Devil's Guard- The Complete Series Box Set

by Eric Meyer

  “So what do you want to do, Rachel? Drop it off at the local recycling facility. Tell them we’ve got some unwanted plastique if they’d care to dispose of it safely?”

  “We could drop if over the Afghan mountains,” she suggested.

  “Great. You’re talking about carpet-bombing Afghanistan.”

  She chuckled then. “Hey, maybe that’s not such a bad idea.”

  We left the plastique where it was. The bowser finished refueling, and we got clearance and took off for the return leg to Kabul.

  * * *

  Lieutenant Dwight Rains popped his head over the parapet and immediately put it down again as a hail of bullets chipped pieces of stone that whizzed around his position.

  “Sergeant Mason, what’s the situation back there, are they holding them?”

  Vince Mason crawled over to speak to his officer. Mason was a ten-year veteran. He’d been through Iraq, and this was his second tour in Afghanistan. He had respect for Rains. The officer commanding the third platoon, C Company, 2nd of the 45th, US Infantry, meant well enough, but the guy was just too inexperienced for a situation like this one. They’d set out to travel from Kabul via Jalalabad to a town in Pakistan, outside Islamabad. Theirs was a humanitarian mission to collect a cargo of medical supplies with a group of medics and escort them to the stricken area. There’d been an outbreak of disease that was as yet unidentified, but it needed to be treated and contained as a matter of urgency. It should have been easy; collect the men and supplies, women too, there were two female nurses in the medical squad, and take them to the stricken town. They’d reached Jalalabad, loaded up their vehicles and helped the medics to board their APCs. Their transport should have been using the latest Strykers, heavily armored APCs, fast and effective against most IEDs and incoming rifle fire. There’d been a change of plans. The Allied force was under heavy attack, and instead, they’d been issued with M113s. The vehicles had been good, once up on a time. But they were Vietnam era, and fighting against the Vietcong they’d been very effective. But here in Afghanistan, they were only used for local transport. They were, in effect, a light transport truck. Out in the countryside, in the badlands, they were deathtraps.

  The Major had had a serious expression on his face, so why did Lieutenant Rains feel the man was sneering at him?

  “I’m sorry, Lieutenant, but every single one of our Strykers is being readied to roll out to search and destroy the fuckers who attacked us. It’s like fucking Tet out there, and I guess you know what happened back in Vietnam. I can’t spare a single one, so it’s the M113 or nothing, I’m afraid. They should function perfectly well as ambulances, and it’s not as if you’re going into combat, is it?”

  He left the ‘like real soldiers’ bit out, but Rains knew what he meant. He also knew there was no choice but to carry out his orders. They’d loaded up and moved out with the medics huddled in the lightly armored hulls, grateful for the comforting feeling of the steel that surrounded them. And the infantrymen, who knew better, tensed their bodies, waiting for the roar of the explosion that would rip into them or the heavy machine gun rounds that would perforate the hull, turning their vehicle into a blazing, corpse-filled coffin. And they muttered the infantryman’s prayer, ‘please, let it not be me’. The explosion, on the lower approaches to the Khyber Pass, had ripped apart the last vehicle in the column. They’d leapt out of their APCs, herding the medics to the relative safety of a nearby stone building, apparently a long abandoned police checkpoint. They’d left behind the bodies of eight of their comrades. The rest of them, thirty-one infantrymen, two doctors and six nurses were pinned down. Their transports were all smoking wrecks out on the road, destroyed by the withering fire the Afghans poured into them. Worst of all, the radios were in the vehicles, or had been before they were destroyed. So they kept the Taliban at bay, but for how long was anybody’s guess. And Mason could see that his officer hadn’t a clue about how to handle the situation. They were pinned down from both sides with no means of escape.

  “There’s no immediate threat, Lieutenant, but they could come at any time, who knows?”

  “In that case we’ll have to hold them,” the officer snapped at his sergeant. “Make sure that everyone is ready for the next attack.”

  “Oh, they’re ready, LT, they’re ready all right. And if the ragheads don’t attack, what then?”

  He waited for a reply. That was the problem. If they just sat and waited, sooner or later the Americans would have to come out. They’d be short of food and water; the Taliban were not fools. And when they came out, they’d be waiting to fall on them like a pack of dogs. “So what do you want us to do, Lieutenant?”

  Rains shook his head in misery. “I don’t know, Sergeant. I haven’t a fucking clue.”

  A soldier shouted suddenly. “Hey, Sarge, look, up there! A drone.”

  Every man in earshot looked up. Sure enough, a drone was slowly crossing the sky from south to north. It flew at a height of about five thousand feet, and low enough to have seen them if the operator was sharp and observant.

  “Do you think he saw us?” another man shouted.

  Rains and Mason glanced at each other, and both shared the same thought. “I sure as fuck hope so,” Rains muttered.

  “Amen to that,” his sergeant added.

  * * *

  Eight thousand miles away Master Sergeant Carol Wendelski sat down in front of her screen to start her shift. She was a wannabe fighter pilot, and when they’d turned her down for the flight crew, she’d volunteered for this assignment instead. At least it meant she had free time at home, to pursue her hobbies of writing a history of the gambling industry in Las Vegas, and even occasionally going to Sin City itself to play the tables. She grinned. What was the point of writing the book if you couldn’t sample some of what you were writing about at the same time? The operator she was relieving stood up and relinquished the chair. Corporal Vernon Munch gave her a nod of welcome. “It’s all yours, Carol. Try not to crash it.”

  “Yeah, yeah,” she acknowledged. She’d heard it all before, the cracks about women drivers. And pilots. “Anything doing?”

  “There could be, yeah. A group of our people is under attack up near the Pakistan frontier. I saw the action when the drone flew over. They know about it in Kabul, so I guess they’ll take care of it in good time, but they’ve got their own problems. The Taliban are attacking the major cities. It’s a major battle over there.”

  “Ok, what’s the state of our ordnance?”

  “We’re unarmed, sadly. In their wisdom, they decided to send her out with maximum fuel, which means no missiles. All we can do is to watch the fun. I guess you’ll see the coordinates in the nav computer when she flies past on the next leg.”

  “Ok, I’ll keep an eye on it,” she told him. Munch left the Ground Control Station, and she settled down to the long, monotonous task of looking down on a barren country eight thousand miles away.

  Chapter Six

  The revival of certain industries, the revival of agriculture, schools and hospitals... there is really no area in which Afghanistan does not require assistance.

  Hamid Karzai

  The President had pulled out of the meeting at the last moment, citing an emergency meeting with Treasury. General Mann wondered sometimes if they shouldn’t link the Treasury Department with FEMA these days. The economy was perpetually in crisis, and it seemed that never a day went by without total panic gripping the nation. He stood up as the Secretary of State walked into the room.

  “Ma’am,” he inclined his head.

  She gave him a frosty glance. “General, I’m getting reports from Afghanistan, and I don’t like what I’m hearing.”

  And good day to you, Ma’am, he thought. So there aren’t going to be any niceties today.

  “Which reports would they be?”

  “First off, your new policy of taking out the leaders. How’s it going? So far, I have no indications that there’s been any progress. None whatsoever.”<
br />
  “It’s early days yet. Give it time, Madame Secretary.”

  “Time we don’t have. You know that the President, indeed the whole country, wants out of that manure pile by the end of next year.”

  “We’re doing our best, Ma’am. We have to tread carefully. Lives are in danger here.”

  “General, every day you delay, lives are being lost, not merely in danger. You pressed for this action, so I suggest you see it through. No more delays.”

  He nodded. “I’ll get onto it as soon as I get back to the Pentagon, and I’ll tell them to accelerate the program.”

  “You do that. Keep me informed. The President is anxious to be certain that we don’t have another total fuckup on our hands.”

  “Ma’am, the political and military realities don’t always come together, we…”

  “In the President’s case, General, they do. He is also your Commander in Chief. Now, the next piece of bad news coming out of Afghanistan. My State Department tells me there are stories of drugs being shipped from Afghanistan to other parts of Asia and even to the US, coming in on military flights. What do you know?”

  He shrugged. “It’s the first I’ve heard. Drugs are always a problem. You know that. We can’t search every returning soldier to pat him down for drugs.”

  “General, I’m not talking about a couple of joints. This is a wholesale, multi-million dollar operation.”

  “Christ!” He was shaken. It was the stuff of nightmares, and the kind of story you often heard about the Vietnam War but assumed was a thing of the past. It was the kind of story that could destroy a soldier’s career, and he wasn’t without enemies in Washington, he knew that. “I know nothing of that, but believe me, I’ll get an investigation mounted right away. Do you have any ideas who’s behind it?”

  “I’m told our friends in Langley know more than they care to admit.”

  “CIA?”

  She nodded. “The CIA. I’ve no idea how true it is, but I want you to find out. Whoever is responsible, the President will want them hung out to dry for this. No exceptions. There’s a cell waiting for them in a Federal prison in some isolated part of the US.”

  Mann whistled. “It could be someone high level, and someone who could throw a lot of dirt.”

  “Not from twenty years in solitary confinement.”

  “So he means business.”

  “He does, yes. Find the bastard and bring him in, General.”

  “I don’t have full authority over the CIA, Ma’am,” he objected.

  “You do now, General. The President has issued a special order, giving you full powers to resolve this matter. The documents will go straight to your office.”

  He nodded. “I’ll do my best.”

  “You’ll do better than that, General. You’ll find out who is responsible and bring them to justice. The war on drugs is every bit as big as the war on terror. The President sees the distinct possibility of losing both of them.”

  “We’re not losing the war in Afghanistan. We’ve made some major gains,” he objected.

  She gave him a tired smile. “Yeah, I’ve looked at the military bulletins out of Vietnam during the late sixties, and they said exactly the same thing. I don’t know about the Taliban, but you can win this problem with the drugs shipments. See that you do. The President would even go as far as to find someone who could do the job if you fail.”

  He glared at her. “You don’t need to threaten me. I’ll get the job done.”

  She smiled a sweet, friendly smile. “I never doubted you, General. Now, the military situation, I’m getting reports of a Taliban build up. Some intelligence analysts predict a big Taliban push against some of our areas, particularly the main cities. What do you know?”

  He shrugged his shoulders. “It’s news to me. But I’ll check on it.”

  “Let me know what you find, General,” was her parting shot as she got up and left. “And let me know when you locate Mullah Omar.”

  He winced. “Yeah, you want me to carry your bags, Ma’am,” he muttered to her retreating back.

  * * *

  This time we were directed to the military terminal after we landed. The stands were crowded with aircraft, helicopters, transports, light armored APCs, troops doubling across the tarmac, Afghan civilians and military mingling with the chaos. A ground controller waved us to a stand next to a hangar. It was painted khaki like the others, but there were no unit designations, and nothing to indicate its purpose or who it belonged to. It didn’t take much imagination to work it out. We shut down the aircraft and made it secure, then dropped down the ladder. Luk carried his rifle. It was still assembled ready for use, and we all carried pistols in holsters. Somehow, it didn’t seem out of place here. In fact, there were no Europeans or Americans who didn’t carry a weapon of some sort. A tired looking guy came out of the hangar and approached. He held out his hand.

  “Hi, I’m Roy Waverley. I’m the manager of this operation. Welcome to Loonytown.”

  I grinned and held out my hand. He shook hands with all three of us, and I gave him our names.

  “So you work for Joe Ashford?”

  He grimaced. “Yeah, that about sums it up. Joe called earlier. You’re to fly a cargo out to Islamabad in the morning, so I guess you guys may as well get some shut-eye in the meantime. I gather you’ve been pretty busy.”

  “We’ve run around the place, yeah. So what is this, another dawn departure?”

  He looked slightly embarrassed. “Actually, I’d like you to get underway before then. Kind of get into the air before the place starts to wake up. Can you be here for four in the morning and wheels up by five?”

  I hesitated. Why did he look so strange? “Sure, we can do that, but I’d like to know the reason why. What’s so important about leaving in the dark?”

  He fiddled with some change in his pocket, kicked up some dust and looked around. He finally came to a decision. “Look, Joe sends these cargoes all over the place, and he has a kind of understanding. We earn three times the pay of anyone else doing similar work. In return, we don’t ask any questions. I’m not saying there’s anything illegal going on, of course.”

  We all smiled. “Of course not,” Rachel replied. “But we need to have an idea what we’re carrying. It’s our asses after all. Is it drugs, locally grown opium?”

  His embarrassment turned to fear. “For Christ’s sake, don’t say stuff like that, not if you want to get out of here in one piece. Just let it go.”

  I glanced at Luk and Rachel. They both nodded.

  “Ok, Roy, we’ll be here at four.”

  “I’ll put the coffee on.” He grinned, trying to ease the tension that we all felt. Running drugs was a passport to hell, and something I’d avoided up till now. The involvement of the CIA should have made me feel easier about it, but it didn’t. It made me feel worse. We were about to leave to make out way to the hotel when all hell broke loose.

  The explosions were the first surprise. Roy Waverley was just going back inside the hangar. He turned and shouted to us, “Mortars! Get yourselves under cover!”

  We looked across the airfield. A mortar shell had scored a direct hit on a helicopter, and there was just a blazing ruin where seconds before there had been a functional flying machine. I couldn’t see what kind of shelter we could head for that would keep us safe from the incoming mortars. Another shell landed, and this time if just missed a huge C5 Lockheed Galaxy transport aircraft. Already, a pall of smoke was spreading across the airfield, but I could still see the crew huddling behind an aircraft tractor. For some reason, I thought how useless and pointless their action was, when their vast, multi-million dollar aircraft lay at the mercy of the Taliban attack. There was the sound of keening in the air, shouts and warlike screams, and I focused on an area about half a mile away. The perimeter fence had been breached, and a horde of black-turbaned men was pouring through it, firing as they ran. The Galaxy crew saw them and started to run, but one of them fell, brought down by a burst o
f fire from an enemy assault rifle. I swiveled around to see how the Americans were responding. It looked patchy, and a group of MPs were hurtling towards the enemy. Their jeep-mounted machine gun was already blazing away, scything through the attackers. But they were too few, and too late. The Taliban attackers were growing numbers, and they started to fan out across the airfield for what looked like an intended head-on attack. It struck me that I was stood immobile, doing nothing while the battle built up in momentum. Already, US private security men, infantry and Afghan National Army sentries were starting to rush out and take up defensive positions. The air was filled with the whine of helicopter engines starting to spool up, and it occurred to me that our precious Twin Otter was in a position of maximum danger. I turned to Rachel and Luk.

  “The aircraft, we’re getting out of here. Get aboard!”

  I was already running and almost vaulted up into the cabin. Rachel followed, and Luk came last, pulling up the ladder. Rachel helped him close the cargo door while I ran forward and began the engine start procedure. The port engine started to spool up, caught and idled. I started the starboard engine and saw Rachel slide into the seat beside me.

  “You’d better tell them what we’re planning,” I shouted at her above the noise of the engines warming up. “We don’t want them to think the insurgents have taken control of the aircraft.”

  She called up the tower.

  “Can any of them fly, do you think, these people?”

  “They managed it on 911.”

  She nodded grimly. The tower had replied and gave us emergency clearance. The controller sounded frantic. I guessed he was undecided about evacuating the control tower, a prime target, or staying on duty to help some of the aircraft escape.

  “Keep your eyes open, Helene Air. There’s a lot of unauthorized aircraft movement out there today.”

  Rachel and I exchanged smiles, but I thanked him for the warning. Half a dozen helicopters floated into the air about a quarter of a mile in front of us, and one of them was immediately brought down by a missile or rocket. The others screamed away into the distance, out of immediate danger. Luk watched them, wide eyed.