“Look, I don’t—” Kevin began, but was cut off by an explosion outside the perimeter. He instinctively ducked his head into his shoulders as dirt rained down on their position. Beyond their perimeter someone was screaming, and then a burst of fire erupted from the high ground.
“Contact two o’clock, forty meters,” someone yelled as the machine-gun fire cut into the strike team.
Rico and Bones spread out, ducking behind cover before returning fire. Kevin turned around and, after flipping his selector to full auto, unloaded a magazine toward the threat. After three quick bursts, he pulled a smoke grenade from his kit and tossed it as far as he could.
Mason was startled by the sudden explosion and paused midstride. Realizing the ambush had just been initiated, Renee darted off the path and began scrambling up the rock face in an attempt to see what was going on.
“Zeus, get her,” he yelled as she scrambled out of sight.
Pebbles and dirt rained down from the low cut, and the Libyan threw his hand up to protect his eyes. He staggered back toward the edge of the cliff face, his arms still shielding his eyes, and Mason had to jump forward to steady his friend.
Just over the ridgeline, the sound of heavy fire mixed with the deep concussion of the grenades going off.
“We’re too late,” Mason said as he steadied his friend and turned his attention to where he’d last seen Renee. Mason clambered up the rugged incline, which leveled out, revealing the valley floor below them. Zeus followed him up, and the two men watched as the firefight unfolded a hundred meters to the southwest of them.
Frantically, he searched for Renee. Did she fall off the mountain? he wondered. “Fuck, where did she go?” he asked out loud.
Mason was about to descend when Zeus grabbed his arm and pulled him back down.
“What?” he demanded.
“Mason, just lase the target and let’s get out of here.”
“What about her?”
The Libyan shrugged and Mason went to pull his arm free but stopped suddenly. Zeus was right.
“Damn it.” He pulled his pack off his back and grabbed the bulky PEQ-1 laser designator out of the bag. The SOFLAM, or Special Operations Forces Laser Acquisition Marker, had made a name for itself during the invasion of Afghanistan. It was a rugged, easy-to-operate piece of equipment that allowed the operator to locate and designate a target for laser-guided munitions. Weighing in at eleven pounds, it had the ability to lase a target over twenty-three kilometers away.
Mason quickly ran through the test program while trying to shut Renee out of his mind.
Harden had watched the men file into their rally point and waited patiently to spring the ambush. Hoyt had carefully emplaced a handful of Italian antipersonnel mines in a shallow arc around the south side of the boulders, and he watched a soldier step on one as a squad left their perimeter. They were moving toward the high ground, just like he’d planned.
Boz had found the mines in Pakistan, and after careful inspection he’d assured Harden that they were serviceable. Apparently he’d been wrong.
“Those pieces of shit,” he said to himself. Looking over his shoulder, he could barely make out Jones hunkered beneath a poncho liner. He was using the makeshift hide site to conceal the light from his computer while monitoring two radios. He used the computer to track any air assets coming on station while scanning the radios in case he needed to jam a particular frequency.
Harden was about to spring the ambush when one of the mines finally went off, and Hoyt opened up his 240 Bravo. The long burst echoed angrily off the rock face and sent fifteen rounds screaming into the valley. Holding the buttstock tight to his shoulder, Hoyt raked the rounds over the strike team caught in the open.
He had taken all the tracer rounds out of the ammo belt and instead of night vision, he was using a thermal optic to engage targets. The thermals picked up heat signatures and displayed them in shades of gray. Natural objects, depending on how much heat they retained, were gray, and people appeared dark black.
Boz had stacked a pile of forty-millimeter high-explosive rounds next to his position. He raised the M79 grenade launcher into the air and arced a round toward its target. The launcher looked like a fat sawed-off shotgun, and after firing, he broke open the breech, picked out the empty casing, and quickly slid in another round. It was an old weapon but still as effective as it had been in Vietnam. Boz liked it because it was light and didn’t weigh down his rifle. He focused on getting the second round into the dead space behind the rocks, but a bullet snapped over his head and he ducked down as he fired, sending the grenade short.
Harden ignored the rounds buzzing around him, and shouted at his men. “Shift fire onto those dudes in the open. You aren’t hitting shit. Hoyt, keep their heads down, I don’t want them moving on us.” He paused to lift up his radio and said, “Scottie, are you going to kill anybody today?”
“Stand by, Anvil 7. I’m just waiting for a shot,” Scottie replied.
“Look harder. I don’t want to be here all night.” He paused and yelled back at Jones, “Is anybody trying to crash the party?”
“There is a Predator in the area, and someone down there is calling for air support, but I’ve got the lines all jammed up.”
“Keep it up. I don’t want any surprises.”
Renee scrambled for a way down the mountain. Her team was taking heavy fire and she needed to get into the fight. The machine-gun fire and random explosions bounced off the rocks like the strikes of a blacksmith’s hammer. She was overwhelmed by her impotence and felt a wave of guilt slipping into her mind. Renee tried to adjust her NODs to get a better view, but her foot clipped a rock and she tumbled face-first into a small depression.
Twisting in midair, she managed to land on her back, and the fall knocked the wind out of her lungs. Renee stared up at the sky, then realized that she must have knocked her night vision off its mount, because she couldn’t see anything. Trying to catch her breath, she felt a sharp pain in her back. The screams of the dying rose like an invisible fog and drifted up to her ears. A brief hush fell over the mountain as she forced herself onto her side. Using her hands, she swept the dark earth for her lost NODs.
“Damn it,” she yelled in frustration as the automatic fire picked up again.
“Hey, that dude is moving down there,” Harden said without taking the thermals from his eyes. Hoyt was changing the belt on the 240, and after slamming the feed tray cover closed, he yanked back on the charging handle and slid it forward before pivoting to acquire the target.
The man was about to dive into cover when Hoyt stitched a quick burst across his back.
“He’s down now,” he said as he shifted onto another target. The men caught in the open were sitting ducks, and he was surprised that some of them were still alive.
“Boz, why aren’t you shooting?” Harden demanded.
“I’m out of rounds,” he replied.
“You’re totally out of ammo? Way to be a burden.”
Boz shrugged in the darkness and Harden was about to cuss him out when Jones interrupted over the radio.
“Hey, boss, that Predator’s loitering just out of range. He’s not getting close enough for me to lasso.”
“What’s it doing, just hanging out?”
“I can’t tell you, but someone learned their lesson.”
“All right, let’s wrap this shit up,” he said over the radio. The drone was making him nervous and up till now they’d been lucky.
A single rifle shot rang out, distinctive from the rest of the gunfire, and Scottie keyed up on the net: “You have a tango moving up to your three o’clock, I have no shot.”