They lowered Spinelli onto the truck's flatbed. Blood, jet-black in the greens of Randall's LI goggles, soaked his right side. Someone had removed his combat harness and vest and cut his blouse open in order to pack the wound with a sterile dressing, but the dressing itself was already nearly soaked through.
Gerald Gallagher was dead, a neat, round hole just above his left eye, and most of the back of his skull completely gone.
But there was no time to mourn fallen comrades. That would come later, if, when the team made it back to the world. What was important now was to put as much distance between the hornet-mad local troops coming up the valley from the southwest… and the cold, grim knowledge that SEALs never left behind their own. Not even their dead.
The bodies of the Hezbollah gunmen in the back of the truck were unceremoniously dumped overboard. Bowman, McKenna, and Payton began stripping headgear, jackets, weapons, and ammo from the dead militiamen and dragging the bodies away to a spill of massive boulders, where they would remain undiscovered for a time. With the hills crawling with hostiles, there was no way in hell the six SEALs were going to make the rendezvous with Seahawk One at the LZ.
But Randall was pretty sure they could make it out another way.
"We've lost them," the technician said. "Eagle Eye reports they're widening the search."
"Eagle Eye," Gordon thought, must be the you-don't-want-to-know intelligence asset circling high above the Lebanese frontier. The images on the big display showed only disappointingly empty stretches of rock-strewn dirt and scrub brush.
"Switch back to Second Squad," General Childess ordered.
"Yes, sir."
Tactical imaging for the dust-off at LZ Bravo had been handed off to another reconnaissance asset — probably a KH-12 satellite, Gordon thought, since the picture had less resolution than the images from the recon aircraft, and was drifting across the target zone fairly quickly.
That was the trouble with low-orbit spysats. A satellite could be parked at geosynch so that it remained above a particular spot on the Earth's surface as it circled the globe once each twenty-four hours, matching the planet's rotation, but the geosynchronous point was over 22,000 miles out, good for weather and communications satellites, but not up-close-and-personal reconnaissance imaging. Spy satellites were usually placed in lower, eccentric orbits, their apogees placed above the spot that needed coverage to allow a longer targeting window, but still limited by their own orbital movement to relatively brief observation periods.
The view of LZ One was already growing hard to interpret as the satellite neared the horizon, but Gordon could see a flat stretch of terrain marked by the bright glow of chemical light sticks, and the dimmer glows of human bodies crouched under cover nearby. A brief radio exchange confirmed that five SEALs from Alfa Platoon's Second Squad had made it to the LZ, along with two men — the sniper and his spotter — from First Squad.
There was no sign of the two Second Squad men, or the five from First Squad trapped south of the fortress.
"Seahawk is inbound," the technician said. "ETA ten minutes."
"First Squad isn't going to make it," North said. "Damn!"
"We knew they wouldn't," Childess said. "That j.g. is asking for a military court, haring off that way."
"I don't see it that way, General," the captain said. "He made the best call he could in a tough situation."
"SEALs don't leave their own behind," Goldman said. "Not ever."
"They're leaving," Childess said, indicating the soft-glowing figures on the screen.
"Let's see how it plays out, General," Goldman replied.
"Alfa Two, this is Alfa One," sounded from the overhead speaker, harsh with static. "Situation resolved. We're moving."
"Roger that," another voice replied. "Want us to hold the LZ down for you?"
"Negative, negative, Alfa Two. Follow the plan. We're taking another way out."
"Copy, Alfa One. See you back aboard."
"Roger that, Two. And good luck! Alfa One out!"
"What other way?" Childess demanded. "What are they doing?"
"Not compromising their plans by broadcasting them," North replied, "even on a scrambled channel. We'll just have to wait them out."
Minutes dragged past. To Gordon, the small basement room was becoming close and stifling, ripe with the smell of sweat and aftershave. The tension was palpable, a thickness in the hot air.
"We're going to lose the satellite feed pretty soon," the technician said, glancing up at a large, LED time readout.
"Ah, but here comes the cavalry," North said, pointing. Three helicopters, their images ghostly, but their engine exhausts white-hot in the spy satellite's IR-imaging lens, were approaching at treetop altitude from the left. They could hear the clipped conversation over the tactical radio net. "Free Sanction, Free Sanction, this is Seahawk One. I see four lights, two green, two blue, over."
"Seahawk, Free Sanction. Confirmed, two green lights, two blue lights. Come on in. Over!"
"Copy, Free Sanction. Coming in now."
"Hawk One, this is Hawk Three," another voice interrupted. "I'm taking ground fire, repeat, taking ground fire, three o'clock!"
In the Pentagon bunker, they could hear the distant hammer of automatic weapons fire, could see the muzzle flashes on the television monitor. The details were too fuzzy to tell whether the attackers were Hezbollah or Syrian.
"Starbase, Hawk One! The LZ is hot, repeat, LZ is hot!"
"Shit, shit, shit," Childess said, a monotone litany.
"It happens, sir," the colonel added.
"Hawk Three, this is Hawk Two. I've got the hostiles. Watch my LOF."
One of the helicopters suddenly spat a dazzling, stabbing spear thrust of light, accompanied by the shrill whine of a high-speed multibarreled autocannon. The M134 minigun, mounted in Seahawk Two's main door, flooded the target with high-velocity rounds as the other two helicopters settled toward the ground. The SEALs were already moving from cover and sprinting toward the waiting helos.
"Starbase, Seahawk. We have five packages, all secure. We're out of here."
"Copy that, Seahawk," the technician said. "RTB."
On the screen, the two grounded helos lifted off and swung clear of the LZ. The third hovered a moment, continuing to lay down a devastating spray of high-velocity mini-gun rounds, before it, too, swung away and accelerated clear. Seconds later, the televised image broke into a flickering ripple of pixellations, then went black.
"Satellite just went below the horizon, sir," the technician said. "Next window will be for Sierra Echo Four in twenty-seven minutes."
"We need to get an image on Alfa One," Childess said. "Raise 'em on the horn. Let's see if we can talk them out of there."
"That could be a problem, General," the technician said. "Why?"
"We've lost their signal."