“Go! Go!” Couture muttered, watching the two figures struggling along. “Get up and run! Run — don’t give up!”
Something on the infrared UAV feed caught the attention of the Air Force lieutenant. She switched the view to the bigger of the two screens without asking the general. Twenty mounted horsemen were riding south from the Khawak Pass toward the wall of fire that shielded the Americans from the view of the village.
“Now they come!” Couture said, throwing his hands up. “A day late and a dollar short. Fucking hell — what have you people been waiting for?”
The major stood up at the back of the room, calling, “General! The president is on the line, sir.”
Couture went to the back of the room and took the phone. “Yes, Mr. President?”
The president didn’t waste any time coming to the point. “What’s happened, General? Do we have her or not?”
“Yes, sir. She’s aboard an AC-130J as we speak, bound for Bagram Air Base. She’s been shot, but we’ve got our top surgeons standing by on the tarmac. The medic aboard the aircraft reports that her vital signs are weak but stable. It sounds like she should make it, Mr. President. That’s all I can confidently say at this time, sir.”
There was a long pause before the president spoke again. “Okay,” he said with a resigned sigh. “Provided she makes it, General, this is how we’re going to play it… for the good of all. You will prepare an operational brief within twenty-four hours detailing the plans for this operation. It will be entitled Operation Earnest Endeavor. Is that clear?”
“Yes, Mr. President.” Couture was still eyeing the screen. The riders were halfway to where Gil and Crosswhite lay motionless in the road, fire burning all around them, but something was wrong, what were all of those heat signatures in the forest north of the valley sweeping down through the Khawak Pass?
The president continued, “You will submit the brief to my military advisor Tim Hagen, who will then submit it to me for my approval. I will approve the brief as of twenty-four hours ago, and that will be the official story of how this mission was carried off. Understood, General?”
“Cynthia!” Couture shouted into the room. “Upper right of the screen, sweeping south in the trucks! Who the hell are those people?”
“General Couture,” the president said over the phone. “Did you understand what I—”
“I’m going to have to ask you to stand by a moment, Mr. President. We’ve got a situation developing here.” He set the phone down and stepped into the com center as the aerial shot panned around to the north to show a column of more than twenty vehicles racing down from the Hindu Kush toward the Panjshir Valley loaded with men. “Oh, Jesus.”
CHAPTER 64
Gil felt himself borne up from the ground, hands pushing him into the air. He heard the urgent shouting of men over a very great distance. No, not distant. Close… but it was as though he were hearing them from beneath the water. The blood ran from his ears, and suddenly he could hear their voices clearly, chattering away in a language he did not understand. The enemy had him, and now they were carrying him over their heads as a trophy of war, shouting in glee over their victory.
He struggled to draw his pistol, but a hand caught his wrist. The orange glow of the fire receded with the heat, and he was swallowed by darkness. He felt cold air against his skin where patches of his uniform had been burned away, then came to rest again against the hard ground. Ice cold water poured over his face, washing away the blood to clear his vision.
“Gil!” someone was shouting into his face. “Gil, can you hear me?”
For the first time, he realized that his ears were ringing like church bells, but, yes, he could hear the voice. The dim face came into focus. Forogh was kneeling over him, shaking him by the shoulder, showing him the PRC-112.
“Gil! I need your authentication code! There isn’t much time! Your people will shoot us!”
Gil opened his mouth to speak but found that he could not talk above a whisper, his trachea twisted. “Roll me onto my bad side,” he croaked.
Forogh put his ear close to his lips. “Say it again, Gil.”
“Roll me to my wounded side. Can’t breathe!”
After a quick examination, Forogh found that Gil was bleeding from the right side of his back. He rolled him onto that same side to keep the blood from draining into the good lung.
Gil felt some relief at once and was able to speak with a bit more force. “Typhoon Actual,” he said. “Authentication… Whiskey-Whiskey-X-ray-Five-Zero-Five.”
“I’ve got it,” Forogh said, preparing to key the radio.
“Find Steelyard,” Gil croaked. “Steelyard!”
“We have him, Gil. I’m sorry — he’s dead.”
Forogh keyed the transmitter. “Hello! I am calling for Typhoon Actual… Whiskey-Whiskey-X-ray-Five-Zero-Five!… I am his interpreter! Typhoon is badly wounded and needs a medevac! Over!”
Another sortie of F-15s swept into the valley to the south. The mountains erupted in orange-black roiling pyroclastic clouds of fire, and the blasts of thousand-pound bombs echoed like thunder.
Forogh called out again, but no one answered.
His uncle Orzu appeared at his side, holding the reins of his horse as the rest of the men held their defensive perimeter. “We need to leave,” his uncle said. “We’re not safe here. The Americans will mistake us for the enemy.”
“We have to let them know!” Forogh insisted. He spotted the kit box from the STAR system and dropped the PRC-112, running back toward the flames. Inside the box, he found a flare gun and a standard strobe light. He ran back to his uncle. “This will be enough.”
His uncle gave orders for the three Americans to be brought along.
Forogh mounted up. “Put that one up here with me,” he said, pointing down at Gil.
Crosswhite came to, howling in pain when they tried to sit him up on a horse, his fractured hip unable to take the strain. So he was draped over the animal’s shoulders, the same as Steelyard, and they galloped north back toward the original extraction zone.
When they arrived, they put the Americans on the ground, and Forogh activated the strobe.
“Our job is done,” his uncle said. “I can’t risk my men being killed.”
“Thank you, Uncle.” Forogh offered his hand.
“You trust them?” his uncle said, jutting his chin back toward the valley, where the last of the American aircraft was flying away to the south.
Forogh shrugged. “I am in the hands of Allah, Uncle. I trust him.”
His uncle nodded and shook his hand, turning to order his men north into the mountains. That’s when they both saw for the first time the column of vehicles racing south down the pass, bristling with rifles and RPGs. Without headlights, the trucks had drawn to within two hundred yards, unseen in the dawning light. Forogh and his uncles were caught between the enemy to both the north and the south, with nowhere to run but a short box canyon to the west.
“Allah, be merciful,” Forogh muttered.
“This is no time for mercy, boy.” Orzu turned in the saddle, bellowing to his clan. “Ride! Put your backs to the wall! We will see if the Americans are still a friend of the Tajik!”
More than twenty horses bolted across the shallow river into the box canyon. The trucks came speeding toward them, bullets whizzing through the air and ricocheting off the rocks. An RPG exploded against a boulder, and one of Forogh’s cousins was thrown dead from his horse.
Slouched in the saddle behind Forogh, struggling for every breath, Gil drew the 1911 and forced his eyes open, turning to fire at the enemy.