Scorched Earth

by George Galdorisi

  “Good. Got plenty of ammo?”

  “Roger.”

  “I want you and your wingman to slow and fly right over the downed Humvee. Then I want you both to paint the street with rounds from your guns. We need to explode any remaining IEDs. Don’t save too many rounds.”

  “You got it, sir.”

  * * *

  As Mabad al-Dosari entered their “studio,” he looked at al-Hamdani. “I heard a large explosion, what was it?”

  “It was one of their trucks hitting an IED. I think we’re holding them off for now.”

  * * *

  There had been no secondary explosions in the lead Humvee. Volner and their 75th Ranger Regiment driver rushed up to the broken vehicle. It was lying on its left side and all was still.

  As they looked in, Volner saw their driver struggling to get out of his seat belt and harness and the other man extracting himself from the passenger seat, climbing up and out of his window. Both were bloodied from shards of glass from the shattered windshield, but otherwise looked okay.

  What he saw when he yanked open the right-side back door was a different story. A dazed Dawson just mumbled, “Hel … help … Hector.” Then he tried to raise himself up, but he passed out.

  They reached in and lifted the unconscious Dawson out. Then Volner lowered himself into the back cab. Rodriquez wasn’t moving. Volner shook him, “Hector … Hector!”

  There was no response. Then he held his fingers against his neck.

  * * *

  “This is Carnival on tactical.”

  “Go ahead, Carnival,” Phillips replied. She knew that with Dawson’s vehicle destroyed and Volner and Moore otherwise engaged, someone had to communicate with Purvis.

  Purvis paused, momentarily surprised to hear a female voice. “We hosed down the street pretty good. I think we got a few detonations, but not sure exactly how many. Dunno if the street is completely free of IEDs now, but it’s a lot better than it was.”

  “Thanks, Carnival.”

  “Orders ma’am?” Purvis began, still trying to sort out why he was hearing a female voice.

  Phillips flashed back to her career in the Marine Corps. She had done several tours in Afghanistan with the Marine Corps Cultural Support Team where she had served on the front lines and had been decorated for heroism. Instinctively, she surveyed the tactical situation.

  “Carnival, the roof of the building we’re headed for has the clearest field of fire no matter how we approach it. Hold south at an altitude where you can see what’s going on up there. If you see any activity, hose the roof with all you’ve got.”

  “Roger that, ma’am; it’ll be just like spraying ants off a picnic table.”

  “Exactly,” Phillips replied. “Still got plenty of ammo?”

  “Ahhh … I wouldn’t exactly say ‘plenty’ ma’am, but we’ll get the job done.”

  * * *

  Master Gunnery Sergeant Charles Moore had “been there and done that.” A seasoned veteran of indeterminable age, he had joined the Marine Corps Special Operations Command at its inception and was one of the first MARSOC team members to serve at JSOC. With multiple tours in Iraq and Afghanistan, he had been on the raid into Pakistan that led to the killing of Osama bin Laden. He knew how to lead men into battle.

  They had rehearsed what they were about to do scores of times in shoot houses at Fort Bragg, and had done walk-throughs in Baghdad while they waited for further orders. Now it was the real thing, and time was of the essence. Moore gathered the two dozen men around him. “You fellas don’t need a pep talk. Here’s the way we’re gonna do this—”

  Finished, he asked, “Questions?”

  There were none.

  * * *

  Dale Bruner was kneeling down on what he thought was a carpet, his hands bound behind his back, with a gag in his mouth and a hood over his head. He heard men whispering off to his left, and then voices in front of him and a rattling of some kind of equipment.

  The Bruner family’s religious tradition was Episcopalian. Their family attended Sunday services regularly while the Bruner children were growing up, and it was never a question as to whether Dale and his two sisters would attend church with their parents; they just knew it was expected. But once he was in college, Dale never made church attendance a priority. And, he had to admit, God was not someone he thought much about any longer. But now he did.

  A few voices seemed to move closer, and he thought he recognized one of them. It was the man who had held his face in his hands.

  * * *

  The ISIL fighters on the roof of the compound didn’t have NVGs, but they didn’t need them. Once the Global Hawk had crash-landed, every light in every window along that block had come on. They were ready to open fire on the approaching enemy with RPGs, machine guns, and their personal weapons as soon as the men came into view.

  They didn’t see the approaching helicopters, but they heard the clatter of the blades and the roar of the T63-A-700 turboshaft engines on both birds. Instinctively, the men dropped their weapons and rushed toward the door leading back into the building.

  It was no use. The carnage was unimaginable as first Purvis’s bird, and then his wingman’s, sprayed the roof with squirts from their GAU-19s. In less than thirty seconds, there was no movement.

  “This is Carnival; you folks are cleared in!” Purvis said.

  “Good shooting!” It was Phillips on tactical.

  “Let’s go!” Moore commanded. “Form up on me. We’re moving forward; easy trot.”

  The JSOC squad covered the two hundred yards from their position to the compound in less than two minutes. A few wild shots rang out from several windows in the compound, but none of them found their mark.

  While Moore and his core JSOC squad made directly for the ISIL compound as they had planned and rehearsed, most of the men of the 75th Ranger Regiment—along with Phillips—stopped short and clambered into an abandoned building just south of where Moore and the rest were heading. They took up positions to serve as a security element and blocking force should any fighters emerge from the building’s entrance. There was only one way out of the front of the building, and soon they had that door under their muzzles.

  * * *

  Volner had kept two of the Rangers with him—one of them a medic—as he tended to Dawson and Rodriquez. The JSOC team leader wanted to get his gun in the fight, but right now taking care of these two men was his top priority.

  * * *

  Moore’s men were pressed against the back of the building between two doors. He yelled, “Fire in the hole,” and the two breechers triggered their Nonel firing systems, and almost simultaneously moved to the side and squeezed against the building with the rest of their comrades.

  The blasts knocked one door completely off its hinges and blew it back inside the building, while the other door hung on for a moment by its top hinge until gravity took over and it crashed down. The first men through each door tossed a flash-bang grenade well into the building and instinctively covered their ears and simultaneously closed their eyes. Seconds later, each assault squad poured through their respective doors like a football team emerging from their tunnel and coming out on the field. The last man in the second squad put a long burst of fire into the transformer that served the building. Everything went dark. Now it was game on, special operations style—act and react, move and shoot.

  * * *

  Al-Dosari stared at al-Hamdani in the light of an emergency lantern for a moment, and then shouted, “You said we could hold them off, but now they’re here!”

  Al-Hamdani was initially too stunned to reply. He looked at al-Dosari, then looked down at their hostage, then looked at al-Dosari and finally said, “Kill him now!”

  “No, it will gain us nothing if we don’t broadcast it, and the power’s out!” the ISIS leader replied. Then turning to one of his men, he barked, “Where is your truck parked?”

  “It’s right outside, on the east side of the building.”


  “Good, let’s go. You drive and al-Hamdani and I will take the hostage with us.” Then, pointing to another man, he said, “Take everyone else and hold off whoever’s coming.”

  The man stood frozen, refusing to move. “This … this is insane. Leave the American; we have to escape while there’s still time!”

  Al-Dosari pulled a pistol and shot the man in the head. He gave the same instructions to another man who immediately complied. Then al-Dosari grabbed the kneeling Bruner and jerked him to his feet, yanking his hostage’s hood off as he did. “Up—and if you go limp and try to make us drag you, I’ll kill you right here.”

  CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT

  ISIS Compound: Central Mosul, Iraq

  July 24, 0230 Arabia Standard Time

  The JSOC team moved through the building with the same precision and choreography as a Broadway musical. The teams surged forward deeper into the building, stopping at preplanned positions to toss flash-bangs and then clearing the areas they were responsible for. There was no shouting, just quiet statements on their tactical net.

  “Clear right!”

  “Moving forward!”

  “Clear left!”

  “Moving up!”

  “Right behind you!”

  “Clear left and right!”

  “Wait!” Moore said over the net. They had begun to clear the first floor, but had encountered no resistance. Had the breeching charges and the flash-bangs made the enemy run off? All of Master Guns’s professional experience told him that couldn’t be the case. He was about to split his force and have half of his men move into the one remaining wing of the first floor they hadn’t cleared and have the other half push up to the second floor, when shots rang out. They had engaged the ISIS rear guard.

  * * *

  The two ISIS leaders followed their driver out the side door of their compound, dragging the handcuffed Bruner with them. The driver jumped into his seat as al-Dosari and al-Hamdani began to shove their hostage into the truck’s backseat. As they did, al-Dosari shouted at the driver, “We’ll go to the safe house, and you need to hurry! Take that road to the right!” he continued, thrusting his arm into the front cab.

  The man paused a moment to frame his reply. He knew the penalty for angering al-Dosari, but he didn’t want to die this way. ISIS fighters are fanatical, but they’re not stupid. “But that will take us along a road we seeded with IEDs. One of them will blow up this truck and us with it.”

  Seated in the back of the truck with Bruner squeezed between him and his number two, al-Dosari couldn’t believe what he was hearing. “Shut up and do as I say!” the ISIS leader shouted. “You were one of the ones seeding the IEDs; you must know where they are. Just drive around them.”

  But the driver just sat there, his hands frozen on the steering wheel. The key was in the truck’s ignition but he hadn’t fired off the engine.

  “I said start the truck and drive!” al-Dosari bellowed as he hit the man on the shoulder.

  The driver was frozen for another instant. Then he was all motion as he flung his door open, leapt out of the truck, and ran off.

  “STOP!” al-Dosari shouted, but the man kept running.

  Al-Dosari looked at his number two who was about to run after the driver. “Let him go. I’ll drive. You stay in the back with him. We’ll go directly to the safe house; they won’t find us there.”

  The ISIS leader hoisted himself out of the backseat of the truck and climbed up behind the wheel. He fired up the ignition and started to creep forward.

  “Stop!” al-Hamdani shouted.

  “What?”

  “Don’t go that way. We need to turn right. I know they seeded a number of IEDs on that main street. We need to head for the alley over there,” he said, pointing at their escape route.

  * * *

  One squad was pressed against both sides of a long hallway while the other squad moved carefully up a stairwell to clear the other floors of the building. The JSOC team had studied the building’s layout, and their best guess was that the hostage was being held on the first floor. When they heard the shots, their guess became a near certainty.

  Master Guns Moore was crouched down right behind his lead assaulter with his hand on the man’s shoulder. In the green glow of their night-vision goggles they couldn’t see exactly where the shots had come from.

  “Now,” Moore said on the tactical net in a low, conversational voice.

  The lead man in each line tossed a flash-bang grenade forward as every squad member closed their eyes to keep the white-hot light of the flash-bangs from overwhelming their eyes.

  Seconds after the flash bangs went off, it was all violence as both teams surged forward down the long hallway. A few wild shots rang out as Moore’s squad shot at fleeing figures. They heard a cry and a loud thump as one of the enemy went down. As the JSOC team looked far ahead, they could see the ISIL fighters running away ahead of them. They seemed to be heading for a large doorway. The fleeing men poured through the open door of the ISIL studio and out into the next corridor. The room was empty, but a door on the far side of the room remained open. Moore held up his hand as the rest of the squad filled the large room. They saw at a glance it was the set of an execution.

  “We have to catch them,” one of Moore’s men said.

  “No, let them go. They ran out of here at full tilt. They wouldn’t let trying to drag along a hostage slow them down. He must be somewhere else in the building.”

  * * *

  The ISIS leader had no trouble sending men—and even women and children—into danger, and even commanding them to be suicide bombers. But when it came to his own safety, and especially the fear of being blown to bits by one of the IEDs he had ordered sown or shot by the approaching enemy, that was another matter.

  “If we go into that alley, we might be ambushed as we come out the other end,” al-Dosari shot back, rejecting his number two’s suggestion. He sat in the truck, the engine idling, frozen in indecision.

  “Then don’t,” al-Hamdani replied. “Turn around and go the other way. It doesn’t—”

  He stopped talking as both men saw several of their fighters emerge from the building’s doors, running from the compound.

  “Let’s go!” al-Hamdani shouted. “The enemy must be in the house. They’ll be out soon, and they’ll see us!”

  As he tried to urge his leader to drive somewhere, anywhere, away from where he was sure heavily armed Americans were about to find them, al-Hamdani loosened his grip on the handcuffed and gagged hostage. It was a small opening, but it was all Bruner was going to get.

  As al-Dosari put the truck into gear, Bruner twisted his body ninety degrees so his back was pressed against al-Hamdani. Using the large man as leverage, he aimed his feet at the door’s handle and kicked with all his might. Nothing.

  Bruner reared back and kicked again. This time the door popped open.

  As the truck lurched forward, the stunned al-Hamdani flailed his arms in an attempt to corral their hostage. Bruner half jumped, half rolled out of the truck and hit the ground hard.

  Al-Dosari looked over his shoulder just in time to see no hostage, but his number two groping for the door. He slammed on the breaks and jerked to a stop several yards from where Bruner had left the truck. “Get out and catch him!” he bellowed.

  * * *

  Moore’s squad searched the room and a few adjoining rooms but didn’t find the hostage. They did find a hood on the floor near the carpet. One of Moore’s men suggested, “Master Guns, maybe he’s in another part of the building and they were going to bring him down here soon.”

  “Maybe,” Moore replied. Then he continued, “This is Lead on tactical. What floor are you on, and have you found the hostage?”

  “We’ve just cleared the fifth floor and are headed up to the sixth. No hostage and no enemy fighters, Master Guns; just a few remaining family members huddled in rooms scared shitless. Looks like these assholes ran away and left some of their women and kids behind.”
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br />   “Roger,” Moore replied. “Call me once you’ve cleared all the floors and then come down. Looks like we may have to cast a wider net to find Bruner.”

  * * *

  Dropping out of a moving car had stunned Dale Bruner, but with adrenaline coursing through his veins, even with his hands cuffed behind his back, he had managed to right himself and stand up. In the darkness he swiveled his head, looking for a way to run. He was still evaluating his options when he saw a hulking figure lumbering toward him. He instinctively fled from the approaching threat.

  Bruner looked over his shoulder and saw he was outdistancing the man, but as he did, he saw, then heard, a truck bearing down on him from behind his pursuer.

  * * *

  Still wearing their NVGs they used to explore the upper floors of the ISIL compound, the second squad reached the roof. They knew Carnival had cleared the roof of fighters before they assaulted the building, but they thought other fighters might have retreated to the roof once the assault had begun. They checked the roof in the same disciplined fashion they had cleared the floors of the building.

  “Clear.” It was the squad leader on tactical. He continued. “Master Guns, we’ve cleared the building as well as the roof. Lots of EKIA up here. We’re coming—”

  “Staff Sergeant!” one of the JSOC men who was peering over the edge of the roof shouted. “There’s a figure down on the street running south. He looks like he has his hands bound and he’s running for all he’s worth … Wait … There’s someone running after him and a truck closing in on both of them.”

  In an instant, every man on the roof was looking over the same edge. The squad leader quickly assessed the situation. “That must be the hostage, Lieutenant Bruner. He’s heading toward where the Ranger Regiment is holding the blocking position. Who has comms with them?” he asked of no one in particular.

  “Master Guns, we see our hostage,” the squad leader said. “His hands are bound and he’s running toward the Rangers and there’s a vehicle in pursuit, but we’re not in position to engage. I want them to hold their fire, repeat, hold their fire, and not shoot the man on foot. Tell them there’s a truck that looks like it’s after him. They should open up on it when it comes into range.”