Ghost Target

by Nicholas Irving

“Here he comes,” Samuelson said.

  “I’ve got him,” Harwood replied. He tightened his finger on the trigger, ready to do to Basayev as the Chechen had done to LaBoeuf. Harwood stayed in the zone, ready to fire. His sight picture was good. A few wisps of dust shot across his scope lens but nothing serious enough to obscure the shot.

  The Chechen was shouting into a personal handheld radio and had completely diverted his attention from taking cover behind his hide position to standing and beginning to run toward the village. The trucks pivoted and kicked up clouds of dust as Basayev stopped and stared.

  He was perfectly still.

  Harwood steadied his rifle, had the man’s head in the crosshairs, saw the emotion on his face. Something terrible had happened to him. Not his concern. The shot was there.

  He took it.

  Basayev dove back behind his rock pile. The bullet missed, smacking harmlessly into the shale, a dust cloud in its wake. It was now nothing more than a warning to Basayev. Perhaps he had known all along that he was under surveillance.

  “Shit,” Harwood said.

  “What’s he doing now?” Samuelson asked.

  A piece of cardboard the size of a combat ration box, two feet by two feet, emerged from behind the rock.

  It’s a damn message! Harwood thought. Written in black camo stick!

  Bring her back! Trade?

  “Oh, man,” Harwood said. “We’re burned. Bring her back? Trade? WTF?”

  The high-pitched whine of mortar or artillery rounds whistled overhead. Oddly, the distinctive noises were not coming from the direction of the Chechen, the men on the ridge, or the Taliban hideout of Sangin. Basayev must have offset the indirect fire team. Based upon the whistling sound, the rounds were coming from behind and only a few seconds away.

  Explosions rocked their position. Shrapnel and rocks flew everywhere. Debris whipped past them like a hive of angry hornets. Harwood tried to move, but the deafening thunder of mortar rounds bursting around their position immobilized him.

  “Sammie!” he shouted. Harwood reached out with his hand only to have it raked by supersonic shrapnel and rocks. Samuelson wasn’t there. Lindsay, the sniper rifle, jumped in front of him, bucked with the ground as the shale beneath him buckled and gave way like a California mud slide in heavy rains. The sensation of plunging into a rock pile was worsened by every sniper’s worst fear: losing his spotter.

  Harwood landed somewhere, he wasn’t quite certain. His mind was reeling. Rocks pounded relentlessly into his body, like Mike Tyson body punches.

  Bring her back! Trade? spiraled through his mind before blackness consumed him. Pinging in the darkness, like sonar, was the final echoing thought: Bring who back? And what did he have to offer in trade?

  CHAPTER 2

  Khasan Basayev stood in his sniper hide as the two men approached. They placed a wounded man and a rifle on the ground in front of him. A quick glance confirmed this was not Harwood. He looked up, shaking his head.

  “Go back and get me the Reaper,” he said to his two Taliban spotters. “This is not him.”

  After a pause, the leader asked, “How much?” They knew the risk of American helicopters arriving soon. It was only their proximity to the mortar fire that had allowed them to secure the one injured American and a rifle.

  “One thousand dollars for each of you,” Basayev promised. It was a hollow gesture. The men would die tonight.

  They nodded and began running the half mile along a mountain-ridge goat trail to the American hide position. Prior to executing any mission, Basayev spent two days scouting potential enemy reconnaissance locations, pencil-sketching them at the angle from which he expected to be observing. Having studied Vick Harwood, the black Ranger sniper, Basayev admired the man’s tradecraft. It was just one rock angled slightly askew that had tipped him off. Even with his preparation, though, he never had a shot at Harwood or his spotter.

  Now as his two pawns closed on the position again, the search-and-rescue helicopters—a UH-60 Black Hawk medical evacuation aircraft and an AH-64 Apache gunship—arrived and struggled with the high winds that had predictably appeared with the change of temperature as darkness arrived. The two men found cover and fired on the helicopters. Rifle shots echoed down the Helmand Valley. The Apache gunship spit Hughes M230 chain-gun rounds at his two men, most likely dead now. Better that than captured.

  The Black Hawk medevac hovered over a deep ravine next to the Reaper’s hide position. A pararescue medic sat atop a T-bar connected to a wire cable as the crew lowered him into the crevice using a hoist. After a minute, he reappeared with a body strapped to his chest, presumably Harwood. For thirty minutes the search-and-rescue team continued the fruitless hunt for Harwood’s spotter. More rifle shots echoed in the Helmand Valley, pushing away the vulnerable helicopters.

  As the helicopters fled the random gunfire, Basayev looked at the American and the rifle the two men had delivered. The man was barely alive, having suffered a severe head injury either from shrapnel or falling debris.

  He created a makeshift litter to drag his newly acquired captive, shouldered his rucksack, and then pulled behind him the heavy weight of his bounty. Stepping onto the treacherous trail, he moved quickly to his vehicle, which was parked a mile away.

  With the helicopters off station, Basayev had to assume that a Predator drone was still overhead, scanning the area. Persistent and lethal, the drones were handicapped in that they could view only a specific area. Their mission would be to continue to search the area for a second body and to do battle-damage assessment on the Taliban.

  His window was now.

  A company of Rangers would soon ferry in from Lashkar Gah and begin to expand outward in ever-increasing circles until they found his hide site.

  Moving quickly along the rocky path, Basayev did his best to protect the injured head of his captive. He reached the valley floor after a dozen steeply inclined switchbacks that challenged even his muscular, well-conditioned body. Before this mission, he had backed his Hilux pickup truck into a small cave. His was the four-door version and he opened the rear door, carefully lifting the man into the rear seat. Basayev was glad to find a pulse. The man had survived the treacherous descent. Using an enhanced medical kit from his pickup bed, he went to work on the soldier. Keeping the vehicle dome light off, he wore a medical headlamp to help him further discern the extent of the man’s injuries.

  The crusty cave floor crunched beneath Basayev’s boots. The man’s skull appeared mangled on the right half. He used a canteen of water followed by a bottle of Betadine to flush the wound. A flap of skin lay back, revealing white bone. Fractures in the skull looked like a broken but barely intact eggshell. More flushing and antiseptic were followed by gauze and pressure, to stem the marginal bleeding. Moving from the most severe wound to inspect the rest of the body, he saw the man’s face littered with shrapnel marks, like freshly oozing acne. He used a cloth to apply antiseptic and clean the wounds, followed by an application of antibiotic cream. He inspected the rest of the man’s body by looking for tears or punctures in the sniper’s ghillie suit, a tan-and-black-flecked outfit that provided him concealment in the mountains. He found no other injuries serious enough on which to waste any more time. He looked in the man’s eyes, noticing their dilation, a sure sign of concussion, perhaps even coma.

  He carefully belted the man into a supine position in the backseat after laying a blanket over him. Wanting to keep his neck and head stable, Basayev placed a rolled blanket around the man’s head and tightened a seat belt across his forehead. He tested his work and found the body secure enough to withstand the bumpy ride to Kandahar.

  He took the rifle that the two men had brought back with the wounded man and disassembled it. Placing the weapon in his rucksack, Basayev retrieved a Sig Sauer pistol and an Uzi machine gun, which would be more useful during the drive.

  Certain that he had done all he could, he began the three-hour drive to Kandahar. He needed to get the soldier to a qua
lified physician. Thinking about what had transpired earlier in the day in the village, he had listened to the shrieks of the women as the kidnap team took them. This had been going on for some time now, and Basayev knew it was a mistake to have his wife, Nina Moreau, with him in the village.

  Looking at the man hanging on to life by a thin fiber in the back of his truck, he bounced along the ruddy trail toward Kandahar thinking that, while he had more to trade, the captive was now his best bargaining chip.

  Resolute, Basayev found the blacktop road and sped toward a doctor in Kandahar, knowing that locating Nina was now the most important mission of his life.

  * * *

  That night, Harwood was in the emergency room, doctors milling around, barking orders. Morphine running through his veins. Funny, he thought, I’m supposed to stop opium movement, not live high on the juice.

  Footsteps entered the plywood operating room in Kandahar. Three shadows were backlit against the light green curtain that had been pulled around his operating table. Harwood shifted his eyes left and right, trying to find Samuelson, but saw only the three dark outlines and a cluster of medical personnel leaning over him.

  “Close your eyes,” a nurse admonished. He did, listening as the men talked and the heart monitors beeped.

  “All the coffins loaded?” one man said beyond the screen.

  “They’re called transfer cases, but yes, sir, they’re all loaded,” another responded.

  “He going to make it?”

  “Not sure. Going to be close. Head wounds,” a new voice commented.

  Soon Harwood lost the voices and the beeps of the machinery. His mind swam to a peaceful place where he and Jackie Colt, the Olympic champion, were dining in a fancy restaurant. He had showered and shaved and his hand was reaching across the table holding hers as they clinked glasses and toasted to his winning of their shooting bet in Kandahar.

  “But the coffins,” she said in his dream. “Why so many coffins?”

  And then he blacked out again for the second time in a single day.

  CHAPTER 3

  One week after Vick Harwood had been evacuated from Afghanistan, he was lying in a bed with crisp white sheets. Dutiful nurses scurried about efficiently. He was in a hospital, but wasn’t sure precisely where or why.

  It was a challenge to get outside of his own head. He was trapped like a caged animal. Thoughts were not maturing fully.

  He wondered, though, about Samuelson. He remembered the mission to kill the Chechen. The pickup trucks in the village. The two men on the ridge. The Chechen going crazy and screaming into his radio or phone. Then the mortars. Then no Samuelson. Samuelson and LaBoeuf. Gone, forever.

  Like Lindsay, his foster sister.

  Gone forever.

  Couldn’t he take care of anyone? Guilt ricocheted in his mind like a rubber ball bouncing aimlessly and endlessly.

  Then another thought, one he didn’t deserve. Jackie Colt, the Olympic champion. He remembered their contest in the Ranger compound at Kandahar Airfield.

  A group of Olympic champions and entertainers had swept through Afghanistan to meet with the troops. One was Jackson “Jackie” Colt, the female gold medalist for the air rifle competition. She and Harwood had established a rapport, talking about angles, deflections, clicks, and scopes, but Harwood had a difficult time taking her seriously until she said, “All right, cowboy, let’s use your weapons and loser buys the other dinner the next time you’re home from this garden spot.” Jackie had smiled, tossed her golden hair over her shoulders, and scrunched her freckled nose at him. If he hadn’t been smelly, sweaty, and just plain nasty, he might have thought she was flirting with him. They held the shoot-out, Harwood beating her by a hair on the last shot. He wasn’t sure if she had intentionally missed or not. She was good, he had to admit.

  “Damn, you just beat an Olympic gold medalist,” Jackie said. “Must be why they call you the Reaper.” She leaned over, pulled the gold medal from her pocket, held it up, and took a selfie of her face next to his, gold medal beneath their chins. She was smiling. Others would describe his expression as dumbfounded.

  Harwood was flustered. A beautiful woman and Olympic champion knew his nickname. “How do you know who I am?” he asked.

  “You’re a legend,” she said, bumping him with her shoulder before they turned toward the small group that had followed them to the firing range. “But even legends need to bathe,” she whispered in his ear. She wrinkled her nose and sniffed. “So, clean up before I take you to dinner when you get back home.”

  He couldn’t remember how long ago that was, but the vision was clear. And he remembered the soft voice, a throaty whispering melody that matched her smile perfectly.

  “Reaper,” she said.

  He smiled. He could see her deep in the recesses of his mind.

  “Reaper, wake up,” she said, again.

  For the first time in a week, Harwood opened his eyes. He was staring at Jackie Colt’s smiling face. Two doctors in light green scrubs hovered behind her. She clasped his hand. White against brown. It was warm, like he imagined the rest of her to be.

  “Reaper, you’re okay,” she said. “I’m here with you.”

  The doctors tried to move around her, but she didn’t move. She stared at him with a knowing smile. She pointed at something across the room, but he couldn’t turn his head.

  “I’ll be right there,” she said.

  She stepped back and let the doctors move forward. One shined a flashlight into his eyes. The other said something, but he was still focused on Jackie. She was here, for him.

  “Still not out of the woods,” one doctor said.

  “Vick, can you feel this?”

  The doctor was pressing something against his feet. He wanted to say yes, but he couldn’t get the word out. He wanted to nod his head, but he couldn’t move his neck. He pulled against the restraint on his forehead. His neck muscles flared with hot pain.

  “Don’t try to move. Blink your eyes twice if you can feel this, Vick.”

  He blinked. He could do that. He was an Army Ranger sniper and former high school athlete and the best he could do was blink his freaking eyes. Great.

  “That’s a good sign, son,” the doctor said.

  The doctors wrote something on the clipboard, looked at each other, and then looked across his bed, presumably at Jackie.

  “He’s improving.”

  They walked out of the room, and his mind spiraled into sleep, exhausted by that little bit of activity.

  * * *

  While the Reaper was opening his eyes in Washington, D.C., Khasan Basayev glanced at his smartphone’s Instagram feed with disappointment. Nothing yet. He lifted his eyes to consider his prisoner. They were on the outskirts of Kandahar. The man had improved thanks to the help of Dr. Mohammed Nijrabi. Lying on the single wide mattress, the man was still motionless.

  Basayev decided to name the man Abrek, an ode to his own Chechen and Circassian heritage. The term meant “warrior” or “brave man” in the tortured languages of his homeland. After all, the man was a soldier. A warrior. A U.S. Army Ranger. He had the skills. Now Basayev needed to test the malleability of the young man as he healed.

  “I’ve done everything I can do,” Dr. Nijrabi said. “He will survive, but I’m not sure about his mental capacity.” Nijrabi was dressed in standard Afghan clothing, the long white outer garment covered with a brown vest. A stethoscope hung around his neck, the ear tips and diaphragm meeting just below his long black beard. He smelled of antiseptic and soap.

  “That’s actually not a bad thing, as long as he is physically capable,” Basayev said.

  The doctor paused. “What do you have planned?”

  “The less you know the better, as always. I’ve paid you well.”

  “I have an oath,” Nijrabi said. “To do no harm.”

  “And you’ve done none. Quite the opposite. You’ve worked a miracle. I didn’t think he would live.”

  “You did well preser
ving the wound. I’ve stitched his scalp. He’s got the skull fracture which appears to be healing, but it will heal deformed. I’ll leave it up to you on whether you shave all of his hair.”

  The doctor had shaved the right side of the man’s head, flushed the wound multiple times, and then stitched the scalp back into place. After a week, bristles of hair were poking around the row of stitches, which looked like a long black centipede embedded in the man’s scalp.

  “He’s beyond getting an infection now so I’m declaring him your patient, Khasan,” the doctor said. After a pause, he whispered, “I’m sorry about Nina.”

  Basayev nodded. The doctor had met Nina briefly prior to Basayev’s mission in Helmand Province.

  “Thank you,” Basayev said. “Be safe in your travels.”

  “Inshallah.” God willing.

  Basayev closed and locked the door behind the doctor. The doctor wasn’t the best at his practice, but he was reliable and trustworthy. The trade-off was necessary.

  His temporary residence was a small outbuilding on Nazim Ghul’s forty-acre vineyard and water-bottling operation. The Taliban paid Ghul well to allow Basayev unfettered access, and Ghul knew better than to ever question Basayev. The two men rarely saw one another other than from afar. Surrounded by tall West Himalayan firs, the compound was secure enough. An additional benefit was that Ghul’s son was an interpreter for the Americans at the military compound on Kandahar Airfield. On more than one occasion Basayev had wedged himself in the false bottom of Tariq Ghul’s pickup truck to gain access to the base.

  Having separated the two twin beds, which he had previously placed together for himself and Nina, Basayev sat on the bed opposite the man he called Abrek. The man breathed steadily, his torso rhythmically lifting the gray wool blanket. The scabs on his face were healing. About fifteen or so pockmarks would scar, as if he’d been blasted in the face by a shotgun. Basayev’s initial inspection had proven mostly accurate. Other than some bruises, the head injury was the only meaningful wound the soldier had sustained.

  Night had fallen and through the window opening came the clarion hunting call of the Eurasian eagle owl, a distinctive hoot. The sounds were those of two owls communicating prior to their nightly prowl. The hedgehogs that scampered through the vineyards were a favorite of the owls. Through the square glassless opening, the cool night air seeped in, bringing with it the syrupy smell of fir trees. A brilliant array of stars swirled above the evergreens. The muted television cast flickers of light that contrasted with the beauty and stillness outside.