The helicopter began descending. Now Parson could tell where Rashid intended to land. Not much choice under the circumstances.
Right in the middle of the firefight.
26
From her knoll above the target area, Gold watched the Mi-17 touch down. An insurgent crouched behind the remains of a rock wall, sprayed the aircraft with gunfire. The sight turned her stomach. Was Parson hit? Rashid?
“You see that shooter?” she called to the Marine sniper and spotter.
“We’re on him,” the spotter said.
The Barrett rifle barked once, a deep booming slam underneath the cackle of lighter weapons down the hill. Flame spat from the muzzle brake. The expended cartridge flipped through the air, landed with a thud as heavy as if someone had dropped a wrench.
The .50 caliber round did not so much drop the insurgent as flatten him. The bullet stomped the man into the ground. Not a classic sniper head shot, but a round through the back that took him apart. With a bullet that size, where it hit didn’t matter.
The sight revolted her. Through his own choices, the insurgent had asked for it. Gold understood the justice. But even justice looked like murder when delivered through a jacketed round a half inch across, striking with nearly ten thousand foot-pounds of energy.
Troops poured from the helicopter. Two fell as they emerged, did not get up. Through her NVGs, Gold could not tell if Parson was one of them.
The sweating returned, that unfocused anxiety.
She drew in a deep breath, forced herself to think rationally. Gold didn’t know a lot about small-unit tactics; that wasn’t her field. But she did know the best way for Blount’s Marines to straighten out that mess down there was to establish fire superiority.
Gold could help with that. And it was the best way to help Parson, if he remained alive. She could fall apart over this when she got home. But right now, she would tolerate no weakness in herself. She was still a New Englander. God helped those who helped themselves. Tonight on this mountain, certain things needed doing.
She listened closely to the Icom radio hissing in her right ear. Nothing on that freq at the moment. The Barrett rifle slammed again. This time she didn’t see its target, but she heard the spotter say, “Good hit.”
In the green imaging of her night vision goggles, she saw two insurgents firing toward the Afghan troops scrambling for cover. Gold flipped up her NVGs, took aim. Her rifle’s optic put her at some disadvantage; it was a standard ACOG, not a nightscope. But she could see where to aim because the bad guys kept shooting.
All right, she told herself. Mind control, breath control. She inhaled, held the air within her lungs, fired. The trigger break felt crisp, like cracking a matchstick. She fired again, twice more. Scanned through the NVGs. One terrorist down and not moving, the other crawling away.
More fire came from near the base of the knoll, immediately downhill from Gold’s position. Additional ruins there, remains of another wall. Only this wall stood higher than the stone foundations near the cave entrance. Behind such ideal cover, several Black Crescent shooters blasted at will with little exposure to themselves. From a position like that, they could do a lot of damage. Gold saw three figures fall to their bullets.
Blount must have seen the same insurgents at the same wall. In her left ear, through the connection to the MBITR radio, she heard him suggest an air strike. Behind her, the combat controller made it happen.
“Raven,” he called, “Seraphim with a fire mission.”
Gold wasn’t on that channel, so she didn’t hear the answer. But over the gunfire, she heard the controller’s next call.
“Target is riflemen at the base of a knoll to the north of the cave bunker. Target is stationary. Will mark my own position with a buzz saw. Request strafing attack, heading zero-niner-zero, pull out right. How copy?”
Another pause, then, “Friendlies to the immediate north and south, danger close. Don’t fire if you can’t identify that stone wall.”
The whine of jet engines rose almost immediately. The A-10s must have held on station close by. Gold could not see them yet.
The combat controller bent a chem light. Gold heard a pop when its inner vial broke. Blue neon filled the controller’s hands. He tied a length of parachute cord to the light stick and spun the light over his head.
Those pilots can’t miss that, Gold thought, but neither can the insurgents. A calculated risk.
With his free hand, the controller keyed his radio and said, “You’re cleared in hot. Confirmation code Hotel Alpha. Call with target in sight.”
Deepening growls of turbines filled the night. Gold scanned overhead, spotted one of the Warthogs. It rolled into a steep bank and pointed its nose at the earth. The attack jet fell from the sky in such drastic fashion that for a moment Gold feared it had been shot down.
Then it began to fire.
A ripping sound overpowered all other noise, as if the mountains themselves were rending. Flame shot from the nose cannon in an unbroken stream; the weapon appeared to spew burning oil instead of metal. The base of the knoll exploded into a churning mass of dust and smoke. The top of the knoll, where Gold lay, shook so violently that it triggered in her some dormant animal instinct. She dug her fingers into the dirt to hold on, shut her eyes.
When she opened them, dust obscured everything in front of her. She could not assess the results of the strafing, but it seemed impossible that anything under that gun could have survived. The engines screamed a shriller note as the Warthog pulled up, powered away from its target.
“Good hit, Raven,” the controller called. After a pause, he added, “Negative. Just give me a couple dry passes in a show of force.”
The chatter of automatic weapons continued down the hill. The air strike had not ended the battle, just changed its calculus. Gold knew children likely remained among the enemy, perhaps some of them firing. She wished she knew if any could be saved. And she wanted very much to know if Parson was all right.
Clicks in her earpiece, the one from the Icom. Then a voice in Pashto: “What is happening, what is happening?”
“The infidels have struck from the air.”
“Send out the young martyrs.”
“Three of them have their bomb vests on now.”
“Tell them to walk to the infidels with their arms raised as if to be rescued.”
Suicide bombers, Gold thought. Warn the Marines.
She reached for the MBITR’s talk switch. Turned to her left, raised up to better find it.
A hammer blow struck her shoulder. Spun her, hurled her to the ground. Heat scalded her chest as if she’d inhaled boiling water.
Gold wanted to get up, make the radio call. Tried to push herself up with her arms. Her body would not respond. She lay on her back, tried to cry out.
Not even her voice worked. Her throat, her trachea, would not propel her words. She remained fully conscious, but could not make sense of things.
I’ve been shot, she told herself. But why can’t I talk?
She put her lips together to form the word medic, but she still could not get enough air to speak.
Why can’t I breathe?
Gold could not understand. She knew she’d been hit in the shoulder by a bullet. But she felt she was drowning. What was happening to her? Interpreting this strange set of agonies was like reading a text poorly translated.
She coughed, felt blood spray into her throat and nostrils.
The A-10s roared over her. Tracers followed them, perhaps from the same rifle that had shot her.
Her chest tightened, wrenched. She opened her mouth, tried to gulp air. Breath would not enter her lungs.