The History Thief: Ten Days Lost (The Sterling Novels) (8 page)

Captain Scott didn’t answer the question, and instead looked his soldier dead in his eye and ordered, “Call it in, York.”

York frowned and spat back, this time noticeably louder and sharper. “Do you really think it’s such a good idea to send this back to the FOB?”

The captain clenched his teeth. This was the old, impatient, and insolent York. There was a noticeable shift in his demeanor that was reflected in the way he glared at York.

The rest of the team looked back at the two men in confusion and then at one another.

Under his breath, SFC Musselman asked Chief Packard, “Hey, Chief, what in hot-damn is going on between those two?”

“Hell if I know, but York should just do what he’s told—the captain looks like he’s about to put his foot up his ass.”

Captain Scott abruptly bolted at York; York stood his ground. The captain grabbed York by his LCE straps, yanked him so close that their noses nearly touched, and repeated his command, “I gave you an order! Call it in, York! I won’t tell you again! Division will handle it!”

When the captain let him go, York did as he was ordered and radioed FOB Salerno with what he had found. Captain Scott moved away from York and stood as far from the rest of the men as was possible in the round room. His hands were placed firmly on his hips, and his head hung low.

A few minutes later York told Captain Scott, “Sir, I let the S-2 know what we found. He asked me to send the file electronically. The extraction team is en route. The Blackhawks will pick us up at the rendezvous site. They want us back ASAP.”

Captain Scott wasn’t surprised. He nodded his head in acknowledgement but didn’t look at York.

York stepped up to Scott and repeated his question from earlier. “Sir, what the hell is going on?”

Captain Scott slowly lifted his head and looked into York’s face, but not into his eyes. He opened his mouth to say something, but nothing would come out. Instead of words, the loud crack of a large-caliber weapon being fired replaced what Captain Scott was about to say.

Both York and Scott snapped their heads toward the tunnel. Captain Scott shouted into his mouthpiece, “Thad, what the hell is happening?”

Thad shouted his response; he was no longer concerned with the quiet approach. “Sir, the cell is back! The fucking rats are crawling up the slope. It was a goddamn trap! I count more than a hundred, and they’re reinforced with heavy weapons!”

York knew it the moment the captain did: they were trapped.

They were like fish in a bowl.

They were stuck in a room that had an exit shared with its entrance. The only way in or out was through a thirty-meter tunnel, a tunnel that was lined with weapons. One well-placed bullet, grenade, or rocket would set off the cache and destroy the cave and everything and everyone in it.

Scott shouted, “Everyone, out now! Get up, and get out! Stack formation!”

With expediency, the men rose to their feet and raced through the tunnel with their weapons at the ready. One by one, they made their way through the door and behind the protection of the rocks just to its exterior. Thad was meticulously picking off the approaching terrorists.

Almost all of the team had made it out safely before the sound of exponentially growing small-arms fire could be heard. The terrorist cell was getting closer and was returning Thad’s fire.

SFC Musselman was in front of York, and Chief Packard was in front of him. The chief was nearly through the door when a bullet pierced his neck; he fell back into SFC Musselman, who quickly laid the gagging Green Beret onto the dirt floor. His carotid artery was severed. SFC Musselman dropped to the ground to help. He pressed his hand against the chief’s neck but knew that there was nothing more that he could do.

It took only a few moments before the chief died. SFC Musselman was on his knees next to the chief and was as rigid as the rock that surrounded them.

“Leave him,” commanded Captain Scott. He grabbed Musselman by his arm and yanked him to his feet. “Get out there and help the rest of the team!”

SFC Musselman hesitated and looked at the chief. With a fire in his tearfilled eyes, he shouted a blood-curdling scream that raised the hairs erect along York’s arms. SFC Musselman bolted away from them, and then he dove out of the door and rolled to a stop. Within moments, the angered Green Beret was in a prone position and taking aim with his 5.56mm M4A1. The fourteen-and-half-inch barrel was all that he needed to line up his sights on the enemy. Before York could leave the tunnel, Musselman had already emptied one of his thirty-round magazines and was slapping in a second. From the first thirty rounds, nineteen had found their mark, and the attacking al-Qaeda cell was fewer by as many Arabs.

York heard two dull thuds; both were followed by larger detonations. SFC Musselman’s M4A1 had a 40mm M203 grenade launcher attached beneath the barrel. Musselman was possessed. His movements appeared frantic, but his aim was true. Chief Packard had been a close friend. The two grenades easily ended the lives of five more enemy combatants.

The attack by the terrorist cell came heavy and vicious; the Alpha team was severely burdened by their numbers. York and Scott had to crawl out of the tunnel as bullets riddled the face of the cave’s entrance.

Once he was out of the cave, York looked over at Thad and knew that what he saw wasn’t good. Thad was no longer firing and was slumped over the Betty. York low-crawled over to the engineers sergeant and pulled him off the large-caliber weapon. Thad’s body rolled onto its back and exposed the nature of his death: part of his lower jaw was missing. A bullet, either well aimed or errant, had penetrated Thad where his face was pressed against the weapon.

York moved Thad out of the way, which was no easy task: the engineers sergeant was a large man. He wished that he could have been more delicate with his dead friend, but this wasn’t the time. Thad’s body rolled roughly away and ended in an awkward position. York sunk in behind the Betty and quickly inspected it for functionality. Satisfied that it would fire, he reloaded the weapon and peered through the Leupold Mark 4 telescopic sights.

York looked for targets.

Approaching from his left and two hundred meters downhill, three Arabs were crouched one behind the other. They were ill-trained and sloppy. They were too easy as a target. The third Arab was holding a portable rocket propelled grenade (RPG-7) launcher. York could easily see the sinister green TBG-7V anti-personnel warhead. The other two al-Qaeda were spotting for the man with the rocket, but they were out in the open; their efforts were futile. York took aim, and when the man holding the rocket launcher stood to fire, York pulled the trigger. The fifty-caliber bullet barreled through the air at twenty-eight hundred feet per second and through all three Arabs at once.

The man holding the RPG-7 fell to his knees, but was able to squeeze the trigger. It was either one last heroic effort on the Arab’s part, or a neurological reaction from the shock of death. It didn’t matter. York knew that at a range of two hundred meters, an RPG is only fifty percent effective at finding its target, and even less when the man pulling the trigger has a six-inch hole in his stomach. The round split the air and was followed by a thin, white contrail. York watched as it curled upward and passed harmlessly above the top of the cave.

York scanned the slope and found four more members of al-Qaeda approaching; four more corpses fell to the earth.

York looked for more targets, but they seemed to be less haphazard with their approach than moments ago. They were learning. It took a few seconds, but he found one of them squatting behind a tree. It was nearly a foot in diameter, but York was sure that the wood of the tree was no match for the Betty. Aiming, he squeezed off his last round. The tree exploded at its base. Slivers and chunks of wood shot out in every direction.

One more lay dead.

Overhead, the distinctive, heavy thump from the blades three Blackhawks began to drown out the small-arms fire from the cell. Help had arrived.

From behind and rising nefariously overhead of what remained of the Alpha team, the noses of three voluminous attack helicopters lifted above the cave complex and tilted downward at the enemy. The four rotor blades of each Blackhawk cut ominously through the air as if to warn of what would come next. An unseen signal was followed by the unleashed power of the mounted M240H machine guns—six in total—releasing a torrent of 7.62mm rounds onto the advancing terrorist cell below. The tree line was soon washed with a waterfall of cascading rounds at a rate of nine hundred and fifty per minute. The sound was deafening. The onslaught lasted just under a minute; each Blackhawk rocked slightly right and left as it strafed the wood line. When it was over, nearly three thousand rounds had cut into whatever was in their path: trees, rocks, earth, and bodies. They didn’t discriminate.

The members of the al-Qaeda cell that had survived dared not return fire and were smart enough to race back from wherever it was that they had come. They were fewer than one-third of the number that had first attacked.

York was breathing fast and hard, and the Blackhawks hovered low overhead. The captain was screaming, but all sound had been sucked from the air.

To his left and to his right, York saw that a number of his teammates had perished, and most of the others were wounded. The able-bodied were helping those that were not so able. Some were being carried.

York stood to his feet.

Sound came back.

Captain Scott shouted out, “Get to the choppers and leave no one behind, I mean no one!”

York looked over to where Thad’s body was lying and ran over to him, dropping to the ground at his side. He grabbed his dead teammate’s arm and leg and wrapped the body around his shoulders. Rolling to his stomach, he placed his own legs underneath himself and grunted as he pushed himself to his feet. He carried Thad over his shoulders in a fireman’s carry and raced to the waiting choppers.

Behind him, York heard one of his teammates yell,
fire in the hole!
Two loud explosions quickly followed. The cave complex and everything in it was destroyed.

The rest of the team—the living, the dead, and the wounded—were aboard the three Blackhawks. Two of the helicopters were already flying away. Captain Scott was waiting at the third Blackhawk for York and motioned with his arm to get in; York ran to the open door, handed his SCAR-H to the outstretched hand of the Blackhawk’s crewman, and laid Thad heavily on the floor. Quickly, he climbed into the chopper’s belly. Captain Scott followed. He had nearly made it all the way in when he screamed out and fell backward onto the ground.

Behind Captain Scott, the growling face of an Arab was visible behind a smoking pistol. He was running toward the Blackhawk and still firing when York grabbed his own 9mm from its holster and returned fire. It took only one shot of the nine York fired. His 9mm was empty, and the Arab was dead.

York jumped out and grabbed his captain. The bullet had hit Captain Scott in his lower back, near his right kidney.

York shouted, “Sir, you okay?!”

The captain let out a long grunt, more like a growl, and painfully screamed, “Get me in the chopper, York!”

York pulled the captain to his feet and then got under him and put his shoulder into the captain’s ass. He forcibly lifted the captain into the Blackhawk and then quickly scrambled in, collapsing on top of his commander.

Looking up at the crew of the Blackhawk, York shouted, “Get us the hell out of here, now!”

The pilot pulled the cyclic, and the Blackhawk jerked higher into the sky at a rate of nearly three and a half meters per second. It didn’t take long to hit the helicopter’s ceiling near nineteen thousand feet. York worked frantically on Captain Scott’s wound. He ripped off the commander’s LCE and yanked up his shirt. The hole was neat with no exit wound, but it was intermittently spilling blood that matched the pulse of the captain’s heart. The captain was going into shock; his eyes had rolled upward, exposing the white underneath.

York anxiously looked around the helicopter and soon found what he needed. An emergency medical technician (EMT) kit hung against the wall. York yanked it down and rummaged through it. The CELOX Hemostat 35g bag was easy to find. Putting the top of it in his teeth, he grabbed a wad of gauze with one hand and ripped off the top of the CELOX with his other. He poured the powder onto Captain Scott’s wounds and then roughly pressed the gauze on top. Scott let out a sharp scream and bit down on his lip. It took less than thirty seconds for the bleeding to stop: CELOX is an impressive coagulant.

Captain Scott passed out.

York exhaled and then looked up and out of the window; the other two Blackhawks were flying just off the port side. The sliding door of the bird nearest his was open and a large dark mass was falling away from it. York’s eyes widened at what he saw, but his brain couldn’t make the connection right away.

Turning to the pilot, York wanted to shout out that something had just fallen from one of the Blackhawks, but just then, his eye caught a second mass falling from the third Blackhawk. This time his brain processed the image—it was one of his teammates. He snapped his head back to the window and screamed as his eyes followed the body as it plunged downward. He recognized the mass; it was the body of MSG Bryan.

“What the fuck?” York screamed.