Captain Lee called in fire mission after fire mission on the ridges above. The big arty rounds rained down, but the Taliban didn’t quit. They smelled blood. After an hour of fighting, every weapon in the squad was suppressed. The insurgents could maneuver almost at will. They bounded down the rocks, closing in for the kill with their AKs. The Taliban didn’t take prisoners.
Apaches roared overhead, like their cavalry ancestors, in the nick of time. The gunships had to drop their ordnance practically on the squad’s heads to keep them from being overrun. The Taliban were that close.
Lee blamed Muldoon for the failure of the mission. Lee thought the kid had spotted them and reported their presence to Taliban in the village.
Muldoon believed the kid hadn’t just shown up at that exact place and time by chance, not in all that wide open nothing. The Taliban had already known they were there. The kid was probably just being used to collect intel on their unit. A spotter. Besides, he didn’t kill ten-year-old kids unless they were pointing a gun at him.
But Muldoon understood why Lee had given the order. Hell, Muldoon sometimes questioned whether he’d made the right call. That was one of the fucked-up things about war—you often faced horrible moral choices that sucked no matter what you did. You ended up plagued with guilt because you didn’t cut a kid’s throat.
His problem with Lee was that the man hadn’t called off the mission, even after there was a good chance they’d been spotted. If there was any chance of the Taliban leader rolling through, Lee wanted to nab him, regardless of the risk.
Lee was a good soldier, a good officer. His intelligence work had saved lives. Muldoon respected that. But the man was a fanatic when he had a cause. Fanatics got good men killed.
Not today. Not if Muldoon could help it. He and his boys were coming back alive.
THIRTY-SIX.
WADE AWOKE FROM A LONG, dreamless sleep with a start. He raised his head from Rawlings’s shoulder. She stirred.
“Rise and shine,” Gray said as he kicked the men awake.
The soldier had taken off his helmet and blouse and wore his tactical vest over his T-shirt. He had large stains around his armpits. He grinned under mirrored sunglasses, chewing gum. He looked like something out of Soldier of Fortune.
The asshole’s starting to enjoy this, Wade thought. Thinks it’s fun.
“On your feet, lovebirds. It’s oh-dawn hundred.”
Sunlight streamed through the closed blinds. The room was hot. Wade felt like crap. But he’d slept the whole night, from dusk to dawn, perhaps for the first time in weeks.
The classroom had a whiteboard and little desks. Books and art supplies filled the shelves. Posters hung on the yellow walls. School was out. He wondered if kids would ever go to school here again.
Rawlings gave him a bleary smile. “’Morning, Private Wade.”
He gave her hand one last squeeze and let go. “Thanks.”
“You should know I don’t let every guy I meet sleep on my shoulder.”
He smiled at her. “I got your back today, Sergeant.”
“Eat up,” Gray said. “We got a long day. Get your calories.”
A soldier burned up to six thousand calories a day in a combat zone. The Meals-Ready-to-Eat, or MREs, provided twelve hundred calories. They’d have to eat every chance they got. The men tore into the pouches and ate their breakfast cold. Gray turned to Wade with a big, satisfied smile.
What does he think, I’d tell the men NOT to eat? Wade was already tired of the pissing contest. If Gray wanted to be in charge, so be it.
Then he realized Gray wasn’t looking at him. As far as Gray was concerned, the pissing contest was over. He was looking at Rawlings. The soldier licked his lips. He had a thing for her, then. Love or lust, it didn’t matter. Gray was going to be a problem.
The men hauled themselves to their feet and checked their gear. They cleaned and reloaded their weapons and counted magazines.
“Let’s move,” Gray said. “We’ll stay on this side of the highway. Check out some houses and see if we can find a few working vehicles. Get the fuck out of here.”
The squad geared up and filed out the window. They moved quietly through the residential neighborhood, flashing hand signals to communicate where they were going and what they saw. Wade limped after them with Rawlings, refusing her help. He had to pull his own weight.
They found plenty of abandoned vehicles, but none of them would run. Even the vehicles still drivable and that had keys in the ignition had been drained of gas by scavengers.
The houses turned into low-rise apartment buildings with retail stores on the bottom floors. The squad filed down the middle of the street, weapons ready, faces pale and drawn. Dead bodies drew clouds of flies. Loose litter fluttered in the breeze. Most of the houses had Xs painted on the doors; the area had been ordered evacuated by the government. Graffiti invited them into some buildings and warned them out of others. The air smelled of smoke.