"Flag? You alright?" McGuire asked again.
I turned away, feeling a rising sense of frustration and panic.
"I've been better," The Colonel finally answered. His voice weak and strained, as though he were lifting something heavier than he could manage.
I tried to smother my relief with a laugh- thr anxiousness was eased almost immediately.
"Let me see." McGuire ordered. "What the hell happened man?"
Flag panted. "That happened."
There was a pause.
"Bullet hit your plate." McGuire reported.
"Yeah, yeah, I'm fine. Come on."
McGuire laughed. "Un-fuck-with-able."
This made me laugh off the worry. Laughter was a balm. It held panic at bay and it seemed to come easily. In these extreme circumstances it became unbearably funny just to act normal. If they could still laugh they were all right.
Something metallic clanged in the background.
"Mark is set." Flag confirmed.
We drove around slowly, combing the walls and windows for anything that wasn't there before.
"ETA on those rebels?" the man on the comms asked someone, it seemed he had forgotten we were listening.
"5 minutes on the Taliban. Drone is 15."
"5 minutes. They live or die because of 5 minutes, and all I can do is watch."
Whoever was on the other end, didn't sound too confident in Flag's escape plan. Or the capabilities of the rest of Alpha Team.
Noah, or whoever he was, must have been a nervous wreck by now, and because of us.
The mistakes made in Helmand weren't because the people in charge didn't care enough, or weren't smart enough. It's too easy to dismiss errors by blaming the commanders.
It assumes there exists a cadre of brilliant officers who know all the answers before the questions are even asked.
How many DEVGRU teams should there have been? One for every guard in the prison? Some of the failures deserved further study.
At risk of a cliché, how is it that a nation that could land an unmanned little go-cart on the surface of Mars, couldn't interrogate the prisoner and go on their merry way? Why did it take the Black Hawks forty minutes to arrive at our force's location when things started to go bad? Shouldn't they have been better positioned at the outset? But these are all questions that are only obvious in retrospect.
Even if you do everything right, you can still fail, even if it had been Ellis on the wire instead of the new guy who was now in a full-blown panic.
White paint ran down the stone walls of a barred window- but what I saw looked out of place. The white liquid stained the walls as it dripped down; it was fresh.
"There!" I shouted. "The window! There's the mark!"
Taylor steered the Humvee near the building, and waited for Amir and Dalton to make their move. "Don't fuck it up," he warned them.
"Copy. I'm gonna need something hollow to make the cone." Dalton ordered.
"Here." Amir handed Dalton a piece of spouting from a scrap heap. "It's hollow."
I held my rifle out the open door of the Humvee, surveying the perimeter for any rogue targets. I was ready to take anyone down if it meant Dalton could make a n escape route through the wall
"Great." Dalton wired up an explosive, and dug it into the sand, touching the wall. "Alright, we're hot."
"Move!" Flag shouted.
"Firing!" Dalton yelled as he ran back to the Humvee.
I climbed out and hunkered down behind the Humvee, using it as a barricade from the blast. Gritting myteeth, i hoped like hell the explosion wouldn't set off any unwanted memories.
Taylor and the others followed suit, some blocking their ears.
"1000," Dalton yelled. "2000, 3000, 4000"
There was a rapid beeping, and the explosive hit the wall and big chunks of it flew off in the explosion. And then, for a few instants, nothing happened.
Sand and flakes of bricks washed over us and the loud pinging of debris ricocheted off the Humvee's metal.
Five figures emerged from behind the dust, heading straight for us. One was limping, being held up by someone else.
Their progress was slow but deliberate, with no hurry, no tension, no anxiety. It was the pace of the invincible.
"That's them!" Taylor yelled, climbing back into the Humvee.
I raced toward them and grabbed the limping prisoner whose leg was dripping with blood. "Come on!" I helped him inside, and immediately organised a tourniquet.
McGuire was covered in dust, but didn't bother to shake it off as he climbed in.
Ellis sat in the front seat between Flag and Taylor.
"Keep him awake!" Ellis instructed as she looked over her shoulder at me. "Priority is the prisoner and extracting his intel. Joint US Forces will handle the prison. Do not engage."
I nodded, and set up a drip for fluids. The Humvee was rocking and swaying in the sand, making it difficult to locate a vein and insert the needle.
"Alpha one, two trucks are splitting off from the main convoy, heading to you. They must have seen the smoke." Noah said.
"Time on the drone?" Flag replied.
"Listen, Predator is 5 minutes out, but those guys are gonna close the gap fast." Noah advised, his voice was shaky.
Flag shook his head dismally. "You gotta create some space."
"That means drive faster!" I shouted at Taylor.
"I'm aware," Taylor replied, in a guff, agitated voice.
No place was safe. The air was alive with hurtling chunks of hot metal.
Two trucks with Taliban on the back were firing their guns.
We were America's elite fighters and we were going to die here, outnumbered by this determined rabble.
"With any luck, they'll think we're just a couple of scared guards."
"Never say luck." Flag grunted.
The prisoner's eyes were slowly closing over glazed eyes.
"Come on, stay awake," I slapped his cheek, and fed more fluid into the drip.
Hayes looked at me from beside the prisoner, gripping the hand rail. "You can do this."
"His blood pressure is dropping." I replied. "I've put an IV in."
Ellis turned in her seat and glared at the man. "This is the moment of truth. I can keep you alive, but I'm not going to. Not unless you give me the name of that base."
The man struggled to keep his eyes focussed on Ellis, but his eyes found me instead. "You won't let me die without my secret. You said that yourself, because you're the good guys, remember?" he winced in pain, and his eyes closed again.
"Wake up! Wake him up!" Ellis shouted.
"I can't!" I replied, grabbing an adrenaline shot and pulling the cap off with my teeth.
Dalton was still behind the passenger door with his rifle out the window, turned in the seat so he could line up his shots, when he was startled by a flash of light down by his legs. It looked like a laser beam shot through the door and up into his right leg. A bullet had pierced the steel of the door and the window, which was rolled down, and had poked itself and fragments of glass and steel straight up his leg from just above his knee all the way up to his hip. He had been stabbed by the shaft of light that poked through the door. He squealed.
"What's wrong, you hit?" shouted Taylor.
"Yes!" And then another laser poked through, this one into his left leg. He reached down to grab his right thigh and blood spurted out between his fingers. He didn't want to look at it.
Then Taylor shouted, "I can't see! I can't see!" The driver's helmet was askew and his glasses were knocked around sideways on his head.
"Put your glasses on, you dumb ass," Hayes said.
But Taylorhad been hit in the back of the head. The round must have hit his helmet, which saved his life, but hit with such force that it had rendered him temporarily blind.
The truck was rolling out of control and Flag, with Ellis wedged between him and Taylor, couldn't move over to grab the wheel. We couldn't stop in the field of fire, so there was nothing to do but shout directions to Taylor, who still had his hands on the wheel.
"Turn left! Turn left! Now! Now!"
"Speed up!"
"Slow down!"
The truck was weaving and banging into the sides of sand dunes.
There was the familiar whistling of a rocket sailing overhead.
"RPG! Cover!" Amir screamed, covering the prisoner's head with his arm.
"Brace!" Flag held his arm out across Ellis's chest, to stop her from being flung into the glass.
The explosion of the RPG clipped the right left fender of our Humvee. Then as we started to spin and Taylor struggled for control, another blast came from behind and rammed into the driver's side. The impact sent us careening into the air
After we were hit, I don't remember hearing anything or feeling any immediate pain, but I recall every sensation of movement that took place from the moment of impact until our Humvee came to a stop. My face was suddenly jammed between Flag's seat and the side of the roll bar. My head was jerked back.
Then I rolled over to the other side of the cab, where my rib cage hit the wheel well. Next I experienced a momentary floating sensation, a slow-motion twisting and tumbling like the dream sequence in a movie. I saw sparks and thought the Humvee was on fire. Finally, I felt a strange tingling sensation in my back. Then everything went still.
We sailed thirty feet, slammed back to the ground, rolled one and a half times, then slid on the left side down for 100 feet and stopped off the shoulder of the road.
I was surprised at how intact it all was. Everything inside that hadn't been strapped down had come to rest on the left side, which was now the bottom. Most had been thrown to the front, and was now piled up against the back of Taylor's seat.
There was a slight odour of fuel inside, and there were liquids draining from places.
Sunlight came through the wide right-side doors that now faced the sky.
I observed all this suspended upside down through the right side door. Reaching down, Hayes checked The guard's neck for a pulse. McGuire had taken the brunt of the impact, and Taylor, because his side had hit the ground, had gotten the worst of it. The whole front end of the Humvee had folded in on itself and buried the bonnet in the sand.
I was too stunned to say anything for a few seconds while my brain started to clear. When I could think again, I didn't think about the chance that I might be hurt. I couldn't feel a thing. All I could think about was my team.
"Everyone okay?" I screamed. I was answered with silence. "Status!" I knew I could hear, because I could hear my voice.
"We're okay," Flag replied finally. "Everyone get out, now!"
The explosions hadn't ceased around us as we clambered out.
Amir and Hayes had the hostage out before I could move.
We then climbed out and got down on the sand by the smashed left underside of the vehicle, digging to see if there was a chance of creating an opening underneath the wreck out of which the body could be extracted. But all the tonnage of the Humvee had ploughed hard into the sand. There was going to be no easy way to get it out.
Flag pulled Taylor out and carried him out of it. The Taylor had a deep and terrible cut across his face and he looked eerily white.
"You alright?" I shouted.
He looked at me frantically.
Ellis was shaking beside me.
"Ops, sitrap?(Situation Report)" Noah called.
"We're okay," I replied. "No serious injuries, except for the prisoner. He's still needing immediate evac. Guard is deceased."
Flag was crouched behind the body of the Humvee, blood trickling down one side of his face. "Get those rifles out!"
"Bring him to me!" Ellis yelled at McGuire, hunkered down beside Flag with her hands covering her ears.
I took the back end of the tipped over Humvee, using it as my cover. I aimed my rifle at the approaching trucks, unable to take a shot.
"Alpha one, three minutes. When the drone is in position, you are gonna have one shot to call the strike. Between relay and delivery, you have got 45 seconds till impact." Noah said.
Flag looked pissed off. "Yeah, piece of cake!"
"They gotta make some distance," Lieutenant General Blackburn hashed in. "They're on foot and that's open desert behind them."
"Drone is in position in one minute."
"They'll be fish in a barrel if they run."
"There's about to be no barrel."
Blackburn growled, exasperated. "Flag, you have got to move! You're within the blast radius!"
The noise was relentless: shooting, grenade blasts, radio calls, men shouting, crying, groaning, screaming back and forth, trying to be heard over the din, each one's need more urgent than the next man's. There was smoke and gunpowder and dust in the air. Poor Dalton was bleeding a river from his shattered right leg and bellowing with pain.
The sun had moved below its peak, and suddenly we were in the middle of a flood of bad guys. They were on their way to assault the prison outpost and we just happened to be along the route. There were a ton of them.
At first, they didn't realize we were Americans, and it was open season. Then, I saw three guys with RPGs taking aim at us from about a block away. I shot each of them in succession, saving us the hassle of ducking from their grenades.
Flag waved at us from over his shoulder. "Everybody leave! Right now! Run! Everybody out!"
We started taking fire from AK's and rocket propelled grenades. The conflict ratcheted up quickly.
RPGs began tearing holes in the loose dunes and the shell of the Humvee, breaking through it and starting fires.
We turned around and raced out into the desert. Meanwhile, insurgents were sweeping toward the crash—so close we could hear them. We cleared the wreckage about two seconds ahead of a grenade attack.
You'd hear the rounds coming past you in the air, followed closely by secondary explosions and whatever other havoc the grenades caused.
The last of Alpha Team had just cleared out of the ditch when the ground shook with a huge force: the insurgents had shot another RPG. The blast was so powerful it knocked a few of us off our feet. Ears ringing, we ran to a dune nearby. But as we were fixing to take cover behind it, all hell broke loose. We got gunfire from every direction.
I turned to look over my shoulder to be sure everyone had made it clear of the Humvee- but it was too late.
Sand and smoke had filled the air of the spot where Flag had been following behind the rest of us.
"Rick!" I shrieked, dashing back for him despite Hayes's feeble attempt to stop me.
Flag's body had been tossed in the blast, his face in the sand. Though he was intact, there was no movement.
The RPG had hit the side of what was left of the Humvee, which took the brunt of the explosion, which was good news and bad news. The explosion also took out a good chunk in the sand.
I moved quickly-I wasn't afraid of getting shot as much as I was that Flag was killed, or close to it.
The Colonel stirred slowly, lifting his head from the sand and looking around slowly before trying to push himself up off the ground. His eyes and mouth were wide open-stunned.
I slapped a new mag into my gun, then grabbed the back of his body armour and pulled him with me as I retreated. At some point as I pulled harder, one of the insurgents threw a frag. The grenade exploded somewhere nearby. Pieces of sand and rock peppered my side, from my butt cheek down to my knee. By some lucky chance, my pistol took the biggest fragment. It was pure luck—it might have put a nice hole in my leg. My butt was sore for a while, but it still seems to work well enough.
I worked my eyes around the road and the surrounding area, expecting all the while to be shot at.
The Taliban, meanwhile, poured out of their vehicles. The just kept coming, swarming all over the road.
"Stay with me, Rick!" I shouted, heaving his body toward the safety of the others.
They all had their rifles out, providing cover fire from around the sand dune.
"Punch left! Punch left!" Flag ordered, fumbling to take out his hand gun as I dragged him.
"You see them running? Do you see what's happening? There is a drone strike about to happen overhead. I am not messing with you. You are gonna die." Ellis was shouting at the prisoner, who seemed awake and terribly frightened.
"Alpha one, drone is in position. You have got to make the call right now." Blackburn shouted through the comms.
"Make the call!" I shouted at Flag, who was now scrambling to his feet.
Of course, the gunfire stoked up real loud as the words came out of my mouth.
"Noah, they're cleared hot on my position. Right now!" Flag yelled.
"They're 50 yards out. You call that strike now, they die." Noah argued.
Blackburn sighed. "He'll move. It's a tactic."
"And what if it's not?"
"Then it's better than the alternative."
I helped Flag to his feet, and took refuge behind the others, frantically checking my mag as he swore into the radio. "Damn it, tell them to fire!"
"Alpha one, bird is away. 40 seconds to impact."
"You like martyrs? You're gonna die lookin' up at this one. I will gladly die here with you, or, you can stop the cycle of violence and I will save you. It's your call." Ellis was yelling at the prisoner, looking somewhat intimidating as she towered over him.
"20 seconds." Noah reported.
"Come on, Nate." McGuire urged.
"B-Bagram. The food crates are rigged."
Ellis sighed and shouted into my ear, quicker for Tac to hear. "Bagram, Food crates are rigged!"
"They're rigged, let's go, let's go!" I shouted, pushing Flag to lunge him forward.
"Get down!" sounded several voices together. The men, Hayes, Taylor, Amir, and Dalton, all flopped to the sand and rolled as fast as they could. Ellis copied them, but more concerned with how hard her landing was.
McGuire reached back to grab Nate and pull him away, and the explosion ripped the prisoner from his hands.
When it blew, I felt myself driven hard into Flag's back plate armour and felt a flash of heat and light behind me. We were in just the right spot. The force of the explosion passed over us. I felt the shock and heat of it, and tasted its bitter chemical ignition, but in the frantic instants after the blast I moved my arms and legs and saw that I hadn't been hurt.
The rest of the guys could not have been so lucky. The prisoner, for sure, was dead.
My body landed over Flag's back, shielding him from the blast, holding my arms over his head protectively. I sat up hesitantly, before the smoke had cleared.
"Flag, status?" The comms rattled. "Ellis? LTC? Anyone, report status."