Bones crunched as the arm bent the wrong way. The jagged point of a fracture tore through Chaaku’s sleeve. The terrorist made a series of high-pitched yelps. The dagger fell from his hand.
Parson had heard cries of pain in many forms, but not like this. The yelps expressed not just pain but panic, and Parson saw why. Blount could have killed Chaaku by now. He was toying with him, taking his time. The gunnery sergeant was not just large and powerful, but apparently skilled in a martial art. A big cat with a mouse, and the mouse knew what was happening.
Not many things scared Parson anymore. But he had never witnessed vengeance in quite this form. And it actually frightened him.
With his boot, Blount hooked Chaaku’s knees from behind. The terrorist fell flat. Blount stomped Chaaku’s fingers. More snaps of bones.
Parson considered whether to try to stop this. It had crossed the line from combat into something else. He knew what Gold would want him to do now: Follow the rules to the letter. But Gold had broken the rules herself when she’d seen the need. And their orders were to take Chaaku dead or alive. One or the other.
Blount lifted the insurgent up over his head and threw the man’s body against the cave wall. Chaaku’s back slammed into the stone.
Parson heard another crack. This time, the spine.
“You like edged weapons?” Blount shouted. “Lemme show you mine.”
Blount reached to his side, unsnapped his KA-BAR. Crouched beside Chaaku. When Chaaku saw the fighting knife, he began to mumble, “Ash-hadu anla ilaha…”
“You praying to God?” Blount asked. Feebly, Chaaku raised his hand. Blount slapped it down. “Maybe you’re asking for mercy? You put suicide vests on children.”
Chaaku looked at Parson. Not exactly a look of hate, but something worse than that. Madness. Serial killer eyes. Take him dead or alive? Parson made his choice, held his silence.
“Maybe you’re saying you like my knife,” Blount said. “My grandpa carried it on Okinawa. Since you like knives so good, I’m gon’ let you look at it close.”
Blount raised the KA-BAR over Chaaku’s face, the leather-bound handle in a bleeding fist. The Marine’s blood trickled over the hilt and down the matte black finish of the blade, dripped off the tip.
The gunnery sergeant swept downward with his fist, plunged the point between Chaaku’s eyes. Drove in seven inches of carbon steel.
Chaaku’s limbs trembled, then stilled. His eyes remained open and fixed on the last thing he saw—Blount’s knife.
Blount stood, placed his boot on the Black Crescent leader’s face. Leaned over and pulled out his KA-BAR. Wiped one side of the blade on his trousers, then wiped the other side. Blood and brain matter left stains on his uniform.
He looked at Parson with eyes cold as flint. Eyes that reflected rage like Chaaku’s, but from a different place. Not from love of killing. From fury at being forced to kill.
“He made me shoot kids, man,” Blount said. The Marine bled from his hands, his right arm, his cheek.
Parson did not know how to respond. Blount looked around for his rifle, found it in the dirt. He took the weapon by the barrel. Swung it like a maul, smashed the buttstock into Chaaku’s head. The skull split open with a spatter of pink.
“It’s over, Gunny,” Parson said. “He’s dead.”
“I won’t ever get over what he made me do.”
Tendons and veins stood out on Blount’s neck, visible even in the poor light. Muscles in his face twitched as if he struggled to contain his wrath or hold on to his sanity.
Parson tried to think of something to say to bring him back, to pull him out of whatever dark night his mind had entered. Before any words came to Parson, four Marines came into the cave.
“Gunny,” one of them called, “are you all right?”
“Yeah,” Blount said. “Clear the rest of this hellhole.”
“Aye, Gunny.”
The Marines disappeared into the darkness farther down in the cave bunker. Parson heard no shots, nothing to suggest any insurgents remained alive inside. He saw his Beretta in the dust, and he holstered the weapon. Left bloody smears on the pistol’s grip.
“Let’s get out of here, Gunny,” Parson said.
The two men stumbled to the cave mouth, their wounds dripping. Just outside the cave, Blount stopped. He looked down at the remains of the boys he’d shot. Two of them lay where they’d fallen, blood congealing around them. Something had blown most of the face from one of them, either Blount’s bullets or shrapnel from the suicide bomb.
Of the child who had detonated himself, Parson saw only a torn leg. EOD will probably come in and blow up the other two, Parson thought. Simpler than defusing two suicide vests. Blount swayed on his feet, went down on one knee.
Voices in Pashto came from farther outside. The boys rescued from the cave babbled among themselves.
“Gunny,” Parson said, “listen to me. You’re going to see this the rest of your life. I get that. But when you see the kids you killed”—Parson pointed to the dead children—“I want you to see the kids you saved.” He pointed to the six boys. “They’re here because you did what needed doing. I’m giving you a direct order to remember that.”
Blount looked over at the children, now starting to gather around Rashid. The gunnery sergeant’s lips moved, and Parson understood Blount was counting the children.
“That’s right, Gunny,” Parson said. “There’s six of them. Six boys who’ll get a chance at becoming good men. My order to remember that stays in force even when you retire to a bass lake down South.”
“Aye, aye, sir,” Blount said. He stood up, made his way over to the kids.
Parson found a corpsman, pulled up his bloody sleeve to expose the slash wound on his forearm. The corpsman placed a clean dressing over the cut, and he wrapped an Israeli bandage over the dressing.
“That’ll need a lot of stitches once we get you back to Mazar, sir,” the corpsman said.
“I know it,” Parson said.
The radio in the corpsman’s tactical vest must have been tuned to some common frequency the medics used. Parson recognized Reyes’s voice.
“I have a critical patient with a gunshot wound,” Reyes said. “Tension pneumothorax. I put a ten-gauge catheter in her thoracic cavity, and she’s breathing all right.”
She? Gunshot wound? Critical?
That could mean only Sophia, Parson knew. He had brought her here. What had he done to her?
28
The air entered Gold’s lungs heavily, as if it had an altered density. But at least the drowning sensation had gone. She lay on her back, and she guessed she was passing in and out of consciousness. Reyes had put dressings on the entrance wound where her arm met her shoulder, and on the exit wound in her back. But she didn’t remember him doing any of that.
Nearby, the combat controller and the Marine sniper and spotter still watched the target area through scope and NVGs. However, the gunfire downhill had stopped. A welcome stillness settled on the mountains. Reyes kneeled beside Gold.
“What happened?” she asked him.
“They just called clear,” Reyes said. “They got Chaaku.”
Gold inhaled slowly, sought the strength to speak again. “What about…” Paused for more air.
“Blount heard your warning, and he stopped the suicide bombers. You’re one tough blonde, I’ll give you that.”
The news eased her pain like morphine. She silently thanked a higher command. Forgot to ask after her own health, but there’d be time for that.
Reyes answered a call on his radio, spoke words Gold couldn’t quite make out. Then he said, “Pave Hawk is inbound, guys.”
The night grew fuzzy around her. Gold sensed she was about to lose consciousness again. But she had to know. She forced her awareness to hold on another moment, took in enough air for one word: “Parson?”