The Making of Blackwater Jack

by Roy F. Chandler

  The Sergeant added emphasis to his words. “I hate this place and everybody in it.”

  Tim asked, “What is so important that it couldn’t wait a day or two, Lieutenant?”

  Swartz snickered before pressing a hand firmly on the rope-covered box, as if pinning it to the truck floor.

  Leaning forward in his seat to better be heard, Swartz directed, “Just accept that it is important, Jack. This is a war we’re in, and sometimes details have time limits. This is one of them. If it didn’t have to be, you can bet your last rupee that we wouldn’t be doing it.

  “Don’t ask anymore, and I won’t have to keep telling you not to ask—that clear, Corporal?”

  “Got it Sarge, but I’d give a fistful of rupees to be able to see more than about three truck lengths ahead.”

  Lieutenant Gold tried to lighten the mood, but his voice was so tension-filled that both Tim and Swartz wished he had not spoken.

  “They don’t use rupees in this country, Blackwater. Rupees come from India and places like that, I think.” Gold laughed hollowly, and they drove on in silence.

  Lieutenant Gold suggested, “I think the mist is clearing a little. We might have it better once we are higher and behind a mountain or two.”

  Tim drove on, but he saw no improvement. To his right, the mountain rose, steeply, he thought. To his left it dropped away. He could not tell if they crept along a cliff face, or if they were at the bottom of a valley.

  Lieutenant Gold attempted to judge their progress by comparing their major road turns to those shown on his sketch. On occasion he announced that they were making it. Tim supposed they were, but their progress was agonizingly slow.

  Swartz asked, “Lieutenant, do you know this Sheik guy we are going to meet?”

  “I’ve seen him twice. He is older, and he is the only guy wearing white. If there are two in white, we’ve got trouble.”

  He and the Sergeant laughed together before Gold added, “The Sheik speaks fairly decent English. He spent time in the States before coming home to run the family business.”

  Swartz snorted, “Some business, he should … ” before the Lieutenant’s hand waived him quiet.

  Tim thought there was plotting going on beyond what he, the peasant of the team, had to know. No doubt it concerned the mysterious box resting on the floor behind him.

  Tim thought about the box. The wooden container appeared to be about a cubic foot in size. It had weight, but not super-heavy like precious metals would be. He speculated to himself. Maybe the box held a crystal skull like the ones in the Indiana Jones movie.

  Crap, with the under-investigation Lieutenant Colonel in on it, they might be carrying some special dope, or … that made no sense. Dope went from the locals to the Americans, not the other way.

  Then to his utter astonishment, Lieutenant Colonel Saltz had mentioned his imminent promotion—to full Colonel? How, based on Shooter Galloway’s claims of pending criminal indictment and Saltz’s obvious cronyism and perhaps illegal dealing with nefarious characters like this white-robed Sheik, could a promotion to the rank of bird Colonel occur?

  Pondering the mysteries allowed time to pass, and Lieutenant Gold announced them almost two hours out.

  Time meant little. What counted was how much of their journey they had accomplished. Gold guessed they were halfway.

  Almost with his words, the mist cleared a little, and Tim’s grip on the steering wheel tightened ferociously. The mountain did rise almost straight up to his right, but the trace they crept along turned out to be hanging from the mountainside with an apparently bottomless drop to his left.

  Swartz hissed, “Oh my God,” and clutched the Lieutenant’s seat back. Gold audibly gulped, and Tim could appreciate both responses.

  He had about two-feet clearance on his right and a hint less on his left—where the earth simply disappeared. The cart track they followed had been hacked from the mountainside, probably in centuries past. It was narrow, and it was rough. Tim wished the Humvee was small and lean like the old Jeep vehicle had been.

  Lieutenant Gold’s voice was little more than a croak. “Drive damned careful, Jack. Don’t rush it. Stay in the tracks.”

  “I’m in the tracks, Lieutenant. There’s no place else to go.” Tim’s steel-like grip on the steering wheel tightened even more.

  Swartz said, “I’m almost sorry we can see. How much further do you think, Lieutenant?”

  “It looks as if we have to ease to the top of this mountain. That might be two more miles. Then we go down a little. Maybe two additional miles.”

  Tim joked, “It’s only a little more than that straight down. “Who made that map, anyway, Lieutenant?”

  Swartz snarled, “Just shut up and drive carefully, Corporal.”

  Gold answered Tim’s question.

  “I’ve got no idea, but it’s been accurate so far. The only trouble is that a flat map doesn’t even hint that this path is chopped out of a solid cliff side. Stay alert, Blackwater. We don’t want to drop a wheel over an edge, you know.”

  Tim knew.

  — — —

  Swartz broke a long silence. “We need a break, Lieutenant. It’s been more than four hours, and I need a piss stop so bad my teeth are floating.” Lieutenant Gold had to be in about the same shape as his Sergeant.

  Tim silently agreed. His grip on the wheel was turning into rubber, and his forearms were numb. While the others had regularly hydrated along the way. He had not enjoyed a sip of water since they had left the compound. His kidneys had probably dried out until they resembled road kill.

  Visibility was improving, and Tim could see at least a hundred yards ahead. Although nothing interesting had appeared on the entire trip, their reentry into the visible world renewed spirits, and they did not feel as hemmed in.

  The Humvee was approaching the crest of a lesser ridge on the downhill slope of the big mountain. A natural stopping spot lay to the road’s high side, and it looked as though it was regularly used.

  Gold shifted uncomfortably. “I wish you hadn’t mentioned a full bladder, Sergeant. Now my teeth are afloat.”

  He pointed ahead. “Jack, leave the vehicle right in the regular tracks. We’ll look around carefully when we step out. Don’t go far, either of you. Just step away from the truck, turn your back, and do what you’ve got to do. Then, remount, and we will be on our last mile or so. At least I think that is where we are.”

  Swartz groused, “Just give me room. I’m full enough to cause the first flood in the history of this desert. He opened his door and got out while Tim was shutting down the diesel engine and unhitching his safety harness.

  Swartz asked, “How big is the Sheik’s village, Lieutenant? I never got to come out to this heavenly spot.”

  Lieutenant Gold answered. “There are a bunch of buildings and the Sheik’s palace, which is only a larger and taller pile of stuccoed-over rocks and mud bricks.”

  Swartz stomped his feet to regain circulation. “Who cares? All I want … “

  The explosion seemed a monster.

  The purest of light blinded Tim Carlisle’s eyes. His mind staggered, and he was struck and dazed by something large and heavy that accompanied a furnace-hot blast of high velocity pressure.

  He was aware of twisting and flying as if air borne, before he was again powerfully slammed by something unseen. His vision was wiped out, and his body was repeatedly hammered and battered past enduring. Was his hearing gone? Dazed beyond clear thinking, Tim could not tell.

  He felt awareness departing, and he wondered vaguely if it was going to come back soon?

  The weight on his body grew a hundred times heavier. There was sharp pain, perhaps in a leg, and he could not seem to get a breath. Then there was only deepening blackness—quickly followed by nothing at all.

  13

  Agony snapped him awake. He could not see it, but his foot was afire. He was on his back, his head hanging outside the shattered Humvee. A giant weight pressed him flat and prevent
ed him from drawing a decent breath.

  As his senses cleared Tim recognized the weight as the body of Lieutenant Gold, also on its back and slammed tight against him. His arms were free, and he struggled to move the Lieutenant enough to ease his breathing.

  He was dealing with dead weight. He shouted at Gold to move, but the officer was either dead or unconscious.

  The smell of cooking meat struck Jack’s nostrils, and he suspected it was his agony-filled foot cooking. Power from years of bench-pressing returned in a panicked rush, and Jack heaved the Lieutenant’s body upward and away—but it fell back on him as limp as if it were a giant pudding.

  He heaved again, this time trying to propel the Lieutenant over his head and out onto the desert floor.

  It worked. The limp body slid with the fluidity of death across Jack’s chest, and its own weight dropped it free of the ruined Humvee.

  Again able to breathe, Jack fought to free himself. One foot, his right foot, was crushed against something hotter than fire. Of course, it was jammed tight. In his desperation Jack almost expected it. Murphy’s law always lurked. If a thing could go wrong, it would.

  For the moment, agony brought strength, and Jack hauled himself upright in the dislodged seat and used the warped and twisted steering wheel for leverage. He jerked mightily and believed a monstrously loud scream of anguish had torn from his lungs.

  He rested, panting as if he had run far but thankfully realized that his scream had actually been a far more muffled groan of barely tolerable pain. With that recognition came awareness of not only what had happened but also of the stunningly dangerous position he was in. A roadside bomb had blown the Humvee apart, and it appeared that he might be the only survivor.

  Jack remembered SFC Swartz stamping his feet on the road following their hours of sitting, and he wondered if that ill-conceived act had occurred smack on top of a bomb that careful driving and good luck had avoided?

  During their growing years, Shooter Galloway, who somehow knew all about such crises, had claimed that during an emergency a detail to avoid was the “Why” of something. Stay on point, Shooter had advised. Decide what to do and do it. Worry about the cause later.

  Tim Carlisle chose that route. As he labored to free his trapped boot, he evaluated what his situation was, and what he would do about it. But, his burning foot felt so bad, he found it difficult to concentrate.

  Sergeant Swartz was gone. Jack saw a part of his booted leg lying against the rising cliff side. The rest of him had disappeared somewhere in the detonation.

  Blood smeared the inside of the shattered windshield. Jack assumed it was the Lieutenant’s, and that led to an instantaneous conclusion that the officer was also dead. When he got his foot loose, he would check, but first he had to somehow grit his teeth, ignore the agony, and twist his ruined foot free.

  Jack went at it. He hauled and he twisted. Held breath whistled through clenched jaws, and his eyes watered as his chest heaved, but, he felt movement.

  It would have helped if he could have seen what was holding his foot immobile, but his body could never twist enough to discover what he was working against.

  Material tore. His pant leg, Tim assumed. He felt the grind of broken foot bones against metal, but he was almost accustomed to the increased agony. He twisted and wrenched even harder.

  And his foot came free. Jack sucked in a few essential breaths, then looked. Then he sought to ignore what he saw, even as he hoped that, somehow, it was not really that bad.

  Freedom to move restored determination, and he clambered from the wrecked vehicle and tested his partly missing and thoroughly burned foot against the ground.

  Not as bad as he had feared. Release from imprisonment had eased the agonizing pressure, and the ghastly looking wound seemed to be numbing itself, at least a little.

  First things first. Blackwater Jack checked his companion for life. He found none. Most of the Lieutenant’s face had been blown away, and bones stuck from his chest. He appeared to have been virtually torn apart by the explosion. Jack supposed that Lieutenant Gold had taken a lot of blast that would otherwise have caught him.

  Next—what to do about being alone, injured, and almost in an enemy’s lap?

  Jack did not wonder if the Sheik they sought had known about the bomb less than a mile from his isolated village. Of course he knew. Nothing went on within the tight-knit villages that the headmen did not know of and approve. If the Sheik had not wanted it there, there would have been no bomb. Period.

  No matter what the newly minted full-Colonel Saltz believed, The Sheik was an enemy. That also deserved a line through his name.

  Most importantly, the village would have heard the detonation. They might wait to discover if any military fallout was heading their way, but very soon someone would be heading up the mountain to determine exactly what their bomb had accomplished.

  Jack had to be gone before then, and his survival had to be unsuspected. If there was a thorough search, he would be discovered. No great escape in his condition was practical. He could and he would hide, but the scene had to appear as if all had died in the explosion. Jack worked at just how that deception could be accomplished.

  There was no opportunity for deliberation. Jack made his plan swiftly, putting it together as he worked, and hurrying because unfriendly figures could appear from the lingering fog or smog or whatever it was at any instant.

  First, he would salvage his gear. Without basic equipment, he would not hold out long, and he was certain that rescue would not appear until the fog had dissipated and Colonel Saltz began worrying about the non-return of his small and poorly armed team.

  His pack was under Saltz’s mysterious box, and Jack hauled it free. Swartz’s sniper rifle lay alongside. He should not leave that deadly and rare weapon for their enemies to discover. Jack placed the rifle beside his pack. He longed to include his carbine, but there had to be weapons to match the bodies. Two bodies required two rifles. Only the sniper rifle could go.

  Ammunition? Saltz’s .308 ammunition had been worn around his waist in a cloth bandolier, Carlos Hathcock style. To where those cartridges had blown was unknown. The Remington action would hold five rounds. Swartz would have the magazine loaded.

  Jack did not waste time checking. If the rifle was loaded, fine. If not? Blackwater Jack would depart with nothing to hold off bad guys.

  Jack separated his cartridge belt of 5.56 magazines from his pack attachment and re-hooked his single canteen to his pack. He left the 5.56 basic load beside the Lieutenant’s body. Everything had to match.

  Now he had to hastily but thoroughly disguise the crime scene. Hah, “Crime Scene,” right out of TV.

  Jack’s still confused mind toyed with bizarre thoughts. Strangest of all, he repeatedly thought of himself as Blackwater Jack. Well, he had been blown up and suffered a damned debilitating wound. Of course his mind wandered. Still, he resolved to keep his real name in the front of his mind.

  The right thing to do turned his stomach, but he should leave the enemy nothing, if that were possible. If he burned the truck and the bodies? Damn, that would be hard, but it made the best sense to destroy everything.

  Where would he go? He could disappear onto the probably lower lands to his left, but every hunter knew that wounded game, including humans, usually went downhill. He had no idea what lay out there. It could be a valley or another mountain.

  Perhaps he should attack? James Bond would have! Jack snarled through his misery. Unlike Double-O-Seven, Blackwater Jack sought a safe place to lie down until rescue appeared.

  Only a few yards back, the cliff rising to his right was broken by a split and a narrow rock fall. Perhaps he could clamber up the slide and attempt to lose himself on the high mountain. If he did not leave a blood trail, that might be possible. Jack looked, and although he had only part of a badly burned boot, his thoroughly cooked flesh did not appear to be bleeding. So, the mountain it would be.

  What could he carry? Water! That wou
ld be most important. Could he manage one of the five-gallon cans? He would try.

  Jack released the carefully secured cans of water and diesel fuel. He set one water can aside, then he paused to gather himself, and to make sure that he felt right about what he was about to do.

  The Army might not approve of burning the bodies. Jack went to his best-known authority on all sorts of violences. What would Shooter do?

  Huh, that settled it. Galloway would not even hesitate. Neither then would his protégé, Blackwater Jack.

  Jack opened the lid of a five-gallon can of diesel and began pouring. The Humvee tank had also leaked, and the ground was already soaking in fuel. He thoroughly saturated the Lieutenant’s upper body. He still did not see Sergeant Swartz’s remains, so he used the rest of the can, thoroughly drenching the vehicle.

  There could be no hint that someone had deliberately fired the wreck. Jack carefully returned the closed but empty can to its place among the others.

  There was one other decision. Saltz’s box lay with its handle ready for grasping. If he slung his pack and the rifle, he could carry his water can in one hand and the mysterious box in the other. They would balance well, and he would deny the bad guys whatever was inside the thing. Jack placed the box among his salvage.

  Lieutenant Gold’s paper sketch map lay handy, and it was thoroughly diesel soaked. Jack had a cigarette lighter in his pack. Few smoked anymore, but most carried some kind of fire starter. Jack’s was the ever-popular Zippo type.

  His thumb flicked open the lid, and he twirled the wheel against the flint starting the flame. He held the lighter to the sketch map until the flames were strong. Then he dropped it into the middle of the fuel-soaked wreck and turned quickly away.

  The rock fall was more stones than rocks. It was mountable, and it was so minor looking that it might not attract attention.

  His nerves jumping at the possibility of an enemy stepping into view at this last possible instant, Jack took a final look at the tar-black smoke roiling upward from the burning Humvee and began his climb.