The Day Before Midnight (44 page)

And there was Peter Thiokol, who’d changed totally. He wore commando gear now, black field pants and a black
sweater, the black knit watch cap down over his ears so that they were too hot. His glasses looked fogged.

Peter stood with his arms crossed, trying to get his thoughts assembled. Hard, under the circumstances. It was like a waiting room outside the maternity ward in an old
Saturday Evening Post
cartoon. There was no real sound in the room, no meaningful sound. He could hear the creak of boots as the men swayed their weight from foot to foot, or scuffed their heels against the floor, or exhaled loudly or sighed tragically. Occasionally, the crackle of static leaked from the speaker of the radio.

“What’s taking them so long?” Peter finally asked, but nobody answered.

He spoke again, because no one else seemed to have the will to.

“Colonel, maybe you ought to contact them again.”

Puller just looked up at him, his face gone shockingly aged, broken. He looked as if someone had been hammering on his bead with pipe wrenches and snow shovels. Peter had never seen this Puller, dazed and old, caught in the crunch of the stress, the energy bled out of him.

This is what Skazy saw at Desert One, he thought in horror. An old man without an edge; an old man squashed by the pressure; an old man who’d sent too many boys to die too many times.

“They’re either going to make it or they’re not,” said one of the other officers. “Talking to ’em during maneuver just screws things up. This, uh—”

“Dill,” said Puller.

“Dill, this Dill, he either gets ’em there or he doesn’t. Funny, you train all your life for a spot like this and there’s maybe twenty thousand professional officers who’d give an elbow and a jawbone to be there, and it comes down to a gym teacher.”

After that there wasn’t much to say.

“Delta Six, this is Halfback, do you read?”

“I copy, Halfback,” said Puller.

“Sir, we still holding?”

“That’s affirmative, Halfback.”

“Sir, if it comes to it, we’ll go in. I mean, we’re Rangers. We go in. You just say the word, and well jump off.”

“That’s a negative, Halfback.”

“Delta Six, Sixgun-One.” It was the lead gunship, still holding on the strip. “We’re ready on the assault too.
Give
the word, and we’ll rock and roll.”

“I said, holding. Holding. Back to radio discipline, all units.”

The crackles sputtered out.

Peter looked at his watch. It was 10:35.

“Sir, if I was you,” someone whispered to him, “I’d turn that watch upside down on your wrist. You get up there, you’d be surprised in the dark, those gooks will zero on the radium in your watchface if it shows.”

Peter looked at him, mumbled an insincere, “Uh, thanks,” and made the adjustment.

“Sir, how long will you hold them?” someone asked Puller.

“Until Bravo checks in,” was all that Puller could say.

“Colonel Puller.”

Skazy stood in the door. He looked like some kind of guardian of hell’s gate, his face blackened like Caliban’s, his eyes leaking white rage, his grim lips pink and hot. He was draped with an immense green rope and wore several ammunition belts around him. He carried two pistols, several M-26 and smoke grenades, an angle-headed flashlight, and a CAR-15.

“Colonel Puller, I’m going to have to ask you to retire, sir. I’m officially taking command.”

Puller stood. He was another large man. Somehow the men between them melted away.

“Back to your station, Major Skazy,” said Puller.

“Colonel Puller, I’m prepared to put you under arrest if you don’t move away from the radio.”

Puller spoke quietly.

“Major Skazy, back to your station.”

Four Delta commandos, heavily armed, slipped by Skazy and slid into the room. Though their weapons weren’t brandished, everyone knew they were cocked and unlocked and at Skazy’s disposal.

“Sir, I request once more that you move away from the radio. It’s time to go.”

Puller reached into his holster, removed his .45, and threw the slide with a harsh clack that echoed in the still, smoky room. The hammer locked back.

“Son,” he said, “if you don’t move out of that doorway and return to your ship, I’ll shoot you in the head. It’s that simple.”

He leveled the pistol at Skazy.

Instantly, four CAR-15s zeroed on him. Craziness flashed through the air.

“We’ll both die, Colonel,” said Skazy.

“Be that as it may,” said Puller, “if you don’t move away from that doorway and return to your post, I’ll shoot you.”

“Colonel,” said Skazy, “I have to ask you one more time to move away from the radio and relinquish command.”

He started to walk into the room—

“Stop it!!”
screamed Peter, himself almost out of control as he lurched between them.
“Stop it!!
This
is
infantile!”

“Step aside, Thiokol,” said Puller, looking through him.

Skazy had removed an automatic from his belt.

“Thiokol, sit down. This doesn’t concern you.”

“This
is
insane,” Peter shouted. He was breathing near to hyperventilation, murderous with rage at the folly and so terribly scared he could hardly stand still. His blood surged with adrenaline. “You assholes, you Delta prima donnas and your goddamned games, do your goddamned jobs like everybody else! Don’t hold yourself so goddamned precious!”

There was a click.

Skazy had cocked his Smith & Wesson.

“Peter, sit down,” he said. “Colonel, I have to give you one last chance to step aside or—”

“Delta Six, this is Bravo, we’re
up
, we’re at the top of the hill, goddammit, we’re
there!”

Peter saw Puller snap the safety on his pistol as he slid it into the holster, lean forward, just an old man with a shit-scared look to his face, nothing dramatic, no big line to deliver, and say, “All units, this is Delta Six, do you copy,
Delta Six. Heaven is falling, I repeat, Heaven is falling. I repeat, Heaven is falling.”

Everybody began to run. Someone cheered. Peter took a deep breath and then was running for his chopper through a commotion of other rising birds, the whip of snow and dust in the darkness, and the sound, far off and blurry, of men with guns.

“They’re off,” yelled the man on the night scope, “five, six, seven, eight, eight of them. Hueys.”

Troop carriers, Yasotay thought. An airborne job, helicopter assault at night. Let them come, he thought. He’d been on a few and knew how they got messed up.

“Rockets,” yelled Yasotay to his missile people. “Spotters ready. Men on the first line, eyes front. Get ready, boys. The Americans are coming.”

But before the Delta-laden Hueys could arrive, the first of the two gunships rose over the treeline, then the other. They hung obscenely, two black shapes against the white snow of the valley. Their rotors filled the air with the wicked whup-whup-whup of the jet engines, loud enough to mask the final movement of troops through the trees to the point of attack. Worse, at an altitude of some five hundred to a thousand feet up, the gunship guns had angle on the ground troops; they’d be firing down on the compound.

“Mark your targets, rockets,” Yasotay shouted in the second before the mini-guns began to fire. The stable world seemed to dissolve. The mini-guns fired so much faster than conventional machine guns that their problem wasn’t accuracy but ammunition conservation. From each of the hanging birds the tracers leapt out at the mountaintop like a dragon’s flame, a stream of light almost, and where the hot streaks touched, the world yielded. But of course in the dark they had no good targets, just as earlier the A-10s, roaring overhead, had no good targets; shooting at men is not like shooting at tanks or trucks. And so the bullets, as had the earlier bullets, bounced across the compound, roiling snow and dirt but little flesh; but their impact was devastating psychologically
because there seemed no force on earth that could stand against them.

Down in the treeline Yasotay saw movement; infantry, coming hard through the trees, almost into the open.

“Rockets,” he yelled again, knowing he had only seven Stingers left after the profligacy of the air attack in the afternoon, but knowing that if he did not push the gunships back the infantry—good infantry, he presumed, better than the boobs who’d come at him earlier—would get close. It was a question of timing now; he’d put up a hard fight, then fall back to the first of the five V trenches; they’d come ahead and he’d have them in two fires. He’d kill them all. They’d never make it. They’d never get out of the mess of ditches and counterditches with the fire pouring in on them from both sides; and every time they made it to a new trench they’d find it empty, except for booby traps, while more fire smashed at them from the flanks. He’d seen the Pathans wipe out an infantry brigade that way, kill four hundred men in ten minutes, and then retire laughing to their rice pots higher up the mountain.

A Stinger fired, streaking out into the dark at one of the birds—it missed, lost its power and sank into the trees.

A second, hastily aimed—the gunner hadn’t properly acquired his target—missed worse, but the pilot in one of the gunships blinked and evaded, and his mini-gun fire swung wildly out of control, missing the mountaintop and spraying out behind them into Maryland.

A third Stinger missed.

Four left, I have four le—

The fourth hit the gunship dead on with a disappointingly small detonation and just the smallest trace of smoke; but the bird’s purchase on the air was altered and it began to slide sideways, until its back rotor pulled free and it simply became weight and fell because it could not glide. It fell into the trees but did not burn.

The second gunship zeroed on the flash of the missiles coming its way, though Yasotay gauged the pilot as merely good and not special like some of the Mi-24 aces in Afghanistan. But the pilot now had a target and he brought the
mini-gun to bear and Yasotay slid down into the trench as the bullets rushed at him, a torrent of light. They struck up and down the perimeter trench and dust showered down, and screams and yelps rose as men cowered under the torrent. One of the missile gunners took a full burst of the mini-gun across the chest and the bullets pulverized him.

The gunship roared in; Yasotay could hear it overhead, circling, swooping as the pilot overshot the mark, swung back; a spotlight raced out from the craft, hunting targets. And then the guns caught it. The chopper pilot, too low, too eager, had crossed Yasotay’s silent first trench in hunt for the missile men; but he’d forgotten Yasotay’s own gunners, who opened up instinctively, catching the craft easily in ten or twelve streams of fire and the Huey wobbled, vibrated, and then was gone in a horrid smear of orange flame spreading bright as day across the night sky.

Yasotay was up even before the flames had drained from the air, and he saw the field ahead of them filled with rushing infantry and thought it was too late. But his NCOs, blooded the many years in Asian mountains, did not panic, and he could hear their stern voices calling out in reassuring Russian, “To the front. To the front. Targets to the front.”

Yasotay fired a flare, and then another.

It was sheer, delirious spectacle.

The infantry came like a tide of insects, scuttling, lurching ahead in dashes, yet still brave and steady, forcing the gap between itself and Yasotay’s front line, rushing ahead in packs of four or five. Yasotay fancied he could even see their eyes, wide with fright and adrenaline. Their backup guns had started, suppressive automatic fire from the flanks, lancing out over the troops but too high to do any damage.

Then his own fire rose, rose again; the men were on full automatic. The assault force troopers began to go down, but still they came, brave, good men, and the battlefield broke apart, atomized, into a hundred desperate little dramas, as small fire-and-movement teams tried to work closer. But Yasotay could see that he’d broken the spine of the attack. He picked up his scoped G-3 and began to engage targets.

*   *   *

Puller could hear them dying.

“This is Sixgun-One, he’s got missiles coming up, ah, no sweat, they’re missing, that’s one past us, oops, two gone, and that’s the big—Hit, hit, I’m losing it, we’re—”

“Charlie, I have you, you’re looking swell.”

“Major, he’s not burn—”

“Christ, he hit hard.”

“Delta Six, this is Sixgun-Two, I have missile launchers ahead, and I’ve got them engaged—oooooooo, look at them boys dance—”

“Sir, belt’s out.”

“Get it changed, I’m going in.”

“Goddammit, Sixgun-Two, this is Delta Six, you are advised to hold your position, I can’t risk another lost ship.”

“Sir, I got ’em running, I can see ’em running, I just want to get closer.”

“New belt, skip.”

“Let’s kick ass.”

“Sixgun-Two, hold your fucking position!” Puller roared.

“Colonel, I got those missile guys zeroed, oh, this is great, this
is
—”

“Shit, sir, there’s fire coming up from—”

“Oh, oh, shit, goddammit, hit, I’m—”

“The fire, the fire, the fi—”

“Jesus,” somebody at the window said, “his tanks went. He’s all over the sky. It looks like the Fourth of July.”

“Delta Six, this is Halfback, I’m taking heavy fire from the front.”

“Halfback, get your second assault team up to the initial point.”

“Ready to go, sir. Shit, the gunships are both down, that one guy, he’s still burning. The fire is heavy.”

“Are your people still advancing?”

“We’ve got a lot of fire going out, sir.”

“But your team, is it still advancing or is it hung up?”

“I don’t see much movement out there, but there’s a lot of fire. There’s smoke, dust, snow, whatever, I can’t see through it. Should I send my backup yet?”

“Not unless you’re convinced your first wave has completely lost it.”

“Well, there’s fire. Where’s that stuff on the left? Where’s Bravo? Where the hell is Bravo? Jesus, Bravo, if you don’t help us, we’re going to get butchered and nobody’s getting any closer to that hole than they are now.”