SEAL Team Six Hunt the Falcon(9)
“Boss, you okay?”
Davis looked down at him with a face smudged with dirt. Crocker used his tongue to feel along the ridge of his mouth and realized that a piece of one of his front teeth was missing.
“You see the rest of my tooth?” he asked.
“Did I see what?”
“Never mind.”
The noise in the cramped, smoke-filled room was hellacious. He saw bodies thrown into a corner and covered with a blue tarp. Blood and entrails peeked out from under it.
Perez, kneeling beside him, said that including himself he was down to four men.
“Four men? How many behind us in D?”
“Another five, sir.”
“Any of them Afghans?”
“No.”
“No?”
Then who the fuck was that Weed guy talking to?
One of the gunners in front of them called out, “We’re running low on ammo for the fifty-cal!”
Perez shouted back, “Conserve, guys. Select fire.”
The gunner growled, “Then we better start collecting rocks.”
Crocker tried to think clearly and consider their options. He asked, “How many enemy?”
“Unclear, sir,” Perez answered. “They just keep coming.”
“Best estimate?” Davis asked.
“I don’t know. Fifty, a hundred, a million. Maybe there’s a hole and they’re coming up from Middle Earth.”
Crocker turned to Davis and yelled, “Call Captain Battier. Tell him we’re gonna need ammo and reinforcements.”
“Okay, boss.”
Twin .50 caliber machine guns continued to pound away in front of him. He saw Ritchie firing a MK19 grenade launcher. Remembering something, he stopped Perez, who was dragging a box of ammo over to the M2HG. “What about the six SEALs who were dropped in last week?” he asked.
“Two of ’em are behind us in D.”
Davis broke his train of thought, which had drifted to his friend Neal Stafford. “Boss! Yo, boss! The captain says no can do.”
“No what?”
“No reinforcements.”
“Let me talk to him.” He grabbed the receiver and spoke in an urgent but authoritative voice. “Hey, Captain, we’re a hair away from being overrun here. We got a lot of men down and are in dire need of support and ammo, fifty-cal rounds especially. What can you do?”
A mortar round tore into the sandbag-reinforced wall on the right side of the station and exploded, sending the gunner of one of the M2HGs sliding across the floor. He scurried back, wiped a stream of blood from his nose, righted the machine gun, and continued firing.
“Captain, do you hear me?” The gunner in front of him shouted a stream of curses. Apparently he’d burned his hand on the hot barrel of his weapon.
“I hear you, chief. I hear you loud and clear. Where are you, exactly?”
“Station C.”
“Have you considered pulling out of there?”
“For a whole lotta reasons that I don’t have time to explain now, it’s not an option.”
“But I’m unable to send reinforcements,” Battier responded via the radio receiver.
“What about ammo?”
“Negative on that, too.”
“Why the fuck not?”
“Chief, I’m looking at the big picture. Presley, King, and Wolf are my priorities,” Battier responded.
“You’ve got men dying down here, Captain. The position is eminently defendable with help!”
“Sorry, chief.”
“I’m sorry, too. Fuck you!”
He threw down the radio and peered through a slit in the reinforced wall, guns pounding all around him, casings spilling onto the floor. Saw the sparks of guns firing from Taliban positions behind rocks, trees, and other natural barriers.
Perez, beside him, was peering through binoculars. Crocker asked, “Where are the bastards coming from?”
“You can’t see from here, but there are a couple of trails up from the valley that are in the vicinity of Station B, which was the first to fall.”
Snow continued to drop, and the light seemed to be fading. Crocker glanced at his Suunto GPS watch, which read 1642 hours. In another hour the sky would turn dark and they’d be even more vulnerable. Screwed, most likely.
“What’d the captain say?” Perez asked, putting down the glasses and grabbing his MP7 4.6x30mm submachine gun.
“We’re on our own.”
“I thought so.”
Crocker hated the thought of giving up the station. His instincts told him to make a stand. “What have you got in terms of supplies?” he shouted to Perez over the tremendous racket.
“Bottled water, MREs, boxes of energy bars, heaters, lamps.”
“Ammo?”
“There’s a storage bunker behind Station D that contains some explosives, but no mags or fifty-cal rounds.”