The Apostle

“I don’t care if it’s a glider with water balloons,” Fontaine said once he had reached the man and detailed their position and situation. “Get hold of J3 Air at Bagram and tell them to send whatever they’ve got. Tell them this is an emergency CAS mission for Roper Six Nine. We’re also going to need a medevac. I’ve got a man down, multiple GSWs.”

West put Fontaine on hold while he spoke with his combat controller and then radioed the operations and pla

Daoud walked over and stood on the other side of the window from Harvath with one of the AK-47s.

“Do you know how to use that thing?” asked Harvath.

“Yes,” replied the interpreter.

“Good. Single shots only. And choose them carefully. We could be here a long time.”

Daoud nodded.

“If you want Mr. Gallagher’s night vision goggles, go ask. He’s not going to be using them.”

The interpreter began to walk away, but then stopped. “Mr. Gallagher saved Asadoulah’s life. The bullets that hit him were meant for the boy and would have killed him if Mr. Gallagher had not acted. Fayaz too. He is a brave man; a good man. Like you.”

“You’re mistaken, Mr. Daoud,” said Harvath. “I’m not that brave and I’m not that good.”

The interpreter smiled. “I think you are. I also think that if we survive this, I will help you find the woman you are looking for. I don’t need any more money from you. You can give mine to Mr. Fontaine.”

“Don’t worry about Fontaine,” Harvath replied as he tightened his grip on Gallagher’s rifle. “I’ll make sure he gets taken care of. Now go get those goggles. I think I see movement out there.”

As Daoud walked back over to Baba G, Harvath began to ask Fontaine what the hold-up was, but the Canadian motioned for him to hold on.

“Roger that,” he said over the radio. “We’ve got two IR strobes on top of our position. There’s at least seventy-five Taliban along the face of the hill two hundred meters directly west of us. In between us and them are three vehicles, two of which are on fire.”

After listening to the response, Fontaine replied, “Copy that,” and turned back to Harvath. “We’ve got a Spectre gunship inbound.”

“How long until they’re on target?”

“Fifteen mikes.”

“How’d you get the call sign, Roper Six Nine?” asked Harvath.

“That’s not my call sign,” said Fontaine as he shook his head. “It belongs to someone I know on an American special operations team. He’s got high-priority access and we’ll get bumped right to the top of the list for air support.”

Co-opting someone else’s call sign was the kind of outside-the-box thinking Harvath could appreciate. Bringing Fontaine along had absolutely been the right thing to do.

Looking back out the window, Harvath detected movement again. This time, he was certain of it. Massoud’s men were closing in. It was going to be the longest fifteen minutes of their lives.

“What about the medevac for Gallagher?” Harvath asked as he flipped up his NODs and focused his rifle on a group of Taliban creeping forward. There were only so many places he and his team could have run and Harvath wasn’t surprised at how quickly they had homed in on them.

“West has permission to disengage and roll his company to our location. They’re going to establish an LZ at the bottom of the road. A medevac bird is right behind the Spectre.”

“Let’s do this then,” said Harvath, who chose the biggest Taliban member in the approaching pack, took aim, exhaled, and squeezed his trigger.

As the man’s head exploded in a shower of blood, bone, and pink flesh, his associates hit the ground and began firing their weapons. The fight was back on.

CHAPTER 49

When Harvath finally allowed the three Afghans to start firing, he and Fontaine were ru

Enemy tracer rounds lit up the night, and the Taliban machine-gun fire had begun eating away at the little mud hut. Since they retreated to the structure, Massoud’s men had fired two RPGs at their position. One had hit the side of the structure and failed to detonate and the other had just missed, detonating against the sheer rock face behind them with a deafening blast and a shower of splintered rock.

The first of their weapons to run dry was Gallagher’s sniper rifle. Harvath was now down to half a mag for his MP5 and the AC-130 gunship had yet to arrive.

Massoud’s Taliban soldiers had moved their heavy, belt-fed machine guns down from the hillside and had set up on top of the road, not far from the burning trucks. Another contingent had split off in an attempt to flank them, but Harvath and Fontaine had immediately put down that attack.

To his credit, Gallagher repeatedly asked to be propped up in the window so he could get in on the action. He didn’t like being sidelined when they were so outnumbered. The first two times, Harvath told him no, but at the third request, he began to seriously consider it. They were going to be down to fighting with their pistols very soon. Harvath would have given his entire fee for this assignment for a box of ammo or a couple of frag grenades.

As they began shooting, the three Afghans amazed Harvath with both their discipline and their accuracy, especially the chief elder. This was obviously not Fayaz’s first gun battle. Though they weren’t expert marks-men by any stretch of the imagination, the trio had managed to inflict a respectable number of casualties.

Even though it felt like they had been fighting for hours, the Afghans seemed to run out of ammunition way too soon. One by one, their weapons fell silent and the men stepped away from their firing positions and sat down. Whether they were simply trying to stay out of the way of Harvath and Fontaine, who were still fighting, or had resigned themselves to what they felt was the inevitable, Harvath had no idea.

Then his own weapon fell quiet. He leaned his MP5 in the corner next to him and switched to his Glock.

Fontaine continued to calmly relay their increasing need for close air support to the Canadian combat controller in the armored column that was racing to get to their location.

Outside the window, Harvath could see Taliban crawling all over. In another minute, they’d be overrun. Raising his pistol, Harvath fired and nailed one of the soldiers in the throat, dropping him gurgling to the ground.

“One minute,” Fontaine finally yelled when he got word the Spectre gunship was almost on station.

“We don’t have one minute!” Harvath yelled back.

Suddenly, there was the sound of a pistol being fired behind them. Harvath and Fontaine spun to see that Gallagher had drawn his Taurus and capped two Taliban who somehow, despite the sheer rock wall their structure’s missing fourth wall opened up to, had managed to breach the rear of their perimeter.

“Tell the waitress to hurry up with my beer,” Gallagher managed to croak out, before being overcome by a fit of bloody coughing.

Fayaz tried to relieve Gallagher of his pistol, but the Marine would have none of it. “Get your own gun,” he said, the red froth building at the corners of his mouth.

The chief elder seemed to understand the joke. Giving the injured man a small smile, he sat down next to him and helped him support the weight of the weapon as they kept watch for any more Taliban who might try to sneak up on them from behind.

“Thirty seconds!” yelled Fontaine.

Harvath surveyed the short distance that separated them from their enemy and, double-tapping another approaching Taliban, he yelled back over the sound of gunfire, “This is going to be close.”

“Fifteen seconds! Everyone take cover!”

When the heavily armed AC-130 Spectre gunship joined the fight, the effect was obvious, and instantaneous. Specifically designed for ground attack, the heavily armed aircraft was one of the most devastating pieces of weaponry that could be brought to bear on the battlefield.