“Lead the way.”
The gunny had slung over his shoulder a pair of bi-oculars like Furlong’s. With bi-oculars, a single lens takes in the light, the thermal computer registers the heat, and the two eyepieces on the other end act like binoculars. The thermal AN/PAS-28 bi-oculars made night into day as Moncrief looked up the valley, and also had a built-in direction finder that pointed the way.
“Stop.”
“What is it?”
“Listen.” The rifle shots coming from up the valley were increasing, the big bullets volleying over their heads.
“Good, some cover.”
“Yeah, and the wind’s letting up a little.” With the wind dying down, the others in the team were able to better locate their targets and make more kills.
“Come on!”
Moncrief headed north through the whap, whap of bullets flying past. The pursuing men’s shots were not well aimed and flew by harmlessly. But that wasn’t the case with Villegas’s Windrunner. With each booming shot Parker knew that another man fell.
Six, seven, eight.
“Does that other team know to get out of there?” he whispered to Moncrief.
“They should, but hold on.” Moncrief stopped to radio them.
“Slashing talon one, this is slashing talon alpha. Are you on the move?”
“Alpha, this is one. We are out of here.”
It was a good thing, as the guns below had become silent.
They’re reorganizing and making their plan. Parker knew that if they were led by an experienced warrior, their leader would adapt to the situation, move his forces uphill, and try to get the high ground. From there, his men could fire rocket-propelled grenades down onto them.
A bright flash of yellow light suddenly lit up the darkness.
The ear-shattering sound of the Predator’s strike followed the flash a millisecond later. Parker felt the rush of wind, dust, and chips of rock blow past as he was knocked to the ground by the concussion wave.
“What the hell was that?” Moncrief lay next to Parker, their ears ringing from the blast.
“Our guardian angel.” Parker rubbed the dust from his face and eyes.
Just as suddenly, the lights of the remaining vehicles went dark. The ragtag army had learned a painful lesson. Headlights only guided drone bombs to their targets.
“They’re gonna move above us,” Parker whispered to Moncrief.
“Yeah, and they’ll be spreading out so another missile will not catch them together.”
“They know that this valley is a dead end. They were raised in these mountains, so they know every rock.”
“Shit, yeah.”
“Worse problem is that they know there’s no way out.”
Parker’s team was in a box with one side being Zulfiqar and the other three being the twenty-five-thousand-foot Himalayan peaks.
Moncrief nodded. “And as long as they think we have this”—he patted the box that held the nuclear core—“they won’t stop, no matter what.”
CHAPTER 73
“Your man’s not looking good.” Sergeant Frix leaned over Parker as he spoke to Moncrief. “I’m gonna give him a lollipop. It will at least make it easier.”
Frix unwrapped the fentanyl-laced lollipop and stuck it in Parker’s mouth. The morphine drug would release into Parker’s bloodstream at an even pace.
“What can we do?” The climb had been brutal, taking Moncrief to his physical limits, and Parker beyond that. But the sniper fire had served to make their retreat possible, at least so long as their bodies held out.
“Clark, Clark.” Parker was starting to mumble to himself, semiconscious and in obvious pain.
“We need to get him on the antibiotics as soon as we can. And even then, it’s going to be close.”
“I’m not sure how they are going to get us out of here.” Furlong was on his knee, huddled nearby. “The winds are moving fast over the mountains, so they say helicopters are out.”
“Do they know about the nuke?” Moncrief had placed the box on the ground in the center in front of them.
“Yeah. Believe me, they do.”
“What about the other one?”
Moncrief stared. “There’s two?”
“Yeah.”
“That may be why he went back to the truck.”
“Back to one of their trucks?”
“Yeah.”
“How is he, doc?”
“It’s going to be close.”
Parker lay immobile and seemingly insensate on the ground.
Moncrief looked around in frustration. “There’s got to be something else we can do until help comes.”
“Did he use both of the IV bags?”
“Both? I don’t know. I only saw what looked like one empty bag near the tent.”
“There was another.”
“In the cooler?”
“Yeah, there were two IV bags.”
Furlong shook his head and whispered to Moncrief, “Without that second bag, he has a zero chance. He just didn’t get enough antibiotic into him.”
“Shit!” Moncrief cried. “All right. I’ll go check and see.”
“What?” Furlong stared at him. “Have you lost your mind? That tent is a thousand-plus yards from here and in the middle of a beehive.”
“I’ll go with him.” Villegas spoke with his back facing the team as he looked down the valley.
“Like hell you will,” said Furlong. “I don’t need everyone scattered out all over this damn place.”
“I’ll be back in an hour,” said Moncrief. “If anything happens during that time and I’m not back, go home without me.”
“I can stop Villegas, but I can’t stop you,” said Furlong quietly. “But remember: He may already be dead.”
Moncrief shrugged, his mind made up.
“Good luck, Gunny,” said Furlong. “We’re going to move to alternate site delta.”
The move would push them farther up the valley. It would also buy them more time as the army below tried to outflank them.
“I’ll keep him alive for an hour,” said Frix, pulling out a plastic tube like the one that each of them carried.
“Who are you going to use?” asked Furlong.
“Mine,” said Frix. “I know how much to give without burning me out.”
Moncrief realized Frix was talking about transfusing his own blood into Parker’s system.
He clasped hands with each of them in turn before turning to leave.
“Okay, Gunny,” said Furlong. “You have one hour.”
The thermal bi-oculars gave Moncrief a chance of making it. They also revealed his situation starkly:
Goddamn, they are everywhere.
He cut down, on the far left side of the valley, thinking that was the one place no one had been. But the small army’s leader was also thinking that he didn’t want anyone to escape by going downhill. So as Moncrief moved down a washed-out streambed, he saw with his bi-oculars five men moving in the opposite direction.
Shit.
Moncrief stopped, burying himself between two rocks by making himself into a small, tight ball. Even so, he sensed the body heat of the two men as they moved by. He could even smell the same cardamom scent from the tea he’d drunk in the aircraft. More important, they didn’t smell him. He didn’t stand out.
The two were whispering to each other, stopping within an arm’s reach of Moncrief. Even in the foreign language, he could tell by their voices that the two were young, barely out of their teens, and bitching about the cold and the wind.
Bitching: The universal language of the soldier.
Moncrief smiled.
He counted to a hundred after they passed, waiting to be sure that it was safe. And then he climbed out of the rocks and scanned the horizon. The team of five had moved up the creek bed, stopping every so often, and then moving again. He scanned the valley to the different sides and counted the white shapes in the thermals.