CHAPTER 48
Whether Massoud’s soldiers knew where they were headed or not, Harvath and his team were dogged the entire way by wildly fired shots, many of which came incredibly close. Winston Churchill’s famous line notwithstanding, there was absolutely nothing exhilarating about being shot at, even if your enemy was missing.
The run-down mud brick hut the team finally took shelter in only had three pockmarked walls and was missing its roof, but it was definitely a step up in the cover it afforded. Next to a stack of water-filled jerry cans there was nothing better at blast attenuation in the middle of nowhere than a thick mud wall.
Making Gallagher as comfortable as possible, Harvath checked his wounds again. So far the tourniquet on his leg was working. It was the bullet through his shoulder he was most worried about. Gallagher’s breathing had become labored and Harvath was concerned that he had dropped a lung. Even so, he sought to reassure his friend. “You’re going to be okay,” he said.
“In that case, why don’t you get me a beer?”
“As soon as the waitress comes back with my onion rings.”
Gallagher laughed and coughed up blood, confirming Harvath’s worst fears. If the man didn’t get medical attention soon, he wasn’t going to make it.
Leaving him in the care of the Afghans, Harvath stepped over to Fontaine, who was keeping watch out of one of the crumbling windows. “They’re going to be on us any minute,” said the Canadian.
“I know,” replied Harvath. “Let’s get hold of West and have his combat controller call in some close air support.”
“How are we going to mark our position?”
“I’ve got a couple of fireflies,” said Harvath, removing an infrared marking beacon from his pocket. It was made by the same Cejay company as his fingerlight and looked like a small plastic ice cube. When snapped onto a nine-volt battery, it emitted an infrared strobe so bright it could be picked up by overhead aircraft and even certain U.S. government satellites.
Everyone in the Spec Ops community used combat ID marking beacons. It didn’t matter if you were American, Canadian, British, or whomever. The goal was to help ID your position so that you weren’t mistaken for the enemy. They also allowed downed pilots and operators caught in unfriendly territory to be more easily located and rescued. They were a great way to mark a structure you might want to come back to, you could also use them to track a vehicle, and Harvath even had a small spool of trip wire he could use to set one off if someone crept inside his perimeter. The fireflies were the Swiss Army Knife of night operations, and Harvath was glad to have snatched a couple from the Golden Conex.
Clicking the cubes onto their nine-volt batteries, Harvath placed one on top of the wall at each corner. Then he took up the watch while Fontaine turned on his radio, switched to the Canadian’s frequency, and tried to reach Captain West.
“I don’t care if it’s a glider with water balloons,” Fontaine said once he had reached the man and detailed their position and situation. “Get hold of J3 Air at Bagram and tell them to send whatever they’ve got. Tell them this is an emergency CAS mission for Roper Six Nine. We’re also going to need a medevac. I’ve got a man down, multiple GSWs.”
West put Fontaine on hold while he spoke with his combat controller and then radioed the operations and planning unit at Bagram Air Base who were responsible for air support.
Daoud walked over and stood on the other side of the window from Harvath with one of the AK-47s.
“Do you know how to use that thing?” asked Harvath.
“Yes,” replied the interpreter.
“Good. Single shots only. And choose them carefully. We could be here a long time.”
Daoud nodded.
“If you want Mr. Gallagher’s night vision goggles, go ask. He’s not going to be using them.”
The interpreter began to walk away, but then stopped. “Mr. Gallagher saved Asadoulah’s life. The bullets that hit him were meant for the boy and would have killed him if Mr. Gallagher had not acted. Fayaz too. He is a brave man; a good man. Like you.”
“You’re mistaken, Mr. Daoud,” said Harvath. “I’m not that brave and I’m not that good.”
The interpreter smiled. “I think you are. I also think that if we survive this, I will help you find the woman you are looking for. I don’t need any more money from you. You can give mine to Mr. Fontaine.”
“Don’t worry about Fontaine,” Harvath replied as he tightened his grip on Gallagher’s rifle. “I’ll make sure he gets taken care of. Now go get those goggles. I think I see movement out there.”
As Daoud walked back over to Baba G, Harvath began to ask Fontaine what the hold-up was, but the Canadian motioned for him to hold on.
“Roger that,” he said over the radio. “We’ve got two IR strobes on top of our position. There’s at least seventy-five Taliban along the face of the hill two hundred meters directly west of us. In between us and them are three vehicles, two of which are on fire.”
After listening to the response, Fontaine replied, “Copy that,” and turned back to Harvath. “We’ve got a Spectre gunship inbound.”
“How long until they’re on target?”
“Fifteen mikes.”
“How’d you get the call sign, Roper Six Nine?” asked Harvath.
“That’s not my call sign,” said Fontaine as he shook his head. “It belongs to someone I know on an American special operations team. He’s got high-priority access and we’ll get bumped right to the top of the list for air support.”
Co-opting someone else’s call sign was the kind of outside-the-box thinking Harvath could appreciate. Bringing Fontaine along had absolutely been the right thing to do.
Looking back out the window, Harvath detected movement again. This time, he was certain of it. Massoud’s men were closing in. It was going to be the longest fifteen minutes of their lives.
“What about the medevac for Gallagher?” Harvath asked as he flipped up his NODs and focused his rifle on a group of Taliban creeping forward. There were only so many places he and his team could have run and Harvath wasn’t surprised at how quickly they had homed in on them.
“West has permission to disengage and roll his company to our location. They’re going to establish an LZ at the bottom of the road. A medevac bird is right behind the Spectre.”
“Let’s do this then,” said Harvath, who chose the biggest Taliban member in the approaching pack, took aim, exhaled, and squeezed his trigger.
As the man’s head exploded in a shower of blood, bone, and pink flesh, his associates hit the ground and began firing their weapons. The fight was back on.