Into Darkness (24 page)

Greely kept his rifle pointed to the ground as Ritter bent over, trying to catch his breath in his newfound sanctuary. Ritter took a swig from his Camelbak and looked around. A white sedan was in the courtyard along with a pair of rusted bicycles and a pile of shovels.

“Sir, I’m really sorry. Kilo just took out a sniper that was shooting at us, and you just appeared out of nowhere. It was pure reflex—that’s all,” Greely said, his voice on the verge of pleading.

Ritter spat out the Camelbak tube and looked at Greely. “Save it. Where’s Shelton?”

Greely pointed at the house.

Ritter found Shelton on a stretcher. His friend was unconscious; blood from his nose had stained his upper lip and chin, and an IV was in his arm. Porter sat next to his company commander, taking his pulse with his fingers pressed against his throat.

Ritter wanted to fall to his knees, shake him awake, and demand how he could have been so stupid as to get tagged out here in the ass end of nowhere, but that wasn’t an option. With Shelton out of action, Ritter was in charge.

“What happened?” Ritter asked Porter.

“I think it was a flash bang grenade. The captain’s knocked out, but his vitals are stable,” Porter said, his voice too loud to compensate for his recovering eardrums. “We need to evac him.”

“Monitor him. Let me know if his condition changes,” Ritter said, raising his voice so Porter could hear.

Kovalenko and Jasim were standing over a slight man in a pure-white
dishdasha
, a briefcase on the ground next to him.

“Who’s this?” Ritter asked.

Kovalenko’s face broke with relief. “Sir, thank God you’re here. Captain Shelton—”

“I know. Who’s this?”

“Son of a bitch tossed a flash bang over the wall, then tried to make a break for it. He made it halfway over the wall before he saw me and tried to get back inside. I yanked him over the wall, and he got a bit bruised up in the fall. Won’t stop bitching about it either. Jasim says his accent isn’t Iraqi, but he isn’t sure where he’s from.” Kovalenko kicked the briefcase. “He won’t give us the combo for this either.”

“Find anything else in the house?”

“No, my guys are looking through it now,” Kovalenko said.

“Get on the radio and get a medevac for Shelton. We need an extraction in thirty minutes. Got it?” Kovalenko left Ritter and went upstairs, where Channing had set up an antenna for the company radio.

“Jasim,” Ritter said to the interpreter, “beat it.”

Jasim scurried away.

“
What’s your name?
” Ritter asked the prisoner, his hands bound by two sets of zip ties. The prisoner looked up at him from behind a pair of round glasses; contempt burned behind his eyes.

“
I need to see your doctor. I think I have a concussion after that lieutenant threw me to the ground
.” Ritter heard a trace of the Saudi accent as the man spoke. Ritter knew his game; the detainee would claim medical issues to delay providing any substantive answers. The longer Ritter played along, the more power the detainee had over the conversation. Ritter ran out of patience the moment he saw his friend on a stretcher.

Ritter’s hand shot out and crushed the man’s ear in his fist. He twisted his grip as he spoke. “
I didn’t ask you about your head. If your hearing is a problem, then you won’t mind if I rip this ear off, will you?
”

“
Atif Mohammed Jaffar! My name is
—” Atif stopped speaking as Ritter let go of his ear.

Ritter reached for the briefcase and saw Porter watching them. His point made, Ritter was confident he wouldn’t have to motivate this detainee any further. He’d deal with any of Porter’s objections later.

“
What’s the combination?
” Ritter said.

“
I don’t know! I don’t even live here. I am an anthropology student studying the
—” Atif stopped cold, his eyes glued to the name tape on Ritter’s armor. Atif knew of him, at least.

“
I don’t know what Mukhtar told you, but the truth is far, far worse
,” Ritter said. “
Combination, now
.”

“
Two two four eight seven
,” Atif said.

Ritter used the combination to open the briefcase. It contained several Saudi Arabian passports—all with Atif’s photo but only one with that name—and stacks of newly minted American hundred-dollar bills.

“Sir! Sir, we have a big problem!” Kovalenko said from the top of the stairs. Ritter closed the briefcase and handed it to Greely.

Ritter made his way to the roof, where Channing and Kovalenko waited next to a satellite antenna Channing had set up behind the large orange water tank. Kilo was prone behind his M14. Beside him Sergeant Morales was scanning for targets. A breeze whipped past them; blown sand made faint clicking sounds as it traveled across the rooftop. Ritter looked up; the sky was trending to orange from the skyborne sand. He could see across the river to the decrepit power plant where Jennifer had died; it squatted against the river like a homeless man waiting for a handout.

“Sir, we’ve got a medevac inbound for Captain Shelton, but I’ve lost contact with brigade. I can relay through Beast Company in Yousifiya; they say one of our Black Hawks is down with a mechanical issue. They might have it back up in an hour.” Channing’s voice cracked as he spoke.

Ritter looked across the desert to the house with the Iraqi family and the would-be suicide bomber. “Tell brigade we want the medevac and the Black Hawk that can still fly here ASAP for extraction. We’ll mark the landing zone with yellow smoke.” He looked at Kovalenko. “We can stuff everyone into both helicopters, but it’ll be tight. Next we need—”

“Sir! We got inbound,” Morales yelled from the roof’s edge.

I knew this day wouldn’t be boring, Ritter thought.

Three pickup trucks kicked up dust as they drove toward Ritter’s position from the cluster of buildings to the south. Ritter could make out the vehicles and not much else.

“They’re hostile. Machine guns mounted on the trucks, and they’re all wearing ski masks,” Kilo said, his scope an invaluable asset at a time like this.

“This wasn’t in the briefing,” Kovalenko said.

Ritter knelt beside the sniper. “Kilo, if you have a shot, go ahead and—”

Kilo’s M14 cracked as it fired. The three trucks advanced unabated. Ritter hurried back to the water tank.

“Wide left. You got to compensate for the wind,” Morales said.

Ritter grabbed Kovalenko by the front of his body armor. “Lieutenant, get your men in the windows and anywhere they can shoot from cover. We have about three minutes before they’re in range.” Ritter let him go. The lieutenant nodded and made for the stairs.

Kilo fired again. A second later Morales whooped and said, “Got him. He fell right off the back!”

“Get Sergeant Young on the radio,” Ritter said to Channing. He went to his hands and knees and crawled toward the sniper team. He peeked over the two-foot-high ledge and saw the trucks more clearly. There were several men in the bed of each pickup.

The M14 fired, and the brass from Kilo’s spent 7.62mm round bounced off Ritter’s helmet. The windshield on the nearest pickup shattered, and the truck jackknifed into the air. The insurgents in the bed went flying before bouncing across the hard-packed dirt. Ritter swore he heard a crunch as they landed.

Glass broke from the windows on the second floor. Ritter looked over and saw M4 muzzles used to clear out the jagged glass still in the frames.

“Good shot! You hit the driver,” Morales said.

“I was aiming for the gunner,” Kilo said as he shrugged his shoulders.

One of the other two trucks slowed down next to one of the wounded insurgents. Black-clad figures jumped out and carried their motionless comrade to their waiting pickup. Machine gun fire from the squad’s SAW broke out from the floor below Ritter’s feet. Red tracer rounds zipped toward the approaching truck but missed. The truck was maybe six hundred yards from their position, a difficult shot with the SAW.

Kilo fired again. Ritter saw the air wake of the bullet as it traveled to the nearest truck. The truck’s front tire burst. The truck trundled off the road and crashed into a shallow ditch. The insurgent in the passenger seat pitched through the front glass and rolled to a stop ten yards from crash.

“Asshole wasn’t wearing his seat belt,” Morales said.

The shooters on the second floor fired sporadically. Ritter was grateful they weren’t wasting ammo by firing at targets they couldn’t hit.

“Kilo, how many rounds do you have left?” Ritter asked.

Kilo rolled onto his side and looked at the ammo rack attached to his armor. “Plenty, sir. I have ten more rounds on me, and Morales has another fifty in his assault pack.”

“Wait. What? Did you put them in the pack? I sure didn’t,” Morales said.

“I told you to do it before we got set for pickup—”

“Kilo!” Ritter yelled.

“Ten rounds, sir.”

“If they advance any farther beyond that truck in the ditch, pop ’em. Otherwise, save your ammo for later,” Ritter said. There was no movement from the truck in the ditch. Two of its passengers were running south. The third pickup retreated as well.

“Sir, medevac and extraction are inbound!” Channing yelled.

“Smoke. Who has the yellow smoke grenade?” Ritter asked. Morales pulled an olive-drab cylinder from his assault pack and handed it to Ritter.

“I bet you got chow in there, don’t you? Plenty of room for pogey bait but not bullets,” Kilo commented.

“Dude, shut up,” Morales replied.

Ritter ran to the north side of the roof and pulled the pin on the grenade. He hurled it as far as he could, hoping the helicopters would set down with the building between them and the hostile encampment to the south. Gray smoke rose from the grenade for a few seconds. Then a yellow-green smoke billowed from the canister. Satisfied, Ritter turned to Channing.

“Where’s Sergeant Young?” he asked.

Channing shook his head. “I can’t get them.”

“Don’t stop trying,” Ritter said.

Nesbitt looked over the room with the corpse one last time. The little house had a million places to hide anything of value, and the company standard was to look anyplace a thumb drive could be hidden. Sergeant Young had him go through with his fresh eyes.

“Nesbitt, I think we’re about to leave,” Thomas said to him from the doorway.

Nesbitt knelt beside the body and lifted it to its side. He figured there wasn’t any chance they’d ever come back here, so why not give
hajji
a little going-away present. He lowered the body so its weight was against the spoon of one of the grenade fuses, then pulled the pin. The spoon stayed in place. The fuse wouldn’t ignite the suicide belt unless someone flipped the body over. Satisfied with his booby trap, Nesbitt tossed the pin under the bed.

“Nesbitt!” Sergeant Young hollered for him.

Nesbitt left the building and saw a pair of helicopters in the distance.

They moved Shelton out of the building and set his stretcher against the outer wall of the house. Ritter and Porter knelt beside their fallen commander, who hadn’t regained consciousness since the explosion. Kovalenko and the rest of his men were lined up along the wall, waiting for the incoming helicopters. It took minutes to abandon the building—longer than it should have since their Saudi prisoner had decided not to cooperate. He’d struggled like an obstinate cat until two Soldiers carried him out.

The smoke grenade had burned out, but the helicopters were nearly there.

Ritter kept looking at the distant house, waiting for Sergeant Young to emerge. He hoped Young would get the idea that they were leaving as soon as he saw the inbound helicopters. He knew hope wasn’t a method, but he had little else to go on.

He looked east toward the trackless desert that stretched to the Red Sea. He squinted at a distant mountain range edging over the horizon.

“Wait a minute.” He stood up and stroked his face, pulling his mouth into an exaggerated frown with his fingers. There were no mountains west of the Euphrates, and mountains don’t move. The “mountains” was an approaching dust storm, a
shamaal
, a veritable wall of dust that would envelop them all in minutes.

Ritter looked to the sky and saw the approaching helicopters; they would land in the next minute. He looked to Sergeant Young’s position; still no sign of him. Ritter did the mental math for how long it would take Young to reach them, how long it would take for the storm to ground the helicopters. He couldn’t find any way for the plan to work. There was no way he could get everyone out in time.

The helicopter-blown dust drowned out his vision, and the whine of the engine was an impenetrable din. A taste of things to come, Ritter knew. The crew chiefs leaped out of their helicopters and opened their doors with enough speed to put a NASCAR pit crew to shame; the chiefs waved frantically at the waiting Soldiers.