Black Knights, Dark Days

by Fisk, J. Matthew;

  That’s just great. He threw his weapon down in the bed and plucked the large machine gun from its mount. Hell, maybe I like this better, he thought with a grin. You couldn’t help but feel like a bad-ass while holding such a beast. He spied the AT-4 rocket launcher behind the back seat and slung it over his shoulder. For good measure, he grabbed a can of 7.62 mm linked ammo. Still grinning, he jumped down with the 240 at the ready position, the brass ammo belt flapping. He sprinted after Bellamy, the fastest runner in the company, who had caught the platoon leader’s truck at the mouth of the alley.

  He could hear the L-T yelling to him, “Let’s go. Let’s go. Let’s go,” as if he weren’t motivated enough to hustle. Hell, even with the extra 45 pounds of weight he was carrying, he couldn’t remember ever running faster.

  

  Swope knew they were in a pickle. His mind raced as he watched Davis extract the equipment and destroy the radios on both vehicles. Who was the KIA that he had heard reported over the radio not five minutes earlier? He tried to count the soldiers as they all scrambled to load up on the remaining trucks. Who was missing? He realized with a start that of all his squad leaders, he hadn’t seen Haubert. There he was, sitting in the Humvee in front of him, not moving. Was he dead? Bellamy was hopping down from Red 3, shouting something at Haubert as he did. Haubert didn’t move. Shit. Bellamy opened the TC’s door and shook the man, shouting something laced with an obscenity that cut through the clamor and smoke. Haubert jerked and bolted from the seat, running back toward Swope’s truck. Not dead then. Swope saw the ashen complexion and a copious amount of blood running from the NCO’s mouth. He cradled his hand to his chest and ran stiffly, eyes wide.

  That must be who they were talking about as the KIA, he thought. They just thought he was dead. Good. Swope felt a surge of relief and hope.

  

  We approached the entrance to the alley, the gaping maw of some ravenous beast welcoming us with gently smiling jaws, and stopped short at the entrance. The L-T hopped out. “Riddell, pull in the alley and dismount. Find a door, kick it in, and clear the building.”

  “Roger, Sir!” Riddell interpreted the L-T’s command to mean that he should pull as far in as possible.

  I stared down the deserted alleyway as Jon Riddell squeezed the wide vehicle past one sedan and then another. Buildings of different heights crowded the narrow residential street, jostling with each other for a better view of the carnage to come. The street itself was relatively clean and uncluttered. A small air-conditioner condenser unit lay lonely and neglected on the left, about 10 feet short of where another small street crossed our path. The street was less than a 150 meters long from where we pulled off of Delta to the next intersection. Beyond that was another crossroad about the same distance, where I could see quite a few people milling about and, presumably, peering down the lane toward us. My hands tightened on the twin wood grips of the machine gun.

  Our vehicle was crowded. Wild sat on Denney’s lap in the seat I had previously occupied, his upper body leaning against my legs. Chen lay motionless on the ammo cans. I twisted to the right to track what I thought was movement on the rooftops. I inadvertently stepped on Chen’s legs as I turned. The feel of his inanimate flesh beneath my boots unnerved me. I felt a lifetime’s worth of revulsion and pity in one moment. I still felt that I needed to be careful not to bruise him just in case—just in case Guzman could…could do something.

  At the precise center of the alley, about 60 meters in, Riddell slammed on the brakes. I cursed as momentum threw me painfully into the gun, but I didn’t take it personally. This was all business.

  

  Aguero waved Swope’s vehicle in with exaggerated gestures that were completely unnecessary. Red 4 pulled to a stop beside him almost as soon as Red 1 had cleared the second sedan. Through the window, Aguero yelled, “Pull in behind Riddell. Enter and clear a building for our CP and set up a defensive perimeter.” The L-T glanced up the alley and noticed that Riddell had gone much further in than he intended.

  I guess I should have been more specific, but that should do.

  Rogers threaded the large vehicle expertly past the cars clogging the entrance. He slammed on the accelerator and managed to catch up quickly with Riddell who was rolling on four flat tires. The L-T looked back at the immobile Humvees and saw Robinson and Bellamy running toward him with Davis bringing up the rear. Good, everyone had made it. Aguero waited a second longer to cover their approach. The firing had stopped. This pause wouldn’t last long, the L-T knew. The Jihadists were just leaving their positions to get a better shot at the infidels.

  

  Coleman worried about the rooftops in the tight alley. Actually, he worried about a great many things informing this jacked-up situation. There were so many people packed into their Humvee that he couldn’t move his legs. When Rogers stopped the vehicle, someone popped the door latch, spilling soldiers out on the dusty lane like a platoon of clowns from a Cooper Mini. Coleman cast a nervous glance upward. No, he wasn’t worried at all about defending the entrance to the alley. Ain’t nothin’ coming in that I ain’t gonna take out, he thought. But he couldn’t use his big gun to ward off targets from above. He couldn’t cover both the entrance to the alley and the roofs at the same time, so he would focus more on the threat from above until the situation changed. Perry and someone else, Davis maybe, were covering Route Delta. With at least a quarter-eye to the alley entrance, he picked up his M16 and began to scan the heavens. We’re about to have all kinds of stuff come up on top of us. Coleman glanced left and saw a window. It was a glass-paned window that was opaque because of a glare that allowed the young gunner to see only his reflection. The window also troubled him. He was currently of the opinion that the whole city had turned on them. He knew that every Iraqi household was allowed to have an AK-47 for home defense. He thought, They’re going to shoot me right in the face because I am so open to this window right here. For the first time he was truly afraid.

  

  I glanced left and saw that we had parked next to a blue metal gate set into a bland wall. I craned my neck to peer over into the small courtyard and could see no one. Rogers was moving so fast that he beat everyone to the entrance that they meant to breach. Riddell, Wild, and Denney were out of the vehicle in a flash and lined up behind him. I could dimly hear Robinson calling for others to stack up behind him. Taylor jumped in line behind him. Although occupied with securing our front, I knew that they meant to breach, enter, and clear the building.

  

  Bellamy, faster than any other man in the Battalion in a pair of running shorts, felt the extra weight of the heavy machine gun and ammo pulling him into the earth. He saw Robinson angle left and fall into line behind Bourquin, preparing to enter a doorway. Bellamy knew that his superior firepower would be useless at close quarters and decided that he should help defend the alley until further notice. He dodged around Perry, ran about ten more paces and hurled himself to the ground on the right side of Red 1. Sala’am the interpreter, still sitting in his seat, jumped nervously as the NCO seemed to fly through the air next to him. Bellamy cocked his body on his left side, dropped first one bipod leg and then another on the machine gun’s barrel, and then shoved the stock of the weapon into his shoulder. Bellamy was breathing hard from the two hundred yard dash and could barely keep the gun steady. God, don’t let me die yet, he thought. Over his shoulder he shouted, “Sir, we need to get in somewhere.”

  

  The L-T saw Davis bringing up the rear and knew that everyone had made it in from the street. At this point, he knew, the possibility of losing control of the situation was very real. Losing control! He snorted to himself. They had lost two vehicles, probably one Soldier, and were cut off from escape by a force that outnumbered them about 500 to one. A surfer had as much control of the ocean.

  

 
; Rogers rocked his body back into the men stacked up behind him signaling that he was ready. A moment later, he felt a tap from the man behind him, signaling that everyone else was ready. Go. He thumbed the safety off of the 12-gauge pump-action shotgun and put a round through the locking mechanism. With the roar of the blast still ringing in our ears, he planted his boot into the blue door, sending it flying open. Maintaining the kick’s momentum, he lunged forward into the doorway.

  The courtyard was empty as they moved in. Rogers moved to the nearest corner on the left. No target. Immediately he swiveled right even as he kept moving forward. “Stairway on the left!” he shouted. He reached the corner in less than a second and continued to travel up the wall halfway to the next corner.

  Hayhurst split to the right corner, saw no target, and immediately swiveled to the left. “Door on the right! Door far corner!” The door closest to him was closed, so he moved past it, leaving it for the fourth man to clear. He trained his weapon on the doorway in the far right corner. He could see into the sparsely furnished room, noted a TV and a couple of chairs, and pegged it as a family room. He could see no one yet, but could sense—something. He moved half the length of the wall toward the den and stopped, finger on the trigger.

  Rob split left on Hayhurst’s heels, noting the open stairway Rogers had called out. He swept his M4 carbine up and right, following a second story L-shaped walk way that led to an upper-story room. The catwalk ended in a door locked with a brass padlock. Taylor had entered and now stood opposite from Rob, his wide, young eyes scanning the roof of the three-story building that loomed over them on their left.

  “One, up!” Rogers cried, indicating that he was OK. “I’ve got movement in the next room.”

  “Team two, move through and clear!” yelled Robinson. Team two emerged almost immediately from the alley and stacked up on the wall in front of Hayhurst who shifted his weapon left to help Taylor cover the three-story roof to their east. Riddell led, followed by Wild, then Denney. Bourquin brought up the rear. Without hesitating, Riddell burst through the doorway, hooked right and then began to shout.

  “Get down, get down, get down!” He cursed and swore and yelled, introducing himself in no uncertain terms to the family unfortunate enough to be in the wrong house at the wrong ambush.

  “Short room!” yelled Wild, who had hooked left. There wasn’t enough room to fit the entire team and everyone else should hang back. Denney stopped short, and Bourquin bounced off of the large man.

  As Riddell continued to yell, replacing Arabic vocabulary with English volume, Bourquin pulled back to a closed door between Hayhurst and Taylor. “Denney, kick this door in and I’ll clear it,” he said. “Doesn’t look like the room’s very big.”

  Denney, pale-faced and wide-eyed, nodded but said nothing. The big man squared up on the wooden door as Bourquin prepared to go in. Bourquin nodded like a cowboy ready to go a full eight seconds on Ol’ Widow Maker, and Denney fired his size-13 boot into the door, sending splinters and dust everywhere. Bourquin was in the room in a flash. Before Denney could enter, the heavily tattooed NCO yelled, “Room clear!”

  The room held a propane cooking apparatus and a bag of rice or flour—the kitchen, if you will. Riddell and Wild emerged from the den with a very upset Iraqi family marching on trembling legs before them. The father was a balding man dressed in modern clothes who looked to be in his early 40s. His wife, a weathered woman who could have been anywhere from 25 to 50, was weeping and pleading. Her eyebrows had been plucked out and replaced with the ornate prison-style tattoos that the Sadr women favored. The children, a young boy and girl, both around six years old, were sobbing. Riddell forced them all to sit in the dirt in the middle of the small courtyard.

  Robinson sensed that innocent lives hung in the balance. He told Rogers—the man who seemed least likely to execute someone for sneezing—to put the family into the small kitchen and watch them carefully. He turned his attention to the second-story walkway that framed the back side of the court. The high ground is what they needed right now, and he meant to get his boys on top of that roof.

  “Hayhurst, up the stairs,” Rob said.

  

  Ben Hayhurst climbed the dozen or so stairs that led to the walkway. He glanced right and was glad to see that a low wall on the roof of the kitchen was actually the wall and roof of the next house, and no one was waiting on the roof to kill him. Even better, the next house was taller than the buildings beyond and provided good cover to the west. He reached the corner, turned right, and ran to the door. Taylor followed close behind him to provide suppression against anyone foolish enough to pop up on the other side of the alley.

  Hayhurst noticed two things that didn’t make him happy: the door was constructed of heavy gauge metal, and the padlock may have been made in Taiwan, but it wasn’t cheap. He tried to hit the lock with the butt of his rifle, a move that usually seemed to work in the movies but failed miserably in practical application. He delivered a savage series of kicks to the door but realized the futility when he saw that it was hinged to swing out. He pointed his rifle briefly at the lock as if demanding its surrender. Wouldn’t do any good to fire a bullet at it. It might ricochet and kill someone.

  “Rogers!” he called. “Bring your shotgun up here!”

  

  Rob nodded for Rogers to move out. As the former volunteer firefighter trotted toward the stairs, the Iraqi man began to speak rapidly and loudly as if trying to make his captors understand some great and important truth. Rob regarded the man warily. Then the light went on and Robinson understood. “Hold up, Rogers!” Robinson motioned the man forward. Their host walked forward, his nervousness receding, pulling something from his pocket. Rob was not concerned because he knew what it was.

  “What’s he saying?” Hayhurst called.

  “He’s got the key,” Robinson laughed.

  Their gracious host opened the padlock and motioned Hayhurst inside with the universal mi casa, su casa gesture. Inside was a steep staircase that ended in a ceiling trapdoor. “We’ve got roof access!” he called.

  

  Everyone in Red Platoon who was not either manning a guard tower or already trapped in an alley were loading onto the two Bradleys, an LMTV, and an unarmored Humvee that now stood ready to enter the fray. The vehicles were lined up and ready for the go command. Bradley Fighting Vehicles armed with 25mm belt-fed guns and co-axially mounted M240C machine guns took up the point and rear positions. Captain Denomy had elected to ride in the Humvee. His armorer, a weapons repair specialist, was manning a machine gun mounted in the same Mad Max fashion as the vehicles that had just been lost in sector. Behind him the LMTV was as ready as it would ever be. What the rear compartment lacked in armor they hoped to compensate for with firepower. In the cab, Hunter sat in a pool of his own nervous sweat. Winkler had mounted the passenger seat and cracked the window so that he could engage as needed. In the bed, the soldiers had spread out—Tyrell just behind the cab on the driver’s side and Fowler to his left. Priddy faced off the rear corner next to Fowler. On the TC’s side was Le, Deaver, Thompson, Arteaga, and Rowe. They were locked and loaded and awaiting their first fight.

  They rolled out within minutes. Two Bradleys from White platoon led the way, followed by the CO in his add-on-armor Humvee, the fresh meat in the back of the LMTV and the two headquarters company Bradleys bringing up the rear, commanded by First Lieutenant Spicer and First Sergeant Carson. The Bradley gun crews were still going through their pre-combat checks as the soldiers in the back—the dismount infantry squads—tightly gripped their weapons and prayed for courage in their own ways.

  

  “Hey, they’re rolling the QRF,” yelled Swope from his seat. A Quick Reaction Force was a platoon designated to respond to crisis situations during the course of the 24-hour duty.

  “That’s great,” exclaimed Aguero. The sooner the better, too. The L-T was standing be
tween the two vehicles trying to decide his next move. They had been here less than five minutes, and he knew that every minute that passed brought the enemy closer to massing their full might on the Americans’ meager defense. The L-T could see a large group gathering down the western end of the alley about 200 meters away. He couldn’t tell how many, but the swarm seemed to number in the hundreds.

  He saw red, black, and green flags unfurled from the previous day’s demonstration. Now he remembered one of the Iraqi’s they had questioned saying that the event was a Mahdi Army training exercise. Obviously so. How long had they been planning this? The obstacles they had emplaced so quickly, the organization, the sheer number of people they had witnessed loading and unloading, all bespoke a well-planned and executed trap. His platoon had just been the first fly to become ensnared in the web.

  

  I accidentally stepped on Chen again as I traversed my weapon back and forth. Knowing that someone would have to get him inside soon if he stood any chance of resuscitation, I made a choice. No one was threatening us from my sector. The nearest human presence was almost 200 meters away. I climbed out of the turret and vaulted to the ground with the ease of a monkey. I yanked open the armored door and grabbed Chen’s arm pulling him closer to me. Chen was a very big, muscular, Asian man, and—if I had been prone to introspection at that time—probably would have thought that pulling him out would have been hard. It wasn’t. I grabbed his ballistic vest by the shoulders and pulled. I would be willing to do a TV infomercial on the strength-inducing benefits of combat on the adrenal gland. My fallen brother felt no heavier than a sack of potatoes.