The Towers (27 page)

Teddy caught Dollhard in the center of the courtyard. He was moving up to the lieutenant when two doors slammed open and muzzle flashes chattered. He wheeled and returned fire, but the twist threw his aim off, and for a moment he was left standing in the open returning fire from whoever was invisible inside, not a good setup. Dollhard was firing too, both of them on full auto, pouring it in the way you did to convince whoever was in there to quit. The tracers came up at the bottom of their mags, and they both hit the releases and swapped out at the same moment. The second 240 gunner was firing too, a ripping burst that chewed smoke and dust up, but when he stopped whoever was in there fired again. “We're not making an impression on these guys,” Dollhard grunted.

Teddy was already sprinting left, though, and snap-aimed and fired the grenade from his 203 through the door. It clanged into something not only solid but metallic, a strangely artificial sound in this world of rock and mud, and instead of going off bounced back out into the courtyard and hopped a couple of times in the dust and rolled to a halt. Dudded.

Dollhard was yelling in what Teddy guessed was Pashtun. Telling them to surrender, probably. All he was getting from inside was what sounded like catcalls, jeers.
“Allahu Akbar”
—he knew that one. “Jesus fuck,” he snarled, reloading on his belly behind some kind of low wooden … water trough? Hadn't seen any animals, though the shit stink was overpowering where he was lying. If it
was
animal shit. He was shivering, even geared up and layered. Nobody'd told him it would be like the fucking Arctic. He fired another grenade. This one went off in there but didn't reduce the volume of return fire. He kept seeing hints of something each time a muzzle flashed. Angular and fairly big, by its shadow. A renewed stutter from a 240, behind them. Distant thuds of the howitzer shells coming down from the Spectre. Breaking up any attempt at reinforcement, he hoped.

“Covering,” the lieutenant yelled, and Teddy stuck his barrel over the trough and let go. Dollhard leapt up, took four strides, and overhanded a pitch through the double doors. A burst flickered at the same moment, and the stubby OIC staggered and went down.

The incendiary blasted fire all through the interior of what immediately became evident was a garage. Screams burst out, but two men kept firing even as they burned, hunched over the treads of what Teddy, yelling for someone to help him get the lieutenant out of there, realized was a bulldozer. No wonder their bullets had ricocheted. As he dragged an unresponsive Dollhard into cover, secondary explosions shot renewed showers of sparks up through a ruptured roofline. Where did these sheep-fuckers get a fucking bulldozer? Then the roof fell in, illuminating a peeling red star on the machine's flank just before flaming beams and debris covered it.

The corpsman took over, propping Dollhard's head up and getting his gear off. Teddy left them and followed Echo One, which had plunged into the warren on the left, continuing to take rooms down. When he left the now fully firelit courtyard, coughing and spitting into the chickenshitty dust, he found them mustering prisoners in a hallway. The Talibs sat with legs crossed and heads bent, custody bags over their heads, hands zip-tied behind them. The SEALs threw weapons clattering onto a pile in a front room. “Any of these fuckers Omar?” Teddy asked the squad leader over the bone mike.

“Nah. They all got two eyes, Chief.”

“Fuck. How many more rooms?”

“Two more, Chief. Then we're up to the front gate.”

“Get it done. Make sure that gate's locked and barred. We don't want anybody at this rodeo we didn't invite.” He switched back to Echo Two, which had followed Lieutenant (jg) Verstegen around the burning garage toward the antenna. Petty Officer Wasiakowski said he was setting demo on it and the transmitter, plus they had a lot more ordnance. Teddy told them they could thermite the weapons in place, but he wanted the ammo carried out into the wadi before they nuked it. “Tell Verstegen we want all male EPWs back in the courtyard for extract. Get some fire in your ass! There's always gonna be more weapons. We can't stick around here fingering each other's buttholes.”

The roar-whine of a 53 going over, as if reminding them to enplane and get the hell out of here. Already in the distance AKs crackled and a higher-pitched rattle might be an RPK. Intel had doubted the locals would back up Johnny Taliban if foreign infidels fell out of the sky. Teddy wasn't so sure. He shoved the hooded captives along, ignoring the wailing of the women. Little kids sobbed, clutching their fathers. This left him unmoved. He didn't mind hate-filled looks. A lot of kids in New York City would never see their parents again. “Wait a minute! Where you think you're going with that?”

“Souvenir, Chief.”

“Fuck that. Find a pistol, you can keep that. But no AKs. On the pile.”

“Roger that, Chief.”

He figured one or two would go back anyway, but if they were smart, they'd keep them out of his sight. He didn't think much of the Kalashnikov. It was for people who had to be told not to shit where they drank.

In the courtyard again as thermite M14s went off, trickling molten iron down into piles of weapons with hissing flares. Guys were carrying crates of ammo out and pitching it down into the wadi. Past the breach a Pave Low was settling, kicking up the same huge dust cloud as it had dropping them off. A burst rattled from Mud Cat's 240. What the fuck was he shooting at? The wind gusted, booming a hanging sheet of tin on the burning garage and whipping great gouts of sparks away to whirl amid the stars. He got on the channel, got Echo One out the breach to set up security. Teddy frisked each prisoner as he filed past. They were small men, but, God, they stank. He found a knife under a droopy shirt and whacked the SEAL escorting the prisoner with it. “Good thing I found this, dickhead, or you'd be pulling it out of your kidneys. Quit cheese-dickin' around and
search
these sand monkeys.”

“Aye, Chief.”

“Okay, hold 'em up there. Gangway. Chief coming through.”

He was climbing the rubble at the blown hole at the back of the compound, boots slipping and grating, when he heard a cough. The whine of some kind of starter. Then, a clatter, and then, as it caught, the full-throated roar of a big diesel. He scrambled through the gap and oriented on the sound.

From another wall, down the wadi, smoke was rising. It was down there, throbbing steadily in the night. Another bulldozer? A truck? That's what it sounded like. A
big-ass
truck.

A heavy crunching. The rattle of stones.

With a bellow, something very large indeed crashed out through, or maybe over, a wall. He glimpsed it for a second, blackness in motion, then lost it. He ran to the edge of the wadi, pushing down his NVGs. Caught it shambling left to right, figures loping after it shimmering in the heat-detecting lenses. At the second glimpse, a chill passed through him like a low-voltage shock.

The intel briefing had told them everything known about the enemy order of battle. Type, number, location, weapons, satellite photos, and written analysis. Not one had mentioned this. But he'd seen that black parallelogram, glowing heat-white from its rear deck, before. Not exactly state-of-the-art. But still not what any SEAL wanted to see on a battlefield.

It was a Soviet-era BMP, the armored personnel carrier the Russians had left scattered across Africa and Eastern Europe as indiscriminately, though not in the numbers, as the ubiquitous AK-47. Hidden, like the bulldozer. So the satellites never saw it.

For a moment he thought the wadi would trap it, that they could fire down at the weaker top armor. But the engine snorted as it pitched up and climbed at a forty-five-degree angle, then slammed down and rumbled out onto the field. Half armored personnel carrier, half light amphibious tank, the thing was all danger. Thirteen tons. Off-road speed, thirty miles an hour. Even as he thought this, a stream of burning light darted across the field at it from the helicopter, which was already slamming its rotors into positive pitch to take off. The 20mm shells hit square, but when the dust cleared the monster was still snarling, tossing its head as it took the undulations of the furrowed field like an angered bull, the long barrel of the 73mm smooth-bore coming around to search for prey. From somewhere in his memory, some drowsy briefing hall, came
Later variants uparmored for service in Afghanistan.

“Armor, left flank. Crossing left to right” came over the tac net.

Ahead Dollhard was being carried between two men. His eyes were open, staring upward, but the way his head lolled, he was dead. Teddy looked left and right, finally caught Verstegen's too-tall, stringy outline against the still-burning garage. These people must have captured and then hidden all sorts of equipment from the retreating Russians. Including the heavy MGs that now barked all around the valley, making it more and more dangerous for the helicopters. Shit, he hoped they didn't have any old Stingers. The immediate problem, though, was still turning its turret, searching them out. It traversed past the now ascending Pave Low, then belched flame. The shell went wide and exploded somewhere in the distance. The chopper banked away, pouring on the power and firing a whole new series of flares, more or less in reflex, Teddy guessed.

A renewed crackle of small arms began behind them, from the compound they'd just left. The M240 ripped, ripped again. The fire slackened. But as soon as Mud Cat stopped, it picked up again. A flash flickered, and something bulky and glowing flew slowly overhead, wobbling as it went.

He caught up to Verstegen as the jaygee signaled the men into line from behind a stone fence slumped into rubble. They gazed up from where they lay, weapons pointed to the flank. One man was unlimbering an AT4, the only thing they carried that might make a dent. The warhead was warranted for 420 millimeters of steel, but any uparmoring had no doubt included a standoff plate, to set off and disrupt the shaped-charge jet.

Verstegen must have recalled this too because he beckoned the man with the antitank rocket toward him. Another echoing blast of dust and flame, and a second shell screamed over their heads. Teddy jumped to his feet, sprinted over, and dropped behind the rubble. Where was the air combat controller? He put out a call on the tac circuit … no joy. A possibility chilled him: Could the Air Force controller have made it to the helo? Was he even now on his way out, leaving them behind? They were all trained to call in air support, but the ACC had the codes, the freqs, and the radios.

“Could be a shit sandwich, Obie.”

“Yes, sir, concur. What's the plan?”

“It's an ambush. We assault into it. Covered by the AT4s.”

True, this was one of their immediate action drills, but he didn't think assaulting a BMP with small arms and AT4s was smart. “Maybe not a good idea, sir. And if they've got any more of them hidden away around here—”

“What do you recommend, Chief?”

“Be better to pull back. Into the compound, if we have to. Call the Spectre, let them handle it. We can't use the primary extraction LZ. They can just follow us and knock the helos down when they come in.”

“It's too late to call off the extraction.”

“No, sir, it isn't. Tell them to abort and prep for an alternate LZ. Have the platoon fall back through the rally point and through the alternates until we find a position they can extract us.”

Verstegen looked undecided. Which was not a good expression to see, at the moment.

The BMP let off another round. This too sailed over their heads, but not as high. Why was it just sitting there? Maybe going down into that ditch had busted something? But as he watched it rocked, then rolled forward again. Uncertainly, slewing side to side. Whoever was driving must be learning on the job. Obviously he didn't know how to aim the main gun. Making it slightly less dangerous, but if it just wheeled around and came in on them, they weren't all going to make it. And he had the feeling that was exactly what it was about to do.

“Stand by. Blast area clear—”

“Clear—”

A lance of flame and a cloud of dust and bitter-smelling smoke erupted behind the prone SEAL to Teddy's right. The rocket motor flared as it left the tube, then winked to a glowing ember that shrank rapidly. It missed the still-turning vehicle, not by much, but enough, and exploded in a mud building beyond, blowing a hole an arm's width across. The clods banged on steel but that wasn't going to hurt anybody. Teddy had a momentary urge to grab an AT himself, but steadied down to concentrate on talking in the Spectre. Unfortunately it was at the north of the valley, dueling one of the antiaircraft sites; balls of fire were flying down from the Bofors and lighting up the hills. An incredible bleedover was on the frequency. It sounded like three, four people talking at once. He shook the handset, cursing.

He was still trying to talk them back to Tantalum when with a deafening roar the Pave Low swept over the compound. Its minigun chattered and more dust and smoke leapt up.

The long barrel trembled, cranked upward a bit more, and fired.

The shell ripped through the helicopter like a flare off the surface of the sun. The aircraft staggered away, sagging to port, and nutated down into another compound. Hot pieces came up glowing and tumbled back to earth again. A hollow, metallic
crump
.

When he switched his attention back to the tank, the wedgy, slanted-forward snout was coming out of the dust and smoke at them. Whoever was driving had finally mastered the steering and the accelerator. Smaller figures shifted and blurred behind it, trotting forward.

Verstegen rose up and yelled to advance, throwing a leg over the stone wall.

Teddy took three swift strides, caught the leg as it swung down on the far side of the wall, and set his Bates Ultra-Lite inside the assistant platoon commander's boot. He rolled Verstegen over his hip and slammed him into the ground. Pinned him there, on the far side of the wall from the others, and spoke into his ear. “You tripped.
Sir.
That's a good thing. Because nobody's going to follow you out there. Get that installed in your brain housing group, okay? Now, order me to handle this. Or I'll hook your fuckin' ass up, here and now.”