Still there was no answer, and he had to repeat the call.
"Two, One!" Anderson's voice came back, a bit shrill with excitement, or something worse. "We've got a problem."
In clipped, tight tones, Anderson described the situation. The five men of First Squad had cleared the fortress moments after Second, but a sudden rush of Syrian troops and Hezbollah militia had cut them off, forcing them to move northeast up the valley, instead of southwest. They'd reached a road, where more Syrians had cut them off, blocking their planned escape over the south ridge and back toward Waypoint Tucson. Gallagher had been hit by machine-gun fire from the back of a small truck as they'd tried to move south across the road.
"We have two men down, now," Anderson continued. "Spiney took a round in the side. We're pinned in a culvert and can't move. Ammo critical. Over!"
Randall chewed that one over for a moment. He was responsible for Second Squad, for getting them clear of the AO and safely to LZ Bravo for the rendezvous with Sea-hawk One and an emergency dust-off.
Essentially he had three choices. He could lead Second Squad to Bravo and pray to hell First Squad made it clear, possibly with intervention from Starbase and the Navy assets offshore. Or he could send a couple of men to help, while leading the rest to Bravo.
Or he could go back and help First Squad himself, possibly with one volunteer… scratch that, definitely with one volunteer, so they could watch each other's backs.
His first responsibility was to the men of Second Squad, the men under his command. But they were clear of the Area of Operations, now, and it didn't look like the bad guys had their scent. Not yet, anyway.
A quick call over the tactical channel verified that Lederer and Hernendez were already clear of the combat area and were well on their way to LZ Bravo. That left five men in First Squad trapped by the road, two of them wounded.
"I need someone to come with me to give First a hand," he told the others. Six hands went up, green in the glow of his night optics.
"McKenna," he said. ET3 James McKenna spoke excellent Arabic, better than Randall's own. "Chief?"
"Sir," Chief Hughes said.
"Get 'em all to Bravo. You've got the maps and the glow sticks." Chemical light sticks would guide the Navy choppers in for the dust-off.
"Aye aye, sir," Chief Hughes replied. "What about you?"
"We'll join you if we can… but don't hold up the show for us. If the choppers come in, you mount up and get the hell out. There's more than one way out of this damned country." He was thinking of slipping south — just a few miles — across the border. They'd have to be damned careful about drawing fire; Israeli sentries were notoriously trigger-happy. Still, the day a team of Navy SEALs couldn't invisibly slip across just about any border in the world was the day to pack it in for Navy Special Warfare.
"One, Two," he called on tactical. "Hang tight. Help is on the way."
"Roger that, Two. We'll be here."
"Alfa Two, this is Starbase," he heard in his headset. "Two, Starbase. Please advise of your intentions, over."
He ignored the voice. "Let's move out, Chief."
"Aye aye, sir!"
Keeping low, Randall and McKenna slipped off into the night.
"Damn it!" General Childess, one of the senior Army officers, said. "What the hell are they doing?"
"Splitting up, looks like," Rafferty replied. He sounded excited, as though he were watching an especially thrilling ball game. "Two men going north to help First Squad, the rest hightailing it for LZ Bravo."
"That's suicide. Call them back!"
You're the one who decided not to send in the air cover, asshole, Gordon thought with a viciously savored righteousness.
"I don't think that's practical," Colonel North said. "We have to let our people on the ground decide how best to handle this."
"Not when we have the technology," Childess said. "Not when we know what's best." Somehow, though, he didn't sound entirely convinced.
"The first rule of the SEALs, sir," Gordon said quietly. He'd known SEALs, had worked with them aboard the Bluefin.
"What the hell are you talking about?"
"The SEALs never leave their own behind. Not alive. Not dead. I think your 2IC just made the best choice out of a handful of bad ones. He's going back to help the guys who're pinned down."
"They don't have that option. They need to stick with the plan, dammit!"
"You going to go down there and tell them that?" Captain Rafferty asked.
Then he grinned at Gordon and winked.
Randall could see them now, a group of eight Hezbollah militiamen in and around a rust-bodied pickup truck with a
Russian-made PKM, a 7.62mm heavy machine gun pintel-mounted above the cab. The two in the truck were aiming the heavy weapon off toward the north, squeezing off long, rattling blasts of thunder, spraying the night with bright red tracers.
He and McKenna had made their way up the South Ridge, then hurried northeast, staying just below the ridge crest as they moved to avoid showing giveaway silhouettes against the sky. A five-minute jog over loose gravel and a steep, crumbling slope brought them to a spot above and behind the enemy gunners.
The Hezbollah truck was well positioned, able to sweep the culvert on the far side of the road and force the SEALs concealed there to keep under cover. Other men, including Syrian Army troops, were moving in the darkness farther north, and to the south as well, spilling into the valley behind the fortress and closing on the ambush site with appalling speed. It didn't take a Napoleon, Randall decided, to see that if something didn't happen in the next couple of minutes, it just wasn't going to happen. Waiting for air cover from the Nimitz was clearly a hopeless cause. He had to do something now.
"Alfa One, Alfa Two," he called over the tactical channel. "We see your problem. Wait one."
"Two, One. Glad you could make the party."
"Roger that." He took a deep breath. "Let's take 'em," he told McKenna. Snapping a fresh magazine into his H&K, he brought the weapon to his shoulder and took aim at the two men in the truck, their backs to him as they worked the PKM.
He triggered a pair of three-round bursts, knocking the machine-gunners down and silencing the heavy weapon. McKenna fired at the same instant, taking out one of the militiamen standing next to the truck.
The fusillade was so sudden, so death-silent that the other militiamen didn't realize at first that anything was wrong. One called to the men in the back of the truck, then pitched back onto the ground as Randall shifted targets and took him down. The others looked confused, some calling out, some simply standing with their weapons at their sides as they searched the darkness for the source of the gallingly accurate fire. Two more went down, then two more. The last militiaman broke and ran, desperately trying to flee the killing zone, but covering only a few yards before McKenna cut his legs out from under him and sent him rolling in the dust.
Randall leaped from cover and raced across open ground toward the truck. The driver was still in the cab, groping for a pistol when Randall put a single 9mm round through his skull, yanked open the door, and dragged him out onto the ground. "Truck's clear!" he called over the tac channel. "First Squad! Get up here!"
Unsuppressed fire barked in the night, but without clear targets or focus. McKenna loosed a burst at a nearby muzzle flash, then ran toward the truck as the flash was cut off with a sharp, short scream. Several strangely shaped, hulking figures emerged from the shadows of the culvert ditch across the broad, dirt road. HM1 Payton came first, supporting a limping, sagging Spinelli. MM1 Bowman followed, with Lieutenant Gallagher over his broad shoulders in a fireman's carry. Chief Anderson brought up the rear, covering the squad's six.