by Richard Fox
Greely reached out and touched the rusty handle of the gate; he slowly manipulated it, checking to see if it was locked. Greely reached back and slapped Kilo’s thigh; he passed the slap back. Once the slap made it to Shelton, he’d send it forward to let Greely, the point man, know the stack was ready to enter the gate.
Something thumped into the dirt beside him. A plastic pipe, which was the length of his forearm, was in the dirt, a grenade fuse in one end. A grenade fuse with no pin or safety spoon.
Shelton pushed the man in front of him with all his might as he yelled, “Grenade!” He threw up his arms as a white flash took over his entire world.
“What the hell was that?” Young asked as the sound of the thunderclap faded away. They were next to the entrance of their target building, seconds from kicking in the door.
“We’ll figure it out later. I’ll take Nesbitt around the side, make sure no one sneaks out,” Ritter said.
“Just don’t go all the way around. Bullets are indiscriminate once they leave the barrel,” Young said.
Ritter pulled his pistol out and thumbed the safety off. He inched toward the corner, then swept around with his pistol at the ready.
Young turned his attention to his stack. Private Thomas, the point man, was positioned to kick in the door. The young Soldier looked like he was on the verge of exploding with nervous energy.
“OK, violence of action on three…two…one!” Young yelled.
Thomas used all the power of his wiry frame to kick the door, which shook but didn’t open. Thomas cursed and kicked again. The door flew open, and Thomas froze in the doorway. A shot rang out. Thomas grunted and fell backward to the ground.
Young didn’t wait—he pushed his men into the house.
They ran into a wall of high-pitched Arabic. A man, his eyes wide with terror, held a gun to the head of a woman he used as a human shield, a child in her arms. An old man sat on a bed, his arms raised in surrender.
Young aimed his gun at the armed man’s head and joined the chorus of shouts for the man to drop his weapon. The insurgent waved the pistol in front of him, threatening everyone in the room before dropping the gun to the ground. He kept the woman between him and the Americans.
Young looked over his shoulder at Thomas, who lay on his side, his back to Young. Thomas groaned as his legs writhed in the sand. Young had no idea how badly he was hurt, but his Soldier needed him. Now.
Young looked back at the unarmed insurgent, rage building as he raised his weapon and aimed it at the insurgent’s head. He put his finger on the trigger and damned the consequences.
“Baba alleh!” Ritter yelled from the other side of a window. The insurgent’s head snapped around to look at Ritter, and he looked right into the barrel of Ritter’s pistol. Ritter fired.
The bullet shattered the glass a millisecond before it passed through the insurgent’s skull. Blood mist hit the shrieking woman in the face, and a chunk of skull landed in the old man’s lap. The insurgent stood for another second before he keeled over like a felled tree.
The woman clutched the child to her breast and fell to her knees, doing her best to cover the child with her body.
“Don’t let ’em move,” Young ordered.
Ritter ran back around the corner and knelt next to Thomas, who lay on his back. He looked Thomas over; he couldn’t see any blood.
“Shit, Sarge. That fucking hurt,” Thomas said. He cracked open his vest and looked down at his bloodless chest. Ritter ran his hands over Thomas’s chest and stuffed them between his back and armor; his hands came back clean.
Thomas ignored the ministrations and pulled the armored plate from his vest. A bullet was embedded in the cracked plate. Thomas looked at the bit of metal that had nearly ended his life and smiled. “Works as advertised!” he said.
“Then get off your ass and get back to work,” Young snapped. Thomas chuckled and put the plate back into his armor. A cracked plate was better than no plate at all.
Ritter left Young and entered the house. The woman was on the bed next to the old man, a bawling toddler on her lap. Nesbitt kept his weapon on the trio as the rest of the fire team ransacked the house.
“No one touch the body,” Ritter ordered. He tapped Nesbitt and motioned for him to join the search.
The woman wore a black hijab; it had an elegant cut and was inlaid with gold, and only her head and face were exposed. Ritter was perplexed. What was a wealthy woman doing out here? She had large black eyes and dark locks that fell to her shoulders. Red flecks of the dead man’s blood marred half her face. She hadn’t cleaned herself; she’d spent all her attention on calming the child and blocking his view of the corpse. The old man couldn’t see much of anything; cataracts clouded his eyes.
“Are you hurt?” Ritter asked.
“No, fine. He has a suicide belt on. Be careful,” she said as she pointed to the dead body. A puddle of blood grew beneath its shattered skull.
“I know. Where is the Saudi?”
“He’s at the big house, toward the desert.” The boy struggled in her grasp and pulled at her hair; he cried harder after catching a glimpse of Ritter. Her eyes pleaded with Ritter.
“Take him and the old man into the courtyard. Hurry.” Ritter positioned himself between the body and the woman as she stood up and hustled out of the room, leading the old man by the hand.
“Young, keep them under guard until we’re done here,” Ritter said.
Young, busy rifling through a sack of dirty laundry, nodded. The Cajun looked over at the corpse and shook his head. “Sir, I got your back, but he wasn’t armed when you shot him. You think the lawyers will be mad? They won’t find out from me. Fucker shot Thomas and all.”
Ritter pulled his Applegate-Fairbairn combat knife from the sheath on his chest and cut open the corpse’s shirt. Lumps wrapped in the black plastic of a garbage bag were fastened to an ammo belt around his midriff. Ritter shifted the body onto its side, displaying a pair of grenade fuses jammed into separate lumps; the pin rings dangled in the air.
“He was going for those when I shot him.” Ritter pulled the body onto its back and looked at the slack face. “Nobody I know,” Ritter said.
“Sir! They need you on the company frequency,” Thomas said as he entered the room. He handed a radio mike to Ritter as he looked at the body of the man who’d tried to kill him. “Good thing he’s dead. I was going to shove that gun right up his ass and—”
“Young, tear this place apart for anything useful, then bring the civilians over to the big house. I have to go.” Ritter handed Young a digital camera from his shoulder pocket. “Get his photo. Maybe we can ID him later.”
Young took the camera and watched Ritter leave. “Wait, sir! Take someone with you,” Young protested.
“I’ll be fine. You know what to do,” Ritter said without a break in his stride.
Mukhtar spied on his financier’s house through a pair of binoculars. Americans had gone in minutes ago, and there was no sign of Atif. Atif was a weakling but one with an acute sense of self-preservation. He should have bolted from that house the moment he saw the helicopters coming in to land.
“Mukhtar, two trucks are ready,” Hamsa said from behind him.
Mukhtar took his eyes off the house and pointed a rude finger to Hamsa. “Get all the trucks ready, like I said! Every mujahideen that can carry a weapon will attack the crusaders on my order. Hurry!”
Hamsa vanished from the doorway; his voice boomed across the cluster of homes, where over fifty of Mukhtar’s al-Qaeda fighters were readying their weapons and performing prebattle prayers. Mukhtar didn’t want to kill Atif, but his death was a better outcome than his capture by the Americans. Besides, the donors in Saudi Arabia wouldn’t mind another martyr for the cause; they might even throw in a bonus with their next payment.
“A crusader is leaving the whore’s house,” the sniper said. Mukhtar and the sniper, late of the Yemeni Special Forces, shared space on an office desk they’d dragged into the
middle of the room. The desk offered them both a stable platform and kept them away from the window, where they would be spotted easily. The sniper could hit a target over a kilometer away with his Dragunov rifle; he could reach the two groups of Americans with ease.
Mukhtar spotted the American as he shut the gate to the distant house. The American turned around, and Mukhtar recognized him instantly.
“Kill him! Kill him now!” The tendons in his hand went white as he squeezed the binoculars in rage.
“He’s moving, and the wind will make—” The protests stopped as Mukhtar reached for his pistol. The sniper exhaled all the air from his lungs and fired.
Mukhtar scanned the desert between the two homes, hoping to see Ritter crumpled to the ground. Ritter was still moving, now running at a half crouch. “Again,” Mukhtar said.
The sniper fired again. Mukhtar’s heart soared with joy as Ritter pitched forward, but the American rolled to his feet and kept running toward Atif’s house. Ritter broke up his speed and direction by zigzagging, which elicited half-mumbled curses from the sniper. The Dragunov boomed again. The bullet struck a rock in front of Ritter, who kept moving.
“I have him this time,” the sniper said. A murderous hiss invaded their room as a bullet struck the sniper in the throat. The Yemeni couldn’t voice his shock as he fell to the ground like a puppet with its strings cut. The body slumped against the desk, its head dangling over a shoulder by a thin piece of stretched skin. Mukhtar dropped behind the desk out of reflex.
The Americans brought their own sniper, Mukhtar realized. The American sniper sent another calling card with another bullet that burst through the desk; wood splinters peppered Mukhtar’s face. Mukhtar fell to the ground and crawled to the door. Another bullet struck the Dragunov lying on the desk; it bucked into the air and clattered to the ground next to the dead sniper.
Ritter’s lungs burned, and his vision blurred from exhaustion as he slammed into the outer wall of Shelton’s target. He didn’t wait to catch his breath but kept a hand to the wall as he made his way to the half-open gate, wheezing the entire time. The seventy pounds of gear he carried on his person as well as a sniper’s best effort to end Ritter’s life made the run a miserable experience.
He opened the gate to the courtyard and met Sergeant Greely, who raised his weapon to aim it at Ritter. Ritter spun away from the gate as a burst of gunfire snapped through where he’d been standing only a moment earlier.
“Oh shit, sir! You OK?” Greely yelled.
Ritter had to swallow what little spit he had left to croak out, “Fine. I’m fine!”
“That’s why you announce yourself before you enter a compound!” Greely said a bit sheepishly.
“Goddamn it! Don’t shoot me! How’s that work?” Ritter said as he peeked into the courtyard. Satisfied no one was aiming at him, he entered the courtyard.
Greely kept his rifle pointed to the ground as Ritter bent over, trying to catch his breath in his newfound sanctuary. Ritter took a swig from his Camelbak and looked around. A white sedan was in the courtyard along with a pair of rusted bicycles and a pile of shovels.
“Sir, I’m really sorry. Kilo just took out a sniper that was shooting at us, and you just appeared out of nowhere. It was pure reflex—that’s all,” Greely said, his voice on the verge of pleading.
Ritter spat out the Camelbak tube and looked at Greely. “Save it. Where’s Shelton?”
Greely pointed at the house.
Ritter found Shelton on a stretcher. His friend was unconscious; blood from his nose had stained his upper lip and chin, and an IV was in his arm. Porter sat next to his company commander, taking his pulse with his fingers pressed against his throat.
Ritter wanted to fall to his knees, shake him awake, and demand how he could have been so stupid as to get tagged out here in the ass end of nowhere, but that wasn’t an option. With Shelton out of action, Ritter was in charge.
“What happened?” Ritter asked Porter.
“I think it was a flash bang grenade. The captain’s knocked out, but his vitals are stable,” Porter said, his voice too loud to compensate for his recovering eardrums. “We need to evac him.”
“Monitor him. Let me know if his condition changes,” Ritter said, raising his voice so Porter could hear.
Kovalenko and Jasim were standing over a slight man in a pure-white dishdasha, a briefcase on the ground next to him.
“Who’s this?” Ritter asked.
Kovalenko’s face broke with relief. “Sir, thank God you’re here. Captain Shelton—”
“I know. Who’s this?”
“Son of a bitch tossed a flash bang over the wall, then tried to make a break for it. He made it halfway over the wall before he saw me and tried to get back inside. I yanked him over the wall, and he got a bit bruised up in the fall. Won’t stop bitching about it either. Jasim says his accent isn’t Iraqi, but he isn’t sure where he’s from.” Kovalenko kicked the briefcase. “He won’t give us the combo for this either.”
“Find anything else in the house?”
“No, my guys are looking through it now,” Kovalenko said.
“Get on the radio and get a medevac for Shelton. We need an extraction in thirty minutes. Got it?” Kovalenko left Ritter and went upstairs, where Channing had set up an antenna for the company radio.
“Jasim,” Ritter said to the interpreter, “beat it.”
Jasim scurried away.
“What’s your name?” Ritter asked the prisoner, his hands bound by two sets of zip ties. The prisoner looked up at him from behind a pair of round glasses; contempt burned behind his eyes.
“I need to see your doctor. I think I have a concussion after that lieutenant threw me to the ground.” Ritter heard a trace of the Saudi accent as the man spoke. Ritter knew his game; the detainee would claim medical issues to delay providing any substantive answers. The longer Ritter played along, the more power the detainee had over the conversation. Ritter ran out of patience the moment he saw his friend on a stretcher.
Ritter’s hand shot out and crushed the man’s ear in his fist. He twisted his grip as he spoke. “I didn’t ask you about your head. If your hearing is a problem, then you won’t mind if I rip this ear off, will you?”
“Atif Mohammed Jaffar! My name is—” Atif stopped speaking as Ritter let go of his ear.
Ritter reached for the briefcase and saw Porter watching them. His point made, Ritter was confident he wouldn’t have to motivate this detainee any further. He’d deal with any of Porter’s objections later.
“What’s the combination?” Ritter said.
“I don’t know! I don’t even live here. I am an anthropology student studying the—” Atif stopped cold, his eyes glued to the name tape on Ritter’s armor. Atif knew of him, at least.
“I don’t know what Mukhtar told you, but the truth is far, far worse,” Ritter said. “Combination, now.”
“Two two four eight seven,” Atif said.
Ritter used the combination to open the briefcase. It contained several Saudi Arabian passports—all with Atif’s photo but only one with that name—and stacks of newly minted American hundred-dollar bills.
“Sir! Sir, we have a big problem!” Kovalenko said from the top of the stairs. Ritter closed the briefcase and handed it to Greely.
Ritter made his way to the roof, where Channing and Kovalenko waited next to a satellite antenna Channing had set up behind the large orange water tank. Kilo was prone behind his M14. Beside him Sergeant Morales was scanning for targets. A breeze whipped past them; blown sand made faint clicking sounds as it traveled across the rooftop. Ritter looked up; the sky was trending to orange from the skyborne sand. He could see across the river to the decrepit power plant where Jennifer had died; it squatted against the river like a homeless man waiting for a handout.
“Sir, we’ve got a medevac inbound for Captain Shelton, but I’ve lost contact with brigade. I can relay through Beast Company in Yousifiya; they say one of our Black Hawks is
down with a mechanical issue. They might have it back up in an hour.” Channing’s voice cracked as he spoke.
Ritter looked across the desert to the house with the Iraqi family and the would-be suicide bomber. “Tell brigade we want the medevac and the Black Hawk that can still fly here ASAP for extraction. We’ll mark the landing zone with yellow smoke.” He looked at Kovalenko. “We can stuff everyone into both helicopters, but it’ll be tight. Next we need—”
“Sir! We got inbound,” Morales yelled from the roof’s edge.
I knew this day wouldn’t be boring, Ritter thought.
Three pickup trucks kicked up dust as they drove toward Ritter’s position from the cluster of buildings to the south. Ritter could make out the vehicles and not much else.
“They’re hostile. Machine guns mounted on the trucks, and they’re all wearing ski masks,” Kilo said, his scope an invaluable asset at a time like this.
“This wasn’t in the briefing,” Kovalenko said.
Ritter knelt beside the sniper. “Kilo, if you have a shot, go ahead and—”
Kilo’s M14 cracked as it fired. The three trucks advanced unabated. Ritter hurried back to the water tank.
“Wide left. You got to compensate for the wind,” Morales said.
Ritter grabbed Kovalenko by the front of his body armor. “Lieutenant, get your men in the windows and anywhere they can shoot from cover. We have about three minutes before they’re in range.” Ritter let him go. The lieutenant nodded and made for the stairs.
Kilo fired again. A second later Morales whooped and said, “Got him. He fell right off the back!”
“Get Sergeant Young on the radio,” Ritter said to Channing. He went to his hands and knees and crawled toward the sniper team. He peeked over the two-foot-high ledge and saw the trucks more clearly. There were several men in the bed of each pickup.
The M14 fired, and the brass from Kilo’s spent 7.62mm round bounced off Ritter’s helmet. The windshield on the nearest pickup shattered, and the truck jackknifed into the air. The insurgents in the bed went flying before bouncing across the hard-packed dirt. Ritter swore he heard a crunch as they landed.
