Sniper Elite (3 page)

Bordeaux grabbed up Mitchell's M4 and jammed it into her hands as he half-carried, half-dragged her toward the rocks where his men were digging in as best they could with the butts of their carbines. “We're in some deep shit here, guys. No cover and nowhere to run.”

One of the other men went right to work applying a pressure tourniquet to Sandra's leg. Shock was setting in fast and she'd already begun to fade.

“We'd better think of something fast,” one of the other Rangers said. “When they correct fire on those mortars, we're dead.”

“They could've done that already,” Bordeaux said. “They're maneuvering to take us alive.”

“Or her,” said a sergeant named Tornero.

“Or her, yeah.” Bordeaux spat in disgust. Their radioman had been blasted to hell, and it would be at least another hour, maybe two, before anyone tried to raise them and thought to send another chopper. This was supposed to have been a very secure zone, which was why it had been chosen in the first place. Something was wrong. “I don't know, guys, but it feels like they were here waiting for us.”

Tornero was jamming cotton wadding into a shoulder wound. “Yeah, well, the way they've been blabbing about the op back at HQ, it don't fucking surprise me.”

“I don't like having a woman in this shit,” Bordeaux said.

“Maybe you can trade me,” Sandra groaned, fighting the urge to vomit.

Another furious fusillade of gunfire erupted, forcing them all belly-down against the earth as the enemy maneuvered still closer.

“There's at least twenty!” shouted one of the other Rangers, firing away, finally managing to kill one. “They're gonna jerk the noose tight.”

Bordeaux knew their time had run out. It was time to surrender or break out across country, and there was no way to break out without leaving Sandra behind.

“Sergeant, you three haul ass for that defilade!” he ordered. “There's no other way. Try to fight your way north toward friendlies. Surrender's not an option here.”

Tornero exchanged looks with the other two members of the
team, all of them shaking their heads. He looked back at Bordeaux and grinned. “I think we'll stay, Captain.”

“I said haul ass!”

Tornero popped up just long enough to biff a grenade then ducked back down. “You can court-martial us if we live long enough, sir, but we're stayin'.”

“Stubborn fuckers,” Bordeaux muttered, crawling off for a better look at the defilade to their north. Three of the enemy had already occupied the depression, and they opened fire the second they saw his face. He jerked the pin from a grenade and slung it in their direction before scrabbling back to the others, taking more hits, one to the arm and another to the boron carbide ballistic panel on his back. The grenade went off with a sharp blast, flinging body parts into the air. Bordeaux and his men all sprang into a crouch, firing in all four directions as the enemy continued to maneuver aggressively against them.

One of the Rangers took a round to the face and fell over backward.

Knowing they were down to mere seconds now, Bordeaux fired his M4 until the magazine ran dry then jerked his M9 pistol and turned to aim it at Sandra.

She winked at him and covered her eyes with her hand.

He hesitated a fraction of an instant, remembering the night before, and then squeezed the trigger.

A 7.62 mm slug blew out the side of his head, causing the round from his pistol to strike the ground near Sandra's shoulder as he toppled from his knees.

Sergeant Tornero spun to fire on the man who'd killed Bordeaux, stitching him from the groin to the throat before taking multiple hits to his armor, limbs, and guts. He pitched forward onto his hands and knees, still taking hits, choking blood as he crawled desperately forward to cover Sandra's body with his own.

Sandra was struggling to tug Tornero's pistol from its holster when the shadowy figure of a Taliban fighter blocked out the sun. He stepped on her hand and reached down to take the pistol from the holster, tossing it to one of his men before hefting Tornero's body aside. He spoke calmly in Pashto, pointing at the American weapons on the ground, ordering them gathered up. The Rangers were quickly stripped of their armor and ammunition, their boots, money, watches, dog tags—everything.

Deep in shock, Sandra was vaguely aware of being lifted from the ground and slung over the shoulder of a squat, muscular man. She opened her eyes briefly, seeing the ground passing below, the sandaled heels of her captor moving back and forth as he walked along.

They walked all the rest of the day, taking turns carrying their prisoner toward the foothills near the Pakistan border. Sometime after nightfall, Sandra awoke to feel herself jostling around in the back of a pickup truck as it made its way higher into the mountains of the Hindu Kush. She mumbled that she was cold, and someone in the back of the truck with her must have spoken English because she was covered with a coat a few moments later.

The next time she awoke was to a bright light being shined into one of her eyes. She was carried from the truck on what felt like a sheet of plywood into a dimly lit hut where she felt needles being pricked into her. She screamed aloud when a steel probe was inserted into her leg wound and struggled against the pain. Someone with gorilla-like strength held her down while the bullet was removed and the wound was sutured closed. After that, a dirty brown sack was slipped over her head, and she was put back into the truck and driven away.

Later in the night, the bag was taken off and she was made to drink a great deal more water than she cared to, a bright flashlight being shined into her face the entire time. She coughed and gagged,
swallowing as much as she could, and the canteen was finally taken away and the bag replaced. After what felt like an eternity, the truck stopped again, and she was carried into another building where she was tied to some kind of a wooden bed.

She awoke in the morning with her leg fevered and throbbing to find that she was still tied to the bed, but that her boots and flight suit had been taken away, replaced with a kind of dirty white gown made from a coarse cloth. A man of about forty sat beside her bed reading the Koran through a pair of dark-framed glasses that seemed too large for his face. He wore the white
jubbah
of a Muslim cleric, and his neatly trimmed black beard was flecked with gray.

He looked up to see her watching him and slowly closed the Koran, setting it aside on a table. “You are awake,” he said in good English.

“I'd like to have my uniform back,” was the first thing she said.

He removed the glasses from his face and folded them away into the pocket of his robe. “That's been burned,” he replied. “Your leg has been repaired, and you are far away from your people now. Very far away. They will not be able to find you here. I am Aasif Kohistani of the Hezb-e Islami Khalis. I am the political leader you and your friends were preparing to illegally kidnap from my village in Nangarhar.”

“Brux,” Sandra said. “Sandra J., Warrant Officer. 280-76-0987.”

He smiled a humorless smile. “I have that information already.” He took from the table a handful of dog tags taken from Sandra's dead compatriots and selected hers from the collection. “You are also Catholic. What else can you tell me about CIA intentions against our party? Are they preparing military strikes?”

“Can I be untied?” Sandra asked, her mouth dry as a sock.

He set the dog tags aside. “It is impossible that you will not tell me what I want to know,” he said patiently. “It would be better for you to tell me now. This will prevent great difficulties for you.”

“I'm just a pilot,” she said. “The CIA doesn't tell us about their plans. I don't even know why they wanted you.” And what worried Sandra the most was that this was the truth. She had no idea why the CIA wanted Kohistani or whether or not there were any military strikes being planned.

“You are not just a pilot,” he said, taking her Night Stalker shoulder patch from the table. “You are one of these people. We know this name very well. I will give you one last opportunity to tell me what you know. After that I will call Ramesh.”

“You really have to believe me,” she begged. “I don't know anything! If I did, I would tell you. I don't give a shit about the CIA.”

“That is not the answer I was looking for.”

“Do you want me to make something up?” she said helplessly. As she lay there trying to think back to the mock interrogations she had undergone during survival school, Kohistani calmly lifted a previously unnoticed wooden rod from the foot of the bed and gave her a sharp crack against the bullet wound in her thigh.

Pain exploded in her leg. She arched her back involuntarily, her entire body going ramrod stiff, barely stifling the cry that threatened to rip from her throat. She gulped air in deep breaths, girding herself for the next blow, but she knew that it was no use. The pain was too intense.

He stood and raised the rod high over his head.

“Don't— I'll tell you!”

He brought the rod down again, and this time with a truly savage amount of force. Sandra screamed in pain, her mind reeling, as the cleric delivered her a third blow. She wailed in agony, sobbing shamelessly as she babbled completely made-up information in a desperate bid to prevent him from striking her a fourth time.

Kohistani stopped short of delivering the blow, tossing the rod onto the foot of the bed with a grimace. “Do you see how senseless . . . how pointless it was for you to suffer?”

She closed her eyes and tried to sob as quietly as she could in an attempt to retain what little remained of her dignity.

“Open your eyes,” he ordered, looking down on her. “Do you know why your country will lose in Afghanistan? The fearless capitalists will lose because they send women to fight their war. Now, I will send in Ramesh to learn if what you told me was the truth.”

He left the room, and a brutish, angry-looking man came in a few moments later, toting a brown canvas bag, setting it down on the table with a metallic clunk.

Gripped by abject terror, Sandra shut her eyes again and tried to disappear.

Gil and Marie were spreading fresh hay in the stable when his mother-in-law called him on his cellular to tell him he had a call on the house phone.

“Be right back,” he said to his wife, slipping the phone back into his pocket.

Marie didn't even look at him. She cut the twine on another bale of hay and broke it apart with her foot.

“It's probably nothin', babe.”

She stopped and stared at him. “It's never nothin' with the Navy. It's only been a month, and you're supposed to get two. You're telling me their ships won't float without Gil Shannon aboard?”

He grinned, knowing she knew damn well he was no deckhand. “Well, they float well enough . . . but the crews won't go out of sight of land unless I'm aboard.”

She shook her head and went back to work, his sarcastic sense of humor no longer holding the appeal for her that it once did.

Gil found the cordless on the kitchen table and took it out onto the back porch. “This is Shannon.”

“Gil, its Hal. Something's happened, and I thought it important enough to call. Can you call me back on your sat phone?” Master Chief Halligan Steelyard was a fellow member of DEVGRU (United States Naval Special Warfare Development Group, aka SEAL Team Six) and one of Gil's closest friends. He'd been in the Navy since Chester Nimitz was a baby, and he was something of his own institution among the SEALs.

“Give me one minute.” Gil hung up the phone and then went to the bedroom where he kept a secure satellite phone and called Steelyard back. “So what's up?”

“Sorry to bother you at home with this,” Steelyard said. “Sean Bordeaux and five of his men bought it yesterday in an ambush here in Nangarhar Province, south of Jalalabad.”

Gil had worked with Bordeaux a number of times in the past and considered him a friend, but this loss wasn't the kind of news that rated a satellite call from a guy like Steelyard from halfway around the world. “What else, Chief?”

“A Night Stalker pilot was taken prisoner in the same ambush,” Steelyard went on. “Taliban caught the bird on the ground during a Ranger training op, shot everybody up, killed the copilot, and stripped the bodies. It's a problem because the pilot they took is a woman, pretty thing, twenty-nine years old . . . the only Night Stalker female. It's not going to play well in the media, especially if she shows up bleeding on Al Jazeera. I thought you'd like a heads up because I expect it's only a matter of time before you get the call from SOG.”

SOG was the CIA's Special Operations Group, a more evolved version of the once infamous and now extinct MACV-SOG (Military
Assistance Command, Vietnam—Studies and Observations Group) that Gil's father had once been a part of. Though the CIA still recruited through SOG from all branches of the US military—the same as they had during Vietnam—the modern CIA was no longer permitted its own “in-house” specialists. So operators like Gil Shannon were often pulled from their assigned Special Mission Units (SMUs) for the purpose of carrying out one-man operations that were often so highly classified that no one else in the Special Forces community ever knew a thing about them . . . at least not officially.

Gil's current, primary unit assignment was to DEVGRU the same as that of Chief Steelyard. Being so highly classified that the US government preferred not to admit its existence, DEVGRU was one of only four SMUs within the United States military. The other three SMUs were: Delta Force of the US Army, the 24th Special Tactics Squadron of the US Air Force, and the Intelligence Support Activity—also under the auspices of the US Army.

Gil patted his jacket pocket for his tobacco. “Are we talking about Warrant Officer Sandra Brux, Chief?”