The Anvil of the Craftsman (Jon's Trilogy)

by Dale Amidei

  The convoy approached the road that would take them away from the highway and toward al-Fatla. Kameldorn made sure that the Blackwater vehicles would not be missing the turn. The compound of al-Dulaimi’s cousin was west of the river in a low valley, taking advantage of a geological anomaly, one that allowed underground water to seep a good distance from the Euphrates and so make itself available for irrigation. The family had lived there for generations, and from what al-Dulaimi had told them, it would be a hard settlement to miss.

  They found the road, showing signs of maintenance and recent traffic. A dozen kilometers remained to another welcome. They turned west.

  Anthony looked out his window at the landscape. The monotony of color tended to obscure the details of the sandy terrain. Rises and wadis blended. He could tell that water sometimes flowed here but that it must be seasonal. It looked like a hard land. It was no wonder, he thought, that it made those who lived here hard as well.

  He saw evidence of people who had tried to scratch a living out of the desert. Farms and old irrigation equipment, now abandoned, dotted the landscape. A walled enclosure in the distance looked to be in ill repair. Well off the highway now, the convoy was making more use of the ground clearance of the SUVs.

  They were in the midst of negotiating a series of turns in the road as their route crossed a seasonal stream now bone-dry. The Blackwater Suburban had slowed, and Kameldorn let it get ahead of them, almost to the other side, before he started to cross. The following two vehicles, which had paused with him as he waited, crept along behind as they, too, bounced across the stony track.

  Anthony was looking at the back of the lead Suburban when something happened. All at once, he sensed something fly in from up the wadi; he heard and felt it hit the Blackwater vehicle with a thump. Then Kameldorn was cursing, and there was another thump ahead as the Suburban blew apart. Two more of the terrible sounds came from behind.

  Not again, he thought.

  Kameldorn’s mind registered the report of the RPG-7 before he realized that they were under attack. The first round had hit the lead Blackwater Suburban in the rear of the engine compartment, and the other looked like it had exploded on the upright behind the driver’s door, shredding the interior.

  “Goddammit!” he heard himself yell. “Get down!”

  In the rearview, he saw Anthony dive down as the rear Suburban experienced similar, very bad things. Schuster was on his way down when the small-arms fire started from the opposite direction of the RPGs. The attack came from three points. The vehicles had been caught in a triangulated ambush.

  Rounds hit the vehicle on the passenger side, and Bernie’s window disappeared in a shower of safety glass. Kameldorn floored it. Colby sat bolt upright in his seat then slumped, Kameldorn saw. He wished that Tom would get even lower where more of the Land Rover’s metalwork could shield him.

  “Follow me, guys, follow me,” Kameldorn said aloud, somehow hoping that the other Land Rover would realize what he was going to do. He chose the RPG side, knowing the reload time of the rocket launcher, gambling that their attackers had not kept a round in reserve after having taken out the Blackwater vehicles.

  The ride was bad, but the burning wreck of the forward Blackwater Suburban gave him the cover that he had hoped for. At least two automatic weapons were firing from over there, and he heard them track into what was left of the big Chevy as he passed it. He swerved back into the ruts as he came around and saw in middle of the trail a scrawny little AQI schmuck with his AK, thinking he was going to stop them. Kameldorn had other ideas.

  The guy got off a few rounds from the hip, but they went high. The Land Rover, wheels digging for traction in the gravel of the streambed, was not about to stop. The little ass-wipe thought the better of it, Kameldorn saw, and now he just wanted to get out of the way. Too bad.

  Kameldorn steered just slightly out of the path, turning after the shooter as he ran and to his credit almost made it. The front of the Land Rover caught his hip just inside the headlights and took him off his feet, throwing him directly in front of the passenger-side wheels. Enduring a rough ride already, none of his passengers even noticed the additional jolts as the vehicle’s undercarriage finished what the tubular-steel grill guard harshly began.

  Rounds came in after them as Kameldorn sped up the far side of the streambed. He had one last lightning-fast look at the vehicles behind him. The rear element Suburban was gone. He saw yet a third RPG round strike that must have been just for fun as the vehicle was already burning. The worst part was the second Land Rover, just sitting there, with black and white smoke coming from its engine compartment. His glimpse of the passengers in the stalled vehicle, he knew instantly, would stay with him for the rest of his life.

  Kameldorn was thinking more quickly than he could ever remember. He was the only one now who had a chance of doing anything to help them, but he had his vehicle and his people to consider. It was at that moment that Tom Colby fell onto his shoulder, and he saw the blood on the man’s far side. Anthony was there now, grabbing him, yelling Tom’s name. Kameldorn’s choices disappeared. He mashed the gas pedal all the way to the floorboard, and the V-8 answered the call.

  He spoke quickly and in command voice as he steered down the sandy road, giving it as much speed as he could manage. “Bernie, he’s hit! Release that seatback. Lay him down and stuff whatever you can find in the wound and hold it there. If the blood soaks through put something else on top of that, capisce?”

  “Got it! Oh God, come on, Tom!” Schuster unlatched his own seat belt then the front seatback, getting out of the way to lower it downward. Anthony handed him a towel from the bag he had dug into. Colby did not move or protest.

  Things have gone to shit, Kameldorn thought. They needed a place, and he had one he’d hoped to visit on this trip, but not like this. God, he thought, not like this again. He hoped to remember how to get there.

  Muhammad Qasim al-Khafji was not happy. He was yelling at them to cease fire. The idiots at his front right mimicked the idiots at his left and put another rocket-propelled grenade into the lead SUV as well—as if those men were going to become any more dead than they were already.

  “Profligate pigs! Stop firing!” he screamed. Everyone was looking at him after that. More importantly, everyone had also stopped expending ammunition.

  He could barely hear anything, having forgotten his earplugs, but he could make out the already-distant accelerating motor of the first of the white Land Rovers. It was too late for him to get to a vehicle and give chase. There was not supposed to have been a chase. They had fired too soon. The way out of the streambed was not blocked. He had instructed them!

  Beside him, Said was angry as well. “I am sorry, sayedy. They did not do what you ordered.”

  “I am sadly used to that by now,” al-Khafji replied with disgust. Slowly he and his men walked up the channel, through the smoke. The occupants of the second white truck were paralyzed with fear, showing them their empty hands. They were Iraqis, he saw, and women. The smart ones, the ones he had wanted so very much, must have been in the lead.

  Said grinned. “Look, they will not fight. What will we do with them?”

  Al-Khafji took two steps to where one of his machine gunners was changing out the drum of his Russian RPK squad automatic weapon. Grabbing it, the Saudi shoved his hot AK into the man's empty hands in exchange. Racking back the bolt on the weapon, he heard others doing the same.

  They began to fire from the hip at twenty paces; the roar did not drown out the screams from inside the disintegrating British vehicle. The glass blew out first. Then the AQIs began to entertain themselves by making pockmarks in the white paint of the passenger-side metal. The AKs ran out of ammunition before the seventy-five-round drums of the RPKs, but they reloaded quickly. When they were all empty again, the screams had stopped. No one was visible in the truck. The only sounds were those of the burning Suburbans. The Land Rover sat there, tires flat, smoking … and murderously riddled.
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br />   He handed Said his hot weapon and spat toward the vehicles. The infidels had been properly welcomed to Anbar. Al-Khafji waved to the men with him. “If by any chance some of them are alive, kill them quickly, and search the vehicle. Put out those fires. Find what you can.”

  He stalked to where the one who had guarded the road lay crumpled, twisted and dead. It suited his ex-employer perfectly. He looked at the road exiting the wadi and saw again in his mind’s eye how the ambush should have occurred. Al-Khafji gave his right arm a jerk, and the little Beretta Tomcat .32 hidden in the sleeve’s interior pocket dropped out into his palm, secured by a string around the grip that he had run up the sleeve and around his shoulder. He put a round into the dead man’s ear, for punishment in the world to come as much as any other reason. He lowered the weapon’s hammer and tucked it back into place.

  “Idiots,” he said to himself. He turned back to his men and pointed to the corpse in front of him. “And bring this one!”

  Chapter 17: The House of Muhammad

  The Land Rover roared back over the few miles to the highway and north a couple more toward Haditha, turning left at a shattered building that its driver remembered, the plot still not completely cleared. He was more grateful for that than anyone would ever know. Schuster and Anthony were holding pressure on the wound under Colby’s arm, and both looked nearly as pale as the unconscious man.

  “How’s he doing?” Kameldorn rasped, trying to keep his eyes on the road.

  Schuster answered in an unsteady voice. “Shit, Matt, there’s a lot of blood.”

  Kameldorn grimaced. “Keep the pressure on. It’s not too much farther.”

  He turned again at a stand of date palms and again at a mud-brick corner, all that remained of an abandoned compound. There it was. At last, he was in sight of their destination.

  “Where are we going?” he heard Anthony asking.

  “The house of a friend.”

  They rolled into the yard of the farmhouse, blowing the horn. A young man appeared at the door, clutching an old AK, yelling at them in Arabic.

  Kameldorn lowered his window, yelling back, “Gabir! Farrah! Saa'adinii!”

  He drove to the rear of the house, almost to the kitchen door. The figure of a woman was visible inside, hastily donning a scarf to cover her hair. There was no time. All motion, Kameldorn exited the vehicle, stopping only at the rear hatch to recover one of his bags from the lower cargo area.

  Gabir, sans rifle, came out the back door. Kameldorn motioned him to the passenger side of the vehicle, where he was finally getting his first look at the bullet holes, including the one just under Colby’s side window.

  “Gabir! Asre'!” he called, opening the passenger door. Schuster continued to hold the soaked towel against Colby’s side. Tom stirred and moaned in pain as Kameldorn and the boy pulled him out of the truck.

  Kameldorn’s face contorted when he saw the wound. “Into the kitchen! Go! Move it!”

  They took him inside the small kitchen, where the woman, Farrah, was clearing everything off the table. They laid Colby on it. From nearby Anthony dragged over a low stand to support Colby’s feet while Schuster kept the towel pressed against his ribcage. Kameldorn had the satchel open and was moving quickly, handing an unwrapped bag of fluid to Gabir and motioning him to hold it chest high. Opening the packet containing the IV line, the former Pararescue Jumper positioned and closed the flow control clamp before he flipped the cap off the piercing pin. He shoved it into the hastily uncapped administration port of the liter of lactated Ringer’s solution. Just as quickly, he uncapped the other end of the line, attaching the needle that he hurriedly tore from its package. Squeezing the bag a few times, he partly filled the drip chamber. A squirt of the fluid arced onto Farrah’s kitchen floor as he opened the roller clamp and cleared the air from the line. He closed the clamp again and handed the needle and line to Anthony.

  Kameldorn’s hand darted into the kit again and emerged with a blue band of rubber. He tore Colby’s shirtsleeve up to the elbow and secured the band around his arm just above the joint, squeezing to find a vein below. No time remained for an alcohol wipe. He took the line from Anthony and inserted the needle on the first try. Removing the tourniquet, Kameldorn opened the line to allow the blood expander to flow, to restore the systemic volume that Colby needed so very much now.

  The officer motioned for Gabir to hold the bag higher and to squeeze. The boy understood. He had done this before, Kameldorn remembered.

  Anthony took Colby’s hand. “Come on, Tom. Stay with us.”

  Farrah brought out her dishtowels, white flour sacks, which Kameldorn quickly swapped for the soaked towel, using others to bind the compress close in. His hands were bloody when he finished, and the floor under the table was slick. His stomach started tightening. He had done this too many times before, and he hated knowing what was going to happen.

  The Ringer's was doing its job. Colby’s circulation started to improve, and after a few minutes and half the bag, he slowly started coming around. Gabir would keep a steady pressure on the fluid, maximizing the flow into Colby’s arm until the bag finally emptied.

  Kameldorn held his hands up, looking at them then at the face of the woman whose kitchen he had turned into an emergency room. She motioned, nodding in permission. Turning to her sink with a pained expression, he began to wash his hands. He could do nothing more. Farrah joined him there, putting her hand on his shoulder, squeezing. It could not be easy for her either, he thought.

  Anthony was looking into Colby’s eyes when they opened a few minutes later. They became painfully alert, and the wounded man coughed. It was bloody, Anthony saw. He tried to stay calm. Colby fought to draw a breath.

  “Where—” he started to ask.

  “You’re safe, Tom. We’re all safe. Matt got us clear.” Kameldorn came over and joined them, looking at Colby’s face also. It was ashen.

  “The others?” he managed.

  Kameldorn shook his head. “Gone, Tom. We can’t help them.”

  Tears formed in Colby’s eyes, and his gaze went distant. “Aw, God. I got them killed. I got ‘em all killed.”

  Anthony took Colby’s face in his hands. “Tom—Tom! Listen to me. You didn’t do it. They did it, the ones that ambushed us. The ones that shot you did that. Them, not you! Can you hear me? It wasn’t you.”

  Colby’s eyes came back to Anthony, he could see. “I’m hurt bad, Jon. I know it. I can feel where the bullet went.”

  Tom coughed again, and it hurt him this time. He uttered a pained sound afterward.

  “God, forgive me. I got us all killed. Who’s going to tell my girls? Who’s going to tell them?” The tears were flowing freely now.

  Anthony heard Kameldorn’s raspy voice. “Generals will tell them, Tom. You leave that to me.”

  “I’m dying, Jon. You can’t stop it. I don’t know what to do.”

  Anthony felt tears running down his own face. “You don’t have to do anything, Tom. God’s already done it. He’s taken care of everything. He’s made up the difference between what we are and what He is already, if you love Him—if you trust Him. You believe that, don’t you?”

  Colby looked into his eyes with a perfect, terminal honesty and forced out his final words. “I believe that—I’ve always believed that.”

  “Then don’t be afraid.”

  Jon Anthony was looking into his eyes when he left them. Tom’s breath followed, and the eyes of his friend grew wide and dark. Farrah gasped.

  With his finger to his lips, Anthony looked at her and at the rest of them. He drew a deep breath to compose himself and, a moment later, managed the words that he had been trying to find.

  “See, Tom, it’s not so bad. It’s all true. Go find the Light,” he whispered.

  Kameldorn felt himself becoming very angry. He turned and walked out to the Land Rover. The rectangular silver case was still where he had stowed it before leaving Baghdad. He grabbed it and the green metal can, taking them back i
nside.

  “What do you do?” Gabir asked him as he set the gear on the smooth wood of the kitchen floor.

  Speaking in Arabic, the Major handed the young man his Thuraya phone. “If I am not back in two hours, give this to them. Not until after two hours, do you understand?”

  Gabir nodded solemnly. “I understand.”

  Kameldorn flipped open the rifle case and stood to shed his sport jacket. Inside the aluminum carrier was a digital-pattern camouflage smock neatly folded over the weapon. Kneeling, he pulled the garment over his head.

  The rifle lay in two pieces. It was also one that he'd assembled himself although this one had been under the supervision of a former Army Scout Sniper and armorer. The lower receiver was similar to the M4A1 but larger; the action mated up quickly to the upper receiver, which mounted a sixteen-inch barrel and range-finding telescopic sight. Once they were snugly fit together, he flipped open an inner compartment. Sliding the bore collimator into the muzzle, he nestled it into the flash hider at the end of the barrel and peered through the scope to level the grid that the device put into his field of view. He moved it counterclockwise just a degree or two against the side of his shoe to adjust it. By referencing the grid, he saw that the scope was set just where it was supposed to be. Kameldorn withdrew the collimator and dropped it back to the foam padding. Finally, he grabbed from the case a black metal tube housed inside a ballistic nylon belt pouch. He clipped the thing to his trouser pocket and again took up the metal ammo can.

  “I gotta go, guys. I’ll be back inside two hours. If not, Gabir has my phone. No arguments, please.”

  No one objected. They were too much in shock.

  “Matt, where are we?” Anthony asked him again.

  “The house of a friend. I’ll be back.”

  Kameldorn went out to the SUV, sliding the rifle and can onto the rear floorboard. He shut the rear hatch and all the doors and left without looking back. Enough waited ahead.