Hunting in the Shadows (American Praetorians)

by Peter Nealen

It took less time than that before we were moving down the stairs and to the front door, several papers, thumb drives, and CDs crammed into pockets or drop pouches. This was going to be the tricky part. First I got on comms with Paul. “Five shooters, one terp, one detainee coming out.” Then I paused at the door, signaled visually, and called out, “Friendlies coming out!” Hassan yelled the translation out as soon as I’d finished speaking. None of us wanted to get shot by Hussein Ali or his men.

  A voice called out in Arabic, and Hassan said, “It is good, we can go now.” Nick went first, pushing Ahmad in front of him, just in case. If somebody was going to get whacked, let it be the target.

  Hussein Ali joined us at the gate, as two of his men took control of Khalid Ahmad and steered him toward their truck, an old Iraqi Army FMTV with a Kord heavy machinegun mounted on top of the cab that was sitting just behind Hussein Ali’s Ranger. The old man had come ready for prisoners.

  Hussein Ali, Hassan, and I took a couple of minutes to confirm our next target and route, using my red LED microlight over a crumpled overhead image on the hood of our HiLux before we went back to the trucks and climbed on. One down.

  As soon as we were moving, I pulled out my cell and sent a quick text to Jim and Mike. “SITREP?” was all it said.

  I got a reply from Mike almost immediately. “T1 KIA, 0 F KIA, on to T2.” They’d had to kill their first target, but all friendlies were still alive and kicking, and they were moving to the next target. Good. A moment later, I got a similar message from Jim, except they’d taken their target alive. I checked my watch. Just over twenty minutes on-site. It was still going to be a long night, but we were making good time.

  Of course, I was also expecting the raids to get steadily more difficult as the night went on. Word was going to spread, and we’d start facing stiffer opposition. Once they got their shit together, I would expect contingents of the PPF to get called out to deal with the door-kickers. Then this was going to get ugly. The faster we moved the better.

  The next target wasn’t far—a house just outside of the Al Faw Flats, near the Imam Ali Mosque. It took less than five minutes to get out of the neighborhood, across the narrow bridge crossing the canal, which almost tipped Hussein Ali’s truck into the drink, and across the wide soccer field to the target house.

  Things were actually getting smoother. The militia technicals were in position before we’d even stopped, their gunners watching the avenues of approach. Hussein Ali and his men, minus the two he’d left in the trucks to watch the detainees, ran to the corners, setting up to cover all sides without flagging each other. They were in position by the time we set up to breach.

  The breach went without a hitch. Little Bob swung his sledge, the door slammed open, and a bang followed. I was the two man, following Nick inside.

  The door opened into a main room, which was completely dark. We’d already blown stealth by smashing in the door, so the weapon lights came on, strobing in the darkness to clear corners and dead spaces. The room was empty, except for piles of sacking, a cupboard of some sort, and a couple of what looked like old ice chests in the corner. There were two more doors leading off the main room, and we moved to clear them.

  I kicked in the nearest door, with Larry behind me. We burst in, clearing the room, to find two women and half a dozen kids stirring slowly from their sleeping mats, blinking in the blazing light of our weapons lights. A quick but thorough search of the room turned up no weapons. Hassan was right behind us, and sternly told the women to stay where they were, and keep their kids quiet.

  Coming back into the main room, we got a similar report from Bryan and Little Bob, who’d gone through the second door to find a kitchen and a small storage room. There weren’t any stairs to the roof, which I found strange, but it meant we weren’t going to have a second story to clear. This was it.

  “Find me the oldest boy,” I told Hassan. We went back to the bedroom with the women and kids, and Hassan pointed to a kid who couldn’t be much more than fourteen, and ordered him to come out into the main room with us. He got up slowly, and came with us, not exactly frightened, but not terribly willing, either.

  “Where is the man of the house?” I demanded. Hassan repeated the question in Arabic. The kid said nothing. Hassan shoved him hard against the wall and asked again. The kid said something, and Hassan just looked at him for a second, before slapping him in the side of the head, hard. He snapped out a rapid-fire diatribe in Arabic, and raised his hand to hit the kid again.

  I just stood by and watched. This was the way it was done here; I’d seen similar working with local terps in Libya. Frankly, especially when you were pretty sure that you were in an enemy’s house, trying to play nice got taken as weakness, which is always a bad idea. This was his country, and he knew how things worked.

  Not that I gave a damn about being nice in these sorts of situations anymore. I’d gotten way too jaded for that.

  The kid flinched, and said something in a protesting tone of voice. Hassan barked back at him. Finally after a couple more minutes of back-and-forth, Hassan turned to me. “He says his father is just a merchant; that he is away in Baghdad for the week.”

  I studied the kid. “You believe him?”

  Hassan shook his head emphatically. “He is lying. His accent is Persian, he is from Abadan.”

  “Boss,” Little Bob said. “Think I’ve got something here.”

  I motioned for Hassan to continue, and walked over to the cupboard that Little Bob had opened. Inside were three PPF uniforms. I pulled one out and turned to the kid. “Just a merchant, huh?”

  Hassan cut loose with a blistering rant in Arabic, and smacked the kid a couple more times. The kid was half crouched against the wall now, cowering from Hassan’s raised hand. He blurted out something, and Hassan stepped back. He asked another question, his voice sharp and harsh. The kid answered, and this time Hassan seemed satisfied.

  “He says that yes, his father is a PPF officer,” he said. “He will not admit that they are Iranians, but his father is on duty tonight, near the Al Othman mosque.”

  “Do we go after him?” Nick asked from near the front door, where he was holding security.

  “When is his father due home?” I asked Hassan, looking at the kid.

  Hassan asked. The kid shrugged. Hassan made to hit him again, and the kid threw up his hands, talking fast. Hassan lowered his hand and turned back to me and said, “He says before sunrise, but he does not know what time. I do not think he knows what time it is now.”

  I thought about it for a moment, checking my watch. As much as I wanted to do a clean sweep, if we went chasing off after one guy for too long, the night’s op was over. “We’ll put him on the back burner. Al Othman’s a ways away, closer to Mike’s AO. We’ll pass the word, and if darkness allows, we’ll see about rolling him up. Right now, it’s time to move.” I radioed Paul. “Five shooters, one terp, coming out.”

  We moved out to the trucks, and in minutes were rolling again. That was when things started to go sideways.

  “Hillbilly, Spooky,” Haas called. “I’ve been monitoring the PPF freqs, and you’re about to have company out there. They’re scrambling every unit they can spare to move into the neighborhoods where you’ve made hits already. Somebody got word to them what was going on.”

  “Not surprising,” I replied. “If we move fast enough we should be able to stay ahead of them for the more important targets.” Of course, inside I was thinking, Damn it, we can’t actually manage to get the whole fucking mission done without a hitch, can we?

  I reached down into the go-bag at my feet, and pulled out the little black ICOM radio that we were using to talk to Hussein Ali. Hassan was riding shotgun with him. “Hassan, can Hussein Ali’s men handle driving blacked out?”

  There was a pause, then Hassan answered. “He says yes, they will have to drive a little bit slower, but they can do it.”

  “Fine, tell them to go dark. We’ve got PPF moving toward us, and I want to see t
hem before they can see us,” I told him.

  “Yes, we will do that,” he said. I put the radio back, as the entire column’s headlights went out. There were enough streetlights, and courtyards brightly lit to deter robbers, that seeing the street wasn’t an issue. I just hoped the PPF were running with their light bars on, so we could see them and either avoid them or set an ambush before they knew we were close.

  We were maybe five minutes from the next target, a largish house in Kut Al Hijaj, when we saw the first blue and red flashing lights. Apparently, my wish had been granted, and the PPF wasn’t aware of the nature of the threat they were facing. They still thought they had control of the situation. I scooped up the ICOM again.

  “Hassan, tell Hussein Ali that we need to stop, and block off the road here,” I said. “This is not our target, but we have PPF trucks incoming. I want to ambush them, preferably before they hit us in the middle of taking down a target.”

  Again, I waited while Hassan relayed my message to Hussein Ali. “He understands,” Hassan said finally, “and he agrees. He will deploy his men in the side alleys, and we will use the big truck to block the street.”

  Paul parked our HiLux in the shadows of a tree growing out over the street from a compound that was unlit, leaving us in shadow. I was really wishing for a gun mount in the back, and even one of Hussein Ali’s PKPs, but we’d gone low-profile, so we were going to have to work with what we had.

  The five of us piled out, moving over to Hussein Ali’s truck. His militiamen were already out and crouched in the shadows of the truck and several nearby cars. I couldn’t see any of the other technicals; I figured they had split off. Hussein Ali’s Ranger was parked in the shelter of the FMTV, which had been parked at an angle across the street, blocking any traffic.

  There were three PPF trucks, and they were moving fast. I didn’t know where they were going, though I suspected they were either heading toward our last target house, or running to another officer’s residence to secure it before we got there. Either way, they weren’t expecting what they ran into.

  I had actually planned on initiating the ambush myself. Hussein Ali didn’t give me the chance.

  He leaned out from behind the hood of the FMTV, and dumped half a magazine into the windshield of the lead truck. His control was better than I expected; probably three quarters of the rounds actually hit the truck.

  The windshield spiderwebbed, and the truck screeched to a halt, partly by plowing into the microbus parked on the side of the street. The PKM gunner in the back was yelling, and charged his machinegun, turning it toward our trucks and our little impromptu barricade.

  He didn’t have time to fire. About halfway through Hussein Ali’s burst, the rest of the militia opened up with everything they had.

  Iraqis like full automatic. Most Third World militias do. It’s loud, it’s fun, and it’s intimidating. It also spends ammo like water, and doesn’t tend to hit much. The AK is not the pinnacle of accuracy in the first place. It’s good for what it’s intended for, and in the right hands is dead-on out to about 150 yards. Put it on full auto, hold it straight out from your body, point it in the general direction of the enemy (Sights? What sights?), and it becomes little more than a dangerous, flashy noisemaker.

  It’s still dangerous, though, and in a narrow street, they didn’t have to aim all that precisely.

  All across the street, and from two side alleys, muzzle flashes strobed in the night, the rattle and roar of gunfire echoing down the street. When the Kord gunner up on top of the FMTV popped up and added his own fire, it got even louder, the staccato hammering of the 12.7mm machinegun splitting the night.

  The lead truck was all but shredded. The ones behind were able to get a few shots off, sheltering behind the wreckage of the lead truck, but not many. There was enough lead in the air that the number two truck took enough to leave it smoking and dead, the gunner faintly visible, his gear caught on the MAG machinegun, holding his body up as the last of his blood dripped into the bed of the truck.

  The trail vehicle was backing up, trying to get out of the kill zone. The fire slacked off as ammunition ran out, and the militiamen had to change magazines. The Kord gunner was still hammering away at the two trucks he could still see; I was pretty sure he didn’t have a shot at the last truck. Hussein Ali started shouting at his men to cease fire.

  None of us had fired a shot.

  It took a few minutes to get the militia to all stop shooting. Several of them were already picking over the wrecks, taking weapons, ammunition, gear, and whatever they found of value off the dead. Hussein Ali was yelling and in some cases, hitting and kicking his men to get them back on the trucks and ready to move again. The old man knew the kind of timeline we were on, and this little ambush hadn’t made things any easier.

  Of course, to the militia, they’d just finally gotten to hit the enemy, instead of letting the American mercenaries do it. This was a victory for them, and they wanted to enjoy it, especially any loot they could get for themselves and their families.

  Hussein Ali wasn’t having any of it. He charged out into the kill zone, butt-stroked a militiaman who was busy trying to get one of the dead PPF troopers’ watch, and then went on a tear in very loud, very angry Arabic. I didn’t need Hassan to translate.

  It took a few more minutes to round up the militia, get them back on their trucks, and get moving. By then, the blue-and-red flashing lights were starting to converge from other parts of the city. Getting clear was going to be tight, and I could already see we were going to have to write off one of the targets; there were too many PPF too close to that site. Unless subsequent raids drew them away, we were going to have to put him off until another night.

  As always, Murphy was fucking with my plans. Oh well, I should have known that sweeping the entire Qods Force leadership in a night was not going to work out. We were still going to take a crack at killing or capturing as many as possible. So the plan was fucked. The plan is always fucked. Suck it up and drive on.

  Once we got things together, and the FMTV pointed the right direction, we went roaring down the back streets, lights out, heading for target four, a compound in Al Rafedayn.

  Target four was a clusterfuck.

  For whatever reason, Al Rafedayn was quiet and dark. The shitstorm of gunfire and flashing lights over in Al Hasawiyah apparently hadn’t woken anyone up here. We rolled up in a cloud of dust, the outer cordon technicals moving into position as if they’d been doing this for months.

  Then the two far trucks blew up.

  One second, we were unassing the truck and getting ready to run to the breach point, the next second the night was full of fire, smoke, and the screams of the dying, those who hadn’t been mercifully knocked unconscious or killed outright.

  The coherence of our cordon was gone just as fast. The Iraqis didn’t want to get out of the trucks, or even move the trucks to a better position. They didn’t know where the IEDs were. We didn’t either; I didn’t know if they were buried or hidden in trash or even false curbs. There were all sorts of methods IED makers used in Iraq to hide their bombs, and where there were two, there were usually more.

  “Motherfuck,” I said. Not only was our cordon shot, but the target, provided he was home, knew for damned sure that we were there now. I wrenched open the door and ran to Hussein Ali’s truck.

  “Are we sure he’s there?” I asked Hassan. Hassan asked Hussein Ali, who nodded emphatically as he replied.

  “If the bombs are armed, he is there,” Hassan said. “Hussein Ali knows this man from a long time ago. He says he is certain he is there.”

  “What about anyone else?” I asked. “Is his family in there?”

  Hussein Ali shook his head. “He says no, that this man keeps his family in Qom,” Hassan reported. “He knows this man very well.”

  There was still the possibility of collateral damage, but if these fuckers were going to put out IEDs on pressure plates in open streets, I’d play their little fucking gam
e. “Tell him to keep his men in the trucks. I’ve got another way to take care of this.” Without waiting for an answer, I ran back to the HiLux, hoping and praying that I didn’t set off another IED as I went.

  Instead of climbing back in, I went to the bed. “Hand me our special toy,” I said. Larry threw back the tarp and pulled it out, passing the long tube over to me.

  The RShG-1 looked a lot like our RPG-27s. It wasn’t quite the same, though. Instead of the HEAT round, it was equipped with a thermobaric round that the Russians had developed specifically for smoking Afghan and Chechen jihadis out of their caves, holes, or buildings. Actually, it wasn’t so much for “smoking them out,” as it was for “cooking them inside.”

  Carrying the tube, I ran far enough to the side to make sure our truck and any of the militia’s trucks were clear of the backblast. Taking a knee, I opened the rear sight and leveled the weapon at the door. The target was apparently so confident in the security afforded by his IEDs and whatever measures he had inside that he hadn’t even arranged for a closed gate. The compound was open.

  I pressed the trigger, and the warhead banged across the short distance, smashing through the thin metal door. An instant later, every window and door in the building blossomed with bright white fire, and part of the roof blew off. The concussion was earthshaking; the blast actually rocked the trucks on their wheels, and bits of building whickered past my head. I ducked, almost going face down in the dirt. Yeah, that was a little close to use one of those.

  I ran back to the truck, tossing the spent tube to Larry. Hussein Ali was out of his truck, yelling into the radio when he wasn’t yelling at the militiamen in the back of his own truck. He sounded pissed—likely because his men were paralyzed by what had happened to the other two trucks.

  Now that I wasn’t so worried about being attacked from inside the target building, we had to get any survivors from the IED blasts out of the kill zone, stabilized, and loaded up to get them back to the factory. I was afraid that our raids were going to be cut short by this. The odds of the Iraqis continuing to perform after that were slim. These weren’t seasoned soldiers, most of them. Hell, getting them to go into that kill zone to get their wounded comrades was going to be enough of a bitch.