When the Killer Man Comes

by Paul Martinez

  Meanwhile, all along our east-west phase line, Rangers and SEALs were picking off enemy fighters with disciplined precision. I snapped back into pancake position.

  My SEAL sniper partner asked, “Do you see anything?”

  I tried to force a laugh and managed a smile. We both knew this was preposterous. We may as well have been on a life raft surrounded by sharks in the middle of the ocean.

  Suddenly more AK and machine-gun fire poured over our heads and into the walls of the outbuilding where we had what passed for cover. We were the definition of pinned down, out of moves, with Taliban 10 to 20 meters in front of us and nearly sheer cliffs behind us.

  “Rock and a hard place,” I groused to my SEAL partner.

  “Damn right,” he hissed. He looked as tense as I felt.

  All we could do was hug dirt, listen to our MBITR radio, and trust that we’d soon hear the Ranger Death Blossom that would buy us some space. I wanted to hear those M240 machine guns and M249 SAWs going full cyclic. I needed to hear them.

  One of our team leaders was on the ground to my left taking cover, such as it was, behind a boulder slightly smaller than he was. A burst of machine gun fire hit the boulder and the dirt around it, and I watched him press his back to the rock and suck his elbows in. He slouched, buying some space.

  I watched as he turned slightly, trying to bend around the boulder to return fire in a near-prone position. A second later, he rolled back behind the rock as another burst obliterated the rocks around him.

  One of his privates, using our building as cover, sprayed a full magazine back at the Taliban who was trying to kill his team leader. He jumped behind the building, changed out his magazine, and sprayed another full burst toward the Taliban.

  Our team leader, hearing the lull in enemy fire, started firing from the position where he had almost died an instant ago. I heard American weapons kicking up their rate of fire on my left and right.

  The enemy was engaging us decisively now, closing in with AK-47s and hand grenades, trying to dash us on the cliffs that loomed behind us.

  Our Rangers on the ground opened up with the Ranger Death Blossom, and SEALs piled on with all their weapons. The deafening, withering noise of heavy weapons finally blunted the Taliban advance, buying us time to exfil.

  “All right, let’s get everybody up and ready to move,” our platoon sergeant called across the Radio Net. “First Squad, you’re leading out. Start pushing up the mountain.”

  Each Radio call sign called back with just his call sign to confirm the order. Meanwhile, the SEALs used their own internal net to do the same thing and begin their exfil beside us.

  We wasted no time gathering up our forces and began pushing up the mountain.

  I was the person closest to the goat path that would lead us out, and Mac was passing the Line Infantry Rangers in a rush to get to me. Rat was behind him, moving with the fluid ease of someone who has spent over a decade in body armor and fighting kit.

  “Balls, I’m going up toward the front, Mac said. “I’ll call you when I have eyes; then you move.”

  Mac’s plan made sense, and I nodded, happy to agree. He was going to push hard and fast up the mountain, find a good overwatch position, and cover us from there. I would be at the rear with Rat, and we would move under Mac’s cover. Once we moved, we would cover Mac and the rest of our men as they continued up the mountain.

  This meant that we would be the last ones in the fight. It was a dangerous honor, but it was a milestone for me to be trusted with the security of both Rangers and SEALs, my childhood heroes.

  Rat and I divvied up our sectors and pointed out the places we wanted to climb to. We stuck close together, but not too close to the trail fire team. We had to make sure we weren’t in the same RPG blast radius. We weren’t going to make the Taliban’s job easy. If they wanted to get us, they would have to do it one at a time.

  My earpiece came alive again. It was Mac.

  “Sierra up,” he called out over the net breathlessly, meaning he had Rat and me covered.

  I glanced over and gave Rat a slight nod. He reciprocated, and we moved out.

  Suddenly, I heard a snik sound from Mac’s rifle 100 feet above us. Rat and I didn’t need any more encouragement to haul ass up the mountain.

  We got to our planned positions, found a bit of cover among the boulders, and turned our attention back to the village. What I saw sent chills down my spine.

  There were half a dozen heads poking around corners and flashes of men with rifles crossing small open spaces. We took rapid aim and shot fast, sacrificing accuracy for speed. We wanted to kill every one of those Taliban, but more than that, we needed to keep them from killing us and the rest of the Rangers and SEALs who were trying to get up the mountain and out of danger.

  All we had were our sniper rifles and a handful of men turning back to discourage these guys, so we had too many targets to waste time trying to get the perfect shot.

  I remembered something Mac had once told me: “Take the shot you have; make the shot you need.” We needed the enemy to hesitate, to make mistakes, to be afraid, and to hide. If they got a machine gun up in a good firing position, they could effectively wipe us out.

  We leap-frogged two more times, and when we were almost to the crest of the small pass, the enemy fire stopped completely. We relaxed for a moment, catching our breath as we moved over the relatively flat terrain of the ridgeline.

  If the Taliban came at us now it would be suicide, and they knew it as well as we did. Mac was already near the bottom of the cliffs, which made a semicircle around us, and he moved north to cover the MSR (major supply route) on the east side of our HLZ exfil point.

  “Balls, we need to cover that pass. And the southern approach of the MSR—what’s it look like up there?” Mac asked, rather than just telling me to take the high ground.

  That triggered something inside me. We were at the end of this rotation in Afghanistan, and this was the last mission we’d be on together, at least this year. I felt I must have proved something to Mac over the last four months and had earned his trust. He was one of the toughest team leaders in 3rd Ranger Battalion, and he was treating me as an equal.

  “Looks good to me,” I replied, with renewed confidence.

  It wouldn’t be easy, but I wasn’t about to say so. I had proved myself once, and I wanted to do it again.

  “Roger, break down at two mikes,” Mac called back casually. (“Mike” is slang for minute.) He meant for me to scramble down the mountain and make the HLZ in time to be the last man on the bird.

  Rat was still beside me, and he was hearing the same thing on the SEALs’ own frequency.

  “Looks like you’re coming with me,” Rat said. He was as calm as if the firefight we had just survived had never happened. I just nodded and smiled back.

  I was in disbelief that I was one helicopter ride away from surviving the bloodiest year in Afghanistan as a brand-new sniper. And the unanticipated, unbelievable bonus was that I got to do one last bit of hunting with a sniper from SEALs.

  Rat and I picked our way along the trail, got to a spur on our edge of the ridgeline, and found good shooting positions where we could cover the rest of the exfil for our guys. We sat there the morning sun, looking at the green fields and the mountains reflecting the pink hues of the sunrise. We scanned and chatted but never said the obvious: that this mission almost got all of us killed.

  Soon we heard the reassuring thump of the 160th SOAR Chinooks. We rushed down the mountain like deranged billy goats, boarded the birds, and headed back to Kandahar.

  * * *

  That mission where Rat and I had escaped by the skin of our teeth was firmly in my mind as I listened to the briefing for our mission that night and looked at each man in the TOC.

  Staff Sergeant Mac was the one teammate I already knew well, since we had been partnered together on our last rotation to Afghanistan and had fought together in south Helmand Province before that. He had been the squad le
ader for our sniper section and the sniper team leader during our previous deployment. At the end of the day, Mac was the best NCO I ever worked for. He taught me everything I know about how to be a good Ranger.

  Then there was my sniper teammate Marcus. Good ol’ Marc. He was a squirrelly, red-haired Puerto Rican guy with high energy and a short attention span. He was always moving and always talking in his high-pitched, nasal voice. Marc was a kind of “Mr. Gadget” who was always looking at new guns and other gizmos to add to his kit. If he didn’t have it, no one did.

  Our officers were first-rate, the kind of men you would follow on any mission, even if you knew your odds of dying were too damn good. Major Dan was our company commander and probably the best officer I ever served with. He had been there and done that. He didn’t talk down to us during briefings. He didn’t even talk to us. He talked with us, inviting questions in such a way that you knew he really wanted to hear what you had to say. It was almost like we were playing a pickup football game and one guy—not the quarterback—came into the huddle with a good idea and we all went with it. And it wasn’t because that guy had been given his authority by the coach, but because what he said just made a hell of a lot of sense.

  Then there was my platoon commander. I’ll just call him “Captain” or “Cap.” He wasn’t a big man—maybe five-foot-ten—but he was built like a tank. Some people in leadership positions feel they have to project to be recognized as leaders. Cap wasn’t like that. He was spare with his words, and when he said something during the mission briefing he conveyed it concisely and accurately. For all of us in Alpha Company, that meant that when he gave an order, you could trust it was the right thing to do.

  My platoon sergeant, Sergeant Pack, was a study. He was small, maybe five-and-a-half feet at the outside. Small guys usually go one of two ways in the Rangers: either they get looked down on because they don’t fit the Ranger mold, or they have a serious Napoleon complex and can’t wait to get their first stripe so they can start bossing everyone else around.

  Pack didn’t fit either of these. He was tough but fair, and above all else we felt we could trust him. Platoon sergeants lead in a few different ways, and they are justifiably the baddest man in the platoon. Some of them leverage that toughness; others leverage their wisdom and proficiency. Sergeant First Class Pack led with his heart, and his decisions were tempered by an unwavering principle: that all of us should live through this and go home whole.

  Staff Sergeant Bill was our Weapons Squad Leader. He was a big guy, over six feet tall and heavyset, and he gave off the aura of someone you didn’t want to mess with. He was the ultimate by-the-book kind of guy. One of his key duties was to help integrate Alpha Company’s augmentees, like snipers and mortarmen, since some of our own senior leaders were augmenting other Ranger strike forces.

  Staff Sergeant Josh was another squared-away leader. He was pretty, too, something we didn’t let him forget. Josh was tall and slim and looked like he’d been a swimmer or a runner in school. I found out later in the rotation that he was from California and was an avid surfer. That was probably why he was so laid back.

  Sergeant Reggie was the biggest guy in the room, and he knew it. Standing out as the biggest guy in a Ranger company meant something. In Ranger units, if the biggest guy is also squared away, he becomes something of a team mascot. This goes back through centuries of fighting—at least as far back as the Middle Ages, when armies had a champion in the form of some huge brute. If we still fought with swords and shields, Reggie would be the guy we sent out to fight the other army’s baddest dude.

  I thought Staff Sergeant John was the most interesting guy in 2nd Platoon, and maybe the entire company. He was from New York City, had been there on 9/11, and was a true believer. He wanted to kill as many terrorists as fast as he could, and he wanted to keep doing it again and again. He had done a turn in HHC (Headquarters and Headquarters Company), my parent company, and we were fast friends.

  It’s one thing to be brave, and another to be well trained, but these Rangers I’d be going into the fight with were an experienced bunch. That gave me confidence that we’d be able to deal with whatever the enemy had to dish out. I mentally placed this group in the mission Rat and I had been on, and I felt we could have handled that one just as well.

  The briefing complete, we grabbed our gear and humped it outside, then gathered on a concrete pad for FMC (Final Manifest Call). It was still an hour before dawn, and stepping out into the January cold in Kandahar—just a few degrees above freezing—shocked us out of the lethargy of an hours-long briefing inside our TOC. Our breath collected into a single small cloud over our heads while we checked our communications gear.

  This mission was a single-platoon operation for 2nd Platoon. Our 1st Platoon had its own mission in another objective area it would be heading for. This was the most typical kind of Ranger op. We sometimes went on a mission as an entire company, as we did on that operation in the Musa Qala District. But more often the nature of the mission called for a smaller footprint, and a single Ranger Platoon—about two dozen men—was the right force to get the job done.

  This was my first mission as sniper team leader. Marc and I had rehearsed our plan as best we could. For Rangers, it’s not just about fighting; there’s a hell of a lot of planning and briefing—and, when there’s enough time—rehearsal. That means we’re doing all we can to ensure mission success, and frankly, it saves lives. Special Operators live by the motto, “Hope for the best, but plan for the worst,” and we planned for every contingency we could think of.

  It wasn’t officially fighting season yet; that wouldn’t come for another month or two. Although the term “fighting season” is used on the television news or in the newspapers, few civilians really understand what it means.

  Afghanistan is a mountainous country, and in the wintertime the mountain passes that are the normal transit routes throughout the country—and especially between Afghanistan and Pakistan, where the Taliban have many of their safe areas—are impassable. So during the winter, from about late October to early March, the Taliban typically hunker down and don’t conduct any major operations.

  Even though it wasn’t fighting season, the Taliban had already infiltrated and even taken control of numerous villages in the region. This meant that the area surrounding Kandahar was always volatile, and, fighting season or no fighting season, our intel told us there were Taliban in that small farming community in south Helmand Province.

  While I was out on the concrete pad checking my gear, Mac began checking my kit and asking me a few key questions about the operation. Marc and I had already checked and double-checked our kit and our weapons, and rehearsed for the mission all we could by quizzing each other on different aspects of our mission plan. I felt as ready as I could be, and you might think that having “big brother Mac” looking over my shoulder would be unwelcome. It wasn’t. This is how special operations are done.

  It’s not the guns and gear or muscles and tattoos that make this work. It’s the boring stuff: checking, double-checking, and then checking again. When you’re operating at the extreme ragged edge of a human being’s performance envelope, anything left to chance will kill you. So Mac checking me out wasn’t a reflection of his misgivings about my ability; it was a much appreciated third set of eyes making sure I was good to go on my first sniper mission as a team leader.

  We were still doing our comms checks when a distant electric version of a voice I had heard in the briefing room scratched into my ear through my Secret Service–like headset.

  “Break, break, break,” the voice said, letting us know it was urgent we listen.

  It was the platoon sergeant. We called him “Two-Seven,” or just “Seven,” until we were back inside the wire.

  “All Second Platoon elements, sound off for comms check.”

  “Looks like you’re ready to go; see you in the morning. Happy hunting, bro,” Mac said as he trotted back to his teammates in 1st Platoon.

 
; I thanked Mac and listened intently for my comms check. So far the planning and briefing had gone well, and I didn’t want to make a rookie mistake and screw up my first radio transmission to my new platoon. The platoon leadership had all called in, and now it was my turn.

  I mashed the button on my MBITR and called our platoon sergeant.

  “Seven, Sierra-One. How copy?”

  Most of our transmissions are hyper-abbreviated, and there’s a reason for that. There are lots of people on the same frequency, and clobbering the net with long-winded sentences is just plain inefficient. What’s more, if the enemy is listening in on your frequency, it can tell him way more than we want him to know.

  In this case, I was indicating who I was calling (our platoon sergeant, “Seven”), who I was (Sierra-One Charlie. Charlie being the letter identification for my sniper team), and that I wanted to know if he had heard me okay (how copy?).

  These mouthfuls of a few letters and numbers were based on a scheme someone much smarter than us dreamed up long ago. And just to make it more complicated, the call signs often changed from operation to operation. They worked, so I didn’t dwell on them much.

  My platoon leader’s response came seconds later. “Sierra, Seven. Lima Charlie.” (Lima Charlie means just what you might guess: loud and clear.) That was it. I’d passed another test and avoided being the platoon screw-up. In special operations reputation is everything, and you go to extremes to build your rep day by day.

  Someone down the line was having trouble transmitting, so my friend James, our radio operator, rushed over and started troubleshooting his gear. In less than a minute he replaced a malfunctioning antenna and loaded new encryption, and our late caller came through on the net loud and clear. James passed his test, too. Everything was a test in a Ranger unit.