The Way Home

Chapter 25

TY FOUGHT THE CONTROLS, TRYING to assess where they’d been hit. Smoke boiled up in the cockpit, so thick he could barely see the multitude of warning lights blinking at him from the instrument panel. Beside him, Mike frantically hit switches, reset breakers, and changed over to backup systems.

Ty bore down hard on the right pedal and finally managed some semblance of control. The smoke started to clear, and he scanned his gauges. Not good.

“Everyone all right?”

“Fine,” Mike and Waldrop answered.

“Want me to take back the controls?”

“I’ve got it, big bro. What the hell hit us?”

“My guess? RPG,” Waldrop said, then yelled, “And shit, shit, here comes another one. Break left! Now, now!”

Ty continued to fight with the damaged controls; the bird moved sluggishly. “Brace!” he yelled. “She’s not responding.”

By some miracle of luck, timing, and fairy dust, the RPG missed them.

“We’re clear!” Waldrop shouted. “Damn. Thank God and poor shots.”

“That came up out of the valley we just crossed.” Mike craned his head around, looking for more. “Don’t know about you, but I’ve had enough. Can you keep her in the air?”

Ty clenched his jaw. “Does a one-legged duck swim in a circle?”

“Then swing back around. I’m going to get that sucker.”

Ty let the right pedal loose a bit, and the helicopter miraculously responded and spun back toward the valley.

Mike flicked the weapons selector switch back to Missiles, took aim, and pulled the trigger, dumping half a dozen missiles toward the enemy guns.

This time, everyone was prepared for the flash, and they all closed their eyes as the missiles shot out of the pods.

When Ty opened his eyes, he saw the valley blow in a flash of fire.

“Nice.” Waldrop high-fived Mike.

“Let’s head back to the LZ and assess the damages,” Mike said.

As Ty started to turn the chopper, a loud crash and the sound of tearing metal rattled the bird. She started spiraling downward.

“Pull back! Pull back!” Mike yelled. “We’re going down!”

THE LAST TIME Nate had looked, Reaper had been kicking ass and taking names as a massive series of explosions lit up the night. Then nothing.

“Reaper, do you copy?”

Nothing. Not even static.

He glanced at Green, then tried again. “Reaper, do you copy?”

More silence.

This was bad. Real bad.

Then Mike’s soul-tearing words came over the radio. “Reaper is going down! Reaper is going down—”

The radio went dead silent.

Nate’s stomach dropped. “Base, you copy that transmission?”

“Roger that.” Crystal’s voice sounded calm but filled with concern. “Eyes in the sky looking for the crash site now. Will advise. Out.”

Nate pressed his cheek against his rifle barrel, then gathered himself. “All teams, sit-rep.”

“Alpha, clear, moving toward your position.”

“Bravo, where the hell are you?”

“Bravo targets secure. Repeat. Targets secure. Three subjects in custody. Hold fire. We’re coming out.”

Worried about the chopper crew but relieved to finally hear from Bravo, Nate walked toward the blown front door, with Green taking a covering position behind him.

Cooper and Taggart walked out first, leading three figures bound in flex cuffs with black cloth bags over their heads. The last one in line had a bad limp. He was almost as tall as Nate but was rail-thin beneath his Pashtun garb.

Nate’s heart picked up a beat.

Santos and Carlyle followed, guns trained on all three figures. Santos, fluent in Pashto, ordered them to kneel on the ground. Two did as they were told, but the taller one stood, defiant.

Nate pulled the bag off his head. A tiny flash of recognition hit him. They all traveled with photos of Jeff Albert in their pockets. He’d stared at his so many times he’d memorized the man’s features. The uniformed soldier they’d studied was in the prime of his life. His hair military-short, his face clean-shaven, his eyes bright with purpose and fire, his body buff and strong.

This man was dressed in typical Pashtun clothing. His scraggly beard had patches of gray, his face was as dark as that of an Afghan. He was shockingly thin and did not look as if he was in the prime of anything. In fact, he looked ill.

Still—there was something in his eyes…

“What’s your name?” Nate asked, then asked Santos to repeat the question in Pashto.

The man looked at him and then at the rest of the team. “You’re Americans,” he stated with equal measures of wariness and hope.

Wasn’t much point in denying it now. “We are.”

The man’s knees buckled, and Green quickly grabbed his arm and steadied him. “Thank God.”

“Can you identify yourself?” Nate asked again, more gently.

“Sergeant Jeffery Robert Albert.”

“I’ll be go to hell,” Reed muttered under his breath.

“Look,” Nate said, “there’s not a lot of time for introductions, but I need to verify you’re who you say you are. What’s your mother’s maiden name?”

“I don’t know.”

“Name of your dog?”

“Did I have a dog?”

Puzzled, Nate tried one more time. “Name of the street where you grew up?”

“Look. I don’t know. I took a hard knock on the head. I don’t remember anything prior to deploying here with my unit.”

“Give me some help, then,” Nate said.

“I formed letters on the roof. My initials and the Special Forces credo. Rabia”—he motioned toward one of the people still bound and on their knees—“she took blood and hair samples to an Army patrol near Emarat… a Lieutenant Court spoke with her. I sent a letter explaining who I was and what had happened to me.”

“Who held you prisoner?” Nate persisted.

“The ISI.”

That soaked it. They’d found their man. This wasn’t a wild-goose chase after all.

Nate extended his hand. “Glad to finally meet you, Sergeant Albert. Bet you’ve been wondering what took us so long.”

“Every hour of every day, sir.” His voice broke with emotion before he regained his composure.

Nate laid a hand on his arm. “How about we take you home, son?”

Albert nodded slowly, clearly overcome with relief.

Nate motioned toward the two hooded, kneeling figures. “Who are these people?”

“Wakdar Kahn Kakar, the malik of this village, and his daughter, Rabia. I wouldn’t be alive if not for them.”

Nate motioned for Santos to remove the hoods and cut them free.

“You’re the one who contacted the U.S. patrol.” Nate addressed the woman.

She nodded.

“America is in your debt,” he said. “I don’t mean to be impolite, but we’ve got to get out of here.”

The old man rose slowly to his feet and spoke heatedly to his daughter.

“My father does not wish to leave.” She glanced fearfully at Nate, then at Albert. “He says he is an old man. He is ready to die here.”

Albert touched his hand on her arm and started speaking softly and respectfully to the old man in fluent Pashto. The malik continued to resist until Rabia’s name came up.

He lowered his head, then finally appeared to concede.

The woman smiled gratefully at Albert, who reached out and gave her arm a reassuring squeeze. Nate found the exchange both interesting and poignant. Albert had been with this woman for almost four months. He imagined a lot had happened between them.

Crystal’s voice in his headset interrupted his thoughts. “Charlie to Lead, we have located Reaper’s crash site—approximately five-zero-zero meters from your current position, north, along the road. No movement from the site but numerous dismounts moving rapidly toward it.”

They had to get to that bird and his men. Nate keyed his mike. “Roger that, Charlie. Advise that we will be moving toward Reaper. Repeat. Moving toward our downed team. Advise the brass that we have Beckwith. We have Beckwith and have verified. Need air assets now.”

Beckwith was the code word for Jeff Albert and the last name of the founder of Delta Force, Charlie Beckwith.

“We also have the two additional evacuees,” Nate stated.

“Roger that. You have Beckwith and two additional evacuees, and you need air assets at your position. Stand by. Charlie out.”

Nate turned to his team. “Let’s scramble up some ground transpo.”

“Rabia has a car, sir,” Albert said. “An older-model Toyota.”

“Not going to do it. Not big enough. Santos and Cooper. Go see if you can find a working vehicle large enough to transport all of us. We need to get to Reaper and check on our guys. We’ll take cover in the house until you return. And hurry your asses up. Reaper’s in trouble, and so are we.”

Crystal broke in again. “Lead, be advised that we are experiencing a slight delay scrambling air assets. ”

“How much of a delay?”

“Working it out. Will notify when ready. Charlie out.”

Nate looked at his men, then at Albert. “Looks like we might get to fight our way out of here yet. Don’t suppose you’ve got any weapons to add to the mix?”

“No, sir.”

Perfect. They were up shit crick in a leaky boat with no paddle. With a nod from Nate, Bravo team along with Green and Alpha team moved into the house, posting up at windows and doors and watching for bad guys as they waited for Santos and Cooper to show up with their ride.

RABIA SCRAMBLED TO change from her night clothes to her day wear, thankful that Jeffery had asked this favor for her. Still catching her breath, she sat on the floor, low along the inner wall of the cooking room, as the Americans had instructed her. Her father sat on one side of her, Jeffery on the other. Both were silent. Her father’s silence came from anger. Jeffery’s, she suspected, was prompted by disbelief. And relief.

They had come for him. He would now go home.

For him, she felt happy. For herself, in the aftermath of the terror when they had burst in with guns and bound their hands and placed hoods over their heads, she felt a numb sense of loss.

He was leaving. Just when she had convinced herself that somehow he would stay. It had been a foolish notion, she knew that. But the grief she felt at the thought of losing him seemed as huge as the night that swallowed the world in shadows.

In the dark, in the silence, as the Americans watched for resistance, she felt Jeffery’s hand seek hers. She clung and tried desperately not to cry.

“I’m so sorry,” he whispered. “I’m so sorry I brought this to your door.”

“This is not your doing. This is Allah’s will. You were destined to leave here.”

“Come with me,” he whispered urgently. “Rabia… you can come with me. Your father, too. ”

The tears did come then. For the hope in his voice and the impossibility of it all. “I cannot go with you any more than you can stay.”

He said nothing. Because he knew the truth as surely as she did.

If they all got out of here alive, she and her father would go to their family in Kabul, as Jeffery had wanted. They would be safe there. She would return to teaching.

And there she would be alone, surrounded by family and friends.

She listened to the night, the cadence of breathing of the armed men guarding them. And she thought of the roof and wished with all her heart that they could have had one more night together beneath the stars.

TY CAME TO slowly. Pain throbbed through his head and back. And his arms—what the hell? It felt as if a pair of vise grips had clamped around his biceps. That’s when he realized he was being dragged.

Fight-or-flight instincts kicked in, and he started flailing. He’d be damned if he’d let some Taliban jihadist take him alive.

“Easy, bro. I’ve got you.”

Mike. Thank God. “What happened?”

“Remind me never to get into a helicopter with you again, Crash.”

Right. They’d taken a hit. Which would explain why his back was killing him. Now that he was marginally with the program, he could see the smoking wreckage of the bird Mike had dragged him away from.

“You OK? Waldrop? Where’s Waldrop?”

“We’re fine. Both of us. Waldrop’s setting charges to blow the chopper. Sit tight.”

Mike pulled a radio from his vest pocket. “Lead, this is Reaper. We are down, minor wounded, but are functional. Chopper is toast. Awaiting orders.”

“No shit, you’re down,” Nate replied, sounding uncharacteristically rattled but clearly relieved. “Damn happy to hear your voice. But you’ve got a bigger problem than a broken bird. Base advises numerous subjects approaching your position—assume they are enemy. Multiple dismounts, and a couple of trucks have joined in. Take cover and defend. We’ll be there as soon as we can to extract.”

“What about Albert?”

“We got him.”

Mike glanced at Ty and nodded, letting him know they’d found Albert.

If Ty had known what to say, he would have, but he didn’t have a clue. If they lived through this, life for him had changed irrevocably, no matter what.

Waldrop sprinted up beside them right then and pointed down the road. “Company. Coming full steam.”

“Crystal still have that Predator circling overhead?” Mike asked Nate.

“Roger that.”

“Yeah, well, we’ve got a truck zeroing in, and I don’t think it’s pizza delivery. Be real neighborly like if you could do something about it.”

“Charlie copies direct.”

“Bless you, Crystal, darling.” Mike breathed a sigh of relief when he heard Crystal’s voice, clearly happy as hell that she’d been monitoring their commo. “Party’s about to start, sweetheart—now would be a really great time for the punch to arrive.”

“Ask and ye shall receive. Shot out,” Crystal advised urgently. “Duck and cover. Duck and—”

A fireball streaked across the sky, then exploded with a loud boom, drowning out the rest of her commo. The missile smashed into the Taliban truck, lighting it up like an oil-rig fire. Bodies spilled out onto the road. Men climbed from the wreck and scrambled into the shadows.

“Nice shot, babe!” Mike crowed.

Crystal’s relieved breath preceded her voice. “Roger that, flyboy.”

“Can you walk?” Mike asked Ty as he handed him an M-4 and a bandolier of loaded magazines.

Ty wasn’t even sure if he could crawl, but his brother didn’t need to know that. “Hell, yeah, but I’d rather run.” He checked to see that the M-4 was loaded, that the magazine was fully seated, and then, gritting through the pain, he trotted after his brother and Waldrop to a low berm, where they hunkered down and waited for the bad guys.