“Wink!” Woods yelled again, his eyes growing damp.
“What?” Wink replied, his voice full of pain.
“You okay?”
“No. Those mothers shot me in the back. It hurts like hell,” he said.
The medic turned toward Woods. “He took a couple of ricochets in the back.” Quickly slicing through the plastic ties binding Wink’s wrists behind his back, the man began cutting away his flight suit. “No organs though,” he said as he examined the wounds. “He should be okay.”
“Thank you, God,” Woods said as he relaxed and quit fighting the lines holding him and the plastic ties around his wrists and ankles.
The second Pave Low crested the top of the mountain and hovered just off the ground as the first one had. The commandos still on the ground began a slow calculated movement toward the helicopter as they continued to receive opposing fire from the three or four Assassins now remaining. They returned fire, much more accurately, accompanied by the guns of the Pave Low. They made it into the helicopter one by one until there were only four men on the ground returning the Assassins’ fire. On a radio signal from the pilot the rest of the commandos dashed up the ramp into the armored chopper and it lifted off the top of the mountain, its guns still firing their angry red tracers at the small muzzle flashes coming their way.
As the helicopter rose, the Assassin who had been lying next to Farouk saw the shoulder-fired SAM that Farouk had been about to use. Dropping his AK-47, he stood up to use the missile, but as he did so the helicopter dropped below the summit, out of sight. Suddenly, it was quiet. The Assassin lowered the SAM in frustration.
“Two’s clear,” the pilot of the second Pave Low transmitted.
The Fire Control Officer in the Spooky orbiting above the hill had been watching the fight on his ALLTV. He had kept his crosshairs on the Assassins the entire time, not willing to shoot with American forces so close. His mouth suddenly went dry as he saw one of the Assassins stand and aim a shoulder-fired missile in his direction. He had waited an eternity for the second Pave Low to call clear. He was ready and fired the 105 at the man, the shell missing by many feet. “Shit,” he muttered. He directed the other two guns on the Assassins and put them on maximum fire as the airman in the back loaded another fifty-pound shell in the 105. The bullets rained down, but not before the Assassin fired his missile at the black sky raining death down on him.
The missile flew out of the tube at the end of a red-hot rocket motor just as a 40-millimeter shell tore the man apart. He dropped as the rocks around him splintered and severed the other two remaining Assassins.
“SAM! SAM!” the IR sensor operator screamed into the intercom aboard the Spooky.
The pilot of the Spooky reached behind him to his left and grabbed a handle hanging on the bulkhead with a long cable attached to it. He quickly squeezed one of the buttons and several flares dropped out of the back of the AC-130U as the pilot pulled up into a steep climb. The copilot was already pushing the throttles to their stops. As the flares lit up the sky around them, they climbed away and took a steep left turn to put the climbing SAM on their beam. The pilot pushed the yoke forward and the Spooky went into a steep dive.
Behind them the SA-7 missile continued to climb, but it was more interested in the flares than it was in the diving airplane. It slammed into one of the brightly burning flares and expired five hundred yards behind them.
The Spooky pilot leveled off, climbed back up to altitude, and headed west. “One’s off,” he transmitted.
“Two’s off, we’re right behind you.”
The Pave Low carrying Woods and the others came to the valley floor and headed west and north, going at the helicopter’s top speed.
One of the commandos bent down and untied Woods from the deck. He helped him sit up. “You okay, sir?”
“Yeah,” he said.
“Where’s your ID, sir?”
“In my wallet in my pocket. Chest pocket. Left.”
The commando reached into the pocket of Woods’s flight suit. He pulled out the wallet and saw the ID in the plastic window. He shined the flashlight on it, then on Woods’s face. “What’s your Social?”
“Five six three, three three, five seven seven eight.”
The man reached behind Woods with a knife and cut the plastic ties on his wrists and feet, then undid his handcuffs.
“Thanks,” Woods said. He rubbed his wrists and crawled aft to Wink. “You okay, bud?”
“Yeah. It hurts, but I’m okay.” He rolled slightly toward Woods. “I want a Purple Heart. Think this qualifies?”
“Has to.”
Wink nodded. “’Cause if it didn’t, I was going to write to that congressman of yours. He’d make it right.”
“I’m sure he would.” Woods smiled. “Let me know if you need anything.” He stood up and staggered to the bench seat. The crew chief strapped him in. It was loud inside but smoother than he had expected, only an occasional bump as they flew along close to the desert floor. The Pave Low beat its way quickly toward Turkey, and safety.
Woods leaned his head back against the bulkhead as he sat motionless. Zev’s hands were still handcuffed and bound together as he lay on the deck. Woods rubbed his eyes. He hadn’t realized how tired he was. He thought of sleep, but he wanted to be completely aware of everything that happened the entire way back to safety. He looked at one of the commandos and pointed to Zev, still lashed to the deck like a menacing shark. “You going to let him up?”
“No, sir. No idea who he is.”
Woods wasn’t buying that. He found the commando captain. “Let him up,” he said, pointing at Zev.
“Don’t know who he is, sir.”
“I’ll tell you who he is,” Woods shouted angrily. “He saved our lives on the ground back there. He hid us out for a day and put his own life in danger. He was the one who told us we succeeded in getting the Sheikh, and if we hadn’t, he’d have done it himself. Now let him up!”
“I’ll let him off the deck, but I’m not going to undo his hands.”
“Fine,” Woods said.
The man crossed to Zev and unleashed the lines holding him down. Zev nodded gratefully and joined Woods on the bench seat. The crew chief tossed Woods a helmet, which Woods put on Zev’s head. He strapped Zev into the seat next to him. As the helicopter bounced through some rough air, Woods and Zev put their heads back against the bulkhead and closed their eyes. In spite of Woods’s determination to stay awake, he dozed off.
He was jerked from sleep when his feet flew up from the deck of the Pave Low as it pitched over toward the ground. His boots slammed back to the deck when the helicopter pulled up and banked hard right, in a desperate attempt to escape something. Wink slept and Zev looked confused. The crew chief studied something Woods couldn’t see. A Lieutenant came down from the cockpit and strapped into the seat across from Woods. He looked grim.
“What’s going on?” Woods yelled to him.
“Fighter. They didn’t see him coming. He didn’t turn his radar on until the last second. Now he’s all over us.”
“Fighter? Syrian?” Woods asked, his mouth dry.
“Not sure. They’re working the ESM gear to identify him now.”
“What about the gunships? Can they help?” Zev asked, overhearing the conversation.
“No, they’re air to ground only. No help at all against an airplane. They’re just hoping he doesn’t see them.”
“So what do we do?” Zev asked.
“Not much. Try to evade him.”
The crew chief listened in his helmet, then crossed to the Lieutenant, grabbing hard points of the helo to avoid falling. He spoke into his ear, then crossed back to his station.