Free Tom Clancy's Ghost Recon: Combat Ops by David Michaels Page A

anticipated the faint click and pop, no louder than the sound of a BB gun, and watched through the binoculars as the gunman in the jingle truck slumped.
    “Good hit, target down,” reported Treehorn. “Ghost Team, this is Ghost Lead. Advance to the  wall. Hume, get that drone in deeper, and feel ’em out. Two teams. Alpha right, Bravo left. Move out!”
    I’d be lying if I didn’t admit I was an adrenaline junkie and that this part of the job quickened my pulse and was entirely addictive. You stayed up nights think ing about moments like this. And there was no better ego-stroking in the world than to play God, to decide who lives and who dies. There was nothing better than the hunting of men, Ernest Hemingway had once said, and the old man was right.
    But I always stressed to my people that they had to live with their decisions, a simple fact that would become terribly ironic for me.
    “Ghost Lead, this is Ramirez. Radar’s picking up something big behind us.”
    “Ghost Lead, this is Brown. Paul and I are all set here, but FYI, two Blackhawks inbound, your position, over.”
    Even as he finished his report, the telltale whomping began to echo off the mountains, like an arena full of people clapping off the beat, and abruptly the two heli copters appeared, both switching on searchlights that panned across the desert floor like pearlescent lasers.
    “Ghost Team, take cover now!” I cried, dodging across the sand toward the jingle trucks.
    Ramirez, Jenkins, and Hume rushed up behind me,  while Nolan, Beasley, and Treehorn darted for a large section of fallen wall, the crumbling bricks forming a U-shaped bunker to shield them.
    “Hume, bring back the drone,” I added. Then I switched channels to the command net. “Liberty Base, this is Ghost Lead, over.”
    “Go ahead, Ghost Lead,” came the radio operator back at FOB Eisenhower.
    “I want to talk to Liberty Six right now!” I could already see myself grabbing Harruck by the throat.
    “I’m sorry, Ghost Lead, but Liberty Six is unavailable right now.”
    I cursed and added, “I don’t care! Get him on the line!”
    Meanwhile, Ramirez, who like all of us had received Air Force combat controller training, gave me the hand signal that he’d made contact with one of the chopper pilots, as both helicopters wheeled overhead, waking up the entire village. I listened to him speak with that guy while I waited.
    “Repeat, we are the friendly team on the ground.
    What is your mission, over?”
    I leaned in closer to hear his radio. “Ground team, we were ordered to pick you up at these coordinates, over.”
    Ramirez’s eyes bulged.
    “Tell him to evac immediately,” I said. “We do not need the goddamned pickup.”
    Ramirez opened his mouth as a flurry of gunfire cut across the jingle truck, and even more fire was directed up at the two Blackhawks, rounds sparking off the fuse lages.
    With a gasp, I realized there had to be twenty, maybe thirty combatants laying down fire now.
    I knew the choppers’ door gunners wouldn’t return fire. Close Air Support had become as rare as indoor plumbing in Afghanistan because of both friendly fire and civilian casualty incidents, so those pilots would just bug out. Which they did.
    Leaving us to contend with the hornet’s nest they had stirred up.
    “What do you think happened?” Ramirez cried over the booms and pops of AK-47s.
    “Harruck figured out a way to abort our mission,” I said through my teeth. “He’ll call it a miscommunica tion, and he’ll remind me that I needed company sup port. But those birds had to come all the way from Kandahar—what a waste!”
    “Well, he didn’t screw up our entire mission,” said Ramirez, then he flashed a reassuring grin. “Not yet!”
    A breath-robbing whistle came from the right, and I couldn’t get the letters out of my mouth fast enough: “RPG!”
    The rocket-propelled grenade lit up the night as it streaked across the wall and exploded at the foot of the