Wynne's War (28 page)

It said, “Underchild Actual, do you copy?”

The men glanced at each other. Wynne raised the radio to his lips.

“Roger, Underchild, proceed with transmission.”

“You've got company. Over.”

“Say again,” Wynne told him.

“I say again, you've got dismounts moving in from your six. Fifteen, sixteen in number. AKs and RPGs.”

Wynne asked if they were headed to the horses.

“Negative,” said Hallum. “They're headed to you.”

“Outstanding,” Morgan said.

They stood there in the torchlight.

“Copy that,” said Wynne, and he had just said it when the radio coughed once again and they heard the transmitted noise of automatic-weapons fire. Wynne's brows furrowed and he keyed the talk.

“Underchild, are you in contact? Over.”

They heard the cackling of rifles. They heard men shouting. One sounded like Wheels, but Russell wasn't sure.

“He's got his thumb on the button,” Bixby said.

Wynne glanced at the radio in his hand and he glanced over at Russell. Rifles firing. Men screaming. Static.

Then they were moving, the six of them crouching down the tunnel, then back into the hall where they'd first taken fire, past the body of Perkins, the lights on their carbines flashing the marbled rock walls. When they reached the stone staircase that led up to the passageway, the captain halted. The chamber here was wide enough for three of them to walk abreast and Wynne squatted beside the steps and keyed his radio.

“Underchild Five, how copy?”

“Roger, Underchild. Go ahead.”

“What's happening out there? Over.”

The voice belonged to Sergeant Rosa. It said, “They're in contact down below me, Grimes and Hallum. I count three Talibs with RPGs and half a dozen with small arms coming to you.”

Wynne asked him how far out.

“Just started up the slope,” Rosa said.

The captain looked over at Ox, his face lit from beneath like a jack-o'-lantern's.

“What do you think?” he asked.

“Can't let them get their rockets off,” said Ox. “They'll suck out the oxygen and suffocate us.”

“Or burn us out,” said Bixby.

“Or burn us,” Ox agreed.

Wynne nodded. He said he was open to suggestions.

Ox said, “We need to hit them while we got gravity working for us. I'd sooner be throwing rounds downhill than up.”

“Plunging fire,” said Ziza.

“Exactly,” Ox said.

“We won't have any cover,” said Morgan. “Not out on that shelf.”

“They get up the slope with those launchers and we're fucked,” Ox told him. “Bottom line.”

Wynne seemed to consider all of this. He keyed his radio.

“Five,” he said, “we're moving to engage from up top. Can you get line of sight on our Tangos? Over.”

Rosa told him he could.

“Execute to follow,” said the captain.

“Wilco,” Rosa said.

Wynne slid the radio back in its pouch, turned, and stood. He motioned for Ox to lead the way up the stairs, then fell in behind. Morgan followed, then Ziza and Bixby. Russell went trailing after, gripping his rifle so tightly he couldn't feel his hands.

 

They emerged from the cave into afternoon sunlight, taking knees on the sandstone ledge and then proning out on their stomachs to peer over the edge of the shelf. Russell knelt behind Ziza and then duck-walked toward the rock-cut stairs they'd ascended earlier. Wynne and Ox lay of the very brink of the ledge, staring down through their rifle scopes. Russell shouldered his carbine and looked downhill where the stairs angled across the slope's final stretch, the hillside very steep and, except for the stairs, impassable. He could hear the rustle and clink of gear as Bixby and Morgan got into position. He couldn't see the Talibs and was reaching for the binoculars in the cargo pocket of his fatigues when he heard the captain unsafe his rifle. Then he heard Ox and Ziza doing the same. He squinted through his carbine's optic and saw two black turbans come into view. Faces beneath the turbans, then shoulders and torsos.

The captain keyed his radio.

“Execute,” he said.

The lead Talib was completely visible now, running the stairs with his rifle at port arms, about fifty meters out. Russell heard the crack of Rosa's rifle, and a second later a cavity opened in the center of the man's chest and he was propelled several feet forward, pitching onto his face. The man behind him turned to look in the direction of the rifle shot, and Russell heard another crack, and this man's head vanished in a bright burst of red. His body tipped backward and then slid from sight.

Everything went instantly quiet. He breathed in and out. He heard Wynne key the talk button and ask Rosa what the other Talibs were doing. Russell snugged the stock of his carbine tighter into his shoulder, relaxed his hand on the grip, opened and closed it several times to get the blood moving. His scalp was tingling and a warm breeze stirred the damp hairs on the back of his neck. Ziza was just to his right, and Russell glanced quickly at the commando lying there beside him with the scope to his eye. He wondered if the man saw something he didn't. He wondered if they'd have to fight their way back to the horses. It occurred to him that the horses might've been killed in the exchange earlier, and then it occurred to him that perhaps Wheels had been as well.

Then they were taking fire, the rounds buzzing in low and sparking off the rocks. Russell couldn't see the shooters, but he hated them instantly. It always surprised him—men you didn't know, never spoke to, never laid eyes on. As soon as that first shot cracked over your head, bile rose from your gut and you loathed whomever would aim the weapon and pull its trigger. You knew they loathed you as well, and you were bound together until one or both of you died and the hatred turned to sadness or rage, something else to carry inside you like a tumor. Russell pressed his chin against the deck, tried to remember to keep his heels down. Ox was releasing controlled bursts from his machine gun, and Ziza had begun to fire as well—spacing the shots carefully, conserving ammo, Russell thought. He shifted his weight and peeked out through his gunsight at the staircase below. There were no Talibs trying the steps, and Rosa's voice came barking over the radio in a metallic stutter:

“Right flank! Right flank! Right flank!”

Russell was just processing the words when he heard the
whoosh
of a launcher and then the low hiss of the rocket traveling toward them. He glanced over in time to see a vapor trail climbing the steep slope to their right, and then he palmed the back of his head with both hands and tucked his chin between his elbows. He'd just done this when there was a loud explosion and debris began falling from the cliff face above. Sand and small clods of dirt rained all around, and there was a fog of dust so thick he couldn't see. He began to hack and cough, and there was dirt in his eyes. He wished for his sunglasses that he'd lost during the assault on the building where they'd been ambushed, and it occurred to him that they'd been ambushed a second time, only this was a trap they'd expected and the captain had led them into it. He coughed again, cleared his throat and spat, then tried to blink the dust from his eyes. He heard Rosa's rifle crack once, twice, and then his voice over the radio telling them to fall back. The dust began to settle and Russell saw what he could hardly believe: Talibs traveling up the hillside.

This slope was impossible to traverse—as unstable as it was steep—but the three forms came up it regardless, spaced twenty meters apart and sprinting. They wore black turbans and black man-shirts, and as they came they hip-fired their rifles. They were about a hundred yards below Russell, maybe a little less. Ziza already had his gun in the fight, and Ox had moved up to kneel beside him, firing on these men moving up the incline, one dropping and sliding backward, two more appearing in the distance to take his place. The captain had crawled up beside Russell—so had Sergeant Bixby—and he glanced to his left and saw Morgan had pulled the pin on a grenade. He rose to lob it, and then his head whipped violently to one side and he fell back and disappeared over the lip of the shelf. Russell called the man's name, but he couldn't hear his own voice, and it wasn't until the sound of the grenade came from the hillside below that the others turned. Bixby shot Russell a confused look, but Wynne's expression indicated he understood almost immediately, and the captain turned back to the enemies approaching from their right and continued to fire.

Then Rosa's voice was loud on the radio. He said they were under fire themselves. He said they were pinned down. He said the captain's position was about to be overrun, and then the radio went suddenly silent and Russell could hear the man's rifle cracking down below. There was the tight staccato chatter of carbines and then the dull, loose rattling of enemy AKs. Another RPG came
whoosh
ing over the shelf and exploded above them, closer this time. Russell's ears were ringing and fragments of rock peppered the backs of his legs. Smoke everywhere. All of them coughing. The Talibs couldn't get a rocket directly on them, but they were using the explosions to provide cover as they moved, and Russell knew in another few minutes they'd be fighting them hand to hand. The dust started to drift, and the smell of gunpowder was back behind his eyes, sharp as needles, and then he heard the captain's voice:

“No one fire,” it was saying. “Everybody on the deck.”

Russell didn't know what they'd possibly fire at—none of them could even see—and they were all pressed to the earth anyway, awaiting their deaths.

But Wynne was crawling backward, inching toward the left side of the shelf, hissing for the others to do the same. Russell thought he was directing them toward the cave—which would certainly be the end, boxed in and buried—but that wasn't the captain's plan.

The four of them followed Wynne, belly-crawling, ten yards, twenty, dragging their bodies across the sand backward until their boots touched the rock wall on the far side of the ledge and they could go no farther. Russell was up against the edge of the shelf, the toe of his left boot hanging out over empty space, Ziza beside him, the captain to Ziza's right. Then Sergeant Bixby. Then Ox. Wynne addressed them in a loud whisper. He pointed toward the far side of the shelf, the lip they'd been firing from and over which, at any moment, the Talibs would appear.

“Make them think they've killed us,” he said. “Make them think they pushed us back inside. They'll be forming up down below us. They'll come at us in a line. Don't squeeze off a single round until you can see them from the knees up. You need to reload, do it now. Work your way from the outside in. Roger that?”

“Roger,” they all said.

Russell ejected his magazine. He had, from the weight of it, maybe ten or eleven more rounds, and he tossed the clip in his dump pouch, pulled a fresh one from his hip, and inserted it in the mag well, giving it a tap with the heel of his hand. He drew back the charging handle and canted his rifle to the left to make sure there was brass in the chamber, then released the handle and let it slam home, careful not to ride it, pressing the forward assist several times to make certain the round had seated. He tightened his grip on the rifle and pressed his heels against the ground, got his spine into alignment, inhaled and exhaled a few quick breaths. Then he stared through his gunsight at the far end of the shelf, holding the red dot about three feet off the ground, aiming for what would be center mass. He thumbed off the safety and rested the pad of his index finger very lightly against the trigger. He thought these would be the last bullets he'd ever fire from a gun, and then there was a shrill cry from the slope below them, a strange alien yawp like a dozen voices screaming the same unintelligible curse, and Russell felt his bladder give way and the crotch of his pants go warm. Wynne was whispering to them, the captain's voice like a narrow bridge onto which he was walking—step by step by step—only the words allowing him to move forward while everything else urged him to close his eyes and collapse. The captain said to stay tight, stay focused, not to break their shots until they could see their targets from the knees up, and Russell managed to step out on Wynne's promptings, a little bit farther, a little farther still. Each word was a brick beneath his feet, and Russell inhaled very deeply and blinked. One moment he was staring through his optic at an empty expanse of sky, and the next there were four men in their long shirts and turbans. Five men. Six. They seemed to appear on the shelf out of nothing—eight of them now—moving at a sprint. They wore the cheap high-top sneakers Americans called “Cheetahs” and carried their rifles very low. Russell watched their expressions shift from resolve to bafflement, eyes visibly widening. He realized they were close enough that he could see their eyes, maybe fifteen yards, and then these men were coming suddenly apart. He'd snapped off half a dozen shots in quick succession, as had Ziza and the captain, while Ox let go his machine gun in a long uninterrupted burst. The men rushing them seemed to have struck an actual wall, bodies moving back as their legs continued to carry them forward, garments shredding, a black-sleeved limb separating from its torso and turning end over end in the dry desert air. And then just as quickly as the Talibs had appeared, they were lying on their backs with legs bent underneath them, Wynne already up on a knee with his rifle shouldered, then Ox, then Ziza, the three of them standing and moving forward, hips locked, walking from the knees down, snapping additional rounds into the dead and dying Talibs as they went past, kicking rifles away from their hands. Russell cast a quick glance over to Bixby, who was still proned out on the ground himself, then looked back toward the captain and Ziza and Ox, who'd reached the far end of the shelf and were now firing over its edge.

And then the engagement was over. Wynne was walking back toward them, keying the radio to raise Hallum or Rosa, Ox behind him laughing contentedly, a warm light in his eyes, joyful as a boy. Ziza began to laugh, and Russell found that he was smiling as well—he couldn't help it—adrenaline coursing, the euphoria like something that could split your chest. He could hear gunfire from across the valley, the long rattle of an AK, and then two quick shots in answer. Then nothing.