Sniper Elite (38 page)

“I'm afraid it's worse than that, Mr. President. This is the age of Wikileaks. You need to get behind this operation yourself. Otherwise, word could leak out that you were initially against it.”

The president's temper flared. “It's an unauthorized operation, Tim! I'm
supposed
to be against it!”

Hagen held his ground. “With all due respect, Mr. President, that doesn't matter now . . . not in the eyes of the public. This situation
has turned into a full-scale military operation to rescue a female pilot—a photogenic female pilot!—who was raped and tortured by the enemy
on camera
. If this mission succeeds, and word leaks out that you didn't back it up—
or worse
—if it
fails
, and word leaks out that you didn't back it up—”

“Okay, I got it!” The president sat knocking the dried tobacco from the pipe into the crystal ashtray on the corner of his desk. “Most powerful man on earth, my ass,” he muttered in disgust. “Here I am at the mercy of a single lunatic running around over there against my direct orders, and if he succeeds, I have to treat him like a damn hero! But if he fails,
I'm
the one who ends up looking like the dumbass.”

“That's why they say the buck stops here, Mr. President.”

“I never said that,” the president snapped. “
That
idiot remark belongs to Truman!” He tossed his pipe back into the drawer and slammed it closed, grabbing the telephone. “Get me the White House Chief of Staff,” he ordered. “Tell him I want to see him—now! And tell him I want to see the Joint Chiefs as well.”

He hung up the phone and rocked back in the chair, pointing his finger at Hagen. “Now, what
you're
going to do, my young friend, is figure out a way for me to burn this fucking SEAL to the ground—no matter
what
happens. Is that clear?”

Hagen hesitated.

“What, Tim?”

“Well, sir, if the mission fails, burning him probably won't even be an issue. He'll likely be dead—he may be dead already. But if it succeeds, sir . . . well, sir, a photo of you putting the Medal of Honor around the neck of the hero who saved America's new sweetheart will look fantastic in all the papers.”

The president's gaze turned flinty. “That's not burning him.”

“Begging your pardon, sir, but that's
exactly
what it is. The entire modern world will know his face, and within a week, they'll know everything else there is to know about him. For an operational US
Navy SEAL, Mr. President, particularly one as gung-ho and private as this one . . . there's nothing worse.”

A slow grin took shape on the president's face. “That's perfect. Hell, it's perfect all the way around. Remind me so I never forget to send you a Christmas card, Tim. You're a ruthless bastard. Now what about Pope? Wasn't he supposed to be keeping these SOG people under control?”

Hagen stood tugging on his lower lip, taking the time to give his response some very serious consideration before finally saying, “Well, sir, to be frank, Pope's a horse of a different color. He's . . . well, we don't want to mess with Pope. Nobody really knows what he's capable of. My recommendation is to think of him in these terms: in four years—provided we win the election—he's somebody else's problem.”

“What happened to
the buck stops here
?”

“Well, like you said, sir . . . that's an idiot remark.”

Gil reined back on the stallion to slow him. The terrain had grown too rugged for a full gallop, and there were too many trees for someone with a rifle to hide behind. He knew the Spectre was watching from above, but there were ways for an infantryman to evade infrared temporarily, and Afghan mountain fighters knew them as well as anyone. He trotted the horse down into a dry arroyo and aimed for a gap in the trees.

“You're going to have to keep yourself in the saddle,” he said to Sandra, letting go of her and switching the reins to his left hand to draw the 1911. He felt her arms tighten around him as he urged the stallion to pick up the pace where the ground began to smooth out across a natural paving of trap rock. He unscrewed the suppressor from the pistol and stuck it into his pocket. The hair on his
neck had begun to stand up, and he didn't need the extra eleven ounces of steel hanging off the front of the weapon if it came time to throw down.

There were plenty of HIK fighters in the mountains to the east, west, and south, many of them moving in their direction, but the gunners up in the Spectre were saving their ammunition for any targets that might pose an immediate threat.

“Key the radio for me,” he said.

Sandra lifted the PRC-112 that hung from a lanyard around his neck and keyed the mike.

“Big Ten, this is Track Star, do you have a visual on our friendlies to the north? Over?”

“Roger that, Track Star. Twelve hundred meters due north of your position. We count twenty-plus individuals arranged in a phalanx south of your designated EZ. We also count twenty-plus horses in the trees. Over.”

“Roger that, Big Ten.”

Farther on Gil rode the stallion up out of the arroyo into an almond orchard. The earth was dry and hard-beaten by the goats and sheep that trampled it day after day. The low limbs made it hard to ride, but it would be quicker than skirting the orchard. As they made their way through the trees, the air pressure seemed to increase suddenly around them. A pair of sonic booms clapped overhead, and the sky was filled with the brain-scrambling roar of two Pratt & Whitney afterburning turbofan jet engines. The horse reared up, and Gil nearly fell from the saddle as he fought the animal under control.

“Son of a bitch!” he hissed. “I guess that's the goddamn cavalry.”

“Crazy flyboys,” Sandra said into his neck.

They could hear the distant explosions of ordinance being dropped on the mountain to the west, but they couldn't see exactly where because of the trees.

“That should drive them back into their holes for a minute or two,” Gil said.

They cleared the orchard as the F-16 Vipers were completing their bomb run and turning back toward the south for Bagram Air Base. With just over a thousand yards to go before they linked up with Forogh's people, a pair of spider holes opened up in the ground right in front of them, and out popped two young Hezbi fighters hoping to catch a glimpse of the jet fighters before they were gone. At first, they seemed every bit as surprised to see Gil as he was to see them. He reined the horse left to give himself a better shot with his right hand and popped off two quick shots, killing them both.

Four more spider holes instantly opened up, and this time the men inside them came out firing. Gil shot two and killed them outright, digging his heels into the horse to send it bolting toward the gap in the mountains. The two remaining gunners continued to fire wildly at them from behind. The horse was hit multiple times and whirled around, groaning in pain and terror. Gil fought to get him under control as the gunners stopped to reload. Sandra held onto him for dear life, but the centrifugal force of the horse whirling around broke her grip, and she flew from the saddle.

This is it
, Gil thought, fighting to keep the horse from trampling her.
This is how I go out—fuck.

A 105 mm howitzer shell impacted between the gunners and blew them both to atoms. A shell fragment struck the horse in the brain and killed it instantly, sending it toppling from its feet toward where Sandra lay on the ground. Instead of jumping clear, Gil stayed tight in the saddle trying to steer the animal away, not realizing that it was dead on its feet. It crashed down on its right side, pinning Gil's leg beneath it.

He pulled with all of his force, trying to free the leg, but it wouldn't budge an inch. “Sandra!” he said, grabbing her wrist.

She lifted her head and dragged herself up against him. “I'm okay.”

He jerked the M4 from his back and put it into her hands. “Keep under cover here behind the horse.” He unclipped the Remington from his harness and rested the bipod on the horse's rib cage, putting his eye to the scope and searching the surrounding terrain. The enemy was moving toward them now from both the east and the west.

“Here they come,” he said. “It's time to get you the fuck outta here.”

“What about you?”

He keyed the radio. “Big Ten! Big Ten! This is Typhoon! You're gonna have to make the drop on my present position! I'm pinned under the horse and cannot make the EZ! No time for cover fire! You have to line up for your drop run now! I will keep the enemy at bay! Over!”

“Roger that, Typhoon. Lining up for the run. Give us three minutes. Over.”

“I don't understand.” Sandra was saying. “What drop run?”

“Surface-to-air recovery,” he said, switching out the subsonic ammo in the Remington for a ten-round magazine of .308 Lapua Naturalis hunting ammunition. The Naturalis round had a special valve in the nose of the bullet to not only guarantee its expansion upon entering the body, but to control that expansion so the round did not break apart, not even upon striking bone. He put his eye to the scope, placed the reticle on the closest bad guy five hundred yards out, and squeezed the trigger. The bad guy grabbed the base of his throat, flipping over backward as if he'd been clotheslined.

Gil took his eye from the scope and touched Sandra's face. “You're going out of here on a Skyhook, honey.”

“No,” she said, shaking her head and starting to cry. “I can't leave you down here. We don't leave our people behind!”

“The Northern Alliance will come for me,” he said. “Well, they're
not exactly the Northern Alliance anymore, but they used to be, so don't worry.”

“Where are they?” she demanded, swiveling her head around. “Why aren't they here? They don't even know the horse is dead!”

“There aren't enough of them for a fight this close to the village, but they'll see the drop. They'll see the drop and they'll come. Don't worry about it. Your mission is to get—hey, what the fuck is this?” He grabbed at her belly where the bloody gown was showing through the open cloak. “You're fucking bleeding, Sandy!”

“I didn't want to you worry,” she said lamely. “I got hit just before the horse went down.”

He grabbed up the radio. “Big Ten! Expedite! Expedite! Track Star is hit! Repeat! Track Star is hit! Belly wound! Repeat! Belly wound!”

John Brux unbuckled his harness and climbed out of the pilot's seat. “Jesus, Dave, she's been hit in the fucking belly!”

“Where the fuck are you going?” the copilot called over his shoulder. “I've never done this before, John!”

“I'll be right back! Just get us lined up!”

Brux found Master Chief Steelyard and Captain Daniel Crosswhite in the cargo hold, where they stood on the open ramp helping the load master ready the drop kit for the STAR system. The wind was howling, and he had to shout to be heard over the roar of the aircraft's four T56 turboprop jet engines. “She's been hit!”

“Sandra?” Steelyard shouted back. “How bad?”

“In the belly. Shannon's pinned under the fucking horse. I think he plans on sending her up alone, but if Sandy's bleeding—”

“If she's bleeding, we can't loiter up here long enough to cover Gil until the cavalry gets here!”

“That's right!” Brux shouted. “CenCom's sending everything they've got, but they're twenty minutes out. Those Northern Alliance guys can't see Gil from where they are, and all he's got down there is a rifle!”

Steelyard turned to grab an emergency aircrew parachute from the bulkhead, throwing it at Crosswhite. “Put that on, asshole, we're going in!”

Crosswhite grinned and began stepping into the harness. Steelyard grabbed a chute for himself.

“What the fuck do you mean, you're going in?” Brux shouted in disbelief. “Jesus Christ, Chief! We're dropping the kit from three hundred feet!”

“It's a called an
E
-LALO!” Steelyard said with a laugh. “
Extremely
low!”

Brux adamantly shook his head. “You can't do it! That's just an old C-9! Those chutes aren't made for LALO-ing. They take too long to open. You'll hit too fucking hard!”

Crosswhite's mind raced to form a solution to their dilemma. He considered briefly deploying the chutes inside the bay. This would allow the wind to drag them off the ramp behind the kit, but the idea was just too damn dangerous, and they might not land anywhere near the kit that way. “I got it!” He turned to the load master. “Get us some five-fifty cord—we'll rig a pair of static lines!”

Steelyard took Brux by the arm, shouting into his ear. “Better get back up front, John. If Gil's pinned under the horse, he won't be able to set up the STAR system anyhow. We
have
to go in!”

By the time they were lined up for the drop, Crosswhite and Steelyard were armed and ready to jump with the kit. They had each attached a thirty-foot-long, double line of parachute cord to the chute carriers on their C-9 parachutes and secured the opposite ends
of the lines to the deck of the ramp on either side. These static lines would rip the chute carries open the second they stepped off the end of the ramp and deploy each of their parachutes more or less instantly.

Crosswhite stood on the ramp beside Steelyard waiting for the load master's signal to step forward. “You ever jump this low with one of these pieces of shit?”

Steelyard grinned at him. “What do you think? I used to be six feet tall!”

They broke up laughing, and the load master held up his thumb. “Thirty seconds to drop!”