When the Killer Man Comes

by Paul Martinez

  The hell of it was that we couldn’t just fight these bastards to a draw. They knew the United States was eventually going to leave—everyone eventually gave up and bailed out of Afghanistan—so all they had to do was make enough attacks on the government to convince Afghans that once the Americans left, the Talibans’ shadow government would come out of the mountains and run the country their way. Much like the IMU up north who we were fighting out of MES, the Taliban in Tangi Valley held the civilian population hostage.

  It was the height of the fighting season, and we didn’t expect to be buttoned down in FOB Shank for long. We weren’t disappointed. Late one afternoon, our platoon sergeant told us to gather our kit and weapons in a hurry and report to TOC. We got a quick intel dump that a midlevel Taliban commander was holed up in a village along with his PSD (personal security detail). That alone told us he was at least upper midlevel, and maybe bucking for a top leadership post.

  Given the amount of Taliban activity in the area, our leadership decided that this was going to be a two-platoon mission. 1st Platoon and 2nd Platoon got the call. Just after dark, following the briefing in TOC and all the other normal preps, we boarded our 160th SOAR Chinooks. It was less than a 30-minute flight to the target area. 1st Platoon’s HLZ was 10 klicks to the east of the objective and 2nd Platoon’s was 10 klicks to the west. Our tactic was to establish a cordon on open ground to the north of the village and then move through what our intel told us were grassy fields.

  When we got to our release point we realized these grassy fields were actually elephant grass. This was exactly like what you see in Vietnam war movies—grass of chest height or higher that slapped you as you pushed through it.

  Chris and I planned to split forces once we reached the village: he would hunt the gaps from the ground along the footpaths on the perimeter of the village, where we had security elements—mostly our mortar team and machine gunners.

  I was eager to get into the village and follow along with the assault force. I was carrying a pistol, since I knew I’d be climbing buildings and a pistol was just the right weapon for clearing rooftops, as well as little cupolas and stairwells. I was also carrying a load of grenades, a tomahawk, and, of course, Miss America. Chris was armed with a pistol, some grenades, his SR-25, and a sheath knife.

  The village reminded me of the illustrations in a Doctor Seuss book. It was a crazy mash-up of curving adobe structures, twisting footpaths, random goat paths, little streams and irrigation ditches, and some two-track roads that were basically just wider footpaths that were passable by small vehicles. The entire place defied logic, serving only whatever specific purposes these villagers and their predecessors had had when they built it.

  When we got to the exterior of the first compound, I found a wooden ladder and used it to clamber up to a rooftop to get a good vantage point of the entire compound and the surrounding area. I was looking for enemy snipers or any signs of an ambush from the village immediately to the south or the fields in the other directions.

  From my vantage point I watched 1st Platoon conduct its surreptitious breach, slipping a Ranger inside to open the vehicle gate. I moved to what amounted to a second-story rooftop on top of the compound’s living quarters. Soon Zeke was on his bullhorn relaying instructions for Two-Seven, Platoon Sergeant Pack.

  I turned my attention to the rest of the village, scanning in a sweeping pattern. The columns of cypress trees and short canopies of fruit trees fouled my view. I cinched up my sling so that Miss America was tight and horizontal against my chest plate of ballistic body armor and switched to my handheld thermal imager. This indispensable little device picks up what infrared night vision cannot, but it didn’t do me much good here. The foliage was just too dense.

  “Sierra-One, Seven.” It was Platoon Sergeant Pack over the net. I knew they were wrapping up their search of this compound and there was a lot of ground to cover tonight, so the platoon needed to move as fast as it could.

  “Go for, Sierra,” I replied, letting him know I was ready for his transmission.

  “We have a sparkle coming down on our next target building,” he said. (A sparkle is a drone with IR capability.) “You see anything?”

  Overhead, the drone washed the compound to our south in a bright green glow. I scrutinized the area for several seconds. Nothing.

  “Negative, Seven,” I replied. “I have eyes but no movement, and I can’t see much. Too many trees.”

  “Roger, Sierra. Seven out,” Pack replied.

  I listened as he began organizing the platoon for a move into the village to the south, issuing quick instructions. In the last few months I’d gained more trust, and with it autonomy, from Platoon Sergeant Pack. He knew that I’d always be somewhere nearby, lurking on a rooftop or stalking among his men, finding the things they couldn’t see, confirming information related to us from the various aircraft overhead.

  This is important for any sniper, and especially for me. I don’t just need to be useful to him. He also has to trust me to know where the platoon’s lines are and to stay out of their way. Every night we went out, he had to keep all these positions in his head. If anyone was in the wrong place—especially me—we’d end up with friendly fire, and the blame for that would rest primarily on his shoulders and those of the other platoon leaders. It didn’t escape me how much leeway I had. Without that trust I would have had to clear every movement over the radio, clogging up the net and slowing down the operation.

  I tried to memorize all the likely routes—at least the ones I could see—before climbing down. I knew that I’d have narrow fields of fire from the ground, but I hoped I would be able to see farther down those shooting lanes.

  The net cleared and I called up Seven.

  “Seven, Sierra.”

  “Go for, Seven.”

  “Not much point in climbing here. I’ll be with ISO,” I said, referring to the Rangers who were surrounding the compound of interest to make sure we had security outside the walls.

  For all the trust we had, he did need to know which of his elements I’d be closest to. Losing a man or leaving someone behind would also fall squarely on his shoulders, and we all used the buddy system to keep that from happening.

  “Roger, Seven out,” he replied, as he turned his attention back to the complex task of moving armed men through the twisting village in the dark.

  Back on the ground, I linked up with ISO. I walked up to Staff Sergeant John, call sign Two-Three, the ISO squad leader.

  “Hey, Sierra!” he began, greeting me with a big grin. “Fighting with us tonight?”

  “That’s right, War Bro!” I replied, catching his enthusiasm. I knew John from his Recce days, and we had a friendship forged in fire.

  “Nice,” he said, as he pumped his fist and moved out behind his Alpha Team Leader. I let the rest of his squad pass and then fell in behind his Bravo Team.

  We surrounded the compound, and John set up his men on the perimeter.

  I hung back a bit and waited for the now-routine takedown of this compound to begin. When I heard Zeke’s bullhorn, I walked first to one end of Sergeant John’s lines and then to the other, to see where I could do the most work.

  I decided that I needed to move closer to the center of the village to get the best field of fire for Miss America.

  There was a clearing between the trees and a proper orchard about 100 meters on one side. From my position I had a clear view of a well-trod footpath. I narrowed my focus on the footpath: it could provide the enemy with a high speed avenue of approach or a perfect avenue of escape.

  The 4-foot berms here made for good fighting positions. There was a SAW gunner near me, and I let him know I was going to push out a little farther and do some hunting. He nodded and confirmed the direction in which I would head. We would fight together as a buddy team if it hit the fan.

  I followed a twisting footpath and moved about 50 meters away.

  My earpiece cracked loudly: “Squirters heading east.”

&nb
sp; “South of the target building, heading for 1st Platoon,” came the call.

  I’d been moving north, and now I turned on a heel and headed back toward our SAW gunner.

  “Two-Three, that’s your left limit,” Platoon Sergeant Pack, call sign Two-Seven, called out, telling me the action was likely coming my way. I was at the left limit of Staff Sergeant John’s isolation squad. I marveled at how Seven kept all of this in his head in the heat of battle.

  “Two-Three, Sierra,” I began. “I have your SAW gunner. We’ll intercept.”

  “Roger, Sierra, moving your way with backup,” Sergeant John called back to me. It didn’t escape me that I had just taken control of Sergeant John’s most casualty-producing weapons and a young Ranger he was responsible for, and he didn’t hesitate or question me. That’s the kind of trust you only get from always bringing your A game when it counts, and we had been doing that in spades for months now.

  “SAW, let’s move up to the intersection,” I said. There was no need to use his name—he knew what weapon he had in his hand. Maybe it’s just the way my brain is wired, but when I’m in the heat of battle I think in terms of weapons rather than people. I didn’t need “Gary” to come with me; I needed a Squad Automatic Weapon.

  I flashed my laser at a pile of fill-dirt that was almost as tall as a man. It would provide both of us with good cover so we could see down the east-west-running high-speed avenue of approach.

  We got to that position and soon saw shadowy figures flashing through the trees and mounds running in an east-northeast direction toward us. It took me a minute to get a solid count: there were three of them.

  We couldn’t see weapons, and we didn’t have a shot. We were alone in the center of a hostile village, so we kept our triggers tight but didn’t fire. Two of the men disappeared, but the third man continued on his east-northeast trajectory toward us. When he hit the large east-west-running footpath, I sent a shot into the packed ground near his feet. The round sprayed dirt and rocks up into the air and the man jumped like a character in a Looney Tune cartoon, then used the footpath to make a high-speed escape.

  I trusted my suppressor, along with the man’s panic, to keep our position concealed, but I knew that my shot would send him into 1st Platoon’s lines to the east and that they would be watching that footpath. If I let him continue heading in a northerly direction, he would twist and turn through the maze of buildings and pop up somewhere impossible to predict at the edge of the village, where Chris and a small team were watching. If it sounds like I was herding him, I was. I wanted to send him right to our machine-gun team instead of letting him sneak around in the village and pop up somewhere unexpected.

  “Sierra, what are you engaging?” It was my captain’s voice crackling across the net.

  “Warning shot,” I replied. “I’m sending him east on Phase Line Broncos.”

  “Roger,” he replied. My captain had been there and done that as a former enlisted man, so he knew exactly what I was doing and why I was doing it. He switched a dial on his radio and called the 1st Platoon’s leader, “Squirters inbound on Phase Line Broncos, heading toward 1st Platoon.”

  We didn’t chase the squirters down. If we had, we could have ended up running straight into 1st Platoon’s fire. Also, we knew 1st Platoon could handle them.

  Meanwhile, inside the compound, the tactical questioning was going well and we were extracting the intel we needed. The occupants of the compound told us that there was someone who they thought was a Taliban leader living in a compound on the outskirts of another village, just 500 meters to our northwest.

  Platoon Sergeant Pack called up Two-Three and tasked his squad with moving to that compound. If the Taliban leader became alerted to our presence, Two-Three and our new terp, who’d been shadowing Zeke for the last few missions, would try to stop them. Two-Three, Staff Sergeant John, was going to take his squad and a terp to the northwest to get a cordon around the Taliban boss’s house.

  I linked up with Sergeant John’s SAW gunner and called Seven to let him know that Chris was going to swap out with me. I reviewed the plan with Chris over the net, and he sent back an eager “Roger.” As far as hunting goes, he was a bit hamstrung by the elephant grass and low terrain on the edge of the building. I knew it was a lot more interesting to poke around in the village than to stare into the distance, providing overwatch and listening to a radio in his ear. I gave him a few details about what I’d seen, and he moved into the village with the rest of the outer cordon.

  Sergeant John and I chatted quickly about how I planned to cover him. There was a tall hill, almost 100 feet high, and I figured I’d be able to provide covering sniper fire from there. More important, since he couldn’t see anything that wasn’t right in front of him because of the trees and the elephant grass, I would be able to alert him if an enemy force was heading toward his position, and he would be able to get back to the main element without detection.

  Sergeant John moved out at a trot and his squad fell in behind him. I made my way to the large hill. I knew I’d be pretty well exposed, but there wasn’t much terrain around me where the enemy could hide, so I traded concealment for being able to spot any trouble coming my way long before the enemy could effectively engage me. At least that’s what I hoped for.

  I got to the hill before Two-Three was in position and saw his squad’s infrared beacons switch on when they reached a wooded, elephant grass-covered delta at the confluence of two deep irrigation trenches.

  Sergeant John’s squad moved closer and closer to the compound but was still separated from it by running water in the irrigation trenches. This was a tactical move by a crafty Ranger squad leader to keep any looky-loos from stumbling into them. The bit of ground they were on was swampy and mosquito-ridden, with elephant grass as tall as they were, so I could just make out their positions. I switched to my thermal imager and scanned the area. I needed to call Mac.

  “Two-Three, you have inbound. I think they’re women and children—too many of them to be fighters,” I warned him.

  “Okay, can you PID?” he asked, hoping that I could identify weapons if there were fighters hiding in what appeared to be a mass exodus to the east.

  “Negative, not at this range,” I replied. “If you PID, mark them, and I’ll take them down.” I knew that Sergeant John or one of his men would use their lasers to mark any enemy they saw. Once they did that, I could go to work with Miss America. This was our usual tactic: we’d have to be each other’s eyes and ears.

  I suddenly got a sinking feeling as well over a hundred Afghans slowly swarmed out of the village, moving silently and sleepily in the moonlight. We’d learned the hard way that while they could just be villagers fleeing the fighting, any number of them could be wearing suicide vests or be Taliban fighters in disguise, or they could just start a riot and tear John and his squad to shreds. It was a sea of humanity that you can’t relate to or communicate with, and we were outsiders, which is inherently dangerous.

  “I can hear them, Balls,” John whispered over the net. He was barely audible and was using my old nickname, breaking radio protocol. “How far until they’re on us?” he asked.

  “Fifty meters. I have good eyes,” I replied, letting Sergeant John know that they were close enough now for me to see if they were armed men or just women and children fleeing.

  “Roger, we’ll fight our way back while you lay it down if they cross the creek,” Sergeant John whispered back.

  “If you hear me cracking overhead, that’s my PID,” I replied.

  I was so far away that Sergeant John wouldn’t hear if I fired suppressed rounds, but he would hear the crack of my bullets’ supersonic wake as they zipped over his head. It was all the warning I had time for. I wouldn’t be able to take my hand off my gun to key my radio if there were fighters I needed to take down, it would happen that fast.

  Sergeant John answered in the affirmative by breaking squelch.

  I quickly scanned each of the fleeing people and s
tarted to feel some relief. This was a mass exodus; they were all women and children. They were now surrounding John on all sides, and I could see figures from the village who were not women and children. The lights in the Taliban leader’s compound had come on as well.

  I had a problem. I needed to provide sniper fire for Sergeant John and his squad, but I couldn’t do that if armed men got tangled up with the women and children. That, in a nutshell, described the difference between us and them. If women and children get caught in a cross fire, the Taliban’s attitude is “so be it,” and they’ll even use civilian deaths for propaganda purposes. Conversely, we’ll do anything we can to prevent that from happening. At that range, without a spotter, the risk of my hitting a woman or a child would be too great for me to accept.

  After a short time, the mass of people moved past Sergeant John and his Rangers.

  The exodus moved past me to the north and joined another mass of women and children beating feet to the east.

  “Two-Three, you’re clear, but you have MAMs moving in and out of the compound,” I called out, not trying to hide the urgency in my voice.

  Before I could get a good count, Sergeant John was up and splashing his way through the chest-deep canal. His inexperienced interpreter hesitated, but the rest of the squad followed him to the Taliban leader’s house.

  “America! Come out with your hands up!” Sergeant John shouted. His red laser danced on a man near the doorway of the compound’s walls as he smashed his way out of the water.

  “America!” he yelled again, and then, in his hillbilly version of Pashtun, he added, “Hands up; let me see your hands!”

  John was a crazy bastard that night, and his brazen move confounded even his squad, but they dutifully cleared the canal and spread out to surround the men in the compound.

  “Everyone knows what ‘America’ means,” he explained to me later at FOB Shank when I asked him what he’d been thinking.