Ultimate Betrayal (2 page)

“Mister Bartolucci, I want to thank you for all you’ve done for me. You’ve been great and I appreciate it. But I won’t be able to work here after this month.”

Bartolucci frowned. “Whatsa matter? Now you a hotshot high school graduate, you gonna leave the wop behind?” He smiled. “You gonna go off to some Ivy League college and chase preppie girls?”

“No, ah, no, Mister Bartolucci.” David’s face suddenly felt hot. “It’s not like that. I enlisted in the Army.”

“You did what!” Bartolucci exploded.

David glanced around. Every person within twenty-five yards seemed to freeze in place.

Gino pulled David by the arm into his office, slammed the door behind them, and pushed him into a chair. “Whatsa matter, you get drafted?” he said. “I can fix that. I can make you a free man like that.” He snapped his fingers.

“There’s no draft anymore, Mr. Bartolucci.”

Bartolucci’s face flushed and his eyes narrowed to slits. The veins on the sides of his neck bulged. “You enlisted? What’d you finish at South Philadelphia High? Last? You stupid or somethin’?”

“First.” David looked at his shoes and quietly said, “I finished top of my class.”

“First!” Gino growled. “First! You gonna waste that on the goddamn Army? Get your ass shot off in some goddamn foreign country?”

David sat silently, momentarily met Mr. Bartolucci’s eyes, then looked away to avoid the man’s blistering gaze.

“Look at me, kid! Look at me!”

David steeled himself. Raised his head.

“You sure you want to do this? You made up your mind?”

David dropped his gaze again.

“I asked you a question, boy. You sure you want to do this?”

David looked up again. He licked his lips and swallowed. “It’s not a matter of
want
, sir. It’s something I gotta do.”

“That’s bull. You . . .” Bartolucci stopped and stared hard at David. Then he nodded and said, “What did your father say about this?”

“I haven’t told him yet. He doesn’t get home from work ‘til 8:00.”

With a sigh, Gino fell into his chair. “He ain’t gonna like it.”

“He won’t care one way or the other.”

“You couldn’t be more wrong.”

David closed his eyes and rubbed his forehead. He had no interest in arguing with Mr. Bartolucci about his relationship with his father.

“Okay, if it’s gotta be, it’s gotta be.

CHAPTER 2

Carmela Bartolucci practiced moving her hips like a runway model, while she walked back to her father’s office. She pushed the remainder of the ice cream cone into her mouth and thought about David Hood. Daddy didn’t like it when she looked at boys. But David acted as though she didn’t exist. She wished he’d pay attention to her. She had every detail of his face memorized: black hair combed straight back; high forehead; dark, well-shaped eyebrows; long, dark lashes; blue eyes; straight nose; sensually-full lips.

“Carmelita, come over here.”

Gino’s loud voice shocked her out of her daydream. She smiled and said, “
Si, Papa, che volete
?”

“
Venga, Carina
,” he shouted.

Carmela blushed. She followed him into his office. “Why did you yell at David, Papa? I could hear you through the door.”

Gino frowned at his daughter. But his face quickly softened. He blew out a stream of air and said, “He just told me he enlisted in the Army. That boy is
molto intelligente.
He should go to college, not the Army.”

“He’s awfully quiet,” Carmela said. “It’s like he’s . . . you know, kinda sad.”

Gino turned his gaze back to her and smiled. “You’re a smart girl, Carmelita.”

She smiled. “Why’s he like that, Papa?”

Gino hesitated, sat down behind his desk, waved a hand at his daughter to take a seat. “You’re probably old enough to hear this.”

Full of anticipation, she sat forward in her chair.

“Patience,
Carina
.” He leaned back in his chair and folded his arms across his chest. “One evening when David was twelve, he and his older brother, Tommy, were on their way home from the movies. Tommy was maybe sixteen. Nice boy, just like David. Tough, too. It was just after dark and they were only a few blocks from their house when a gang of hoodlums jumped them.”

Carmela knew her mouth had dropped open. Her heart raced, but she didn’t dare move. She sat transfixed by the sadness in her father’s eyes, the grim set of his jaw. The thought of someone hurting David made her feel sad and angry.

“There were five of them against Tommy and David. Tommy fought like a
lupo
and beat up three of the gang. Then one of the others pulled a knife on David. Tommy went after that guy.” Gino paused, as though he expected Carmela to ask a question.

“What happened?” she obliged.

Gino’s mouth turned down and he closed his eyes for a moment. When he opened them again, he said, “Tommy died right there. The one with the knife stabbed him in the heart. The word is David has always blamed himself for his brother’s death. He was just a kid. There was nothin’ he coulda done.” Gino shrugged. “To make matters worse, David’s mother went
demenziale
, crazy, over Tommy’s death. She died a couple years ago. And David and his father don’t have much of a relationship. You understand now, Carmelita, why David seems so sad.”

“But it wasn’t his fault that gang attacked them. They were just in the wrong place at the wrong time.”

“Yeah, that’s true, Carmelita. But I heard Tommy didn’t want to go out that day. David kept pestering him. Their parents wouldn’t let David go out alone; he was too young. So, Tommy finally agreed to go.”

“You think he’s going into the Army because of what happened to his brother?”

Gino’s mouth dropped. “You’re too damned smart for your age.” He smiled. “Get outta here so I can do some work.”

Carmela nodded, stood up, and walked to the office door. She tried to wipe away the tears from her eyes before Papa noticed. She didn’t know what to do about the ache in her heart.

DECEMBER 12, 2002

CHAPTER 3

Lieutenant James Ross crawled up the side of a natural trench in the Nad-e Ali District of Helmand Province, Afghanistan and peeked toward the sun, which now rested on the horizon. He blew into his gloved hands and tried to warm his fingers. “Damned cold!” he muttered. He turned to his right and looked at Sergeant David Hood. “There’s supposed to be a Taliban unit out there somewhere, but I haven’t seen or heard a thing.”

“With these mountains, a thousand snipers could be fifty yards from us and we wouldn’t know it, Lieutenant,” David said.

Ross peeked over the top of the trench once again. “Sergeant, have the men check their ammunition and supplies. I’m going to call for a resupply drop.”

“Already done, sir. We’re down to three magazines per man and a day’s worth of water and MREs.”

“How’re Peterson’s feet?”

“Not good. He’s got blisters on blisters.”

“I’d better call for a medevac. Between the cold and the terrain, I’m surprised all of us aren’t crippled. Damned coun—”

David saw the lieutenant’s skull explode, felt warm, wet spray hit his face, heard the distinctive sound of an AK-47 rifle. Then the
whump, whump, whump
of launched mortars. The bullets and mortars seemed to come straight from the setting sun.

“Sonofabitch! Sonofabitch!” David panicked, felt the urge to run. But there was no place to run. He forced himself to stay under control. “Incoming!” he shouted into his headset. “Incoming!” He looked left and then right. The eighteen men in his unit were arrayed in a depression, which meandered off to the left on a relatively straight line and on the right curved in an arc that ultimately turned west into the now half-set sun. He grabbed Lieutenant Ross’s boots and pulled his body down into the trench.

On the radio communications net, David ordered the men on his right to only fire at clearly visible targets. “Conserve ammo,” he told them.

The first mortars impacted twenty-five yards short of and to the left of his position, damned close to his men in the left side of the trench. He ordered those men to move past him to join up with the right side of the unit, where the trench was at its deepest. This left David alone, a good thirty yards from his closest team member. He unslung his grenade launcher and “walked in” rounds in twenty-yard increments, beginning about fifty yards in front of his position. At about the one hundred-yard mark, he heard shouts and screams.

“Bad guys at about one hundred yards in front of my position,” he said to his men, as he popped off another half-dozen grenade rounds. Then he ran to join the rest of the team. He radioed headquarters, gave his team’s position, and called for air support.

Another round of mortars rained down on where David had been a minute ago. Ross’s body was probably obliterated. When the mortars stopped, all David heard was his own breathing. A minute passed. Then another. And another. Five minutes in all. Then a phalanx of armed men rose from crevices in the side of the mountain and moved toward the Americans. Like pop-up targets in an arcade shooting gallery, the tribesmen appeared, then disappeared, appeared, then disappeared again, shooting all the while. They moved toward both ends of the trench.

David had been in fire fights before and had learned how the enemy operated, what sort of tactics they used. He had to prevent the Taliban force from executing a pincer maneuver. His throat constricted as the reality of the situation hit home. With the enemy so close to them, it was too late for the Americans to retreat en masse to high ground, especially with some sunlight still present. They’d be easy targets. They were out-numbered, pinned down in a depression, and low on ammunition. And the enemy controlled the high ground. The only hope they had was to pull back in small groups while the rest of the platoon provided cover fire. If they could reach high ground and hold off the Taliban until air support arrived, they might make it.

David ordered Sergeant Pritchard and three other men to find cover in the boulders above and behind them. Stooped over, Pritchard and his three men ran toward the boulders while David and the rest of the unit fired at any Taliban fighter who showed himself. The four men serpentined around rock formations and then raced up a goat path toward the elevated position, when a heavy automatic weapon suddenly opened up. David recognized the drumbeat of an NSV Utyos 108 mm machinegun, probably captured years ago by the
mujaheddin
from the Soviets. He looked back at Pritchard’s team and saw one of the men lying on the goat path. Pritchard and two of the men had made it to the shelter of the boulders.

“Pritchard, what’s your status?” David said over his headset.

“Johnson was cut to pieces. Fuckin’ heavy machinegun.”

“You all okay?”

“Yeah. Nothing serious.”

“Stay low,” David told Pritchard. “I’ll touch base in a second.”

When the sun dropped completely below the horizon, mortar rounds again fell from the sky.

“Check with air support,” David told his radioman.

“FAC, this is Blue Team Six, where’s that air support?” the radioman shouted into his radio.

“Thirty minutes out,” the Forward Air Controller shouted back.

Thirty minutes! David thought. We’ll be dead in thirty minutes.

Based on previous experience, David suspected what the Taliban leader might do. He’d drop mortar rounds on the trench for five or ten minutes until he’d done as much damage as possible and then he’d have the heavy machinegun rake the trench from one side, while the rest of his men attacked the survivors in the trench from the other side.

David flipped down his night vision device and scanned the hillside in front of him. He caught brief glimpses of enemy fighters and huge greenish blooms that came off the mortar rounds as they exited their firing tubes. Mortar rounds impacted just in front of their position. The Taliban had zeroed in on them. They didn’t need sunlight anymore. They knew exactly where David and his men were. The next rounds would wipe out his team.

To make matters worse, the heavy machinegun opened up again. The machine gunner fired a ferocious one-minute burst and then went inactive. Probably to reload, David thought. The hot lead from the weapon had bloomed on David’s goggles.

“We’ve got to get out of here now,” David told his men. “Fall back to that rock formation at the bottom of the goat path. Take weapons, ammo, and night vision goggles only.”

David counted fourteen men leave the trench. He followed them to a large rock outcropping and slipped behind it.

The machinegun opened up two minutes later while mortar rounds destroyed the trench the Americans had just vacated. Then the machinegun went quiet and the Taliban stopped firing their rifles. They’ll attack now, David thought. And once they found the trench unoccupied, they’d figure out the Americans had retreated up the back side of the hill.

“Fall back to Pritchard’s position,” David ordered.

His men left the rock outcropping and ran up the goat path toward high ground. David looked back at them and watched as they scaled the path. Without his night vision glasses, they would have been invisible. Then he looked back toward the trench.

David smelled the Taliban fighters before he heard or saw them. A mixture of goat, sweat, and tobacco. Then, through his goggles, he saw two men move noiselessly toward the right end of the trench and veer toward his position. They passed the edge of the rock formation he hid behind. David stepped out, covered the second man’s mouth with his hand, and thrust his combat knife into the man’s kidney. He slowly lowered the man to the ground and moved to follow the first man. He was three paces away, when the Taliban fighter turned and raised his rifle. David used his knife to deflect the muzzle of the rifle. But the weapon discharged and David felt a shock of hot pain hit his right thigh. His leg crumpled beneath him. He shifted his weight to his left leg, pointed his knife hand at the man, and launched himself forward. His knife penetrated the man’s chest and was nearly wrenched from his hand as the blade hit a rib.