Perez, kneeling beside him, said that including himself he was down to four men.
“Four men? How many behind us in D?”
“Another five, sir.”
“Any of them Afghans?”
“No.”
“No?”
Then who the fuck was that Weed guy talking to?
One of the gunners in front of them called out, “We’re running low on ammo for the fifty-cal!”
Perez shouted back, “Conserve, guys. Select fire.”
The gunner growled, “Then we better start collecting rocks.”
Crocker tried to think clearly and consider their options. He asked, “How many enemy?”
“Unclear, sir,” Perez answered. “They just keep coming.”
“Best estimate?” Davis asked.
“I don’t know. Fifty, a hundred, a million. Maybe there’s a hole and they’re coming up from Middle Earth.”
Crocker turned to Davis and yelled, “Call Captain Battier. Tell him we’re gonna need ammo and reinforcements.”
“Okay, boss.”
Twin.50 caliber machine guns continued to pound away in front of him. He saw Ritchie firing a MK19 grenade launcher. Remembering something, he stopped Perez, who was dragging a box of ammo over to the M2HG. “What about the six SEALs who were dropped in last week?” he asked.
“Two of ’em are behind us in D.”
Davis broke his train of thought, which had drifted to his friend Neal Stafford. “Boss! Yo, boss! The captain says no can do.”
“No what?”
“No reinforcements.”
“Let me talk to him.” He grabbed the receiver and spoke in an urgent but authoritative voice. “Hey, Captain, we’re a hair away from being overrun here. We got a lot of men down and are in dire need of support and ammo, fifty-cal rounds especially. What can you do?”
A mortar round tore into the sandbag-reinforced wall on the right side of the station and exploded, sending the gunner of one of the M2HGs sliding across the floor. He scurried back, wiped a stream of blood from his nose, righted the machine gun, and continued firing.
“Captain, do you hear me?” The gunner in front of him shouted a stream of curses. Apparently he’d burned his hand on the hot barrel of his weapon.
“I hear you, chief. I hear you loud and clear. Where are you, exactly?”
“Station C.”
“Have you considered pulling out of there?”
“For a whole lotta reasons that I don’t have time to explain now, it’s not an option.”
“But I’m unable to send reinforcements,” Battier responded via the radio receiver.
“What about ammo?”
“Negative on that, too.”
“Why the fuck not?”
“Chief, I’m looking at the big picture. Presley, King, and Wolf are my priorities,” Battier responded.
“You’ve got men dying down here, Captain. The position is eminently defendable with help!”
“Sorry, chief.”
“I’m sorry, too. Fuck you!”
He threw down the radio and peered through a slit in the reinforced wall, guns pounding all around him, casings spilling onto the floor. Saw the sparks of guns firing from Taliban positions behind rocks, trees, and other natural barriers.
Perez, beside him, was peering through binoculars. Crocker asked, “Where are the bastards coming from?”
“You can’t see from here, but there are a couple of trails up from the valley that are in the vicinity of Station B, which was the first to fall.”
Snow continued to drop, and the light seemed to be fading. Crocker glanced at his Suunto GPS watch, which read 1642 hours. In another hour the sky would turn dark and they’d be even more vulnerable. Screwed, most likely.
“What’d the captain say?” Perez asked, putting down the glasses and grabbing his MP7 4.6x30mm submachine gun.
“We’re on our own.”
“I thought so.”
Crocker hated the thought of giving up the station. His instincts told him to make a stand. “What have you got in terms of supplies?” he shouted to Perez over the tremendous racket.
“Bottled water, MREs, boxes of energy bars, heaters, lamps.”
“Ammo?”
“There’s a storage bunker behind Station D that contains some explosives, but no mags or fifty-cal rounds.”
“What kind of explosives?”
“C-four and claymores.”
“Okay.” He started to turn to Ritchie on his right and stopped. “You told me two of the Team Six guys were behind us in Station D. What happened to the other four?”
Perez lowered his brown eyes. “Taken out resisting the initial charge.”
Crocker was afraid to ask, but had to. “Neal Stafford?”
Perez nodded and pointed over his shoulder to the tarp-covered bodies in the back corner. Crocker pictured Neal’s pretty, blond-haired wife and young sons. He wanted to beat the shit out of something, or scream so loud that time stopped and rewound. But he swallowed hard and summoned Ritchie instead. With his arm around the tall man’s shoulder, he led him to the back of the bunker so the two men could hear themselves speak.
Crocker said, “Take Jonesy with you and go back to Station D. There’s a…” Neal’s smiling face flashed in his head. He gathered himself and started again, “There’s a storage bunker there, back of D. I want you to grab all the explosives you can find and bring them here. Ask the SEALs there to help you.”
Ritchie, his eyes burning with intensity, pointed to his backpack stacked against the back wall. “I’ve got blasting caps and detonators. You okay, boss?”
“I’m fine. I want to do something bold. Imaginative. Insane. Get the stuff.”
“You want bold? You tapped the right man,” Ritchie said, grinning. “Depending on what we find in D, I’ll give you cataclysmic.”
“I like the way you’re thinking. Now go.”
Chapter Three
What we need are more people who specialize in the impossible.
– Theodore Roethke
Check this mother out!” Jonesy shouted as he burst through the back door carrying a GAU-17/A 7.62x51mm minigun, which featured six rotating barrels capable of delivering a whopping 4,000 rounds per minute.
He got grunts of approval from some of the men crowded inside the dark, smoke-filled room, and one shout of “Sweet!” Otherwise the eight soldiers were occupied with trying to hold back an enemy that wouldn’t let up.
With a sheer cliff to the right of Guard Station C, and considerably higher terrain behind them and to the left, which is where Station D was located, the Taliban had only one way of overrunning the guard post, and that was head-on, which they seemed determined to do, no matter how many new martyrs they created in the process.
One M2HG heavy machine gun covered the Taliban assault from the right; a second was trained on the left, which posed more of a challenge. The six soldiers in between fired a combination of MK19s, M4A1s, MK13s, HK416s, and one MK11 medium sniper rifle.
Crocker’s head, right arm, and shoulder were numb. His ears and knees ached. After adjusting the five-position butt stock of the HK416, he looked through the diopter sight, located the torso of a Taliban fighter crouching and shouldering an RPG-2 in the crosshairs, and pulled the trigger, releasing a stream of 5.56x45mm bullets that tore into the enemy’s torso, neck, and head. The weapon was a marvel of modern engineering that offered power, maneuverability, and reliability.
The Americans were outnumbered, perhaps as much as thirty to one, and due to that and the approaching darkness, Crocker could tell that the Taliban sensed victory. He saw it in the confident way they moved forward and maintained their position despite everything the Americans were throwing at them.
He glanced at his Suunto, then turned to Jonesy, who was busily setting up the minigun with Sergeant Perez’s help.
“Where’s Rich?”
“Ritchie, man, he’s doing his bad thing.”
“Where?” Crocker asked.
“Outside.”