by David Kersey
CHAPTER FORTY SEVEN
“I’m hit, I’m hit. Jackson, I’m hit, go get the medic,” said Corporal Gregory Minnick.
The same flashback, always. Jackson was crouched down behind an old stone wall. She was mouthing words. Minnick couldn’t hear, not only her voice, he could hear nothing at all, the explosion had deafened him. She disappeared, he didn’t know where to. He craned his neck as far as he could without passing out from the intense pain. She was gone. No one came back for him nor heard his screams for help, not until the next day when Rodriquez stumbled across his face down body. She hadn’t told a soul. Minnick had suffered through the night and almost bled to death, and surely would have had not Rodriquez done what men soldiers do, they leave no man behind, dead or alive. She would pay, if it’s the last thing he would do on this earth, she would pay for leaving him to die. She was as much to blame as the Taliban.
Charlie Cramer, formerly Bill Brownley, who was formerly Alan Abrams, and whose real name is Gregory Minnick, is a haunted man. A dangerous man with a mission. He knew where to find Jackson, Sharona Jackson, in Memphis, Tennessee. And he would find her in due time and would take great pleasure in watching her die. That black face of hers mouthing something. He had seen the same picture a thousand times. The dust and debris raining down, almost in slow motion in a surreal, silent world, through which he could see her looking straight at him, her mouth moving, gaping open as if screaming. It haunted him. What was she saying?
The Korengal Valley, in northeast Afghanistan, also known as the Valley of Death, is a six mile stretch of valley running north to south, surrounded by towering mountains on both sides. So far no American had ever made it to the end of the sixth northernmost mile. Local insurgents, the Taliban, foreign jihadists, and al-Qaeda occupied the mountains on each side of the valley. From their perches troops working the villages on the valley floor were sitting ducks. Any brain dead general would have given up that strategic piece of real estate. The British had tried for years, followed by the Russians who gave up and lost their country in the Reagan years because of it, followed by 80,000 U.S. and coalition soldiers that couldn’t take the full six miles. Minnick was one of those, as was Jackson. Obviously there was a prize at the end of the valley. The soldiers all knew it was Bin Laden, or at least claimed that in order to make sense out of a hopeless situation. Bin Laden, somewhere holed away in the mountains to the north.
Six of the patrol were on the rocky ridge a thousand feet above the valley floor. They heard the whistle of mortar shells coming their way. The Taliban, who had them spotted and pinned down. They radioed that they were under fire. They couldn’t fight back, the enemy was out of range for small arms. More mortar shells, closer, they were zeroing in. Then a loud whistle, this one would be close. It exploded not more than a fifty feet away from Minnick’s unsheltered position. Jackson saw him take the hit. She watched him fall. She watched him dying.
“I’m hit, I’m hit. Jackson, I’m hit, go get the medic. She didn’t, and left me to die. And I never saw her again. I was airlifted to Camp Leatherneck to recover after my Sergeant found me.” That was the story he told to the AP newsman covering Leatherneck. It was never printed, just like all stories that uncover cowardly acts are snuffed by the brass.
Cramer woke up from his flashback. He was driving north on I-95 up the Atlantic coast of Florida, but he wasn’t aware of how long he had been driving under the influence of the recurring nightmare. He felt his heart pounding just like it had on the Korengal mountainside. And he was sweating profusely.
Before he killed Sharona Jackson, he would have a talk with her. He had to know what she was saying. But she was not next on the list. Memphis was the sixth location on his route. Next up, Barbara Crawford, Crescent Beach, Florida. Eighty miles to go.