Combat Ops

TWELVE

I kept quiet during the ride back to the base, and as I got out of the car near the main gate, Bronco started to say something, but I cut him off. “I appreciate what you’re trying to do.”

“Then do the right thing. This ain’t worth it. And if you think you can beat them with all your fancy gadgets and gizmos, think again, right?”

“Are you helping Zahed?”

“Me?”

“I’m asking you a direct question. Yes? Or no?”

“No.”

“Why do I find that hard to believe?”

“Listen to me, Joe. Don’t let your ego get in the way here. They gave you a mission, but they don’t understand. They didn’t give you orders to upset the balance here.”

“Balance?”

“Yeah. You might think this doesn’t work, but to these people, it ain’t half bad.”

I smirked, slammed the door, and walked on toward the gate. The mine-sweeping team was just coming in as well, and I asked a lieutenant at the Hummer’s wheel how they’d made out.

The skinny redhead wiped a bead of sweat from his brow and answered, “Looked clear to us.”

“Hey, can you do me a favor and sweep the original zone?”

“You mean where we were supposed to drill?”

“Yeah.”

“I’m sorry, sir, but I haven’t received orders or authorization to do that.”

“Yeah, but it wouldn’t take long, right? Thirty minutes? I mean you’re all loaded up already.”

He grinned slyly. “You think those bastards are hiding something out there, don’t you?”

“I know they are.”

“I’m surprised Captain Harruck didn’t ask us to sweep it.”

“That hottie Anderson is keeping him real busy now,” I said.

“Oh, yeah, she’s hot.”

“Australian accent. What an ass on her, too.”

I was talking his talk. He wriggled his brows. “Tell you what, we’ll give it a quick look. I’m sure the CO would make us check it out eventually.” He threw his truck in reverse, backed out, and started away from the gate.

Damn, I thought. I didn’t think he’d go for it. Now I was committed to the plan.

I watched them leave, then hurried back to our billet, where inside, the guys were doing the usual: reading, playing computer games on their iPods, cleaning weapons, and/or creating battle profiles for our Cross-Coms, something Nolan truly enjoyed. We always killed more time than enemy insurgents. So it was in the Army. Hurry up and wait.

Ramirez and Warris were seated at the small conference table near the door, and Ramirez gave me a sour look as I entered. “What’s up?”

“Sir, just had a nice, long talk with Captain Warris. Seems he’s in charge now.”

“Say again?”

“That’s not exactly true,” said Warris.

I quickly said, “Gordon told me you’re our new—”

“Liaison officer?” Warris finished. “Yeah, well, that was the initial thought. They say they won’t relieve you of command, Mitchell, but I’ve been told that anything and everything you do must be screened through me first, and at that point I’ll bring it up with Harruck. I’m sorry. I know how this is. But they were emphatic.”

“Outside,” I snapped.

“Excuse me?”

“I said, out… side… do you read me?”

“Whoa. You’d better check the registry.”

“Not now, son.”

I opened the door and waited for the punk I had trained, the punk who thought he was replacing me, to head outside, where we could talk away from my boys.

So I’d just learned that my father was in a coma, that my chances of capturing my target were next to nil, and that some kid with barely two combat tours under his belt was going to “oversee” my operation. I guess I’m trying to rationalize or justify what I did next.

Sure, my hand itched with the desire to reach for my pistol and put it to Warris’s head — just to teach the cocky bastard a lesson. And my other hand shook with the desire to strangle him until he was blue and his eyes rolled back in his head.

Wasn’t it just yesterday that I was standing there with Warris as his evaluator during the training exercise we’d just completed?

I’d been playing the role of a tribal chief and he’d misjudged my character and how I might behave in the heat of battle. Sure, I threw him a few surprises, but he should have been ready for them, and he was not.

Indeed, he’d screwed up big-time and I’d chewed him out, but he’d been humble and had never questioned my authority. I hadn’t known his true feelings about that experience and the aftermath… until now.

“Mitchell, don’t think you can throw your weight around like you did back at the school. Those days are over,” he began. “You were the wise old man back there, but over here, it’s a whole different ball of wax. Old school doesn’t work anymore. We might be Ghosts, but we still have to learn, adapt, and overcome.”

I smiled. “So you’re an asshole, too?”

His eyes widened. “I could write you up for that.”

My grin darkened. “Listen, kid, if you think I’m going to ask your permission for anything I do here—”

The explosion came from the other side of the wall, and I knew in the next breath who was involved: the mine-sweeping team. Had they found a mine? Were they under attack?

My imagination raced through fragmented images of blood-filled sand fountaining into the air and human appendages tumbling end over end…

I pointed a finger at Warris, about to say something, then just sprinted away toward the rear wall, where a ladder would take me up to the machine gun nest. From there I’d have a clear view of the field.

The report of automatic weapons echoed the first boom immediately, and it sounded like an all-out gun battle by the time I mounted the ladder.

By the time I neared the gunner’s nest, the two guys there were already firing, one on the fifty, the other on his rifle. Two trucks had driven out to the field to join the minesweepers’ Hummer, and about twenty Taliban thugs had jumped out and were firing from behind their vehicles.

Still more guys were firing from the foothills, at least six more strung out along a broad reef of stone, muzzles flashing.

There were only five guys out there, huddled around their Hummer and being surrounded by four times as many Taliban.

An RPG whooshed from behind one of the Taliban trucks and struck the Hummer, exploding inside the cab and sending the fireball skyward.

“Get off that gun,” I screamed to the kid manning the fifty. I shoved him out of the way and began directing fire myself, first on one Taliban truck, then on the other. My bead drove the Taliban away toward a ditch behind their trucks, tracers gleaming, big rounds thumping hard into steel, glass, plastic, and sending sparks and then gasoline pouring onto the sand.

Within another two heartbeats, both trucks caught fire, and the Taliban now ran toward the foothills. Between me and the guy on his rifle, we cut down five guys making their break.

Someone was shouting my name, and when I glanced below, I saw Ramirez in a Hummer with the rest of the team, including Warris, whose expression seemed neutral. I came back down the ladder and hopped in the flatbed. Ramirez floored it, and we rushed past the open main gate and hightailed it toward the field, along with two other Hummers carrying a pair of rifle squads.

We took sporadic small-arms fire from the hills for a minute, but the rifle squads returned fire and suppressed those guys. We parked behind the burning trucks for cover, then charged out and raced toward the mine-sweeping team.

Six guys were there, every one of them on the ground. I rushed over to the lieutenant I’d spoken to at the gate. He’d been shot in the neck and the arm and was bleeding badly. “Nolan!” I screamed.

The medic rushed over while guys from the rifle squads went to assist the other fallen sweepers.

“It’s right next to our truck.” The lieutenant gasped. “Right there.”

“GET BACK! GET BACK!” Ramirez screamed.

I turned my head.

And it all unfolded in a weird slow motion that people describe during traumatic events. Sometimes they say they felt “outside themselves,” as though swimming in an ether while watching the event from far, far away.

Ramirez pointed to the ground, where an insurgent had just rolled over. He’d been shot up badly but was wearing a vest of explosives with a detonator clutched in his right hand.

He’d been waiting for us to get close.

I’ve always wondered what would’ve happened if Warris had been within the blast radius. How might the rest of the story have played out?

But Warris was back near our truck, calling it all in, probably talking to Harruck, when I turned and lunged away, toward him, along with the rest of our group.

I hit the ground near the Hummer’s right front tire, crawled once on my elbows, and the deafening burst sounded behind me, followed a half second later by blasting sand and shrapnel pinging all over the truck.

Ears ringing, pulse racing, drool spilling out of my mouth, I rolled, then pushed up on my hands and knees as the fire and smoke mushroomed above us.

Guys were screaming, but no noise came from their mouths. I took a few seconds to search out each of my men, and I found them all except for Beasley, who was lying near one of the other Hummers. I rose and staggered over to him.

He was missing a leg, an arm… the side of his face. I turned away and gagged.

A few of the others gathered around me, and Nolan and Brown dropped to their knees.

Two more pickup trucks were racing across the desert now, heading toward us from the village. I shielded my eyes from the glare and saw Kundi in the passenger seat of one vehicle and the water man, Burki, at the wheel.

My arms and legs were stinging because I’d taken some minor hits, but I was still too shocked to even look for the wounds. With the fires raging all around us, I shifted around the trucks to where I spotted a shovel stuck in the sand. The lieutenant had found something all right, and one of his guys had begun digging.

I knew that once Kundi arrived — and no doubt Harruck would, too — it’d all be over, so whatever the villagers or the Taliban had buried out there needed to be uncovered — immediately.

I’d just lost a guy, and I’d be damned if it was for nothing. I seized the shovel and began digging like a maniac, sand arcing through the air, while Ramirez came over to me, wanted to know what I was doing.

“Grab the other shovel! Dig now! Dig!”

“Matt’s gone! He’s dead!”

“I know. Dig!” I cursed at him, kept digging, going down another two feet when my shovel hit something. I dropped to my hands and knees, dug around with my hands, found wood. Maybe a hatch. “Got something! Help me out!”

My gaze was torn between clearing away more dirt and the approaching vehicles.

And now came the heavily armed and armored Hummer carrying Harruck himself, streaking across the sand.

I found the edge of the hatch, a rope pull, and tugged on it. Nothing. Just a creak. Still too much sand holding it down.

Ramirez leaned over and began clearing sand with his hands, and within thirty seconds we began to pull free the wood. It finally gave and we came up with it: a rectangular piece of plywood about three feet by four.

As dirt poured down into the hole, sunlight revealed a wooden ladder and a chamber at least two meters deep. I stole one more look at the pickup trucks and Harruck’s ride, then descended the ladder. I turned around and in the shadows saw that the chamber extended another two or three meters to my left and was filled with cardboard boxes and crates.

No, it wasn’t some Afghan wine cellar, that was for sure, and what I’d uncovered was both significant and alarming. A creak from the ladder drew my gaze, and Harruck reached the bottom, turned, and let his gaze drift past me.

Another man I didn’t recognize reached the bottom of the ladder. He was middle-aged, had a thick mustache, and wore a green uniform with red insignia on the shoulders: AFGHAN NATIONAL POLICE.

“It’s all American,” I said, my voice cracking. “Probably a hundred rifles or more. Thousands of rounds of ammo. Grenades, gas masks… all stuff that was meant for the national army and the police.”

“I agree,” said the man in uniform. He looked at me. “I am Shafiq, the new police chief here in Senjaray.”

Harruck spun around, his eyes now glassy, his cheeks turning red. “Mitchell, get your people back to the base. We’ll take over from here. I’ll work this out with Captain Warris.”

“Yes, sir.”

He blinked hard, coughed, then looked at me, as though to say, No argument?

But then, as I ascended the ladder, he threw a verbal punch that I could not ignore: “I’ll find out why the minesweepers were here, Mitchell.”

“Look around. Kundi’s been letting the Taliban store weapons. They figured we wouldn’t look here, right out in the open — unless of course we wanted to drill a well. And that’s why the old man got so bent out of shape. He was protecting his little cache here.”

“He is right,” said Shafiq.

I gave Harruck a final look and climbed out, where I shouted for my men to rally back on our Hummer. Nolan had already removed a body bag from the truck, and he and Ramirez had just finished zipping up Beasley. They carried his body to the flatbed and eased it onboard.

The fires were still whipping in the breeze behind us, the scene now like an anthill that had been disturbed. Kundi was out near the hole, throwing his hands in the air, along with Burki, as Warris, Harruck, and the new police chief faced them.

Warris turned away from the group and looked at me, and for just a moment, I thought he longed to be in my boots, not having to deal with any of the crap.

But then, suddenly, he waved me over.

I looked over my shoulder, then back to him. Me?

He nodded.

Harruck turned around and cried, “Mitchell? We need you over here right now!”

I liked how he called me Mitchell around everyone else.

“You wanna just take off?” Ramirez asked me. “Screw them all. Screw all these assholes.”

“No. You guys take Beasley back. Then get to the hospital and get everybody else checked out. If these idiots want to talk to me, then they’d better strap in and get ready for the ride…”

I took a deep breath, winced over a shooting pain in my leg, and marched toward them.