I, Judas

by Bob Mayer

  Cold wind whistled through the peaks carrying blinding snow with it. Captain Gates sat on top of his rucksack as still as the scant rocks he’d scavenged to build the small shelter two weeks ago. Mixed in with the wind, he could hear the rattle in the breathing of Sergeant Mumphries, the man with whom he’d shared this sparse location for fifteen days. They were located on the steep side of a mountain at twelve thousand feet, and it was approximately an hour before midnight.

  Spotting something moving in the distance through intermittent breaks in the snow, Gates put down the night vision goggles with which he’d been observing the mountain trail they were above. In their place, he picked up a bulky .50 caliber Barrett 82A1 sniper rifle. The mountain straddled the Afghanistan-Pakistan border, and according to his global positioning receiver, they were less than fifty meters away from being in the wrong country. Actually, Afghanistan wasn’t exactly the right country either. None of the other men on Gates’ team were happy to be here. The twelve men of his A-Team were deployed in six teams of two along passes on the border. It was a nasty place, and operating in the high mountains was not only difficult but dangerous. And not just because the Taliban and the various tribes that used these trails held no love for Americans, but also the altitude and weather, as Mumphries’ cough indicated.

  Gates pressed his cheek against the stock of the sniper rifle, his shooting eye closed and resting on the rubber, his other eye open. It was a position he could hold for a very long time. He couldn’t see anything through the snow as the wind picked up once more. He closed his non-shooting eye as he turned on the thermal sight bolted on top of the rifle. He slowly opened his left eye and blinked, as it was flooded with a spectrum of colors. Ignoring the cold snow, the sight picked up heat images. He could see six red figures moving up the trail.

  Gates wrapped his left hand around the stock, forefinger inside the trigger guard. The heavy barrel was supported by a bipod. His right hand was on the scope, adjusting the sensitivity. He’d zeroed in the thermal sight just before infiltration. He’d fired the weapon in many different situations so he knew how the bullet would perform with the drop in altitude to the trail below. His nostrils flared as he sniffed. The wind would have to be taken into account. And the altitude. The air was slightly thinner at this height, and it did make a tiny difference in trajectory.

  The gun was almost six feet long and weighed over thirty pounds. Thirty-two point five pounds without bullets to be exact. He had the number memorized the way he used to have verses from the Bible memorized. A ten round box magazine was fitted into the receiver, holding fifty caliber—half inch in diameter, over six inches long shells. The fifty caliber round had been invented by Browning during the First World War to be used as an anti-tank round.

  The weapon was accurate out to two thousand meters, and effective out to seventy-five hundred meters (or more than four miles). In military jargon, “accurate” meant he could hit a target with a large degree of success; “effective” meant the odds of hitting the target decreased as the distance increased, but if the round did hit, it would do the job. The bullet carried such mass that it could penetrate an inch of steel. At two kilometers, or roughly just under a mile and a half, the round carried more energy than a .44 Magnum at point blank range.

  There were only two groups of people who would be on these trails: Taliban or smugglers. The former were legitimate targets and Gates had free fire orders on them. The latter were also targets because they supplied the Taliban with weapons and ammunition. However, he didn’t have free fire authorization for them. But who was to know here? And often smugglers were Taliban.

  Gates squinted. The thermal gave him the rough outline of the figures. They were walking relatively upright, which meant they didn’t have heavy packs on their backs. From the position of their arms he could tell they all had weapons in their hands. To Gates that was enough identification. They were Taliban, crossing back into Afghanistan from their safe havens in Pakistan, on their way to attack and harass the peacekeepers who were trying to build a country out of the mess that decades of war and revolution had produced in Afghanistan.

  Gates removed his finger from the trigger and turned as Mumphries breathing turned into a hacking, drawn out cough. The sergeant rolled to his side, body in the fetal position, trying to expel the fluid filling his lungs. His hands were tight against his chest, and Gates could see the silver cross clutched in one of the sergeant’s gloved hands.

  “Re-supply chopper will be here today,” Gates told Mumphries. “We’ll get you out.”

  Mumphries struggled to a sitting position, pulling the sleeping bag tighter around his shaking body. He squinted as he peered out the narrow opening. “I ain’t stupid, Captain. They’re not flying in this, just like they haven’t flown in the last three days.”

  “I sent in a priority medevac,” Gates said.

  Mumphries coughed, then spit out a gob of yellowish liquid. “It ain’t that they don’t want to fly, Captain. They can’t. Not in this weather. Especially not at night. You know that. Don’t bullshit me.” He finally saw the gun in Gates’ hands. “You got targets?”

  “Six.”

  “Take care of business, sir.”

  Gates ran a gloved hand across the stubble on his chin. His skin was dark from the fierce rays of the sun at this altitude, and blistered from the cold. He was a lean man of average height, his body encased in a heavy Gore-Tex parka and outer pants of the same material. His hair was prematurely gray, making most who met him assume he was ten years older than he actually was.

  They’d snuck in here just over two weeks ago on a Special Operation Chinook flown by the Nightstalkers of Task Force-160. Getting in had been hard, and they’d known getting out would be just as difficult. There was no place to land, so the pilots had put the rear of the helicopter toward the steep mountainside, the massive blades of the rear rotor mere feet from biting rock, and lowered the back ramp. Gates and Mumphries had tossed their supplies onto the four-foot-wide ledge they’d chosen as their new home, then jumped off the ramp and watched the chopper fly away to the north. The only way on or off the ledge was by helicopter, as there was a sheer drop directly below them and the ledge only extended about five meters in either direction before disappearing.

  Mumphries had begun to get sick just as this storm front had descended over the mountains three days ago. Bad timing. It was the only kind of timing that Gates believed in. Mumphries spasms became so severe that Gates had to put down the gun to wrap both arms around the sergeant and hold him tight. He knew there was no rush on the targets. It would take fifteen minutes for them to make it to the top of the pass.

  There were beads of sweat on Mumphries’ forehead, a very bad sign in the freezing air. Gates took off his Gore-Tex parka and wrapped it around the other man despite Mumphries’ feeble protests. Gates then once more draped his own body protectively around the other man, allowing Mumphries to maintain some degree of body heat. The cold air immediately penetrated Gates’ coat liner and camouflage fatigue shirt.

  “Do your job, sir.”

  Gates almost didn’t hear Mumphries. Almost. Making sure the parka was wrapped tightly around his sergeant, Gates let go of the other man. Reluctantly, Gates reached inside his fatigue shirt, fingers groping beyond the polypropylene underwear he wore next to his skin to wick away moisture, to the thin piece of cloth that was tied loosely around his neck with a slip knot. It was a stole, what a Roman Catholic priest used to bless the sick and the dying. Gates pulled the loose end through the knot and removed the cloth. He wrapped it around his right hand. Then he picked up the Barrett sniper rifle once more.

  Looking through the thermal scope, he saw that the six figures were almost at the pass, over twelve hundred meters away, and two hundred meters below Gates’ position. He centered the reticules on the last man’s head. Gates then mentally adjusted for distance, altitude difference, and wind. He let out his breath and didn’t inhale, finding the rhythm of his heart. Still without breat
hing, in between heartbeats, he squeezed the trigger as smoothly as when he used to place the Eucharist on the tongues of those coming to communion. He rode the heavy recoil, and then shifted to the penultimate man in line, waited as his heart surged once, became still, pulled the trigger, shifted, waited for another heartbeat, and then fired for the third time. He kept this rhythm, firing as quickly as he accurately could.

  The first round hit the trail man in the head, the half-inch-wide bullet effectively decapitating the man. The sound of the round impacting reached the next man in line even before the noise of the distant gun being fired. He was in the process of turning when the second round hit him in the left check bone and took off the entire right rear quarter of his head as it exited.

  The third man was slow to react. He died only vaguely aware something was wrong behind him. The fourth man reacted, but Gates had anticipated having to change tactics, and now shifted from the head to the wider body shot. As the man ducked down, the fourth round hit him in the upper chest, having been aimed at his waist. He was knocked sideways, the bullet shredding his heart and lungs and continuing out the other side.

  The last two men scrambled for cover, but they were caught between a rock wall on their right and the drop on their left, which was why Gates had chosen that kill zone. He killed the fifth man with a round through the back as the man scrambled at a boulder, trying to climb over it for cover. The sixth man dove to the ground, making as small a target as possible, partially hiding behind several loose stones.

  Partially. Gates could see the red outline of the man’s lower right leg. He zeroed in on it and fired. The impact of the massive round severed the man’s leg at the lower calf and knocked him back several feet. The man was most likely screaming in pain, but at this distance, with the wind and snow, Gates could hear nothing, his ears ringing with the sound of the gun going off right next to his head. He fired for the seventh time and put the man out of his misery.

  Gates stopped firing. It had taken all of eleven seconds from first shot to last. Automatically, as he’d been trained, he reached down, grabbed a full magazine, and replaced the partially expended one in the gun, slamming the box of new rounds home and chambering a round.

  After checking the kill zone for any movement, Gates put down the gun and turned to Mumphries. The sergeant had either passed out or was asleep. Gates had to assume the former, considering the racket the gun had made. He got to his feet, feeling the bite of the cold wind through his thin fatigue shirt and undershirt. His body began to shiver uncontrollably, and he knew he would not last an hour dressed like this.

  Gates spread his arms wide, inviting the cold to have at him. He looked up into the swirling snow as if trying to see something.

  “Sir.”

  The word barely made it into the darkness of Gates’ mind. He could hardly feel his hands.

  “Sir.”

  With great reluctance, Gates turned from the brunt of the storm toward his sergeant. He knelt next to the man. “Yes?”

  Mumphries struggled to open his eyes. “Someone said you were a chaplain before—” Mumphries began coughing again, trying to clear his lungs in vain.

  Gates had been in the Army for more than twelve years, and knew there was no such thing as a secret amongst soldiers. His past was something he never talked about, but there was always the soldiers’ grapevine. He slid behind Mumphries, wrapping the sergeant with his own body.

  Getting no reply, Mumphries continued. “I was raised Catholic, sir. Church, school, the whole deal. Got married in the church. My wife, she believes more than me.”

  How could there be levels of belief, Gates wondered, but did not voice. He knew where this was heading.

  “That chopper doesn’t show today—” Mumphries paused once more as his lungs worked, trying to clear. “I might not make it through the night. I’d like to go clean, not worrying. And it would be a comfort to my wife to know I did.”

  “I’m not a priest anymore,” Gates said.

  “But you can do it, can’t you? I mean you know the—” the sentence was cut off by a long, rattling cough.

  “I know the words,” Gates acknowledged. “But they’re just words.”

  Mumphries shook his head, his body shaking in Gates’ arms from the fever that wracked it. “Not to me, they’re not. Please.”

  “You’re going to be fine,” Gates promised. “I’ll get you out of here. We’ll—”

  “Please. I don’t want to take a chance. I want to know I’m clean. Especially after the things we’ve done here. And in other places.”

  Things we’ve done. Other places, Gates thought. He couldn’t allow his mind to go there.

  “I don’t have a Eucharist for the viaticum, the passing over,” Gates said. “Or Holy Water. Or a Bible.”

  “You got anything? Isn’t it the thought? The belief, the trust, that counts?”

  Gates looked at the thin and tattered stole wrapped around his right hand. He slowly unwrapped it and extended it to its full length. Mumphries opened his eyes and saw it.

  “What’s that?”

  “My stole,” Gates said as he placed it across Mumphries’ sweat-soaked forehead.

  “What’s that stain on it?”

  “Blood.”

  “I thought so. So you’ve done this before?”

  Many times, thought Gates. “Yes.”

  They gave Timothy McVeigh last rites, Gates thought as he made the sign of the cross over Mumphries. Did that mean McVeigh had been absolved of what he had done? The people he had massacred? That he was now in heaven? Gates was trying to think about anything except the last time he’d performed the last of the seven sacraments. Extreme Unction. That’s what it was called when Gates had entered the seminary. The last time he’d performed Extreme Unction was his last act as a man of the cloth. Then he’d given up the cross on the collar of his camouflage fatigues for the crossed arrows of Special Operations. It had not been that difficult to do, as he had already gone through the Special Forces Qualification Course en route to an assignment as the chaplain for the 10th Special Forces Group (Airborne).

  Scripture. Now was the time for a reading, but he had no book. He closed his eyes and placed his other hand on top of Mumphries’ head. “’If we say that we have no sin, we deceive ourselves and there is no truth in us. But if we confess our sins to God, he will forgive us our sins and make us clean from all our wrongdoing.’”

  This was when the last communion was to be given. Gates thought about it, then reached into the cargo pocket of the pants inside the Gore-Tex shell and pulled out a cracker he’d saved from his last meal. Keeping it in his pocket had kept it from freezing. He broke off a piece and placed it between Mumphries’ cracked lips. The sergeant’s tongue snaked out and took the particle of cracker.

  Gates, half-dressed, was now shivering as badly as his sergeant. He knew neither would make it much past nightfall. And he welcomed the coming darkness. He was very tired. Exhausted to the depths of his bones.

  Gates opened his mouth to speak once more, but paused, cocking his head. For fifteen days, all they had heard was the wind. Any change was significant. And there was something at the very edge of his hearing that was different.

  “Sir, I—”

  “Shh,” Gates said, placing a finger over the lips on which he had just placed the piece of cracker. “Hear it?”

  Both men were perfectly still, even Mumphries’ shivering holding at bay for the moment, as they strained to listen.

  “Chopper,” Gates finally said. He slid Mumphries over so the sergeant was lying on his rucksack. Then the Captain grabbed the short-range FM radio in the pocket of his combat vest, his hand shaking so badly he could barely turn it on and press the transmit button.

  “Eagle, this is Eyes Four. Over.”

  The reply was instantaneous and clear, which meant the aircraft was close.

  “Eyes Four, this is Eagle. We are in-bound your location. Give us an IR strobe. Get packed and ready to depart. Over.
”

  Gates put the radio aside and began stuffing the few loose articles into the two rucksacks after turning on his infrared strobe light. “They’re in-bound,” he informed Mumphries, which wasn’t necessary as the sound of the blades could now clearly be heard coming closer.

  “I don’t believe it,” Mumphries mumbled.

  Gates didn’t either, but there was no denying the sound and the radio call.

  The Chinook appeared out of the blowing snow, creating its own small storm inside the larger one. Snow was caught in the vortex created by the large blades, swirling about. The pilot was fighting the wind, turning the rear of the large, double-rotor chopper to the mountain, a crew chief standing on the open back ramp giving the pilot his distance from the mountain. The large craft began slowly backing toward the hide site.

  Gates stared at in disbelief. He’d been on many a pick-up zone waiting for helicopters to come and had been disappointed more often than not. That one was here in this weather at this altitude in the dark was something he had not considered possible or remotely probable. To risk the lives of three men on board the chopper, not to mention the specially modified aircraft, to rescue Mumphries, was something unprecedented in his Army career.

  “Thank God,” whispered Mumphries. He looked at Gates with burning eyes. “See, Captain, it worked. Prayer worked.”

  To that, Gates had no reply. He was focused on the helicopter. When the edge of the back ramp was about three feet from the mountain, the crew chief gestured at them. Given the wind, this was close as the pilot dared bring the craft. If the blades whopping by overhead hit the mountainside, they’d all die.

  Gates threw both rucksacks into the chopper. There was no way Gates could make the short jump. Glancing down, Gates could see the two thousand foot drop to the rocky streambed below.

  Gates pondered the situation for a few seconds, the crew chief furiously gesturing as a gust of wind moved the helicopter several feet sideways. A gust toward the mountain like that and there would be disaster. The chopper edged back into place.