Afghan Storm (Nick Woods Book 3) (16 page)

Chapter 46

“We’ve got
to move,” Nick screamed, his head down again.

His Afghan
clothing was turning red from the wound, which he was afraid to investigate.
His arm and shoulder still moved, but that could just be the adrenaline. And
seeing the wound would only accelerate the shock and panic.

Nick fought
every fear that overwhelmed him by telling himself that they were dead if they
stayed. They were pouring through their ammo and quite outnumbered, facing
assaults from two directions. Probably still ten or fourteen men to their front
from the stalled trucks, and six or eight villagers behind them. Assuming he
assigned someone to shift fire to the villagers, they were most likely looking
at a stalemate, absolute best case.

A stalemate
would favor the enemy. They could be reinforced and re-supplied. Nick’s team
was as good as dead.

Nick forced
himself to his feet, firing off his sniper weapon by just pointing toward the
enemy. The point was suppression, not accuracy at this point.

“Let’s go!”

No one
needed any encouragement. Truck dropped his reloaded RPK in the bed and hurdled
over the truck bed to get in the driver’s seat. Red and Marcus leaped into the
bed, firing liking mad men and clambering aboard.

Truck
slammed the
clutch to the floor and yanked the Toyota into first gear. Bullets pinged
through the tailgate and zinged by their heads. Nick’s rifle clicked dry, and
he hopped in the bed, the last man to load up. He saw the RPK among the gear
but had no idea if it was reloaded or not. Worth a try, he figured, hefting it
and loosing a long burst. The gun roared, dominating the sound of the
battlefield. It joined Red and Marcus’s fire.

Their rate
of fire was more like that of scared recruits than calm professionals. It was
inaccurate but heavy. And volume trumped accuracy in this case. If only one or
two Taliban fighters took their time and truly aimed, they wouldn’t be making
it to the border.

The Toyota
slung gravel and nearly dumped the three men in the back. They careened and
collided into each other and the gear stowed inside the bed. The only person in
the truck not completely scared out of their mind was Ahmud al-Habshi. He was
coming to and beginning to regain his senses. But fortunately for him, he was
still a little too high to not be enjoying life.

The Toyota
picked up speed and roared as Truck pushed the engine to the brink in each
gear. The villagers to their front saw what was happening and concentrated
their fire.

“Bring it, boys!” Truck
yelled as he headed right toward them. He’d had it with being cautious and was
most definitely done playing nice. And if he hadn’t accepted the possibility of
his death a long time ago, then he would never have signed on for another
mission a la Nick Woods.

Rounds cut
through the windshield, but Truck never flinched. Behind him, Nick, Marcus, and
Red climbed across gear and assumed firing positions over the cab, engaging the
villagers. But Truck didn’t notice. He was in his own world now.
It was just him at the
reigns of a hundred and fifty horses charging full speed ahead.

What was
death? Death was definitely staying where they were. Death was definitely
fighting all the men behind them.
Besides, what was death anyway? Death was staying
put and letting your ass get surrounded. So while Truck accepted death, that
sure as hell didn’t mean he’d go easy.

Consequently,
death brought no fear to Truck or any of the other men. They’d faced it too
many times to sweat it. As the saying went, “He who cares the least, wins.”

All four men
had accepted that death was a likelihood on this mission, for sure, so they’d
said their prayers long ago.

The battered
Toyota cleared forty miles per hour and seemed to glide on the loose sand and
gravel as it lost traction and skimmed over the ground. Truck realized he’d
momentarily lost control of the two-ton vehicle.

The seven
men facing the truck could have stopped it statistically speaking, but they
lacked the training and mindset of professional soldiers. Between seeing their
buddies gunned down from impossible distances earlier to seeing the
determination of the driver headed fearlessly toward them, they decided they’d
had enough.

They broke,
turning and running to dodge the path of the oncoming vehicle.

Truck
considered aiming toward a couple of them and running them down. But the 4x4
felt too loose and unresponsive in the shale and gravel. He figured there was a
decent chance he’d turn, and the truck would fishtail sideways then flip once
the wheels caught on something.

No. A couple
squashed villagers were not worth killing themselves over. Especially this
close to the border.

He stuck to
the prudent course of action and kept the steering wheel straight for the
village and what passed as a road in this wild and forbidden land. They
screamed by the fighters and zoomed through the village. A few stray rounds
spit by from behind them, but the bullets were high and the real danger had
passed.

Chapter 47

Three miles
down the road, the ramshackle village of mud huts barely visible behind them,
Truck stopped the Toyota so the team could regroup. The fighters climbed out of
the truck bed and checked weapons and magazines. They sipped water, crammed
down chocolate energy bars, and wiped off sweaty brows.

A euphoria
gripped the team for having survived the ordeal, but there were no laughs or
jokes as was so common following most firefights. The team was still in enemy
territory, and they hadn’t made it across the border to safety yet.

Marcus
noticed Nick’s blood-soaked Taliban jacket and checked the wound. He helped
Nick remove his gear and pulled the Afghan khet, or traditional tunic, off the
injured shoulder. The round had clipped his left shoulder -- a bad graze wound.
It had cut into the skin perhaps a millimeter or two, doing no real damage.
Just creating a real bleeder.

Truck joked,
“We wouldn’t even report that in Special Forces.”

Marcus
grabbed some blood clotter and a bandage and patched up Nick’s shoulder. Red
stepped away to relieve himself, and Truck popped the vehicle’s hood to inspect
the engine.

“Looks
good,” Truck said, slamming the hood down minutes later. “It’s got a few small
leaks, but it’ll get us where we’re needing to go.”

Red lit a
cigarette, catching a much-needed hit.

Nick kept an
eye on their rear while Marcus doctored the wound. Nick grimaced, as Marcus
finished the job, then said, “Let’s redistribute ammo while we have a moment.
Dig in the truck bed and make sure everyone has as much as possible. And Red,
help Truck load some of the empty drums for the RPK.”

Nick pulled
his top back on and dug a map out. He oriented the map and studied their
upcoming checkpoints before they crossed the border.
Up ahead was the side road
they’d use to bypass the closest checkpoint. Even if the checkpoint was almost
always vacant, Nick was done taking chances for the day.

Their bypass
road proved more difficult to navigate than expected, but
it wasn’t anything worse
than what they’d already seen. After a few more self-built rock ramps, like
before, the Toyota
made it up over the high ground
and into the sanctuary of Afghanistan.

“It’s nice
to be back home,” Red said, as they headed down the high ground.

“Speak for
yourself,” Marcus answered. “This isn’t my damn home.”

They drove
on ten miles to put plenty of distance between them and any Taliban pursuit
force that might be after them. They also avoided all forms of civilization,
attempting to stay as covert as possible.

Nick
directed them to an empty spot that had great visibility around them and would
be easily defendable. With that, the team started laying rocks into straight
lines spelling out “HELP” in big, capital letters. Ahmud al-Habshi was
completely alert by this point, and he seemed fully aware that he’d been
abducted and transported to a country he probably didn’t want to be in.

“Shit’s not
so fun when you’re not sitting at your keyboard in a safe house, is it?” Red
said, taunting the man.

The man
looked at him stupidly, clearly not comprehending English, and too frightened
to stare back with anger.

Red pointed
at him. “This man’s a damn coward. A complete damn coward.”

“We’ve got
them in every army,” Nick said. “He’s just a fucking pogue who thought this was
a game. Turns out, it’s not. Now leave him alone and get back to work.”

The team
worked for a couple of hours, building up the letters until they were each
eight feet long.

“They look
good,” Truck said, once they were finished. “But how long before anyone is
brave enough to check on the signal?”

“Probably a
long damn time,” Red said, laying down against his pack to rest. “There aren’t
many Americans left in the country, and we’re practically in no man’s land.
There probably hasn’t been a patrol or flyover of this area in months or maybe
even a year.”

“No doubt,”
Nick said, “that they’ve given up on this district. But they’ll come
eventually.”

He dug in
his pack and pulled out an emergency beacon used by pilots in the Air Force. It
was designed to automatically transmit a distress signal, and would get someone
investigating in a hurry since almost nothing caused more alarm than a stranded
pilot.

Nick spent a
few minutes putting the device together with its battery in place. He had been
given it in a completely deactivated state since on real planes they activate
on their own once the ejection seat leaves the plane.

The team had
opted for using the beacon as their rescue plan because they did not want to
deal with Afghan checkpoints and disloyal villagers, who might see four men as
an easy target. The thought process was that since there had been no American
patrols in months, none of the local villagers would be keen on helping four
exhausted Americans looking for help.

Worse, word
was probably spreading wider-and-wider by shortwave radio that the Taliban was
looking for one of its men who had been abducted. Villagers would be heavily
rewarded if they aided in his return.

Chapter 48

Nick looked
down at the beacon and hoped it was working, then stowed it away in his gear.

“Everyone
grab some shut-eye,” he said. “I’ll take first watch.”

Nick had his
Dragunov sniper rifle slung across his back. It wasn’t the most tactical of
ways to hold a weapon, but his right shoulder ached and didn’t need a rifle
stock digging into it. Plus, the ground was flat, and they could see for miles.

He scanned a
360, and content they remained safe for the moment, he walked up to al-Habshi
and offered him a canteen. The man nodded, and Nick gently poured some water
down his mouth. Some of it spilled down his face and chest, but there was no
way Nick was going to unbind his arms or legs.

Nick really
wished they had a large American flag they could hoist or spread out and tack
down, which would be easily visible from the air. Or, having a radio would have
been even better. That’s how you’d do it in the movies, but this wasn’t the
movies and you didn’t carry American flags or encrypted radios on deep strikes
into foreign countries where you were quite likely to be killed or captured.

He shuddered
at the thought that the Taliban might have gotten their hands on an encrypted
radio with which they could have used to spy on America or Afghanistan. It
frightened him more to consider them nabbing an American-issued satellite
radio, which had been another item that would have been nice to have had.

Nick
listened for a drone and hoped someone had taken note of the emergency beacon.
Five minutes later, he arched his back and grunted from the soreness that
screamed from too much abuse the past eleven days. He straightened and twisted
his upper body, working out some stiffness.

Damn, he
hurt all over. He resumed watching the direction he expected the drone to
arrive from. And after what felt like two hours of boredom -- but was actually
fifty minutes -- a drone investigated in the distance. No doubt the drone’s
operator quickly recognized the large word “HELP” written in English and
alerted his superior to the strange sight.

Nick knew
that would lead to more calls even higher up the chain of command, with lots of
questions about exactly what unit might be operating in that district. And all
would soon discover that no unit was actually operating in the area, which
would lead to even more questions.

Eventually,
it would be decided that it was a trap, but no officer would rest easy without
finding out why an emergency beacon went off.

Nick wasn’t
sure of what was being said, but the drone was eventually followed by the
arrival of two Apache helicopters. Nick woke everyone up, and they stowed their
weapons and walked away from their gear.

You really
didn’t want to anger a couple of Apaches.

The Apaches
circled in warily, beginning at more than a mile away. They searched for traps
and ambushes with their sensors and infrared. They then slowly, carefully
closer.

Two fighter
jets had been armed and sat waiting on a runway to respond should it prove a
trap. The Apaches circled four different times, sliding in closer and closer.

The entire
time, Nick’s team stood away from their gear, their weapons stashed among their
packs. No one wanted one of the pilots getting an itchy finger with the
armament the Apaches carried. One burst from their 30 mm cannon would shred
their entire party.

Eventually,
they had closed to within a thousand yards -- still essentially out of small
arms, but easily within the range of their cannon and Hellfire missiles.
Finally, one of them backed up and raced overhead at more than a hundred miles
per hour, while his partner covered him, hoping to spring whatever trap might
be set.

When no trap
occurred, one of them sat down a hundred yards away. It remained facing them
and its sister provided in-air cover just behind them. A pilot climbed down and
approached with his pistol drawn. Nick instructed his men to put their arms up
and stay put as if they were surrendering.

Nick removed
his turban and walked toward the pilot, who wore a green flight suit. Nick
moved slow and kept his arms parallel to the ground, out in a cross-like
position. Nick remembered as he got closer that he was dressed like an Afghan,
and realized he should have removed his outfit before they arrived. But he
didn’t want to stop now and fidget with any clothing. The last thing he wanted
this pilot to think was that he was some kind of suicide bomber.

“That’s
close enough,” the pilot warned, stretching out his Beretta M9 pistol and
putting up his hand in a universal halt position. Thirty yards still separated
him.

“I speak
English,” Nick said, “and boy, are we glad to see you guys.”

The pilot,
who wore the rank of Captain, lowered the pistol just a tad.

“Who the
hell are you guys? And what the hell are you doing out here? We were told no
friendly units were operating in the area.”

“That’s
right,” Nick said. “The guys we work for don’t tell anybody where we’re working
or what we’re doing.”

Nick nodded
back to his team and the bound body of Ahmud al-Habshi. Nick smiled and said,
“Let’s just say we got a little turned around and failed to read our maps
properly. And who knows? Maybe we ended up on the wrong side of the border.”

“Roger
that,” the pilot said with a smile. “It’s becoming clearer now. But I’ll still
need to get some guys out here with some rifles to process you guys.”

“Just have
your commanding officer call our embassy and tell him there’s a Nick Woods out
here in the middle of nowhere, asking to be picked up,” Nick said. “I promise
you once you do that, we’ll be out of your hair in no time at all.”