Nods around the table. By springing the deal on them this way, Li had given them little choice. Turning down the offer would have made them look weak, and none of these men wanted to look weak, least of all Zhang. If they’d known what he planned next, they would have been more cautious, but they didn’t.
Li raised his glass to his lips. Another step toward the power he’d been chasing for so long. He took a deep sip of cognac, filling his mouth with its sweetness.
13
“NOW!” HUGHLEY YELLED. “NOW!”
Holding the frame of the juddering Black Hawk, Wells tugged on his pack: sixty-three pounds of ammunition, grenades, energy bars, water, bandages, and the other essentials of close combat.
A Kevlar cable was coiled on the floor, its end knotted to the helicopter’s frame. Wells threw it out the side. He shimmied down, hand over hand, feeling the cable’s rough fibers under his gloved fingers. AK-47 rounds whistled by, and he wondered if he should have chosen heavier armor. Five feet from the ground, he jumped, landing lightly despite his gear.
The sun was gone now. But the quarter-moon and stars shined on the open plateau, making Wells’s night-vision goggles a distraction. Wells pulled up the goggles and took stock. The plateau was a half-mile long and five hundred feet wide. Boulders and stunted trees littered the ground, offering decent cover.
Around the drop zone, the Hellfire missiles had done their job. Burned men were strewn across the plateau like trees tossed by a category 5 hurricane, the stench of their barbecued flesh heavy in the air. A guerrilla in a long white robe twitched and moaned beside a rock seventy-five feet away.
As planned, the attack had caught the guerrillas building campfires for dinner. Sheep and goats were tethered near the caves, maybe the same animals that had provoked Bashir Jan, the village headman, to reveal the existence of the camp. Somehow, the animals had survived the missiles. Their desperate bleats cut through the night over the crackle of the automatic rifles and the roar of the Black Hawks. The goats, the fires, the dead men: the scene was a waking dream, a twenty-first-century Goya painting, Wells thought.
The satellite photos had shown three encampments across the plateau. The Apaches had targeted most of their Hellfires at the northern and center camps, trying to drive the guerrillas south, toward the 10th Mountain. But either the southern camp had been the biggest, or the plateau as a whole had held more men than they’d been told. Thirty or more men were scattered behind rocks and trees to the south. A smaller group was half-hidden behind boulders that obstructed the entrance to a cave west of the loading point.
Wells unstrapped his carbine and dropped to the ground. The plateau was cold, more stone than dirt; a rock poked at his groin. The men by the cave were the immediate threat, he thought. They had already almost taken out a Black Hawk with their RPGs. He opened up at them with three-shot bursts, hoping to distract them from the helicopter.
Thump! Thump! Hughley landed beside him, followed by the rest of B Company, as A Company hit the plateau two hundred feet to the southeast. When the last soldier touched the ground, the Black Hawks pulled away.
“We’re in it now,” Wells yelled to Hughley.
“Yeah, and we ain’t getting out till the sun comes up.”
THE MEN OF B COMPANY fanned out in a two-hundred-foot arc. Wells and Hughley lay nearest the caves. A Company had set itself similarly. The position looked more solid than it was, Wells thought. Already the Talibs to the south were spreading out, enlarging the battlefield, giving themselves new angles to fire on the SF soldiers. Guerrillas — like civilians — usually clustered when they came under fire, hoping for safety in numbers. The fact that these men had done the opposite offered more evidence that they were getting professional help.
“Shit!”
Even without looking, Wells recognized Hackett’s voice. The stocky sergeant hopped on his right leg toward Hughley and Wells. Ten yards away, he fell. Wells ran for him, picked him up, and threw his shoulder under Hackett’s arm. Together they struggled toward Hughley like kids in a three-legged race.
“Sir, I took one.” Hackett spoke evenly — he could have been talking about someone else — but the pain in his voice was unmistakable. “Left leg. Bad, I think.”
Wells put Hackett down and shined a penlight on his leg. The bullet had hit low on the thigh, just above the knee. Blood pumped steadily out from the wound, shining under the light. The popliteal artery. Hackett grunted as Wells palpated the area around the wound. Hughley put a flashlight to the sergeant’s face. He was pale, his massive jaw gritted against the pain.
Get a tourniquet on him,Wells thought. Cutting off the artery might cost Hackett his leg, but the alternative was worse. A trauma surgeon could sew up the wound, but the nearest surgeon was in Bagram, so the tourniquet would have to do.
“Take off your pack, Sergeant. I’m gonna wrap it tight.”
“A tourniquet?” Hackett’s voice lifted slightly.
Hackett knew what a tourniquet meant, Wells thought. He wanted to give Hackett a hit of Demerol, but the sergeant had already lost too much blood. An opiate would put him in shock. “It’s gonna sting a little. Bite on this.” Wells found a mouthguard in his pack and pressed it into Hackett’s hand. Beside them Hughley fired short bursts at the cave.
“How we doing?” Wells said to Hughley.
“Worry about my soldier.”
Wells grabbed a combat tourniquet — a black plastic band big enough to fit over a man’s leg, with a sturdy plastic handle attached. He pulled on latex gloves and tugged the band above the spurting wound. The sergeant groaned and bit hard on the mouthguard. Wells pulled the loop of plastic tight around Hackett’s thigh.
“Just a few seconds more.”
“Down!” Hughley yelled as a guerrilla popped up from behind a boulder beside the cave to fire an RPG. It exploded behind them, lighting the night.
“That the best you can do?” Hughley said. He fired a burst at a guerrilla who’d foolishly stood to watch the RPG. The Talib screamed, his hands rising to his throat. He fell hard and didn’t move.
“Hold tight, Sergeant,” Wells said. He turned the handle of the tourniquet, tightening it around the meat of Hackett’s thigh. Hackett’s shoulders trembled. He moaned softly, a low sound hardly recognizable as human.
The blood slowed to a trickle but didn’t stop. Wells wiped down the wound and taped a thick, clean bandage around the sergeant’s leg. He pulled off his gloves, slick with blood. “Sergeant. It’s over. You’re gonna be okay. Just get comfortable. Keep your leg up.”
“Yessir. I’m cold, sir.”
Wells pulled an aluminum blanket from his pack and wrapped it over Hackett’s shoulders, then grabbed a water bottle and dumped in a pouch of Gatorade powder. “Drink this.”
“He gonna make it?” Hughley whispered.
“If I knew, I’d say.”
“All right.” Hughley nodded at the boulders where the men with the RPGs were hiding. “Gotta take them out, protect our flank. Can you handle it with Gaffan? Gonzalez can give you some support while he watches Hackett.”
Two guys against five, maybe more, Wells thought. Not great odds. But he saw Hughley’s problem. B Company was already down two men, since Gonzalez, the medic, would have to take care of Hackett. That left the squad at nine soldiers, including Wells. A Company had ten more. Facing at least thirty guerrillas to the south, Hughley couldn’t spare a third guy on the flank.
“Sure,” Wells said. Through his tactical radio, Hughley ordered Gaffan and Gonzalez to their position. As the men reached Hughley and Wells, another RPG flared out from the boulders.