Sniper Elite (42 page)

He sucked in a deep, painful breath to mostly inflate the still partially collapsed lung and forced himself to his feet. Crosswhite looked up at him wide-eyed, watching as he stepped over and offered him his hand. Both were bleeding from more than one bullet wound, and both were covered in enough blood and grime that their own mothers could not possibly have recognized them.

“Not going to let you ring the bell today,” Gil said, referring to the infamous bell every SEAL knew intimately as throwing in the towel during Hell Week. “Give me your hand, brother. We're going forward to see this fight through.”

Crosswhite could feel Gil's strength flowing into him as he grabbed his forearm and hauled himself to his feet. A sharp pain cut through his groin, and he screamed aloud. The joint was definitely dislocated, so Gil supported his left side as they limped past the second line of dead horses toward the mouth of the canyon, where Forogh and his uncles were still trading fire with the enemy.

“Goddamnable waste of horseflesh,” Gil muttered in disgust.

Crosswhite screamed again, trying to slip free of Gil's grip to the ground, but Gil refused to release him.

“Fuck it! Put me down!”

“They can't get a chopper in here. Walk!”

“What fucking chopper?” Crosswhite howled.

Gil ignored him, dragging him forward on the good leg.

Two Cobra gunships thundered over the canyon, firing rockets and Gatling guns into the remaining HIK and Taliban forces among the rocks at the mouth. Sparks flew, and rock fragments zipped through the air as bodies exploded and men screamed in agony. The Tajiks threw themselves against the ground, horrified they were about to be annihilated as well, but the Cobras peeled off abruptly and banked out into the valley, their guns still blazing away at God knew who.

A flight of A-10 Thunderbolts flashed briefly overhead, their own Gatling guns roaring with a chainsaw sound that cut through the air in short, ripping bursts of fire.

“Winchester,” Gil said, chugging along like a perforated steam engine. “They popped the fuckin' cork for us. We're gonna make it.”

“Let me down!” Crosswhite gasped, crying in agony now. “They can bring me a stretcher.”

They reached the front of the line. Enemy fire raked the rocks from the trees a hundred yards out across the river where the choppers hadn't been able to spot them. Gil put Crosswhite down behind a boulder, wishing like hell they still had a functioning radio.

“Thank Christ!” Crosswhite said, feeling relief sweep through his body.

Gil saw Orzu looking at him. “I'm sorry about your horses,” he said in English, pointing back at the dead animals and holding out his hands in the gesture of a supplicant.

Orzu stepped forward and turned him around to see the plastic tube hanging out of his lower back. His eyebrows soared, and he patted Gil on the shoulder, saying something in Tajik that Gil hadn't a prayer of understanding, but the older man's eyes were telling him
not to worry about it, that this was life, and that life was sometimes very cruel.

Forogh joined them. “My uncle asks, What should we do? We can break out now, but there's nowhere to go on foot.”

“We wait for the helos,” Gil said.

Forogh spoke with Orzu and shook his head with a shrug. “But what about us, he asks? That valley is still full of HIK.”

They stood listening to the jets hammering the valley on the far side of the mountain.

“Not for long, I don't think,” Gil said.

“They will not get them all. The caves are very deep. The HIK will wait until—”

Gil grabbed Forogh's arm. “Don't worry! Tell your uncle you're all going out with us, or I'm staying here
with you
.” He looked at the old man and smiled. “Fair enough, Uncle?”

Forogh translated and the old man smiled back.

“He says, Fair enough, Nephew.”

They picked up their rifles and went forward through the rocks to add their own fire to the tree line.

A pair of Night Stalker Black Hawks appeared overhead five minutes later, and three RPGs shot up from the trees after them almost instantly. Only the practiced evasive maneuvers of the pilots averted utter disaster. They banked sharply away, climbing for altitude, their door gunners pouring fire into the tree line.

Gil busted Forogh on the shoulder. “You'd better get your uncle to pull his men back. Air Force will definitely barbecue that fucking tree line now.”

But even as he was speaking, fifty or more Pashtun came pouring out of the forest one hundred yards across the river in a desperate charge to finish off the Tajik traitors, every one of them bent on killing and dying for Allah in this great battle for what they considered to be the soul of Afghanistan. RPGs exploded among the rocks and
against the ground as the Tajiks fell back through the canyon with no other option but to give ground rapidly.

Forogh and Orzu dragged a screaming Crosswhite between them, scrambling over the jagged terrain toward the heel of the canyon, where they took cover behind the double phase lines of horses, firing singly at the enemy on semiautomatics, many of them on their last magazine. Were it not for the machine gunners in the Night Stalker helos stationed overhead, they would have been overrun completely or blown to hell by RPGs.

Gil felt the vibration in the canyon floor even before he heard the roar of the General Electric F101 turbofans. “Get down!” he screamed, making gestures with his hands. “Get down!”

A pair of B-1B Lancers streaked through the valley past the mouth of the canyon so low that Gil could have sworn he saw the rivets on their fuselages just before he buried his face against the earth near the belly of the dead horse. When the bombs exploded, the ground shook like the very earth was coming apart at the fault lines. Rocks tumbled down into the canyon, and the Tajiks screamed for their lives until the air was sucked from their lungs in the vacuum. Gil and Crosswhite fared better than the rest, having known to expel the air from their lungs before the bombs went off.

When the explosions ceased and the roar of the Lancers receded, Gil raised up to see an entirely different landscape at the mouth of the canyon than had been there only seconds before. The rocks and the river were no longer really there. Only a moonscape of craters and rivulets of muddy water. A number of the Tajiks were badly battered by the shock wave, and still others were partially buried by the avalanche of rock, but miraculously only five of them had been killed.

Gil got to his feet and staggered forward to help as the pair of Night Stalker helos set down at the mouth of the canyon a hundred yards away. The Cobras reappeared seconds later to stand watch as
two more Air Force Black Hawks arrived on station awaiting their turn.

The first Night Stalker crewman to reach Gil was a Master Sergeant that he knew well. His name was Waters, a muscular black man with a bright smile and perfect teeth.

“Master Chief, I've got orders to put you and Captain Crosswhite on the first helo out.”

Gil shook his head. “Get Captain Crosswhite out of here. I'm not leaving until the last Tajik fighter is loaded up.”

Waters stepped forward to take a hold of Gil's arm, not to move him, only to steady him so he wouldn't fall down. “They're going, too, Chief. The Air Force helos are responsible for them. Where's Master Chief Steelyard?”

The last Gil had seen of Steelyard's body, it was among the rocks outside the canyon. He pointed to the crater at the canyon mouth. “He's gone, Sergeant . . . just gone.”

Four army medics were working their way through the canyon, tending to the Tajik fighters who needed it most. Two other medics loaded Crosswhite onto a stretcher and began to bear him out. They could still hear bombs falling in the valley beyond the mountain.

“We're safe now?” Gil asked, swaying on his feet.

“Yeah,” Waters said, being patient with him, still steadying him to prevent him toppling over. “Ain't nobody gettin' back here now. You should come with me, Chief. You're bad off. I don't want you dyin' on me.”

Gil looked at him. “Get those Air Force helos down here, Sergeant. These are my people, and I won't leave them.” He knew that if Waters decided to pick him up and carry him out of the canyon over his shoulder, there wouldn't be jack shit he could do about it, but he was determined to use the last of his strength to see his will be done.

Waters got on the radio and requested the Air Force helos land at once.

A badly bleeding Forogh sat on the ground against a rock, a long gash in the side of his face that would take at least fifteen stitches to close. His uncle Orzu lay against him, clutching his chest with both arms, his lungs injured by the blast wave. Gil tried to smile at them and found that he couldn't, but they smiled back.

“My uncle thanks you,” Forogh said.

Gil felt his eyes fill with tears. “What for?” he croaked.

“He says this battle will be told in the Panjshir for centuries. He says that you have made our clan legend . . . and that he is proud to know you as a warrior. He says to tell you that you will always be his American nephew.”

Gil's legs gave out and Waters caught him, lowering him gently to the ground.

“Need another stretcher over here!”

Gil spent the first five weeks after Sandra Brux's rescue in physical rehabilitation for his broken ankle, the gunshot wounds to his leg, and the knife wound to his lung. His wife, Marie, flew to Maryland to be with him at Bethesda Naval Hospital, where he was treated like any other wounded combat veteran during his stay. No one over the rank of lieutenant ever came to speak with him, nor did anyone from the Judge Advocate General's Office. Upon his release from the hospital, he was given written orders telling him to report to the Training Support Center Hampton Roads at Virginia Beach, Virginia.

Upon his arrival at Hampton Roads, he was assigned a task of mundane training duties. He was told by his new commanding officer that under no circumstances was he to speak with anyone about the unauthorized rescue mission, and under no circumstances was
he to attempt to contact Captain Daniel Crosswhite. He then spent the next three months cooling his heels around the training center, bored to death.

The news of Sandra's daring rescue had spread like wildfire across the United States, though very few actual details of the operation were released to the public. There were rumors around Hampton Roads of Gil's involvement, but no one ever had the poor judgment to ask him about it.

Then one afternoon, after his second month in Hampton Roads, the other shoe finally dropped. He was called before his commanding officer and given the news that he and Daniel Crosswhite were to be awarded the Medal of Honor, along with Halligan Steelyard, who would be awarded the medal posthumously. There was to be a ceremony at the White House at the end of the month, during which the president himself would present them both with the award. Gil felt his temper flare, but he maintained his military bearing, snapping to attention and stating respectfully that he intended to refuse the award.

“Oh, you can certainly refuse it,” the Navy commander said, “but you might want to consider the fact that this president now stands poised to win reelection. Do you really think it's a good idea to spit in his face a second time? Your court-martial has been held in abeyance only because of his personal order.”

That had settled the matter. Gil would have no choice but to accept the Medal of Honor, allowing the president to use him as a prop in his political freak show.

MASTER CHIEF GIL
Shannon stood in the White House in his Navy dress whites, posing beside Captain Daniel Crosswhite before a bank of photographers. Marie sat off to the side beside Sandra Brux, who had only recently made her first public appearance. Her
husband, John, sat on the other side of her. Both were in uniform, and both were smiling. Neither of them had any idea what the charade was really all about. All they knew was that two brave men were about to receive the nation's highest military award.

Sandra gave him a wink, and he nodded back, feeling like a complete chump to be accepting a medal for getting one of his best friends and seven brave Tajik fighters killed.

Crosswhite, however, was eating it up. He knew the whole thing was a charade, but he didn't care. As far he was concerned, they'd both earned the goddamn medal, and Steelyard, too. “Why let it get to you?” he'd said to Gil earlier in the day during one of the brief moments they'd been left alone. “The only thing that pisses me off is that Sandra doesn't get shit for what she went through.”

Gil tried to focus on the bright side. He was still a member of DEVGRU, as far as he knew, and he had been somewhere that no other SEAL had ever been . . . Iran. Who knew how valuable such an experience might be to SOG in the future? There was also the medal itself to consider. Good or bad, right or wrong, Medal of Honor recipients enjoyed a certain status within the US Armed Forces, and Gil realized there would be ways of using that status to his advantage.

Still, there were jealousies within SOG that he would have to contend with, other operatives who might now try to edge him out of the game. Only time would tell how well he would be received by his peers in the coming months. And only time would tell how willing the Head Shed would be to put a Medal of Honor recipient back into harm's way.

The President of the United States entered the room and stood before the podium. “Good afternoon,” he said with a smile. “Today, we are gathered to bestow . . .” And so the brief speech went, and after the president had finished telling the American public what gallant warriors both Gil and Crosswhite were, he stepped from behind
the podium to accept the first of two medals from the secretary of defense.

He was about to slip the sky blue ribbon over Gil's head when he stopped. “You know what?” he said, turning to look toward the honored guests. “I've got a better idea. Sandra, would you mind doing the honors?”