Without Fear

by Col. David Hunt

  Which means the intel is probably shit.

  Even when provided with satellite and drone imagery, and eyes on the ground on a site, as had been the case with Compound 45 the day before, the insurgent count was always questionable. And the discrepancy had to do with the fact that the insurgents just loved their damn tunnels. For all he knew, there could be a hundred Tangos behind those walls.

  As Wright decided to call a halt when they were within two thousand yards of the objective—as close as he would ever dare approach, given the unknowns—his AN/PRC-148 MBITR, strapped to the side of his vest, came alive through the earpiece coiling into his helmet.

  “Six Six Zulu, Bravo Niner Six.”

  Wright tapped the mike just below his chin and whispered, “Bravo Niner Six, Six Six Zulu, go ahead.”

  “Six Six Zulu, be advised of increased reported threat at your target. Do you have visual?”

  No shit, he thought, looking over at Bronkie, also equipped with an MBITR. He tapped the mike. “Affirmative. Six Six Zulu has visual. Place is a fortress. Four RPDs and at least a dozen Tangos so far. Probably more.”

  “Copy that, Six Six Zulu. Hold position.”

  Wright slowly shook his head. “Copy that. Six Six Zulu holding.”

  * * *

  What in Allah’s name is he doing? Pasha thought, adjusting the Leupold scope of his bolt-action Remington M24, observing the captain call a halt a half kilometer from the compound, just shy of the kill zone Pasha had set up for the marines.

  Reaching for his radio, he whispered, “Wait for my signal.”

  Adjusting for the breeze, and also for distance, Pasha let the front of the platoon reach the center of his crosshairs as he readied to deliver that American captain a little message.

  * * *

  Wright dropped to one knee and pulled up his binoculars again, saying, “Screw this, Gunny. Get everybody back one click into DFPs.”

  “Yes, sir,” Bronkie replied, motioning the minesweeping trio to the back of the line so they could lead the thousand-meter pullback.

  But as the three guys walked past Wright, and just as Bronkie started to convey the order to the squad leaders via their MBITRs, a report thundered down the mountain.

  Wright stared in disbelief at the face of his gunnery sergeant as the impact sliced it cleanly off his head. The large man just stood there, a mess of muscle tissue, ligaments, and shattered bones pulsating beneath his helmet, hands still clutching his rifle.

  One of the Gizmo guys, splattered in the sergeant’s blood and facial tissue, started screaming. It happened precisely six seconds before another report blasted in Wright’s head, deafening, crushing, as if a sledgehammer had just pounded his helmet.

  Colors exploded in his mind before everything went suddenly dark.

  * * *

  Pasha had put a 7.54 × 51mm round through the face of the man wearing several stripes on his shoulder pads. He knew from experience that gunnery sergeants were typically the most experienced soldiers in a platoon, more so than the officers.

  Pasha shifted targets while manually ejecting the spent round, working the bolt action to load another one to take out the captain kneeling on the ground. He wanted to cut off the head of the snake before unleashing his men on the approaching team.

  Akhtar’s orders were clear: under no circumstance should those soldiers be allowed inside the compound before he could move the bomb and the scientist to a new location.

  But as Pasha squeezed the trigger a second time in three seconds, a spark flashed in his eyes. The M24 rifle shook violently with the impact of what he recognized as a suppressed round fired by an enemy sniper who had obviously spotted his initial muzzle flash.

  The round tore the Leupold scope cleanly off its mount, along with a chunk of wood from the top of the bolt-action mechanism.

  Tossing the damaged Remington to the ground, his hands trembling from the impact, Pasha rolled off the branch and scurried down the pine tree before the hidden sniper could adjust his fire.

  Landing on his side on a thick cushion of leaves, he silently cursed leaving his prized M24 behind and reached the rear of his fighting force, where he gave the order to move on the enemy.

  It was time to finish this.

  35

  Rules of Engagement

  COMPOUND 57. SULAIMAN MOUNTAINS. SOUTHERN AFGHANISTAN.

  “Missed him, Romeo,” said Larson over the squadron frequency. “But saved that captain’s ass.”

  “His head, actually,” corrected Ryan.

  “Not bad given he only had six seconds’ warning after that first muzzle flash,” commended Martin.

  “Dammit. Kill the chatter,” ordered Stark, hiding his annoyance toward Ryan for releasing that suppressed round, even if no one could tell its origin—and even if it probably resulted in keeping that captain’s face attached to his head, unlike that of the gunnery sergeant. It was still a violation of his CIA-funded mission’s rules—and of his own rules of engagement. His team’s survival depended heavily on stealth, on their ability to remain hidden, especially when facing such formidable enemy.

  “And nobody makes another move,” Stark added. He’d already warned Harwich, who indicated he would contact Duggan immediately, though apparently “immediately” meant a different thing at the Agency. “Let the marines take care of themselves. They’re trained for this.”

  But as the Taliban contingent that had been amassing outside the compound’s wall broke into a full-blown attack, Stark began to reconsider his contractual obligation to his employer versus his loyalty to American troops.

  36

  Bounding Overwatch

  COMPOUND 57. SULAIMAN MOUNTAINS. SOUTHERN AFGHANISTAN.

  “Sir! Enemy contact straight ahead, eight hundred yards, small arms and light machine guns!”

  The helmeted face of one of his rifle squad sergeants, a three-tour guy from Louisiana named Eugene Gaudet, backdropped by swaying branches blocking the sun, materialized in front of John Wright as he lay on his back. Eons ago, during basic training, he had gotten kicked in the head during hand-to-hand combat drills. It had nearly knocked him out and given him a concussion.

  This felt worse.

  “What are your orders, sir? Sir!” the man shouted in his thick Cajun accent. His brown eyes, positioned a bit too close, flanking an aquiline nose with flaring nostrils, narrowed in obvious concern on a face tight with urgency.

  Standing with considerable effort, his ears ringing, Wright blinked while staring at Gaudet, then at his faceless gunnery sergeant lying dead next to him, then back at Gaudet, who said, “Your helmet, sir! It deflected a—”

  “Get Chinooks to the LZ and call air support!” Wright shouted through the dizziness. He had to get helicopters to the landing zone.

  Gaudet got on his MBITR. “Bravo Niner Six, Bravo Niner Six, Six Six Zulu.”

  Static, followed by, “Six Six Zulu, Bravo Niner Six. Go ahead.”

  “Six Six Zulu taking fire. Tallie ambush. Need relief and immediate exfil. LZ hot. Repeat. LZ hot. Need a Hawg.”

  “Six Six Zulu, Bravo Niner Six understands you’re taking fire and need exfil and Hawgs. Confirm.”

  “Bravo Niner Six, Six Six Zulu confirming. Exfil and Hawgs. Hot LZ. Be advised Six Six Zulu has casualties.”

  “Roger that, Six Six Zulu. Two Hooks on the way. Grunt in the air,” the operator at KAF reported, referring to the Chinook helicopters and an A-10 Warthog, respectively.

  Wright heard Gaudet’s conversation, hoping like hell that KAF did not deploy Vaccaro, given her close call less than twenty-four hours ago.

  His training overshadowing the crippling pain, he ordered a leapfrogging withdrawal to the landing zone.

  Leapfrogging, also called “bounding overwatch,” allowed for one squad to take an overwatch position, laying suppressing fire on the enemy while another squad bounded to a new covered position. This way there was always an overwatch team engaging the enemy directly while the rest of the platoon withdre
w to a more favorable location, before swapping roles, in leapfrogging fashion. The tactic had the added benefit of confusing the enemy, who would fire in the direction where the overwatch team had just been, only to realize they were no longer there.

  The well-trained force deployed as ordered. Wright and Gaudet remained with Rifle Squad A. They set up an overwatch defense perimeter behind trees and boulders along the expected frontal attack while Squad B pulled back one hundred feet to get ready to leapfrog. Meanwhile, Squad C rushed back to protect the LZ a mile away.

  Armed with a mix of Heckler & Koch UMPs, M-32 grenade launchers, M4 carbines, and M249 light machine guns—and as the large Taliban force from the forested mountainside materialized three hundred yards away—Wright gave the order to fire.

  * * *

  The speed and nimbleness of the enemy’s reaction surprised even someone as battle hardened as Pasha. Four of his men failed to react in time and seek cover. The incoming volleys cut them down, their backs exploding with rounds punching through before they fell in the thicket.

  Dammit, he thought, aiming an AK-47 at the center of the muzzle flashes while turning left, then right, leading his men in a zigzagging pattern, emptying the forty 7.62 × 39mm cartridges housed in the curved magazine.

  But as he reloaded, he noticed that the enemy was no longer there, a realization not yet made by the dozen men flanking him and still firing at nothing.

  “Hold your fire!” he shouted, wondering where the hell they had gone.

  But an instant later, two men a dozen feet from him perished as a new fusillade materialized from a spot ten meters off to the right and at least fifty meters behind the original enemy location. Their muzzle flashes illuminated the woods in stroboscopic fashion. Then twenty seconds later they were gone, but another set of muzzle flashes sparked almost immediately to the left and again fifty or so meters behind.

  There are two teams! Pasha finally realized. The American force had split up into two teams that covered each other during their retreat, so there was always suppressing fire, which effectively forced his team to constantly seek shelter instead of charging.

  Ordering his men to lay low and advance with caution, Pasha waited for the right opportunity to attack again.

  37

  Into the Fray

  KANDAHAR AIRFIELD. SOUTHERN AFGHANISTAN.

  “Six Six Zulu taking fire. We need relief and immediate exfil. LZ hot. Repeat. LZ hot. Need a Hawg.”

  The afterburners kicked Laura Vaccaro in the back as she listened to the call sign of Wright’s platoon, shooting her off the runway like a rocket and leaving KAF behind in the wake of the A-10’s twin turbofans.

  Blue skies, desert, and the distant Sulaimans filling the armored canopy of a her new A-10, Captain Vaccaro turned the stick to a heading of 230 degrees, placing the Warthog on a direct intercept course with the provided coordinates almost eighty miles away, holding five hundred feet at three hundred knots.

  “Red One One in the air. One six minutes out. Repeat, One six minutes out.”

  “Red One One, Six Six Zulu. Tallies north and east of LZ.”

  “Roger that,” Vaccaro replied, trying to make out if that was Wright on the radio, but the accent was wrong. It sounded … Cajun?

  “Red One One, Bravo Niner Six. Traffic twelve o’clock. Five miles. One thousand five hundred, two Hooks. Hooks Six and Seven. Traffic six o’clock. Five miles. Five hundred, a Hawg.”

  Vaccaro spotted the twin dots just over the horizon as she closed the gap on the Chinooks. “Red One One has traffic in sight.”

  “Hook Six looking,” replied the pilot of the lead Chinook.

  It took twenty seconds to catch them, and as she rushed beneath and to the left of the dual-rotor helicopters, Vaccaro added, “Hookers, Hookers, Red One One will clear things up for you.”

  “Red One One, Hook Six. Copy that.”

  “Red One One, Six Six Zulu standing by. Smoking your target in ten zero.”

  Vaccaro clicked the mike twice to acknowledge that the marines would use grenade launchers to lob smoke shells onto Taliban positions in ten minutes, though she figured that enemy muzzle flashes alone would be enough for her to spot the bastards.

  Twelve minutes.

  The terrain changed from desert and rocky hills to light vegetation as she inched back the control stick to follow the sloping terrain at the foot of the mountain range, keeping the jet dead on five hundred feet above ground level as measured by the A-10’s radar altimeter.

  Nine minutes.

  She scanned her instruments as trees dominated the landscape above four thousand feet, confirming proper operation of every system, in particular the massive 30mm Avenger nose cannon.

  Five minutes.

  A quick diagnosis of her underside ordnance, the primary 70mm Hydra rockets, returned nominal as she tried to perform another radio check with the marines on the ground, but all she heard was the deafening noise of full automatic fire.

  Two minutes.

  She came up from the southeast, skimming the treetops at three hundred knots, her altimeter shooting past nine thousand feet, eyes on the LZ just ahead, a mountainside clearing she could not yet see while flying nap-of-the-earth. But she could see the bluish smoke rising above the trees.

  “Red One One coming in hot and fast.”

  “Red One One, Six Six Zulu. Roger, hot it is.”

  “Roger that,” she replied, climbing a thousand feet over the terrain while briefly throttling back, getting a bird’s-eye view of the clearing and the coiling blue smoke.

  Dropping the nose and advancing the throttles, Vaccaro headed cockpit-first into the fray.

  38

  Fire and Movement

  COMPOUND 57. SULAIMAN MOUNTAINS. SOUTHERN AFGHANISTAN.

  Distant explosions and the unmistakable thunder of an Avenger 30mm cannon marked the unmistakable arrival of a Warthog. But Wright was too busy to check who was piloting it.

  The marine captain and his team were developing a rhythm, leapfrogging back across the goat path every thirty seconds, one squad covering the coordinated getaway of the other. Once the bounding squad settled in their new position, it assumed overwatch, firing their weapons for just twenty seconds while the other team began its bound. And leading the way ahead of both squads, working at a faster clip than recommended, the trio of minesweepers combed the wider track of hillside required by the infantry tactic.

  Wright and Gaudet remained in the overwatch, constantly switching squads, firing their .45-caliber UMPs at the large mob of screaming and shooting rebels closing in on them while getting reports from the battle in progress at the LZ, among their team, an A-10, and a second contingent of Taliban.

  Bastards are trying to cut us off.

  Wright frowned, picking his targets carefully, the fire selector lever on semiautomatic mode, allowing him to fire single shots, like real operators. Fully automatic fire on a weapon like the UMP45 was the stuff of movies.

  Still, after four minutes, the marine officer was running dangerously low on ammunition while the enemy continued coming at them strong.

  Removing a spent twenty-five-round magazine and inserting his last one, Wright got ready to shift squads while retreating to a new vantage point, firing next to Gaudet and another soldier, a young corporal named Franklin.

  “Stay with me, Corporal!” Wright shouted, noticing shadows off to their left. The Taliban was trying to flank him. Pointing in that direction, he ordered, “Hit them over there!”

  The kid, on his first tour and justifiably agitated, took a stand next to his captain and his sergeant, laying down suppressing fire with his M4 carbine for several seconds before switching magazines and shooting another volley.

  “I’m out, sir!” Franklin screamed.

  “Pull back to your squad!” Wright ordered, dispatching Franklin to rejoin his buddies while he and Gaudet brought up the rear.

  The kid took off, and Wright saw the mistake a moment before it happened.

&n
bsp; The corporal’s squad had gone around the corridor formed by the parallel wall of boulders, where the minesweepers had marked off the nonmetallic daisy-chained IEDs, and it had already returned to the goat trail on the far side of the pass. Franklin, in his hasty attempt to catch up, and getting a glimpse of his team already past the fifty-foot-long rocky passage, completely missed the orange markings on the ground and plunged straight into the kill zone.

  The image of the kid running in between moss-slick rocks, M4 carbine in hand, vanished in a sheet of fire and shrapnel as he triggered the mines.

  The blasts, shaped by the rock formations, shot out of the channel in both directions, punching Wright in the chest while hammering the rear of the retreating force on the other side of the pass. His body armor absorbed the brunt of the shock wave, tossing him back several feet. He landed by Gaudet, who somehow managed to keep his footing, remained standing, and—

  A late detonation flashed on the forested hill on the other side of the rocky pass. Even in his altered state of mind, Wright realized what it was: the first IED the minesweepers had identified, likely triggered in the aftermath of the daisy-chained blast.

  For an instant the world went black, then gray, before the canopy of trees resolved, followed by the cries of Corporal Franklin.

  Staggering to his feet, the UMP45 still in his hands, and actually amazed that the kid was still alive, Wright heard himself scream, “Claymore mines, Gaudet! And suppressive fire! And get Franklin to the LZ! Now!”

  Then he almost fainted, and dropped to his knees, before adding, “Move, soldiers!”

  Two soldiers knelt by Wright, covering him with their M249 light machine guns, unloading a wall of full metal jacket at the enemy less than two hundred yards away, forcing their dark silhouettes, visible against the side of the hill, to seek shelter.