by Peter Nealen
I watched as they set in between the wall and a small shack, that, if I was reading the ground right, was just across the wall from the shack I’d seen inside. I took my eyes off them to scan the roof of the University building, and spotted one of the sentries, who seemed to be pointing toward the wall…
The night exploded.
Chapter 28
The shockwave of the explosion slapped me in the face, hot air rocking me back on my heels. The noise was deafening, even this far away, and I almost didn’t hear the hiss of flares being popped off, or the sporadic pops of small arms fire, as the sentries started shooting into the kill zone.
Through my NVGs the area around the shack was a huge thermal bloom. Smoke and dust was still billowing out from the blast point, and glowing wreckage was strewn across the ground. It didn’t seem possible that any of the point element had survived that. The bullet impacts that were smacking dust up from the ground just seemed to emphasize the hopelessness of it. Danny, Nick, Hank, and Rodrigo were dead.
Somewhere inside the campus, some fuckstick started up a PA, and started shouting “ALLAHU AKHBAR!” at the top of his lungs, over and over. It was so loud it was clearly audible over the steadily intensifying roar of gunfire as the Shabaab fighters hosed down the kill zone frantically with rifle and machinegun fire.
All around us, the city came awake. Engines roared, headlights flared to life, and more small arms fire popped off. My earpiece crackled to life with Mike’s voice.
“Coconut, Speedy,” he called. “All hell’s breaking loose out here; we’ve got mounted patrols coming out of the woodwork. What’s your status?”
“Same thing here, Speedy,” Alek replied. “Hold what you’ve got, we had an IED go off, and we’ve got casualties. I’ll fill you in when we’ve got a better handle. For now, go firm and get ready for us to come to you, fast and hard.”
The rest of the team was already at the windows, guns up and ready, but as yet, no one had started shooting. The flares were starting to white out my NVGs, so I flipped them up and started using my scope. We weren’t taking fire yet, and if the guys out front were gone, we wouldn’t do them any good by bringing hell down around our own ears. Alek came up to me and took a knee, and was about to say something when I held up a hand to stop him.
I’d seen movement, out there in the kill zone. At least one of our guys was still alive. I pointed, and whispered to Alek, “We’ve got to get over there. Somebody’s still breathing. We can’t leave ‘em here.”
He looked at the long stretch of open ground we’d have to cover to get there, the fighters on top of the campus building that were still shooting, and the half dozen trucks that were rumbling in from at least three different directions. “Good thing we brought at least one sixty,” was all he said. He turned, tapped Jim on the shoulder, and pointed toward the roof.
It was going to be a drop in the bucket, but if we were lucky, it would get their heads down long enough for us to get to our casualties. Jim and Larry would stay put, Alek, Bob, Tim, and I would head for the blast zone.
Heaven help us, we were about to run into a fucking kill zone. I swallowed the hollow feeling in my gut, and got ready to run.
We peeled out the back door of the abandoned house and headed for the wreckage of the shack at a sprint, as Jim and Larry opened fire on the campus, the thud-thud-thud of the M60 being punctuated by the hammering reports of Larry’s FAL. We ran bent over, as friendly rounds snapped past overhead. My body immediately started to protest, and the dusty, smoke-laced air burned in my lungs, as my boots pounded the ground, and my gear bounced and rubbed against my torso with every jarring stride.
We were halfway there when two of the enemy technicals rolled into the open.
Their headlights glared across the open ground and silhouetted us against the wall. I don’t think they knew quite what to do, at first. The sight of four large men running full tilt toward the gunfire must have thrown them, because they seemed to falter at first. Then somebody shouted something in Somali, and AK fire started to strobe out of the darkness behind the headlights, reaching out for us.
I didn’t slow down as I returned fire. They were probably the least-aimed shots of my life, but they might have bought us a few precious seconds. One of the headlights shattered, and some of the gunfire slackened, as I heard frantic shouts in Somali. We were almost to the knee-high remains of the shack.
Then Tim dropped on his face. Bob skidded to a halt, turned, and ran back to him. Alek and I dropped to the prone and started shooting at the trucks, concentrating our fire a little better from a stationary position. My chest was heaving, making my aim waver, but they were close. I saw two skinnies drop as I unloaded an entire magazine at the truck, and the rest scurried back to try to shelter behind the bed. I was glad I’d loaded up for bear as I rolled to one side to get a mag out of my vest to reload.
Bob was yelling at us, as I rocked the fresh magazine in place and sent the bolt home. I fired four more rounds at the truck, which looked like an old 5-ton, before twisting my head around to see Bob dragging Tim’s limp form into the semi-shelter of the wrecked shack walls. He was yelling and waving at us to come on. I scrambled up onto a knee, then scuttled over to Alek and hit him on the shoulder. I stayed there, alternating between the two trucks, which were becoming increasingly bullet-riddled, firing a pair at one, then at the other, until he could get to his feet. He was breathing harder than I was, but we couldn’t afford to slow down. We sprinted for the shack, as Bob opened fire from its dubious cover.
I vaulted the shattered wall, and landed in a mess of rubble. I noticed at that point that Bob wasn’t the only one in the shack shooting. Nick was alive, covered in blood, and sitting up against the back wall, popping desultory shots up at the campus building. He looked shaky; I guessed he had a severe concussion at the very least.
Hank lay in the rubble of the shack wall closest to the blast. His right arm was nothing but mangled meat just past the elbow. Because of the way the rubble had fallen, I didn’t see until I tried to move him that both legs were just gone. Before even thinking to check him, I grabbed his tourniquets off his gear and threw them on the stumps of his legs, cranking them down so hard that if he’d been conscious, he’d have been screaming in pain. Only once they were in place did I check for his pulse.
Nothing. He’d bled out while we’d been regrouping and trying to get over to them. Hank was dead.
My adrenaline was cranked so high that I didn’t feel anything. I just stared at the man who had been my friend for almost ten years, and was now nothing more than inanimate, bloody meat. It didn’t seem real. Even the boom and crack of gunfire didn’t quite bring it home that he wasn’t ever going to sit up, or open his eyes again. I probably would have stayed there for a long time, but many years of training and instinct stirred me to action before my brain even caught up.
I went to check Tim, but Bob just reached out to grab my arm, and shook his head. It took only one good look to see why. The bullet had gone in just under his right eye.
I looked around for Rodrigo and Danny. At first I couldn’t see any sign of them, like they’d just vanished. But then I started to see the pieces.
Danny’s head was mostly intact, lying on its side in a patch of dirt that had been turned to mud with the blood that had flowed out of it. A little farther away was a Lowa hiking boot, with mangled flesh and a jagged bone sticking out of it. Over by the corner was part of a ribcage.
Four men dead. Just like that.
I hurriedly checked Nick for any serious bleeds, while Alek and Bob laid down their hate on the two trucks, as well as a third that came in from the west. He wasn’t very coherent, but he was conscious and shooting back. He had a broken leg and a lot of frag in him, but no arteries had been hit, and he was breathing all right. We’d need to get him checked out, but for right now he was alive.
Now we just had to get out of this deathtrap.
The firing from the rooftop had slackened considerably. I co
uldn’t tell just how effective Jim and Larry’s fire had been, but the Shabaab fighters had fallen back off the roof, and weren’t shooting at us from above anymore. But I could see movement down on the ground floor. It looked like they were massing to rush us. Meanwhile, the fighters out by the trucks were chewing up the shattered cinderblocks we were using for cover. Dust and fragments filled the air with a harsh crackling thunder.
Alek was yelling into the radio, but I couldn’t hear him over the gunfire. I settled my rifle on the edge of the smashed wall and got ready to start denying the rush.
When it came, it wasn’t particularly disciplined, but it was a little more than the usual mob that we had expected when we first got to this shithole country. They moved forward in bounding rushes, firing from the hip as they came. They still weren’t hitting shit, and I dropped three in the first rush alone. Nick got another one, whether by aim or luck I still don’t know.
Then I got a look at the guy in the back, directing the attack. And I recognized him. It threw me for a second, but when I got him in the scope, it was undeniable.
It was Spider.
In spite of the fatigue, the adrenaline, and the mind-numbing noise of the fight, I felt an upwelling of rage and hate like I don’t think I’ve felt before or since. My usual combat calm cracked, just for a minute, and I dumped six rounds into Spider’s chest as fast as I could squeeze the trigger with a snarl of sheer animal fury. He staggered backward in a welter of blood and shredded meat, thumped against the wall behind him, and fell on his face, leaving a dark splatter on the cement.
It was at that point that Jim and Larry came running up, using the lull in the firing from the roof to link up with us. Jim yelled, “Friendlies, coming in!” at the top of his lungs, and vaulted the low, broken wall, the M60 held chest high, then dropped down between me and Nick, laying the machine gun on top of the wall, and opening fire. Larry came in a little bit slower, blowing hard. Guys Larry’s size aren’t built for speed.
Alek turned from the far wall as Larry took up position and opened fire. “Baird’s choppers are incoming!” he yelled. “They’re apprised of the situation, and are coming to us, and coming in hot!”
That was the first good news of the night. “What about Mike’s team?” I threw the question over my shoulder as I continued to engage enemy fighters in the University building. The first half dozen deaths had convinced them that trying to rush us was a losing proposition, and now they were trying to shoot at us through the shattered windows on the first floor.
Alek’s answer was momentarily forestalled by Jim ripping a long burst at the Shabaab positions. As the pig fell momentarily silent, he called back, “They’re falling back out of the city, and linking up with the rest of Baird’s people at the vehicles. They’ll meet us at the RV point in the desert.”
I squeezed off a pair of shots and dropped an RPG gunner who had popped out of a doorway. He convulsively clenched the trigger as he spun and dropped. The rocket smacked off the doorway and spun off into the night, and the backblast pulped the man who had been next to him, whose body fell out into the door. Nick shot him again, apparently just to be sure. “How far out are the helos?” I asked. “We aren’t going to be able to keep this up much longer.” We were going through ammo like crazy, and once the bullets were all gone, that was all she wrote.
“Five mikes,” was the reply. I just hoped they didn’t rally and try a bigger push in the next five minutes. Not to mention, I hoped that they didn’t have RPG gunners set and ready for helos. We were in the same country where two SOAR Blackhawks had been shot down with RPG-7s within 15 minutes of each other, after all, and that was over twenty years before.
“North!” Larry yelled, turning his FAL to hammer out a booming trio of shots. I turned to join him, and saw three big panel-sided trucks rolling into the open, their beds almost overflowing with fighters.
Even as I started shooting, Jim pivoted, took one step to take a knee right next to me, and dumped the rest of the belt into the back of the lead truck.
It was a long burst, at least twenty-five rounds, and it shredded the side panels along with anyone who didn’t have the presence of mind to jump off the far side of the truck. The truck slewed to one side, giving us a view of the heaped bodies in the back, after Larry shot the driver. The occupants of the other two trucks immediately started bailing, and Larry and I started picking them off as best we could.
They started spreading out through the walled compounds on either side of the dirt road that had sort of faded into the wide open area in front of us. They had a long way to go to flank us, but either way, we were running out of time.
We actually saw the helos before we heard them. To be accurate, we saw the muzzle flashes and streams of tracers from their door-mounted guns. Hans and his fellow pilots had also considered the history of helicopters being shot down in Somalia, and weren’t taking any chances. They were coming in low and fast, and their door gunners were shooting at anything that looked like it might be carrying an RPG.
The Alouette was in the lead, and came in on a low curve over the campus, as the port door gunner raked the main building with 7.62 fire. The other gunner was giving our attackers from the north the business, playing his stream of tracers across the three stopped trucks, which shuddered, and started to come apart under the hail of steel and lead. A tracer found the rear truck’s gas tank, and it erupted in flames, further adding to the hellish scene.
Then the Cougar was swooping in to land, fire spitting from both side doors and the back ramp. It settled in a swirl of dust, and then two figures were running off the back ramp, firing at the enemy to the north as they ran. I recognized Baird and Jason Van Voorhees as they got closer. I grabbed Nick, making sure his rifle was pointed in a roughly safe direction, and got him up. I shoved him at Jason as they ran up. “Get him on the helo!” I yelled. “We’ll get the bodies!” Jason just nodded, threw Nick’s arm over his shoulder, and started toward the bird, supporting his weight easily.
Bob was already throwing Tim’s body over his shoulders in a fireman’s carry, but Hank was going to be more difficult. I ended up slinging my rifle across my back and picking him up by the armpits. He was lighter than he had been in life, with the amount of his body that was missing, but he was still heavy as hell. I had to back toward the chopper, while Alek, Jim, Baird, and Larry bounded back slowly, keeping themselves between Bob and me and the enemy.
I staggered up the ramp and found a spot forward where I could lay Hank down. I positioned him as best I could, across the fuselage from Tim, as the rest of the team pounded up into the bird and Baird ran forward to yell at the pilot to take off. The tail gunner was already going to town again, hammering away at the University buildings, as we rocked into the sky and pulled away from Kismayo.
I looked down at Hank. His eyes were still open, so I reached down and closed them before I got into one of the mesh seats and slumped against the fuselage. The pilot had pitched us over hard, and we were tearing away from Kismayo as fast as he could get the old helo to move. The guns fell silent as their targets receded behind us.
At that point, I confess I wasn’t thinking about the hostages who’d been left behind. They were as far from my mind as anyone back in the States. All I could think about was the brothers we’d just lost, in less than an hour of hell.
As we flew north, the first, silent tears began to fall.
Chapter 29
Conversation on the bird was impossible. The howl of the engines drowned out any words that weren’t hollered directly into someone’s ear. But as the flight went on, I started to study Baird carefully.
I’d been too busy staying alive before to think through the implications of what had just happened. Baird and Jason had come with air support, and were getting us out, so I hadn’t looked a gift horse in the mouth. But now, as the adrenaline drained out of my system, and we were no longer in danger of winding up as mutilated corpses in some celebratory jihadi video on the Internet, I had some t
ime to think, and I didn’t like where my thoughts were taking me.
I didn’t think anyone else had seen Spider on the ground back there. Nick had been the only other shooter facing that direction, and he was still a little out of it. There hadn’t been time to tell anyone else, in the mad scramble to get airborne. So I was left pretty much alone with my thoughts, and my suspicions.
The question was, did Baird know about it, or had Spider betrayed him as thoroughly as he’d betrayed us? Or was it all a setup? Was Baird really back in Somalia for the reasons he’d said, or was he there to keep the CIA from doing the Muslim Brotherhood’s lackeys too much damage?
But if that was the case, why fly into that hornet’s nest to lift us out? He could very well have abandoned us to be overwhelmed and slaughtered as soon as our ammo ran out.
It was a conundrum.
After a couple of minutes, I felt more than saw Alek’s eyes on me, and I looked over to see him watching me, a faint frown on his face. His eyes flicked over to Baird, then back to me, with one eyebrow raised. I shook my head, and mouthed, “Once we’re on the ground.” He watched me for another moment with narrowed eyes, then nodded, and put his head back against the fuselage.
We touched down in the desert to pick up Mike’s team before continuing on toward Ethiopia. The Cougar was getting fairly full, but with three of Mike’s guys getting on the Alouette, we were still well within the limits of both birds, so we cruised north as the sky began to turn pale in the east.
The sun was all the way up and getting hot as we touched down in the desert just outside of Dolo. Caleb’s team had a small temporary FOB set up, with several GP tents, fuel bladders for the helos and the DC-3 that had been parked nearby, and three smaller tents that looked innocuous from the outside, but were lined with sandbags on the inside. Each held a mounted M60E4 and over one thousand rounds of ammunition.