I, Judas the 5th Gospel (7 page)

Mumphries had begun to get sick just as this storm front had descended over the mountains three days ago. Bad timing. It was the only kind of timing that Gates believed in. Mumphries spasms became so severe that Gates had to put down the gun to wrap both arms around the sergeant and hold him tight. He knew there was no rush on the targets. It would take fifteen minutes for them to make it to the top of the pass.

There were beads of sweat on Mumphries’ forehead, a very bad sign in the freezing air. Gates took off his Gore-Tex parka and wrapped it around the other man despite Mumphries’ feeble protests. Gates then once more draped his own body protectively around the other man, allowing Mumphries to maintain some degree of body heat. The cold air immediately penetrated Gates’ coat liner and camouflage fatigue shirt.

“Do your job, sir.”

Gates almost didn’t hear Mumphries. Almost. Making sure the parka was wrapped tightly around his sergeant, Gates let go of the other man. Reluctantly, Gates reached inside his fatigue shirt, fingers groping beyond the polypropylene underwear he wore next to his skin to wick away moisture, to the thin piece of cloth that was tied loosely around his neck with a slip knot. It was a stole, what a Roman Catholic priest used to bless the sick and the dying. Gates pulled the loose end through the knot and removed the cloth. He wrapped it around his right hand. Then he picked up the Barrett sniper rifle once more.

Looking through the thermal scope, he saw that the six figures were almost at the pass, over twelve hundred meters away, and two hundred meters below Gates’ position. He centered the reticules on the last man’s head. Gates then mentally adjusted for distance, altitude difference, and wind. He let out his breath and didn’t inhale, finding the rhythm of his heart. Still without breathing, in between heartbeats, he squeezed the trigger as smoothly as when he used to place the Eucharist on the tongues of those coming to communion. He rode the heavy recoil, and then shifted to the penultimate man in line, waited as his heart surged once, became still, pulled the trigger, shifted, waited for another heartbeat, and then fired for the third time. He kept this rhythm, firing as quickly as he accurately could.

The first round hit the trail man in the head, the half-inch-wide bullet effectively decapitating the man. The sound of the round impacting reached the next man in line even before the noise of the distant gun being fired. He was in the process of turning when the second round hit him in the left check bone and took off the entire right rear quarter of his head as it exited.

The third man was slow to react. He died only vaguely aware something was wrong behind him. The fourth man reacted, but Gates had anticipated having to change tactics, and now shifted from the head to the wider body shot. As the man ducked down, the fourth round hit him in the upper chest, having been aimed at his waist. He was knocked sideways, the bullet shredding his heart and lungs and continuing out the other side.

The last two men scrambled for cover, but they were caught between a rock wall on their right and the drop on their left, which was why Gates had chosen that kill zone. He killed the fifth man with a round through the back as the man scrambled at a boulder, trying to climb over it for cover. The sixth man dove to the ground, making as small a target as possible, partially hiding behind several loose stones.

Partially. Gates could see the red outline of the man’s lower right leg. He zeroed in on it and fired. The impact of the massive round severed the man’s leg at the lower calf and knocked him back several feet. The man was most likely screaming in pain, but at this distance, with the wind and snow, Gates could hear nothing, his ears ringing with the sound of the gun going off right next to his head. He fired for the seventh time and put the man out of his misery.

Gates stopped firing. It had taken all of eleven seconds from first shot to last. Automatically, as he’d been trained, he reached down, grabbed a full magazine, and replaced the partially expended one in the gun, slamming the box of new rounds home and chambering a round.

After checking the kill zone for any movement, Gates put down the gun and turned to Mumphries. The sergeant had either passed out or was asleep. Gates had to assume the former, considering the racket the gun had made. He got to his feet, feeling the bite of the cold wind through his thin fatigue shirt and undershirt. His body began to shiver uncontrollably, and he knew he would not last an hour dressed like this.

Gates spread his arms wide, inviting the cold to have at him. He looked up into the swirling snow as if trying to see something.

“Sir.”

The word barely made it into the darkness of Gates’ mind. He could hardly feel his hands.

“Sir.”

With great reluctance, Gates turned from the brunt of the storm toward his sergeant. He knelt next to the man. “Yes?”

Mumphries struggled to open his eyes. “Someone said you were a chaplain before—” Mumphries began coughing again, trying to clear his lungs in vain.

Gates had been in the Army for more than twelve years, and knew there was no such thing as a secret amongst soldiers. His past was something he never talked about, but there was always the soldiers’ grapevine. He slid behind Mumphries, wrapping the sergeant with his own body.

Getting no reply, Mumphries continued. “I was raised Catholic, sir. Church, school, the whole deal. Got married in the church. My wife, she believes more than me.”

How could there be levels of belief
, Gates wondered, but did not voice. He knew where this was heading.

“That chopper doesn’t show today—” Mumphries paused once more as his lungs worked, trying to clear. “I might not make it through the night. I’d like to go clean, not worrying. And it would be a comfort to my wife to know I did.”

“I’m not a priest anymore,” Gates said.

“But you can do it, can’t you? I mean you know the—” the sentence was cut off by a long, rattling cough.

“I know the words,” Gates acknowledged. “But they’re just words.”

Mumphries shook his head, his body shaking in Gates’ arms from the fever that wracked it. “Not to me, they’re not. Please.”

“You’re going to be fine,” Gates promised. “I’ll get you out of here. We’ll—”

“Please. I don’t want to take a chance. I want to know I’m clean. Especially after the things we’ve done here. And in other places.”

Things we’ve done. Other places, Gates thought. He couldn’t allow his mind to go there.

“I don’t have a Eucharist for the viaticum, the passing over,” Gates said. “Or Holy Water. Or a Bible.”

“You got anything? Isn’t it the thought? The belief, the trust, that counts?”

Gates looked at the thin and tattered stole wrapped around his right hand. He slowly unwrapped it and extended it to its full length. Mumphries opened his eyes and saw it.

“What’s that?”

“My stole,” Gates said as he placed it across Mumphries’ sweat-soaked forehead.

“What’s that stain on it?”

“Blood.”

“I thought so. So you’ve done this before?”

Many times
, thought Gates. “Yes.”

They gave Timothy McVeigh last rites
, Gates thought as he made the sign of the cross over Mumphries. Did that mean McVeigh had been absolved of what he had done? The people he had massacred? That he was now in heaven? Gates was trying to think about anything except the last time he’d performed the last of the seven sacraments. Extreme Unction. That’s what it was called when Gates had entered the seminary. The last time he’d performed Extreme Unction was his last act as a man of the cloth. Then he’d given up the cross on the collar of his camouflage fatigues for the crossed arrows of Special Operations. It had not been that difficult to do, as he had already gone through the Special Forces Qualification Course en route to an assignment as the chaplain for the 10
^th
Special Forces Group (Airborne).

Scripture. Now was the time for a reading, but he had no book. He closed his eyes and placed his other hand on top of Mumphries’ head. “
’If we say that we have no sin, we deceive ourselves and there is no truth in us. But if we confess our sins to God, he will forgive us our sins and make us clean from all our wrongdoing.’”

This was when the last communion was to be given. Gates thought about it, then reached into the cargo pocket of the pants inside the Gore-Tex shell and pulled out a cracker he’d saved from his last meal. Keeping it in his pocket had kept it from freezing. He broke off a piece and placed it between Mumphries’ cracked lips. The sergeant’s tongue snaked out and took the particle of cracker.

Gates, half-dressed, was now shivering as badly as his sergeant. He knew neither would make it much past nightfall. And he welcomed the coming darkness. He was very tired. Exhausted to the depths of his bones.

Gates opened his mouth to speak once more, but paused, cocking his head. For fifteen days, all they had heard was the wind. Any change was significant. And there was something at the very edge of his hearing that was different.

“Sir, I—”

“Shh,” Gates said, placing a finger over the lips on which he had just placed the piece of cracker. “Hear it?”

Both men were perfectly still, even Mumphries’ shivering holding at bay for the moment, as they strained to listen.

“Chopper,” Gates finally said. He slid Mumphries over so the sergeant was lying on his rucksack. Then the Captain grabbed the short-range FM radio in the pocket of his combat vest, his hand shaking so badly he could barely turn it on and press the transmit button.

“Eagle, this is Eyes Four. Over.”

The reply was instantaneous and clear, which meant the aircraft was close.

“Eyes Four, this is Eagle. We are inbound your location. Give us an IR strobe. Get packed and ready to depart. Over.”

Gates put the radio aside and began stuffing the few loose articles into the two rucksacks after turning on his infrared strobe light. “They’re inbound,” he informed Mumphries, which wasn’t necessary as the sound of the blades could now clearly be heard coming closer.

“I don’t believe it,” Mumphries mumbled.

Gates didn’t either, but there was no denying the sound and the radio call.

The Chinook appeared out of the blowing snow, creating its own small storm inside the larger one. Snow was caught in the vortex created by the large blades, swirling about. The pilot was fighting the wind, turning the rear of the large, double-rotor chopper to the mountain, a crew chief standing on the open back ramp giving the pilot his distance from the mountain. The large craft began slowly backing toward the hide site.

Gates stared at in disbelief. He’d been on many a pick-up zone waiting for helicopters to come and had been disappointed more often than not. That one was here in this weather at this altitude in the dark was something he had not considered possible or remotely probable. To risk the lives of three men on board the chopper, not to mention the specially modified aircraft, to rescue Mumphries, was something unprecedented in his Army career.

“Thank God,” whispered Mumphries. He looked at Gates with burning eyes. “See, Captain, it worked. Prayer worked.”

To that, Gates had no reply. He was focused on the helicopter. When the edge of the back ramp was about three feet from the mountain, the crew chief gestured at them. Given the wind, this was close as the pilot dared bring the craft. If the blades whopping by overhead hit the mountainside, they’d all die.

Gates threw both rucksacks into the chopper. There was no way Gates could make the short jump. Glancing down, Gates could see the two thousand foot drop to the rocky streambed below.

Gates pondered the situation for a few seconds, the crew chief furiously gesturing as a gust of wind moved the helicopter several feet sideways. A gust toward the mountain like that and there would be disaster. The chopper edged back into place.

Gates reached down and grabbed Mumphries. He threw the other man over his shoulder, his knees almost buckling from the weight. Gates turned toward the chopper and leapt.

The two tumbled onto the ramp, the crew chief grabbing both of them as the chopper immediately began moving away from the rock wall. Gates rolled onto his back and stared up at the ceiling of the cargo bay. The crew chief secured Mumphries on the red web cargo seating on one side, then came over and knelt next to Gates. The crew chief noted Gates’ lack of a parka and then the two on Mumphries, and shook his head in wonderment as the back ramp closed and the heaters fought against the freezing cold.

“Thank you for coming for my sergeant,” Gates shouted above the noise of the engines and rotors.

The crew chief continued to shake his head. “We didn’t come for him. Even for a priority one medevac, the weather is still too bad to fly. This came down from the very top. I don’t know who the fuck you are, sir, but we were ordered to come out here in this shit to get
you
. Our commander told us in no uncertain terms that he didn’t give rat’s ass if we smashed into the mountains. We were flying. And if we did crash, he’d send another bird. And then another.” He held out a red envelope. “They’re holding a jet for you at Kandahar airfield.”

Gates slit open the seal and pulled out the single piece of paper. It was the summons he’d hoped he’d never get. He wished he were still on the mountainside waiting for nightfall and complete darkness.