by Jack Terral
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1015 HOURS
THE leading Arab showed up around the bend in the gully so quickly that Puglisi instinctively twitched. "Here they come," he whispered, recovering from the surprise. "They're kind of close together, so we don't have to stretch the ambush out any farther."
As the column came into view, the sight of the Arabs was impressive. All were well equipped, with the latest in assault rifles, rucksacks, canteens, bandoliers, and web gear. Their uniforms were in good shape, with excellent footwear, and they also sported the keffiyeh head coverings their people preferred. They were the red-checked style the SEALs had seen before.
Joe Miskoski, with his AS-50 locked and loaded, waited patiently, his eyes glued to the front man in the formation. The guy's face in the telescopic sight was that of a young and determined soldier, his beard and mustache well trimmed, as would be expected of someone just out of an elite training camp where the discipline was harsh and demanding. When he was in the right position, Miskoski's trigger finger tightened just enough to fire the powerful rifle.
The fifty-caliber round exploded the man's head, blowing it off in pieces.
The Arab just behind him stood still for an instant before a couple of .556 rounds from an M-16 kicked him sideways before he collapsed to the ground. Back on the other end of the line, Puglisi had already taken out the Tail-End Charlie a millisecond after he heard Miskoski's weapon fire. In ten seconds, the bursts of blazing M-16s suddenly quit. Seventeen men were down, and three stood with their hands up.
"Assad," Brannigan said. "Warn those guys not to move and do what you tell 'em."
"Indak!" Assad yelled. "Isma minni!"
"Redhawk and Matsuno!" Brannigan said. "Move down and take charge of those EPWs. Walk 'em down to where that slope is and bring 'em up on the far side toward the LZ. We'll meet you there. Ensign Taylor and Petty Officer Concord, go search the dead for documents or any other intelligence you find. Let's go, people!"
The four men assigned to go into the gully slid carefully down the steep sides until they reached the bottom. Redhawk and Matsuno moved over to the trio of men who still stood with their hands up. The SEALs used gestures to indicate the direction they were to go. Taylor looked at Connie Concord. "You go down to the end and start checking. I'll go up where the first guy is."
"Aye, sir."
Taylor had fired only one round during the short, violent action. He'd taken aim at an Arab directly to his front and squeezed the trigger. The guy had taken a jerky step, then fell to the ground. The young ensign stared at him in horrid fascination. He had killed a man. The shooting during the attack three nights before had been into vegetation in a reconnaissance-by-fire trying to locate the enemy. If he hit anyone, it was by sheer chance, and he didn't know about it. But this time he had deliberately shot another human being. He walked up toward the first man to die, doing his best not to look at the one he personally shot.
The Arab hit by Joe Miskoski was a mess. The entire top of his cranium from just below the ears and up was a splayed mass of brains and bloody meat. His eyes and nose were gone, leaving only the lower jaw. Taylor noticed the guy must have been seeing his dentist regularly; the teeth were white and even, without a cavity showing. The SEAL searched the pockets, finding nothing; not even an ID card. He supposed that was to be expected, since the dead man hadn't been a member of a regularly enlisted army.
After examining two more corpses, he came to the guy he had killed. He was a skinny kid, maybe eighteen or nineteen. His eyes were open, and his lips were in a sort of combination sneer and grin. Taylor suddenly looked directly at the dead face, almost stepping back when he noticed the victim seemed to be gazing at him. A quick search revealed empty pockets.
When Taylor and Concord met in the middle, they had nothing to show for their efforts. "I'm not surprised," Connie said. "These guys are not the usual raghead mujahideen. They're equipped good, carry them French rifles, got plenty of ammo, and are nourished good. This is gonna be a tough fight before it's all said and done, sir."
Taylor noted that if Petty Officer Concord had killed anybody--and there was no doubt he had--he wasn't going to lose any sleep over it. Taylor affected a grin. "Well, let's get back with the others. Good job, huh?"
"Yes, sir," Connie said. "We done good, alright."
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THE LZ
1045 HOURS
GARTH Redhawk had turned on the homing beacon of the AN/PRC-112 to bring back the chopper, and the patrol was out in a loose defensive perimeter. Brannigan was inside the formation with Mike Assad, who guarded the three EPWs. The captives squatted unhappily on the ground, still stunned by the suddenness of the attack that had destroyed their unit. Assad had exchanged a few words with them, learning nothing new. They told him they were on their way from Iran to join the small force in the mountains.
Suddenly one of the Arabs leaped to his feet and dashed toward the perimeter, leaping over Bruno Puglisi. He ran wildly across the open ground, heading for the stand of boulders.
"I'll get him, sir!" Puglisi yelled, getting to his feet and going after the guy.
The Arab was fifteen meters ahead of the SEAL, not looking back as he instinctively sought the shelter of the rocky area. When he reached it, he went in between a couple of boulders. Then he shrieked and backed out, holding his hand.
When Puglisi arrived he saw what the trouble was. The cobra, still weaving back and forth in its attack stance, was ready to strike again. The Arab turned around, his hand and forearm black and swelling from the venom. Puglisi winced. "Jesus! You poor dumb bastard!"
The Arab knew the potency of the serpent's venom and realized that he was dying. He sank to his knees and began calling out in Arabic. Now Mike Assad joined them, having left the other two with the Skipper. Mike looked at the guy. "What the fuck happened to him?"
Puglisi answered by pointing over to the cobra.
Assad shook his head slowly. "We got nothing to give him for that."
"I know," Puglisi said. "He'll be dead before the chopper gets here."
"Shit, Bruno," Mike said, "he's only got another five minutes at the most to breathe."
Now the Arab was on the ground, almost delirious as he kept babbling.
"What's he saying, Mike?"
"He's praying for himself."
"We should shoot him and put him out of his misery, man!" Puglisi said.
"I'm not shooting him," Mike said. He turned and began walking back to the perimeter. He'd gone ten meters when he heard Bruno's AS-50 fire. Then the sniper caught up with him.
Neither SEAL spoke as they returned to the unit.
CHAPTER 8
USS COMBS
17 JUNE
IT had been a bad week for the two Arab EPWs brought back from the ambush site by Brannigan's Brigands. When they left their Iranian SF training camp, the fledgling insurgents thought they were on their way to their big opportunity to be conquerors in the name of Allah's glory. But they were only halfway to their first battle site when a bunch of crazy infidels suddenly appeared from nowhere and shot their unit to pieces. And if that wasn't bad enough, after surrendering, one of their buddies was bitten by a poisonous serpent and was put out of his misery with a bullet that turned his skull into something that looked like a shattered vase that had been filled with tomato paste and cottage cheese.
It was most definitely not a good experience.
Then, to make things slightly worse, immediately after the incident with the snake, they were blindfolded and had to sit with their hands bound by plastic strips and wait until an aircraft arrived. They were taken aboard with their captors to go for a flight--they didn't have enough experience to recognize they were in a helicopter--that ended when they landed at some unknown place. After being ushered off the aircraft still blindfolded, the two Arabs were taken into the interior of a large structure. When they were freed from their blinders and bonds, they discovered that their captors had put them behind some barbed wire in one corner of a
building. For amenities the EPWs were provided with foam mattresses and a couple of chairs. At least they weren't mistreated, but being uncertain of what fate awaited them did not ease their emotional stress.
After a fitful night, the Arabs were given breakfast, then blindfolded again, and put back on an aircraft for a short flight that ended on a rocking airfield made of steel. From there the pair was led through a very narrow door and taken down steep steps until they were in the depths of some horrible place with engine noises. At that point the blinders were removed and they were separated and placed into small rooms with pipes and valves along the walls. A bright light-bulb that was never turned off glared from the ceiling, and from that point on they couldn't tell if it was night or day.
As time passed they became queasy as the floor where they sat rocked slowly back and forth. They also had moments when they felt this strange prison was actually moving.
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0730 HOURS
THE name of the EPW sitting in the metal chair was Hamza Qazi. A brilliant light shined straight into his face, and he could not see the man who spoke to him, although he sensed that additional persons were present after he heard occasional coughs and someone clearing his throat. Qazi had been there for more than two hours, though he was unaware of exactly how much time had passed since he was fetched from his hard metal quarters.
The three men in the compartment with the prisoner were Dr. Carl Joplin; Edgar Watson, of the CIA's Iranian desk; and interrogator Fred Leighton, also a CIA operative. Leighton, who had spent much of his boyhood in the Middle East, where his father had been a field operations supervisor for an American oil company, spoke fluent Arabic with such a slight trace of accent that no Arab could determine his exact nationality. Between Leighton's language skills and the probing questions provided by Joplin and Watson, a lot of useful information was being dragged out of Qazi.
He was a Syrian, born and raised in the city of Deir Al Zor, not too far from the Iraqi border. His father was a shop-keeper who sold tobacco, candy, and magazines. The profits were small, but the family was comfortable enough, though frustrated from time to time from wanting better material things in their lives, such as an automobile and a larger TV set. Qazi left school at fourteen to help in the business. During his leisure time he hung out in the streets with a group of boys his own age and played in a local soccer league, where he was considered one of the better players. He was sixteen when he learned about the Jihad Abadi--the Eternal Holy War made up of Shiite mujahideen. Eventually he was recruited into the organization and learned that they disavowed suicide bombings, preferring to train their members in soldierly skills to fight the infidels of the West. This was much more effective in the holy struggle than blowing themselves up to inflict casualties on the enemy. Qazi and his buddies attended meetings and class sessions at the local mosque, where they were thoroughly indoctrinated in the group's philosophy. He was honored when his natural athletic abilities were noted, and he was sent for more advanced instruction at a training site in Iran. This choice of location confused the young Arab, who could not understand what interest the Iranians had in Arab insurgencies, except that those speakers of Farsi were also Shiites.
When he arrived in Tehran, he was put aboard a military bus with other Arabs from all over the Middle East. They went to an Army garrison in the north. It was a camp with training facilities and few amenities. The students lived in tents, used outdoor toilets, and drew their water from spigots around the area. There was no electricity, but this didn't matter to most of the Arabs, who were from the country or slum areas of places such as Baghdad, Amman, and Riyadh. At first Qazi was annoyed by having to use candles and camp lanterns, but he eventually got used to it as the first couple of weeks passed.
The orientation prior to moving into the hard-core phase of training taught the young men that Iran would be taking over all Shiite insurgencies and bring them into one large, effective army. The boys in the camp would be the cadre of that magnificent fighting force, destined by Allah to march into Europe as conquerors, then accept an unconditional surrender from the Great Satan, the United States of America. This fired up everybody's enthusiasm, and when the training began, they were ready to give it their all.
The first thing on the agenda was to toughen them up. The instructors, harsh and merciless, were all members of the newly organized Iranian Army Special Forces. They sent the Arab kids through obstacle courses, took them on long runs, and supervised prolonged periods of exhausting exercises. After a couple of weeks the candidates were considered properly conditioned for some real soldiering.
The Arab boys went into a program where they learned weapons, demolitions, map reading and orienteering, small-unit tactics, and other skills needed for the basics of combat. A crash course in acquiring a good working knowledge of Farsi was included. One pleasant part of the duty was that they were given an abundance of meat, vegetables, and fruit in their mess tents. Only when they were in the field did they go hungry as a preparation for long periods of tough, relentless campaigning.
After twelve weeks of hard work, they graduated and were assigned to permanent units. From that point on, they went on complicated and demanding FTXs to sharpen the skills taught them. Then Qazi and nineteen other young troopers were chosen for a special assignment in which they would go into a real war. They were issued French FA-MAS assault rifles, ammunition, rations, and brand-new field gear.
After being equipped, the rookies were taken by bus to a spot near the Iran-Afghanistan border, with maps showing their destination, where they would link with a battle group actively engaged in combat. They set off in high spirits, ready to fight and conquer.
Then they were ambushed.
Qazi's buddy, when questioned, gave the same story except that he was a country bumpkin from Yemen who had been recruited into the Jihad Abadi while working as a laborer in Saudi Arabia.
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SEAL BASE CAMP
1200 HOURS
PO2C Bruno Puglisi was on Lieutenant Bill Brannigan's shit list.
The shooting of the snakebitten EPW may have been merciful, but Puglisi had taken it upon himself to perform the deed. He should have waited for orders from the Skipper before taking such a drastic step. Now the Skipper was between a rock and a hard place. The killing of a prisoner was a serious situation, and if the truth came out, Puglisi could be in bad trouble.
The Skipper had glared at him, speaking in a low tone of extreme anger. "You just better hope nobody gets real curious about this. If they do, you're gonna be in deep shit and I'll be having serious career problems of my own. As it is, I'm going to report that the guy was killed during an escape attempt."
"That's technically correct, sir," Puglisi happily agreed.
"Shut up!"
"Aye, sir!"
Brannigan then dropped the miscreant into the front-leaning rest, and chewed the SEAL's ass to pieces with loud bellowing. After venting his rage, the Skipper followed SOP and gave him the choice of administrative punishment or a court-martial. Puglisi had completed boot camp a long time ago, and he knew the better of that deal. He chose administrative punishment under Article 15 of the Uniform Code of Military Justice. That meant the incident wouldn't go in his personnel record. It also eased the Skipper's problem with keeping the snake-bite incident under wraps.
Now Brannigan could choose a punishment. If he was less than creative and did something like make Puglisi run up and down the mountain trails with a rucksack full of heavy rocks, it would make a hero out of the erring SEAL. In fact, some of the other Brigands might take on the task themselves to see how they could handle it. So the Skipper assigned the slightly miffed sniper to forty-eight hours of watch-and-watch. But rather than let him rest between stints of duty, he had him report to Senior Chief Buford Dawkins for extra "tasks." Consequently, rather than having four hours of sleep during his off-duty time, Puglisi sometimes got as little as one before having to report back to the watch officer for another tour of duty.
The rest of the detachment cringed at the chickenshit aspects of the ordeal. The collective feelings of the others were summed up by Joe Miskoski, who said, "You gotta be a real dumb sack of shit to get in a mess like that."
Bruno Puglisi would have agreed with him.
GARTH Redhawk and Matty Matsuno had become good buddies.
This friendship began during a quiet period after the ambush, when they were sitting in the Sneaky Petes' area, cleaning their weapons. The conversation had been the quiet sort common between young men busy at important tasks. Matty, who was wiping down his bolt, asked, "What's that little bag you wear around your neck, Garth?"
Garth explained the meaning behind the medicine bag and showed him the trident insignia, the piece of wood from the Oklahoma tree, and the small rock from South America. "I don't really go around looking for things," Garth said, "but if something is right for the bag, I know right away. And so far I only got these three things."
"It's Indian custom, huh?"
"Well, I prefer to call it Kiowa or Comanche custom," Garth said. "My dad isn't really into that stuff. He's a petroleum engineer and has a real logical and scientific mind. My grandfather on my mother's side taught me a lot about the old traditions."
