Dog One

by Jim Riley

  When a team moves into a dynamic entry, the line-up of the stack changes as entries and exits are made into rooms and the men restack. We had one last room to clear, which was a small dressing room off the master bathroom. I was third back in the stack at this point. I saw that JB, who was now in the number one position, was moving to the dressing room. I also saw that although his weapon was pointed ahead of him and he was moving that way, his head didn’t seem to be looking forward. There was a lull in the noise, and we could hear the screaming again. I figured he was listening to it, trying to figure out who it was. The chance that we were going to find one more bad guy upstairs in the last little place we looked was not that great, but any good operator keeps his head in the game until the fat lady sings. JB didn’t, and he caught a jacketed .223 round that went right through his ballistics vest. He fell backward, bumping Tony, who was in the number two position at that point. I flipped the selector switch to full auto and sprayed the room through the sheet rock wall that separated me from the apparent bad guy. Tony had recovered by then and sprayed the small room down as well. I threw a flashbang around the corner and one-and-a-half seconds later it went off. I took the corner and saw the bag of shit laid out on the carpet, shot to hell.

  Tony was ripping JB’s LBV off to get to the wound. Or at least he was making a heroic attempt at it. I looked at JB and could see it in his eyes. He was dying. He knew it and I knew it. Blood was coming out of his mouth and he couldn’t speak, even though he was trying desperately. Tony was begging him to hang in there.

  “Come on.” I said to Tony.

  Tony looked up at me with begging eyes. I know he wanted me to do something. At least tell him it was going to be okay. It wasn’t. And there was no time.

  “Let’s go. It’s not over.” I grabbed Tony by the LBV and pulled. He jerked it back and told me something. I couldn’t exactly hear what it was but assumed it was something to the effect of “fuck you.”

  “Let’s go, Tony. It’s not over. We have teammates downstairs and a bomb that may still go off.”

  “Fuck you. And fuck the bomb.” He was still holding on desperately to JB’s hand, and JB was still trying desperately to say something.

  “It’s a nuclear bomb, Tony. It’ll take out the whole county. Let’s go.” I pulled again, only this time more gently. He stood up and looked at me.

  “A nuclear bomb?”

  “Yeah. Come on.” He followed me away from JB. I heard a moan from JB’s direction but didn’t look back. I assumed it was a death rattle. I didn’t know, and I didn’t want to know.

  “Brett, talk to me.” Under stress, sometimes you forego radio protocol.

  “Taking fire from a big-ass gun and it’s cutting us up. I’ve got one man down and we’re pinned in the living room.”

  “Where’s he at?”

  About that time the gun started up again and I couldn’t hear Brett’s response. Tony and I worked our way down the stairwell to the landing that opened up into the downstairs hallway. I could see the wall had been torn up from the .50 caliber. The gun was still firing but I wasn’t seeing any bullets coming into the hallway. I assumed he had figured he had Brett and his team pinned down and was laying down fire through the walls in their direction. It was working, too. I looked back at Tony, who was wide-eyed, and motioned two fingers in a walking motion, then palm down I raised and lowered my hand. He understood that to mean I was going to move low, down the hallway. That’s exactly what it meant. I got down on my knees and peeked the corner. I didn’t see anything. There were four doors down the hallway in the direction the gunfire was coming from. Three were open and one was closed. It was the last one on the right and I was betting it was the one he was in. I began crawling on my belly down the hall. I wasn’t too concerned with the noise my nylon LBV was probably making as it moved along the carpet. No one, including me, could hear anything over the gunfire. I came to the first door on the left and moved into the room, then stood up. By the time Tony had followed me into the room, I had cleared it. I wasn’t going to make the same mistake JB had made and assume it was clear. I knew the door across the hall was a bedroom and wasn’t about to go into it, since it was directly in the line of fire from the .50.

  The gun had lulled again and I stood quietly. I noticed that the screaming had stopped. I didn’t know if that was good or bad for whoever had taken a round. The thought of taking a .50 caliber round is enough to make a person want to stop and think. I didn’t have that luxury, though.

  I walked to the back of the bedroom to make sure the guy didn’t hear me and I pushed the PTT.

  “Brett, draw his fire.”

  “Say again!?” he asked in horror.

  I knew he’d heard me and also knew he would have choked me out if he could have gotten his hands on my neck. “Fire a round and get him going again so we can move on him.”

  “Okay.”

  Someone let go with a ten shot burst of 5.56 rounds from an M4. The .50 fired back up.

  I didn’t even slink back down. Tony and I went down the hall and into the last room on the left, which was a bath. It only took a second to clear it. “When it lulls, we kick the door, bang the room, and go in.”

  Tony nodded. I could see in his eyes he wanted this guy. He wanted to kill him. If I’d had time I’d have tried to talk to him. Bring him down. We didn’t have time, and quite honestly, it made me feel a little secure knowing he was going into that room with me come hell or high water. Even if it was with wrong motives.

  I didn’t think the guy would ever quit firing this last time. Brett shooting back must have spooked him. Maybe it hadn’t been such a good idea. The noise was deafening from the other side of the door. I’d been inside buildings many times and heard 9mm, .45s, and even .5.56s, but this .50 was like all of them put together. I didn’t know how that guy was standing it. The gun finally quit. Within a split second, my size eight boot was flying forward at the area just below the doorknob. Stupid me didn’t even think of trying the doorknob. I guess I was too worked up. The door gave easily, fortunately, since if it hadn’t we’d have no doubt been receiving the good news from his .50.

  Time slowed down to a crawl. I can still vividly remember the bang flying over my right shoulder and flipping end over end into the room. There was a middle-aged, pudgy white guy with a worn-out looking .50 on a bipod. The bipod was resting on a dresser he had turned sideways. He was sitting on the bed and his mouth was open. He looked like he was yelling something, but I couldn’t hear it. I closed my eyes, turned away and covered my ear with my right upper arm. I felt the overpressure as the flashbang went off but didn’t hear it. I’m pretty sure it wasn’t from the gunfire hurting my ears, but my brain having shut down that particular sensory input. Before I could straighten up, Tony had moved around me and was shooting. Tony was using a 5.56 fully automatic Bushmaster M4. We always trained to use the automatic weapons on single fire unless you felt like you needed the extra firepower. That was especially true of the 5.56s, since they were hard to control on full auto and you ended up missing a lot. Tony may have felt like he needed it. I don’t know and would never ask him. I do know that he emptied what was left of his magazine into the asshole.

  After we cleared the bedroom I called the “all clear,” but told Brett to clear the rooms again just to make sure. I walked out into the hallway. I saw Brett leading his team into the first room. He’d left a man posted at the stairwell, too, since someone could have been hiding and now going to be coming down to get us. I walked toward the back room where Team Two had been pinned down. It looked like a war had taken place in there. There wasn’t a square foot of wall that wasn’t damaged by bullets, and the furniture looked the Tasmanian Devil had gone berserk on it. Then I saw what I’d come down there to see. I needed to know if I’d lost another man, and who it was. It was Travis Meach. Fuck.

  Brett came walking back into the room with me. He stood quietly beside me without saying a word. I patted him on the back and told him he’d done a g
ood job. He nodded but didn’t say a word.

  “Is it all clear?”

  “Yes.” I’d barely been able to hear him. That was probably due to the ringing in my ears from the gunfire.

  “The house is clear. Perimeter teams report.” I said over the radio.

  “Number 2 and 3 perimeter all clear. No movement.” It was JW.

  “Sierra One. Sides 1 and 4 clear. No movement and no one came out.”

  “U-Haul truck is secure.”

  “Roger, all perimeter teams. Listen up. No one moves around this house. If you see anyone, you are cleared to shoot immediately. Acknowledge.”

  They all acknowledged without comment.

  “All team members on the house, upstairs with me now.”

  I walked up the stairs. I didn’t look back to see if Brett was following me. I just didn’t have the energy to emotionally carry him and me. He’d have to do it on his own. The group was sullen. There were no high-fives or arm-pumpings like normally happened when you win. As far as they were concerned, they’d lost. Two of their teammates, their friends, were dead. That’s hard to call a win. I made a decision.

  “Listen up. First, did you all hear my order that anything that moved outside was to be shot on sight?” They all nodded, and I got a few yeahs and one yessir. “Okay. I know it, uh … ” I paused, looking for the right words. Just say it. “JB and Travis are dead. Nothing will ever make that right. But you need to know why we were here and that the sacrifice they made was worth it.”

  When I told the team that it was a two-kiloton nuclear bomb in the U-Haul truck outside, I got a wide variety of reactions. I made sure to look each man in the eye. Some were confused, or maybe in denial. Some nodded as though it suddenly made sense. Brett didn’t react at all. I was worried about him.

  I told Tony I wanted perimeter teams of two on each corner of the house. I warned him to coordinate with the perimeter teams out there now and tell them they were coming out. Based on my last order, anyone moving outside the house would be shot first and questioned later. After what all had transpired, I doubted anyone was going to hesitate pulling the trigger at this point.

  Tony took care of the perimeter teams. By now, Brett and I were the only live team members left in the house. I needed to talk to him. I felt like he was maybe slipping into shock, but first I had to talk to Coop.

  “Dell?”

  “Yeah. Look, the house is secured.” I stopped and counted the dead bad guys up in my head. “Four bad guys down. And I’ve got two guys down.”

  “Dead or wounded?”

  “Dead.” When I said it, Brett turned his head quickly to look at me with a stricken look on his face, as if he’d only just then found out. I didn’t know what he thought I was doing or saying. He was definitely going into shock.

  “What about the bomb?”

  “Well, it didn’t go off. I haven’t looked in the truck, and I wasn’t planning on it, either.”

  “No, don’t.”

  “How far out is the chopper?”

  “About five minutes or so.”

  “I’ve got perimeter teams out and a sniper with orders to kill anything that moves. I need to talk to that team and coordinate their ingress. We don’t need any friendly-fire accidents.”

  “Yeah, I guess they just got a satellite tasked to your location. We don’t have it up, but it sounds like the team is getting a live-time thermal image of your location. Hold on … You got six men outside?”

  “Yeah. Two of you left in the house?”

  “Yeah. Alive, yeah.” That sucked to even say it.

  “Hold on again.” I could hear him repeating the numbers to someone, and I assumed it was being relayed to the team on the chopper. Everyone on the same page.

  I didn’t even care if I had to hold now. I was starting to come down from the adrenaline. It was the first time in years I wanted a drink this badly.

  “Okay. The team’s gonna be there momentarily, but they’re not coming in until you give the okay.” I could hear the chopper in the distance.

  “Stand by.” It was his turn to hold. “All members. We have a helicopter with a specialty team inbound. They’ll be onsite in a minute. Hold your fire unless your target is already on the ground before they land. Stand by.”

  “How are they going to deploy?” It was me talking to Coop.

  “Hold on.” I could hear him talking to someone in the background, then he asked me, “Will they have a big enough LZ to put down?”

  “Negative.”

  “Then they’re going to fast rope down.”

  “Okay, tell them the only place to do that will be in the road in front of the house.”

  While he was telling them on his end, I told my team what was going to happen. Once that chopper began to hover, I didn’t want anyone shooting unless they were one hundred percent sure without a doubt it was a bad guy. I got acknowledgements from everyone.

  “Dell.” It was Coop trying to get my attention.

  “Yeah.”

  “Tell your men not to shoot at the guys coming out of the chopper.”

  That was so stupid and pissed me off so bad I almost couldn’t talk. Coop must have sensed it and quickly added, “That was from the Team Leader, not me.” I didn’t even respond.

  “Tell the Team Leader to rally his men between the U-Haul and the truck. We’ll swap out positions from there in an organized manner.” He could tell I was pissed. Friggin’, conceited, special-ops assholes.

  “Okay. I’ve told him.”

  I could hear the chopper coming in. I stayed on the phone with Coop, but we didn’t talk. I didn’t feel like it. I just needed to keep the line open in case I needed to communicate with the chopper. I walked over to the door just in time to see the chopper come in, tilted, nose up. It settled down level, and ropes fell out of the doors. It was pretty awesome in the night sky. Within seconds, men were sliding down the ropes. It was very professional and looked good. I just wasn’t in the mood to be impressed.

  The M28 team members had taken positions behind the vehicles, allowing them a small perimeter facing out. Two were covering the door, specifically. It was the right thing to do. They’d been communicating with me over an open airway and through a third party. They didn’t know for certain what they had. I’d have deployed the same way. We hadn’t worked out a code word to allow us to identify each other, and suddenly I was wondering who was going to make the first move, us or them?

  The chopper was lifting off when I heard one of the helmeted men yell out, “Dog One. Alpha Team requesting permission to enter.” It was Sarge. I recognized his voice.

  “Dog One to Alpha Team Leader, come ahead.” All of my anger lifted almost immediately, and now I assumed the smartass comment about not shooting his guys had been a joke. Poor timing though, Sarge, I wanted to tell him.

  It was somewhat surreal looking at the weird body armor suit-and-helmet system once again. I shook his gloved hand when he walked up.

  “You’re a shit magnet, Dell. Anyone ever told you that?”

  “No. Not recently, anyway. Good to see you.”

  “What’s the situation?” Good old Sarge. Always business when he needed to be.

  “Four bad guys down. One on the number 4 side outside. One over there,” I pointed to the guy Danny had shot at the front door and who we had dragged out of the way. “One more in the back bedroom area upstairs, and one downstairs in the master bedroom on the east end of the house. I also have two of my guys down. KIA.”

  “I’m sorry.” I knew he was, and knew he’d lost men before as well. “You guys did a hell of a good job here. We’ll take it now, though. You’ll be evacuating on the chopper.”

  “Where to?”

  He shrugged. I didn’t know if he didn’t know or just wasn’t saying. It didn’t matter because I wasn’t going to get anything from him either way. “How? Can’t land here.”

  “You have any vehicles handy to get you to a place where he can land?”

 
“Nothing close. We could take the U-Haul.” It was a joke and he took it like that and smiled.

  “Get something up here and make it happen. You and your team need to be on that bird in twenty minutes.” It was an order and I took it that way. Any other person and any other time, I’d have bowed up at being ordered around on my own turf. But this was Sarge and it was now. I just did what I was told. Tony had taken care of coordinating with Sarge’s Assistant Team Leader, and all my guys were switched out with Sarge’s. They had stayed as a group outside until everything was done and accounted for. No one left behind and no mistakes. Very professional on both sides. They came into the house as a group. Sarge’s number two guy came in with them. They were talking over their microphones in their helmets. I couldn’t hear them but could see his lips moving behind the shield. I noticed that the helmet he was wearing was even smaller and lighter than the one I’d worn a few years prior. I looked down at the M28 and noticed it had gone through a couple of changes as well. It had been scaled down to about the same size as my MP5. It looked lighter. Sarge noticed me staring.

  “Don’t you wish you were in one of these suits with us?”

  “Kind of, I guess.”

  “I can make it happen.”

  “I’ll think about it.”

  I sent JW down the mountain after the van. He was the most agile and best runner on the team. He also didn’t seem to be too shaken up by what happened. He seemed even more calm than Danny Baker was, and that was saying something.

  I turned back to Sarge, who was over by the window now. I think he was talking to someone, but I interrupted him anyway. “What’s going to happen here at the house?”