by Jason Kasper
After securing my shemagh , I looked up to see that, by scarcely ten in the morning on our first day in Somalia, we had been compromised .
Squinting through the dense mass of jade trees to our left, I caught intermittent glimpses of a filthy white van riding low on overburdened tires. The roof was loaded with four-foot bundles of cloth, and on top of that yellow barrels were strapped with single strands of rope. Two Somali men were perched like songbirds atop one of the bundles, peering toward us with their sandaled feet resting on the windshield .
Jais casually held up one hand, and one of the men waved back as the van rumbled southward on the west bank and disappeared from view behind the trees .
I said, “Where the fuck did that come from? We haven’t even made it to Kamsuuma yet .”
Jais accelerated the boat to full throttle, and the pitch of the engine went from a steady, dull roar to a high-pitched whine. “No idea,” he called over the sound. “That road’s not on our maps .”
My pulse began racing as our boat carved a semicircle left along a bend in the river. Within seconds, we caught sight of a bridge—another key feature that our maps didn’t depict. By the time we saw it, Jais could do nothing but maintain full throttle. I readied the Galil in my lap as we scanned the bridge before us .
It was a perfectly straight expanse of wooden X-frame rails suspended twenty feet over the muddy river. At its center stood a single militiaman .
He was dressed in a brown T-shirt under an olive chest rig like ours. His uncovered head was silhouetted against the sky alongside a sharp triangular shape that he held over his shoulder, pointed upward .
“RPG,” I said, recognizing it as the cone of a rocket-propelled grenade .
Jais raised a fist and shouted, “Allahu Akbar !”
By way of response, the man on the bridge lowered the rocket launcher over his shoulder and aimed the cone toward us .
Jais kept the boat moving at full speed, and his next words were spoken with all the understatement of delivering a weather report .
“Take him, David .”
By the time my name had left Jais’s mouth, the rifle’s buttstock was pressed firmly against my shoulder and the barrel was leveled with the man on the bridge. As I clicked the selector lever from safe to fire, I centered my crosshairs just above the man’s chest rig, where I could now see a fixed-blade knife tied horizontally above his magazines .
I fired two rounds, the buttstock thumping into my shoulder with each shot, and the last thing I saw was a slight flutter in his T-shirt, as if a breeze had ruffled the fabric, before he dropped out of sight .
And that’s how it worked most of the time in combat, I thought, even as I waited for him to emerge again with the rocket—there was no stuntman fall from the bridge with limbs flailing. They just…dropped out of sight .
My optic went dark as we cruised under the bridge, and I lowered my rifle to see Jais swerving the boat around the next curve in the river, where a dense blanket of forest guarded the banks on both sides .
For a split second, my mind didn’t connect the flickering muzzle flare on the far side of the river with the audio of erupting machinegun fire; instead, I initially registered them as separate events in no way connected with the string of geysers that danced across the water in succession as they stitched their way toward our boat .
The first rocket launched from the far shore, a wispy streak of smoke marking its progress from the firing point to its impact on the near bank in front of our boat. It exploded in a cloud of flame and dirt that turned my head into a bell tower of painful ringing .
I raised my rifle and began returning fire—for lack of options more than anything else. My rounds were no match for a medium machinegun and an RPG firing from positions of cover and concealment, and when the second machinegun opened fire at us from farther up the river, I knew at once that they had us dead to rights .
Jais made a valiant effort to speed our boat through the kill zone until the second machinegun opened up. Moving forward or to the left would have led us into the spray of bullets, so he swerved right instead. I only became aware of this when the view through my optic suddenly shifted from the clear, distant view of bushes on the far shore to an unfocused blur of green immediately in front of me .
The boat ran into the bank at full speed, throwing me on top of our combat packs as we came to a stop with the engine still churning .
Jais may have yelled something to me, but my ears were still ringing from the RPG blast. All I cared about was getting our equipment and ourselves deep into the jungle as fast as possible, and so I picked up my combat pack and threw it off the boat .
The pack soared an outlandish distance into the brush—with a greater velocity than I ever could have dreamed of hurling it under normal circumstances—which was my first indication that adrenaline had seized control of my body. I grabbed Jais’s combat pack and easily repeated the performance, watching it fly twenty feet into a grove of bushes .
As I snatched my rifle, Jais’s hands were upon me, shoving me forward. I flew off the bow and rolled into a blanket of spiky grass, sensing his body landing beside me as successive bursts of machinegun fire began impacting the area around our abandoned boat .
We plunged violently forward through the brush, the thorns and sharp leaves slicing through our clothes and skin going virtually unnoticed as we ran deeper into the foliage, finding one combat pack and then another and donning them immediately. I reloaded my second magazine of mixed hollow points and armor-piercing rounds and looked over to see Jais scanning the vegetation to our front .
“Well,” I said, pulling the shemagh down from my mouth, “at least we’re on the right side of the river now .”
“Baby steps, Rivers. You all right ?”
“I’m going to miss being river pirates. You ?”
“Don’t get me started.” He panted two quick breaths, a blanket of sweat appearing on his forehead. “There’s no place for us to go, and they know it. They’re going to come at us from the east. When they do, we need to hit them hard before they realize what’s happening .”
If the conversation had been occurring from a position of relative safety, I would have laughed in his face. Instead, I replied, “That shouldn’t take long, because all we’ve got are two rifles and some goddamn American fighting spirit .”
“All the more reason to make every round count. Come on .”
He pushed himself to his feet. I followed suit, and together we plunged deeper into the forest .
* * *
The jungle we moved through wasn’t a dripping rainforest teeming with life but rather a dense conglomeration of the same scrub brush and trees I would expect to see on a savannah. According to the map, our protection from outside view was comprised of a square kilometer at best; we were bordered on all sides by the river, open fields, or the main road along the western end of the city toward which we now ran .
A forest of that size didn’t provide much in the way of hiding for two men known to enemy forces, and less so if the enemy in question had no incentive not to flush their quarry by wildly firing into the trees with crew-served weapons. We could still hear machinegun chatter from the far shore, and with the city of Kamsuuma just across the road at the forest’s eastern edge, the militia on our side of the river would converge on us within minutes .
We raced eastward, trying to find the sole trail leading out of the forest into Kamsuuma proper. Before we could locate it, we heard a monstrously loud burst of heavy weapon fire .
Jais stopped suddenly and whispered, “There’s our lifeline—that’s a Dushka firing .”
Through heaving breaths of hot jungle air, I replied, “So they’ve got a machinegun big enough to shoot down a helicopter. Explain to me how this helps our cause .”
“It’s too big to carry, which means it’s on the back of a truck. And that truck is our only ride out of here unless we fuck it up. Now let’s go find it .”
Another burst of Dushka
fire sounded to our front, this time followed by the supersonic crack of its rounds smashing through the trees. We continued moving and found the trail in short order, seeing that it was merely a set of tire tracks weaving among the dense vegetation that entombed us from outside view .
We had hoped to locate a sharp bend where we could set up a hasty L-shaped ambush. Instead, we stopped beside a slight turn in the otherwise straight path .
Jais said, “This is as good as we’re going to get. I’m going to set up here to hit the driver head-on. I want you to move twenty meters up, find a position on the left, and take out the gunner from the side as soon as I open fire. Then we’re riding that bitch out of here .”
I shot off into the brush beside the trail, hearing a third burst of Dushka fire as I settled into position behind the biggest tree trunk I could find, located a scant fifteen feet off the tracks. If I moved any farther into the brush, I’d lose my view of the enemy truck when it approached .
For a few long moments, I heard no bird or insect calls, just my breath and the rustle of wind through the treetops. Soon, I detected the sound of the truck engine approaching .
The next burst of Dushka fire thundered through the forest, and a glimmer of flame became visible through the leaves as the gunner sprayed the bushes to my left in an attempt to draw us out of hiding. Branches and leaves rained to the forest floor amid cloudy streaks of incinerated bark that faded as quickly as they appeared. As the echo of the shots receded, I could hear the vehicle’s engine once more .
As the first glimpse of the truck’s bumper slid into view, the resolute focus of inevitability befell me. I wrapped my left hand around the tree trunk, thumb pointed out, and rested my rifle’s handguard in the notch of my palm .
Rotating slightly, I angled my head toward a tan Hilux pickup visible under the swinging shape of an outlandishly long Dushka barrel that was being maneuvered by a standing gunner in a black shemagh . The Dushka’s barrel was as long as the hood of the truck, though that was still less concerning than what I saw in the bed .
Enemy fighters were packed in the back, sitting atop some unseen surface with their legs hanging over the side of the truck, looking out. Five of them faced me, the barrels of their assault rifles and machineguns bobbing like medieval lances as the truck rumbled toward Jais. There must have been an equal number of men facing out the opposite side .
We were hopelessly outnumbered, and in the final moment before I opened fire, I recalled the last time I felt so frightened—in the woods outside the target house that Matz and I were about to enter, where I tried to conceal my shaking hands as he spoke .
“Don’t worry about how many guys they have. What did I tell you before we left ? ”
“That we’re only outgunned as long as we’re missing . ”
“God, I love my job. Now go . ”
A cluster of white puffs burst out of the windshield—Jais was shooting the driver. I leveled my optic on the Dushka gunner and saw his standing profile vanish as I hammered two rounds just below his neck .
The truck wasn’t quite broadside to me as I shifted my attention to the men in the back, firing a shot into each torso from right to left as fast as my aim would allow. I hit the man closest to the bumper before working my way back toward the cab, allotting two shots for each figure I saw along the way .
Just before the clatter of return fire, I heard a great wail of agony and pain as bodies spilled forward onto the ground and backward into the bed. By the time the truck rolled broadside to me, I had emptied my magazine and was ducking behind the tree to reload. Angling back around the tree to find the truck slowing to a halt, I began firing on the shapeless masses crumpled above the seating area in the bed. Between muzzle flashes, I caught a blur of movement. Jais was racing toward the truck, sprinting down the overgrown trail with his combat pack and rifle faster than I could have run on a track .
He fired a chaotic spread of shots as he moved, lacing bodies I couldn’t see on the far side of the vehicle. Upon reaching the driver’s door, he wrenched it open, flung a body out of the cab, and tossed in his rifle and combat pack before leaping inside and reversing toward me .
I ran forward to meet him, angling my barrel left and firing rounds into a row of bodies scattered along the trail. They were dressed in camouflage fatigues, some heads were wrapped in shemaghs and some not, and a few were trying to crawl until my optic crossed over their forms and I gunned them down for good .
Jais slammed on the brakes beside me. I scrambled atop a rear tire and into the bed, barely clearing the edge before he reversed down the trail and toward Kamsuuma .
I fell onto my side, finding the uneven surface below me to be a bloodied mass of bodies .
There were four men in the back with me, their figures prostrate on top of metal ammunition cans and wooden crates arranged around the bed as a seating platform. I struggled to sit upright, feverishly trying to assess whether any of them were a threat. I wanted to shoot them all by firing downward but couldn’t risk severing a hydraulic line on the vehicle. Regardless, I had zero chance of standing unassisted in the jarring truck bed as Jais floored it in reverse while trying not to hit the trees on either side of the narrow path. One thickly muscled arm rested on the doorframe as he leaned out the window to look behind him .
My vision was drawn to a glowing disc of light beyond the tailgate that grew larger as we glided toward it at the highest possible speed. As we approached, I realized with equal parts relief and dread that I was looking at the trailhead at the end of the forest, beyond which lay only open terrain and sky .
“Ten seconds!” I yelled to Jais. I dumped my combat pack and pulled myself up a metal tripod crudely welded to the bottom of the bed, atop which the Dushka was bobbing from a single pintle mount. Grasping one of the vertical handles with my left hand, I found the parallel handle and hoisted myself to my feet, spinning the heavy mass of metal around until the business end was oriented toward the exposed ground outside the forest .
I lined up the giant stud of the front sight post with the trailhead, having only moments to check that the belt of ammunition still ran under the gun’s feed tray cover. The pointed tips of the six-inch bullets clanged into the metal walls of the long ammo can extending to my left, and I glanced around the weapon for a safety lever before we burst out of the trees into the blinding sunlight .
Jais careened into a wide turn that swung our back end onto the main road leading to the bridge, where two trucks identical to our own now sped toward us between the X-frame cross braces. The lead truck’s driver and gunner clearly saw me. In the time it took me to align my front sight post with their windshield, it occurred to me that, in my shemagh and from four hundred feet away, they hadn’t yet realized that I wasn’t one of their comrades. In a flash of mild panic, I wondered whether my new gun’s safety lever was activated or not and pulled the dual trigger with both index fingers .
The weapon roared to life with a pulsing cadence of explosions that jarred my ribcage .
I squinted through the rear ladder sight with both arms fully flexed to maintain my point of aim on the lead truck, which erupted in streaming clouds of smoke before a plume of flame shot skyward. Jais put our vehicle into drive and accelerated forward. The truck I’d been shooting was now stationary, completely ablaze, and blocking my view of the trail vehicle. I unleashed another long burst of gunfire. When I finally released the triggers, I heard Jais yelling, “GUN FRONT !”
Traversing the giant weapon required me to circle around the tripod mount and step on the bodies of militia fighters. I swung the barrel left to see the village of Kamsuuma sweeping by in a blur of tightly packed mud and tin buildings. Gunshots erupted from our front a fleeting moment before I located their source .
A hundred meters away were dozens of armed men in fatigues and black shemaghs , a line of black flags falling as they scrambled to either side of the road and out of the way of our truck. Muzzle flashes sparkled among their ranks, the cracks of inc
oming bullets soon buried beneath the thundering boom of my Dushka as I swept the rocking muzzle to rake a storm cloud of dirt and human flesh from one side of the street to the other .
I released the trigger as we closed upon them, spinning the barrel behind me as our tires thumped over bodies in the street, nearly knocking me down in the process. Once I saw the green shapes of uniformed bodies off the driver side, I continued firing as I completed a full 360 with the gun .
Without time to judge if any of them were still alive, I simply didn’t want to stop shooting the Dushka—its recoil was unlike anything I’d experienced, and the ability to project force after we’d turned the odds in a few minutes of intense fighting felt addictive .
Jais shouted, “Cease fire, goddammit! We’re going to need that ammo .”
I saw the dispersed formation of fallen men receding into the distance and swung the barrel forward. The buildings of Kamsuuma gave way to endless rectangular plots of low-lying green crops as we sped northeast on the main road .
Bending my knees, I looked through the blood-stained rear windshield to see bullet holes on either side of my legs. The front windshield seemed to have taken an even greater number. “You shot or what?” I asked .
“Took some glass shrapnel, but I’ll live. You did pretty good with that Dushka .”
“I don’t know where this thing has been all my life .”
“First time shooting one ?”
“Yeah, and judging by the way this mission is going so far, it won’t be my last. I’m going off the gun to search these bodies; holler at me if you see anything up front .”
I knelt beside the dead militiamen, used a knife to cut their chest rigs free, and patted down their pockets before tossing their bodies over the tailgate. Then I did a quick inventory of the crates in the back .
