The Sixth Martyr, page 11
part #1 of Alpha Squad Series
They took a long detour to the north. If the Talibs were still around, there was no way he wanted to risk going back along that hair-raising narrow ledge. Javed led them along remote tracks that had nonetheless been well used, on the premise that any anti-personnel mines would have detonated long before. He started to relax. With hours of riding ahead of them, and despite the winter chill, a weak sun brightened up the morning. Sarah and Javed chatted, and he was happy to leave them to it while he lost himself in his thoughts. Most of them concerned with death.
He was surprised when she suddenly held up a hand for them to stop. He rode forward, and they reached the crest of a hill. She signaled him to dismount. Javed held the reins while he and Sarah went to take a look, and they both dropped flat.
Below them, about two hundred meters away, men were working on a wider road. She put her head close to his and spoke in a low voice, as if the distant figures could hear them. “Taliban, and that’s the western route into Chiras. You know what they’re doing?”
He nodded. “I’ve seen it before.”
Afghanistan didn’t have the most hard-working culture in Asia. If men were digging energetically with picks and shovels, there had to be a damn good reason. And when they were digging a huge hole in the road, the reason didn’t need any further analysis or evaluation.
“That’s one hell of an IED they’re planting down there.” He was looking at the wooden boxes of explosive they’d stacked close to the hole, enough to destroy several vehicles. No simple ambush, but a planned wholesale bloodletting, against whom?
“We’ll wait here and see what goes down. I don’t intend to let them just kill our guys and walk away.”
“There are too many of them, Joe.” Her face was wreathed with concern, “I count eight men. We can’t kill them all. We wouldn’t stand a chance.”
He grinned, “Let’s just watch and wait. With any luck, the diggers will disappear, and we’ll just have to deal with one or two guys waiting to remotely detonate the bomb.”
After another hour of frantic work, the diggers began to pile the explosives into the hole. Men rushed to cover it with earth and rubble, and another man buried a thin wire that led off the road and into a shallow depression about fifty meters from the IED. One hundred and fifty meters from where they watched. Two Talibs shouldered their weapons and walked away, but the other six remained. Another two men crouched next to the IED, and they connected the wire to a detonator. The remaining four walked away; climbed a hill opposite the position from where they were watching, and sprawled on the ground.
“They’re waiting to watch the show,” he grunted, “which is a real shame.”
“Why?”
“Because there’s going to be just the one show in town. The one where I kill them.”
She shuddered. “There are still too many of them…”
From the corner of his eye, he saw Javed give a frantic wave. “Mr. Tyler, vehicles coming.”
“Hostiles?”
“I think…no.”
He swiveled his gaze to the west and spotted the dust cloud. He brought out his binoculars and focused on the vehicle convoy, and his blood ran cold. Red crosses. This was no ordinary military convoy, but the personnel on board would be doctors, nurses, the sick and the wounded. Taking the northern road that would loop around Chiras, they were driving into a trap, and enough explosive to tear the convoy into bloody ruin. He could already picture the appalling loss of life.
The long years of Special Forces training kicked in. Improvise, use what you have, get close to the enemy, and kill the bastards. The immediate enemy was in front of him. Two men hunkered in, waiting to detonate their lethal weapon, and six more up on that hill.
I’ll have to take the two in front of me first to stop them turning the road into a charnel house. The others…I need time. Use every weapon I have, every resource, and every finger that can pull a trigger. Javed, Sarah, and Nasrat.
They were watching him, and he pointed to the men on the hill. “I’m going down there, and I want you three to stop them getting to me while I deal with the bombers. Shoot and keep shooting. Try to hit them, but don’t worry if you miss. The object is to keep them off my back while I disarm that bomb. You okay with that?”
Javed nodded, his face eager. He could taste enemy blood. “I have the AK-47, and I won’t let you down Mr. Tyler.”
“Nasrat, you okay?”
He nodded and waved his AK-47.
“Good. Sarah?”
She took the Weatherby off her shoulder. “I can shoot straight. Gary taught me. But I’ve never…” She cast her eyes downward, “never shot or killed a man.”
He pulled her toward him and put his hand under her chin. Then he lifted her head and stared into her eyes.
“Listen to me. I need those Talibs to leave me alone until I can deal with the bombers. It’s a simple choice, and there are no alternatives. They’ll try to kill me, and if they succeed, the people in that convoy will die. It’s kill them, or let good people die. You choose, and you have about five seconds.”
Her response was immediate. “I’ll do it. Go to work, Joe. I’ll be fine.” She glanced at Javed and Nasrat, “We’ll be fine.”
Clutching the M4A1, he took off down the hill. The way to handle this was with speed, shock, and awe. He nearly didn’t make it. As he ran, he’d expected the two bombers to panic and start shooting. They didn’t do anything of the sort. They sped up their operation. One man pointed at him, shouting at the other man, who bent down, picked up a wire, and began to connect it to a small, plastic box. The detonator. He looked to his left, and the convoy was getting closer. Screened by the cloud of dust they were churning up, they weren’t likely to detect the trap that awaited them.
The man who’d shouted produced a rifle, and the first burst of bullets whistled past him. He ignored them, concentrating on the target, the guy holding the detonator. He fired on the run and missed. The trucks were really close, a cloud of dust and stink of diesel exhaust fumes hovering over them like a cloud. A second later, everything was chaos. The men on the hill had spotted him, knew he was about to spoil the party, and they opened fire. Bullets stitched into the ground around him, and then Javed, Nasrat, and Sarah opened fire. Sensible, controlled bursts, the deep, staccato chatter of the AK-47s in three-shot burst mode, and the sharper ‘crack’ of single shots from the Weatherby. Up on the hill, someone cried out, and he hoped at least one man was down.
The incoming fire slackened as the hostiles on the hill shifted their aim to deal with the new threat. But one man was still shooting at him, the man crouched next to the bomber, and he was less than thirty meters away. He could hardly miss. Tyler rammed the selector forward to full-auto and emptied the magazine at the target. He was so near he couldn’t miss, and he didn’t miss. The shooter went down, but the bomber had dropped out of sight, and the next thing that happened would be the explosion.
It can’t happen. I can’t let it happen. But how do I stop it?
The trucks were almost level with the IED, and thick dust swirled around him. His chest hurt, lungs searing with the exertion of going beyond the limits of human endurance to get there in time. Muscles aching from the almost superhuman demands he was putting on them, and still it wasn’t enough. Desperately, he threw himself forward over the last few meters. Too late, the man had stood up to check the position of the convoy, and Tyler was backfooted. The magazine was empty, and he clawed for the Colt. A moment later he slipped on a patch of loose rubble, dropped the gun, and the bomber grinned, knowing he’d won.
He took his time, deliberately showing the American the detonator box, and he pointed out the tiny lever at the top. With a sly grin, he reached his hand toward the lever, and Tyler grabbed for a rock to throw at him. A last desperate throw of the dice, and his fingers didn’t find a rock. They found something else, a wire. His hand flashed to his belt, snatched out the knife he’d taken from the dead man in Chiras, and he sliced the blade through the wire. A split second later the bomber twisted the lever.
The timing was down to hundredths of a second, and a heartbeat more would have been too slow. But nothing happened. Seeing the fight, the convoy slowed to a stop, and the bomb failed to explode. The Talibs on the hillside shifted their aim again, firing down on him in rage, but he covered the final two meters and ducked inside the hole. His hands reached for the bomber, and the man tried to grab a rifle to kill him, but Tyler still had the knife in his hand. He stabbed, once, twice, and the second thrust went deep into his heart.
The gunfire from further up the hill had intensified. In their rage at the thwarted ambush, they’d switched targets again. Now the convoy was under fire, and men and women were leaping from the vehicles to take cover; most helped carry the sick and wounded to shelter amongst the rocks, away from the bullets lashing around them. Javed, Nasrat, and Sarah kept up a steady rate of fire, giving him a chance to reach the hostiles shooting up the medical convoy while their attention was elsewhere. He slammed a new magazine into the M4, leapt out from cover, and took off up the hill.
They saw him a moment later, and before he hit the slope, bullets slashed around him. But now they were panicked. Their carefully planned ambush had failed, and they’d taken casualties. He reached the line of rocks and began climbing. The shooting died away. He was out of their line of fire, and he could almost reach them without chancing a bullet. Except they knew he was coming, and they’d be waiting. He pushed it to the back of his mind.
I have to get to them, have to kill the murdering bastards.
Five men, and at the rate of fire they were pouring down on the convoy, they’d soon start to score hits. Maybe not the violent devastation they’d set out to do, but they’d settle for second best. Infidel deaths, regardless of whether they were combat soldiers or medics.
Now Sarah, Nasrat, and Javed were taking heavy fire. He had to hit the hostiles fast before they did more damage. He paused for a second and told himself to think it through. Dead, he’d be useless to them. So he had to stay alive. He studied the hillside above him, and the only way to get up there was on the route he was on. The route they’d be watching. He surveyed the ground again, quartering every inch, and found a possibility. He couldn’t get up to them, but he could get below them. Cross below their position, and find a way up from where they were least expecting him.
The gunfire had slackened again. He climbed onto the rocks and began working his way across. On the other side of the road, they’d have seen what he was doing, and they fired repeatedly. The Talibs returned fire; maybe too busy to wonder where he’d disappeared to. The climb was difficult, and in parts the soft, fissured rock threatened to break away. There were a few solid hand and footholds, and he clambered across the face of the hill, until he’d worked out he was several meters past their position. Now he needed to reach them.
The route he found was incredible, a flight of stairs; a natural series of steps that had eroded in the stone over the millennia. A scream from below told him of a hit on one of the soldiers from the medical convoy, and he prepared to launch his attack. A final check of his weapons, and he bounded the last few paces up the rough steps. They didn’t extend as far as the ledge where the Talibs were firing from, and he launched himself upward from a meter below. With a massive effort, he scrabbled over the edge, and he was amongst them.
If lives weren’t at stake, he would have laughed. The five men stared at him like he was a genie who’d emerged from a bottle. Or maybe the evil Djinn, come from hell to claim their souls. Close enough, he’d come to claim their lives, and their souls were part of the package. He squeezed the trigger, and the M4 snarled out its vengeance. Short bursts ripped into them, and they were gripped by indecision, not knowing whether to fight or to run. Or perhaps say a prayer to their blood-crazed god for mercy. He put down four Talibs, but one man, in the act of falling, saved his comrade’s life. The bullets intended for him riddled the already dying man, and he leapt nimbly away, racing back across the plateau, heading for a narrow path that would take him to safety.
Tyler fired again. Five bullets left the barrel, and they all missed the fleeing man. He reloaded, but the Talib ducked out of sight. He was going to be a hard target to reach without Tyler offering himself as a target. He looked across the intervening space to the opposite hill, and Sarah stood up and waved. She was with Javed and was shouting something to him. She pointed in the direction of the Talib, who lay on the ground, almost, but not quite out of sight.
He couldn’t reach him, couldn’t cross the open ground to get close enough to get in the shot before the guy killed him.
What was she saying? Will they cover me?
It came to him an instant later. They wanted to use him as bait to draw the man out, and it made sense. He walked forward, rifle in the crook of his arm, like he was strolling out for an afternoon skeet shoot, conveying a message.
Hey, I’m not a threat. You can kill me, buddy boy. Show yourself, and enjoy tasting the blood of this infidel.
He made no attempt to stay low, no attempt to hide from the anticipated bullets, and he was halfway there when the shooter jumped to his feet. His teeth showed where he’d parted his lips in a broad, savage smile. He said something, and the straggly beard wobbled as he talked. With a sneer he raised the AK, and died in a storm of gunfire from three hundred meters away. They were both good shots. Javed’s 7.62mm rounds tore into his belly, while Sarah snapped off a mere two rounds with the Weatherby. They were the rounds that killed him, heart shots. Incredible shooting, and he reminded himself to compliment her. The man toppled, like a giant hand had shoved him.
He waved across to her and climbed down to road. When he reached the first vehicle, a soldier came to greet him, a Major, wearing a wide smile of relief.
“We’re sure glad you happened along, Mister, whoever you are. Was that what I thought it was?”
Beneath the helmet and armored vest, he glimpsed a female. He nodded and pointed.
“IED, yes. They buried it in the road, and they were waiting for you to drive over it.”
“Wow, that was close.” She whistled and offered him her hand, “I’m Pat Bryant, MEDCOM, U.S. Army Medical Command. They called for volunteers for this shindig, and I put together a scratch unit to prepare for when the taskforce goes in.”
He shook. “Joe Tyler, civilian.”
She snorted. “You’re no civilian, Mr. Tyler. I watched you in action up on that hillside, and you’ve done it before. Army Rangers?”
“U.S. Navy SEALS, and a spell in country with CIA.”
She grimaced. “Then you’ve been through the mill. What’re you doing out here in the middle of nowhere?”
He explained about the martyrs, the kids condemned to die by the Islamic crazies. About going to Chiras to free them, and she shook her head. “I’d give Chiras a miss. There’s a big battle on the way, and they’re working toward Mazari Sharif, where we’re headed. They’re sending in aircraft, artillery, you name it, and they’re shooting anything that looks like it may be a hostile. Between Chiras and Mazari Sharif is the area you need to avoid.
“Those kids are in Chiras. I don’t have a choice, Major.”
She nodded. “Then good luck to you. You’re gonna need every ounce of luck, every damn ounce. Our recon suggests the Taliban are waiting for the Coalition to start, and when it happens they’re planning to unleash hell.”
He nodded. “I hear you, but we’ll have to chance it. By the way, you’ll need to call someone in to dig up those explosives.”
“Will do.” She offered her hand again, “We owe you more than just thanks. Any time you need medical help, give us a shout. So long, and good shooting.”
She swung aboard the lead vehicle, a Humvee with red cross markings, and waved the convoy forward. As they disappeared into the distance, Sarah, Nasrat, and Javed came down, leading the horses. She gave him the once over.
“Everything okay, Joe?”
“I’m good. That was first rate shooting, Javed.” He grinned with pride at the compliment.
“Sarah told me to make sure I didn’t miss. She said if we did, you’d be dead.”
“You didn’t miss. There’s something you need to know, Sarah.”
He explained about the direction the Taliban was moving in. “The thing is, they’ve split into two groups. One group is moving west.”
“West, right. What does that mean?”
“Your ranch is in their way, Sarah.”
“My ranch.” Her voice was a whisper, “You think they’re planning to attack it.”
He didn’t reply. An attack would be overkill, for they could punch through it like it was made of paper. Scores of Talibs, and all that stood in their way were Fatima and a few locals who worked out there. Yet it wasn’t likely. Facing the Coalition armies, they had other problems to deal with than an insignificant ranch.
Junior is there. Dear God, don’t let Sarah’s child die.
“What can we do?”
He stared at her for several seconds. “They should be okay. We must keep to plan, waltz into Chiras, and free the kids. Then we’ll head straight back to your property. But first give them a call and warn them. I think they’ll be okay, but just to be on the safe side.”
“I’ll do it now.”
She put through the call. When she’d finished, her face was white and strained. “I’ve warned them. All we can do now is hope they’ll be okay, Fatima, the rest of the staff, and Layla and Junior. They’ve never attacked before, Joe.”
“I’m sure they’ll leave them alone.”
“Yes. What now?”
“We hit Chiras, find those kids, get them out, and deal with that mad Mullah, this Ahmadi. Fuck him, I’ve had enough. Then we’ll get back to your place. It’s time to saddle up. The cavalry’s going in.”
