by L. J. Martin
As I don’t want to be the vic of friendly fire I whisper into the radio, "Hey, I’m patoo wrapped. Be careful who you whack."
I’m able to get within fifty feet of the front gate without being seen. I launch the quadcopter and fly it back about a hundred feet from the gate, and set it down in the middle of the road. I don’t have to use my night vision as I’m close enough to the guard to observe his actions, particularly since he’s backlit by the distant mercury light.
He takes no notice of the copter, so I raise it and fly it twenty feet closer to him and again set it down in the center of the road, set it down hard. This time he raises his eyes, cocks his head to listen, but makes no move.
I wait a moment, then lift off again and move another thirty feet and plop it down. It’s now even with me and my hiding place only ten feet off the road, behind a closely spaced pair of pistachios.
With this plop, he lifts his AK at parade arms and takes a couple of steps forward, cocking his head as if listening. So I pick the copter up a couple of feet and let it drop again. He moves forward ten feet, now only forty feet or so from the little bird. So I pick it up and move it back the way it has come, ten feet or so.
He moves forward, not seeming afraid, but only curious. I know he can see movement, and maybe hear it plop down, so I take it up, maybe fifteen feet high this time, and again back fifteen feet. This time he jogs forward, seemingly determined to discover what this strange night creature might be. He passes me, and I slip out behind him, not quite quiet enough. I wasn’t going to do more than crack him hard with the butt of my M5, then mace him with the new knock out stuff, but he sealed his fate. He spins and I drop to a knee and put a round high in his chest, which proves to be just under his Adam’s apple I discover as I drag him off the road. I took that position as I was firing back toward my own people, and friendly fire is not a pleasant thing to explain to dependents.
The suppressor on the M5 is mainly for flash, not sound, but luckily I was facing away from the compound and the noise would be hardly noticeable.
I radio BeBe. "Guard's down. Let’s move up. Don’t forget the bolt cutters."
He circles out into the undergrowth and appears at the gate about the same time I do. I notice he’s carrying one of the Franchi SPAS twelve gauges slung over his shoulder and carrying his M5 as well as the bolt cutters. The shotgun is not suppressed so if it has to be used we’ll wake the whole kwala. But I’m not going to question BeBe’s choice of weapons. This is hardly his first rodeo.
I had thought we might jump the wall behind the building we figure is where they have the Blackthorn boys, but the gate seems clear, so I point to it. BeBe takes one side of the fifteen foot wide opening and I take the other.
He sets the claymore beside the gate and strings the wire, taut, across the opening and affixes it to the far gatepost.
Both of us drop our night vision and spend some moments studying every nook and cranny we can see. Just as we start to move inside, a door opens in a hut on the opposite side of the compound entry road from our target, and light floods the roadway forty paces from us.
Both of us drop back.
A voice rings out. "Mina!"
It can’t go unanswered, so I reply with a loud cough.
And the voice repeats, "Mina," and follows with some Pashto I don’t understand.
This time BeBe answers. "Insha’Allah," which I know means Allah willing, much as we’d reply God willing, and it makes no sense at all to me but must be a reply for the gibberish I didn’t understand, and footsteps are coming our way, crunching in the gravel.
I wait until it sounds as if the footsteps are almost to the gate, and I step out, knowing that little but my patoo wrapped head can be made out in the darkness. I duck under the pipe gate and only have to take two steps to reach him with the butt of my M5, and crack it across his chin. He drops back a half step as I don’t catch him solid, but the cry he tries to get out is squashed by my advancing and driving the butt hard into his throat. He drops to his knees, grabbing his throat with both hands, and this time the swinging blow of the butt catches him on the temple and he goes down hard. Again, I drag an Afghani into the shadows, this time macing him a quick shot. Even though he's already unconscious he coughs, chokes and moans.
BeBe and I fade back and make our way along the inside of the six foot compound wall, between it and our target, and spot a window. However, it’s barred as I suspected.
But it is windowless and only has a heavy drape hanging on the inside. I point to my mouth and motion to BeBe that I want to call out, and he shrugs. The Blackthorn boys are named Max Broadbent and Andrew Cutbirth, so I call in a loud whisper.
"Blackthorn. Max. Andy."
Dead silence.
This time I call in a low voice. "Blackthorn. Max. Andy."
And I hear some shuffling inside. I’m sincerely hoping I didn’t just awaken the officer of the guard, but I know this is a building locked from the outside, so the chances are small.
I can hear someone moving to the window, then the drape is pulled aside. I’ve palmed a frag grenade, just in case the face that appears is middle eastern, but it’s not. It’s a blonde, who looks a little like a runway model except for the bedhead.
She speaks in a language I don’t understand.
"English," I instruct, in a whisper.
"Who are you?" she asks, in an accented English whisper.
"American."
"Thank God. They took Max and Andy yesterday…somewhere. I heard the trucks drive out. Are you taking us?"
"Us? How many."
"Four, two Brits, two of us Danes."
"Fuck," BeBe says, the first time I’ve heard him swear.
"No choice," I say to him.
"Hoorah," he replies.
"Wake the others, quietly. Don’t bring anything with you, understand?"
"Yes."
"Stay away from the door. We may have to blow it. You have one minute to be ready to move."
"One minute." She says, and the drape falls.
11
That suitcase we're looking for won't be in a hut with the prisoners, if anywhere it'll be in the main house. But, odds are, between us and it are at least forty Taliban fighters. So, first things first.
Moving to the front of the hut, the door side, will expose us again to the rest of the compound, but it’s either that or try and throw a winch line over the wall and take the bars out—and that would likely make enough noise to bring the whole compound running our way.
So, with me covering and BeBe on the bolt cutters, we move as quietly as possible. Luckily it’s not a hardened padlock and he snaps it easily.
With his night vision down he drops the bolt cutters, opens the hasp, and swings the door aside into the darkness. "Two men, two women," he says quietly over his shoulder.
"You lead, I’ll take the drag," I say, and he waves them out and they follow. To their credit, they’re moving quietly, even though one of the men, way overweight, is limping badly. We manage to circle the building on the far side of the gate and get to the space between gate and hut. BeBe stops before he walks into the open space between the end of the building and the gate, some forty feet, and studies the open area, then puts his head around and surveys the rest of the compound. He turns back and does the universal sign for quiet, an index finger over his pursed lips.
All four of the captives nod, and he turns back and starts to take a step, when we hear another voice.
"Mina!" this one calls out as the last one had, and out of the same door across the road and gate opening from us, a woman in a black burka steps out of the doorway, and calls even louder. "Mina, Tabaan!"
Then she walks toward the gate and looks around. Seeing no one she turns to go back, then walks between her hut and the wall where I’d dragged the second haji.
In seconds, that Arab yell that sounds like a screeching-warbling bird rings out and she runs from between the building and wall and back into the compound. It’s a little
surprising how fast a woman can run in a burka.
"Move," I yell, but don’t have to as BeBe is already charging the gate. He stops, and in a commanding voice, warns his followers of the wire.
"Booby trap, don’t touch." And he makes sure each of them is paying attention.
He slips under and takes a defensive position at the far side, using the wall for what cover he can.
As I follow, I grab up my radio. "Smoke," I yell . "Walk ‘em from the back this way."
The first three, two women and a man, move quickly avoiding the wire. But the third guy, the chubster with the limp, is not so light on his feet. I grab him under the arm and drag him forward as I hear the Afghan woman begin to yell in words, not screams, and almost as quickly the rattle of an AK-47, probably the guard at the house a hundred and fifty yards from the gate. I’m praying he’s a lousy shot, and his view will quickly be occluded by the smoke, as I shove the chubster under the gate. He looses his balance and hits hard, so close to the wire my stomach turns.
I drag him away from it.
BeBe has already moved the first three out of the line of fire, protected by the wall, and they disappear into the undergrowth. As I reach for the guy on the ground, the road around me erupts in plumes. The AK-47 guy is not so bad a shot. I drop to a knee and empty a clip in the direction of the main house.
Then I hear the reports of the Russian grenade launcher, and explosions follow quickly in the compound. And suddenly you can’t see the main house for the smoke, only the single mercury light is an image in the cloud.
I half drag chubster off the road and out of the line of fire, and only then realize he’s been hit, he’s crying like a pre-schooler, and yelling at me in a Brit accent. "You bloodly shagger, I was fine. I was fine, until—"
"You were already limping, so you weren't fine," I snap. "Now, shut the fuck up or you won’t be fine ever again." He gets wide eyed. He’s hit in the thigh, and bleeding badly. I throw his arm over my shoulder and we start away from the compound.
"In the road," the chubster yells directions in my ear as I drag him through the undergrowth, which is grabbing at us and clinging to our clothing, but there’s method to my madness.
"Shut up," I yell and in moments he figures it out as a vehicle has appeared out of the smoke in the compound and as its headlights flood the roadway, and almost as quickly we hear a whoop and an RPG sings down the road, passing us with a whoosh, where chubster wanted to be cavorting. It slams into a Toyota truck with a manned fifty caliber mounted in its bed, just as it comes even with the gateway. The world lights up as the truck explodes and does a back flip.
"Hoorah," I can’t help but yell as it goes up in a ball of flame, blocking the entrance with flames and twisted metal.
"I’m bleeding," chubster yells.
"And we’ll both be dead if we don’t get the hell out of here," I yell back.
As we near the DPV in the road, one of the Danish women runs forward and helps me haul him that way. We stuff him into the passenger seat with me hanging off the rear, BeBe in the gunner’s seat, his arm around a woman in the basket and one hanging on the .50 cal, and the other male standing next to TooBad. TooBad is riding shotgun, stuffing our passenger to the center, and still firing the Russian. Only now he’s firing Phosphorous, and plumes like fireworks light up the compound as the smoke dissipates. TooBad circles the rig and takes the driver’s seat. We haul ass the two hundred feet to Dirt Dog, and unload as one of the women opens one of our first aid kits and applies a stretchy rubber tourniquet to chubster’s thigh.
"Too tight," he whines.
"Shut up," she commands.
BeBe takes the wheel of Dirt Dog, I take the elevated gunner's seat behind the 50 cal, the Brit who’s not wounded takes the passenger’s seat with the blond on his lap; TooBad is driving Sand Hog with the wounded guy in the passenger’s seat and Hank in the gunner's seat on its 50 cal., with the other woman standing beside him with her arms around him for support.
As we pull away, I hear a swarm of hornets pass my ear and instinctively duck—AK 47 rounds coming from the compound gate—then smile as I hear a secondary explosion and see a blinding flash...and know the claymore has done its work on pursuers.
We drive fast as far as we dare in the darkness, then slow and stop for a moment and the blonde moves quickly and cuts the fat boy's trousers away.
"I’m a doctor," she explains, not that any of us asked. She studies the wound for a moment, stuffs cotton gauze in the exit side, then adds. "Maybe only nicked the bone. We need to get somewhere so I can stitch this up and give him an injection if you have any antibiotics. You’re gonna be fine, Nigel," she says in her best bedside manner.
"It hurts," he whines. "You got some morphine?"
"Tough it," she says, and mounts back up.
"Let’s get Killer and Emir," I yell, and we’re off.
In a few minutes we traversed the desert and have stopped in nearly the same low spot we’d hidden the DPV before, where I’d hoped Emir and Killer would have moved anticipating our arrival, but no one is in sight.
"I’ll get them," I yell, and jump out of the gunner’s seat and jog over the top of the hill and down to the hidey hole, and almost trip over a body.
I bend down to see Killer, his face in the dirt, a 9mm hole in the back of his head, blood, still wet covering the soil beneath his face.
The Barrett is gone, and so is Emir.
Oh, God, how I'd like to go back to the main house and slip in to see if I can find the suitcase, and Emir, while the whole place is up in arms and fighting fires.
But I've got to get these people to safety.
12
I can feel the anger flooding my backbone, and heating my cheeks and neck. Anger, and frustration.
Emir, an ex-employee of the CIA…my buddy shot in the back of the head.
Some things just take a while to compute. I don’t have time to do a CSI on the scene—I’d like to see if there’s sign of others slipping up on them, but there’s no time and I sure as hell don’t want to burn a light.
I wonder how quickly we’ll be pursued? Hopefully the hajis are busy fighting fires.
Glancing back at the compound I get a moment’s satisfaction as several buildings are aflame. The phosphorous grenades from the Russian launcher have pulled their weight, in addition, I hope, to burning some holes in some haji assholes.
Now I've got to pull some weight. It’s our mantra: no one left behind.
Killer Carlos Juarez is a stocky, heavy guy, but I manage to get him over my shoulder in a fireman’s carry and carefully, placing each foot, get to the top of the rise.
"Hank, how about a hand!" I yell out, and Hausman comes double time.
"What the fuck?" he manages to get out, then "Where’s the haji?"
"Long gone. So’s the Barrett," I manage with a gasp as I drop Killer and we grab him up, arms and legs.
After everyone catches their breath, we roll Killer in the camo tarp get him loaded on Dirt Dog, tied to the deck under the 50 cal, and don’t stop tearing up brush and blowing gravel out the back until we’re back at the wadi.
Time for a new plan.
While the blonde doc, whose name turns out to be Anita, goes to work on the Brit, Nigel, I move away from the rigs and the new people and gather the rest of our boys around for a quick recon.
My voice is low and earnest. "Well, we got no Blackthorn boys, we got no suitcase. We’ve bought ourselves a problem with four passengers and probably half the Taliban hot on our ass. But that's tough shit as far as I'm concerned. I, for one, am going back to finish the job. I won’t blame any of you for hauling ass out of here…but you’ve got to take care of our new found friends."
"Can we get a ride?" TooBad says, and I’m a little surprised. Then he adds, "for them," and points back at our passengers.
I expel a breath as I feared I might be going it alone, or with only Skip who I know wouldn't abandon me. I reassure them, "As soon as I know who’s going an
d who’s staying I’m on the sat phone. As soon as the doc’s finished with the Brit’s leg, we’re gonna haul ass toward the river and away from the Mullah and his scumbags."
Everyone of my boys says they are along for the ride, all the way to the end.
I get on the sat phone and raise Pax.
"What’s up?" he answers.
"Not our bank accounts. We hit them hard and ended up without any Blackthorn people or the case. We have four new souls who need a ride. Two Brits, two Danes. Can you get one of the big MH rigs to come up the wadi we talked about as we’ll be hauling ass toward the river. When I see him coming we’ll send up a flare. Also get the Little Bird on standby as close as he can get to us, in case we’re being pursued. Which I’m sure we will be. We racked their world pretty good."
"Great."
"Not so great, we lost a man and our terp may be the guy who took him out."
"Who?"
"Killer Carlos. We’re bringing him out."
"Fuck. I’ll report to Scroder and we’ll see what they’ll do for his family, if he’s got any. And I’ll see what chatter I can pick up from Zazai and his bunch. Do you think the Blackthorn boys are still at the compound?"
"I doubt it. No reason for them to have them stowed someplace else. There was lots of room where they had the Brits and Danes. We ain’t quitting. Find out where I’m going and advise."
"Copy that."
"And make sure they bring us a couple of twenty gallon bladders of gas and Afghan civilian clothes for all of us. We may have to go to town now! We’ve got to haul ass."
