Sword of the Caliphate

by Clay Martin

  After my shift was over, I called Scott, Willie, Paul, and Ranger in for a planning session. Scott and Willie had the most reconnaissance experience, while Ranger and Paul had another helpful bit of knowledge. They had both spent time in a Ranger Battalion, which specializes in airfield seizure as one of its missions. Our strategy would be a lot different than dropping 500 angry, well-armed, minions of destruction from the back of a plane right in the middle of the place, but they would still have a valuable insight.

  “Speaking from the never hijacked a plane point of view,” I began, pointing to the planes on Willie’s hood drawing with my knife. Stick figure planes? Really? Fucking Marines. I was actually kind of disappointed he hadn’t put boobs on them as nose art. ”I would say we need to check a few things with it first. Like is it fueled? Really suck to get 200 feet in the air and run out of gas. If it isn’t, can we figure out how to fill it up? If nothing else, getting inside the thing might offer us a chance to steal the preflight checklists, which hopefully also tell us how to start it. Aside from the plane, we are going to need to shut down those 14.5s. If they managed to traverse one around while we were still learning to drive on the apron, this will be over fast. We saw the cluster-fuck with the LAW’s today, where would similar ordinance be stored? Upping our rocket weapons numbers might help us pull this off. And how are we going to get across that fence line, if we need to do recce first?”

  Ranger and Paul conferred quietly for a moment, and then Ranger spoke for both of them. “Sensors in the ground between the fences would be normal, but I don’t think we have to worry about them. Reading the output is a pretty complex system, and it is unlikely any of the bad guys know how it works. It doesn’t just blare an alarm like you tried to run out of Macy’s with the tags on your pants. The Air Force would rather catch you than scare you away. For the ordinance, it is in the underground bunkers perpendicular to the flight line, offset a few hundred meters. In practice missions, we had to secure that as a secondary objective. Most places keep the light stuff in bunkers near the airplane stuff. It’s simpler that way. Far enough away that a bunker fire doesn’t jeopardize your billions of dollars in aircraft, but close enough you can re-arm them in a hurry. Some missiles and stuff would be staged in the hangers, but that is all for the planes. The big threat you missed is the towers. They are set up to provide airfield protection, yes. But they are also built with the space to quickly reverse the guns, covering the flight line. Not only does that help defend against paratroopers, but it is a fail-safe in case someone steals a plane. Very common security feature on nuclear bases, but not impossible here. Each of them will have an M2 50 cal or a 7.62 machine gun, and plenty of belts.”

  Paul picked up next, “The fuel farm, you can see on the far end of the base. Same theory as the bombs, you don’t want a fire to take out everything. There are fuel trucks behind the hangers, but we won’t know till we get there if they are full. Worst case, it is a drive across the entire airfield to get gas. Which sounds super fun.”

  Next was Scott, “On a positive note, it is doubtful that haji has figured out how to use the NVGs they no doubt captured. At least not well. Half of our Army didn’t know how to adjust them right. Also factor in that NOD’s on a skull crusher or helmet are uncomfortable, and the odds of them being in use are low. Hell, it was hard to get our Private’s and support guys to wear them.” That was good news at least, and true. It takes a long time to get adjusted to wearing goggles, and it probably was a major factor in all of our neck problems. It wasn’t just a piece of kit you found and instinctively used well.

  “So we know we will need at least one night of recce. Any thoughts on approach?” I looked to Willie.

  “I think it has a lot to do with the night guard set up. I would say we need to approach from low ground, which here means the furthest end of the runway. You can just see the end of a drainage ditch under the fence.” Willie had thought about this. And thank God for the wet Iraqi winter, even here in the South. It might not rain often, but when it did, standby. Flooding was the norm, followed by inches deep mud the country over. “That means a lot of open ground to cover though. I suggest a different approach. Whatever gap in the guards exists, we cut the wire and put the links back together with zip ties. It wouldn’t pass a close scrutiny, but at a glance it is easy to miss.”

  Well, at least we had given voice to what we needed to find out. As a collective, we decided Paul, Willie, Scott and I would sneak in for our initial recce around midnight. Hopefully the majority of the goons would be asleep by then, the morning call to prayer came early. Midway through out planning, Frank called me on the radio.

  “Derrick, you’re going to want to take a look at this.”

  “Roger,“ I replied, “on my way.”

  I crawled up beside him in the overwatch position, careful not to disturb the spotting scope. It was undoubtedly set on whatever he wanted me to see, and I took over as he inched out of the way. The desert mirage was playing hell with the image, but the major features were good enough to glean the message. A man in an orange jumpsuit was cleaning out a metal bucket with his hand, while a group of thugs smoked cigarettes and laughed. One of them reached out and slapped him in the back of the head, to eruptions of joy from the others. When Jumpsuit was done emptying the bucket, he turned and looked at them, holding it upside down. There was a moment of animated yelling, with one of the thugs miming fingers in his mouth. Jumpsuit stood there uncomprehending. Several of them knocked him to the ground, kicking him and screaming. Finally one of them wiped his own hands on his face, to the delight of the spectators. Finally, two goons picked him up by the elbows and roughly marched him back inside a building.

  My heart jumped into my throat as my brain went into high gear. Was that one of ours? The face looked brown, but that could easily mean Hispanic at this distance. Hell, we used our own Hispanic guys for cover work all the time. At anything but contact range, it worked. It could just of easily have been a local, or one of the IC’s own getting some re-training. But the possibility was there. If they still had US prisoners alive, they might just have the answer to our prayers. At this point, a cook from the Air Force was closer to being a pilot than anyone on the team anyway. We just got a new recce priority.

  After dark, six of us prepared to step off. It was a hell of a split of forces, but we were very low on manpower for this size of operation. Steve and Jim would accompany the recce team to a jumping off point, to provide us close range fire support if the wheels came off. The rest of the troops would be on standby in the trucks, in case we needed to get out dodge in a hurry. That was also the quickest way to get our machine guns into play, though 240s were a weak substitute for heavy weapons. But as they say, wish in one hand, and shit in the other. We know which one fills up faster.

  Six hundred meters from the fence line, we stopped to wait. It was still early in the night, much too early for clipping fences and pulling a Sneaky Pete. We had to get in closer than our daytime overwatch position to be able to see anything. The UNS clip on night vision for the 300 Win Mag and Tikka 6.5 were our best observation devices, but they weren’t magic. The range was much shorter than a day scope, limited to about 900 meters under perfect conditions. With the best quality German glass, you could only magnify to about 10x behind them. My Kingdom for a next-gen thermal. Laying in a tight line, we took turns passing the rifles back and forth.

  The towers were easy to figure out, the occupied ones were obvious from the bright glow of cigarette cherries. Tsk! Tsk! The cadre from infantry school would not approve. Fortunately for us, only three of them seemed to be in use at night. One on each corner, and another midway down the runway section. Probably more to keep people in than out. The IC seemed to have eliminated most of the external threat, that they were manned at all was no doubt in case of an escape. Good luck running through two fences while machine guns rain fire from above. Or maybe it was just pointless guard duty to give the new recruits so
mething military-ish to do. We had all stood a lot of pointless guard posts as Privates, and I bet every army on Earth respected that custom.

  Beyond the wire, the UNS sights didn’t offer much else. Regular binos did let us see the areas of the camp that still had lights on though. The front gate had floodlights, left overs from the previous occupants. There were lights on in several of the buildings, including what we had come to think of as the barracks. At several points during the day, we watched lines of troops enter and exit them like ants, including an uptick during the blazing hot afternoon. Siesta time isn’t just in Spain, most cultures from extremely warm climates have something similar. Apparently Allah approved of the decadent Western invention of air conditioning, or else they would be sleeping in the hangers. As the night wore on, we saw the barracks lights slowly start to go out, with a few die hards staying the course. Always has to be a couple of night owls pissing in your soup.

  At midnight, we saw a truck make the rounds to each guard tower, dropping off new troops and picking up the old ones. This stuck with the pattern of regular changes we had seen during the day. Too bad, all night shifts would have been much more likely to fall asleep on the job, no matter the number crammed in each tower. With a Sergeant of the Guard coming by to check on them, these boys would be wide awake. The timing gave us a pretty good indicator of one more shift change at 0400, but possible all the way after morning prayer. That cut our recce time down significantly. It would be best to beat the guard change, fresh eyes are most likely to spot an anomaly. We also didn’t want to be halfway across the flight line when the headlights started bouncing around the perimeter. Optimal time to extract with an all-night crew would have been 0445, but the new developments meant 0330.

  The recce crew was all armed with real rifles tonight, and carrying just a few magazines apiece for a load out. We were going to avoid a firefight at all costs, but no way any of us were getting in one with a pistol caliber weapon on primary duty. Leaving anybody shot tonight was a major compromise anyway, so doing it loud didn’t make a lot of difference. It would also instantly tell our external team to hit the heavy fireworks, which we would need all of if this went sideways. Confident we could exploit a gap midway between two guard towers without being seen, we made a beeline for the wire.

  Willie went to work cutting a hole with bolt cutters, while the rest of us pulled security for him. We had chosen a to make our cuts right beside an unmanned tower to make it easier to find again on the way out. Considering that might be in a very big hurry, it seemed prudent. With our amplifying headsets on, it sounded like Willie was dragging a chain through a lawnmower. Every twang of a link separating made me cringe, but there was no other way. We could have tried the prison method of blankets over the razor wire, but that would have been even noisier. I kept reminding myself that we could hear ten times better than normal human ears, and that we were right next to the action. I also had yet to see an Iraqi willingly use ear plugs in a gunfight, so maybe noise wasn’t that big a deal. I was already dripping sweat by the time he made a big enough gap to waddle through, more nerves than weather. We crossed the middle strip of dirt, and Willie went to work on the inside fence. I stood by the first hole with zip ties, I would close it up after we made entry. If we had tripped an alarm, no point in needing to cut our way out of a trap of our own making. Once through, Wille set the bolt cutters down next to the hole and covered them in dust. Good enough camouflage, and it kept us from carrying the clanky fuckers around on the recce job. Willie, Scott, and Paul made their way inside, and I went to work on the fence. I put zip ties every foot including the bottom, weaving the tail back into the links after I tightened them down. This was faster than cutting them off, and hid them well enough. On the way out, we would zip every link. For now, the short cut method provided good enough camouflage, and would be much easier to get out of. With the size of tie I had used, you could hit the fence at a run and break them all with your body weight. The devil is in the details, and no one knows that more than a recce troop. When you spend half your life outnumbered and out gunned, you learn to stack the deck in your favor every chance you get.

  Satisfied with our entry, we started the long movement across the open airstrip. I couldn’t help but think this was exactly how a whole gaggle of SEAL’s bought it in Panama, trying to disable Noriega’s personal jet. On this flat, open field, there was nowhere to hide. We were also on a tight timeline. Counter to every recon manual in the inventory, we covered the wide open at a jog. Once on the far side, we stopped in the shadow of the hangers to catch our breath. Priority one was a pilot, even though the prison was smack dab in the middle of jihadi central. Without that, the rest was mostly pointless. Better to find out now, than spend all night making preparations and come up short.

  I led the way, moving from shadow to shadow. The fully adjusted human eye isn’t great in darkness, but it can surprise you. One of the only downsides to Night Vision Goggles, you start forgetting about the tiny sliver of natural illumination. There was a waxing crescent moon tonight, which didn’t offer much. But it was far from nothing. I overshot the jail building the first time, and we had to double back to find it. Seeing something from a distance in the daylight and finding it again close in the dark takes some doing, I was lucky to get it on the second try. A quick glance at the bars on the windows confirmed our thesis. This wasn’t some cobbled together haji construction project, it must’ve been built for the OSI. The Air Force Office of Special Investigations was a weird bird. They were similar in nature to the Navy’s NCIS, but they did some intelligence work in the war as well. It would make sense they had a jail for handling detainees until they could hand them up the chain to the real prisons in Abu Graib and Baghdad. There was only one entrance, a clear violation of fire code. I would have to report this if I survived the next few days. The front had windows, and we could see lights on inside. I snuck a peek, to see what we were dealing with.

  Spread out on the floor was a motley assortment of pillows and blankets, with several IC troops lounging around, AK’s close at hand. A television in the corner was blaring propaganda video’s, set to the those catchy pseudo Arabic rap tunes. A hookah sat on the ground, being kept alive by two dedicated smokers. A cloud of smoke hung in the air, its perfumed essence catching my nose. A heavy steel door separated the front room from the rear of the building, and in the corner was a desk with a bank of monitors. They were active, though I couldn’t see the detail of what they covered. Individual cells was a good bet though. No one was actively watching them, though they did occasionally glance in that direction. Good to know. It would make sense to limit the noise transfer from the cells to the guard room, to keep your prisoners from driving you crazy. But you would want to be able to see every move they made. I hoped the Air Force shared my logic; time to go find out.

  Around the side of the jail, we picked a cell midway down. The window was 8 feet off the ground, and much too small for a human to fit out off. Like US jails, it was rectangular and long, just enough to let some sunlight in. We found a pallet of water bottles nearby, and used them to make a platform I could stand on to see in. I wanted to get a visual of who I was dealing with before I started running my mouth. If it was locals instead of American’s, they could win some serious brownie points by selling me out right quick. I pulled my pistol out just in case, since I was barely at eye level with the slit. The lights were on inside, so I flipped my goggles up. Paul covered the front of the building, while Scott and Willie watched my back.

  Looking down, I saw a series of metal barred cages, like the holding cells for county lock up. I would have guessed the Air Force would have sprung for the maximum security cubicle style, to keep prisoners from talking to one another. Looking around the room, I had seven prisoners I could see, and a couple of angles I couldn’t. Most of them were curled up on the floor, trying to sleep. One was pacing his cell like a mad man, and another was sitting in the corner, knees pulled to his chest. They were
definitely ours, I could tell even in the dingy light. Even dirty and beat up, Americans have a look to them. Even flyboys made the locals look small. Directly below me was a man lying on his back, limbs spread wide. I watched his chest for movement for a few seconds, so as not to waste my time on a dead man. I was going to need to be careful on this next part, to keep an injection of salvation to keep from blowing our cover.

  I didn’t want to waste time looking for pebbles, so I used what I had at hand. I slid the magazine out of my pistol, ejected a few rounds into my hand, and put the magazine back, pressing hard to ensure it seated. Then I bounced a 9mm round off of sleeping man’s chest. He didn’t budge. I tossed another one, hitting him in the stomach. He still didn’t move. Jesus, this guy slept like a rock. I really didn’t want to move my water bottle perch, time was not on our side. I underhanded one more in, aiming for his head. I watched with horror as it slowly arced past his nose, slipping into his open mouth like a hole in one from the devil himself. The sleeper jerked off the floor, clutching his throat and gagging. He bounded up and bounced off the door to his cell, making more noise than a marching band colliding with a train crash. In seconds, everyone in the cell block was on their feet, yelling advice or trying to figure out what the hell was happening. Finally, bent over and turning purple, he yacked the round out onto the floor, with a final metallic clang of brass hitting concrete. Fuck my life, this was a Bad News Bears fiasco if I ever saw one.