PART 3
The fighters below sensed it too.
Their firing slowed.
Not stopped.
Slowed.
That was how you knew they were moving.
“Hundred yards,” Evans said, peeking through a gap in the wall. “Maybe less.”
Beckett drew his sidearm.
The sound of that pistol clearing leather cut through me harder than the radio call.
A SEAL pulling a sidearm in the middle of an ambush means the conversation is almost over.
I checked my own weapon.
One magazine in.
No spare.
Danvers coughed once.
Doc pressed harder.
Beckett glanced at each of us like he was memorizing faces.
Then he looked toward the ridge where the enemy was forming for the final push.
“Make them pay rent for every inch,” he said.
That was Beckett.
Dry humor at the edge of death.
Then the sound came.
Not an AK.
Not a machine gun.
Not an RPG.
One deep crack rolled over the valley.
The fighter carrying the RPG at the front of the assault folded backward so suddenly the men behind him stumbled over him.
The launcher dropped into the dirt.
The rocket never fired.
Every man in our compound froze.
Evans blinked.
“What the hell was that?”
A second crack hit.
The machine gunner on the left ridge collapsed over his weapon.
Beckett stared toward the opposite high ground.
“That’s not ours,” he said.
Hayes grabbed binoculars with shaking hands.
“TOC, Romeo Two-Zero. Be advised, unknown friendly element engaging enemy from eastern ridge.”
The answer came fast.
“Romeo Two-Zero, negative. We have no friendly assets in your grid.”
Another crack.
A man shouting orders on the ridge dropped mid-command.
Hayes lowered the binoculars slowly.
May you like
“Then somebody better update the map,” he said, voice breaking.
“Because a ghost just saved our lives.”
