“Where are our guys?” demanded Turk.
“Easy,” said Grease, letting him go. “You’re more important than all of us combined. We’ll sort it out.”
Turk’s legs shook when they first touched the dirt. He took a few steps toward the road before Grease caught him, the Delta trooper’s thick fingers clamping hard into his arm.
“Where the hell do you think you’re going?” Grease demanded.
Turk spun toward him. Their faces were bare inches apart. “I’m not going to stay back while our guys are getting pounded.”
“Our job isn’t to save them.”
“Screw that.”
“No,” said Grease firmly. “Your mission is more important than their lives. Much more important. If you fail—they fail. They don’t want you hurt.”
Flustered, Turk opened his mouth to speak but couldn’t.
“Listen,” said the Israeli. “Something’s coming.”
They ran back to the rocks, Grease dragging Turk with him. Turk took a knee and peered out, trying to sort his feelings. Grease was absolutely right—and yet he felt responsible for the others. In his gut he knew he had to help them, no matter the cost.
The curve of the hills muffled the noise at first, and it wasn’t until the pickup appeared that Turk was sure the vehicles were theirs, and only theirs.
Granderson leaned out the passenger-side window of the troop truck. The truck had been battered, the windshield and side window completely blown out, and half the front fender hung down. “What the hell are you stopped for?” he yelled. “Go! Go!”
“Are you OK?” Turk shouted.
“Just get the hell out of here!” yelled the Delta captain. “Just go, go go! Damn. Grease! Get the hell out of here.”
“We’re going,” he said, practically throwing Turk into the car.
THEY STOPPED A HALF HOUR LATER, IN THE SHADOW OF the foothills, within sight of Jandagh, a small city that commanded one of the north-south valleys at the edge of the desert. Old archeological digs, long abandoned, sat nearby. Windswept sand pushed across low piles of rocks; the outlines of forgotten pits spread before them in an intricate geometric pattern, disturbed by an occasional outlier.
The troopers had blown up the two trucks with grenade launchers they’d taken from the barracks but were still badly mauled; the only one in the truck who hadn’t been hit by bullets or shrapnel was Granderson, who miraculously survived without a scratch. Green was the worst; he’d taken shots in both legs and lost considerable blood. It was small consolation, but they’d killed all of the Iranians.
The back of their stolen troop truck had been turned into a makeshift rolling clinic. Turk climbed up, talking to the men as Grease watched from below. Dread tried to make a joke about seeing the “beautiful Iranian outback,” but it fell flat. The canvas top had been punctured by bullets, but the air inside still hung heavy and fetid, smelling of blood and cordite.
Granderson came back from the pickup to get Turk and figure out what to do next. Turk had been lingering with Green. It seemed impossible that the solid old warrior could be wounded, as if his body was made of steel and concrete, yet his legs and fresh green uniform blouse were covered with blood.
“I’m good, Pilot,” he kept muttering. “I’ll be all right.”
There was nothing Turk could do for Green, or any of them. He slipped out and walked around the side with Granderson, who was explaining what had happened.
“The passenger in the front of the first troop truck jumped out with a handgun and tried to wave down the pickup,” Granderson told him. “We didn’t stop. When he started to fire, Gorud and the troop truck ran him down, but the second truck swerved to block us. We fought it out.”
It hadn’t taken too long—three minutes, five—but Granderson was worried that they got off a call for help; one of the command vehicles had disappeared before they could fire at it.
“Hills are so bad Grease couldn’t even hear your radios,” said Turk. “Probably, they couldn’t get anything out.”
“Maybe.” Granderson turned and pointed to the troop truck. “We won’t get far with this. It’s pounded to crap. And the pickup’s not too much better. We’ll have to steal something from Jandagh.”
It was just visible in the distance, off to the right. Turk rubbed the sand off his face and looked at the dunes scattered between them and the small city. Yellow buildings floated below a wavy haze. Patches of green appeared like bunting amid the parched landscape and distant bricks.
“We’ll never get a truck out of there during the day without being seen,” said Gorud, walking over with the Israeli. His left arm was wrapped in a thick bandage. “Assuming we find one.”
“Sitting here is not a good idea,” said the Israeli.
They studied the GPS and the paper map. They were roughly two hundred miles from the target area, and that was if they went on a straight line. Even the best roads would add another hundred miles.
“Maybe the best thing to do is split up,” Gorud suggested to Granderson. “Take the pilot west for the mission. You wait until dark, then take the truck and go north to the escape route. Route 81 is nearby.”
“We’re not leaving without you,” said Turk.
“Gorud is right,” suggested the Israeli.
“It’s not going to happen,” said Turk. He glanced at Grease. The soldier’s stone face offered no hint about what he should say or do. “What if we wait until nightfall?” he asked. “Then we slip into the city and take what we need.”
“Not with wounded,” said Granderson.
“What other cities are there along the way?” Turk asked. “We could go a little distance, stretch it a little bit, then steal something.”
That seemed promising, until they examined the map. The desert west of Jandagh was mostly dunes; the car probably wouldn’t make it and the pickup might not either. So the only route possible was north, where about eighty miles of travel would take them to a cluster of hill cities and oases. If the truck made it that far, it could go the entire way.
Before they could make a decision, Turk heard helicopters in the distance. As they scrambled back to the vehicles, he had an idea.
“We’ll go back up the hill,” he yelled. “We’ll make it look like we’re investigating what happened.”
He spotted the helicopters a few minutes after the car pulled onto the road. There were two, both Shabaviz 2-75s, Iranian reverse-engineered variants of Bell’s ubiquitous Huey series. They looked like Bell 214s, with a thick, rectangular-shaped engine box above the cabin. Dressed in drab green paint, they were definitely military aircraft. They flew from the north, arcing over the sand in the general direction of the gunfight, though about two miles from it.
“They going to be close enough to see what happened there?” Turk asked as they drove back up the road. They were going as slow as the Israeli could manage without stalling the car.
“Absolutely,” said Grease.
The helicopters continued southward for a half minute, then turned in a circle and headed toward the vehicles. Grease radioed a warning to the others but got no response, even though they were within a few hundred yards of each other.
Turk fingered his rifle as the helicopters approached. They appeared unarmed, but someone inside the back cabin with a machine gun could do a hell of a lot of damage.
On the other hand, if the choppers did land, the crews might be overpowered.
Turk didn’t know how to fly a helicopter, but he certainly had every incentive to try.
The helicopters skipped low near the side of the mountain, passing near the vehicles. They flew over the car and the small caravan and promptly banked away, back in their original direction.
The sound of the rotors grew steadily softer. The Israeli continued for a short while and found a place to turn around. They passed the pickup as it started into a three-point turn.