The Summer House

Chapter 98 Afghanistan

I come to, resting on my side on a bunch of sharp rocks. What a goddamn mess. I turn and grind my teeth at the pain. The crumpled metal and broken glass and torn cables from what was once a multimillion-dollar and gorgeous flying machine lay all around me. All I see is the destroyed Little Bird and lots of rocks.

My legs are stuck.

I gingerly move them.

Both hurt like hell, as well as my left hip.

I cough. Blood in my mouth.

“Hey, Chief,” I call out. “You there, Chief?”

I hear the sound of the wind and the snap-crackle of electric circuitry shorting out somewhere.

Nothing else.

I smell spilled aviation fuel, and the memory of being trapped in that shattered Humvee and seeing the flames approach my trapped legs makes me start shaking.

“Not again,” I whisper. “Please, God, not again.”

There’s a glow of something still working in the shattered instrument panel, and as my eyes adjust, I see the slumped form of Chief Cellucci, still fastened in his seat, dangling upside down, his arms free.

“Chief!” I call out. “Hey, Chief! Are you okay?”

My eyes adjust better to the deepening darkness. A piece of metal broken from the helicopter’s frame has gone right through his neck and out the back.

Guilt hits me like a cold wave. The man is dead because of me, because I bribed him to take me on an unauthorized trip to see a CIA guy... and for nothing.

I tug again at my legs, grit my teeth in pain.

I roll to the left, see my rucksack. I strain and strain with my left arm, grab a strap, drag it over to me.

It takes a lot out of me.

I close my eyes, catch my breath.

At least the crackling of the circuitry is gone.

Maybe the damn thing won’t catch fire after all.

Something is digging into my right hip. I move around, take out my SIG Sauer.

Worthless for the moment.

I wonder what’s going on in Georgia. How the Rangers are doing. How that meeting with Connie and someone involved with the shooting went. Has she found out what I now know, that this whole mess began here in Afghanistan, when the Rangers stumbled across something they shouldn’t have witnessed?

I open my eyes, yank the top of my rucksack, manage to get it open.

I push my right hand in, dig around, a few items falling out.

There.

Got the Iridium satellite phone.

I breathe hard, bring it up, push the power button.

Nothing.

The small screen remains dark.

I push the button again and again.

The satellite phone is dead. I drop it, take up the SIG Sauer, put it into the open rucksack.

It’s almost completely dark, and a few stars appear overhead.

I think I hear voices.

I stop moving.

Damn, I’m not thinking anymore.

I am hearing voices.

Fear is digging right into my gut.

A memory comes to me, of the research I did before my first deployment to Afghanistan, and the books I read, including the poetry of Rudyard Kipling and his tales of British soldiers serving in India and Afghanistan.

A stanza comes right to my mind, about what a young British soldier should do if wounded on Afghanistan’s plains, and when the Afghan women came down at you with knives:

I whisper, “But I’m no soldier. I’m just a goddamn cop.”

A wounded, trapped, and alone cop at that.

I try again to free my legs, but the pain digs in deep, like hidden knives are carving me up.

The voices grow louder.

I hear the approaching men, but I can’t understand what they’re saying.

Yet I know what they’re saying.

Here’s a shot-down American helicopter. Let’s see who’s alive.

A light comes on, illuminating the wreckage, the dead body of the chief, and then me.

That’s when I go to the rucksack, for one final, desperate gamble.