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Senior Airman Asa Dobbs ignored the bead of sweat creeping past the outer edge of his left eye and squinted, concentrating on the camp below him, portrayed in the eerie green of his night vision goggles. There... He tracked the target slowly, cataloging mannerisms, the way the dead man walking moved.
The vision hit him as all the others had, with an abrupt fade of his “here” sight, as it morphed into the “other.” In his mind’s-eye the desert around him disappeared, replaced by the murky interior of a building, cluttered and dirty. In the center of the room sat a card table surrounded by four men, each sweating as they smoked contraband cigarettes. His target gestured angrily, pointing to a map centered atop the table, before driving the tip of his knife into the flimsy paper, leaving the hilt swaying with the force of his blow.
Asa forced his floating body forward, until he stood between two of the insurgents, his target directly across the table. The map showed a deep, dusty valley, surrounded by craggy cliffs.
His vision misted once again, and he “saw” a three-vehicle convoy slowly wind its way up the mountain, keeping to the middle of the road in an attempt to avoid IEDs. He cringed at the images of the carnage the insurgents would wreak, the broken and battered bodies strewn along the road, equipment and weapons and a high-end camera, probably from an embedded reporter.
This was what he’d been meant to see. He withdrew, retreating to the here-and-now. With a sharp blink of his eyes, the vision of the building dissolved, replaced by the reality of Afghanistan.
Asa slithered down the slope and went in search of the one man he could trust. Technical Sergeant David Carmichael.
Carmichael crouched in a shallow ditch, his own NVGs trained on very same camp, a camp where they suspected a driver from a supply convoy was being held. As pararescue, they weren’t usually the first in, but in this case, they’d been the closest unit for recon until regular Army troops arrived.
Asa jumped into the ditch, not surprised when Carmichael didn’t even flinch. His sergeant was made of ice. A very large, very powerful block of ice.
“Speak,” Carmichael said quietly but with such a punch of force, his order was almost a physical thing.
“He’s not in there,” Asa whispered, “but they’re planning a hit a convoy of Green Berets.”
Carmichael swiveled slowly and pushed the NVGs atop his head before giving Asa the fish-eye. “What did you see?”
Asa swallowed past a knot the size of Texas. “They’re on the road now. I don’t know that we can stop it, but we can lessen the damage.” Carmichael hadn’t believed in his visions, not at first, none of them had, but Asa had pulled their bacon out of the fire once too often. Now all of them relied on his gift. Hell, even Roney had finally bought in, but he’d been a hard-assed bastard to convince.
Afghanistan was a hell of a long way from Kansas, and he intended to make it back to Wichita in one piece. And if he had his way, his comrades would be going back to their state of choice right beside him...not in a fucking body bag.