Countdown: The Liberators - By Tom Kratman Page 0,1

know what's going to happen to my people if we don't get them back quick."

Stauer nodded and said, "Yeah, I know. Lemme think for a minute."

"Okay, sir," Thornton replied, as all but one of the Blackhawks began taking off again, raising a still more enormous cloud of dust as they left.

It had been a long war, and a hard one . . . and, so it increasingly appeared, a losing one. After all the years, all the treasure, all the blood and pain, the tide of victory was receding. First Russia had cut off reliable transport through it or its satellites; though they still occasionally let some things through when they needed some concession or other. Then Pakistan had openly and officially granted the enemy safe asylum across the convoluted, mountainous border. This, naturally enough, had caused the United States forces – though not generally NATO allies-to treat the border with no more respect than the enemy did. Indeed, once Pakistan effectively ceded sovereignty, it could hardly claim to still have it. Nonetheless, the U.S. incursions had had the unfortunate effect of bringing down the Pakistani government and seeing installed one still more firmly committed to helping the Taliban and Al Qaeda. Of course, the Pakis had also cut off surface transportation. Worse still, they used some of their own special operations forces, by no means contemptible, to support the enemy, just as they sometimes had against the Russians, decades before.

Now the war was being waged purely on the aerial resupply ticket. And it wasn't enough. Five divisions were needed to win, at least five. They had the equivalent of, and could barely support, three, one of these a mixed NATO formation that sucked up logistics but added little or nothing to the war effort. (There were feelings, among Americans, Brits, and Canadians, that, but for the latter two, the non-U.S. NATO contribution represented a net minus.) It was a formula for eventual defeat.

And everyone who mattered, not least the enemy, knew it.

These were not the first Americans Stauer knew of who had been captured. What had happened to the others, except in the rare case where a timely rescue had been possible, was horrible beyond belief. And frustrating, as the entire war had been frustrating. As the idiocy emanating from Washington had been frustrating. As the refined idiocy coming from Kabul had been frustrating.

Seven years of war can do odd things to a man. Thinking about the fate in store for his countrymen, Stauer felt something give inside him. It might have been his sense of restraint.

Pacing, Stauer clasped his hands behind his back. Never mind that you wanted stars, Wes. If that's your most important value you don't deserve to have them, just like most of the motherfuckers wearing them. So skip that. Even if what you have to do costs you stars; you haven't lost anything you could have saved.

He looked down at the villagers, the men from Welch's team surrounding them in the village center. One man alone, Welch's medic, was watching the women and children, who were kept separate.

And what's the worst case if all this gets out? Again, forget prison. If you're afraid of that you're also not worthy of stars. What's the worst case to the war effort?

He snorted softly but with profound derision. What difference? Since Jesus Christ in his second coming occupied the White House, we've been losing anyway. About the only good news is we've kept the Pakistanis out of the country, if not officially out of the war. But every troop that can be spared is holding the passes, now, leaving not a lot to clean out the guerillas. Now it's so far gone I doubt we even can win, not without carving a chunk out of Pakistan. Silly, arrogant, slick-talking bastards have micromanaged us all the way to defeat.

Stauer considered some of the stars sitting in Kabul and thought, Not that they didn't have some help, silliness and arrogance-wise.

Okay, forget all that, too, for now. What about the rights and wrong of the thing? Again he snorted. Wrong to lose a war, terrible, morally execrable, in fact. And wrong to let your men be led off and butchered.

"Captain Welch!"

"Sir!" answered the bright-eyed-team commander. Terry Welch was not so tall as Stauer, nor so broad in the shoulders as Biggus Dickus Thornton. He was, however, an intensely strong West Pointer, and former captain of their weight lifting team.

"Back me up in this. You and your men aren't going to