The Last Mission Of The Seventh Cavalry

Chapter One-2

Alexander hurried to the back, where he took hold of a strap on the weapons container to steady himself. He and the captain looked down on heavy cloud cover.

“What d’ya think, Captain?” Alexander asked.

Captain Sanders shrugged and turned to face his soldiers. He tapped the side of his helmet, above his right ear, for a comm check. The noise from the slipstream made it impossible for them to hear him without their communicators. He then spoke into his mic.

“Everyone who can hear me, give me a thumbs-up.”

All but two of the soldiers gave the signal.

Alexander stepped over to the first soldier who didn’t respond. “Paxton, you butt-head.” He flipped on the soldier’s communicator. “The captain’s talking to you.”

“Oh, s**t!” Private Paxton said. “Now I’m online, sir.” He gave the captain a thumbs-up.

“Your comm on?” Alexander asked the second soldier.

“Yeah, Sarge,” Private Kady Sharakova said, “but it ain’t working.”

Alexander checked her comm switch. “All right, Sharakova, it’s busted. Just pay attention and do what the guy in front of you does.”

“Right, Sarge. Whose butt we kicking today?”

“All the ugly ones.”

“Cool.”

Scars on a woman’s face usually mark her for scorn or contempt. However, Kady Sharakova wore her disfigurement more as a badge of honor than a blemish of humiliation.

The soldier in front of her grinned and made a floating motion with his hand. “Do everything I do.”

“Oh, grow up, Kawalski.” Kady thumped the front of his helmet with a flick of her index finger.

Alexander hurried back to the tailgate.

The captain spoke into his mic. “We’ve got a layer of clouds below, stretching wall to wall. The pilot said it’s too close to the ground for him to get under, so we’ll have to jump through it.”

“Hooyah,” one of the men said on the comm system.

“You people have had four practice jumps, but this will be the first time The Seventh Cavalry has parachuted into combat. Let’s get it right so I don’t have to requisition body bags.” He looked from one grim face to the next. “The Taliban has managed to bring down one of our newest drone aircraft, the Global Falcon. We’re going to take it away from them and capture the people who figured out how to hack into the drone’s avionics.”

He pulled a folded map from the inside pocket of his camo jacket. Alexander leaned in to watch the captain run his finger along a dashed red line.

“It looks like we’ve got a hike of about ten clicks from the LZ.” The captain handed his map to Alexander as he glanced along the two lines of soldiers. “We’ll be dropping into the edge of the Registan Desert. Our destination is a range of low rocky hills to the north. The electronic beacon on the drone is still working, so we’ll home in on that. There are no trees, no brush, no cover of any kind. As soon as you hit the sand, have your weapons ready. We could drop right into a fight. I’m going out first, followed by the weapons container.” He patted the huge fiberglass box sitting to his right. “Then I want all of you to follow just as fast as if you were lining up for chow at—”

The aircraft jerked violently to the right and tilted into a dive. The captain was thrown hard against the weapons container, knocking him unconscious. He tumbled off the tailgate and into the air as his static line yanked tight.

“We’ve been hit!” one of the soldiers yelled.

The metal of the airframe groaned as the plane twisted to the left, then seemed to right itself for a moment.

Alexander worked his way forward to the door leading into the cockpit. When he pulled the handle, the door flew open, hitting his helmet and almost taking off his arm. He pulled himself into the doorway, leaning into the wind howling through the open door.

“Holy s**t!”

He blinked, not believing what he saw: The whole nose section of the C-130 was gone, including the pilot and co-pilot seats. The navigator’s seat was still in place, but it was empty. When he looked forward through the gaping hole where the front of the plane should have been, he was terrified to see they were spiraling toward a jagged mountaintop, no more than two miles ahead of them.

“Everybody out!” he yelled into his mic. His soldiers stared at him, frozen in place, as if they didn’t understand his order. “Out the back, NOW!”

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