Without Fear

by Col. David Hunt

  Calm. Focused. Ready.

  He turned back to the picture beyond the window, a nearly solid layer of pines sprinkled with fresh powder rushing just below the helicopter’s belly.

  Vaccaro had been right. The place did indeed look like Colorado Springs in early winter, after the first blizzard—except for the bearded insurgents hidden beneath that tranquil sea of snowy boughs.

  “Two minutes!” came the warning from the copilot over the intercom system.

  Feeling the adrenaline rush in anticipation of battle, Wright flexed his hands, protected by a pair of leather gloves with hard-shell knuckles, just the tips of his fingers exposed, to retain dexterity.

  He clutched the Heckler & Koch submachine gun, feeling confident in his ability to place all twenty-five .45 ACP rounds in the detachable magazine with crazy precision from any stance—even running—and in any lighting conditions.

  “Goggles,” he told Gaudet.

  “Marines! Goggles down!” the Louisiana native shouted.

  The men complied, lowering their helmet-mounted AN/PVS-14 monocular night vision devices over their nondominant eyes. The single-eye design provided superior depth perception and night adaptation, leaving their shooting eyes free for a matching AN/PVS-14 attached to every weapon.

  “Sixty seconds!”

  The side gunners trained their M240Ds on the incoming clearing, a rocky outcrop just wide enough for one bird at a time. The machine guns were mounted on pivot arms and fitted with front and rear sights and a trigger group that accommodated the spade grip devices, and were fed by extra-large magazine boxes filled with disintegrating M13 linked belts of 7.62 × 51mm cartridges.

  Wright looked at one of his men, who was armed with an M240L, the lighter version of those side-mounted guns, incorporating titanium into the design to achieve an 18 percent weight reduction.

  Filling his lungs with the cold air streaming through the side openings as the gunners scanned the LZ, Wright waited for the pilot to flare the Black Hawk a foot over the rocky ledge, then he jumped out the side door and ran to the trees. He took less than fifteen seconds to cover the fifty feet of clearing, by which time the first Black Hawk was already out of the way and the second was rushing into its place, dropping its load.

  Ten seconds per helo. Eight helos.

  Eighty seconds, Wright thought, his UMP45 aimed at a forest painted in a palette of green, as he searched for anything that moved. That was plenty of time for insurgents in the area to reach the LZ and unleash hell on the incoming Black Hawks at their most vulnerable moment. So the marines spread efficiently around the edge of the clearing, progressively covering each bird until the entire platoon had safely infiltrated the woods and the helicopters vanished down the mountain.

  Automatically breaking up into their three rifle squads, led by a three-stripe sergeant, the marines fell in line while Wright had Gaudet call it in.

  Speaking into his MBITR, the gunnery sergeant said, “Bravo Niner Six, Six Six Zulu on the ground.”

  The reply came a few seconds later, as the transmission had to go through a pair of UAVs circling the top of the mountain and acting as relay stations. “Roger that Six Six Zulu. Proceed to target. Be advised we still don’t have eyes on hostiles.”

  “Of course,” Wright whispered to himself, though loud enough for Gaudet to turn his head. “Where would be the fun in that?”

  “Sir?”

  “Nothing, Gunny. Let’s just go finish this,” he replied, staring at the picture before him, a fresh layer of snow mixed with pine needles angling up at around twenty degrees under a virgin forest of stone pines.

  It could actually be a Christmas postcard—peaceful, serene, even beautiful—if it weren’t for the fact that somewhere beyond the range of his night optics hid a whole lot of crazies armed with a nuclear weapon.

  122

  Back in Business

  SULAIMAN MOUNTAINS. SOUTHERN AFGHANISTAN.

  The mountain wind brought tears to Stark’s eyes, and as he inhaled, the chill seemed to squeeze his chest. But the air wasn’t just cold. It smelled of burned wood.

  MP5A1 at the ready, he stepped out of the cave at the bottom of the stairs and onto a bed of singed pine needles, noticing the nearly circular pattern around the exit.

  Monica extinguished the torch before exiting what had been a long and winding series of descents, sections of steps between long inclines cut in the rock. Ryan followed as the three of them stared out into dark wilderness.

  Stark peered through the night vision scope mounted on the MP5A1. Monica and Ryan already had their night vision monoculars out and were scanning the scenery.

  To his right, the mountainside slanted into green darkness at a shallower angle than the hill to their left. The dim silver moonlight filtering through the canopy showed that the hill led to the same gorge they had seen on the southern face, which had been lined with river rocks after a thousand-foot drop. But it wasn’t until he stood here that Stark got an appreciation for the strategic value of this place high up in the mountains, secretly bridging the country’s northern plains with the southern section of the Sulaimans skirting Kandahar and Lashkar Gah. It was the ideal route to run guns and soldiers between the northern and southern war theaters.

  And who knows how many other passages like this one exist in these mountains.

  Stark believed in his core that such secret compounds, mountain passes, and the tunnels that connected them all were the primary reason why the Taliban could never stay defeated. NATO could pound the hell out of it for months—just as the Soviets had in the 1980s—driving them out of a region or a town, but a month later the rebels were back in force.

  Monica tossed the smoldering rags from the end of Hagen’s knife before wiping it against her pants, walking to the edge of the burned forest floor.

  Kneeling, she loosened pine needles with the tip of the knife.

  “What are you thinking, Cruz?” Stark asked, while Ryan took a knee next to her.

  She lowered the monocular and pointed the Boker knife at the trail of crushed pine needles in the direction of the abyss. “Some went this way.”

  Peering through his scope, Stark made out what looked like a goat trail disappearing into the chasm, likely leading to switchbacks down to the riverbed.

  “And some went that way.” Ryan stretched a gloved finger at the hillside to his right.

  Stark stood between them, scanning the woods with the sight on the Heckler & Koch submachine gun.

  No one in sight.

  “Bastards are long gone,” Monica said, reading his mind. “But which group has the bomb?”

  “Sierra Echo One, Six Six Zulu. SitRep.”

  Stark heard the marine contingent through the earpiece connected to his MBITR, as did Ryan and Monica, who stood up.

  “Six Six Zulu, Echo One at northern egress.”

  “Six Six Zulu is two miles northeast of your position. Negative enemy contact.”

  “Roger,” Stark replied.

  The rest of his team, as well as the Russians, joined him ten minutes later, and everyone gathered around Kira as she activated her receiver, which came to life with a series of beeps.

  She paused, removing her helmet and turning the GPS screen over so everyone could see it. The location of the hidden transmitter was overlaid on a color GPS map.

  “It is picking up the signal again,” she said, zooming in on the map.

  “Makes sense,” Stark said. “The cave must have blocked it.”

  “Da,” Kira said. “And it is moving … that way, one and a half miles from us.” She pointed in the direction of the gentle grade, away from the gorge.

  “That’s the same direction Wright and his platoon are coming from. Chief, relay those coordinates to Six Six Zulu right away. The insurgents are just a half mile from them. Keep updating them every minute until they make contact.”

  While Larson got on the horn with Wright and his marines, Stark divided the team into pairs to head downhill. Leaning
over to Kira he asked, “What did your boss have to say?”

  She shook her head. “He was busy, so I left a message with Anton.”

  “Anton?”

  “His boy.”

  “Son?”

  “No, Janki mishka. His aide, but a boy just the same. No hair on his yaytsas.”

  “His what?”

  “His balls.”

  Before Stark could reply, Kira headed out.

  123

  Picks and Shovels

  SULAIMAN MOUNTAINS. SOUTHERN AFGHANISTAN.

  They advanced methodically, the forest painted in shades of green as he surveyed it through the scope of his UMP45 submachine gun, safety off, fire selector on single-shot mode. Gaudet covered his right side, closely followed by one of his three rifle squads, Six Six Zulu Alpha. Squads Beta and Charlie flanked Alpha by a predetermined distance of fifty feet in each direction. All squads had split up into their respective fire teams of four marines each at fifteen-foot intervals. Together, Six Six Zulu formed a mobile and unified offensive fighting force of mixed-caliber weapons more than two hundred feet wide, advancing uphill.

  Wright had already entered into his wrist-mounted GPS the coordinates provided by Chief Larson, marking the location of the enemy, indicating it was less than a half mile away and closing.

  The woods became sparser now, allowing moonlight in, which shimmered over the layer of freshly fallen snow.

  Pausing, which made the entire line pause, Wright glanced at the surrounding peaks, now visible through breaks in the trees, before looking over at Gaudet in the greenish twilight of their optically enhanced world.

  “Get the men into static DFPs. We’re going to wait for them right here. And hold fire for my signal.”

  Gaudet conveyed the order to the squad sergeants, who relayed it to the rifle team leaders, and within a minute the entire platoon had dug in behind boulders and trees.

  He received a new set of coordinates from Chief Larson that told him the Tangos were less than fifteen hundred feet away and moving steadily in his direction.

  Wright settled behind a cluster of ice-slick rocks half buried by pine needles and fallen boughs amid patches of snow. Settling his shooting eye behind the AN/PVS-14 monocular atop the UMP45, he focused on his fire arc of roughly ten degrees to either side of his direct line of sight. Anything beyond that was the responsibility of either Gaudet to his right or the corporal to his left.

  Any moment now, he thought.

  Cold and dry air, both chilling and invigorating, filled his lungs as he relaxed his breathing. The thing about the incoming enemy was that Wright had no idea of its size. All Chief Larson could provide was the location of the GPS transmitter, and KAF had no eyes on them because of the tree coverage, so it could be just one insurgent or a whole bunch of the bastards.

  His index finger caressed the trigger as seconds ticked by, while he scanned the edge of his optics’ range, a greenish terrain dotted with sparse trunks backdropped by darkness.

  The murky background suddenly shifted as a shadow slowly detached itself from a tree: a man in loose clothes and a turban, wielding an AK-47, moving in a deep crouch, slowly but deliberately. Then another. And another.

  He risked a scan beyond his assigned arc of fire and noticed others emerging through the darkness, counting at least a dozen, probably more.

  As he returned to his assigned arc, Wright noticed that a couple of the men were holding not AK-47s but picks and shovels.

  He frowned, just as Gaudet leaned over and mumbled what Wright was already thinking.

  “Sir, who the hell brings picks and shovels to a gunfight?”

  But a moment later, he understood why.

  124

  Flanks

  SULAIMAN MOUNTAINS. SOUTHERN AFGHANISTAN.

  Stark and Kira paused the moment gunfire echoed down the mountain, a blend of UMPs, M4 carbines, and M249 and M240 machine guns, mixed with AK-47s.

  “It’s begun,” he whispered, following the trail of what looked to be at least twenty or thirty men, perhaps more, moving in five columns spread about a dozen feet apart.

  Once more divided into pairs, Stark and Kira tracked the rightmost trail while Monica and Ryan handled the next one, then Hagen and Martin, Larson and Sergei, and finally the last two Spetsnaz soldiers at the other end.

  “Our trail is breaking right, Janki mishka,” she whispered back in the dark, her slim black figure glued to his left flank, the suppressed AK-9 up by her shooting eye, polymer stock pressed against her right shoulder.

  Stark nodded. Their mark’s trail was indeed veering farther and father to the right, away from the other four columns of rebels.

  “But the signal is coming from over there,” Kira said, pointing in the direction of the other tracks, which were headed into the firefight downhill.

  “I know,” he replied, spotting the crushed pine needles and broken branches marking the rightmost group’s path. “But these assholes might just be breaking right to try and flank our guys down there.”

  Kira hesitated, obviously ordered to follow the signal from the embedded transmitter. “Okay, Janki mishka,” she finally said. “I guess there are too many chefs in that kitchen.”

  Deciding to let that one go, Stark spoke into his MBITR. “Chief, looks like we’re breaking right to follow our guys, who might be trying to flank the marines. Stay with the main force. The signal is coming from one of your columns. Hit them hard from the rear.”

  “Roger that.”

  Stark and Kira pressed on, rushing across a narrow clearing to a series of switchbacks that veered up the side of the mountain but headed east, circling the fighting.

  And that’s when Stark heard the shots coming from just beyond the next bend in the trail, which led to a ledge overlooking the battle in progress.

  * * *

  Wright knew something was seriously wrong less than thirty seconds into the battle, as he fired at the incoming insurgents. Some fell, but the rest took immediate cover and returned fire.

  It wasn’t the shots they fired back at his marines that bothered him. The counterattack was expected, just as he expected his men to overwhelm the enemy with their superior weaponry and tactics.

  It was the enemy, however, that was surprising him.

  The first marine, a corporal with Bravo Squad on Wright’s left flank, fell on his side. Then another man collapsed—also from Bravo Squad.

  And again, falling on his side.

  Damn!

  The soldiers were not snapping back as if shot from the front. They were being fire upon from …

  “Gunny! We’re being flanked!”

  “Where?” Gaudet said, firing another three rounds into a man hidden behind a boulder, the M4 carbine reports deafening.

  Shots zoomed overhead, most from the enemy ahead, but one walloped into the tree just to his right.

  “Up there!” Wright shouted, looking toward the wooded terrain rising to their left, spotting the distant muzzle flashes. “Somewhere the hell up there!” As more shots blasted overhead from that vantage point and others punched the ground just behind him, he shouted, “Call it in! Get a damn Hawg over there!”

  125

  The Stars

  SULAIMAN MOUNTAINS. SOUTHERN AFGHANISTAN.

  Akhtar watched bin Laden work the Dragunov sniper rifle with unparalleled skill. In the first ten seconds he had eliminated two enemy soldiers from a distance of at least five hundred meters—and at night.

  The six men they had brought with them were also firing in the direction of the enemy’s muzzle flashes, clearly visible across the dark meadow below them. But at that distance their AK-47s lacked the accuracy of the Russian sniper rifle. So they offset exceeding their weapons’ effective range of three hundred meters by unleashing volleys of 7.62 × 39mm rounds in full automatic fire, emptying magazine after magazine into the cluster of marines spread along the length of the mountainside.

  Akhtar also fired his Kalashnikov at the maximum cyclic rate of
six hundred rounds per minute, emptying thirty-round magazines in seconds, reloading, and firing again.

  He glanced over at Akaa, perched over a branch at the far end of the ledge, which gave him a nearly perfect line of sight into the—

  One of his men dropped his rifle, hands clutching his bleeding chest as he tumbled over. Then another.

  What in Allah’s name is happening!

  He turned in the direction of the threat, catching a glimpse of two figures firing suppressed weapons.

  The world seemed to slow to a crawl for Akhtar as he stared in disbelief at the incoming enemy, at their bulky silencers, while his AK-47 remained pointed in the wrong direction. He knew it would be impossible to bring it around in time.

  But he still had to try.

  Just before two rounds stabbed his chest.

  Akhtar fell to his knees, dropping the assault rifle, his vision tunneling as his body went numb.

  He finally collapsed on his back, staring at the stars. He was having difficulty breathing.

  And that’s when he realized he was choking on his own blood. But he noticed that the pain was gone, all the pain—the cramps, the spasms, the incessant craving for another shot of opium.

  Akhtar found himself suddenly at peace—at peace with the stars.

  126

  Elvis

  SULAIMAN MOUNTAINS. SOUTHERN AFGHANISTAN.

  Stark and Kira had divided the enemy, capitalizing on the element of surprise.

  She took on the closest rebels while he focused on the farthest ones, whose flank was exposed as they focused their attention on Six Six Zulu’s DFPs.

  The MP5A1 with the night vision scope made his job easier, allowing him to align a target while running, firing two shots into each center of mass before switching targets.

  Kira did the same, mowing down the enemy efficiently.

  It didn’t take long to neutralize all seven of them on that ledge, all wielding AK-47s.

  Stark paused, scanning the kill zone next to Kira before speaking into his MBITR. “Six Six Zulu, Sierra Echo One. The threat to your flank is neutralized.”