The Making of Blackwater Jack

by Roy F. Chandler

  Probably the village would cluster around their leader’s residence. A major question would be whether the Sheik would venture forth into Blackwater Jack’s rifle sights.

  If he did not, could Jack move in close without being detected, but … what about dogs? Moslems did not have dogs, at least as a general rule. Something religious there, he had heard.

  They might have sentinels posted. This was a dangerous land. The village could even have a roving patrol, but Jack doubted both possibilities. This was the Sheik’s home. He had probably always lived here, as had his parents before him. He would feel safe. He was the Sheik, after all. Around him all things gathered. That gathering included whatever secret was hidden in Saltz’s box.

  Jack thought again about opening the mysterious box, but he had always planned on carrying it unopened back to his chicken coop in Bloomfield, where he would discover the contents at his leisure and probably in the presence of his pal, Shooter Galloway. He had long enjoyed imagining how that would be as they, together, examined and decided how they would handle his undoubtedly scintillating discovery.

  It was night, and he could not see much. Perhaps tomorrow or the next day? Nothing in the box could help him execute the Sheik. Most likely he should stick with his original plan. He would keep the sweet stuff until later when it could be properly savored, when he was home and safe within his own familiar shelter and surrounded by his own community. Do it right was always the answer.

  Jack rolled his camouflaged blanket and fitted it into his pack. He secured his ammunition belt and slung his binoculars around his neck, tucking the instrument within his shirt collar. He nestled the GPS on top of everything. As he had years before, he stuffed a pocket with MREs but shrugged aside the Camel Back water carrier. He expected to return to the safety of his hole, so he took only what he genuinely had to have.

  For shooting at various ranges he had made a simple table of holdovers. He did not expect to shoot in the dark, when he would be unable to read the table, but he tried to memorize the longer range setting where even small distance estimation errors resulted in huge misses.

  Finally ready to move, Jack eased his head through the hole entrance and examined the green colored world exposed by the night vision goggles.

  A problem with older night vision apparatus like this one was the loss of depth perception. Still, the goggles allowed him to see in this the blackest of nights. His opponents, if any appeared, would not have night vision (he sincerely hoped), and he could bring his XM3 into position in a long instant, certainly well before he would be seen.

  The mountain revealed no creeping figures, much less a heavily armed platoon struggling across the broken rock aiming for his hiding place. The night was empty of enemy, at least on this side of the rock fall that led to the roadway.

  Jack slid from hiding and paused to lightly disguise the entrance to his hole. If he was able to make it back, he might be closely pursued, and he wanted no delays in uncovering, entering, and recovering his hollow.

  Descending the loose rocks to reach the road was as clumsy as he remembered. He endeavored to proceed silently, but if someone had been waiting, he would surely have been detected. No weapons fired, and no one rose to challenge his presence. Jack supposed that he really was alone on the mountain, but he was pleased to cross the road and disappear onto the flatter land beyond.

  It was not until later that he thought about the possibility of land mines like the one that had dismembered SFC Swartz being planted in the same area used before. On his return to his hole Jack resolved to follow as exactly as possible his steps coming out.

  Jack swung to the right toward distant light detected by his night vision goggles. The light had to be coming from the Sheik’s village. Workingmen were long in bed, but a Sheik? Who could know?

  Villages in Afghanistan did not feature street lighting, but Jack thought the distant glow too strong for the usual oil lamps. A Sheik would probably have electricity, and the light glow might indicate that he was in residence.

  Now there was something to worry about. A man as important as the Sheik appeared to be might be visiting distant relatives or have business in a large city.

  Jack had considered the possibility, but the light at night eased his mind. If the important man were absent, there would have been no electric lights burning, not in dirt poor Afghanistan.

  Within a mile, Jack breasted the pass and gained his first look at the Sheik’s home turf. Holy Hell! The site weakened Blackwater Jack’s knees, and he chose to collapse onto a handy rock to digest what he was seeing. This was no rich man’s house surrounded by a few outbuildings. The Sheik’s was a genuine town with the usual twisted lanes and alleys, and possibly a mosque of serious size. Jack cursed the night that both protected him from discovery but disguised what he sought to see.

  Selecting only larger flat stones, that could have no landmine secreted beneath, Jack moved far off the roadway and settled onto his belly to use his rifle’s vastly superior night vision. There was light, both lamp and electric lights. Each added clarity to his overview.

  Jack estimated that the town could contain a thousand residents. The village acted as a sort of stopper where the mountains ended and flatter more useful valley land began.

  The community was built on one side of the mountain pass, and it appeared that a stream or at least a streambed separated the town from a steep and barren mountain slope similar to the one that had provided his hiding. There were trees within the village and a scattering of foliage along the stream. Jack thought there were fields, perhaps vineyards, surrounding the village, but they did not creep far up the barren and steep mountainsides.

  Probably, land beyond the mountains was arable, and produce from the land supported the Sheik’s town.

  It was just as likely that part of the Sheik’s income came from charging passage via his mountain road. The Middle East still operated with laws and customs dating back to the beginning of time. Road and passage tolls would not be a revolutionary concept in modern Afghanistan.

  An even more interesting possibility popped into Jack’s awareness. Might the Sheik’s farmlands include poppy fields? And if they did, mightn’t the box have documents or even money involving Ex-Colonel Saltz in that illicit trade?

  Illicit in American eyes, of course. Not necessarily unlawful in outlying areas of primitive Afghanistan.

  Probably not. Although his wish would be to apply Ockham’s Razor to his problems, drug trading seemed a bit trite or maybe over simplistic.

  Actually, Jack did not care what the Sheik did for a living, legitimate or unlawful. If he surfaced, he would meet a 7.62 match grade bullet, right where it damaged most.

  Blackwater Jack’s next move would be to gain the best shooting position he could find. It might be that he would see a better spot when daylight returned. Then he would wait through another day, just watching, unless the Sheik posed for a shot, of course.

  There was no rush. Jack had days to make his single shot and to safely retreat to his regular hide. He would put serious emphasis on his getaway planning.

  — — —

  All of the electric lighting appeared to be coming from a large building that more or less overlooked the ancient roadway. That should be the Sheik’s domicile. Jack hoped it was. From the opposite mountainside he would have direct shooting at the building. Of course, he would be fairly high on the hillside, but Jack expected that he could find something to hide his presence within five or six hundred yards of the building proper.

  The inevitable ‘buts’ arose. Could he find a shooting spot that close that also allowed a covered retreat? Examining the barren mountain from this side through his rifle’s night vision scope, nothing looked promising.

  He would get over there while it was dark and look closer. He would have to be in some sort of position and completely out of sight before the sun rose. Movement on the rock strewn mountainside after that would stand out like a coal in a snow pile.

  Jack rose
, slung his rifle, and listened to the night. Dead silent, just the way he wanted it. The old night vision goggles were working well, and he had determined that his Double A batteries would work as replacements. He wondered who had made the thing, and he prayed silently that the device did not eat batteries. He had brought more than enough for his rifle’s night vision, but he did not own many extras.

  The way across the broken rock mountain was miserable and treacherous. Jack got at it. He hoped the far mountain was equally rugged. The rougher the better, really. On smooth stone, he would find few choices. Amid broken boulders, he might locate just the right shooting stand.

  Silent as fog, Blackwater Jack moved away.

  21

  Blackwater Jack scrunched comfortably within the almost perfect rock crevice he had stumbled upon.

  For hours he had staggered up, down, and across the rock-shattered mountain face like a blind squirrel searching for a nut, with about the same luck the squirrel could have expected. Nothing promising appeared.

  He had taken advantage of the dark to empty both bladder and bowel, using the supplied camouflaged toilet paper. He buried his deposit deep within rocks and moved far away.

  Scouting to the edges of the village fields proved pointless. If he had gotten a shot that close in he would have had hundreds and hundreds of yards of open ground to cover before gaining even the lifeless broken stone slopes of the mountain’s lower reaches. Now his legs ached from overuse on difficult terrain, and he found he was favoring his bad foot.

  If he shot, he expected the village to erupt with everyone searching for the murderer who had executed their white robed leader. A village of this size, Jack judged, might put forth one hundred or so vigorous males, all of whom would know every inch of the surrounding terrain, and most of whom would own a Kalashnikov rifle. His was not a suicide mission. Jack focused his search higher on the mountain.

  — — —

  When he literally stumbled on the hide he hoped for, Jack judged sunrise was only an hour away.

  Tired and discouraged, he had chosen to rest on a broken ridge where great stones had crashed and jammed themselves into permanent ruins creating an almost impassable jumble that required twisted crawling among long imbedded boulders or daring leaps from one great stone to another for yard upon yard, until suddenly, there was no next stone to leap to.

  His tired gaze fell almost unheedingly on a slightly darker shadow nearly beneath his feet. He was about seven hundred yards from the front wall and slightly above the prominent building he believed could house the Sheik, which was well within his shooting range, so he bent to look.

  There was something there, so Jack looked closer. There was empty space beneath the forward edge of his sitting boulder. His night vision goggles had caught a slight difference in texture that disclosed a small opening, perhaps big enough to crawl into? With greater room further in? Jack’s hope surged.

  Jack clawed away a few smaller stones and cleared the opening. Not bad! Not the room he had found for his original escape hole, but this rock crevice looked long enough and large enough so that once inside he could turn and nearly sit up.

  Until there was better light, or until he poked his head inside, he could not tell for sure, but if he removed his pack and slid in feet first, he should have an almost perfect supported prone position, pointing toward? Jack rechecked his field of view. Wow! It all lay right there in front of him. If the Sheik stuck his white robed carcass into view, Jack would have a near perfect shot.

  There was a single, not to be ignored problem. If his position was detected, he would be trapped. There was no backdoor or even a hint of an escape route.

  Following his shot, movement on the mountainside could not go unnoticed. The Sheik’s village would resemble a disturbed anthill with every eye searching for someone, for anything that might reveal the devil who had killed their leader. Once in the hole, Jack would be confined there until dark again hid his movements.

  Still, the unexpected hollow appeared to be not only a perfect shooting position, but probably the only one. That, too, gave Blackwater pause. Might, for centuries past, every boy-child of the village know this slit under the boulder? If he could stumble on it so easily, why wouldn’t the curiosity possessed by all children have revealed the niche to many? Jack weighed angles, imagining himself a child of the village and trying to visualize the almost endless wasteland of rock as it would look, and as it would appeal, to children and grownups of the town.

  Unless one got down to look inside, as he had done, the tiny opening had appeared insignificant. Until stones were moved, the hollow beyond the small opening gave no hint of its presence. Therefore … ? Well, therefore, he accepted that the spot could be unknown.

  Jack reasoned further. If the slit under the boulder had been known, wouldn’t the entrance have already been widely opened for inspection? Wouldn’t any discoverer have at least taken a look? Jack’s reasoning said it was so, but should he risk his life on such a hasty and shallow, hopefully-weighted conclusion?

  Jack brought himself up short before he talked himself out of the entire idea. What did he expect he would find that would be better?

  He reviewed all that he had seen in his hours of wandering. There was nothing else, much less anything better. He had come to shoot. This could be the place.

  He would shoot as a sniper did, one shot-one kill. Jack also reviewed that thinking. When a sniper shot once, he was extremely difficult to detect, for certain, even the direction the sound had come from. On a second shot, sharp observers might locate the direction and sometimes the approximate range to the shooter, but rarely the position of the sniper. That usually required a third shot, which even the greenest of snipers knew better than to risk.

  Jack had another advantage, the hugest of all. His XM3 rifle wore a suppressor. At seven hundred or so yards, no one in or around the village would hear the shot. No one would have a clue as to where the bullet had come from. Where would they look? Everywhere, out to about three hundred yards. A three hundred yard shot was beyond the abilities and therefore the expectation of most of the poorly trained riflemen. Few ever looked further.

  Seven hundred yards, halfway up the mountain, out where only wild things roamed—up there on the bare rock where everything could be seen and nothing could hide? No one would search, period.

  Blackwater decided that he could stake his life on it, assuming, that when he got inside the rock slit he would find all that that he expected.

  First, the preliminaries. Jack walked more than a hundred yards away and relieved his bladder into a rock pile. He had not eaten enough to endanger his bowel. So he settled onto a stone and ate a ration, washing it down with canteen water.

  Next, Jack made a tour circling his hide and examining it through his night goggles. His first opinion remained solid. Once inside the tiny entrance, only an earthquake could reveal his presence. Jack shuddered at that possibility and moved his thoughts away.

  Ready, Jack stripped off his pack and set it and his rifle aside. He sat with his feet within the hole before sliding on his back into the darkness of the cave. On his back, the rock ceiling was only inches above his nose. Hmmm, would recoil strike his precious scope against the stone roof? Too soon to determine.

  Jack rolled onto his stomach and inched his rifle inside, followed by the pack. Damn it was tight inside, but not too tight. He wrestled the pack crossways, and began positioning his rifle. He beat a small hollow into the pack’s top and settled the rifle’s stock into it. Hah! There was more room above the scope than he had first thought. There would be no danger of his scope’s tube striking stone.

  Jack freed his binoculars from his chest carry and removed the strap from his neck. There was room for the binocs to stand handily beside his body. He would use them during daylight. Glassing too long through a powerful telescopic sight decreased seeing ability more than slightly. Binoculars were better, and a spotting scope would have been best, if he had had one.

 
Jack removed the clumsy night vision device. Daylight approached, and he would not need its help for many hours, probably not until he began his escape to his permanent hideout

  Jack checked to determine that his rifle’s muzzle was well within the rock slit’s opening. When he fired, the suppressor would disguise most of the muzzle flash, but not all of it. The rock enclosure would help channel the momentary burst of light. Jack recalled a lecture on the subject, and darned if it hadn’t been Shooter Galloway doing the talking.

  Galloway told of shooting into massed enemies from within a thick-walled building. The Iraqis, in Shooter’s case, came out only at night, but Galloway’s early model of Colonel Rock’s sniping rifle had a suppressor and an extremely low powered telescopic sight option. The combination allowed Galloway to kill more than a dozen without the enemies realizing they were being nailed. The overly excited and wild shooting mob heard nothing, and unless they were looking almost into the muzzle, they could not detect the narrowed flash. Now it was Blackwater Jack’s turn, but he would shoot only a few times, hopefully, only once. He especially wished to remain unlocated.

  Jack crawled into shooting position behind his rifle. A few adjustments were required to have the weapon lying on the pack pointed directly at what Jack hoped was the Sheik’s domicile.

  The first hint of morning light was touching the horizon. Soon life would return to the village. Jack hoped fervently that not more than one white robe appeared to taunt him as he attempted to decide which was the right target.

  Jack dry fired a few times and believed that he was ready. With only slight rifle movement he could place his crosshair on most of the major buildings. The XM3 rifle’s Night Force scope boasted a Mil-dot reticle. The Mil-dot had both vertical and horizontal crosshairs fitted with small balls that could be used for holdover or windage. Jack had used them to determine the holds he would need for the ranges he expected to shoot. He spent a few moments focusing on how he would hold if a target appeared at various spots within the Sheik’s village.