Wilde ran across the camp, the sound of gunfire becoming increasingly louder, with opposing weapons joining the cacophony from the other side of the wall. A proper battle was raging between the outer cordon and whoever was attacking them. He arrived at the war room to find that McBride already had it open, had thrown on his kit, and was now assisting other members of the team.
“What’s up, buddy?” McBride grinned, his white teeth shining above his dark-red beard. He loved a good gunfight.
“Sounds real this time,” Wilde said, smacking his friend on the shoulder as he passed.
Inside, Wilde went immediately to his cubby and began throwing on his gear while the rest of the team did the same. He donned his coyote-brown Crye Precision Cage ballistic plate carrier and matching Low Profile Blast Belt, more commonly called a war belt. Next, he turned on his Harris AN/PRC-163 multi-channel handheld radio that connected to the Peltor headset on his helmet. He then snatched up his M4A1 SOPMOD carbine, slapped in a magazine, and chambered a round. Wilde touched the up arrow on the side of his EOTech holographic sight, and a red dot framed by a circle sprang to life inside the optic. Finally, he donned his Ops-Core helmet and pulled his AN/PVS-31A night vision goggles from a pouch on his kit and clicked them into the mount on his helmet. While doing so he could hear his friend and team sergeant, Kendall, barking out orders.
“Tim, make sure thejundeesare under control and shooting in the right direction,” Kendall said, referring to the Yemeni soldiers. “Josh, get the mortar tubes prepped. Pete will call them out as he sees them.”
The orders continued, although everyone already knew their job in the event that the base defense plan was activated. McBride had createdit and run them through multiple drills over the months. On several occasions they had conducted it for real, though the threats generally turned out to be minor, individual potshots or light probing attacks. This was something else. Something much bigger.
Wilde knew his role. He was to be a floater, acting as Kendall’s second-in-command, and shoring up defenses as necessary, filling gaps as they arose. He immediately headed toward the front gate, when suddenly the rear towers began firing at a cyclic rate. Seeing that most of the force was focused on the main gate, he turned on his heels and ran toward the newly erupting gunfire.
McBride was descending the steps from one of the rear guard towers when he arrived. “What do we got?” Wilde asked him.
“Definitely a complex attack,” McBride shouted coolly over the gunfire. “At least a dozen on this side!”
Wilde nodded to the tower above them. “You take this tower, I’ll take that one.” He motioned to the tower twenty-five meters behind him.
McBride nodded and put out a coyote-brown Mechanix-gloved fist. Wilde bumped it with a mirrored fist and McBride turned to climb the stairs as Wilde ran to the next tower. Arriving, he sprinted up the stairs to the top and found a Yemeni guard frantically attempting to load a new ammo belt into the PKM machine gun.
“Marhaban,” Wilde greeted him with a smile, trying to put the guard at ease. The man muttered something in return without looking up from his work. He was clearly scared, and Wilde didn’t blame him. If the terrorists on the other side of the wall managed to overrun the camp, the Americans and British would be killed, but the locals who sided with the infidels would be treated much worse.
The veteran Green Beret ignored him and posted up along the edge of the tower. He flipped his night optical device, or NODs, down in front of his face and the landscape instantly lit up, the white phosphorousimage presenting a crisp picture complete with depth perception. He could see several terrorists amid the terrain in front of him, some running, some crawling, and some hiding in a dried-out streambed. He used his left thumb to press a button attached to the side of his M4 and an infrared laser shot from the Advanced Target Pointer Illuminator Aiming Laser, or ATPIAL, known as the PEQ-15, strapped to the Picatinny rail on the side of the barrel. It had been previously sighted, along with the EOTech optic, and confirmed regularly so that he knew how to adjust his point of aim to account for varying distances.
Wilde settled the laser on the closest target, a man less than twenty meters from the wall crawling on his stomach. He used his right thumb to rotate the selector switch on his rifle from safe to semiautomatic and depressed the trigger several times, putting three rounds into the man’s torso. With the SureFire flash suppressor attached to the end of his 10.5-inch barrel, it would take time for the attackers on the ground to locate his position in the darkness. He scanned downfield and noticed a head popping out from within a draw, a shallow channel carved into the terrain. The man shouldered an AK-47 and fired a burst, the actions lighting up under Wilde’s optics but not washing them out as would have happened with older-generation night vision technology. He painted the attacker’s head with the laser and fired once. The man dropped instantly. To his left, the Yemeni on the machine gun was firing wildly, proving inaccurate but managing to keep the terrorists’ heads down. But as a result, rounds were beginning to find their way toward his direction, some cracking through the air above his head, others slamming into the sandbags surrounding the tower.
The radio in Wilde’s ear chirped with calm voices explaining the various situations around the camp. There was light activity on the flanks, with the majority of the attack manifesting at the main gate and rear of the compound. The junior communications sergeant Pete Morrisonwas acting as a forward observer for the junior weapons sergeant Josh Sales, who was hanging mortar rounds and lobbing them at what appeared to be an enemy staging area. A few Yemeni soldiers had been wounded, and the medics had already begun getting to work in the medical tent, which also served as the casualty collection point, or CCP. Wilde gave a quick SITREP between shots and Deforest asked if he and McBride needed assistance, but Wilde waved him off. They could handle the current situation, and if things got worse, he promised the team leader he would be the first to know.
Wilde continued firing, methodically scanning left to right, moving farther and farther away as he spotted targets and engaged them, knowing McBride was doing the same in his sector. He put three more of the attackers down before he noticed a flash that registered brighter than those from the rifle fire. Glancing to the periphery of his right line of sight, he saw a rocket-propelled grenade screaming toward him. He ducked, and his Yemeni partner in crime turned and leapt from the tower into the compound, landing five meters below with a thud and a yelp. The rocket soared wide and to the left over the camp and into the city.
Popping up immediately so as not to lose sight of the triggerman, Wilde acquired the RPG and its owner, moved his laser to him, and fired the remainder of his magazine. The man dropped, and Wilde depressed the M4’s magazine release with his trigger finger while simultaneously pulling a fresh mag from the chest rig on his kit. He jammed the new magazine in, slapped the bolt release to chamber a round, and tapped the forward assist to ensure the round was properly seated on the bolt face. The wave of attackers appeared to have died down. He moved to key up his radio to ask McBride if he saw any squirters, when Kendall’s voice came over the net.
“We’ve got a possible VBIED here,” he said calmly, though the concern in his voice was evident. “Heavily armored!” The sound of gunfirewas heavy in the background of the transmission and notably increased across the camp. Vehicle-borne improvised explosive device was just a fancy way of saying car bomb, and they were extremely dangerous.
Wilde raced down the tower stairs. The Yemeni soldier who had jumped was at the bottom limping around. He grabbed the man by the collar, pointed up at the tower, and yelled in Arabic, “Get back up there and pull security!” Wilde released him and turned to head toward the main gate.
At that moment, an area approximately two hundred meters in front of him, where the main gate was situated, erupted into an enormous fireball. Wilde barely heard the explosion as the concussive blast knocked him off his feet and threw him to the ground, his face flushing from the intense heat. He lay there dazed for several seconds as his brain took time to comprehend what had just occurred. He stared at the area where the main gate used to be, but all he saw was fire and a plume of dark smoke funneling up into the night sky, blotting out the stars.
Wilde took a moment to compose himself as fire and debris rained down, forcing him to cover his face with his hands. When it stopped, he took stock of his situation. He wiggled his fingers and toes and checked himself briefly for bleeding. While the concussive blast had knocked the wind out of him, he didn’t appear to be injured. The Green Beret slowly climbed to his feet, shaking the cobwebs from his head. He recovered his carbine, which had been flung from his grasp, throwing the VTAC sling over his head and inserting a fresh magazine to replace the one that had been knocked out by the explosion and the ensuing fall. He took one step forward, steadied himself as he still felt slightly off balance, then took off running for the main gate.
Turning a corner around a tent he nearly ran into McBride and had to stop suddenly to keep from colliding with him. They looked at eachother but said nothing. Several of their team members had been at the gate and they both knew their friends were most likely dead. Neither man was anxious to arrive at the carnage, and yet they had to look for survivors and fight off the ground attack that was sure to follow the breach of the perimeter created by the blast. Wilde nodded subtly and McBride returned it, both men sharing an unspoken understanding as they moved out toward the gate.
As they approached the area, they encountered several of the British and Arab soldiers situated behind cover and returning fire into the smoke. There were bodies strewn about, as well as pieces of bodies that moments earlier had been whole men, splayed out among the wreckage of metal that used to be a large vehicle. As the two Americans joined their counterparts, a Saudi soldier turned around and Wilde immediately recognized the face of Ahmed. He seemed to brighten at the unexpected arrival of the two Americans.
“My friends,” he said, “the situation is not good. Many enemies at the gates. The Yemeni forces are mostly dead or have run off.”
The implication was clear. They were on their own. There would be no local support.
“Fucking hell,” Wilde swore under his breath as he peered into the smoke that was wafting in their direction, stinging his eyes. He could make out silhouettes in the distance and intermittent muzzle flashes. The situation appeared to be grave, but it didn’t matter. If there was even a chance that their teammates were still alive then they had to get them out.
Wilde keyed his mic. “Net call, this is Fox. All elements respond with an up.” He waited. They should have reported in order, meaning the team leadership should have called in to confirm their status. After hearing nothing for several seconds, he stated, “Fox, up.”
McBride spoke into his radio. “Bravo One, up.”
“Bravo Two, up,” came the voice of Sales from the mortar pit.
“Charlie One, up.” The voice wasn’t on the radio. Price stumbled toward them through the smoke, coughing. He was covered head to toe in black soot, and somehow the bullets that were still cracking through the air were missing him. McBride popped up from behind cover and grabbed him, dragging the engineer sergeant behind a barrier.
