Full Assault Mode (4 page)

He picked up the last 5.56 mag and inserted it firmly into the magazine well, giving it a tug to ensure it was fully seated, then pulled the charging handle to the rear one more time and let the bolt slam forward, pushing the top 5.56 Hornady TAP 75 grain bullet into the chamber. He tapped the forward assist with his right palm before moving the selector switch to the safe position and closing the ejection-port cover.

Kolt raised the rifle and powered on his EOTech optics to ensure that they worked before powering them back off. Looking around the room again, he removed the infrared cover from the tactical-weapons light secured to the right side of the upper receiver and pressed the
ACTIVATION
button to ensure the light worked before placing the cover filter back on. He did the same with the IR laser and floodlight on the top side of the upper receiver.

Bravo Team was almost ready. The men were going through their final checks, every one of them intent on his weapons and gear. Kolt nodded and tugged on the sling to ensure it fully extended, checked the setting on the collapsible stock, then slid his left arm into the sling and held the rifle just off his chest while he adjusted the sling to snug before releasing the rifle.

Kolt keyed the push-to-talk button to make a radio check with the team and confirmed all radios were working and everyone was up on net. He turned the top-sided channel selector on his higher radio one click to the right and made a check on “Helo Common” with the air-mission commander.

“Baller Two-One, this is One-One. Over”

“Go for Baller Two-One,” replied the chief warrant officer 4, Bill Smith, a longtime buddy of his.

“Smitty, how’s the snow?” Kolt asked

“Racer, if there wasn’t an active firefight with wounded, I wouldn’t be launching,” Smitty said.

Kolt knew it had to be close to blizzard to hear that from Smitty. He decided not to push it.

“Got it, partner. We roll till you pull. Your call as usual,” Kolt said.

“Roger, ropes pinned and stowed, ready for customers,” Smitty said.

Kolt pulled his quarterback armband over his left forearm and opened it to reveal the GTG, grid target graph, of the target area. Reaching the end of the ritual, he turned back to the cubicle and removed the three-by-four-inch full-color, red, white, and blue American flag velcroed to the plywood shelf and affixed it firmly on the Velcro portion on the midchest area of his vest. The large Old Glory was a throwback from the early Delta operators, and Kolt and many of his men felt obliged to follow their lead. Finally, he walked over to the fridge, grabbed a Red Bull energy drink, turned to the men who also had cans or bottles of their preferred energy drink in their hands, and toasted, “Here’s to us and those like us—damn few left!” They chugged, then tossed the cans in the corner trash bin.

Kolt looked around at the black-clad warriors and then turned for the door—then uncharacteristically hesitated, turning back to his men.

“Anyone think Shaft has a better deal tonight?”

THREE

The Black Hawk carrying Kolt and Bravo Team put them down on a rocky hill six hundred yards to the west of Thunder Turtle’s position in a swirl of snow. Kolt was already unclipped and out the door before the helo’s balloon tires gently touched the ground. Nine times out of ten, helos got you where you wanted to go, but they were just big fat targets when they landed. Every second on an unmoving helo in a combat zone was ass puckering.

Ricocheting tracers bounced into view over the low ridgeline that blocked Kolt’s position from the Taliban ambush site. An eerie orange glow marked the location of the destroyed Buffalo. Kolt had had the pilot put them down in a downwind position from the Taliban ambush point behind the cover of a small ridge. He kept his eyes on the ridge, searching for the telltale spark of enemy fire, but the Taliban had focused all their energy on Thunder Turtle.

The Night Stalker’s custom MH-60M Black Hawk’s twin General Electric T700 engines whined as the pilot poured on the power and launched the helo skyward while the last assaulter exited the bird. Kolt buried his head and closed his mouth as stones and sand pelted him. It was never a good feeling for those few seconds when tons of whirling death hovered over your head.

“I’m betting they didn’t see us come in,” Slapshot said, coming up beside Kolt and tapping him on the shoulder as the windstorm created by the departing Black Hawk dissipated into the cold mountain wind.

Kolt looked up at the ridge, flipping down his night vision goggles. The Taliban must have figured the snow would keep any kind of immediate rescue from reaching Thunder Turtle. Or they simply planned to make a mess and melt back into the village before American air power could get on station. Either way was good.

“The helo just radioed Thunder Turtle our position. They know we’re here,” Slapshot said.

“Rog,” Kolt said. “Now, let’s let the Taliban know we’re here.”

Kolt, Digger, and the team’s sole sniper, Stitch, took off, moving down the hill into the small gully before the ridgeline. It would have been a suicidal move in daylight, but in the dark and with the enemy blind and focused elsewhere, it was a calculated risk. Actually, it sucked, but it beat the hell out of trying to put the helo down on the X. That had been tried before, and a lot of good men paid the ultimate price. Still, if the Taliban had even a single spotter on the ridge watching their rear, Bravo would catch hell. Kolt, impetuous and even reckless at times, wasn’t stupid. Half of Bravo remained on the hill covering the other half as they made their way down the hill and then up the ridge.

Slapshot whispered over Kolt’s earbud. “Racer, movement on the ridge, your eleven o’clock.”

Kolt froze. AK fire mixed with the heavy pounding of a 40mm grenade launcher on one of the armored vehicles while a gunner blazed away on a loud-ass .50. The rest was lost in a wind that was picking up speed and, with it, more snow.

“Shit, lost it.”

Kolt eased his head back and looked up and to the left. Blowing snow and wavy shadows from the flames of the burning Buffalo on the other side were all he could see.

“Well?” Kolt asked, easing his HK416 into a more comfortable position against his shoulder. He looked out of the corner of his eye and saw the two other Bravo Team members with him had frozen in place as well. Stitch’s nearly six-foot frame with superwide shoulders cast a long moon shadow several feet in front of the larger Digger, who was humping a twenty-two-pound M249 light machine gun with a MultiCam soft bag loaded with two hundred rounds of linked 5.56mm and his twenty-six-pound black medical-aid bag.

“I was sure I had a head and upper body, but I can’t see shit now,” Slapshot said.

“Can you rifle lase the spot for us?” Kolt asked from under his nods, wanting Slapshot to activate the IR laser on his rifle and put the narrow unseen beam on the enemy position.

“Marked. You got it?” Slapshot asked.

“Got it.”

Kolt kept scanning the ridge, but if the Taliban spotter was there, he’d gone to ground.

“Fuck it. Let’s move,” Kolt said, pumping his legs to climb the last sixty yards to the top of the ridge where Slapshot had focused his IR laser. If there had been a spotter there and he’d seen them, then there was no time to lose.

The snap of rifle fire echoed over his head, and he knew it wasn’t a stray round from the firefight on the other side of the ridge.

“Three Turbans on the ridge—your ten o’clock!” Slapshot shouted as Digger opened up with the M249 LMG. Expended links and brass from the rapidly fired 5.56mm rounds zipped through the air above Kolt’s head, the copper bullets stitching the ridgeline, which was now just eight yards above him.

Kolt dropped to his knees and grabbed a frag grenade. He yanked off the tape tab, pulled the circular pin, counted to two, and airmailed it up and over the ridgeline to where the Taliban should be.

There was a sharp bang and the whir of stone and dirt flying through the air. “We’re moving up the ridge,” Kolt said into his mike, standing up into a crouch and running the last eight yards. He didn’t go directly at the Taliban position but angled to the right, hoping to flank them, reaching the ridgeline fifteen yards to the right. He flopped down onto his stomach and stuck his HK416 over the edge and looked over.

The bodies of two Taliban fighters lay sprawled on the rocks. Brain matter hung out of the back of the head of one of the fighters while the other was faceup, his sightless eyes staring into space. Kolt thought about eye-thumping the other one but opted instead to hold what he had and put two suppressed rounds into him for insurance before turning to scan for the third Taliban. He spotted him thirty yards away, scrambling down the ridge like a scalded ape, his left hand clutching his right shoulder. Out of the corner of his NVGs, Kolt saw Digger fire a short burst, all three shots hitting the fighter between the shoulder blades. The fighter went facedown and didn’t move, impressing Kolt given Digger’s main job in the troop was medic.

“Slapshot, three crows down. We’re good,” Kolt reported as he studied the two lightly clad dead fighters nearby. It always amazed Kolt how the Taliban were acclimated to the freezing temperatures—how they lived and fought in the same thin layers of clothing, seemingly oblivious to the seasons.

“Rog,” Slapshot whispered back.

“Push up a hundred yards to the north on the ridge. That’ll give you cover and a good view of the road and the gully behind us.”

“Got it, Racer, moving!” Slapshot said.

“It’s like a fucking circus!” Stitch said, cutting in over the net as he deployed the bipod legs underneath his custom semiauto sniper rifle and settled in behind it.

Kolt saw what he meant. The road below was awash in light from flaming wreckage. The Buffalo that took the mortar round had ripped in half, strewing its contents over forty feet in every direction. There was no way the crew survived that, and Kolt knew it must have been something a lot nastier than a single mortar round. The Buffalo that tripped the IED tilted nose down in the crater caused by the explosion, but a gunner was manning the weapon in the turret, so that crew looked as if they’d be OK. The rest of the vehicles appeared intact and were pouring out a heavy stream of fire as tracers zipped over their heads.

“Those guys obviously brought a shitload of ammo with them,” Kolt said, surprised that the troops in Thunder Turtle were still firing a cyclic rate well into the ambush.

“Sounds like they brought their balls, too,” Stitch said, obviously impressed with the combat tenacity and guts of the American troops below them.

Two mortar rounds landed on the road between a Buffalo and a wrecker but did no damage beyond scratching the paint. That was the horror of mortar rounds. With a little cover and distance they were harmless, but if they impacted on you, it was lights-out.

Kolt knew immediately this wasn’t going to be the typical drop-in visit. If the three Taliban they smoked and left to freeze in the snow didn’t convince him, what he saw now certainly did.

“Slapshot, this is One-One. Push up and tie in to our north. Over.”

“Rog. Moving,” Slapshot sarcastically replied, as if to say,
It’s about time.
Kolt didn’t take it personally, and he knew he would laugh about it later at the hot wash. Besides, operators like Slapshot, or any Delta operator for that matter, didn’t strap it on and hang it out just to sit in overwatch on a distant ridgeline.

“Boss, I’ve got an RPG team moving toward the convoy,” Stitch said.

“Be sure, Stitch,” Kolt said, subtly reminding his sniper to positively identify friend from foe before he squeezed. Master Sergeant Clay “Stitch” Vickery was one of the top snipers in the unit for sure, but Kolt didn’t need a blue-on-blue out here.

“PIDed, boss. I’m taking the shot.”

Kolt didn’t see them, but he didn’t have Stitch’s 20/15 vision. He did wonder why he hadn’t heard from the Joint Operations Center. The ISR feed into the JOC back at J-bad from the circling Predator B drone at ten thousand feet above the ridgeline should have picked up the fighters before Stitch.

“It’s all yours,” Kolt said, focusing his attention on an AK flash some two hundred yards away and getting radio comms established with the Thunder Turtle commander.

A solid thwack marked Stitch’s first shot exiting the suppressed end of his Heckler & Koch PSG1 7.62 mm sniper rifle. Two more shots followed in rapid succession.

“Three done. Confirmed,” Stitch calmly said over the radio.

Kolt cycled through several frequencies, counting the clicks to the correct channel, looking to reach Thunder Turtle.

“Any station, any station, radio check. Over,” Kolt said into his mouthpiece.

“This is Thunder Turtle. Who is this?” a very obviously scared and lower-ranking voice said.

“Thunder Turtle Actual, this is friendly American unit, call sign Mike One-One, on the ridgeline to your immediate east. We’ve got IR strobes on. Can you identify?”

“This is Private Ahrens. Our commander is dead. We need to get out of here.”

Kolt quickly keyed the mike, but paused and released the button. He wasn’t sure why. If for no other reason than to make the mental adjustment that the troops firing rapidly in front of him likely had less command and control than he thought. And that made things a lot less warm and fuzzy for Kolt and his mates.

Kolt keyed the mike a second time.

“OK, Private Ahrens. We’re here to help. Listen carefully. This is what I need. Break,” Kolt calmly said as he released the mike for a second, then pressed it to talk again.

“We’ve cleared the high ground on this side. Tell your squad leaders to look for our IR strobes and make sure they understand we are friendly. Over.”

“OK. Yes, sir. We’ve got serious wounded, and we’re getting low on ammo.”

“Got it, partner. Now confirm to me ASAP that you guys have eyes on our strobes. Over.”

Dirt and snow kicked up a few feet away from Kolt, and a fraction of a second later he heard the sizzle of the ricocheting bullet. The Taliban were aware they no longer held the high ground all to themselves, but Kolt was more worried that the troops from Thunder Turtle were mistaking Kolt and his men for the enemy.