MARNIER MAYHEM
CHARLEY MANNER SERIES BOX SET
MICHAEL MARNIER
Four Action Adventure Stories from the Charley Manner Series
(Click to jump to each book)
HELLHOLE IN KHYBER
TROUBLE ON THE STRAITS
DEEP STRAIT
CANINE COURAGE
HELLHOLE IN KHYBER
Copyright © 2017 Michael Marnier
All rights reserved
No part of this book may be reproduced, scanned or distributed in any printed
or electronic form without written permission. This is a work of fiction.
Names, characters, places and incidents are a product of the
author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any
resemblance to actual persons, living or
dead, businesses, companies, religious
entities, events or locales
is entirely coincidence.
Charley Manner is separated from his SEAL squad during an ambush in the Khyber Pass. His war dog is wounded, and one mate is killed. The rest of the squad is extracted under heavy fire, leaving Charley behind. Captured and tortured by the Taliban, he is left to die in a hole filled with human excrement and rotting body parts, deep in a cave on a Spin Ghar mountain. But Charley has other ideas.
Note from the Author
The events in this story take place two years before Trouble on the Straits, Book #1 in the Charley Manner Action Adventure series, and are based on fictional special operations missions in Afghanistan prior to U.S. troop withdrawal in 2014. Hellhole in Khyber is a novella-length prequel to the series, which can be read and enjoyed in any order. I've made sure to exclude spoilers for those of you who haven’t read Book #1 yet. Existing fans of Charley's escapades will still find plenty of fresh action and adventure, as well as a little background detail on some of the major players in the Charley Manner universe. In fact, the second half of the prequel shifts settings from the mountains of Afghanistan to the Florida Keys with a brief stop by Charley in Bethesda Navy Hospital for his recovery and decision to retire from the Navy. I hope you enjoy the prequel and continue reading the series.
Michael Marnier
michaelmarnier.com
1: STEALTH INSERTION
O-DARK-HUNDRED, sixty clicks east of Jalalabad, we fast-roped from a stealth Black Hawk. The whisper of composite rotor blades blended with the wind blowing down from the Spin Ghar Range. A dust cloud swirled in the backwash, swallowing the six-man squad as we dropped to the ground—silent and invisible.
God willing, or maybe I should say Inshallah, this will be our last special op together. Six tours, same platoon, two in Iraq, the rest in this country of rock piles, death-stalker scorpions and poppy fields. CJ Manner has given enough, thank you very much. Time to go home…and I don’t mean in a body bag.
Our ghost ride vanished as soon as we released the ropes. A Star Trek transporter could not have made the insertion more quietly. Spirit—my Belgian Malinois Navy SEAL war dog—took point position as we melted into the arid, broken foothills guarding the Khyber Pass that cuts through the Spin Ghar Mountains.
Winding between towering cliffs of shale and limestone, five miles from Afghan Fort Ali Masjid, the Pass becomes very steep, not more than 600 feet wide, flanked by precipitous walls. A dangerous place. A place we needed to be ASAP.
The mission was a snatch-and-grab. No direct-action force looking for a fight. We kitted light for speed and agility, armed with M4A1 carbines, SIG-Sauer P226 pistols and flash bangs. The Warning Order specified no rocket launchers, no SAW—too heavy for a quick mountain recon. The extra twenty pounds plus ammo would slow us down.
Mullah Abdul Kareef is a high-ranking Taliban military commander believed to be camped in the Khyber not far from the fort. A local informant Id’d the Mullah two days ago in a caravan heading into the Pass. Drone surveillance spotted the group at sunset last night. Fortunately, a soiled tunic from Kareef’s wardrobe was delivered before we left camp. Spirit had the scent. This should be a cakewalk.
My best bud, Hawk Handy, covered my six as I tracked behind Spirit. She held her head up in search mode, nose pointed into the wind, and strained at her leash. Jake, Scope, Trad and Olly formed two pairs to watch our flanks.
We began the climb up the steep path. No moon but our NVGs made it seem like the middle of the day. Technology is a wonderful weapon, but Spirit beat any hardware when it came to sensing a threat to the squad.
Without a canine warrior, our movement would have been slow. I would be walking Ninja-style, planting my forward foot lightly in case an IED trip plate lay just beneath the surface, the soles of my feet acting like pressure sensors, detecting a softness of loosely packed dirt instead of the normal hard-pack of a well-traveled trail.
Spirit's nose was far more sensitive to detect IED explosive material and ten thousand times more efficient than my Ninja walk. The deep, staccato inhale and rush of heavy exhale signaled she was onto an odor, her trained nose with a quarter million scent receptors tingling. And so we moved swiftly, like a gust of wind sweeping up the slope. I love that dog.
Make no mistake, our target was armed and surrounded by jihadis determined to die for seventy-two virgins in paradise. And IEDs were no doubt buried along the path we used to get closer to the camp. With Spirit’s nose leading, we’d just tiptoe through the tulips, grab the SOB, hightail it to the extraction point and be back in camp before sunrise.
SEAL teams operated primarily under the principle of surprise. Without it, we'd lose the advantage and usually be outnumbered a hundred to one. Not bad odds. We trained to win against those odds.
Hawk’s whisper hissed in my headset. “Keep that bitch on leash, CJ. She’s going too fast.”
“What’s the problem, bro? You getting too old for this gig?”
“Roger that, CJ. Don’t need any complications.”
Jake chimed in. “Stow the chatter. Stay focused.”
We worked our way up the caravan track that threaded through the Pass, scanning for the glint of an AK47 as Spirit followed the Mullah’s scent. I watched closely for subtle changes in her body language.
The path veered to the right near a ledge and Spirit went rigid, ears pushed forward, hind legs quivering with tension. Then her tail went vertical, the tip wagging in a slow twitch. Tells that she was on human odor and not explosives, anxious to be released from her leash. I commanded her to lie down in a crouch in case the enemy was close. I flattened behind her, in deeper shadow.
Several pakul-headed men appeared from nowhere on the caravan path up ahead, AK47s slung across their chests, bulky packs and RPG launchers on their backs—a transport team smuggling arms from the Pakistani side of the Pass. We were still a few kilometers from Fort Ali Masjid and the Mullah's camp.
I heard Jake’s whisper in my earpiece. “Do not engage.”
The last raghead in line stopped and turned toward the ledge where Spirit crouched. He stared at the shadow. I held my breath, finger on the trigger of my weapon. A full minute that seemed like ten passed before the soldier continued on. We waited five more minutes before moving up the trail.
A steep embankment blocked movement to our left. To our right, ten or so meters of more gradual bank covered with loose boulders sloped down to a dry wash. Trad and Olly watched our back-trail, Jake and Scope our right flank. Hawk and I, with Spirit at the point, headed toward the steep side of the slope for a closer look where the Taliban soldiers had first appeared.
Spirit was still agitated. Maybe she spotted a hide hole or smelled a Mullah. No more than twenty meters away, four gun barrels poked out from a crevice and opened up. I whipped my carbine up to my s
houlder and snapped off a burst on full-automatic. I released Spirit with the command, “Reviere”—loosely translated " Find that muthafucking mullah"—and hit the dirt as she bolted up the slope.
Scope and Jake went down in a hail of bullets coming from the high ground behind us. Trad and Olly scrambled for cover. I lost track of Hawk and Spirit as I dove and rolled to get my armored pack between me and the AK47 hailstorm. Somebody threw a flash-bang grenade, and everything went from blinding white to pitch black. The noise from the explosion became muffled in my headset thanks to the noise-cancelling earmuffs built into my helmet.
I blinked twice before realizing my NVGs had blocked the blinding light from the flash bang. The goggles cleared as quickly as they had darkened, exposing a half dozen stunned Taliban rolling in the dirt, holding their ears and moaning. Hawk, Trad and Olly were already on them, dispatching each by a SOG thrust in the back of the neck with a twist for good measure.
I’d learned from a shrink that had addressed our Team during down time in San Diego that only two percent of the male population has an instinctual ability to kill in combat when it was justified. Capable of brutal combat without psychological after-effects, many become SEALs.
We dragged the dirties deeper into the crevice they’d used to ambush us, well off the path. Experience has taught us leaving the enemy alive guaranteed problems later. War is cruel, but we trained to survive.
Jake did a roll call. “Heads up, mates. Time to move out.”
We double-timed toward the fort before more Taliban arrived. Gunshots echoing down the Pass are not unusual, but the time of night signaled to anyone nearby that we were coming. So much for surprise. We'll improvise.
We traveled another click without further engagement. Spirit was still off-leash and had charged ahead while we dealt with the ambushers. She had stopped at a rise in the path. With a night-vision video cam mounted on her harness pack we had a panoramic view of the area on Jake's vid screen. There was a small encampment, more like holes in the ground, hidden on the slope leading to the southwestern side of Fort Ali Masjid. We could see the outline of the fort in the distance.
Time to glide in like ghosts and snag the Mullah. Swift, silent and deadly. First, we needed to find which hole he used to hide his unholy ass. Spirit's nose led the way. Two hours since insertion, plenty of dark left to complete the mission.
A favorable wind lifted odor from the encampment and blew it in our direction. Spirit was all aquiver, but her training kept her from charging in. She looked at me for a command. From our position on the ridge, we could see that the center of the camp had a mound of boulders blocking a cave entrance. High tech architecture, Afghani style. Spirit stared at the opening. A couple of sentries leaned on the largest boulder in front, cigarettes glowing in the darkness, spoiling their night vision.
It took only a few seconds to plan the raid. Not likely to be any IEDs planted this close to their living room so a direct assault at top speed made sense. Just like we’d trained hundreds of times.
Trad and Olly got the nod to take out the sentries while Hawk, Spirit and I would crash the Mullah's cave. Shock and awe, SEAL-style. A few flash-bangs tossed in ahead of us should disable any more guards.
We were only thirty meters from the hide-hole when Spirit jerked her head to the north. The wind had suddenly shifted, bringing a new batch of scents from the other side of the hill. Her nose didn't lie. A swarm of Taliban fighters appeared at the top of the ridge. There must have been three hundred of them, many wearing NVG headgear.
Hawk saw them, too. “What the fuck, CJ. Change of plans.”
Three hundred AK47s opened fire. Jake yelled, “Too many to fight. Better E&E to the extraction point.”
Hawk said, “Radio for a gunship to lay down covering fire.”
The enemy was beginning a flanking maneuver. They must have known we were coming.
A mortar barrage cut off our escape, several shells landing between us, forcing us to split up. The enemy apparently had serious training. They were organized and well-equipped, concentrating firepower at our group-center. A mortar round exploded three meters in front of me. Blew me off my feet.
~~~
ESCAPE AND EVADE, or E&E the enemy, is as much a part of SEAL training as offensive assault tactics. Reality was, our operations ended in an abort more times than not. The playing field in the Afghan mountains was far from level. The locals had home-field advantage.
When I came to, I quickly realized from the chatter of AK47s in every direction that I was surrounded. I had fallen beneath a hanging ledge and was buried under a pile of rocks that had slid down from higher ground. The thunder of 105mm shells pounding the top of the ridge above my position didn't make me feel any safer even though I knew they were coming from one of our gunships. Friendly fire kills just as effectively as enemy bullets. Gotta dig out of this before the whole mountain seals me in.
My Modular Integrated Communications Helmet (MICH) was damaged by the rocks pressing against me. Without comms, I had no idea what had happened to the rest of the squad. Finding Spirit and then E&E became my priorities. Get my ass to the rendezvous point on the north side of Fort Ali Masjid. We had scoped the spot at the pre-op planning meeting but that is precisely where three hundred well organized Taliban fighters had come from. The intel sucked on this op. Gotta find a way to get around the swarm. Send up a flare but don't get caught! First, I need to get free, one rock at a time.
❖
2: SPECTRE GUNSHIP
HAWK HEARD A YELP and turned to see Spirit roll on her side, blood spilling from her thigh. He yelled into his headset. “CJ, Spirit’s down. You copy?”
No answer. A barrage of bullets continued to rain down from three hundred AKs. Hawk signaled Trad and Olly to cover him, then grabbed Spirit by the harness handle on her body armor, pulling her behind a large boulder. A roll call via headset told him Scope was likely dead—Jake confirmed it. CJ was missing.
The clatter of AK-fire didn’t let up as rounds pinged in the dirt inches from Hawk’s head. He clicked his throat mike and said, “We've been set up. Call in some air cover, Jake, or we ain’t goin’ nowhere.”
Jake pulled out his SAT-phone. “Big Mama, this is Raider One, we need a dragon pronto…and send back the Black Hawk for extraction. Mission aborted. Repeat…mission aborted.”
“Roger that, Raider One, this is Big Mama. Sky bird and dragon deployed. Ten minutes ETA.”
“Thanks, Big Mama. Direct dragon to neutralize hostile fire on the ridge. Goose the ghost ride. Spirit’s wounded and Scope is dead. No sign of CJ.”
Another hailstorm of AK fire erupted from the ridge above the squad. Hawk pulled Spirit under him, turning his body-armored back toward the fire. Spirit whined and then emitted a low-pitched growl as she peered out from her human shelter.
“I know, Spirit, CJ's out there and there's not a damn thing we can do until the dirties are vaporized.”
The AC-130H Spectre gunship roared overhead minutes later, spitting 40mm and 105mm death at the insurgents clustered behind the boulders above the SEALs. It took only seconds to rip apart the ridge, sending rocks and Taliban body parts tumbling down the slope.
The Black Hawk materialized in a smoky shroud swirling in the center of the wash behind the squad. Hawk lifted Spirit aboard, followed by Jake, Trad and Olly hauling Scope’s body. The gunner on board unloaded his SAW over their heads. Another volley of small arms fire erupted but missed the ghost ride as the dragon completed a circle and opened up a second time.
One last three-sixty scan looking for Charley came up empty. They had to lift off without further delay. Hawk looked down at the destruction and wondered if CJ was still alive.
“Hang in there, bro, we’ll be back.”
3: FATAL MISSION
HAWK CHARGED into the Commander's office, straight from the Blackhawk after touchdown and slammed his fist on the desk.
“We need to send a squad back pronto.”
APC Anderson bristl
ed at Hawk's unannounced entry.
“Stand down, sailor. I'm aware of the situation.”
“All due respect, Commander, but Charley's still out there.”
As an Assistant Platoon Commander on his first operational tour, APC Anderson had little field experience and did not appreciate the urgency Hawk was trying to convey.
Anderson’s face turned crimson as he puffed, “The gunship cameras show the entire side of the ridge was obliterated. Our drone surveillance in that section of the Pass showed no activity. No one could have survived.”
“No offense, sir, but you underestimate CJ.”
Anderson scowled. “Dismissed, sailor.”
Hawk spun about and stomped out. Ass-wipe greenie. Wasting my time here.
~~~
BEFORE RETURNING to his billet, Hawk stopped by the field hospital to check on Spirit.
“Hey, Doc, is Spirit patched up?”
Captain Armstrong looked up from his desk. “It was a clean wound. Bullet went clear through, no bone or tendon damage. I put her on antibiotics. She'll be good to go in a few days.”
Hawk strained a smile. “Wish I could say the same for CJ.”
“I heard. When will you go back out?”
“Pardon my French, sir, but the fuckin' APC sees no reason. His intel tells him CJ's just body parts.”
Armstrong shook his head. “Between you and me, Hawk, the Assistant Commander's still finding his battle legs. Happens to some when they're on their first field deployment.”
“Makes no difference to me, sir. CJ is alive, I can feel it. I wish the Commander wasn't off base. The APC is a shit. We gotta do something.”
The doc frowned and raised his eyebrows. Hawk knew what he was thinking. Time to roll. He double-timed it back to the squad's battle prep tent. We'll see who has battle legs. CJ's waiting. Time to bring him home .
Charley Manner series Box Set Page 1