.45 Caliber Soul
Chapter 1 – "I've a feeling we're not in Afghanistan any more.""Beamer Six, this is Beamer Three-Six . . . we got a truck comin' up the draw. . . . two men in the cab, four in the back, looks like a twelve-point-seven or a fourteen-five mounted on top the cab. Betcha that's our boy."
We were in the middle of the Panjashir Valley of Afghanistan, two hundred miles from the nearest place with running water and electricity. We'd been hiking for two days through bandit country to get here. My C.P. was up on the hillside overlooking an isolated farmhouse. I could see through my night vision goggles that there were five or six guys in turbans hanging around the farm, waiting for somebody. That somebody, whoever he was—the guys from the Other Government Agency (a polite term for "CIA") that I was escorting here in bandit country wouldn't tell me much, just that he was a High Value Target—was probably a passenger in that truck that Corporal Taylor just reported.
My job was to take custody of Mr. HVT, in as undamaged a condition as possible, so the OGA guys could have a long conversation with him. To accomplish this, I had the Third Platoon, Company C, First Battalion, Ninety-Third Volunteer Infantry, United States Army, with attached assets, namely a sniper team with a Barrett fifty and one USAF Enlisted Forward Air Controller. The wing-wiper was a shrimpy, mousy little guy, but he had a GPS, a laser rangefinder, and a radio, and out here that made him the Hindu god Shiva, the Bringer of Death and Destroyer of Worlds. On about five minutes' notice, he could call in a two thousand pounder JDAM or an AC-130 gunship or a Warthog on anything he could see—and make it go away.
If he had to do that, it probably would mean we were in trouble.
Corporal Purcell's squad was on the hill just below me, covering the farmhouse with all three SAWs. Sergeant Wheeler, my platoon sergeant, and the second squad were close in, and one of the grenadiers had his GL loaded with flash-bangs. Third squad, Corporal Taylor, was watching the road. The fifty, the OGAs, and the wing-wiper were right next to me.
The plan, as plans go, was pretty simple. Once the truck passed, Taylor's people would move down into a blocking position across the road. We'd wait for the HVT to get in the house, then Wheeler's grenadier would put a flash-bang in the window. Wheeler would assault the house, covered by Purcell, while Taylor would sweep up the road in case anyone tried to escape.
The truck pulled up to the farmhouse. "Six, this is Three-Six," my earphone whispered, "in position." That meant Taylor was ready.
I took another look at the farm through the NVGs. The guys from the truck were going in, save for one who stayed outside on the big gun. Four other turbans were just standing around, providing what I guess they considered local security. They didn't have a clue we were there.
"Six to One-Six," I said into the radio. "Go, no-go?"
I heard a single beep from Sergeant Wheeler's signal key. He was ready.
I set my NVGs down. "Your target's the truck. Take the gunner first," I whispered to the sniper.
"Yessir."
I keyed the mic. "Let's roll!"
There was a single, soft popping noise from down in the valley—Wheeler's grenade launcher—and a sound of breaking glass. The interior of the farmhouse lit up like a flashbulb. The Barrett fifty went off with a loud report. Purcell's SAW gunners fired a series of short bursts, spraying tracers into the night.
I put the NVGs back up to my face and looked toward the farmhouse. The gunner on the back of the truck was slumped over the tailgate. Only one turban was still standing, blasting away with his AK in random directions. The truck suddenly backed away and shot off down the road in panic. I heard the sniper curse—he must have shot at the driver and missed. The last turban flopped over, probably a victim of M-16 fire from Wheeler's squad. I saw three of our guys race up to the farmhouse door and do a "ballistic breach" of the door with a shotgun.
There was a burst of fire from up the road. The truck had run into Taylor's ambush. I looked up that way through the NVGs—the truck was stopped, off to one side of the road.
I looked back toward the farmhouse. Wheeler was inside by now. I could hear indistinct shouts, but no shooting. "Six, this is One-Six," my radio said. "Objective secure. We got the big boy."
"Cease fire," I replied. "One-Six hold the prisoners 'till I get there; Two-Six and Three-Six, redeploy for local security and mark out an LZ for the extraction bird; well done people." I put down the mic. "You fall in with Purcell," I said to the sniper, then turned to the FAC. "Call the taxi," I told him, referring to the transport helicopter waiting to pick up the OGAs and the HVT. "Now let's go on down," I said to the nearest OGA, "and say hello to your new friend."
When I got to the farmhouse, Wheeler met me at the door. He was a tall kid from the rough part of Detroit, young for a sergeant, but very good at the job. "El-tee!" he said when I got close enough for conversation, "we've got six enemy kilo, nine EPWs, two of 'em wounded—Doc's workin' on 'em now—and no friendly casualties."
"You're having a good day at the office," I replied. That might seem a funny thing to say, in response to a report that six people had just died by violence, but that's how you think out in the boonies. You want it so that everybody on your side has fun, and nobody gets hurt. The other team, they're supposed to be casualties. It's like old General Patton said, you don't win a war by dying for your country, you win by making the other guy die for his.
I stepped inside. The farmhouse was pretty basic, mud-brick walls, crude wooden furniture, a couple of kerosene lanterns for lighting. The prisoners were lined up on one wall, their hands tied behind their backs with plastic zip-cuffs, and one of Wheeler's squad standing over them with a pistol just in case they got any ideas. The rest of Wheeler's squad was carefully searching the farmhouse.
The OGA guys made for the oldest prisoner and started talking to him in Arabic—not Pashtun or Turkoman or one of the other local dialects, but Arabic, with a Saudi accent. He was definitely a major bad guy.
"Hey, El-tee, we found a spider hole in the back." It was Rawlins, one of the guys in Wheeler's squad, standing in the doorway to the back room.
I followed him into the back bedroom. They'd found a trap door under the bed; beneath it was a shaft about eight feet deep. One guy had already gone down in there; I could see a flashlight dancing in the darkness.
I hunched down over the hole. "What'cha got down there?"
Private Ruiz looked up at me from the bottom of the hole. "Oh, hi, El-tee. You oughtta come down here an' see for yerself. It's a regular jee-haddi warehouse."
"Okay, comin' down." I set my M-16 on the floor next to the hole and lowered myself in. There was a ladder of sorts along one side of the shaft.
At the bottom of the shaft, it opened out into a chamber about four feet high, filled with crates and boxes. "Lookie here, El-tee," Ruiz said. He crouched and went in between two crates, pointing things out with his flashlight. "This place's a regular Taliban party supply store. We got seven point six two ammo over here . . . RPGs over here . . . some Bouncin' Betty mines . . ."
I swung my own flashlight into another part of the chamber. I caught a glint of something red and metallic between two crates. For some reason, it caught my curiosity, and I crawled over to it.
". . . one-twenty mortar rounds . . . a whole one-twenty mortar broke down into pack loads . . ."
Whatever it was, it practically glowed when the flashlight hit it. It was the most mesmerizing shade of red I'd ever seen. "Hey, El-tee, what'cha got over there?"
"I don't know." I reached in to touch it—
—and suddenly I wasn't in Afghanistan any more.
It was the middle of an overcast day. I was standing in the sanctuary of a ruined Gothic cathedral. Most of one wall and the roof were missing; to judge from the broken stonework and debris, and the holes in some of the surviving stained glass, it looked like it had been bombarded. I turned around slowly, surveying the scene.
I wasn't alone. About fifteen feet away from me was a short, powerfully-built man—in lacquered Japanese samurai armor, with a big long Japanese samurai sword.
He didn't look happy.
In fact, he looked like he was about to use that sword of his on me.
. . . to be continued . . .