by Glynn James
Nobody really had time for wheel reinvention.
As Raible dove in, Lovell stood aside and let him take the lead. Handon and Juice got the impression this material was pro forma at this point – like they’d executed this mission profile many times. Most of what changed from one scavenging mission to the next was just the layout of the target buildings, the design of the harbor – and the threat from the closest population centers.
Raible took them through their plans for infiltration, exfiltration, and actions-on and time on target – as well as a host of logistical, contingency, and mission-essential tasks for the day. There were annexes on weather, terrain, and enemy movements; radio frequencies, ISR, mission support, and timing for SITREPs. Other slides listed assets, specified tasks, the operational environment, maneuver, fire support, mobility and survivability, command and control, and force protection.
There was a slide for medical (including medevac procedures and quarantine), plus emergency plans of action, rally and rendezvous points, and other actions-on – including ambush, separation, and lost comms.
Mainly, Raible illustrated how the mission accomplished the commander’s intent – which was “get us a whole lot of shit we desperately need; try not to get killed doing it” – and conformed roughly to his concept of operations (CONOP).
Handon was impressed. It wasn’t so much pro forma as it was professional, and comprehensive. He was reminded once again that military operations are always life-or-death matters. And there could be no glossing of the details, nor doing things in a half-assed manner.
“Looks good,” Drake said. “As far as I’m concerned, you’re go.” He stood as the lights came up. “Just keep clearly in mind our priorities. Find us ammo, especially small-arms ammo, and other ordnance. We also critically need fuel – avgas, and especially JP8, or JP5 if we’re luckier than we deserve. And we need long-lasting provisions like MREs and HUMRATs, and cans or sealed bins of staples.”
One of the Marines muttered, “HUMRATs? That sounds terrible…” Nobody laughed. They all knew what humanitarian rations were, plus had heard that joke before.
“Get in quietly, get everything cataloged,” Drake concluded, “and where possible get it centrally stockpiled. Secure the HLZ, and we’ll come in with the helos to scoop up both it and you – fast. And, remember – this is no longer just about survival of the strike group. It’s about survival of the species. We’re working for everyone now. So get it done.” He exhaled. “And make it fast.”
Fick stood and grumbled, “Okay, you jokers, that’s it. Get jocked up. You launch in thirty mikes.” As everyone stood and shuffled, he sidled over for a quiet word with Juice. “I’m running out of Marines,” he said. “Try to bring these ones back.”
“Roger that, Master Gunny.”
As the leadership stepped out of the room and into the companionway, Handon took Juice’s elbow and added, “Try to bring yourself back, too.”
Juice nodded.
But, later, on his way back there, when he paused outside the team room to check his electronics, he overheard two of the Marines talking inside.
“This dude they’ve saddled us with – former Delta?”
“No, man. The Activity.”
“The what?”
“Exactly.”
* * *
Thirty minutes later, the same group was together again, all hanging off the back of the carrier – on the boat dock at the waterline, just beneath the fantail deck. Except now with the Marines and Juice looking a lot heavier and more dangerous, all tooled up with weapons, ammo, and armor.
It wasn’t any brighter outside than it had been in the team room – it still felt like night, in fact, with the rising sun only just slightly lightening the horizon over the invisible continent to the east of them. Also, the dock lights were kept off as per standard shipboard security protocols for a combat mission in hostile waters.
On the other hand, it was a lot less stuffy out here than belowdecks, and the air a hell of a lot cleaner, with a little chill and a bit of salt on the shifting breeze. Everyone out here for the mission launch could feel, if not see, the world swaddling their little cocoon of life, from all directions.
Well, except maybe from the direction of Africa. That felt like something different.
A thirty-foot single-hulled utility boat had already been winched down onto the water, and the Marines were piling into it – right behind their packs, weapons, and team equipment. The boat was piloted by two sailors in helmets, life vests, and flak jackets, and powered by an 80-horsepower inboard engine that had been tricked out to run quietly. One of the sailors sat in back at the pilot controls; the other sat up front, manning a 7.62mm minigun that pointed menacingly over the prow.
The minigun reminded Juice of those rigid-hulled inflatable boats (RHIBs) the SEALs rode in to insert and extract themselves, bristling with machine guns, and manned by their badass special warfare combatant crewmen (SWCCs). He could only hope today they wouldn’t end up having to be extracted under fire, or in any way that would require use of a goddamned minigun.
Juice was last aboard, as he would be first out on the beach. Handon pulled him aside for a last word. “Remember Homer’s warnings. And be careful. We just had a boatload of Russians shooting at us on the water.”
Juice nodded. “And we don’t know for sure what’s on the land.”
“Right. And the very last thing you need is to get into a firefight with castaway Spetsnaz operators. Drake said the Russians keeping people ashore would defeat the infection-safety advantage of being at sea, and discounts the risk. But I’m not sure I do.”
Juice nodded. “They don’t call Ivan crazy for nothing.”
“Exactly. Our ISR doesn’t show anything moving on the base. But that place is a maze of warehouses and buildings. And we have no idea what’s going on inside any of them. So you watch your asses.”
Juice nodded and started to turn away, but Handon grabbed his elbow and leaned in close. “And bring back those supplies. Otherwise we’re dead in the water.” The two men locked eyes for one second, then Juice spat tobacco juice over the side of the dock, tossed his assault pack in the boat, and climbed in after it.
Just as he did, two very large figures descended the ladder from the fantail deck. Fick, who was closest, looked up to see that it was Predator, and his own Staff Sergeant Brady – who had been wounded on Beaver Island, and had been healing up and on light duties since then. The enormous Predator, and the big, strong, lanky martial-arts champion Brady, took up positions on the deck, with legs planted wide and their arms crossed.
And they stared at Fick.
“What?” Fick snapped. Nobody like being stared at – and only giants and martial-arts champions stared at Marine Master Gunnery Sergeants without risk of severe bodily harm.
“Drake told us to come down,” Brady said.
“What the fuck for?”
Predator rumbled, “He’s afraid you’re going to pull the same shit you did in Virginia Beach – and go on the mission by hopping on the boat just as it’s pulling out, too late to stop you.”
“Yeah?” Fick said. “Why would I go and do a thing like that? And what are you two gonna do about it, anyway?”
Brady said, “Basically, our job is to jump on you and pin you to the deck if you try it.”
Fick wrinkled his nose. As a black-belt in Brazilian jiu jitsu, Brady was on the very short list of people who could probably pin Fick to the deck. And Predator, well, he’d only have to sit on him, and there’d be no getting out from under that.
Fick eyed the two, as the boat engine started up.
They eyed him right back, judging the distance between Fick and the edge of the dock. All three twitched slightly, and clenched and unclenched their fingers, like gunfighters at 11:58 in Dodge City. Predator squinted deeply – he realized he honestly had no idea whether Fick was actually considering going for it, or was just fucking with them.
Or perhaps he just didn’t like
being told what to do – and for that reason alone, was now considering going for it.
The boat slid away from the dock.
Fick turned toward it. But he only stood motionless, and watched it move off.
Inside the boat, Sergeant Lovell looked back over his shoulder and across the water, smiled big, and said, “Have fun sitting on your old ass, Master Gunny!”
Fick clenched his jaw so hard it looked like he was trying to eat his own teeth. Finally he belted out, “You screw this up, you sons of bitches, and I will come down on you like baby Jesus swooping in on roller skates to anally violate your soul with a cement mixer!”
Predator, who had stutter-stepped when Fick turned, and almost fallen over on his bad leg, now gave him a distressed look. “That was random as fuck, Gunny.”
Brady just gave Pred a look like: Welcome to our world.
Handon and Drake both just shook their heads as the boat burbled around the side of the carrier, picked up speed, disappeared into the sparkling dimness – and headed for shore.
All their hopes rode with them.
Panjshir
JFK - Combat Information Center
Drake leaned back into one of the comfy upholstered chairs around the periphery of CIC. He wasn’t sure why they got all the comfy chairs in here, except perhaps because these guys had to be glued to them all the time. That, or so it would look like it did in Tom Clancy films.
He leaned back in the cool dimness, settling into the rich hum of voices and activity around him, and watched the big screen up front. This showed the video view from their Fire Scout, the helicopter drone, which had cycled and refueled, and then relaunched an hour ago.
It now orbited the naval base, its camera currently trained on their boat full of badasses, which was about five minutes from hitting the docks. The light was still low enough that they were watching in night-vision/thermal mode. But the sun was coming up. Under normal conditions, they’d have two or even three UAVs up there, for a variety of views on the target objective. But they already had the Predator tasked, its unblinking eye on the Russian ship.
And fuel wasn’t getting any more plentiful. In fact, they were down to the bottoms of almost all their barrels.
This had better work, Drake thought. He felt like a guy with a bad gambling problem – whose wife had just left him for his boss, who had just fired him – now putting his last two chips on thirty-seven black on the roulette table.
This was perhaps their last and only chance – do-or-die.
On either side of the big screen at the end of the room, they’d also piped in video from the GoPro shoulder cams worn by the operators, one on Raible, the other on Juice. They were using the Fire Scout as a traffic relay for data and voice, so there was little danger of a commo outage, almost regardless of where the ground team went. Somebody in CIC was listening to traffic from their squad net; but they reserved the wall speakers for the command net, and talking directly to the ground commander.
Finally, there was a digital map display on the left wall, showing the area where the team was operating, namely the environs of the port facility. It was overlaid with a small blue rectangle, which updated in real time, and showed the near-exact location of the shore team, as identified by the FOF (Friend-or-Foe) ID transponder on Juice. It moved when he did. This didn’t overlay with the drone video view, but with those two taken side by side, plus the shoulder cams, everyone in CIC should have a pretty good idea of where the ground team was, what they were doing – and exactly what they were facing.
You’ve gotta love technology, Drake thought.
Then again, he knew if that map zoomed out enough, it would also show a red diamond – the symbol for the Russian battlecruiser, which was not nearly far enough away down the coast for comfort.
Drake exhaled and said a prayer of thanks – mainly for the fact that there were two of him now. This meant he’d been able to leave his other him, Abrams, in command on the bridge – and not have to worry about anyone fucking things up too badly.
This also meant he didn’t have to worry about himself fucking things up. The way his head had been swimming, periodically going in and out, since absorbing that grenade blast, he was not currently his own biggest supporter, at least as far as judgment and tactical acumen went.
And while he wanted to be down here and not miss a minute of the show, he also needed to stay hands-off with a live shore mission. He didn’t always have the discipline to do so – but, today, being woozy helped. Campbell and her staff would provide whatever support the team on the ground needed. And, of course, the operators would be running their own show, and making their own tactical decisions.
Drake always remembered and tried to live by a comment once made by Army Chief of Staff “Shy” Meyer: “The last thing you want is a bunch of dipshits at the Pentagon running something.”
Or dipshits at any level of command, Drake added.
As the little toy boat down on the water far beneath the drone’s camera crawled toward the pier, CIC lightened slightly with the outside hatch opening and closing again. It was Handon coming in.
He didn’t want to miss the show either.
* * *
For Juice and the Marines, getting out of the cold dark shadow of the Kennedy and into open water was like achieving escape velocity from some hulking, gray, iron-ore planet. But much like outer space, open water was a big and lonely place, particularly just before dawn, and it had a way of making anything out on it feel small, weak, and vulnerable.
Or maybe the feeling of vulnerability was due to what they faced at the water’s edge: Africa, the dark continent, now a dead one, too. Just like all the others. But the one where it had all started. This gave it a palpable feel of menace. Like it wanted them to stay away. Or, much worse, like it wanted to draw them in.
On the other hand, thought Juice, this breeze is nice. And at least no one’s going to be firing mortars or machine guns at us as we climb up off the beach.
Juice’s grandfather had been a Navy corpsman who had landed at Anzio, and later Normandy. He’d rarely talked about it – probably because, as a medic, he’d spent most of his time elbow-deep in the guts of nice American boys, on the first day of their only European vacation.
Anyway, Juice knew this Navy craft had a hell of a lot better stability than the old Higgins boats, those floating dumpsters the GIs had gone in on. And just having nobody puking over the side, or puking not over the side, made for a much improved experience.
So Juice pushed back against his pack, let the wind ruffle his beard, and watched the sun coming up ahead of them. Whatever was waiting for them on the land, they’d deal with when they hit the land.
Corporal Raible was closest to him – as one of the two fire team leaders, he’d also be one of the first out. As he watched Juice’s beard billowing around, he smiled. The Marine Corps had been a little late to the special operations party, and they’d never really adopted the profoundly casual attitude to grooming standards displayed by spec-ops in the other service branches.
Raible raised his voice above the wind and said, “Hey, man. Where’d you pick up that beard? Afghanistan?”
Juice just smiled contentedly through the beard and wind and nodded.
“Helmand? Paktia?”
Juice shook his head. “Panjshir Valley.” He saw the young Marine’s forehead crinkle as he ran the geography and timing on that one. Panjshir was about five feet from Kabul, and so the last time it had been seriously contested by the Taliban would have been…
“Shit, man. What, were you, like, in the first wave in?”
“Something like that.”
Raible was looking more impressed now – because, if he wasn’t looking at the greatest generation, he was definitely looking at the generation before his own. And the one that had kicked off the War on Terror in style – by taking down the Taliban in weeks, with a couple hundred guys on horseback using laser target designators to direct airstrikes.
“What uni
t?”
“Fifth Special Forces.”
Raible shook his head. “Dude. I was six years old.”
Juice shrugged. “Well, you’re a man now, my son. And I’m an old man.” He meant old by military standards. But those were the standards they had.
As these two generations of warrior let the peace and wind noise take over again, and as the world began to glow with the rising sun, and the shore swelled and grew inexorably closer, Juice blinked his eyes and remembered. What he didn’t tell the kid was that he had not only been one of the first into Afghanistan, but also one of the last out – though they’d had to leave before the job was done.
And this brought back a flood of memories… including the genesis of the famous beard.
* * *
On one of his very first nights in-country, after inserting by Chinook, and then riding eight hours on horseback, Juice’s Special Forces ODA (Operational Detachment – Alpha) had bivouacked on the edges of a Northern Alliance mountain camp, waiting to move on Kabul with a force of Uzbeks led by one General Dostum.
Very late in the night, a man had been brought to see them, escorted by one of the Uzbek fighters. Since Juice was the senior NCO on watch, he greeted the man in his rudimentary Dari, then listened as the fighter translated for them. The old man spoke with tears leaking from the corners of his eyes – though, puzzlingly, he also seemed to be smiling. He had walked two days to meet with the American soldiers he heard were operating in the area.
He had come there to tell them that six of his children had been killed by an errant U.S. bomb strike.
Juice sat up straight at this, his expression sagging. “I am sorry for your loss,” he said, which seemed utterly inadequate. He knew there could be no way for him to understand pain like that.
The man stepped forward, gripped Juice’s hands in both of his, and continued talking, as the young soldier translated. He said he could bear this loss, the sacrifice of his children… if it meant that his country could be free, and that all of Afghanistan’s little girls would be able to go to school. And he held onto Juice’s hands tightly and looked at him with a tear spilling from the corner of each fierce, dark eye.
