The Last Platoon

by A Novel of the Afghanistan War (retail) (epub)

  “No! No!” Tulus yelled. “Hide rifle!”

  Puzzled, Quat placed his AK in the reeds and walked forward. Tulus pointed upward.

  “Eye in the sky,” he said, “very bad. But a dead American, very good! All fight now!”

  Quat looked at Tulus. The man’s cheeks were flushed and he was nodding, beating softly on the handlebars. Allahu Akbar! Tulus patted the rear seat, indicating he’d drive Quat back to the mosque. Quat climbed on and looked up at the sky—somewhere a drone was watching.

  Americans tolerate their enemies, he thought. A foolish people.

  THE PATROL WAS SCARCELY BEYOND SIGHT of the wire when a group of workers bolted from a field to their east.

  “Winmag, we’re headed to that field,” Cruz radioed. “Stand by for us to take fire.”

  “Wolf Six, we’re tracking on your south flank,” Ashford replied.

  Wolfe found a cut through the undergrowth. Reaching the field where the workers had been, he veered left so that the Marines were walking parallel to a tree line about a hundred meters away. The patrol was in the open when the first AK bullets cracked over their heads. Immediately some flopped down, while others knelt to see above the poppies.

  “Willkes, return fire at seventy degrees!” Sergeant McGowan shouted at the machine gun crew.

  After three short bursts, he signaled to stop. For the next minute, there was no return fire. Then a few more AK rounds passed high over the Marines, followed by the short, deep bark of a PKM machine gun. There were no tracers, but McGowan thought the firing sounded slightly north of the previous shots. As the M240 responded with a long ratatatat, Cruz knelt down next to McGowan.

  “I think the shots came from northeast,” he said. “They’re trying to lure us in. Probably IEDs waiting for us.”

  The tree line was as long as a football field, a tangle of thin poplar trees, thick undergrowth, and Andean vines thin and strong as fishing lines, coiled around branches and anchored under rocks, waiting to trip the unwary.

  Cruz tugged the 153 handheld out of a breast pocket and called the ops center.

  “Eagle Three, you watching this?” he radioed. “Have Big Bird zoom in on the field on the east side of the tree line. Let me know if you see any squirters.”

  Over the speakers inside the ops center, Cruz’s voice sounded loud and firm. Barnes, as the watch officer, nodded to the corporal controlling the drone. Coffman, listening in the rear, did not interfere.

  “Winmag, this is Wolf Six. I want to cut those shooters off,” Cruz radioed. “Move into the tree line from the south.”

  This was an unusual tactic for a sniper team, but they were grunts before they became HOGs.

  Cruz turned back to McGowan.

  “I’ll stay here with the 240,” he said. “You take two teams and move straight north. Let me know when you can see the field on the far side of that tree line.”

  On their tablets, McGowan, Ashford, and Cruz watched the blue blips that marked their three separate groups of friendlies. At point, Wolfe followed a yellow teleprompter line that traced the footsteps of the workers who had fled minutes before. Big Bird’s two-hundred-power telescope was zoomed in, allowing a half-dozen Marines in the ops center to examine each tiny open space in the foliage and to scan the poppy rows that provided escape routes for the Talibs.

  Cruz toggled his 153.

  “Eagle Three, this is Wolf Six,” he said. “How about dropping a closed sheaf of 81s in the field on the east side of the tree line?”

  Barnes winced at the request. He stole a nervous glance at Coffman. A few of the operators were smiling and rolling their eyes. Rolling Thunder at work. Barnes tried to provide Cruz with an out.

  “Wolf Six, the dust will obscure Big Bird’s view. Over.”

  Cruz wasn’t buying it.

  “Eagle Three, understood. I want to block them in.”

  Typical, Barnes thought. In the field, Cruz doesn’t know how to back off. Coffman’s blaming him for Beal, and three hours later he’s calling a fire mission?

  “Wolf Six, that’s a solid negative,” Barnes said. “Friendlies are too close. Remember? Out.”

  Barnes intended his reprimand to sting. Instead, it angered Cruz. Barnes was using Beal as his excuse not to fire. The mortars would hit a hundred meters away from the nearest Marines. Take some risk. Don’t allow the Talibs to hunker down so close to the base.

  Cruz knew it was futile to argue. He waited as McGowan moved north. Fifteen minutes passed with no more shots from the tree line. Cruz looked inquiringly at Tic, who had earphones on and was turning the channel settings on his intercept box.

  “Can’t find those shooters talking on any channel, Skipper,” Tic said. “Neither can Ahmed. Lots of other chatter, but they’re staying off the net, probably waiting for us to push on.”

  Cruz turned to Corporal Juan Fuentes, the squad’s systems operator, who had taken off his pack and was adjusting a four-bladed drone the size of a thick book.

  “Sweep just above the treetops,” Cruz said. “What’s the flying time?”

  “Fresh battery, sir,” Fuentes said. “Tinker Bell’s good for thirty mikes.”

  “That’ll do. Hover over different spots, like you’re checking something out.”

  Fuentes unfolded the rotor blades and launched the drone toward the tree line, watching the video return on his handheld tablet. Each time he twisted a knob on his control mechanism, the pitch of the tiny motor changed. The drone climbed and dove like an angry bee, the sounds floating across the fields. It darted back and forth, dipping and hovering. Fuentes, peering at the small video screen, shook his head in frustration. With the camera bouncing and jiggling, he could see only leaves and foliage.

  Inside the tree line, the engineer with the sniper team was sweeping as best he could. But as he ducked and twisted through the undergrowth, his detector missed many spots. It was a calculated risk. Cruz knew the Taliban rarely buried IEDs far back in the tree lines amidst the root tangles and vines. Concealing the wires was too tricky, and the chances were too remote of any takfir blundering past.

  On his tablet, Cruz looked at the blue dot marking the snipers. It would take another half hour for them to complete their search. Altogether, he was spending a full hour on one tree line less than a quarter mile from the base. If he came up empty, it would be a long night. On the other hand, if they killed some Tangos here, the others would likely pull back to decide their next move.

  “Give me a sitrep. Over.” Cruz radioed.

  “Wolf Six, this stuff is thick,” Ashford said. “I’d need a machete to hack my way through. Plus, we’re making way too much noise.”

  “Understood. Make as much noise as you can. Over.”

  “Wolf Six, say again your last.”

  “Make more noise. Shout back and forth.”

  There was a pause. Then from somewhere back in the tree line off to his right, Cruz heard a clear “Hello!” followed by, “Can you hear me now?”

  “This is Wolf Six. Louder. Break, break. Wolf Two, sitrep. Over.”

  McGowan’s team had advanced beyond the northern end of the tree line.

  “Wolf Six, this is Wolf Two. We’ve got eyes on the field on the other side of the tree line,” Mac radioed. “What now?”

  “Stop and go 360,” Cruz replied. “Stay alert for any muj running east from the bush.”

  McGowan signaled to Wolfe to take a knee. Behind him, Lance Corporal George Adler, the platoon’s Designated Marksman, did the same. Though a notch below Ashford’s status as a sniper, Adler’s performance on the snap-shooting course had won him rave reviews. He scoped the field on the far side of the tree line and focused on the swaying purple-and-white poppy bulbs.

  Pop, pop, pop, he thought. Gotcha. Three for three.

  INSIDE THE TREE LINE, Mustafa Benjab was crouching in a small ditch alongside his two companions when he heard the americanis shout back and forth. One thing after another had gone wrong, and his head hurt. Zar had told them to sh
oot to help the Asian escape, then join the workers in the field. Ha! The workers had fled before the firing. So he had waited and these americanis had come. Fine. His men took a few shots at them and then waited. But that drone was now circling like a giant mosquito. He gestured to his two companions to stay hidden and wait for the kafirs to move off. Only instead, some americanis were shouting from inside the tree line. Time to pull out. He stood up and gestured at the field to their east. Run across, fast!

  ADLER HAD TAKEN A KNEE, his butt resting on his right ankle, left elbow dug into his left thigh, both eyes open, right pupil dilated from constantly peering through the seven-power Bausch scope. Wolfe was squatting next to him, leisurely sipping sugared tea through the tube attached to his CamelBak.

  “Give that scope a rest, bro,” Wolfe said. “You’ll get cross-eyed doing that so long.”

  “Sergeant Mac assigned me the prime shooting spot,” Adler said. “Gonna get some.”

  “Yeah, well,” Wolfe said, “Sergeant Mac’s gungy. But shit, no hajji’s going to tear ass across your personal three hundred range. All those sneaky bastards do is plant their IEDs and ditty-bob by us, carrying their fucking and shovels. I—”

  Bang, bang, bang! Wolfe fell back on his ass as Adler squeezed off fast shots. A few hundred meters away, three men in dusky kameez were sprinting through the poppies. The one in the lead, hit twice, was stumbling. The other two tried to support him, and then all three dropped out of sight. Wolfe scrambled to grab his M27 but before he could get to his knees, three more M27s had joined in. Every rifle had a noise suppressor, enabling Mac’s shouts to be heard over the din.

  “Cease fire, damn it! Give me a pos rep!”

  “Three! Three at two o’clock!” Adler yelled, pointing to his right. “I got one, maybe two.”

  “See any weapons?”

  “I think so. They were carrying something. I mean, why else were they running?”

  “OK. Listen up! Adler, you and Wolfe shoot where you saw them. Everyone else, watch their impact area and then hose the shit out of it. One mag each!”

  Adler stood up, aimed in carefully, and fired three more rounds. Wolfe got off a burst that included a tracer. Seven other rifles joined in for several furious seconds.

  “That’s enough!” Mac yelled. “But if anyone sees movement out there, shoot first and inform me later.”

  McGowan radioed the situation to Cruz.

  “Wolf Two, copy all,” Cruz said. “Move to where you saw them. Tinker Bell will recon.”

  Thirty seconds later, the tiny drone was hovering twenty feet above the spot. On Fuentes’s tablet, the video showed one man sprawled on his stomach. A second man was lying on his side in a fetal position, knees tucked close to his stomach. The drone rose to thirty feet for a wider camera angle. Farther away, a third man, dragging a PKM machine gun, was crawling on his hands and knees between two rows of poppy. The operator tilted his tiny joystick, and the screeching drone dove and hovered a few feet over his head. Whether panicked or brave or both, the man leaped to his feet and swung the PKM upward, firing madly at his tormentor. At least five Marines, delighted to see a live target, responded immediately and the man danced spastically for a few seconds, twitching as dozens of bullets beat the dust out of his kameez and the blood out of his body.

  When the shooting stopped, recon by the drone confirmed three men down and no others in the vicinity. Cruz called in the sniper team and the drone was retrieved. Within ten minutes, all the Marines were together at the defensive perimeter McGowan had set in near the dead men. Holding the PKM across his chest, a grinning Adler was posing for pictures and Wolfe was waving an AK.

  Two rounds from an M27 coughed out, sounding like burps. A Marine, rifle muzzle pointing down, was standing over one of the crumbled bodies. Cruz glared at him.

  “Delivered a hammer pair, sir,” the grunt said. “Dead check.”

  “You mean brain dead,” Cruz said. “You wanted to shoot someone, so you shot a dead man. Give me your weapon.”

  Cruz removed the magazine, ejected the round in the chamber, and roughly handed the M27 back.

  “For the rest of this patrol,” he said, “you carry a club, unless your squad leader decides otherwise.”

  McGowan pointed a finger at the Marine.

  “Meet Terminal Lance Corporal Merrill, sir,” he said, “my perpetual motard fuckup.”

  “Merrill,” Cruz said, “you disappoint me.”

  The Marines briskly searched the bodies, finding little of interest. Tic had stripped an ICOM from one of the dead.

  “Do they know we have it?” Stovell said.

  Tic shook his head.

  “No. There’s no coordinator on this net,” he said. “It’ll be a few hours before they know we zapped these three. I can screw with them big time.”

  Stovell turned to Cruz.

  “If we confuse the Talibs,” he said, “we deflect their attention from the base. When Tic is finished, they won’t know what to think or believe.”

  Cruz hesitated, wary of being manipulated. The CIA team was relentless, doling out information only when it suited them. Still, time and again Eagan’s shooting skills had proven valuable. And while Stovell behaved as though his brilliance meant little, he was obviously the strategist.

  “All right, Stovell,” he said. “I’ll let Barnes know.”

  As the patrol returned to base, Tic keyed the ICOM, alternately speaking in Pashto and Dari. With the volume turned up, he was laughing at the torrent of replies.

  “Hey, bro,” McGowan said. “Don’t keep it to yourself.”

  “They all watch TV,” Tic yelled. “They know the virus killed lots of people. They’re afraid of it. So I tell them Marines are bringing a new plague.”

  He was gleefully shaking his fist.

  “They believe it!” he shouted. “The stupid fuckers!”

  Cruz looked quizzically at Stovell.

  “Why’s he laughing?”

  “Tic’s father bought a dozen camels at auction in this district,” Stovell said. “The local council claimed the rich outsider was a spy. The Taliban hanged him and the locals divided up his money. Tic’s indulging in payback.”

  “You didn’t bring him to settle a personal grudge,” Cruz said. “Isn’t this over the top?”

  “Actually, I suggested it,” Stovell said. “I hired Tic for this mission. We’re not here to win friends. We want them afraid. The unknown rattles them, so I’m sowing fear. It may not pay off, but the cost is negligible.”

  THE SNIPER TEAM WAS LAGGING BEHIND the patrol, hoping for a shot. Their chance came when Ashford scoped a compound wall seven hundred meters to the south. A thin man with a full beard and AK over his shoulder was putting out of the gate on a motorbike, balancing a young boy on the handlebars. An older boy sat behind the driver, shielding his back.

  “A bad dude,” Ashford said. “Can you spill him?”

  Eagan adjusted the tripod under his Heckler rifle, dialed in the scope, and read the tracking numbers.

  “Negative,” he said. “Bike’s bouncing too much.”

  “What sorry-ass father,” Ashford said, “sends his kids out as shields?”

  They set off again. Once within sight of the wire, some older boys began to walk parallel to the patrol, pointing and laughing at the grim giants. A gang of little ones popped up, skittering behind the older ones. To show off, a skinny teenager threw a small stone at the Marines. A second, then a third stone followed.

  Eagan stopped and extended his tripod, bringing his rifle to bear. Ashford felt a tingling feeling in his neck. Would Eagan shoot? Should he say something? Seeing the monster rifle swinging toward them, the older kids ran away. Satisfied, Eagan folded up the tripod, put aside his rifle, opened his rucksack, took out a fistful of thin sticks, and threw them away.

  After he moved on, the little kids darted forward to pick up the sticks.

  ONCE INSIDE THE LINES, Cruz went to the ops center, where Barnes listened intently to his de
brief.

  “Well done,” Barnes said. “The bird for PFC Beal is inbound. No ceremony this time. Better check security at the LZ, and after that, check your own six.”

  “Meaning the C.O.?”

  “Worse. Binns submitted a statement,” Barnes said. “He’s a true blue falcon. He blames you because Beal wasn’t wearing a helmet. It’s bullshit. Beal was hit in the neck, not the head. But it’ll look bad in the investigation.”

  “No, it’ll look good,” Cruz said. “It takes the heat off Sergeant Doyle.”

  41

  Ambition Dashed

  By late afternoon, Coffman had twice rehearsed his talking points, the index cards carefully arranged on his desk. His report, sent to Kabul and the States hours earlier, had been crisp, thorough, and exonerative. For his televideo appearance, he remained in his soiled, sweat-stained cammies, leaving a smudge of dried mud on his left cheek.

  The first call came from General Hal Gretman in Kabul. He led Coffman through a review of the written report without indicating approval or disapproval.

  “Looks like you have a front moving in, Colonel,” he concluded. “Once that weather passes, I’m coming down to see where things stand.”

  A few minutes later, General Killian called, wasting no time on preliminaries.

  “Your base still under pressure, Hal?”

  “No, sir. We’ve swept the area,” Coffman said, launching into his first talking point. “In fact, we killed three of the bastards, captured a PKM and…”

  Killian brushed that aside.

  “What’s this about friendly fire maybe causing the fatality?”

  “The corporal wasn’t wearing a helmet, sir. A squad leader wants to bring charges against the patrol leader, Captain Cruz.”

  Killian’s face hardened. Coffman’s manner irritated him, sitting there in dirty cammies, pretending to be a snuffy yet not defending his junior officer.

  “Back here, Colonel, no one’s interested in some platoon commander,” he said. “According to your report, you were out there too.”