“Delta Six, this is Bravo, we’re up, we’re at the top of the hill, goddammit, we’re there!”
Peter saw Puller snap the safety on his pistol as he slid it into the holster, lean forward, just an old man with a shit-scared look to his face, nothing dramatic, no big line to deliver, and say, “All units, this is Delta Six, do you copy, Delta Six. Heaven is falling, I repeat, Heaven is falling. I repeat, Heaven is falling.”
Everybody began to run. Someone cheered. Peter took a deep breath and then was running for his chopper through a commotion of other rising birds, the whip of snow and dust in the darkness, and the sound, far off and blurry, of men with guns.
“They’re off,” yelled the man on the night scope, “five, six, seven, eight, eight of them. Hueys.”
Troop carriers, Yasotay thought. An airborne job, helicopter assault at night. Let them come, he thought. He’d been on a few and knew how they got messed up.
“Rockets,” yelled Yasotay to his missile people. “Spotters ready. Men on the first line, eyes front. Get ready, boys. The Americans are coming.”
But before the Delta-laden Hueys could arrive, the first of the two gunships rose over the treeline, then the other. They hung obscenely, two black shapes against the white snow of the valley. Their rotors filled the air with the wicked whup-whup-whup of the jet engines, loud enough to mask the final movement of troops through the trees to the point of attack. Worse, at an altitude of some five hundred to a thousand feet up, the gunship guns had angle on the ground troops; they’d be firing down on the compound.
“Mark your targets, rockets,” Yasotay shouted in the second before the mini-guns began to fire. The stable world seemed to dissolve. The mini-guns fired so much faster than conventional machine guns that their problem wasn’t accuracy but ammunition conservation. From each of the hanging birds the tracers leapt out at the mountaintop like a dragon’s flame, a stream of light almost, and where the hot streaks touched, the world yielded. But of course in the dark they had no good targets, just as earlier the A-10s, roaring overhead, had no good targets; shooting at men is not like shooting at tanks or trucks. And so the bullets, as had the earlier bullets, bounced across the compound, roiling snow and dirt but little flesh; but their impact was devastating psychologically because there seemed no force on earth that could stand against them.
Down in the treeline Yasotay saw movement; infantry, coming hard through the trees, almost into the open.
“Rockets,” he yelled again, knowing he had only seven Stingers left after the profligacy of the air attack in the afternoon, but knowing that if he did not push the gunships back the infantry — good infantry, he presumed, better than the boobs who’d come at him earlier — would get close. It was a question of timing now; he’d put up a hard fight, then fall back to the first of the five V trenches; they’d come ahead and he’d have them in two fires. He’d kill them all. They’d never make it. They’d never get out of the mess of ditches and counterditches with the fire pouring in on them from both sides; and every time they made it to a new trench they’d find it empty, except for booby traps, while more fire smashed at them from the flanks. He’d seen the Pathans wipe out an infantry brigade that way, kill four hundred men in ten minutes, and then retire laughing to their rice pots higher up the mountain.
A Stinger fired, streaking out into the dark at one of the birds — it missed, lost its power and sank into the trees.
A second, hastily aimed — the gunner hadn’t properly acquired his target — missed worse, but the pilot in one of the gunships blinked and evaded, and his mini-gun fire swung wildly out of control, missing the mountaintop and spraying out behind them into Maryland.
A third Stinger missed.
Four left, I have four le—
The fourth hit the gunship dead on with a disappointingly small detonation and just the smallest trace of smoke; but the bird’s purchase on the air was altered and it began to slide sideways, until its back rotor pulled free and it simply became weight and fell because it could not glide. It fell into the trees but did not burn.
The second gunship zeroed on the flash of the missiles coming its way, though Yasotay gauged the pilot as merely good and not special like some of the Mi-24 aces in Afghanistan. But the pilot now had a target and he brought the mini-gun to bear and Yasotay slid down into the trench as the bullets rushed at him, a torrent of light. They struck up and down the perimeter trench and dust showered down, and screams and yelps rose as men cowered under the torrent. One of the missile gunners took a full burst of the mini-gun across the chest and the bullets pulverized him.
The gunship roared in; Yasotay could hear it overhead, circling, swooping as the pilot overshot the mark, swung back; a spotlight raced out from the craft, hunting targets. And then the guns caught it. The chopper pilot, too low, too eager, had crossed Yasotay’s silent first trench in hunt for the missile men; but he’d forgotten Yasotay’s own gunners, who opened up instinctively, catching the craft easily in ten or twelve streams of fire and the Huey wobbled, vibrated, and then was gone in a horrid smear of orange flame spreading bright as day across the night sky.
Yasotay was up even before the flames had drained from the air, and he saw the field ahead of them filled with rushing infantry and thought it was too late. But his NCOs, blooded the many years in Asian mountains, did not panic, and he could hear their stern voices calling out in reassuring Russian, “To the front. To the front. Targets to the front.”
Yasotay fired a flare, and then another.
It was sheer, delirious spectacle.
The infantry came like a tide of insects, scuttling, lurching ahead in dashes, yet still brave and steady, forcing the gap between itself and Yasotay’s front line, rushing ahead in packs of four or five. Yasotay fancied he could even see their eyes, wide with fright and adrenaline. Their backup guns had started, suppressive automatic fire from the flanks, lancing out over the troops but too high to do any damage.
Then his own fire rose, rose again; the men were on full automatic. The assault force troopers began to go down, but still they came, brave, good men, and the battlefield broke apart, atomized, into a hundred desperate little dramas, as small fire-and-movement teams tried to work closer. But Yasotay could see that he’d broken the spine of the attack. He picked up his scoped G-3 and began to engage targets.
Puller could hear them dying.
“This is Sixgun-One, he’s got missiles coming up, ah, no sweat, they’re missing, that’s one past us, oops, two gone, and that’s the big — Hit, hit, I’m losing it, we’re—”
“Charlie, I have you, you’re looking swell.”
“Major, he’s not burn—”
“Christ, he hit hard.”
“Delta Six, this is Sixgun-Two, I have missile launchers ahead, and I’ve got them engaged — oooooooo, look at them boys dance—”
“Sir, belt’s out.”
“Get it changed, I’m going in.”
“Goddammit, Sixgun-Two, this is Delta Six, you are advised to hold your position, I can’t risk another lost ship.”
“Sir, I got ’em running, I can see ’em running, I just want to get closer.”
“New belt, skip.”
“Let’s kick ass.”
“Sixgun-Two, hold your fucking position!” Puller roared.
“Colonel, I got those missile guys zeroed, oh, this is great, this is—”
“Shit, sir, there’s fire coming up from—”
“Oh, oh, shit, goddammit, hit, I’m—”
“The fire, the fire, the fi—”
“Jesus,” somebody at the window said, “his tanks went. He’s all over the sky. It looks like the Fourth of July.”