The Towers (50 page)

Two unwounded shooters left. Two wounded but still able to defend themselves, at least. O'Brien and the Doc dead. No air support. Getting low on ammo. Also, he'd managed to lose his rifle. So far Swager hadn't noticed. For some reason, having the newbie pick up on that worried him more than the prospect of bleeding to death.

“Okay, you're patched.” Swager tugged the jacket down. “Doesn't look too hairy, Chief.”

Teddy closed his eyes again, then gathered his strength. He rolled over onto hands and knees, getting ready to struggle to his feet. A crackle in his ears; his MX, fading as the cold ate the batteries, but back on. “Obie. You there?”

He hit the transmit button. “Yeah. That you, Cat?”

“Take a gander out to your front,” the faint voice murmured. “I think there's somebody headed our way.”

 

24

TEDDY
lay full length, listening past his own harsh, wheezing breath. The snow-laden wind howled through these lonely crags like the souls of those who'd just died here. Then, beneath that, came a low bumping detonation, stripped of all higher frequencies by distance. A JDAM or iron bomb going off miles away, down in the valley of the black dust. Where the vise was closing on the architect of horror. The sad-smiling beanpole who'd sent thousands to their deaths, who would cost his own people and religion many more thousands; whose vision had changed the world. Just as other evil madmen had redirected history.

But maybe he wasn't down there.

Maybe he was trying to escape.

A muffled jingle reached his ears. He crouched like a cat, gloves splayed in the snow. Every sense tuned to where the smoky wind crept over the mountains and speeded up, funneled by the pass.

A jingle?

What the hell would
jingle
? Santa Claus? His fucking reindeer?

He shook his head violently. Concussion or not, he had to focus. Something was bearing down on them. And he had wounded guys who were not going to last much longer, and maybe he wouldn't either. But that didn't matter. He was the chief. He was supposed to get his team back in one piece.

A hand on his shoulder, a hiss in his ear. “Hear that?”

“Yeah. I hear it.” He tried his MX, but dropped it, cursing; it had gone out again. An intermittent failure was more frustrating than a full-blown fuckup. “Who've you got, Knobby? Is Moogie still on satcom? We need more shooters. Got to get the word out we got wounded here. We need extract.”

“Wait one … he's trying, but he doesn't have anybody. His batteries are dead, he says.”

“Fucking great. How's his legs?”

“He's losing blood. Mud Cat's stable. They can man the pig, base of fire, but they can't move without help.”

Two shooters, two KIA, two immobile wounded. Great. He squeezed his eyes closed, fighting the desire to drift off. He could lie here and bleed and just freeze.

Or he could follow through, like a fucking Tier One operator. Get his guys off the mountain before they bled out and froze. But he couldn't help feeling events were rolling over him. The fucking altitude. The fucking cold. A fucking SA-7 gunner who'd gotten lucky enough to have a fucking Chinook plunk down right in his sights. And a fucking retirement-age career sniper, who'd nearly on his own fucked up what remained of the squad pretty goddamn thoroughly before Teddy had put him down. No question, they were not in the best of fighting shape here. Without dependable radio contact, they couldn't coordinate fire support, even when daylight came. Might not even be able to coordinate extraction. No, that would happen no matter what. The rest of Echo would be back for them. They still had ID panels and flares. No man left behind. But it might be days before a helo could exfil them, if this storm got worse.

And meanwhile something out in the storm was moving steadily closer. “Tough fucking titty! Tell them I want that pig up. As close under the east-side ridge as he can get. I want their back right up against that elevation, so no one can work around behind them. Copy?”

“Got it, Chief—”

“And keep it down, the wind's our way but they're listening too.” He paused. “Knobby—you didn't think to get their NVGs? Doc and Vaseline?”

“Uh, no, Chief. Sorry.”

“How about your claymore? Did you police that up, or leave it—”

“Uh, sorry. I can go back—”

“No. Forget it.” The last thing Teddy wanted now, with whatever it was out there coming closer every minute, was to split up the few shooters he had left. Be nice to have a claymore, though.

Nice to have a lot of things he didn't have anymore. Like his SR-25. Lying somewhere at the bottom of the cliff. If it hadn't just kept on going, slid all the way down the fucking mountain into Pakistan. Seemed like something happened every mission. In Ashaara the fucking scope, busted to shit on the HALO landing. This time, his rifle.

His rifle.

Wait a minute. He
had
a rifle.

It just wasn't
his
.

“Okay.
Okay,
” he muttered, and turned in the snow to backtrack along the col in the dark. Too weak to stand. On all fours, like a dog. He caught the crack of flapping canvas yards off and homed in on that until he collided with the collapsed tent.

The old sniper was still sitting like a Buddha statue. Already, in the few minutes since Teddy had shot him, his body had frozen solid, as hard to the touch as the sharded rock it sat on. Teddy reached for his SureFire, then reconsidered. This was an old mujahideen route. Whoever was coming would be watching the ridge, alert for the faintest glimmer, the slightest sign of an ambush. He slid the flash back into its pouch. He just hoped they didn't have some kind of recognition signal worked out.

Could he hooker them in close enough to take them? Maybe. The ridge was a good shooting position. Mainly it depended on how many were out there.

He didn't even want to think about what would happen afterward. So he didn't.

His searching, outstretched fingers hit something hard.

He pulled the long, icy-cold length of Russian wood and steel toward him and checked it by feel. Magazine inserted. Scope attached. A thin wire led to the old man. Teddy patted the rigid corpse down and found a heavy object under its coat. The battery that charged the light-sensitive plate. He found another magazine in a bandolier, but it was empty. He broke the one out of the rifle and fingered icy cartridges with wooden fingers. Two? Three? No more than three. He felt around the corpse, under the tent, but came up with nothing more. He unplugged the battery and thrust it inside his own jacket and zipped the fleece closed on it.

As he crawled back, voices blew toward him on the wind. He had to stop and pant, face down in the snow. He fingered his side. The dressing was hard, the blood either dried or, more likely, frozen. His leg, where the muj had stabbed him on the way down, was numb, a dead log he dragged as he crawled. Again he felt the siren call of unconsciousness. Defeat.

Fuck that! He forced himself up and alligator-elbowed the last few yards to collapse beside Swager again. He groped for the second class's ear, but was silenced by Swager's mitten on his mouth.

Something being pushed into his hands. It whined. His lifeless fingers finally recognized the NVGs. He made sure the illuminator switch was off, passive mode only, and raised them to his face.

Shifting veils of green against black. The blinking red dot that meant the power was getting low. Then, off to the left, the searching beam of an infrared illuminator. It looked just like one of their own. Scavenged and sold, or looted and passed from hand to hand. He studied it as it shifted here and there. Still some distance away, but nearing. He shut the goggles off and handed them back.

“Okay, Knobby, listen up. You're going to take Mud Cat and Moogie back to Denver.” The primary-extract LZ, fifteen hundred feet down the mountain and offset to the west of the trail down from the pass.

“What? Hell, no, Chief—”

Teddy reached out and got him by the throat. “What was that?”

“I mean—wait a fucking—
wait
.” Swager broke his hold; Teddy must be getting weaker than he'd thought. The petty officer coughed. “The extract LZ. You want me to—”

“Now you're hearing me. We don't have enough shooters left to hold this pass. Two or three hostiles coming through? Maybe. But any more, we're just gonna get rolled up. You take the wounded back to Denver. I'll stay here. If an HVT shows, I'll zip him. If it's just your rank and file, I'll let them traipse on past, let the Paks dustpan and foxtail 'em up. Copy?”

“I'll come back, Chief. Get them down to the LZ, then come back for you.”

Teddy wavered, then gave in. Swager wasn't going to get two wounded men fifteen hundred feet down the mountain, then trek back up, until after dawn. And this would all be over before then. One way or the other. At dawn there'd be Coalition eyes on the pass anyway, Predators or air. As long as he bottlenecked it during the storm, they'd have accomplished the mission. “Okay, you do that. But your first priority's getting Moogie and Cat down to where we can call in the CSAR.”

Swager hesitated, then rogered up. He gripped Teddy's shoulder, which didn't seem to hurt as much as a few hours earlier. Started to leave, but Teddy pulled him back. “Leave me the PVSs.”

“Oh, yeah. Sorry.”

Teddy felt the goggles thrust into his hands. Then the second class was gone, a fading shuffle of boots and sliding rock going down the slope.

*   *   *

HE
lay for a good long time, every sense strained toward the pass. Wondering if he'd imagined the illuminator beam. He didn't think so. Maybe whoever was coming up the pass had turned back. The storm was getting worse. Every few minutes he had to squirm out from under a fresh fall of snow. If only he had his ruck. His poncho was in his ruck. But he didn't.

Oh, well. What the fuck, over.

At last he set the goggles to his head and turned them on again, keeping numb fingers well clear of the illuminator button. Shading them from the blowing snow, he peered into the night.

Shifting ghosts in black jade distance. He fumbled at it and the tubes flashed but didn't clear. Good as he was going to get, apparently. They were dying too. Everything was going hypothermic in the altitude and cold. He coughed and lightning shot through his head. He squeezed his eyes shut, then forced them open and peered again.

Four men in line abreast waded toward him through the snow. He couldn't make out more, not with passive alone, just the white, spotty infrared of heat. He almost hit the illuminator but remembered in time. If they had IR, it would be just like shining a spotlight. Their heads seemed misshapen, but not the way helmets would look. They were well spaced out, maybe five yards between each man.

He shifted the field of view left, knowing what he'd probably see, and there they were: two men separated from the main body. More, only barely visible, off to the right. Flank security, patrolling fifty or sixty yards uphill as the party came up the draw. The four in front were walking point. He studied them for a few seconds, then passed the goggles back to Swager. “See 'em?”

“We can hammer 'em, Chief. Get 'em between us and hammer 'em.”

Then Teddy remembered. Swager wasn't there. But hadn't he answered?

He whispered, “We won't get 'em all. And they'll roll up Moogie and Mud Cat. Just stand the fuck fast. This isn't the main body.”

Now he could hear the crunch of boots and low voices. The jingle came again, cutting through the snow-laden air with a spooky clarity. It
did
sound like sleigh bells. They couldn't have a sleigh. Could they? He shook his head again, wishing he could think. But everything was going fuzzy, soft, warm. Then rolling over, going to sleep … he bit his lip savagely, dug his fingers into the clotted flap between his eyes. He gagged on a near-scream, but the mists cleared a little.

When he looked up again, the snow was coming down so hard he had to continually blink it off his lashes. Damn. The wind was freezing his eyeballs. Let 'em go by, he decided. He could get one, maybe a couple, but those he missed would wheel and come up the pass and get Moogie and Mud Cat. “Then we'll have two more KIA,” he whispered.

No, now he remembered. Swager was moving them out. They should be below the pass by now. Headed for the exfil point. Well, then, they'd come up here and roll him up. He was outnumbered and immobile and almost out of ammo. So he'd let them pass. The Paks could deal with them. Demonstrate their committment.

The decision made, he felt relieved. “Just watch 'em go by,” he whispered. He started to tell Sumo to pass that over the net, to hold fire. But Sumo wasn't there either. He pulled the rifle up closer, felt to the end of the long, spindly barrel and dug around to get any snow or dirt out of it. Then pushed up snow in front of his position and settled the lower handguard. He pulled the battery wires out of his jacket and started connecting them to the terminals on the scope. This simple operation proved extraordinarily difficult. He kept losing the wires or forgetting what he was doing. Finally he got one looped where it seemed to be supposed to go and started to tighten the nut down. He turned it and turned it, wondering why it didn't tighten. Then felt nothing between his fingers.

He'd been turning it the wrong way, it had come off, and was now lost somewhere. “Fuck,” he whispered through lips he couldn't feel anymore, with a tongue that didn't want to move.

Beside him he felt a familiar reassuring presence. Turned his head, and there he was, almost invisible in the dark, but he could just see his outline. Bulky, but not fat. Not fat at all. The big Hawaiian a mass of supple muscle. “Sumo. Where the
fuck
you been?”

“Right here now, haole.”

“About fucking time. Gimme a hand with this. Can you—”