Sniper Elite (37 page)

“If that makes me feel any better?” she said, suddenly lucid. “I can't believe you'd tell me that in my condition!” She jammed her
arms into the sleeves and almost fell over on the bed for lack of strength and balance. “You wait till I see that son of a bitch!”

Gil was glad to see his statement had the desired effect. “If all goes according to plan, you'll be seeing him a hell of a lot sooner than you think.”

Khan took a firm grip on the handle of the knife and spoke to Badira, telling the American through her to breathe deep and hold it.

Gil did as he was told, and Khan slowly pulled out the knife, immediately covering the wound with the palm of his hand to prevent any air from sucking back into the chest.

Khan spoke again to Badira.

“He says you're lucky. He doesn't think any air got into the cavity.”

“Good,” Gil said. “Now slap a patch on that fucker and let's get this show on the road.”

Suddenly there was a great deal of shouting from outside across the intersection toward the Kohistani house.

Badira and Khan looked at each other, their eyes wide with fear.

“What the fuck's goin' on out there?” Gil said, unable to get up from the chair because the palm of Khan's hand was the only thing keeping his chest cavity from sucking air when he breathed. If too much air got into the pleural cavity, the lung would collapse and twist the trachea, creating a tension pneumothorax and suffocating him.

Badira's eyes were still full of fright. “Did you . . . did you kill Kohistani?”

“Shit, they found him already?”

Sandra sat up on the bed, her eyes dancing. “You killed the fucking bastard?”

“Why did you do that?” Badira demanded. “He's like a god to these fanatics!”

Gil looked at her and shrugged. “He needed killin' . . . and it seemed like a good idea at the time.”

As far as General Couture was concerned, the moment that Sandra Brux's Mayday call went out over the emergency band, the entire game changed. He didn't require the president's permission to commence rescue operations for a downed pilot of either sex.

“Chief Shannon's one clever son of a bitch, Captain. He's left us no choice but to help him.” He turned his back to the screen. “Okay, listen up! I want two alert F-16s scrambled out of Bagram, right now—with whatever they're carrying—and find out exactly where our airborne B-52s are. I want to keep those bastards in the mountains at bay until we can get a napalm strike in there! Get those Air Force helos inbound for the extraction, and tell them they're flying into a hot LZ. Also, I want SOAR prepped and standing by to back them up in case this goes to shit. Lastly, somebody
find out who the hell
Big Ten
is and what the hell kind of support he's providing.”

“Sir, I've already got Big Ten here on the flight roster!”

“Feed me, Sergeant.”

The sergeant poked his head out from behind his computer screen. “It looks like he might be a CIA Spectre gunship, sir, but it's . . . well, it's confusing. I've cross-referenced the tail number, and this aircraft was supposed to have been taken out service back in '98. Which doesn't make any sense because on the next page it says it's presently based out of Diego Garcia. So I don't know what the hell to make of it, sir. I
think
we're safe to assume that it landed in Jalalabad early yesterday for unspecified electrical repairs . . . but I can't guarantee it, sir.”

“Where's it supposed to be now, Sergeant?”

“Says here, sir, that it departed Jalalabad forty-five minutes ago, bound for Kabul.”

Couture turned toward Metcalf, hands on his hips. “For unspecified electrical repairs,” he echoed. “And since nobody in Jalalabad would ever
dream
of poking around in CIA business . . .”

Metcalf lifted his eyebrows and looked toward the console. “Sergeant, what's the airplane's configuration? Are we talking about a run-of-the-mill Spectre?”

The sergeant ran his hands over the keyboard. “It doesn't look like it, Captain. This aircraft keeps changing its designation. It's been listed as damn near everything at one point . . . a Combat Talon I, Combat Talon II, Dragon Spear, Spectre . . . a Combat Shadow, a Commando II—the list goes on, sir. I have no idea how it's configured now. I'm sorry, but it could be damn near anything.”

Metcalf caught and held the general's gaze, asking over his shoulder: “Was it ever STAR-equipped, Sergeant?”

The sergeant paged down. “Yes, sir. It's been STAR-equipped twice—according to what it says here—but it's not now.”

Metcalf grinned at General Couture. “Are you taking bets tonight, General?”

Couture shook his head. “I suddenly smell Bob Pope back in Langley . . . and I'd never take a bet where that cagey son of a bitch was involved.”

“I'd say that's probably smart money, sir.”

The general shook one of the filterless cigarettes from the pack of Pall Malls, offering it to Metcalf, who shook his head. He pulled the smoke from the pack with his teeth and struck a match. “The funny thing,” he said, shaking out the match and tossing it onto the table. “The president himself ordered Steelyard and Crosswhite into that crazy bastard's custody. Word around the Hill is that he's got files on everybody . . . or at least everybody seems to be afraid he does.”

Metcalf watched the screen, wondering what the hell was taking Gil so long to get Sandra out of the building. “This is taking longer than it should, General. I think something's wrong this time.”

They stared at the screen as a man entered Kohistani's house. A few seconds later, he came running back out and up the lane. A few seconds after that, men with guns starting pouring out of the command post and heading down the lane toward Sandra's quarters.

Couture drew pensively from the cigarette, his eyes fixed on the screen. “Looks to me like the proverbial shit just hit the fucking fan.” He looked to the back of the room. “How much longer on those F-16s?”

“Taxiing for takeoff now, General. ETA ten minutes.”

“Where are my B-52s?”

“Twenty minutes south, sir. They're going to have to refuel before they can make the strike.”

Couture spit a fleck of tobacco from his lower lip. “Might as well be twenty days.”

Khan slathered an overly generous amount of petroleum jelly over the compress Gil took from his harness and used that to seal the knife wound to his back. There would be no time for sutures.

Gil jumped up and grabbed his M4. “Sandra, call down a one-oh-five strike.” He went to the door and checked up the street to see a mob of men running down the lane toward the house, closing fast at fifty yards. “Make it danger close!”

Sandra, sitting up on the edge of the bed again, keyed the radio. “Big Ten! Big Ten! This is Track Star. Be advised, I am still beneath the strobe. Need one-oh-fives on my position—danger close!”

“Roger that, Track Star. We have them in sight. Take cover.”

“Get down!” Gil shouted at Badira and Khan, grabbing Sandra from the bed and rolling into the corner to shield her with his body.

Seconds later the first 105 mm artillery shell fired from the AC-130J Spectre's M102 howitzer slammed into the earth so close that it blew a hole in the wall, shattering the oil lamp and killing the lead element of the attacking force just as they were arriving outside the building. Six seconds later another shell struck fifty feet away, blowing seven more men to oblivion. The remainder of the charging column stopped in its tracks, unable to hear the Spectre performing a tight pylon turn 10,000 feet over their heads, firing the howitzer at its maximum rate. Every six seconds a round exploded against the earth as the onboard digital fire-control system walked an unceasing barrage straight up the lane, effectively annihilating the entire attacking force, then going on to pulverize the command post.

Gil activated the infrared strobe he'd attached to the top of his helmet and dashed from the building with Sandra over his shoulder. “Big Ten! This is Track Star Two,” he called out over the emergency band. “Be advised were are mobile. Heading north on horseback for the EZ. Follow my strobe!”

“Roger that, Track Star, we have you in sight. Be advised they're coming out of their holes. We've got multiple heat signatures. You're totally surrounded except for the gap to the north. We'll do what we can to keep it open for you. Over.”

“Roger that.”

Khan and Badira dashed from the house and hurried off into the darkness.

“Vayan con Dios,” Gil said after them, kicking open the door to the guard shack and hefting Sandra into the saddle facing backward. He mounted up with her in front of him and told her to wrap her arms around him. “Keep a hand against that bandage for me. Duck your head now. We're going out the door.”

The stallion was good and spooked because of the artillery barrage, and it started to rear up the second they left the safety of the building, but Gil dug in his heels and reined him hard around.
“Hyah!” he shouted. “Move your ass!” The horse bolted north toward the gap in the mountains three thousand meters away.

Gil could see the bursts of orange tracer fire streaking down farther up the valley to the north, the Spectre's 25 mm Equalizer cannon clearing the way for their escape as HIK fighters flooded in to block the pass. The human body splashed apart like a water balloon when hit by even a short burst of fire from the obscenely accurate weapon that flew so high above the battlefield that you couldn't even hear it firing at you. To behold such an awesome display of firepower made it easy to feel like they were home free, but Gil realized that the Spectre's forward-looking infrared eyeball could not see into the many caves surrounding the valley. His only hope was that the Spectre could keep the HIK fighters pinned down in their holes long enough for him and Sandra to slip through the mountain pass to the north, where Forogh and his uncles would be waiting to provide them a defensive perimeter.

In order to perform the complicated extraction maneuver, the Spectre would have to break off its attack and fly a very precise south-north heading. The maneuver would take several minutes to complete and severely limit the aircraft's ability to provide them covering fire.

The stallion was strong and fast, and he bore their weight easily as Gil forced him on, faster and faster, keeping one eye to the night-vision monocular, watching out for any holes or rocks that might trip the animal up. He thought of his own horse, Tico, back in her stable in Montana. No way would Tico ever be forced to charge headlong into the dark like this at top speed. As he thought of this, a strange feeling overtook him, like a ghost finally catching up to him from behind. He felt suddenly as though he weren't going to make it back this time, that he had pushed the envelope too far and that the God of War was about to turn his back.

“Doesn't matter,” he said to the night. “I never trusted you much.”

“Me?” Sandra said into his ear, clinging tightly against him with both of her hands pressed against the occlusive bandage covering his wound, her face nestled into the crook of his neck.

“No, I was talking to myself.”

“I had a really bad feeling the second before you said that.”

He laughed. “Well, that's not good, 'cause I had it, too.”

“Just don't let 'em take me back, Gil.”

“Don't worry.” He wrapped an arm around her waist to hold her tight in the saddle. “John promised to bring those one-oh-fives right down on our heads before he'd let that happen.”

It was shortly past dinnertime, and the president was in the corridor talking with the secretary of commerce when Tim Hagen walked up, casually clearing his throat and using his eyes to say, “We've got a problem.”

“Excuse me a minute, will you, Mike?”

“Certainly, sir,” said the commerce secretary.

The president led Hagen into the Oval Office and closed the door. “You know I don't like it when you do that,” he admonished. “You can say, ‘Excuse me, Mr. President,' like everybody else.”

“I'm sorry, sir,” Hagen said, “but Sandra Brux is broadcasting from the Panjshir Valley on the emergency band. General Couture is mobilizing elements of the 24th Special Tactics Squadron, the 160th Special Operations Aviation Regiment, a pair of B-52s from
the 40th Expeditionary Bomb Squadron, and the entire 391st Expeditionary Fighter Squadron. This is an all-out effort to effect her extraction, Mr. President. She claims to be receiving assistance from indigenous personnel on the ground, and from what I understand, sir, a CIA Spectre gunship is already in the act of providing fire support.”

The president darkened. “That's odd. I gave orders half an hour ago that no one was to take any action at all. Now it's World War Three over there!”

“Yes, sir, but . . . well, sir, there's no way Couture could possibly ignore a mayday call from a downed pilot anywhere inside the ATO. He'd be court-martialed, Mr. President.”

“Fine! So is it that renegade SEAL or not?”

“Nobody knows for sure yet, sir. There aren't many details because the situation is so fluid . . . but I don't know how else Brux could've gotten her hands on a prick one-twelve.”

The president made a face. “On a
what
?”

“Sorry, sir. The PRC-112 handheld radio—it's used by downed pilots. That's just what they call it, sir.”

The president cut him a hard look, crossing the room to the desk, where he sat down and took his pipe from the center drawer. He stuck it between his teeth without lighting it and sat chewing the stem. “Okay, correct me if I'm wrong.” He took the pipe from his teeth. “But I'm thinking this is the point where we have to start praying for that hero over there to succeed.”