After covering the darker soil with fine dust from nearby, Ahmadi turned on his torch and admired his handiwork. It was almost perfect. All he needed to do was obliterate any sign that he had been there and the trap would be set.
An hour later Ahmadi was back in the hills, six hundred yards from the IED. Spread out around him and well-hidden were his men; forty young fighters who had trained exclusively in Pakistan for the last two years. This was to be their first engagement with the enemy; their blooding. Most carried AK-47s, but their number included two snipers, one equipped with a Russian-made Dragunov and the other a Barrett M107.
They would lie in position all day long, waiting for the Western forces to take the bait. Later that morning, Abdul al-Hussain would pass word of a stockpile of anti-aircraft rockets to the Americans via a trusted contact—and this was the only road leading to the fictitious cache. The invaders would no doubt send a drone over to ensure it wasn’t a trap, hoping to catch Ahmadi and his men out in the open, but they would be too late. Every one of his soldiers was equipped with a sand-coloured thermal blanket, rendering them invisible to the airborne eyes. And they would remain hidden until word came that the enemy had been sighted. In the meantime, they would eat dry rations and relieve themselves in plastic bags. No-one was to leave their position until the mission was complete.
Ahmadi’s spot was around a hundred yards up the slope, giving him a good view of the kill zone and his men below him. He nestled between two large rocks and spread the blanket over them, forming a crude shelter. He used his backpack as a pillow after taking out his worn copy of the Qur’an and clutching it to his chest. It was too dark to read it now, but after he woke, it would provide him with comfort while he waited to do Allah’s work.
Chapter 13
Saif Ahmadi scanned the heavens once more, but there was still no sign of any enemy aircraft preceding the expected patrol. Darkness had fallen an hour earlier, so tonight’s combat would take place through the green tinge of his night vision glasses.
He looked around the hillside but found it difficult to spot his men who were hunkered down in their positions awaiting the single vehicle that had set out from Kandahar a couple of hours prior. His spotter had confirmed that there were four soldiers aboard, though there was no telling which unit they were with. They could be special forces or plain infantry, but it would make little difference. They wouldn’t know about the ambush until it was far too late.
Ahmadi had walked the route the enemy would take, just to ensure his men were invisible from the road, dragging a tree branch behind him to obfuscate his tracks. He needn’t have worried. His men were so well hidden that not even the dreaded drones would be able to spot them. There were forty men on the hillside. And they had the advantage of numbers, the high ground and the element of surprise.
The enemy wouldn’t stand a chance.
It was approaching midnight when he saw the vehicle in the distance, a plume of dust heralding its arrival. It was still around two miles away, but he was already dialling the number that would trigger the IED buried under the dirt road. It would take a shade under four seconds for the device to go off once he hit the Send button, so timing was crucial. Too late, and the vehicle would pass out of harm’s way. It would then come down to hitting a moving target driven by someone alerted to danger, which levelled the odds a little.
Ahmadi’s thumb hovered over the button as he studied the approaching target and tried to gauge the speed. The success of the attack was all down to him, now. His men wouldn’t open fire until the device exploded, so if it failed to go off, the patrol would escape.
As the enemy reached the hundred-metre mark, it was time to find out if they would live or die.
Saif Ahmadi pressed the button on the satellite phone and began a mental count.
One…two…
It was going to go off too early, he could feel it. He’d misjudged the speed. No, that wasn’t it—the vehicle was slowing.
When he reached and passed the count of four with no detonation, his heart sank.
* * *
For sergeant Joshua ‘Josh’ Miller, the boring part of the patrol was over. Very little usually happened on the heavily-travelled highways, but now that they were off-road and a few miles from their target, it was time to sit up and pay attention.
Like the other three members of the patrol, Miller was looking at the world through his NVGs. The lights of the Land Rover Defender were off, leaving the driver to navigate the dirt road using the artificial light enhanced by the quarter-moon above them.
‘Billy, slow down,’ Miller told the driver.
To their left was endless desert, while to the right the ground began to rise as they neared the base of a mountain. The mission to locate and destroy the weapons cache would take them into the hills; Miller saw it as the perfect place to set an ambush.
‘I don’t like it,’ he told the rest of the team. In truth, he’d had a bad feeling since the hillside had come into view, but hadn’t wanted to say anything in case he sounded jumpy; he didn’t want his men thinking he wasn’t up to the task.
‘I’m with you on that,’ Mick Donaldson replied from the back seat. ‘Do you want me to scout ahead?’
It was the sensible thing to do, Miller knew. Donaldson could jog along the route and report any signs of the Taliban, if any were indeed in the area. In the meantime, the rest of the patrol would follow a few hundred metres behind him in the Land Rover, ready to provide support if he was engaged by the enemy.
‘Sounds like a plan,’ Miller said to Donaldson. ‘Billy, stop here.’
As the driver eased his foot onto the brake pedal, the ground beneath them erupted. The nose of the vehicle was thrown violently upwards and it flipped onto its back. The trooper manning the .50 machine gun atop the roll bars didn’t stand a chance, his body crushed by over 4000lbs of metal.
Before the dust had even settled, Miller was taking stock. Like himself, the driver was hanging upside down, his harness pinning him to his seat.
‘Billy, you okay?’
The response was a groan, but that meant he was still alive.
Liquid dripped in front of Miller’s face, and he looked up to see that the source was his own feet. Both boots where shredded, and one of them was hanging at an unnatural angle.
‘Mick, Simmo, talk to me.’
‘Simmo’s dead, Josh. We gotta get outta here.’
Donaldson had already dropped out of his harness, and he eased between the roll bars and crawled forward to Miller’s side. He mouthed a curse when he saw the state of the sergeant’s feet.
‘Brace yourself, I’m gonna hit the release.’
Miller put his hands in the dirt as Donaldson undid the catch. The sudden shift in his weight caught him off guard, and his damaged feet struck the dashboard as he fell to the ground. Miller uttered a few of the choicer swear words he knew as Donaldson dragged him free of the vehicle and then handed him his rifle.
‘I’m gonna get Billy. Call it in.’
As Donaldson disappeared under the Defender, Miller—through gritted teeth—radioed the base to let them know about their situation. He’d barely told them about the IED when bullets started thudding into the body of the vehicle.
‘Contact! Contact!’ he yelled into the mic, then threw himself onto his stomach. He crawled to the front of the upturned vehicle and saw dozens of flashes in the hills above him. He answered them with his own rifle, and as he paused to replace his empty magazine, he realised that he was the only one returning fire.
‘Mick, what the hell are you playing at?’
When he got no answer, Miller sent a few more rounds into the hills, then crawled back to see exactly what Donaldson was playing at.
The reason he hadn’t received a response was because half of Donaldson’s head was missing. Miller had seen a similar wound before, when a sniper armed with a .50 Barrett had taken out a Taliban fighter as he was preparing an IED.
Facing such firepower, he kn
ew the battle would soon be over.
The driver, still secured in his harness, moaned again.
‘Stay still, Billy.’
He hoped that if the driver appeared to be dead, he wouldn’t attract any more fire, but that still left Miller facing impossible odds.
‘I need immediate air support,’ he shouted into his mic. He had to wait a few seconds for the reply—it wasn’t what he wanted to hear.
‘Nearest bird is sixteen minutes out.’
Miller knew that he’d be lucky to last another two minutes. By now, the enemy would know that he was the only survivor and would be preparing to flank him. He was trapped—death was a matter of moments away.
Dying wasn’t the issue. He felt he’d let his team down by getting too close to the high ground. If only he’d spoken up a few minutes earlier, they’d all still be here.
More incoming fire made him snap out of it. All that remained was to take a few of them out before the reaper came calling.
He dragged Donaldson’s headless corpse out from under the vehicle and went through the dead man’s pouches, snatching at six magazines and a supply of four hand grenades.
Miller screamed as he flipped himself onto his back; his mangled feet determined to taunt him while he still had breath in his body. When the pain subsided a little, he eased himself up against the body of the stricken Land Rover and waited for the fat lady to begin her solo.
* * *
Saif Ahmadi saw the open-topped vehicle leap into the sky as its front wheels caught the full impact of the blast. He watched it flip as if in slow motion and it was clear that the soldier standing behind the machine gun had taken his last breath.
For some time, the scene was obscured by dust thrown up by the explosion, and he and his men waited patiently for targets to present themselves. When the air finally cleared, Ahmadi could see the driver hanging lifelessly upside down in his seat. That left just two to deal with.
In a bid to get them to reveal their positions, Ahmadi sent a volley into the side of the wreck. His men soon joined in. The response was a burst of fire from the front of the vehicle, so at least one survived the blast.
Then he saw the second, making a foolhardy effort to help the unconscious driver. His sniper had also seen him, because a second later the soldier’s head vaporised.
That left one, and Ahmadi wasn’t content with putting a few bullets into him. Over the years he’d seen many close friends die at the hands of the invaders, and it was time that he and his men got some payback—up close and personal.
Casting aside his own orders to maintain radio silence, Ahmadi instructed some of his men to surround the vehicle and take the last one alive. It had to be done quickly, because there had been plenty of time to call for help, and those reinforcements would no doubt arrive by air.
Below him, the mountain came alive as half of his men emerged from their hiding places to make their way down the hill and towards the target. The rest covered their advance, sending a hail of bullets into the bodywork of the upturned vehicle.
It wasn’t long before a dozen men were within a few metres of the surviving enemy soldier, who was hidden from view by the wreckage.
‘Cease fire!’ Ahmadi ordered, and the night fell quiet.
‘Take him! Now!’
Ahmadi watched as two of his men, who had been crouching at the rear of the ruined Land Rover, stood up and aimed their rifles at the unseen target. Faint shouts reached him as they turned and started to run in the opposite direction. A second later, they were enveloped in a fountain of dust—the small explosion reaching Ahmadi’s ears moments later. More detonations followed as the hidden soldier threw grenades over his vehicle. Two more of his men went down before the rest backed off to a safe distance.
‘What are you doing?’ Ahmadi screamed over the radio. ‘Get in there and take him!’
His men regrouped once the explosions stopped. Ahmadi saw one of them point to either end of the wreckage before he slowly climbed on top of it. One man went to the rear of the car and fired a couple of rounds, and when it was answered by a burst from the enemy, the one on top of the wreck grabbed his AK-47 by the barrel and swung it like a golf club.
‘We have him!’ Ahmadi heard over the airwaves.
‘Hurry,’ he ordered, and as an afterthought added: ‘check the driver.’
There might be some fight left in the one suspended in his harness. Two men carried out his orders, checking for signs of life, then released the man’s restraints and dragged him behind them.
‘He’s alive!’
Ahmadi managed a humourless smile. Allah had truly blessed them this night, and there would be more pleasure to come once they got back to their base.
His men had already picked the wreck clean and, loaded up with weapons, ammunition and the vehicle’s radio, they began to climb the hill once more. When they reached the summit, they started the descent down the other side, where their own vehicles had been camouflaged under sand-coloured tarpaulins.
A glance at his watch informed Ahmadi that six minutes had passed since the IED had exploded. Aircraft would be on their way, and he and his men needed to get under cover before they arrived.
He urged his men to hurry, warning of harsh consequences if they were caught out in the open once the helicopters—or worse, the heavily-armed C-130—arrived. Both of these aircraft had infrared cameras to detect heat signatures against the rapidly cooling landscape, and once caught in their crosshairs there was no escape.
Within two minutes, everyone was underneath the huge tarpaulins. They had been erected earlier in the day, and by now they were the same temperature as the surrounding hills. The material, like the personal blankets each man carried, would shield Ahmadi and his soldiers from the prying eyes in the sky. It wasn’t long before he heard the sound of rotor blades ripping the night apart, and it felt strangely satisfying to know that he was hiding within spitting distance of the enemy.
The helicopter spent a few minutes overflying the area, then the pitch changed as it climbed and headed southeast towards the border with Pakistan. It was obviously searching for them, but the effort would be in vain. Ahmadi and his men were situated west of the ambush site, and would remain there for the next hour until the search team exhausted its fuel supply and was forced to return to base. He knew from experience that a recovery team would be setting out by road to investigate the attack, but they wouldn’t arrive for some time. When they eventually turned up, it would be with adequate air cover, so it was pointless leaving a small team behind to tackle them. That would be a more one-sided encounter than the one he’d just orchestrated. No, the battle had already been won. It was time to melt back into the countryside and get to know their prisoners.
A couple of hours before first light Ahmadi instructed his people to dismantle the overhead covering. The material was split between four trucks, and it was used to cover the two captured soldiers in the flatbed on Ahmadi’s Toyota. The group then dispersed; nine vehicles in total on different southerly trajectories. In time they would meet up again near Quetta, and while the enemy were searching for a large attacking force, the individual trucks would be overlooked.
It wouldn’t be long before Ahmadi was back in the relative safety of the Chiltan mountains—his prisoners would soon learn the price for daring to set foot on his land.
Chapter 14
‘Looks deserted,’ Len Smart whispered.
Gray had to agree. Through the green tinge of his NVGs, he couldn’t see any movement. It had been like that for the last twenty minutes, and Gray was beginning to believe it was yet another night wasted.
To get to the target house they’d travelled over forty klicks in the chopper, then ridden eight more on the bikes before walking the last two kilometres. The building was believed to be owned by a local Taliban leader—Farzad Shah. And a drone had pictured two vehicles dropping eight men off the previous afternoon. Shah himself hadn’t been positively identified, but it was assumed there was a
high likelihood he was among them. Gray and his team had been tasked with taking him out.
The house was one of just three buildings that nestled between two mountains. It was three storeys tall while the others looked like they were just used for storage. Probably farm equipment, Gray surmised, judging by the neatly-arranged crops farther up the valley.
‘Anything?’ Gray whispered into his mic.
The replies from Levine and Sonny were negative.
‘Let’s give it another half hour,’ Gray said over comms. ‘If we don’t see anything, we’ll go and take a look.’
It wasn’t like they had any other plans for the evening.
Ten minutes before they were due to give up and call it a day, Sonny’s voice came over the air.
‘Movement.’
‘What you got?’ Gray asked.
‘One X-ray just came out the back door. Looks like he’s heading to one of the outbuildings.’
‘Armed?’
‘AK,’ Sonny said.
Gray acknowledged the report with two clicks of his mic.
‘Let’s give it twenty minutes, then go in,’ Gray suggested to Smart, who nodded his agreement.
Gray passed on instructions to the other two members of the team who were watching the rear of the main building. Sonny was to stay in position, covering them with his suppressed sniper rifle. Levine would make his way to the rear, while Gray and Smart would go in the front way. The signal for Levine to go in was the sound of all hell breaking loose.
Clearing a house was a tricky business at best. Gray would have preferred to look at the blueprints beforehand so that they knew the layout and could assign everyone their role, but in these circumstances that was impossible. They would be going in blind, against an unknown number of threats, with only their exceptional training to fall back on.
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