One of the helicopter’s crew leaned back and craned his head toward Rainer. He was shouting, but his voice was barely audible over the strident whine of the turbine engines. “What happened?”
“A complication,” Rainer answered. “The plan is the same.”
Sasha didn’t understand. How could the plan be the same if they were leaving?
The crewman just nodded.
“Do it!” Rainer shouted.
Sasha was still trying to make sense of this when the Delta team leader brought his carbine up and fired two shots.
Klein jerked in the seat beside her. Sasha flinched, as a hot blast of sulfurous exhaust sprayed her face. Then she felt something else, something warm and wet on her shoulder. Klein had slumped against her with blood trickling from a pair of tiny holes in his forehead, and gushing from the enormous opening in the back of his skull.
The crewman Rainer had spoken with stretched out his arm, pointing across the cabin in the direction of his counterpart on the opposite side. As the other crewman started to turn, a tongue of flame leapt from the pistol in the first man’s hand. The second man slumped forward over his machine gun. At almost the same instant, there was another report from the cockpit.
“What the—” the man Sasha knew as Pettit stiffened on his seat, trying to get his own weapon up, but Rainer was already swinging his gun around. Two more shots erupted from Rainer’s carbine and punched into Pettit’s face.
Sasha didn’t know what was happening…except in a strange way, she did. It was exactly what she’d been afraid of; they had changed the plan, and now chaos was descending.
They’re going to kill me next, she thought, and maybe that was okay. Everyone died, no matter how they fought against that inevitable outcome. Life, with all its endless unpredictable possibilities, always reduced to zero in the end, the final victory of order over chaos.
But the Delta team leader didn’t shoot her; he didn’t even point his gun at her.
“Sorry you had to see that,” he shouted. “But if you’ll just sit tight, everything will make sense in a little while.”
Sasha very much doubted that.
SEVEN
Sigler was the last to climb aboard the second Black Hawk. As he got in, he flashed a thumb’s up to the crew chief and shouted: “Last man!”
Then the crew chief did something unexpected. He held up his hand with forefinger and middle finger extended, just like the peace sign, or V for Victory…or, Sigler realized, the number two. The crew chief was telling him to switch to channel two on his radio, which was preset with the Night Stalkers’ frequency.
“This is Cipher One-Six,” Sigler said when the he’d made the switch. “Do you have traffic for me?”
“Cipher, this is Beehive Six-Four. I’ve lost contact with Beehive Six-Six, and they are presently heading away from our position on a bearing of three-three-zero. Do you know what’s up? Over.”
Beehive Six-Six was the Black Hawk with Rainer’s group, and the compass heading meant they were flying north-northwest. Ramadi lay to the south.
“Standby.” He switched to the Delta channel. “Cipher Six, this is Cipher One-Six. Come in, over.”
No answer. He tried two more times, unsuccessfully. He was about to switch back to update the pilot, when a voice sounded in his earpiece. “Cipher One-Six, this is Eagle-Eye Three. What the hell’s going on?”
Even without the callsign, Sigler recognized the voice of Lewis Aleman. The tall, athletic sniper shared Parker’s interest in science and technology, and the two men often hung out together, salivating over the Sharper Image catalog like it was the Sport Illustrated swimsuit issue.
“Wondering that myself, Eagle-Eye. Are you guys on the bird?” Sigler saw the crew chief motioning for his attention again, but waited for Aleman to answer in the affirmative. “Roger, Eagle-Eye. Standby.”
He switched to the Night Stalkers’ frequency. “Go for Cipher element.”
“Cipher, this is Beehive Six-Four. Beehive Six-Six is…they’re bugging out, and they ain’t taking our calls. This is your show, Cipher. What do I do?”
Sigler’s brow furrowed in disbelief; there was no protocol for a situation like this. He leaned over the crew chief’s shoulder and stared out the door, hoping to catch a glimpse of the departing Black Hawk, as if visually confirming what he’d been told would give him some insight about what to do next.
He didn’t see the helicopter. Instead, he saw a flash on the ground, perhaps a mile to the west, then another.
Abruptly, the display in his night vision device flared bright white, like a high intensity spotlight beaming directly into his retina. He reflexively tore the monocular away, but the damage was done; a greenish blue spot filled his right eye.
His left eye however, fixed on the source of the light: two parachute flares, fired from mortar tubes, were blazing like tiny suns in the night sky.
“Shit! Get us out of here, Beehive!”
His warning was unnecessary; the pilots had seen the flares as well and were already taking evasive action.
Two deep booming sounds reverberated through the airframe, the reports of the mortar launch finally reaching them, and then Sigler’s good eye detected more flashes on the ground, and pinpoints of light streaking into the sky. Sigler recognized them instantly; RPGs…rocket propelled grenades.
The effective range of the RPG was only about a hundred meters. Beyond that, there was less than a fifty percent chance of hitting a stationary target. At a thousand meters, the grenade would self-destruct. Sigler’s helicopter was well outside that radius, but Beehive Six-Five was a lot closer to the source. The air around the helicopter carrying the snipers suddenly came alive with flashes, as the grenades began exploding. Sigler thought the helicopter had weathered the barrage, but a moment later he heard a voice over the radio: “Shit! We’re going in.”
Beehive Six-Five wobbled in the air and began corkscrewing downward.
There was a thunderous eruption right in front of Sigler; the crew chief had opened up with his M240. Red arcs — tracers — described the path of the 7.62 millimeter rounds as they lanced toward the source of the RPGs, but it was impossible to distinguish a target or judge the effectiveness of the fire.
A puff of dust below marked the spot where Beehive Six-Five finished its fateful plunge. Sigler knew exactly what he had to do next. “Six-Four, get us as close as you can. We’ll do the rest.”
“Roger, Cipher.” The pilot’s voice was steady and professional, without a trace of hesitation. “I’ll try to make it a short walk.”
Sigler switched channels. “Eagle-Eye, do you copy?”
There was an interminably long silence, but then someone broke squelch. Sigler heard several seconds of gunfire, then a cough. “Cipher. Could use a little help here.”
It was Aleman.
“On our way, Eagle-Eye. What’s the count?”
“Two and two.” Two dead, two injured badly enough to be out of the fight. After a beat, Aleman amended: “I think. Having trouble telling which way is up right now.”
“Sit tight, Eagle-Eye. Help is on the way.”
The Black Hawk set down about fifty yards east of the crash site, well out of RPG range, but in between bursts from the M240, Sigler could hear the distinctive crack of bullets ricocheting off the armored exterior of the helicopter. As soon as the crew chief threw open the door on the sheltered side, Sigler’s team poured out onto the desert floor.
When the last man was out, Beehive Six-Four rose again into the sky, and the door gunner continued to hurl bullets in the direction of the muzzle flashes. Sigler’s men broke into pairs and began moving toward the crash using the tried and true individual movement techniques taught to every soldier: three to five second rushes, measured out to the rhythm of the mantra I’m up, he sees me, I’m down… Then drop to the prone, roll left or right, it didn’t matter which as long as you didn’t get into a pattern, and give your buddy some cover fire so that he could make his move.