The Mullah's Storm (32 page)

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Authors: Tom Young

BOOK: The Mullah's Storm
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A smoke trail spewed from the fort’s battlements like a smudged pencil line drawn straight to the landing helicopter. God, not again, thought Parson. The RPG struck the tail rotor. Shards of metal punctured the chopper’s skin as the tail rotor disintegrated. The stricken aircraft began to gyrate, spinning in the opposite direction from its whirling main rotor. The snow cloud behind the chopper flattened, then encircled and enclosed it as if the ground itself had erupted and swallowed the Pave Hawk in a white maw.
A voice came over Parson’s 112, straining like the pilot was lifting something heavy: “Two’s hit. I got no antitorque. Two’s going in.”
Four insurgents stood on the parapets. One aimed a grenade launcher. Parson shouldered his rifle and shot him.
The wounded helicopter gained a few feet of altitude. Parson saw parts of it through the whipping snow: a rotor, the nose, the broken tail boom. Still spinning, it lurched toward the fort. One of the remaining insurgents rose up with the grenade launcher.
Parson chambered another round and made a snap shot. The bullet chipped masonry in front of the insurgent holding the launcher, and the man dropped behind cover. Cantrell fired a burst from the M-4. His rounds kicked up a spray of dust from the merlon shielding the insurgents.
For a moment, Parson saw the pilot inside the spinning helicopter. He was holding on with one arm and reaching across the cockpit panel with the other as the copilot fought the controls. The chopper spun into the ground between Parson and the fort. Torque from the rotation rolled the Pave Hawk onto its side. The main rotor shattered when it chopped into snow and dirt. Blade fragments tore through the air. A five-foot section sliced into the ground next to Parson like a broadax.
As he ran toward the wrecked helicopter, he heard its engines whine to a stop. He hoped that meant somebody inside was uninjured enough to pull fire handles. Damn fine job setting that thing down if they could continue to function and run the shutdown procedure. Things were bad enough without an explosion.
Rifles chattered as the SF troops tried to keep the insurgents pinned down. Parson slung his M-40 over his shoulder and climbed onto the side of the chopper. He smelled the burned steel odor of overheated turbines, but to his relief, not the sharp fumes of raw fuel.
A pararescueman inside was helping the pilots unbuckle their harnesses. Shouts and curses. Parson offered his good hand and helped the crewmen crawl through the upturned side door. The two pilots, two pararescuemen, the flight engineer, and the gunner all carried M-4 carbines. They dropped to the ground with their weapons at the ready, and each took cover behind the wreckage. Nobody seemed badly hurt. One of the pilots took off his helmet and slammed it into the snow.
“Son of a bitch!” he shouted over the rotors of the other chopper. Sweating face. Trimmed black mustache.
“They’re up in that fort,” Parson said. “I think they got more RPGs.”
“Great,” the pilot said. “And we can’t get all of us out of here in one Hawk.”
“I know it.”
Parson looked over the wreckage and saw the insurgent with the grenade launcher peek up. Cantrell fired a burst. A miss, but the insurgents stayed crouched behind the wall. Parson couldn’t see what the bad guys were doing, but it looked like they had a second launch tube, some kind of shoulder-fired weapon. An SA-7 missile, probably.
Aboard the first chopper, the gunner swiveled his minigun toward the insurgents. The spinning bores fired a storm of bullets that tore into the side of the fort. The slugs threw up red dust but struck none of the enemy.
On his 112, Parson heard Cantrell talking to the first helicopter’s pilot: “Take as many as you can,” he said. “The rest of us will keep them pinned down when you take off.”
“Roger that. We’ll get another aircraft to you ASAP.”
Parson turned to the downed helicopter crew beside him. “You guys take this flight out,” he said. Their job was saving lives. No point keeping them here as targets. Then he looked around him, across the snowfield. Those damned riders could be anywhere by now.
Gold jumped down from the side door of the first Pave Hawk and ran toward him. She held her rifle with both hands and turned her face against the snow and gritty ice kicked up by the rotors. A lock of her hair had come untied, and she brushed it from her face as she kneeled beside him. Something about the angle of the gesture, the profile of wrist and hand, struck Parson as a moment of beauty. Simple grace in the middle of hell.
“What are you doing?” he asked.
“If you want my place on the chopper, I can wait here with Captain Cantrell.”
“No,” Parson said. “Go back to Bagram while you can.”
“Are you sure? You could escort your crewmates home.”
That made him pause. They deserved a last ride with someone who had known them. Their families deserved to hear the story straight from him. He looked at the waiting Pave Hawk, heat waves shimmering from its engines. It could lift him out of this nightmare within seconds.
Cantrell squeezed off two rounds. No guarantee the insurgents would stay pinned down forever. No telling if more were coming. Time for another decision.
“Get back on board,” Parson said. “You can make sure the right people ask the mullah the right questions.” His crew deserved a job seen through to the end.
“You’re certain about this?”
“Charlie Mike, Sergeant Gold. Continue your mission.”
Parson thought he saw a hint of a smile.
“You’re starting to sound like me,” she said.
“Maybe that’s a good thing.” Parson said.
Gold put her hand on his left forearm where his parka sleeve overlapped his glove. She squeezed just for a second without looking into his eyes. Then she jogged back to the first helicopter and the flight engineer slid the door shut. Parson doubted he would ever see her again. He hoped he had done right by her. If he had, that was enough.
“Can you leave me an extra weapon?” Parson asked the helicopter pilot beside him. “I might need more firepower than this bolt action.”
The pilot handed Parson his M-4 and two magazines. Parson shouldered the carbine and opened up with covering fire as the downed crew ran to the other aircraft.
The howl of its turbines rose. When its blades changed pitch, waves of snow shrouded Parson and bathed him in white. The flying snow swirled with exhaust smoke and became a gray soup that smelled like overheated oil. He heard Cantrell fire a burst, then he felt the rotor wash roll over him, a cold, pulsing wind. The chopper rose from the ground, and the smoke and snow cleared enough for him to see the aircraft lower its nose and accelerate.
An insurgent stood with the launch tube. Parson fired and the man went down. Couldn’t tell whether the insurgent was hit or just took cover. Parson dug his spare cartridges from his pockets. Two magazines of rifle ammo, one more magazine of .45s. Plus the M-4 and the ammo the helicopter pilot had left him.
The Pave Hawk grew smaller, and the thump of its rotors faded with distance. It climbed through the cloud ceiling and disappeared as though it had never existed. Now the mullah was someone else’s problem. Whatever the old man knew or did or didn’t do was between him and God and the government. Parson keyed his radio.
“Saxon, Flash Two-Four Charlie,” he called. “We need some close air support in here. Expedite.”
A few moments later, the Brits called him back: “Quick Reaction Force is airborne and inbound. Flight of two Apaches.”
Exactly what he wanted. He could vector in those attack helicopters and have them lay a couple of Hellfires into that fort. The insurgents said they wanted martyrdom. Coming right up.
Parson pulled the cold air into his lungs. It carried exhaust that smelled like a match just after striking, and it scored the inside of his chest. The snow had stopped completely now. Still a solid overcast above, but visibility underneath maybe fifty miles. The sky so smooth and still that pilots would fly through it with only their fingertips on the controls.
He set aside the carbine and picked up the M-40. Lay prone in the snow by the crashed helicopter, the aircraft now a permanent part of the landscape. His wrist throbbed with pain, though it was bearable. He could chamber another round if he had to. Little feeling in his fingertips, but enough to press a trigger. No feeling at all in his feet. He didn’t like that, but it wasn’t important now.
Parson scanned for horsemen approaching from beyond the river. Then he peered through the rifle scope and watched for an insurgent to pop up. The crosshairs bounced with his shivering. He packed some snow into a mound in front of him. Rested the weapon across the packed snow. Crosshairs steady now. He hoped his batteries and ammo would last.
Past the fort, mountains backdropped mountains, ridge after ridge in the cold distance. He thought he knew which of those crests overlooked the wreckage of his C-130, but he put that from his mind. He listened to the hiss of his radio and waited for the sound of gunships.
The Story Behind
 
THE MULLAH’S STORM
 
W
hen you write fiction, your best work may come from what scares you most: you take pen in hand and imagine the worst. When I first flew into Afghanistan, what scared me most wasn’t the thought of getting shot down and killed. It was the thought of getting shot down and not killed.
For most aviators, an encounter with the enemy usually happens in the form of lights streaming up from the earth. It has an air of unreality about it, almost like a video game. If those lights don’t hit you, they don’t hurt you. But what if you had an airplane blown out from under you and you met the enemy on his terms, in his territory? What would you face on the ground? What would your buddies need you to do? Under conditions of extreme duress and hardship, would you make decisions you could live with later?
When I went to the Air Force Survival School years ago, an instructor gave a briefing I have never forgotten. He said, “Every Air Force flier shot down in Vietnam, captured, and dragged to the Hanoi Hilton sat right here in this auditorium and thought, ‘It won’t happen to me.’”
I still think it won’t happen to me. But if it did?
The Mullah’s Storm
is an imagining of that fear.
The book’s action begins with the downing of a C-130 Hercules in Afghanistan, at an indeterminate time in the war. It could have happened in 2001, or it might not have happened yet. A shoulder-fired missile blows my main characters out of their normal world and onto a journey that forces them to disregard personal safety and even personal loyalties for the sake of the mission.
My fears have become reality for some service members, and the characters in
The Mullah’s Storm
are composites of people I have known. One of those people was an early mentor and squadron mate who had served as a Marine Corps helicopter crew chief in Vietnam. He enjoyed target shooting, and I assumed such an avid marksman would also be a hunter. But when I invited him to go duck hunting, he declined. He said, “When I was shot down in Vietnam, I learned what it felt like to be hunted. I have never hunted anything since.”
Although my colleague’s Vietnam ordeal echoes through the book, the characters draw their motivations and mind-sets from veterans of the current wars. These service members, all volunteers, come from the best-educated military ever fielded. American troops have more skill and training than ever before, and their leaders have more confidence in them. They have more individual responsibility and, in extremis, more ability to act alone when necessary. They are not cynical, yet neither are they naive about their missions and the mistakes of those who send them on those missions.
Another difference with today’s military is the greater contributions of women. Their presence as part of the team no longer raises eyebrows; in fact, it is taken for granted. My novel’s female character, Sergeant Gold, was inspired by women with whom I have served. Those real-life military women include some of the best pilots, navigators, and flight engineers I’ve known.
Other characters are from a U.S. Army Special Forces team. As a C-130 flight engineer, I often had the pleasure of working with Special Forces. Sometimes we flew SF troops during their parachute training, dropping free-fall jumpers from so high that they had to breathe from oxygen bottles on the way down. In addition to their other military skills, each SF soldier is fluent in at least one foreign language. Those guys are very smart and very tough, and I’ve seen them face awful conditions with spirit and humor.
I could have set this novel, or one very much like it, in Iraq, or even Bosnia or Kosovo. But during airlift missions over Afghanistan, I was struck by the stark beauty of the country as seen from the air: the snows of the Hindu Kush, great distances of mountains unmarked by so much as a dirt path, cold and clear night air lit by a meteor shower, rural expanses so dark the stars appeared not as scattered points but as silver dust.
The book contains scenes of violence, and sadly, that reflects reality, both past and future. Afghanistan will likely never completely rid itself of insurgents and warlords, jihadists and opium traffickers. The Taliban will not show up on the deck of the USS
Missouri
to sign an instrument of surrender. Even if American forces were to end combat operations tomorrow, the country would need humanitarian assistance and airlift support into the foreseeable future. Whether U.S. troops stay or go, this will be a long war for the Afghans.

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