The Towers (49 page)

Bells tolled in his ears. He was thinking way too slow. Confusion, headache, dizziness, slurred speech. All symptoms of concussion. But he was still here. Still in condition to kick some ass.

The Mission comes first.

No matter what faces you, go over it, under it, around it. The only thing that can stop you is yourself.

He rose slowly out of the snow to a crouch. Then to his knees. Finally, to his feet, swaying in the buffeting wind. His forehead was numb already, passing from pain to freezing in seconds. He tensed, expecting a bullet, but none came.

They couldn't see him anymore.

Nor could he see them.

Blind men, grappling in the dark.

The net said in his ear, “Chief.”

“Talk.”

“They've got a radio active.”

“Say again?”

“Moogie's losing battery power fast, but Whale Watcher says somebody's transmitting UHF off to the west of us. About a hundred meters. They don't have a translator for whatever he's speaking, but they're picking up the transmission. Sounds like … sounds like a cheap walkie-talkie.”

Teddy rogered, looking over his shoulder as if he could pick them up. Their mama in the sky, the EP-3E elint bird. Crew of twenty-four, and more electronic analysis equipment than anything else the Navy flew. It would be thousands of feet up and dozens of miles away. Out of visual range, even if heavy cloud and snowstorm hadn't already cut them off from visual surveillance.

But now he understood the setup. Somebody above them, on the ridge to the left of the pass. Spotting for the sniper.

Or was the transmission from the sniper, rogering for the information?

No way to tell. He had the fuzzy sense he should be able to triangulate where the shots had come from, but couldn't force the tasking though his mind. It got lost in there and sort of stopped.

Anyway, there was only one way to break a combination like that.

He staggered through the snow, boots dragging, freezing air sawing in and out. A splitting headache, blinding flashes as if reality were coming apart, seams ripping, letting something searing hot beneath leak through. Then a hand grabbed him. “Obie. Where you going?”

“… to get up there.”

“You're fucked up, Chief. Got half your face hanging off. Want us to, just—”

“Maneuver and lay fire,” Teddy slurred. “Doesn't matter at what. Just work your way up the pass, lay some fire down.” He hit the intrasquad but couldn't get a response. Actually, the thing sounded dead. But it'd been working a minute ago. Either his batteries were butt-fucked or the bullet hitting his NVGs had put it into an intermittent fail mode. “You got comms? Oh, I forget, your radio's fucked—”

“I took Doc's.”

“Uh-huh. Okay. So how we doing?”

“Moogie took a bullet through both legs. Mud Cat's with him.”

So the Cat wasn't hit. “Is he stable? Can the Cat move him?”

“They say affirmative. But not far.”

Okay, he'd be taken care of, anyway. They'd lost their corpsman, but every SEAL was trained in battlefield trauma management. “Tell them to work their way up, take it slow, and lay down some suppression. I'm going up left field. But for Christ's sake, don't turn their illuminators on. They can use 'em passive mode, but don't go to active. You support 'em. Copy?”

“Copy, but where you going?”

“Up that ridge.”

Teddy shook himself free and staggered into the dark. About thirty yards, dragging through the snow, before he felt the ground lift under his boots. Lift, and grate, and shift under the creaking snow; the loose, shallowly concave deposit of scree or talus you found at the base of a weathered cliff. Just feeling that told him that even though they hadn't brought rock gear or belays, the cliff could probably be climbed. He put his hands out and his gloves met near-vertical stone.

Travel light and mooch, a Team saying. Probably not much to mooch at the top, but he wouldn't get there toting this weight. He unsnapped the ruck and swung it down to lean against the cliff. Eighty pounds lighter, he slung the SR and checked everything else was secure and wouldn't rattle; pistol holster snapped, knife and light handy. He got his boots locked into the first set of footholds and a found a cup for his right hand. He levered up and pain tore through his shoulder as his searching left hand found a nice big fracture in the rock.

The face wasn't quite vertical. He found a ledge and edged upward along it until he ran out of footing, then groped across the rock. Nothing. Smooth face. He retreated, still searching, and found a handhold and then another crack. He got up another couple of yards before one of the fissures crumbled under his weight, leaving him dangling by his left hand. He grunted. Something was tearing in his shoulder every time he put weight on it.

Off to his right in the dark firing broke out. He figured it for the rest of the team, probing the enemy, but couldn't be sure. Then heard the distinctive
poppoppop
of Mud Cat's 249 and knew. Still working their way forward. With any luck, distracting whoever was up top here from looking down.

The invisible ground fell away to his left into what felt like a gully leading upward. Yeah; that had been on the topo. He worked over into this and friction-climbed upward, belly to flat, jagged rock, alert for ice or the slippery lichen he'd noticed the day before. But there didn't seem to be any, just rock and a dusting of snow like powdered sugar.

He braced a foot and reached, got an outcrop. Pushed upward along a bald plane of cold rock. He had himself pulled halfway up when the outcrop shifted like a loose tooth and came free in his hand. He let go quickly and it rattled away into the dark, but he'd lost his momentum, jiggled his climbing rhythm.

Wait a minute.

The smoothness against his belly wasn't rock.

It was ice. Snow-powdered, smooth, frictionless ice.

He started to slide backward, pivoting to the left. His arms flung outward, scrabbling for purchase. The rifle sling slipped down his right arm. But just then his left Suzy finger snagged in a crack and brought him to a halt, though enormous pain shot through the damaged shoulder. He lay rigid, gasping, listening to the clatter and jingle of his departing rifle growing fainter and fainter.

No more SR-25. Leaving him with a pistol and a knife. Not a great recipe for facing heavily armed men in the dark. Especially if whoever was at the top had heard the rifle going down the slope.

For a second he wondered if it might not be smart to slide back down the gully. Pick his way back down from cup to crack. Gather whoever was left and retreat. Find the trail bin Laden would be taking down to the valley, and backpedal down it himself. Find the Pak army and turn himself in. “We got lost in the snow,” he muttered. Surely no one could blame him for getting lost.

Instead he searched his gear pockets, wedged his remaining 7.62 mags into cracks, and started climbing again. This time, angling to the right of the gully, where the snow and ice might not have built up so thick.

And it turned out it hadn't.

He kept working his way up. It was a little easier without the weight of rifle and ammo, though he felt naked without it. Then he came to a sheer face. There were cracks for handholds, but they were too narrow for footholds. He could find nowhere to put his boots that didn't place them either square on slick ice or kicking close-grained vertical rock. He tackled it grimly and failed time after time, until he could feel his fingers bleeding inside the gloves. He grappled with the rock like an exhausted, nearly defeated wrestler, grunting, growling deep in his throat. But at last he put together just the right combination of leverage and pulled himself up with sheer body strength alone.

He came to a halt then, wavering, almost toppling backward. The searing fire was streaming from the cracks in the darkness. The pain was hot spikes being driven into the joint of his shoulder. He couldn't climb any more.

Down? Going down was ten times harder than coming up. He'd never make it. Just didn't have it. So that just wasn't really an option.

He reached up one last time.

His outstretched hand waved, groped in darkness. He lowered it to a gritty lip of loose, friable rock the size of clenched fists.

So, he was at the top.

He had his hand to his face before he remembered: no NVGs. And even if he had them, he couldn't illuminate. He clung like a spider to crumbling rock, rigid, muscles shaking, the ax embedded between his eyes, the void at his back. He searched from left to right, carefully, slowly, by sectors. Nothing but the dark, and the sigh of the wind, and the grate of snow crystals over snow.

The rocks shifted under his weight as he got an elbow over, and slowly, slowly fulcrumed himself up onto the slanted, narrow col. The horizontal wind told him he was at the top. Blowing directly into his face, it tanged of earth and burnt explosive. Straight from the valley of fire. To the right, another cliff face overlooked the pass. To the left, the ridgeline led west. The map lit in his mind and he saw its narrow pointed arrow of kinked topo lines. He sniffed and listened, turning his head from side to side. If the guy they'd picked up a transmission from was still up here, he couldn't be far.

Teddy waited. He hadn't heard any firing for a while. But he didn't want to move until—

Four rapid pops from an M4. Distant and trivial-sounding, but distinct. And a glimmer, just a glimmer, through the blowing snow, the falling, twisting white veils. A flare?

He saw the silhouette no more than ten yards off. Cupped by the col, it was sitting in the half shelter of a rigged tent.

Teddy was sliding his pistol out of the holster when something ripped through his side and a heavy impact flung him half-turned into the ground. But he'd sagged backward at the hit, trained to reflex through hours of hand-to-hand. His attacker kept going, expecting resistance, and toppled over him, shouting. He twisted as he fell, stabbing down into Teddy's leg, but he'd cleared the SIG, and as the muj got to hands and knees Teddy fired two rounds into his face at close range, the powder-flash illuminating dark eyes and heavy black beard with ruddy light once, then again.

Leaning back in the snow, he brought the handgun around stiff-armed and fired five more rounds through the flapping fabric of the tent, spacing them from left to right in the dying light of the declining flare. He instantly rolled left, ignoring something flappy and loose in his side. Came up and fired three more rounds, aiming down. The illumination glimmered out. He grabbed for his SureFire. The thing was so bright it blinded and disoriented. Once he hit the button, it would wipe out his night vision and make him a target for anybody within fifty yards. He aligned it with the pistol, aiming at where the shelter had been. Went to his combat-shooting crouch and hit the button.

The world burst into a searing glow reflected by falling snow all around. From it a dying man with a white beard and heavy black brows looked into his eyes. Teddy held his gaze for a fraction of a second that stretched out as if they were exchanging life stories. His seamed leathery face looked as if it had seen sorrow and loss. Slowly, he turned a hand toward Teddy and opened his fingers.

A small green spheroid rolled into the snow.

A green spheroid.

A grenade.

Without his thought the pistol blazed until it clicked empty. But the muj had already fallen forward, over the grenade. A second ticked by. Then another.

It didn't go off.

Teddy stood shaking, realizing only then he should've hit the deck. He clicked the light off and sank to his knees. Hellish pain throbbed in his head and shoulder. When he fingered his side he felt warm, slick blood. Knife, or bayonet—the guy had ripped through uniform and gear into his flesh.

Somebody calling, down in the pass? Was that a voice? He made sure the old muj under the tarp was dead. Checked the grenade, unfolding the body gingerly and rolling it aside. He looked at it in the glow of the thumb-shielded Surefire. The pin was still in. He clicked the light off again and crept to the edge and peered down. Not much to see, just darkness and snow. Then the call came again. “Obie. Y' up there?”

Moogie. “Up here,” Teddy howled. Without night vision, no one was going to hit him based on sound.

“All secure down here. Got the last one.” A pause, then the radioman added, “Mud Cat took a bullet, too.”

Teddy didn't answer. Eventually Knobby Swager's high voice added the information that the Louisianan had been shot in the hand. “We got a tourniquet on it, though. Two more mujs down here, both dead,” Swager yelled.

“Too fucking loud. Keep it down, I can hear you.” Teddy lay feeling warmth spreading from his side and leg. Getting drowsy. He grabbed a handful of snow and rubbed it into his face and shouted down, “Bring me a dressing. Use the eastern slope. Less gradient.”

Swager rogered and Teddy put his head down and just breathed for a while. His leg was going numb. Thermal undies, black fleece, and still going hypothermic. But they had the pass. Not in great shape, but they held the position. And he didn't feel that bad. In fact, he felt almost comfortable, lying here in the soft snow. The wind felt warmer too.

A stir, scraping, from down the bank. His SIG jumped into his hand. But it was only Swager, cursing as he negotiated the last few steep yards, thrashing and falling. The baby SEAL collapsed beside Teddy. “Jesus. How'd you get up here, Chief?”

“Took the shortcut.”

“You okay?” Hands grabbed him, landing first, Teddy hoped by accident, on his ass. He pushed them off. “Sorry.”

“I need a Kerlix.”

“You hit too?”

“Knife wounds. Not too bad, but I'm leaking hydraulic fluid.”

“Funny, Chief.” Swager pulled Teddy's coat up and the cold bit his chest and stomach. He closed his eyes, breathing short and hard as Swager worked on his wounds. Then opened them again and stared into the dark. Taking inventory.