by Clay Martin
“What if we can’t find a pilot?” Steve countered, “What if they were overrun?”
“I’m not an expert, but I call this part a big gamble. Every pilot I have ever talked to said taking off isn’t the hard part. Any idiot can do that. Landing is what gets you. I propose, if we can’t find a taxi driver, we steal one anyway. We might die at the end of the runway in a fiery crash, but I still give it a higher chance of success than the other plans.”
John then hit me with the obvious left over question, “If we can’t land, what do we do after we run out of fuel?”
“Simple, John. Did you guys deploy with parachutes?” I was smiling, but it was the smile of a madman.
CHAPTER EIGHT
It was a stupid plan, but it was the only one we had. I didn’t relish the idea of learning to fly by doing, but it still beat all the alternatives. None of us had a single flying lesson, nor was anyone a closet flight sim hero. I asked. The best we had was me, with my experience of flying for ten minutes when I was a kid. One of my school buddies got his pilot’s license at 16, which at the moment I was wishing I had done. I would trade all the cheerleaders and backseats in the world for it at the moment. Okay, maybe not all of them. But at least half.
Over the next few hours, we hammered out the details. We needed to get the parachutes from the ODA Firebase, if at all possible. Stealth rather than sledgehammer preferably. They were a HALO team, so they had 24 free fall rigs as part of the deployment kit. Shoved in a container on the backside of the base, for the rare eventuality they might be needed. Both for the parachutes run, and our movement to Nasiriya, we decided speed trumped protection. Scott and John set to work stripping the armor and other unnecessary weight off of three of our F-350’s. The plate steel weighed thousands of pounds, meaning the trucks came with souped up engines. I was betting they would positively fly with the diet plan completed.
During weapons and ammunition count, Paul handed out the toys he had acquired from his base. He had four Nordic Components 9mm carbines, short barrels, complete with suppressors. They were not a replacement for a rifle, 9mm is still a poor choice in a street fight, but they did have one decisive advantage. Running the 147 grain subsonic ammunition he swiped, they were near silent. Like Hollywood quiet. The loudest part was the bolt cycling back and forth, which was at best like a light knock on the door. That could prove handy. Also thanks to his pilfering fingers, we had two more sniper rifles, absolute works of art. Tikka T3 TAC A1 models, Tikka being Finnish for perfection. I’m not sure it actually means that, but it feels like it should. They were smooth as glass bolt actions, magazine fed, with a crisp trigger set to two pounds. These also had suppressors, which would at least muffle them some. They were chambered in 6.5 Creedmore, which was both a blessing and a curse. The 6.5 Creedmore flew like a wonder, allowing them fight the wind and velocity loss better than much bigger bullets. The curse part was, we would never find spare ammo for them. The military was still on 308. Not a problem if you were an agency hot shot with unlimited resources, but a big problem for us. Two hundred rounds from now, they were going to be boat anchors. For the moment, we had more ammo for our rifles and machine guns than we could carry.
It was also obvious that we needed to cut Bazan and the Kurds loose. I was actually kind of amazed they hadn’t abandoned us already. They either didn’t fully grasp the way the world had changed yet, or they really liked us. Being Kurds, it was probably the latter. I would never ask them to come South with us, with the odds of survival so low. However, I did need them to help us hold the gas station until we could get our plan into action. I called Bazan over, and we offered the bribe. Four of our trucks, plus the Suburban and Humvee, and all the ammo we weren’t taking with us. And the three water buffalos on the COP, 400 gallon water trailers, which he could fill with fuel before he left. We also told him now what we thought was happening, no point leaving a friend in the dark. He agreed, and went off to have his boys start preparing.
For the mission to retrieve the parachutes, we decided to split our forces. It was the wrong way from the airfield anyway. Smaller numbers would hopefully be less noticeable, in and out like the wind. John and Steve would lead the way, with Paul, Ranger, and I for back up. Around midnight, we were dressed and ready to go. We had two of the new silent sub guns with us, hopefully we wouldn’t need them. Blacked out and under NVG’s, we threaded our way back towards the Firebase.
Thousands of hours of collective driving experience under see in the dark goggles is a handy skill to have. We were moving almost as fast through the night as we could’ve in the day, with no chance of our dust giving us away. As predicted, the stripped down trucks positively hauled ass. The suspension was a little weird, having been set up for twice the weight, but we found our sea legs in short order. Well ahead of schedule, we pulled up short of the objective.
Conducting reconnaissance with night vision is limited by the range of your technology. After a careful look through the UNS (Universal Night Sight) attached to the Tikka rifle, we saw nothing. Eight hundred meters was the max range on a good night, and we were closer to 600. Not a creature was stirring, all through the house. We were going to have to get closer. John and I took the suppressed carbines, moving in on foot. Paul covered us with the sniper rifle, with Ranger and Steve on the machine guns in case this went pear shaped. Silently, we made our way to the gate, which was wide open. John took one side, I the other, maneuvering to see as much of the compound as we could before entering. We turned through the gate together, me going left, John going right. Satisfied we weren’t going to get ear holed by the Mongolian horde waiting for us, I turned and caught up to him, staying a few meters behind. No sense in letting one trip wire kill both of us. John made his way to the parachute storage Conex, gliding like a jungle cat to keep our boots from crunching loudly on the sand. I looked over his shoulder to see a line of storage boxes, all open, many with the contents strewn right in front of them. Moving past a few of the open doors, we were rewarded with a pile of parachutes, kicked out in the dirt and forgotten. Couldn’t expect hadji to have a use for those. Jackpot!
John started to lift one, when I motioned him not yet. I pointed my finger at an empty Conex. Must’ve contained something good, they took everything but the paint off the walls from this one. We stepped inside, and I risked a few words, using a quiet but deep voice. Whispers carry further than talking in a low voice.
“I haven’t heard a peep, you think this could be abandoned?” I asked.
John mulled it over a minute. This wasn’t the place for a long winded response. “Could be. Check it out?”
I nodded the affirmative. I was pushing our luck, but there was more we could use here if it was empty.
We moved back toward the buildings, staying in the shadows as much as we could. It was eerie, not hearing the familiar hum of electricity, telling me I was entirely too accustomed to civilization. Even on the COP, we had comforts unheard of for a war zone. Slowly, we turned the corner to what was once the Jundie section of the base. Several doors were open, but not a soul in the rooms. We used our lasers to look through the windows of others, finding them similarly empty. We moved on to the ODA’s section. This area was absolute bedlam, showing the scars of the battle that had taken place. One of the Gustav 84mm recoilless rifles rounds had crushed the side of the American med shed, the cheap Iraqi concrete crumbling like a tissue sand castle.
Suddenly, John froze, snapping his rifle up. I honed in on what his laser was illuminating, two men, sitting on the ground. John’s laser was on the left target, so I took the right. Neither of us fired, and I started slowly backing up, keeping my guy in sight. We weren’t here to start a firefight. I had gone two steps when I realized John wasn’t following. His laser was dancing all over his target, and he had one hand on his goggles. To my horror, he then started moving forward, right toward them.
We had frozen at first, because that is your normal instinct when yo
u surprise someone on a stealth mission. When you have spent a lifetime under Night Vision Goggles, you sometimes forget your prey can’t also see in the dark. It seems logical that if you can see a green tinted world, so can everyone else. John seemed to be having the opposite problem. What the hell was he doing, trying to count coup? This wasn’t a John Wayne movie. I knew John, but I didn’t know him that well. I shuffle stepped to catch up to him, trying to stay as quiet as possible. I prayed I didn’t see him unsheathing a Rambo knife, or some other idiotic nonsense. He was one step away when I caught up to him, grabbing him by the sleeve. I gave him my most menacing glare. At least the most menacing I could muster in the pitch black. He pointed to his eyes with two fingers, then down to the sitting figures. Then he mimicked rotating his NVG focus ring. My anger was rising by the second, but I didn’t have much choice.
NVG technology is nowhere near as advanced as it looks in video games. Much like a rifle scope or binoculars, you can only focus perfectly on one set distance at a time. We usually get by from setting that focus at 50 yards or so, and dealing with a little blurriness at all other ranges. When you go inside a building for CQB, one of the first things you do prior to entry is set that focus to 10-ish yards. The place your focus is always off, is right in front of you. But by maxing out the focus knob, you can in fact see things six inches away. I refocused my goggles, and looked at the figures below me with new eyes. Then wished I hadn’t.
It was better to see this under green than in full color, but not much. At least I had some hope of sleeping in the next few days, with the mask of technology creating a kind of emotional distance from what I saw. These two poor bastards weren’t sleeping, they were dead. And they died hard. Knees and elbows run through with a power drill, fingers cut off, no doubt one by one. The guy on the left was missing an eye, from what looked like a hot iron. I was certain they left the other one so he could see what was happening to his buddy. Right side man looked like his entire jaw was cut off with a saw. Each had a power drill hole in the forehead, a calling card of Al Qaeda in Iraq years ago. Seeing such brutality up close, and this wasn’t my first time, always made me despise the protestors back home. We protect a nation of sheep, who think our soldiers are so mean and unfair. Brutish is a favorite word from the skinny jeans Marxist crowd. I wish everyone one of them had to watch, just once, the savagery the locals inflicted on each other. Routinely. And us if we were ever unlucky enough to be captured. Butchery and torture were par for the course in the Arab world, long before we ever got here. The two at my feet didn’t look American, so at least it wasn’t John’s teammates. That might have been too much to bear. But then, people from our line of work also understood the importance of saving your last grenade for yourself.
Refocusing to a middle distance, I motioned John to continue mission. We found the bodies of the rest of his team, but no one else alive. In the TOC, I found his radio man slumped over a stack of SATCOM and crypto devices, dozens of bullet wounds in his back. As I rolled him over, I saw that half his head was burned off too. A moments detective worked showed why. He used his last breaths to pull the pin on a thermite grenade, destroying all the sensitive devices on the compound, before they could fall into enemy hands. Good man. I hoped I could recommend him for a medal someday. Thirty minutes after we had started, the Firebase was clear. Not a soul in sight. I broke radio silence, and called the trucks forward. As they rumbled in the gate a few minutes later, John and I met them for a quick change to the plan.
“The place is empty. No idea why it would be abandoned, but it is. I recommend we take this chance to grab anything of value we can, along with some new priorities. Parachutes first, that is what we came for. Second, weapons. I doubt there are any, but big ones if we can. Third, Steve and John, you’re not going to like this, uniforms. Were we are going, it might pay for us to look like actual Army soldiers. We need nine sets, and the patches to make them look authentic. If they are low on seats at Nasiriya, looking like an SF team might help us jump the queue.”
John piped right up, “There should be enough spares in the CHU’s, even counting the two that burned. But if we have to take a dead man’s pants, I am sure they would understand. Weapons, I know were some might be stashed they didn’t find. What about the bodies? My guys deserve burials.”
“I concur. On both counts,” Steve said, giving his consent to what needed to be done.
This wasn’t the time to get misty eyed and sentimental, but it also wasn’t my teammates. “If we have time, and it is last on the list. Everyone keep an eye out for body bags while you are searching. We are on borrowed time, I want to be out of here in under an hour. To speed things up, I recommend we go white light. If you can’t be subtle, be bold. This seems like the time. We need one person to keep watch, any reaction is likely to come from the direction of town. Questions?”
Ranger immediately volunteered for the watch, and took off toward the East guard tower. Steve drove toward the parachute conex, parking as close as he could. We loaded twelve, one for each of us, and three spares. A quick flashlight glance let us discard two with popped reserves, and one that looked like it had been stepped on repeatedly. Thank God the team had deployed with two each.
Next, John directed us to a line of three Sealand containers. These were the medium sized 20 footers, the kind you see on container ships. The first was the ammunition storage locker, predictably ransacked. It did net a few Gustov rounds, most likely because the team had never taught the Iraqi’s to use a Carl G. The launcher was safely back at the COP, so this was a score. The next container was the old arms room, nothing but empty racks. No surprise there. Terrorists were a lot like pirates, they would have taken these on principle. Having captured American weapons to use would be a status symbol. After that, was a container full of what appeared to be junk. Tools were strewn out in front of it. A peek inside showed extra Hesco’s in stacks, along with razor wire by the roll and other assorted nonsense. John started rummaging in earnest.
“John, what the fuck are you doing. We don’t need any of this crap, and we don’t have the space to carry it anyway,” I said quietly.
“Hold on, this stuff is just a ruse,” He responded, moving the trash to one side to clear a path. “No weapons man worth his salt is without a stash of captured goodies, and don’t keep them out on front street.”
John’s stock was going up. He was younger than me, but he had obviously been trained by an old hand. Every Weapons Sergeant I ever had kept a stash too. Not only was it potential useful, but they seemed to really enjoy tinkering with enemy armaments. I mean, that and drawing crayon pictures on a big chief tablet of course. Weapons guys usual weren’t giving up a lucrative career at NASA to be on the team. John came back out with RPG rounds. Score! I passed them off to Paul behind me, who passed them to Steve, who loaded them in the truck. Sixteen in total, that increased our firepower significantly. Last, John came back with a Russian 82mm mortar tube.
“Awesome! Does it have a base plate?” I asked.
“It even has the optical sight!” John replied, visibly excited. That was something, most times hadji threw that part away. Finding one over here was rare as hens teeth.
“How about rounds? What do you have?” This night was getting better by the second.
“Unfortunately, we have none of those. The Charlie’s blew them all up.” John was still amped.
“Then why are we taking it? We aren’t going to scour the countryside looking for caches. If it has no ammo, it’s useless to us.” I wasn’t following his logic.
“Because a Russian 82mm mortar, by design, can use our 81mm shells in a pinch.” Those crafty son of a bitch Russians, always planning on worst case scenario. The inverse was obviously not true, an 82mm round won’t even fit in an American tube.
“But we don’t have any of those either. The ammo bunker was empty, and we sure as hell don’t have any. We barely rated machine guns.”
�
��True. And the tube is gone out of our mortar pit. But do you think they emptied the ammo lockers in the pit? The rounds we keep ready to go for fire missions?”
Genius! John was thinking this through, and coming up with solutions. A quick run to the mortar pit showed plenty of rounds, stacked and ready to go. We managed to get 20 loose rounds on the trucks, all high explosive. No sense wasting the space on illumination rounds.
We were ahead of schedule, and I was about to turn Steve and John loose to scour some other odds and ends when the radio crackled to life.
“Got a single set of headlights coming our way, direction of the village.”
“Copy that Ranger, standby one.” Shit. Either we had gotten a little careless with the flashlight party, this was a normal rotating check, or it was completely unrelated. We could escape right now with what we had, free and clear. But that risked leaving something we might never have the chance for again. “Paul, Steve, move the trucks behind the TOC. Stay in the driver’s seat, in case we need to haul ass. Engines off. John, you and me, welcoming party. Ranger, how much time?”
“Few minutes at least, this guy looks to be in no hurry.”
“Copy that.” I said, grabbing my real rifle and slinging it on my back. The sub gun would be fine if I just needed to shoot someone in the head at close range. If tango’s popped out of this vehicle like a clown car, I wanted a gun with some bite. “Ranger, stay put, keep us informed. If it turns out to be multiple vehicles, we hit them right in the gate. And then we bail out of here like rats from a sinking ship.”