The Devil's Waters
Read The Devil's Waters Online
Authors: David L. Robbins
Also by David L. Robbins:
Souls To Keep
War of the Rats
The End of War
Scorched Earth
Last Citadel
Liberation Road
The Assassins Gallery
The Betrayal Game
Broken Jewel
For the stage:
Scorched Earth
(an adaptation)
The characters and events portrayed in this book are fictitious. Any similarity to real persons, living or dead, is coincidental and not intended by the author.
Text copyright © 2012 David L. Robbins
All rights reserved.
No part of this book may be reproduced, or stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without express written permission of the publisher.
Published by Thomas & Mercer
P.O. Box 400818
Las Vegas, NV 89140
ISBN-13: 9781612186061
ISBN-10: 1612186068
To the selfless men of CSAR, combat search and rescue.
To Sherrie Najarian, for whom I have searched, and by whom I have been rescued.
“That Others May Live”
motto of the USAF pararescue Guardian Angels, known as the PJs
2010
On board HH-60 Pedro 1
Hindu Kush
Afghanistan
The earphones
in LB’s helmet buzzed.
“Where’d he go?”
LB lay still. He’d stretched out on the Pave Hawk’s vibrating floor and wasn’t going to give up his spot just because the pilot sounded a little edgy. These helo jocks were good, and what little they didn’t know about the valleys and mountains of Afghanistan, multiple arrays of electronics could tell them. GPS, FLIR, Inertial Nav—the cockpit up front shimmered with green gauges, digits, and shifty electronic lines. LB lay in the back of
Pedro 1
, comfortable. He had his own job to do once they reached the village. He lolled his head to the side to glance out the window, into the canopy of high blue over the serrated edges of the Hindu Kush.
Beside him, Wally couldn’t help himself; he had to look. He rose to his knees, pivoting to get a peek out the windshield. The moment he did this, Doc’s boots filled in the vacated space.
Wally’s voice sizzled over the intercom. “Whoa.”
In that moment, the squall socked away the sky and mountains. The floor under LB’s rump and rucksack shook as their copter disappeared into the fat, blowing mist.
Around LB, everyone—the
flight engineer, back-end gunner, even old hands Doc and Quincy—peered out the windows. This wasn’t a fascination with weather, how thick a whiteout nature could whip up at nine thousand feet in the Afghan mountains. The men were on the lookout for
Pedro 2
, the other Pave Hawk on the mission, with its own giant rotating blade somewhere, invisibly, close by.
LB couldn’t enjoy having the floor all to himself if no one was competing with him for it. The others had noses pressed to the windows like pooches, paying him no mind. The pilots and engineer continued their radio chatter. Even in their clipped speech over the intercom, LB deciphered some nerves. He slid back against the door, shoving himself to a sitting position, and shouldered beside young Jamie to get a gander at the storm.
“Whoa is right.”
The HH-60 blasted through the squall at 120 miles per hour. Snow and sheets of fog streaked by in hurrying, purling ghosts of opaque white. Visibility ramped down to zero.
The air frame rattled, suspended beneath the spinning rotor. The HH-60 was built for rugged, not smooth, flying. She was neither sleek nor pretty. The aircraft was designed to be hard to bring down, not much else. Left and right, mountain peaks and sheer walls zoomed by, completely obscured. Somewhere in this same blank morass flew
Pedro 2
, another HH-60.
“
Ringo 53
,
Pedro 1
,” the pilot called to their HC-130 fuel plane cruising two thousand feet overhead, above the storm. “You got eyes on?” “Negative,
Pedro 1
. Blind on your position.”
LB muttered, “Shit.” The intercom picked this up.
Wally shot him a cool rebuke from behind his Oakley shades.
LB ignored him. Wally was a captain and a CRO, but that didn’t have much juice up here, where all their tails were equally on the line. On his knees, LB squirmed between Doc and Quincy. He stuck his head into the narrow alley between the engineer and back-end gunner for a clear view of the cockpit.
LB didn’t look out the windshield or at the
gauges and flowing emerald lines on the heads-down display. He was interested not in computers or satellites right now, but in the pilots, the hands on the controls.
He’d been in this situation before, a year ago in southern Afghanistan, Paktika Province. Same drill: high altitude, sudden whiteout, PR mission. The air force after-report said the copter pilots lost spatial orientation only minutes after being swallowed whole in clam chowder clouds. They stopped trusting their instruments, got hesitant, and decided to abort. They banked the Pave Hawk out of the mission flight path. In the thin air at ten thousand feet, the rotor couldn’t generate enough lift. The HH-60 sank into the unseen side of a mountain. The blades sheared into catapulting pieces in every direction; the fuselage slid backward, then somersaulted into five barrel rolls down the slope. Many miracles occurred in those tumbling moments. When the dented hulk of the HH-60 finally came to rest against a stone hut, in the dust, smoke, and adrenaline, no one had a single broken bone or even a gash, just a lot of bruises and some puking. Wally was there, too; he held up his breakfast burrito and emptied coffee mug. He earned himself a new call sign that morning: Juggler.
Today’s storm raged in northeast Afghanistan; the conditions were lousy all over this country. LB studied the men in the cockpit for situational awareness. Were the pilots keeping it together? The squall tossed them around, but
Pedro 1
was built to take enemy fire; it could stand a good buffeting. In his twelve years as a pararescueman, LB had seen men and machines outperform any reasonable expectation, go far past what could be decently asked of flesh or metal. He’d been present, too, when machines failed and men broke. It was always a coin toss what was going to happen.
Wally sidled next to him. He made an okay sign with fingers and thumb, asking how LB was holding up. LB made a sour face. Wally bent his helmet’s mike close to his
lips so the pilots could hear him clearly.
“How we doin’ up front?”
“The terrain’s taking us up another thousand. Not happy having to climb in this soup.”
“Stay with it, guys. We’ll make it.”
The helicopter lurched in a stomach-churning jump over a wind burst.
Pedro 1
was giving her all. Young Jamie blew out his cheeks, no fan of roller coasters. Wally turned on the four PJs, sticking out an upturned thumb. Doc and Quincy looked to each other. Both were experienced soldiers—Doc a former marine, Quincy come over from the SEALs. Neither had been in a crash. Jamie was the newest PJ. This was just his second PR mission. He waited for the others.
Wally waggled the thumb, asking for a vote. As much as LB enjoyed frustrating Wally’s attempts at leadership—they agreed they’d been together too long—he was the first to stick up his own thumb. This time, Wally was right on the money. The safest thing to do in these conditions was to press forward, fly the flight plan loaded into the instruments, prepped for in the briefings. As long as
Pedro 1
stayed airborne and performing along this route, and
Pedro 2
did the same, they should rely on their avionics. Flying white blind was not as big a risk as losing confidence and faith.
The blowing ropes of fog and snow drew Doc and Quincy to one last, agonized glance out the windows before they voted thumbs-up. Red-cheeked Jamie made it unanimous.
Wally turned forward, toward the cockpit.
“We got a vote back here, Major. We want to push through. There’s a kid up ahead. He needs to meet us.”
The pilot pivoted enough to eye Wally, with LB beside him. Jamie, Doc, and Quincy came to their knees so the pilot could see the entire team.
The pilot’s lips parted to speak. He closed
them, nodded, and returned to his instruments and the storm.
Smartly, Wally slid to sit on the shivering floor before the others could grab all the legroom. The PJs settled in with lowered chins and folded arms to await the consequences of their vote. LB kept on his knees. Wally lifted his chin to him, in thanks for the support. LB hit him on the shoulder, too hard.
The weather broke like a fever, after enough shaking and sweats to exhaust everyone in
Pedro 1
. The perfect sky and troublingly close cliffs reappeared with only a dozen miles left to the village. LB stayed on his knees, watching the pilots until the clouds parted and
Pedro 2
corkscrewed out of the mist fifty yards ahead, right where they’d been thirty minutes ago when the storm stole them.
Wally thanked the pilots. He cast another thumbs-up around to the PJs, but no one came out of their own hunker to respond. LB sometimes felt bad for Wally and his sunny demeanor, his cheerful brand of leadership that often fell flat. Not this time. LB was sore and tasting the bile in his throat from the thrashing of the squall. He wanted to be on solid earth, even Afghanistan’s stony ground.
The pair of choppers barreled through a long, deep valley, carved between sheer slopes along the northern ridge of the Hindu Kush.
Pedro 1
and
Pedro 2
poured on the speed, beating at the flimsy air to put some distance between them and the squall rolling up behind them.
The pilot crackled over the intercom. “Figure fifteen minutes on the ground, boys. That system’s funneling right down the valley. I don’t want to be here when it hits.”
“Roger that.” Wally tapped his wristwatch at the PJs to keep an eye on the time.
The back-end gunner shoved
aside his window. He lowered his visor and put both hands on the .50 caliber. On the left,
Pedro 2
slowed and stood off, hovering high above a rocky creek carving through the valley.
Pedro 1
surged forward.
LB secured his gear and med ruck, his M4 carbine. He unplugged his helmet from the HH-60’s intercom and jacked into the team’s radio comm on his Rhodesian vest.
He pointed at Wally. “Juggler, radio check.”
Wally responded. “Lima Charley. How me?”
“Loud and clear.”
One at a time, LB made contact with the others until all had transmitted and received. Each team member checked his own radio the same way.
Pedro 1
slowed, hovering several hundred meters shy of the LZ. Out of the copter’s rear, a liquid gush blew from the tank release valve as the pilots dumped two hundred pounds of weight to accommodate the passengers they’d come to retrieve. At eleven thousand feet, every extra pound had to be accounted for and balanced so the chopper, after setting down, could fight its way back into the air.
LB rose to his kneepads. The others did the same in a circle. The chopper descended quickly, squeezing another pinched look from Jamie. Out the window, a stream coursed, swollen with winter runoff from snowy peaks on all sides. The HH-60 zoomed in low over the creek, then halted in midair while the pilots final-checked the landing. With an ease missing from the rest of the flight, the chopper touched wheels down.
The PJs unclipped their cow’s tails from the floor, and Quincy slid back the door. The back-end gunner swept the barrel of his .50 cal across the waiting village elders. Wally hit the cold ground first. LB and the rest formed up behind him, crouching beneath the spinning blades. Dust and small stones whipped at their boots. The elders’ dark
chapan
coats and beards wavered on the rotor wash.
LB lengthened
his strides to pass the much taller Wally, raising a hand to the locals. A younger one, in a blue
pakul
hat to match his long frock, stepped forward. This one’s beard was the shortest, the hand he extended the least thick. Wally and Doc arrived beside LB. Jamie and Quincy spread out, attention on the first huts of the village a hundred yards off, the steep terrain rising behind it, and the sere shrubs along the stream.
“Welcome to Rubati Yar,” the young man shouted in English. “I am teacher.”
LB pulled off his glove to clasp the offered hand. Wally did not remove his sunglasses.
LB asked, “Where’s the boy?”
“Come.”
Wally nodded, stepping back. He rested a hand on the M4 carbine slung at his chest, near the trigger. LB motioned Doc to follow.
The teacher led them away from the stream, up a pebbled trail into the village. Rubati Yar was made up of a few dozen stacked-stone shacks, corrugated tin roofs, stave sheds, and goat pens clinging to a flat patch on the side of a mountain. One cinder trail ran beside the water ten kilometers downhill, leading west to the poppy fields of the Khumbi Khulkhan highlands. Twenty miles east sprawled Pakistan, twenty to the north lay Tajikistan.
In this sparse, far corner of Afghanistan, a boy had stepped on a land mine.
Yesterday a marine LRP team, walking this high-altitude stream, had been flagged down by the villagers of Rubati Yar. They showed the marine captain a boy in rough shape. Half his foot was blown off; black flesh framed the wound. The marines put in a call to Bagram Air Base for an air evac. The PJs spun up at first light.