by Peter Nealen
It took a couple of hours to link up with Hal’s team. During that time, I was able to do some rethinking. I had gotten a little rushed, I had to admit. I get impatient sometimes. It would certainly be harder to hit the ISOF compound now, but that just made it smarter to take our time, do it in darkness, and do it right. Once we linked up with Hal, we got down to planning in earnest.
Chapter 8
If you’ve never slogged, crouched down with one hand in the mud, through an Iraqi canal in full kit, while trying to keep your rifle, radio, and NVGs out of the water, for about a kilometer, you cannot truly understand just how bad it sucks.
I was extremely glad of how lightweight we kept our kit as I dragged myself up out of the two-foot-deep ditch. Some of the stuff I’d had to use in the Marine Corps would soak up enough water doing this to weigh twice what it did dry. I was wet, chafed, and uncomfortable, but I could still move pretty well.
Behind me, the rest of the team was crawling up out of the muck, and slithering out into a rough wedge, aimed at the low concrete wall that bordered K1 Airbase. To my right, I could just see the guard tower on the corner, though it was unlit, and even with the thermal attachment on the PVS-14s, I couldn’t see if there was anyone in it. I had to assume there was; the ISOF was too well trained to accept the kind of lax security that we might find elsewhere. Now whether the sentry was awake or not, that was another question, but it wasn’t one I was going to bank on. We had a contingency for that.
We reached the dirt road that led to the abandoned farmhouse just outside the wall, and hunkered down in the slightly thicker vegetation bordering the road. I keyed my radio. “Hillbilly, in position.”
“Roger,” Hal’s voice came back. “The birds are in the air. Distraction commencing in thirty seconds.”
I tapped the PTT twice to acknowledge, and pointed to Malachi, who was about twenty meters to my right, and watching for just that signal. He came up to a low knee and unslung the RPG-27 he’d brought along from another one of our caches, bringing it to his shoulder and waiting.
He didn’t have long to wait. Hal’s team triggered the “distraction” right on schedule. A series of rolling booms echoed across the base as they hit the main gate to the north. I had requested plenty of noise and smoke, and Hal was delivering in spades.
As all hell broke loose up north, Malachi lined up the RPG’s sights, and fired. There was a bang, and the concrete guard post disappeared in a dark cloud with a tooth-jarring thud. The sentry wouldn’t have been able to get a warning off, and hopefully the explosion was lost in the cacophony that Hal and his boys were stirring up.
We’d learned the benefits of distraction and misdirection during a hit in Yemen. We’d used a large explosion to attract Al Masri’s security forces long enough for us to get in and start hitting them. It was a tactic that didn’t have wide use in the US military, but we didn’t have the hangups that some of their commanders did.
No sooner had Malachi pressed the trigger than the rest of us were sprinting up against the wall. Larry and Nick tossed the scaling ladder hooks up on top of the wall and tugged, hard, to make sure they were set. Then Bob and I headed up.
While they are handy, the nylon scaling ladders are a pain in the ass to climb, especially in kit. They sway, and the loops that act as rungs tend to be difficult to get your boot into, especially when time is of the essence. And when you’re trying to get over a wall on a guarded enemy airbase, time is of the essence.
I got to the top first, by a split second, and levered my rifle over the edge. I stayed in place on the ladder, with Bryan helping me keep from swaying, and held security while Bob clambered over and dropped to the ground. As soon as he was down, on a knee, and had his gun up, I followed.
I hit hard, but managed to stay roughly on my feet. A quick scan of the open end of the airstrip showed we were alone, aside from the smoking, dust-enshrouded remains of the guard tower. There was plenty of activity up north, where the buildings were, but our little corner was clear.
Bob and I spread out from the crossing point, allowing room for the rest of the team to come over with the ladders. We stayed on a knee and held security. At least I did until Paul thumped down beside me and tapped my shoulder with his fist, freeing me up to get a handle on things and get the assault moving. The clock was ticking, and had been since Hal’s team had set off the first explosives.
While most of us were headed for the compound, to break out the oilmen and cause as much havoc as possible, Jim and Juan had a different tasking. There was a reason we hadn’t blown up both guard towers at the wall. Jim and Juan were going to take the other one.
We hadn’t seen any fixed anti-aircraft positions, but we at least strongly suspected that they had MANPADS for air defense. At the very least, they’d have RPGs, which would present a hell of a hazard for our two helos that were already incoming. So, Jim and Juan were going to go set up in that tower. Juan was lugging a drag-bag on his back, carrying an Accuracy International AX338 with a thermal weapon sight. If anybody popped up ready to fire on our helos, they’d get shot. The two of them would also be in a position to cover our breach through the compound wall.
The rest of us formed up in a loose wedge and started moving at a trot across the tarmac toward the walled compound. So far, there wasn’t any real enemy presence or sign that we’d been noticed, in spite of the fact that we’d blown up a guard post. Hal was holding all their attention. The crackling shitstorm of small-arms fire, punctuated by the regular thumping of mortars and RPGs, coming from the north end of the base spoke to his effectiveness, but he’d have to break off soon. He didn’t have the numbers or the firepower to keep it up for long.
We were almost at a sprint when we hit the wall. I was sure it was nothing short of a miracle that nobody had spotted us so far. I’d gotten the brief code word over the radio that Jim and Juan were in position. It didn’t sound like the guard post had even been occupied.
There wasn’t any hesitation; we’d planned this as thoroughly as we could under the circumstances, and we had come to the wall right at our planned breach point. Larry went straight to the center with the ghostbuster charge, and slapped it on the wall. As soon as he was certain that it was securely attached, he yanked the initiator and ran back to the rest of the stack, where he joined us, head down and mouth open, waiting for the concussion.
The charge blew with an earthshaking thud, caving in a six-foot-wide hole in the wall. Concrete dust and shattered cinderblocks flew inward; it wouldn’t have been particularly healthy for anybody on the other side of that wall, at least within about twenty feet. We were moving before the debris had even stopped falling.
Now we really had to move fast. If the ISOF had been focused on the attack to the north, there was now no way of concealing the fact that we were in their perimeter. Speed was our security now.
We made straight for the “prison,” weapons up and watching for any resistance. A guard stumbled out of the billowing dust, coughing and choking as he tried to use his radio, and Jim shot him twice, the suppressed 7.62 rounds drowned out by the noise of the fight at the gate. The Iraqi dropped. As I passed him, I saw that Jim had aimed high, shooting over the man’s armor plate. He was dead as a doornail.
In a moment, Bob and Little Bob were cutting through the triple-strand concertina wire that had been laid around the building, while Bryan, Nick, Paul, and Malachi headed to the corners to hold security. Larry and I took a knee behind the guys cutting the wire. We were going in as soon as it was cut.
Cutting concertina isn’t as hard as handling it. Especially if it’s been stretched out, once the strand is cut, it tends to spring apart pretty fast. The Bobs were through in a few seconds, and pulling the strands to the sides. “Go!” Bob barked. I was on my feet and moving.
To the west, where Bryan and Malachi were stationed, more small arms fire erupted. “Contact, west!” Bryan sent over the net. “About ten foot-mobiles.”
“Handle ‘em,” I snapped back. “A
ssault section is going in.”
The building wasn’t in the best repair. It looked like it had gotten partially bombed out back during the war, and never fully repaired. The walls were pockmarked, and parts were missing. An entire section of the roof was partially caved in. The door we were headed toward was intact; they probably wouldn’t have used it as a prison otherwise.
Little Bob hit the door at a run, slamming the battering ram into the latch with a resounding metallic boom. Either the latch broke, or the jamb bent enough, and the door slammed open. Little Bob rolled out of the way, and Larry led the way in.
There wasn’t much space. A narrow, T-shaped hallway led through the building, with doors leading into three different spaces. Larry and I stacked up on the first closed door, the same rusty metal as the outside door, while Bob pushed past to hold on the hallway intersection, Little Bob, now sans battering ram, on his heels.
Larry tested the doorknob. It was unlocked. I reached around him and grasped the knob, as he raised his FAL. I turned the knob and shoved the door open, hard. Larry went in, and I went after him, riding the door to the stops.
A quick scan revealed the room was empty. The walls were bare, covered in graffiti, both English and Arabic, and aside from a few loose bits of brick, the floor was just as barren, and covered in about a half inch of dust. One room clear. We stacked back up on the door and flowed out into the hallway.
We came out just as Bob and Little Bob breached the second door, across from the hallway. I was in the lead as we bounded past them, covering the open hallway as we went. There weren’t any other doors on the hallway, just the far door that led, I was pretty sure, back outside, or at least to the roofless part of the building.
The next door opened the opposite direction from the first. Larry bumped past me to take up position facing the opening, while I put my back to the wall and donkey-kicked the door open.
This time, there were people in the room. Two men and two women were sitting on thin pads against the walls. None of them were armed, and fortunately, they all had the good sense to stay put and not make any sudden moves or noises when two big guys in body armor with rifles burst in the door.
As soon as we’d determined that there was no one else there, we started checking over the prisoners. I recognized all of them, fortunately, which made things easier. It removed the usual need to treat hostages as “unknowns,” i.e. possible bad guys who just didn’t have weapons. Larry moved to the door as I made sure none of them were booby-trapped and that they were all ready to move.
“Thank God.” Emilia Packer was a thickset blonde woman who worked administration. Thickset, hell, she was fucking fat. I really hoped that we didn’t run into any problems with the birds, because trying to hump out with her really wasn’t an option. “I knew someone would come and get us. Thank you, thank you…” She was on the verge of tears, which was something else we didn’t need, especially as the volume of fire from outside was increasing. There was a heavy thud that vibrated the building that could only be a grenade. The ISOF weren’t taking the liberation of their detainees lightly.
“Quiet,” I said sharply, and she flinched. “Until we get you all back to Erbil, you need to keep your heads down, your mouths shut, and do exactly what you are told, when you are told to do it. Do you understand?”
She started to say something, but I cut her off. “Do you understand?” I repeated.
She nodded, her eyes wide. Miguel Somoza looked pissed, his lips compressed to a thin line as he stared at me, but I gave him the evil eye right back, as though daring him to say something. I had no problem with gagging and zip-tying the whole lot of them until we got them on the birds, if it came to that. Somoza was one of Mackey’s ass-kissers, and didn’t like us any more than Mackey did. I tried not to think about how much I might enjoy putting his face in the dirt in the course of rescuing his pompous ass from the Iraqis.
I keyed my mic. “Shiny, Hillbilly. Sitrep.”
“Two shooters up, no tangos, six hotels,” he replied promptly. No bad guys, six hostages. We had everybody.
“Roger,” I replied. “Two shooters here, no tangos, four hotels,” I replied. “Prepare to exfil.”
At that moment, things got more complicated. “Hillbilly, this is Albatross,” Bryan called. “We are taking heavy suppressive fire, and there are multiple hostiles closing on the target building. They are out of our line of fire. You need to get out now.”
“Acknowledged,” I sent back. “Key-lock, Hillbilly,” I called.
“Send it, Hillbilly,” Nick replied.
“Status at the breach point?” I asked.
“In the clear for the moment,” he answered. “Apostle and I are keeping any interference from the east away, but Albatross and Slapdash are taking heavy fire.”
“Affirm.” Surprisingly, I wasn’t irritated by the repetition of information. I guess I had too much else to worry about. “Shiny, Hillbilly. We’re moving back to the breach point. You take point; we’ll bring up the rear.”
“Roger,” he replied. “Moving now.”
I looked at Larry, who was watching down the hall through the open door. He nodded as he saw the Bobs come out, with their charges in tow. I turned to ours and barked, “Let’s go, on your feet, we’re getting out of here.”
The noise of the firefight outside had quite a salutary effect on getting them to move quickly. All four scrambled to their feet and started to crowd toward the door. I put out my arm to block Somoza. “Stay behind Monster,” I said sternly. “Do not pass him, do not go anywhere but where he goes, and absolutely DO NOT step in front of him. Do you understand?”
Somoza looked at me with a combined expression of fear, anger, and desperation. Finally, without a word, tight-lipped, he nodded, and fell in behind Larry.
“Coming out!” Larry called out to the Bobs.
“Come ahead,” was the reply. Larry moved, Somoza and the other three on his heels. I took up the rear. I’d be the last one off the target site.
Little Bob was holding on the corner of the hallway, watching the unopened door that led to the collapsed part of the building. Larry took up security and pushed the civilians across to Little Bob, who led them out the breach point, where Bob had already taken the first batch. I bumped Larry across, and took up position covering the door while he crossed the hall.
Just then the door slammed open.
Once we’d gotten inside, we had raised our NVGs and gone with the white-light flashlights on our rifles. If we’d been trying to do a soft hit, we’d have kept the NVGs and IR lasers and floodlights, but identifying the civilians, and getting them out without them stumbling all over each other and turning it into a shitshow, had taken priority, not to mention the fact that our explosive breach had pretty well killed any chance of doing this stealthily. So when the first Iraqi commando came bursting through that door, he got an eyeful of two 200 lumen Surefire Scout Lights.
That kind of candlepower has an interesting effect on the human nervous system. While it isn’t as devastating as some might hope, it is a shock to the system, and can cause disorientation. Enough disorientation to clog up their stack, at any rate, and let us get the first shot off.
We got rather more than just the first shot off.
Larry and I opened fire on the one-man at almost the same instant, the suppressed rifles still cracking loudly in the confined space of the hallway. The first shots just staggered him as they thumped into his chest plate, but the follow-up brain shots smashed the contents of his skull across the inside of his helmet.
He crashed backwards into the next guy in the stack. The lot of them got tangled up in the doorway.
There’s a reason we call a doorway and the space right in front of it the “fatal funnel.” You get caught up in it during a firefight and you’re probably going to wind up dead.
It was interesting targeting, but we kept shooting until nobody in the heap was moving anymore. It wasn’t exactly surgical shooting, but under the circumstan
ces, it did the trick.
We weren’t waiting around to make sure of any of them. I flowed across the hallway, keeping my muzzle on the heap of dead and dying Iraqi commandos, and passed Larry, who stayed barricaded on their entry point. Once I got to our breach point, I stopped, turned, and yelled at him, “Turn and go!”
He peeled off and ran past me, heading toward our breach in the wall. Most of the civies were already through and headed for the airstrip. I could just barely hear the helos coming in to pick us all up.
“Turn and go!” he called, and I ran to join him at the wall. Now we had to collapse the two elements at the corners of the building. Nick and Paul hadn’t been engaged yet, but Bryan and Malachi would need some pretty heavy supporting fire to make it back.
As if the increasingly hot response to our prisoner grab wasn’t enough, at that point I got a call from Hal. “Hillbilly, Dave. We are taking heavy fire from the gate area, and what appears to be an Iraqi Army patrol just came up on our three-o’clock. We are pinned down and need support.”
“Roger, stand by,” I replied. “Shiny, Hillbilly.”
“Send it, Hillbilly,” Bob answered.
“Get Chickenhawk on this push,” I told him. I didn’t want to change channels in the middle of a firefight to talk to the birds; better for Bob, who didn’t have to coordinate between two teams and two helos, to do that.
A moment later, a laconic voice came crackling over the radio. “Hillbilly, this is Chickenhawk One. Send your traffic.”
“Chickenhawk, Team Dave is pinned down near the main gate under heavy fire,” I reported. “Can you do a couple of gun runs to take the heat off them?”
“Roger, be advised, from what we can see it’s a little confused down there,” Sam replied. “I need some kind of marker to tell the Cowboys from the Indians.” There was no questioning the sudden change in plan, which had been for them to swoop in, land under cover of Jim’s and Juan’s sniper fire, pick us up along with the civilians, and get the hell out. Close air support had not been in the briefing for this one, but all our helos went armed, though sometimes covertly, depending on the venue.