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.
One of those flashes turned into a lightning bolt with still images printed along its surface, each cell depicting Sarah receiving the news of his death. No, he couldn’t put her through that . . .
Muted gunfire stitched up the mountainside, and he could feel the rounds thumping into the earth behind him. Was he hit by shrapnel? Was he okay? Where the hell was he?
The moment came down like an avalanche, and barely conscious of his movements, he was already on his feet, digging in deep, charging up the mountain, with more gunfire trailing. He ripped free a grenade, pulled the pin, and tossed it over his shoulder without looking.
To his left rose a stand of pines, and he darted toward them, boots sliding as he fought against the incline, his ears ringing loudly from the explosions.
Those sons of bitches were coming up behind him, but he had the high ground, if nothing else.
He had two more grenades left. Tugging down his trifocals, he went to sonar, marked the positions of nine men now who were fanned out in a semicircle within the trees, with several more, three or four, in the distance.
Night-vision mode allowed him to zoom in on the nearest troop. Seeing an opportunity, Fisher shoved up his goggles and got behind the AK-12’s attached scope. As a rule of combat—and if you had a choice—you never trusted an enemy’s rifle. He sighted the forehead of the nearest troop, then panned right to the next three about a yard back. The second man was there, leaning out from behind the trunk. Fisher knew that once he fired the first round, the second guy would switch positions, ducking for cover—but his tree wasn’t quite wide enough, and so when he did try to hide, Fisher would exploit that reaction.
The moment seemed perfect, and firing down at a sharp angle decreased the amount of bullet drop, placing the odds of a better shot in his favor.
If he did it right, gripped the weapon firmly with his left hand, gently with his right, then exhaled halfway, every shot would be a surprise. There was no conscious pulling of the trigger, only pressure until the round exploded from the barrel. It did. The troop’s head snapped back as Fisher was already shifting fire to the second one—who moved exactly as predicted. Fisher caught him in the side of the head.
The other troops detected his muzzle flash and sent volley after volley of automatic weapons fire in his direction. Rounds tore apart the pines and ricocheted off the rocks behind him.
At the next pause in fire, he was on his feet, gritting his teeth and clambering for the next stand of trees back to his left, the gunfire resuming and ripping past him now. The bullets sounded like sand thrown into a fan, and a round or two might’ve struck his legs, he wasn’t sure, the Kevlar certainly protecting him at this range, but he wasn’t sticking around to tempt fate any further.
A blur raced over his head and zoomed back down the mountain. He recognized the buzzing of the drone’s rotors and sighed with relief.
“Goddamn, Charlie, you’re a little late!” he cried.
“Sorry, Sam, the drone took fire. Lost one rotor. Had to reboot. Just get out of there!”
“That’s the plan.”
“Sam, don’t move,” cried Grim. “There’s another squad. They just got in front of you. They came up on your flank. You’re about to be surrounded!”
“Then, Grim, I need to move!”
“Sam, I have an idea, but you won’t like it,” said Charlie.
Fisher reached the next tree, dropped to his knees, then leaned over, stealing more breath. He was a few seconds away from collapsing. “Charlie, what’re you thinking?”
“The Black Hawk’s armed with Hellfire missiles—”
“Absolutely not!” shouted Grim. “He’s too close and while I can explain away a Black Hawk off course, I can’t account for missiles fired on Russian ground troops.”
“Forget the missiles,” said Fisher. “I’ll slip past that squad ahead. Briggs, what’s your ETA to the landing zone?”
The man’s voice came broken and breathless: “Uh, just a minute or two, I think.”
Fisher activated his sonar and wished he hadn’t.
His heart sank, and a string of expletives slipped from his lips. He was surrounded, all right, with six strung out above him, seven or more moving up from behind, a couple more on each flank, with his perimeter narrowing from thirty or so meters to twenty and decreasing by the minute. Not an ingenious way to capture someone, given the risk of cross fire, and there was an opportunity for Fisher to get them shooting at each other, but he’d rather just get on the move. Somehow.