The Return Of Dog Team

by William W. Johnstone

  Tillotson said, “How many?”

  “Six cars and trucks filled with armed men. They just crossed the bridge north of us and are heading toward the farmhouse road.”

  “What’s your situation?”

  “We’re okay. Our vehicles were hidden around the bend so they didn’t see them. Or if they did, they didn’t stop. We didn’t get too good a look at them, but I can tell you this: they’re loaded for bear and they’re moving in fast on your locale!”

  Tillotson passed the warning to McBane. McBane said, “It’s too late to withdraw, so we’ll have to make a fight of it.”

  The farmhouse was the strongest point from which to make a stand. It would be the core of the resistance. The situation favored not a static, passive defense, but an active one. Teams of mobile, free-ranging defenders could take the fight to the enemy with every chance of inflicting serious damage. “Let’s give them a little welcoming party,” McBane said.

  The farm road stood between the farmhouse and the wadi and ran north-south. Access roads met it at right angles. One access road lay south of the farmhouse, another north of it.

  Two three-man teams were set up, each covering one of the access roads bracketing the farmhouse. The teams were positioned west of the farmhouse to intercept the hostiles well in advance of the stuc-ture. Berger, Creedy, and Paulus covered the south road; Ervil, Niles, and Steve Ireland covered the north road.

  McBane, Tillotson, Calhoun, and Garza occupied the farmhouse.

  Virgil, Donnicker, and Prester would man a Humvee to take the invaders from the rear should the opportunity present itself. They were being held in reserve until the enemy had committed his forces.

  In the south road team, Creedy manned a .50-caliber machine gun, seconded by Paulus, who would act as spotter, feeding the weapon the cartridge belt and keeping it unsnarled, while Berger was armed with a rocket-propelled grenade launcher.

  In the north road team, Ervil worked another big .50 machine gun, Niles was the belt feeder, and Steve Ireland would handle a grenade launcher.

  Both teams took cover behind roadside hillocks and mounds. ODA 586 had an element of surprise working for it. The enemy was in the dark as to what had happened at the farmhouse and the number and disposition of the forces arrayed against them.

  On the other hand, it wasn’t a complete surprise. They knew something; otherwise they wouldn’t be speeding toward it with anywhere from two dozen to three dozen armed troops in half a dozen vehicles. And as they neared, they would see the light of the burning garage to further warn them.

  Who they were was as yet unknown to the Special Forces unit. That the newcomers were unfriendly was certain. Americans had no friends in this part of the region. That the intruders were insurgents was also clear.

  What they were was Akkad gang members and associates. When Hassani Akkad and his men in the ambulance had failed to return some time earlier or to answer the ever-more-urgent cell-phone queries directed at them from their fellows in Azif, the hardcore element in the gang had grabbed their guns, jumped in their vehicles, and headed out to the farmhouse.

  Along the way, they’d discovered the ambulance in the ditch by the wrecked plank bridge, with all its occupants but Hassani murdered and him gone. They raced toward the farmhouse, in the course of which they’d been seen by the three men posted by the Humvees in the wadi, who’d given the alert to their fellows at the farmhouse. But this exact sequence would not be known to the Americans until some time later, the next day, after events had played themselves out. McBane and company could be fairly certain, however, that whoever was coming were friends of the gang and no friends of theirs.

  In the farmhouse, Tillotson was trying to raise Foxtrot, but the base’s radio signal was elusive. The sandstorm played hell with radio communication.

  Calhoun finished patching up Garza’s wounds. Garza was shirtless, and his left shoulder and upper arm were taped up. Garza picked up his rifle and took up a position at one of the west windows.

  Al-Magid lay off to the side, covered with a blanket, breathing heavily but steadily. McBane told Calhoun, “Keep an eye on him. I don’t want him jumping up and running off on his own.”

  “No worry about that. He’s out like a light,” Calhoun said. “Tillotson can keep an eye on him. I’ll cover the roof.” Calhoun picked up his weapon and climbed the stairs to the rooftop.

  Tillotson labored over the radio, still trying to raise Foxtrot.

  The caravan had taken the bridge north of where the Special Forces Humvees were stashed in the wadi. It was a simple plank bridge, like the one where the Red Crescent ambulance had been ambushed. The route from the bridge eastward cut the farm road at a place above the northern farm access road.

  The lead vehicle turned right on the farm road, heading south, the other vehicles falling in line behind it. It and two vehicles directly behind it soon turned left, entering the farmhouse’s north access road.

  The three remaining vehicles continued onward, making south until they came to the intersection with the farmhouse’s south access road. They entered it, splitting their forces.

  Steve Ireland watched three vehicles rush toward him along the farmhouse’s north access road. He was on the north side of it, and Ervil and Niles were on the south side. The sandstorm caused the outline of the vehicles’ headlights to blur, as if seen through a canvas screen.

  The lead vehicle was a dark Mercedes sedan. It was old and battered and needed a new paint job, but it was a Mercedes. The engine was in good shape, and the car moved. The windows were all rolled down, with guns sticking out of them, guns wielded by the occupants of the car.

  The second vehicle was a light-colored compact car. It was somewhat smaller than the first, though the same number of gun barrels bristled out through the open windows. The group in the tan car were so crowded that they were practically sitting on each other’s laps.

  The third vehicle was a pickup truck. A machine gun was mounted across the cab roof, pointing at the road ahead. A gunner stood behind it, working it. The pickup bed was surrounded on three sides by a set of shoulder-high metal railings for the men in the back of the truck to hold on to while they were standing up.

  The car-and-truck combo didn’t wait for their compatriots in the other half of the caravan to get in position on the south road before attacking. They came on.

  Ervil lay prone, gripping the machine gun handholds. He sighted the machine gun on the Mercedes, swinging the muzzle toward where the driver would be. He opened fire. The machine gun bucked, spitting lead. Sparks flew as rounds struck the car body and windshield posts, making spanging noises when they ricocheted. Niles held the underside of the belt loosely in both hands, maintaining an uninterrupted feed into the weapon.

  Ervil kept firing into the car, aiming at the men and not the machine. Slay the men, and the machine would take care of itself. The windshield disintegrated. So, too, did the driver’s head and upper body. The car swerved, fishtailing. It flashed toward the place where the Special Forces trio was set up. It drifted toward its left, riding up on the shoulder, closing fast on the mound behind which Steve Ireland lay. For an instant it was coming straight at him, and he had time to wonder if it would climb the mound and sail over him, or bulldoze it and him along with it. He never found out, because a vagary of the driver’s dead hands on the steering wheel caused the Merc to swerve back to its right, removing him from its path. Momentum kept it coming more or less straight on down the road. It flashed past the mound and the rockpile on the other side of the road, where Ervil and Niles manned the machine gun nest.

  The Merc rushed on for another twenty or thirty yards before it ran off the road into a ditch and rolled. Shouts and shrieks sounded from inside the vehicle, mixing with the crunch of collapsing metal. The outcries stopped well before the Merc stopped rolling.

  The other two vehicles changed course, leaving the road. The light-colored compact car angled north, and the pickup truck angled south. The pickup’s roof-moun
ted heavy machine gun fired in Ervil’s and Paulus’s direction. The gang gunner knew where the enemy machine gun was, having seen its muzzle flares when it was putting the blast on the Merc.

  The gunner aimed at them, but he had a lot to overcome first. It was hard enough to hit anything from a moving platform such as the pickup truck. The vehicle had left the dirt road for the even more uneven and bumpy terrain of a field, all rutted and washboard irregular. The heavy machine gun’s formidable rate of firepower was offset by the bouncy ride. The gunner couldn’t hold a bead on his opponents in this duel of the machine guns. By the same token, the pickup’s shaky, unpredictable course made it difficult for Ervil to tag it with his weapon.

  The pickup hit a particularly rough bump, causing one of the riders in the rear to be thrown clear of the vehicle. He was catapulted into empty air, crying out as he followed a tight parabolic arc that finished in a crash landing on hard ground.

  Steve Ireland readied himself for the onslaught of the compact car. It left the road and drove across the field north of the road. The guns sticking out the windows on its right-hand side fired in the direction of the rockpile behind which Ervil and Niles were set up. The bullets went high, sailing harmlessly overhead.

  The car swerved farther north to avoid the mound behind which Steve sheltered. He led it slightly as he lined up the grenade launcher and fired it. It made a sound that went puh-tock!

  It was a tough shot and he misjudged the range, causing the grenade to overshoot the car, although it exploded nearby. The car lurched, one of its lights blacking out. Shrapnel tagged some in the car, yielding cries of pain.

  The shouting from inside the car stopped, but the car kept going, curving toward a stone wall bounding the field. It slowed, but not in time to keep from crashing into the stone wall. The other headlight went dark.

  Before Steve could loft another grenade at it, machine-gun fire started tearing up the road around where he, Ervil, and Niles were planted. It came from the pickup’s roof-mounted machine gun. The pickup had managed to reach a hillock in the middle of the field and was sheltering behind it, keeping the hillock between them and Ervil and Niles.

  The hillock was a low one, and its highest point barely reached the pickup’s roof. The gunner was able to shoot across the top of the mound at Niles and Ervil. The rest of the pickup was hidden behind the mound. The men who’d been riding in the back of the truck had all dismounted and taken cover.

  The rockpile was highest where it faced the access road. It presented less cover toward the hillock where the pickup stood. Less cover, but some. Ervil and Niles flattened as the pickup gunner loosed a series of bursts at them. Steve Ireland was in the line of fire too on the other side of the road. He ate dirt while machine gun bullets tore up the ground around him. He could feel the vibrations of the rounds impacting the earth. The ground was torn up, sending dirt clods geysering.

  Steve spotted a roadside ditch. He threw himself into it and flattened. The untimely attack had kept him from following up by launching a few more grenades at the compact car.

  The pickup truck’s machine-gun fire temporarily halted. Steve took advantage of the lull to peek over the top of the ditch at the compact car. There was motion in the car. The rear doors were forced open, and several men piled out. There were four in all, and they were armed.

  Commotion and weak cries sounded in the front seat. The man in the front passenger seat was alive. He was trying to open the door, but it was jammed and he couldn’t move it. He called for his comrades to help him.

  Steve triggered the launcher to peg a grenade at the car. Again, it went puh-tock. The sound goosed the four gunmen into diving over the stone wall to the shelter of the far side. The man in the front seat cried for them not to leave him.

  The grenade hit the car with a whoomping noise, followed immediately by a blast. The car was engulfed in an eruption of red glare. The gas tank blew, and the car became a fiery octopus, growing tentacles of flame that suddenly thrust out in all directions.

  Ervil and Niles crawled around, moving the machine gun to the southern limb of the rockpile and pointing it at the hillock. The pickup truck gunner knew that something was up from the lack of fire coming from his foes. He poured more lead at them, making a fearful racket as the slugs streamed into the rockpile, sounding like jackhammers breaking up pavement.

  The other half of the caraven consisted of a jeep and two Ford Explorer SUVs. The vehicles were all filled with armed men. The jeep was short and snouty, with fat, knobbed tires. The two Explorers were exactly alike, dark green with tinted glass. The tinted glass was something of a liability at night.

  The Explorers drove more slowly than the jeep, which hurtled along at a breakneck pace. A gap opened between the jeep and its two followers as they plowed east along the farmhouse’s south access road.

  Berger tagged the jeep with a rocket-propelled grenade. The projectile hit the jeep head-on. It was like the jeep had hit a brick wall, only instead of bricks, the wall was made of an explosive blast. The front of the jeep got smeared, and the rest of the vehicle started coming apart at the seams, unable to contain the fire that was engulfing it. A couple of tires blew, and the jeep started slewing around, pinwheeling as it slid to a stop in the middle of the road and stood there, burning.

  The Explorers came on, a gap now widening between them. The tail car was hanging back. Creedy fired the machine gun at the lead Explorer. A nasty surprise lay in wait. It was armored, with bulletproof glass. Creedy kept firing bursts into it. The bullets seemed to have about as much effect on it as hailstones. It flashed past, striking the wrecked jeep a sidelong blow and knocking it off the road.

  The second Explorer, the tail car, abruptly left the road and drove across the field toward the farmhouse. Creedy gave it the treatment, firing across the field at it, raking its right side. It shuddered under the impact but kept going. He concentrated fire on the machine’s underside. The tires were solid rubber, but he managed to shred the right front tire. The Explorer sagged, curving toward the right. The metal wheel dug a line in the dirt.

  The driver fought it, wrestling it to the left, fighting to pull it out of a slide. Creedy’s bullets savaged the right rear tire. The Explorer ground to a halt in the middle of the field, at a point southwest of the farmhouse and northwest of Creedy and Paulus. It was at a tilted angle that served as a natural barricade.

  Doors opened on the driver’s side of the Explorer and gunmen got out, sheltering behind the armored SUV. The first Explorer kept on going, leaving the road and curving north, circling back around the outbuildings.

  Berger craned, looking for a shot with the rocket-propelled grenade, but the Explorer zipped around the corner of a shed and out of sight. The burning garage stood between the shed and the farmhouse. The blaze had lessened but was still going pretty good. Twisted, red-hot metal struts and walls collapsed, sending a shower of sparks skyward.

  Some gunmen leaned around the rear corner of the second Explorer and started shooting at Creedy, Paulus, and Berger. A couple more darted toward the farmhouse. Gunfire blazed from the roof and some of the side windows of the farmhouse, felling the attackers who were moving toward it. They were cut down. The remaining gunmen behind the Explorer divided their fire between the men on the road and those in the farmhouse.

  It was getting hot for Steve Ireland. The four men who’d escaped from the compact car were on the far side of the stone wall, shooting at him.

  Steve used the launcher to pop a grenade over the wall. It burst on the far side. A shriek sounded, then choked off. The shooting stopped. After a pause, it started up again. Three guns only, now; the fourth had been stilled. The shooters dispersed, ranging themselves so there was plenty of space between each of them along the wall.

  Steve also had to worry about the machine gunner on the pickup truck. He and Ervil and Niles were close to being caught in a crossfire. Ervil and the gunner on the pickup truck exchanged shots, to no great result on either side.

>   Steve set down the grenade launcher and picked up his M4 machine gun. Spearblades of light that were muzzle flashes flared and spiked in three places along the stone wall. Steve pointed his weapon at one of the spearpoints, squeezing out bursts at it. The light winked out.

  Ervil and Niles were feeling the heat from the shooters behind the wall. They were pretty well covered from the pickup gunner but less so for the shooters to their rear. Niles took up his rifle and turned around, firing from a prone position at the two shooters remaining behind the wall. That gave Steve something of a breather.

  It was a short-lived one, for he became aware of a vehicle moving up on his right. The first Explorer had circled north around the back of the burning garage and was now curving west, toward the farmhouse’s north access road.

  He reached for the grenade launcher. The shooters behind the wall started pinning him pretty good, forcing him to flatten in the low-sided ditch. He could hear the Explorer’s engine winding out, the sound of its heavy underside bumping and scraping against the rocks and furrows of the fields. Niles saw the Explorer coming up and turned his rifle on it, raking the driver’s side. Bullets bounced off its armored surface.

  The Explorer was pointed north, its wheels edging to the left to begin the turn onto the north access road. Then it faltered. It started to go into a left-hand turn, but instead of completing the curve it kept on going, crossing the road at an angle and arcing toward the stone wall. A bullet hole pierced the windshield directly opposite the driver’s head. A similar hole pierced the driver’s forehead, an angry third eye. He was dead—shot by Kilroy.

  Kilroy had finally gotten into position on the half-buried rock knob at the northeast corner of the fields. With his night-vision glasses he’d scanned the scene, following the developing clash. He recognized the attackers as Akkad gang members. He’d seen the lead Explorer run the gauntlet of heavy machine-gun fire directed at it by Creedy, and knew that it was armored. He still had some titanium alloy bullets left. He knew what to do with them. He’d put the crosshairs of his sniper rifle’s scope on the Explorer’s driver and squeezed the trigger.