Brux chopped the throttles, and together they hauled back on the yoke to gain another fifty feet of altitude.
“We’re gonna miss it!” Dave shouted.
“No, we’re not!” Brux kicked the rudder to swing the tail of the aircraft around just enough so that the far left edge of the V-shaped pickup yoke, extending from the front of the Spectre, caught the line less than a foot inside of the left turnbuckle. The line rode the yoke down into the eye and locked into the Skyhook at the bottom of the V, snapping against the windscreen and slapping back over the top of the fuselage, tearing away from the balloon as it was designed to do.
The unconscious Sandra was snatched up into the sky with little more force than that of an opening parachute and disappeared into the night. As the AC-130J leveled off, the line extending from her harness ascended to a parallel position with the bottom of the aircraft. She trailed seventy-five feet behind the plane, twisting slowly in the wind as the load master reached down from the end of the ramp with a retrieving hook attached to a long pole to grab the line. After the line was hooked, he and one of the gunners ran the line through a pulley anchored over the ramp and fed it back into a winch that reeled Sandra up into the plane.
Within three minutes of being snatched from the ground, she was lying on the deck with an Air Force medic starting an IV of O-negative blood.
John Brux appeared a minute later and knelt beside her to take her hand, both seeing and smelling that his wife was covered in filth. When he looked into her face, he thought she was dead. “Is she going to make it?” he asked, shattered by what he saw.
The medic nodded. “Her vitals are weak, but not that weak. She should make it if we haul ass for home. No way can we afford to stick around and help.”
Brux nodded, shaken to his core by the feel of Sandra’s missing ring finger. “Roger. I gotta get back up front.” He felt Sandra’s grip tighten and looked down to see her looking up at him in the red glow of the cargo hold.
“Baby, I’m so sorry for everything!”
His face contorted, and he leaned down to kiss her filth-covered face, fighting the deluge of emotions threatening to break him down. “I love you! I gotta go fly the plane now.”
“Okay,” she said. “Love you.”
He went forward and strapped himself back into his seat, taking the yoke and wiping his eyes on his upper arms.
“She okay?” Dave asked.
“For now,” Brux choked, checking the starboard outboard engine to make sure the fire was still out. “Jesus Christ, Dave, she’s a goddamn mess. I don’t even fucking recognize her.”
Dave reached across and grabbed his shoulder. “Hey, you did it, man. You got her the fuck out of there. Everything else from here on is fucking gravy.”
“Yeah?” Brux said. “What about them back there?” He thumbed over his shoulder. “We have to leave them, and help is still ten minutes out.”
Dave shook his head. “We can’t worry about them. They volunteered for this same as you and me… same as everybody on this plane. They’re down there for Sandra. Now get on the fucking radio.”
Brux keyed the radio. “Big Ten to Typhoon. Big Ten to Typhoon. Do you copy? Over.”
“Roger, Big Ten. Is she up there with you now? Over.”
“Roger that, Typhoon. Be advised… be advised we have to bug out on you. She’s lost too much blood. Over.”
“Roger that, Big Ten. We knew that already. Godspeed!”
Brux choked up and Dave took over the radio.
“Typhoon, be advised that Big Ten is very grateful for all your help. Over.”
“We’re grateful for yours, Big Ten! Gotta get back to the fight now. Typhoon out.”
CHAPTER 60
By now, Couture and the others in Central Command were watching the battle via satellite in addition to the UAV feed, providing them a more expansive view of the valley. People came and went from the room like bees working a hive, delivering communiqués from DC, Langley, and various other locations from inside the ATO.
Couture stared at the screen where Gil and his compatriots were taking cover behind a pickup truck that Crosswhite had disabled with a grenade. It was easy to see from the way all three men moved about that they were carrying wounds, slowly being picked apart. Their situation was perilous, to say the least, and degrading rapidly. A large HIK force numbering close to eighty had gathered west of their position on the far side of the river, and it was readily apparent that Gil and the others had no idea they were about to be caught in a lethal crossfire. They were too heavily engaged by the hundred or so men fanned out ninety yards in front of them to the southeast. What kept the enemy from overrunning their position from both directions was anyone’s guess at this point, but Couture assumed it must have something to do with their not having any idea how large a force they were up against.
“It’s a damn good thing these people have no command structure to speak of,” he said to no one in particular. “How long before those B-52s are over the target, Major?”
“Five minutes out, General.”
An RPG struck the pickup truck, and the entire screen was temporarily whited out.
Couture glanced at the UAV screen for a better picture, but it was obscured as well.
“Cynthia, back that off.”
The Air Force lieutenant zoomed out, and they saw that the truck was burning. Gil, Steelyard, and Crosswhite were falling back, leapfrogging north through the rocks and trees toward the dead horse, where there would be no cover at all. Two more pickup trucks loaded with fighters raced out of the village, many of the men in back firing wildly over the top of the cab as the trucks careened along over the rugged terrain.
Couture stole a glance at Captain Metcalf. “Looks like this is it, Glen. I’m sorry.”
“Yes, sir.” Metcalf mopped his brow with an olive drab handkerchief.
The room had fallen silent as a tomb minutes before in the instant Big Ten was struck by the RPG. No one had dared to even breathe as the huge plane slewed out of control temporarily, only to nose up again seconds later, banking left like a fighter plane to snare the balloon line and snatch Sandra from the Valley of the Shadow. Then, minutes later, the message came that she was safely aboard the gunship, and everyone in the room had shouted in triumph and disbelief, high-fiving and backslapping one another.
Admittedly, that had been the single most exciting moment of Metcalf’s life.
Now — just over three minutes later — he found himself at the lowest moment of his career. He was about to watch three terribly brave men gunned down in the open without so much as a ditch for cover. Tragically, this was not an unheard-of occurrence within the Special Forces Community. Brave men — like Sean Bordeaux and his Rangers — had been caught out and shot down a number of times in Afghanistan, more times than most of the American public realized or cared to hear about, but this time Metcalf was going to lose a close personal friend.
He and Steelyard had found themselves knee-deep in the shit together more than once during the Cold War. He owed his life to Steelyard, in fact, having been shot through both legs during the First Gulf War, riding over Steelyard’s shoulder for more than a mile across the desert to make their rendezvous with another SEAL unit. It sickened Metcalf, and it shamed him that he could do nothing more for his friend in return than to watch him die on television, as if it were a Tom Clancy film, from the safety of a climate-controlled office in downtown Kabul.
“At least they can go out knowing she’s safe,” he said, speaking as much to himself as General Couture.