Page 36 of Everything Changes

As the latest song drew to a close, some devil on Jase’s shoulder prompted him to ask, “Hey, dude, how about some Linkin Park?” The other guys chuckled, sure Jase had stumped him with the request for the hard rock/rap the musical group was famous for.

All their mouths fell open as, without so much as batting an eyelash, Danny launched into an acoustic version of “Roads Untraveled,” the haunting lyrics so much more powerful without the hard driving beat behind them.

As the song came to an end, Jase found himself singing along, his husky baritone entwining with Danny’s tenor, the poignant words floating on the silent night air, men surreptitiously wiping their eyes and looking carefully anywhere but at each other.

SEVERAL HOURS later, Jase was bumping along in the passenger seat of a heavily fortified vehicle, his M-4 between his knees. There were six vehicles total, with four men in each. As Vince had outlined to Jase during the briefing, the SEAL team was working with members of the ANA, or Afghan National Army, to gather intelligence on a specific target who was holed up around thirty clicks away. The man in question was suspected to be coordinating the transfer of weapons from across the border, directly into the hands of the insurgents.

Each team member wore local dress with their body armor and armament underneath the loose clothing. Hopefully from a distance they looked like a ragged band of criminals; even the vehicles they were using looked exactly like the kind used by the enemy. Jase knew they would eventually be spotted by the goatherds and shepherds that dotted the region, and they’d done everything possible to look like anything but what they really were.

Jase and Vince were in the third vehicle back, Danny and Ali, the ANA commander, directly behind them. Since the ANA members were more familiar with the territory, they were on point in the two lead trucks, with the rest of the SEAL team interspersed and bringing up the rear. They drove at a slow, deliberate pace, navigating solely by Night Vision Goggles and thermal scope; Jase had never seen darkness as absolute as an Afghan night. Conversation was kept to a minimum so as not to interfere with each man’s situational awareness, their eyes constantly scanning, tracking the surrounding cliffs for any type of movement.

They were traveling off of the main roads, taking instead a series of trails that led to the small village their target was holed up in. The trails were little more than dry riverbeds, or wadis, and were rough and uneven. Every now and then the whole caravan would stop, and a small squad of men would move ahead on foot, scouting the area, coming back to give the all clear to proceed since it wasn’t unusual for a vehicle to come around a bend or a dip in the road and blunder into a Taliban checkpoint bristling with men and weapons.

After several silent, tense hours, as the sky lightened from pitch black to gray, Vince radioed the lead vehicle that they were approaching their first planned hide, and before long they had all pulled off to the side of the wadi and were concealed as best as they could be under some camouflage netting. Jase made the rounds of all the men, encouraging them to drink water and eat a protein bar, doing a wellness check before huddling up under the vehicle himself to grab a little sleep. He’d wanted to take a turn for watch, but Vince had told him he’d rather have Jase as well-rested and alert as possible since he was the only one with advanced medical training and would be responsible for all twenty-four men.

As Jase huddled as best he could on his pallet on the rocky ground, he let his thoughts drift to Carey for the first time all day, wondering how he was doing. Jase squeezed his eyes shut, his mind turning helplessly to the last time he’d seen Carey, how his skin was bone white with blood loss, clinging to life by the merest thread, touch and go all the way. The flight nurse had shaken his head and muttered to Jase that it would be a miracle if Carey made it to Kabul alive, much less to Germany and the trauma unit there at Ramstein Air Force Base. Jase had never considered himself religious, but he found himself praying desperately to whatever, whomever might be out there for that miracle.

When the chopper pilot had made the return trip to the firebase, he’d grimly told Jase Carey’s heart had stopped twice on the trip to Kabul, but he was alive when the med transport plane took off for Germany. After that there had been no information for weeks, until Jase learned just the day before that Carey had indeed made it to Germany and was holding his own.

For the first time, Jase allowed the emotion that knowledge brought to sweep through him. In that cold, lonely predawn darkness, in the middle of the most hostile, dangerous territory on Earth, he let the hot tears slide silently down his cheeks. They were tears of relief he didn’t have to find a way to live in a world that didn’t have Carey in it; tears of regret he couldn’t have done more to spare Carey the pain and anguish he was surely experiencing right then; and tears of happiness, because in that moment, Jase realized he had fallen deeply, irrevocably in love with his best friend.

AFTER THE endless daytime hours hunkering down under the camouflage netting, darkness had fallen once again, and as the unit prepared to launch, Jase made yet another wellness check of all the men. Other than being tired and stressed to the max, everyone was in good shape physically, and Jase gave Vince the all clear. They set off again in the same formation as before, two ANA vehicles taking point, the rest spaced behind at random intervals but still as close as safety allowed.

Suddenly Vince’s comm crackled to life. “Rogue Actual, this is Rogue Three. Movement on the ridge about four clicks east, over.”

“Rogue Three, this is Rogue Actual. Good copy, over,” Vince replied.

“Rogue Actual, Rogue Three. No way to tell if it was just shepherds on about their business or hostiles. Over.”

“Rogue Three, Rogue Actual. Copy. Cease chatter, radio silence. Over.”

Jase scanned the surrounding cliffs, looking for movement, anything out of place, his situational awareness screaming. All was quiet, and the vehicles crept ahead at a snail’s pace.

“If it’s not just shepherds but hostiles tracking us, they’re gonna attack at first light, Doc, before we can get hidden,” Vince said tersely.

“Should we abort?” Jase whispered.

“Negative” was the reply. “The wadi is so narrow for the next ten clicks that we’ll never get turned around, and we’ll be the proverbial sitting ducks. Best choice is to keep pushing ahead until we have more maneuverability and we can make the call then.”

Jase nodded, knowing the narrowness of the dry streambed was the drawback to staying off of the more dangerous main road, and it was a trade-off that had been carefully weighed and considered when setting the route. Now it looked like the gamble had failed, and the only choice they had was to continue, possibly right into a deadly ambush.

Once again the hours passed agonizingly slow as the vehicles traveled as fast as they dared, trying to get out of the narrow canyon and into a place where they could maneuver and get turned around if Vince decided to make that call. Jase tried not to let a feeling of hopelessness overtake him. He was, after all, among the best of the best, the most elite fighting force in the world. Adrenaline surged through him, making him antsy, and it only grew worse as the sky lightened, emphasizing the danger they were in as they became fully visible. They didn’t dare stop, though, having no choice but to push on.

“Contact right! Contact right!” The comm crackled to life moments before the whine of an incoming RPG split the morning air, and the lead vehicle exploded into flame. Jase felt the truck he was in leave the ground several inches as a result of the shock wave before slamming back down, jolting everyone hard. Burning shrapnel ripped into them, thumping into the ballistic blankets.

Small arms fire erupted from the ridge to the left, peppering them all with deadly projectiles, and Vince gunned them forward, screaming into the comm at the vehicle still in front of them, “Rogue Two, this is Rogue Actual! Get off the fucking X! Off the X! Over!”

One of the fundamental rules of ambush was get out of the kill zone, or “off the X.” The ANA vehicle in front of them didn’t move, and inexplicably the doors opened and several men dismounted, crouching, their M-4s spitting toward the ridge.

“What the fuck?” Vince forced out between gritted teeth. “Rogue Two, Rogue Actual! Mount the vehicle and move out, over!”

Jase knew the ANA commandos were highly trained and efficient, but the stress of being under attack and being forced to make split-second decisions could rattle even the most disciplined of units. He could only watch helplessly as the exposed men took heavy fire, their bodies shredded into bloody pulp in seconds. One of the surviving men stood frozen in terror, a deer in headlights as he watched his teammates being ripped apart before his eyes. He fell to his knees, vomiting. Jase battled back his own nausea and horror. No matter how much combat injury he’d seen, he was still never prepared for it, even knowing how weapons of war were designed for extreme lethality, to rip, shred, and tear apart. The unfortunate men’s bodies lay in pieces on the road.

The vomiting man managed to pull himself together and throw a colored smoke grenade, which briefly shielded him long enough for him to crawl into the vehicle and gun it forward, knocking the burning hulk of the first vehicle to the side enough for him to squeeze by, and soon the convoy was moving again, though exposed to deadly fire. Jase knew it was only a matter of seconds before another RPG was incoming—just as he completed that thought, an unmistakable whine tore through the air, and the projectile exploded just a little off to the left, thankfully missing all targets.

Vince keyed his comm unit, his voice calm, as he said, “This is Rogue Actual. Take cover behind any large rocks and bail out. Rogues Five and Six, boots on the ground, run flanking maneuver. Over.”

“Rogue Actual, Rogue Five. Solid copy, over” was the reply.