Devil's Guard- The Complete Series Box Set

by Eric Meyer

  “Understood. But you know Rains will already have called them.”

  “Yeah. Let them come and saturate bomb an abandoned village. We’ll be halfway to Yaluk, underneath the mountain in the tunnel.”

  He smiled then. “Yes, I like it. I’d suggest we pull the vehicles back from the expected attack site. Five hundred yards back from the village should do it.”

  I could hardly believe what he was saying. “They surely wouldn’t target their own vehicles. There could be soldiers inside!”

  “Are you prepared to bet on that?” He looked grim and hard. “It happened to me once before. So-called friendly army saturation bombed our position, and I lost half my men. Never again.”

  “Were they American?”

  “No. French.” His face relaxed. “But they could have been any nationality. Soldiers are the same the world over. They have fixed objectives, and they’ll usually use whatever force they have at their disposal to reach their objectives.”

  I thanked him and called up Rains on the radio.

  “We should laager our vehicles five hundred yards outside the village.”

  “Yeah, I’ve already given the order, Max. We’re about to move out now. Is this guy in the village itself?”

  “No, we’ll need to go in on foot. He’s outside the village.”

  “Got it. We’re moving out now.”

  I watched the puff of smoke as his driver gunned the engine and drove back out of the village to the road. Our driver followed and they parked their vehicles in laager, just as we had outside of Jalalabad. Rains detailed one man to remain with each vehicle then assembled his men ready to move out. I noticed him look up at the sky and smiled. “We’re ready to move, Hoffman. Do you want to take the point? It’s your show.”

  “I’ll do that, Art, would you and your men travel right behind us. Dwight, you can take the rear. Is that ok?”

  He nodded. I could see he wasn’t too happy to be in the position that would put him closest to whatever action the General had planned, but he nodded his agreement and gave the orders to his sergeant. Vince Mason issued the orders and got his men into formation, ready to move. The tough sergeant was no fool, and his men were spread out in a loose spearhead formation, far enough away from each other not to present an easy target to an enemy, but close enough to give each other supporting fire. Mason himself took the position at the rear. I wondered if he knew what Kabul had planned, maybe not. Probably only Rains was privy to that information.

  “Max, up there!”

  I followed the direction of Art’s gaze. A drone banked lazily in the sky. It was perhaps five miles away and about three thousand feet high.

  “I see it. I hope I’m wrong, and it’s just an unarmed Predator on a routine reconnaissance.”

  “Yeah, and my mother was the Queen of England,” he returned grimly. “I’d bet my pension it’s a Reaper, and carrying a full weapon load.”

  I looked at him. “I wasn’t aware that mercenaries had pension plans?”

  He shrugged. “Well no, we don’t. But I’ve never liked to gamble.”

  Rachel heard his sardonic comment, and we both laughed. If it was a Reaper, it was early. I just prayed that whoever flew it was patient enough to wait until we’d cleared the area.

  * * *

  Master-Sergeant Carol Wendelski touched the joystick and brought the MQ-9 back to the straight and level. She had the village in sight, and now all she needed was a target. Her orders were clear. She was to use the Hellfires, of which she carried a full load on the drone’s hardpoints, and not to use her ace-in-the-hole, the laser guided bomb, until she had cleared the order with local control, Kabul. She could see the Strykers, which meant ISAF, so she had to be very careful. Where was the enemy? Corporal Vernon Munch stood at her shoulder, watching. He was due off shift, and he’d been flying a Predator for the past four hours, patrolling the skies between Kabul and Helmand. He should have gone home, but the buzz in the Ground Control Station was too much, and he’d stayed to watch.

  “I have to see this, Sarge. I’ve never seen one of those laser guided babies fired in anger. Not yet, anyway.”

  His Sergeant kept her eyes glued to the screen. “I’ve only done it in practice, Vernon, on the simulator. I don’t even know if I’ll get clearance to use it yet. It’s Hellfires only on my command, and they’ll let me know when I can toss the big one. Hold up, there’s something coming in from Kabul.”

  She listened intently, and her eyebrows narrowed in puzzlement. “Could you repeat that, Sir. You want me to launch the laser guided bomb on your command, even if it endangers our own people?”

  She waited for the reply. Then, “I understand, Sir. But it could mean inviting a friendly fire incident. Are you certain about that order?”

  The reply left her in no doubt as to their intentions.

  “Yes, Sir, I understand, crystal. I shall fire immediately on your order. Creech out.”

  Ok, it was obvious what they wanted. And what they intended. But it wasn’t obvious to her how to play this one. She had a sneaking suspicion that she was about to receive an illegal order. One that she could obey, and be hung out to dry in the subsequent furor. Or disobey, and be put through the ringer, all the way to court martial. Or was there a third way?”

  * * *

  I led the way through the village, towards the tunnel. When I turned around, I could see Dwight Rains looking around with an uneasy expression on his face. A few yards from the entrance to the tunnel, I slowed and waited for his men to catch up. He came up with his Sergeant, wearing a puzzled expression.

  “What’s the deal, Hoffman? Where are we headed? There’s no one here.”

  “Lieutenant, would you follow me into the tunnel. Art, you take the rear, we’re going underground.”

  “Sure, we’ll be here,” he acknowledged and winked at me, enjoying the conspiracy.

  We entered the tunnel, Rachel, Luk and Najela in the front with me, and Rains following with his men. About five hundred yards in, there was an open space where the tunnel widened into a natural cavern. I called a halt and told Rains I needed to talk.

  “I’m sorry, Lieutenant, but I deceived you. Mullah Omar isn’t anywhere near the village.”

  “The hell you say! You mean you’ve led us all this way for nothing?”

  “No, not for nothing. He’s not far away, but not where I said.”

  I explained my belief that General Westwood would launch a bombing raid as soon as he knew the target.

  “You can’t think he’d drop bombs on top of us, Hoffman? The man’s a tough soldier, but he’s not a homicidal warlord.”

  “Perhaps you’re right. What message did you send him?”

  His eyes darted away then came back to me. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

  “Come on, Rains. You know as well as I do that he wouldn’t allow you on this mission without making sure you kept in contact. What did you say?”

  His hesitation was brief. “I sent the coordinates of that ruined village, which was all. If you’re right, it’s about to be flattened, but I don’t hear any bombs dropping.”

  He was right. There was only silence in the tunnel, no loud explosions, and no shuddering vibrations as the earth shook to the detonation of high explosives. I wondered for a few moments if I was wrong, but only for a few moments.

  * * *

  She’d lost sight of the soldiers. One moment they were visible in the village, moving through the buildings, checking for enemy activity or IEDs, she presumed. The last she saw of them was when they were close to a heap of rocks at the foot of a nearby hill that formed the southernmost border of the village. When she’d brought the Reaper around again they’d gone, but she’d no idea where. Back to the village, or somewhere else, but where? Her headphones crackled, and she listened intently.

  “Creech, this is Kabul. Are you over the target?”

  So it was a target now, not a village. Of course, in the post operation report, it would sou
nd much better, colder, more military; a target, and something to be hit, to be destroyed.

  “That’s affirmative, Sir.”

  “Confirm the location of our troops. Are they in sight?”

  “No, Sir, I cannot see them.”

  “Roger that. You have permission to fire, do you understand, permission to launch a single GBU-12 Paveway laser guided bomb on that village? Flatten it for us, Master Sergeant.”

  “But, Sir, I can’t confirm that our troops are clear of the area.”

  “You have a fire order, Master Sergeant. Do it, now!”

  She sighed. She’d seen the soldiers disappear to the south of the ruins, and she could give them a chance. She sighted the laser target designator to the north of the buildings and pressed the fire button. There was brief spurt of smoke and flames as the rocket motor fire, propelling the bomb towards its target. Seconds later, it impacted in a huge explosion as debris was thrown skywards; rocks, earth, lumps of wood and rusty old iron used to patch the roofs of the decaying buildings, but as far as she could tell, no bodies, no torn scraps of uniforms or equipment. Thank Christ for that. Except that she knew it was a wasted shot, there was nothing down there. Whichever Taliban warband they were attempting to take out, they were nowhere near. But neither was her side. They’d be pissed that she’d skewed the shot, but that was tough. She had one GBU-12 Paveway laser guided bomb left on the rails, now how could she use it to inflict the maximum damage on the enemy?

  * * *

  The blast brought down a shower of rocks and stones near the entrance to the tunnel, and a mass of small pieces of rock nearer to where we waited. A huge cloud of dust swirled around us, blotting out our vision, so that it was as if we were in one of the fabled London peasoupers; the fogs that blanketed the city during Victorian times. Several of the men started to edge further away from the tunnel entrance where the explosion had occurred. Rachel held my hand tightly, more a woman and less a tough fighter pilot now that we were inside a dark cavern, waiting for the roof to collapse and bury us alive. The dust eventually settled, and we were able to see again in the beams of the flashlights the soldiers carried. Rains was frozen, unmoving. I borrowed a flashlight and looked at him closely, shining the beam into his eyes. They were wide, dilated in the abrupt shock caused by the explosion, and the knowledge that everything he’d believed about his army, about the honor and principles that were its guiding light, had just been shattered. At last, he’d left West Point behind for good and planted his feet firmly in the soil of Afghanistan. I pitied him the terrible culture shock, but there was not time for pity. War was a pitiless occupation, and we were stuck in the middle of it. I looked at his sergeant.

  “Are any of your men injured?”

  He shook his head. “I don’t think so. It was just the, er, surprise, I guess you’d call it.”

  “You’ll need a couple of men to look after the Lieutenant. I think he’s out of it for now.”

  “Yeah, you’re right. Johnson, Venner, come and look after the LT.”

  Two PFCs came forward. “Is he injured, Sarge?” one of them asked, a pale, pimply youth of no more than nineteen years of age. He looked half starved, his helmet oversized on his thin face. Too young and frail to fight, except for his eyes. They were eyes that had seen combat, eyes that measure, assessed and then acted in a split second. I’d noticed those eyes many times in the past few days.

  “Nah, he’s just a bit shaken. Keep him at the back of the column.”

  “ I assume we’re going forward, Sir?”

  “We are, yes. There’s no going back.”

  “Why’s that, Sarge?”

  Vince Mason nodded towards the direction we’d come from. The roof was down and the entrance blocked.

  “We’re trapped, oh Christ, we’ll never get out of here!” the other trooper shouted. His companion sniggered. “You crazy fool, Johnson, we just go out the other end, like we did before.”

  I interrupted them. “We need to get moving. Make sure Rains stay in the rear. Art, when we get near the tunnel entrance, your men need to be ready for anything. That bomb will have alerted them that something’s going down.”

  “I hear you, Max. We’ll be ready.”

  We started again moving along the tunnel, crawling where the roof got lower and lower and then we were back on our feet, and I quickened the pace to the end. When we saw the daylight, Art and three of his men overtook us and went ahead. As we came to the end, he turned to me.

  “It’s all clear. How do you want to play this?”

  “You’re not going to like this, but we need to split our forces. I want about half the men to go to the north and half to the south. We’ll leave four soldiers here with Rains. They can stay out of sight inside the tunnel entrance.

  “It’s going to be a long walk back now that they’ve brought the roof in. I’d guess about fifty miles, and we won’t make that in less than two days in this terrain.”

  “No, that’s why I’m going to radio the Strykers to start heading this way. They’ll get here in two or three hours. That’s time enough for us to do what we have to do and move out.”

  He looked chagrined. “Christ, I’d forgotten the Strykers. I must be getting old.”

  I laughed. “Not old, Art. You’re just not used to that kind of luxury.”

  I called up the infantryman who carried the radio and used it to contact the Strykers. The corporal in charge was dubious at first about taking orders from me, so I called Sergeant Mason to come over. He put on the headset.

  “Who’s this? Corporal O’Shea? Right, Mr. Hoffman is in charge, you know that. So get your ass into the APC and get its wheels turning.”

  “Hold on, Sergeant. Tell him to stop five miles short of Yaluk. We’ll call them in when we’re ready.”

  He passed on the order, ended the call and looked at me. “Anything else?”

  “Yes, get your men up and ready to move off. We’re going in. Take your squad south, we’re going north to encircle the village and then move in.”

  “You’ve got it, Sir.”

  Chapter Thirteen

  This is a government based on nothing because of the continuing presence of foreign troops in Afghanistan. Karzai's call to the Taliban to come to the government has no meaning. He became president through fraud and lies.

  Taliban spokesman Zabiullah Mujahid

  “What’s the story so far, Charlie?”

  General Westwood put the question to his intelligence officer without looking way from his wall map.

  “We’re not making much progress, General. One Paveway hit on that village, but by the looks of it there was nothing there. Hoffman’s team has disappeared.”

  “What are they up to? Soldiers don’t disappear.”

  “I’ve no idea, Sir.”

  “Damn. That Mullah Omar is almost within my hands. I can smell him. Are the backup forces on standby?”

  “Everything’s ready. We’ve a squadron of Deltas. You may have met them. They’re the Night Stalkers. The guys are waiting on the tarmac, waiting to get their choppers airborne.”

  “What are they flying?”

  “Little Birds, General. There are ten of them, forty Deltas in all.”

  “What about ground forces?”

  “Vance Everard is already on his way to Jalalabad, and they’ve been shadowing Hoffman’s’ mission at long range since they started. There are twenty Strykers, about three hundred aboard.”

  Westwood grunted. Where the hell was Hoffman, where was he headed? He pored over the map, checking, rechecking, and making calculations. Then it hit him.

  “Charlie, that village where they pulled back to after that attack when Rains was hit, what’s it called?”

  “Yaluk, General.”

  “Yeah, Yaluk, that’s right. Hoffman was playing us for suckers. I don’t know what his game is, but they’re headed to Yaluk.”

  “But General, that’s another fifty miles and they’re on foot.”

  “It didn’t
take them that long to get there last time. There must be a tunnel under the mountain. That’s where they’ve gone. Through a tunnel to Yaluk.”

  “Are you sure, Sir?”

  “Damn right. Get onto them, and get the Deltas airborne. Tell Vance Everard to put his foot on the gas. Send his company in. They’re headed to Yaluk, and you can get onto Creech. I want that Reaper overhead with a feed to this headquarters. This time we’ll nail that bastard Omar once and for all.”

  * * *

  I led the group to the north of the village. Luk and Najela were with me. We needed her knowledge of the local terrain and Luk to interpret her sign language. Rachel was there too, despite me trying to get her to travel with Art Schramm. I tried to persuade her to stay in the center of the group of mercenaries, but she’d refused.

  “I’m coming with you.”

  I didn’t argue further. She was a woman, but she was also ex-military and knew how to handle herself and her weapons in a scrap. I could see Sergeant Mason leading the infantry towards the south of the village, and so far we’d hadn’t encountered any of the enemy. Three hundred yards ahead of us lay the village itself, and two hundred yards further the stone hut where I knew that Omar stayed.

  “What do you think?” I asked Art.

  He stood next to me. I’d called him forward to decide on how to move in. His usual tactic of hurtling in, all guns blazing, was not what I wanted for these villagers who had done so much to help us.

  “You mean other than an all out assault?”

  “That’s not going to happen, Art. They were good to us when we needed them.”

  He nodded. “That’s right. But Omar is certain to have sentries out, and they could start shooting at us anytime.”

  I saw Najela signing to Luk, and her hands were moving frantically, like semaphores. Luk turned to me.

  “She says she will go into the village and see if there are any enemy soldiers lying in wait.”