Task Force Desperate

by Peter Nealen

  “Roger all,” Alek snapped. “All right, we’re going to move to the east side of the building, find an exit, and move to building two. We’ve got to be fast and aggressive, but I don’t need to tell you guys that, do I?”

  “Fuckin’ A you don’t,” Jim growled. “I’m up, let’s move.”

  It was a careful balance between speed and security. We moved as fast as we could down the hallway, carefully clearing each door as we passed it, our muzzles never coming down from the low ready. We reached a door at the end of the hallway and kicked it open, moving in to clear the room beyond without even slowing down. From there, Jim, Larry, and I moved to the windows, while Alek covered the door.

  Quick strikes of rifle muzzles shattered the glass, and we swept the ground beyond for hostiles. In the process, we got a good look at the fight that had shaped up outside.

  We had split up into elements of two to better cover multiple lanes, and shut off the target building. We had four guys to the west, covering down the north and west sides of the target building. They didn’t have much to the west to occupy them, but they were taking desultory shots at anybody on the north side of building two who tried to poke their head out. Four of us were in the target building. And four more, with Mike leading them, were south, covering the main gate and the south and east sides of building two.

  Mike and his boys had the heaviest part of the fight at the moment. There was fire coming from both floors and the main entrance, as blasted to hell as it was, of building two, and more fighters were trying to get out the back and sides to try to get at them. Some were just doing the time-honored hajji form of combat shooting, sticking their rifles out the windows and spraying south without aiming. An M60E4 and Mike’s MGL were making an unholy mess of the front of the building, along with anybody who tried to get out, but they only had so much ammo, and it looked like there were a lot of bad guys in there. Several fires were already burning on both floors, I had no doubt due to Mike’s grenades. The fires and muzzle flashes lent a flickering, hellish illumination to the scene.

  Four men wearing camouflage jackets and cheap chest rigs bailed out of the lower windows. They were armed with a couple AK variants, an SKS, and a G3, and they crouched low as they tried to maneuver toward Mike’s team. Larry, Jim, and I didn’t even have to say a word. We swung our rifles out the windows and opened fire. The jihadi shooters dropped like sacks of meat. They never even knew what had happened. Our suppressors apparently masked our own muzzle flashes enough that nobody in building two knew, either. We didn’t take any fire.

  Alek started shooting from the doorway, a series of rapid, muted cracks announcing his shots. “Got shooters in the hallway!” he yelled. Where the fuck were they all coming from?

  “Speedy, this is Hillbilly,” I called, as Jim turned and sprinted to the opposite side of the door from Alek, leaning out to finish off the last three SIG 550-toting terrorists. “Four friendlies coming out of building one, east side. Shift fire.”

  “Roger, go ahead,” Mike replied.

  I turned back to the door and yelled, “Alek, Jim, we’re going, move!” Then Larry and I hoisted ourselves into the windows and jumped out.

  I landed badly, falling on my side but managing to keep my suppressor out of the dirt. I was able to roll out of the way before getting crushed by Alek’s huge self unassing from the window. As I got up on a knee under the trees that lined the side of the building, half a dozen more bad guys came out a side door, where they were masked from the western element. The lull in firing had opened up an opportunity.

  Larry had already seen them, and his FAL started barking almost as soon as they cleared the doorway. The lead shooter flopped to the ground, and the rest scrambled for nonexistent cover as Jim, Alek and I joined in. They were shooting back, but although they were showing better firearms training than I’d seen hajjis use before, they still sucked in the dark. Rounds were snapping high overhead and smacking into concrete and tree limbs, shredded vegetation falling down around us as we moved forward in a sort of half-crouch, firing as we moved.

  The flickering light, along with the smoke and dust in the air, was making it hard to see, even with NVGs, but the thermals helped. I was able to pick up outlines in the green haze, something they couldn’t. We swept from one side to the other, each putting two rounds into any thermal signature he could pick up. A moment later, the gunfire coming our way died down, the only sound from the destroyed team the pained gurgles of a man not yet quite dead.

  We picked up the pace without a word, heading for the opening the enemy shooters had come out of. I called Mike again. “Speedy, Hillbilly. We are making entry northwest side of building two.”

  “Roger,” was the reply. The shooting suddenly redoubled again.

  We paused to stack on the door, as Alek prepped a frag and tossed it in. We followed the earthshaking thud of the explosion, moving fast into the smoke and debris. There were more corpses in the hallway; it looked like another team had been on its way out when the grenade had gone in. We had well and truly kicked the hornet’s nest. It was starting to look like there was at least a reinforced company of troops of one kind or another here.

  There was an open door ahead, leading to a stairway. Alek led the way to it, while Larry popped the corner of the intersecting hallway, holding it as the rest of us headed up the stairs. Jim thumped him as he went past, and Larry fell in with the rest of us going up.

  The top floor was kind of strange, with a hallway running around the outside of the building, and what looked like it might be a conference room in the center. There were several shooters, of the camouflage jacket and AK chest rig variety down at the south end, taking shots at Mike’s element. They never even knew what hit them. Staccato pairs of suppressed shots dropped them into heaps of meat and rags leaking blood on the tile floor.

  There was another stairwell at the far side, and shouts in Arabic were starting to come up from the one we’d just ascended. Larry was posted on the landing, his FAL aimed down the stairs, waiting for the first hajji to show his face. Alek took the corner, facing down the long hallway to the south, watching the far stairs. Jim and I moved to the nearest door.

  It was wood, or at least wood veneer, and it looked like it was pretty good quality. Most of this place had been pretty fancy at one time, before decades of neglect had been topped off by us blowing the shit out of it. There was a lot of yelling on the other side, most of it that I could make out was in Arabic. Somebody didn’t sound happy. I reached for the doorknob and turned it. It was unlocked.

  The door splintered inches from my hand, as someone on the other side fired a long burst from what sounded like an AK-74 through it. So much for that option. I moved to donkey-kick it open, while Jim pulled out his last frag.

  There was more defiant yelling from inside, and another burst tore up the door some more. Jim had the pin out, and his hand clamped around the grenade’s safety lever, and nodded to me. I wound up and slammed my foot straight back into the door.

  The door latch ripped right through the splintered doorjamb, and the door slammed open. Jim lobbed the grenade inside, throwing it high to bounce it off the ceiling, hoping to lessen the chance that somebody could scoop it up and throw it back out.

  He must have cooked it off while I was winding up. It detonated a bare second later, and I felt the concussion in my chest, even through the wall. I pivoted and went in, Jim on my heels, with Alek and Larry falling in on the door behind us.

  The room had been a conference room, and a very nicely appointed one. Rich wood paneling was now gouged by shrapnel, and what I could only assume was a very expensive deep red carpet was smoldering where the grenade had gone off. Several burning papers were still fluttering in the smoky air.

  The first half of the room was a charnel house. Whoever had been shooting at the door was down, missing both his arms and one leg, along with a good chunk of his head. His AK was a smashed ruin, bathed in blood at the foot of the now thoroughly smashed end of the con
ference table. Two more lay crumpled off to the side, similarly mangled. We cleared the corners and moved forward, stepping over the mutilated bodies.

  There were four men at the far end of the conference table. They had been knocked senseless by the overpressure, and were bleeding from several shrapnel wounds. We closed on them quickly, rifles leveled.

  One was dressed in traditional flowing white Bedouin robes, with a black keffiyeh on his head. The other three were all dressed in expensive suits, marred now by dust, blood, and shrapnel holes.

  The first one to start to pick himself up was a short, spare-framed man, in a black silk suit, with short, oiled hair and a short, neat beard. He came to his hands and knees, and looked up at us, his eyes bleary. He obviously wasn’t seeing straight.

  I recognized him, though. After Baird had provided the ID, we’d gotten photos. The man on the floor was responsible for hundreds of dead Americans, and who knew how many dead Africans and Arabs. He had plans to be the next Osama Bin Laden. He was Mahmoud al-Khalidi. Al Masri. I leveled my rifle at his forehead.

  As his eyes started to clear, he looked around at us, then at his associates on the floor, who were also starting to shake off the effects of the grenade blast. Recognition lit in his dark eyes, followed immediately by a flash of hatred so intense that if looks could kill, his would have incinerated the side of the building. He stared up at me for a moment, then simply said, “Allahu akhbar,” and reached into his suit.

  His pistol had just cleared his lapel when I shot him.

  The round hit him just to the left of the bridge of his nose, and blew the back of his skull out, splashing the white thobe of the Bedouin-dressed man with blood and brains. In the next second, the other three were shot dead, before they could do the same.

  We didn’t stop to reflect on what had just happened. That could come later, provided there was a later. As we moved to the next door, leading out into the hallway, the radio came to life again.

  “Coconut, Speedy,” Mike called. “We’ve got Yemeni security forces at the gate. They’ve got armor, and we can hear at least one helo incoming. We have to go, now.”

  Chapter 34

  “Roger,” Alek responded. “All callsigns, primary target is down, I say again, primary target is down. We are moving to extract. Fall back by pairs to the west wall.” He turned from the door we were stacking on. “Back the way we came!” he said, heading for our breach point. “We’ll use the building to shield us from the armor.”

  We pounded across the room to the shattered door, and stacked on it quickly. A bare second’s pause to ensure everyone was ready, and we flowed out and into the hallway. Jim almost collided with the hajji who had led the way up the stairs.

  The man wasn’t ready for us to come boiling out of the conference room, and staggered back, staring in shock. Jim muzzle-thumped him in the throat, squeezing the trigger even as his suppressor crushed the guy’s larynx, blowing fragments of his spine out the back of his neck.

  He dropped like a rock, clearing the guy behind him, who was bringing up his SIG 550 as I shot him in the head. It was a fast shot, and just blew out the side of his skull. He spasmed in pain, his finger tightening on the trigger, and shot Jim in the leg as he fell.

  Jim grunted and staggered, as the 5.56 round blew a chunk of meat and blood out the back of his calf. Alek and I raked the rest of the fire team coming up the stairs, pumping shots as fast as we could, just making sure that there was a body in the sights each time we squeezed the trigger. Several of our shots hit body armor, but enough were placed well enough to kill or wound, driving the team back down the stairs, stumbling over the bodies of their dead, or their thrashing, screaming comrades.

  Larry got to Jim before his leg collapsed under him, whipping out the tourniquet that Jim had strapped to his vest and hastily wrapping it high around Jim’s wounded leg. Jim leaned on him, his rifle pointed, if somewhat shakily, at the corner where anyone coming from the other stairway would have to expose themselves.

  “Can you move?” Alek asked, facing toward the opposite corner, while I covered the stairs.

  “Damn straight, I can,” Jim growled. “I might be a little slower, but it’s either that or stay here and die.”

  “Fucking right,” Alek said. “Jeff, you take point. Larry, you stay with Jim, I’ll take rear. Let’s get down the stairs and out of this building before the Yemeni Army decides to come in.”

  I didn’t wait for much of an acknowledgement. Larry reached out and thumped me in the back of the shoulder with a meaty fist, as I pulled my last frag out of my vest and prepped it. “Frag out,” I called over my shoulder, and chucked it down the stairs, hard.

  There was a burst of panicked shouting in Arabic from below, cut off as the grenade exploded. I followed the jarring explosion down the stairs, intent on not giving the bad guys time to recover.

  There were still five of them alive at the base of the stairs, though two of them were rolling on the floor screaming, clutching at mangled or flat-out blown-off limbs. I worried about the ones that were still standing, halfway down the hall, trying to shake off the concussion and bring their AKs to bear. I shot two of them, and a shot from above me took out the third. I glanced over my shoulder. Larry had both hands on his FAL, and Jim was holding on to the drag handle on the back of his vest to hold himself up as he hobbled after him. Good thing Larry’s a big guy.

  I drove on, pushing through the short hallway to the side door. “Speedy, Hillbilly, four coming out,” I called. “Kemosabe is hit, but mobile.”

  “Roger, we’ve got you covered,” Mike replied. “We are at the south wall, taking heavy fire from the gate. Rock is down. We’re going to have to blow the wall and go out this way. We’ll rendezvous at the BLS.”

  “I copy, Speedy,” Alek replied. “Shiny, we’re coming to you, north side of building one.”

  “Roger, come ahead,” Bob answered. “Make it fast, we can see the helo. Looks like a Kamov.” That was some good news, anyway. The Ka-29 couldn’t carry more than about six people; they weren’t going to be dropping troops on us with it, at least. On the other hand, it could be fitted with a minigun or cannon, which would be a bad day. Better to just get the hell away from it.

  “Let’s go,” Jim yelled. “I’ll hobble as fast as I can. Let’s blow this Popsicle stand.”

  I dug in and sprinted to the northeast corner of the big building, pivoting and dropping to a kneeling stance as soon as I got to it. The Yemenis weren’t advancing into the compound very quickly, thanks to Mike’s fire, but that wouldn’t last long, especially if Charlie was out of the picture. Larry and Jim ran/limped past me, heading toward the far end of the building, then Alek ran past all of us to take point. I held on the corner for a few more moments, and then started after them.

  We ran through Bob’s position, past Chris and Marcus, and headed toward the breach in the wall, as they got up and came after us. Some fire was starting to snap past us from the gate, but it was unaimed and didn’t come close.

  Coming around the corner of the three-story building that butted up against the west wall, I saw that Chris and Marcus hadn’t fucked around. There was a thirty-foot hole blasted in the wall, and it looked like part of the corner of the building had taken some damage from flying debris. There were fragments of concrete and brick strewn around for a hundred feet. The crater was still smoking.

  Alek rounded the crumbled edge of the wall, as Larry popped the opposite direction. There was a crackle of gunfire, and Larry yelled, “We’ve got company!”

  Alek grabbed Jim and kept going down the length of the wall, heading for the road. I dropped to a knee beside Larry and took up firing on the hazy shapes of armed men coming toward us from the north. Bob skidded to a halt next to me, but I yelled at him, “We’ve got this! Go! We’ll catch up!” He looked at me for a second. I could see him out of the corner of my eye, even as I took a shot at another armed silhouette and missed. Then he was gone, sprinting toward the road.

  T
here was more gunfire from behind me, back in the compound. I risked a glance back to see what looked like Mike’s team trying to bound along the inside of the wall, laying down fire with the remaining rounds for the M60. One of them was lugging a body in a fireman’s carry. It looked like Bo, which meant the body was probably Charlie.

  “We’ve got to hold,” I hollered at Larry, over the noise that seemed to be tearing apart the night itself. “Mike’s coming.”

  “He’d better hurry the hell up,” Larry yelled back over his shoulder.

  I scrambled back to the hole in the wall, dropping to the prone in the crater, to try to help cover Mike’s team’s fallback. There were Yemeni troops starting to fan out into the compound, following an AML-90 armored car. They were shooting, but not heavily. They seemed more interested in keeping the AML between them and Johnny’s M60. Most of their shooting was definitely of the “spray and pray” variety, which helped. It didn’t look like they could see very well, either; no night vision.

  We didn’t have anything that could even scratch that armored car, at least not without getting way too damned close to it. The fact that Mike wasn’t using his MGL told me he was already out of grenades for it.

  I lined up the first Yemeni soldier who got a little too aggressive, and squeezed the trigger. He dropped, and his buddies scrambled to cram behind the AML. I kept up single shots whenever I saw a target, as Mike, Bo, and Johnny came closer. Mike was on point, and Johnny was taking up the rear, firing short bursts from the M60, and immediately moving. The AML was returning fire, but it was slow and inaccurate; I could only guess that they didn’t really have night sights on the vehicle, either, which was good news, such as it was.

  Mike led the way into the breach, pounding past me and up to Larry’s side. Larry was putting out a constant barrage of fire to the north; it sounded like the bad guys in that direction weren’t getting the message. A moment later, Bo staggered through, carrying Charlie’s body over his shoulders. I pointed him toward Alek, Jim, and the rest, down by the road, and he kept going. Johnny dropped down next to me with the 60. He was wrestling with a 150-round “nutsack,” one of the soft-sided ammo carriers we’d gotten for the machine guns. “Last belt,” he gasped.