— Mark LZ with green smoke.
— Copy. Smoke out.
Morrison watched Grace circle overhead, providing cover as a green smoke canister popped in the compound and the SEALs began moving their wounded toward an open area.
Then he noticed something.
Anti-aircraft artillery positions on the western ridge, previously silent, now tracking them.
— Warthog, AAA tracking you! Break left!
Grace was already moving, rolling the aircraft inverted, pulling into a split-S that brought them hurtling toward the ground in a screaming dive.
The AAA opened up—tracers filling the sky where they had been a second earlier.
Morrison felt his stomach try to climb out through his throat. The G-forces were brutal now. Eight, maybe nine G’s. The world graying at the edges. Pressure building behind his eyes.
He heard Grace’s breathing—still controlled, still even—as she pulled out of the dive at what couldn’t have been more than 100 feet, leveling into a terrain-following flight path that kept them below the gun’s traverse.
— Flares! she barked.
Morrison slapped the countermeasure release. Brilliant heat signatures scattered behind them—decoys against any heat-seeking missiles. The AAA fire shifted, confused, tracking the wrong targets.
Grace climbed again, rolled.
And Morrison saw it happen in brutal clarity.
