The Last Platoon

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

  AFTER LEAVING THE SHATTERED OPS CENTER, Cruz had set out for Bunker Five, with Doyle and the QRF behind him. Compass in hand, he walked slowly, counting each pace. When he reached the wire by bumping into it, he backed off and turned to Doyle.

  “The bunker’s right around here,” he shouted. “Take four Marines and search north. I’ll take Ashford and two others south. Stay in touch on the net.”

  He hadn’t made a dozen steps before he was stumbling up a large mound of dirt and kicking aside Bunker Five’s broken boards, some with flapping strips of canvas attached. The mound wasn’t higher than Cruz’s chest, and it dipped into a concave bowl where the grunts had eaten, slept, and stood watch. Ashford tripped over a body and called out. The others rushed up and, digging with their hands, pulled out a half-buried Marine. He was unconscious and his head lolled. Ashford placed his thumb and finger under the dirt-caked chin.

  “I feel a pulse!”

  “He was blasted and buried!” Cruz yelled. “He’s gone. Let’s go!”

  “You don’t know that for sure!” Ashford shouted back.

  Another body was found, leading to more frantic efforts. Cruz grabbed Ashford.

  “We have to find the cut wire,” Cruz shouted. “They’re getting through! Leave one Marine here. The rest come with me!”

  Cruz slid out of the collapsed bunker. Ashford didn’t follow immediately, pausing to pull dirt from the mouth of the lifeless Marine. Without looking back, Cruz plunged into the blizzard of dust. As Binns had done, he kept his face down, rifle in his left hand to check the tautness of the wire.

  QUAT WAS CROUCHING NEXT TO A STEEL STAKE that anchored the wire. While waiting for Zar to bring up the assault wave, he had pulled the broken coils farther apart so that two Taliban could rush through abreast. Four minutes had passed since he had sent Nguyen and Trao back to act as guides. Where were they? Was that idiot Zar waiting for more detonations by the suicide bombers? The man had the brain of a monkey. Weren’t two explosions enough to get him moving? A minute ago, Quat heard one burst from an AK a short distance to his north, but no third explosion. That wasn’t good. Come on! Come on!

  What was that? He looked up, the dust pelting his goggles. A monster was standing not a foot away, peering down at him. Quat reached to bring up his AK. Not able to swing his rifle around, Cruz charged forward, smashing into the Vietnamese. Quat’s slight body bounced backward and his rifle went flying. He felt the barbed wire slash into his back. Adrenaline surging, he wrenched free with no sense of pain.

  Then the American was on him, heavy arms around him, picking him up to slam him into the ground. Quat spun and ducked low, instincts honed by years of training. He was halfway loose when Cruz sensed his escape and lunged after him, using his weight to bear down. Quat fell and twisted onto his stomach, Cruz’s arms locked around his thighs. Quat squirmed and wriggled, digging his hands into the dirt, his rubber body suit slipping from Cruz’s grasp. Quat rolled onto his back, drew up his right leg, and drove his heel forward like a piston.

  Cruz felt a jolt of pain and saw a jagged flash of lightning as his left cheekbone shattered. Instead of backing away, he dove forward, flopping on top of Quat before the Vietnamese could deliver another kick. He wrapped his arms around Quat’s lower ribs and pulled the Vietnamese on top of him, locking his hands and squeezing with all his might.

  Quat felt the American’s thick arms tightening their vise grip. He dug his heels and elbows into the dirt and arched his back, straining to gain an inch of separation from Cruz’s chest, twisting and turning to open enough space to slip free before the breath was squeezed out of him. Cruz hugged him in a bear’s embrace for five seconds, seven, ten. Then Quat had to breathe. When he did, Cruz pulled harder and a rib broke. The pain exploded through Quat’s body. His muscles went into spasms and his heels and elbows momentarily lost their grip in the dirt. He banged the back of his head against Cruz’s face, trying to deliver a hammer blow. He felt the American’s teeth bite down on his hair and tear at his scalp, trapping his head before he could deliver a second blow.

  When he next tried to inhale, Cruz again squeezed and a second rib fractured. Quat was no longer fully conscious. Cruz knew he had to keep applying full pressure until the Vietnamese passed out, but his muscles were tiring. Quat felt a slight slackening and gathered himself. When he next heaved himself up, he would roll to his right, pinning the American’s arm. Once he squirmed loose, he’d deliver fast kicks to the face.

  Then Ashford was there, down on one knee, peering from Cruz to the Vietnamese as though the referee at a wrestling match.

  “Fuck!” Ashford said.

  “Knife,” Cruz grunted.

  Ashford drew out his Ka-Bar, pressed the tip against Quat’s windpipe, and shoved hard. Quat’s head jerked up, his blood spraying Cruz’s face.

  54

  We Hold Here

  Cruz pushed the body away as two more Marines rushed up. He pointed a few feet to the east where the broken wire, unseen in swirling dust, stretched across the flat ground. Unable to fully open his mouth, his words sounded garbled.

  “Grazing fire,” he said. “Short bursts, knee high, spray.”

  Ashford loosed a burst into the black void of the gale. Two seconds later, they heard several cracks as AK rounds broke the sound barrier above their heads. That told Cruz what he needed to know. Bunker Five, ripped apart, was the critical hole in the perimeter and the enemy assault force was somewhere out there, closing toward them. But in the wind and dust, the Taliban had to crawl blindly toward the waiting Marines.

  “We hold here,” Cruz said.

  He ripped the Velcro cover from his handheld and radioed to Doyle.

  “Wolf Four, this is Six. I need your 320 here! My pos is on the wire ten meters south of Bunker Five. Feel your way along the wire.”

  Inside a minute, Doyle had groped his way to them. A grenadier followed him with a grenade launcher that looked like a flare gun pistol attached to the underside of his M27 rifle barrel. Cruz pointed vaguely east.

  “Plaster our front,” he mumbled.

  Each 40mm shell had a burst radius of four meters.

  “I can’t see shit!” the grenadier yelled.

  “You don’t have to!” Cruz said. “How many rounds you got?”

  The pouches on the Marine’s vest bulged with explosives the size of oversize shotgun shells.

  “Forty!”

  “Pump out one every ten seconds, right in front of us!”

  “How far out?”

  “Put ‘em in the wire!”

  The grenadier tilted his rifle barrel vertical, pulled the trigger, and the first shell thunked out.

  THIRTY METERS DOWNSLOPE and midway through the dozen bands of barbed wire, Zar was kneeling next to his Vietnamese guide when the first 40mm shell exploded with a sharp bang. He dropped flat. Behind him thirty fighters were lying in a long row. Dimly he heard the cracks of bullets overhead.

  What? Had the Vietnamese failed to cut the wire? The infidels were firing from somewhere close, and that idiot Quat was not answering the ICOM. He looked at his watch. 0215. Fifteen minutes since the assault had begun. Too long, too long! They had to get inside the base before the americanis could rush up reinforcements.

  Another burst of bullets, so close he instinctively flinched. No sound of the rifles, just crack! crack! as the bullets snapped overhead. He jabbed at the Vietnamese next to him. Go on, get up there. The Asian shook his head.

  “We cut wire,” he hissed. “You fight!”

  Zar knew it was suicidal to crawl blindly forward with bullets cracking over his head and the enemy waiting. He rolled over and tugged at the mujahideen lying behind him.

  “Pitai,” he yelled. “Get Pitai!”

  Pitai, a slight Pashtun with a wild beard, crawled up, dragging his RPG. Pointing at the flickering green cyalume to his front, Zar gestured to him to move forward to a firing position. Pitai immediately obeyed, pushing past Zar before steadying himself on one knee and ra
ising the RPG to his shoulder. Zar rolled away from the recoil area as he fired. Following the sharp whack of the back blast, Zar strained to listen. Four full seconds passed before he heard the rocket explode. Too far away, a clear miss.

  LYING PRONE AT THE BLASTED ENTRY GATE, Cruz saw the red flash a millisecond before he heard the rocket grenade sizzle past. He snapped the safety clip off an M67 grenade, straightened the pin, rose to one knee, and hurled it. The fourteen-ounce bomb carried sixty feet through the air, bounced, rolled, and exploded. WHAM!

  PITAI WAS LOADING A SECOND ROCKET when a white-hot shard whizzed through his cheeks, splattering teeth fragments and blood across Zar’s goggles. Shattered mouth agape, Pitai stood up and staggered blindly, his brain a dazzle of white, searing stars. Four silent bullets hit him. He lurched sideways and pitched headlong into the wire, the fierce wind blowing his body back and forth like a puppet.

  The two Vietnamese guides looked at each other. One pointed toward the tree line and both low-crawled toward the rear.

  Zar heard a few more snaps overhead, but again there was no sound of shooting. The kafirs were near, very near, using rifles with suppressors. He needed Quat to point out where the enemy was. He grabbed Bacha, next in line behind him. The man’s face was wrapped in a balaclava, and he was wearing sunglasses to ward off the stinging sand and grit. Zar jerked off the sunglasses and shouted into his face.

  “Crawl forward! Follow the green sticks to the Asian. Bring him here!”

  Bacha squinted at him, raising his hand to shield his eyes.

  “I can’t see,” he protested, making no effort to move up.

  Zar yelled to bring up a PKM. Seconds later, the heavy barrel of a PKM machine gun glanced off his shoulder. Good! At least Sial was willing to fight. Zar pointed into the stinging wind.

  “Shoot!”

  Sial stood erect, braced himself against the wind, and, holding the weapon waist-high, fired wildly. Five Marines returned fire on full automatic, aiming in the direction of the PKM sound. Hit four times, Sial lost his balance and the wind pushed him backward into the wire.

  Staying flat on the ground, Zar was trying to tug the body loose when another 40mm shell exploded. He felt a thousand hot needles puncture his upraised arm.

  BOTH SIDES WERE SHOOTING BLINDLY. Cruz heard the sharp crack! as a bullet snapped by his left ear. As he turned to check on the others, Doyle leaned against his right shoulder. Without looking around, Cruz tried to shrug him off.

  “Damn it, Mad Dog,” he shouted. “Give me firing room!”

  Doyle didn’t budge. The rim of his helmet seemed stuck inside the collar of Cruz’s armored vest. Cruz felt hot liquid on his neck. He wrenched around and looked at the bloody pulp that had been Doyle’s face. A heavy slug from the PKM had smashed through his forehead and shattered his skull. Cruz held the sergeant in an embrace for a second before lowering the body face down into the dirt.

  Ashford was kneeling a few feet away, focused toward the wire, oblivious to Doyle’s death. Cruz grabbed him by the elbow and jerked him flat.

  “Stay prone! Shoot low!” Cruz yelled. “Short bursts.”

  Six Marines were now lying prone across and on both sides of the gap in the wire. He crawled from one to another, repeating the message. First one sent a few rounds downrange, then the next, and the next. Occasionally the grenadier popped another 40mm shell.

  ZAR REMAINED FLAT, flinching as bullets cracked and snapped over his head. Gradually the pain in his arm subsided. He knew he had to crawl forward. The three Asians were gone, but he didn’t need them. He could see the green cyalume beckoning a few meters in front of him. Move! Once he dragged himself up to it, he would see another. And there would be one after that. Move!

  Courage is not constant. Even the stoutest warriors need encouragement. When there is the hand of no other warrior to grasp, and your eyes see only black, and your face is pelted with dirt stinging like needles and no encouraging voice is heard over the deafening wind, then courage ebbs and blind rage cools. Zar had reached his moral limit. With one arm numb, he made a feeble effort to crawl forward and then stopped. His zeal, anger, and belief in Allah could propel him no farther. He laid his cheek in the dirt and breathed heavily. He would rest for a few seconds.

  A searing white flash and a close clap of thunder shook the ground, followed by lashing rain. Then the ice pebbles came, hitting him on the head and bouncing off the ground around him. He grabbed a fistful. Through his glove, they felt like cold marbles. Hail like this had fallen only twice during his lifetime, and both times the frozen rain drops had proved to him that Allah’s heaven existed. Now the pounding hail, whipped almost vertical by the wind, was beating on his back, punishing him for hesitating.

  This freak of nature swept by in less than a minute, leaving Zar shivering in the mud. He hunkered there, cursing the elements, unable to summon the grit to rush forward. He had lost the conviction to assault. When the moment counted most, he was no longer a leader or a believer. His men couldn’t continue to lie inside the wire in single file, while the infidels shot and threw bombs at them. They would be slaughtered when light came.

  “Turn around,” he said to Bacha. “We have to go back.”

  THE ATTACK HAD FAILED. In fact, the assault had never taken place. The mujahideen crawled away from the caldera of six frightened, angry Marines defending a four-meter cut in the wire. As the Marines took turns loosing three-round bursts, they received scant return fire. The wind had decreased, but they still could see no targets. Peering through their night vision goggles, they swept their infrared aiming dots back and forth in the swirling maelstrom, unable to lock on a single target.

  CRAWLING THROUGH THE MUCK back to the shelter of the tree line, Zar tried to assure himself that he had done the right thing. The assault had failed because of the Asians and the freakish weather. No one could blame him. Four martyrs with satchel charges had penetrated the American base. Dozens of infidels had surely been killed, maybe more than one hundred. News of his victory would spread around the world.

  AT 0220, TWENTY MINUTES AFTER Bunker Five had been obliterated, Cruz called the ops center.

  “Wolf Five Acting, this is Wolf Six. We’ve plugged the hole. No incoming, repeat, no incoming. Over.”

  “Six, this is Five,” Richards replied. “All bunkers have reported in. No other points of entry. One angel at Bunker Two. I think there’s Tangos still inside the perimeter. Over.”

  “Five, this is Six. Understand all. Wolf Three, come forward to my pos. Five, I will come to your pos once Three relieves me here.”

  McGowan, who had been listening inside Bunker Seven, squeezed hard on the push-to-talk button.

  “Six, this is Three. Copy. Am moving to your pos.”

  He turned to his two companions.

  “It’s about fucking time! You devil dogs monitor the net and stay alert.”

  Stay alert? He knew that sounded stupid, as if they might fall asleep in the middle of a wild storm with suicide bombers wandering around. Alone, he slid down to the wire and, tapping it with his right glove, slowly duck-walked his way north. He was counting his thirty-ninth step when he bumped into an Afghan soldier.

  The askar was bent over, facing into the wind, peering forward over the wire as though trying to see something in the void. Mac’s knee hit his shoulder and the soldier sprawled forward. Mac lurched back.

  “Sorry, man,” he blurted out. “I didn’t see—”

  The askar was scrambling to his feet when Mac’s brain snapped into gear. An ANA here inside the wire? He brought up his M27, still hesitant to shoot. The soldier responded by raising an AK. From three feet away, Mac fired on automatic. The bullets hit the armored vest of the mujahideen, staggering him. Mac swung the muzzle up and fired again, hitting the man in the throat, with two bullets ricocheting off his helmet and zipping past Mac’s face.

  The Taliban fell thrashing, feet kicking convulsively. Mac swiveled, making a full circle, tense, straining to see. Damn, he th
ought, I almost shot myself! The wind was keening and the gravel was pelting his cheeks He took a knee and waited for a few seconds. He peered down at the corpse.

  “Tashakor, motherfucker.”

  He grasped the wire and warily continued north, soon linking up with Cruz.

  55

  The DNA of Warrior Ants

  In that howling black, there was no functioning chain of command, only an instinct forged by training and tradition, a sense that others had fought through much worse. The Marines had the DNA of warrior ants. Kill one or one thousand and the result was the same: the survivors swarmed into the breach. They knitted together, opened their incisors, and continued to attack. Remove one leader and another stepped forward.

  Every component looked out for its own. The security platoon guarding the perimeter plugged the gap and held on. With both Coffman and Barnes barely coherent, the sergeants at the ops center cleared the casualties and connected the comms. The aid station had a working generator, and Commander Zarest and his Navy medics were working feverishly to stabilize a dozen severely wounded. The artillery NCOs had evacuated all tents and set up circular defenses inside the four revetments holding the 155s.

  Lasswell knew her duty was to check on each revetment. Accompanied by one Marine at point and another at the rear, she set out into the storm. The Marines carried their M27s, while Lasswell cradled a lensatic compass and behind her Stovell and Eagan held SIG Sauer pistols.

  After checking one revetment, they headed toward the next. In the open space between the two, the wind was pushing so much dirt they had to cover their mouths to breathe. They stopped while Lasswell adjusted her headlamp to read the compass.