Turk had to think about what he had seen. People moving, standing. Weapons?
None that he remembered. He tried processing it again.
“Negative. Not even rifles,” he added.
“You sure?”
“I think so. You see something?”
“No.” Grizzly sounded disappointed.
Groundhog began squawking. They were calling the helicopters in for a pickup.
“We’re moving to the south side of town,” said the SAS soldier. “Do you copy, Shogun Six?”
“Shogun Six copies.”
“Point is marked as Landing Four on your map. It’s behind a low wall.”
“Affirmative. We copy.”
Turk spotted the two helicopters flying from the north, crossing in a wide arc west of the hamlet. They were aiming at a field behind a large building.
“Got people in that building,” said the helicopter pilot.
“Are they aggressive?” asked the controller. “Weapons?”
“I just see people.”
A three-way conversation between the helicopters, the controller, and the ground unit ensued. The voices were quick and sharp as the men tried to determine whether the people in the building constituted a threat. No weapons had been spotted, and the ROEs declared that they be left alone. That seemed to be a relief to all concerned, especially the ground unit.
As a precaution, Turk noted the building. He could blast it with a missile if necessary.
The dozen members of Groundhog hopscotched down the street toward the landing point. Turk could see knots of people moving roughly parallel to the soldiers.
“A lot of people down here,” said Groundhog.
“We want to keep them as far back from the helicopters as possible,” said Shogun. “More Hog psyops.”
The helicopters touched down. The Brits fell into a dead run.
They were still twenty or thirty yards away when one of the helicopters jerked upward.
“Gun! Gun!” yelled someone over the radio.
Turk, about a half mile east of the pickup area, strained to see what was going on.
Grizzly radioed Groundhog and Shogun but got no answer. Bits of smoke appeared in a line on the ground about a hundred yards from the pickup area, near the village.
“Shogun’s firing,” said Grizzly.
“Hold back,” warned Turk. “Helicopter is circling.”
Turk had to bank to give the chopper room. Smoke spread across the field. It looked like something from a smoke grenade rather than gunfire.
“Groundhog? Groundhog!” said Grizzly. “Say your situation. What the hell is going on?”
The first helicopter circled south, ramping upward. The second helicopter remained on the ground.
“I don’t see any gunfire,” said Turk.
“I can take out that building,” said Grizzly.
“Negative, negative,” said Turk. “There’s nothing coming from there. Hold off.”
The blades on the second helicopter began rotating furiously. The helicopter rose upward, cutting across a thick fist of smoke.
“We’re good, we’re good,” Groundhog said. “All recovered.”
Turk lost sight of the helicopter as it passed behind him, flying northeastward. He found Grizzly on his left and followed him upward, climbing away from the village.
Barely two minutes had passed since the ground element began running for the choppers. It had been a tangle of confusion, at least from Turk’s point of view. He tried sorting it in his mind: the helicopter that lifted off had seen people coming and decided to hold them off with gunfire that missed but scared people away. The other chopper made the pickup, the trooper tossing smoke grenades behind to cover their retreat.
Simple. Assuming that was the way it went. It was hard to decipher even the most obvious action in combat.
The helicopters arced northward, getting away from the village. Turk started thinking about the long flight home — and how long he would sleep once he reached the hotel.
“This is Shogun Actual,” called the helicopter commander. “All allied assets, be advised. We have two men still on the ground. They are moving through the field at the north side of the village. Mountain Three is coming for a pickup.”
The men, providing an overwatch from the northern end of the village, had been separated as the units began exfiltrating. Confusion on the ground had sent the helicopters skyward before they reached the pickup point.
Damn.
The two SAS men on the ground were in radio contact with the controller. The men, using the call sign Rodent, were on the north side of the village. The helicopter pilot flying Mountain Three was closing in. He told them he would meet them wherever they wanted.
“Hell if necessary,” added the man, who had the slight lilt of a Boston accent.
They told him they would go north and meet him in the flat desert area. No one was following them.
The air controller, meanwhile, tried to gather more information about the crowd that had been following. The SAS men said they hadn’t seen any weapons, something Turk and Grizzly confirmed. But someone aboard the helicopter believed he had.
It was impossible to know the real facts. As a practical matter, the rules remained the same for the two A–10 pilots: they could watch, and buzz the crowd if necessary, but at the moment they couldn’t fire.
How strange it must be on the ground, Turk thought. A civilian in the war zone was a voyeur, an observer, maybe reluctant, maybe against his or her will. Yet the fascination to find out what was going on must be incredible.
You’d be drawn to the strangeness, if not the danger. The danger might not even seem real, because the situation was so bizarre — men with guns running through your village, a nightmare in the middle of the day. But it was absolutely real, and a false move or a mistake could easily lead to your death — either from someone on the ground or someone in the sky.
Was that what it had been like in the village when the Sabre attacked? It must have been worse — hell simply broke open from the sky without warning, arriving on the nose of a fast-flying missile before the plane was close enough to make a noise.
A terrible, terrible mistake.
Not his, though. Not his.
The troopers on the ground moved around the backs of two houses, toward the Y intersection at the center of town. Turk used the zoom feature on the satellite image to check the path they were intending to take — it cut through the hill off the northern road and down into the desert. The village was tucked behind the ridge there, cutting off the view from the buildings.
He looked down at it. Clear, as far as he could tell. So far, so good.
And what of the nightmare for the soldiers on the ground? They had two great fears — their legitimate enemy, trying to kill them, and the innocents walking through the village.
If they were innocents. How could you even tell?
It was easier in the old days, when you just decided everyone was bad and rolled over the place.
The SAS troopers crossed the street near the mosque.
“We’re going north on the street,” reported Rodent. “We—”
He stopped talking. Turk heard gunfire in the background.
“We’re under fire,” said the Brit.
“Do you have a target?” called Grizzly.
“Negative,” said Rodent. “We’re in cover. We can’t see the gunman.”
“Rodent, is it the mosque?” Grizzly asked.
“Stand by.”
“I can take the mosque out.”
“Stand by.”
“Turk, you see the gunfire?”
“Negative.”
Turk, about a mile and a half behind Grizzly, zeroed into the area on his screen, using maximum resolution. He couldn’t see any gunfire at all. Hitting the mosque would be easy enough, but without a positive ID that it was the target he couldn’t take the shot. The helicopter, meanwhile, held short, about a mile and a half away.