by Ross Sidor
After making a trip around the perimeter of the target house, Avery determined that there were five people inside and knew the rooms in which they stayed. He used this information to prepare a floor plan of the house, complete with current placement of its occupants. Avery joked to Poacher and Flounder that maybe the next generation of Radar Scope would be able to even differentiate hostages from the bad guys.
When they’d completed the night’s work, it neared 3:30AM.
They agreed to take turns of six-hour shifts in observing the house and manning the audio surveillance gear. Poacher volunteered to take the first shift, and Flounder insisted on taking the second, to give Avery time to recharge, since he was operating on the least amount of sleep. Both of the CIA operators had been able to get a full night’s sleep the previous night, but by this point, it had been nearly two days since Avery last slept, so he was grateful to finally shut his eyes. He didn’t even care that it was in a sleeping bag on the dirty, dust-covered floor of an old grocery store that was now home to big, black, monstrous-looking arachnids known as trapdoor spiders.
At 9:30AM, Poacher woke up Flounder.
When they switched places, Poacher informed Flounder that there’d been no activity from the target house overnight. He’d made a written log of any vehicular or pedestrian traffic, with descriptions of the passerby in each entry. Seven people had walked past the house, including a drunken bum and a group of four teenagers out late. Only three cars and a bicyclist had come by. Two militants on a roving patrol had passed along the street. There’d been no sighting of any official government police or troops.
Avery woke up at ten, ate a couple protein bars, and joined Flounder at the storefront. Flounder brought him up-to-speed and showed him the activity log. The only relevant occurrence was that at 9:45AM a man exited the target house and left in the pickup truck, heading south, but he hadn’t said anything within range of any of the audio surveillance equipment they’d installed. Flounder had gotten a clear picture of the man and showed it to Avery.
At 10:27AM, the man was apparently still in the pick-up truck, because he made a phone call and Sideshow’s bugs heard everything. Both Avery and Flounder were familiar enough with the language to determine that the man spoke Uzbek, with a spattering of Russian thrown in. Flounder recorded it, and they listened to it several times, breaking the two minute conversation apart and taking out the words they recognized and trying to put them into some manner of context. The only thing they could clearly piece together was the Uzbek telling whoever he was speaking to that they would give it “one more day” and “see if they showed” and then “move out.” It was also apparent by his tone and inflection that the Uzbek spoke to a superior over the phone. The Uzbek returned to the house forty minutes later.
This time, catching a frontal view of the Uzbek’s face, Avery immediately identified him as Otabek Babayev. There was no mistaking him. The face from the CIA file was seared into Avery’s mind.
Flounder had the voiceprint of the Uzbek speaker in the IMU’s Cramer video—the man the Russians claimed was Otabek Babayev—on his laptop. Computer analysis determined this voice to be an 88% match with that of the man they’d just listened to. The mask Cramer’s captor wore in the video could have muffled his voice and account for the discrepancy.
Babayev’s presence seemed to confirm that this was an IMU job, Avery thought. He’d been skeptical of the Russian report claiming that Babayev was the masked man in the video. After all, CIA and NSA had no sample of Babayev’s voice on file and therefore no way of confirming it. But here was Otabek Babayev right in front of his eyes.
Flounder woke up Poacher and showed him what they had. Avery suggested, and Poacher and Flounder concurred, that they go into the house that night.
ELEVEN
Yazgulam
They continued their surveillance of the house throughout the remainder of the day and observed nothing else of interest. Discouraging, they also saw and heard nothing to confirm whether or not Cramer was on the premises.
Avery wasn’t going to contact Dushanbe station or sit around waiting for the green light from Culler. In the meantime, Cramer could be completely brutalized and beaten to within an inch of his life, placing more assets at risk. The worst would be to wait another day, go in, and find Cramer’s freshly slaughtered corpse.
As far as Avery was concerned, there was no other option, not with a life potentially on the line, and this is what they’d come here to do. If Cramer wasn’t present, then Babayev’s crew almost definitely knew where he was or what happened to him and could provide the next piece of vital intelligence. Either way, the only point forward now was through that house.
There were five people inside the house. From experience in hitting torture houses in Iraq and Afghanistan, three or four terrorists and one or more prisoners sounded like the normal ratio. The prisoners were usually kept in a locked, boarded up room, a basement or cellar, if there was one, or even in a cage like an animal. The terrorists would be spread out, to have all entrances covered and have a good lookout.
The team would try to take as many of the house’s occupants alive, if possible, which should not be difficult if they caught them completely off-guard and roused them out of their sleep. The terrorists would likely have weapons readily available, within reach, but they would also feel confident that they were safe here and wouldn’t expect a rescue team to make entry. If Cramer wasn’t inside, then killing all the terrorists would only bring them to a dead end. They needed at least one alive to question.
If anyone posed a threat, either to a member of the team or Cramer, then Avery and his crew would put them down with two, three rounds through the head, no questions asked. If they were IMU, then Avery expected them to put up a fierce fight. Like Avery, Poacher and Flounder had gone up against IMU forces before. The Uzbeks were some of the most vicious and disciplined fighters the US and its allies encountered in Afghanistan, second only to the Chechens. Cornering them and engaging them within close quarters could turn nasty. That’s why they’d need to utilize to full effect what Flounder’s shipmates from Dev Group called “speed, surprise, and violence of action.” They would move in fast, hit hard, secure the advantage, and the IMU cell wouldn’t know what hit them until it was over. That is, if any of them were still breathing.
Avery, Poacher, and Flounder by now had memorized the floor plan of the house. Each man could practically close his eyes and visualize the entire layout, complete with dimensions and distances. On pencil and paper, they’d spent the afternoon preparing and perfecting plans for entry and takedown. The only factor they couldn’t take into account was any potential traps or hazards inside the house, so they would need to be cautious, alert, and ready for anything.
Going into the front door, which outwardly faced east, there was a small entryway space. Turning left, or south, this led directly into the largest room in the structure, probably what served as a living room in Tajik houses. Opposite the front door, on the north side of the house, there was a wide, almost square-shaped hallway leading into four rooms, two on either side. The two larger ones were the presumed bedrooms. The other two were smaller, the size of Western closets. From the pipes running into these rooms from the outside it was surmised these were the bathroom (houses here didn’t have toilets; they had a hole in a cement floor) and shower room. The west end of the hallway led into the kitchen and eating areas. Combined, these occupied roughly a third of the entire floor space. Finally, at the far west end of the house was a back porch area with boarded up windows and the back door. There was no basement or cellar, which would be the ideal place to hold a captive, so Avery surmised that Cramer, if present, would be held in one of the two bedrooms. There were no windows to these rooms, making it an easily secured space to hold a prisoner.
They waited until 2:00AM and geared up. All light sources were again out in the nearby houses by this time. Also, at this hour, the human body’s senses and reflexes are naturally operating at their
lowest levels of alertness and are least effective. It was the ideal time to execute a raid like this one. Even if someone was awake and on guard duty, his body would not be operating at full efficiency, his senses dulled and weary.
Avery dressed in 5.11 tactical pants and wore a lightweight, black ModGear vest, with light armor plates, over a navy blue t-shirt. He secured his Glock in the vest’s fast draw holster over his left side and carried three spare magazines for the handgun. He threaded the Atlas Universal Typhoon silencer/suppressor onto the end of the M4’s barrel and inserted two spare magazines of M193 Ball ammunition into his vest’s pouches. He fastened the M4 to his sling mount, securing the carbine over the front of his body. Poacher also gave him two M84 flashbang grenades, which he secured to the D-ring clips on his vest, and he seated his Cold Steel Tanto knife into the sheath on the vest’s belt.
Poacher and Flounder were similarly dressed. They tucked their pants into their Adidas GSG-9 boots. Poacher wore military standard issue digital camouflage and Flounder black cargo pants. Poacher wore a gray, cable knit sweatshirt, Flounder a desert camou t-shirt, beneath their vests. Poacher also wore knee and elbow protectors. Unlike Avery, the two SAD officers carried silenced, compact Heckler & Koch MP5SD submachine guns with 9mm subsonic hollow point ammunition.
The MP5 is specially made for close quarters combat and one of the favorite weapons of SEALs, Delta operators, and SWAT shooters. Although larger and heavier, Avery still preferred the M4 and, going back to his Ranger days, had the most time on that weapon.
For side arms, the two CIA operators were equipped with Mk 23 .45 ACP SOCOM pistols, specially made by Heckler & Koch for US Special Operations Command. Although phased out of service in 2010, many special operators still favored the Mk 23.
Avery and Poacher also wore black balaclava masks over their faces, leaving only their eyes visible, while Flounder preferred black grease paint and a black watch cap. They also wore Hatch ultra-thin Nomex/Kevlar gloves with removable index fingers for trigger pulling. They were equipped with AN/PVS-21 low profile night vision devices. For communications, they were wired with encrypted Motorola CP185 easy-access tactical throat microphones.
Before leaving the observation post, they checked their gear and comms, making sure everyone’s earpieces and mikes were transmitting.
Then Avery made another pass around the house, with the Radar Scope. He pin pointed the locations of each of the house’s five occupants—two in the front living room, one in a smaller room on the right side of the house, and two in the back room. He took his time, checking to see if there was any activity inside the house. The motion detector indicated that except for one man in the back of the house, perhaps getting something to eat, the other four occupants were stationary, so Avery surmised the others were asleep.
Poacher covered Avery while Flounder drove the van, with the lights off, around the block, pulled over near the target house, and put the van in park. He left the keys in the ignition and the doors unlocked. The van needed to be easily accessible to make a fast getaway. They stashed all of their additional gear in the van and made sure that they’d be leaving nothing behind in the observation post.
By 3:45AM, they were ready to go and took up pre-assigned positions around the house. Avery would breach the front door, while Poacher and Flounder simultaneously made entry through the rear.
Flounder, the team’s demolitions expert, had applied a line of detcord—thin plastic tubing packed with a PETN high explosive core—down the side of each door near the hinges. Flounder carried the detonator and would simultaneously blow both doors.
The doors were massive, heavy and thick. They had no way of knowing if the doors were reinforced on the other side, and they weren’t equipped with breach grenades or specialized rifle grenades, so the quickest way through was to blow out both doors. Then they would enter the house simultaneously from both ends and sweep it clear.
The only problem was that this temporarily left Avery in the open, exposed. He waited in a crouch in front of the Uzbeks’ pickup truck, approximately seven feet from and to the side of the front door. He cradled the M4 in front of him, finger indexed over the trigger guard.
He tapped the transmit button on his throat mike twice in quick success to indicate that he was in position and ready to go and immediately heard the “tsk…tsk” response, indicating Poacher and Flounder were also in position.
This close to the house, before the assault, they wouldn’t talk over the radios. Although encrypted and secure, it was always possible someone with the right gear could listen in. There was also the risk that prolonged transmissions could potentially interfere with television, radio, or phone reception, thereby alerting anyone still awake that someone was nearby.
Avery tapped the transmit button three more times in rapid succession—the signal to Flounder to blow the doors—and braced himself and turned his head away from the door.
Three seconds passed.
The explosion sounded, a sudden thunderclap with accompanying bright flash lasting less than a second. The door simply flew outward and off its hinges, over the porch, along with splintered wood and a few small chunks of debris, and landed several feet in front of the house. A cloud of gray smoke lingered in the space of the doorframe.
Avery exploded onto his feet and sprinted the distance to the front door. He kept his rifle in the low ready position, letting the barrel lead the way toward the entrance of the house. Closer, he prepared to pull a flashbang from his vest’s D-clip, igniting the 2.3 second fuse and hurl the grenade into the darkness.
But two muzzle flashes lit up from somewhere inside the darkened house.
The AN/PVS-21 night optics responded instantly to the flashes and automatically switched off the night vision, so that Avery now looked through the clear lenses of the goggles. It was a life-saving feature over older models of NVGs, which would have left him blinded and subsequently dead meat. There was the sound of automatic weapons fire within the small confines of the living room. The shots penetrated the wall and doorway in front of him. He returned his left hand beneath the barrel of his M4 and released a three-round burst in the direction of the one of the muzzle flashes, pivoted his aim, and fired at the second target’s position.
As he took a step back, to get to a safe position from which to throw the flashbang, Avery felt something punch against his vest, low on the right side of his body, like someone whipped a hammer at him, and he grunted and tensed and stumbled back a step before catching his balance, hoping the armor plate in the vest wasn’t penetrated.
The muzzle flashes continued, closer now as the enemy advanced on him.
Avery fired another three round burst to push the attackers back as he pivoted left, out of the open space of the doorway and slid behind the wall and squatted low. He started to reach again for the M84 stun grenade.
Bullet holes opened up in the wall in front of him, just inches over his head. He turned and launched himself to the left, out of the way of the open door space, as two constant streams of full automatic fire chewed through the wall he had just been positioned behind.
Avery smacked hard against a patch of dirt. The gunfire stopped from the house. There was quiet, and he imagined the men inside were reloading, having each just emptied their magazines against the wall, spraying and praying that they’d hit him.
So much for catching the fuckers in their sleep.
Movement caught Avery’s attention. A shadowy man-sized shape materialized in the doorframe and stepped out of the house, a submachine gun held in front of him as he pivoted and swept left-to-right looking for a target or, more agreeably, a dead body. He spotted Avery lying on the ground, adjusted his aim, shouted something out in Uzbek to the man still inside the house, and tapped the trigger.
Avery rolled across the dirt, skirting out of the way of incoming bullets. The rounds bored into the ground, kicking up a dry cloud of dirt and dust. He aligned his sights over the target’s torso, pressed back on the trigger, once,
twice, and felt the recoil.
Despite the attached suppressor, the carbine still made a perfectly audible and sharp, whip-like thwack, resembling a muffled firecracker and not at all the silent pfffttt in movies (though Poacher and Flounder’s silenced MP5s firing subsonic ammunition came close).
The IMU terrorist took the hits against his body armor. He grunted and stumbled back a few steps, his finger letting up on the trigger of his own weapon. Avery raised his aim a couple degrees and placed two rounds through the IMU’s face. Blood splashed into the air as his head snapped back, and his body went instantly limp and dropped like a ragdoll. Face first, head down he sprawled over the dusty ground.
On his feet, Avery tracked his rifle for threats. From the crumpled heap in which the downed terrorist lay, Avery was certain he was dead, but he discharged a single round into the side of the man’s head to make sure, and kicked the submachine gun away from his hands.
Another burst of automatic fire came from the doorway.
Avery reacted, dropped to one knee, and kept his head low, to present a smaller target, and fired back, forcing the gunman back inside the house, behind the doorjamb for cover. With his partner down, this one would be more cautious now.
Without any more muzzle flashes or other sources of ambient light, Avery’s night optics automatically engaged again, casting his world into shades of green. He ripped the M84 from his vest and pulled the pin as he stood up, commencing the grenade’s three second fuse. He took a step forward, released the grenade in the air through the open doorway and into the black, open space of the living room, and fired another couple shots to keep the gunman back.