We must have fallen by some village we never knew about, Iman reasoned with the presence of unknown jihadists. He was familiar with the tribal warfare that ran alongside international conflicts. The men who shot the Marine helicopter down might have done so as an act of jihad. They might have also shot the bird down to fall into Farhad’s good graces, thus saving their village from pillaging marauders later on. The laws of the land were primal. The people were savage. Social evolution skipped the ways of life in Afghanistan. The tribes there were doomed to forever contort in the throes and woes of the most powerful village of any area.
What are we doing here? Government-funded terrorism was no longer a matter of concern to Iman. Patriotism and a call to duty no longer held weight in his heart. There is no saving these people from tyranny. Tears flooded Iman’s eyes. We can’t save them from tyranny because we can’t save them from their own savagery. The older staff sergeant felt defeat despite his ability to win. He felt his heart break and his stomach burn as humanity clawed its way out of him. Then he swallowed hard, devouring the human, and returned to the war-hungry beast that is the United States Marine. He yearned for war and no longer sought reason.
Reason was lost to reality. “Three-sixty on me,” Iman ordered the Marines. Their dead were staged and hidden well enough to evade any distant observations. The living Marines, including Iman’s younger brother, circled the senior leader and faced outward. They were in a defensive formation that protected them from an attack originating in every direction.
“They’ll be coming for their kill soon enough. Let’s not let them find us here,” Iman coached. He spoke as he faced north. He called out only loud enough to be heard by the men circled around him. Then he paused. The quiet surrounding them caused him to exercise sudden caution toward the volume of his voice. Iman knew that only the ill-trained and ready-to-die become the tallest things in a lightning storm, or the loudest things in the middle of a field operation. He waited before he continued, “We have to carry on north from here.” The senior Marine pointed ahead to the cap of a nearby hill. He knew that was their destination. Their planned encroachment patrol would have to be expedited. The team was compromised far too early to have been engaged by Farhad’s defensive positions. Iman was, therefore, forced to consider two prominent possibilities.
The first was that Farhad received word of Iman and Hasim’s escape only days prior and decided to move camp. The information gathered over prior months would be void. They would have no means to verify if innocent people had been adopted into the herd. They would not have the ability to stop Command from making headlines around the world that the United States of America was openly killing women and children. Iman tried not to grit his teeth to the blatant propaganda used globally to defame the greatest nation in the world.
Secondly, Iman considered that another terrorist organization was in the surrounding, and uncomfortably close, area. The presence of another jihadist camp might mean that Jericho would receive reinforcements in the event of a firefight with wounded and weary Marines. In either case, the Marines needed to evacuate the crash site quickly.
Their mission was either compromised and would go into history as a failure, or Farhad remained in place and would die as planned. Iman was determined to pursue the objective to its end. The Marines surrounding him, war-ready and eager to destroy demons, were determined to do the same.
“The only comm we have is the laser.” Iman pointed to the bulky equipment staged nearby as he thought of improvised means to annihilate Jericho. “Any volunteers to hump it?” Iman asked as a challenge to their bravado and taste for machismo endeavors. The Marines looked, one at the other, unaccustomed to anyone asking for volunteers. They better understood orders. They were given orders. They blindly followed orders. The concept of volunteering for excess weight never occurred to them. No one volunteered, so Hasim picked it up first. He decided to lead from the front on the issue.
Iman continued, “We’re headed north. We are going to get into position and paint the target. My plan is to cycle through and laze the target every fifteen minutes until we get a marked response or can no longer use the equipment. However, we are also looking at the possibility that no devastating response is coming…so we might just run the cursed thing until there is nothing left in the battery or nothing left of Jericho. I’m hoping that the frequency and comm checks will catch the laser. If not, we will move in for a good old-fashioned gunfight…because we’ll be dead anyway. In short, gentlemen, we are playing it by ear until we play it by the general rules of destroying the enemy by any means.”
REASSEMBLE
I man stood at the center of the tactical three-sixty, the circle of kneeling Marines with their weapons pointed outward for protection in all directions. Each Marine surrounding Iman peeked back and stood in a hunched position. They waited until the leader shook his hand north. He gave them the silent order to continue their march into combat. The Marines stepped back into the war wounded, tired, unable to communicate with Command, and with little hope for reinforcement. They moved north searching for nothing shy of a bloody fight to an inevitable end. They pushed onward in a heavily determined spirit. Victory or death.
Iman looked to his right as the tattered team parted the area. He lowered his eyes from the dead. Bludgeoned and bloody bodies were crudely covered with whatever brush and dirt the Marines could find just east of the crash site. The living had done well enough in haste to conceal the fallen, but interment was far from complete. Yet the covering of combat Marines was done with a proper amount of respect and admiration. The living honored the dead despite very little provisions for burial and no time for last respects. The sentimental were thankful. The dead were impartial.
The men who had given their lives to the mission temporarily rested behind a large rock in the open desert. Very little of their bodies and equipment remained visible to any potential passersby. Iman and the others had no doubt that anyone stopping at the crash site would be more interested with the downed aircraft than anything else. Dead bodies would have been of little interest beyond the valuable equipment and resources to be found inside a destroyed helicopter.
“Let’s go,” Hasim said, urging the Marines to move quickly from the area. The Force Recon warriors were not comfortable with stomping through open terrain in blatant disregard for concealment. They were masters of sneaking around in the backfield of the enemy. They were stealthy, quietly lethal. However, their whereabouts had long since been broadcast to the enemy. The helicopter smoldered and smoked without flame, sending signals into the air for anyone in the area to see. Noise from the crash and recovery echoed through every valley in every direction. Lack of cover and concealment in the wide vicinity made for a panoramic view of what remained and who was present to defend anything or anyone on site. The staff sergeants knew that threats were imminent in all directions, including the direction that might lead them back to friendly-held territory. The team was isolated from the next nearest American force by an unknown number of very involved and very dedicated enemy troops. Therefore, Iman and Hasim prodded the other Marines to run from the crash zone. Every man experienced a renewed sense of urgency to evade looming threats that would stand between the team and their mission.
The men of Force Recon turned into machines. They were no strangers to hard runs under the weight of their full combat loads. Some of them even preferred a pack run for the sake of getting a decent workout in garrison. However, what would be a decent workout in rear echelon became an impossible venture in deep sands and rocky hills. Iman vomited twice on the long run en route to Jericho. His heaving gullet only crushed his broken ribs further into the tissues that allowed him intermittent and sharply painful breaths. Yet he pushed on.
Hasim’s legs gave out beneath him several times. The previously hard pace set by the point man slowed to a painful shuffle. Too many broken bones traveled too many miles by foot, under heavy gear, and in the direction of chaos. Every man hurt, but they kept on. The
Marines made up distances lost in being shot down south of their intended landing zone. Each of the hardened men splintered and bled. Skin between their toes ripped to flattening sands and rolling rocks. Wide straps of every pack rubbed their shoulders and necks into raw blisters and peeled skin. Calluses on their hands tore open from the enthusiastically desperate grips they maintained on their rifles. Every lip split and bled with cracked dehydration. Every nostril was filled with the desert glass created by finite shards of sand settling on thick mucus. Their helmets rubbed the tops of their ears until there was nothing more than red strips of raw meat at the sides of their heads. Inner thighs chafed and burned from the incessant rubbing of fabric against tender skin. Spit congealed at the backs of their throats and coaxed out what little food they had stored in their stomachs. Even still, their legs remained in motion. One foot in front of the other, they trotted to war without hesitation. They jogged without pause. They pursued the fight like wolves chasing deer for a swift kill.
Late afternoon faded into falling night. The hills ahead of the team looked like poorly painted silhouettes rather than ridges of knife-like rocks and hatefully thronged bushes. Night was upon them as was the cold. Every ounce of sweat that poured into the Marines’ camouflaged uniforms for hours prior threatened to build a sheet of ice over their clothes. Every thorn-covered bush reached out with eager blades of nature’s discontent to tear into the already exhausted men. The desert, black in night and in soul, yearned to devour the Marines, not knowing that they were too tough to chew. Any beast that dared meet them in the night would lose its sad existence either in trained silence or flurries of ferocious fire. The Marines cared nothing for the land, the creatures, the natural threats, or the enemy. They cared only to win so they could leave what they considered to be a preview of hell.
They all hated the place where a fight waited to be found, even though they so desperately sought conflict. All illusions leading to a collective belief that things could not get worse were proved wrong with every step deeper into the desert. Iman’s stomach muscles involuntarily clenched once more. His body heaved again as he ran. His stomach was too empty to ease the pain. His wretched vomiting produced nothing more than a painful dribble of spit and agony. Iman finally conceded to the natural need for water and rest. Hours of running through fatigue became too great, and he called a silent halt. He wanted to surrender to the desert. He wanted to die. All the Marines shared the same sentiment. Yet they held onto something within them that no other could understand. They held onto their ethos, the hot coals of hate within, even when they could maintain nothing else.
Iman raised his fist into the air. He could hear flattened feet grinding into the rocks and sand behind him. Those who expelled the contents of their stomachs were required to do so without sound. No cough or gag could be heard beyond stomach fluid splattering to the dry earth. They were marvelous in their plight.
The long distance once separating the team from their enemy was finally found short. Clouds in the night sky parted and Hasim used a beam of moonlight to identify their first destination. He squinted to confirm their location, and his eyes rested on the nearby mountain’s edge. He was certain as to where they were bound.
The younger brother moved to the unit leader. He tapped Iman on the shoulder and pointed north-northeast. Iman regained his composure through the cramping in his gut and the pain in his ribs. He could not draw a full breath for the pain piercing through his lungs. Even still, he looked up to where Hasim was pointing rather than wince in front of his Marines. Iman remembered the area and recognized the point of an impassable hill. It was the site of Jericho’s southernmost defensive position. Iman grinned. He did not smile in relief. He only gave a smirk as a lion would, licking his chops as he crouched in high weeds just before taking prey.
Hasim and Iman knew the position well. It was the least fortified fighting hole with the fewest amenities for comfort. They knew a single machine gun rested there. They also knew that the hole was not deep enough to conceal a man completely. Anyone doomed to the cold defensive position would be hunkered down behind the shallow walls in a desperate search for refuge against piercing winds. Dedicated but undisciplined, the jihadist guard would likely be asleep in the hope that Farhad and his lieutenants would not brave freezing temperatures for a perimeter check. The sentry on duty was probably stretched out along the base of the wall, away from his weapon, and resting in a false sense of security. The guard likely put his faith in the idea that no one could possibly sneak up on the impassable defense to Jericho’s south.
Bipod-mounted, shoulder-fired machine guns could be found in pairs at every perimeter site around Farhad’s camp. Other positions were concerned with avenues of approach that had to be monitored constantly, day and night. Multiple machine gunners and spotters had to observe their fields of fire from nearly every route because of perceived weak spots in and around the camp. However, the southern defense required only one guard and one machine gun.
The machine gun’s bipod rested on top of seven sandbags facing south. The weapon was moved so rarely that divots formed in the tops of the canvas bags beneath the gun. Iman and Hasim wondered if the barrel had become frozen in its near-vertical position. Then they dismissed their mocking ideas toward the enemy. If they were to assume anything, they had to assume that the threat was real and should be respected accordingly. The brothers returned to Jericho in the name of destruction, not ridicule. Each of the men had to coax calm and steady willingness back into their minds so that they might be able to kill men they knew.
The lead Marines also knew that Farhad’s men took for granted the southern point’s natural defenses. A rugged and steep hill separating the militant post from the valley gave guards a fallible impression that the camp was impervious to attacks from its bottom edge. Hasim and Iman cycled separately behind the vertical machine gun in the south several times when they walked openly among the enemy. Each of the men found the on-duty guards asleep or hiding from the snow on all occasions. They hoped to catch the enemy off-guard once again, only from the opposing side of the fight. They hoped to assume control of the fighting hole with minimal resistance. However, hope alone would not be enough.
Reassembling and resuming their patrol formation after the long and hard run, the Force Recon team reasserted its combat-driven presence. Iman and Hasim recognized their surroundings. They were just north of where their original landing zone was intended prior to being shot from the sky. They were officially at the original mission square one. Iman knew they could find cover behind some rocks directly to their north. They would be able to find giant stone formations with ease even in the blackness of the night. The entire team would also be able to establish a line of approach into the southern defensive position from cover, hidden by the massive boulders.
Iman straightened the fingers on his left hand and pointed his flattened palm in the direction of the large stones. The other Marines squinted through darkness and could see his waved motion. They acknowledged and followed his lead. No one spoke. No one made a sound louder than the weight of feet slowly pressing into rock-laden sand. Every strap and buckle on their gear was wrapped with green or black tape. Any piece of metal that might make contact against other metal or plastic was secured tight with the same adhesive strips. Their canteens were either completely full or completely empty as to prevent sloshing noises. If the Marines had to breathe, they did it through their noses to keep from sending a cloud of fog around their heads. None of them carried flashlights anywhere that a button might accidentally be pushed. They did nothing to broadcast their position to the enemy.
The grinding patrol pace slowed even more as a last sliver of twilight faded to black. The men naturally tightened the formation so as not to lose sight of one another in darkness. Iman was able to see that they were only fifty meters from the cover of massive rocks. However, the fifty-meter stretch was wide open. A chasm of land spread before them and provided no concealment from enemy view. Flat earth stood bet
ween the Marines and their ability to hide or seek cover from direct fire. The sparse area gave Iman a great deal of reserved pause. Then he panicked in fatigue. His mind went blank. He should have been able to make a command decision instantly. He should have been able to push forward spitting in the face of danger. He should have been able to defy ordinary logic and go with his Marine gut. However, the leader was not able to deny his instinct for self-preservation and his human desire to survive.
Iman silently summoned down the line for his brother. Hasim slowly and quietly eased forward to join the patrol leader. The younger man raised his head rearward to silently ask what Iman’s problem was with their current position. They had a straight line of sight on a likely sleeping enemy just beyond the refuge of large boulders. Iman, slightly ashamed at his sudden memory lapse, pointed to the southern defense. Then he formed his hands like he was holding invisible binoculars. He silently asked Hasim if the enemy guard might have night-vision goggles.
Hasim smiled and shook his head. Then he held up his thumb and two fingers, shook his fist twice, and held up three fingers forming a “W.” Three hundred meters west. Iman translated the gesture to himself. He understood and remembered. One of two night-vision goggle sets in Farhad’s camp was allocated to a weaker defensive position three hundred meters further west from the team’s approach. The enemy’s defenses were separated by a large rock formation between fighting holes. Iman saw shields of darkness and stone as the framed window of opportunity he needed to lead the team once again. The Marines could move directly north without being spotted by enemy troops to their west. It was a straight line from their concealed position, to the next point of cover, and onward to the first target.
Operation Jericho Page 14