Black Operations- the Spec-Ops Action Pack

by Eric Meyer

  "See? You could bet your pension on it," Jeffs concluded, "There's no doubt, no doubt at all."

  "There's one thing you haven't told us." I fixed him with a hard stare, "Noncombatants, how many are there inside the mosque?"

  He smiled. "On that score, I can give you a definite answer. Absolutely none. We've been monitoring the place for several weeks, and the focus of Muslim worship has switched to a couple of mosques on the outskirts of Herat. They've cleared out and given Khan a perfect operational base."

  "So no civilians? You guarantee that?"

  He nodded, and he reminded me of a college teacher responding to some dumb biology question. "Absolutely. I guarantee it, no women, no children, no one except for Ghani Khan and his people."

  It sounded okay. I swapped glances with Niall. He was unhappy, and so was I. The way this should be done was to put boots on the ground. It was essential we take a good long look at the target and the surrounding area. We were outvoted. Brad and Manuel both wanted to go in, and Jeffs was pushing like crazy. Maybe he was on a bonus, or maybe he wanted a successful operation recorded in his personnel file. Whatever the reason, we agreed to go in that night. The last photograph was taken only the day before, and we needed to hit him before he disappeared again into the countryside. I looked at Jeffs.

  "How about our gear, you got it ready for us?"

  "Sure, it's all stored in a lock-up, not too far from here. You want to check it out now?"

  I nodded. "If we're going in tonight, we need to know what we're working with."

  We paid the tab, and he led us through the reeking streets and alleys. Women in blue robes, covered from head to toe, their faces hidden behind fine mesh, moving quickly along the dark alleys; some of them laden with heavy parcels. Children working, sewing carpets or hawking trinkets from flimsy stalls, surly men sitting in pavement cafes, drinking coffee, and smoking, probably opium. The narrow lanes were packed so tightly together the sunlight never reached them, and they were squalid and dank. It always appeared to me that ‘cleaning’ was not a word that had ever entered the Pashtu vocabulary. By the time we reached Jeffs’ lock-up, we were getting used to the stench that hung over the place like a swamp, but we were wary. We had a tried and trusted maxim; beware the Muslim with a gun, and none of them were very far from a gun.

  The CIA man unlocked the door, and we walked inside. He lit an oil lamp, and by its light we were able to peruse his private armory. He stood in front of the wooden crates and racks with his arms spread wide, like a market hawker proudly displaying his wares for sale.

  "We’ve got it all, Gentlemen. The Agency keeps these supplies for the times when weapons are needed in a hurry; HK 416 assault rifles, Sig Sauer 9mm handguns, the P226 model, and a bunch of other stuff. Over there on the rack we have a couple of SAWs, M249 Special Purpose Weapons. They're fitted with Picatinny rails for laser night optics, so they're good for…"

  I stopped him. "I think we all know what they're good for, Jeffs. If we didn't, we wouldn't be here."

  He flushed red. "Right. Take a look around. There's plenty of ammo, grenades, ballistic vests. You help yourselves. I need to write it all down. I'm leaving for Kabul, so I'll pass it to our Head of Station."

  Something in his voice sounded a warning bell.

  "Kabul? When do you leave?"

  "I'm flying out of Herat this evening."

  "So you won't be around when we go in."

  He couldn't meet my gaze. "No, I wish I could, but there's a meeting…"

  I ignored the rest of it, but it was less than ideal. The Agency man on the spot, the one person who would be able to offer help and resources if things went south, was getting out of Dodge. We helped ourselves to weapons and equipment. There were no radios, which meant someone had fucked up. But when you're in a place like Herat, there's no one to complain to, except maybe Jeffs, who was already packing his bags.

  I sorted out my gear, an HK MK 23 SOCOM .45 caliber fitted with a long silencer on the barrel. It was something of a handful, but tucked under my coat, it was well concealed. For an assault weapon, I took the silenced MP5SSD, another bulky weapon with the permanently fitted silencer, but during the night, and utilizing its laser optics, it was the perfect tool for a clandestine hit. Niall chose the SAW M249. I smiled as he chose a Remington 870 Tactical Shot Gun as a sidearm. It carried seven cartridges, and its ability to shock and awe in tight situations had been proven time and again.

  "What about vests?" Brad asked, "We don't know what we're up against."

  I shook my head. "If they start shooting, we've already lost. They won't take too kindly to Americans taking down their head honcho, right next door to the local mosque. We need to keep this discreet."

  He agreed, and we finished drawing our equipment. Jeffs handed us the intel packet and shook hands.

  "Good luck to you guys. I wish I could stay around, but I have a plane to catch."

  "Sure you do," Niall muttered.

  The CIA man reddened once more. "Yeah, well if there's anything else I can do, let me know."

  "You want us to write?" Brad asked him.

  He looked puzzled at first, and then he gave a sickly grin. "Oh, a joke."

  He was wrong. It was a statement of fact. He made the Agency position crystal clear. Don't ring me. I'll ring you.

  Another shitty bar in another shitty street, and we sat eating a meal while we waited for the streets to clear and most of the folks to go home. We were sitting inside, watching the mosque across the street through the smeared and dusty windows. We were all sweating, unable to remove our coats because of the hardware we carried underneath. The night was cold outside, with the temperature close to zero, but the bar owner had managed to superheat his place to make it comfortable for the customers, although we were the only customers. He kept bustling up to our table, rubbing his hands and asking us if everything was to our liking. None of us had ever been much for goat stew, but we didn't want to disillusion him.

  Eventually, the time hit midnight. Without a word, we paid the tab, got up, and left. He breathed a sigh of relief, turned off the lights, and locked up the bar. We were relieved to breathe fresh air once more.

  We had a simple plan. Brad and Manuel would go in the back way. Niall and me would kick in the front door. We usually paired up that way, and we used Niall as the lead breacher, on account of his formidable weight and strength. The other two men strolled away, and we waited the agreed time, ten minutes for them to get into position. Once we went in, we'd have to play it by ear, not having any radios. It was an inconvenience, but one we’d just have to get over. I was mistaken.

  We strolled through the square, just two tourists walking home after a late-night meal. We didn't glance at the mosque as we walked past, but we managed to squint sideways. Enough to tell us two men, Khan's sentries, were outside the door and hiding in the gloom of the porch. When we reached the end of the block, we turned, and I glanced at my wristwatch. One minute. I looked at Niall as I eased the .45 caliber silenced HK from under my coat.

  "I'll take the two gomers on the door. You go straight in and start blasting."

  "Copy that."

  Lead breachers normally carry a steel battering ram or similar implement. Niall Quinn needed nothing more than two hundred and fifty pounds of rock hard muscle. He fell in slightly behind me to give me a clear field of fire. As I came adjacent to the door, I swung up the HK and fired a double tap, and then again. Four shots, but the sound wasn't enough to alert any of the hostiles. I swung to the side, just in time. It was like a small truck was heading toward the door at speed. He hit and kept going, stepping over broken wood and iron. In a move we'd practiced a hundred times before, he rolled to the floor. A split second later I rolled to the opposite side, and he started throwing grenades. M67 fragmentation grenades, six and a half ounces of explosive, a four second delay, and anyone inside a fifteen-foot radius of the blast were on the fast track to paradise. Up to fifty feet, most victims would suffer disabling wound
s. Niall threw four grenades one after the other, and they detonated in a shattering series of blasts. The room in front of us filled with smoke, dust, and plaster from the walls, and we hugged the floor as hot metal buzzed around us like angry hornets. I started to lift my head when I heard the distinctive sound of more grenades coming in from the rear.

  "Grenades!"

  Our standard MO was to lob them into the center of the target, and Brad's grenades exploded in roughly the same area as Niall's. A total of eight missiles, each containing high explosive, showered the room in a hurricane of steel fragments. As the smoke lifted, I jumped up and started forward. A man loomed in front of me, bleeding from a deep gouge in his side, but trying to bring his AK-47 to bear. He was barefoot, this being a mosque, and the blood dripping from his wound mixed with more blood on the floor, and he slipped; a fatal mistake, very fatal. I popped a single round into his brain as I rushed past and went looking for more targets. We could all see better and were mopping up the survivors one by one. Most of the shots were mercy killings, finishing off badly wounded victims of the grenade blasts. A few tried to fight back.

  "Behind you!" I heard Brad's voice shout to me.

  I dropped flat, and a burst of automatic fire rattled past where I'd been standing less than a second before. I'd already recognized the distinctive chatter of an AK-47 on full auto, and I swung around, aimed, and fired in a single fluid motion. The Afghan went down, peppered with 9mm rounds from the HK. Flames were starting to lick around the room as the team ran around, eliminating the last of the hostiles. By the light of the flames, we could make out their faces, and we went from body to body, checking for Ghani Khan. He wasn't there.

  "Brad, guard the rear door. Niall, you watch the front. Manuel, come with me. We need to check out the second floor. The target has to be somewhere.”

  “Roger that.”

  We had to move fast now. The fire had taken hold. A line of flames stretched up the tapestries on the walls of the staircase, and we could hear screams, screams from the second floor - the screams of women. We raced up, squeezing past the fire that was devouring everything flammable in its path. It was like a beast, a wild thing, out of control, ravening, gluttonous, and determined to slake its hunger for destruction and death. Smoke was billowing around the passage on the second floor, and we raced along, checking each room for hostiles. He wasn't there. Ghani Khan had disappeared again, but the woman who catapulted out of a doorway, robed and veiled, materialized like a genie from a bottle.

  She carried grenades, the old Soviet style grenades, probably left over after the Russian occupation. Her intention was unmistakable. Her face was screwed up in agony at the fire that consumed her, and hate for the foreign infidels who'd attacked their refuge in Herat. She attacked like a creature from hell, all smoke, flame, and those two grenades. We were adjacent to two doors either side of the passage, and I popped off a shot. As I threw myself to the right, the door burst open, and I hugged the floor. Niall threw himself to the left, but in spite of his massive weight and physique, the door stayed resolutely closed, and he bounced off. He made a rush for the room I was sheltering in, just as the flaming woman appeared. Her hands were raised ready to lob the grenades, and we did the only thing we could do. Both of us emptied the clips of our assault rifles into her, driving her back with the force of a score of bullets smashing into her body. She fell backward out of sight, still clutching the grenades, and they detonated. We were already flat on the floor, and the air above us was suddenly alive with metal fragments as the blast wave swept in and assaulted our bodies with a huge, hot tidal wave.

  Niall jerked, as one of the shards of metal hit him in the side of his body, just missing the kidney. I looked across to him.

  "You okay?"

  He nodded. "It's nothing. I'll put a dressing on it later."

  "Roger that. Let's go find Ghani Khan, and watch out for any more fire-breathing dragons. That was too close."

  We re-entered the passage and went to check the two remaining doors at the end. They were both closed. Niall shouldered the first door, and I went in, ready to hose the place down with 9mm lead, but it was empty. We looked across at the last room.

  "He has to be in there," Niall murmured, "Jeffs was certain he was in here, and the intel packet was clear cut."

  I thought for a second before I replied. The suicidal woman worried me. But then again, the Taliban and Al Qaeda used plenty of women, and it shouldn't have come as any surprise.

  "In that case, he'll be waiting for us. They could have a machine gun set up in there, probably do, and we could walk straight into it."

  A shout came up the stairs from Manuel. "There's a crowd building up in the street, dozens of them. We only have seconds to get out. If we don't go now, we're here for the duration. Hurry it up, guys."

  That settled it. I was in command, and I had to make a fast decision. I took out a pair of grenades and pulled the pins.

  "Open the door."

  He slid the Remington off his shoulder and looked at me. "You sure?"

  I knew what he was thinking. Civilians. But we had the word from Jeffs; there were only hostiles in this place.

  "Do it."

  He pumped in a round, fired a shot into the lock, and then another. The door opened a fraction, and he gave it a hefty kick to make it swing wide. Two shots cracked out, burying themselves in the plaster close to where we stood. I tossed in the grenades, one each side, and we flattened against the wall. There were shouts of alarm, twin explosions, and then the screams of mortally wounded people. But not the screams we expected to hear. Not the hoarse, angry shouts of injured men. These were high-pitched and shrill. I ducked my head around the door and saw a scene from hell. A group of women, five of them, all lay on the floor, eviscerated by the two blasts. There were no men, and no Ghani Khan.

  "Schaeffer, we have to get out."

  "You go first and cover me, but there’s something I have to do."

  "Roger that."

  He dashed away, and I entered the room. Three of the women were clearly dead, one of them still clutching her pistol. The other two were dying, their bodies torn apart by fragments of metal. Apart from the female with the weapon, the others were heavily pregnant. They were little more than girls, still not out of their teens. At a guess, I'd say the shooter was guarding them. One of the injured women stared up at me, and our eyes locked. She was begging me, desperate, despairing. I got the message, and with a heavy heart and a troubled soul, I did what she wanted of me. A single shot between the eyes, and I finished off the other one the same way. A brief second to see what I'd done, and then I left, racing down the staircase to join the other three men.

  "We need to go out the back way. The main square is filling up with people, and most of them are armed. We go out that way, and they'll shoot us down like dogs."

  "Right, let's get out of here."

  We left and skirted through the dark lanes and alleys to find our Toyota SUV. It looked untouched, but still we checked all around and underneath for any signs of tampering. Then we climbed aboard and headed out of Herat. Niall took the wheel, and as we bumped along the sorry track that passed for a highway in this region, he looked across at me.

  "Back to Kabul?"

  "Yeah, Kabul."

  "I guess you want to find Jeffs and have a word with him."

  "I want to find Jeffs and string him up from the nearest lamppost. You know what he's done? Two of those women were armed, the one with the grenades and the other with the pistol. The rest of them may have been Taliban, but they weren't armed combatants. The bastard led us to commit a war crime."

  "That's crazy," Brad shouted from the back, "We had no choice. We just went on the information we were given."

  "Maybe, maybe not. But innocent lives were lost. You know they were pregnant?"

  Niall jerked around and almost lost control of the SUV. "Pregnant! You sure?"

  "I'm sure. Jeffs has a lot to answer for."

  He concentrated o
n his driving and quietly crossed himself. I think it was at that point we both lost the will to go on. I could hear Brad and Manuel in the back, talking between themselves. Although they weren't so shattered by the revelation, neither were they very happy about it.

  We reached Kabul, but we never did see Jeffs. The resident spook at the Embassy told us he'd already returned to Herat, yet someone else insisted he'd taken a long vacation. I hoped it was somewhere he'd be safe and comfortable. Somewhere in the Antarctic would be about right. It was obvious he'd been told to lie low, and the Head of Station was unsympathetic when he heard we were still chasing him.

  "You know how it goes. Sometimes, things go wrong. This is a war we're fighting."

  I put my face three inches from his and stared him out. "Against fucking pregnant women? Are you serious? Jeffs fucked up, and you know it. He should answer for it."

  "That mosque was full of armed men," he snarled, "It was a legitimate target."

  "Our brief was to kill everyone. You telling me those pregnant women were armed insurgents?"

  "It's not unheard of," he snapped back. I didn't reply, "but it makes no difference, Schaeffer. You killed them, not Jeffs. You want to take this further, it'll be your ass on the line, not his."

  I got nowhere. The Agency had thrown a barrier around their man, and they'd protect him against all comers. They wanted the file closed. We never did hear any more about Ghani Khan. It was as if he'd disappeared into myth. I did receive one strange call from Jeffs a few weeks later. My cellphone rang in the middle of the night.

  "Schaeffer?"

  "Yeah, who is it?"

  "Listen carefully, you little shit. You think you can smear me for your fuckups in Herat; you've got another think coming. I'm gonna fix you, Schaeffer, you and that ragtaggle bunch of bums you work with. You're finished. Do you hear me? Finished!"