Fault Lines

by Steven Hildreth Jr

  To call it daunting was an understatement. For men like Logan Fox and Jack Bradshaw who thrived on challenges, it was Mount Everest.

  “So, you’re gonna do it?” Bradshaw asked.

  Fox took a moment to sip on his beer and contemplate. Finally, he said, “If they give you the team leader slot, yeah. The team’s back to square one if we both leave. Our guys are good, but they’re not ready to step up to the plate just yet. You’re long overdue for a team, and I’d like to keep progressing.”

  “Don’t factor me in your decision, brother,” Bradshaw said. “I’ll be good wherever they post me. You’ve gotta focus on what’s good for you.”

  “Nuh-uh.” Fox shook his head. “You need your own team. You’re just as good of a Ranger as me.”

  “No way. You made E-7. I’m still a Six.”

  “Fuck that,” Fox said. “That was just the way the cards fell. We’re on the same level. I just happened to catch the right spotlight at the right time.”

  Bradshaw glanced at the wall and let out a deep sigh. Fox looked at him with narrowed eyes.

  “What is it?”

  He shook his head. “I’m not sure I’m ready to be a team leader. That’s a pretty big responsibility.”

  “Nobody’s ever really ready,” Fox said. “Were you ready to be a team leader on the line?”

  Bradshaw smiled and shook his head. “Hell no.”

  “I wasn’t ready for this shit,” Fox said. “I learned on the fly. My training and my wits got me by. It’ll get you by, too.”

  Bradshaw took a deep breath and shifted his lower jaw laterally. “I suppose I don’t have a say in the matter.”

  Fox grinned. “Nope.”

  “Well,” Bradshaw said, “if you think I’m ready, I’ll do it.”

  Fox’s countenance turned serious for a moment. “There is one thing, though…”

  “Yeah?”

  “Your temper. You’ve gotta keep that shit in check.” He saw Bradshaw hang his head. “Look, I’d be lying if I said I hadn’t thought about tuning up a muhj with the fucked up shit they do. But you’ve got to keep your emotions in their place. Outside the wire, there’s only the mission.”

  “Tracking,” Bradshaw said. “One-time slip up. I won’t let it happen again.”

  “I’m not speaking to you as your team leader,” Fox said. “I’m speaking as your friend. I mean, sure, you can keep tuning them up, and given the current environment, the President might pardon you when the outcry’s loud enough, but you’ll still be on the street.” He put his hand on Bradshaw’s shoulder. “There’s a war on. The Army needs men like you, brother.”

  Bradshaw nodded. “You’re right.” He waited a beat. “Though…”

  “What?” Fox asked.

  Bradshaw met Fox’s eyes and smiled. “We both know I carried you through RIP, Ranger, and Recce OTC. I didn’t get an invite to Unit Selection. I don’t know how you’ll do there.”

  Fox rolled his eyes. “Oh, whatever, motherfucker,” he said with a chuckle.

  Bradshaw opened his mouth to say something, but a muted explosion in the distance grabbed his attention. He sat up straight, listening for the source. While Nangarhar Province had recently been cleaned up in major operations by Afghan and Coalition forces, the occasional IED was not uncommon. If it was an IED, it would be plotted in the JOC’s Blue Force Tracker and that would be the end of it.

  A second explosion roared, this one generating enough force to knock both Bradshaw and Fox from their seats. They scrambled to their feet, grabbed their rifles off the ground, and sprinted to the door. It was a 15-meter dash from the team room to the JOC. When Bradshaw and Fox entered the tent, they saw several analysts and technicians scurrying from point to point, some in uniform and others in civilian clothing.

  Fox and Bradshaw spotted a man wearing desert digital camouflage standing above the crowd. Commander Brock Templeton was DEVGRU Red Squadron’s commanding officer, and thus the commander of the RRC detachment. Fox and Bradshaw marched over to Templeton, who turned to face them as they approached.

  “We’re under mortar attack,” Templeton said, his voice deep and gravelly. “We haven’t locked in a point of origin.”

  “Where’d the first mortar land, sir?” Fox asked.

  “Between the living quarters and the motor pool,” Templeton said. “We’re assessing if we’ve taken casualties now.”

  An OGA drone operator yelled over his shoulder, “Sir!”

  Templeton, Fox, and Bradshaw marched over to his station. The drone operator pointed to the screen, which showed a feed in black-hot infrared. “We’ve got at least 70 tangos approaching from the north.”

  “Holy shit,” Bradshaw breathed.

  Templeton turned to another JOC worker and ordered calmly, “Call Jalalabad. Spin up the QRF, and tell them I need artillery fires, most skosh.”

  “Yes, sir!” somebody in the crowd responded.

  “My whole squadron’s out running hits right now,” Templeton said, turning back to Fox.

  “I’ll get my men kitted up and we’ll get in the towers,” Fox said. “Once the arty battery’s up, let me know their freq and we’ll call in fires.”

  “You have an FO on your team?” Templeton asked, referring to an artillery forward observer.

  “Don’t need them,” Fox said. “Won’t be the first time we’ve called for fire.”

  Templeton folded his arms and nodded. “Do it.”

  Fox nodded dutifully, then tapped Bradshaw on the arm and led him on a dead sprint out of the JOC and towards the living quarters.

  CHAPTER FOUR

  33.4 kilometers south-by-southwest of Jalalabad, Nangarhar Province, Afghanistan

  12 June 2017

  22:35 hours Echo (17:35 hours Zulu)

  Sergeants David Sears, Eric Devlin, Breck Anderson, and Lawrence Johnson had been rotating through bouts of Injustice 2 on Devlin’s PlayStation 4. Anderson, the team’s senior RTO, had been dominating as Aquaman, to the chagrin of the others. Johnson, Team 2-4’s resident comic book nerd, had been deep in a passionate, persuasive argument as to why there was no way that Aquaman could best Superman as easily as Anderson had bested Johnson during their best-of-three match.

  Then the first mortar struck FOB Walker.

  All four men had deployed before, both as members of RRC 2-4 and as members of the Ranger Regiment. Their reaction was ingrained and automatic. They dropped everything, scrambled to their respective corners of the CHU, and grabbed their kit. Devlin and Sears had been in their PT gear, having done a third gym session before game night, and neither one bothered to put on more clothing. They knew to grab only critical kit and be prepared to react once the fight started.

  The door burst open, and Fox and Bradshaw rushed in. They had made a pit stop by their own CHU to grab their kit.

  “What the fuck’s going on, boss?” Johnson asked.

  “Mortars are just the prelude,” Fox said. “Beaucoup bad guys inbound to our position. Dam Neck boys are out running hits. Just us and the mercs until QRF’s on station.” The men took the news stoically. Panic and false bravado were noticeably absent. There was only a determined sense of survival.

  “Where do you want us?” Devlin asked.

  Fox pointed to him and Anderson. “Glee, Minecraft, Tower 7. McLovin, Token, Tower 2. Boy Scout and I will be in Tower 1. Conserve your ammo, shoot only what you can hit. We don’t know if this is the bulk of the OPFOR or how long it will take for QRF or battlespace fires to get on station. Tracking?”

  “Tracking,” the four Rangers murmured in unison.

  Fox clapped his hands and said, “Let’s move!”

  Nick Farmer huddled in the guard tower, posted up behind his M4 carbine. He peered deep into the expansive wilderness through the AN/PVS-14 night observation monocular that was mounted behind his ACOG optic. Farmer had heard the radio transmission that enemy forces were inbound to the COP, but neither he nor the LP/OPs had seen them yet. He fought to control his breat
hing as he continued to scan his sector.

  Farmer knew the job would be dangerous when he signed on with Triple Canopy. Despite his average, unassuming build and appearance, danger was not a foreign concept to him. He had done three tours as a rifleman with 2nd Battalion, 8th Marines, two to Iraq and one to Afghanistan. Farmer had survived both the Ramadi and Helmand Province campaigns and had earned his Combat Action Ribbon the hard way.

  It would not be his first firefight, but the anxiety and fear never went away, no matter how many engagements one survived.

  With his Mechanix-gloved hand, Farmer wiped the sweat from his brow and into his slicked-back, sandy hair. He scratched the stubble on his chin as he continued to scan. The sounds of ascending footsteps on the ladder drew his attention, but Farmer kept his eye on glass. He didn’t move as the pair of newcomers entered the tower and set up shop on both of his flanks.

  “Hey, buddy,” the one on his left said. “What’s your name?”

  “Nick,” Farmer said.

  “I’m Logan,” the man said. “That’s Jack. Figured you could use some extra firepower up here.”

  “I’m not one to turn away extra guns in a firefight, sir,” Farmer said.

  The one to Farmer’s right, Jack, snorted. “We’re NCOs, bro. Don’t hurt us like that.”

  “Aye-aye, sergeant,” Farmer answered immediately.

  “Ah, great,” Jack said in faux-despair. “A fucking Marine.”

  “Just remember that you ain’t really Marines yet, sergeant,” Farmer said with a wry grin.

  “All right,” Logan said. “Now that we’ve broken the ice and measured our dicks, let’s stay on task.” Not waiting for either one to respond, he keyed up his MBITR. “All points, this is Grease. In sequence, acknowledge that you’re on-site, over.”

  Another mortar round detonated, this one a fair distance beyond the COP’s southern wall. All three men tensed but remained in position. A few moments of silence passed before Logan said, “Roger. I copy all elements are on-station. Stand by.”

  “Now what?” Farmer asked.

  Logan let out a long sigh. “Now, we wait.”

  Brock Templeton marched back and forth in the Joint Operations Center, his eyes on the large screen that displayed the Predator feed. While he did not have nearly as much trigger time as his chiefs and petty officers, Templeton was experienced in combat, both with SEAL Team 7 and DEVGRU. It chafed him to be in the JOC, watching and waiting for an attack. That was only a hair more vexing than the fact that the attack had been launched when all of his men were out doing their jobs. That told him that somebody had been casing his COP and that this was not an impromptu attack.

  The only consolation was that while COP Walker’s location was tightly controlled information, it was inside a war zone, and thus reinforcements would be readily provided, in contrast to the Benghazi attack nearly half a decade earlier. They only had to hold out long enough for said reinforcements to arrive.

  With his gray eyes locked on the screen, Templeton asked, “We hear from Jalalabad yet?”

  One of the uniformed petty officers manning a computer said, “QRF is spinning up and should SP at any moment, sir.”

  Templeton directed his gaze to the petty officer, a young man whose nametape he could not see from his position. “What about artillery fires?”

  “They acknowledged the request but haven’t gotten back to us with a freq or call sign, sir.”

  Templeton shifted his eyes to Diana Fairchild, a bespectacled, redheaded targeting officer who was the ranking OGA officer in the JOC. “What’d your people say about redirecting a Reaper?”

  “They’re trying to free one up and task it in our direction, but they haven’t given us an ETA,” Fairchild said.

  Templeton scowled. “Looks like we’re relying on Jalalabad.”

  Fairchild nodded. “Yes, sir.”

  Templeton directed his attention at another petty officer. “The second any of Red Squadron clears their mission, you get them back here.”

  “Aye, sir.”

  The first petty officer called out, “Sir, I’ve got artillery.”

  Templeton spun on a dime and marched over. “Gimme what you’ve got.”

  “Call sign ‘Honey Badger,’ frequency 42.325,” the petty officer said. “Single channel, cipher text. They’ve got 155s, HE, smoke, and illumination.”

  “Good,” Templeton said. “Tell them that each guard tower is a TRP, and transmit the grids to the battery. Have each TRP number correspond with the tower number. Lemme know when QRF is oscar mike.”

  “Can do easy, sir,” the petty officer said.

  Utilizing each guard tower as a Tactical Reference Point for calling artillery was standard procedure for firebase defense, as each tower was a fixed, known point. With that information pre-programmed, the artillery battery would be able to make adjustments to their guns with greater speed.

  Templeton walked over to a SINCGARS set and grabbed the hand mic. “Grease, this is Indian Six.”

  “Go for Grease,” Fox immediately responded.

  “Stand by to copy arty fire information,” Templeton said.

  “Roger,” Fox said. “I copy ‘Honey Badger,’ 42.325, single channel, cipher text, 155s, HE, smoke, and lume. TRPs correspond with the towers.”

  “Solid copy on all,” Templeton said. “Stay frosty. Indian Six, out.”

  “Wonder what they’re waiting on?” Bradshaw said. He rested his SCAR against the tower wall, removed the MBITR from its war belt pouch, and immediately went to work on stowing the Honey Badger frequency on channel 4, a process that took him about two minutes. Once the freq was stored, Bradshaw held the Peltor set to his ear and keyed up.

  “Honey Badger, Honey Badger, this is Oscar Romeo 2-4. Radio check, over.” There was a long pause. Bradshaw repeated his transmission.

  The silence was finally broken with an electronic crackle, followed by a tenor voice saying, “Oscar Romeo 2-4, this is Honey Badger. Read you Lima Charlie. How me?”

  “Roger, read you same-same,” Bradshaw said.

  “Roger,” Honey Badger’s RTO said. “Standing by for fire mission.”

  “Tango mike,” Bradshaw said. “Talk to you soon. Out.”

  As he switched the channel back to the Omega net, both Fox and the contractor, Nick, tensed. When Bradshaw reached the target channel, he realized why.

  “—I say again, enemy in the open, headed southbound.” From the way the LP/OP contractor whispered, Bradshaw surmised that the enemy must have been close.

  With that knowledge, he quickly secured his MBITR in its pouch and got on glass. His Elcan SpecterDR optic was cranked up to its highest 4x magnification, and an SU-232 PAS thermal sight had been mounted in front of the optic. Through the glass, the rugged, desolate landscape was an eerie, white, alien world. Bradshaw’s nose touched the rifle’s rear sling attachment point to create a reference for a consistent sight picture. He slowed his breathing, as he had been instructed at Forts Benning and Bragg, and slipped into his zone.

  Templeton came up on the net. “OP-4 and OP-5, this is Indian Six. Can you pull out of your positions without compromising yourselves?”

  “This is OP-4, roger,” one contractor said.

  There was a long pause. “OP-5, Indian Six, acknowledge, over.”

  The sound of 5.56mm rounds erupted and echoed through the expanse. A second later, the heavier reports of 7.62x39mm gunfire drowned out the former.

  “OP-4, OP-5, respond!” Templeton growled into the radio. There was another pause, and then Templeton came back on the net. “All points, Indian Six. I have confirmation via Predator drone that OPs 4 and 5 have been neutralized by enemy forces. They should be cresting the hill any moment.”

  Bradshaw keyed up. “Indian Six, Boy Scout. Are we clear to use artillery fires in that area?”

  After a long silence, Templeton replied, “That’s a negative, Boy Scout. We don’t know if they’re KIA or WIA. Hold off on artillery fires unless absolutel
y necessary.”

  Bradshaw let out a long, silent exhale. He understood Templeton’s position. Even though the contractors no longer wore the uniform, they were still soldiers and Marines who had taken oaths to defend the nation. They would not be left behind if at all possible.

  “Boy Scout copies,” Bradshaw said.

  “Be advised, QRF is en route. ETA one-five mikes. I say again, QRF in one-five mikes.”

  “Roger,” Fox said. “We’ll hold the line.”

  Bradshaw saw the first target emerge from the back end of the hill, a faint black dot with a streak of white diagonally across his chest. He held his fire. It was a parabolic risk: they didn’t want to let too many of them crest and then overwhelm the defensive positions with fire saturation, but they also did not want to fire too early and incentivize them to fire and maneuver on the base.

  “Hey, Nick,” Bradshaw said.

  “Yeah?” Nick said.

  “You do a range card when you came up here?”

  “Aye-aye, sarn’t,” Nick said.

  “How far do you place that hilltop?” Bradshaw asked.

  “About 450 meters.”

  “So it’ll be danger close. Fantastic.”

  “Yes, sarn’t.”

  There were about 10 figures over the hill at that point. Bradshaw noticed they were clustered in groups of four, spaced out, with one group out front and a couple of others on either flank and staggered off of each other. Bradshaw’s brow furrowed.

  “You see this?” Bradshaw asked Fox.

  “Yeah,” Fox said quietly. “Somebody’s been teaching the muhj how to walk in the woods.”

  Bradshaw trained his crosshair on the point man, then raised it to where it was between the fourth and fifth hash marks. He slowly rotated the SCAR’s selector switch from SAFE to SEMI.

  “I’ve got the point man,” Bradshaw said.

  “I’ll take the guy on his right,” Fox said.

  “Switch me spots,” Nick said.