by Dalton Fury
“Fuck it, time to go,” Kolt whispered, setting off into the dark.
The night was cool and the sky clear. He’d have no trouble orienting himself by the stars. Kolt retraced his steps to the gas jug and the back gate. He slowly lifted the chain and eased the gate open just enough to squeeze through. He looked up to get his bearing and eased away from the compound walls, heading west toward Afghanistan.
* * *
Kolt figured he had been walking for at least three hours, skirting the dirt road that meandered generally west, careful to stay twenty to thirty meters off the edge of the road. It was mostly rolling desert terrain covered by small rocks and knee-high scrub with intermittent stretches of rough terrain, rocky outcrops that sapped his strength and tested his endurance.
Reaching a dense tree line high in the hills, he set the gas jug down before easing down on his left butt cheek to keep from opening his wound again and leaned against a large rock, wishing now he would have carried a jug of water instead of gasoline. Happy for the rest, Kolt looked up at the moon, sitting nearly directly above him, contemplating the time of night.
Kolt knew he could never make it to a friendly coalition or U.S. base in Afghanistan without food and water, without a more precise form of navigation than the stars, or without finding a vehicle to steel. The cards would be stacked against him—he understood that, which is why he had humped the gas jug for the last three hours.
Kolt stood up and looked around the area. He lifted the gas jug to the top of the highest rock to serve as a point of reference as he moved away to find enough deadfall and brush to erect an aerial distress signal. Using the moonlight to carefully step around the basketball-size rocks lying sporadically on the hillside, he collected what he could carry and returned each time to the gas jug. Within a half hour, he had collected what he needed to erect the Delta Force in extremis distress signal. All he needed to do now was set it on fire.
The fire, and thus the distress signal, would be picked up by a Predator RQ-1 that Kolt hoped would be circling overhead. The drone would in turn bounce its image to whichever tactical operations center happened to see the signal—it would be so strange and out of place that they would be alerted that something was up. The unique design of the burning signal should, Kolt hoped, kick the signal all the way up to the JSOC center in Jalalabad. If … no, when that happened, the chances were extremely high that a Delta or SEAL Team Six assault force, or even a platoon of Army Rangers, would be sent to the border area to recover whoever had set the signal. Kolt was banking that it was just too unique of a signal to ignore.
Fire! Shit!
Kolt certainly knew it was a long shot. Erecting the distress signal wasn’t anywhere in Tungsten’s plan for Kolt. And now, as much as he knew it was entirely sketchy that it would, he realized that water wasn’t the only crucial item he left behind in the tent.
Without matches, Kolt’s inability to start a fire was now his biggest showstopper. He thought it over for a moment, searching for a solution. He needed something to start a fire, something to at least create a spark over a handful of dried brush, which he could massage with the right amount of man-made power while blowing to produce flame.
That damn prepper bracelet!
Kolt’s thoughts turned to Hawk and the prepper bracelets her Special Forces boyfriend, Troy, had made for her. She had shown him both of them, and they both had small whistles and fire-starting flint sticks woven into the paracord. Kolt realized Troy might not be the whacked-out end-of-the-world survivalist he thought he was.
But a spark couldn’t be that hard to create. Kolt looked around for a piece of metal that he could use to strike a hard rock. He felt the thirty-round magazine of the AK-47 that was slung over his shoulder sticking into his lower back and slipped the rifle over his head. He dropped the magazine and studied it in his hand.
Kolt realized that next to fire, maintaining noise discipline to prevent compromise was a close second. Banging a metal magazine against a rock was risky. Sound carries forever at night in the desert, and even though he had been careful on his march and was sure nobody was within striking distance of him, he couldn’t be sure at all that a small village was not hidden behind the hills, or even that a small camel caravan wasn’t bedded down nearby. The last thing he needed was a group of locals surrounding him. He had his night vision adjusted, but he would certainly be flock shooting with his AK-47’s iron sights. If it came to that, his mission was dead in its tracks.
Screw it! I can’t debate this all night.
Kolt moved to the distress signal he had laid out in the desert floor and doused it with the gasoline, thoroughly soaking it from center to end and on each leg. He emptied the jug and discarded it before gathering a handful of brush nearby. He balled the brush up in his fist, setting it gently on the dead fall. He reached for a rock, felt its strength, and dropped it. He reached for a second rock—it was heavier, more solid—and he banged it against another rock to test its strength.
Kolt cringed as the noise definitely carried across the vast desert floor.
Kolt grabbed the AK magazine, lined it up over the rock, and began striking downward just above the ball of scrub. The sound was even stronger, louder than the impact of just two rocks. After a dozen or so powerful strikes, Kolt saw a spark and dropped the magazine. He leaned over and cupped the scrub, protecting it from the wind, and began blowing vigorously.
After several quick breaths, the smoke flashed, and a small flame grew from the edge of scrub. Kolt blew a few more times, giving the flame the oxygen it needed to take, allowing the fire to grow and spread before setting it delicately on a larger portion of brush and the deadfall.
Within a few minutes, with the help of the doused deadfall, the fire successfully spread across the entire signal.
With signal burning, Kolt began a slow walk around the fire. He cradled his AK-47 as he walked. He wanted the Predator to see him. As he walked, a thought occurred to him. As far as the SEALs and Delta were concerned, no one from their command was missing. So who the hell would have set the distress signal?
“Come and find out,” Kolt whispered to the stars, hoping someone somewhere was curious.
TWENTY-FIVE
“What do we have, Sergeant Major?” General Allen asked after having been summoned from his personal quarters minutes earlier. He had hastily thrown on his fatigue pants and brown cold-weather top but didn’t bother with his fatigue top.
“Well, sir, I know what we have here, but I can’t explain why we have it,” said JSOC Sergeant Major Castor as he pointed to the plasma screen from the center of a standing-room-only crowd of night shifters, all inquisitively staring at the odd thermal image in white-hot mode.
“What’s the source?” Allen asked, not taking his eyes off the screen.
“The 25th ID in Kandahar. Their Predator picked up a strange fire near the border, about fifteen miles west of Gulistan,” Castor said. “They didn’t know what it meant, if anything, so they asked around.”
The new JSOC commander, Lieutenant General Seth Allen, having replace Admiral Mason just a few weeks prior, wasn’t too keen on launching aircraft for something that could be a Taliban trap. General Allen was a longtime Special Forces man, for sure, well known throughout the community, but he wasn’t stupid. He motioned for Castor to step away from the crowd and led him over to the coffee table near the tent’s front entrance.
“What’s your take on this?” Allen asked in a low tone, wary of anyone that might invade their space.
“Well, sir,” Castor said, “it is unmistakably the correct ground-distress signal we teach our Tier One operators. Nobody can dispute that.”
“Are we missing anyone?”
He shook his head no. “Every team is accounted for. All radio checks have come back solid. We don’t know who that is.”
“So it could be a Taliban- or AQ-baited trap,” Allen said.
The comment wasn’t lost on Castor. He knew very well the pain of losing the SEALs
and others, thirty-eight in all, when the National Guard CH-47, call sign Extortion 17, was shot out of the sky by Taliban rocketeers just a couple of years earlier—a tragedy that is still considered the worst loss of U.S. military life in the entire twelve-year campaign.
“It may not be an active SMU operator,” Castor said. “We have a lot of former guys doing independent contract work for the agency.”
Allen knew this to be true. Ever since 9/11, JSOC personnel were highly recruited by the CIA, which meant the signal could be from a former JSOC operator. The CIA had numerous former operators on their rolls now as ICs. They had been supporting CIA covert operations around the globe, operating all over the Middle East, Central Asia, and Africa. Yes, they were active and very discreet in the war on terror, and the one country that could boast having the most covert American operators on their soil was without question the Islamic Republic of Pakistan.
“Do they have their personnel accounted for?” Allen said.
“Chief of station in Kabul already called, sir; they are one-hundred-percent sure they are good to go,” Castor said.
“Damn it!”
“Sir, do you see the man in the image walking around the burning signal in a large circle?” Castor said.
“Sure, why?” Allen said, not sure where his sergeant major was going with the question.
“That’s the signal that the man is compromised but his location is secure,” Castor said. “In other words, sir, if the guy felt threatened, he wouldn’t be near the fire at night because it’s a bullet magnet.”
Allen nodded, confirming he understood the significance of what Castor was saying. The general thought about it for a few seconds, beginning to feel the enemy threat may be low.
“Sir, it is a tough decision for you. But I have been in this business as long as you, fourteen years in the Unit. I wish I could explain it, but in my opinion there is a friendly out there that needs help.”
“I agree, Sergeant Major,” Allen said without hesitation. “Let’s spin up the JOC. Wake up the key leaders and let’s assemble in the war room in ten mikes. We gotta get this done in this cycle of darkness, or we’ll have to push twenty-four hours.”
The wheels of war were spinning up quick.
Afghanistan-Pakistan border
Just after 0400 hours, three MH-60M Stealth Black Hawks lifted off from Kandahar Airfield, having stopped en route from J-bad to top off from the fuel trucks. They executed a sharp turn to the east and headed toward the Afghan-Paki boarder, south of the faint lights pockmarking the village of Spin Boldak.
General Allen didn’t have to tell the professionals from the 1/160th that this wasn’t the ideal time to be executing this kind of mission profile. They knew too well about the early birds in that area, the goons that kept rocket-propelled grenades on the roofs of their homes covered by blankets, ensuring they remained at the ready for coalition aircraft executing flybys in the middle of the night. But the risk was certainly mitigated by the type of aerial chariots pushing the border carrying twenty-two grizzled and seasoned special operators.
These were the same type of state-of-the-art helicopters with the outerspace-looking tail rotor that put the SEALs into Osama bin Laden’s compound in May 2011. They were outfitted with the latest avionics and positioning systems, refuel probes, and advanced engineering that made them the quietest, most stealthy assault helos in history.
“Captial Zero-Six, this is Comet Four-Seven, Green SAT. Over,” CW4 Bill “Smitty” Smith calmly said into his mouthpiece from under his night-vision goggles. He scanned the horizon through the cockpit’s bubble nose, turning his head slowly and deliberately. “Checkpoint seven, we are committed.”
“This is Capital Zero-Six. Roger, we copy checkpoint seven,” General Allen answered. He remained several hundred miles away at the JOC in J-bad, acknowledging the helos had reached the point of no return, where the only thing that would stop them from continuing to the target area was an act of God or an enemy vote.
After hearing the JOC’s confirmation, and without receiving the code word to abort the mission, Smitty turned the black knob on his communication suite above his head to the troop internal frequency the customers in the back were monitoring.
“One minute, one minute,” Smitty calmly transmitted.
“Roger, one minute. Any sign of the package?” the Delta troop sergeant major code-named Slapshot asked from the rear, feeling the helo slow down as it approached the distress signal. Slapshot, along with eleven other operators, were squeezed in tight in the back of the bird. On either side, three operators sat with their legs hanging out both sides of the helo’s open doors, the NVGs attached to their helmets allowing them to scan the ground below them for any threats.
“Negative on PID. Fire is out as well. We are going to do a wide flyby and circle back,” Smitty said.
“Roger,” Slapshot said.
Smitty adjusted his approach, moving slightly south but remaining at one hundred feet above the ground to lower their profile and allow him to sweep in quickly if necessary to pick up the package.
“Shit! Contact front, ten o’clock, heavy tracers,” Smitty transmitted.
“Put us down,” Slapshot said.
“Negative. I can’t do that just yet. Landing zone is too hot. I need to back off into orbit and gain some altitude until we figure this out.”
Slapshot didn’t blame Smitty. He knew he was calling the shots on this one, especially while they were still airborne. It would be stupid to set down in the middle of a shit storm not knowing who was fighting whom down there.
As the two helos banked off the approach and climbed, Slapshot and the others jockeyed for firing positions in the back of the helos. The ones in the center took knees facing out, while the ones in the doorways settled their arms on the safety straps and activated the infrared lasers on their HK416 rifles.
“I’ve got movement!” the operator name Shaft announced as he tried to hold his laser steady on the figure below.
“I’ve got him,” Slapshot said, confirming the mark by his mate Shaft. “Looks like one body. Weapons hold on that guy.”
Smitty understood the weapons-hold call from Slapshot and relayed it across his helo internal net to his door gunners to hold their fire on the single figure until they could PID that it was friendly or not.
“Whoever that guy is, he sure seems like he is on the wrong side of things,” Digger said over the troop net.
The single figure below was running at full sprint as he came over the small ridgeline from where they expected the distress signal to be. He stopped, took a tactical position behind a group of rocks, and shouldered his rifle, firing three rounds in the direction he had just come.
Slapshot studied his movements and took note of the clothing. “No military uniform, looks local dress,” Slapshot said. “Guy seems to know his shit, though.”
Smitty powered the helo into a tight circular orbit, forcing the operators in the back to scramble to the opposite door to observe the single figure on the ground.
The shooter again stood and moved backward, meticulously watching where he was stepping. But then he did something incredibly stupid that the operators on the port side of the helos had a first-class view of. It was hard to believe what they were seeing, but it was happening right in front of their eyes in full lime-green color.
“Is he flanking?” Digger asked.
“Looks like it. Looks like he is tired of running,” Slapshot said.
The figure below jumped two large rocks, sliding down the opposite side of each, while holding on to his rifle. He stepped behind a third rock, appeared to lift up on the balls of his feet to fire over something, and unloaded with several bursts of his rifle.
“Green tracers!” Shaft said. He didn’t have to say it—they all could see it—but he was reminding everyone that enemy tracers are green, whereas coalition troops’ are red. It was a simple note to remain alert that the guy performing below them might not be friendly.
&
nbsp; The figure moved farther from the helo, lower down the ridge, now out of sight of the operators in the helo.
Slapshot yanked the helo’s customer headset off the hook and put one earmuff to his right ear and pulled the voice piece in front of his mouth. “Comet Four-Seven, we’ve lost visibility of the guy we were scoping. Can you get closer?”
“Negative. I can’t risk that. The JOC has spun up a fresh drone from Kandahar. We need to sit down somewhere and give it time to get in the airspace,” Smitty said.
“Wait, wait, wait!” Slapshot said. “We’ve got him again. He is walking with his hands up. I think he is waving at us.”
* * *
The two-and-a-half-hour helo ride from the pickup point roughly two miles into Pakistan back to Jalalabad Airfield seemed more like ten minutes to Kolt. His heart raced as he shivered underneath the two green wool blankets the loadmaster had wrapped around his shoulders. It was uncomfortably cold at the altitude they burned through the sky at as they pushed 120 knots and skirted jagged mountain ranges by just a few yards. Kolt wondered why the hell they didn’t close the doors for the trip home.
Kolt was strapped into a jump seat near the cockpit. It was crowded, but the troop medic on board gave him a thorough check, hastily cleaning and dressing his wounds and inserting an IV in his arm to replenish his loss of fluids. Even if Kolt needed more advanced medical care, the Delta aid man could practically operate on him in the back of the helo.
But besides the cold, Kolt was fine. He was a little startled that the recovery force actually arrived. Amazed that a Predator drone actually picked up on his distress signal. He had only enough gasoline to set the distress signal once before he’d have had to take his chances moving toward the border and dodging Talban patrols, lookouts, or even goatherders and bedouins. After getting compromised by a small group of locals, most likely because he was forced to violate noise discipline to start the signal fire, continuing to run away was a nonstarter.
But what shocked Kolt the most was that someone had enough authority, or the balls, to order a Joint Task Force launch, an incredibly risky mission based on sketchy information. Cross-border ops, even in extremis, took SECDEF-level approval. Kolt shook his head, a little amazed, really. Tungsten really does have some juice, he thought.