The horsemen rode into the box canyon and dismounted among the rocks. The firing fell off for a moment as the trucks slid to a stop on the far side of the Panjshir River and the HIK unloaded, taking up positions of their own as they began to maneuver aggressively toward the canyon.
Orzu was shouting orders to his men, putting them where he wanted them. Finally, when there were not enough rocks or positions of cover for them to fall back to, he ordered the horses formed into two separate phase lines of a dozen each. Then he ordered them all shot in place.
Gil screamed and slammed his fist against the earth, strangling against the tension pneumothorax in his chest, his blood-soaked face turning blue, lips beginning to swell.
Crosswhite and Forogh dragged him to the back of the canyon and propped him up on his knees over the belly of a dead mare.
“You’re dying!” Crosswhite said, jerking the water tube from Gil’s CamelBak. “I gotta drain that lung. Forogh, hold his ass down!”
A wild firefight broke out at the mouth of the canyon a hundred feet away; rockets exploded among the rocks.
“Do you know how to do this?” Forogh asked, shaking like a dog shitting a peach pit as he lay across Gil’s shoulders.
“I saw it once in a cartoon,” Crosswhite said, grunting against the pain of a cracked pelvis. “Be sure and hold his ass tight.”
He took Gil’s Ka-Bar from its sheath and cut Gil’s jacket up the back to expose his sweat-soaked skin. “Hold on now!” He put the point of knife into Gil’s lower back and slowly pushed it in at an upward angle toward the bottom of where he hoped the pleural cavity would be.
Gil writhed around like a fish on the end of a spear, choking blood, unable to breathe or scream. The fight raged on in the mouth of the canyon, the HIK desperate to kill them all before the next inevitable airstrike. A grenade landed in the middle of the canyon and exploded harmlessly near the first phase line of dead horses. Crosswhite pulled out the knife and stuck his finger deep into the wound, sliding the hard plastic water tube in behind it. He felt the tube slide into what he hoped was the empty space of the pleural cavity, and a few seconds later a pinkish red fluid began to drain from Gil’s body.
“Got it!” he said, slapping Forogh on the shoulder. “Can you fucking believe that?”
After forty or fifty seconds Gil had begun to breathe again. “Get me a rifle,” he croaked, his face contorted with pain, still smeared with gore.
Forogh gave him his AK-47, and Crosswhite took Gil’s pistol and what was left of his ammo. Forogh ran to join his clan among the rocks where he knew there would soon be another available rifle.
Crosswhite took a few moments to get Gil propped comfortably in the crook of the dead horse’s shoulder, careful to keep his wounded side lower than the other. “How you wanna play this?”
Gil took the last grenade from his harness and gave it to him. “Save that for us.”
“Okay,” Crosswhite said with a smile, tucking the smooth green orb into his jacket. “I wouldn’t be able to run even if we had someplace to go.”
CHAPTER 65
Couture went back into the office and picked up the phone. “Still there, Mr. President?”
“What the hell is going on over there?” the president demanded, very pissed at having been put on hold.
“Mr. President, one of our men on the ground is already dead. At this time, the two survivors and twenty-some of our Tajik allies are cornered in a canyon just outside the Panjshir Valley, south of the Khawak Pass in the Hindu Kush. They are surrounded by more than one hundred heavily armed Taliban and HIK fighters with hundreds more on the way. I’ve got two B-52s about to drop a JDAM strike, but that’s only going to buy these people ten or fifteen minutes of relief. I do have a few helos on standby to extract our men — both of whom are very badly wounded. What I do not have, Mr. President, is the means to extract the Tajik fighters who have risked their lives on this operation to save our people.”
The president cursed under his breath. “So exactly what are you asking me for, General?”
“Mr. President, I’m requesting permission to declare Winchester, sir.”
The president hesitated, embarrassed to admit that he didn’t immediately know what Winchester was.
“Mr. President, declaring Winchester means that I intend to call upon every single air asset at our disposal in a continuous series of sorties until I have annihilated all HIK and Taliban forces within the Panjshir Valley… leaving only the village of Bazarak itself untouched. This will not only eliminate the imminent threat to our personnel and our allies on the ground, but will also eliminate the expanding HIK military presence in the Panjshir Valley.”
Couture looked at the major and covered the receiver with his hand, giving the go-ahead for the B-52 strikes to commence.
“Are you aware, General,” the president asked, “of the parliamentary problems such a military strike against the HIK would create for President Karzai in the present political climate over there?”
“With respect, Mr. President — Mr. Karzai’s political woes are not my concern. My concern at this time are the lives of our people and our allies on the ground who helped to rescue Warrant Officer Brux. What are your orders, sir?”
Couture waited as the president considered his response, pensively watching the screen as the JDAMs struck all around the mouth of the box canyon. Men and truck parts were blown across the valley floor in great sweeping explosions, leaving gaping black craters in their place.
“General Couture,” the president said finally, “I’m going to grant you the authority to use every air asset we have in that hemisphere from Diego Garcia to London, England. In fact, I’m calling the chairman of the Joint Chiefs to tell him you have the tactical authority to call upon whatever you need — be it air, land, or sea. But understand me, Generaclass="underline" if you decide to escalate this battle to that level, you had better make damn sure you can bring those people out of there alive. If you fail, I don’t want to hear any excuses. Is that clear? Because I’ve just given you everything you’ve asked for.”
“Thank you, Mr. President. Now, if you’ll excuse me, sir, I have a battle to direct.”
“Very well, General. Good luck.”
“Sir!” Couture hung up the phone and turned to his staff. “Winchester is in effect, people! I want those A-10s in the sky right now, and get those alert B-1s off the ground in Diego Garcia — I want them supersonic all the way to the target!” He stabbed his finger at the screen. “Our priority is to bring every one of these fighters trapped in this canyon out alive! Is that clear? Every one! Now get on the phones — brief your helo crews, your flight leaders, and crew chiefs! Everybody! I don’t want there to be any confusion on this! We are lifting those indigenous people out of the Panjshir Valley!”
Practically everyone grabbed for a phone.
Couture sat down on the edge of the table next to Captain Metcalf. “I damn near cried when they gunned down all those horses, Glen. Reminds of me of what my granddaddy had to go through on Corregidor back in ’42.”
Metcalf thoughtfully stroked his chin. “Your grandfather was a cavalryman?”
Couture nodded. “He was forced to eat his horse… and he never got over it to the day he died.”
CHAPTER 66
Gil was firing single shots over the open sights of the AK-47 when the JDAMs struck at the mouth of the canyon. Great shock waves reverberated off the canyon walls. He and Crosswhite took cover behind the corpses of the horses to avoid being hit by an avalanche of pineapple-size rock that came showering down. The B-52 pilots had been smart, carefully dropping their ordnance much less than danger close to avoid killing friendlies, wiping out the vast majority of HIK and Taliban fighters who had come down from the north but leaving enough of them alive that the Tajik fighters were still engaged in a dangerous firefight. At least now, however, they weren’t in immediate danger of being overrun.