“What’s up?”
“Peterson’s gomer is nervous about something.”
Driscoll did a scan ahead with the night vision but saw nothing. The valley floor, level and clear of debris save the occasional boulder, appeared empty. Nothing moving, and no sound except the faint whistling of wind. Still, Driscoll’s gut was talking to him.
Tait asked, “See something?”
“Not a thing, but something’s got what’s-his-face jumpy.”
“Grab Collins, Smith, and Gomez, then backtrack fifty yards and pick your way along the hillside. Tell Peterson and Flaherty to put their prisoners in the dirt and keep them quiet.”
“Roger.”
Tait disappeared back down the trail, pausing to whisper instructions to each man. Through the night vision, Driscoll watched Tait’s progress as he and the other three snaked their way back up the slope, then off the trail, moving from boulder to boulder, paralleling the valley.
Zimmer had moved up the line to Driscoll’s position. “Little voice talking to you, Santa?” he asked.
“Yeah.”
Fifteen minutes passed. In the green, washed-out glow of the NV, Driscoll saw Tait suddenly stop. Over the radio: “Boss, we got an open space ahead of us-a notch in the rock. I can see the peak of a tent.”
Which explains the nervous gomer, Driscoll thought. He knows the camp is there. “Life signs?”
“Muffled voices-five, maybe six.”
“Roger, hold pos-”
To the right, fifty meters up the valley, came a pair of headlights. Driscoll turned to see a UAZ-469 jeep skid around the corner and head in their direction. Throwbacks to the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan, UAZs were favored among the country’s sundry bad guys. This one was open-topped and equipped with another piece of Soviet Army equipment, a mounted NSV 12.7-millimeter heavy machine gun. Thirteen shots a second, 1,500-meter range, Driscoll thought. Even as he recognized it for what it was, the muzzle began flashing. Bullets thudded into rock and soil, throwing up shards and plumes of dust. Farther down the valley, atop the cliff opposite Tait and the others, muzzles began flashing. Peterson’s prisoner began shouting in Arabic, none of which Driscoll understood, but the tone was unmistakable: encouragement for his compatriots. Peterson popped him behind the ear with the butt of his M4, and the man went limp.
Tait’s team opened up, their M4s cracking and echoing through the valley. Driscoll’s remaining men had found cover and were lighting up the UAZ, which had skidded to a stop twenty meters away, its headlights aimed at the Rangers.
“Tait, put some grenades into those tents!” Driscoll ordered, then ducked left and snapped off two quick bursts at the UAZ.
“On it!” Tait replied.
Up the trail, Barnes had found a niche between some rocks and had his M249 SAW-Squad Automatic Weapon-up on its tripod. The muzzle started flashing. Its windshield spider-webbed, the UAZ started backing up now, the 12.7-millimeter still pumping rounds into the hillside. From Tait’s direction Driscoll heard the crump of a grenade, then another, then two more in quick succession. Now more shouting in Arabic. Screams. It took a half-second for Driscoll to realize the screams were coming from behind. He spun, M4 to his shoulder. Fifteen meters up the trail, Gomez’s prisoner was on his feet, facing the UAZ and shouting. Driscoll caught a snippet-Shoot me… Shoot me…-and then the top of the man’s head exploded and he toppled backward.
“Barnes, get that thing stopped!” Driscoll shouted.
In answer, the SAW’s tracers dropped from the UAZ’s cab and roof to its front grille, which began sparking. Bullets thudded into the engine block, followed seconds later by a geyser of steam. The driver’s-side door opened and a figure staggered out. The SAW cut him down. In the truck’s bed, the NSV went silent, and Driscoll could see a figure scrambling. Reloading. Driscoll turned around and signaled to Peterson and Deacons-grenades-but they were already on their feet, arms cocked. The first grenade went long and right, exploding harmlessly behind the UAZ, but the second landed beside the truck’s rear tire. The explosion lifted the truck’s rear end a few inches off the ground. The gunner in the bed tumbled over the side and lay still.
Driscoll turned back, scanned the far cliff wall through the NV. He counted six gomers, all prone and pouring fire into Tait’s position. “Light those fuckers up!” Driscoll ordered, and eleven guns began hosing down the cliff face. Thirty seconds was all it took. “Cease fire, cease fire!” Driscoll ordered. The gunfire ceased. He got on the radio: “Tait, head count.”
“Still got four. Caught a few rock splinters, but we’re good.”
“Check the tents, mop it up.”
“Roger.”
Driscoll picked his way up the trail, checking each man in turn and finding only minor scrapes and cuts from flying rock. “Barnes, you and Deacons check the-”
“Santa, you’re-”
“What?”
“Your shoulder. Sit down, Sam, sit down! Medic up!”
Now Driscoll could feel the numbness, as though his right arm had fallen asleep from the shoulder down. He let Barnes sit him down on the trail. Collins, the team’s second medic, came running up. He knelt down, and he and Barnes eased Driscoll’s pack off his right shoulder, then the left. Collins clicked on his hooded flashlight and examined Driscoll’s shoulder.
“You got a rock splinter in there, Santa. About the size of my thumb.”
“Ah, shit. Barnes, you and Deacons go check that truck.”
“Got it, boss.”
They trotted down the trail, then across to the truck. “Two dead,” Deacons called.
“Frisk ’em, check for intel,” Driscoll said through gritted teeth. The numbness was giving way to white-hot pain.
“You’re bleeding pretty bad,” Collins said. He pulled a field dressing from his pack and pressed it against the wound.
“Pack it up as best you can.”
Tait, on the radio: “Santa, we got four KIA and two wounded, both are on their way out.”
“Roger. Intel check, then get back here.”
Collins said, “I’m gonna call for an evac-”
“Bullshit. In about fifteen minutes we’re gonna be drowning in gomers. We’re humping out of here. Get me up.”
6
IT WAS GOING TO BE a sad day, Clark knew. His gear was already packed-Sandy always handled that, as efficiently as ever. It would be the same at Ding’s place-Patsy had learned packing from her mother. Rainbow Six was moving into its second generation, much of the original crew gone by now, rotated back stateside in the case of the Americans, mainly back for Fort Bragg and Delta School, or Coronado, California, where the Navy trained its SEAL candidates, there to tell such stories as the rules allowed over beers to a very few trusted fellow instructors. Every so often they’d come through Hereford in Wales, to drink pints of John Courage at the Green Dragon’s comfortable bar and trade war stories rather more freely with fellow graduates of the Men of Black. The locals knew who they were, but they were as security-conscious as the Security Service agents-called “Five” men in a nod to the former British MI-5-who hung out there, too.
Nothing was permanent in the service, regardless of the country. This was healthy for the organizations, always bringing in fresh people, some of them with fresh ideas, and it made for warm reunions in the most unlikely of places-a lot of them airport terminals, all over the freaking world-and a lot of beers to be drunk and handshakes to be exchanged before the departing flights were called. But the impermanence and uncertainty wore at you over time. You started wondering when a close friend and colleague would be called away, to disappear into some other compartment of the “black” world, often remembered but rarely seen again. Clark had seen a lot of friends die on “training missions”-which usually meant catching a bullet in a denied area. But such things were the cost of belonging to this exclusive fraternity, and there was no changing it. As the SEALs were fond of saying, “You don’t have to like it; you just have to do it.”