The Englishman - Raglan Series 01 (2020)

by Gilman, David

  ‘Dan… sorry… don’t stop. Keep going,’ his friend said through gritted teeth.

  Raglan kept one eye on the terrorists, who were keeping their heads down, but that wouldn’t last for much longer. He checked the sky. There was no roar from the attack helicopters’ engines. As he comforted the wounded man he quickly dragged rocks to form a protective shield around him. One of the other commandos was ducking and weaving under covering fire towards them.

  ‘Plenty of time, Sammy. Too many of the bastards for us to move forward. Choppers are coming,’ said Raglan as he pulled aside the downed man’s webbing that held his ammunition pouches and slipped his hand beneath his body armour. Blood swathed his hand. Somehow a round had punched through his midriff.

  The commando ran the last twenty metres and took up position next to Raglan to cover his exposed comrades. Empty brass cartridge cases bounced on the rocks as he poured fire towards the terrorists.

  ‘Milosz!’ Raglan warned him, pointing to a handful of Al Qaeda fighters who rose up and rushed them. The Polish-born commando shifted his arc of fire and brought them down.

  ‘Can’t feel my legs, Dan,’ said their wounded friend.

  Milosz spared a quick glance at him. He smiled. ‘Sammy, that’s because you’re a malingering bastard. You’d better stay put while we sort these fuckers out,’ he shouted, dropping an empty magazine and seamlessly reloading another. The weight of suppressing firepower far outweighed the legionnaires’ few numbers.

  ‘Fuck you too. Everyone knows you Poles can’t run for shit anyway. I could crawl faster,’ Sammy answered, sucking in his breath from the pain.

  Raglan pressed his hand behind his friend’s back. There was no exit wound. Pulling open the wounded man’s medical pack he took out a blood-clotting gauze dressing. Tearing it from its packet he pressed it beneath the wounded man’s close-fitting body armour. ‘Keep your hand pressed tight,’ he shouted.

  ‘Listen… don’t leave me here… not like this, eh? You know what they’ll do to me. Do what you have to do, yeah?’

  Raglan had no intention of either killing his friend or letting the enemy take him. Neither was an option for these close-knit fighting men. Before he could answer Milosz yelled a warning.

  ‘Dan!’ The Pole fired a forty-millimetre red smoke grenade into the enemy position as moments later the wind at their backs heralded the clattering blades of the helicopter approach.

  Bitter experience from previous operations stopped the commandos from pre-warning the pilots what colour smoke they would be using. The enemy could monitor transmissions and pop their own smoke drawing helicopters to land in an ambush. Raglan pressed the transmission button.

  ‘Identify smoke.’

  ‘I have red smoke,’ answered the pilot.

  ‘Roger that,’ Raglan confirmed and covered the wounded man with his body as the terrifying power of cannon fire ripped ground and enemy apart. The devastation was staggering. As the downdraught pummelled them Raglan and his men pressed themselves flat. Stone fragments whirred from the unfolding scene of slaughter. The daring Tiger pilots had come in low and fast and locked on to the enemy position. With devastating violence, human bodies became ragged pieces of flesh hurtled this way and that, staining the rocky ground. The killing was swift and efficient. Raglan heard the crackle in his headset asking for confirmation that the enemy position had been neutralized. Answering in the affirmative Raglan requested a casevac. Now that the mountaintop plateau was clear the wounded man would be airlifted to safety.

  The raptor choppers swooped away. The legionnaire commandos quickly got to their feet and moved forward. Raglan watched them step across the killing ground. If any Al Qaeda had survived the slaughter they would soon be dispatched.

  He undid the wounded man’s helmet strap and reached once again for his medical pack. ‘Now we’re screwed if any of us get hit. You’re the bloody medic,’ he said as he fumbled for the painkiller in the pack. Each man was trained to administer medical aid but it was the team medic who carried the lifesaving supplies.

  The injured man grimaced in agony. Adrenaline had fled his body, leaving the door open for biting pain. ‘Trick is… don’t get bloody hit. Jesus… come on… mate…’

  Raglan shook the small clear liquid bottle, inserted a syringe and then tapped it free of air bubbles. ‘Casevac’s on its way, Sammy. Hang on in there, this’ll give you happy dreams.’ Raglan injected fifty milligrams of ketamine into his friend’s thigh muscle. Ketamine was preferable to morphine as it did not cause respiratory depression and the heart is stimulated rather than suppressed. He heard the whirring blades approaching. As urgent as the Tigers’ but at a more sedate pace. He wrote the dose and the time it had been administered on his friend’s forehead and then popped a green smoke canister to identify his location. Once again Raglan had the pilot confirm the smoke colour. With a final tap of farewell on his injured friend’s shoulder, he gave a thumbs up and ran to where the men waited to abseil down into the caves. There was no denying the regret he felt at seeing a friend wounded. They had been lucky so far on this mission. In the past, so many had been killed. Concern filled the men’s faces; they needed no words to express their feelings. They had been together for years. Raglan readied the rope. The casevac helicopter’s blades swept the canister’s smoke across them.

  If they were to snatch the terrorist leader and secure the intelligence material, they needed to abseil to the mouth of the caves. Their lives were now in the hands of the snipers. They launched themselves into the void.

  2

  ‘Bird’ Sokol wiped the sweat from his eyes. His ghillie suit of tufted hessian stitched over his disruptive pattern combat uniform made shooting even more difficult in the oppressive heat. His sniper rifle was balanced, its thirty-pound weight supported by the boulders that gave him and his spotter cover. The full length of the weapon was fifty-four inches from its stock to its box-shaped muzzle break at the end of its 27.6-inch barrel, which was wrapped in sacking. Shooter and his weapon were well concealed, their outline broken against the rock-strewn terrain. The rifle fired a .50 calibre round over 2,000 metres at 850 metres per second. Sokol had shot that distance but the most effective range was 1,800 metres, and even though the paratroopers’ assault had secured the ground approaching the lower slopes there was still a several-hundred-metre stretch to clamber across to the cave’s entrance. The legionnaires had killed hundreds of terrorists and the survivors had withdrawn into their mountain stronghold. An enemy belt-fed machine gun with an effective 1,500-metre range was sited in the cave entrance and swept the ground to Sokol’s front. The jihadist machine-gunner was protected by a sangar of rocks beneath the cave’s overhang, which kept him safe from mortar fire, and neither the Russian sniper nor the spotter at his shoulder had declared a clean shot. Time had run out. The legionnaires on the ground needed to press their attack now that he saw the commandos abseiling down the cliff face, but if he could not make the shot a lot of men would die the moment they dropped into view.

  Sokol had been at his fire position long enough to establish his wind and range markers and now the wisps of dust that sheered across the mountain face settled. He had already killed the enemy snipers and neutralized camouflaged pickup trucks with mounted twin-barrelled cannon, now he needed to make the machine-gunner break cover. He recalculated, turning the settings on his telescopic sights to adjust elevation. A bullet never travels straight; it flies on a parabolic curve, gaining height before gravity makes it drop. Sokol had the range he needed to correct his scope and compensate for the bullet’s flight. He pressed his cheek against the stock keeping his eye on his telescopic sight and saw a movement across the face of the cave. Belt-fed machine guns had a voracious appetite for linked ammunition and he saw a terrorist shuffle across the face of the cave to resupply his gunner. Sokol’s spotter had barely called the target when Sokol aimed in front of the man’s strides and fired. Rule of thumb said a thousand-metre shot would take a little less than two seconds for
the bullet to reach its target. He had barely counted those two seconds before he saw the splash of blood as the heavy-calibre round tore into the terrorist’s leg. He’d soon be dead from shock and blood loss. Sokol cycled the bolt action, chambering another round from the magazine. He fired again into the rocks that gave the machine-gunner cover. In the seconds it took for the round to strike and shatter some of the rocks from the man’s protection, another round was already loaded. Now Sokol relied on his instincts. To kill effectively meant thinking what the enemy might do next in the time it took for the sniper’s bullet to reach its intended target. The machine-gunner needed ammunition and Sokol expected him to risk everything and go for it – he had helped make up the gunner’s mind by killing his loader and then pounding his protective cover. Sokol changed his aim and risked laying off to where the loader had been shot. Sokol steadied his breathing. The crosshairs in his telescopic sight caught the movement. He squeezed the trigger. If he missed then the machine-gunner would have no difficulty turning his weapon on the dozen men who were moments away from swinging down into the open mouth of the cave. The terrorist stretched forward and the bullet took him in his head.

  No sooner had the man gone down than two or three more fighters emerged from the shadows, but they were too late. The commandos swung down, tossing stun grenades into the cave. The explosions echoed across the valley floor, quickly followed by staccato gunfire. Sokol lifted his eye from the telescopic sight. The commandos were inside.

  *

  Raglan and his men cast aside their ropes and swiftly killed the few stunned gunmen. They split into pairs, chose a tunnel and moved forward tactically. Speed was of the essence now they had breached the cave. The deeply hidden terrorist base held vital intel and Abou Zeid. The first thing Raglan noticed was the cave’s symmetry. The walls were ribbed like a whale’s skeleton, the bone-like curves etched as if hand dug over a thousand years, which probably they had been. The initial cave was big enough to drive a truck through. The legionnaires who would already be clambering across the ground towards the caves now that it had been breached could secure these big caverns; it was the smaller tunnels that the commandos were tasked to search. Raglan had Milosz, the Polish commando, two paces behind him, weapon at his shoulder, scanning left and right. Both men steadied their breathing after their exertions. Cables ran the length of the tunnel walls; light bulbs flickered. There must be a generator somewhere far below.

  The tunnel narrowed. They crouched, edging forward. Suddenly, a gaping black hole. At first it appeared to be a large recess but it was an opening into an antechamber. A scuffle alerted them; they swung their weapons round. Raglan quickly raised his arm to stop Milosz from pouring fire into the confined space. A dozen young faces stared back at them in deepening shadow. Children, huddling in terror. The terrorists used them as runners between the caves and the villages. Raglan beckoned them to stand, wary that they might have been booby-trapped with explosives. The terrorists had no compunction about wiring kids with Semtex. He tugged each one past him. The wide-eyed boys, for there were no girls among them, couldn’t have been older than eight or nine. And through their fear or their training none made a sound, not even a whimper.

  ‘Milosz, take these kids to the entrance. If they make a run for it they’ll be targets.’

  ‘Leave them here is better. We go down the tunnel together.’

  It was a sensible point the Polish commando made, but if the troops coming in behind them used grenades to clear their way before they ventured too far into the labyrinth then the children would still die.

  ‘No. Take them out. Hand them over and then get back. I’ll keep on down this tunnel.’

  The decision was made. Milosz nodded and gathered the children like a primary-school teacher and had them hold hands in a daisy chain. As he led them away Raglan followed the tunnel. After another fifty metres, it twisted left and then right. It became narrower. The dangling lights fewer. The shadows deeper. Raglan stooped and edged around the bend. A sudden burst of gunfire tore fragments from the rock face. Raglan drew back, pulled free a grenade and rolled it down the gentle uneven slope of the tunnel floor. The gunfire fell silent as the rattling grenade made the man look down. Raglan turned the corner and fired. The gunman was less than five metres away. His body jerked as the rounds hit him, his AK-47 assault rifle clattered against the wall. Raglan stepped quickly forward, kept his weapon covering the passage ahead and bent down to pick up the grenade he had deliberately not armed. Concussion waves from an exploding grenade at such confined quarters would have killed the gunman but would also have harmed him. The pin was still tight. He tucked it back into his webbing. His breathing quickened and muscles tensed as he stepped gingerly forward across the fallen man. Now he saw that the tunnel burrowed ahead for thirty metres, widened slightly and looked as though it made another turn away from the lights. One passage left, the other to the right. He moved slowly, reached the dark corner, saw that light bulbs had failed in a few places and then flickered again. He heard the gentle hum of a generator. The main command cave was close.

  Had the shadow that loomed forward twenty paces down the passage on his left not cried out Allahu Akbar he would have had time to detonate his suicide vest. Raglan fired two rapid head shots. No brain, no neurological reflex. And no guarantee if the suicide bomber had a dead man’s trigger. This one didn’t. Raglan’s ears rang from the gunfire but he still heard distant echoes of other gunfights in other tunnels. The man’s impetus had carried him forward close to where Raglan stood. He stepped back warily. Makeshift terrorist laboratories mixed a lethal explosive cocktail of triacetone triperoxide, commonly known as TATP, and even when inert it was dangerous. His caution in stepping away from the headless terrorist nearly cost him his life. Metal scraped on rock behind him. He spun around. A muzzle flash flared from a gunshot fired by a crouching terrorist further back in the shadows. The bullet struck the rim of his helmet, knocking him back on his heels. He slammed into the wall. Three more scattered pistol shots followed. Raglan threw himself to one side. His weapon fell from his hands. Reaching for his chest holster he yanked free the 9-mm pistol and fired instinctively into the shadows. Bullets thudded into flesh. Raglan crawled forward, desperately reaching for his rifle. His hands touched the shooter’s body. He slowed his breath and listened. He felt a moment of disbelief as he tugged the body over. It was a boy who looked to be ten or eleven years old. Anger and disgust flared in him. The fresh-faced child stared sightlessly at the man who had killed him, eyes wide and jaw slack in shock and surprise.

  And then what lights remained went out. He reached for the pouch holding his night vision goggles but felt the ragged tear from where one of the other bullets had torn through it. Like a blind man feeling his way in an unknown environment, he pressed his palms forward. Somewhere in the distance low reflected light from what must be another room seeped into the tunnel. Letting his eyes adjust, his fingers explored the rock face. The passage narrowed. A grown man could not get through. The tunnel’s junction gave access from the left-hand passage for the suicide bomber, but this way was too tight and the terrorists had sent a boy to kill him. If he backtracked then Raglan thought the other way could lead into a deeper labyrinth. If he could get through the narrow entrance then the dull glow ahead promised a widening of the tunnel. He realized that if he pushed his assault rifle through the gap the sound of it scraping on the tunnel floor might alert anyone further down the tunnel. Raglan stripped off his webbing and body armour, pulling free his combat knife. With pistol in one hand and knife in the other, he belly crawled into the narrow space.

  His shoulders pressed against the low ceiling. He squirmed and wriggled until he felt the pressure on his body ease. Crawling forward on hands and knees, he listened for any movement ahead. There was barely enough reflected light touching the rough walls to distinguish if there were any other side tunnels. But he smelt water, a damp chill as you would experience in a grotto. A sheen of water, no more than a sliver, gl
inted on a jagged piece of rock ahead of him. He stopped. He heard the hollow drip of water drops falling into a pool or well. The humidity in the tunnel was oppressive. Men lived deep in these caves; their bodies and cooking stoves gave off heat. Raglan went forward, senses alert for any movement. The dull glow ahead seemed illusory. A curved glow of reflective light on the tunnel roof disappeared as he got closer. Then it appeared again, creeping into crevices, exposing the walls’ ribbed curves. He crouched, and saw that it depended on his position in the tunnel as to where the light showed itself. A waft of air freshened his face. Chances were he had come close to an air shaft. He lost his footing as his boots slipped on a slimy surface. He fell hard, one leg dropping away into a void. It was a natural well in the rock floor eroded by a thousand years of running water. The pistol slipped from his grip. He swore, found dry rock and hauled himself upright. He had lost his weapon. A moment of panic fluttered in his chest. The darkness and fear were as much a threat to him as an unseen enemy. But Raglan was the gatekeeper of his own emotions and he pushed the fear away. Mind over matter was the key to survival. His probing hand told him he was in a full-height tunnel again. Using his left hand as a guide he gripped the combat knife in his right and went forward. His heartbeat threatened to deafen him. He stopped, slowed his breathing and realized that somewhere ahead was a voice, reduced to a whisper. Another voice answered the first. The murmur had to find its way through the crevices and turns of tunnels that lay ahead, just as did the elusive glimmer of light. And then he heard another voice, urgent despite its distance. It sounded like a name being called. The boy. Whoever had sent the young gunman was calling for him. The demand was issued again and then he saw a shadow block the shimmer of light as a man stepped into the tunnel. Instinct borne of years of fighting a guerrilla war made the man stop. Now his voice lowered cautiously. ‘Faisal?’ he called.