Ghost Watch

by David Rollins

  Pushbikes were scattered behind the rear entrance. The gunmen had cycled to work. The Sig went back in its holster. The M4’s thirty-round mag and short barrel made it the ideal weapon for cleaning house. I flicked the selector to three-shot burst to conserve ammo, took it off safety, and crept inside. It was dark. I stopped against the wall, tried to get my breathing under control and gave my eyes a few seconds to adapt to the available light. There was a room both to the left and right off the short hallway. I checked them and they were clear, so I moved forward into the main room on the ground floor. Also clear. Retracing my steps, I closed the back door – there was no lock – then found the stairs against the wall and crept up the single steep flight to the first floor. It ended on a small landing; the rest of the floor was divided into two rooms, gunfire banging away from my left and right. I cased both rooms quickly. Room on the left had one shooter. Room on the right had two. The floors in both were littered with spent casings and magazines.

  The Taliban fighter in the left-hand room was old – mid-fifties – and dressed in black. Pops was making so much noise that he didn’t realize I was behind him until the Ka-bar took out his windpipe and partially severed his spinal cord. Blood went everywhere. I gently laid him down among all his brass trash as he gurgled and shook, then I took his AK and replaced the mag with a fresh one from a satchel sitting on a broken chair. There was no food in the bag, suggesting that this gig was unplanned – good to know. Propped against the wall behind the door were an M16A2 and a bag full of mags. I picked up the rifle. It was brand new, still with that showroom shine. The serial numbers on its receiver had been ground off. Where does a Taliban fighter get one of these? I hooked the weapon over my shoulder and took the satchel with the mags.

  Had I killed Pops with the M4, everyone would know that Uncle Sam was making home deliveries. To head off any concern, I fired a couple of bursts from the guy’s AK out the window to reassure his buddies that the old man was still on the job. Then I dropped the weapon and walked across the landing into the room on the right. The door was wide open. Both targets, also dressed in Taliban black, were in their late teens or early twenties. They had their backs to me, firing on full auto on the crippled Landcruisers, wasting ammo, washing my buddies in lead. From the sound of it, one of the targets was firing an M16.

  Then a couple of rounds tore into the ceiling above my head. Gray powder drifted down, dusting my shoulders. My guys across the street were zeroing in.

  ‘Yo, fellas,’ I called out, raising my voice above the din. ‘S’up?’

  The shooters glanced over their shoulders, eyes wide. The fighter with the M16 had an orange beard and large blue-green eyes, maybe a throwback to when Alexander the Great arrived here with his army to subdue the local population and get in a little R&R. I didn’t have to think about what to do. Both men got three rounds in the chest. The force of it pushed Ginger out the window, ass first. He fell in silence, already dead.

  The shooter on the floor above me stopped firing. He knew something was up, probably when he saw his Islamic brother take the big step backward into the street below. He started calling to his friends. When no answer came, he began firing down through the floor. I made myself small against the wall and changed mags. Plaster, wood splinters, and lead rained down, which gave me some idea of his position. I fired upwards – single shots – emptied the mag, then waited for an answer. I stood on the spot for ten seconds or so, changed mags, listening, looking up. No one was walking around up there, and the shooting had stopped. Blood clogged the bullet holes in the ceiling and began dripping down onto the floor.

  I climbed up to the second floor to confirm that only one fighter occupied it, and that he was now dead. I searched him quickly for the benefit of folks back at intelligence but found nothing of interest. I picked up his AK, released the mag, emptied the chamber, and swung it against the wall a couple of times, splintering the stock. Then I went back down to the other rooms, collected the M16, and put those AKs out of action for a while also.

  Moving over to the window, I gave my people a whistle. Movement up the road attracted my attention. Shit, half a dozen armed, bearded men were running toward us, black robes flapping in the breeze. Three of them ducked into one of the houses thirty meters away. I lost sight of their friends. Time to go. I searched the corpses and their satchels but came up empty-handed. Sporadic firing was beginning again. Exactly how many more Taliban were in the area? It wouldn’t have been a good idea to hang around and conduct a census.

  I took the steps down to the ground floor and contemplated my next decision – leave by the back door or by the front? I figured that my guys would put holes in any enemy fighters who were in full view; and maybe in me, too, if I wasn’t careful. The back door was still closed the way I’d left it, but I wasn’t confident about what might be waiting on the other side. So I moved to the front door and slipped the bolt. It was jammed. The wood was ancient and dried out. I took three steps back, and charged it with my shoulder just as the back door opened a few inches and three grenades rolled in. I hit the door and it splintered into matchsticks. Tangled up in rifle straps, I stumbled and planted my face in the road. And then, behind me, the building exploded in a howl of mudbrick chunks. A torrent of grenade fragments and glass shards warbled as they flew close overhead and landed with a musical tinkle between the Landcruisers and me. Gunfire came next as Taliban fighters charged through the suspect back door and reoccupied the remains of the house that their buddies had just died in.

  I got to my feet, dove for the Landcruisers and scrambled behind them. I was relieved to see Mattock and Bellows hunkered down with Stefanovic, Fallon, and Detmond. They’d taken up firing positions behind the Landcruiser on its side, the one I’d occupied with al-Eqbal. Unfortunately, though, we were now being outflanked by enemy reinforcements and gunfire was coming in on us from a number of directions. It was only a matter of time before the Taliban closed all the angles and started picking us off. Now the assholes were firing on the fuel tanks, too. I smelled diesel. At least it wasn’t gasoline.

  ‘Radio?’ I yelled at Stefanovic.

  He shook his head. ‘According to ops, nothing on the ground this sector.’ He checked his watch. ‘We’ve got Apaches inbound, ETA fifteen minutes.’

  We didn’t have fifteen minutes.

  I took a few seconds to assess Detmond. He was lying on the ground behind the others, going into shock, and not entirely with us. His eyes were closed, but he was moving.

  ‘Wounded in the neck and just below his armpit – he’s lost a lot of blood,’ Fallon informed me, shouting into my ear.

  In fact, the sergeant was lying in a pool of it. We had to get him out of there. He also looked dazed. The blast had deafened him.

  Stefanovic’s hand and M4 were also sticky with blood. He was pale, the color having leached from his face.

  ‘Where’d you get hit?’ I yelled at him.

  He turned slightly. I could see a large chunk of flesh had been chewed out of the back of his arm.

  ‘Need a compression bandage here!’ I shouted at Fallon.

  We had two dead: Rogerson and al-Eqbal. Including myself, Stef, Fallon, Detmond, Mattock and Bellows, there were six of us left. Hang on, someone was missing. Oh, yeah . . .

  ‘Meyers is alive,’ I said. ‘Fallon, you’re with me. We’re going back in there to get him.’

  The look on his face said, You’re shitting me . . .!

  ‘Stand by. I’m gonna check Rogerson’s vehicle first.’

  Mattock and Bellows threw some rounds downrange at the enemy.

  AK rounds buzzed around my head. I could almost see them. I was in the groove, juiced up on adrenalin. It wasn’t that I believed I couldn’t be killed; I just didn’t give a damn if I were.

  The third vehicle was badly mauled, but at least it was still on its tires. I ditched the M16, crawled back to the vehicle and, staying low, opened the door. Specialist Rogerson was belted into the front seat, her hands clasped aroun
d the steering wheel at the ten-two position. I saw that she had beautiful nails; manicured, painted red. She wore a wedding ring. I reached in and released her belt and she slumped sideways across the bench seat. I tried not to think too much about her. The red lights burning on the instrument panel told me that the ignition was on – a good sign – but the motor had stalled. I hoped there was no disabling damage. If this thing wouldn’t start, we were screwed. Leaning in below the steering column, I twisted the ignition key off, and then twisted it on. Nothing. It was dead. Shit. Then I noticed the transmission was in drive. I banged it into park, pressed on the brake with my free hand, gave the key another twist and the motor hummed to life.

  I backed out of the vehicle, sprinted to the others, and tapped Detmond on the shoulder.

  ‘Three minutes!’ I yelled, ‘Then you go!’

  I motioned at Fallon to follow me and we ran at a crouch into the smoking dustbowl behind us. Meyers was in here somewhere, lying in the rubble. We found the old woman, her arm protruding from beneath a ton of broken masonry, then encountered a pile of bloody rags that looked like al-Eqbal’s – but no cousin, no girl, and no Meyers.

  Fallon smelled burning American tobacco through the dust haze and followed the scent. The trail led us to Meyers, propped up against a wall beside a bicycle. The guy was pulling hard on a Marlboro, his boots turned at impossible angles on the ends of his shattered legs. The blast had happened minutes ago; he still had some time before his nerve endings started screaming. I hunkered down beside him and hunted through my medical pack for a shot of morphine to see him through.

  ‘I took a second quick scan out the back and al-Eqbal locked me out,’ he said drowsily. ‘What happened?’

  I pictured the girl pregnant with C4 explosives running into the building next door. ‘No birth control in this place,’ I said. She’d probably run into al-Eqbal’s cousin’s building through an adjoining door that Meyers had missed.

  He nodded, finding the crack about birth control perfectly reasonable, which told me he was also in shock. I found the morphine, administered it to his upper thigh, and then checked his limbs. Both femurs had compound fractures, and the wounds were messy. He would need a good surgeon to save them. I used his blood to paint an ‘M’ on his forehead. Fallon took the defensive position and swept the area while I did what I could to control the bleeding. Carrying him between us with those legs in such bad shape was not an option, and one of us would need to provide covering fire if required.

  I handed his weapon to Fallon. Meyers was no lightweight; this was not going to be easy. I took one of his arms and pulled his torso over my shoulder.

  ‘Help me up,’ I grunted at Fallon.

  I could hear the gun battle behind me in the street intensifying.

  I managed to stand with Fallon’s assistance, squatting Meyers’ two-hundred-plus pounds in a fireman’s carry. I remembered doing this very exercise at Fort Benning, running a mile with some guy across my back who was pretending to be a wounded pilot. But that was a long time ago, when I was younger, flitter and stronger, and before several bullets fired at my ass over the years had torn me a new one.

  ‘Jesus,’ I groaned, ‘what the fuck do you weigh?’

  Meyers was singing a Miller Lite commercial.

  ‘Gone to his happy place,’ suggested Fallon.

  ‘Bastard could’a taken us with him,’ I gasped, sucking oxygen and dust.

  I staggered forward then centered the weight. Meyers grunted. The dust was settling. We had to get back to the Landcruiser before we were fully exposed to the Taliban’s fire. I managed to get through the rubble and come up behind the vehicle without tripping or breaking an ankle, and without being fired upon. I laid Meyers on the ground beside Stefanovic, who was up on one knee in the firing position. His condition was deteriorating fast as his blood leaked away, the bandage saturated. His eyelids were heavy, every blink a microsleep; he was having trouble keeping his weapon aimed anywhere but at the ground. Enemy fire was coming in hot and heavy. We couldn’t hold our position much longer. One Landcruiser, eight passengers, one of them dead.

  ‘Give me your smoke,’ I said to Stef, seeing the canisters hanging from his webbing. His wounded arm wouldn’t allow him the movement required to unhitch them. His eyes moved around, unable to focus. An incoming round whined off the road beside my hand, fragments of stone chips ripping through the fabric of the battle uniform around my wrist.

  ‘You’re a ghost,’ Stefanovic murmured, and he dragged his bloody fingers down my face, across my mouth.

  I spat the copper taste of his blood out of my mouth and took his canisters.

  ‘Smoke,’ I said to Fallon.

  He handed his over and I collected more from Detmond and Meyers.

  ‘Get everyone in the vehicle,’ I yelled.

  I popped two canisters and threw them upwind. Ribbons of green and red smoke swirled and drifted down the road toward us. I ran to open the driver’s door of the third Landcruiser and verified that the engine was still running. Then I sprinted around to the back and opened the rear hatch. The enemy figured something was up and concentrated their fire on the upright vehicle, but the smoke was making their aim uncertain. A volley of AK rounds, sounding like a heavy-metal drum solo, punched new holes all over the roof of the Landcruiser shielding us.

  I dashed back and hoisted Meyers across my shoulders once more. With Fallon shooting over us, we made it to the open rear hatch. I laid Meyers sideways across the width of the floor and hooked one of his arms around a rear seatbelt anchored to the car’s bodywork above his head. Detmond helped Stefanovic into the back seat; Bellows and Mattock provided covering fire. I ran back to the driver’s door. Fallon had climbed in and was struggling to prop Rogerson against the passenger door. There wasn’t enough room; at least, not for me.

  I popped smoke, tossed it, then slammed the doors shut.

  ‘C’mon, Cooper!’ Fallon shouted. ‘Get in!’

  ‘Go!’ I said, smacking the roof with the flat of my hand.

  The incoming fire was getting more accurate. Holes were gouged in the hood; the windscreen shattered. Fallon was about to argue but changed his mind. He jumped back behind the wheel, jammed it into drive, and stomped on the gas. The Toyota took off, wheels spinning in the packed dirt, the vehicle fishtailing into the smoke, drawing some of the fire and leaving a vortex of red and green swirls in its wake. Within seconds, my unit was out of range and out of danger.

  I once more took up a position behind the second Landcruiser, the ground crimson with coagulating blood. I had my M4 and the captured M16s. I put a couple of them on single shot and fired them from the hip at the buildings occupied by the enemy. Changing mags, I did the same again. When those mags were spent, I threw more smoke and emptied another couple of mags, changing to three shot bursts, hoping the opposition might think there was more than one idiot left down here.

  I put down the M16 with the others, crawled to the rear bumper, popped two canisters, the last of them, and threw them short. Bright red smoke swirled over my position, but mostly over the wrecked building behind me. A barrage of lead poured in, cutting me off from those M16s. I had to leave them, and crept through the smoke and the rubble of the destroyed building, back to where we’d found Meyers.

  Still no sign of those damn Apaches. Time to boogie.

  The choking, cloying dust and smoke stung my eyes as I ran crouched over. I came out into the open and movement stopped me. Two kids with AKs were creeping in my direction. I saw them before they saw me. The way they were moving, it was obvious that they were hoping to come up behind my position. I recognized them. They were the boys outside al-Eqbal’s cousin’s place when we rolled up. Maybe they were the ones who blew the whistle on our arrival to the Taliban. One of them looked right at me and his eyes widened. Terror filled his face. He pointed at me and screamed. His buddy did likewise, and they both turned around and ran, which was a relief. Killing kids, even ones that would happily plant me in the ground, wa
s not something I wanted to have to answer to myself for.

  I wondered what had spooked them.

  With still no sign of the choppers, I followed through with my plan, hopped on the pushbike I had seen beside Meyers and pedaled back to the base.

  Photograph

  ‘We sure as shit don’t need this kind of crap.’ Lieutenant Colonel Charles Mertins tossed a copy of the New York Times on the desk in front of me. ‘You want to explain what got into you here?’

  Mertins’s nose was white with anger. It was a big nose and didn’t go with the shape of his long, thin head, or the size of his ears, which reminded me of Dumbo’s. In fact, I wondered if Mertins had been assembled from spare parts. My commander wasn’t my kind of guy, or anyone else’s as far as I knew. A guardsman from Montana, he’d left the OSI in the mid-nineties and joined the Helena PD. He was a detail hound, not very popular, and within a year they’d packed him off to Siberia – running the evidence lockup in the basement of a secondary building at the bottom of a long stairwell. His unit’s call-up to Afghanistan was like giving him parole.

  ‘I wouldn’t know, sir,’ I said.

  ‘You don’t know? That’s not good enough, Cooper. You usually go out on a mission looking like this?’

  ‘No, sir,’ I said. The photo was printed in full color beneath the headline ‘Harrowing escape in Afghanistan – Hero up for Air Force Cross’. I was familiar with the picture, of course, as was everyone here at Camp Eggers. Fallon had snapped it with his iPhone when I rode into camp on the pushbike. That it had reached the media was news to me. Even more surprising was this business about the decoration. Aside from the fact that I was being considered for it, the consideration for a thing like that was supposed to be a closely held secret. Someone must have leaked it.

  I took another glance at the photo. The powdered masonry dust gave my head the color of bone. The overhead position of the sun caused black shadows to gather in my eye sockets. I looked like a skull, an extra macabre touch being the crimson stripes of Stefanovic’s blood that he’d finger-painted down across my mouth. I recalled the terror on the faces of those Afghan kids when they looked up and got a load of me. Thank God the fight had gone right out of them – I owed Allah one for that.