The Oracle's Message by Alex Archer Read Free Book Online

that there must have been a unit operating in the area.”
    “Exactly.” Hans sighed. “It amazes me that it seems so logical to you, and yet to my own government it was not what they did.”
    “They didn’t pull you out?”
    “No. They left us there. The first strike had proven so successful, they wanted us to stay in place to make sure the Taliban didn’t try to come through the region again.”
    “But—”
    Hans held up his hand. “I know, I know. It defies all proper sense of logic and intelligence. But bureaucrats are not warriors for good reason. They’d be dead within minutes if they ever stepped onto a battlefield.”
    “That must not have gone over well with the other members of your team.”
    Hans frowned. “To be honest with you, Annja, it was the first time I’d ever considered the notion of disobeying a direct order. We talked it over, though, and in the end decided we had the benefit of being a small and highly mobile unit. We knew the region and felt comfortable with the idea that if we were discovered, we could exfiltrate to the extraction site and get pulled out by helicopter.”
    Annja felt a strong breeze blow over and, despite its balminess, felt a shiver run through her body.
    “The Taliban were, of course, furious that one of their convoys had been so utterly decimated. The cost to them in terms of monetary value—along with the cost in human life—must have been quite extraordinary.”
    “They wanted your unit.”
    Hans nodded. “They knew, like you said, that there had to be someone operating in the area. I found out later that they had put a bounty on our heads. The equivalent of fifty thousand dollars for our capture or death. To your local Afghani, that much money was like being promised the keys to a kingdom.”
    “They turned those mountains into a war zone.”
    Hans nodded and kept talking. “The first indication we had that our lives were about to get really terrible was when our sentries signaled us that we had the enemy approaching. But they didn’t just come at us from one direction. We could have easily handled that.” He frowned. “They swarmed all over that mountain, creeping up through unseen crevasses we didn’t even know about. They stalked down old goat trails. Over boulders. And when they attacked, it felt like hell itself had been unleashed upon us. Bullets flew everywhere, ricocheting off rocks, splintering whatever stubby trees happened to be in the area. The sound of gunfire never wavered. We scrambled and fought back as much as we could, but they were relentless.”
    Annja’s heart beat hard against her chest. “How did you ever get out of there?”
    “Somehow we made our way back to our extraction site. But when the first helicopter came in to pick us up, the Taliban launched a Stinger missile—you know, the ones your CIA gave to the mujahideen to fight the Soviets way back when? Anyway, the helicopter exploded, killing everyone on board before we could even get close to it.”
    “My God…”
    “We asked for another rescue mission. But we were denied, told it was too hot a landing zone for them to try again. We were directed to an alternate landing zone for rescue.”
    “Did you go there?”
    “Not before one of our team was killed by a grenade. He threw himself on it to protect the rest of us. We would have all been killed otherwise.”
    Annja bit her lip. “Brave man.”
    Hans nodded. “He was indeed.” He glanced away. “The secondary LZ was two miles to the east. It may as well have been a thousand. They attacked us every step of the way. Another member of my team took a bullet to his shoulder and we had to tend to his wounds. While we did, another shot took him right between his eyes. His head exploded all over me and my friend, Tomas.”
    “Jesus,” Annja said.
    “I hope he was with him,” Hans said. “But it certainly felt as though God had deserted us on that day. The Taliban kept up the attacks as we traversed the boulders and