CHAPTER 4
Ali was sitting with half the team on one side of the shuddering MH-47, a reddish light on the inside of the fuselage cast throughout the interior of the cabin. She could feel the vibration of the twin engines whirling above her, as well as ripples moving up through her boots from the metal deck. They had a hundred miles to fly, a long way for a mission. They all wore earphones to cut out the ear-destroying noise. Ram sat opposite her, across the aluminum deck, his face unreadable, just like the rest of the group. It was show time.
She saw Wyatt up in the stairwell leading up to the cockpit where the two pilots were located. He was on one of the SEAL communication radio frequencies, continuing to coordinate the mission with SEAL HQ at Bagram. He turned around, making a sharp gesture toward her, and instantly she was on her feet.
When she reached Wyatt, he indicated by a jab at his earpiece for her to turn their radio to a private channel.
“What’s up?” she asked, wondering if it had anything to do with her encounter with Ram.
But it was far more important.
“I’ve got Aarmaan, the chief of that village, on the sat phone. He’s upset as hell and he’s speakin’ Pashto a mile a minute and I can’t understand a word he’s saying.”
“What’s the frequency?” she asked.
Wyatt gave it to her and she traded places with him at the entrance to the cockpit.
“Aarmaan, it’s Ali,” she greeted him in Pashto. “What were you trying to tell Wyatt?”
“Oh! Allah help us. Ali, the Taliban broke through our wall! They’ve gone house-to-house, stealing our young girls and boys. Oh!” he wailed, his voice cracking with terror. “They’ve stolen them! They came to rob us of our children, and to sell them as sex slaves in Pakistan! You must help us! You must!”
Her heart broke as she heard his sobs and tightened her hand around the radio, trying to get a grip on her own feelings. She forced herself to stay calm. Panic wouldn’t help anyone, and she knew that people made bad decisions when they lost control. “When did it happen?”
“When I called Sahib Wyatt the first time, there were six Taliban looking for a way to get into our village. We watched them, afraid they would try to break in! We didn’t know how many others were waiting out in the trees, but after a couple of hours, they drove up with a big truck and parked it outside our wall. Then, they blew a hole into the wall with an IED and ran into our village with AK-47s! They started breaking open the doors on all our homes, searching for children between ten and twelve years old! They stole fifteen of our children, Ali! We are terrified for them! We had no way to fight these men! They threatened to kill us if we tried to stop them or follow the truck. That was an hour ago.”
“And did you see which direction they took?” Her mind was recalling the topography of that small valley high in the mountains. They were fifty miles away from the Pakistan border, and she would bet her life the men were driving as fast as they could over one of few, but tortuous mountain roads, trying to reach the border before the Americans could launch a rescue mission to stop them.
Sobbing, barely able to speak, his voice wobbling badly, Aarmaan replied, “They took the only road in and out of our valley. We did follow them. The fathers quickly took to the hills above the road and watched them go down the mountain slope very slowly. When they got to the bottom of it, they were in another valley, heading east, toward the border, I’m sure.”
“Can you tell me about how many men attacked your village?”
“At least eight men. There were two who stayed in the cab of the Pakistani military truck, but the other six ran in and grabbed our precious sons and daughters from us.”
“Did they hurt the children?”
“No . . . no, they just grabbed them ran out through that hole in our village wall and put our children in the back of the truck.”
“Into the back of the truck? You’re sure?”
“Y-yes. And then one of the fathers saw six Taliban get in the rear of it with our screaming, crying children. Then, they pulled a huge flap down over the opening so he could no longer see anything and drove off.”
“How many boys?”
“Five. The rest are our precious little daughters.”
“Any smaller vehicles along with the truck?”
“No. Please, can you help us? My people are crying in grief and shock over their children being stolen. They know what is going to happen to them. They are wailing with despair.”
“We’re on our way, Aarmaan. You’ve given us good information. Now, we’ll go to the maps and the satellite and try to locate that truck. I’ll be back in touch with you and keep you in the loop.”
“You must! You must! Even your dear little favorite, ten-year-old Husna, was taken!”
Ali kept her voice calm, but inside she was a whirlpool of emotions. Husna was indeed very dear to her, almost like a daughter. She saw Wyatt come and stand nearby as she spoke, his expression heavy with concern. “Thank you for telling me that. We’re going to do everything we can to bring all your children back to your village.”
She signed off and handed the radio to the copilot. Turning, she donned her headset again and dialed to the private line to speak only with Wyatt. In as few words as possible, she told him everything. His gray eyes grew hard when she finished.
“Come with me. We need to fire up the Toughbook with the communications guys. We need a mission reset, pronto. I’m going to get Tinker over with us and the three of us will try to locate that truck via satellite.”
Giving him a brief nod, she followed him down to the aluminum deck, placing her feet wide apart to keep from losing her balance and falling as the helo shuddered and shook. They took three empty nylon seats toward the rear of the helo and sat down. She saw Ram give her a questioning look, but he said nothing and neither did she. He remained sitting with the rest of the team.
Husna! That a beautiful green-eyed, red-haired child! Ali fought thoughts of the reality that might become the child, trying to not let it deluge her. From the first time they’d met, the girl doted on Ali. She had lost her mother in childbirth and was being raised by her maiden aunt, a woman who seemed unable to show her love. Once Ali recognized this, she gave the woman money to ensure that she would keep Husna. Often, orphaned children met a horrible fate because families living in near-starvation in these villages could rarely afford to feed an extra mouth. She might have been exiled from the village, to die of starvation or exposure to the elements out beyond the walls of the village in frigid weather.
“Husna” meant ‘beauty,’ and Ali could see why the Taliban would grab her. She was a beautiful child and would go for a high price as a virgin if her team couldn’t stop that truck from leaving Afghan territory. Her stomach recoiled, but she forced back her visceral reaction to those dark thoughts, focusing instead on the changed mission.
Ali had trouble concentrating as she watched the laptop come alive with images as an Air Force satellite passed over the area. Ali knew all the children of that village because Wyatt brought his team there every few weeks.
Its strategic placement made it important to the SEALs. The enemy created many nearby “ratlines,” new trails made by the Taliban to bring weapons, armory items, shells, IEDs, and bomb-making materials into Afghanistan. The village elders would tell Wyatt and his team where they were so they could be found quickly and destroyed. Any village who worked with Americans became the enemy of the Taliban. These courageous people were risking their own lives to help the SEALs.
Wyatt had cultivated a deep, respectful relationship with Aarmaan, a kind, loving man in his fifties, and a Sufi Muslim. Everyone, except the Taliban, revered him. The Sufis believed that love was the greatest healing emotion in the world and his villagers whispered that their leader was a saint sent by God to their village to care for all of them. She understood the tragic blow that was hammering the village right now. The families were so close to each other, and their children meant everything to them. She just couldn’t begin to imagine the distraught mothers who’d had their children torn away from them—and the wailing, the tears falling right now as the shock of the raid began to sink in. How helpless they must feel!
As she listened to Wyatt and Tinker go over the sat photos coming in, she opened one of the area maps to see where they might be able to stop the truck. It took twenty minutes before Wyatt came up with a plan. He dialed in his radio, calling all the team members over to a pallet that was strapped down in the center of the helo. Wide, thick nylon straps held it in place as the bird bumped along in the night sky. The team had placed all their gear nearby, beneath anchored netting, and stood expectantly around the huge pallet, waiting to hear what had happened.
Ali was standing to the left of Wyatt, Tinker to his right. They had their two laptops open so the group could see, in real time, a Pakistani military truck chugging down a steep mountain switchback, swaying from side to side.
She felt someone approach her and automatically looked up. It was Ram. She could see genuine worry in his eyes as he placed himself near her left shoulder, but far enough behind her so she didn’t feel threatened by his presence. She’d become distracted by his unexpected move and was surprised to feel the sense of protection that enfolded her. She swallowed hard, stifling her emotional reaction to the children’s kidnapping.
She also blocked out her reaction to Torres’ approach. Too much was going on right now to assimilate it all. Right now, her priority was rescuing those hapless, frightened children.
*
Ram remained in the background, listening intently to the new agenda. After Wyatt had gotten them all up to speed on the op, all the SEALs had comments and suggestions, including Ram. It took some back and forth for twenty minutes before the final plan was drawn up. Tinker had been able to get a photograph of the truck carrying the children. It was a typical, olive-green, a Unimog U5000. This workhorse truck was used to carry everything from human beings to weapons. It had a twenty-six-thousand-pound carrying capacity, and was used by the Pakistani Army to move materials or troops. It would take time for it to snake through the switchbacks, slowing it to a crawl. The roads were in such poor condition they would have time to reach a certain area, stop, and rescue the children before the truck crossed the border.
With the plan in place, Wyatt took the new coordinates for where the MH-47 would deposit the team. Tinker and Chuck were hunched over their laptops, swiftly figuring out all the details for such a landing. First, the area would have to be cleared of any Taliban who might be potentially loitering in the area. The Unimog would be trundling down the dirt road in less than an hour and there were many crucial details to be swiftly worked out.
Ram knew that Wyatt had his hands full with this unexpected turn of events. Their mission had gone from expecting an attack by the Taliban on a village, to a rescue effort to get the abducted children back home to their distraught parents.
Once the decision was made, the helo changed course. The arrival time to their new landing spot was now twenty-five minutes away. He watched Ali sit down far away from the team, choosing the nylon seat at the end of the line. The reddish light filling the cabin revealed the anguish she was feeling when she thought no one was watching.
Girding himself, he began walking down the bay towards her. For some reason, he actually wanted to go to her. He knew there was nothing he could do to help her, but what the hell. And then he was there, the corner darkened, and he saw her lift her chin, staring up at him in surprise.
He switched to the private channel. “Feel like some company, or would you rather be alone?” For a moment, Ram swore he saw tears in her eyes, but just as quickly, they disappeared. It was the first time he’d seen her without her game face in place and it did odd things to him.
Ram waited patiently, letting her decide if he should stay or go. Why had he come down here? Was it because Wyatt had threatened him if he didn’t have her back? Or was it something else, deeper and far more mysterious that moved him to join her in this dark corner as she fought back tears.
Ram wasn’t sure. He rarely thought about why he did things. He’d done everything on his own since he was a young child without parental guidance or support. What had kept him alive until now was his own intuition and strong sixth sense when he was in a threatening situation. And he never questioned those choices because he was still, for some reason, alive.
Sensing she needed to talk—like most women—he said, “I’ve got a good ear to listen to you, if there’s anything you want to get off your chest.” Well, these weren’t exactly warm, fuzzy words, but he knew she’d get the gist. “I know how close Husna is to you. It had to hit you pretty hard finding out she was one of the kids who were kidnapped.”
Instantly, those tears were back and Ali jerked her head to the side, trying to hide her reaction from him. “Leave me alone, Torres.”
The huskiness in her voice told him she was close to losing control. “Yeah . . . okay,” he replied, and turned away. Well, what should he expect? He’d set it up like this between them from the beginning so that he’d have no major connection with her on the team. Dan Cousins and Manny Felix were usually the ones who worked with her when two SEALs were needed in a tactical situation.
And why the hell did it bother him that she wanted to cry? No one had cried for him growing up. And any tears he’d shed had always been in the safety of that dark hidey-hole of a closet, where no one could hear him sobbing.
Finding an empty spot close to the front where the rest of the team was gathered, Ram sat down next to Manny.
“Is Ali pretty tore up?” he asked, concerned, giving Ram a brief glance.
“Yeah, I think so.”
“She loves that little tyke, you know? From the first, Husna singled her out and that kid loves her more than anyone else in the world.” He shook his head. “I once asked Ali if she could adopt the child, if she would.”
Frowning, Ram asked, “What did she say?”
“Well, you know Ali: she’s ever the realist. She said she would, but Husna had family, lived with her aunt, and no one would ever let her adopt a child under those circumstances.”
Rubbing his beard, Ram nodded. “Think she’ll be okay for the mission?”
Manny grinned. “Hell, yeah, dude. She’s got her shit together, no worries.”
“We’ll be using an infrared scope to look through that canvas fabric to see how many Taliban are in the back with those kids.”
“Nobody better than Ali, then, to be with you on that part of the mission. She’s deadly behind a scope, as you know.”
“Yeah, but she’s upset.”
“Stop worrying. Hasn’t she proved to you in the past that she’s a professional? Her shit is tight.”
“Yeah,” Ram mumbled and sat back, closing his eyes, trying to focus only on the dangerous plan that Wyatt had dreamed up. They had to get lucky. Damn lucky. And even then it was anyone’s night to die. Oddly, he wasn’t afraid of his own death. As he looked a little deeper into himself, he suddenly realized that he was afraid—for Ali.
Now why the hell would he do that? He never worried about anyone else on the team dying. This was another first for him, throwing him into a quandary, unable to figure out why he’d even thought up such a thing.
Maybe Lockwood’s inspiring talk had done it. He’d not been concerned about her before his “woodshed” moment. Opening his eyes, he lifted the flap on his watch. In fifteen minutes they’d be on the ground. And then they had forty-five minutes before that Unimog rolled into that damned narrow dirt road in that canyon they’d spotted on the map. On the one side, it had a two-thousand-foot rocky cliff above the road. On the other, a boulder-strewn thousand-foot drop-off. And there weren’t any guardrails in this country, either. That vehicle was going to have to do a bare crawl for the half mile where the road narrowed like a test tube beside that huge cliff.
Wyatt’s plan was totally unconventional, but it was brilliant, using the geography in that area to assist them in the rescue. Ram was sure that at the War College, where Wyatt had taught, if he’d pulled this one off, they’d probably call it the “Hail Mary Op.” That, or the “Oh Jesus Op.” A sour smile edged his mouth. This whole mission had been chaos from the start: expect the unexpected. He was confident in his comrades to be a calm, reliable force in the face of the coming danger. Ali had always been that way, too. But tonight, might she falter? Would her emotions, because she was a woman, get the best of her so she’d screw up and leave everyone in a lurch and vulnerable to a bullet? Fuck.
*
After landing, the team made it to the canyon, the high cliff and equally deadly one-thousand foot drop off on the other side of the road. Lockwood dispersed his people. They all knew where they had to be and their job. She had gone to the side of the road that had the drop-off. Torres was about seventy feet away from her, farther down the road. Right now, Lockwood was creating a manmade avalanche of rock and dirt across the road that would stop the Unimog. Ali lay on her belly, her M4 rifle nearby and tucked against her body to protect it. She hid her face in the crook of her arm when Steve Allen tossed a grenade as high as he could up onto the rugged, rock cliff face. She lay on the other side where the road narrowed, about a hundred feet from the actual area and waited until the grenade exploded.
A booming sound erupted into the dark night, bright red and yellow tentacles of fire arcing outward. Rocks of all sizes and dirt blew outward, falling across the road, making it impossible to drive any farther. The pressure wave struck, rolling across her and she burrowed deeper into the cliff slope to protect herself and her rifle. Some of the dirt and smaller pebbles pelted down on her, striking her helmet and the back of her Kevlar vest. She pulled her NVGs down over her eyes after lifting her head, and saw the dust floating high above the road.
“Everyone okay?” Lockwood demanded over the radio.
Everyone answered in the affirmative.
“Take your positions,” he ordered.
Ali got to her knees, holding her M4 up, the butt resting on her thigh as she surveyed the area. The side of the cliff, a thousand feet below her booted feet, looked like a black maw. She saw Wyatt and Tinker roll out some huge, round boulders from the edge of the road. They had been loosened by the grenade, and would make it impossible for the Unimog to drive around them. Wyatt’s plan was to blow a hole into the cliff and cause a landslide across the road, making it appear to be a natural event that had occurred. The enemy would never guess it was an ambush because there were many rocky avalanches in these mountains every day. Ali felt Wyatt had come up with a clever plan to use the land to his advantage.
Now, she looked down at the drop-off behind her. Luckily, there was a thirty-foot wide shelf about three feet below the main road. It was going to provide excellent cover, and she could use her infrared scope to seek and find the Taliban hidden in the rear of the transport without being seen. She estimated where the truck might stop, and dug a couple of toeholds into the dirt and rocks to give her leverage when necessary.
Through her NVGs she saw Torres settling into his area, his M4 ready. Lockwood and some of the other SEALs finished rolling a few more boulders up on the road. Her gaze drifted back to Torres. He looked powerful and confident. Too bad he was such a sourpuss. But maybe that was a good thing because, to her shock, she’d been drawn to the dude since she’d arrived on the team. It was a constant battle not to give into her curiosity and try to know him on a friendlier level.
But friendship would be it. She would never initiate any kind of a personal relationship with anyone from her team. Never.
At times, Ali felt as if Torres was the ultimate male tease to her inner female that she hid from everyone. He was handsome in a rough kind of way. She liked his over-the-top confidence because it was backed up with skills and talent. He wasn’t cocky, which was always a turnoff—he was more like the Rock of Gibraltar, steady and reliable. Those two traits were a turn-on for her.
In some ways, he reminded her of her father, who had that same kind of rooted steadiness. But that was where those two split and went opposite directions personality-wise.
She was glad Wyatt had ordered the two of them to work as a team. They were to use their infrared scopes to peer through the canvas fabric on the rear of the truck, locate where the children were, and how many enemy were there. Through the scope, they would see where the enemy stood, and then kill them. The infrared scope would clearly show the bright red outlines of the children and where they were located. Wyatt’s whole plan hinged on the truck being placed into park, and the two men in the front seat, and some of those in the rear, getting out to go move the many boulders out of the way so they could continue down the mountain. It was a long shot. But it was the scenario that was the least dangerous for the vulnerable children. Any other plan would put their lives in real jeopardy. At least here, she and Torres would have a close shot at the enemy and swiftly take them down. In another ten minutes, the truck should arrive at this point on its journey. She saw Ram get up, go to the top of the road, peering around. Did he not like the spot? That was possible. She waited, saying nothing.
Ram moved easily over the edge of the road and carefully checked out the lip before stepping onto it. Even then, he sat down on the edge of the road and tested its strength because he wasn’t a lightweight. Ali understood his precautions and watched as he held up his M4 with ease, shooting gloves on, the tops of each finger cut off so he had physical contact with his weapon. He resumed a crouched position, fully hidden below the road, his rifle at the ready.
They had discussed their plan earlier after unloading from the MH-47. He would take a spot farther down on the lip from where she was situated. That way, if the truck didn’t stop where they thought it would, at least one shooter would be able to take out two or three of the enemy who were in the rear of the truck with the children.
She moved a bullet into the chamber of her M4. There was no safety mechanism on any SEAL weapons. Both she and Ram had silencers on their rifles so it wouldn’t startle those enemies who were up ahead of the parked truck tossing rocks off the road, until it was too late.
Wyatt directed Dan and Steve to scramble up the two-thousand-foot cliff on the inside of the road, hiding among boulders, insuring good range of sight with their weapons. He, Chuck, Manny, and Tinker were stationed on the low side of the road, just beyond the nasty avalanche, with good visibility to shoot when it came time to take the tangos down as they cleared the area. All of them carried silencers on their weapons. They had the most up-to-date equipment in the world at their disposal and tonight, it was going to make the difference. Steve and Dan were high enough so there would be no crossfire or friendly-fire casualties from either side of the road. Wyatt was a stickler on that one.
Struggling to keep from worrying about Husna and the other children, Ali had never worked so hard as tonight to put her emotions in her kill box. She loved children. Her thoughts drifted momentarily to her family back home. Cara, had always been the soft, gentle sister in their family. Ali was the warrior, just like her mother, who came from fierce Yaqui warrior blood in Mexico. She was on the council of the Pascua Yaqui tribe who lived on a reservation, near Tucson, and was a fighter for the rights of her people. Her father, Diego, originally from Sonora, Mexico, was a peaceful man who doted upon his two daughters. He was the most loving man she’d ever seen and he, like Cara, was on the peacemaking side of their family.
Children were important to the Montero clan. Even though Ali was going to try saving these terrified children tonight, she wasn’t a kindergarten teacher at heart like Cara. No, she was a warrior and celebrated that every day. She fought for the underdogs of life, just as her mother Mary did. She was as good as any man, and her mother had given her confidence, as well as her DNA. There wasn’t anything a man could do that she couldn’t do—and sometimes better.
CLICK.
Ali instantly snapped her head to her right. There, coming down the twisting, snake-like dirt road, was the Unimog. Its headlights bounced and swayed because the road was in terrible shape, the shafts of light moved like wavering twin beacons, carving the blackness out of the night, making strange shadows that looked more like evil monsters lying in wait. Eventually, she heard the deep growl of the Unimog’s engine as it crawled off the slope and onto a flat stretch toward where they were located. The click was from Wyatt’s radio. From here on out, only a click would be used to communicate, no human voices, no whispering, which could alert the enemy. They had to fade like unseen ghosts into the surrounding shadows. The whipping wind came up from behind Ali, through the unseen valleys below and around the massive peaks, kicking up puffs of dust on the road in front of them every now and then.
Her heart slowed in rate as the Unimog rounded the last curve, its headlights flashing upon the avalanche that was spread across the road. There was a grinding of gears, a slowing of forward motion as the driver spotted the blockade. She forced herself to breath as the truck inched closer and closer. She could hear someone in the rear yelling, “Is it an ambush?”
The driver leaned out the window yelling, “No! It’s a landslide! Get out! Come help us move these boulders out of the way!”
Ali felt some relief, bringing up the M4 into firing position, finger lightly caressing the two-pound trigger. The truck came to a stop four feet in front of where she lay. She and Torres had a perfect and unobstructed view of this side of the truck. She watched as four armed Taliban soldiers slipped out from beneath the canvas flap, leaping out of the truck bed and onto the hard dirt road. They were cursing as they trotted toward the front of the Unimog, where rocks blocked their forward motion. The driver and his sidekick climbed out, both doors remaining open, the truck idling noisily. The smell of diesel hit her nostrils. She hated the odor.
Bringing up her M4, she looked through the infrared scope. She spotted two men standing up in the truck, hands on their AK-47s. Scanning slowly one way and then the other, she counted fifteen red outlines of the children sitting far below where the guards stood over them. The kids were probably sitting on a long wooden bench, she guessed. She clicked her radio, connected on a special channel with Torres’ radio.
He returned the click. This alert told him she was now going to fire at the count of three. Ali had put her sights on the nearest guard inside the rear of the truck, brushing the trigger. The heavy jerk of her M4 slammed into her shoulder. At the same time, she heard Torres fire almost simultaneously. Watching through her scope, she saw two Taliban soldiers collapse and disappear.
The night suddenly erupted in gunfire coming at every angle as the shocked Taliban, busily lifting and pushing rocks out of the way, froze. The muzzle flashes were minimal, and so was the sound. Taliban began to get hit, hurled two or three feet off the ground, AK-47s flying out of their hands.
Without a word, Ali and Torres scrambled up the lip and onto the road, rushing for the rear entrance to the Unimog. Torres was closer and reached the step first, leaning up, yanking the covering aside. Ali was right next to him, her rifle on her shoulder, ready to fire, swiftly taking in the heat signatures.
The children, seated on a wooden bench, were screaming and crying, hugging one another, trying to hide, but there was nowhere to go. Blocking out the chaos, Ali concentrated on the two unmoving bodies lying sprawled out across the metal floor. Looking through the scope, Ali could tell the tangos were dead because the reddish glow around them began to dissolve.
She hopped up into the bed of the truck, her rifle on one of the enemy and Torres’ muzzle aimed at the other one. They were taking no chances. With her boot, she pushed an AK-47 away from the farthest soldier’s hand and Torres did the same thing to his tango.
Both of them leaned down at the same time, placing two fingers against the carotid arteries of each the unmoving soldier. Ali felt no pulse, but she heard other gunfire ahead of them. It took but a minute more and suddenly, there was silence outside the truck as well. Ali knew Wyatt and the team had dispensed with the rest of the Taliban. Torres radioed and confirmed it.
Only the pitiful cries of the frightened children in the dark hold, clinging to one another, broke the blackness of the night now surrounding them.
“Let’s get these tangos outta here right now. The kids don’t need to see them when we get a light thrown into this truck,” Torres growled.