Choke Point

FORTY-SIX

Ross had found the secondary entrance to the minaret through the mosque, but the door there had also been blocked. He did manage to pry it inward enough to squeeze through, just as 30K had reached the hole in the tower and was staring down the stairwell.

But as 30K had dropped a second rope and was preparing to scale his way down toward the staircase — and Ross was about to climb his way up over the gauntlet of jagged stone — that helicopter had rumbled overhead, and Ross had activated his Cross-Com and HUD to see what the hell was going on. He patched into Kozak’s drone and was cursing not two seconds after viewing the map floating in his HUD:

The dismounts had finished their sweep through the cemetery and were heading toward the mosque. Whether Naseem had spoken to them or not didn’t matter anymore. They were coming, and Ross needed to get the team out of there.

Their second problem was the chopper, a MIL Mi-24D Hind known by Russian pilots as the letayushchiy tank, or the ‘flying tank.’ The Yemen Air Force had approximately fourteen of these attack helicopters in service, and this ‘D’ variant had two separate cockpits for the pilot and gunner.

A single 12.7mm four-barrel Yak-B machine gun jutted from under its nose turret, while four 57mm rocket pods were mounted beneath stubby wings. Ross didn’t bother scanning the bird’s additional weapons. The fact that CAS (Close Air Support) had arrived was bad news if you were running a clandestine operation and trying to make a swift and silent escape.

The gunship wheeled overhead as though its crew were going to lower a rescue line –

But then it suddenly pitched forward and raced off, its machine gun blazing.

Ross’s HUD switched to drone video piped in by Kozak, who’d redirected the UAV to a higher position so they could see the gunner’s target.

A convoy of four Panhards operated by the rebels had come racing up the street toward the cemetery, with more troops running alongside them, several carrying RPGs on their backs.

‘You better hurry up, boss, because the fight’s coming to us,’ called Kozak.

‘I hear you,’ said Ross, then he started his way up the staircase, clutching chunks of stone and checking each new position for good purchase, his boots slipping over the dusty rock, his flashlight now Velcroed to the side of his helmet, the beam cutting through the dust motes like a light-saber. The sweat was burning his eyes, and he grimaced over the taste of plaster.

30K was coming down the inside wall with the speed and agility of a man who’d been bitten by a radioactive spider, and Ross couldn’t help admiring the operator’s youth and unwavering sense of purpose. He, too, was burning with the desire to rescue his buddy, and he reached Pepper a few seconds before Ross did.

Only Pepper’s left boot was visible; otherwise, he was completely buried by chunks of rock, and one by one, Ross and 30K worked together to uncover him. They cleared away his face and legs, but the largest section of stone, about two meters square and a half meter thick, was lying across the sergeant’s back, and it seemed the only thing that had saved him from not being crushed to death was that he’d been slammed and tucked into one of the stairs, with the staircase itself absorbing most of the kinetic energy.

‘Explosion hit the mortar, and the damned thing went off right in my face,’ Pepper explained. ‘What are the odds? What kind of shitty bad luck is that?’

‘I told you, Pepper,’ 30K began, prying free another stone from the man’s shoulder. ‘You gotta start living on the straight and narrow like me. You need to stop tempting fate.’

‘Oh, Jesus, you hear this, Captain? This from the monster of mayhem.’

‘How you feeling?’ asked Ross. ‘I mean breathing.’

‘It’s rough,’ said Pepper. ‘I’m jammed in here really good. We need to find my Remington, too. We ain’t leaving without it. I dropped it somewhere.’

‘I see it up there,’ said 30K. ‘Don’t worry, we’ll get it.’

‘You think anything’s broken?’ asked Ross.

Pepper snorted. ‘Just my ego.’

Ross exchanged a mild grin with 30K, then shook his head at the piece of wall pinning their colleague. ‘Any ideas?’

‘I got a frag,’ said 30K. ‘Let’s just blow it off of him.’

‘Wait, hold on,’ groaned Pepper.

‘Relax, bro, I’m just kidding,’ said 30K.

‘Ghost Lead, it’s Kozak. Are you done in there? The chopper’s engaging the rebels, and Naseem’s boys are moving up on them. We need to be out of here yesterday.’

‘All right, Pepper, you think if we can lift this thing a little bit, you can try sliding out? There’s no time to get a rope in here and try hauling up the rock. We gotta move, all right?’

‘You lift it, boss, and I’ll get my sorry ass out. What’re you waiting for?’

Ross gave a nod to 30K, and they positioned themselves side by side, backs to the edge of the stone, hands locked under the edge, triceps ready to fire up and take some serious pain.

‘On three,’ said Ross.

‘Aw, just pull on it,’ said 30K –

And bang, they got to work, grimacing and groaning in agony as the stone began to lift, an inch, two inches, three, as Ross shouted:

‘Can you move?’

Pepper gasped through his exertion. ‘Not yet. Little more.’

30K exercised his right of free speech, drawing deeply into his vocabulary of four-letter words to create an R-rated mantra that would’ve had conservative blue-haired grandmothers clutching their hearts and fainting right in the middle of Father Thomas’s homily.

Suddenly, sans any fanfare or even a word from Pepper, he drew himself out from beneath the stone, then finally cried, ‘Clear!’

Ross took a slight step forward, then glanced at 30K and said, ‘Let her drop.’

The hunk of stone came down with a heavy bass note, shaking the staircase and cracking in half.

Both Ross and 30K remembered their lessons on how to treat trauma victims and went over Pepper with a fine-tooth comb, checking each of his limbs for breaks, exposed bones, anything that might need immediate care. They examined his pupils, making sure they were equal and reactive to light. They looked for fluid coming out of his ears, which would indicate a head injury. They had him flex his arms and legs several times. His helmet had saved him from what could’ve been the very worst of it, but he did have a gash near his elbows, and probably a hundred other bruises that would only reveal themselves in the days to come. He was damned lucky to be alive.

‘All right, big guy,’ Ross began. ‘I know it hurts, but we need to leave. I’ll get your rifle.’

‘Thanks,’ said Pepper, being helped shakily to his feet. ‘I’m banged up, but I can walk. Just don’t ask me to dance.’

‘Let me get down there first,’ said 30K. ‘Need to clear some rocks from that door so we can open it up all the way and get him through.’

‘You saying I’m fat?’ asked Pepper.

30K laughed. ‘I wasn’t the one who ate an entire pizza.’