by L. J. Martin
And we ring off, load up, and kick dirt out behind the wheels as we leave. We’ve got a full moon, and it helps, as I don’t want to turn on the headlights until we’re at least five clicks down the road.
The Brit who was not hit stands beside me, hanging onto the roll bar and gunner’s cage, and yells in my ear, "Where're we going?"
"You’re going to London, I imagine. Who are you people?"
"I’m Radborn Whitehill, Rad please…a Methodist minister, my associate…the bloke who’s wounded…is Nigel Gray. He’s a water engineer specializing in small village systems. We’re here with Near East Outreach. The ladies are Erika and Anita, medical types from a Mazar women’s clinic funded by some Danish group. Where we going?"
"I’m going back into the fray. With luck, you’re catching a chopper out of here."
"Thank God. Bless you. Sorry about your friend."
"There were two others with you?"
"There were. Andy and Max. They were taken away only yesterday. They were tortured terribly as they were part of some attack group and had killed lots of the Taliban. This killing has to stop."
Fuck, I think and don’t say to the minister, we were a day late and maybe more than a dollar short. I don’t bother asking him just how to stop the killing as I’m sure he’ll give me some love-your-neighbor claptrap, and I’m sure he won’t appreciate my opinion: kill all the bastards who want to kill you and the killing stops. So I ask, "Do you know where they were taken?"
"You could just barely see the gate from the window in the back of our little prison. It was a big black city car, a limo I think, a stretch limo, a Mercedes, that left the compound not long after they were dragged out."
A limo? Things have changed in Afghanistan.
He barely gets it out when an explosion lights up the night fifty yards in front of our DPV. Hank swerves hard left and we almost lose the minister, who loses both a hand and foot hold. He gloms back onto the cage wide-eyed and open mouthed.
At almost the same instant, a chopper passes a hundred feet over us at three times our speed, and I realize it was a rocket blast and we are the target.
"Head for the bank," I yell at Hank, and he does as up ahead the chopper is making a wide turn. I now realize the Porsche engine was not well muffled and had occluded the sound of the oncoming chopper.
"Off," I yell at the minister and the woman who’s in the passenger seat. "Take cover and stay out of sight, no matter what happens."
I look back and see that TooBad and BeBe have followed suit and are dumping their passengers. Nigel is tossed out like a sack of shit—which he seems to be—and is shaking his fist as BeBe drives away. Skip’s left to babysit our passengers, with an M5 and RPG for company.
So it’s me and Hank in Sand Hog and TooBad and BeBe in Dirt Dog.
"Haul ass until he makes another pass," I yell, and Hank hits it so hard I think we’re gonna do a wheelie, and we’re off across the sand. I don’t want to know how fast and the Porsche engine is whining like a turbojet. This time the chopper passes us and just behind us erupts a rocket plume that’s aimed at Dirt Dog. It explodes two car lengths to the west of them and on their flank, and they’re unharmed. Hank slows as I dig an RPG out of the back, then he speeds up again.
I spin the seat facing back and watch the ANA chopper make another wide turn. He passes low over Dirt Dog and I can see his machine guns spitting fire when BeBe cuts the steering wheel, spins, and is suddenly headed the opposite way.
The chopper comes on and the bad guys and I fire about the same time, him four hundred yards behind us and moving at over twice our speed.
"Break right," I yell, and Hank does and it’s a damn good thing as my shot is low and slow and passes under the chopper—I haven't led him enough—and his blows a crater in the sand right where we would have been, showering us with rocks and sand.
"Find a hole," I yell at Hank. "Let’s get out of this white sand and make him hunt us in the dark."
I look over my shoulder and don’t see Dirt Dog, they must have headed up the bank and into the undergrowth, and we follow suit.
The chopper is making another wide turn and Hank slides to a stop in the middle of a small copse of pistachio trees.
The chopper comes hard up the wadi, ranging back and forth a little, not seeing a target.
I’m still wearing my helmet and consequently my night vision, and employ it and the chopper stands out like a frog in the punch bowl at a ladies party.
My gun is a M2HB heavy machine gun with a mounted AN/PEQ-15 laser device. In darkness and when used in conjunction with the night vision goggles, the PEQ-15 may be used as an aiming device or target indicator. I detach and hand the LAW 66mm disposable rocket launcher to Hank.
"If this guy slows down for a hard look, let’s both go after him."
Hank unloads from the vehicle and, wisely, moves away from the DPV. No sense in the bad guy getting both of us with one rocket or one sweep of auto fire.
This time after making his wide turn, the chopper does slow. I hope BeBe is set up and ready as well, and know he will be.
I’m not surprised when a couple of million candlepower spot light is turned on under the chopper and he starts ranging back and forth from one side of the mile wide wadi to the other.
He’s about five hundred feet altitude making a wide turn right over the top of where I think Dirt Dog is holed up and it proves I’m right, as a burst of fire from Dirt Dog’s M2HB rattles the night and tracers fill the air, maybe some even hitting the chopper. He’s coming my way but makes a tight turn to line up his rockets with the threat that’s Dirt Dog, and Hank takes the opportunity to light up the LAW, and I swear it passes a foot under the chopper, who veers hard right and does another pirouette.
I put the hammer down and our M2HB lights the night and tracers pass on either side of the chopper and I know I must have scored, but he merely drops his nose and heads our way. It’s rocket time again.
But before he’s able to line up on the source of the tracer fire coming from my gun, a LAW rocket trails in from behind, from Dirt Dog and BeBe’s good eye. The whole world is alight with fire and smoke, and in seconds with a secondary explosion the ANA chopper hits the ground nose first at what seems like mock one...and parts and pieces fly.
I dive for the dirt as he hits only a couple of hundred feet from us.
The swish of rotor parts and miscellaneous metal cuts the air overhead and a chunk twangs off the DPV.
Eating dirt, I stay for a moment, not wanting parts and pieces to cut me in half or even rain down on me, then finally stand in the eerie silence with only the crackle of flames in the distance, then have to hit the ground again as machine gun ammo in the wreckage begins to explode, sending brass and steel jacketed shells all over the desert.
It’s a full three or four minutes before things quiet down and I climb back into the DPV to find a two foot by four foot piece of chopper skin, sheet metal, in my elevated gunner's seat. I burn my hand trying to get the damn thing off my perch.
By the time I’m shed of it, Hank is by my side, smiling like the cat that ate the canary. "Damn, if that wasn’t exciting."
"Yeah, let’s get the hell down the road before his reinforcements arrive."
By the time we get Sand Hog back in the wadi, Dirt Dog is driving up. He has three of our four passengers hanging off the side of the thing, TooBad in the gunner’s seat, and the injured Nigel in the passenger seat.
Nigel yells at us as they pull up. "Let’s go you shaggers, I’ve got to get to a hospital."
The blond doctor seems about fed up with Nigel.
She snaps at him, "Shut up. They just saved your life...again."
I think I’m beginning to like the hair still askew runway-model-beautiful Danish doc, and would even if she weren't runway-model-beautiful.
Now let’s see if we can keep her and all the rest of us in one piece.
13
We’re almost back to the river after an hour’s driving, having to slow many time
s because of the growing banks crisscrossing the wadi’s sand bottom where the main channel has wandered, when I spot the oncoming lights of a chopper. I don my helmet and flip down the night vision, and make out that she’s a twin rotor MH.
We fire a flare that explodes well under and well in front of the MH and she makes a wide turn, then lights the night with a spotlight, and we give her a wave. We position the DPV’s fifty yards apart, lighting an LZ with our headlights, and she settles.
Quickly we trade our sad bundle, Killer Carlos, and our very happy passengers for two bladders of fuel, and a bushel basket full of Afghani attire and they’re off as are we. We need the tarp, so we have to unroll Killer and place him on a bench in the chopper where he can be strapped down. Every time I think of him I get angry all over again. It's not merely that he's dead, it's the way he was killed. Assassinated, it seems, shot in the back of the head. Somebody has to pay.
We want to put some distance between ourselves and the LZ as our combined lights and the flare could be seen for miles.
After we’ve crossed the wadi to the far side and moved back upstream five kilometers, I tell Hank to pull up and we let Dirt Dog catch up.
"Let’s chow down and recon," I yell at them and we move to a cut near the east bank of the wadi.
"What’s the plan from the head shed," TooBad asks as we hunker down and break out our water and MRE’s.
"As we lost our terp, under suspicious circumstance, I want to drift by his kwala and see if the old boy is foolish enough to have gone home. I want to nut him and let him bleed out."
"That won’t make us any money," TooBad snaps.
"And until Pax comes up with some intel, not much will."
BeBe, as usual at odds with TooBad, jumps in, "Maybe no dough, but some self-respect. Looks like Emir did our buddy, the scum fucker, and if so, we should send him to meet Allah. It’s worth a look."
"Damn right," I say. "If we don’t get some intel that calls us off, it’s a visit to his village."
"Then what?" TooBad snarls.
"Then we’re gonna find us some transportation and go to Mazer-I-Sharif and find us a big black Limo. There can’t be too many black limo’s in Mazar."
"You realize that all our guys have pulled out of Mazar and are now in Kabul," TooBad says, with a shake of his head. "Nobody left in Mazar but ANA, and we’re not too popular with those ragheads."
"Shit happens," I say. "Let’s chow down, gas up, check our stores, and hit the village before dawn, then we’ll stop by one of our caches and resupply."
"How about sleep?" TooBad asks.
"We’ll sleep," Skip jumps in, "in the heat of the day. From now on we travel at night, right Mike?"
"From now on," I say.
We can’t go into Mazar in the DPVs, even flying Afghan pendants and wearing Afghan BDUs, and with our only current terp, BeBe, obviously not an Afghani. A black Afghani with a southern accent probably won’t play.
I know enough about TooBad’s background to know he had less than an illustrious youth, in fact he had to excel in college to overcome his youthful overindulgence in breaking and entering and some car theft. Thanks to his college grades and a helpful Congressman, he got into the Army. I bring this up as we’ll need the skills of a good car thief. Maybe a truck thief, if we can find a truck big enough to handle one or both of the DPV’s. We’ll breach that hot-wire job when we come to it. However, it’s more than likely to be a highjack job off the highway.
We back track south in the wadi until we find the place where we entered it after picking up Emir, and follow our own tracks back until we can make out the rooftops of his kwala against the setting moon, then we park and put our heads together.
I'm not going into this kwala with a smile on my face. A firefight is the last thing I want, but I mean to make sure Emir is not hiding out here.
We've still got a half hour before the sun starts coloring the sky at our backs to the east, and I want to take advantage of the darkness, so we move quickly. We leave Skip guarding the DPVs and manning the LAWs, and a Russian grenade launcher. We take one RPG with us, TooBad and Hank will come in from the north side of the kwala and BeBe and I from the south. I plan to take some hostages—hopefully elders—and use them as shields to search every hut, and there's at least a dozen huts. There's sort of a town square in the center of the village, and TooBad and BeBe will set up at the west end, with the second grenade launcher overlooking the whole village. There are at least a dozen and a half, maybe two dozen, adult males in the kwala, and all of them will be armed with, at least, AK-47s, and there may be an RPG and a 50 cal hidden in the village.
We move in quietly and I'm pleased that there don't seem to be any guards posted. There are two huts, in addition to the meeting building I was in when I first met up with Emir, that are larger than the rest and I presume they'll house a couple of the elders.
Boldly, with BeBe with his back to the wall beside the doorway, I bang on the jamb, and call out. "Emir." Nothing. Again, "Emir!" And I hear a voice from the inside and movement.
The heavy rug covering the doorway is pulled aside, and one of the elders—we've lucked out as it's the Malik, the village leader—stands squinting. BeBe breaches the opening and shoves the man back with the muzzle of his M5. The man stumbles, his arms out to his sides, his eyes wide.
BeBe snaps at him, rattling off something in Pushtu, and he nods, then moves to the doorway. As we walk out I see a woman, her face half covered, peer out of an interior door. We move to the next hut and the man enters, with us close behind, without even a knock on the jamb. This hut houses two families, and as we scan the interior of one larger room and a smaller one with our combat lights, it's obvious there's no Emir here.
We move to the next hut, taking the elder male from this hut along too. Another hostage, another layer of meat between us and a shooter. By the time we've visit each hut, awakening families in each one, we have four elders as human shields. We get some angry shouts, but no gunfire.
The six of us join up with TooBad and Hank and I ask BeBe, "Tell them I'm very sorry, but I have to find Emir. Do any of them know where he is?"
BeBe rattles off again, and they shake their heads. I dig in my pocket and pay them the equivalent of a thousand U.S., a pile of Afghani three inches thick. I get a very tight smile from the first elder, and a nod of the head, when I hand him the money.
Again I ask BeBe, "Ask them not to tell anyone we've been here." And he does.
Then I have another thought. "Do they know where we can buy a truck...a big truck. I'll pay more than it's worth."
A couple of them actually laugh. BeBe turns back to me and reports. "They wish they knew where to get a big truck. They'd steal it if they did."
It's my turn to laugh, and I do. Then ask BeBe, "Thank them again and tell them I'm sorry for the intrusion."
He nods, and does. Then I ask again, "I want two of them to walk with us back to the DPVs."
He again rattles, and they nod and two follow as BeBe leads the way. Skip and TooBad take the flanks, and I take the drag.
As we move away, I turn and say, "Salaam aalaikum." Which I hope I've pronounced 'peace be upon you' correctly.
More than one of them replies, "Wa’alaikum salaam." Which is peace be upon you too. So I guess they got it. I do, however, think I sounded more sincere.
Even paying them for the intrusion, going into someone's home in the middle of the night, uninvited...it's not the way to win hearts and minds.
Now to find a little transportation.
14
It doesn't take a great mind to figure that if you want to steal a truck, find a highway, and since there's only one highway nearby, A62, our destination is clearcut.
But we've got to restock, so that means find one of our two spots where we've cached supplies. And we've got to rest. Men who haven't slept tend to make bad decisions.
It takes an hour to locate the first stash, and as it happens the bank is high over the hiding place an
d we are able to back both DPVs against the bank and string the tarps overhead from 50 cal to 50 cal to create a tent, and one hard to see as it looks like an extension of the bank.
We put a man on two hour watches and are into our fourth one when it becomes too stifling hot to sleep, and since all of us are awake, I decide to move out and find a spot to waylay a truck.
With our claymore replaced, our Russian grenade launcher reloaded, and our M5 clip pouches refilled, we move the few clicks back to A62. There are more hills and ravines on the far side of the Mullah Zazai kwalla, and it's closer to Mazer-I-Sharif. We give it a wide berth, as much as I'd like to get inside the main residence there, find Mullah Zazai, and clamp jumper cables on his nuts until he coughed up the suitcase bomb. Of course there would be forty or so Taliban fighters to deal with before that happened. First things first.
We set up on a rise where we can see three or four clicks both north and south on the highway. We'll need a place to unload the truck and a way to load the DPVs, or at least one of them.
The traffic is anything but heavy, sometimes a quarter hour passing between vehicles. There's every variety of car, light truck, three wheeler and heavy truck...including some ANA military vehicles. Finally a six foot high stake-sided flat bed with a canvas covering is rolling our way, coming from Mazar, heading north. It's an older Mitsubishi, just big enough to load both DPV's and have them out of sight. That's the good news, and the better news is it's like dozens of other trucks I've seen on the highway. We don't want to be driving a stolen pink truck easy to spot.
BeBe is commanding Dirt Dog with Hank as his gunner.
TooBad and Skip are with me.
I load up and yell at BeBe. "We're gonna recon this one. Stay a quarter mile back."
We're two hundred yards from the roadside so I idle down that way, and watch as he nears. A single driver. He passes and we cannot see into its canvas covered rear. I radio BeBe that we're going to stop this one. BeBe closes the distance from behind and I pass the guy and get in front.