Air Battle Force (55 page)

To emphasize his point, Carter punched instructions into one of his multifunction displays. The beam-control telescope switched back to target number one: the C-32A VIP transport. The adaptive optics showed the plane in remarkable detail. Carter was even able to zoom in on the cockpit windscreens, showing both pilots working together, quick-don oxygen masks on, checklists out. The readouts still showed the plane in a descent, getting below Ashkhabad's radar. “See that, Zipper? Our guys are still alive and still flyin'. You did good, son. You're a defender, not a killer.” He put his gloved hand out and clasped Tarantino's left shoulder, firmly but gently. “You gotta understand the difference, son. Otherwise you might as well not be wearin' that uniform.”

He didn't think Tarantino heard him, thought the kid might be heading toward the deep end—until he saw the young officer reach up and pat the glareshield. “Good Dragon,” he said in a strong, resilient voice. “Good Dragon.”

“There you go, son,” Carter said approvingly. Some guys never made it back to the world after scoring their first kill. He knew that Frankie Tarantino would—eventually—be okay. “There you go.”

Daybreak that morning

Jalaluddin Turabi spooned the last of the rice into his mouth, pretending that its stale, bug-infested taste was really the savory juices from succulent lamb mixed with exotic Chinese spices. He knew he was the last man in his company to be fed, so that spoonful also marked the last of their rations. And he didn't need to pick up his canteen to know that their water had almost run out, too. Damn it all, where in hell was their resupply flight? He knew that Aman Orazov was an incompetent asshole, but certainly even
he
could muster enough brainpower to load a few helicopters with supplies and fly it out here.

Abdul Dendara, Turabi's first sergeant, stepped over a few moments later and began to speak, but Turabi held up a hand. “Let me guess: We just ran out of fuel for the power generator?”

“That ran out an hour ago, sir, remember?” Dendara replied. “We just ran out of water.” He took Turabi's canteen and replaced it with another, which had about a liter of fluid in it. “You may want to pour it through your shirt first to filter it. It was the last drop from the metal emergency barrels we scrounged from Yagtyyol last night. I got out as much sand and rust as I could.”

“Thank you. Any possibility of getting more water from the city?”

“Power is still shut down—we can't get water from the wells,” Dendara replied. “Unless General Zarazi can get the power turned back on from Mary, we've taken every drop of water from that entire town.” He paused, then added, “I can order a patrol to start going house to house, looking for water. . . .”

“I already said no, Abdul,” Turabi said. “The people out here are suffering just as much as we are. If the homes are evacuated, you can take water from there—make sure every cistern, every shelf, every refrigerator, and even every toilet tank has been searched—but if the house is occupied, stay away from it. I'll personally execute any man who disobeys my order. Is that understood?”

“Yes, sir. I'll pass the word again.”

“Do that,” Turabi ordered. “Now, assuming our men hoarded half their normal daily ration of water, we should last—”

“Until tomorrow morning,” Dendara responded. “Then we're out of war-fighting mode and fully into survival mode.”

Turabi checked his watch, then nodded. “We won't wait until then. If we don't get supplies within four hours, we'll head back to Mary.”

“Very good, sir,” Dendara said.

When his first sergeant walked away, Turabi tried the radio. He knew he was ordered to maintain radio silence, but this was an emergency. Breaking off this scout patrol before discovering what the Russians might be up to was very dangerous. Abandoning it for the sake of a few hundred liters of water and diesel fuel from just a few kilometers away made even less sense. He keyed the mike: “Hawk to Condor. Come in.” No answer. He tried several more times—nothing.

Turabi took the canteen and drank the last of its contents, grimacing as he swallowed what tasted like welding beads. Shit, he thought, I'll just as likely die of lead poisoning as I will from enemy action. He knew that hoarding water would do no good—in the desert, one rationed sweat, not water—but he knew also that desperate, scared men would save a liter or two of water on their persons.

He noticed Dendara come running a few moments later, and Turabi stepped quickly toward him. “What is it now, Abdul?”

“Just got word from one of our patrols that came back from Mary. The Russians attacked Mary last night,” Dendara said. “Heavy bombers with cruise missiles and antiradar missiles, all from standoff range.”

“Oh, shit,” Turabi said. “That's why we didn't get a resupply chopper, and that's why the radio's been down. Any word on General Zarazi?”

“Nothing.” Dendara looked worried, which was unusual for this veteran warrior. “What are we going to do, sir?”

“We go back to Mary at once and link up with the general,” Turabi said immediately.

“But the Russians . . . don't you expect another attack?”

“It doesn't matter, Abdul. Wakil Zarazi is our leader. If he's alive, we'll follow his orders. If he's dead, we'll avenge him on every Russian we can get our hands on, and then I'll take command of the brigade.”

“And then what, sir?”

Turabi hesitated, but only for a moment: “And then I'll lead the brigade home,” he said.

“Home . . . ?”

“Home to Afghanistan, home to our families and our tribe,” Turabi said. “This fight is Zarazi's fight, not mine. If Zarazi is alive, we are honor-bound to follow his orders. But if he is dead, once we have avenged his death, I take command—and in my eyes and in my heart, we have accomplished our mission, the one given to us by our tribal elders. We shall return home, turn over our equipment to the elders, and then reunite with our families.”

“Then . . . then Zarazi's mission is . . .
false
. . . ?”

“Not false, at least not in his heart,” Turabi said. “He truly believes that he is carrying out God's wishes, and that is good enough for me and for all of us. Every Taliban leader must search his heart and make the right decision. My decision will be different from Wakil's, but that does not make either one false. Get going now. Organize the patrol, and let's head back to Mary.”

“Hawk, this is Snake,” one of the lookouts radioed just then. “Scouts report a chopper inbound from the south with slung cargo. Looks like a water tank.”

Thank God, Turabi thought. “Acknowledged,” he replied. They needed ammo and diesel to continue this flanking patrol, but they
absolutely
needed water first. One of the helicopters had survived, and they thought of using it to resupply this patrol. It was a surprisingly heads-up thing for Aman Orazov to do. “Make sure the air-defense squads are on their toes. Don't let anyone get complacent.”

“Acknowledged.”

Turabi looked out across the sands and saw Dendara shouting orders to his platoon commanders, telling them to maintain watch while the helicopter came in. Many times the enemy sneaked in while the men were preoccupied with their relief-supply helicopter.

But his orders were useless. Sure enough several dozen of the men—mostly Turkmen recruits, but a fair number of his Taliban tribesmen followed along as well—were running in the direction of the incoming helicopter, gesturing frantically for it to touch down. Some were waving canteens and buckets, and one man even waved his SA-14 shoulder-fired antiaircraft weapon. That fool was going to get disciplined, Turabi vowed—loudly, painfully, and publicly. He would see to it himself.

The supply helicopter was coming in fast and very, very high, at least five or six hundred meters in altitude. With Russians possibly in the area, he was taking an awfully big chance coming in so high. It was hard to see clearly, but it appeared that the load was on a very short sling, meaning that the pilot would have to hover closer to the ground to unsling his load—which would kick up plenty of sand and dust and make unslinging the water tank that much harder. Poor discipline, he decided. He would have to see to setting up a retraining course for his chopper pilots as soon as he got back to Mary.

The helicopter pilot was obviously confused by the onrushing soldiers—and no doubt by the idiot waving the shoulder-fired missile in the air. He swung sharply to the west, the slung load arcing dramatically to the right. Turabi was about to shout out an order to his men . . . when he took a close look at the underslung load. Several of his men, closer to the helicopter, stopped and pointed at the load in confusion as well. It was not a water tank, or a diesel-fuel bladder, or a supply net.

It was a bomb, an incendiary bomb, pointing downward, resembling a huge cylinder with a long fuse on its nose and stabilizing fins on the aft end. The pilot was not swerving to get away from the soldier with the SA-14 missile—he was swerving to toss the bomb toward Turabi's patrol while he turned away to get as far from the blast as he could. And, as he watched, the bomb fell away from the helicopter directly at his encampment.

“Take cover!” Turabi shouted, waving his arms downward. “Take cover!
Incoming!
”

“Get down!” he heard a voice shout. It was his first sergeant, Abdul Dendara. Turabi turned just in time to see the man plow into him at full force, pushing him into the trench Turabi used as a temporary command post. Dendara then leaped in right after him, covering Turabi's body with his own.

Turabi looked up and was about to order his first sergeant to get the hell off of him—just as a bright flash of light instantly turned the dawn into high noon in summertime. Seconds later he heard several loud pops, followed by an ear-shattering explosion. Turabi saw Dendara pulled backward as if caught in a powerful vacuum, seemingly sucked right back out of the trench.

And then Dendara's body was instantly turned to a cloud of ash as the sky—no, the very air—was transformed into a wall of white-hot fire.

Turabi rolled over onto his belly and buried his face in the sand as the ocean of fire raged barely two meters above him. He felt his clothing and skin turning to flame, and he covered the back of his head with his bare hands and screamed and pleaded for God to take him before he could feel himself burn to death. The searing heat crept up his legs, and he could do nothing else but slap and kick the fire out and try not to expose any more of his body to it. What a nightmarish way to die, he thought. At least poor Abdul got the privilege of dying instantly, not bit by bit like this. . . .

It was the powerful explosion itself that saved him. The furious blast and overpressure swept hundred of kilos of sand down into the trench, extinguishing the spontaneous flames that burst out all over Turabi's body and threatened to broil him to death, creating a thin but effective layer of insulation over him.

He had no idea how long it was before he awoke. At first he thought he'd been buried alive, but he found he could easily move aside the sand and create enough space to take a deep breath. The sand felt very warm, almost hot, but it didn't seem to be burning him. He experimented with his limbs and neck, trying each body part carefully, and found himself in pain but able to move, with no apparent serious injuries. Turabi reached above himself and found that his hand had popped out of the sand. He struggled to his knees and then to all fours, brushing sand from his face, marveling that he was still alive and dreading what he might find above.

The first thing he found, praise be to Allah, was a squad of his fellow Taliban soldiers searching the area. They had managed to chase away the Russian attackers, Turabi thought happily. He looked over and saw Aman Orazov himself, standing on an armored vehicle, listening to a verbal report from one of the men. Yes, Orazov was an ass, but right now he was surely a welcome sight. Turabi thought it appeared to be about midmorning—he might have been unconscious for three or four hours. He brushed more sand out of his ears as he hunted for a foothold on the edge of the trench.

As he did, he heard Orazov say, “Excellent. Looks like our attack worked perfectly.”

Turabi let go and immediately dropped back down into the trench. What in hell did he mean, “our” attack?

“Negative, sir,” he heard another soldier say—another Turkmen turncoat, like Orazov. “There's no sign of any living thing here. One hundred percent casualties. Everything that was aboveground was incinerated. The fuel-air explosive worked exactly as planned.”

It wasn't a Russian attack? It was Orazov?
Their own men had attacked them?
Impossible . . . !

No, not impossible. For Orazov it was
very
possible. It clearly meant that Wakil Zarazi was dead also. Orazov had obviously betrayed Zarazi and then undertook his first mission: to kill Turabi and the rest of his patrol. He probably intended to win favor back from his former Turkmen officers or the Russian army, once they'd completed their reoccupation.

Jalaluddin Turabi knew that his mission had now changed. Instead of capturing booty for his tribe back in Afghanistan, Turabi's new mission was simple: avenge Wakil Zarazi's death. He was sworn to do it. Orazov had to die, and by Turabi's own hand. Nothing else in life mattered. Zarazi might have been misguided, blinded by some invisible, mystical calling—but he was still the leader, and Turabi's new duty was to avenge him. Then he could lead the loyal survivors back home, tell the elders what had happened, and prepare to take command of the tribe—or face the wrath of the elders.

But he couldn't confront Orazov now. That would be suicidal. He had no choice but to play dead and hope they would go away.

Turabi slinked back into the sand, slowly, carefully nudging it aside, intent on burrowing back down and burying himself. Standard procedures would be to search the trenches for survivors or bodies—he hoped Orazov was lazy or stupid enough to merely look around, decide there were no survivors, and go back to Mary. Maybe,
maybe,
if he did so, Turabi could escape, make his way back to their stronghold in Chärjew, then assemble a fighting force, sneak back to Mary, and carry out his new mission—kill Orazov.