Fault Lines

by Steven Hildreth Jr

  “Pretty Boy, Grease.”

  “Go, Grease,” came the response.

  “We’re approximately 200 meters south of your position,” Fox said. “Flashing IR now.”

  On cue, Bradshaw flashed his infrared illuminator twice and waited for the response. It came a moment later, a trio of IR flashes from the gathering in the brush.

  “We’ve got you,” Pretty Boy said. “Come in.”

  “Moving,” Fox said.

  Fox and Bradshaw marched at a measured pace. Every few steps, Bradshaw would turn around and check their rear to ensure they had not picked up enemy attachments. A few moments later, they walked past a man in Desert MARPAT digital camouflage, prone and leaned up against the stock of an M60E6 machine gun. Once inside the perimeter, Fox led them to a man on a knee in the center. Like them, the man sported a scruffy beard, though his had specks of gray that could not be seen in the NODs’ lime-green imaging. The man was lean, of average height, and had a fat pinch of dipping tobacco in his lower lip.

  “Glad to see you made it,” Fox said.

  “Yeah.” Senior Chief Special Warfare Operator (SEAL) Roland Burr of the Navy’s Special Warfare Development Group spat in the ground beside him. His kit was similar to Bradshaw’s and Fox’s, with the exception of the tomahawk that dangled from his war belt and the alien-looking Ground Panoramic Night Vision Goggles—GPNVG-18s for short—mounted to his helmet. He held a suppressed Heckler & Koch HK416 in his hands, the crook of the magazine well pressed against his bent knee.

  “We’ve spotted at least 10 tangos near the objective,” Fox said. “About half that in rovers, and a couple of rooftop sentries. Their guard’s down, though. Should be easy to move up on the objective undetected.”

  “Good,” Burr said. “You wanna lead us in?”

  “Can do easy,” Fox said.

  Burr nodded, then keyed up his radio and spoke softly into his lip mic. “On your feet, boys. Recce Rangers gonna lead us out.”

  CHAPTER TWO

  29 kilometers northwest by west-northwest from Peshawar, Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, Pakistan

  11 June 2017

  03:45 hours Echo (10 June 22:45 hours Zulu)

  Bradshaw followed Fox out of the ORP. The seven DEVGRU operators collapsed the perimeter one after another and fell into a file behind the Recce Rangers. They walked at a normal pace, fast enough to have purpose but not so fast that they developed tunnel vision or telegraphed themselves aurally. Twenty minutes earlier, Bradshaw had been fighting fatigue. Now, moving towards the objective, the adrenaline hit his bloodstream, and he was wide awake, his head on a swivel in search of targets.

  As they continued to the village, Fox keyed up his radio while keeping his rifle up and his firing hand on his M4A1’s pistol grip. “All OPs, this is Grease. Making final approach to the objective. Call it up to higher and provide overwatch, break.” He let go of the transmitter just long enough to allow emergency interjections, then depressed it once more. “Niner friendlies approaching from the southwest. I say again, niner friendlies approaching from the southwest. How copy?”

  Eric Devlin was the first to respond. “This is McLovin. I copy niner friendlies from the southwest.”

  In OP-1, where Fox had started the night, Sergeant David Sears keyed up. “Roger. Got eyes on you now.” A second later, he hissed on the net, “Hold it!”

  Fox threw his left arm up at a 90-degree angle, but this time, his hand was clenched in a fist. Bradshaw immediately froze in his tracks and threw the sign back to the others. Nobody went to a knee or shifted to pick up a sector of fire. Each waited anxiously for Sears’s next transmission.

  What seemed like an eternity was only about 20 seconds between the warning and the follow-on announcement. “I’ve got a bead on a MAM,” Sears said, using the acronym for a Military Aged Male. “Just stood up to stretch his legs. Gonna take him momentarily.”

  Fox keyed the transmitter once, letting Devlin know that he acknowledged the last traffic but could not respond due to imminent danger in the area. He stood still and waited, hoping that the opposition didn’t stare too long in their general direction or possess night vision. While it was still uncommon for jihadists to run NODs, it wouldn’t be the first instance.

  Bradshaw scanned the rooftops. It only took him a moment to see the lone sentry, his Kalashnikov slung on his back, his arms stretched outward as he yawned. A split-second later, the sentry’s head rocked as a 7.62x51mm round punched through it. The body slumped to the roof, and only then did Bradshaw make out the faint sound of a suppressed supersonic report. He only heard it because he had expected it.

  Sears came up on the net. “Grease, Glee. You’re clear. Move.”

  Fox rose to his feet and advanced, his M4 at the ready and scanning the rooftops ahead and to the right. Bradshaw picked up the left sector, his head traversing laterally and vertically as he scanned for any threats the snipers might have missed. They stuck to the shadows and used the surrounding buildings to obscure their movement.

  When they were roughly 150 meters from the target building, Fox halted the file once more. As Bradshaw and the others took a knee, Fox glanced around the corner, then slowly retreated as he reached for his transmitter.

  “McLovin, got one up high, two down low. Boy Scout and I will take the ground sentries. Initiate on your mark.”

  “Roger,” Devlin said. “I’ve got him.”

  Bradshaw moved behind Fox, setting his right foot between Fox’s legs. He switched the SCAR from his right shoulder to his left to adjust for the corner. When he was ready, he gave Fox’s shoulder a squeeze. In unison, both of them lunged around the corner, Fox taking a knee while Bradshaw remained standing, most of his body obscured by the building. Bradshaw immediately saw the two men at ground level, standing beside a building that stood between the assaulters and the target building. The sentries faced each other. In his peripheral, Bradshaw also spotted the man up high. He activated his PEQ-15 and trained the laser on the left target’s chest.

  The sound of a body hitting the roof was their initiator. Bradshaw squeezed the SCAR’s trigger. A lone suppressed round tore through the target’s ribcage and shredded vital organs. The jihadist was dead before he hit the ground.

  Beneath Bradshaw, Fox squeezed off two rounds from his suppressed M4, and the second target joined the first in the dirt. They searched for any indication that they had been compromised. When they found none, Bradshaw reached down, grabbed Fox by the handle on his plate carrier, and pulled him up while simultaneously guiding him to the left to avoid placing him in front of the SCAR’s muzzle. Once Fox was clear, Bradshaw joined the march towards the next building, the SEALs in tow.

  When they reached the building, Senior Chief Burr keyed up. “Hulk, you’re up top.”

  “Moving.” Chief Special Warfare Operator (SEAL) Tony Rossotti, a solid mass of Italian muscle, slung the M60E6 on his back and immediately felt the wall for hand and foot holds. Once he was situated, Rossotti scaled the three-story building in an impressive 90 seconds. He walked past the body that Devlin had dropped, unslung the machine gun from his back, and cradled it in his arms as he lowered himself into a prone position. Rossotti reached the roof’s edge and set the gun up so the muzzle didn’t silhouette his position.

  “Hulk’s set,” Rossotti radioed. He used his support hand to stabilize the gun’s bipod.

  With vertical dominance established, Burr signaled for Fox to lead the way to the front door. Before they moved, Sears came up on the net.

  “Hey, Grease.”

  “Go, Glee.”

  “If you wanted to turn off the lights, you’ve got a genny at red-one-two, near the red-black corner.”

  Something that the Regiment had inherited from their brothers at the Bragg SMU was a modified version of the 22nd Special Air Service’s Colour Clock Code. If one was facing a target building’s main entrance, the front was the white side, the back was the black side, the left was the green side, and the right was the red side. The
second component was the floor, and the third was windows from left to right.

  The sides and backs only had two windows per floor, so that meant that Sears was announcing a diesel generator on the right side, ground floor, near the corner where the right and back sides met. Fox looked over his shoulder to Burr.

  “It’s your show.”

  “Do it,” Burr said.

  Fox resumed point. Bradshaw kept his SCAR’s suppressed muzzle trained on the windows as they made their way into the open and along the building’s green side. When they reached the corner, Fox slowed his approach, switched his stock to his left shoulder, and leaned back and forth in increments to slowly clear the dead space and keep himself behind concealment. Once he had full vision of the black side, Fox led the file wide to the target’s black side and repeated the process at the black-red corner.

  Once on the red side, Fox moved forward and pulled security. The DEVGRU SEALs fanned out and established a three-sixty perimeter. Bradshaw pulled out his Cold Steel Survival Rescue Knife from the sheath on his plate carrier and began to search for the generator’s wires. By the time he found them, Senior Chief Burr had materialized behind him, tomahawk in hand.

  “Allow me,” Burr said.

  Bradshaw stepped aside and sheathed his knife. Burr took a knee, and with a single wide overhead arc, he cut through the wires. The generator’s steady purr sputtered out and eventually faltered, and the lights flickered and died simultaneously. Spoken Pashto grew from murmured to shouted, and the sounds of sandals moving rushed against floorboards grew.

  The front door flew open, and two ISIS-KP fighters spilled out, their eyes still adjusting to the lighting shift. Fox and Chief Edward Rosales had security on the door, and their suppressed weapons spoke. Rosales’s HK416 spit four bullets into center mass of the trail shooter, while Fox’s M4 stitched a loose line from sternum to throat. Both jihadists fell forward, their weapons tumbling out of reach.

  Bradshaw jogged around the corner, his SCAR trained at the ground as he reached with his support hand to grab Fox’s shoulder. A SEAL stacked behind him, while others moved to the other side of the door to stack on Rosales. The SEALs held their weapons at the high port with their muzzles trained directly skyward, a peculiarity that seemed specific to maritime-based SOF units. The operator behind Rosales grabbed a stun grenade off the back of the short, mustachioed SEAL’s plate carrier and primed it. That SEAL leaned around the corner and lobbed the cylinder through the open doorway.

  The combination of magnesium and ammonium nitrate shook the ground and brilliantly lit the interior. As soon as they felt the rumble, Fox and Rosales piled into the hallway, with Bradshaw hot on their heels to form a Rolling T formation. Fox immediately saw a room to his right and broke from the group, with Bradshaw on his six. Upon entry, they encountered a pair of Caliphate soldiers seated on a meal rug and clutching at their eyes and ears, their weapons still within reach. Bradshaw and Fox cut the pair down with a swarm of 5.56x45mm and 7.62x51mm rounds, then continued into the adjacent kitchen.

  A young woman in a burqa stared at the two figures in the faint moonlight, looking like intruders from another world or agents of Shaitan. A pistol lay on the counter within reach, and she looked between the Rangers and the weapon.

  “Don’t!” Bradshaw warned in Pashto.

  She let out a shrill cry as she lunged for the weapon. Bradshaw trained his infrared laser on her and punched two rounds through her torso. He took another step forward, waited until the laser dot hovered on the back of her head, and fired once more, the large round sending skull fragments and gray matter splattering outward. Without another thought, he took point and moved forward towards a door, his SCAR at the ready.

  “Pretty Boy, Grease,” Fox said into the radio.

  “Go,” Burr said.

  “Pretty sure this kitchen connects to the common area,” Fox said.

  “We cleared it,” Burr said. “You can come through.”

  “Roger,” Fox said. “Friendlies coming through.”

  Bradshaw opened the door slowly and stepped through, immediately lowering his rifle when he saw a SEAL. He glanced down and found four bodies sprawled across the ground, some of them holding their weapons while others had been reaching when they were killed. Bradshaw glanced up and saw Burr and his second, Chief Trevor Wall, positioned at the mouth of a stairwell.

  “Gimme two,” Wall called.

  Bradshaw and Fox jogged across the common area and stacked on Burr and Wall. Fox squeezed Bradshaw’s shoulder, who in turn squeezed Wall’s. When Burr received the squeeze, he turned the corner and trained his HK416 upward. Wall moved to the left side, and Bradshaw squeezed between the two of them, Fox brought up the rear, his rifle trained at the floor. They moved up the stairs deliberately. Traversing a stairwell was a tactical nightmare, and it didn’t pay to sacrifice security for speed.

  That axiom manifested itself a moment later when an ISIS-KP shooter leaned over the bannister from above. Wall trained his PEQ-15 on the threat and squeezed his HK416’s trigger twice, both rounds punching through the rifleman’s forehead. Another shooter rounded the corner at the top of the stairwell, and Bradshaw put a tight three-round grouping center mass, cutting the jihadist’s strings where he stood.

  When they crested the stairwell, Wall button-hooked left to clear the dead space leading to the next flight. Bradshaw moved to the left wall and established security down the hall. Burr joined Wall, and Fox joined Bradshaw. A machine gun’s chatter forced Bradshaw to take a knee and tense, but radio traffic a moment later provided an explanation.

  “Boss, this is Hulk. You had two MAMs grabbing AKs in one of your green-two rooms. They’re down. No movement on my end.”

  “Good shooting,” Burr said.

  “Glee, anything on the right side?” Fox asked.

  “Couldn’t tell you, Grease,” Sears said. “Got some obstructions. Can’t see much below the roof.”

  “Roger,” Fox said. He looked to Bradshaw. “Let’s clear it.”

  “Friendlies coming up!” called a heavily Southern accented voice.

  “Come up!” Fox called.

  A pair of SEALs jogged up the stairs. Chief Paul Morton and Special Operator 1st Class Henry Miller were about the same height, though Miller looked more native with his tanned skin and thick beard. Morton looked like he’d be more at home in Dixie backwoods than in the Asian desert, and when he opened his mouth, that impression was bolstered.

  “You guys take the far room, we’ll take the close,” Morton said.

  “Roger,” Fox said.

  “We’ll hold the stairwell,” Burr said.

  Bradshaw fell in line and moved on the door. Neither one had flash-bangs. Rather, Fox reached for the door handle with his support hand and paused. When he received a nod from Bradshaw, Fox threw the door open and stood off to the side of the door. Both Bradshaw and Fox trained their weapons inside, keeping all but their heads and weapons concealed. They swept left and right, and when they found no threats, they stepped in and methodically cleared the room. On the other side of the bed, Bradshaw found a girl younger than the one he’d killed in the kitchen, clutching a boy that couldn’t have been older than five.

  “On your stomach,” Bradshaw commanded in Pashto.

  Both of them immediately complied. Bradshaw pulled out a pair of pre-prepped flex-cuffs and fastened them to each of their wrists. Once they were secured, he pulled out a couple of gags from his detainee pouch and tied them over their mouths. He was sure they weren’t fighters, given they had cowered in a bedroom rather than gone for a weapon, but over a decade of experience had taught him not to leave it to chance.

  In the adjacent room, the chatter of suppressed rifles filtered through the wall. Norton’s voice filled the Peltor comm sets. “Gumbo, two down in here.”

  “Two non-combatants in here,” Fox keyed up. “They’re secured. We’re coming out.”

  “Same,” Norton said.

  As they reentered hallway,
Burr said from down the hall, “Gumbo, Colgate, hold the second floor. Rangers, with me.”

  Bradshaw and Fox jogged down the hallway to link up with Burr. When they arrived, Burr keyed up on the net. “Glee, this is Pretty Boy.”

  “Go,” Sears said.

  “You have eyes on the red-three?”

  There was a pause before Sears responded. “Funny that you mention that,” he said. “I’ve got eyes on the package. He’s pacing the room. Got a couple of MAMs with him, all armed. No non-combatants that I can see. He’s gesturing to somebody.”

  Bradshaw’s heart skipped a beat at the eyes-on confirmation of Noorzai. Burr said, “Confirm that you have eyes on the package.”

  There was another pause before Sears said, “Roger that. It’s him.”

  “Roger,” Burr said. “Keep eyes on. If they attempt to engage before we’re in position, you’re weapons free.”

  “Roger that, Pretty Boy,” Sears said.

  Burr gestured to the stairwell as he raised his rifle. “Let’s go,” he said.

  Wall took the right side, Burr hugged the left, and Fox filled the middle. Bradshaw brought up the rear as they took it a step at a time. Nobody awaited them when they crested the third floor. That told them that the bulk of the opposition had been dealt with in the preceding two floors. Burr led the way to the two doors. Wall and Burr took the closest room, while Bradshaw and Fox moved to the furthest.

  “Psst,” Burr said, getting Bradshaw’s attention. He tossed a stun grenade to him, then nodded when Bradshaw caught it. Bradshaw let the SCAR dangle by its two-point sling as he thumbed away the grenade’s safety, yanked the pin, and held the spoon against the body. Fox reached for the doorknob, looked to Bradshaw, and nodded. Wall and Burr went through a similar ritual.

  Fox and Wall threw the doors open, and Bradshaw and Burr tossed in stun grenades. When they detonated, the two buddy teams swarmed the rooms. Bradshaw trained his PEQ-15 laser on the closest target and serviced him with three 7.62x51mm rounds to center mass. As the target crumpled, Fox engaged the second target and dropped him. Bradshaw locked eyes with the target, slung his SCAR on his back, and bolted forward. He vaulted over the bed, tackled him, and threw him to the bed. When he thrashed, Bradshaw grabbed his left arm and torqued it behind his back before he cried out. He grabbed the target’s hands, secured them with a pair of flex-cuffs, and stood the target up, looking him in the eyes through the PVS-15s.