The Towers (48 page)

Occasional bursts of fire stitched the dark. Whoever had fired the missile had pulled back, slightly upslope still, and to the right. They'd overrun an advanced fighting position, that was all. He tried to remember the terrain. The pass was flanked by ridges that were the top of the mountain proper. Both ridges were narrow and steep, stony blades jutting out of the snow. The bigger was to the west. That was where they'd planned to set up the OP.

Teddy burst up and sprinted, then sank beside one of the men who'd fallen. A partially unwrapped turban. A dark cape, spread over the snow.

The next sprawled form was the squad leader, O'Brien. But he didn't respond to a shake. When Teddy rolled him over, he saw the muj Vaseline had killed had managed to nearly saw the SEAL's head off. Teddy eased him back down. Then changed his mind, rolled him up on his side in front of him, and braced the SR on the dead man's ribs. He put his eye to the scope.

Green flashes outlined moving forms amid the blowing snow. He aimed carefully and fired. One dropped and stopped moving.

Whoever else was out there stopped firing. In the lull he hit the tac circuit. Moogie, Mud Cat, and Doc answered up. Doc said he didn't think Harley and Tore had made it out of the chopper. Teddy remembered the swaying forms, outlined by light. Swager didn't respond. Not him too? Teddy thought. Shit; down three shooters before they'd even set foot on the mountain. They put together a count and got eight on the opposing team.

“We really stuck our head in the fucking hornets' nest,” Moogie said gloomily.

A spark in the dark, and a bullet snapped close to his head. A deeper boom than the AKs made arrived an instant later. Fuck, did one of the mujs have night vision? If so, this'd be a different ball game. Whoever was up there, they were a different story from the ragged Taliban they'd rolled up in the valley. Black turbans. Capes. The Fifty-Five Brigade?
No plan survives contact with the enemy.
As the muj fired again, another man rolled in beside Teddy. He had his pistol half drawn when Swager yelled into his ear, “Radio's fucked. I can hear you, but I can't transmit.”

“Yo, just follow me.” Teddy went back to the circuit. “Anybody see movement?”

“Nothing here.”

“No movement.”

“Obie, d'you see Vaseline?”

“He's down hard, Doc. Got his head cut half off. All hands: These guys are pure shooters. May be the double-nickel brigade. They had to be right at minimum range on the Strelas, or whatever they hit the bird with. Where's my electron fucker? Moogie?”

“I think I'm off to your right.”

“See if you can get Verstegen, or the other bird. Or Boss Man, if you can.”

Boss Man was the code name for the AWACS, the big eye in the sky that saw all and knew all. Or was supposed to, anyway.

“It's not going so good. I'm not getting a lot of cunt juice out of these batteries.”

“Keep trying. If One can fall back toward us, we'll box these guys in, both ends of the pass. I'm gonna move up to you. Me and Swager and Mud Cat will cover. Cat, got the pig? Didn't leave it on the bird?”

“She ain't no pig. Gentle Lady's layin' here with me, Obie.”

“Good. When we lay down cover, everybody else fire a 203, then fade back behind us and push hard over to the left. Maybe a hundred meters, there's a ridge. Get up there and dig in, then maybe we can get gunship support.”

Disengaging under fire was an immediate action drill they'd all practiced hundreds of times. Except maybe Swager. Teddy slapped the new guy and they burst up together, or rather, staggered. The deceptively smooth snow disguised uneven rock and they fell again and again. He saw the others ahead and angled to the side. Another flash, another bullet, even closer. They had to get the play under way before the shooters above tried to flank them. He hoped they didn't have mortars. But tough to imagine anybody lugging mortars up here. He dropped and rolled and yelled, “Cat. Locked and loaded?”

“Right here, Chief.”

“Any joy on One?”

“Haven't got 'em yet. Still trying.”

Screaming figures appeared out of the flying snow. Black shapes flickered above them like accompanying demons, and Teddy blinked before realizing: the capes, whipping in the wind. For thirty seconds the SEAL line was a blaze of burst fire. All four attackers sank into the snow. Teddy slapped in another magazine and looked to reacquire, but there were no more targets. Just motionless, prone blobs and the green-black seethe of night vision.

Now whoever had C2 up there knew exactly where they were. If the sniper with the night scope hadn't already ratted them out. What he probably didn't know, though, was just how few men they were faced with.

And that they were SEALs, of course.

“One grenade each, out in front. Then we cut a chogie. Three-second rushes—I think they've got a sniper with green-eyes. One, two—
three
.”

As soon as the dark split with grenade flashes, they got up and rushed. Teddy slogged uphill by feel, by memory. Had to be a ridge up here. It overlooked the pass, maybe fifty feet higher. They rushed and dropped, rushed and dropped. He kept waiting for a bullet in the back from the guy with the larger-caliber rifle, but none came, and they wheezed up a slight slope and down another one.

“Was that it, Chief?”

Teddy went a few yards farther and almost walked off the ridge. He backpedaled hastily from a bottomless precipice. This had to be the far side from where Chisel 03 had gone down. The whole pass was only about two hundred meters wide, but it felt like a mile in the dark. Like Bitch Ridge at La Posta, the mountain training facility they ran up to sometimes from San Diego.

He was jogging back toward them when another boom echoed, followed by the unmistakable
whack
of a heavy bullet hitting flesh.

“Doc's down, Obie.”

“Fuck.
Fuck.
” Not their corpsman. Teddy crawled over and cradled his head as they searched for the wound. They found the entry under his left arm, but no exit. Dipper died without a word, bleeding out internally. Teddy laid him down, raging. For no reason he turned his wrist to expose the tritium numerals of his watch: 0250. A long time to dawn. “Line to the front, and I want your eyes out there crawling around.”

“What do I do, Chief—”

“Get your claymore out. Low-crawl it out there. And make fucking sure it's aimed the right way. Now, now,
now!
” Something moved in the dark and the men on both sides of him fired.
“
Moogie, you
got
to have contact.”

“I'm on the right freq, Chief. Wait a—wait a second.” Moogie spoke at length in a muffled voice, then called, “One didn't make it in, Chief. They're orbiting, waiting for word on what to do.”

“Oh, you are fucking kidding me,” Teddy muttered, rolling over to where the radioman had the notebook-size radio set up, the spidery antenna rigged out. “What are you—you're on satcom. Okay. Who you got?”

It was the pilot of the other Chinook, who'd waved off when he saw the flares and missile-engine signatures. Moogie passed along that he didn't think dropping more men in what was obviously a heavily defended landing zone was a good idea.

Teddy reached for the handset. The pilot didn't seem to know Chisel 03 was down, but he didn't see why he had to be the one to give him the bad news. “This is Echo Two. I can't honestly disagree with you, dude, but we are looking to seriously get our asses kicked here. I have two KIA already.”

“Roger that. Do you need the QRF?”

“No, I don't need the fucking QRF. What I need's the rest of my team. These guys are Fifty-Five Brigade. Osama's personal bodyguard. If they're here, there's a reason.”

The pilot said he'd pass the word, but he was coming up on bingo fuel. Teddy cursed and passed the handset back. “See if you can get a gunship. We could use some support.”

“I've got Whale Watcher.”

The electronic intelligence bird. “Great, but he's a nonshooter. Get a Spectre. Call Boss Man if you have to, but get us some fucking firepower.”

Okay, Teddy, think. He had four shooters left: himself, Moogie, Knobby, and Mud Cat with the machine gun. They'd started with about eight hostiles. Couldn't be more than four or five left, after that badly advised banzai charge. But one had night vision and an accurate rifle on an overlook. Like being up in a tower. Even worse, that particular Q knew how to shoot.

But the bad guys they'd landed on top of had made one mistake. They'd pulled off to the best tactical position: the high ground, to the right. Unfortunately for them, that left Echo One right smack in the middle of the pass anyone trying to escape from Tora Bora had to thread to go south.

But he couldn't just sit tight. If bin Laden was really on his way and heard gunfire, he'd back off and take another ratline. Maybe one that the intel guys didn't know about.

He couldn't sit tight. He couldn't wait.

They had to kill all the men trying to kill them. Take the pass and hold it. That was the mission now.

Before the thought was fully formed, he was passing orders over the squad net. The responses came back clipped as he belly-squirmed through the snow. Along the lip of the ridge, the stone crumbling away under the cover. The howling emptiness to his left pulled at him like gravity itself. The lower boss or hump would give him cover for the first few yards. After that, he'd be in the open. He started to slip and clawed frantically at loose scree and snow, pushing it desperately into the void, but kept sliding, gathering speed. He jammed the butt of the SR into a crack and only just managed not to follow the rattling rock off over the edge. Crawled carefully uphill again, until he regained solid ground.

“Okay,
now,
” he told them.

A crashing fusillade burst out. Tracers and flares, to burn out the retinas of anyone glued to a sniperscope. In the sudden glare Teddy caught an erect form ahead and above. In one swift movement he lined up and fired. It half turned and dropped from sight, and he rolled instantly to the right.

A bullet ripped through the space he'd just evacuated, followed by the
crack-boom
of the heavy rifle. Then all was dark again, until a burst crackled from the far right. Mud Cat, working his way around with his beloved Gentle Lady to take them from that flank. Teddy lay rigid, unable to cram enough oxygen into his lungs, his overspeeding heart shaking his whole upper body. So the one he'd shot hadn't been the sniper.

Another
crack-boom,
and a cry from the right flank. The rattle cut off in midburst. Fuck, they couldn't have gotten Mud Cat, could they? He had to zip this guy. Now. He rolled again, panted, and crawled a few yards forward, pushing up the snow to shield his own heat. Blew the flash hider of his rifle free of snow, checked the seating of the magazine. Then, slowly, pushed the muzzle up over the little heap of snow.

With a crashing blow and a burst of white light, a sledgehammer caught him squarely between the eyes.

*   *   *

HE
came back from somewhere very black to find himself lying in the snow. He was turned on his right side, and the world was turned funny too. He blinked and pushed a glove gingerly toward his face. A moment later, he was sorry. Something pulpy bulged in the center of his forehead. He couldn't make his fingers press hard enough to feel exactly what it was. They were numb, anyhow. His skull was split open. His brain was oozing out. But surely that couldn't be, or he wouldn't be lying here wondering about it. Would he?

Then his NVGs fell apart under his fingers and something warm ran down from under them. He felt it again, still not quite able to assemble himself into anything he understood.

“Chief Obie. You okay?”

Swager, bending over him. Teddy grappled, trying to pull him down. Get him out of the line of fire. But Swager was dragging him instead, back behind a rock. His hand groped again, and Teddy sensed rather than saw him recoil. “Jeez. You are some fucked up, Chief.”

“Shut the fuck … up.”

“Good, it talks. Looks like you caught a ricochet, right in the AN/PVSs. They're a wreck. All you got left's the straps.”

Teddy shook Swager's hands off and tried to sit up. Vertigo. Nausea. He leaned to the side and coughed. Waited, but nothing came up. “… head.”

“Got a hell of a gouge there. Lucky it didn't take one of your eyes out.”

Teddy lay panting, ears ringing, passing from thankfulness to respect to rage. A hell of a shot. If it'd been three inches higher, it would have split his face instead of the rock. Even as it was, the ricochet would have killed him if it hadn't impacted the night-vision goggles.

Whoever he was, this guy was damned good. Chechen? Arab? From the sound, he was shooting a full-power thirty caliber. Probably a Dragunov. Semiautomatic, and not that different from his SR, except the cartridge was the Russian rimmed round. Effective range, upward of six hundred meters in skilled hands. And he had a night scope on it. Most likely the PSO-1. The PSO-1 had a night reticle, but it was too dark up here for that to do much good.

It also had a special countersniper feature: an infrared charging screen a shooter could use for passive detection of infrared sources.

That is, it wouldn't illuminate, like the SEALs' AN/PVSs, or like Obie's own rifle scope. But it would pick up radiation sources.

Such as the AN/PVSs themselves.

The sniper hadn't been aiming at them.

He'd been aiming at their night-vision equipment.

“One, this is Obie. Turn your illuminators off. This sniper's got a passive scope.”

He could hear the slurring in his own speech. He sounded drunk. Felt toasted, too. If only the brunette could've been here with him. The cop. Salena. Funny, he hadn't thought about her in weeks. He lay with blood running down his chin, the savor slick on his tongue. Listening to the wind and the dark. The absolutely utter dark, now that they'd lost their night vision.