“Showtime, pal. Our train’s coming in.”
“Copy that. We’ve got our tickets ready.”
As he put down the radio, Maxwell heard the faraway beat of inbound helos. He saw that B.J. was awake now. She lay under the thermal blanket, regarding him with large, somber eyes. Her face was still blackened, and her short, dark hair lay in a mat on her head.
She was a good-looking girl, he observed, even with all the glop on her face. Funny that he had never noticed before.
She caught him studying her. “I look like a witch, don’t I?”
“More like a girl who’s been chased by guerillas in Yemen.”
She gave him a wan smile. “Are they going to pick us up?”
“They’re on the way.”
“Will the Sherji start shooting again?”
“I don’t know. Maybe.”
She slid the blanket aside and sat up. Her left arm was bound in the sling he had made for her. She winced when she tried to use the arm. “Owww, that really hurts.”
“Are you able to move? We have to find a clear spot for the pickup.”
“Don’t worry. Nothing is going to stop me from getting into that chopper.”
They gathered their equipment into the two satchels. With Maxwell in the lead, they started down the hillside. He didn’t want to risk traveling far, only to an open area with enough clearance for the helo crew to pick them up.
It would have to be a quick snatch. The Sherji would know about the helos as soon as they did. He carried the .45 with a refilled magazine in his right hand, just in case.
On a terraced hillside he found a clearing that looked suitable. Not too steep, not so open that it would be a shooting gallery. He motioned for B.J. to take cover in the bushes above the clearing. “When they get close, we’ll throw the smoke flare into the clearing. Don’t wait for them to land. Just run out and let the crew haul you aboard.”
She nodded. “Do you think it’s gonna work?”
“We’ll be okay.”
She looked at him for a moment. “Well, just in case, I wanted you to know…” Her voice trailed off.
“Wanted me to know what?”
She swallowed, then finished. “I mean, you know, I wanted to say… thanks.”
“You saved me first, remember?”
“Uh-huh.” She kept her eyes focused somewhere over his shoulder, avoiding his look. “That’s not really what I meant. Look, I have to say this, just get it out and then drop it.”
“I have no idea what you’re talking about.”
She blurted the rest. “I love you. That’s all. It’s crazy, I know, but I just had to say it and I promise I’ll never bring it up again, okay?”
She turned away and began furiously retying her bootlace.
Maxwell stared. He tried to think of something to say but nothing came out. He was still standing there, speechless, when the Sherji guns opened up.
The sounds of battle again spilled out of the hills.
The Whiskey Cobras came in low and fast, rockets blazing from their inboard pylons, streams of cannon fire spewing from the chin-mounted twenty millimeters. Behind them, approaching the marine perimeter, the big vulnerable CH-53E Super Stallions were already taking hits. The first cargo helicopter pulled up and made a hard turn away. Then the next. And the next. None were landing.
The Sherji gunners were getting the range on the helicopters.
“Abort, abort!” Maxwell heard Gritti calling on the SAR frequency. “Pull the Stallions back. It’s another fucking ambush.”
He heard the frustration in Gritti’s voice. The Cobras were dueling with the Sherji gunners, concealed in a line of scrub trees south of the marines’ perimeter. In the distance Maxwell heard the bullets pinging into the retreating Super Stallions.
Maxwell had already tossed his flare. Now a gush of orange smoke was wafting into the sky from the clearing where Maxwell and B.J. were huddled.
“Do you think the helicopters see us?” B.J. asked.
“I don’t know, but the Sherji definitely can.” He stashed the PRC-112 radio and yanked B.J. to her feet. “This is turning into another shooting gallery. We’ve gotta get out of here.”
“Wait,” she said. “They still might be able to—”
A nearby burst of gunfire cut her off. It was close, no more than a hundred yards. Without protest, she grabbed the satchel with her good arm and followed Maxwell down the hill.
Before they’d gone twenty yards, they heard the sudden racket of rotor blades. Maxwell turned to see a Cobra gunship pop over the ridgeline behind them. Directly behind the Cobra appeared a UH-1N Super Huey utility helicopter. While the Cobra flashed overhead, the Huey swept in over the clearing where Maxwell had thrown the smoke flare, kicking up a tornado of dirt and orange smoke.
A crewman in the three-man sling was descending from the hovering Huey. Maxwell and B.J. retraced their steps, running to where the crewman was just stepping to the ground.
He wore a cranial protector and goggles and a helmet-mounted radio. Blinking, coughing in the dirt and smoke, B.J. and Maxwell each slipped a loop of the sling around themselves as they had been trained. The crewman gave the sling a quick check, then flashed a thumbs-up to the man peering at them from the open hatch. With a lurch the sling yanked them off the ground, reeling them upward. While they were still clambering inside the cabin, the Huey’s nose tilted forward and accelerated.
They sat facing each other in the drafty cabin of the helicopter as they sped back southward. Neither spoke. B.J., still black-faced and wearing her sling, huddled in the corner, avoiding Maxwell’s eyes.
Out the open hatch he saw the column of Super Stallions following them. “How many did they pick up?” he asked the crewman, already knowing the answer.
He shook his head. “Just you, and that was blind-ass luck. The Cobra gunner spotted your smoke. Nobody could get inside the perimeter.”
B.J. gazed out the hatch at the empty cargo helicopters. “Al-Fasr knew they were coming, didn’t he?”
Maxwell nodded. “Yeah, he knew.”
“Surrender?” said Gritti. “He’s gotta be kidding.”
“No, sir,” said Captain Baldwin, the compactly built young officer Gritti had sent over the wire. “The guy was dead serious. Says we have one hour. Then they come into the perimeter with tanks and artillery and a force of infantry. If jets or helicopters show up before that, they’re gonna get shot down with missiles.”
“And if we surrender?”
“He says we’ll be fed and treated as guests, not prisoners.”
Gritti snorted. “Hostages, he means.”
Baldwin just nodded.
Gritti couldn’t remember when he had felt so lousy. He had been in this goddamned hellhole for… how long now? Eighteen hours? No, longer.
At least the heavy firing had ceased. For the past three hours there had been just this eerie silence. No mortars, no sniper fire.
Then, this afternoon, a white flag. Three hundred yards away, from the tree line where the Sherji were concealed, an emissary in fatigues and a brown kaffiyeh walked out into the open. He carried a megaphone. He announced that he wanted to talk to the marine commander.
Gritti had dispatched Baldwin to talk to the emissary. After ten minutes of discussion, the young captain returned.
Now, through his fatigue, Gritti was trying to make sense of the situation. “Tell me what you think, Captain.”
Baldwin glanced around, then said in a lowered voice, “I think it sucks. So do the rest of our marines. They want to know why we’re stuck here without support. Where the hell are our reinforcements?”
Gritti nodded southward. “Out there. On the Saipan and the Reagan. Waiting for someone to give the order.”