Target Omega

CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO

The crevasse ran deep and long, high in the Hindu Kush. A short distance ahead, no more than a two-hour walk, was the mountain that intel had identified as the safe haven for Taliban fighters who had been harassing allied troops for the last three weeks, often with devastating effect.

Lieutenant Dan Dwyer led his team cautiously through the narrow passage, alert for any signs of the enemy’s presence. This was their territory and they knew how to remain hidden in the rocky crags and nooks until it was often too late for allied patrols to react.

The crevasse was perfectly constructed for ambush, with only one avenue of retreat. To the team’s left was a steep four-hundred-foot slope, behind which the midday sun was already beginning to disappear, casting hideous shadows throughout the canyon floor. On the right was an imposing wall of rock that rose more than three hundred feet at a sheer ninety-degree angle. Between the steep wall and the more gradual slope, the floor of the crevasse was no more than forty feet wide, with massive boulders throughout.

Every single member of the team preferred not to be walking this path, but there were no practical alternatives. Most of the terrain surrounding the safe haven was impassable and the only other plausible path was controlled by the Taliban.

Dwyer and his men — Chief Petty Officer Terry Cipriano, Petty Officer Ron “Cochise” Coleman, and Petty Officer Bob McKnight — had been in the mountains for three days and had yet to encounter any of the fighters they were looking for. Consequently, with each passing minute their tension grew. Each wanted to get out of the crevasse as quickly as possible, shake the sensations of claustrophobia and being watched, and have room to maneuver. They felt straitjacketed in this place.

As they approached a cluster of boulders, Dwyer heard Coleman whisper behind him.

“Boss. Ten o’clock high.”

All four slowed and looked midway up the slope to their left, squinting as the blinding sunlight framed the crest.

“Don’t see anything,” Dwyer said quietly.

“Me neither,” McKnight concurred.

Coleman stared at a spot on the slope. “Seeing ghosts, I guess,” he said, shaking his head. “Light gets funny up here.”

“You just keep right on looking for ghosts, Cochise,” Dwyer said, turning back to Coleman. “This place—”

Before Dwyer finished the sentence a 7.62×39mm round tore through Coleman’s throat, nearly severing his head from his neck. Almost simultaneously, McKnight took a round in his left shoulder, and Dwyer’s left thigh was also struck. Ground sausage.

The three SEALs dove behind the cluster of boulders a fraction of a second after Coleman’s body collapsed to the ground. A storm of gunfire chased them, slamming against the boulders for several seconds before halting abruptly.

Cipriano peeked quickly around one of the boulders to scan the slope and then looked back to a grimacing Dwyer. “Looks like the last scene from Butch and Sundance out there. I’d estimate forty-five to fifty. That I can see.”

“Shame. Gonna be a shitload of graves for them to dig.” Dwyer nodded at McKnight, who was inspecting his wounded shoulder. “How you doing, Bobby?”

“Pissed.”

“We’ve got a couple of seconds before they start coming down that slope,” Dwyer said. “Terry, take care of Bobby’s shoulder.”

Instead, Cipriano sprinted out to Coleman’s body and began dragging it behind the boulders. Dwyer cursed as he watched from behind the boulder and saw Cipriano get hit in his left hip, a spray of blood and bone marrow temporarily blinding the team leader.

“What the hell,” Dwyer said. “You don’t believe in waiting for cover?”

“Just assumed you knew I’d go, boss.”

“You okay?”

Cipriano’s eyes were bloodshot with pain. “Never better.”

“Okay. Then patch us up, quick as you can. Bobby, get on the radio. We need evac right now. Otherwise, there’s going to be a whole mess of dead Taliban up here.”

Dwyer took another peek up the slope. The enemy was using rocks and shrubs for cover. He detected no movement. He knew that would change quickly.

“Radio won’t work, boss,” McKnight informed. “Canyon walls. We need to get out of here.”

Dwyer knew the team wasn’t getting out of there anytime soon. They were going to be pinned behind the cluster of boulders, backs literally to the wall, unless they could thin out the opposing force substantially.

“All right,” Dwyer said, “they know if they come directly down the slope at us, we’ll pick them off from behind these rocks. So any second now, they’re going to start fanning out to try to flank us. We can’t let that happen. You see them move laterally, you take them out. Got it?”

Cipriano and McKnight nodded.

“Maintain fire discipline,” Dwyer continued. “No matter how hot it gets. Make each shot count—”

Dwyer was cut off by the thunderous noise of gunfire from dozens of AK-47s reverberating off the canyon walls. Shards of rock torn from the boulders screamed past them like swarms of jagged dragonflies.

Dwyer spun to his left and fired single shots at two Taliban trying to flank the team’s left, felling both. Cipriano and McKnight, manning the right flank, each fired bursts at enemy moving to the right. Two more fell.

Even though the enemy’s ranks had been reduced, their fire increased. The SEALs had to pivot from behind the rocks, acquire their targets, fire, and return to cover within seconds. All in the face of withering, incessant fire.

Yet they were doing so with lethal accuracy. The Taliban were determined to outflank them, but every attempt was thwarted.

Even so, the enemy was inching closer down the slope. If they couldn’t outflank Dwyer’s team, they would eventually charge them en masse. And Dwyer knew that the enemy’s sheer numbers would overwhelm three shooters, no matter how accurate they were.

But the three warriors kept fighting, steadily and methodically acquiring targets and taking them out.

The fight had raged for nearly two hours when the rate of fire increased, as if they’d just landed at Omaha Beach. Dwyer was braced against the rock wall, slamming a new magazine into his weapon, as McKnight edged out to see what was going on.

“I got good news and bad news, boss,” McKnight said.

“Give it to me.”

“The good news is, cavalry’s here. Bad news is, it’s theirs. Maybe another fifteen to twenty.”

A bullet ricocheted off the back wall and passed through Cipriano’s left shoulder, leaving a shallow wound. He emitted an angry growl and kept firing. At the same time, two Taliban, firing furiously, charged across the floor of the crevasse. Dwyer spun from behind the rocks and cut them down with two torso shots each, but not before catching some shrapnel in the meat of his left biceps. He dropped his M4 momentarily but willed himself to raise it and fire several more rounds to keep the Taliban at bay.

Four more men charged, screaming loud enough to be heard over the cacophony. Cipriano fired a fusillade, killing them all, and retreated behind the boulders.

Cipriano caught Dwyer’s eye and nodded toward McKnight. Though upright, he was leaning hard against the boulders and appeared dazed, on the cusp of losing consciousness. He was soaked in blood. He’d been hit several times during the course of the fight but was determined to keep going.

Dwyer and Cipriano glanced at each other. The math wasn’t hard. They didn’t have comms. No one knew their position. They’d spent most of their ammunition, and the Taliban seemed willing to sacrifice as many bodies as necessary to get the job done. It was just a matter of time. But they would never quit fighting.

Dwyer winked at Cipriano and moved over to McKnight, patting him on the shoulder.

“Take a blow for a minute, Bobby. We got this.”

He lowered McKnight to a sitting position on the ground and propped him up against the wall.

McKnight stared straight ahead. “Just for a minute, boss. Then I’m back in the fight.”

Dwyer stood and prepared to reengage when Cipriano, providing cover, looked back to him with a puzzled expression.

“Hear that?”

Dwyer did. Interspersed among the cracking sounds of the AK-47s were several single shots from a different weapon, followed by wails of agony.

Dwyer and Cipriano darted their heads around opposite sides of the boulders and saw several Taliban falling. The two SEALs turned back toward each other with quizzical expressions. Then more single shots, more cries of pain, accompanied by frantic shouting.

Again, the two glanced around the boulders. Dwyer couldn’t see where the fire was coming from — the glare from the sun’s corona sinking behind the slope obscured the view. And once more, the two turned to each other.

“What the hell?”

“They’re dropping like flies, boss,” Cipriano declared with a hint of a smile. “Gotta be a whole squad of our guys up there. Maybe more. And not missing. Not missing at all.”

“Maybe Delta. Or Six.” Dwyer looked at McKnight. “Hear that, Bobby? Hear that? Hang in there, buddy.”

McKnight smiled and nodded painfully.

Cipriano whooped and spun around the boulder, firing. Dwyer did the same. The Taliban had broken cover trying to evade the shots coming from the top of the slope, and were now sandwiched by Dwyer and Cipriano below.

Dwyer and Cipriano were jacked. The momentum had shifted dramatically. Fire discipline was out the window. They were pumping rounds at the enemy with glorious abandon.

And then they saw him.

Cipriano noticed him first. At the very top of the ridge, silhouetted against the sunlight. Not a squad. Not even a team. Just one man, on one knee, in a firing position. Exposed, yet obscured by the blinding sunlight. Calmly taking out one, two, three — six, seven, eight Taliban in a matter of seconds, then pausing to slap in a fresh magazine, seemingly indifferent to return fire, and then taking out more.

Cipriano pivoted to Dwyer. The two blinked at each other with expressions of disbelief. Cipriano began laughing almost maniacally, then turned, gave another triumphant yell, and resumed firing.

The attention of the Taliban now was focused almost exclusively on the threat from the top of the slope. Dwyer watched as the man rose, his figure framed but still obscured by sun glare, and began slowly descending toward the Taliban, firing as he went. Confident, as if he believed himself indestructible. Under any other circumstances, Dwyer would have considered the move inexplicably reckless, almost suicidal. But Dwyer conceded that to the Taliban, who were being slaughtered apace, it probably looked ominous. Dozens of them lay strewn across the slope.

The figure continued down the slope, picking off the enemy with deadly efficiency. Merciless. Whoever this guy is, Dwyer thought, he’s badass, stone-cold.

The remaining Taliban, now numbering no more than eight or nine, took off at a full sprint to Dwyer’s right down the crevasse, firing everything they had while making their escape. Dwyer and Cipriano fired after them. A couple more went down.

Less than a minute later, the echoes faded; the crevasse was silent. The Taliban were gone and the spectral figure continued his descent, stopping to check the Taliban lying on the ground with his HK416, making sure they were dead. He looked to Dwyer like a farmer checking to see if his tomatoes were ripe.

As the figure approached, Dwyer and Cipriano moved tentatively toward him from their position behind the boulders. When they were about twenty paces apart, Dwyer came to a dead stop.

“I don’t effin’ believe this.”

“What?” Cipriano asked.

“Mike effin’ Garin.”

Cipriano was incredulous. “You know this guy?”

“Mike?” Dwyer called. “Mike Garin?”

The man’s face, shrouded by long curly hair and a thick black beard, was deeply tanned and weather-beaten. But there it was — the unmistakable intensity in his eyes. Garin acknowledged Dwyer with an almost imperceptible nod as he scanned their wounds.

Dwyer rushed forward and gave him a bear hug, then turned to Cipriano and in a voice that sounded like he was announcing the winner of the Ms. America Pageant said, “Mike effin’ Garin!”

In a quiet voice, Garin responded, “Let’s get you squared away and out of here.”