This time, instead of carrying the smaller sound-suppressed MP7 9mm submachine guns, Chris and his mates carried the more powerful HK416 5.56 assault rifles, wore bullet-resistant vests, and carried a deadly assortment of grenades. Every available pocket bulged with extra ammo. This was not a stealth mission.
The helos slowly lifted off the tarmac. Clouds blanketed the sky and the world shone green and 2-D from underneath his night vision goggles. One of the snipers flipped his middle finger at Chris’s helo. Chris grinned and returned the greeting.
Soon they picked up speed, and the blades’ thwop, thwop, thwop was drowned out by the roaring wind. The three helos hugged the earth so close and traveled so fast that it looked like the ground would tear off the Black Hawks’ skids. The choppers raced northwest along a dry river bed before speeding north through a valley. They dodged and hurdled sand dunes, houses, power lines, and palm trees before crossing the Syrian border.
Mordet’s men were keeping Young in a dried-up well. Chris knew the tactic all too well. While his parents worked at the US embassy in Syria, he had been kidnapped and held for four days in a dried-up well outside of town, eventually rescued by SEALs. A shiver ran through him, and he tried to push the memory away.
The helos continued forward then flew up at a steep angle, clearing a cluster of two-story buildings. Then the birds dived at the earth like kamikaze planes. At the last moment, their beaks flared up, halting the birds before leveling above an empty field near Mordet’s plantation. Chris and his teammates quickly stepped onto the skids, then hopped down into a field surrounded by a cloud of dust kicked up by the helos.
The two squads moved at double time. The fourteen SEALs swiftly reached their objective, the well. Two armed Syrians emerged from a lopsided farmhouse — only to be picked off by the snipers hovering in the Little Bird above.
Chris looked down into the well with an overwhelming sense of dèjá vu. Suddenly he was a thirteen-year-old boy trapped in that well, again. He struggled to breathe. His chest tightened.
Breathe, Chris. Breathe.
But he still wasn’t getting enough oxygen. He had to pull himself together. He was going down there.
“Young Park,” he forced out. “United States Navy SEALs. We’re here to rescue you!”
Young looked up from the bottom of the pit. “Help me,” he said weakly.
Beanpole and Psycho attached two rappelling ropes to the well, and Chris checked Beanpole’s before hooking in. Meanwhile, the other SEALs lay in a perimeter around them, taking cover in a ditch, behind a tractor and whatever else was available. They created the blocking force for anyone who might disturb the rescue.
“Stand against the wall, Young,” Chris said. “I’m coming down.” The SEALs’ powerful HK416 5.56 caliber rounds cracked the night. Enemy AK-47s staccatoed the air, but the noise became muffled as Chris rappelled into the well — his teammates would take care of the insurgents.
Before Chris reached the bottom, the stench hit him with the force of a cargo ship at full speed. His feet touched the ground, and he immediately put a rappelling harness on Young. Part of the offensive odor came from Young: a mixture of urine, feces, and something else Chris couldn’t discern. He gagged. Young was missing both ears and most of an arm. In that moment, the wounds were Chris’s, and he wanted to kill Mordet.
He attached Young’s harness to the free rope and gave it a tug. Chris’s teammates pulled Young up. Fortunately, the harness didn’t require two hands for balance. Then Chris tugged on his own rope, but there was no response. “Hey, pull me up!”
Chris tugged again, harder. Nothing. “Get me the hell out of here!” Not waiting for an answer, he pulled himself up the rope. He climbed higher and higher — faster and faster. Soon he cleared the top, freed himself from the rope, and took cover behind the well. Oxygen rushed into his lungs like a roaring river.
Psycho grinned with bloodlust with each insurgent he dropped — he enjoyed the killing too much. Beside Chris lay Beanpole, his neck and face covered in liquid goo — he’d been shot. Chris neither liked nor respected Beanpole, but he was still a teammate, and it sucked some of the life out of Chris to see him injured like that. While Little Doc tried to help Beanpole, Young crouched next to them shaking.
Chris dropped the rappelling gear, stood between Young and the enemy, aimed at the nearest attacker, and squeezed the trigger — two to the chest. The attacker landed on his back with his leg folded underneath him. Chris patted Young on the shoulder. “You’re going home tonight. You’re going to be okay.” It’s what Chris would want to hear, and it’s what Chris intended to deliver.
“Thank you, thank you. I’m going home, I’m going home.” He kept repeating his thanks and that he was going home.
Now the whole inland area seemed to move toward them — there must’ve been nearly a hundred tangos out there, outnumbering the SEALs seven-to-one — despite his team’s talent, the odds favored a SEAL slaughter. If they tried to break contact now, the enemy would overrun them. The SEALs would have to put up a ferocious fight in order to give the enemy enough pause to allow the frogmen to flee.
The enemy raised the volume of their fire to forte fortissimo and advanced on the SEALs. Chris shot a barrel-chested tango, busting his barrel. Another tango stepped in front of Barrel Chest to take his place. There seemed to be no end to them. The air around Chris cracked off like firecrackers, and a round hit him in the gut, punching the air from his lungs. He gasped for air and said a silent prayer of thanks that the bullet-resistant vest had stopped the projectile before it cut into his flesh.
The enemy advanced. Despite the SEALs’ best efforts, they couldn’t slow the assault.
So this is how it ends.
His promise to get Young home had become a lie.
“Mary Poppins, Sierra One.” LT’s radioman spoke their call sign anxiously over the communications net, trying to get in touch with a plane above for backup. “Identify our position, over.”
“Sierra One, Mary Poppins, I identify fifteen friendlies, over,” a crew member onboard replied. Flying at an altitude of nearly a mile in the sky, out of enemy small arms and RPG range but within the plane’s own artillery and cannons’ range, Mary Poppins flew in a wide circle around the battlefield.
“That is correct,” LT’s radioman confirmed. “Kill everything west of us outside danger close!”
“Roger, Sierra One. Kill everything west of you outside danger close.”
Over the noise of the ground fighting, a small clap of thunder came from the sky. The first 105 mm, thirty-three-pound projectile popped the sound barrier as it shot to earth. In the middle of the enemies’ position, the earth exploded, flinging body parts and dirt. The closest survivors lay stunned in a column of rising smoke.
Six seconds later, the smoke cleared, and another 105mm bomb struck the earth, this time on the enemies’ left flank. Most of the insurgents on the right flank figured out it was time to haul booty. Six seconds later, the right flank detonated, obliterating the slow learners.
Meanwhile, the plane’s cannon opened up. Each second, two explosive pom-poms blasted clusters of bad guys.
Enemy bullets stopped popping the air around Chris’s head.
“Pop smoke,” LT commanded over the radio.