Hour after hour, the S3 team pushed on. Following one hour of movement, they’d take ten minutes of rest, reorient themselves to their maps, and pick up again.
Although the routine was the same, it now felt like every step was a battle, both physically and mentally. This mission was already much more difficult than any of the men could have anticipated. The realities of their situation and the high potential for failure or even death was quickly sinking in. That realization, in addition to the growing fatigue and unrelentingly harsh elements, had them all headed in a downward spiral of self-doubt. And despite each man’s desperate desire to disguise it, the wear and worries were starting to show.
Truck worried whether his knee would hold up. The pain continued to worsen, and when Nick wasn’t looking, he found himself beginning to limp. On breaks, he’d check the swelling when he knew no one was looking.
Red worried about his senses. A nagging fear had been growing that he really had to do more than see the enemy first. Even a successful firefight without casualties would mean mission failure since it would alert the enemy and attract more fighters. Therefore, he needed to not only see the enemy first but see them so far away that none of the team could be discovered. And in worrying about this, Red failed to realize that his pace had slowed.
Marcus continued to psych himself up, mentally preparing for whatever would come. He was easily the biggest man on the team. Easily the strongest. And he wasn’t toting a machine gun, as Truck was.
Without question, if someone was hit or killed, it would be Marcus carrying him out. And with so much weight already on him, this was something Marcus wasn’t looking forward to. His pack was already testing his limits, and so he took deep breaths and told himself over and over, “This ain’t shit. Nothing can break me. This ain’t shit. Nothing can break me.” Inside this mental repetition, Marcus maintained his stride in rhythm with his words.
Nick Woods fought the impending doom he could feel coming. It reminded him of the time he and his spotter had entered Afghanistan on what would be their final mission. The two had grown used to the dangers, but when they saw their target location had nearly a thousand troops, and not a hundred as they had been told, they knew they were in deep shit. And instantly, a nagging fear had risen up in Nick’s mind that the two men had been betrayed and sold out.
This mission didn’t feel like they had been sold out, but it seemed fraught with things that could go wrong. It’d been so simple on paper back at the base camp, but now Nick grappled with the realities on the ground: how long it took to cover even a short distance, how far they were from assistance, how they had no means to contact reinforcements or air support, and how totally isolated they truly were.
Aside from the threat of literally hundreds of enemy fighters in the area, the biggest thing eating at Nick was the distance and realities of how slow they must move to avoid detection.
Nick realized that Red was moving slower than he had been, which was arguably needed. If they killed one man, others would soon know -- even if they didn't hear the silenced shot. And once they knew, the hunt would be on.
Besides Red’s pace, Nick hadn’t fully considered that moving at night on such steep terrain would make the forty miles feel more like fifty or sixty.
Nothing to be done about it now, he thought. Just keep pushing and dig deep, baby.
Chapter 4
Nick called a halt at 4 a.m. They needed to find a hide before dawn. The team gratefully stacked packs against each other and left Truck with his big RPK machine gun to watch them.
Nick, Red, and Marcus pulled out compasses and headed off in opposite directions to search for a good position. The men had rehearsed this procedure back at base camp. One would go toward twelve o’clock, one toward four o’clock, and one toward eight o’clock. Dividing up would hopefully help them find the best position faster, plus give them more information about their surroundings.
This search procedure was just one of about two dozen SOP actions, or Standard Operating Procedures, that the team had practiced hundreds of times. Hasty ambushes, break contact, reaction to direct fire (and indirect fire), and countless other tactical responses that might prove necessary.
They knew how each man would react, they memorized where each man had stored every single item in each pack, and they had discussed and rehearsed every contingency they could think of.
Twenty minutes later, Red, the last of the three, returned. They huddled in a circle and debated in whispers who had found the best position in as low of tones as they could speak. Truck kept his eyes outward while they discussed their finds.
In the end, they went with Red’s position. He said he’d found a low spot in a gully between two draws. It would barely be defensible, but had the benefit of being almost perfectly hidden. Without another word, they broke the huddle, and the men slipped on their packs for what they hoped would be the last time today. Well, at least for another twelve hours.
Ten minutes later, Red guided them into the place he’d found. Again, without a word, the team set up a hide as they’d rehearsed. Packs were stashed facing outward and low nets were pulled out and staked into the hard ground by boot heels -- the rubber was much quieter than shovels.
Dawn found all four men under the low net, alert. After it was confirmed they were secure, they began two-man watches. Two on watch facing opposite directions, two sleeping.
Nick and Red took the first watch, with Red looking down the hill and Nick looking uphill. Marcus and Truck laid down to get some much needed rest and sleep.
Nick’s mind wouldn't stop racing. He had followed one of the truest maxims in the military: the KISS principle, or “Keep It Simple, Stupid.” Yet as the team lay hidden approximately 4.7 miles inside Pakistan, he couldn’t help but wonder if he’d gone overboard on the KISS principle. After all, the team had only made it about three-quarters of the distance he’d planned for them to make.
Perhaps they should have parachuted in. The CIA had offered to push them through an intense, mission-specific four-week course, but Nick had ruled it out. It held too many dangers, as it was hard to keep the team together. Gear often got separated. Ankles sprained. Legs broke. As a general rule, Nick thought that if you had to parachute in, you should find another way.
Yet there were other options besides parachuting. They could have tried to take a 4x4 truck past the Pakistani army. They could have taken money and tried to bribe their way through a checkpoint, or snuck past sleeping guards. Option three, which Red favored, was killing the guards and making it look like the Taliban had done so. “And if that leads to some Paki-Tali killing afterward, so much the better,” the short man scoffed with a sick grin.
They had also considered silenced, souped-up four wheelers, but that brought up all kinds of possible gear malfunctions, fuel requirements, and possible toolkit needs. Even studying it for a few hours made Nick’s head spin with the possibilities of everything that could go wrong.
Bottom line, Nick was used to walking, and he’d walked into Afghanistan too many times to count back in the day, so walking is what they’d do. And it’d be a hell of a lot of walking before they were done.
Nick tried to shut his mind down and focus on the ground up the hill, looking for any form of movement. He had three of America’s greatest warriors with him, and they were completely committed to one of the riskiest missions in the world. And in the end, the boldness of the plan would either soar or come crashing down on top of them.
Chapter 5
The various watches passed without any major drama. Despite finally making it into a more heavily populated area, the team’s resting position high up in the hills continued to go unnoticed. It was clear that this far into Pakistan, the Taliban had little to no concern about using the roads and open areas as they pleased. And if there was any fear of coalition forces, either air or ground, it certainly didn't show.
All throughout the day the team observed loads of beat-up cars, a couple farm tractors, and lots of
foot traffic pass on the road below. Still no one stopped to even glance up into the hills. The Taliban's confidence must have been contagious as it appeared that even the everyday man had no reason to question their safety.
Dusk approached, and Marcus passed out another eight hundred milligram round of ibuprofen. Nick motioned for the men to crawl closer under the net.
“Alright, guys,” he whispered, “tonight we make up for the fact that we’ve covered so little ground today. Red, I want you to step it out, just like it’s an all-out hump.”
Red raised his eyebrows, giving Nick an apprehensive look.
Nick stopped him before he could say a word.
“Look,” Nick said, “all day long we’ve been here, and we’ve seen that nobody is paying attention. And we’ve also seen that nobody is moving this high up the hill. While we needed to move slow last night, close to the border, our chances of running into anybody tonight are slim.”
Nick turned his attention to Truck.
“If your knee can’t take the faster pace, let me know. We’ll slow it down, or even steal a vehicle if we have to.”
The big man nodded.
Nick met each man’s eyes and asked if there were any questions.
Clenching jaws and fidgeting hands were the only response he got. No, there were no questions about the plan. Questions about how the hell they were going to pull this mission off, however, they had those in surplus.
Nick was right there with them. His back and legs were no more improved from the rest. The cover they camped under during the daylight hours was no match for the malicious summer sun. Their water supply was being consumed at an alarming rate and then unavoidably being sweated back out almost twice as fast.
Nothing you can do about it right now, Nick. Just got to keep moving.
As soon as they were cloaked in the night’s dark, Nick helped his team to tear down and stow the netting, wishing he could stow his worries away just as easily.
That night, they pushed harder than the previous night. Now with the realization that the Taliban wasn’t looking for foreign troops, they were able to move faster. They crossed deep gullies, angled draws, and steep fingers. They walked as fast as the terrain allowed, trudging, slipping, and cursing when it worked against them.
Several times they paused for possible sightings, and Red and Nick would scan the area with their night vision goggles (NVGs), but each time proved to be a false alarm. Before daybreak, they scouted for a hide, then assembled their nets to lay under.
And for four more days they followed this pattern. Push hard at night, stop with enough time to scout a hide, then attempt to physically recover in the day under camouflage cover. Each night they covered 4.0 to 5.0 miles.
Nick lay under the net around noon on the seventh day, keeping watch and feeling like the day was creeping by slower than a single drip could fill a barrel. Now taking stock of their situation, Nick saw that there were more problems than solutions. The heat was burning them in more ways than one. The massive supply of water they had lugged in seemed to be evaporating before their eyes, and the sun relentlessly drained what little energy they had left.
To make things worse, that hellish, oven-like temperature was keeping them from getting the sleep they so desperately needed. The four men of Shield, Safeguard, and Shelter looked rough, to say the least.
Their bodies reeked, and their clothes were filthy, ripped, and stained. Nick figured he had lost more than ten pounds, and he really didn’t have ten pounds to lose. The sweat, the sleep deprivation, and the inability to keep up his muscle mass from a diet now solely comprised of dried fruits and meats -- all had sapped his body and knocked him down from his optimum operating condition.
Any more than three more days of this and Nick knew the men would arrive gaunt and weak. Like men who had survived a hundred-mile march. Granted, their forty miles didn’t come close to that, but with the crushing amount of gear they had to carry and their need to be alert -- not a day passed when their adrenaline didn’t spike three or four times from some false alarm -- it might as well have been.
And it wasn’t like they’d arrive at their destination and be greeted by a finish line, cheering supporters, and plenty of rest. Instead, they’d arrive and be forced to fight and make perfect split-second decisions, or they’d all be dead within hours after firing the first shot.
Besides the exhaustion, Nick also knew they were all increasingly banged up. A twisted ankle here, a throbbing knee there, and that didn’t take into account the bumps, scrapes, and bruises each had collected in spades.
Nick realized his plans to cover the distance on foot had erred on what their conditioning could endure. Sure, they were in the top three or four percent of athletes in the world in terms of physical conditioning, but the mission required more than Nick had ever dreamed when he drew it up on paper.
The terrain -- the ups and downs, the slanted slopes, the loose rocks, the requirement to only move at night -- all had slowed them down and made Nick and Marcus’s conservative estimates on distance per night seem like a naive, unrealistic wager made by some drunk and desperate gambler on the Las Vegas strip.
S3 would reach their objective, and they’d be ready to fight, but it was going to be pretty ugly. And that was best case.
Chapter 6
Disaster struck on the following night, just three days away from their destination. It was as if Nick’s fears had cast a line baited for trouble, and then caught a whole school of it. Actually, loads of it.
The four men had barely covered a mile in the dark when Red, ahead on point, signaled for a halt mid-stride.
Nick watched as the little man’s body went completely rigid then slowly inched downward. Attempting to silently crouch with nearly one-hundred pounds of gear working against you was no small feat.
As soon as the bottom of his water jug brushed the ground, Red released it and used his hands to help him take a knee without pitching forward under the weight. Without even looking to Nick for instruction, Red lowered all the way prone while keeping his gaze locked ahead of him.
He didn’t even bother to take his pack off. Going prone with that kind of crushing burden was never something you did by choice.
Nick, in the second position, froze. He moved as slow as he could and passed the signal back to Truck and Marcus in the rear of the formation. Red remained motionless for nearly three minutes, which felt more like three hours in the quiet, night air.
Red’s behavior was so uncharacteristic that Nick avoided moving at all. With the way Red was acting, any sound could be devastating. Finally, Red pushed himself up. He lifted the water jug as if it was full of unstable explosives, and tip-toed backward. His other hand kept his AK-47 pointing straight ahead, and he refused to turn his back on whatever he had seen.
The team moved backward, covering each other in bounds until they were a couple hundred yards away from danger. The team circled up, and Nick leaned down by Red.
“What’d you see?” Nick asked.
“Enemy troops,” Red said.
“Taliban?”
“Couldn’t tell. Saw a silhouette coming toward me. Thought he saw me, then heard the sound of water hitting the ground. He was pissing.”
Nick considered the situation. Was it one man? Or more? He needed more information.
“Leave your pack and go scout forward,” Nick whispered. The team staged their packs and set up a quick perimeter, while Red dropped his pack, slung his AK-47, and pulled out a silenced Glock .45.
It took thirty minutes for Red to return, far longer than Nick preferred.
“We’re fucked,” Red said, dropping to the ground.
He looked exhausted as he guzzled from his CamelBak. Nick waited, and looked around their small perimeter. Truck faced their front in the prone, lying behind his RPK machine gun and its extended bipod legs. Marcus monitored their rear while their gear sat stacked in the center of their ten-foot perimeter.
Red and Nick lay huddled among t
he packs, keeping a low profile. Nick wondered how many men it’d take to spook Red. The crazy little Marine had never shown an ounce of fear as far as Nick knew.
Red stopped drinking and collected himself. Nick saw his face take on a stern look in the rays of moonlight shining through a mostly clear night.
“We’ve got a battalion-sized element of Pakistani troops right in front of us,” Red reported.
“What?” Nick said. “That’s impossible.”
“I would have thought so, too, but go check for yourself.”
Nick chewed on the news.
“Are you sure?” he asked.
“I’m certain,” Red said, nodding. “They’re broken up and spread out all over the hill. Straight ahead there’s about a platoon-sized element, cooking fires and all. They’re mostly bedded up, but some of the men are still hanging around the fires, bullshitting. Tried moving up the hill to see if we could go around them. Walked nearly half a mile up it. Troops as far as you could see.”
Nick sat there, stunned.
“I turned around,” Red continued, “moved down the hill back to my starting position, then walked half a mile down from there. Same thing. Troops as far as you can see. There’s probably an entire battalion on that finger ahead.”
“A thousand troops?” Nick asked, shaking his head with disbelief. They had studied satellite images prior to their departure, and the entire region had been clear of Pakistani troops, except at the border.
Nick tried to calm himself. “Are they in blocking positions? Facing this way or the other direction? Like they’re looking for someone? Or maybe looking for us?”
“No way,” Red said. “They’re all completely unprofessional. No fighting positions. Guys horseplaying, singing, cooking shit over fires. But they’re there. No going around them.”
Nick processed the information. The good news was the battalion didn’t seem to be looking for anybody, especially Nick’s group. If they were, they’d be tactical: patrolling, looking, hiding.
Afghan Storm (Nick Woods Book 3) Page 2