PRIMAL Unleashed (2) (20 page)

Khalid turned to hobble up the hill, hoping his surface-to-air missile crew were still alive. As he stumbled forward, he felt a stab of pain in his back and a red mist filled his vision. He lifted a hand to his sternum, feeling the bloodied exit hole in his chest rig with his fingers. Without a sound he toppled forward and died under the afternoon Afghan sun, far away from his wives and sons.

***

Ice scanned the Taliban position through his scope. Their fortified bunkers had been reduced to mounds of scorched earth; he could barely make out the broken bodies covered in dust and debris. He held his scope on the twitching corpse of the final survivor. Ice was satisfied with Mirza’s choice of a chest shot, letting the target know he was dead.

He glanced down at the feed coming from the UAV as it flew above the US soldiers; they looked pretty beat-up. The three vehicles had formed a tight circle in the engagement zone and men were dragging their wounded comrades into the makeshift casualty point. Ice used his iPRIMAL to activate the frequency the Americans were working on. 

“Texas 1-3, this is Nemesis 4, over,” Ice broadcast.

“Nemesis 4, this is Texas 1-3. You guys rock.” The voice of the radio operator sounded flat, despite his enthusiasm.

Ice smiled grimly. “Good work holding out, guys.”

“Nemesis, you saved our butts, dude. We were up shit creek without you.”

“Yeah. Sorry we took so long. Listen, Texas, is your boss there?”

“Roger, I’ll put him on.” There was a slight pause as the radio changed hands.

“Nemesis, this is Captain Kev Daley of call sign Texas 1-3. Thanks again for helping us out.”

“It’s cool, Kev. This is Ice, of call sign Nemesis 4. We’re just sorry we couldn’t get air support earlier.”

“No hard feelings, Ice. Without you we’d still be waiting.”

“Kev, how are you guys looking on the ground?” Ice asked tentatively.

“We’re shot up pretty bad: thirty dead and eleven wounded leaves me with twenty able-bodied men. Most of them have minor injuries.”

“Understood, Kev. What’s your plan now?”

“Well, this unit’s done fighting for now; we are combat ineffective. Choppers inbound to extract the wounded and recover our dead.”

“Roger. Me and my partner will provide overwatch from here.”

“Much obliged, Ice. Once that‘s complete I’m going to take the rest of my men and we’re going to get the hell out of this shit-hole.”

“You gonna drive out of here with just one Humvee and your two pickups?” Ice couldn’t blame the man for wanting to extract.           

“That’s the plan. Someone else can deal with this shit fight. My priority is to get my men back to Kandahar and refit to fight. What about you?”

“We’re headin’ up the mountain,” Ice replied.

“What? Why? How many men you got up there? You said you and your partner?”

“Kev, my partner and I are trying to find a former Russian experimental weapons lab and stop a WMD getting into the hands of Iranian agents.”

“Jesus Christ, Ice, who the hell are you working for? CIA?”

“Something like that. Just believe me when I say that the intelligence behind this is rock solid. Those were hardcore Taliban mercenaries we just wasted, not the usual rag-tag bunch. I’m pretty damn sure they were defending the facility.”

“No shit. They knew exactly what they were doing.”

“I need to get up there, find the facility and blow it to hell.”

Kev’s curiosity was roused. This was exactly the kind of mission he thrived on. “Can you get more air support?”

“Yeah, no problem, but need to take out those SAMs before our bird gets back on station.” Ice hoped the Pain Train would be repaired by the time they neutralized the anti-air weapons. “Kev, look, I know this is a big ask, but I need you and your remaining men to hit the mountain with me. I’ve lost the element of surprise and there’s only two of us.”

There was a pause on the other end of the radio. 

“How many of these bastards do you think are left?” The Green Beret wanted a crack at the men who’d ambushed him.

“We just destroyed their main security force. There’s probably no more than a handful of guards and the SAM shooters.”

“You’ll cover my evac?”

“Of course.”

“Fuck it, OK then. We’ll get the wounded and dead out, then we’ll find this facility of yours and kill the rest of these assholes.”

Chapter 35

Helicopter door mounted minigun

Khod Valley

Kev Daley and his signaler helped the team medic load the last of the wounded into the two pickups before they jumped in the Humvee and escorted the battered vehicles back down the track. The Master Sergeant had already marked out a landing zone and two
MH-47
helos were only fifteen minutes out.

They had only made it a few hundred meters before Jimmy handed his boss the radio handset.

Ice’s voice came over the Special Forces frequency. “Kev, we have a problem.”

“Go ahead, Ice,” the Green Beret responded.

“I have visual on an estimated hundred-plus local fighters massing behind the eastern ridge.”

“How far out?”

“They’re on the move, no more than fifteen minutes from your LZ. They’re in range we are engaging now.” Over the radio Kev heard the distinctive noise of a suppressed weapon firing. “Kev, we can slow ‘em down but you need to get the fuck out of here.” The weapon hissed again.

“Goddamn it, Ice, we’re all getting the hell out of here. The choppers can lift us all out. Get the fuck off the mountain. We’ll hold off the Taliban till you marry up.”

“Negative. They’re moving in platoon-sized groups along the ridgeline. If you don’t go now, you’re fucked.” Kev could still hear the hiss of suppressed weapons over the radio as they continued to engage the Taliban from their hidden position high up on the ridgeline.

“Do you realize what you’re saying?” Kev said.

“Go! We have this well in hand. We’ll bypass the Talibs and find their missiles. Once we’ve neutralized the air-defense we can call in air support. No more of your men die today.”

Kev clenched his gloved fist. “Roger. We’re going to set up a defensive perimeter around the LZ and wait for the choppers.”

“Affirmative. We now have eight more Taliban KIA but we’re going to have to slow our engagement and conserve ammo.”

“Stay in contact, Texas. Out.”

Kev turned to his signaler. “Jimmy, let the choppers know it’s going to be a hot LZ. Company-sized Taliban element approaching from the northeast.”

“Yeah, boss.”

As they moved the last few hundred meters to the pickup point, bursts of fire could be heard further up the valley. The Taliban were firing at shadows, trying to spook out the two snipers culling their ranks.

Kev and his men formed a perimeter two hundred meters out from the extraction site. They lay in wait, weapons ready. Behind them wounded men moaned quietly, the team medic moving between them, desperately trying to keep them alive.

***

Khan’s first wave of Taliban reinforcements approached cautiously from the east. They moved in an extended line, silhouetted against the sky as they crossed the ridge, weapons held at the ready.

On the opposite ridge, Ice and Mirza lay low in a depression along the rocky slope. From six hundred meters away, they were all but invisible to the Taliban, drab robes blending in perfectly with the rocky terrain. Through their high-powered scopes the PRIMAL operatives could see the approaching Afghans clearly as they descended towards Texas 1-3. Some of them carried AKs, others rocket launchers and machine guns. A few wore the distinctive digital camouflage patterned armor over their robes, scavenged from the bodies of the dead American patrol.

“Shit, reinforcements,” said Ice.

“There’s too many,” Mirza whispered over the radio.

“Need to cull their numbers a little,” Ice replied as he exhaled slowly and squeezed the trigger. The weapon jumped against his shoulder and he lost sight of the target as the Taliban fighter toppled over. “Tango down.”He quickly aligned on another enemy fighter.

“They have to be in range of Texas 1-3 by now,” Mirza said as he fired his own rifle.

As if waiting for the Indian’s cue, the American Special Forces opened up, hitting the Taliban with a wall of lead. The line of advancing fighters dropped to the ground, hitting back with an equally heavy weight of fire. A second, then a third line of Taliban followed up, pushing forward in pairs, firing as they closed in on the US and Afghan soldiers.

“These fuckers are insane,” said Ice as he hit another target. “They just keep coming.” As the enemy warriors fell to the combined fire of the snipers and the Green Berets, more rushed down the hill to replace them. 

“This isn’t normal,” Mirza reported between his own shots. “They’re too well trained.”

Ice panned his scope down the slope to where Texas 1-3 was defending. The Green Berets and their Afghan Army partners were putting up a valiant fight, but one by one they fell as he looked on, the wave of Taliban surging forward relentlessly.

“You’re right, and they’re gonna get the better of Kev and his boys unless they get back up soon. Where the hell are those helos?”

“I don’t know but I’m getting low on ammo,” Mirza replied as he fired again.

“Roger, make ‘em count.”

The Taliban pushed forward as the remnants of Texas 1-3 peeled back to the extraction zone and their wounded men. Ice identified the team’s signaler crouched next to another American, the thin antenna giving him away. He watched as the Green Beret Captain fought side by side with his radio operator, laying down fire as they moved. They constantly changed their positions, going through a routine of firing, reloading and moving.

“Texas 1-3, this is Nemesis. Any news on those choppers?” Ice broadcast over the American frequency.

“Negative, Nemesis. We’ve got no comms with aircraft,” replied Jimmy.

Ice and Mirza had used most of their ammunition and still more Taliban were joining the battle. All along the perimeter, the weight of fire from the Special Forces and their Afghan allies began to wane. Ice could see the Taliban pushing forward harder, sprinting from cover to cover. They sensed victory. He watched as the Green Beret signaler struggled with a jammed weapon.

“Mirza, cover them,” he snapped.

A pair of Taliban dashed forward to overrun the Command Team’s precarious position and both snipers fired at once. It took half a second for their bullets to travel the six hundred meters from barrel to target. Both Taliban dropped, their heads torn apart.

The forward line of Taliban had come within fifty meters of the Green Beret’s outer perimeter when Ice heard the faint beat of rotor blades approaching from the south. All along the defensive line, Kev’s men had their spirits lifted by their imminent rescue. It only made the Taliban more determined to push forward.

As the first black twin-rotor chopper came into view, a Taliban fighter rose from the ground hefting an RPG launcher to his shoulder. Mirza spotted him moving from cover and shot him cleanly through the head. The dead man fell to the ground but managed to trigger his rocket, launching it sideways. It streaked across the valley and slammed into the mountain less than twenty meters from Ice’s position, showering him in shards of stone and dirt.

“Ice, you OK?” asked Mirza.

‘Yeah, I’m fine. Thank God the cavalry’s here.”

With a noise like tearing canvas, a six-barreled minigun opened up from above, spraying a lethal volume of fire across the advancing Taliban. They scrambled for cover as a downpour of glowing red tracer ripped up the ground and churned flesh to pulp. Ice looked up to see the MH-47 helicopter circling with both the side-door minigun and back ramp machine gun blazing.

Behind Kev and his men, on the landing zone a second chopper was already on the deck and medics were rushing to load Texas 1-3’s wounded. Its minigun was also firing bursts, shredding any enemy foolish enough to show themselves.

From their position high above the evacuation site, Ice and Mirza continued to engage the Taliban, firing at any brave enough to raise their heads above the dirt. The Green Berets were using the covering fire to withdraw rearwards; they needed to board the helicopters as quickly as possible. These last few minutes were critical, the aircraft most vulnerable while on the ground.

An RPG hissed upward from behind a cluster of boulders, narrowly missing the circling chopper. A savage burst of minigun fire lashed out, shredding the rocketeer. With a roar the second bird lifted off, swapping places with the other helicopter as it landed to pick up the last few soldiers.

“FALL BACK,” screamed Kev, standing on the helicopter ramp to wave his men onto the helicopter. “FALL BACK!”

The men raced back in pairs, covering each other as they dashed to the helicopter. Jimmy was the last of the Green Berets; he continued firing to cover the few remaining Afghans who were struggling to carry their wounded comrades.