by Eric Meyer
“Cover! Keep your heads down while we locate that sniper. He has to be somewhere on the slope ahead of us, probably hiding inside one of the houses. If we don't kill the bastard, he'll hold us off for hours while they make their getaway. We need to take them down, all of them. Otherwise this operation is a bust.”
They lay flat in the dirt, searching with scopes and binoculars for the shooter. No further shots spat toward them, and it looked like the sniper had stopped for some reason. Maybe they'd gone away. Until another weapon opened up, a light machine gun. PO Mike Jameson, his number two, crawled over to him.
He felt reassured; Jameson would know what to do. He kept the men safe from inexperienced officers like freshly minted Lieutenant Stoner. Jameson was a fireball of a man, although his wiry, almost runty physique looked unexceptional, until you looked underneath the hood at the motor that drove him. Stripped to his shorts, he resembled a rockpile. Even his lantern jaw looked tough enough to batter down the door of a target building. Right now, he was shaking his head as he worked through their options.
“We gotta do something fast, Lt. No good eating dirt while the rags pick us off like sitting ducks.”
He nodded. "Sure, but what can we do, Mike?”
Stoner was new to the SEALs. Jameson had spent many years in undercover operations fighting against insurgents. He was a tough veteran, and Stoner wanted the advice of a man who'd fought this kind of action a score of times before.
“We need to call in a boat. They can sling one under a helo, give us covering fire while they drop it and we cross over. That'd be my advice."
It was more than advice. A veteran SEAL's advice was as good as an order to a rookie Lieutenant.
“Do it, Mike, and thanks.”
He nodded and crawled away to their radioman. Minutes later, he came back.
“They’re setting it up right now, priority one. The Marines had a Black Hawk spooling up for a training flight, shooting up ground targets on the range."
He nodded. The reliable Sikorsky UH-60 Black Hawk twin-engine helo was the workhorse of American forces in country.
"How soon?"
"The ground crew is strapping the RIB underneath, and they said they’ll take-off any moment. ETA is about twenty minutes.”
“Copy that. Jesus Christ!”
The force of the blow knocked him back. The sniper across the river had moved position, and the shot had slammed into his body armor. It struck him low in the body, too low. A few inches more would have meant a serious leg wound, even a ruptured femoral artery.
The machine gunner opened fire once more, and this time they marked his position. He’d holed up on the second floor of the end house in the village. The sniper fire was coming somewhere on the other side, although they still hadn’t identified his stand. A couple of the SEALs took potshots at the machine gunner’s position. Not one of the shots scored a hit. He’d concealed himself well behind the thick stone walls of the building. They continued to return fire each time he sent a burst in their direction, but it was a no-win situation. Their chances of hitting the insurgents were zero. Yet all he and his sniper friend need do was keep trying. Sooner or later they’d score some hits on the SEALs.
Stoner raged with frustration, wondering if he should have done something different. The arrival of the helo brought them a solution. The Black Hawk mounted a M240 7.62mm door gun, with a rate of fire in excess of nine hundred rounds per minute from the link belt ammunition. While the pilot hovered out of range of enemy fire, he called Stoner on the radio to establish what they wanted. It occurred to the SEAL Lieutenant they could have boarded the helo and gone straight into the village, although they had no intel on the enemy strength. They could have heavy machine guns, RPGs, enough to bring down a slow, low flying aircraft. It could result in the loss of one expensive Black Hawk aircraft, as well as the lives of the crewmen and passengers.
Better to do it this way, Jameson was right.
“This is Marine UH-60, call sign Camel Driver. What can we do for you Frogs this fine day?”
“Glad you could join us, Marines. We’re facing an enemy machine gun sited on the second floor of the last building on the west the village. There’s also a sniper on the east side, but we don’t have eyes on his position.”
“Copy that. You want us to suppress the machine gun while we drop the boat, we can handle that. Why don’t you try to draw fire from the sniper? As soon as you locate him, use tracer fire to light up his position. We’ll take care of the rest.”
I should have thought of tracer. Dammit, when will I learn how this job works?
“Appreciated, give us a minute.”
He turned to the waiting Mike Jameson. “Pour it on. We need the position of that sniper. Give him an excuse to shoot back at us infidels.”
“Copy that, Lt. Men, open fire, but keep it to the last three buildings on the east side of the village. We don’t know if there are friendlies in there.”
Every man opened fire on the suspected position of the sniper. At the same time, the Black Hawk swooped in, and the M240 opened up. Spewing hundreds of rounds into the target at a frightening rate, the gunner drenched the buildings to the west with a hurricane of lead. The linked belt gave an almost inexhaustible supply of ammunition, and the gunfire chipped huge chunks from the stone facade. It was all but impossible for the target to survive the onslaught. Within seconds, they saw the barrel of the machine gun tilt at a crazy angle as the man behind the breech felt the full fury of the incoming fire.
Whatever the reason was, the combined gunfire from the SEALs and the helo, or anger at the loss of a comrade, the enemy sniper got it in his head to take revenge. Instead of the occasional shot, he popped off five in succession, and this time they nailed his position.
“Second house from the east side of the village, Lt, I see muzzle flashes,” Jameson yelled.
Before Stoner answered, he turned to the SEAL with the machine gun. “Dan, you get a fix on his position?”
“That’s affirmative,” Dan Abbott replied. He carried the heavy SAW, or Squad Automatic Weapon, the M249, an American adaptation of the Belgian FN Minimi. The weapon fired a lightweight 5.56mm bullet from a thirty round Stanag clip, “Locked and loaded with tracer. Here’s a present for you, shithead.”
He pulled the trigger, and a burst of bullets spat out to the spot where they’d seen the smoke. The flashes of tracer lit up the intervening gap almost like a finger pointing to the target. Camel Driver didn’t hesitate. The Black Hawk banked away thirty degrees to port, dropped lower, and turned to give the gunner the right angle. The M240 fired, and once again, the dreaded hammering noise of the machine gun echoed around the hills. Stoner had no idea how much ammunition the weapon carried, but it was more than enough. The long burst ripped chunks out of the front of the building. Through one of the holes, they could see light streaming in, enough to eliminate the body of the sniper.
“Tell them to drop the boat. Enemy is suppressed,” he shouted to Jameson, “We’re going across.”
“Copy that.”
The radioman sent the message; the helo swung around, dropped to within a couple of meters from the ground, and slipped the lines on its load. The RIB dropped to the ground, only a few meters from the riverbank.
“That’s it. Let’s go,” he shouted as he grabbed the headset from the radioman, “Camel Driver, target is destroyed. The situation in the village is unknown; can you remain on station in case we need you again?”
“Roger that, we'll be here. Happy to help.”
Stoner split his men into two, four-man fireteams. He led the first team as they carried the boat down to the water. They waded in and then jumped into the RIB, as the next two men pushed the vessel further into the water and then boarded. Two men from the other fireteam crowded in the back; ready to fetch the boat back for the second team. The two remaining men on the bank, Jameson and Abbott, manned the SAW to give covering fire.
They paddled the boat over the fast flowing r
iver and had to fight hard against the fierce current. They landed fifty meters downstream from where they’d launched, but they were across. As they ran up the bank, the two men left with the boat re-launched to return to the opposite bank. Stoner led his SEALs on the run across open ground, and they reached the first stone building without encountering enemy fire.
Curtis, the radioman, was the first to see the bodies. He didn’t cry out, just crouched in a heap and started to vomit, in between making low moaning noises. Stoner came up with him and saw what had caused him to spew his guts. Bodies. Dead bodies. That was nothing new, not in Afghanistan. But this was very new. They weren’t the bodies of combatants; adults, men with beards and assault rifles who'd fallen in battle. This was a scene of extreme butchery.
The nearest pile of bodies showed evidence of forced execution. It was clear their murderers had pushed them into a kneeling position, and then gone along the line putting a bullet in each of their heads. They lay in the same neat line. A few were men, older men, but most were women and young children, useless mouths to the insurgents. They couldn’t carry a gun or pack a heavy load. Maybe they'd refused to wear a bomb vest to commit murder by means of their own suicide. Useless.
Worse was the trail of bodies stretching away from the line of corpses; men, women, and children who’d refused to accept their fate. They’d tried to run. Their murderers had followed them, and slaughtered them one by one. Not content with a mere bullet to end their lives, they’d hacked and slashed at the corpses until they were almost unrecognizable, probably to encourage the others to play ball. Whatever the reason, it was no reason.
He gulped a few breaths to recover and gave orders, “Curtis, I know it’s bad, but we have a job to do. Go with Blake and check out the east side of the village. Vega, come with me. We'll take the west side and circle around to the north.”
“Copy that.”
They left the scene of slaughter and went from house to house, but the place was empty. The Taliban had finished their work. Curtis’ voice came into his headset.
“Lt, it’s the Black Hawk. They’ve just spotted the main party of insurgents. They broke cover about three klicks north of here. They count twenty of them. He's asking for authorization to fire.”
Stoner’s heart was cold as ice. “Tell him to kill the fuckers. Every one of them.”
“You sure? We were supposed to bring back a couple of prisoners.”
“They forfeited the right to live when they murdered these people. Tell him.”
“Roger that.” He started to walk back to the riverbank where Jameson was coming across in the RIB. In the distance, he heard the yammering sound of the door gun as they swept the ground below clear of Taliban. It didn't help. He crouched down, and like Curtis, he was violently sick. Jameson had heard the reports, and he understood. He waited a short distance away until Stoner had finished. Then he walked up to him.
“I know it's not good, Lt, not when it’s women and kids as well.”
"Do you ever get used to it?"
"No. Never."
He stared at his second-in-command. “They butchered them. They just hacked, slashed, and murdered. Like wild beasts, no, worse than beasts, there was no reason for it. They were just innocents. How could any of us ever forget this place?"
Jameson waited a few seconds before he replied, “Lieutenant, one thing you learn fighting these people. You never forget scenes like this. They stay with you, and when you wake up in the night, you still see them. Still staring you in the face, like ghosts. It goes with the territory. That's the way it is. We can't change the world."
Stoner stared back at him.
We should try to change the world. At least, this small part of it, isn't that why we're here, to protect these people, to change things?
He reflected that only his SEALs remained alive and able to bear witness to the killing ground. To honor the lives and deaths of these innocents who'd died in this place.
Just a single unit of U.S. Navy SEALs to keep so many memories alive.
* * *
The Present Day
“Fill ‘em up, Anahita,” he slurred, grinning at the men sitting at the table with him, “They’re on the house.”
It was one of those rare times, a chance to relax in the bar he part owned with Ma Kelly. With him were four good friends he hadn’t seen in a long, long time; four men who’d done work for him in the past, but lately been too busy in the east of the country, hunting down the bad guys. Enemies of the government in Kabul, or at least, men who the Ministers said were enemies.
More likely, they were rivals for the lucrative drug traffic, the main source of revenue. Afghanistan was the greatest illegal opium producer in the entire world, ahead of both the Golden Triangle and Latin America. Lately, they'd found new ways to profit from the lucrative trade. Heroin and morphine refined from the raw opium. Each kilo of opium could make as much as one hundred grams of pure heroin, easier to transport and the price was astronomical. That was their business. What Stoner cared about was keeping the booze flowing freely in Ma Kelly’s saloon bar. A bottle of Scotch or Bourbon was a healthy dose of oblivion. When the booze dried up, the nightmares were always there. Waiting.
The shingle outside stated ‘Bar’, but inside it was more than just a bar. Ornate chandeliers decorated with cut crystal glass, polished mahogany furniture upholstered in velvet, and a wealth of solid brass fittings. Walls adorned with artworks suggested a very upmarket establishment. The girls sitting on stools at the bar suggested something completely different. Heavily made up, dressed in little more than their underwear, with silk stockings and high-heeled shoes on their feet, a man could have mistaken them for high-class whores. It was no mistake. Ma Kelly’s was a brothel.
Stoner smiled at them, happy to be with his own kind, four men, all former military, and all with their own stories to tell. The more painful memories he kept hidden deep inside the soul, never to surface from those dark depths.
“What’re we drinking to?”
He gave ‘Black Bob’ Crawford a hard stare. “Not what’re we drinking to, more like what’re we drinking for. To oblivion.”
The four men nodded and raised their glasses. “To oblivion!”
They tossed down the harsh spirit and put the glasses on the bar for refills. The bottle said, ‘Jack Daniels’ on the label, but it hadn’t been nearer to Tennessee than Helmand Province, where they brewed the firewater and slapped fake labels on the bottles. It did the same job as the real stuff. Provided you could deal with the monster hangover the next day. It was less a hangover, more like a steam hammer pounding inside the brain. It wasn’t all bad. How could a man think of the bloody past when his head threatened to burst into fragments of tissue on the barren soil? There was only that longed for oblivion.
They filled their glasses and swallowed another round of what tasted like recycled paint stripper. Stoner looked with fondness at his pals. Tall, big muscled Black Bob Crawford, a former Delta Force operative, a man who couldn’t settle down when his service ended, so he came back to seek his fortune. And never went home. Rumi Baba, an Afghan, former-Taliban, probably he and Bob had once swapped shots. Rumi had a patch over one eye, which made him look theatrical, like a pirate.
There was Malik, a stone killer, a hard, cold Pakistani on the run after he killed a government minister. He claimed the man raped his sister, but some doubted the story. In the remote regions of Pakistan where he came from, they’d have killed their own sister as well as the perp, a punishment for allowing herself to be raped.
Then there was Sebastian Koch. German, and a former ISAF soldier, he'd deserted after a Taliban ambush almost wiped out his unit. He couldn’t take the brown-nosed coward who ran the unit, so he gave his officer a severe beating, left him with broken arms and legs, and just walked out. Afterward, he made a living any way he could, always with a gun, and in company with Malik, Baba, and Crawford.
When he needed men, Stoner recruited Bob's team to help out. It
worked both ways, and they sometimes called on him to join them for a special operation. When it was quiet, they came together in Ma Kelly’s to swallow the booze, enjoy the girls, and swap yarns.
Black Bob was speaking, and he missed it. “What was that, something about Helmand?”
The big, bearded mercenary grinned. “Yeah, we were just coming off an operation, and we ran into a bunch of ragheads outside Lashkar Gar. They were digging a hole in the road. You know what I mean, they weren’t repairing potholes."
He chuckled. The road mending in Afghanistan was more a notion than a reality. Money went in, and then disappeared as if an even bigger hole had opened up at the Ministry concerned. "We decided they were up to no good, so we showed them the error of their ways. Permanently. Jesus, we could have run over one of those IEDs they were planting."
Stoner didn't smile. Instead, he swallowed the contents of his glass, refilled it, emptied it, and refilled it again. The name was like a hard kick in the guts, Lashkar Gar, a small, pisspot village a few klicks outside the city. It had been more of a skirmish than a battle. No, it wasn't even a skirmish. Butchery summed it up best. Everything started to blur. There’d be no oblivion this night, only the ghosts; a bleeding, psychological wound that would never heal.
It was his final recollection of that night. Afterward, he alternated between periods of unconsciousness and semi-comatose wakefulness. He preferred the former. He didn’t need his mind to work. He wanted it to sleep, to drift away into nothingness.
He dimly recalled his old friend Greg Blum picked him up off the street and put him in the passenger seat of his GAZ 69 jeep, AKA a piece of Russian crap. He came to in his own bed in the apartment he kept on the top floor of the brothel. Someone had taken off his clothes. He assumed it was Anahita, his favorite whore. He dimly realized there was a noise in the room, and at first thought it was the ringing in his head, but it was the ringing of his cellphone on the bedside cabinet. He automatically reached out a hand to answer.