Thirty-seven Allied soldiers had to fight off nearly two hundred Taliban, ending up after a fierce battle with one American soldier dead and another wounded, nine Australian Special forces wounded—every single SAS soldier—one wounded Afghan solder and an estimated eighty Taliban killed, with countless more injured.
The nine-hour battle was a hard-won victory and saw many medals of honor being awarded, including a Victoria Cross for Australia to Trooper Mark Donaldson—if a withdrawal from the battlefield could be classed as a victory.
So the CO had a valid point.
“Provision for twenty-one days,” continued the CO, his words clipped with military precision. “You leave tomorrow morning, zero four hundred hours. You’ll be on your own. There are no backup troops on the ground within two hundred kilometers.”
“Yes sir, understood,” replied Sergeant O’Donnell, totally cognizant of the Battle of Khas Oruzgan. It was firmly etched into the minds of every SAS trooper as a battle hard won, but also lost.
“Call sign is Anaconda,” said the CO as a parting comment. “Dismissed, Sergeant.”
Ice was the CO’s go-to soldier when a difficult but important task was at hand. Fearless in battle and inspiring to his men, he was a soldier with a strength of character that was second to none. Totally emotionless once a target was in his crosshairs, when he was in the zone he could kill on demand, with no second thoughts or last-minute regrets jumping up from his subconscious to deter him from squeezing the trigger.
He was a machine, worthy of his nickname.
Trained as a specialist sniper, now with thirty-three confirmed kills to his credit, Sergeant Tony O’Donnell was a six-year veteran of countless SAS missions. Sometimes he felt that he had spent half his life behind enemy lines, observing, guarding, supporting . . . killing.
However, embarrassing as it was to him, O’Donnell was best known in the SAS not for his valor and bravery under fire, but rather for using his favorite weapon, the Accuracy International L115A3 8.59mm, to blow the head clear off an insurgent who was peeping over the top of an outcrop of rocks, like a pumpkin at a range shoot 921 meters away across a deep valley.
“Anaconda, Anaconda, do you copy?”
“Roger, copy and clear.”
“We have intel that two targets are heading your way. Four kilometers to the east. Intercept and elimination required. I repeat, elimination. ETA, forty-five minutes.”
“Understood. Details, please.”
Special Operations Command had just received intel from the Americans an hour ago. Their eye in the sky had located two wanted terrorists, Saifur Mansoor, a known Taliban insurgent and his brother Rahman, whom they had been tracking on and off for the past week. They were on the run and traveling on foot toward O’Donnell and his troopers.
“Repeat, engage and eliminate,” said the unknown voice on the other end of the transmission.
“Copy. Do they have backup? Any other hostiles in the area?”
“Negative, Anaconda. Traveling alone.”
The Taliban had received early intel last week about a convoy of much-needed medical supplies en route to the Afghan Army base in Kandahar. Saifur and Rahman were explosives experts and had been directed by the mujahideen to mine the road into Kandahar that the trucks would be traveling on. All they had to do was wait for the convoy to arrive, then detonate the M18 Claymore land mines remotely when the convoy was in the blast zone.
Boooom.
When the time came, the equivalent of ten kilos of C-4 exploded under the convoy.
Twelve soldiers were killed and four trucks totaled in the blast. Then the Taliban attacked and killed all the survivors, making off with the supplies themselves.
The orders from Command to O’Donnell were clear: ambush and eliminate the two terrorists. No prisoners, no survivors.
They had to be wiped.
“Bravo Four, take up a high position on the left flank on that steep rise over there,” said O’Donnell in urgent, hushed tones.
“Bravo Two, take the right behind that outcrop of rocks over there. Make sure you have line of sight on the kill zone and the approach.”
“Me and Bravo Three will set up seventy meters off the edges of the track. Wait for my signal, then cover us when the fun begins.”
“Roger, Ice,” replied the two kitted-up soldiers in unison.
“The retreat point is behind those rocks over there seven hundred and fifty meters to the northeast. You copy?” said O’Donnell, pointing in the afternoon light to a large mound of rocks sitting proud of the sand and scraggy scrub, their shadows hanging long to the west. The downside was that there was only minimal cover between their current location and the rocks; the upside was that once there, they had a good defensive position to regroup and observe the surrounding area.
Adjusting the shoulder straps of his seventy-pound backpack as he stood up from his kneeling position, Bravo Four checked that his Sig Sauer P226 handgun was secure in its holster and the bayonet hanging off his belt was ready to grab, patted his spare ammunition in the pouch on his hip, checked for his water flask, and picking up his SA80 A2 Heckler & Koch rapid-fire assault rifle, stealthily crept off, ducking and weaving behind the sparse low desert shrubs.
Bravo Two was already on his way, machine gun at his shoulder, sweeping the weapon left and right in time with his body as he darted this way and that to his ambush position on the high ground.
Bang, bang.
Saifur and Rahman would soon be knocking on Allah’s door, thought Bravo Four as he left.
Well, that was the plan.
“Call position,” said the Sergeant over his mic, his orders crackling in a high-pitched tone into his trooper’s respective earpieces.
“Bravo Four, ready. Clear visual east down the track for four hundred meters, plus have eyes on the northern approach. All clear.”
“Bravo Two, ready. Have the bend in the track covered all the way to the contact point. Line of sight on the southwest approach. All clear.”
“Bravo Three, ready. Good visual of the eastern approach and to the southeast. All clear.”
“Copy that,” said the Sergeant to his troopers. “Secure positions and lay low. Maintain observations. Check in when targets sighted. Report in every ten minutes.
“Me and Bravo Three will neutralize the two targets. Bravo Four and Bravo Two, provide backup if needed, and keep a lookout for action out of the kill zone.”
O’Donnell positioned himself in prime position to make the kill shots. He made himself part of the desert, blending into the landscape, disguised and hidden behind a clump of low shrubs. Lying prostrate in a slight hollow that he had scooped out with his bare hands about two meters higher than and seventy meters away from the track, the only giveaway were his two intense eyes peering down the barrel of his assault rifle.
He checked left and right.
Perfect field of vision, he thought to himself. The two terrorists would be totally exposed for twenty-five meters.
Nowhere to run, nowhere to hide.
Picking out a small clump of low grass in the middle of the track the terrorists would have to walk down, O’Donnell adjusted the scope on his assault rifle, focusing the crosshairs on a fat black centipede the size of his little finger that was lying in wait in the grass for a small insect to wander by.
“You’re in ambush mode too, aren’t you?” O’Donnell quietly said to himself as he adjusted his sights to perfect clarity.
“Don’t give us away, okay?”
O’Donnell settled in for the wait, slowing his heartbeat and attempting to ignore the discomfort of the sand flies as they buzzed around, attracted by his sweating body. They bit and stung and left an itchy calling card that gave him the shits. And if the stings were left untreated they could cause a disfiguring disease called leishmaniasis. His permethrin-treated shirt that was supposed to repel the biting insects was fucking useless, sticking to his back as if it was glued on and had a sign across it saying, “bite me here.�
�
And as his body odor drifted up to meet him, he realized that he stank. Other than a top and tail wash every few days, he hadn’t bathed for thirteen days now, and he had sand and dirt seemingly fused to his skin. Lying with the afternoon sun beating down on his back as it filtered through the sparse shrubbery he had positioned himself under, the hot air dried out his mucous membranes with every labored breath. He wanted to move and scratch, but with the discipline of a thousand similar operations etched into his brain, O’Donnell ignored the pain and discomfort and lay dead still.
A large multicolored camel spider as long as his palm came out of nowhere and darted across the sand in front of him, readying itself to do battle with a sand-colored scorpion the size of a matchbox. O’Donnell was an audience of one to the two gladiators about to enter into combat in front of him. The camel spider was kitted up, its two red claws at the ready out the front, complete with a black stripe running lengthwise down its back.
The scorpion held its ground, its deadly stinger on the tail twitching and ready to strike.
But then as if it had changed its mind, the camel spider turned on its axis and skittered away to safety, and the victor, the scorpion, wandered off.
The battle of the bugs and insects reminded O’Donnell that although the annoying critters mightn’t carry AK-47s like the Taliban, they were enemies who were equally as dangerous as the terrorists. A health and safety lecture that he had recently attended flashed in front of his mind, where the medic had said, “Bullets, bombs and explosives may kill and incapacitate, however ill health caused by insect bites can cause more casualties, and even deaths, than fighting the enemy. So be aware, be careful and don’t get bitten.”
Which was all right for the medic to say in the relative safety of the base camp, but the world was totally different when you were lying in ambush.
“Bravo One, this is Bravo Four, you copy?” crackled the voice into O’Donnell’s earpiece.
“Roger, Bravo Four. Over.”
“Bravo One, targets have just come around the corner of the track. Heading this way. Appears to be two males out front and a female with a child following two paces behind them.”
“Fuck!” said Bravo One. This wasn’t in the rule book. They were only expecting to engage the two terrorists. No mention had been made of a woman and child. But this was Afghanistan, and the Taliban weren’t above using women and children as human shields as the need arose.
Silence over the airwaves. Bravo One needed a moment to reassess.
“Mission to continue as ordered. Two targets will be taken out. Don’t injure the woman and child. I repeat, mission to continue. The woman and child to be spared. You all copy?” said Bravo One.
“Roger, Bravo One.” All three troopers replied in the affirmative.
“Prepare for the ambush. Bravo Two and Four, keep a lookout for hostiles out of the kill zone. Bravo Three and me will take out the terrorists. Radio silence from now on.
“Bravo Three, don’t engage until you hear my first shot. Bravo One out.”
The first terrorist fell to the ground after a clean shot to the head by O’Donnell. The 7.62mm bullet dragged with it a vile mixture of blood, bone and brains as it exited his skull, splattering over the woman a pace behind, making her dusty black niqab look like a multicolored Pro Hart painting. As was standard practice, a second and third shot to the chest immediately followed in rapid-fire succession, the target jerkily blown backward through the air as each round hit his body.
The young child was next to the woman on the opposite side to O’Donnell, obscured from his view. With a speed that belied her previous walking amble, the woman in the niqab grabbed the child and threw him to the ground, protectively falling on top of him, the two of them ending up pressed against the first terrorist’s lifeless body.
Bravo Three had taken the lead from O’Donnell. In a mirror execution, the first round entered the second terrorist’s left ear and took out his face and the side of his head as it exited through the right side of his skull. A second and third shot compounded the kill, the man’s long shirt rapidly darkening with red blood from his heart where the second bullet had entered his chest and pulverized his internal organs.
Five seconds from the first to the last shot. Result: two dead terrorists, mission accomplished.
“Going in to confirm the kills,” said O’Donnell over his radio mic.
“Bravo Three, cover me. Bravo Two and Four, stay in position. All clear in the distance?”
“Roger, Bravo One. Copy,” replied Bravo Three.
“Bravo Four. All clear.”
“Bravo Two. All clear.”
The words and communications were almost cursory, and if not for the soldiers’ training, totally unnecessary. The four of them were a well-oiled team who had battled together, side by side, for three years. Like two long-term married couples, each pair of buddies instinctively knew the thoughts and reactions of the other, their strengths and weaknesses, and how they would react in a combat situation. The four of them were closer than family. In battle they were each the most important person in the other’s lives. They were all totally in tune with their partner’s thoughts and reactions, and never gave a second thought about being backed up or supported. It was just assumed.
Each partner was just there, as if they were joined at the hip. There was an unspoken dynamism that bound them together as tightly as a bond between mother and child.
Bravo One crawled out of his foxhole trench and stood up, crouching over as he dusted off some of the sand clinging to his body, confident that his team had his back. Picking up his preferred combat weapon, the Heckler & Koch HK417 A2 assault rifle, he notched the weapon against his shoulder, deftly scanning the immediate area to check that all was clear, and darting this way and that, zigzagged the seventy meters to the two dead targets lying motionless where they fell.
Approaching the first fallen terrorist cautiously, Ice slipped his sand-colored, size eleven boot gingerly under the man’s shoulder and rolled him over.
Dead.
A single remaining eye stared back at him blankly. What was left of his face was already attracting sand flies as they swarmed around, no doubt looking for some tasty tidbits.
Paying the woman and child no attention, O’Donnell guardedly moved over to the second terrorist. He was lying in a jumble of twisted arms and legs, his shirt dyed crimson with blood, most of his head blown away.
No need to check any further. Two confirmed kills.
O’Donnell loosened his Kevlar vest and reached inside to scratch an annoying itch that had been troubling him for the past forty-five minutes. He couldn’t hold back any longer. Something had been biting him on his stomach and he had to get rid of it.
The cowering woman looked up at O’Donnell through terrified eyes, her face a mix of hatred and despair. The young child under her was shaking, whimpering uncontrollably, frightened out of his wits.
O’Donnell felt an extreme burning sensation as the bullet hit. It passed through the left side of his abdomen and exited out the back, lodging itself on the inside of his body armor. The woman had a Russian Stechkin automatic pistol hidden under her niqab and in a fit of rage blindly shot off three rounds at the murderer standing in front of her, aiming at nothing other than body bulk. Two of the three bullets deflected off his Kevlar vest. But the third lucky bullet found a way through the opening in O’Donnell’s body armor and hit its mark.
O’Donnell staggered, taking a step backward, more out of shock than because of the injury. In a reflex action, his right index finger twitched and squeezed the hair trigger of his assault rifle, firing a single shot.
Thud.
The instant he pulled the trigger, O’Donnell knew that the errant bullet had found flesh. In that split second, his world froze. Time went into slo-mo as the realization occurred to him that he had just committed unjustified murder.
Crack, crack, crack.
Three more shots rang out and found their mark,
the woman flying backward as each bullet hit hard. Bravo Three was backing up his sergeant. He shot and killed the woman without even a second thought.
Battle hardened as he was, Ice was mortified. The pit of his stomach hit the ground. His own actions were accidental, yes, but totally inexcusable. He was a professional, and the words “collateral damage” were simply not in his dictionary. Certainly not for the woman though. She probably deserved to die.
It was the child. He had instantly stopped crying and shaking. O’Donnell forced himself to look down at the young body lying on the ground in front of him, not wanting to see the damage his wayward bullet had done.
The young child’s chest was lost in a sea of red. Dark blood was oozing from his mouth, dribbling down the side of his chin.
Oh shit! Chest shot—that’s bad. O’Donnell instinctively knew that his victim had no chance of survival. Not out here in the desert with a wound like that.
Ignoring his own injury, Ice dropped to his knees and gently cradled the child’s head in his arms, as if he was holding a newborn baby. Strangely he thought how the child looked at peace. It was as if he had just said his goodbyes to this world.
Then the child let out a small sigh and passed over. He was on his way to Allah.
As Ice watched the child’s life force float away, he knew that this killing would haunt him for the rest of his natural life. This death wasn’t in his rule book.
O’Donnell gently placed the child’s head on the ground. He looked up with a glazed, vacant stare, willing what had just transpired to be nothing but a terrible dream. With blood from his stomach wound trickling down both the front and back of his battle fatigues, he clutched his left side in agony and toppled over, joining the four dead bodies in a haphazard jumble on the sandy track.
“Command, this is Anaconda. Do you copy, over?”
The Cait Lennox Box Set Page 60
