Black Site (7 page)

He felt nothing below the waist, and with each frantic breath he registered unnatural movement in his rib cage.

A ringing in his ears subsided enough for him to realize that the mortar barrage had ceased. A new sound grabbed his attention, just louder than the crunching of his broken ribs as he took labored breaths.

Footsteps approaching.

Raynor pulled his Glock from the Velcro holster on his vest. Raised it toward the noise down by his feet.

Jet appeared around the edge of the boulder and dropped to his knees at his major’s side.

“Damn it, Jet. I broke my back. Can’t move my legs.” Raynor thought Jet had come to render aid. He expected him to dive into his Combat Casualty Response Kit, but he did not.

Instead, Jet carried two rifles. Held the weapon in his left hand out for Major Raynor. It was a long-barreled HK416. Covered slick with thick red blood.

“Rock’s gun?” Raynor asked as he took it, but he knew. Price painted yellow tick marks on the butt stock, one for each month he’d spent in Iraq or Afghanistan. Forty-one yellow lines showed from under the blood smears. “Where’s Rock?”

“Dead. Can you fight?”

Kolt continued to battle the vertigo acquired during his fall. He fought confusion. “Fight? Fight who?”

“We got company.”

“Company?”

“Bad guys. Me and Musket will hold the northern approach. Cover the ridgeline in case they try to flank us from the east.”

“Roger that.” Raynor was officially in command, but he lay on the cold dirt, flat on his back and bleary-eyed. He had no problem relinquishing authority to the two ambulatory operators still in the fight.

Jet disappeared back around the boulder.

For a moment all was quiet. Raynor squinted into the sun, now just barely rising above the hill in front of him and beaming into his eyes. He had Oakleys stowed in a pouch somewhere, but he did not bother to search for them. They were probably either crushed or lost up on the hill. Instead, he just lay there, tried to slow his breathing and to use what senses he had available to acquire threats.

Small-arms fire erupted to his left, hidden from view by the big stone that had shattered his back and pelvis. Multiple AKs burped at full auto and HKs snapped return fire in short controlled bursts or cracked single shots. Musket shouted out, an order barked to Jet. The medic answered back. Raynor could tell the two operators had positioned themselves far apart to divide the enemy’s fire and attention and to cover for one another.

“Reloading!” shouted Jet after a minute.

“Covering!” replied Musket authoritatively.

Raynor raised himself to his elbows, tried to inch his way backward to get around the boulder to help. He felt so impotent positioned here, covering a quiet snow-dusted and brush-strewn hillside, with his two men screaming and battling for their lives just thirty meters off his left shoulder. After no more than a foot he dropped again, weakened by the agony in his back and rib cage. He looked down at Rocky’s weapon. Raynor’s gloves were stained bloodred.

The AK barrage picked up considerably. The rifle fire echoed through the gorge and bounced from all directions toward Kolt. It sounded as if a world war had erupted around him. A pair of low explosions that he recognized as golf ball–sized Mini Belgian frag grenades thrown by his men answered back.

The fighting continued for another minute. Then Musket called out. “Jet! Jet?”

When there was no response Kolt cried out to Sergeant First Class Lee as well. “Jet, you good?”

Then he shouted, “Musket! I’m coming around!” Major Raynor made it back to his elbows. Reached back and dug them into the dirt and shale, pulling himself another half foot. He dropped again in a cold sweat.

“Racer, hold fire,” Musket said, and he appeared around the foot of the white rock. His nose and beard dripped blood from a cut between his eyebrows, but he moved quickly and confidently. Raynor just looked up at his master sergeant.

“Jet?”

“He’s gone.” The NCO slung his rifle and knelt down over his officer. Reached for Raynor’s belt and began unbuckling his hip rig. “I’m gettin’ you out of here.”

“We can’t leave Rock and Jet.”

“And I can’t carry all of you, Racer! Help me get your gear off.”

“Comms?”

“Not down here in the basin. Now work with me, Raynor!” Just then, AK fire cracked to the north, and 7.62 mm rounds smacked against the boulder next to the two operators. “Wait one,” Musket said. He stood and fired over the top of the boulder. Quickly dropped down to a squat behind the cover and reloaded his rifle as bullets whizzed over both men.

“How many?”

“Too many. Let’s go.” Master Sergeant Michael Overstreet made to reach under Kolt’s armpits to lift him up, but Raynor pushed the hands away.

Raynor said, “No good. It’ll take you twenty minutes to get me out of here. They’ll be on us in two.”

Overstreet looked down to Raynor. Nodded. “Right. Okay. You keep them off the hilltop. I’ll take the north.”

“No, Mike. Help me around the rock. I’ll keep them back while you bug out. You can’t help me.”

“Negative, Racer. We’ll hold out for the Rangers.”

“Bagram doesn’t even know we’re in contact! Get the hell out of here!”

“I’m not leaving you, boss.”

Raynor slammed his gloved fist into the cold dirt. “That’s an order, Musket!”

“Then I guess I’ll see you back at Bragg at my court-martial.” Overstreet reached into Raynor’s vest. Pulled a fresh mag from a pouch and reloaded Rocky’s bloody weapon for Kolt. He lowered the gun back to Raynor’s chest and held the half-empty magazine out for him to see. “Partial mag by your right hand.” He placed the magazine on the ground on Raynor’s right.

“I messed up, Mike.”

Overstreet said, “These are tier-one AQ and that mortar fire was too accurate. They were expecting us. This was a trap.”

“And I led us right into it.”

“Yeah. Yeah, I reckon you did, but it was a fair call you made.” He spit into the snow. “Screw it, Racer. You and me. Blaze of glory and all that shit. Let’s make ’em hurt.”

Racer blinked cold salty sweat from his eyes. Nodded. “Roger that. Help me around the boulder.”

“Just watch the hill.” Musket spun away, headed back around the boulder in a crouch.

“Mike! Help me around the boulder! Mike!” Raynor called out in vain.

The shooting began immediately.

For a full minute Raynor listened to the long salvos of Kalashnikov rifles, followed by higher-pitched, staccato bursts from Overstreet’s HK416. Twice Raynor called to the master sergeant but Musket did not reply. Twice Raynor tried to get around the boulder, but the pain in his back was too excruciating to bear.

With a sudden thought Kolt lowered his rifle to his chest, reached for a cord around his neck. On the end of it hung a morphine self-injector. He bit off the red safety cap, pushed the pen-sized injector against his thigh, and smashed the black plunger with his thumb. Instantly 20 milligrams of morphine entered his bloodstream.

In seconds he felt a wave of relief course through his body. The pain remained, but the edge had been taken off.

It was at this time he realized that the AKs, still belching steadily to the north, were no longer receiving answering fire.

“Musket? Musket?” No response.

Raynor winced with pain, lifted his HK over his head, pointed it at the edge of the rock on that side, holding the weapon’s grip with his left hand. With his right he hefted his pistol and pointed it at the other edge of the rock. This way he had both approaches around the boulder covered, though he could not look both up and down at the same time. The muted pain in his pelvis pulsed with his frantic heartbeat.

“Musket? Talk to me!”

Without sound nor warning a black-clad Arab leaped around the edge of the rock at Raynor’s feet. The turbaned man’s eyes widened and his short-barreled AK rose toward the prostrate American invader just two yards away.

Kolt’s pistol cracked and jumped. Acrid wisps of smoke ejected behind three .40 caliber cartridges. The Arab’s head snapped back and away and he fell to his knees. Slumped dead on his back.

Raynor sensed the second man, though he had heard nothing. With barely a glance the Delta operator fired a three-round burst from his rifle back over his head, spinning a similarly clad gunman 360 degrees before he fell facefirst, his rifle clanging against the sun-blanched boulder on the American’s left.

As the AK came to rest next to him, another figure appeared at his feet. Raised a rifle toward him. Raynor’s reaction time suffered from the morphine. He’d let his Glock sag to the ground but he lifted it and fired.

But the al Qaeda fighter fired first.

The Arab held his Kalashnikov at his hip and at three yards’ distance blasted a burst that sent dirt and rocks and snow into the air between Kolt’s splayed legs. Raynor felt his right leg kick up and caught a brief glimpse of splattering blood in the air through the gun smoke of his own weapon.

Raynor pressed his Glock’s trigger once, twice, five times before the enemy fell back and away screaming shrilly as he dropped dead in the snow.

Without taking time to check himself for wounds Raynor looked back over his head, expecting another attack from the west side of the boulder. Only when it did not come for several seconds did he look back down to assess himself.

Propped on his elbows he saw the red hole torn in his boot at the instep, a growing pool of blood forming in the snow just below his knee, and a third blood-speckled gouge on the outside of his right thigh. The AK-47 had stitched up his leg, though even with the horror of this realization the professional in Raynor was thankful to see no gushing arterial spray.

Though he had already been incapacitated, he was now even more so, surrounded and alone and bleeding and weakened by the morphine. He dropped down on his back and looked up to the sky. There, on his back, he executed a tactical reload, topping off his pistol with a fresh magazine. The action was accomplished through pure muscle memory.

He was furious for allowing himself to be shot. Furious with the dead man at his feet who’d shot him. “Son of a bitch!”

Now he heard noises on the other side of the rock. They were converging on him. Three at least. Perhaps many more. Raynor dropped his pistol and reached into his vest. Pulled a Mini Belgian frag. First he fumbled with the duct tape securing the pin, his doped-up dexterity making even this petty action a complicated chore. He concentrated his diminished faculties and finally freed the pin. Then he tore it out of the grenade with his teeth.

“Frag out, Musket!” He let the spoon fly, and the explosive sputtered a moment in his trembling hand as he let a few seconds cook off. He lobbed it over the rock.

The explosion on the other side sent brush and snow over the top of the boulder.

Raynor lobbed a second and then a third grenade. Each one a little farther away. Each time he called, “Frag out!” If any of his teammates were still alive, maybe they would be able to scramble to cover.

When he had lobbed all his frags he hefted his pistol again and covered both approaches, expecting at any moment a dozen men to converge.

Thirty seconds, and nothing.

A minute, still no attack.

This was good, and it was also standard operating procedure for the enemy. The Taliban and al Qaeda both were well acquainted with American close-air support tactics. Their attacks were furious and intense, but they were virtually always short-lived. They had learned to expect that if they stuck around in a firefight, within a matter of minutes, death would rain down on them with a vengeance.

Raynor holstered his pistol on his chest rig and slung Rocky’s rifle around his neck. Back up on his elbows, he scooted backward with all the strength in his shoulders. Most of the pain in his back was gone now, adrenaline and morphine masking the wreckage of his body for the time being. Kolt took advantage of the lull in his agony and reached back with his elbows to find wedges between the white stones of the dry stream bed, and then pulled himself backward by his elbows. In urban terrain he wore hard-plastic elbow pads, and he wished he had them now. Three times he looked down to his feet and saw that some of his blood had smeared across a sun-whitened river stone. And three times he scooted forward, grabbed the stone, and flipped it over or tossed it to the side. He knew he could not remove all evidence of his evasion route, but hiding or dispersing the most obvious markers of his trail was better than nothing.

As he crept backward, his elbows shredding against the hard stones, Raynor kept his eyes on the northern approach. He saw a dozen or more bodies strewn along the dry riverbed, the rocky bank, and the grassy hillside. Among them would be Jet and Musket and Rock, but Raynor did not dwell to pinpoint his dead men. The enemy had backed off for a moment, but he knew they would likely regroup and attack again in force when no planes appeared in the clear sky. After he’d traveled twenty-five meters he reached the far bank of the stream bed. He continued, and though the exhaustion in his shoulders slowed him, he did not stop his pathetic retreat. Without looking back he made his way into some thick brush, pushed through it until his feet were covered with foliage, and continued on until he reached the beginning of the hillside. Here he stopped, lay back under the meager protection of the snowy thicket, and feebly attempted to dress his thigh wound. The holes in his shin and his foot would just have to bleed. He could not reach them and he could not lift his legs up closer to his hands.

The morphine put him slowly to sleep. Shortly before losing consciousness he heard voices across the dry stream. Arabic and Pashto. Men shouting out in exultation, praising their god for their blessed victory. The unmistakable cry of “Allah-hu Akbar!” God is Great!

NINE

Major Kolt Raynor realized he was in a helicopter from the vibrating sound and the prevalent smell of fuel, but he had no idea how he had come to be there. Turning his head slowly from side to side, he saw mud-slicked tan combat boots. When he tried to lift his head to look around, he realized he was on the floor and strapped onto a backboard with a neck brace. He was wrapped in a blanket, and tubes ran into his arm. His right leg lay outside the blanket. A medic knelt over him and bandaged his foot. His thigh and shin were already shrouded in dressings.