“Here they come,” he said. “It’s time to get you the fuck outta here.”
“What about you?”
He keyed the radio. “Big Ten! Big Ten! This is Typhoon! You’re gonna have to make the drop on my present position! I’m pinned under the horse and cannot make the EZ! No time for cover fire! You have to line up for your drop run now! I will keep the enemy at bay! Over!”
“Roger that, Typhoon. Lining up for the run. Give us three minutes. Over.”
“I don’t understand.” Sandra was saying. “What drop run?”
“Surface-to-air recovery,” he said, switching out the subsonic ammo in the Remington for a ten-round magazine of .308 Lapua Naturalis hunting ammunition. The Naturalis round had a special valve in the nose of the bullet to not only guarantee its expansion upon entering the body, but to control that expansion so the round did not break apart, not even upon striking bone. He put his eye to the scope, placed the reticle on the closest bad guy five hundred yards out, and squeezed the trigger. The bad guy grabbed the base of his throat, flipping over backward as if he’d been clotheslined.
Gil took his eye from the scope and touched Sandra’s face. “You’re going out of here on a Skyhook, honey.”
“No,” she said, shaking her head and starting to cry. “I can’t leave you down here. We don’t leave our people behind!”
“The Northern Alliance will come for me,” he said. “Well, they’re not exactly the Northern Alliance anymore, but they used to be, so don’t worry.”
“Where are they?” she demanded, swiveling her head around. “Why aren’t they here? They don’t even know the horse is dead!”
“There aren’t enough of them for a fight this close to the village, but they’ll see the drop. They’ll see the drop and they’ll come. Don’t worry about it. Your mission is to get — hey, what the fuck is this?” He grabbed at her belly where the bloody gown was showing through the open cloak. “You’re fucking bleeding, Sandy!”
“I didn’t want to you worry,” she said lamely. “I got hit just before the horse went down.”
He grabbed up the radio. “Big Ten! Expedite! Expedite! Track Star is hit! Repeat! Track Star is hit! Belly wound! Repeat! Belly wound!”
CHAPTER 57
John Brux unbuckled his harness and climbed out of the pilot’s seat. “Jesus, Dave, she’s been hit in the fucking belly!”
“Where the fuck are you going?” the copilot called over his shoulder. “I’ve never done this before, John!”
“I’ll be right back! Just get us lined up!”
Brux found Master Chief Steelyard and Captain Daniel Crosswhite in the cargo hold, where they stood on the open ramp helping the load master ready the drop kit for the STAR system. The wind was howling, and he had to shout to be heard over the roar of the aircraft’s four T56 turboprop jet engines. “She’s been hit!”
“Sandra?” Steelyard shouted back. “How bad?”
“In the belly. Shannon’s pinned under the fucking horse. I think he plans on sending her up alone, but if Sandy’s bleeding—”
“If she’s bleeding, we can’t loiter up here long enough to cover Gil until the cavalry gets here!”
“That’s right!” Brux shouted. “CenCom’s sending everything they’ve got, but they’re twenty minutes out. Those Northern Alliance guys can’t see Gil from where they are, and all he’s got down there is a rifle!”
Steelyard turned to grab an emergency aircrew parachute from the bulkhead, throwing it at Crosswhite. “Put that on, asshole, we’re going in!”
Crosswhite grinned and began stepping into the harness. Steelyard grabbed a chute for himself.
“What the fuck do you mean, you’re going in?” Brux shouted in disbelief. “Jesus Christ, Chief! We’re dropping the kit from three hundred feet!”
“It’s a called an E-LALO!” Steelyard said with a laugh. “Extremely low!”
Brux adamantly shook his head. “You can’t do it! That’s just an old C-9! Those chutes aren’t made for LALO-ing. They take too long to open. You’ll hit too fucking hard!”
Crosswhite’s mind raced to form a solution to their dilemma. He considered briefly deploying the chutes inside the bay. This would allow the wind to drag them off the ramp behind the kit, but the idea was just too damn dangerous, and they might not land anywhere near the kit that way. “I got it!” He turned to the load master. “Get us some five-fifty cord — we’ll rig a pair of static lines!”
Steelyard took Brux by the arm, shouting into his ear. “Better get back up front, John. If Gil’s pinned under the horse, he won’t be able to set up the STAR system anyhow. We have to go in!”
By the time they were lined up for the drop, Crosswhite and Steelyard were armed and ready to jump with the kit. They had each attached a thirty-foot-long, double line of parachute cord to the chute carriers on their C-9 parachutes and secured the opposite ends of the lines to the deck of the ramp on either side. These static lines would rip the chute carries open the second they stepped off the end of the ramp and deploy each of their parachutes more or less instantly.
Crosswhite stood on the ramp beside Steelyard waiting for the load master’s signal to step forward. “You ever jump this low with one of these pieces of shit?”
Steelyard grinned at him. “What do you think? I used to be six feet tall!”
They broke up laughing, and the load master held up his thumb. “Thirty seconds to drop!”
They stepped off to either side of the kit, and Steelyard stuck an unlit cigar between his teeth. “I hope they got a couple a wheelchairs down there. ’Cause we’re gonna fuckin’ need ’em!”
CHAPTER 58
Gil was having a hell of a time drawing a bead on his targets with one leg pinned beneath the horse. The only good thing about having the animal between him and the enemy was the fact that the incoming AK-47 and SKS rounds wouldn’t penetrate its body. With effort, he could raise up well enough to hit whatever target he needed to, but he couldn’t maintain a sight picture while working the bolt. After each shot, he had to fall onto his back again to eject the spent round and jack a new one into the battery before rising back up to shoot. It was costing him valuable time, allowing the enemy to encroach much closer on his position than they would have otherwise been able to. He was engaging targets at only a hundred yards now, and they should strictly not have been able to get that close.
“Goddamn you!” he swore at the man he caught belly crawling through the scrub at fifty yards, blowing the top of his head off. “Last time I saw that fucker he was clear over there!”
“Let me help you!” Sandra said for the third time, curled up in a ball beside him.
“You keep watching our six. The plane’s gonna be overhead any minute now.” He took off his helmet and gave it to her. “Use the infrared scope to spot the strobe when they drop the kit. You’re gonna run out and drag it over here so I can help you assemble it.”
“Gil, I’m not sure I can even walk.”
“Yeah, well, you’re gonna run if it comes to that.” In his mind, he was wondering how in the bloody hell he was going to assemble the extraction kit and keep the enemy off their backs at the same time. He was hoping the Spectre would be able to beat the bastards back far enough one last time before breaking off to circle out again for the extraction run, but even sixty seconds was too far in the future for him to worry about. He rose up over the horse with the Remington and instantly spotted three desperados charging their position at a dead run.