I cut through a natural defilade that ran for perhaps two hundred yards, then emerged onto a long, wide, open field strewn with huge rocks and short, dry brush. When you move at night, you have to make the terrain work for you. Give the enemy nothing. Use the darkness as a friend: no silhouettes, skylines, or quick, jerky moves that attract attention. I like to have bow hunters in my units, because bow hunters learn young how to move so as not to disturb the game as they get into position.
Now the going got slow. I worked my way from cover to cover, keeping myself as low as I could, providing no S-3, which stands for shadow, shine, or silhouette. We were spaced out at eight- to ten-yard intervals, with Timex providing rear security, and Hammer just in front of him, sweeping the area in front of me with the night-vision sight of his suppressed sniper’s rifle to make sure I didn’t run into any surprises.
I’d made it to within a hundred yards of the perimeter fence when I heard a “tsk-tsk” in my left ear. I froze where I was, which was prone, just beyond an irregular pool of light from one of the security lamps, lying half in the shadow of a rock and half out.
I lay there for eight, nine, ten seconds, not breathing. Listening. And then the hair on the back of my neck stood straight up as I heard the crunch of boots on ground, approaching from my left. The sound was followed by the scent of cigarette smoke, garlic, and b.o. I guess that meant the enemy had arrived. So much for roving security patrols keeping inside the perimeter fence.
I dropped my face into the crook of my arm, so no light reflected by my eyes would betray me. I e-a-s-e-d the muzzle of my MP5 alongside my temple, so it could be brought up with almost no effort. And then I lay, as inert as a corpse, and waited, my heart beating a loud tattoo in my ears.
Why? Because I didn’t want to have to kill this asshole. Not now. Not yet. We were still way outside the fence line, and dispatching him, as pleasurable as it might be, given my mood and the way the day had gone, would give away the fact that hostile visitors—i.e., us—had come a-calling. More to the point, it is mainly in Hollywood pictures that up-close-and-personal killing is accomplished sans any noise whatsoever. In real life there is always the possibility of ambient sound—a body collapsing onto the ground; the chance that the kill won’t be completely silent and your target will manage one bloody scream; or the sudden appearance of Mister Murphy (or one of his damn relatives) to gum up the situation.
And so, I lay there and waited. Because I knew that unless this asshole had night vision, or thermal, or he was an accomplished fucking hunter, he wouldn’t see me, even if he looked right at me.
Why? Because at night, you don’t see the same way you do in daylight. In daylight, you look directly at an object to see it. That’s because you use the cone cells of your eyes, which are concentrated in the center of the retina. At night, you use the rod cells, which are grouped around the cones. I’ve taught my guys that at night, they should never look directly at anything. Instead, they should skew their vision by about the width of a human fist. And by doing that, they’ll see their enemy before their enemy sees them.
But not everyone knows that trick. Obviously, the tango who was out for a stroll didn’t know it. Moreover, his night vision was spoiled by the cigarette he was smoking. So he ambled on past, oblivious to moi, and got to live for a few more minutes, enjoying what would probably be his last cigarette.
0201. Fifty-nine minutes until Show Time. I lay up against the chain-link fence in the partial shadow between the security lights, fumbling for the wire cutters in my fanny pack. And fumbling. And fumbling. In point of fact, I could have fumbled all fucking night, because the fucking wire cutters weren’t in my fanny pack. Where were they? you ask. Good question. Ask Mister Murphy, because I knew goddam well I’d stowed ’em there when I’d loaded my gear in Baku.
It took me six minutes to wriggle and slither my way back to where the rest of the squad lay behind cover, only to discover that I was the one fella carrying the wire cutters tonight.
Now the Naval Special Warfare technical term for what’s just happened is “goatfuck.” Why? Because redundancy is supposed to be built into every mission. Put simply, if I get killed, my men have to be able to complete the mission, and they can’t do that if I’m the OFACWC—only fucking asshole carrying wire cutters.
But I was the OFACWC tonight. So doom on me, because now we were nine minutes behind the schedule that was scrolling in my head.
And we were still outside the fence.
But not for long. I silent-signaled that we’d go up and over the top. I pulled off my flak jacket. I’d use it to go around the coil of razor wire. I looked at Nod and mimed a slingshot. Nod gave me an upturned thumb, patted himself down, then reached into his left-hand cargo pocket and displayed a slingshot and a bag of ball bearings. He made the return trip with me, lay on his back, and shot out the closest security light with his first shot. At least some things were working tonight.
Have I ever told you to never think like that? Well, never think like that. Because when you assume everything’s going right, then something will always go wrong.
Because just as I was giving Nod a big grin for his job well done, I heard a quick tsk-tsk-tsk in my ear. So did Nod. We froze—because that triplet was the trouble signal. We lay on our backs, trying to become invisible in the darkness. That was when I heard the crunch of approaching boot-falls on the gravel, coming from just inside the perimeter fence.
They slowed, then stopped. I didn’t dare look, because looking would mean motion and motion is what gives you away. But the hair on the back of my neck was standing as fucking straight as it ever had when my body is telling me I am in extremis. And then, the footsteps began again. Slowly. Deliberately. Evenly. Crunch. Crunch. Crunch. And then I heard the sound of a boot sole stepping on broken glass.
That’s because Mister Murphy had made the fucking security lamp lens fall inside the fence.
The footsteps stopped. In my mind’s eye I could see him, bending over, looking for what had caused that disparate sound.
I heard intake of breath as he realized something was wrong. And then, a soft thwop, as if someone had punched a pillow in the next room, and then the very welcome muffled sound of BCOD—body crumpling onto the deck.
No time to lose. I looked over to where the sentry had fallen. He was still clutching some kind of automatic weapon in his lifeless hand. I scrambled to my feet, clambered up the chain-link fence, molded my flak jacket over the sharp coils of razor wire, rolled over the top with the practiced motion of someone who’s done this exercise hundreds of times before, and dropped down the eight or nine feet to the ground.
Directly onto a sharp, sharp stone about the size of a tennis ball. Yes, my feet have half an inch of callus. But sharp is sharp, and big is big, this one caught me right at the forward part of the arch, at the precise pressure point Chinese martial artists call hsing hsüan. A properly executed strike at hsing hsüan causes immediate spasm and loss of mobility. And since I execute nothing improperly, I fucked myself up but good.
I did not pass GO. I did not collect the two hundred fucking dollars. I went straight to PAIN. I collapsed as if I’d been sucker-punched. The fucking spasm shot up my leg, radiating from the arch of my foot, through my Achilles tendon, all the way up past my knee, into the semitendinous muscle at the base of my butt. I couldn’t straighten my fucking leg out. I just lay there, the cap of my knee touching my chin, in perfect, complete, God-given agony.
Nod was the first to get to me. He uncoiled my leg and pushed me down on the ground until I was stretched out on my back. Then he began to work the muscles and tendons in my leg. I looked up through unfocused eyes and saw Boomerang arrive. He took up a defensive position close to the body of the man Hammer had sniped. Then Duck Foot came over the fence, followed by Timex and Gator, who held his position long enough to retrieve Hammer’s big MSG90 sniper rifle so my sniper-man could climb up and drop down unharried.
Enough of this shit. I sat up and tried to m
assage the spasm out of my foot. But it wasn’t going anywhere. So I stood up, planted it on the ground—hard!—and grimaced, because the fucking thing still contained a big knot of absolute white-hot pain.
Which, of course, was precisely when the cigarette-smoking asshole who’d been patrolling the outside of the fence decided to make his repeat appearance.
We heard him before we saw him, because he started shouting at us in Farsi or whatever. I turned toward the sound. The sumbitch was coming from the gully we’d used, his AK up to his shoulder, the muzzle waving vaguely in our direction. Obviously he saw motion. But since the security lights were pointed outward, and we were in darkness maybe 150, 160 yards from where he was, he didn’t know what he was looking at. All he knew was that we shouldn’t be where we were, and he was gonna check us out.
Gator swung the fourteen-pound semiauto sniper rifle up to his shoulder, dropped into his half-crouch MP5 position, stuck the muzzle through the chain-link fence, squinted into the ten-power night-vision sight, flicked the safety downward, and squeezed off three quick shots.
No, he’s not a sniper, but he’s a shooter—and he hits what he shoots at, even with an unfamiliar piece of hardware that was sized for Hammer’s big frame. The first shot kicked up rock fragments just above the tango’s left shoulder. The second and third shots scored—the bad guy went down, knocked back as if he’d been punched, but still moving. Now, his target immobilized, Gator took his time, and holding the big rifle rock-steady, got a match-quality cheek mold and put a fourth shot into the Jap’s head, exploding it like a fucking melon.
I gave the kid a look that told him he’d just done great work. But there was no time for further Bravo Zulus. We had to move our butts.
0212. Let me pause here long enough to tell you about a highly important element of unconventional warfare. It is keeping quiet during the infil. Noise discipline is critical. You can’t go up to a target making a ruckus, because if you do, the bad guy will hear you coming, and he will wax your ass before you can wax his ass. Now, I see you out there, protesting that what I’ve just said is such basic common sense I didn’t need to say it. But you are mistaken. Even the best of us violates noise discipline from time to time. And so, as you make your approach, you must ensure that it is wholly silent, hushed, and quiet. No crunching of gravel. No stepping on twigs or leaves. No whispering. No nothing.
Now, that kind of technique takes time. You cannot just run up to the target, because running ain’t silent. And so, we’d have to move slowly, cautiously, prudently, as we made our way across a wide, open graveled area, toward the long side of the L.
The larger of the two structures had a makeshift deck/porch about ten feet wide, running its entire length. There were two doors on the long side of the L, one door on the short side, and no windows. I hadn’t been able to tell from the surveillance photograph, since the entire structure was under one roof. But now, I could see that the two sides of the L were not attached. That was good news, because it’s easier—less complicated—to hit a pair of targets simultaneously than work your way through a long, double target, especially when you do not know what the interior layout looks like.
Last, between the perimeter fence and the structures, just shy of the seven o’clock position, was that big, tractor trailer–size corrugated steel container that, from the surveillance pictures, I’d concluded the bad guys used as their armory and equipment stowage facility. It would offer us protection and cover, and so we’d stage there, then go hit the motherfuckers.
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0227. WE PUT HAMMER IN POSITION FIRST, EASING HIM up atop the warm steel of the corrugated cargo container. He slithered across the top of the container, settled into a prone position, put the rifle to his cheek, then swept the area with his night-vision scope and pronounced it clear.
0233. I made my way inch by inch across the gravel, picking my way carefully, until I reached the deck area that abutted the larger of the two one-story buildings, and pulled myself underneath it. I lay there, sweating, the ache in my foot pulsing contrapuntally to my accelerated heartbeat, thinking about how much God loves me. I edged forward, only to smack my skull against a concrete footer. It is good to know that some things, like pain, are constant in my life. Thirty seconds later, I was joined by Nod, whose night vision was good enough so that he crawled around the thick, rough footer. Half a minute after that, Duck Foot and Timex made their way under the wooden planking. They were followed by Gator and Boomerang.
We lay on our backs, with half a foot between the tip of my much-mashed nose and the bottom of the unevenly spaced deck planks. There was no need to communicate: each man knew what he had to do.
I checked my watch. Nineteen minutes to go. Duck Foot and Timex kept moving, working their way deliberately toward the aft end of the deck, where they’d be able to stage their assault on the single entrance to the classroom building. As they hit their target, we’d hit ours. I lay on my back, running my hands over my equipment, making sure everything was where it needed to be.
Which was when I heard the door just above my head creak open, followed by the sound of feet on the creaky wood planks. All movement stopped. I lay there, my heart pounding in my ears. Talk about pucker factor; I don’t think you’d have been able to get a fucking straight pin up my sphincter right then.
I heard the unmistakable scratch of a match swiping against wood, a secondary pause, an intake of breath, and the satisfied exhale/sigh of a serious smoker as he took his first drag of the day.
He stood where he was for about a minute and a half, although it felt like a fucking hour and a half to me. Then he ambled over to the edge of the deck (four more footsteps). There was rustling, and then the noisy drizzle of piss on gravel as the motherfucker stood at the edge of the deck and relieved himself. Then he farted long and hard—geezus, what the hell had he been eating?—shook off, flicked his cigarette out into the darkness, and walked back inside.
This was not good news. As I’ve told you, folks like me are at our most vulnerable when we are in the staging portions of our operations. That’s when we’re unprotected, and it is hardest to achieve the critical mass of surprise combined with violence of action that allows us to overcome the enemy’s superior numbers.
And with at least one tango awake, surprise was going to be a lot harder. Not to mention the fact that our approach was now going to have to be even more silent than ever.
But what is life without a challenge every now and then, right?
0246. I crawled out from under the decking as far away from the piss puddle as I could manage, the muzzle of my MP5 up and ready, my night-vision goggles turned on and secured tightly around my forehead.
I rolled onto my back, and signaled that it was time to go to work. Nod and Gator started toward the secondary doorway, some thirty feet away, moving sans sound.
Thirty seconds after they’d made their move, I crept six feet to the edge of the deck, slid out from underneath, hunkered, then climbed between the deck’s rough-hewn posts and rails, c-a-r-e-f-u-l-l-y crossed the planking sans making any noise, eased on up to the building itself, and pressed myself against the outer wall, just to the left of the doorway, on the same side as the hinges. Boomerang followed—but obviously not in my footsteps. I winced as the deck creaked under his weight. If I hadn’t been concentrating so hard I would have given him a dirty look. He knew how to move better than that.
Then it was Nod’s turn. The former Green Beret moved like a fucking ghost. So did Timex. Their expressions told Boomerang they knew he’d fucked up.
Once they’d crossed the deck, we shifted position to the side of the doorway opposite the hinges. Boomerang stacked behind me, Nod behind him, and Timex played rear security. I could feel Boomerang’s fingers patting, probing, and poking to make sure that everything I was carrying was secure and ready to go. As he was checking me, Nod was doing the same for him, and Timex checked Nod’s equipment, pronouncing him ready with a squeeze on his right shoulder. Finally, Nod s
pun Timex around and made sure everything was where it was supposed to be. My quartet squeezed off from the rear, and when I felt the pressure of Boomerang’s hand on my shoulder, I knew we were ready to go.
0254. I tsk-tsked twice to check on the rest of the team’s preparation, and received affirmative responses. Shit, we were not only ready to go, we were even six minutes early. Well, isn’t it nice that some things actually work out. Okay: Show Time. I eased up on the MP5 that was slung over my left shoulder on its worn canvas harness, my left hand on the extra-wide forearm to control the muzzle angle. My right hand went to the pocket on my CQC vest that held one of the three DefTec No. 25 flashbangs I was carrying tonight.
I eased it out of the pocket, and then, holding my hand securely around the spoon, I pulled the pin. Boomerang began tapping my shoulder. I shrugged him off, as if to say, ‘I know, I know,’ straightened the pin out, and hung it on my left pinky. You never want to drop a grenade pin because you might need the fucking thing again, if you decide not to toss the grenade and have to stow it. He didn’t have to remind me of such a basic detail.
Okay, I was armed and dangerous; ready to hop & pop and shoot & loot. And Boomerang was still fucking tapping me on the shoulder.
Which was when the door opened by its own fucking self. Of course, we all know that the door did not open by its own fucking self. It was pushed open by another tango on his way to an early morning smoke ‘n’ piss.
He didn’t see me, because I was pressed back next to the door frame as he pushed the door open. But he sure as shit sensed my presence, because he suddenly pushed against the door, whirled, and slammed me splat in the face with his fucking fist. My night vision went flying. His fist continued in its trajectory, smashing me in the nose. Yes, of course it hurt. It hurt like hell. But since I’m used to pain, I just absorbed it, held my ground, reached up, and swatted at his ugly puss, using the Def-Tec in my right hand as a brass knuck.
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