by Jason Kasper
I consolidated my wingsuit, parachute, and sleeping gear in a heap behind the center mortar and recovered the overstuffed yellow hiking pack we had cached. Setting it on top of the pile, I opened the flap to see the enormous explosive charge that Matz had constructed and gave an involuntary whistle of awe. I unrolled a section of cord ending in two fuse igniters, setting it outside the pack for easy access. Matz had admittedly assembled the charge to the point of overkill; when I asked if I would be killed in the ensuing blast, he shrugged and said, “You’ve got one minute, plus or minus three seconds. It depends on how fast you run.”
After conducting another patrol around the hillside to ensure no one was approaching, I transmitted to Ian.
“Red, this is White. I send Coin Toss and request confirmation of Kickoff.”
“White, Red. Copy Coin Toss. No change to kickoff time.”
“Copy.” I checked my watch, synchronized by Boss before I left, and saw I had eighteen minutes to go. No change to the plan meant that Boss, Matz, and Ophie must have completed their ground movement and were already stationed at the ambush site.
Carrying my rifle at the ready, I performed a final, circular patrol around the hilltop, peering down the forested slope in all directions. Light from the rising sun trickled through the leaves, and I felt its warmth wash over me amid the sound of birdcalls. When five minutes remained on my countdown, I transmitted to Ian.
“Red, this is White. Request confirmation of Kickoff.”
“White, Red. No change.”
“Copy.”
I watched the clock tick down, agonizingly slow in its progress. At one minute out, I tightened the sling of my M4 to keep it out of my way while firing and picked up a set of shooting earmuffs. Although my radio earpieces doubled as hearing protection, the mortars were loud enough to warrant extra insurance to preserve whatever hearing I had left.
A moment before I positioned the muffs over my ears, I heard the snap of a branch down the hill to my front.
I froze.
Slowly, I lowered the hearing protection away from my head. Setting the muffs on the ground, I loosened my M4 sling and readied the rifle as I walked to a tree at the end of the clearing. I took cover behind its trunk and eased my rifle around the side to scan the downhill slope. At first, I saw nothing except for the dense greenery I had already surveyed during my short patrols. Then, I heard another branch break to my left. I aimed my M4 toward the sound, focusing my vision down the hill and hoping against all odds that I would only find a deer.
Instead, a man walked diagonally up the slope a hundred meters below me. He was dressed in civilian camouflage, and at a slightly greater distance could have passed for a hunter. But he carried a black assault rifle that I couldn’t identify and wore a vest like mine that surely held ammunition and a radio. His head turned to the side intermittently, and it became clear to me that he was having a quiet conversation just before I saw the second man.
The men appeared to be on a routine security patrol, conducting gradual switchbacks up the hillside toward me. I could tell they didn’t expect anyone to be on top of the mountain. They weren’t maneuvering tactically, although that would surely change once I fired the first mortar round. I heard another noise and glimpsed a third man through the trees, walking in front of the other two. The terrain was on my side; they would have a steep uphill fight to overrun me.
But that was my lone advantage.
I didn’t know how many were among them or their number of reinforcements, and firing the mortars would leave me completely vulnerable to their assault. Leveling my sights on their party, I watched them pass in and out of view through my optic as they moved between the trees. By now, they were perhaps eighty meters away from me. I couldn’t tell who was in charge, and absent that knowledge tried to get a bead on the lead man to discourage their advance. He vanished behind the trees, and I moved my sights to chest level along his path, waiting for him to emerge. He reappeared a few steps later, walking forward into the aim of my suppressed M4.
At that moment, my watch alarm began beeping. He looked uphill and directly at me.
I fired two well-aimed shots, chasing them with five more in rapid succession. He dropped out of sight. I swung my rifle to the left, spreading another ten bullets back and forth where I suspected the other two men stood. I heard them yelling to each other. Rifle fire cracked to my right, and I turned to see muzzle flashes from a second group of men located fifty meters from the security patrol I’d just shot at. I returned fire until I had expended my magazine. By then, the first group had also begun shooting.
I turned and ran to the mortars, pulling the sling so my M4 was tight against my side. I hoisted the first 120mm round off the ground and slid the tail into the tube until my hands reached the rim.
I released my hands from the round and swept them down the outside of the cannon, feeling the concussion of the mortar system roaring to life with a massive explosion as the round rocketed upward into the sky. Grabbing the next round off the ground, I repeated the process as quickly as I could. The BOOM of the mortar repeated at a cadence as I fell into the routine, wanting to get all seven of the 120mm rounds downrange to flush our targets toward the ambush. I knew the men on the hill would hesitate at the initial blast but recognize the rhythmic explosions in seconds.
Once they did, they would launch their assault; as long as that mortar continued to shoot, the men they were being paid to protect would die.
As the final 120mm round blasted off, I ran to the tree line while reloading my rifle. Ducking behind a tree trunk, I angled out to aim at the source of sporadic gunfire coming at me from the right side. As I began sweeping the firing positions with bullets, gunshots erupted from the team on my left—they were now only fifty meters away, having closed the distance while the other team provided covering fire.
Bullets hissed over my head and cracked into the tree in front of me. I emptied the rest of my magazine at the men, then ran back to the mortars. I heard the distant crunk of the first rounds impacting at their destination, and I skidded to a halt in front of the 81mm rounds. I was able to load these lighter rounds into the tube more quickly, and I fired the first five before moving back to the woods. After reloading my rifle on the move, I looked up to see a thick haze of violet mist rising up from twenty-five meters below me.
The men were using smoke grenades to conceal their maneuver, and were now closing in too fast for me to stop them. Gunfire continued from the other side of the hill, the bullets zipping through the trees at a steady rate.
If I ran to the tree line again, I’d be shot.
I stopped in place, then threw one grenade to the left and one to the right. The trees below me were too dense for accurate aim, but the explosions would cause the men to reevaluate how badly they wanted to overrun that hilltop. Running back to the mortars, I bypassed the 81mm and moved to the hiking pack, grasping the two igniters with my left hand and activating them with my right by giving each ring a quarter turn before pulling it up toward me.
I fired the remaining 81mm rounds as quickly as I could, my arms beginning to tire by the time I lifted the tenth and final one. Gunfire from the hillside to my front continued, and I saw more violet smoke rising ten meters into the woods. I hurled another two grenades in separate directions and transitioned to the last mortar before they exploded. I heard the impact of the 81mm rounds resonating through the hills amid the security team’s rifle bursts, and picked up the first 60mm round as my grenades detonated.
I knelt next to the tube, dropping the rounds in one after another as the small cannon bucked with each shot.
An explosion burst in the clearing ahead of me, raining dirt over my head. At first, I thought a mortar round had misfired and landed short before realizing that I was receiving incoming grenades from the men assaulting the hilltop.
I was being overrun.
Throwing a final grenade, I dropped another two 60mm rounds down the tube. A second incoming grenade exploded, t
he concussion knocking me down. Gasping for breath with my head ringing, I felt a tiny shred of hot shrapnel smoldering in the right side of my neck. Struggling to my hands and knees, I realized the piece of metal had missed my artery by perhaps half an inch. At that point, I had no idea how many 60mm rounds remained unfired, and couldn’t fathom how much time remained before the explosive charge detonated and took me with it.
I stumbled to my feet and lurched toward the far tree line.
The gunfire behind me increased in volume and intensity as my attackers crested the hilltop. I approached the slope to my front in what felt like slow motion, observing bullets impacting the trees ahead of me. Puffs of smoke sprinkled against bark and leaved branches recoiled as rounds struck and tumbled past them. How had I not yet been shot? The downhill slope materialized in front of me, but was still three long paces away.
As if on cue, a single bullet struck the back plate of my body armor, and I lost all control.
I had been leaning forward into a run, and the violent impact against my spine sent me sprawling headlong with uncontrollable momentum. I flew forward and hit the ground, bounced hard on my right side, and rolled over the edge into the empty space beyond the hill.
As I soared and spun past the rock face, a deafening explosion rocked the hilltop and a blinding flash of light seared my eyes. A split second later, the shockwave passed over me; the image of the treetops whipping in the blast froze in my mind before I rolled over again to find the ground rushing toward me.
I slammed into the earth on top of my slung rifle and bounced down the hill. My vision was a blur of blue, green, and brown as sky, trees, and dirt swirled before my face. I bounced farther down the hill before hitting a tree trunk so hard that my body spun sideways as I tried to grab a bush to my left. Thorns raked my arms and face as the bush slipped from my grasp, though I was able to twist myself into a feet-first downhill slide. I looked down between my boots in search of anything to grab as I skidded on my back, but only saw clouds hovering over distant treetops.
I was twenty feet from launching over a cliff face at a speed that felt like I had been shot out of a cannon.
I dug in my heels and flung my arms to the side, clawing into the earth with gloved fingers. Trees sped past out of reach and vegetation grew sparse as the terrain dropped off into nothing. Ten feet from the edge, I saw a small tree directly in my path that was leaning perilously over the abyss. I spread my legs and placed both hands in front of my crotch, picking up speed and bracing for impact.
The trunk was perhaps three inches in width, and I slammed into it with incredible force dispersed in equal parts between my hands and groin. My sunglasses flew off, tumbling once on the ground before vanishing over the edge. The pain was a point-blank shotgun blast inside my brain, and I became so lightheaded and nauseated that I almost wished I’d gone over the side.
My body slid sideways in a 180-degree turn as I scrambled to stop it, feverishly grasping the tree trunk with both hands as my legs swung uphill. I came to rest with my back hanging over the side and my rifle dangling below me from a sling that was now wrapped around my neck at maximum tensile strength, cutting off all oxygen and blood to my brain. I was delirious with pain, and mustered all of my focus to look below me for a ledge that would allow me to simply let go of the tree and take my chances.
Instead, I saw a forty-foot drop to the talus.
My eyes registered a flash of light and a massive cloud rising from the low ground in the distance. The sound of the explosion arrived a split second later and was followed by the chatter of machine gun fire and the swooshing of faraway rockets ending in more concussions. Now moments from passing out, I released the tree with one hand to strip the M4 sling off my neck. The rifle vanished into the space below me as I returned my hand to the tree trunk.
I took a deep breath to restore what mental acuity I could before pulling myself up with all of my remaining strength. Using one hand to paw at the dirt, I hooked a leg around the tree and pulled myself into a sitting position with my legs hanging over the side. I crawled a few feet up the slope, rolled onto my back, and stared at the sky as tidal waves of pain washed over me.
The first bullet snapped into the earth a few feet to my left, blasting dirt over the cliff. I scrambled to my feet as more rounds followed from high above me on the hill. As I ran along the ledge, more bullets snapped through the trees, cracking into wood and whizzing through the air over my head. The men must have been having just as hard a time seeing me as I had when shooting at them from the hilltop.
I sprinted to a point where the hill met the cliff, then took a hard switchback and ran downhill along the descending rock face.
The gunfire stopped as I ran along the bottom of the cliff, closing the distance to my missing rifle. Fleeing straight toward my pickup site meant leading my pursuers toward Karma, who was surely standing beside the truck smoking cigarettes, unflappable amidst the gunfire and explosions resonating among the hills. The moving targets and thick vegetation rendered my pistol useless, so my only option was recovering my M4 and hoping it survived the fall.
I ran until I saw a divot of freshly turned earth and located my rifle a few meters downhill. Snatching it up, I found that it was covered in sand, a wide corner of the plastic shoulder stock had chipped off, and the suppressor was packed with dirt. Hearing a noise above me, I looked up to see one of the men standing at the top of the cliff and scanning the forest with his rifle.
He expected me to be running away, not standing directly below him. I took aim, rotated my selector lever from safe to semiautomatic, and briefly wondered whether the weapon would explode in my hands with that much dirt in the barrel. I pulled the trigger twice; the first round fired before the second malfunctioned.
As I racked the bolt to clear the failed round, the man fell over the edge, his rifle tumbling from his grasp. I threw my back against the rock face, watching his body sail past me and hit the ground with an eerie percussion accompanied by what sounded like dry branches snapping as his bones broke. Bouncing once, he rolled against a tree and stopped, motionless. His rifle crashed through a treetop and speared into the ground a short distance away from his body before pinwheeling down the mountain.
I slung my rifle and was upon him in seconds, dragging his limp body downhill and out of view from the cliff. I rolled him over, then froze when I saw his face.
A voice transmitted over the radio on his vest.
“Remy? Remy?”
My old friend’s eyelids fluttered open. He stared into the distance before looking at me and giving me a weak half-smile.
“Hey, Slick,” he drawled in his thick Alabama accent. “Thought you’d be an officer by now.”
“I thought you’d still be in the Rangers.” I stripped the radio off his vest and transmitted, “Your friend is fine. I’m taking his radio, and if you call for help or come down that cliff, he’s dead. You can come get him in an hour, and not before.”
“Let me hear him if he’s alive.”
“This isn’t a negotiation,” I transmitted.
Remy said, “It’s all right. I’ll keep ‘em back.”
“Are you going to play nice?”
“You got my word.”
I held the radio to his mouth and keyed it, nodding to him.
“I’m okay, guys. Just hang back, and I’ll see you in an hour.”
I brought the radio to my mouth. “Don’t transmit again or he’s dead.” Stuffing the radio in my pocket, I began stripping grenades off his body and refilling the pouches on my plate carrier. His rifle magazines were meant for a different weapon, so I left them.
“That was a hell of a shot,” he said.
“I learned from you, remember?”
“Hell of a fight, too. Started to think we were back in the invasion.”
“You weren’t so bad yourself. Do me a favor and say you never saw me before, okay?”
“I can’t move anything. Give me a clean kill, Slick. I can’t handle a v
egetable ward.”
“You’ll be all right. Just let your boys come for you.”
He grimaced and swallowed. “You better not leave me like this. I wouldn’t do that to you.”
“It might not be as bad as it looks.”
“Get the fuck out of here. Let me die with some dignity.”
I shook my head. “I’m sorry, brother,” I said, cringing as I stood and leveled the M4 at his head. I pulled the trigger.
It clicked.
I tried to clear the malfunction again by racking the bolt, then pulled the trigger a second time.
Remington grunted and exhaled.
“Fuck, Remy, I’m sorry.” I dropped the magazine and ejected the round. I partially disassembled the M4, withdrawing the bolt and blowing dirt out of it. “I don’t have a suppressor on my pistol, so if I can’t get this working it’ll be the knife.”
“I’m fine taking the knife now,” he gasped.
“I still need the rifle for your friends.” I blew again and began reassembling the weapon.
“You end up getting married?” he asked.
“It didn’t work out.”
“Well, this is just my luck. Meeting my maker as soon as Sarah’s finally available.”
I grinned. “You didn’t want her, Remy.”
“Yeah, I did.”
“Ready to give this another try?”
He gave a slight nod. “Yeah, brother. See you on the other side.”
“‘Til next time, Remy.”
I fired a single round into his face, then turned and began running down the hill.
I covered the downhill slope at a jog, eventually finding the path to my link-up site. As I approached, I saw the white pickup through the foliage. I stopped behind a tree, scanning first for the driver before turning to listen for the sounds of pursuit. Silence.