratroopers.
Squad leaders gathered as many men as they could, and these teams began bounding forward under hastily emplaced support by fire teams. Grenades and machine guns were the weapons of choice on both sides, and explosions boomed while tracers crisscrossed the drop zone.
Renee heard a weak voice yelling as the mortar boomed to life behind her. She finally caught a slight movement a few feet in front of her. As she crawled closer, she saw a paratrooper lying on his back, bleeding heavily from a chest wound. Like many of the jumpers, he had packed his body armor in his ruck, and she could tell he had been trying to don it when a round found his unprotected flesh.
“I’ve got 7.62,” he said, trying to sit up.
“Stay down,” Renee ordered. “Medic. I need a medic.”
She ripped open the small trauma kit attached to the body armor that lay uselessly next to the wounded paratrooper. She quickly pulled out a packet of blood-clotting gauze.
“You’re going to be okay,” she said as she packed the wound.
“Take the ammo—don’t worry about me,” he replied.
Renee knew that the paratroopers valued the lives of their brothers and the mission as a whole more than their own lives, but this was the first time she had actually experienced the fabled selflessness for which the division was famous. Despite the fact that the young soldier knew he was dying, he was more worried about getting ammo to the men who needed it than his own life.
“Medic,” she yelled again.
“Just go,” the young paratrooper repeated. He yanked a belt of ammo from the ground next to him and pressed it into her bloody hands.
&n
bsp; “Hold on,” Renee said, continuing to dress his wounds.
Suddenly, out of the corner of her eyes, she saw a man running low through the hail of fire pouring in. Zigzagging across the drop zone, in apparent disregard for his own safety, the soldier ran straight for the downed paratrooper.
“I got you,” he said, sliding to a halt beside his patient. He tossed his aide bag on the ground and addressed the wounded paratrooper. “You going to be fine, bro.”
“You got him?” Renee asked.
“Yeah. How you feelin’, troop?” he asked, checking the wound.
“Doc, go help someone else, I’m fine.”
“Hey, I’ve got nothing but time,” the medic replied as he worked to control the bleeding.
Renee felt a wave of emotion bubbling up inside her as the medic caressed his patient’s face. Done here, she grabbed the bloody belt of ammo off the ground. She knew that no one would ever understand the sacrifices of these men—the powerful sacrifices that were unfolding all around her—and despite the horror of the battle, she knew she was witnessing something sublime and noble.
Taking the ammo, she headed back to the front. On the way, she passed the mortar crew, whose cannon was almost vertical as it fired in support of the assaulting element.
“Hang it,” the gunner yelled while his assistant stood up and placed the tail fin of the round into the barrel.
“Fire.”
The round fell down the tube with a scraping sound before hitting the firing pin and blasting skyward. The assistant gunner had another round in his hand already, waiting for orders as Renee hustled past.
“Ammo . . . Ammo.” The 240 gunner was still yelling as she dove beside him and tried to snap the slippery belt of ammo into the links already feeding into the gun.
The rounds twisted in her hands, and her fingers slipped on the blood, but she somehow managed to snap the metal link into the last round. The gunner laid down on the trigger.
Braaadaaaaappp. Braaadaaaaappp.
As he let off the trigger, another 240 opened up from the south, picking up the rate of fire as the first one let off. The two gunners couldn’t see or hear each other, but they had managed to interlock their fields of fire without being able to communicate. Their rounds were keeping the fighters’ heads down long enough for a squad to maneuver into fighting position.
Cruuuuump.
A mortar round exploded on the edge of the airfield and two paratroopers rushed at the fighting position. The 240 gunners shifted fire before one of the men tossed a frag ahead of him and hit the ground.
The explosion lit up the horizon. One of the squad leaders got to his feet and yelled, “Follow me.”
“Let’s go . . . Let’s go,” the 240 gunner said, lifting the machine gun off the ground and running foward.
Renee fell in step behind him, her rifle up, searching for a target. She caught up quickly with the lead elements. When a fighter popped up out of a trench, she snapped the safety off and fired two quick shots into the man’s face. Figuring he had friends, she snatched a frag off the front of her kit.
“Frag out,” she yelled, yanking the pin out with her left hand, while still cradling the rifle.
She let the spoon flip off, hearing the paratroopers closest to her echo the fact that she was about to toss a grenade, and then flipped it into the trench ahead of her. Renee took a knee and waited for the frag to go off. A moment later, it detonated amid screams of agony.
Renee sprinted forward and jumped down into the trench. A fighter lay writhing in pain at her feet, and she shot him in the top of the skull. She cleared the right side of the trench, her chest heaving from the short sprint, sweat running into her eyes, and her heart hammering in her ears.
The trench had been dug hastily, with the dirt from the hole used to form a berm along the lip. Renee stepped over a box of ammo, noticing the grenades and RPGs stacked at intervals along the trench line. A boy no older than fifteen was crouched near one of the cases of ammo, trying to yank an empty magazine from his AK-47.
Renee didn’t hesitate as she settled the reticle of her Eotech holographic sight on the boy’s forehead and pulled the trigger. The round snapped his head back, blowing his brains across the sandy floor of the trench.
“Allahu Akbar,” a man yelled behind her, and she turned to see a fighter running at her with a grenade clutched in his hands. She tried to get the rifle up on target but knew she was too slow.
Suddenly a shadow fell across her. The 240 gunner appeared at the edge of the trench and fired a short burst across the fighter’s chest. The jhadist fell forward, the frag still clutched in his hands.
Renee threw herself to the ground and prepared herself to eat the blast by tucking her head low into her chest and opening her mouth so it wouldn’t blow out her eardrums. The wait seemed like an eternity, and when nothing happened, Renee looked up slowly.
“Holy shit, it was a fucking dud,” the paratrooper said. “I can’t fucking believe it. I thought you were done.”
Renee saw the grenade sitting harmlessly less than a foot in front of her head. Slowly she got to her feet—she was shaking and felt like she was going to vomit. Then the sound of gunfire quickly brought her back to reality.
“Alpha Team, on me,” the team leader ordered from the other side of the trench. “You two get the fuck up here. We’re moving out.”
She climbed out of the trench and saw that the edge of the airfield was only a few yards away.
“I’m staying with you; I think you might be good luck,” the 240 gunner said, falling in beside her.
Renee managed a smile before a secondary explosion erupted near one of the hangars. She had met death, and it felt awfully good to be alive. Now all she wanted to do was link up with Mason and get the fuck off the objective.
CHAPTER 58
* * *
Mason heard trucks idling on the other side of the metal shed and he crept around the corner carefully to get a better look. The vehicles had their lights off, and through his NODs, he could see artillery shells mounted to the back.
A tangle of wires dummy corded the rounds together, and he realized immediately that he was looking at a massive vehicle-borne IED. Next to the lead vehicle, a man stood smoking, in the shadows, oblivious to the shells.
“We need to go,” the driver said, poking his head out the window.
“We wait for the emir,” the man replied.
“We do not have time. We will never make it to the dam if we don’t leave now.”
“We wait,” the man shouted, throwing his cigarette to the ground and shouldering his rifle.
“What do you have?” Zeus hissed behind Mason.
“A couple of VBIEDs. I think they are going to try and blow the dam.”
“Fuck,” the Libyan cursed.
Both men knew that if that happened, a tidal wave of water would be set free to crash over Mosul and drown everyone from here to Baghdad.
“Do you have a shot?”
Mason stepped forward, raising his rifle, and when he did his foot clipped a piece of metal. The object clanged off the ground, reverberating in the tight space. Instantly, the man with the AK leveled his rifle and sent a burst toward Mason.
“Emir, hurry,” the driver yelled.
Mason rushed the shot, having to duck for cover as he pulled the trigger.
Out of the darkness a man appeared—heading for the lead truck.
“It’s him,” Zeus yelled as Mason sent two rounds into the man’s chest.
He tried sweeping his rifle toward al Qatar but was engaged by another fighter. Zeus grabbed him by the back of his kit, yanking him behind a stack of crates.
Al Qatar yelled to the driver, “Go.”
“Get off me,” Mason growled, ripping free from the Libyan’s grip. As he pressed the HK against his shoulder, the first truck lurched away, temporarily obscuring al Qatar, who ran around the second vehicle and disappeared from sight. Mason flashed the laser over the cab of the truck and was ab
out to fire through the cab when a muzzle blast erupted from his left.
The round slammed into his NODs, blasting them off of his helmet and wrenching his head violently to the side. By instinct, he threw himself backward just as he heard the crack of a high-powered rifle.
A second round slammed into the crate next to his head, a millisecond after he’d dropped behind cover. Mason felt a burning sensation tear into the side of his face and blood pouring down his cheek.
He had been a sniper long enough to recognize the sound of an American rifle, and Mason swore as the driver slammed the second truck into gear.
“Cover me,” he yelled.
“Mason, wait,” Zeus screamed.
Kane shot from cover, his vision obscured by the blood in his eyes. He held down the trigger as he ran, swinging up the HK despite the pain shooting down his left arm. The rifle bucked violently as it hammered through the full magazine. Even though it could have been friendly fire, in his mind there wasn’t a shadow of a doubt about who was trying to kill him.
It had to be Warchild.
He felt the bolt lock to the rear as the mag ran dry. He released his grip on the rifle and leapt up for the metal handhold welded to the bed of the truck.
The driver slammed his foot on the gas just as Mason grabbed on. His arm was jarred as the truck jolted forward. He scrambled to get a better grip. His feet bounced off the ground, torquing his back while he held on for dear life.
The HK beat against the small of his back, and he could feel his grip slipping. To compensate, his right hand shot out for the bumper. Mason grabbed on with his left hand, and the pain from his shoulder crashed over him with a vengeance.
He gritted his teeth, forcing the pain away. To add to his difficulties, he was choking on the hot exhaust spraying over his face.
Suddenly the comms came alive, and he heard a pilot check on station.
“Variable 1 and 2 inbound,” the pilot said.
With powerful handholds, Mason inched his way into the back of the cargo truck. Sweat and blood poured down his face. He grabbed onto a cargo strap, stretched tight over a row of artillery shells, and hauled himself all the way into the bed.