Field of Valor

by Matthew Betley

  CHAPTER 17

  Like most homes in Ramadi, the upper floor had a middle stairwell that led to a door emptying out onto a mortar-constructed rooftop. The home’s owner, Samir, had informed them that the door opened up toward the front and was flush with the sides of the walls of the stairwell in which they now stood. Which means if there’s someone out there, they could just light us up through the walls.

  West stopped at the door, listening for the slightest sound or movement. All he heard was gunfire and the occasional impact of rounds on the front of the concrete home. The enemy had intensified its fire within the last two minutes, which told West the assault was imminent. Here goes nothing.

  West turned to Special Agent Mike Benson, who was stacked up right behind him, and reached for the old brass doorknob with his right hand. He held up his left hand and three fingers, dropping them one by one in the universal signal to go. He exhaled as he lowered his last finger and turned the knob.

  Rays of sunlight invaded the dim stairwell, illuminating the swirling specks of sand and dirt that swarmed in through the opening on the right side of the door. He pushed harder, increasing the size of the gap . . .

  . . . which allowed the insurgent on the roof who’d been patiently waiting to insert the barrel of an AK-47 into the stairwell.

  “Gun!” Benson screamed instinctively, but Captain West was already reacting.

  Boom! Boom! Boom!

  The insurgent fired three deafening shots into the stairwell as the door was flung wide open. Chunks of concrete were torn from the left wall of the stairwell, stinging the left side of West’s exposed face.

  Ears ringing and furious at himself for not detecting the ambush, West grabbed the hot barrel of the AK-47 before the insurgent had a chance to pull the trigger again. Rather than expose himself to additional fire, he pulled the insurgent forward and into the stairwell entrance, pushing the barrel of the assault rifle to the ceiling.

  While the insurgent might have momentarily held the advantage through the tactical element of surprise, that was all he had.

  Captain Logan West, adrenaline pumping and fueled by anger, pressed the full weight of his body against the smaller enemy, leaning in from inches away with unmasked rage to glare at the bearded man.

  For Special Agent Mike Benson, the next moment was the introduction to the real Logan West that he would come to know, respect, and love as a brother-in-arms against a multitude of enemies. It was the true essence of the gladiator inside the man and the Marine. He saw the blade that had appeared in Captain West’s right hand plunge into the side of the man’s neck, then blood gushing from the wound as the Marine officer rotated his wrist forward for maximum damage.

  The man’s eyes widened in pain, and a strangled cough escaped his lips. But it was Captain West’s eyes that Benson would remember. There is absolutely no mercy in them. Thank God he’s on our side, he thought as Captain West dropped the dying insurgent to the stairs, grabbed the AK-47, and handed it to Benson.

  “Here. This will beat that Glock of yours,” West said. “Now let’s secure this rooftop and go to work.”

  West turned back to the open doorway and unslung his M4, stepping over the dead insurgent and exiting the stairwell in a crouched combat walk.

  For some reason West would never understand, the front of the roof was clear, but he heard the sounds of movement behind and to the left of the rooftop entrance. Efficiently functioning on automatic pilot, he turned to the right, his M4 up and in the ready position, one eye looking through his reflex scope, the other open and looking past it. He reached the back of the structure and walked past the edge of cover, all hesitation gone—unfortunately for the two insurgents standing side by side, pointing their AK-47s at the front of the entrance on the other side of the structure. Too bad for you two idiots.

  At such close range it was an execution, which suited West just fine. The first two shots struck the man closest to him in the side of the head, spraying blood over his partner. The second Iraqi blinked the blood away and tried to turn, but his momentum was stopped as two more bullets caught him in the face, ripping open his right cheek and tearing away a chunk of his nose before killing him.

  What the hell? West thought as he stared at the shiny object that rested on top of the small concrete railing behind the two insurgents. An aluminum ladder? You’ve got to be kidding me. The insurgents had shimmied across it from the adjacent home. While the extra standoff distance from the highway had been his main concern, he’d failed to realize how close the neighbors’ homes were. The enemy had tried to capitalize on that closeness. Maybe these guys aren’t as stupid as I thought they were.

  “Clear!” West shouted, and Special Agent Benson, Captain Rodgers, Gunny Quick, and Sergeant Ramirez joined him on the rooftop. He’d asked General Longstreet to stay downstairs with the wounded Sergeant Childress, hoping the lowest, innermost room of the home would provide maximum protection. He didn’t want to be the one responsible for getting a commanding general killed.

  “Help me with this ladder, Gunny, on the off chance we have to use it to likely do something stupid,” West said.

  “Stupid is as stupid does, sir,” Quick quipped, grinning maniacally as he helped pull the aluminum ladder onto the rooftop and place it at the bottom of one of the side walls.

  “Seriously? Fucking Forrest Gump right now? I might make you run all the way to Baghdad, Forrest,” West said, and shook his head. “I swear I might shoot you myself.”

  “Captain West, you may want to get up here,” Benson shouted from the front of the rooftop. Special Agent Benson and Sergeant Ramirez—another SAW gunner—were providing overwatch from the front of the roof while Captain West and Gunny Quick dealt with the ladder. “I think we’re out of time.”

  Captain West and Gunny Quick joined the rest of the group and stopped at the scene spread out before them. This is going to be harder than I thought, West realized.

  “Sergeant Ramirez,” West said calmly as he stared across the street, “you and I have the front two corners. Make ’em pay with that SAW. Gunny, you and Special Agent Benson take the two rear corners. Steve, you stay here near the door and stay as low as you can. I need you on that air support. Also, start prepping call-for-fire missions just in case things get really bad. Those army boys better be ready,” West said, referring to the US army artillery battery charged with providing support to the Marines and army units operating inside Ramadi. If all else failed, he could call in a series of 155mm artillery strikes danger-close from the self-propelled Paladin howitzers. That’s a last resort, Logan. Don’t get crazy, the rational part of his mind told him. Not unless I have to, another part of his mind replied as he watched the impending storm assemble itself.

  “Good Lord,” Rodgers muttered.

  “I hope he’s here with us, because we’re going to need all the help we can get,” Quick said, moving into position in the back left corner of the roof.

  On the other side of the highway three hundred feet away, a mass of at least forty fighters with an assortment of weapons—AK-47s, RPGs, and sniper rifles—moved like a living organism with malevolent intent. The horde suddenly divided itself into three equal-sized groups, each with its own avenue of approach that immediately became self-evident. Great. A three-pronged assault. This is going to be interesting.

  “Fuck ’em,” West said coldly. “There’s only one way through the gate, and we only need to buy a few minutes. Let them come, and let them die.”

  CHAPTER 18

  The initial fusillade of fire was overwhelming, the crack of rifle rounds filling the air above and around the house like a swarm of angry mechanical birds. This is worse than the butts at the rifle range, West thought, remembering the first time an M16 5.56mm round passed merely feet overhead of the heavy berm that protected the Marines pulling targets up and down in the pit area of the range. It’s a long way from Camp Pendleton.

  Had it not been for the concrete construction of the home, West was certain th
ey would have all been killed. Wait for it . . . wait for it . . . wait for it. He focused for a moment on his breathing. There it is—the brief lull in fire he’d expected as the assault force reloaded.

  To proficiently shoot, move, and communicate was an acquired tactical skill honed through thousands of rounds expended and multiple ranges run. West was confident these insurgents weren’t conducting live-fire exercises on a daily basis. Running across an open killing ground as some of them had done earlier wasn’t the most tactically sound plan on earth, and he’d hoped that lack of discipline extended into all their military maneuvers. And he’d been right.

  Our turn, West thought as he exhaled one last time, turned, and looked over the short wall on the rooftop.

  The three groups, with approximately fifty feet of separation between them, had crossed both sides of the highway and reached the extra swath of land that West intended to exploit. He spotted several men standing and reloading, obviously incapable of reloading on the move, but those weren’t his first concern. As he’d reminded his Marines, the first priority was the greatest threat—the RPG-wielding insurgents. His intent was to remove them from the battlefield before they could wreak havoc on the front of the house, punching holes in the walls and creating extra points of insertion for the attacking force.

  Bingo. A man wearing tan-colored robes and combat boots knelt outside the gate opening and aiming a long, menacing tube at the house.

  West screamed, “RPG two o’clock!” and opened fire, sending a short burst into the man’s chest from more than 120 feet away. He couldn’t see the impacts, but he knew his aim was true when the insurgent toppled over to his right, the RPG harmlessly falling to the ground.

  “RPG ten o’clock!” Sergeant Ramirez yelled, dropping a target on the left.

  Moments later, West heard two more weapons open fire as Special Agent Benson and Gunny Quick joined the firefight, firing from the rear of the roof and along the sides of the house at targets only they could see.

  Within the first ten seconds of the real battle, at least six insurgents lay dead in the dirt, their rockets useless and no longer a threat.

  “I don’t see any more RPGs!” West screamed, which Sergeant Ramirez took as his cue to unleash a brutal salvo on the main assault force approaching the gate.

  Staff Sergeant Farrell, who lay in cover twenty feet to the right of the front door behind a small group of rocks in what passed for a yard, picked up the SAW and braced the light machine gun with the bipod on the rocks.

  Moments later, the two machine guns were “talking,” firing in alternating bursts of devastating gunfire that tore into the insurgents.

  The sound was deafening, as all members of Captain West’s defending force were now engaged. It’s mass suicide, he thought as he watched bodies drop to the ground from all three groups. There’s no way they can keep this up. It’s going to be over soon. This is why you don’t assault a fortified position across open ground. He adjusted the M4 slightly, acquired a clear sight picture on an insurgent running with a pistol—a pistol?—and fired, striking him in the head and ending his suicide sprint.

  Less than a minute later, most of the assault force lay dead or dying, and not one had breached the front yard. This is better than I expected, West thought, still scanning for moving targets among the carnage.

  A low reverberation began to shake the roof, a mechanical tremor that increased in intensity. Spoke too soon.

  “Sir, we’ve got a problem back here!” Gunny Quick yelled.

  West dashed to the back of the roof and saw the new threat, and his blood turned to ice. Two hundred meters away, a Russian-made BMP-2 tracked infantry fighting vehicle was lumbering down the street that ran parallel to the back of the front row of homes. It wasn’t the co-axial 7.62mm mounted machine gun that worried West—it was the 30mm autocannon, which could turn the entire home into rubble in minutes with its high-explosive and armor-piercing ordnance designed to take out enemy aircraft and armored vehicles.

  “How the hell did they get their hands on a BMP?” Quick asked no one in particular.

  “My guess is it’s a throwaway from the Republican Guard, but it doesn’t matter. If we don’t get it away from here, we’re all dead,” West said.

  “What do you have in mind?” Quick asked. “I assume it’s going to be incredibly reckless. So I’m all-in.”

  “Me too,” Benson said from beside them.

  “You’re not Atlas, Captain West,” a voice spoke up from behind them.

  The three men turned to see General Longstreet, who had joined them on the roof.

  “Sir, you should be downstairs—I don’t need my commanding general getting killed today—but regardless, I don’t plan to hold the earth up by myself,” West replied.

  “It’s the heavens—not the earth—that Atlas is holding up,” Longstreet replied.

  “Why did I think it was the earth?” West said almost absentmindedly, acutely aware of the absurdity of the conversation in the middle of combat.

  “Everyone does, but they’re all wrong,” the general said.

  “No disrespect, sir, we can talk mythology later. Now who wants to help me with this ladder?” West said, and picked up one end of the forty-foot aluminum ladder.

  CHAPTER 19

  Farouq al-Khouri stared through the periscope, his dark eyes focused on the target building 150 meters away. The Americans would learn a hard lesson today—one he intended to deliver in explosive steel. While the military invasion might have gone as smoothly for them as any in recent history, he planned to ensure the follow-on occupation did not.

  A former tank commander in Saddam Hussein’s famed 2nd Al Medina Armored Division, he’d survived and escaped the bloody battle of Al Kut in 2003 at the hands of the 1st Marine Division. He’d returned to his home city of Ramadi once the Republican Guard had been disbanded, hoping for some semblance of a normal life. Unfortunately, the sudden poverty and lack of resources due to Baghdad’s severing the lifeline to the former Saddam loyalists had prevented it. No normal life was to be his, and the American invaders had guaranteed it.

  On a clear, sunny Wednesday afternoon, as he and his wife and five-year-old son walked back from a local mosque after the Duhr, the noon prayer, a local insurgent leader ambushed a small US army convoy. Unfortunately for Farouq and his family, the ambush happened fifty meters away from him and had turned into a running gun battle. He’d sought the safety of a nearby alleyway, dragging his wife behind him, but it hadn’t been enough.

  Stray fire had found his wife and child, cruelly sparing him. As he’d knelt next to their lifeless bodies, their blood pooling, hands still clutched together, he’d looked up and seen the singular image that would shape the rest of his life—a US army soldier standing next to a patrol vehicle, pointing a weapon in his direction, guilty knowledge written all over his pale face. The soldier had then stepped back into the vehicle and disappeared down the street as if casually dismissing the wreckage he’d left behind.

  Farouq’s soul had been broken that day, and an uncontrollable wrath had consumed him. He’d hunted down the local insurgent leader who’d initiated the ambush and shot and decapitated him in front of his closest advisors, who’d been paralyzed at the sudden violence he’d delivered to their leader. And then he did something unexpected: he assumed leadership of the fledgling insurgency, reaching out to his connections in the former Republican Guard in order to build his arsenal and army.

  Once he’d acquired a significant number of men willing to die for his cause and the armament to support them, he’d waited, planning for a day that had finally arrived. This day.

  He’d known just killing American soldiers wouldn’t send the message he intended; the action would have to be bigger to get the attention of the politicians and puppet masters in the hell the Americans called their capital—Washington DC. And like a gift direct from Allah, he’d been provided intelligence on the meeting between the new American commander of all forces in the region and
the local tribal leaders. It was an opportunity he could not pass up, and it was how he found himself in the commander seat of the BMP-2 one of his former commanding officers had provided as a personal gift for Farouq’s saving his life in the initial American invasion.

  The swift fury of Allah is at hand, Farouq thought, as the building loomed closer in his periscope. The mechanical beast of death rumbled closer. Fifty more meters, and I’m razing it to the ground.

  His gunner kept the autocannon trained on the structure, now twenty-five meters away. Almost time for vengeance for my family and to make the Americans truly pay in a way they’ll understand.

  A figure in an American desert-pattern uniform suddenly emerged from behind the building and dashed across the front of the vehicle, disappearing behind a home to the right.

  “Ahmed, you see him?” Farouq asked his gunner.

  “No. He went behind that house,” Ahmed responded.

  “Very well. Leave him. Target the house, praise Allah,” Farouq said.

  “Allahu akbar. As you command,” Ahmed replied, aiming the 30mm autocannon directly into the center of the first floor of the back of the house.

  Clink. Clink. Clink.

  “What is that?” Ahmed asked.

  Fear and anger smashed into Farouq as he realized his mistake. It wasn’t fear of death—he’d died long ago in that alley with his wife and son—it was fear of failure. The American on foot was trying to flank them. But before he could speak, the three grenades simultaneously detonated in front, on top, and on the left side of the BMP-2, dazing the occupants of the vehicle.

  B-B-BOOM!

  * * *