But the terrain demanded an air attack, as Wells had realized immediately when he’d seen the satellite photographs. Armored vehicles couldn’t get through, and an assault on foot was impossible. The camp-ground was hundreds of feet above the valley. Guerrilla snipers would devastate attacking infantry. Plus the mountains in this part of the Kush were riddled with tunnel networks. If they got advance warning, the guerrillas would disappear into their underground labyrinth before they could be destroyed.
Thus the 10th Mountain had been pulled back like a rottweiler on a choke chain, and the Special Forces ordered in. The helicopters would strike at dusk, destroying the camp before the Talibs could respond. Speed would be key. If the operation worked as planned, the guerrillas would panic. The Special Forces would cut off the caves. With that route blocked, the guerrillas would flee down the mountain, into the unfriendly arms of the 10th Mountain, whose men would wait at the base of the valley.
A high-risk operation, Wells thought. But the soldiers in these helicopters had the best chance in the world of pulling it off. And they had a secret weapon.
THE SUN WAS LOW as the four-helicopter convoy reached Jalalabad, one hundred miles east of Kabul. From here, they would fly northeast along the Pech River and into the mountains. One of the Apaches had briefly flown over the valley two days before, the only live visual recon of the campsite. More overflights might have spooked the guerrillas.
Wells looked at his watch. 1840. They should be at Chonesh in less than an hour, assuming nothing went wrong. An hour after that, they’d know where they stood. If they hadn’t broken the camp by then, they would probably be stuck in a firefight, with little chance for reinforcements until the morning.
Afghanistan was eight and a half hours ahead of Washington, so Exley was probably at work right now, Wells thought. He pictured her in their suite in Tysons Corner, sipping coffee from the ridiculous mugs that Shafer had bought. She knew this mission was happening tonight, and though she hadn’t asked for details, she had to know it wouldn’t be easy. Yet she’d given him her blessing to go, encouraged him even. Because she’d known he needed the action, needed to feel useful.
In truth, the Special Forces were doing him a favor by letting him participate in this mission. Technically, Wells was replacing B Company’s second medic, who had been shot in the leg two weeks earlier and was recovering in a military hospital in Germany. But Special Forces units were often short a soldier or two. Initially, Wells had worried he might distract the other men in the unit, who’d fought together long enough that they knew one another’s moves instinctively.
The night before, he’d told Holmes he’d sit out the attack if Holmes thought he didn’t belong. “No hard feelings if you don’t want me, Glen,” Wells said.
“You kidding?”
“What do you mean?”
“You gonna make me say it out loud? These guys love you. You’re better for morale than the Cowboys cheerleaders.”
“Really?” Despite himself Wells had felt a flush of pride.
“John, look, we’ve got some history. I don’t pretend to know you all that well, but it’s obvious, what happened in New York is all twisted in your head. Put aside the politics for a minute and think on what you did. The people you saved. That’s what these guys see. Believe me. Hughley wants you out there tomorrow. I do too.”
1910. THE PECH RIVER FLOWED shallow and fast beneath the Black Hawk, its clear water reflecting the gold of the sun’s dying rays. Two children stood beside the river, waving their thin brown arms metronomically as the helicopter roared by.
The Black Hawk banked left, turning north into a narrow valley, hidden from the sun by a crumbling rock ridge. In the sudden darkness, the helicopter’s gunners hunched intently over their 7.62-caliber mini-guns.
In these valleys, the ride got dangerous. Fly too high, you opened yourself to a lucky shot with an RPG or a SAM. Fly too low, especially at night, you could get taken out by a canyon wall. The topo charts for these valleys were notoriously sketchy. The pilots usually stayed low, figuring they could dodge a mountain more easily than a missile.
The helicopter pulled up steeply as the valley tightened. Ahead, a trickle of water coursed down a near-vertical rock face. The Black Hawk banked right and cut through a gap in the rocks, its skids skimming the tops of the stubbly oak trees that speckled the mountain. The helo topped the ridgeline, and a new valley opened beneath. The Black Hawk followed the contours of the mountain downward, changing pitch and direction like a supercharged roller coaster.
“In my next life I want to be a helicopter pilot,” Wells yelled to Hughley.
“I know what you mean.”
Suddenly, Wells was cold. A few minutes before, they’d been in the sun at 6,000 feet. Now they were in shadows at 10,000, and the temperature had fallen twenty degrees. He was glad he’d followed Hughley’s advice and thrown thermals in his pack. Even if the mission went perfectly, they’d be out all night.
1930. THE BLACK HAWKS SLOWED while the Apaches raced ahead. Part of the plan. The Apaches didn’t carry soldiers, but without them the operation had little chance of success. The Apaches — AH-64 helicopters, each carrying a crew of two — were the secret weapon that would enable twenty-two American soldiers to take on fifty guerrillas. In the Army’s dry jargon, the Apaches would “prepare the battlespace for the insertion.”
In the cabin of Wells’s Black Hawk, the crew chief held up five fingers, silently signaling that the helicopter would reach the landing zone in five minutes. The soldiers nodded, their faces expressionless. The silence was anticipation, not fear, Wells thought. These men wanted to get on the field and play.
1933. THE BLACK HAWKS SWUNG over a ridge and hovered at the southern end of the Chonesh Valley. Two hundred yards ahead, the Apaches were preparing the battlespace. Their preparation consisted of firing AGM-114N Hellfire missiles at the guerrilla camp.
The Army had developed Hellfires at the height of the Cold War to defeat the armor of Soviet T-80s. A generation later, the missiles were reengineered to take out an enemy that preferred caves to tanks. In place of shaped charges to cut through steel, these Hellfires held a fine aluminum powder wrapped around high explosive. The twenty-pound warheads sprayed molten shrapnel in every direction, killing anyone in a twenty-five-foot radius.
As Wells watched, the forward Apache fired two missiles. The Hellfires glowed in the dusk, trailing brilliant white exhaust as they screamed toward the plateau and exploded in orange fireballs. Seconds later the sounds of their impact reached the Black Hawks, echoing off the valley’s rock walls and into the night.
Whoomp!Whoomp!The trailing Apache fired two more missiles. For the first time, the guerrillas responded. A small white burst flared toward the helicopters, a rocket-propelled grenade fired blindly into the night. At this distance, the RPG was as harmless as a baby’s fist. It ran out of propellant short of the Apaches and crashed to the valley floor.
The Apaches fired their last Hellfires, then pulled up to make way for the Black Hawks. Time to go in. Wait too long, and the guerrillas would regroup, or just disappear into the caves. The Black Hawks accelerated toward the plateau. Wells pulled on his night-vision goggles for a closer look. Already the guerrillas were reorganizing. Two men ran out of a cave holding an RPG launcher. They twisted toward the Black Hawk and fired. Again they missed, but not as badly as before.