Medal of Honor

by Chris Ryan

  We had other tools too. M4 carbines, locked and loaded, with replacement magazines of 5.56 rounds stashed in our ops waistcoats. These rounds were the hard-hitting 77-grain rather than the standard-issue 62-grain green tips. More violent fragmentation at short range meant the bad guys were less likely to stand up again once they’d been hit. My rifle was suppressed. It wouldn’t totally silence it, but it meant that if we found ourselves in a contact in a built-up area, it would be more difficult for the enemy to locate me from the sound of my weapon. I had my Sig P226 strapped to the inside of my leg; the others had theirs wherever it was most comfortable: round the ankle or slung across the chest. Each of us had a satellite marker strapped to his arm, there to transmit our location back to MacDill Air Force Base in Florida, and night-vision goggles on our heads. Patrol comms were fitted – MBITR radios, with an earpiece in my right ear, and a small boom mike by my mouth; and, in each of our ops waistcoats, a pouch containing our Iridium sat phones – connected up to our earpiece and mike – for communications with MacDill. Our clothes were made of rough Afghan material – no sign of the military camo that would instantly mark us out as foreign troops. Each of us wore a kneepad on one knee, to protect the joint when we got down into the firing position. Our heavy caftans and shamags were musty and sweat-filled, but they were almost as important as our personal weapons. If you’re heading into a hornets’ nest, you need to look like a hornet. Otherwise you get stung.

  At the other end of the chopper, by the tailgate, were our quad bikes – squat and khaki-coloured, with fat, sturdy tyres – each one fixed to the aircraft with a green cargo strap.

  ‘Two minutes out!’ The loadie’s voice came over the noise of the chopper’s engines. ‘Two minutes out! Let’s go, guys!’

  Voodoo looked at the rest of us and we nodded at him, just as the loadie started undoing the cargo straps. The MI-8 was already losing height when we took our places on the quad bikes, fixing our Bergens to the rack on the front, the back racks already being used to carry jerrycans of petrol. Cam nets were fixed to the vehicles, and by the side of the quad was a rifle mount. Fuck that. I preferred to have mine slung over my shoulder where I could get at it, and a quick glance around showed me that the others felt the same. I was the first to engage the red starting button on the right-hand side of the handlebars; the others quickly followed suit and we waited – with the quads already knocked into forward drive – for the chopper to touch down. None of the flight crew wanted to be on the ground for a second longer than was necessary, so we had to be ready to go.

  There was a gentle bump as the MI-8 touched down. The tailgate immediately lowered to reveal nothing but a cloud of dust kicked up by the rotary blades, and a faint glow as the dust hit the blades and caused a spark. Voodoo was down, almost before the tailgate hit the ground, pulling off sharply to the right and vanishing into the dust cloud as Dusty followed, then me, then Rabbit. We were off the aircraft in less than ten seconds, and emerged through the brownout on to a featureless plain where the rumble of the MI-8 sounded even louder than usual. The four of us travelled about twenty metres from the chopper – far enough to be out of the range of the downdraught – before stopping.

  I looked back over my shoulder to see the chopper, still surrounded by dust, its blades still sparking. Over the comms I heard Dusty’s voice.

  ‘So long, little bird.’

  Right on cue the MI-8 started to rise. The dust settled and within ten seconds the aircraft was just a silhouette against the stars. The noise of its engines disappeared into the night, leaving us alone in the silence.

  I took a moment to get my bearings. The MI-8 had inserted us fifteen miles due south-west of Pajay – far enough for the aircraft to land unnoticed by any AQ or Taliban in the village, close enough for us to approach by quad. There was a bright full moon, large but low enough in the sky for a quarter of it to be obscured by the peak of a mountain to the north. The ground was baked hard and stony, and twenty metres away I could see a long crack in the earth, about a metre wide and with a few spindly plants bravely trying to force their way skywards. I’d spent enough time on the ground to know that our path to Pajay would be full of these treacherous cracks and inlets. We’d have to go carefully.

  Voodoo’s voice over the comms. ‘I’m getting on to base. Jock, join the call. Dusty, Rabbit, watch our backs.’ Voodoo and I dialled in to our command centre at MacDill. ‘Zero, this is Voodoo, Zero, this is Voodoo. Do you copy?’

  A pause, then a crackle and a distant-sounding voice: ‘Go ahead, Voodoo.’

  ‘We’re on the ground, the bird has flown.’

  ‘Roger that. We have your position. Repeat, we have your position. Advance to target.’

  ‘Check.’

  We disconnected the call.

  ‘Dusty, what’s our bearing?’

  Dusty pointed due northeast. Total confidence.

  ‘You boys follow me,’ he said.

  ‘Roger that.’

  We switched on our headlights. To the naked eye, no visible light emerged from the quads’ headlamps as they’d been covered with IR filters; but as soon as we engaged our NV goggles, the beams illuminated the ground ahead of us for a good ten or fifteen metres, maybe more. I looked up. The Afghan night sky, impressive at any time, glowed like an acid trip through the NV. No time for stargazing, though. Dusty had already moved forward.

  We drove slowly. No prizes for being first. At five miles per hour, the noise of the quad’s engines was barely audible. It meant that as we approached, any reception party in Pajay could neither see us nor hear us until we were right on top of them.

  There were other reasons to go slowly. The ground was treacherous – bumpy, stony and with sudden cracks that seemed to appear from nowhere, especially given that we only had the IR beams to light the way. And as we travelled, I tried not to think of the risk of legacy mines, left over from the Soviet invasion twenty years previously. The Russkies had mined the place to fuck, and half the things were still there. Just three days ago I’d had to pump a ten-year-old kid full of morphine after a mine had blasted his leg off. He was never going to survive more than a few minutes, but at least the drug made his final moments a little less agonizing.

  We drove in silence, each man concentrating on the path ahead. Back at the FOB we could shoot the shit all day long, but now we’d only speak when necessary.

  It took two or three hours before the low buildings of Pajay emerged from the distance. Our patrol stopped at the edge of a wide wadi. The dried-up riverbed was about ten metres across and two metres deep. We found a point on the bank where the incline was shallow enough to drive the quads down. The bottom of the wadi oozed with a thin film of mud – the remnants of the river. Give it a couple of months and it would be flowing with melted water from the snow-covered peaks, but for now it was wet enough to spatter our clothes as we drove around to find a suitable place to hide the bikes. It was Rabbit who found a section of the bank with an overhanging ledge and enough low brush to camouflage the gear. We got off the bikes, parked up, covered the gear with cam nets and regrouped.

  ‘How far to the village?’ Rabbit asked.

  ‘I’ll recce,’ I said. I pulled my Kite night sight from my Bergen and, leaving the others by the quads, scrambled up to the northern edge of the wadi, keeping my head low. I pressed my body down into the earth and looked through the sight, focusing in on the nearest building I could make out. Difficult to tell what it was from this distance. It was tall, maybe twenty metres high, and looked like some kind of medieval watchtower. The scale on the sight told me it was 1700 metres away. I scanned left and right, pulling the focus in and out to search for any threats. Nothing. I could make out the outskirts of the village itself about fifty metres beyond the watchtower, and as I scanned west I could see what looked like a compound, but run-down and decrepit. I remembered what Jackal had said about Pajay being surrounded by tumbledown structures like that. Seemed like the intel was good. I rolled back down to the wadi bed. �
�OK, fellas. A mile to go. There’s what looks like an ancient lookout post ahead of us on the outskirts, but no lights in the vicinity. We can take cover there, then get base to guide us in.’

  ‘Spot any gizzies in the vicinity?’ Voodoo asked.

  ‘Negative. Looks like everyone’s sleeping soundly, fellas.’

  ‘Yeah.’ Dusty’s expression was dark. ‘Either that or they play a mean game of hide-and-seek.’

  We approached in single file so we didn’t present too wide a target for any shooters who did happen to be facing out from the watchtower, each man leaving about twenty metres between him and the guy ahead. I kept my rifle at the ready, the butt pressed in firmly to my right shoulder, ready to engage if need be. But there was no sight or sound of anyone as we grew near to Pajay; just the occasional howl of a dog barking the darkness.

  ‘I don’t fucking like it,’ said Dusty once we’d congregated by the watchtower. My first impression through the scope had been right – this thing looked like a relic from another century. It was old and neglected and part of the roof had fallen in. On the south wall was some kind of graffiti, but even that was faded. ‘Where is everybody? Nowhere’s this quiet.’

  He was right. The place was like a morgue and Dusty wasn’t the only one to have a bad feeling about this. Not bad enough to make us want to turn back, though. We were here to do a job, and we had no intention of leaving until the job was done.

  Voodoo took control. ‘The Taliban might have imposed a curfew,’ he said. ‘Last time I checked, they weren’t too hot on big nights out. Means if we bump into anyone, it’s probably a bad guy.’ He pointed at the two corners on this side of the building. ‘Rabbit, take the left, Dusty the right. Jock, let’s get on to base. The sooner they can guide us to this Malouf dude, the sooner we can get the hell out of here.’

  Sounded like a plan to me. We used our sat phones to dial in. ‘Zero, this is Voodoo. Do you copy?’

  A pause.

  ‘Voodoo, this is Zero. How you guys doing out there?’

  ‘We’re ready for the walkthrough.’

  ‘Roger that.’ A pause. ‘There’s a wide street due north of your position. Advance 175 metres to a crossroads. This is the junction with the main market street of Pajay, so expect hostiles. Repeat, expect hostiles.’

  Voodoo pointed at me and Rabbit. ‘Take the lead,’ he instructed.

  We knew what to do without talking about it. While Voodoo and Dusty covered us from behind, Rabbit and I moved forward, round the side of the watchtower. I could see the wide street up ahead, about fifty metres away, but between here and there was a patch of open ground with only two small mulberry trees to break it up. I jabbed my finger towards the trees, Rabbit nodded and together we ran towards them. Once we were there, we took cover. Rabbit pointed his rifle towards the street; I pointed mine back the way we’d come. ‘Go!’ I hissed over the radio, and seconds later I saw the silhouettes of Dusty and Voodoo running towards us. They didn’t stop at the mulberry trees, but continued running past while Rabbit and I gave them cover, only stopping by the entrance to the wide street. They took up position one on either corner.

  ‘Go!’ came Voodoo’s voice in my earpiece, and Rabbit and I moved on.

  We continued this leapfrogging movement up towards the crossroads. From what I could make out of Pajay, the place was a shithole. Half the houses – if that’s what you wanted to call these run-down collections of breezeblocks, rotten timbers and corrugated iron – were clearly deserted. Some of them didn’t even have front doors. From the occasional house we saw a glow emanating from behind shuttered windows. But not a single person. Until…

  ‘Tango straight ahead,’ I reported.

  Rabbit and I were approaching the crossroads when, about twenty metres away, a figure walked from the left into our line of sight. We pressed ourselves into the shadow of a doorway, hoping that whoever it was would wander off in the opposite direction. No such luck. The figure sauntered towards us. He had a cigarette in his mouth, and as he walked past I saw a Kalashnikov slung over his right arm. Whoever this was, he wasn’t just out for a midnight stroll.

  He stopped, took a deep drag on his cigarette, the tip glowing briefly in the night, then walked past us. Ten metres from our position, about halfway between us and the others, he stopped again. He had the demeanour of somebody who was on guard, and while he stood in the middle of the street, we weren’t going anywhere.

  Voodoo’s voice over the comms, not much more than a whisper. ‘I’ll talk to him. Any funny business, you know what to do.’

  Rabbit got the guy in his sights while I loosened my knife. I found myself holding my breath as Voodoo stepped out from his hiding place into the street, his weapon slung across his back so that our man couldn’t easily see it.

  ‘Salaam,’ he called. Voodoo might have been Southside Boston born and bred, but he had enough Pashto to converse with the locals. Mine was only just good enough to understand what they were saying. ‘You got a cigarette, my friend?’ he asked, sounding to my ear like a native.

  I only got the gist of the man’s unfriendly reply. ‘What are you doing out on the street? There’s a curfew… punishment…’

  ‘Hey, friend, take it easy.’ Voodoo spread his arms wide, displaying his palms to show how harmless he was. It didn’t wash with our man. He started moving his AK round to his front.

  That was my cue to move.

  Rabbit could slot the guy in a second, but even a suppressed round would create more noise than we wanted to make. I covered the ten metres between me and the target as quietly as possible and in less than the time it took him to get his rifle in anything near a firing position. I was two metres behind him when he realized Voodoo wasn’t his only problem, but by that time it was too late. I got my left hand over his mouth, my right knee into the small of his back and my blade against his neck.

  One slice and he was down, unable to make any kind of noise as he died, because his larynx had been severed.

  The fucker bled like a pig, but I ignored that. Our main problem was that a dead Taliban in the middle of the road would alert people to our presence if anybody found him. We needed to get him out of the way. Voodoo took his legs, I took his arms, and we moved him to the side of the road. We selected a house that looked deserted and hid the body just inside the doorway. Not exactly a great hiding place, and it wouldn’t take long before the body started to stink. But by then we’d be long gone, and I couldn’t help but think the villagers would scarcely mourn the death of a Taliban guard.

  I was wiping my bloodied knife on the dead man’s clothes when I heard a voice over the sat phone. ‘Voodoo, this is Zero. You’ve stopped. Everything OK?’

  ‘Everything cool,’ Voodoo replied. ‘Everything just cool.’

  The control centre at MacDill continued to guide us in. We took a left at the crossroads, continuing in our leapfrog formation past the rickety, boarded-up stalls that lined the main road through Pajay. A few old motorbikes were propped up against some of the buildings, and the air smelt of spilled fuel, rotting garbage and animal shit. MacDill instructed us to make a right about fifty metres along the road, then directed us through a maze-like network of stinking side streets until we came to a single-storey dwelling that was slightly less of a dump than all the others. The roof was made of corrugated iron; the render on the blockwork was crumbling; but the door and windows looked a little sturdier, and the building was slightly larger than most. Yellow light seeped out from under the doorway.

  ‘Voodoo, this is Zero. You are on target. Repeat, you are on target.’

  ‘Roger that, Zero. We’re going in.’ Voodoo and I disconnected our sat phones. ‘Dusty,’ Voodoo said, ‘Rabbit, watch the street. Jock, cover me.’

  Dusty and Rabbit moved with barely a sound. Dusty hid in the shadow of a small alleyway about ten metres to the left of the building, got down on one knee in the firing position and aimed his rifle one way down the street. Rabbit took cover behind a pile of bald tyres just
opposite him and pointed his weapon the other way. I took a few steps back from the building and covered the entrance while Voodoo, his M4 pressed hard into his shoulder, gave two light kicks on the door before stepping back five paces and waiting.

  Nothing happened. All I could hear was my own breath.

  Dusty over the headset: ‘What’s going on?’

  ‘Fingers on triggers, Jock?’ Voodoo breathed.

  ‘Fingers on triggers.’

  He kicked the door again, before stepping back once more.

  Five seconds passed. Suddenly a shadow covered the yellow glow escaping from under the door. I pressed my finger a little more firmly against the trigger of my rifle.

  The door opened slowly.

  I narrowed my eyes as they adjusted to the sudden outpouring of light.

  A figure was framed in the doorway, but it was not Malouf. This was an old woman, her back hunched, and her body swathed in black robes. She peered blindly out of the house, just as Voodoo approached with his weapon pointed directly at her. Whoever she was, she was a tough old bird. She glanced down at the barrel of Voodoo’s carbine like she was looking at a troublesome child.

  ‘Where is he?’ Voodoo demanded in Pashto.

  The old woman didn’t speak. She just looked over her shoulder and stepped back into the room.

  ‘Dusty, Rabbit, stay where you are. Jock, you’re with me.’

  We entered quickly. Voodoo took the area to the right of the door. I took the left. We were in a room about five metres square. On the floor there was an old, patterned Afghan carpet and the walls were bare apart from a single picture that showed a passage – probably from the Qur’an – in Arabic. Against one wall was an old wooden table with a decrepit lamp and a bare bulb. Sitting at the table was a fat, sweaty man – Malouf. His piggy eyes were full of fright and he shrank back when he saw us, but we ignored him for the moment. I covered that main room while Voodoo passed through the only other door, just by the table, to check the rest of the building. It took about twenty seconds before he returned. ‘Clear,’ he said.