Hunt the Viper

by Don Mann

  “What about me?” Dilshad asked nervously.

  “Come with me,” Crocker answered. “I need you to translate.”

  “Why?”

  “You have a walkie-talkie? You can communicate with the mayor?” Crocker asked.

  Dilshad held up the push-pull model in his hand and nodded.

  “Excellent. Everyone’s got comms?”

  “Check.”

  “Deploy!”

  Rockets exploded in front of them and to their left as they crossed the plaza. Townspeople with guns were shooting in panic, wasting ammunition. Crocker turned to Dilshad and said, “Call the mayor. Tell him to tell his people to stop shooting until they reach the perimeter and coordinate with us.”

  “How can he do that?”

  A woman ran up to them holding a girl who was bleeding from one of her legs. Fear and panic poured from both their faces. Crocker had to fight the impulse to open his medical kit and help her.

  “You have a hospital? A clinic?” he shouted at Dilshad.

  “We do.”

  “Where?”

  “Down there,” he answered, pointing down a dark alley. “Down on the right.”

  “How far?” The lady was shouting at him in Sorani.

  Dilshad held up three fingers. “Three…blocks. Blue sign…”

  “Davis, help them. Then hop in Truck One and join me on the northeast.”

  “Got it!”

  Carefully, Davis took the girl, held her in his arms, and ran off with the mother following and shouting.

  “This way!” shouted Crocker.

  They bumped into Akil as they exited the plaza.

  “Let’s kick some Daesh ass!” Akil growled.

  “You stick with me. Davis will join us. We gotta defend the northeast corner.”

  “We’d better fucking hurry. Where’re the trucks?”

  “They’re parked back at the town hall. Davis is bringing one. Rip is getting the other.”

  “Where’s CT?”

  “He’s headed southwest.”

  The town was small. Only twelve blocks before they reached the northeast corner. They’d gathered eighteen militiamen along the way—mostly young men armed with hunting rifles, shotguns, and AKs.

  CT’s urgent voice came through Crocker’s earbuds. “Deadwood, Daesh is moving toward my perimeter. Three technicals and a swarm of men.”

  “Copy.”

  “They’re covering their assault with RPG and .50 cal fire. These kids are fucking useless. Some have already cut and run!”

  “Organize them the best you can! Rip is on his way with the SAW. We gotta organize them so they know what the fuck they’re doing.”

  “I’ll try.”

  Crocker selected a two-story building on the northeast perimeter. Like the other structures in town, this one featured a flat concrete roof. He waved his arm to indicate to the young men to gather around. Most of them looked scared shitless.

  Davis roared up with Truck One.

  “Where should we set up?”

  Crocker turned to Dilshad and said, “Tell the militiamen to come with me. Davis, you and Akil take the truck and set up a couple blocks away. Give us as many grenades, launchers, and RPG rounds as you can spare.”

  He selected four of the strongest-looking teenagers to carry the gear from the truck, then led the other dozen or so up a set of exterior stairs to the concrete roof. It was about six hundred square feet with a three-foot-high lip around it.

  Soon as they arrived, one of the kids was thrown back by a .50 cal round that ripped a hole in his chest. The kids around him groaned and shouted.

  “Down! Down! Tell them to get down on their stomachs and do what I do!” Crocker said to Dilshad.

  “The boy…”

  “Forget the boy. He’s dead. Tell them to get down!”

  He turned the kid over and placed a piece of tarp he found in the corner over his body.

  Two rockets screamed past and exploded against a building behind them. One of the boys left his rifle and ran toward the stairs.

  Dilshad shouted after him.

  Crocker heard the SAW start up below. Raising his head above the concrete lip, and peering through the NVGs, he saw jihadists take cover behind their trucks, still one hundred meters away on a flat field of some kind of new crop. The fact that they were being cautious gave him a glimmer of hope.

  “Davis, what did they say at the TOC?”

  “They’re checking on available air support.”

  “Fuck that.”

  If they were checking, he figured it might take an hour or more, by which time the town might be overrun.

  Communicating through Dilshad, who lay on his stomach beside him, Crocker instructed the young men to stop spraying bullets wildly, and instead do as he did—raising his head every ten seconds or so, locating a target, taking a few carefully placed shots, and then ducking behind the lip for cover.

  They were hugely outnumbered and short on ammunition. A kid to his right already ran through the only mag he had for his AK-47. Crocker handed him a single-shot, break-action M79 grenade launcher and some rounds, showed him how to use it. The kid, who wasn’t old enough to grow a mustache, nodded back.

  “Deadwood, three more technicals circling south.”

  “CT, you copy? You see them?”

  “Copy, boss. We’re taking a shitload of rocket fire right now!”

  “You on the SAW? Where’s Rip?”

  “Copy. Copy on the SAW. He’s moving the truck so we’re better positioned.”

  “Rip?”

  He heard a loud explosion through his headset, followed by intense incoming. Crocker couldn’t deal with that now. AK rounds were tearing into the concrete lip in front of them at an increased rate. He raised his head, saw the jihadists inching forward, growing bolder. Picked out one of them shouldering an RPG and raked him with a blast from his HK416. The boy to his left was struck in the shoulder and started screaming bloody murder.

  The other ten kids looked his way with intense fear in their eyes. Crocker sensed he had to do something dramatic to keep them from panicking. More rocket fire ripped into the roof behind him. A woman’s scream echoed down the narrow street.

  He reached into his medical kit, located an Israeli bandage, and used his right foot to pull an RPG-7 closer.

  He handed the bandage to Dilshad. “Wrap this around the kid’s wound.”

  “I…I don’t know how.”

  “Do the best you can.”

  A bullet ricocheted off the lip, throwing dust and plaster into Crocker’s mouth. He spit it out and tasted blood, then loaded an arrow-shaped 93mm PG-7VL round into the RPG and aimed it at one of the technicals.

  Pulled the trigger as incoming buzzed toward him. Lowering his head, he heard the explosion and quickly looked up to see flames spreading across the technical’s hood.

  The kids to his left and right seemed to gain encouragement from that. The enemy responded with a barrage of RPG fire of their own. He lined up another PG-7VL and fired, at the same time calculating in his head how much longer they could hold out. Ten minutes? Fifteen?

  A big explosion reverberated from the street below, followed by shrieks and the sound of a wall collapsing. Then cries for help.

  “We must surrender,” Dilshad moaned.

  Before Crocker had a chance to answer, Davis’s urgent voice came over comms. “Akil’s hit! He and some of the kids with him are buried! They’re behind me. Fuck.…I can’t help him. Can’t leave the SAW.”

  “I’m coming!” Crocker shouted.

  Crocker handed his SIG Sauer P226 pistol to Dilshad. “Pull the trigger and shoot! I’ll be right back.”

  “Wait!”

  He slammed a fresh mag into his HK416, and rushed down the outside steps, ignoring the bullets that tore into the plaster wall and balustrade.

  CT was screaming in his earbuds, which Crocker took as a good sign. He was alive. He could only focus on one thing now—the steps in front of him, th
e position of Truck One and Akil. He looked north, south, and west.

  Spotted a bold jihadist running toward the village with an AK. Dropped him with a short burst of rounds.

  Spoke into his body mike. “Davis, direct me!”

  “Boss…” The line broke up.

  “Davis…what the fuck!”

  The sharp buzz of the SAW led him north down the dirt path that ran along the building to the first perpendicular path, where he found the Flyer-60. In the light from a window, he spotted Davis with both hands on the SAW and rivulets of sweat streaking his face. A picture of grit and determination if he’d ever seen one. The air so clogged with smoke and cordite, he could barely breathe.

  Crocker shouted to get Davis’s attention, but the latter was so intensely focused and the noise reverberated so loudly in the tight space that he couldn’t hear. So he climbed up on the back of the truck and slapped Davis on the back.

  Davis didn’t shift his eyes from the targets in front of him. AK and other small-arms fire was coming at him furiously, and glancing off the armored shield around the SAW.

  “Where’s Akil?” Crocker shouted over the roar.

  “Boss…Boss! Under the pile of bricks at the corner. The whole fucking thing collapsed. I want to…but can’t stop.”

  “Anything new from Erbil?”

  “Negative. I keep checking. All air assets are committed to the fighting around Mosul.”

  There was no point complaining. Not now.

  Crocker looked past the Flyer hood and saw that the insurgents had moved forward and were set up at seventy-five meters. Then he wound around the back of the Flyer to the opposite corner, where the whole side of a building had collapsed and was now a five-foot-high pile of rubble and bricks.

  Fuck.

  The dust was still settling, and in the dark, an old man and an old woman with a scarf around her head were digging frantically with their hands. He joined them, furiously pulling up bricks and pieces of mortar and throwing them to one side.

  Sweating, he thought he heard someone moaning under the rubble. Wasn’t sure it wasn’t his imagination, or the wailing of the older woman, or maybe his hearing was screwed up.

  He hadn’t heard from CT, Rip, or Mayor Sabri for a while, and was now able to separate the racket from the southwest from the tremendous firing behind him. Both were getting closer, which wasn’t good.

  “CT, it’s Deadwood,” he called into the body mike. “Copy?”

  No response.

  Chapter Five

  Talk straight and to the point, without any

  ambiguity or deception.

  —The Quran

  Ninety miles away in the Syrian city of Raqqa, Commander Abu Samir al-Sufi slept in a tiny room behind the Al-Firdous Mosque, when his aide Yasir Selah came in to wake him.

  “Forgive me, Sheikh,” Yasir said. “It is our brother-in-arms Mohammad Balul who is directing the assault on Qabusiye. Our brother seeks your guidance.”

  It took al-Sufi a few seconds to recall where he was, and picture the face of the young Mohammad Balul, who if he remembered correctly had been born in Qatar and had been fighting with ISIS for more than a year.

  “Tell Balul to call me on the encrypted phone. You have the number?”

  “Yes, Sheikh.”

  The heavyset man rose and said a quick prayer to Allah and asked him to look over the wives and children who seemed like echoes from another life. He’d left those still alive behind in his hometown of Tikrit, Iraq—not far from the birthplace of Saddam Hussein, whose family had been shepherds. Two of his sons had died since the American invasion, and he hadn’t seen his favorite and only surviving wife, Fatima, in almost a year.

  “What happened with our brother?” the sheikh asked his aide as he reached for the wooden prayer beads at his hip—a gift from Caliph Ibrahim, who claimed to be a direct descendant of Messenger Mohammad.

  “Balul is calling soon.”

  Caliph Ibrahim had given him the nom de guerre—the Viper—because of his quiet manner, skill at camouflage, and lethal bite.

  Sheikh al-Sufi had been fighting most of his life. He started at the age of fourteen as a member of Saddam Hussein’s Special Youth Corps, sent to man checkpoints in Iraqi Kurdistan. At sixteen, he joined the Iraqi Army, and at nineteen was invited to join Saddam’s vaunted Republican Guard. As an officer in the Guard, he had resisted the United States–led coalition twice, once in 1990 in Kuwait and again in 2003.

  He’d learned along the way that a military commander has to remain calm under all circumstances. Panic and rash decisions are anathema to victory. As al-Sufi finished washing his face and beard, Mohammad Balul’s excited voice came over the encrypted line.

  “Commander al-Sufi. Sorry to bother you, wise leader.…May God lead us to victory.…”

  “Inshallah.”

  Balul relayed the details of the assault on Qabusiye and the unexpected resistance his fighters had met.

  “How many trucks and fighters do you have, Balul?” the sheikh asked.

  “Seven pickups and thirty-two men.”

  “And how have you deployed?”

  “We have amassed at the northeast side to maximize our firepower and break through the town’s defense.”

  Sheikh al-Sufi fingered the prayer beads at his waist and sighed. “The problem then, brother Balul, is one of tactics.”

  “Tactics? What’s wrong with our tactics?”

  The circumstances of this war had made it difficult to instill discipline and unity of purpose. Many of those jihadists who joined the fight from places like Yemen, Somalia, and Saudi Arabia had lots of motivation, but very little military training. Others, especially those from Syria, were opportunists who had joined the cause to rape and pillage and enrich themselves.

  The sheikh put Mohammad Balul in the former category—motivated but lacking experience. Over the cell phone, he said, “In battle it is paramount to always know your enemy. Who is your enemy, Balul?”

  “My enemy?”

  “The enemy you face now. How would you describe them?”

  “Sheikh…We are fighting maybe a dozen U.S. soldiers and the town militia of maybe forty men.”

  “Are these men untrained and poorly armed?”

  “The militia? Yes. Most definitely.”

  “And they are defending a relatively large perimeter, correct?”

  “Yes, Sheikh. Yes.”

  Al-Sufi could sense frustration in the young Qatari’s voice. He asked, “If you look at the situation as it is, what is the best way to attack?”

  “From all sides simultaneously?” Mohammad Balul suggested.

  “Yes, brother Balul. It’s the correct way, it’s God’s way.…”

  “God’s way. Yes.”

  “The Prophet Mohammad said, ‘Those who believe, and have left their homes and have striven with their wealth and their lives in Allah’s way, are of much greater worth in Allah’s sight. These are they who are triumphant,’” Sheikh al-Sufi said, quoting from the Quran.

  “Thank you for these words of wisdom, Sheikh.”

  “They are ours to live by. Ours is a just fight, Balul. Inshallah.”

  On his knees and breathing hard, tossing bricks aside and digging through the rubble, his fingertips raw and bleeding, Crocker called “Akil!” over and over.

  No answer. One explosion after another pounded his temples and deafened his ears. You didn’t leave a teammate behind under any circumstances.

  While he continued digging, he looked up to see if the streets in front of him were still clear. They were. No insurgents had breached the perimeter. Not from his perspective. None so far.

  The sun had started to rise, and he was making progress on his side of the pile. The woman across from him had stopped out of exhaustion and was sobbing. He felt something smooth, and when he looked down, spotted a Nike swoosh on a sneaker in the dappled light.

  The shoe contained a foot, which he traced to a leg and the body of a boy. His head had b
een crushed on one side.

  Seeing the boy’s body, the woman pushed Crocker away, and flung herself on it with a heart-piercing scream. But not before he established that the boy was dead.

  Past her legs he saw something move in the pile. An arm with a tattoo on it?

  “Akil!”

  Three more rockets squealed overhead and exploded. Debris stung the back of his head and neck. Continuing to dig, he pulled at a rectangular piece of metal with an illustration of a sewing machine on it. Behind it, he found a wide back covered with dirt and pieces of brick. Pushed them off and as he did, felt for signs of life and along his neck and spine for damage.

  “Akil, can you hear me?”

  Crocker thought he detected something moving inside his big teammate. A pulse, he hoped. Cut the side of his hand on something sharp as he reached around the debris and grasped Akil around the chest and very slowly and carefully pulled him up.

  “Yo, buddy.…You hear me?”

  Akil wheezed badly. Crocker opened Akil’s mouth, reached inside with two fingers, and cleared his mouth and throat. Akil turned his head violently, coughed, and spit out a glob of mud and concrete just as another rocket slammed into the street in front of them, setting off a secondary explosion.

  “Mofos,” moaned Akil.

  Crocker thought of the Flyer. “Davis?” he called into his body mike. “Davis…report!”

  “Boss…boss,” Akil growled. “I need to wash this shit out of my eyes. I can’t see.”

  “Wait here. I’ll be right back.”

  He scurried back to the Flyer, saw that Davis was still on his feet and firing, flashed a thumbs-up, and grabbed a water bladder and medical kit. By the time he returned to the corner, Akil was sitting up with his back against part of the building that was still intact. The old woman still hadn’t let go of the dead boy.

  “The kids…got…fucked,” Akil groaned.

  “Not your fault.”

  “Brave boys…”

  “Lean back.”

  Two other women had arrived and were talking among themselves and digging. One of them had an old M1 carbine slung across her back.

  Crocker lifted the bladder and rinsed Akil’s eyes and face. Then handed it to him so he could clean his mouth. The big man had a large gash on his right cheek, and smaller cuts and bruises all over his body.