Now he was seriously considering disregarding family traditions by not returning home to finish school and begin a banking career in the family firm. At this time in his life, the idea of not being a SEAL or one of Brannigan's Brigands was beneath consideration as far as Petty Officer Third Class Chadwick Murchison was concerned. He scorned everything in his past life, including Penny Brubaker, the girl who dumped him. It was like the guys in the platoon always said, "Turn the broads upside down and they all look alike."
A movement to the front caught Chad's attention, and he instantly recognized the figures of Dave Leibowitz and Mike Assad approaching the position. He could tell by their actions they were in an easy mood, and he stood up so the Odd Couple could see him. He nodded to them as they walked up. "Anything interesting out there?"
Mike shook his head. "Just a village like they told us in Isolation."
"The fucking terrain out there looks like the high desert in California," Dave added. "Remember that training operation at Trona south of the China Lake Weapons Center? Same thing exactly."
They went back to the area where Bill Brannigan had set up his command post with Senior Chief Dawkins. Both squatted down in front of the honchos while Dave gave the report. "Nothing there, sir. I'd hate to have to attack the place though. There's dozens of places in those knocked down buildings for cover and concealment."
Dawkins took a bite of his PowerBar. "Did it look like anybody had been there lately?"
"It's hard to pick up tracks on the hard ground," Dave said. "But nobody's obviously lived there for a hell of a long time."
"Deserted," Mike pronounced.
"Well, I hope that defector shows up sometime tonight," Brannigan said. "Okay, guys. Take a break. Send Lieutenant Cruiser, Chief Gunnarson and Puglisi over here."
"Aye, sir," Dave said.
A couple of minutes later the three SEALs responded to the firm invitation and joined the skipper and senior chief in the bucolic headquarters. Brannigan shifted his seat on the rocks he had been warming with his buttocks. "Assad and Leibowitz say there's nothing at the site. I want you three to go over there and see if somebody shows up for a meet. Take off at oh-two-hundred and wait until oh-five-hundred. If nothing happens by then, we'll have to try again tomorrow night."
"What if more than one guy shows up?" Jim Cruiser asked.
"Don't make contact in that case," Brannigan said. "We'll try again. If there're two of 'em, the next time we'll take a chance. But not now."
"Gotcha, sir," Cruiser said. He checked his watch. "Hell! We've got time for a two-hour nap."
.
VILLAGE RUINS
9 AUGUST
0100 HOURS LOCAL
BAS HAR Abzai led his group of ten mujahideen into the rubble to set up for another period of waiting and watching. During the hike to the site, which started late because he had so much trouble rounding up the men, he had begun to wonder if this was some useless situation that wasn't going to amount to much. They really didn't have a lot of solid information to go on except a confession tortured out of a frightened man. Abzai wasn't so sure about that method of interrogation. He'd seen it a lot in the past, and most prisoners would end up saying anything, if only to get the awful pain to stop. But just the same, he had brought along an old Russian flare pistol and a half dozen star shells in case there was some validity to the situation.
After he placed everybody into proper firing positions, he settled down in one of the higher piles of rubble so he could keep an eye on everything. As he sat there, Abzai began to think about his promotion to sergeant. That was the first time he had ever heard rank mentioned in the warlord's band. Most people were called by whatever their jobs happened to be at a particular time. There were patrol leaders, senior guards, snipers, bombers and all that. Warlord Durtami had made him a sergeant. Abzai wondered if that meant a raise in his share of the money that was divided among the mujahideen when they sold the poppy gum, or ransomed hostages.
He looked out over the terrain to their front. He couldn't see a blessed thing. The darkness was as deep and black as the inside of one of the caves up in the mountains. They would have to rely on sounds if they were to catch anybody. He suddenly remembered the flare pistol, and loaded it. At the first disturbance, he would fire it off so he and his men could at least see what was going on for fifteen seconds or so.
A sudden snort, followed by snoring, broke the silence of the night. Abzai angrily got to his feet and stumbled toward the sound. He found one of the men leaning back against an old hearth, sleeping.
"Wake up!" Abzai exclaimed angrily, kicking him hard. "Ow!" the mujahideen said. He got to his feet. "I shall cut your throat for that!"
"And the warlord will cut yours!" Abzai sneered. "Are you forgetting I am a sergeant by his personal command?"
The fellow rubbed his sore leg. "I do not even know what a sergeant is."
"It is a rank of authority," Abzai said, "like in the army, understand, bumpkin? And if you fall asleep again, I shall turn you over to Hamid the Jailer. Is that what you want? He can give you pain that is a thousand times worse than what you feel now. Shall we go see Hamid when we get back in the morning?"
"Na," the man said, shaking his head. "I will not fall asleep again."
"See that you don't," Abzai said.
He went back up to his own position to continue the night's waiting.
.
SEAL CP
0155 HOURS LOCAL
LIEUTENANT Jim Cruiser led Chief Gunnarson and Puglisi over to where the skipper and Senior Chief Dawkins sat in the rocks. "We're ready to move out, sir."
"You're going to have to play it by ear," Brannigan cautioned him. "That defector may be one of those nervous nellies who'll shoot first and ask questions later."
"Unless he has a night vision capability, we'll have a distinct advantage over him," Cruiser pointed out. "See you later. If nothing happens, we should be back here by oh-five-thirty."
The three-man contact team moved through the defensive perimeter and down toward the valley.
.
VILLAGE RUINS
0230 HOURS LOCAL
AS soon as the bombed-out village was spotted via the night vision goggles, Cruiser ordered Chief Gunnarson and Puglisi to hit the ground. "Have you got anything in that M-203?" the lieutenant asked.
"HE, sir."
"Good," Cruiser said. "You two stay here. I'm going to move a little closer. If I receive fire, cut loose with that HE grenade. I'll pull back while the bad guys duck their heads."
"Aye, sir."
"Then we'll make a firing withdrawal for only a few seconds," Cruiser said. "When we stop shooting, we'll move directly down the valley to the south. They won't be able to see which way we've gone. Everybody understand?"
"Affirmative," Chief Gunnarson replied.
Cruiser moved slowly toward the village, glad he didn't have to worry about being a silhouette because of the mountain behind him. A movement in the shadows off to one side caught his eye. He waited. Then it moved again. He eased toward it for another ten meters before kneeling down. Suddenly the sounds of somebody urinating could be heard. It stopped, then the figure moved from right to left.
"Pinze!" Cruiser said loudly, uttering the number five in Pashto as per the challenge.
Instead of a password in reply, the area to the front exploded with gun flashes. Bullets split the air around the SEAL and he went all the way down to the ground. The belch of Puglisi's grenade launcher broke into the din, and within seconds a detonation and a scream were heard.
The lieutenant had his CAR-15 set for automatic bursts of three rounds, and he stayed low as he scrambled backward. He didn't want to fire, knowing that the muzzle flashes would betray his position. When he reached Gunnarson and Puglisi, they all leaped up and turned to rush southward to break contact.
Then the star shell suddenly detonated overhead, its flare floating down under a parachute.
The SEALs went to the ground, turning to face
the enemy in the stark glare. The mujahideen were more warriors than soldiers. They shouted Islamic slogans, leaping from the ruins, running at the SEALs. Puglisi had reloaded his M-203, and he lobbed another HE grenade at the enemy. He then joined in the fusillades from Cruiser and Chief Gunnarson that were ripping into the charging Pashtuns. A half dozen of them jerked under the impact of the bullets before collapsing to the ground. The flare burned out and the gun flashes died off.
Cruiser led his two men down the valley rather than straight back west toward the mountains, the way the mujahideen expected them to go. The sounds of bullets zipping and crunching the ground to the north showed that the ruse was working.
Another flare opened up and the Pashtuns caught sight of the SEALs once again. They resumed their wild assault, blasting out inaccurate volleys while running at the Americans. The bullets of two CAR-15s and an M-16 whipped back and forth into the last four mujahideen, knocking them sprawling to the dirt.
The latest flare went out and the sudden silence was overwhelming.
"I think that was all of them," Gunnarson said.
Cruiser had started to reply when a third flare went off above them. But this time there was no more firing. The lieutenant looked toward the village. "Goddamn it! There's some son of a bitch up there with a flare pistol?'
"I'll take care of him," Puglisi said. He turned back to his trusty M-203 and fired a trio of HE rounds up into the rubble. Three widely spaced explosions quickly followed the last one just as the flare went out.
The SEALs waited for another illumination device, but twenty minutes went by with nothing lighting up the darkness. Cruiser signaled for the others to follow as he moved off toward East Ridge and the rest of the platoon.
Up in the village, a very frightened Bashar Abzai cowered in the rubble, determined not to fire the flare pistol again.
.
0315 HOURS LOCAL
THE contact team's return to the platoon caught everybody's attention. As Chief Matt Gunnarson passed through the perimeter, he ordered a hundred percent alert, warning of the possibility of an attack by reinforcements. The SEALs observed fire team integrity in placement and formation as everyone did his best to find the most advantageous field of fire within the illumination of his night vision goggles. Meanwhile Lieutenant Jim Cruiser and Chief Petty Officer Gunnarson reported in to Brannigan and Senior Chief Buford Dawkins.
"Our boy wasn't there," the 21C informed the skipper. "But a group of real pissed off mujahideen sure as hell was."
The main thing the Skipper was concerned with was the potential of more fighters suddenly appearing out of the east. "How'd the firefight go?" he asked Cruiser.
"There's no doubt we got them all," the 21C reported. "I think there was ten, but Chief Gunnarson estimates maybe nine. Neither one of us is sure. There was somebody in the village shooting up flares until Puglisi kicked off some grenades from his M-203. There might have been one guy alone or a couple."
"If he survived and isn't wounded, he's probably already legging it for his home base," the senior chief said. "That means the warlord or whatever he is, will be sending out every swinging dick he commands to get us."
"Then we'll kill 'em, by God, Buford!" Gunnarson said.
"Or we'll kill as many as we can until they kill all of us," Brannigan countered. "Remember that asset at the briefing said there was two or three hundred of the bastards?'
"Well," Cruiser remarked, "here we are one way or the other." He winked and grinned. "This sort of situation makes you wish we were still doing those short raids. Hell, normally we could hightail it back to the water for pickup by boat."
"The nearest water is about eight hundred miles from here, sir," Senior Chief Dawkins said. "That would take a lot of hightailing."
"It's not going to be easy to call in a pickup," Brannigan said. "If those mujahideen have Stingers, they'll knock down any aircraft that comes for us:'
"They probably have plenty," Cruiser said. "The CIA gave those fucking things away like lollipops when the Afghans were fighting the Russians."
Brannigan took a deep breath. "Okay. Let's get everyone on their feet. We'll be better off at our base camp on West Ridge. I want to get across that valley between it and this mountain before daylight."
The senior chief turned to the fire teams on the perimeter. "All right, people. Off and on! We got a fast trek to make before the sun comes a-shining with the dawn."
The platoon reacted quickly, moving out of the rocks to form up.
Chapter 5
BASE CAMP IN WEST RIDGE
AUGUST
0830 HOURS LOCAL
THE top of the mountain's crest was as bare bones as it had been for eons. The small creek, not more than two yards wide, meandered through boulders, rocky outcrops and scrub brush. James Bradley tested the stream with his potable water chemical analysis kit, and found it to be safe for human consumption. That was great news. It meant no one had to use the water purification tablets that created a sour taste.
The sixteen men of Lieutenant Bill Brannigan's platoon occupied this pristine location without giving the slightest visual evidence of their presence. The soil was firm, without dust, thus the SEALs moving from spot to spot as they took up security and firing positions left no boot prints. Vital sound and light discipline so necessary for concealment came as instinctively to these veterans as did breathing and swearing. The SEALs blended deeply into the environment, making them deadly as cobras.
Brannigan set up his CP within an area enclosed by a natural wall of rock. A roof of thorny brush was put on top to provide overhead cover, and the entrance was blocked from sight by more vegetation and stones. The skipper killed a half dozen scorpions during the first few hours of occupation, and the surviving poisonous insects seemed to have concluded that, as Shakespeare wrote, "the better part of valor is discretion." They became discreet to the point of disappearing from sight.
Now, on this second day of the operation, Lieutenant (JG) Jim Cruiser, Senior Chief Petty Officer Buford Dawkins and Chief Petty Officer Matt Gunnarson crowded into the CP to drink instant coffee and have an official confab with the Skipper. Brannigan took a sip of coffee, grinning at his senior subordinates. "I was just wondering how many times I'm destined to sit in the middle of harm's way in the company of you guys and your ugly mugs."
Dawkins emitted a country-boy chuckle. "We ain't in harm's way, sir. Hell! We're on Harm's Freeway."
"Actually, we're on Harm's Freeway going north in the southbound lanes," Cruiser added with a grin.
"It's more'n that. We're on Harm's Freeway going north in the southbound lanes with no off-ramps," Gunnarson interjected in uncharacteristic humor.
"In other words," Brannigan said, "we're up the proverbial shit creek without a paddle. We were supposed to spend ten days in-country, but that's no longer applicable. The fact we were attacked in lieu of meeting a defector pretty much brings this mission to a screeching halt."
"It's time for an expedient aerial exfiltration," Cruiser said.
Brannigan shook his head. "Those mujahideen must have Stingers. The bastards know we're here now, so they'll nail any aircraft that comes in the area and tries a landing. There's a big possibility that we're going to have to get out of here by ourselves. The country west of here is made up of foothills and ravines. It provides damn good cover and concealment, but would mean a long walk through unfriendly territory in both Afghanistan and Pakistan. One big downside is that Al Qaeda is split up and scattered all through those areas. It would just be a matter of time before we attracted the sort of attention that leads to complete disaster. The situation would really have to deteriorate before I'd choose that particular option."
"We'll be needing a supply drop if we stay here much longer," Cruiser said. "Our chow and ammo won't last forever."
"A fast-flying aircraft could make a low drop while spewing out flares," Brannigan said. "That would keep the Stinger projectiles off it."
"But that would reveal ou
r location to the mujahideen," Gunnarson protested.
"Hell, Chief!" Brannigan said. "It's like I said. They already know we're up here. There're only two frigging mountains in this goddamn OA. They've probably figured we're on this one by now. And if they haven't, they soon will."
"One way or the other we have to make a decision," Cruiser pointed out.
"Don't worry about that," Brannigan said. "All decisions will be made by SOCOM. That means they damn well might tell us we're on our own."
The sounds of approaching footsteps broke into the conversation, and they looked up to see the radio operator, Frank Gomez. He knelt down and handed a message to Brannigan. "It's from SOCOM, sir. It's in reply to the SITREP you sent out earlier."
"Now we're going to get the word," Brannigan said. He read the neatly printed missive that Gomez had decoded from the five-letter word groups. "Well! SOCOM seems a bit wishy-washy. This is an order to stand fast and go on the defensive. They need some data to send a resupply mission to us:'
"In other words," Senior Chief Dawkins said, "nobody back in SOCOM has figured out how to pull us out of this shit."
"From what I read into this, it appears that they're concentrating as much on getting us out as they are on giving us another mission," Brannigan said. "Something's going on and we're in the middle of it."
"You can't be sure of that," Cruiser commented.
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