The Reaper

by Irving, Nicholas; Brozek, Gary;

  “That’s the plan.”

  In the end, we figured it was best to take a RECCE guy with us to keep comms in place and to notify chain of command what was going on, both back at the Marine base and with our Ranger platoon.

  It had been ninety-six hours since I’d gotten anything near decent sleep, and I’m sure that contributed to the surreal impressions that night left me with. The sun was angling lower and Pemberton and I put on our ghillie suits and headed out along with McDonald to set up that hide site. In the low light, night vision wasn’t as effective as it could have been, and I found myself staggering a bit. I led the formation out of the back of the Marine compound, and I immediately picked up a scent. With the wind at my back, Pemberton and McDonald were leaving a scent trail as strong as anything I’d ever smelled. I knew that I was no spring breeze myself, and in that case that was a good thing. Blending in with your surroundings meant doing so in every way possible. Fresh soap smell or a clean body was a sure giveaway.

  We crept along, going about as slowly as I ever had on any march, and the quiet was almost overwhelming. Knowing that there are other armed personnel out there who are bent on getting at you is a weird feeling, especially at night. It’s like your thoughts expand to fill up all the darkness, the blank black chalkboard ahead of you. I spotted a small outbuilding at one point, and thought it offered a good view of a wide-open field anyone coming toward the marines’ position would have to cross. We’d have plenty of time to put eyes on them and communicate with the marines. I wanted McDonald to enter the building first. He had an M4 assault carbine and it was the best weapon to use in that confined space. He also had a thirty-round magazine and a suppressor, all tactically superior for that application than my twenty rounds and my 308. Pemberton was behind us with his monster Win Mag, and I knew that if it came to him having to fire off rounds in that building, we were maybe beyond worst-case scenario and into some serious, serious trouble.

  Using hand signals and moving far more slowly than we would have during a normal clearing operation, we determined that nobody was home. I was relieved to be able to stretch my muscles a bit. All that superslow-motion stuff had me cramping a bit. I gulped down nearly a full CamelBak of water. I figured it was about 0330 hours and we had until just before dawn before we’d see any activity at all. It wasn’t going to take us long to set up the hide, considering that the building was only about twenty by twenty in size and windowless. Three guys. No windows. Not much real thinking to be done. We fashioned a hide on the roof.

  How to get through the next eight hours was going to occupy my mind entirely. Just before we came on this RECCE operation, I’d bought a pack of cigarettes from an Afghan market. They were foul-tasting things, like inhaling the smoke from a soggy campfire, but in the first hour or so, I managed to go through the entire pack. I felt like I’d swallowed a stick and it was lodged in my chest cavity, my mouth was coated with a foul-tasting soot that I couldn’t spit clear, and I was wired. All that nicotine was doing a horse race through my bloodstream, and I could have sworn I could see hoofs and clods of dirt being kicked up in the throbbing veins of my wrist. I could hardly keep still, and with my legs bouncing and my eyes twitching, I sat as the minutes crept by. I played little games with myself, trying to count to sixty in the exact amount of time it would take for the second hand on my watch to complete a revolution. I’d wait for the little line to get to the twelve, look away while counting and then take a quick glance once I got to sixty to see how I’d done. After a while, I turned that into a kind of competition, with me squaring off against my imaginary friend Dave, keeping track of how many seconds we were both off, totaling them after five rounds.

  Somehow, I got to the time when the first bit of yellow and reddish light bled across the horizon. Pemberton had dozed off for a while, and McDonald was on the comms. At one point, he patched me in to the marines’ commander. He let me know that they’d decided to not sit and wait for the attack. They were going to assume a position roughly halfway between the village and their compound. That was going to put them about a quarter mile from our location, out of the range of our fire. I agreed that was a good plan, and he shared with us their route and ETA. We’d be able to provide cover fire for them if necessary.

  No more than twenty minutes or so later, we had them in our sights. I was following them through my scope, when I heard at first one, and then a moment later, a series of snaps. They were lighting up a nearby compound on the edge of the village. I heard a few louder concussive booms and knew that they were firing RPGs, except we could hear them going over our heads and back toward the marines’ compound. The Taliban were retaliating. Over the comms came a report a few seconds later that they’d taken a hit and a marine was KIA. In our sleep-deprived state, Pemberton and I scrambled around on the roof. Once up there I realized we’d both left our helmets with McDonald. That much weight on your head while looking through a scope for an extended period of time was way too taxing. We didn’t have time to do much about that.

  I was pissed at that point. I observed the area hoping that someone would enter my crosshairs. I knew I had to make sure that we didn’t fire on any friendlies, but I was starting to feel like if I didn’t do something assertive and soon, I was going to lose it. I calmed myself by sighting on as much as I could. A small firefight was going on at that point, but all I could see was our marines and their position. Eventually, as I panned side to side, I saw something glint in the early morning sunlight. Silhouetted against the eastern sky was a single figure on a moped. I couldn’t see what was attached to the back of his vehicle, but it looked like little flagpoles or something. I couldn’t be sure if he was a Taliban dude or some local who was going to work somewhere and had his tools strapped to his moped.

  I knew I needed to keep an eye on him. He dismounted his moped and he unstrapped a sack that was cinched to a rack behind the seat. He slung the sack over his shoulder and walked behind a building. I sighted on him, on the building, on his moped, took a dimension on him from his groin to the top of his head. Since the locals were generally shorter than American men, I estimated the dimensions to be around 35 inches instead of 40. I employed a rule of thumb. In my scope, he measured approximately 1.2 mils or 740 meters away.

  “Pemberton, you got the guy on the moped at ten o’clock. Track him with me and follow up in case.”

  “Roger that.”

  I stared at that lone figure for a few more minutes, watching his movements. For a second or two, he went out of my scope as he hunched down. When he stood again, I could see that what I thought were the handles of shovels or other tools were RPGs. He raised the weapon to his shoulder and leaned far out from behind the building he was tucked behind. I could see a Marine Humvee about fifty meters from his position, on maybe a ten-degree angle from where he was at, essentially a straight-on shot. In my head, I could see everything playing out—the rocket impacting the vehicle, the five guys inside being ejected from the flaming wreck.

  I sighted again and determined that the attacker was still approximately 740 meters away. I knew I didn’t have a whole lot of time, so I couldn’t pick out a specific location on his body. I squeezed the trigger and watched the bullet drop into his body. I was hoping to make contact, do something to keep him from firing that RPG. It felt to me like it took forever for that bullet to impact him, but it did and he went down in a heap, with his face between his legs. This was the farthest shot for me to date. Watching the bullet’s vapor trail travel to the target had me feeling serene. It took only less than a second before that .308 married itself to his body, but it felt like a lifetime. Some of his guys noticed what had happened and dragged his body and the weapon back behind the building.

  Pemberton and I started to pepper that building and I watched as he took out another guy who foolishly stood up and fired his AK. The round got him in the hip area and spun him. He lay there twisted and twitching for a few seconds, still firing rounds haphazardly before he stilled. The marines had moved b
ack for a bit, but after Pemberton’s kill, they advanced. Bullets were still snapping by all around us, but now they were getting closer. The Taliban fighters must have figured out that we were up on that roof and they started hammering the building.

  I started to freak out thinking I was going to get snapped in the head since I was helmetless. McDonald was down below us, still on comms, and with all the gunfire going on, he couldn’t hear us. I low-crawled over the ledge near a small window and leaned over and started shouting, “Helmets! Helmets! Helmets!” as loud as I could. Suddenly two helmets came flying up in the air, whizzing past my head. If one of them had hit me, I would have been knocked unconscious. McDonald’s throws were excellent. The helmets clattered onto the roof and sat there spinning slowly. Pemberton and I grabbed them and strapped them on, both of us knowing we should have never put ourselves in that position.

  We resumed laying down suppressive fire. McDonald joined us at that point, unloading that M4. Bullets were impacting all around us. I could see little dirt devils being kicked up near my feet and legs, but I just kept firing. Finally, after about five minutes of the marines firing and us firing, the Taliban fled, retrieving their dead and retreating to their position within the village.

  The quiet was unnerving, broken only by the sound of voices coming over the comms. We were informed that the second platoon had arrived; Pemberton and I were to rejoin the rest of the RECCE team and resume our intended mission. As we made our way back toward the Marine compound to meet up with the rest of our team, a few of the marines approached us, thanking us for our help. They were glad that I’d taken out the RPG dude especially. Their top gunner had spotted him, but in trying to get a bead on him, the .50 cal had jammed.

  We talked for a while longer, and then our guys from the second showed up. Cody, a little guy from the Bronx, came up to me and pushed me in the chest, smiling and saying, “The Reaper. We knew it was you, man. As soon as we landed, we could hear a firefight going on to our right in the distance. We heard that single shot crack off. Knew it had to be you. The Reaper.”

  “What are you talking about with this Reaper stuff?”

  Treadwell joined us and said, “You haven’t heard? There’s some wild shit being talked about you killing, like, seven hundred guys, so they call you the Reaper now.”

  I shook my head. I liked the name, but the stories were out of control. “Are you kidding me?”

  “No, man. You know how these things go.”

  I knew it was useless to try to stop guys from talking. The Ranger community was kind of like a big school class. Somebody did something and by the time the story had spread, it went from a guy having drunk a six-pack to him knocking over a liquor store and delivering twenty kegs to a party along with a few dozen sorority girls from the local college.

  We stayed at the Marine compound for a few hours. We did a quick briefing, but we’d been at it for four days now, and we all knew what the plan was. I liked the idea of us being able to freelance a bit to help out the marines. I was feeling good about what we’d done, but knowing that somebody had lost their life took a lot of the gratification out of it. We were sitting around with a few of the marines playing cards and talking. One of them, a black guy named Samuels, was talking about the man who was KIA.

  “Good guy. Helluva soldier. Just the worst stinking feet ever though.” He laid down his cards. “Fold.”

  “Sorry about what happened.”

  Samuels stretched and then rotated his head around to loosen up his neck muscles, “No worries. It happens. Guys get killed out here. It’s war.”

  A few of the other marines chimed in, echoing what Samuels said.

  I knew that I couldn’t dwell on it for too long. If I wanted to make sense of that marine’s death, the one way I could do it was by taking out that Taliban HVT we’d been tracking. An eye for an eye was about the best you could do.

  We switched it up and I played a few hands of Texas hold ’em, but the cards being laid down began to swim in my vision. I knew I needed some sleep. I stepped away from the guys and lay down in the dirt. I found a round, smooth stone and used it as a pillow. I was lying on my back and I could feel my stomach bile rising into my throat. I heard a strange whistling sound, high-pitched and persistent, and wondered if we were going to come under attack again. It didn’t matter. The next thing I knew I woke up and the last of the day’s shadows were retreating. Pretty soon we would be after it again. I was hoping that things would go according to plan. As we climbed into the deuce and half and rolled on, I knew that the original plan had changed. Instead of it just being me and Pemberton and the other RECCE guys, we were joined by the entire second platoon, four truckloads’ worth of men and equipment. It was good to have them as backup and support, but I wondered how this was going to play out now that we weren’t moving fast and light. Was somebody not telling me something?

  6. The Chechen Comes Calling

  You never know how stress and sleeplessness are going to affect you. As we rolled along in the trucks, I was struck by just how beautiful the area was. The moon was up and full, and we’d entered a desert area with rolling dunes. Beauty can also be a beast, or at least it can turn your beasts of burden into two and a half tons of lawn ornaments. The sand wasn’t too deep, the dunes were more like waves of sand, but some of the trucks bogged down. Eventually, it didn’t make much sense for us to try to get any farther on four wheels. We exited the trucks and formed up. So much for all the preplanning and scouting we’d done. Our target had moved on into an extremely remote and desolate area. Flying in would have revealed our position and intentions, the trucks couldn’t get through, so we were left to our own two feet.

  I wasn’t looking forward to the march. I was already exhausted, had catalogued the memories of the assist we gave to the marines in a mental file called “the Longest Day,” and I knew that it was only going to get longer. Yet, when I looked out across the moonlit desert landscape, I thought, This looks like a scene from Aladdin. I wish that Pemberton and I could just ride a magic carpet to our objective.

  The thought and the image were so ridiculous to me that I started to laugh. Pemberton looked at me with a puzzled expression. I managed to stifle my giggle and said, “I can’t even tell you right now what’s going on in my head.”

  “I hear you. I’m so friggin’ tired.”

  I heard him, but I was still picturing the two of us sitting on that carpet, cruising above the landscape, some corny-ass Disney tune playing in the background.

  Five hours later, all I was thinking was that this just sucked. We’d been marching for hours, and it was like we’d been walking in boot-sucking mud the entire time. Those little dunes, the ones that seemed like the ripples on a potato chip, were exhausting. Every step we had to lift one foot up, trying to maintain our balance, and then push off and go, all the while fighting our way through one another’s divots. It was a hamstring-and-quadriceps-killing exercise in stop-motion agony. Worse, the sun was coming up, and that meant that we’d be doing the operation in full-on daytime, having our position exposed in the sunlight.

  Every now and then the terrain would change, rocky soil and a few stream crossings, the water just high enough to get over your boots, and the rocks slick enough and the current powerful enough to knock you off balance. Maintaining noise discipline was tough, especially with that many guys, and in that high desert valley, it seemed as if sounds could travel miles uninterrupted. We couldn’t talk to each other, obviously, but every time one of us staggered or slipped, we’d involuntarily make some noise, have our gear rattle a little bit. Being stuck inside your own head after that many hours, and being so exhausted and sleep-deprived, you were in a place you didn’t want to be mentally. Random weirdness rattled around in there. I took to singing a little song in my mind to keep those other thoughts at bay. In time with my footfalls, I was chanting, “ This sucks. This—sucks,” on and on.

  Finally, we got within a half mile of the objective. That’s when the RECC
E team and Pemberton and I split off. We made our way about eight hundred meters from the main element. I was on point and discovered a large hole, maybe two meters wide and a meter deep. I pointed it out to Pemberton and he nodded. We wanted to mentally mark that location in case we needed it if things got bad. We kept going and then stopped and took our position in a large open field, now some thousand meters from the rest of the platoon. We were responsible for making sure that no one fled the area. The plan had been to check in with the main unit once we’d established ourselves.

  I tried my radio. I got nothing in return. Pemberton tried his. Same thing. McDonald tried his. Three for three. We’re lying in the middle of this open field and we’ve got shaky communications at best. Radio malfunctions and radio weirdness plagued us all the time, in a nerve-jangling version of Murphy’s Law.

  At one point, two men on a bike came up on our position. I had to stop them. I aimed my mounted PEQ-15’s visible laser right on the chest of the guy riding on the handlebars, hoping he’d notice that dot. He did. The bike came to a stop. We were pretty well camouflaged, so I rose up just a bit and signaled to them, making sure to keep the red dot on him, circling it so that he knew exactly where the bullet would impact him. Not a sight anyone would welcome. They took off in another direction, not going back toward the village and not heading toward the rest of our guys.

  Pemberton was a few meters away from me, and since our radios weren’t working, he said, “Look. There’s some kind of meeting going on.” He pointed over toward a dead tree where a small group of men had gathered. I watched as they turned inward and then outward toward us, pointing our way. This wasn’t my call, so I got the attention of the nearest RECCE guy, Derek, a guy who had the habit of sucking in his breath loudly before saying anything.

  “Let it play out. Let it play out.”