Riding the Red Horse

by Christopher Nuttall

  The troop split in two to avoid the improvised explosive device and continued toward the village, reaching the first houses. The village was dark. There were no street lights, and electricity was still just a concept to the villagers. None of the windows they could see had any light showing through them.

  “Knight 02, Knight 01,” called the CO. “We have the package,” he said, indicating they had secured the corrals with the women in them.

  “Roger,” replied LCDR Bringle, Knight 02. “We are entering the village. All quiet.”

  The first ranks moved into town, staying to the sides of the dirt street. Typical of the area, the locals lived in mud houses with thatched roofs. All were single story, and most of them were only one or two rooms. Large iroko trees grew between every house or two, casting shadows that seemed to move in the moonlight.

  “Shadow, Knight 01,” the CO called. “Are you in communication with Taxi?” he asked, referring to the large open-backed trucks that were to take the women to the city of Gamawa once they reached the extraction point. Led by the other members of Mr. Jones’ group, the ten trucks were waiting several miles away where their motors wouldn’t be heard across the plains.

  “Knight, Shadow,” replied the aviator, “that is affirmative. They are waiting at the extraction point.”

  “Roger. Please let them know that we need them to rendezvous with us here. We have too many injured to evac.”

  “Roger, Knight 01, we’ll send them your way.”

  “Thanks, Knight out.”

  The troop advanced another block and arrived at the headquarters building, which sat on the west side of a small square. The building was obviously important, as it was the only one that was illuminated, the only one made out of modern building materials, and the only one that was two stories. Several vehicles waited out front, including two with mounted machine guns. Master Chief Rowntree could hear a humming from behind the house that was probably the generator powering the lights.

  A light flared in front of the building as a man lit a cigarette. The troop froze in the shadows.

  “Knight 02, Shadow, be advised the terrorists know something is on. The sentries at both the south and east ends just went to a higher state of vigilance. Movement! The technical at the east end of town just started up and is headed toward your position.”

  Shit, thought Rowntree. “Richardson, take the smoker in front of the building,” he ordered. “Jenkins, there’s a technical incoming from the east. Get ready to take it out. Snipers, be prepared to kill the occupants.”

  Petty Officer Jenkins could see the jeep coming through the night scope of his .50 caliber M82 Barrett rifle, and he focused on its engine block. The one sniper that Rowntree hadn’t used in the first attack, Jenkins was armed with a rifle was both anti-personnel and anti-material; it could easily penetrate the jeep’s hood and disrupt its motor.

  Rowntree heard a cough and saw the man in front of the building fall. The technical was now a block away, coming slowly through the dirt streets.

  “Standby…standby…now!” Rowntree said, and the snipers fired. The technical’s motor and occupants died at the same time, and it coasted unmanned toward one of the mud houses across from the headquarters building. Two of the SEALs ran forward and put shoulders to it, stopping it before it could crash into the house. They checked the vehicle’s occupants; all three were dead.

  Bang-Bang-Bang!-Bang!-Bang! A rifle on full automatic fired from one of the windows of the headquarters building, and bullets ricocheted off of the technical and whined into the night. Not all of them missed; one hit Petty Officer Higuchi, and he spun around and fell to the ground.

  Bang! Bang! Bang-Bang-Bang! A second rifle joined the first, and Petty Officer Evans dove behind the vehicle for cover.

  “They know we’re here,” said Rowntree. “Light ‘em up!”

  Twelve Heckler and Koch MP7 submachine guns returned fire into the building, along with several of the sniper rifles, and fire from the building soon ceased. Petty Officer Burton ran up to the building from the side and tossed a grenade through the broken glass of a window. “Fire in the hole!” he called as he ducked back around the side of the house. The grenade detonated, blowing out the remainder of the glass.

  Master Chief Rowntree scanned the buildings around the square and saw movement from several of them. “Alpha squad, take the building. Bravo squad, find cover and watch for terrorists in the nearby buildings and the streets. Rogers, rig the vehicles out front for demo. We’ll blow them when we leave.”

  A TAC-338 sniper rifle coughed. “Hostile down,” said Petty Officer Holm.

  Alpha Squad stacked at the front door of the building and indicated their readiness. “Fire in the hole,” called Petty Officer Parker, flipping a stun grenade through one of the broken windows. The flashbang detonated and Alpha Squad surged through the door. One MP7 fired a quick burst, and then it was quiet. As the squad moved toward the stairs they could hear rifle fire from outside the building, and they knew they needed to hurry.

  “Knights, Shadow, be advised they just called in the sentries. There is a technical inbound from the south and terrorists coming from the south and east.”

  Chief Petty Officer Bill Mayes, Alpha Squad’s leader, jogged to the stairwell and peeked around the corner, but withdrew his head as gunfire from above filled the stairway wall with holes.

  “Need a grenade here, Barnard,” said Mayes.

  As Petty Officer Barnard went to join Chief Mayes, Petty Officer Stevens and Petty Officer Rodriguez documented the men they had killed. Stevens pulled out his camera and tried to match the dead men’s faces with the known Boko Haram leaders, but didn’t find them. He snapped a picture of each corpse, while Petty Officer Rodriguez took DNA samples from the men for further analysis.

  “Angle a grenade up the stairs,” instructed Mayes. “There’s two of them at the top.”

  “Got it, Chief,” said Barnard. He leaned in and fired a 40mm grenade up the stairs with his M203 launcher.

  The grenade bounced off the wall and detonated. Mayes stuck his head into the stairwell, but neither man was visible at the top of the steps. Steeling himself, he said, “Let’s go!” and ran up the stairs, two at a time. Reaching the top, he saw that the two men were both wounded and stunned. He put a burst of 4.6mm rounds from his MP7 into each of them, and they stopped moving. A door slammed, and he looked up. There were only two doors on the hallway; the further one had just closed.

  Mayes indicated there was someone behind the second door. Watching it, he sent Barnard and Parker through the closer one.

  “Shit,” said Petty Officer Barnard, who was the first through the door. The room was small, just barely big enough to hold the two beds that were in it. A young woman was tied naked to each bed, and both women showed multiple signs of having been abused, in addition to being blindfolded and gagged. No one else was in the room. “I’ll cut ‘em loose,” said Barnard, who had first aid supplies in his kit. “You go help Chief.”

  Petty Officer Parker went back into the hallway and found Petty Officer Stevens and Petty Officer Rodriguez cataloguing the two dead terrorists. Stevens looked up. “Hey, Chief, it looks like these are Akintola and Balewa, the two lieutenants.”

  “Then that just leaves Shekau in the other room,” replied Chief Mayes. The men advanced to the other door. “Locked,” said Mayes after trying the handle.

  “Got it,” said Petty Officer Parker, pulling out a roll of detonating cord. He looped some around the door handle and along the door jamb. The men moved back and Chief Mayes nodded.

  Parker fired the detonator and the det cord blew off the door handle and blasted in the door.

  Chief Mayes led his troops to the door, gun at his shoulder, ready to fire. As he came around the corner, he spotted a man holding two women in front of him, a pistol to each of their heads.

  Seeing Chief Mayes, the man said something in his native language of Hausa, and then he added, “I kill, I kill!”

&nbs
p; “Not if I kill you first,” said Chief Mayes. He didn’t know whether Shekau was threatening to kill him or the two women; he also didn’t care. He fired once, putting a bullet through Shekau’s forehead. Both women screamed as Shekau fell backward.

  “Parker, take care of the women and get them downstairs. Stevens, Rodriguez, get him into the database and let’s get the hell out of here.”

  A new sound joined the gunfight out front. Until now, Mayes had only heard the sounds of the terrorists’ assault rifles; now a big machine gun joined the fight. It fired on full automatic with its distinctive “chunk, chunk, chunk, chunk, chunk” sound. “Someone’s got a .50 cal,” he said. “We better hurry.”

  Alpha Squad ran down the stairs. A second burst of machine gun fire followed the first, and then everything went quiet outside. Chief Mayes came out of the headquarters building to find Master Chief Rowntree standing in one of the terrorists’ vehicles, manning the .50 caliber machine gun mounted to it. A wisp of smoke trailed from the barrel as he tracked it back and forth across the surrounding houses. Two of the houses were full of holes and looked like they might fall down at any minute. The technical from the southern sentry position had crashed into a house across the square and was smoking.

  “We got Shekau and his two lieutenants,” said Chief Mayes, reporting in. “We also recovered a few more of the women; they were in bad shape.” He pointed at the machine gun. “Taking a little target practice?”

  “They didn’t realize how serious we were,” said Rowntree. “I just thought I’d show them.”

  “Shadow, Knight 02,” radioed LCDR Bringle from the cover of the next vehicle. “We are mission complete and headed to Knight 01’s position. What does the road look like between here and there?”

  “Knight 01 is three blocks north of your position,” replied the aviator. “We don’t see anything in between. I think they’re keeping their heads down after that last burst of .50 cal.”

  “Let’s go join the CO,” said LCDR Bringle. “Move ‘em out, Master Chief.”

  “All right Gold Knights, we’re not getting paid by the hour,” transmitted Rowntree. “Miller and Reid, you’ve got point with Ben. Let’s move.”

  The troop advanced up the north road. The two named petty officers led the way with the combat assault dog, one on each side of the street. Most of the able-bodied troops followed them, with the wounded in trail. In addition to Petty Officer Higuchi, who had been hit in the shoulder, Petty Officer Fields had a minor leg wound and Petty Officer Sparks had been hit in the arm. The bullet that hit Sparks had broken his right humerus and his arm was in a sling, so he was down to just the HK45CT pistol in his left hand.

  “Hey, Master Chief,” transmitted Chief Petty Officer Reese, who was in the trail position at the back of the formation, “they’re getting bold back here. Looks like they’re manning up the jeeps to come after us.”

  “Petty Officer Rogers, do something about that, would you?”

  “Sure thing, Master Chief,” replied Rogers. He pushed the button on his transmitter, and the three vehicles detonated.

  Chief Reese watched as the two terrorists that had been getting into the technical went cart wheeling through the air. “Disregard my last,” Reese transmitted, “I think they just changed their minds.”

  The troop reached the north end of town without seeing any more terrorists and joined up with the rest of the squadron. Almost all of the women and girls had been loaded into the trucks, which had arrived five minutes earlier. With the extra assistance, the loading process was finished in two minutes, and the trucks roared off to the east, where the sky was just starting to lighten.

  “Gold Knights, Knight 01,” said the CO, “fall back to our rendezvous point and prepare to depart.” The rendezvous point was in the trees, 100 meters to the west; the squadron was gathered within minutes.

  “You know, Master Chief, we’re like thieves in the night,” said Petty Officer Parker as he put on his flippers for the short swim downstream to the extraction point. He nodded back toward the village, where everything was once again dark and quiet. “No one’s going to even know we were here.”

  Master Chief Rowntree looked back at the village and shook his head. “No,” he said, “you’ve got it all wrong; we’re not thieves. It’s like that old Jimmy Buffett song. We ain’t stealing, we’re just taking back.”

  Editor's Introduction to:

  A RELIABLE SOURCE

  by Vox Day

  Vox has the distinction of being the first and, so far, only member of the Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America ever to be formally purged from that organization. I said “distinction,” and I meant “distinction,” and in the most positive way you may imagine. A man ought to be known by his enemies. Being named a public enemy by SFWA, a once-great organization now deep in the throes of the Social Justice Cultural Revolution and latter-day Great Leap Forward, a mental and moral sewer, an intellectual black hole, a vile and despicable den where calling a woman a “lady” constitutes capital thoughtcrime, says nothing but good about the enemy so designated.

  Vox is a Hugo-nominated science fiction author and the Lead Editor for Castalia House. He is also a professional game designer, a three-time nationally syndicated columnist, a three-tongue polyglot, and the co-founder of the techno band, Psykosonik, which has four Billboard Top Forty Club Chart hits to its credit.

  Although we’re officially co-creators, Riding the Red Horse is more Vox’s brainchild than mine. He brings to this first volume “A Reliable Source”, a frightening glimpse into a future all too probable. Indeed, that future becomes more probable, shading towards the inevitable, with each passing day. It was perhaps already present in the form of my old Arabic instructor, Ali Abdel Saoud Mohamed, former Egyptian Army officer, former US Army Sergeant, and all-around helluva nice guy when he wasn’t engaged in things like trying to blow up the old World Trade Center.

  When I start explaining the principles of war, and discuss my own suggested additions to those principles, think about “Shape” in relation to the world of “A Reliable Source”, a place where there is no longer shape, where everything is an amorphous blur, a place where the threat is everywhere, and where there is neither security nor sanctuary. For anyone.

  A RELIABLE SOURCE

  by Vox Day

  Even with the drone's high-resolution camera, the streamed video appeared blurry at the edges on the massive high-definition screen in the middle of the Operations Center. The GPS coordinates across the bottom were sharp and clear, however. Just moments ago, three men exited the building over which the camera sights had been hovering and climbed into a white Jeep Grand Cherokee that was parked near the side entrance. No sooner had the third man closed the rear driver-side door than the vehicle disappeared in a flash of bright light, followed by a billowing cloud of white smoke.

  “Bang, you're dead,” a young 2nd lieutenant cried exultantly.

  “Settle down, Wexsler,” barked Captain Hainesworth. He glanced at Ronald, who was too busy frowning at some notes he'd marked on legal pad from an earlier briefing to have noticed the lieutenant's outburst. “Sorry, Colonel.”

  “What's that?” Colonel Ronald M. James, Wing Commander of the 111th Fighter Wing, wasn't paying attention. “That's a confirmed kill. No question concerning the identities of the three targets?”

  “None whatsoever, Colonel. We had solid intel from NSA.”

  “Very good, Captain. Who was flying?”

  “Major McGinness was the pilot, sir.”

  “A nice clean kill. No collateral damage. That's what I like to see.” Ronald scribbled a brief note on his pad, reminding himself to review the After Action Report and put the captain in for a medal. He was overdue. “Tell the major I said as much.”

  “Of course, Colonel.”

  The three militants never had a chance. The MQ-13 Grimm could carry 1,500 pounds of ordnance, which usually took the form of GBU-42 PLH bombs and AGM-117 Hellfire III air-to-ground missiles.
It was also equipped with a pair of mini-ATAS missiles and an XM-2 autofletchette for defense against enemy drones. It could stay in the air for 96 hours, floating patiently high above its unknowing targets, waiting until the right opportunity presented itself.

  Judging by the size of the explosion, the white vehicle had been taken out by a Hellfire. And just like that, Ronald could scratch two more names off the Pentagon's list of most wanted militants. Which was certainly timely, considering his meeting in Washington this afternoon; being able to report the kills in person to the Commander of Strategic Air-To-Ground Operations, more commonly known as SATGO, would be one more checked box on his eventual ticket out of Willow Grove. The mission had actually been completed several hours ago, before he'd even arrived in the op center, but he'd wanted to personally review the recording before he departed in case he was asked any questions about it.

  Not that he minded life in the suburban Pennsylvania town. Jennifer enjoyed its proximity to the civilized amenities of Philadelphia and the public schools were a damned sight better than they'd been on his last two assignments. Bruce was the proud third-string defensive end on the junior high football team and Michaela was active in gymastics as well as some sort of knitting group, if he understood correctly.

  But the fact was that the 111th Fighter Wing was a National Air Guard unit, not a proper Air Force unit, its manned aircraft had been permanently grounded seven years ago, and an air base located out in the middle of suburban Pennsylvania was no place to win a general's stars. He'd made full bird four years ago and leaped at the chance to command the UAV base established there because he knew drones were the future of air combat. But since then, he'd learned that the promotions and plum assignments were still mostly going to the traditional flyboys commanding bomber wings and the sort of fighter wings that still had real planes and pilots.