Chapter 13 - Into the Zero Visibility
The twin turbine engines of the MH-60M Pave Hawk screamed in a deafening, mechanical roar as the chopper lifted three feet off the tarmac, pitched violently forward into the howling wind, and clawed its way into the pitch-black sky.
Inside the cabin, the red combat lights cast an eerie, bloody glow over eight operators from the Special Tactics Squadron. They sat with their knees touching, heavy packs wedged between their legs, faces blackened with greasepaint, assault rifles held vertical between their thighs. Every man in that bird knew the stakes. Vanguard Six had survived hell once; leaving them to freeze or be executed on a remote Afghan hillside was not an option on the table.
I sat near the open starboard door, the safety tether clicked into my harness, watching the lights of the Virginia base vanish into the storm clouds within seconds of takeoff. We were staging out of a high-altitude forward staging corridor, utilizing the fast-response tactical transport that had brought my unit back to the States only days prior. The transit flight had been brutal, but now we were descending through the freezing mist toward the jagged teeth of the mountains.
"Three minutes to insertion zone!" the crew chief yelled through our helmet headsets, his voice crackling with static. "Wind shear is seventy knots out of the northwest! Pilot says he can give us thirty seconds on the hover before the tail rotor loses authority!"
"Thirty seconds is twenty more than we need!" I shouted back into the boom mic. "Fast ropes only! Master Sergeant Keller, you're first man down! Secure the southern perimeter! I'll take the medical kit to the fuselage!"
"Hoah, Colonel!" Keller yelled back, slamming a fist against his armored chest.
I pulled down my night-vision goggles. The world instantly transformed into a sea of phosphorescent green and sharp black shadows. Below us, the mountain rose like a jagged wall of obsidian, cut through the middle by a razor-thin fissure where the transport plane had plowed into the snow.
Through the greenish haze, I saw it: the broken spine of the C-130.
One wing had sheared off against the granite ridge, spilling aviation fuel that had ignited a localized blaze, casting long, dancing shadows across the deep snowbanks. The tail section was mangled, hanging precariously over a sheer five-hundred-foot drop into the gorge below.
And then, my thermal sensor caught movement.
"Hot contacts!" I barked over the net. "South-southeast ridge! Four hundred yards and closing on the wreckage! Foot-mobiles, carrying RPGs and light machine guns! They’re moving in to finish them off!"
"Pilot, suppress that ridge!" Keller shouted.
The door gunner on the port side racked the charging handle of the minigun. A split-second later, a deafening, continuous buzz—like a giant chainsaw ripping through sheet metal—shook the entire airframe. A solid stream of green tracer fire arced down from our bird, chewing into the snowy crest four hundred yards away. Geysers of rock and frozen dirt erupted into the air, forcing the advancing enemy fighters to dive behind the boulders for cover.
"Ropes! Ropes! Ropes!" the crew chief screamed, kicking two thick, braided nylon ropes out the open doors.
They tumbled down into the howling whiteout, slapping against the frozen rocks below.
"Go! Go! Go!"
Keller went first, sliding down the rope with terrifying speed, his boots disappearing into the snowbank below. Two more operators followed in rapid succession.
I grabbed the heavy braided rope with both hands, hooked my boots around the nylon, and kicked off into the void.
The wind hit me like a solid wall of ice, threatening to peel my grip away, but the muscle memory of twenty years of clandestine drops took over. The friction burned through my leather gloves as I slid thirty feet through the blizzard, hitting the frozen crust of the mountain in a controlled roll.
I popped up instantly, carbine raised to my shoulder, clearing the immediate perimeter. The downwash from the chopper's rotor blades was kicking up a blinding cloud of stinging ice that threatened to scour the skin from our faces.
Above us, the Pave Hawk hovered for another five agonizing seconds, providing cover fire, before its turbines screamed in agony against the downdrafts. The pilot pulled pitch, banking hard away from the cliff face to avoid slamming into the granite wall, leaving us alone in the freezing dark.
"Perimeter set!" Keller called over the local squad frequency, his voice tight. "No immediate hostiles within fifty yards! But they’re regrouping on that southern knoll, Colonel!"
"Hold the line!" I ordered, wading through waist-deep drifts toward the shattered cockpit of the C-130. "Get the survivors out before that fuel tank cooks off!"
The smell of burning composite, hydraulic fluid, and charred insulation was overwhelming. I ducked beneath the twisted aluminum of the fuselage, stepping over shattered cargo pallets and ruptured hydraulic lines.
"Is anyone alive in here?" I yelled, flicking on my weapon-mounted white light.
From beneath a collapsed section of the upper deck, a weak, blood-choked cough answered me.
"Over... over here..."
I scrambled over the debris, dropping to my knees beside a young airman pinned beneath a sheared steel support beam. His flight suit was soaked in dark, freezing blood, his face pale with severe hypothermia.
Beside him, two of the Vanguard Six operators—the very men I had pulled out of the wire forty-eight hours ago—were alive, one holding a field dressing to the airman’s crushed leg, the other pointing a standard-issue Beretta at the shadows with hands that shook violently from the cold.
"Hold your fire, soldier," I said softly, sliding my flashlight across my unit patch. "Valkyrie is here. You're going home."
The wounded Vanguard operator looked up at me, his eyes bloodshot, his lips split from the freezing wind.
"Colonel Callaway..." he whispered, a ragged, disbelieving laugh tearing from his throat. "You... you came down the rope for us?"
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"I don't leave my people," I said, wedging my shoulder beneath the heavy steel beam. "Keller! Get in here! We need leverage on this bulkhead, now!"
***