Chapter TWENTY-FOUR

It was obvious from the twinkling eyes that David had relayed their conversation when they all met up at the truck with a small group of soldiers who were going on the flight. Two of them shared the truck that the Divos and Honey were on and at last they were on the way.

Honey was more like herself today, smiling and talking more, still keeping close to Urs and pleased that he felt comfortable enough now to show his feelings in public. He touched her often, holding her hand, draping his arm carefully over her undamaged shoulder, brushing curls back off her face, not that it was necessary, for one look at his face when he gazed at her spelled out the deep love that he felt. And when their eyes met, it was almost like peeking at a moment of intimacy to anyone watching.

It wasn’t far to the helipad/airfield and the mood was upbeat since most of the travelers were going home.

“Are you going home to family, Corporal?” Urs asked the young soldier sitting with them.

“Yes, Sir,” the soldier said with a huge smile. “My wife and daughter. She was born the month after I got here…she’s a year and a half now. I can’t wait to see them both.”

He glanced at Honey and looked like he wanted to say something but hesitated.

“Go ahead, Corporal,” she said and smiled at him.

“I don’t talk much about what happens over here to Julia, my wife…a lot of it is just too upsetting. If you don’t mind I would like to tell her that I met you….for sure the press will get hold of the story…..and I’m right proud to have met all of you guys and you ma’am.”

Honey blushed and Urs laughed at her, just like the old days.

“Better yet, how ‘bout if David takes a photo of you with all of us. You can show your Julia.”

David set up the Corporal’s camera and they all squeezed together, hoped that the truck wouldn’t hit too bad of a bump and took 3 shots just in case.

About ten minutes out, they passed through the ruins of a village and Honey noticed a group of women refugees walking towards them along the side of the road, likely heading for the camp another 2 K on. It was narrow here and the trucks slowed a bit, the three armed guards standing on the benches for better vision, watchful and alert but Honey was nervous and suddenly realized why.

“Sergeant!!” she spoke softly but urgently to the NCO sitting across from her. “Some of those women are not women. They’re Taliban. Look at the feet, too large, the hands, large and hairy….and boots….boots are never wasted on women.”

The Sergeant stood slightly and looked ahead where she had noticed the Taliban among the women, started passing the word among the guards and crept up to the open window of the cab to tell the Lieutenant.

Honey had dragged Urs down onto the floor of the truck, motioned the other Divos down too and they crouched while all the soldiers now stood on the benches with their arms ready.

Shots rang out as the Taliban members started firing, the real women screamed and ran for cover in the ruined buildings and the soldiers returned fire.

A grenade took out the engine, the Lieutenant and driver were wounded by the flying debris but the Louie shouted to his men, “everyone out, take cover” and everyone scrambled out of the truck, covered momentarily by the Sergeant and two soldiers, who came last. It was bedlam, shots whining and hitting the dirt, sending up geysers of dust, the women screaming, the soldiers yelling and returning fire in bursts of their M16’s, the Lieutenant and Sergeant shouting orders to take cover.

The Divos scrambled from the back of the truck and ran bent over, Honey in their midst, shielded by their bodies, refusing to be carried, running full out to not hold them up. A soldier, the driver, running ahead of them went down, clearly gone, with a large hole through his head and she jumped over him, unmindful of the pain it caused her feet. Urs snagged his weapon as they ran past, his old training coming back to him now when he needed it, the specs and operation of the weapon as clear in his mind as if his training had been last week.

They reached the wall of a building and Urs picked Honey up and threw her over, scrambled up and over quickly as bullets pinged off the plaster wall and sprayed him with shards of stone. They all crouched on the other side, trying to catch their breath and assess the situation.

“Everyone Okay?” The lieutenant called out. They looked around and saw that only the driver had gone down and two had made it over this section of wall with injuries. One was leaning against the wall putting a dressing on a wound in his side, his buddy lay beside him, an auto inject syringe still protruding from his leg, his stomach area a mess of blood and gore.

Honey crawled over to the wounded soldier, the Corporal from the truck, stayed on her knees and helped him with the dressing. When she was finished, she checked on the other soldier with the stomach wound and gently closed his unseeing eyes. The shooting had stopped for a moment and the whole area was suddenly eerily quiet.

Urs came over to her, crouched low and grabbed her arm firmly, looked at the wounded man and indicated his dead buddy’s weapon… “May I?”

The soldier nodded, Urs took the M16 and they both returned to their section of the wall trying to keep below the top of the wall.

He looked around and assessed the situation.

He had given the first M16 to David when he went to drag Honey back to safety so now there were four, the Sergeant, the wounded soldier, David and himself. The officer had a hand gun and an old Kalashnikov that he had taken from one of the Taliban. Carlos and Seb where unarmed, leaning against an L shaped projection of wall with an open area that kept them from joining their friends. Urs looked at David and nodded when David signaled that he counted at least 20 rebels in front of them, spread in an arc in the ruins on the other side of the narrow road.

The Louie crawled over to them. “Thanks to your lady we got a message off to base… and the other truck got through…we should have some help right quick.” He snapped the clip on his hand gun and pulled it out of the holster. “Ma’am, do you know how to use this?”

She reached out for the weapon, checked it, ejected the clip, reinserted it, put it on semi-auto and took the safety off, then nodded yes.

He stared at her. “They likely know about you now, Miss. Don’t let them take you, do you understand?”

She paled but nodded. “Not alive.” She heard Urs curse quietly behind her and didn’t want to look in his eyes at the moment but was unable to resist.

He crouched down and lay his hand on her face for a moment, his dear face bleeding in a few places, just a trickle, from the sprayed pieces of stone and plaster. His kiss was gentle, tender and loving as his mouth touched hers, both with their eyes open, seeking courage from each other. Then he stood again and scanned the far wall for signs of the gunmen.

The Louie looked at the Divos. Urs and David both had minor wounds to their faces from the spraying plaster and both had weapons but no helmets. They were peering carefully over the wall with their M16-A4’s on semi-auto and ready to use. He sprinted over to Carlos and Seb, dodged the one burst that was fired at him, and as he crouched by them noticed that Carlos pant leg was bloody.

“It’s nothing, went right through and just scraped the skin off…isn’t even bleeding anymore.”

“Watch our backs…some of them could try an end run.” He left them a satchel of grenades when Carlos said he remembered how to use them.

Suddenly Urs roughly pulled Honey down to lay on her side against the wall and stood on her jacket to keep her there, penning her in with his long legs as he stood against the wall and yelled “Here they come!”

She heard his M16 letting out controlled bursts, felt him change position as he tracked targets, heard the same from David’s position a little further down the wall. She saw movement near the back wall on the left and called out ….

“Carlos… Izquierda!!”…saw him lob a grenade to the left and saw the pieces of wall and gunman fly through the air from the explosion. A rifle sailed into the ruins and Seb raced out, dodging gunfire to retrieve it, laughing nervously as he got back unscathed.

“Can someone show me how to use this thing?”

“I would Seb, they made all the women learn, but I’m in jail.” Honey called out to him and Urs growled at her: “And stay there!”

Seb took a chance again, raced over and Honey showed him, noticing now that there seemed to be an ominous lull.

“This is an easy one, Sebbie, point and shoot but keep it really tight to your shoulder or the kick back will dislocate it. You’ve got 9 shots left in the clip and I took the safety off. Be careful. Make them count.”

They could hear approaching trucks and knew that now the Taliban would likely make one last all out effort to overcome their position. Suddenly there was a rush from back and front. Carlos used his grenades to take out a group of three, Urs, David, the Sergeant and the Corporal kept up a stream of fire to the front, Sebastien actually hit two of his targets but now, he was out and Carlos had no grenades left, only the Lieutenant was left to watch the back wall. Honey managed to get off a couple of good shots, then screamed at Urs as one last Taliban gunman, at an angle where she couldn’t get her arm out enough to return fire, started to raise his rifle at Urs’ unprotected back.

A burst of semi-auto fire stitched a line across the man’s middle and David swung his rifle back over the wall even before the man hit the ground.

Now the area was flooded with troops, firing at the remaining attackers, rounding up everyone not in uniform, collecting weapons. Again it was controlled chaos as the Taliban surrendered, the frightened women cried and tried to scurry away, the soldiers yelled and fired in the air to control the crowd.

The defenders came out from their cover, Carlos limping and Seb supporting him, the others in a cluster, the adrenal rush fading and shock at what they had managed to do setting in.

The new arrivals made all the black dressed ‘Women’ line up and, as a small courtesy for the real women’s honor had Honey walk down the line of chadurs, peeking inside the veil, identifying the real women and leaving only the Taliban fighters. The Lieutenant walked ahead of her pointing his returned hand gun at the temple of each person until they were identified.

One of them tried to flee but Urs brought him down easily, out racing him with his strong legs, tackling the man and ripping his chadur disguise off.

It was a very subdued group that finally made it to their heli transport.

The medic attended to their wounds, butterfly stitches for two cuts on Urs face, one on David’s and 7 in the ‘Nothing’ in Carlos leg plus a number of small plasters on all of them. Once again Honey’s shoulder was bleeding from the rough toss over the wall but all in all they were remarkably unscathed. The medic finished with them and the wounded Corporal then helped them into the heli without incident, except that Seb was disappointed he couldn’t keep the rifle for a souvenir.

They were all quiet until they had reached the main airfield, left the heli and boarded the slightly less noisy fixed wing for the long flight to Germany.

Honey undid her seat belt and went over to sit on David’s lap and kiss him softly on each cheek.

“Thank you for saving him for me Davey.”

Urs looked at them with his eye-brows raised, so she told him what David had done.

For once David flushed a bit but recovered to make a joke.

“Hell, I was just playing Han Solo. It was like a video game.”

Urs frowned at him. “So if you were Han Solo, who was I?”

“Chew-bacca,” David answered not missing a beat. All of them including Urs laughed, as usual the tension converted into a good mood by David, the master clown.

When he stopped laughing, Urs tried to argue that David should be Chewy since he was taller and it developed into a good natured quarrel that had to be settled by arm wrestling. Urs won of course, because as always, he cheated, getting David laughing too hard to be strong.

The new Han Solo took his prize, the Princess Leia, and snuggled with her for a nap. Honey kissed his chin softly and murmured… “Okay, I don’t mind being Princess Leia, but I’m not doing that nasty hairdo.”

**