Tom chewed his lip and grabbed the seat bar as the Chinook hit turbulence. He knew he was heading for a death zone.
The last time he’d flown in a helicopter had been on a short flight from DC to Richmond, Virginia, where the secretary had opened a library at South University. That was a fortnight ago. He’d thought that his time with her would end in a clean slate until he’d gotten the call from his direct superior, informing him that she would be going to Islamabad. He never knew why, in detail. He didn’t have to know. He was only ever told her destination days before if her schedule changed. But he’d felt uneasy from the beginning, a nagging doubt that had played out as fretful dreams.
Crane turned to Tom. “ETA five minutes,” he mouthed, holding up five fingers. He opened up a laptop to get the live feeds. “That’s the view from Sawyer’s video camera in Salt One,” he bellowed. “That’s the interpreter next to him. Bet he didn’t sign up for this. The operators call it flying it into the X. Heavy shit, huh.”
The interpreter was a Pakistani, his face obscured by a black ski mask. Tom knew that his whole family would be killed if he was ever recognized.
The screen was split into quarters, with different images appearing from the various cameras, including those mounted on the Black Hawks’ fuselages. Briefly, Tom wondered what his first words to her would be. Whether it would be appropriate to apologize or simply say he was glad to see her alive? But what if they found her dead already? What if the plan failed at the last moment and she was killed or terribly injured? What would he say or do then? he thought.
As the amber LED lights were cut, he spent the next few minutes zoning out.
“They’re moving in,” said Crane, breaking into Tom’s thoughts.
Tom looked down towards Crane’s lap at the live feeds. “The Black Hawks are shaking a lot,” he said, watching one of the helicopters hover above the fort’s flat roof as the other lowered down to about ten metres above the courtyard. Each had a sniper aiming a suppressed rifle out of the cabin’s open side door, scanning the rescue site for any sign of a fighter.
“Uplift of trapped air,” Crane said. “It’ll be fine. The Delta work top down, bottom up, and converge in the middle. Smooth and fast, smooth and fast. A breacher blows down a door, then the fire teams enter. They take out the resistance. The main dangers are trip wires, IEDs and blind firing around walls. If the whole place isn’t rigged with Semtex, it’ll be fine. Don’t worry. If she’s there, we’ll find her.”
At least Crane is still upbeat, Tom thought. He just hoped he had a right to be, despite the man’s previous misgivings.
On screen, he watched Sawyer lead the assault on the ground. He fast-roped adroitly in leather mitts some seven metres from the bar jutting out from Black Hawk’s fuselage, landing into a swirl of dust and small stones. After being propelled forward by the rotor wash, he took point in the dark courtyard, adjusting his headphones before speaking into his cheek mic. The main building was directly ahead of him, a few outbuildings and vehicle ports left and right. He scanned around with his M4A1 carbine, fixed with a thermal scope and red-dot laser, his four-tube night-vision goggles allowing peripheral vision, but making him look as if he’d landed from another solar system.
After the main interpreter sprained an ankle on the descent and a medic had his ill-secured backpack almost torn off by the wash, the assault teams panned out and ran forward, their torsos clad in sixty-pound ballistic plates. The live feed showed a serious of controlled explosions, bursts of automatic fire and swift movement.
“Alpha three down. Medevac,” Sawyer shouted, looking over at an operator seven metres from him, his body splayed on the ground.
With that, another Delta was blown into the air three metres in front of Sawyer. He landed heavily, his legs a twisted mess. The operators couldn’t use their fragmentation grenades, because they had no idea where the secretary was being held. But the local fighters were using them to devastating effect. That and a triangulation of small-arms fire.
“Jesus,” Tom said.
The movement ratcheted up to something approaching frantic. Gunfire crackled and breaching charges erupted. A flurry of tracer rounds flew through the air from a corner turret and, a few seconds later, there was a massive explosion coupled with a white flash. Tom heard the muted voices of the men on the ground.
“Salt Two down,” said Sawyer. “A bird’s down. A bird’s down.”
“Shit!” Tom said.
With that, an Apache hovered before blowing off the turret. A funnel of flame exploded upward from the black smoke ball, the smashed clay bricks showering down onto the courtyard. Tom thought it might as well have been made of balsa wood for all the protection it had afforded.
“Wow,” Crane said. “See that? Got those RPGs for damn sure.”
As the operators moved into the main building they began to clear the warren of corridors. Their eyes were covered by helmet-mounted NVGs as they aimed suppressed, desert-tan HK416 assault rifles and Colt carbines, assaulting the building from top and bottom, just as Crane had said they would. The insurgents fell away like ghosts, or buckled under double taps to the head and body from relatively close quarters, after they were fixed with IR lasers. Once a section was cleared, an assaulter shouted, “Move,” and his teammate would shout, “Moving,” before taking a step. It was precise. Calculated.
Outside, a second Apache fired a rocket at the far left-hand side of the surrounding wall of the fort compound, smashing a gaping hole in the clay bricks.
“There ain’t enough room to put the Chinooks down in the courtyard and the gate is likely to be rigged. Hence the hole. We’re going in,” Crane barked. “And put your goggles on or you’ll be picking grit out of your eyes for a week.”
Tom felt a rush of adrenalin. He’d been in combat zones many times, but this was something else.
The Chinook hovered before descending ten metres from the fort’s outer wall. After it touched down in the landing zone, the tail ramp lowered so that they could disembark quickly without squeezing through the cabin doors. A bearded master sergeant, holding an HK fixed with an AG416 40mm grenade launcher, led them through the smoke and swirling dust whipped up by the rotors, over the chunks of bricks and into the main courtyard. The downed Black Hawk was burning up in the far right-hand corner, the other circling in front of the bullet-ridden walls of the main building. The Delta told them to follow his steps, saying that they hadn’t swept the area and IEDs could be anywhere.
Tom saw a dozen bodies lying dead or groaning on the ground, including three operators, who were being attended to by medics. A group of women, hugging children and wailing, sat in the courtyard to the left. In front of them, a couple of Delta stood either side of the second masked interpreter as he attempted to comfort the innocents and obtain intel in the process. Directly behind him, four operators were securing those insurgents who’d surrendered or had been captured alive with plasticuffs before hooding them. At the doorways to the outer buildings, infrared lights visible only via the operators’ night-vision goggles signalled that they’d been cleared of any threat.
Tom, Crane and the others were met at the central door by another five Delta, all wearing mismatched uniforms and padded gloves. One was holding a Belgian Malinois dog on a lead, its eyes protected by a ballistic visor, its torso sheathed in body armour. The dog snarled when they came close, bearing huge fangs. Its Delta handler jerked the lead and took point. Sawyer remained behind, organizing the ongoing security of the periphery with