“They’re trying to flank us,” Carlos said. “Reinforcements coming along the ridge at three o’clock. Firing.” Carlos switched his sector of fire to target the incoming troops.
“Wilkins, suppress that ridge line!”
Henry turned and saw men darting from tree to tree, rock to rock. There were too many.
“We’re gonna have to pull back,” Henry said.
“No shit. To where?”
Henry fired at a muzzle flash. A heavy round smacked into the tree above him, and Henry could smell the sap from the tree. He scooted backwards, using his elbows. Snow had gotten inside his smock and thermals and was wet against his belly.
“Moving,” Carlos said. He got up and edged backwards while Henry continued to fire, shifting his aim to the troops moving along the ridgeline.
Henry scooted back further, then risked coming to a crouch and made for a boulder a few meters up slope. The small arms fire was less intense now, as the Wolves conserved ammunition and the attacking troops sought targets from behind cover.
This might just be the day I die. I’ve been in some fixes before, but none as bad as this. Outnumbered, drones hunting me, and my own guys trying to kill me. His ears were ringing and his heart hammering and his mouth tasted like a copper penny. Why do they have such a hard-on for us? We shouldn’t matter. We’re just a few guys who bugged out of the base. They hunted us all the way into Canada. Who the hell are we up against?
Henry scanned the area. Carlos was making his way toward the top of the ridge, and Henry decided that was the right idea. If they could make it over the ridge, they’d be out of the line of direct fire. The drones would still be a threat. But, so far, there had just been the initial attack. The drones probably spent their ordinance, still circling overhead, but unable to engage. But they might have friends.
Henry was cresting the ridge, struggling with deep snow and a steep slope, when the world rocked him sideways. His hearing was gone and his bones and organs and brain seemed to convulse and all of the oxygen in the valley disappeared. He pitched face-first into the snow with the shock wave as the second bomb hit.
There was smoke and fire. Trees burned and the wreckage where the cabin had been was a roiling crater, a perfect mushroom cloud forming in the valley. Henry was aware of Carlos, grabbing him by the collar and dragging him back from the slope. Henry looked at his friend, saw his mouth moving, but there was just the high-pitched ringing. From the expression on Carlos’s face, he was shouting and speaking slowly. Henry felt sluggish and punch-drunk in the way he’d felt after stepping into the ring with his first hand-to-hand combat instructor at Ranger School. He’d been wearing headgear, but after a flurry of fists and chops and one particularly nasty kick, he was swaying on his knees, gasping for breath, not entirely sure what his name was. He felt that way now.
Carlos gave up on trying to talk to him and hauled Henry to his feet. Carlos wasted no time, moving out. Henry staggered behind him, taking one last look at the wrecked valley.
The sun had slipped behind the mountains and the valley was tinged in blue, dying light, tainted by smoke and blood. The bombs, probably JDAMs, laser-guided bunker busters fired from an aircraft, had killed many of the attacking troops. Henry could make no sense of it.
He knew he probably owed Carlos his life, though. If he’d been on the other side of the ridge, the bombs would have turned his insides to jelly. If Carlos hadn’t decided to make a run for it, that would have been the end of Henry Wilkins. As it was, he knew most of his fellow teammates lay dead in the snow. He grieved as he ran and slid through the twilight and powder.
While the Wolves, like other elements of the special ops community, were trained and indeed selected for their individual ability to make decisions and act independent from the chain of command, every operation was carefully planned and rehearsed ahead of time. Before any given direct action, the men invariably went into the mission armed with contingency plans, fallback rendezvous points, and clear mission objectives. Henry had become accustomed to this structure. Even if things went sideways on an op, which they often did, there was always another move, a planned step in the face of chaos. There was at least the hope of extraction. Henry felt lost now.
He’d been cut off in enemy territory before, back when he was a Ranger humping it over the hopeless mountains of Afghanistan, waiting on a medevac that took days to come because the Rangers were actually operating in Pakistan and the politicians and brass couldn’t get their shit together. They’d pursued a high-value al-Qaeda target across a border without markers, an alien world of thin air and hate and snipers and mortars fired from hillsides miles away. No matter where you were in Afghanistan, there was always someplace higher, and the mujahideen were always there, sniping from cover. It seemed no matter how high he climbed, there were loftier peaks and crags and rocks and the enemy was there. He’d watched guided munitions smash enemy positions, seen the Spectre gunships pound hillsides, shouted with his fist in the air as a squadron of Cobra attack helicopters hammered hillsides with Hellfire missiles. But the enemy always came back. Millions of dollars in munitions up in smoke to kill a five-dollar camel that seemed to never die.
Lieutenant Michael Cox, a soft-spoken young man from Lexington, Kentucky, had taken a round to the thigh high on some unnamed mountain in Pakistan. Lieutenant Cox was the kind of man who inspired others without seeming to try. He was not given to fiery speeches and angry exhortation. He cared about his men, unwilling to take foolish risks with their lives, and he was more likely to quote Jesus or Kipling than utter a harsh word. Henry, along with the rest of his platoon, loved Lieutenant Cox. Henry was only twenty years old then, and although Cox was maybe only twenty-five, he seemed wise and calm and just. Lieutenant Cox was a venerated warrior, and Henry trusted him with his life without question.
“You are the MOST OUTSTANDING FUCKING Rangers in the battalion,” he’d tell his men. “The baddest men on the planet. Take a knee. Oh, Lord, protect my Rangers this day and watch over them. Protect them with Jesus fire and the Sword of Righteousness. Amen.”
And then Lieutenant Cox would lead them into battle. Henry had watched the lieutenant hunkered down beside a boulder, calling in fire missions from artillery units or radioing for air support while rounds peppered whatever it was he was using for cover that day, the rounds missing him as if God himself turned them aside. One of the men had dubbed Cox “Meshach” for the Old Testament man who had endured a furnace in the name of God and emerged unscathed. The name stuck.
On January 2, 2014, Lieutenant Cox, aka Meshach, bled out on a mountainside in Pakistan that God, command, and the rest of the country did not seem to care about. Lieutenant Cox went hard, fighting it to the end, issuing orders while his lips were turning blue and his face turned gray. The medic had done what he could, but it wasn’t enough. Lieutenant Cox’s eyes seemed to sink into themselves.
“Wilkins,” the lieutenant said. His voice was strained, but calm, not the voice of a dying man. He couldn’t die. But his eyes were fluttering and he was in shock because a .50-caliber round had torn through his leg and severed his femoral artery. Doc Wilson was swearing and trying to staunch the bleeding. Lieutenant Cox gripped Henry’s wrist and pulled him close, face twitching with pain and visions of whatever it was he could see in that awful moment, something urgent on his lips.
Maybe he was about to order Henry to take the men to higher ground, or to leave him until they could come back for his body, or tell his wife or momma that he loved them, or reveal the secret of the universe.