The Kill Zone by Chris Ryan Read Free Book Online

chopper lifted into the air and flew off, its Apache chaperone hovering close above it, leaving the remaining members of the unit on the ground.
    05.13 hrs.
    Jack and Red hadn’t waited around. The sky was getting brighter by the minute. They’d immediately headed south again into the desert, moving silently and keeping to the low ground as they hurried the klick to where Pixie was on stag, signalled to Al to join them, then turned to look back at the hills where the cave system was located.
    ‘I’ll sort it,’ said Pixie.
    ‘Make sure you use your good eye,’ said Red. ‘I don’t want you lasing my arsehole.’
    Pixie grinned at him. He carried the laser target designator twenty metres away up a gentle slope so that he had a direct line of sight back north towards the hills; then he clicked the khaki scope on to its small tripod before crouching down and peering through the viewfinder and focusing the apparatus on the cave mouth. There was a small whirring of machinery as Pixie charged up the LTD.
    Jack got back on the sat phone while Red and Frankie took up positions on either side of him, pointing their weapons to the west and east.
    ‘Zero Alpha, this is Delta Five One. We’re in position. Over.’
    A crackle. ‘Roger that.’ It was Matt Cooper, the ops officer. ‘Fast air two minutes away. We’ll have you out of there very soon, Jack.’
    Jack didn’t reply. They held their position and waited for the F-16 to arrive.
    Silence on the radio.
    ‘Come on,’ Jack muttered. ‘Come on, come on, come on . . .’
    They waited.
    A burst of activity from the radio.
    ‘ Delta Five One! Delta Five One! You’ve got company! ’
    Jack grabbed the handset. ‘What the fuck do you mean?’
    ‘Icom chatter. Jack, you’ve got Taliban approaching from the south, the west and the east. They think they know where you are. They’re less than five hundred metres away.’
    ‘How many?’
    ‘Impossible to say, but they sound confident.’
    ‘ Exfiltrate us now! ’ Jack roared. ‘ Now, Matt! ’
    ‘The chopper’s on its way.’
    ‘How long?’
    A pause.
    ‘ How fucking long, Matt? ’
    ‘Three minutes. Coming in from the north.’
    Three minutes. In situations like this, it was a lifetime. Jack addressed Red and Al. ‘Did you get all that?’
    ‘Yeah,’ Al spat. ‘We got it. How the fuck did they get so close without us seeing them?’
    The same thought had been going through Jack’s head. ‘They must have clocked us the moment we landed.’ He shouted up at Pixie. ‘ Have you lased the target? ’
    Pixie looked over his shoulder and held up one thumb.
    ‘ Get down! ’ Jack shouted.
    But too late.
    The round came from the west, hitting Pixie square in his left shoulder. The SAS man fell to the ground, knocking the LTD on to its side. The remaining three members of the unit acted immediately. Red started firing slow, regular shots into the air towards where the round had come from; Al covered them to the east with one Minimi and Jack to the south with another while they moved, as quickly as they could, up towards where Pixie was lying.
    He was still alive, but his shoulder was buggered. His arm was hanging limply and it was immediately obvious to Jack that he was going to lose it. His face was white and sweating and his breathing was short and irregular. Jack lowered his weapon and pulled out a morphine injection from his ops waistcoat, quickly breaking off the safety tab at the end of its plastic coffin and punching it down through Pixie’s clothes and into the skin of his thigh. He didn’t say anything – no words of comfort, no ‘We’re going to get you out of here,’ because he knew Pixie didn’t want any of that bullshit.
    And besides, there wasn’t time.
    Jack could see the enemy now, advancing on three sides, their heads appearing and disappearing behind the undulating terrain. The ones coming from the west were the closest – about fifty metres away. Jack turned to Al, who had the LASM