Hunting in the Shadows (American Praetorians)

by Peter Nealen

  As soon as he got to the corner with the next street over, there was a burst of gunfire, and Nick dashed, bent over, to shoulder-slam into the opposite wall, barely sheltered in the alcove of a door. I rushed forward and dropped to a knee, leaning out around the corner, to almost lose my own head to a burst of AK fire from the half dozen armed men coming down the street.

  Nick leaned out of his alcove and opened fire. As the reports of his shots echoed down the street and the bullets smacking into the wall inches from my head eased off, I popped out and added my fire to Nick’s. They were only a few meters away. I dropped two with my first five shots, then the rest were running, leaving half their number dead or dying in the street.

  I stepped out, risking a glance down the other direction to make sure any of their buddies weren’t coming up behind us, and started down the narrow street, Nick right beside me. As we passed the bodies, single head shots made sure none of them got up to shoot us in the back once we had passed by.

  We were getting close. The El Arab Mosque was clearly visible over the roofs to our north. Nick pointed out an empty lot only about a block from the target, and I nodded. We moved in, took a knee, made sure all the approaches were covered, and I brought out the ICOM again.

  “Hassan, this is Jeff,” I said. “We are in position. We need Hussein Ali and Daoud al Zubayri to set their men into the blocking positions, then we will assault the building.”

  Gunfire cracked and thundered to the west, toward Route 6 and the militia column. It intensified as I waited for Hassan to respond. That didn’t sound good.

  “We are trying, Mister Jeff,” Hassan called. “The PPF is engaging us heavily. Hussein Ali says he needs you to strike them from the side.”

  Fuck, fuck, fuck, FUCK. “I understand, Hassan,” I sent back. “We will be there soon.” I dropped the ICOM back in my dump pouch and turned back to the rest of the team. “The PPF just stalled up the column,” I hissed, barely audible over the cacophony of the firefight off to the west. “We’ve got to move in and take some of the heat off.”

  “Motherfucker,” Bryan snarled under his breath. Jim shuffled over to take a knee next to me. We had to figure out a plan of attack fast, quick, and in a hurry.

  Jim and I hashed something out quickly. There wasn’t a lot to hash out—we were already essentially in position. The only real change was that we were attacking the perimeter without the area being secured.

  “Speedy, Hillbilly,” I called. “What’s your position?”

  “We’re stuck with the militia,” Mike replied. “If you guys can’t take the heat off, we’re going to have to fall back. The militias have already taken losses.”

  So much for running mutual support with Mike’s team. We were out of time. I pointed to Nick, and said, “Go.”

  He got to his feet and led off, keeping his movements smooth and controlled but faster than before. I was right behind him, about five meters back, my rifle muzzle tracking up, covering every opening and passage we passed. The rest of the team spread out behind us, flowing down the street toward the target. We weren’t running, but we weren’t exactly walking, either.

  There was only a little over a hundred meters to go. We were in cover from the police station itself, but not from the side streets, and the enemy wasn’t just holding in the police station.

  Two more gunmen ran out of a side street, pelting toward the fighting to the south, cradling AKs. Nick caught one in the side with a snap-shot, sending him spinning to the pavement and tripping up his buddy. Our follow-up shots echoed off the nearby buildings as Nick and I both shot the pair of them.

  We got to the cross street the two dead goons had come out of in moments. I took a knee just short of the intersection and motioned to Nick to wait until Bryan came up to cover down the way we were going before we popped the corners. With the amount of gunfire hammering through the air in there, I wasn’t taking chances, desperate circumstances or not.

  It was a good thing I was being cautious. I leaned around the corner to look down the barrel of an AK that some little fucker was aiming at us, crouched about twenty-five yards away.

  I didn’t have time to think, only react. The two of us fired at the same instant. He missed. I didn’t. Four 7.62 rounds slammed savagely into his torso, and he crumpled, falling in a bloody mess on his weapon. Instinctively, my rifle muzzle tracked him down, and I put two more rounds in him before it registered in my mind that he was dead, and wasn’t moving anymore.

  I cleared the rest of the street before I stripped out the mag and rocked in a fresh one. If we hadn’t still been in a combat situation, I probably would have started shaking right there. That had been too fucking close. I glanced back for an instant as Bryan, Juan, and Larry crossed the street. The enemy’s shots had missed Nick; he was still up on a knee and covering his sector.

  Little Bob and Jim moved up to bump Nick and me across the street. We moved up through the rest of the team to take point again.

  And then we were there.

  Most of the police station wasn’t walled, but there were plenty of sheds, shipping containers, and cars between us and the building itself. Most of the fire seemed to be coming from the windows, and fortunately for us, it was directed down the street toward the militia.

  Nick and I rushed to the first container, leaning out from each end. What we saw was a trash-strewn open area between us and the building. The place looked more cluttered than it really was. I scanned the windows, but saw no one. Apparently they weren’t all that concerned with their flank security. Given how many irregulars we’d traded fire with so far, I figured that was why. They were depending on the irregular forces to cover their flanks.

  I ducked back behind the container, and waved the rest of the team up. This had to happen fast. I left Bryan with the PKM to cover the windows, Jim to cover the rear, and the rest of us moved out at a dead run for the back door.

  The police station wasn’t a single building, but rather a collection of outbuildings mostly connected with a central two-story building. There were small walls connecting a couple of the outbuildings, but we didn’t have to go over or through it to get to a breach point. The outer door to the back outbuilding was closed, but it didn’t look too solid.

  Little Bob pulled ahead and hit it at full tilt, rebounding and rolling out of the way as the metal door slammed inward. Juan took the lead, flowing into the station with Nick and I right on his heels.

  It was dark inside the station, at least as compared to outside. There were a few lights on, but it looked like they were keeping them off to make it harder to target the shooters in the windows. It was still light enough to see the two men in PPF uniforms at the southwest windows, turning in surprise as we burst through the door.

  Juan and I had them dead to rights. Their KH-2002 rifles were still pointed out the windows. They tried to pivot toward us, but we were already up on target. Two pairs of shots each hammered them against the wall, where they slumped and slid down to the floor.

  Juan advanced on them while I finished clearing our half of the room. I heard the clatter of the rifles being kicked away from their limp hands. By then the rest of the team was in, the room was clear, and Larry and Little Bob were already advancing on the next door.

  We moved through the outbuilding quickly; there were plenty of supplies, explosives, weapons, and ammunition, but no more shooters. So far, with the intensity of the fighting to the south, there was no sign that the PPF or their Iranian handlers even knew we had penetrated the station.

  I took a pause right at the door leading into the courtyard and called Hassan again. “Tell Hussein Ali to break contact and pull back,” I told him. “We are in the station now, and if he keeps shooting at the PPF in here, one of us is going to get hit.”

  “Yes, yes, Mister Jeff, I will tell him,” Hassan almost shouted. There was a lot of gunfire in the background.

  We had to hold for a while. I was waiting for the bad guys to figure out what was going on, and start try
ing to swarm the outbuilding. Finally, Hassan came back over the radio. “Hussein Ali does not want to fall back, Mister Jeff,” he said. “He says that he must keep the pressure on the Iranians.”

  “Tell him that that’s what we’re in here for, but I’m not getting my guys shot by friendly fire because of his pride,” I snapped back. “We are on the objective and we will clear it, but he needs to shift fire away from the station.”

  “I will try to tell him, Mister Jeff,” Hassan replied.

  Naturally, that was when all hell broke loose on the objective.

  The back door of the main station building slammed open. I almost didn’t hear it over the roar and crackle of gunfire. I was, however, in a position where I could see the first tan-uniformed men in body armor with Khaybar rifles coming around the corner toward us.

  I snapped my rifle to my shoulder and opened fire, hitting the first man in the plate. He staggered under the impact. I didn’t get to see much more than that, as his fellows behind him opened fire and I had to duck back behind the doorway. Chips of concrete spat off the wall near my head as the rounds smacked into the stucco with harsh cracks, a few of them ricocheting away with high-pitched, whizzing whines.

  They kept up the fire as they moved on the door, making it impossible to lean out and shoot back. So I changed the rules. I reached into my vest, pulled out a frag, yanked the pin out, and rolled it into the courtyard. Fuck you assholes, if I can’t shoot you, I can still blow you up.

  There was some frantic yelling in Arabic, then the grenade went off with a tooth-rattling thud, filling the courtyard with dust, smoke, and whickering shrapnel. The gunfire slacked off considerably, and then I was out the door, rifle to my shoulder, pumping half a magazine in the direction I’d last seen them, Juan on my heels.

  As the dust cleared, I started to be able to see the enemy, some moving painfully, others starting to pick themselves up off the ground. Juan and I started shooting, tracking back and forth across the courtyard until nothing was moving.

  More gunfire erupted from the corner, and Juan and I threw ourselves in opposite directions, as Little Bob opened up from the doorway behind us, suppressing the shooters trying to get into the courtyard to support the guys we’d just killed.

  Meanwhile, the loud cracks of rounds going by overhead continued, and redoubled. I couldn’t hear if Hassan had called me back; I was too busy trying to stay alive in this little cramped corner of hell. Even if he had, it was pretty obvious that Hussein Ali wasn’t pulling back, and wasn’t shifting his fire. This was a very, very uncomfortable place to be in, especially as I could see that with more PPF trying to get at us in the courtyard, any attempt to fall back was going to run the very real risk of being shot in the back.

  Then a hammer blow blanked out everything. The world became nothing but noise, darkness, and pain.

  I don’t know if I blacked out, or for how long if I did. When I could see again, the air was still full of dust and smoke. My head hurt ferociously, and the rest of me ached. It took me a second to figure out where the hell I was, and what the fuck was going on.

  It slowly penetrated through the pounding in my head and the ringing in my ears that somebody had blown up the north side of the station. There was a gaping crater in that direction, and bodies and pieces of bodies were strewn across what was left of the courtyard. Part of the main station building had collapsed, and the shed/outbuilding on the corner was just gone, reduced to a pile of rubble.

  VBIED, my aching brain registered. Somebody had tried to blow up the PPF station. Under other circumstances, I might not mind so much, but my team and I were in it at the time, so that kind of pissed me off. I was still thinking too slowly to register who might have done it, when we were there, and Hussein Ali’s people were in the opposite direction.

  It did register that I had to get the fuck off the ground and get ready to fight. Even through the fog of pain and wooziness, I still knew that this shit wasn’t over. My rifle was still connected to me by the sling, but the ocular lens of the scope was cracked. My iron sights still worked though.

  Apparently the guys in black who rushed across the crater weren’t expecting anyone to be alive. My first shots were wild, but I forced myself to steady down and dropped two of them with rapid pairs to the chest, more by instinct than conscious targeting. The rest scattered for cover.

  I took the momentary breather to try to assess the situation. The courtyard was scattered with rubble and debris. There was still smoke in the air, and I was starting to hear well enough to make out the continuing gunfire going overhead. A silhouette started to run toward me from my right, and I almost shot Little Bob before I focused enough to see it was him. He fired a few more shots toward the figures running toward us from the north, then dropped to a knee next to me. More fire started to come from the door he’d come out of, as some of the rest of the team took up covering fire toward the corner of the station building and whoever had launched that IED.

  Little Bob was checking me over for wounds. I was trying to fight him, trying to get back up, but he knocked my hand away, and continued to do his blood sweeps. Only once he was satisfied that I had just been knocked around, and wasn’t bleeding out, did he turn back to the enemy, who were avoiding the ferocious covering fire coming from the doorway.

  My head was starting to clear, though I still couldn’t hear very well. My ears were ringing, and my head felt like it was being split open with an axe. I was still able to get my feet under me, and got achingly to a knee, to snap a pair of shots at a hazy outline with a rifle peeking out from behind a car. That was when the bolt locked back on an empty magazine; I’d lost track of my round count for some reason.

  I ripped the mag out, dropping it on the ground instead of in my dump pouch, and fumbled to rock a fresh one in place. I wasn’t moving as well as I should have been; I was still pretty rocked. I was still keeping my eyes on the threat, so I saw him pop back up and level his weapon at me, while I still had the magazine only halfway into the mag well.

  Little Bob snapped his rifle over and shot the bad guy in the face. I got the mag the rest of the way in, racked the charging handle, and put a pair of shots into another man, in track pants and a t-shirt, running toward us with an AK. He went over his feet and fell on his face in the dirt and gravel.

  I took stock. Little Bob was next to me, down in the prone, shooting at anyone who moved in the dust and smoke to our north. Larry and Nick were in the doorway, similarly throwing lead at targets of opportunity. Juan…

  Juan’s shattered torso lay face-down on the ground, six feet from the crater. At least one of his arms was gone, along with both legs, and a substantial portion of his skull.

  I was off-balance already. My brain was rattled, and the shitstorm that this op had turned into wasn’t helping things. I saw Juan’s destroyed body and damned near broke.

  Now, I’m not going to get all mushy and say that Juan was one of the greatest friends I’d ever had. He wasn’t. We’d worked together for most of a year. He was competent, and generally a decent fit for the team, but we weren’t all that close. There was always a distance with Juan. As professional as he’d always been, I still think that he hadn’t quite gotten over his rank on retirement.

  That said, he was still a good operator. He was still one of mine. And he was the third man I’d lost in the last month.

  “MOTHERFUCKERS!” It came out as half a scream of rage, half a sob. I started to surge to my feet, to head out into that bunch of fucking savages, and kill every last one of them, with my bare hands if it came to that.

  Little Bob planted a meaty hand on my shoulder, staggering me and clearing my head the rest of the way. I couldn’t go berserker. I was the team leader, I still had five other guys to keep alive, and we were in the middle of a gunfight, not a medieval battle. I nodded to Little Bob, took a deep breath that stank of metal, smoke, blood, and shit, and got my mind back in the fight.

  It took me about two seconds to see that as much as I di
dn’t like it, we were going to have to strongpoint. We were effectively surrounded. I couldn’t count entirely on Hussein Ali’s militia to support us, though I suspected they were pushing further north as the Iranians and PPF in the station reacted to the attack from the north. Retreating wasn’t really an option. I grabbed Little Bob and yelled in his ear, probably louder than need be thanks to the ringing in my own, “Back inside! We’re going firm!”

  Chapter 29

  Nick and Larry rolled out of the doorway to let us in. I dropped to a knee by the wall, covering for Little Bob to get inside, then followed him when he yelled at me.

  “Sitrep!” I demanded as soon as I was in.

  “Everybody in here is up,” Jim replied, coming into the back room with us, as Little Bob pushed toward the entrance. “We’re all at about fifty percent on ammo.” He looked around us. “Juan?” he asked.

  I shook my head. “Fuck,” he said. His shoulders slumped a little, but only for a moment. We didn’t have time to mourn Juan or Paul, at least if we wanted to survive to see the next day. “Any idea what the fuck just happened?”

  I shrugged. “Somebody drove a VBIED into the north side of the station. Don’t know who it was, but I doubt it was our guys.”

  “AQI?” he asked.

  “Maybe.” I looked around the building. There wasn’t a lot to it, but that kind of simplified things. It was still just a standard cinderblock building; it wouldn’t necessarily stop much in the way of explosives or heavy machinegun fire, but it would have to do. “It doesn’t really matter at the moment. We can’t move any farther in; we’d be taking fire from two sides plus the defenders in the buildings. We’ll strongpoint here, at least until Hussein Ali and Mike can get to us.”

  “And if they send another VBIED?” Jim asked quietly.

  “Then we probably all die,” I replied. There wasn’t anything else to say. There wasn’t any magic wand that could be waved and make our situation any less fucked up. Jim just nodded, and headed for the back.