As the miniature mushroom clouds of fire expanded above, rising from columns of dense black smoke, the injured appeared, a couple of troops missing appendages, crawling with what limbs they had left, scraping forward across the ice.
Before Fisher and Briggs could assess any more of their ambush, they were on their feet and hauling ass back toward the forest to circle around and above the pass. The sonar goggles revealed that there were at least five more troops left up top, all having fallen back to secondary defensive positions within the trees.
“Sam, the troops at the crash site—”
“I know, Grim,” he snapped. “But we need to clear a path for Briggs so he can get to that helo.”
“Well, you’d better move. I count at least ten sprinting toward your position.”
“Charlie, can you run interference?” Fisher asked.
“I’ll see if I can offer the drone as bait, let ’em take some potshots to keep ’em distracted. And Sam, I haven’t spotted any bodies in the trees.”
“Okay,” Fisher answered, fighting for breath. “Just slow down those bastards for me.”
He and Briggs scaled a hill so steep they were forced to lean forward and clutch at the earth and snow. At the top, Fisher’s quads were burning, and the altitude was really getting to him now. Briggs was crouched again, scanning with his trifocals. He gave Fisher a hand signaclass="underline" got two guys to the left, three to the right.
Fisher gestured for Briggs to go left, take out those two quietly. Fisher slipped off across the snow and toward the other three, holstering his pistol and drawing the karambit from its sheath attached to his waistband just behind the holster.
The knife was a curved blade variant, a “tiger’s claw” endemic to Sumatra, Central Java, and Madura. Over his long career, Fisher had studied with many close-quarters combat experts, among them world-renowned edged weapon master Michael Janich, who’d taught Fisher to use the blade with expert and deadly efficiency. The karambit’s design made it more easily concealable in the hand as well as offering more leverage while dragging it across the neck, with the ultimate goal of opening an enemy’s head like a PEZ dispenser. The karambit’s outside edge was sharpened, its back blade nearest the handle heavily serrated to be flipped and used to hack through thicker objects or pieces of flesh. By slipping your pinky or ring finger through the ring attached to the bottom of the knife’s hilt, you could switch between forward and reverse grips in a lightning-fast 180-degree stroke. Fisher owned two karambits, one with a silver uncoated blade, the other featuring a DLC, or diamond-like carbon, coating that gave the blade a matte black appearance for better camouflage and protection against reflections that could betray his position.
Knowing most of this op would be run at night, he’d taken the black blade — which now jutted from the bottom of his fist.
At the next tree he paused and marked the positions of each troop, their weapons trained on the valley to his left. He zoomed in once more with his trifocals. The nearest troop peered out from behind a more narrow pine, his rifle at the ready, a pair of night-vision goggles clipped to his helmet and slid down over his eyes.
After plotting his path, Fisher stepped as gingerly as he could, coming in from behind the man, who turned back as he approached, but all he saw was the next spruce behind him. He didn’t realize Fisher was so close, placing a gloved hand over his mouth to try to stifle his warm breath. Once more Fisher examined the ground between his position and the soldier’s. No, not good. Broken patches of ice, pine needles, and a few brown leaves scattered on top of it all. A soundless approach would involve antigravity boots. He’d have to get Charlie on that. For now, though, it was all about reaching the troop before the man could fire and alert his comrades.
Reaching the troop… that was one way to do it. The other involved bringing the troop to him…
Taking in a long breath, the air stinging his lungs, Fisher stood and began to walk in place, the snow and leaves crunching loudly under his boots.
Then he froze, got back down on his haunches, and doused the green lights on his trifocals.
As expected, the troop clambered to his feet and left his position to investigate the noise. His movements were tense; in fact, Fisher had never seen a young man more puckered up.
As he came toward Fisher’s tree, Fisher cautiously maneuvered to the side so he could still attack from the rear. Again, the most important part of the assault was getting the troop’s finger away from his trigger. After that, the karambit would communicate Fisher’s will in a way words could not.
Fisher rose and came up on the troop like a camouflaged extraterrestrial, once part of the mountainside but now morphing into a lethal, three-eyed combatant.
In that half second when Fisher sensed the troop would whirl around, he reached out and seized the man’s right wrist, yanking it away from the assault rifle.
The blade was already tearing across the man’s throat before he could yell, and as he fell back toward the snow, Fisher eased him silently to the ground. While grisly, it was necessary to stab him twice more in the heart before he was sprawled out on his back and flinching involuntarily.
Men did not die instantly from knife wounds the way Hollywood producers wanted you to believe. It took a while to bleed out, but flooding an enemy’s throat with blood ensured he wouldn’t be screaming for his brothers as, in the minutes to come, he finally, inevitably, drowned.
Fisher took the man’s rifle and slung it over his shoulder. He was about to open the man’s belt pouch to draw some spare magazines when he spotted movement farther up the mountain. He dashed off, the thumping of the Black Hawk much closer and certainly welcome. With that racket concealing his footfalls, he wasted no time rushing up on the next troop and working the knife the way a symphony conductor instinctively works his baton. The troop saw nothing, felt only a hand, the edge of the blade, the warmth of his own blood spilling down his chest.
As Fisher silently finished the job with two more blows, he caught sight of the man’s painfully young eyes, and that youth reminded him of a moment after he’d had a few drinks and his guard was down. His daughter, Sarah, had asked, “Is it easy to kill a man?”
He’d considered the question for a long time, then finally told her, “When it’s for our country, I try not to think about it. But most of the time I do. And it’s never easy. Or fun. Or anything that should be glorified.”
Breathing a heavy sigh, Fisher traded his blood-soaked gloves for the troop’s, then hustled out of there.
“Hey, Sam, Briggs here. Two down, nice and quiet. But they’re coming up fast from the east. If you want me on combat control for that helo, I need to roll now.”
“Go. I’ll be right behind.”
Following a deep cut in the mountain formed eons prior by glaciers, Fisher abandoned his assault on the last troop, who was just north of his position.
Maybe they could lure that soldier into following, then double back to take him out once they were near the LZ. Getting to that troop now would take Fisher too far off the trail and leave Briggs more vulnerable to those attackers from the east.
With his lips chapped and nose sore from the cold, Fisher dragged himself up another ten meters, the grade nearly 40 percent now, his breath ragged. He had to stop, find some air, find some way to actually catch his breath.
And that’s when the grenade went off.
The white-hot blinding flash, followed by the ear-rattling ka-boom sent him crashing forward and burying his face in the dirt. Grim and Charlie were screaming in his ear for him to move, and for a moment, the world seemed to tip on its axis.
There was no rush of imagery from his past, no reflections on his divorce, or anything else — just that terrible ringing and white noise, the blinding flashes like old flashbulbs going off repeatedly in his face.