Full Assault Mode (5 page)

Kolt thumbed the button to transmit over the troop internal net.

“All elements, sounds like the Turtle commander is KIA. His RTO is up on comms but pretty shook up. They haven’t PIDed us yet, so hug the rocks,” Kolt said, tracking another muzzle flash and firing several rounds at it. The hammering whine of talking SAWs told him Slapshot’s group was now on the ridge as well.

“One-One, this is Slapshot. We’re in position, and we copied your last. Holy shit, there’s bad guys everywhere!”

“Focus on the north end of the ridge,” Kolt said, following a shadow through the snow that looked to be carrying another RPG. He ran his mag dry and reloaded. He couldn’t tell if he hit him or not.

“One Mike Mike, we’re picking up a lot of Taliban chatter. They have decided to back off.”

Kolt ignored the kid’s inaccurate use of his proper call sign. The young soldier was amped up, and understandably so. Kolt turned his eyes up to the top of the far ridge and trained his HK416 on it. The Taliban were fierce fighters, but they no longer had the upper hand. Every moment they stayed meant risking American air power and artillery raining down on them. They’d set out to do what they meant to do and now wanted to get the hell out of Dodge.

But they weren’t moving up the ridge opposite Kolt. Under nods, Kolt quickly scanned both sides of the valley floor, looking for signs the enemy was actually bugging out. Nothing. Kolt wondered whether the chatter Private Ahrens had reported was bullshit. Before he could overthink the problem, movement at the bottom viewing portion of his nods grabbed his attention.

“Shit! They’re coming at us!” Kolt said aloud to himself before grabbing his push-to-talk and sharing the word with the others. Immediately, Kolt switched radios and keyed into the Turtle frequency.

“Turtle, Turtle, Cease fire. Cease fire!” Kolt said. “Hold what you got. They are bugging out.”

Through Kolt’s other ear, he heard the last part of a question.

“Last calling, you were stepped on. Say again. Over,” Kolt said.

“Boss, what’s the call. I count three dozen, minimum. We bolting or what?”

It was Slapshot. Slapshot, like everyone else lying on that snowy ridgeline, anticipated Kolt’s giving the order to unass the high ground.

“Stand by!” Kolt said quickly. It was a common tactic of his. Put everyone, and everything, on hold while he ran the options and the risk through his head. He’d been here before, dozens of times. Hell, every one of the wide-awake Delta operators on the ridge had. Five against three dozen? None of them liked to run from a gunfight. Kolt knew that much about his men. But what were the odds?

“Kolt, fast movers are on station, but the CG wants you to come up on Green SAT first. He sounds a little bent,” Slapshot said.

Kolt fingered the knob on his higher radio and turned it three clicks clockwise, picking up a transmission already in progress. The voice was familiar. It was the JSOC commanding general.

Great timing. What the hell does he want?
Kolt thought.

A silhouette of a man appeared thirty yards below on the ridge through Kolt’s NVGs. Kolt activated his lime-green infrared laser and put the tip of the invisible beam on the figure’s chest, center mass, but before he could break the five-pound trigger, the man threw his head back and collapsed to the ground as blood gushed white from the wound in his neck.

Nice,
Kolt thought, traversing his rifle farther along the lower part of the ridge, looking for more targets. He spotted motion and began pumping rounds. The falling snow was making it increasingly difficult to see.

More Taliban broke from cover and raced farther up the ridgeline. Kolt saw three more Taliban go down.

Kolt swapped out his magazine for a fresh one before turning his attention back to Admiral Mason and Green SAT.

“I’m seeing a lot of Taliban,” Slapshot said with obvious emphasis on the graveness of the situation. Kolt didn’t respond, keying the mike to engage the commanding general.

“Capital Zero-Six actual, go for Mike One-One. Over,” Kolt said firmly, conscious of the inflection of his voice and controlling his nerves.

“This is Admiral Mason. Put the officer in charge on the radio. Over,” Mason said with an obvious frustration in his voice.

Kolt thought it was an odd request.
Who the hell did he think he was talking to?

“This is. I’m a little busy. Send it,” Kolt said clearly, in no mood for giving a lesson on radio protocol to the new JSOC commander.

“I have cleared hot close-air support. Move your men four hundred meters to the south to reach safe standoff,” Mason directed.

Kolt did the math. Big bomb, danger close. Not only the Taliban on the lower crest of the hill would be vaporized, but he and his men would be toast as well. And very likely the men of Thunder Turtle, especially if the GPS-guided bomb was even slightly off mark, which they were notorious for. Moreover, moving away from the ridgeline, and away from the approaching Taliban, would surrender the high ground to the enemy. Within minutes, they would be at the mercy of the enemy, who would be plunging fire into the valley floor as they retreated.

“What’s the call, boss? We gotta do something!” Slapshot said.

“OK, here’s the play. Slapshot, contact the fast mover. Wave him off; check his fire. We go online here. The moonlight is to their back; mass our fire toward the enemy,” Kolt said before releasing the push-to-talk to think about the next step.

“Fuck, Kolt, I advise against that. You wanna reconsider?” Slapshot said with a little irritation in his voice.

Actually, Kolt wasn’t sure. It seemed doable. It was basic infantry shit. Everyone get shoulder to shoulder at double-arm interval and mass the entire group’s firepower to the front. But that potentially left their flanks unprotected, and certainly their rear. But if Kolt knew anything about leading hardened Delta operators in war—and few would disagree that he knew more than most—he knew enough to trust his instincts. Only once, and it was bad, did he make the wrong call. He lost men on that op, and he paid a dear price himself. He wouldn’t let it happen again.

“Negative. We are holding here. Check the fast mover. Prep frags and hold your fire till I make the execute call. Let them think we bugged out, get about ten meters from the crest, then we’ll unload on ’em,” Kolt said, hoping like hell it didn’t sound like he was making this shit up as he went. If he was out there flapping, the response from his men would confirm it.

He patiently waited for responses. He knew the troop’s sergeant major, Slapshot, was the key. If Slapshot supported the call, the rest surely would.

“Kolt, you’re jacked up. But I’m too old and cold to run away now. I’ll check the fast mover,” Slapshot said.

“I’m in,” Digger said.

Stitch followed. “Let’s knock the ugly off plan A and make it work. No time for plan B.”

Kolt smiled. Proud of Slapshot. Proud of the entire team. Hoping like hell he hadn’t bit off more than he could chew and condemned more of his men to death. The unit wouldn’t accept it again, nor could he live with himself if, for a second time, he had the blood of his mates on his hands.

Kolt and his men didn’t have long to worry about it. Thunder Turtle had stopped firing minutes earlier. It was eerily quiet, short of the sound of the howling winds at altitude. And the hushed Pashtun voices that could be heard well within hand-grenade range.

The Taliban were talking. Either they thought Kolt and his men had left the area, or they simply didn’t care. Their voices were frantic and loud at first, several men either arguing with each other about what to do next or discussing how in the world the coalition hadn’t shown up with the attack helicopters or bombing planes yet. And then, moments later, twenty something enemy fighters stood from behind the rocky outcrops, slung their AKs over their narrow shoulders, and began walking directly up the hill, heading for the house and morning prayers.

“I think we are all seeing the same thing,” Kolt whispered into his mouthpiece. “Keep it simple, basic ranger-school shit. Wait for the command, then dump two mags each in your lane, then lob your frags. Slapshot, you throw long; I’ll take short. The rest take center mass, key your mike if you understand. Over.”

Kolt listened for four distinct breaks in squelch. One, two, three, four.

The enemy closed on Kolt and his men, completely oblivious to the Americans’ presence, stepping on one rock after another as they delicately placed each foot as they ascended.

“Execute, execute, execute!” Kolt said.

The five Delta operators unloaded simultaneously into the group of enemy fighters. They watched through their nods as their green IR lasers settled on the torsos, dropping two and three at a time—some falling backward down the ridgeline and out of sight, a few slumping forward to lay facedown and lifeless on the large rocks they had hoped to safely negotiate.

As Kolt and the others reloaded to dump a second mag into the group, faint cries and moans could be heard from the mass of enemy lying to their front and below. One fighter yelled out,
“Allah u Akbar!”
Then a second fighter followed suit.
“Allah u Akbar! Allah u Akbar!”
Kolt couldn’t help but be impressed with the enemy’s dedication and commitment to their cause as he emptied his second magazine into the group and yanked the safety pin from another frag.

“
Allah u Akbar
my ass, motherfuckers!”

Kolt tried to listen for voices or signs that some of the enemy survived the ambush, since he gave the “cease fire” command about a minute earlier. There was no more of the distinct sound of AKs or Thunder Turtle’s gunners raking the ridge.

As the last operator-tossed frag detonated among the rocks, snow, and ravaged enemy fighters, the mountain grew strangely quiet. The sound of the wind took on an eerie quality. Echoes of gunfire still rattled around in Kolt’s head, but he couldn’t hear anything new.

“Racer, it’s Slapshot. I’ve got Baller Two-One. They’ve got a CASEVAC helo inbound. Twenty minutes.”

Kolt nodded. “Good. Take your team and push out another two hundred yards on the ridge. I don’t want any Taliban sneaking back to take a shot at the helo.”

Kolt listened in on his radio as Thunder Turtle talked to Baller Two-One. Four dead, another four wounded. Kolt heard movement behind him and turned to see Slapshot approaching from his rear. The veteran warrior’s thick beard was obvious in the ambient light as he dropped to his right kneepad near Kolt.

“Happy birthday, sir!” Slapshot whispered. “Forty is old as hell.”

“You would know, Slap,” Kolt said.

“Nobody buys the farm on their birthday, but you are a crazy man. I wasn’t sure that would work,” Slapshot said.

“Thanks for the vote of confidence, and for the record, I wasn’t sure either.”

Slapshot laughed quietly, shaking his head side to side. “You call the CG back yet?”

Kolt hadn’t called Admiral Mason back yet. He wanted to, sort of, just was too busy to think about it.

“What now?” Digger asked over the radio, breaking Kolt’s train of thought.

Kolt looked at his watch and then at the snow-filled sky. “Now, we stand watch over Thunder Turtle until dawn. Think warm thoughts.”

FOUR

“It’s gonna take two days for my ass to thaw,” Slapshot said, walking stiff-legged around their lounge area back at base. “That was the coldest damn night I’ve spent in years!”

Kolt sipped his mug of coffee and smiled, wondering if Slapshot was still suffering from the severe injuries he’d sustained a year ago while chasing Amriki in northern Mexico. It had been cold. His cheeks were still burning, probably a touch of frostbite. Still, compared to those four poor souls in that Buffalo, he and Bravo Team were fine. Stiff, cold, and tired, but fine.

“Twenty-eight confirmed dead,” Stitch said for the fourth time. “Twenty-eight Taliban fucks in the ground.”

Kolt nodded but didn’t engage. Snipers were an odd lot. Maybe it was all the attention to detail, but numbers mattered to them in a way that only accountants might understand.

“Maybe that’ll get us a mission now,” Slapshot said to no one in particular. “They got any Taliban in Tahiti?”

“We’ll be off our butts and busting Pakistani airspace in a day or two,” Kolt answered with a bit of nervous confidence. He was proud of last night’s work. They’d kicked serious ass and come out intact. They were ready. But the final word wasn’t yet in from Admiral Mason about how things went down out there. Sure, twenty-eight was a helluva score. Kolt knew it. Everyone knew it. Even so, whether the new commanding general was impressed or pissed at the perceived insubordination was yet to be seen.

“Still optimistic after all these months? I think I recall hearing that from you a couple of times before,” Slapshot said, rubbing his butt as he walked.

Kolt didn’t blame him. The odds of their ever receiving authority again to launch a Delta assault force across the Afghan-Paki border were slim.

“I don’t know, I doubt the commanding general will pull the trigger and actually send us,” Digger said, sitting up and throwing the
Maxim
toward Slapshot. “All yours.”

“Yeah, what’s the new admiral now, one for thirteen with execute authority?” Slapshot added.

“Would have been two for two with Team Six by now, though,” Stitch added, simply to remind everyone, as if they needed reminding, that admirals are to the navy as generals are to the army. The implication being that Admiral Mason favored his high-strung, hard-drinking, throat-punching SEALs over the army’s more reserved Delta Force.

“That’s bullshit,” Kolt said, before cautioning them all. “Besides, don’t say that too loud. Shaft might hear you.”

Shaft, Bravo Team’s second in command, was a Green Beret medic prior to being selected for Delta’s ranks. Even though he was a full-fledged Delta assaulter now, the guys around the compound often spoke of his skill with the scalpel. He had a knack for it. Medicine was his true passion. Sure, it was completely contradictory to his current job as a counterterrorist operator. He was paid to kill, not paid to heal. But, nevertheless, his Delta buddies weren’t complaining.