CHAPTER 19

checkpoint dewar’s

hindu kush mountain range

afghanistan

And just like that, with one cosmic flip of the coin, everything went to shit.

Chunk had been here before. Times like this were what separated a leader from a shooter. In the chaos, the team would cue off his response. If he kept a cool head, so would they. If he didn’t let the chaos of battle distract him, neither would they. If he ate the shit biscuit the universe had just served them and kept on going, so would they. The only way to turn the tables and regain control was through sheer force of will and Tier One–level determination.

“Contact, right! Contact, right!” Riker shouted in Chunk’s ear.

This was followed by two three-round bursts of rifle fire. Chunk spun left and pedaled backward, following his Senior Chief as they descended off the rocky rise, toward the “courtyard” by the cave entrance.

“Twelve fighters south and spreading out west,” came Yi’s voice. “Less than sixty yards. You have fifteen more moving quickly from the north. They shifted east and will come down the hill right on top of you.”

Enemy rounds exploded the boulder beside Chunk’s head. Rock shards peppered his right cheek as he sighted and returned fire on the muzzle flash across the way. After squeezing off a three-round burst, he ducked low and found barely functional cover behind a rocky rise, his back now to the cave mouth.

If fighters come out of that cave mouth, we’re fucked, he realized.

“God, One—how are your lines?” Chunk asked, working the problem.

“One, God—I got no line yet on the southern assaulters pressing you.”

“How about the cave mouth?”

“Good lines.”

“Put a few rounds to keep heads down and make them think twice,” Chunk answered. “Just in case.”

Because the Tali were pouring out the other exits to escape the CS gas, odds were the cave was empty, but a little insurance would be nice so his guys could focus on the enemy in front of them. He heard three throaty pops from Saw’s sniper rifle, firing deadly 7.62 rounds into the cave.

“Three rounds down the throat,” Saw came back. “No movement.”

“Check,” Chunk said and turned to Riker, who was firing his assault rifle, the Mk 48 machine gun still strapped to his back. “Let’s put the heavy gun to work. I’ll cover you.”

“Roger,” Riker called to him, firing from a crouch. “Cover.”

Chunk popped up and fired several blind bursts into the woods, then targeted the area where he’d last seen enemy muzzle flashes, aware that Georgie was firing from beside him and Trip was still in the fight at the overhang above the cave. He felt, rather than saw, Riker sprint across the courtyard, unstrapping the Mk 48 as he ran.

“Shit,” Yi said. “Looks like three more fighters emerging from the south. That’s fifteen south, and the fifteen north will be on you in seconds.”

“Hang in there, Jackal,” came the cool baritone voice of Captain Bowman. “Stalker is inbound to clear the woods in less than two mikes.”

“Roger, Mother. Jackal, pop IR now. Pop lights for Stalker,” Chunk ordered his team.

Chunk fired again, reached up and snapped on the IR strobe on top of his helmet, then clicked the MBITR radio on his chest two clicks left and switched to vox, letting his voice now activate the boom mike.

“Stalker flight—Jackal One.”

“Jackal, Stalker Three—we’re on target in forty seconds. Stalker Four in trail,” the helo pilot answered, rotors thrumming the air in the background.

“Roger, Stalker. We’re being overrun. Popping lights. Anything without a strobe is a shithead. We have fifteen tangos between us and Maker’s Mark, and another fifteen engaging us from the south.”

“Hurrying,” came Stalker’s deadly serious voice in his ear.

“Contact left!” someone called.

A fresh burst of enemy fire ricocheted all around him as Taliban fighters from the north came into range and joined the fight. The controlled staccato cracks of the SEALs’ 5.56 rounds were drowned out by a wave of throatier, chaotic AK-47 fire from the new arrivals.

“Two, this is God,” came Saw’s calm voice. “Shift left two meters.”

Chunk scanned the woods and rocks to the south. A head snuck around a boulder and he dropped his green IR dot onto the face and squeezed. Three rounds tore apart the bearded face and the insurgent pitched forward onto the pine needles. Chunk switched to a single round with his right thumb as someone reached around the boulder and pulled at the downed fighter, only to collapse on top of him after Chunk’s bullet hit him in the chest.

In the background, Chunk heard Saw finally going to work with his sniper rifle as the Taliban encroached into his sight lines.

“Two—you got two tangos bearing down on your left,” Saw warned Spence. “And you got three more trying to flank you, Jackal Two.”

Several more cracks followed.

To Chunk’s left the tree line suddenly exploded with muzzle flashes. The ground in front of his face exploded and dirt sprayed his face. He tried to raise his head to engage a target but was forced back down by another barrage from the woods.

“Shit, shit, shit,” he heard Trip grumble.

Fire and move. Fire and move . . .

He dropped low and shuffled to the left, smashing his elbow painfully into a rock. Then the air began to vibrate around him as he heard Riker, behind him, light up the night with the heavy machine gun. He peered above the rock, aware that warm blood trickled down his right cheek and was collecting in his beard. The stream of 7.62 from Riker’s Mk 48 tore through the pine trees, dropping branches and chunks of wood to the forest floor and forcing the fighters back. Chunk pulled his rifle up, sighted, and with three rapid squeezes of his trigger, dropped two retreating fighters, shooting them in the back.

Then the world exploded to his right.

“Oh, fuck,” came Spence’s voice. “Heavy contact. Five, shift fire right. We’re in deep shit.”

“I got no line,” Riker said. “Moving back.”

“Stalker Three and Four are on station,” came the pilot’s voice. “We see you in heavy contact, caught in a crossfire from north and south, Jackal.”

Chunk imagined the battle from the attack helicopter pilot’s perspective. His half of the SEALs were on the west side of the courtyard, bunched up with limited cover. Spence and his team were even less protected on the other side. They were completely boxed in and, yes, caught in a wicked crossfire.

Chunk was confident he could hold the south, especially with Riker on the Mk 48. Unfortunately, reaching their exfil required them to go through the heart of the Taliban force bearing down on Spence’s squad. The minute Chunk turned his team north, the Taliban shooters behind them would pursue, flanking them the entire way.

First things first . . .

“Stalker Three, we need you to clear a path north to Maker’s Mark,” Chunk said to the helo pilots.

“You’re danger close, Jackal. Closest fighter is less than ten yards.”

“Roger, danger close. Stalker, standby—we’ll reposition and clear you in hot.” He squeezed off several rounds south. Then, he pressed a button on the MBITR and clicked twice to the left, merging the channels. “Jackal, fall in on the cave mouth. Close ranks right fucking now. Stalker is coming in hot, danger close. Move now.”

A steady thump of sniper fire echoed from Saw’s position, but it was quickly drowned out by a prolonged strafe from Riker’s heavy gun.

“One more down to your north,” Saw called.

“God, cover our six to the courtyard. Once we’re repositioned, we’ll cover your move to rejoin,” Spence called.

“Jackal, I count ten tangos surging from the south tree line,” Yi said.

Despite the bad news, Chunk felt a paradoxical calm come over him, warm and familiar from dozens of other firefights he’d survived. He’d repositioned his team and had Stalker engage. Now, they just needed to exfil.

Muzzle flashes lit up in the trees south of him like fireworks.

In response, he, Georgie, and Trip, popped up and poured fire into the tree line. A moment later a serpentine tongue of orange fire licked over his shoulder as Riker sprayed the advancing fighters with 7.62 rounds. Chunk watched several tangos bite the dust, unable to withstand the maelstrom of bullets.

When the barrage ended, he made an adjustment. “Three, shift fire to the north to cover Two.”

“Check,” Riker replied and brought the heavy machine gun around to work the flanking Taliban fighters.

Thighs burning, Chunk duck-walked back to the right, then popped up and fired into the trees. In that moment, he noticed the muzzle flashes opposite them had all but stopped as the surviving enemy retreated from Riker’s prolonged assault. A heartbeat later, the Taliban redoubled their efforts and unleashed a coordinated barrage.

“Ah, shit,” he heard Georgie holler to his left.

Then he felt something hot tear through his left arm.

Awesome. Now I’m fucking shot.

“Four, Six, and Eight—stagger movements now,” he ordered.

Chunk ducked and counted to three, ready to pop up again, and pictured Morales, Edwards, and Antman covering each other as they moved one by one. He popped up and fired, ignoring the burn just above his elbow. His arm appeared to be working, so whatever wound he’d taken, it wasn’t mission critical.

“Four’s in the courtyard.”

Another strafe from Riker sent rounds and tracers into the tree line.

“Eight is moving,” Antman replied.

“God’s gotcha,” came Saw’s calm voice, then the whump whump of his sniper rifle.

“RPG!” someone shouted.

Chunk’s throat tightened at the call and he dove down behind the rise of rocks, feeling Georgie do the same beside him, uncertain which fire team was being targeted. An explosion rocked the earth behind him. An acrid smell filled his mouth and nose, and AK-47 gunfire cracked all around them.

“Man down, man down!”

It was Edwards’s voice.

Chunk realized it was all going to hell . . . he had to get Spence’s guys to the courtyard so Stalker could strafe the north slope and clear a path to the exfil. Dug in like they were, it would be impossible to accomplish from the ground.

“Covering fire!” Spence shouted, more a plea than an order.

The desire to spin around and engage to the north to cover his men was almost unbearable. But if he shifted north now, they would be overrun from the south. Hold the line, said the voice in his head as he popped up again and fired two three-round bursts into the woods where he’d last seen enemy muzzle flares. Georgie and Trip followed his lead, and the return fire flashes in the woods fell off.

“One, we have an urgent CASEVAC. Eight is down,” Edwards reported.

“Down but not out,” came Antman’s tense reply.

“Two, call the air strike,” Chunk barked.

Spence’s fire team had still not made it to the courtyard, and Chunk couldn’t cover the rocky rise to have Stalker engage without risking friendly fire. The AK-47 fire from the north was relentless now as Spence and Edwards tried to drag Antman back to the courtyard without getting shot in the back.

“Two, you gotta call it, dude,” Saw said, now the lone covering fire. “Or you’re fucked.”

“Stalker Three, Jackal Two—you’re cleared hot on the tangos north. Danger close. Danger close.”

“Roger, Jackal. Targets north. Danger close,” the helo pilot said, then unleashed hell.

Chunk ducked and covered as the MH6 engaged. The unmistakable brrrrrrrrrttt of the Miniguns strafing the hillside sent a shiver down his spine. He couldn’t see it, but his mind’s eye imagined the scene—Taliban fighters scrambling for cover as twin tongues of fire turned the mountain into a pile of rubble, bone, and blood. The Miniguns went quiet and a half dozen squeals shredded the silence as the pilot fired his Hydra 70 rockets. In that moment, night became day, even behind Chunk’s tightly closed lids, and a wave of heat rolled over his back as the rockets exploded in near-simultaneous precision, engulfing the northern approach in a wall of flame.

“Two,” Chunk said, keeping the strain out of his voice as best he could, “move north toward Maker’s Mark. We’ll cover your six until you’re clear, then pull up. Three and Five, covering fire when we move, then fall in on us.”

Several double clicks followed, along with Saw’s calm voice in his ear, “Rog.”

Chunk fired a burst, then glanced over at Georgie, who leaned in on his rifle, jaw clenched and shredding the tree line. A wet oval the size of a football soaked the kid’s left pant leg at thigh level.

“How’s that leg, Georgie?” he called.

“I’m in the fight,” the SEAL yelled back over the roar of his weapon.

“Can you run?”

“Yeah, boss.”

“All right, get ready. We’re exfilling to Maker’s Mark,” he said, then into his mike, “Stalker Three, Jackal One—you cool repeating that performance and sweep south?”

“Make the call and we’ll light them up,” the pilot came back.

“They’ve got at least one RPG in the mix. Be careful, Stalker,” Chunk warned.

“Roger that, we’ll light ’em up with rockets first in that case.”

“God,” he informed Saw, “covering fire, then fall in. Let’s move, people.” Chunk led the retreat. Georgie followed in a hobbled backpedal, rifle up and firing behind them. As they crossed in front of the cave entrance, Chunk scanned over his rifle into the blackness. Thank God, the hole was still empty, or they would have been cut to pieces. And yet, with the Taliban maintaining this kind of presence, and mounting such a tenacious defense, it all but confirmed these caves had played a role in the drone attack. With that thought, he snapped the IR beacon off the left shoulder of his kit, turned it on, and tossed it to the ground at the entrance to the black hole.

They pushed through a gauntlet of boulders and bullets.

Overhead, the helo’s engines whined and Chunk glanced up in time to see the Stalker pilot execute a truly badass maneuver. Like a drift racer, he swung an arc over top of the cave while gaining altitude and repositioning to fire down mountain on the Taliban to the south. The pilot opened with a rocket barrage, emptying the eight remaining Hydras. The explosion that followed completely washed out Chunk’s night vision. Light blind, his toe caught a rock and he stumbled, banging his knee painfully. A heartbeat later his vision returned. He scanned ahead and saw Spence and Edwards helping Antman, who was buckled over at the waist, across the rocky terrain on the final push to the X. Glancing behind him, he saw that Georgie was limping now, taking a skip instead of a stride every few steps, so Chunk ducked beside him and hooked an arm around his torso.

“Stalker Lead,” Chunk said, calling the Blackhawk pilot. “Jackal will make Maker’s Mark in less than four mikes. One urgent surgical.”

“Roger, Jackal,” came the reply.

“Jackal One, Stalker Three,” came the little bird pilot. “Clearing the woods for you.”

“Copy. Thanks for your help. Just one more package for you. You should see a strobe on station at Dewar’s,” he said, referring to the IR beacon he’d tossed into the mouth of the cave.

“Stand by, Jackal . . . Roger we’ve got it.”

“Turn it to dust when we’re clear.”

“Roger that, Jackal.”

He liked the pleasure he heard in the pilot’s voice.

With the woods behind them, Chunk and the others reached a wide cliff ledge, less than forty feet across, with a hundred-foot drop-off to the east and a sheer thirty-foot wall of rock to the west. The outcropping had barely enough clearance for the fifty-four-foot rotor diameter of the Special Operations variant 160th SOAR Blackhawks.

He eased Georgie to a knee. The others followed his lead, all taking tactical knees and scanning all directions in a defensive circle at the edge of the thin woods.

“Mother, Jackal is Maker’s Mark,” Chunk announced, a hint of triumph creeping into his voice.

“We see you, Jackal. It’s clear around you. Stalker, Mother—clear for pickup of the package.”

In seconds, a Blackhawk materialized at the very edge of the cliff ledge, the tips of the rotors sparking green with static electricity in the NVGs. Spence and Edwards sprinted forward, Antman in between them, then Morales, all scanning over rifles as they stepped backward into the helicopter, which hovered expertly just inches from the ledge. The Blackhawk nosed forward and headed south, dropping below the ledge as a second bird moved into position.

Chunk scanned behind them as Riker and Saw helped Georgie into the helicopter. Then they stepped backward into the bird, never stopping the scan over their rifles. Chunk’s stomach lurched as the helo dove steep and fast. Then it rose rapidly and banked east, climbing higher into the sky, then sharply south toward J-Bad.

“Stalker Three, Jackal One. Send it.”

He flipped his NVGs up just as the entire east side of the mountain exploded. A mushroom of flame lit up the twilight sky as the Hellfire missiles fired by the MH6 turned the mouth of the cave into Dante’s Inferno.

Chunk grinned.

Anyone left in the cave was a crispy critter now. The Talis wouldn’t be launching drone attacks on US convoys from that mountainside stronghold ever again.