Sword of the Caliphate

by Clay Martin

  “How about the surrounding area?”

  “Straight desert on the West side, they have the Ziggurat of Ur and all. Flat as a pancake to the East. There is some terrain to the South, but no vegetation. That is all over near the Euphrates, a solid ten miles away.”

  “Fantastic. So airfield recce from the South side. In the sun, with little to no cover. On a positive note, if any flyboys are hiding out, they likely went that way too. What about the getting there part? Anyone got a bright idea on that one?” I queried.

  Paul took that one. “We have the Elder’s at Gassan working with us pretty tight, I suggest we stop in and ask them how it looks South. But my vote is we actually go East, skirt the trackless desert that makes up the border with Iran, then cut between Sharqi and Amarah. Those are both pretty well inhabited, so splitting the difference seems like the least chance of contact. We are just going to have to move at night, and hope we don’t trip on a hornet’s nest. I suggest the bridge over the Euphrates well south of Nasiriya. That lets us sweep up on the South side of the airfield anyway.”

  “Alright then. Sounds like we have at least a quarter assed plan. Willie and Paul are on routes. Let’s get some overlays slapped up, and GPS programmed. Frank and Jim, you are on logistics. Plenty of fuel in case the airfield is a bust. Chow and water for 7 days, and let’s hope we don’t need it. Scott, I have no desire to leave all this extra gas for the Islamic Caliphate, please rig it to go boom. Steve and John, sort out your kit, and give Scott a hand. Gabe, you and Ranger are with me. I want to dope this other 6.5, we may very well need it tonight. Two hours from now, meet back here.”

  I wanted Ranger and Gabe with me, not so much to assist in my task, but to cover me while I did it. Doping a scoped rifle isn’t the hardest thing in the world, but it does take some focus. It would be just my luck to be lost inside the bubble of concentration needed to perfectly zero the gun, and get shot in the back of the head by some jihadi lost patrol. Our range inside the compound was much too short for what I needed. Thank the god of snipers for evolving ballistic computers in the early 2000s. Prior to that, to know what a rifle would do, you had to go shoot it. After experience, you might know where to start at a given range, but to be precise would still require tons of ammo. In the old days, a sniper would zero his gun, and then the fun would start. All of us carried around a notebook with our shooting data in it. Want to know exactly what hold you need for, say, your rifle, 7.62x51 caliber, 175 grain ammunition, 76 degrees, 50 percent humidity, 3,000 feet of elevation? You had to go shoot in those conditions, walk your rounds into target, and record the data. If anyone of those conditions changed, you no longer knew the exact answer. It wasn’t uncommon at all to see the sniper’s running to the arms room as soon as some strange weather blew in. They might not get to record those variables for a long time if they missed it. About the time you had paper data for every condition possible, your barrel was shot out, and you had to start over again. Ballistic computers and Kestrel weather stations changed all that. Provided you put all the variables in correctly to start, the ballistic computer would give you correct data for every weather condition, every elevation change. The new, and incredibly fast, method was this. Zero your rifle at 100 meters. Input all the weather conditions from your Kestrel, bullet weight and flight profile for your ammunition, and a generally close but not exact muzzle velocity said bullet should achieve from your gun. Skip all the other ranges, and use the generic hold given for around 1000 meters. It varied by exact bullet, but 1000 was good enough for most things. Walk your rounds into a hit, changing the muzzle velocity in the computer until the hold it spits out is the same one you are using in reality. With ten rounds and a water bottle set up down the road from the COP, I had all the ballistic data I would ever need for the gun. Thirty minutes, start to finish.

  As everyone else completed their assigned tasks, we decided on the recce to Gassan. Paul and Jim knew the elders, so they were going for certain. It would be an incredible risk to send only one truck, so we elected for two, short as we were on manpower. One could be disabled by enemy fire, blow an engine, get stuck, or any other myriad of possibilities. It was thirty miles to Gassan, we didn’t have time to leave anyone walking back. Scott and I volunteered to take the chase truck. We set out from our back gate, not willing to risk the straight shot down the asphalt road in broad daylight. It would take longer, but the margin of safety was much higher. We set out at a slow pace, to keep our signature down on the dirt roads. An hour and a half later, Paul pulled to a halt on the side of the road.

  “This is a small ridge about two klicks out. Let’s glass the village before we head in.” Paul said, pulling out his binoculars.

  Scott pulled out the spotting scope, and I elected to use the range finder. It was only seven power, but that was enough for this purpose.

  Gassan was a small village, total population under three hundred. It was in the poorest part of a poor nation, and it showed. The houses were all tin roofed shacks, the walls mud similar to adobe. They were laid out in no particular order, typical of the third world. Small paths served as streets, with the buildings resembling businesses facing the main road, a two lane paved artery to the rest of the world. The business were set back to allow traffic to stop and buy gas or orange drinks, perhaps even the ubiquitous Iraqi car wash from a bucket. For all the cultural things I found strange, the obsession with clean cars in the desert was by far the most odd. This wide area also served as the public square, which was currently inhabited by a half dozen pickup trucks, goons dismounted. There had to be at least fifty of them I could see, and no telling how many more in the village. Detail was a bit fuzzy for me, but they seemed to be rounding up the villagers and putting them in lines, facing the open garage door of the village mechanic shop.

  “Ah fuck, really?” Scott whispered next to me.

  Whatever it was, I couldn’t deduce it from my line of sight. I motioned Scott to give me a look with the spotter. With the 30x scope, it was plain as day. The goon squad was in mixed clothing, but armed to the teeth. Out front was the leader, I could tell not only from the way he was talking, but from the green jacket and black pants. They must’ve ordered a container load from China before all this started, make sure the officers are all dressed alike. He was gesturing with great fanfare, either giving a speech about the new sheriff in town or Islamic law, probably a mix of both. Three feet to his right was the object of Scott’s consternation. Tied to a post was an old guy, with a tire already forced down around his chest. In Mr. Green Jackets hand was something shiny, and it didn’t take a rocket scientist to guess it was a zippo. The tire necklace, a terrible way to die. When Green Jacket was done running his mouth, he was going to light the tire, which was probably already filled with gas. It would take about twenty minutes for the victim to finally die, enduring terrible burns and screaming until then. Life was cheap in these parts, and the savagery of the locals was something a Westerner just couldn’t fathom. Unless they had seen it.

  This was not what we planned on. There were too many of them to fight, and starting one risked our mission of escaping the country. The best thing we could do was just walk away. This wasn’t really our problem, and shouldering it would give us infinity more headaches, not to mention possibly get us killed in the next few minutes. I was mulling over the options, and leaning towards forgetting we saw it, when the dynamic changed. One of the goons was dragging a small child over by the arm. The kid knew something was wrong, he was flailing and screaming for all he was worth. This caused several of the jihadis fits of laughter, and another joined in to help him. They got the child all the way to the guy wearing the tire before it dawned on me what they had in mind. As they started tying the kid to the old man, my decision was made. I spoke to Scott directly as I set the range finder on top of the spotting scope to stabilize it.

  “Mr. Dodge, did you bring the Win Mag?”

  By way of reply, he put his ballistic computer in my
hand, already open to his gun data, and raced back toward the truck. Twenty seconds later, he was plopped down beside me, a high powered instrument of justice in his hands. He slid the bolt forward, chambering the Magnum cartridge as I fed him the range.

  “1570 meters, 17.2 elevation,” I said, switching back to the spotting scope. Pre feeding him the elevation hold allowed him to settle in on the correct part of the reticle. The military had long since adopted Horus reticles, which meant everything was a hold, there were no dial to spin. As he brought up the correct elevation mark on target, I worked on a firing solution for the wind. That, he would have to add in as I told it to him. The wind is what separates the men from the boys, the last piece of the sniper skill that is still an art form. I could feed the wind into the computer for a hold, which I would have to do. I was too rusty to be able to do the math in my head on the fly at the moment. But technology did not yet exist to tell us the exact wind speed, that would be a guess on my part. 1570 meters was a long way, a tiny error in wind would be a miss. Still, it wasn’t the longest shot on record. There was a living legend walking around 3rd Group, with two 1750 meter kills using a 300 Win Mag a few years back. It could be done.

  I used the spotter to check the terrain close to us, midway, and at the target. I would have to average those out and feed my guess to the computer. No point in waiting around on inspiration. My guess was either going to be good enough or it wasn’t. And even if it did the trick, this was a bad idea.

  “Jim, Paul, go start the trucks. As soon as Scott empties this magazine, we are out of here. Scott, you jump in trail, I’m in lead.” Better to get that part sorted out now, before we stumble fucked around trying to get in the same door.

  “Spotter up. Left, 2.2,” I said. The last syllable had barely left my mouth when the Win Mag roared. The time of flight was just over two seconds, which strung into eternity with my left eye pressed to the eyepiece of the spotter. It’s the harder job of the two in a sniper team, though pulling the trigger perfectly at close to a mile is no joke either. I had time to think all kinds of stupid things, like did I blink and miss it? Was my wind call so wrong we just smoked a kid? Was this even a good idea? Straining to keep my open, and hoping not to see a puff of dust low and left, I was finally rewarded with watching 190 grains of fury slap Mr. Green Jacket in the left shoulder, spinning his completely around and dropping him to a knee. An arc of blood splatter confirmed a hit, and not a reflexive duck from a near miss. But my brain was already in overdrive with a correction.

  “Left 2.0, re-engage.” It was heartless, but that is what the job demands. Tin Men, we called ourselves. The merciful died or broke quick in this business. Green Jacket was trying to crawl away, likely on a shattered shoulder joint that Scott’s bullet had turned into mush and bone shards. Knees and one good elbow, it would be easy to let him go. He was out of the fight, one way or another. But that wouldn’t be good enough. Our best odds of surviving centered on killing the leader, as well as the next leader to step up. Arabs are notoriously centralized in command, at least at the tactical level. Taking out the guy in charge wreaks havoc on the units ability to function. At least for a little while.

  The Win Mag roared again, and two seconds later Green Jacket slammed face first into the dirt, lead and copper hammering into his back like a speeding train. He wasn’t getting up from that one, you could bet the farm on it.

  Rechecking the wind while Scott found a new target, I noticed the dust dying down. We didn’t have time for a full target walk on, and I knew Scott would pick the likely sub commander to the best of his ability anyway. The range was close enough, everyone we needed to shoot was within 30 meters of one another. They were scrambling for cover, but not quite fast enough.

  “Left 1.8,” I called, as Scott voted for another martyr. He was already ejecting the empty as I saw jihadi flip over backwards. My God the 300 Win Mag was a beautiful round.

  Without waiting on another wind correction, Scott blasted the remaining two rounds from his magazine rapid fire. I don’t know if the last one hit anything but dirt, we were already sprinting down the hill to the trucks. This wasn’t the time to be congratulating ourselves, it was the time for running. Or retreating, whichever sounds better to you. I didn’t even have the door to the lead truck closed before Paul stood on the gas. Off we went in a cloud of dust, no idea if the pursuit had even begun.

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  “If you can’t be subtle, be bold.” Words my mentor Colonel Tonn had spoken to me many times, before his passing. Well, the die was cast now. Subtly was over. Paul gunned it for the asphalt road, we stood a better chance of escape that way. There might be checkpoints already up, and there might not. But at least a real road didn’t project a giant dust plume, that might as well be a glowing neon sign that said “this way”. These people had Bedouin ancestors, they could follow that like a shark on a blood trail. Pushing the trucks to their limit, we screamed down the pavement.

  “Scott, you guys good?” I spoke into my mike.

  “All good. No one on our tail. Yet,” He returned. This was as good a time as any for a tally of the damage.

  “Good shooting back there. Any luck last two?”

  “Fourth hit one in the leg, I pulled it a little. But he’s at least having a bad day. Five, no idea. I was gone before the recoil stopped.” Good man. Three down barely counted as combat damage against a unit that size, but hopefully it would at least make them think twice about following us. Quickly at least.

  Twenty minutes later, the 7/11 appeared on the horizon. To my horror, so did a column of black smoke. Paul hit the brakes and the rear truck wish boned up on our left as we pulled to the right. That put the most guns in the fight, if we actually had turret gunners at the moment. Habits die hard.

  I got out and set the spotting scope on the hood, Scott already doing the same with his scope rifle on the other side of the road. Paul and Jim pulled security to our rear, mindful we might have company any minute.

  Bringing the scope into focus, detail emerged like a magic eye picture. Several vehicles were in front of the COP, looking like they had made a run for the front gate. One of them was on fire, and I could vaguely make out puffs of dust jumping around one of the others.

  “Looks like visitors, and they stopped them cold.” I voiced.

  “Three down, one burning, local builds. I concur.” Scott answered back.

  Dividing our tiny forces had been a risk, for both parties. But this was definitely not good. It seemed like bad guys were coming out of the wood work today. It was time to make a move.

  Back on the road, we made comms link up with the 7/11. They had finished the mop up while we drove the remaining stretch, and cleared a path through the wreckage pile in front of the gate. As we wove our way through the mess to get back inside, I nodded with approval as I saw every corpse with a coffin kill. Another hard lesson learned from the GWOT. When the shooting stops, bad guys all get one more between the eyes as you walk past them. Be a shame to eat a grenade ten feet from home, courtesy of someone we assumed was dead. I barely had my feet out of the truck before Frank hit me with the debrief.

  “Five cars, made for the front gate like they thought the place must be empty. We assessed low risk of a VBIED by the approach. All of them nice and tight, like they were coming over for dinner. We let the first one stop and two passengers get out before we lit them up. But no time for a coordinated fire plan, and not enough guns in the fight. Last one reversed out under a hail of gunfire, but they got away. Took some damage, but we lost them.”

  “Fuck. We are blown then. Even if it was just local scavengers, they will be looking for an IC unit to report it too.” Quoting Star Wars, I followed up with the obvious problem, “They will be back soon, and in greater numbers.”

  I at least got a smile out of Frank with that one. Things were grim, but he was still a nerd. And yes, I had been waiting all day to use that one. Speaking in
to the radio, I ordered a quick planning session.

  “Front gate, everybody, now.” I said, as Frank retold the 7/11 tale to Paul, Jim, and Scott. As the rest of the American crew staggered in from whatever position they were at, I weighed options in my head. Everyone present, I rapid fire hit the highlights of our own adventures.

  “So, even if the guys here hadn’t been required to repel boarders, we stirred up a hornets nest. We have two options, neither of which is good. One, we can run right now, and risk hitting a big enemy force in open terrain, in the daylight. Or two, we can Alamo the COP until sunset, and escape under cover of darkness. I like option two, though it does run the risk we get completely surrounded in the meantime, in which case we die here. Which is sub optimal. There is also the possibility they can’t muster a force before the lights go out. It is 1600 now, which gives us about five hours. I suggest we vote. Option 1, hands please?” There is a time to be the big man in charge, and time to let the boys decide. This was a pretty bad set of choices, so I felt better letting the majority decide our fate. Three votes for option one.

  “Looks like option two then, unless anyone has a better idea. Speak now, or forever hold your peace.” I let 20 seconds pass, without a peep. Professionals to the last, the three dissenting voters would tow the party line. I really hoped someone had a better idea, but it seemed my luck was already used up for the day.