Devil's Guard- The Complete Series Box Set

by Eric Meyer

  I didn’t like it, but it was her village.

  “Ok, Luk, but you go with her and protect her.”

  “I was going anyway,” he smiled.

  They walked quickly towards the silent mass of stone huts and disappeared around a corner. At first I thought the place was empty, and I had a feeling of dread that I’d led them here for nothing. Then two children appeared, playing with an old motor tire. It was slightly incongruous. We were watching with a force that could bring down overwhelming military might on their tiny community, and yet here they were, playing as if there never had been any threat to their peace and security. So the village was still occupied. I turned to Art.

  “Remember, no massive shows of force. We don’t want those children hurt.”

  He shook his head. “No, of course not. We’ll be careful. When do we go in?”

  That was the next question, whether our main target was still in residence, and if so, how to tackle the task of taking him alive.

  “Let’s wait a little longer, and see if anyone appears.”

  A few minutes later, we were rewarded with the sight of a bearded tribesman carrying a water container to the village well. That was unusual. It was the norm here for such work to be done by women. But what was significant was that this man didn’t just carry a water container. He also had a Kalashnikov assault rifle slung over his shoulder, the iconic AK-47, together with crossed belts over his shoulders bearing pouches for spare clips. He also wore a black turban. Everything about him screamed Taliban insurgent, so they were keeping a guard post in the village. I whispered to Art.

  “I think we’re in business. The stone hut I saw Mullah Omar in is over there, a couple of hundred yards from the center of the village.”

  I pointed it out to him. “I suggest we circle around behind and rush it when we’re a few yards away.”

  He nodded. “We’re ready.”

  At that point everything started to go wrong. My intention was to make a clean, incisive attack on the area where Omar’s house stood, so we’d stay away from the main village and avoid any threat to the inhabitants. Sergeant Mason was waiting for the order to go, but I saw a figure running towards them, several hundred yards away. Even at that distance, I could see it was Rains.

  He was shouting, “Attack, attack, go in and get him before he escapes!”

  The fighter with the water container looked up in alarm and dropped it. He unslung his AK-47 and cocked the action. Then he released a burst that threw up chips of stone near to where the infantry were milling, uncertain whether to obey their sergeant’s order to wait or their lieutenant to move in. The military has a hierarchy, officer’s trump sergeants, and they came to that decision automatically, as they were trained to do. They charged.

  Mason was running alongside, them, shouting, “Get back, and get under cover.”

  But they ignored him. They were committed. Their blood was up, and they were following a legitimate order. I cursed the men at the tunnel for letting him go, but it was no time for recriminations.

  “Max, look!”

  I followed Rachel’s gaze. Four black turbaned fighters had materialized, but these were armed with RPG-7s, the shoulder launched missiles that were the preferred weapon of Islamic terrorists worldwide. Two of them launched; one missile went wide, and the other detonated close to Rains’ men. I saw them diving for cover.

  “Hoffman, we have to go,” Art shouted.

  “You’re right. Lead your men in to help Rains’ people. I’ll go into the village and try to locate Luk and Najela.”

  He led his men off without a word, charging in the direction of the fighters with the missile launchers.

  I shouted at Rachel. “Let’s go, we need to find Luk and Najela.”

  She followed me on a curving run that took us into the village, keeping us out of sight for most of the way from the missileers. I heard the sound of automatic gunfire. First there were only two assault rifles, and then they were joined by many others.”

  “I wish I knew who was firing,” I shouted at Rachel. “We don’t know yet how many enemies there are.”

  “They taught us to hear the difference,” she panted as we ran. The slower rate of fire, it’s a deeper sound as they shoot, are the AK-47s.”

  “There seems to be more of those,” I replied.

  “Yeah, one hell of a lot more.”

  We rounded a corner and ran into Luk and Najela. Luk had his sniper rifle ready to use. He stared at me as we rushed up.

  “What’s going on? It sounds like a war has broken out.”

  “That’s about right, yeah. They saw us coming, so we’ll need to fight it out with them.”

  “Do you have any idea of their numbers?”

  “No, none.”

  Najela signed rapidly. Luke turned to me to interpret.

  “She says there are more than a hundred fighters. Most of them were staying in a cave on the hillside just above the village, so as not to attract attention from enemy drones. But they will be on their way here.”

  The firing was increasing by the second, and a full-scale firefight was developing.

  “I think we can work that one out for ourselves, Luk.” I turned to Rachel. “You need to get her somewhere safe. She’s too important to risk out in the open.” I saw her open her mouth to argue, but I overruled her. “Just do as I say, and try to keep the villagers safe if you can.”

  “Where are you going?” she asked, not moving.

  “We’ve got a battle to fight, Rachel. Now get her under cover.”

  I left them and Luk, and I headed for the firing. We reached the edge of the main village square and joined Art’s men who were pinned down by heavy incoming machine gun fire.

  “They tell me there are more than a hundred enemy fighters,” I shouted to him. “Do you know what Rains’ men are doing?”

  He pointed to a larger building down a side street. “Last I saw they were pinned down behind that place. I only hope to Christ…”

  Before he could speak, two rockets hit the building in quick succession, and when the smoke cleared it was almost flattened. We could hear the cry of at least one soldier who’d been hit, but there was no time to go and attend to the casualties.

  “Art, those men, we have to draw the enemy off them, and give them a chance to regroup.”

  “That bastard Rains! They’re good troops, and he led them straight into trouble.”

  “Forget Rains. There’s only one way to do this.”

  “What’s that?”

  “Your way. Straight in and hit them hard.”

  He gave me a broad smile. “That’s my way of thinking.” He turned to his men. “We’re going in fast, are you all ready?”

  A chorus of shouts announced their enthusiasm. These men did this for a living. The money was good, but what drove them were situations like this, and I guessed that some were as addicted to the adrenalin rush of battle as a junkie to his crack pipe. Then Art leapt up, and they followed, running at breakneck speed straight for the enemy, but not all of them. Art had deployed four of his men with light machine guns to give covering fire. Luk joined them, shoulder to shoulder, aimed and firing his sniper rifle at high speed. It could have been another Charge of the Light Brigade, magnificent but foolhardy. But if there was a massacre, it was the enemy who fell, not the mercenaries. I ran behind them and got caught up in the adrenaline-fueled chase. One man next to me went down. I bent to him, but his companion shouted, “Leave him, he’s ok. We need to kill these bastards first. We’ll worry about the wounded afterwards.”

  I nodded and ran on.

  We were still a hundred yards from the stone hut that was temporary home to Mullah Omar, and the Taliban were dug in fifty yards back from that. We threw ourselves through the gaping holes in the stone building that stood directly opposite. Art was already deploying his men to bring their fire to bear on the enemy. I ran over to him.

  “Why have we stopped, Art? We’re nowhere near the hut.”

&nbs
p; “Look!”

  He gestured to the ground that lay in front of us. It was open ground, and the Taliban had been crossing it to intercept our force. Art’s shooters had killed a score of them, and their bodies lay strewn over the ground.

  “The reason we killed them so easily was because of the flat, open nature of the ground. If we try and cross it, they’ll do the same to us.”

  “You’re right. They still outnumber us by more than two to one, and we don’t know yet about Rains’ casualties. I need to send someone back to bring his men forward.”

  “Max, they’re coming!”

  It was Luk who’d shouted. I searched the ground ahead of us.

  “No, behind us. Sergeant Mason, he’s bringing the men forward to join us.”

  I looked, and there they were, Rains’ platoon of infantry, dashing forward to join us. Mason slid in next to me and grinned.

  “I thought it was time we did some good.”

  “What about Rains?”

  He shook his head. “The Lieutenant’s dead. He was the only fatality. A couple of the men took minor flesh wounds but nothing to stop them fighting. At least Rains is out of our hair.”

  “Forget Rains. We’ll record he was hit when leading his men into action.”

  He gave me a scornful look.

  “It’s too late for him,” I continued. “But at least his family won’t suffer.”

  He stared at me silently for a few moments then nodded. “I copy that. I guess the poor bastard just wasn’t ready for all the flak that was thrown at him over here. What’s the next move?”

  I was about to reply when there was a burst of firing and bullets zipped around our position. They weren’t coming from directly in front of us, to the east, but this time from the north. Reinforcements!

  “Luk, I’m worried about those missiles. Cover our front with your sniper rifle. Sergeant Mason, could you deploy your men to cover the north. We need to find out how many of them we’re dealing with. What’s the situation with machine guns?”

  “We have two, M249 light machine guns. They’ll keep their heads down.”

  “Good, get them firing as fast as possible. We don’t want them overrunning our position.”

  He gave orders to his men, and they moved their positions to cover the north side. Almost immediately, they began to fire, blunting the new attack that had materialized from the north of the village. I turned to Art Schramm.

  “Art, we’ve got to face the obvious. We can’t defend this position. They can pin us down here with machine gun and rocket fire, and we’ve nowhere to go. It seems to me we either break out or stay here and die. The only other alternative is a miracle.”

  “You’re right. A frontal attack will result in casualties, and a lot of the men are going to get hit.”

  I checked my watch. We had several hours to go until darkness. It was going to be a difficult choice to make. There was a renewed burst of heavy gunfire. I strained to make out the direction it had come from, but everything was covered in a thick cloud of smoke that had swirled down around us as if by magic.

  “Well if that don’t beat all,” Art exclaimed.

  “What?” I still couldn’t see anything.

  “It’s the damned cavalry, and in the nick of time, as always. It’s a flock of Little Birds, coming down on us.”

  “Little Birds?”

  Then I saw them, small, agile, attack helicopters. They swooped in, peeling off one by one in formation to fire a salvo of rockets into the enemy position. They carried on down, firing the twin thirty millimeter chain guns mounted on a stubby wing either side of the fuselage. I could see the troopers clinging to the cockpit, two to each side, heavily armed and heavily armored. They were waiting to land and deploy, and we all knew that hell would break loose the second their boots touched the ground. From below, they seemed like mythical lords of war, watching the results of their savage gunfire on the enemy below. It was cold, clinical, dispassionate killing. It was magnificent. The Taliban were jumping to their feet, attempting to fire on the helicopter borne troops. It was no time to sit and do nothing. I jumped up, shouting at the men.

  “Luk, keep pouring it onto those bastards. The rest of you, we’re attacking. Sergeant Mason, take out those enemy to the north. Machine gunners, cease fire as soon as we move off unless you have a clear field of fire. We’ll take down those bastards in front of us. Let’s go!”

  I ran out, uncaring about who would follow me. I knew they’d be there, right behind. We flung ourselves down in a narrow ditch that crossed the open ground. We were less than fifty yards from the enemy, and now they’d seen us some had started to fire in our direction. I waited for an opportunity for us to start forward again, scanning the enemy position, watching them try desperately to fight off the assault from both sides. The tide had turned. They’d been part of a two-sided assault on us, but now they were on the receiving end, and already the panic had begun. It was time to finish it.

  “Max, behind you!”

  I whirled. We’d climbed the rocky ledge the enemy were using as a barricade and jumped down amongst them. I fired again and again. It was as if time had slowed, and there was no universe except for this tiny place, where expectations became a brutal binary reality of life or death. A fighter had just tossed down his assault rifle, out of ammunition, and he was jumping at me with a huge blade in his hand, a richly ornamented Afghan fighting knife.

  I knew that in societies like this these blades were handed down from father to son, as a sign of adulthood. Some were not functional, and purely used for symbolic, ritual purposes. Others were savage killing blades. I realized at once that this was the kind of weapon I faced. I dodged to the side and missed the first killing stroke. He back swung the knife, and I pulled the trigger, but my gun had jammed. I used the rifle to ward off the blow, but his blade slid down the barrel and the stock, slashing into my hand. It felt unreal. In the midst of the high tech action, where men fought with machine guns, assault rifles and missiles, I was in a fight with a man using a weapon that could have been made two thousand years ago. I felt the pain as the blade cut in. The man smiled and lifted the knife again for the killing stroke. He swung down, and I kicked him hard in the groin. His breath left his body in a searing scream of pain, and he hesitated for that one moment; it was enough. I still had my Colt .45 in the holster, and in one fast, smooth action, I ripped it out, levered off the safety, then for a second, a whirlwind of images flooded my mind, and I saw the face of that Vietnamese. Then I cocked the pistol and fired. The heavy bullet caused him to stagger, but he still made another lunge, and I fired again, two more shots. This time there was no more resistance. He doubled over in agony and fell to the ground, blood pouring from his wounds. In that moment, I knew I’d thrown off some of the chains that shackled me to that image of long ago, on the Vietnamese border. It had been a question of life or death, and I’d chosen life. I was also certain that the decision I’d made all those years ago was based on the same, fundamental premise. He’d meant to kill me, and I’d chosen to live.

  It was time to get back into the fight. I looked down. My hand was bleeding badly, but not enough to stop me fighting. I picked up a dropped rifle, a Soviet AK-47, distinctive with its banana magazine. I’d no idea if it was loaded, but when I pointed it at a pair of insurgents hacking towards me, a stream of bullets came out of the barrel, and they fell dead. There was the sound of screaming and shouting. I looked up, and my blood chilled. We’d hacked clean through the line of Taliban, but a second wave was coming in.

  “Take cover,” I shouted. “Get behind the rocks, and pick them off as they come.”

  The men jumped behind cover as the new assault came at us. One of the men shouted, “Holy shit! Look at them go.”

  I looked around. For a moment I thought even more enemy had appeared to join the battle. But this time the Gods of War were smiling on us. The Delta Force, they’d deployed from the helicopters and begun their fearsome killing work. They came in on the run,
fast, expert, sliding from cover to cover, each man protecting his partner, laying down a lethal curtain of fire as they attacked. Pure poetry, at least, of the efficient, killing kind. The enemy had formed a defensive curtain around the area where Mullah Omar’s hut stood. I still hadn’t seen him, but he was here. These Taliban were fighting ferociously for one reason only, to protect their leader. The Deltas forced them back, and they retreated over a carpet of their dead and wounded. The assault never let up. The Little Birds poured down fire from their miniguns, decimating the robed ranks, whilst the Deltas pressed forward, pushing them further and further back. We came in behind them, although there was little we could do, except make certain that there were no survivors waiting to hit the Deltas from behind when they’d gone past. Slowly the battle wound down as the fight ascended the rocky slope above the village. Then it was as if we’d hit a brick wall. The enemy staged a last stand, manning a defensive pile of loose boulders and shale that stretched across the narrow pathway leading into a cleft between the rocks. Bullets and rockets hammered towards us, and we dived for cover. I knew instinctively what was happening. These were the sacrificial rearguard, making a suicidal last stand while their leader escaped. And there was nothing we could do about it. The gunships zipped around like angry bees, unable to locate a target. And we still had a formidable blocking force to fight before we could even begin to give chase. In that moment, I knew that we’d won, and yet we’d lost. And then something happened. Something strange. The question in all of our minds was Mullah Omar. Was he ever here, or was it all for nothing?

  “Max!” I looked around. Luk had been using his sniper scope to spot for the enemy. “He’s there, look!”

  I gazed in the direction he was pointing and focused my binoculars. Just where the rocks parted to give way for the dark cleft that led into them, a group of men stood; insurgents, Taliban. They were staring down at us, and almost daring us to take a shot at them. In the center of them stood a man dressed entirely in black. A patch covered one of his eyes. Mullah Omar. The rest of our force stopped to look, and we all looked up at our main foe. It was like a frozen tableau that lasted for a couple of minutes, a frozen moment in time. No one fired, as if it was some ancient battlefield courtesy, facing the enemy after a hard battle. Then there was a flurry of movement, and they were gone.