by Mark Romang
Battle Scream
By Mark Romang
Copyright © Mark Romang 2013
Kindle Edition
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events or locales or persons, living or dead is entirely coincidental.
Cover design by Robin Ludwig, Inc.
Author’s Note
A human cannot physically fight a demon. The only way to defend against a demonic attack is to put on the full armor of God as described in Ephesians 6:10-18, and to pray. Submit yourselves, then, to God. Resist the devil, and he will flee from you. James 4:7. But for the sake of writing an action-packed suspense novel, I temporarily altered the rules of engagement. I hope you understand and forgive me.
Prologue
Eastern Afghanistan
Date: Classified
“This mountain presents challenges like no other peak in the Hindu Kush. Even the Pashtuns avoid it. They think Allah has cursed it,” Navy Lieutenant Commander Jonathon Stoltzman told his SEALS earlier at the mission briefing.
Petty Officer First Class Andrew Maddix didn’t believe in curses until today.
Bleak and forbidding, the windswept mountain would never grace a postcard or calendar. Its towering spires poked into the clouds like deformed fingers reaching up from a collapsed grave. Swift and sudden death often visited this glacier-carved mountain, and only a few hardy goat herders ventured out onto its lonely ramparts.
Inside the mountain’s belly, a manmade tunnel snaked westward for nearly ten miles. Equipped with electricity, a fifty watt light bulb hung from the low ceiling every one-hundred paces and provided murky illumination. Maddix and his SEAL fire team penetrated the cavern using deliberate movements designed more for stealth than speed. Step, stop, listen, and repeat. They didn’t want to betray their presence. The Taliban warlord patrolling this hardscrabble region in the Hindu Kush dispensed cruelty at the tiniest provocation.
Maddix pulled rear security for the four-man team. Ahead of him two SEALS covered left and right flanks, while First Lieutenant Damon Kirkland served as lead man of the diamond formation.
Not wanting to risk a cave-in, Maddix and his teammates carried silencer-equipped M11 handguns as their primary defense weapon, caching their M4 assault rifles among the rock piles outside the cave entrance.
Maddix positioned his back to the other team members as he skulked inside the manmade cave. He kept his eyes glued to the entrance from which they came, on the lookout for Taliban fighters setting an ambush. Every three steps he looked behind him to make sure he didn’t trip.
Maddix allowed his eyes to drift periodically along the cave walls and floor. The metamorphic rock glowed phosphorescent green beyond his night-vision goggles. He crept like a ghost, his boots treading lightly on a dirt floor imprinted by dozer tracks and other heavy mining equipment.
Intelligence gathered from the raid on Osama Bin Laden’s compound in Abbottabad, Pakistan led to the whereabouts of this mammoth cave, long suspected to be used by the Taliban to travel undetected back and forth from Afghanistan to Pakistan. The tunnel was a mindboggling engineering feat. But more amazing was how the Taliban transported a tunnel boring machine up the mountain without being photographed by keyhole satellites. Intelligence analysts will be unraveling this mystery for many years to come, Maddix thought.
He focused his eyes onto a spot on the cave floor. He thought he spotted an anomaly jutting up from the silvery-brown mixture of dirt and schist two steps to his left at 9 o’clock. He went over to that area and squatted down. “Checking out something on the cave floor, guys. Looks suspicious,” Maddix whispered into the boom mike attached to his helmet.
“We’ll wait for you, Mad Dog,” Lt. Kirkland replied back.
“Roger that,” Maddix said as he gently dragged a hand along a metallic projection poking out from the dirt. A warning to be careful rippled up from his subconscious. In a booby-trapped nation of a million landmines, he couldn’t be too cautious.
But this object didn’t look like any landmine he’d ever seen. Most anti-personnel mines are cylindrical. This metallic object had a ninety degree angle to it.
Maddix pulled a trenching tool from his pack and began to shovel dirt away from the buried object. In less than a minute he uncovered a lid belonging to a weapons crate. Judging by the crate’s size, he guessed that RPGs or rifles rested inside. Maddix lifted the lid, pushing it to the side. He peered inside the crate. A couple dozen or so AK-47s met his gaze. His pulse rate accelerated.
“Each of you blockheads needs an eye exam. I just found a crate of Kalashnikovs sitting out in plain sight,” he said into his helmet mike.
“Grab one for me, Mad Dog. I’ll add it to my collection of enemy artifacts,” Petty Officer Coleton Webb replied back.
“Sure thing, C-Dub,” Maddix said. He perused the old rifles left over from the failed Soviet campaign, looking for the one with the least scratches. He lifted a likely candidate out and leaned it against the cave wall. He then slid the lid back onto the crate. Later, they would wire up the crate with explosives and detonate it on their way out of the cave.
Maddix slung the AK over his left shoulder and took a step away from the half-buried crate, unaware it would be his last step on two legs.
His right foot contacted the pressure plate of an M-14 anti-personnel mine, causing the firing pin to push down onto the detonator, igniting the Tetryl explosive. The superheated fireball overwhelmed the darkness. And for a brief moment the cave became hotter than the sun. Like a scene from an action movie, Maddix felt himself catapulted into the air. He flew through an acrid cloud of dirt and smoke, landing hard on his back about five yards from the flashpoint.
The jarring thud siphoned the air from his lungs. He tried to sit up, but could only lift his head a few inches. His face burned, and his lips felt like they were melting. He wanted to look at his right leg in the worst way. Something about it didn’t jive. He couldn’t feel his foot.
As he gathered his strength for another attempt at sitting up, he heard Lt. Kirkland’s authoritative voice crackle in his helmet. “We’re coming, mad Dog! Hang tight!”
Maddix suddenly felt weak. His eyes glazed over even as glacial coldness crept up his torso, pushing away his body heat.
Using the last of his strength, he lifted his head high enough to see his right leg resembled a bloody stump. The explosion had sheared off his lower leg at the knee and scattered it somewhere in the cave.
The rest of the SEAL team arrived at his side seconds later. Just before he blacked out he looked into their eyes. Their worried looks told him all he needed to know.
****
Petty Officer Daniel Pettis hurriedly opened his medical kit and pulled out a C-A-T tourniquet. “Webb, I need you to apply pressure to his femoral artery while I put the tourniquet on.”
“Gotcha,” Coleton Webb said, applying his knee to Maddix’s upper thigh region.
“How are his vital signs?” Pettis asked Lieutenant Kirkland, who had a pressure cuff wrapped around Maddix’s right arm.
Kirkland shook his head. “Not good. His pulse rate is only 38. I counted a respiration rate somewhere around nine breaths per minute, and I’m getting a blood pressure reading of 76 over 53. I haven’t taken his temp yet, but he feels cold already.”
Pettis nodded. “We need to get a medevac to Bagram immediately or he’s not going to make it,” he warned as he routed the tourniquet band around Maddix’s leg, passing the red tip of the band through the slit on the buckle, pulling it tight.
Lieutenant Kirkland pulled out his r
adio. “I’m on it.”
“Come on, Mad Dog. Don’t check out on us. You’re the toughest SEAL in the Navy,” Webb pleaded to his closest friend.
Pettis twisted the tourniquet rod tighter and tighter but couldn’t get the bleeding to stop. The field medic shook his head. “I still feel a distal pulse. I’m going to have to put a second tourniquet on him.”
“Yeah, he’s leaking like a sieve,” Webb said as he watched a crimson spray gush from his buddy’s leg. Webb applied even more pressure to Maddix’s femoral artery. Nearly all his weight rested atop the crudely amputated leg.
“Wolf-Pack to Base, we have a man down with severe blood trauma. We need a medevac ASAP, over,” Lt. Kirkland said into his field radio. He shook his head. “I’m going to have to go outside. I can’t get a signal in this giant hidey-hole.”
“Hey! He’s trying to sit up!” Webb exclaimed. “Be still, Mad Dog. Don’t try to get up.”
Like Lazarus rising from the dead, Maddix bolted up to a sitting position. His eyelids jerked open. Fear swirled in his bulging eyes. His gaping mouth contorted like a woman giving birth. “Demons!” he screeched. “I can see them! They’re everywhere! I see demons!”
Chapter 1
Walter Reed Army Medical Center
Army Major John Triplett shuffled his notes until he found a group of highlighted questions. They were the same queries he asked his patient in previous sessions, just worded a little differently. Triplett liked to call them his “nut cracking” questions, no disrespect to his patient.
He designed the questions to pinpoint the events and the timeline of their occurrence just before Petty Officer Andrew Maddix encountered his NDE—near death experience.
“Tell me again, Andrew, exactly where do you think the angel took your spirit?” In all his years counseling military personnel, Triplett had never crossed paths with a patient as puzzling as Maddix. The Navy SEAL swore he saw demons during his near-death experience in a cave in Afghanistan’s Khost province.
Maddix sighed and closed his eyes. “It definitely wasn’t heaven. The angel led me through a passageway and into a cavernous room. We stood on the precipice of a high bluff and looked down into a fiery abyss. The abyss stretched for as far as I could see and contained a body of flames as vast as an ocean. And the flames gave off a repulsive odor.”
“Can you describe the smell?”
Maddix nodded. “It smelled like sulfur.”
Triplett wrote down “brimstone” in the margin of his notes. “Do you think the cave you just mentioned was the same one you and your SEAL team were in when you stepped on the land mine?”
“I’m not sure. I just know I didn’t see any of the other guys.”
Triplett removed his glasses and pinched the bridge of his thin nose. “But you said in one of our other sessions that when your spirit first lifted from your body that you looked down and saw your team medic tying a tourniquet around your leg.”
“Yeah, I did. But then the angel came and took me away and we were alone.”
“Did the cave you and the angel were in look natural or manmade? And was it composed of granite or sandstone?”
“It looked natural. And the walls were reddish. I guess it was sandstone.”
Triplett chewed on one stem of his reading glasses. “Is there anything else about the geography of the cave that you find memorable?”
Maddix nodded. “There wasn’t a ceiling to it. I could see sky above me.”
Triplett leaned forward. This was a new admission that might just lead to something. “So the cave might actually be a slot canyon?” Triplett noticed confusion drift across Maddix’s face. “Are you familiar with slot canyons, Andrew?”
Maddix shook his head. “Aren’t they just big cracks in the earth?”
“Not exactly, but close,” Triplett said. He grabbed his laptop off his desk and ran a Google search on slot canyons. He selected the best image and handed the laptop over to Maddix. “A slot canyon is a narrow canyon formed by the cutting action of wind and water. They can sometimes be more than a thousand feet deep and only three feet in width. There are hundreds of slot canyons in the Southwestern United States. Utah has the most of them, I think,” Triplett said. “Anyway, does the image on my laptop look like the cave you were in?”
Maddix nodded, his face losing color. “It could very well be the same one.”
“Tell me again how far you traveled inside the cave before you came to the chasm.”
Maddix handed the laptop back to Triplett. “It seemed like a long ways. I’m guessing a mile or two, maybe.”
“Were you walking or floating?”
Maddix closed his eyes again. “I was walking. The angel kind of hovered alongside me.”
“You were alone with the angel?”
“Yes.”
“What did the angel look like?”
“He looked like a man in his prime. He was very tall and wore a white cloak that seemed to glow.”
“Did he have wings and a halo?”
Maddix snapped open his dark eyes and shot Triplett a glowering look. “Are you making fun of me, sir?”
Triplett shivered. “No, Andrew, I would never do that. All I’m trying to do is help you. I can’t do that without a clear picture of everything you experienced. Some of these questions are redundant and silly, I know. But clues can hide in obvious places. And sometimes I have to be very specific to make progress.”
Maddix nodded. “He didn’t have a halo or wings. Like I said, he looked like a man, only aesthetically perfect. And there was something about him that emanated tremendous power and holiness.”
“Did the angel say anything to you? Did he explain what was happening to you?”
Maddix closed his eyes for the third time. He shifted his prosthetic leg to a more comfortable position. “The angel said I had been chosen to view the home of Satan and his demons, and the people he deceived.”
“Did he say why you were chosen?”
Maddix nodded his head slowly. Sweat beaded on his brow. He opened his eyes and looked at Triplett wildly. “The angel said…”
Triplett shifted forward. He sat on the edge of his seat. If he leaned forward any more he would fall to the floor. “The angel said what?”
“That I was chosen before the beginning of time to lead a resistance against Lucifer.”
“You’re confiding all sorts of new things to me today, Andrew. Why have you waited until our last session to tell me these things?”
“I didn’t want you to think I was crazy,” Maddix confessed. He paused for a moment. “So do you think I’m a nutcase, sir?”
Triplett put his glasses back on. “No, Andrew, I really think you’re as sane as the next guy or me for that matter. Having a NDE and OBE—out of body experience—doesn’t make you crazy. But they can drive you to insanity trying to figure out what they are and what causes them.”
“What do you think they are?”
Triplett smiled and shrugged his shoulders noncommittally. “There are a number of theories out there. But I’m afraid none of them will satisfy you, Andrew. Personally, I believe NDEs may be a combination of lucid dreaming and hypoxia. At some point you may want to talk to an oneirologist. They could probably help you more than I can.”
“What is an oneirologist?”
“Someone that analyzes dreams and tries to interpret what they mean.”
“But I wasn’t dreaming, sir. This was different. I was clinically dead and my soul briefly detached itself from my body.”
“Lucid dreams are many times so realistic that they’re hard to distinguish from reality.”
“It strikes me as odd that the very people trying to explain away near-death experiences have never experienced a NDE.”
“You’re right, Andrew, I’ve never had one. And I don’t pretend to have all the answers you’re looking for. I can only give you my humble opinion. Look, no one is disputing the existence of NDEs. Millions of people have experienced them. NDEs are an ac
cepted phenomenon. It’s the cause behind them that the scientific community can’t agree on.”
“And they never will figure them out because NDEs are of a spiritual nature. And spirituality defies scientific knowledge,” Maddix said.
“You do have a point there,” Triplett agreed. “I’m curious, Andrew, before your near-death experience, were you a religious person? Did you spend much time thinking of God and spiritual issues?”
Maddix smirked and shook his head. “You can ask any of the guys in SEAL team 8. I was a hard-drinking, skirt-chasing frogman. I never had any use for God or the Bible.”
“But now you do?”
Maddix nodded his head. “My out-of-body NDE has affected me on a visceral level. It forced me to rethink my religious beliefs and to make some lifestyle changes.”
“Now you’re a strictly business Navy SEAL, a frogman in touch with his spirituality.”
Maddix looked down at his prosthetic leg. He shook his head sadly. “I’m not a SEAL anymore. The PEB declared me unfit for military duty,” he said softly. “I just wish they would’ve held off making their decision a little longer. I went for my first run early this morning. I almost made it a mile. And my prosthetic hasn’t affected my swimming at all.”
“I’m sorry to hear about the Physical Evaluation Board’s decision. But I’m not surprised about their recommendation to retire you from the military. Even though you have made amazing progress, they’ll always err on the side of caution.”
Maddix frowned. “The government has spent a lot of money on my training. And now they’re going to cut me loose just like that? I could be an instructor, if nothing else.”
“I’m sorry, Andrew. America is not as safe without you defending our interests. I mean that.”
Maddix manipulated his prosthetic leg, bending it back and forth with little effort. “The Navy says I’m disabled. But I don’t feel disabled.”