“The CT unit working with the Agency.” Cipher element wasn’t a unit, per se, but rather an assignment, and the plan was for every Delta squad to get their turn. Most of the current Cipher roster were from Bravo team, but Tremblay knew a few of them.
“That’s right. Well, we just got word that they are in the shit. Right now, as we speak.”
Tremblay frowned, trying to recall the names of the men he knew who were currently deployed with Cipher. “What went wrong?”
“What didn’t? All I know for sure is that they are stranded in the desert and they could use a few more shooters.”
He let it hang right there, and Tremblay couldn’t tell if Vaughn was ordering them into the fight or asking for volunteers.
It didn’t matter really. Either way, he was going.
TEN
After their initial success, the tide of the battle had shifted against the insurgents. They still had superior numbers on their side; the original force of one hundred and eighty-five mujahideen had been whittled down to about a hundred and thirty, while by their best estimates, the surviving Americans numbered less than a dozen. Their greatest asset however, the element of surprise, had been thoroughly expended. The Americans had suffered heavy losses in those first few minutes of combat, but once the initial sting had worn off, the Americans’ superior training and technology had swung the pendulum in the other direction.
Two groups of American soldiers, working in concert with some hidden observer, had flanked their position and destroyed the mortar emplacements before they could be used to deadly effect. One of the fire teams had been cut off and annihilated, but the damage was done. With the mortars gone, the insurgents had lost their ability to light the battlefield, to say nothing of having the capacity to rain down destruction from a safe standoff distance.
The battle had begun with a cacophony of shots and explosions, but now, as the various pieces on the chessboard moved to gain strategic advantage, silence dominated the night, with only occasional scattered gunfire — spooked insurgents, shooting at phantoms. The American rifles and machine guns had not been heard for nearly half an hour.
The insurgents, motivated more by impatience than courage, advanced to the site where the helicopters had gone down. Smoke still seeped from the burned-out remains of the Black Hawk helicopters, which had both been completely destroyed with incendiary charges. Using hooded flashlights, they scanned the area and quickly discovered the trail left by the retreating soldiers — a trail of blood from bodies dragged across the dry floodplain. The Americans were fleeing to the old lake monitoring station — the bait that had been used to lure them out into the desert in the first place. The mujahideen set out at dead run, confident that victory was nigh.
There was no sign of activity at the concrete building, but a faint glow was visible inside. The bulk of the fighters spread out, taking up over-watch positions, while a small knot crept forward, their weapons trained on the door. The leader of the group noted the deactivated tripwire, lying on the sand of the entryway. He dug a Russian-made F1 fragmentation grenade from his satchel, pulled the safety pin and lobbed it through the open doorway.
The grenade detonated with a dull thump. The concrete walls withstood the blast, but the explosion blew the metal shutters off the windows, sending them spinning like shrapnel into the night. A column of dust and smoke vomited from the door.
No one inside could have survived, but the insurgents needed to be certain. After waiting a few seconds for the smoke to clear, they rushed inside. A few moments later, one of them emerged and called out with his report.
No bodies. The building was empty.
More of the fighters came forward, as if to confirm for themselves.
That was the moment for which Jack Sigler had been waiting.
He pumped the M57 firing device three times, but once was enough to send a small electrical charge through a fifty-meter long strand of insulated wire and detonate the blasting cap in the M18 Claymore anti-personnel mine.
A storm of steel pellets obliterated the advancing group. At the same instant, the surviving Eagle-Eye snipers reached out with their rifles and started picking off targets of opportunity. The men searching the building rushed out, only to be met by a hail of bullets from the Delta operators concealed in low fighting positions less than a hundred meters away.
Primal fear momentarily overcame fundamentalist zeal; the insurgents abandoned their defensive positions and fled.
Sigler keyed his mic. “Cease fire, I say again, cease fire and move to zero.”
He didn’t wait for confirmation. Everyone knew the plan.
After Beehive Six-Four had gone down, the priorities had changed. Up to that moment, the plan had been to simply stay alive long enough to get everyone out. Survival and victory were the same thing now; staying alive meant defeating this enemy, destroying them completely.
Sigler possessed the ability to think analytically — strategically — even under the worst conditions. His instructors at OCS had quickly recognized his innate talent, and they had sharpened it by running him through increasingly difficult scenarios and simulations. He’d learned how to outwit his opponents, overcome seemingly impossible odds and perhaps the hardest lesson of all, when to gamble with the lives of his men.
Half a world away, observers at Joint Special Operations Command painted a picture of the battlefield from real-time imagery, supplied by the UAV circling overhead. Sigler had divided the survivors into four groups. One group, comprising most of the remaining snipers and the lone surviving crew chief from the downed Black Hawk would fall back to the original objective to disarm the booby-trap and set up an ambush of their own. The rest of them — six men, including Sigler and Aleman acting as spotters — would flank the insurgents and take out the mortar emplacements.
They’d succeeded in accomplishing that task, but one of the forward teams — Jon Foley and Mike Adams — had been cut off during their retreat. The disembodied voice from JSOC had confirmed their deaths.
There were just eight of them left now — four snipers, including Lewis Aleman, whose right hand was broken and useless; one warrant officer from the Night Stalkers; and the three surviving members of Cipher element — Daniel Parker, Casey Bellows and Sigler. They were desperately low on ammunition, and every shot had to count. That was the bad news. The good news was that help was on the way…or so HQ kept telling him.
Sigler sprang to his feet and hurried to the corner of the building to provide covering fire for the rest. Parker appeared beside him, still hauling the M240. A loop of ammunition, about twenty inches long, hung from the feed tray; fifty rounds, maybe less…after that, they might be able to beat someone to death with it.
The snipers had the farthest to run, and before they could reach the relative shelter of the structure, the insurgents seemed to collectively recover their nerve. Sigler heard the low crack of Kalashnikov rifles firing, and then realized that rounds were ricocheting off the cinder block walls behind him. The snipers were zigzagging, trying to stay one step ahead of the incoming fire.
“Move your ass!” Sigler shouted, more out of frustration than anything else, and then he fired in the direction of the muzzle flashes closest to the running men. Beside him, Parker ran out the last of the ammo belt, and then immediately switched to his carbine.