Raid on Afghanistan, page 9
“No, Sir. That would just result in more deaths. Tell us about this cave system.”
So he did, describing the underground network of tunnels that led underneath the town.
“They were used when the Russians were here. The Mujahideen launched a great number of raids using them, and the communists never knew what hit them.” He smiled as he was talking.
“But you were on the Russian side, Abraham, a translator. You sound as if you supported the Mujahideen during the Russian occupation.”
“That is only natural. The Russians were the invaders, and the Mujahideen were defending our country.”
“But you worked for the Russians.”
Another shrug. “A financial arrangement, nothing more. I worked for the Russians, but I am an Afghan.”
“What about the Americans? Don’t you feel the same way?”
“You Americans support a President elected by the Afghan people, even if there are those who believe the election was a fraud. I support only Afghanistan. The Americans, the Taliban, I can only assess what they do for my country. If they cause damage, as did the Russians, they are my enemy. If not, well, we shall see.”
Damn, that’s a pragmatic approach if ever I heard one.
Nolan was almost grinning at the man’s refusal to give a committed answer. When the bullets start to fly, whose side would he be on? They’d only know when the shooting started.
The call came in after fifty minutes. Nolan checked his watch, and it was zero one thirty. Talley asked Carl Winters to take the Afghan civilian outside and made sure the rest of the platoon were listening in. Then he answered.
“This is Bravo.”
“I’m in a difficult position, Lieutenant. I’m not sure how to advise you.”
“What you mean, Sir.”
“I’ll spell it out for you, Lieutenant!” The Colonel’s voice was sharp and hard. “I’ve put what you said to the very top. No one is prepared to take this one on board. It’s too far-fetched, very far-fetched. You’ll have to deal with it yourself. Make the decision and go with it.”
The men stared at each other. It was hardly believable, and yet, it was happening to them. Nolan understood straight away. This was a hot potato, too hot to handle. Someone needed to call it, one way or the other. There would need to be a confrontation, probably involving the Pakistan government, the Afghan government, and naturally the American government. The person who made the wrong call would be the one who was offered up as a sacrifice if anything went wrong. Maybe there was substance to what Abraham Dur had said, and the men of Team Bravo were sure convinced. But the bureaucrats played a different game. Watch and wait, take credit if things went well, and put the blame elsewhere if they didn’t. He heard Talley speaking again.
“We’ll go in and do our best to take out Rahimi and this bombmaker. That’ll complete the mission we came here to do. As for the rest of it, we’ve identified the bombmaker as a Pakistani national, a Ms Hotaki. She worked for the Pakistan atomic energy program.” He paused, but the Colonel refused to bite. “If we pick up any intel, we’ll pass it up the line, Sir. But the materials for making the bombs may not be in this town. That could present a problem, and I’d prefer to have some operational support on this one, to make sure we cover every possibility.”
“And you shall have that support, Lieutenant Talley. The Reapers are overhead, so you can call them in anytime you need them. But if you think I’m calling in a bombardment squadron of B-52s to flatten the town, or airdrop a brigade of paratroops outside the walls, you’ve got another think coming. Keep us posted, and let us know if you need any more advice. Out.”
“I wasn’t aware he’d given any advice, the fucking chair polisher,” Zeke Murray snarled. “This mission is going downhill at a fast rate of knots. Fucking nukes, what the hell next, biological warfare?”
Talley gave him a small smile. “I agree with you, PO1. And when a mission goes bad, who do they call for? The Navy Seals.”
As one man, they shouted, “Hooyah.”
Talley nodded. “So let’s go to work.”
He called outside for Abraham Dur to come back in, leaving Winters out on sentry duty.
“Abraham, it’ll be dawn in a few hours. It would be best for us to lay up here through the day and wait for the heat to die down. They’ll be a little skittish after all that shooting. If you would explain this cave system to us, we’ll plan an assault for tonight, when they’re asleep.”
“No! I will not do it.”
They stared at the old Afghan.
“I don’t understand,” Talley said in a tone of bewilderment. “I thought you wanted us to go in there and deal with these guys, to save your granddaughter.”
“That is correct, Lieutenant. But Rahimi is to take her later today. Tonight will be too late. She will be dishonored. If you will not go now to save her, I will leave you and go on my own.”
“Then you’ll be killed, Sir.”
Dur gave him a thin-lipped smile. “If Rahimi takes my granddaughter’s maidenhead, I will already be dead, dishonored, my family name dust. Tonight is too late.”
Talley looked around at the men. “It could mean walking into a hornet’s nest if we go in daylight.”
Will Bryce looked at him. “Boss, no one but a crazy fool would try and get in there during the day, especially after what we’ve just done. They’ll be sore as hell.”
“So you’re against it?”
Bryce shook his head. “Hell, no. I’m saying it’s the last thing they’d expect. Especially if the old man here can lead us through this cave system.”
“We don’t get down into the caves until we’re much nearer the town, the entrance is about a mile from here. It means we’d have to get there before dawn, it’s cutting it real fine,” Nolan observed.
He moved his legs to ease the ache in his muscles, thinking about the waste of the days spent drinking and doing nothing when he should have been training. Now he was paying the price. He felt his mind wander again and jerked it back.
I hope to Christ I don’t get another blackout. If it happens while we’re in the middle of the assault on the town, people are gonna get killed.
He gave Talley a meaningful look. “And there’s something else, Boss. We need to redefine the mission in the light of this new intel. It seems to me we have a whole heap of new objectives, would you care to spell out to us the priorities?”
“If there’re fissionable materials in that town, we need to destroy them,” Talley said at once. “But we need to kill Rahimi and this Hotaki witch.”
Bryce stared at him. “And how the fuck would we know how to identify that kind of nuclear stuff, the ‘fissionable materials’ you called them? I don’t recall they covered that in training, Boss.”
Nolan nodded his agreement. “That’s true. But it’s not the materials, it’s the person who puts them together we need to kill first,” he pointed out. “But whatever you decide, Boss, we need it spelt out before we go in.”
The Seals started to bicker about the primary mission objective. Talley held up his hand to halt the discussion.
“Now hold on there. It’s as the Chief says, we’ve got a heap of objectives here, and we need to tighten them down. What’s the number one priority? The bombmaker?”
There was a silence. Dur broke it. “If you want my help, you must make my granddaughter your first priority. Otherwise, I will go alone.”
The Lieutenant sighed and finally nodded his acceptance. “Very well, in return for your help, I’ll assign some men to go with you, Abraham. Their mission will be to rescue and safeguard the girl, Najela, and if possible, take out Rahimi.” He looked at Dur. “I assume Rahimi won’t be far away from her?”
“That is correct, Lieutenant. She is being held in the same building.”
“Okay, then, Bryce, Rose, Eisner and Mosely, that’s your task. Next, Chief Nolan is correct. The bombmaker, a nuclear physicist I guess, who builds the bomb. That’s the main target.” He looked at Nolan. “So I reckon that’s your job, Chief. Talk to Abraham and find her twenty. You know what to do, kill her. Take Zeke and Carl with you. The rest of us will take a look around for that nuclear stuff, so our best bet is to take a couple of prisoners and get them to talk to us. And all of you, remember to keep an eye out for Major Siddiqi. I want him out of there. Don’t leave him for those animals.”
Dur looked up. “If you take Taliban prisoners, I doubt they will tell you anything about the location of the bombmaking materials, Lieutenant. They hate Americans with a passionate intensity. The last thing they would do is give up any secrets.”
Talley looked cold. “You’re wrong there, Abraham. They’ll tell us what we need to know, believe me. They’ll tell us. The last thing they’ll do is die.”
There was a chilled silence in the cave as the Seals contemplated what had to be done to prevent a possible nuclear holocaust. The philosophers could endlessly debate the morality of torture as a means to an end, from the safety of their heated offices and comfortable armchairs. Navy Seals had to live in the real world. He turned and looked at Merano.
“Vince, I want you to find a stand inside the town as soon as we get in there. Make it a priority. I guess the tower’s out, now that it’s destroyed. You’ll need to do the best you can and cover us as much as possible. Make sure you have sight of our exfiltration route. We could be coming out under fire. I guess we’ll need every bit of help we can get by the time we pull out of there.”
“There’s one thing more, Boss,” Nolan murmured. “The main force. Who’s going to take care of them? We each have target specifics, but there are a lot of hostiles in that town, and they’ll need to be contained if we’re to achieve our objectives.”
“Yeah, I know that, Chief. I’m calling in the Reapers. We’re humping a couple of LTDs. I’ll arrange for my group to paint the hostiles. The Reapers can do the rest.”
LTDs, laser target designators, were used by Special Forces to call in air strikes. These man-portable devices fired a laser beam at the target, causing a reflection that a suitably equipped aircraft or in this case, UAV, Unmanned Aerial Vehicle, could detect. Bouncing the beam off a target was known as 'painting the target'. The Reapers would do the rest.
“Vince, are you carrying an LTD?” he asked Merano.
The sniper nodded. “In my backpack.”
“Good. The Reapers give us a lot of firepower. They’re sure to have a few missiles up the spout when we’re exfiltrating. I want you to direct them onto anyone that seems to be coming after us. If it’s hot, I’d sure like to think we had a couple of Hellfires on our side.”
“You got it, Boss. I’ll set it up as soon as I reach the stand.”
“Good.” He looked around for Kyle Nolan.
“Chief, I’d guess you ought to take the first two groups in. We’ll watch your back and follow you in. Zeke, make sure you guard Abraham well. We need him. You know what to do.”
“What about the timing of this op?” Murray asked. “What did you have in mind?”
Talley looked uneasy, but he managed a small smile. “That one’s easy. When the Reapers hit, finish up and get out fast. The same goes for you, everyone, including you, Chief. Believe me, we’ll be right with you.”
Nolan nodded as he got to his feet and shouldered his MK11 Sniper Weapon System. It wasn’t the perfect weapon for the kind of fighting they were about to engage in, but Seals didn’t carry cartloads of ordnance to choose from. Their specialty was improvisation. And if he did need something more along the lines of an assault rifle, he’d soon arrange for a donation from one of the hostiles inside Adasabad.
“Copy that, Boss. Okay, let’s go. Abraham, would you care to show us where these caves are?”
The Afghan stood. “The path leads to the east of this hill, and we will be able to approach the town out of sight.”
He walked away, and the men followed him. The Afghan nimbly made his way off the hillside and across the broken, rubble-strewn ground, as easily as if it was a sidewalk back home. Nolan walked right behind him, carrying his Sig Sauer with the suppressor in his hand, pointed downwards. But there was a bullet chambered ready, and the safety was off. They assumed Abraham Dur was okay, but you never knew.
“Your officer, he does not seem happy,” Dur said after they’d covered the first few hundred yards.
“He’s okay,” Nolan grunted.
“I think not. He does not believe this operation will go well.”
That made Kyle think for a few moments, and he chuckled at Abraham.
“You’re pretty observant for an old guy, Mr. Dur. I’m not sure you’re right. We’re trained for this kind of stuff, and it generally pans out well. I guess the problem is that there are so many objectives, and it’s hard to plan for every eventuality.”
“My granddaughter must come first.”
“Yeah, we got that bit.”
“Will Lieutenant Talley keep his word?”
“He’s a Navy Seal, Mr. Dur. He’ll do as he said.”
They lapsed into silence and continued walking silently along the path. They’d dropped into a deep cut in the ground, probably an ancient watercourse in the days when Afghanistan was more fertile, and the natives were preoccupied with growing crops than fighting wars against foreign invaders. They made rapid progress across the ground and soon came to a narrow crack in the rock at the end of the gully. It was barely a foot wide.
“This is it?” Zeke exclaimed. “Are you sure it’s the right place?”
Dur grinned. “I’m sure. There was an earthquake, many years ago. When the ground stopped shaking, this opening had appeared. Some children who were braver than the others went in and followed it through. They found that it led to an ancient water system that used to feed the city, actually a series of tunnels.”
“Right, we’d better strip off our equipment and squeeze through, it’s the only way,” Nolan told them. “Let’s get to it.”
They stripped off their gear, wormed their way through the opening, and they were inside the cave system. They switched on their flashlights and were relieved to see that the system opened out into a useable tunnel high enough to walk through without stooping.
“Turn off the lights,” Nolan ordered. “We’ll use our night vision gear. We don’t want to warn them we’re coming.”
Dur watched while they pulled on the goggles and strapped on their gear. Dur led off again. He seemed to have his own night vision system, or maybe he just knew every bump and turn inside the tunnels. Nolan and the other two men followed him.
“Do you enjoy what you do?” the old man asked.
The Chief almost tripped in surprise. “What kind of a question is that?”
“I asked because I sense a great sadness in you. As if you do not like what you do.”
Nolan recalled the time he’d learned off Grace’s death. “I like what I do, Abraham. I’ve just had a few problems lately.”
“It is the will of Allah, Mr. Nolan. I have also noticed that sometimes you appear to be a long way away, almost as if you are in a trance. It is because of the sadness, I have no doubt.”
Jesus, it’s still happening, even this old guy noticed! I need to watch myself.
But the old guy meant well.
“It’s Kyle.”
Dur nodded. “Kyle. You know that these things happen for a reason that is often incomprehensible to us mere men. It is God’s plan for us.”
For some reason, Nolan found himself irritated by the man’s assumption.
“It was the will of a bunch of drug dealers, Abraham. My wife was killed during a turf war between Mexicans and Afghans, fighting for control of the Californian drugs trade.”
He thought of Grace, his wife, mother of his kids.
The bastards killed the mother of my kids. When this is over, I’ll make them pay. That won’t be the will of Allah. It’ll be the will of Kyle Nolan!
“Did you find the men who did it?”
“Not yet, no. But I will.”
Dur chuckled. “So it is here in Afghanistan, the blood feud. You will hunt these men down and kill them?”
“Yes, I will.”
“Good.”
They walked on through the tunnels, and Dur continued chatting about Afghanistan, and the blood feud.
“We believe that revenge is honorable, my friend. We have a saying, ‘He who cannot revenge himself is weak. He who will not is contemptible’. For if you do not revenge yourself on the man who has wronged you, why would he not commit the same act again, if he has nothing to lose?”
“Yeah, I’ve got it all in hand, Abraham.”
“That is good. You say it was an Afghan who was involved?”
“That’s right. Mohammed Gul. He’s a big wheel in the drugs trade.”
“But I know this Gul. If it is the same man, he has vast holdings of poppy fields in the west of the country, near the Iran border. He is very, very rich. Gul is always trying to recruit young men from all over the country to work for him, as soldiers, couriers, even farmers. Do you plan to kill him?”
“Yes, I do. I’m sorry, I guess I’ll put a lot of Afghans out of work.”
“It is not the kind of work they need, my friend. The wages he pays them are not welcome. Drugs and death, which is all they will see for their efforts. I will not weep when he is dead.”
Nolan didn’t reply. Since Grace’s death, there’d been that black void in his heart; in the place where before he’d felt the normal human emotions, love, hate, happiness, fear, whatever. Now he didn’t feel anything, and he knew that the killing of Gul would not put things back the way they were. But it was one important step on the road to recovery, and he had two kids who needed him to travel that road and discover their father again. For some strange reason, he thought again of Detective Carol Summers. How did she deal with the death of her husband? But thinking of her made him feel he was disloyal to Grace’s memory. Maybe there’d be time later to consider Carol Summers. She sure was pretty.
“I can help you, if you wish.”
Kyle kept walking. He almost laughed to himself, although he wouldn’t humiliate this old man by openly smiling at his words.
