Afghan Storm (Nick Woods Book 3) (2 page)

Chapter 3

Hour after hour, the S3
team pushed on. Following one hour of movement, they’d take ten minutes of
rest, reorient themselves to their maps, and pick up again.

Although the routine was
the same, it now felt like every step was a battle, both physically and
mentally. This mission was already much more difficult than any of the men
could have anticipated. The realities of their situation and the high potential
for failure or even death was quickly sinking in. That realization, in addition
to the growing fatigue and unrelentingly harsh elements, had them all headed in
a downward spiral of self-doubt. And despite each man’s desperate desire to
disguise it, the wear and worries were starting to show.

Truck worried whether his
knee would hold up. The pain continued to worsen, and when Nick wasn’t looking,
he found himself beginning to limp. On breaks, he’d check the swelling when he
knew no one was looking.

Red worried about his
senses. A nagging fear had been growing that he really had to do more than see
the enemy first. Even a successful firefight without casualties would mean
mission failure since it would alert the enemy and attract more fighters.
Therefore, he needed to not only see the enemy first but see them so far away
that none of the team could be discovered. And in worrying about this, Red
failed to realize that his pace had slowed.

Marcus continued to psych
himself up, mentally preparing for whatever would come. He was easily the
biggest man on the team. Easily the strongest. And he wasn’t toting a machine
gun, as Truck was.

Without question, if
someone was hit or killed, it would be Marcus carrying him out. And with so
much weight already on him, this was something Marcus wasn’t looking forward
to. His pack was already testing his limits, and so he took deep breaths and
told himself over and over, “This ain’t shit. Nothing can break me. This ain’t
shit. Nothing can break me.” Inside this mental repetition, Marcus maintained
his stride in rhythm with his words.

Nick Woods fought the
impending doom he could feel coming. It reminded him of the time he and his
spotter had entered Afghanistan on what would be their final mission. The two
had grown used to the dangers, but when they saw their target location had
nearly a thousand troops, and not a hundred as they had been told, they knew
they were in deep shit. And instantly, a nagging fear had risen up in Nick’s
mind that the two men had been betrayed and sold out.

This mission didn’t feel
like they had been sold out, but it seemed fraught with things that could go
wrong. It’d been so simple on paper back at the base camp, but now Nick
grappled with the realities on the ground: how long it took to cover even a
short distance, how far they were from assistance, how they had no means to
contact reinforcements or air support, and how totally isolated they truly
were.

Aside from the threat of
literally hundreds of enemy fighters in the area, the biggest thing eating at
Nick was the distance and realities of how slow they must move to avoid
detection.

Nick realized that Red was
moving slower than he had been, which was arguably needed. If they killed one
man, others would soon know -- even if they didn't hear the silenced shot. And
once they knew, the hunt would be on.

Besides Red’s pace, Nick
hadn’t fully considered that moving at night on such steep terrain would make
the forty miles feel more like fifty or sixty.

Nothing to be done about
it now, he thought. Just keep pushing and dig deep, baby.

Chapter 4

Nick called a halt at 4 a.m.
They needed to find a hide before dawn. The team gratefully stacked packs
against each other and left Truck with his big RPK machine gun to watch them.

Nick, Red, and Marcus
pulled out compasses and headed off in opposite directions to search for a good
position. The men had rehearsed this procedure back at base camp. One would go
toward twelve o’clock, one toward four o’clock, and one toward eight o’clock.
Dividing up would hopefully help them find the best position faster, plus give
them more information about their surroundings.

This search procedure was
just one of about two dozen SOP actions, or Standard Operating Procedures, that
the team had practiced hundreds of times. Hasty ambushes, break contact,
reaction to direct fire (and indirect fire), and countless other tactical
responses that might prove necessary.

They knew how each man
would react, they memorized where each man had stored every single item in each
pack, and they had discussed and rehearsed every contingency they could think
of.

Twenty minutes later, Red,
the last of the three, returned. They huddled in a circle and debated in
whispers who had found the best position in as low of tones as they could
speak. Truck kept his eyes outward while they discussed their finds.

In the end, they went with
Red’s position. He said he’d found a low spot in a gully between two draws. It
would barely be defensible, but had the benefit of being almost perfectly
hidden. Without another word, they broke the huddle, and the men slipped on
their packs for what they hoped would be the last time today. Well, at least
for another twelve hours.

Ten minutes later, Red
guided them into the place he’d found. Again, without a word, the team set up a
hide as they’d rehearsed. Packs were stashed facing outward and low nets were
pulled out and staked into the hard ground by boot heels -- the rubber was much
quieter than shovels.

Dawn found all four men
under the low net, alert. After it was confirmed they were secure, they began
two-man watches. Two on watch facing opposite directions, two sleeping.

Nick and Red took the
first watch, with Red looking down the hill and Nick looking uphill. Marcus and
Truck laid down to get some much needed rest and sleep.

Nick’s mind wouldn't stop
racing. He had followed one of the truest maxims in the military: the KISS
principle, or “Keep It Simple, Stupid.” Yet as the team lay hidden
approximately 4.7 miles inside Pakistan, he couldn’t help but wonder if he’d
gone overboard on the KISS principle. After all, the team had only made it
about three-quarters of the distance he’d planned for them to make.

Perhaps they should have
parachuted in. The CIA had offered to push them through an intense,
mission-specific four-week course, but Nick had ruled it out. It held too many
dangers, as it was hard to keep the team together. Gear often got separated.
Ankles sprained. Legs broke. As a general rule, Nick thought that if you had to
parachute in, you should find another way.

Yet there were other
options besides parachuting. They could have tried to take a 4x4 truck past the
Pakistani army. They could have taken money and tried to bribe their way
through a checkpoint, or snuck past sleeping guards. Option three, which Red
favored, was killing the guards and making it look like the Taliban had done
so. “And if that leads to some Paki-Tali killing afterward, so much the
better,” the short man scoffed with a sick grin.

They had also considered
silenced, souped-up four wheelers, but that brought up all kinds of possible
gear malfunctions, fuel requirements, and possible toolkit needs. Even studying
it for a few hours made Nick’s head spin with the possibilities of everything
that could go wrong.

Bottom line, Nick was used
to walking, and he’d walked into Afghanistan too many times to count back in
the day, so walking is what they’d do. And it’d be a hell of a lot of walking
before they were done.

Nick tried to shut his
mind down and focus on the ground up the hill, looking for any form of
movement. He had three of America’s greatest warriors with him, and they were
completely committed to one of the riskiest missions in the world. And in the
end, the boldness of the plan would either soar or come crashing down on top of
them.

Chapter 5

The various watches passed
without any major drama. Despite finally making it into a more heavily
populated area, the team’s resting position high up in the hills continued to
go unnoticed. It was clear that this far into Pakistan, the Taliban had little
to no concern about using the roads and open areas as they pleased. And if
there was any fear of coalition forces, either air or ground, it certainly
didn't show.

All throughout the day the
team observed loads of beat-up cars, a couple farm tractors, and lots of foot
traffic pass on the road below. Still no one stopped to even glance up into the
hills. The Taliban's confidence must have been contagious as it appeared that
even the everyday man had no reason to question their safety.

Dusk approached, and
Marcus passed out another eight hundred milligram round of ibuprofen. Nick
motioned for the men to crawl closer under the net.

“Alright, guys,” he
whispered, “tonight we make up for the fact that we’ve covered so little ground
today. Red, I want you to step it out, just like it’s an all-out hump.”

Red raised his eyebrows,
giving Nick an apprehensive look.

Nick stopped him before he
could say a word.

“Look,” Nick said, “all
day long we’ve been here, and we’ve seen that nobody is paying attention. And
we’ve also seen that nobody is moving this high up the hill. While we needed to
move slow last night, close to the border, our chances of running into anybody
tonight are slim.”

Nick turned his attention
to Truck.

“If your knee can’t take
the faster pace, let me know. We’ll slow it down, or even steal a vehicle if we
have to.”

The big man nodded.

Nick met each man’s eyes
and asked if there were any questions.

Clenching jaws and
fidgeting hands were the only response he got. No, there were no questions
about the plan. Questions about how the hell they were going to pull this
mission off, however, they had those in surplus.

Nick was right there with
them. His back and legs were no more improved from the rest. The cover they
camped under during the daylight hours was no match for the malicious summer
sun. Their water supply was being consumed at an alarming rate and then
unavoidably being sweated back out almost twice as fast.

Nothing you can do about
it right now, Nick. Just got to keep moving.

As soon as they were
cloaked in the night’s dark, Nick helped his team to tear down and stow the
netting, wishing he could stow his worries away just as easily.

That night, they pushed
harder than the previous night. Now with the realization that the Taliban
wasn’t looking for foreign troops, they were able to move faster. They crossed
deep gullies, angled draws, and steep fingers. They walked as fast as the
terrain allowed, trudging, slipping, and cursing when it worked against them.

Several times they paused
for possible sightings, and Red and Nick would scan the area with their night
vision goggles (NVGs), but each time proved to be a false alarm. Before
daybreak, they scouted for a hide, then assembled their nets to lay under.

And for four more days
they followed this pattern. Push hard at night, stop with enough time to scout
a hide, then attempt to physically recover in the day under camouflage cover.
Each night they covered 4.0 to 5.0 miles.

Nick lay under the net
around noon on the seventh day, keeping watch and feeling like the day was
creeping by slower than a single drip could fill a barrel. Now taking stock of
their situation, Nick saw that there were more problems than solutions. The
heat was burning them in more ways than one. The massive supply of water they
had lugged in seemed to be evaporating before their eyes, and the sun
relentlessly drained what little energy they had left.

To make things worse, that
hellish, oven-like temperature was keeping them from getting the sleep they so
desperately needed. The four men of Shield, Safeguard, and Shelter looked
rough, to say the least.

Their bodies reeked, and
their clothes were filthy, ripped, and stained. Nick figured he had lost more
than ten pounds, and he really didn’t have ten pounds to lose. The sweat, the
sleep deprivation, and the inability to keep up his muscle mass from a diet now
solely comprised of dried fruits and meats -- all had sapped his body and
knocked him down from his optimum operating condition.

Any more than three more
days of this and Nick knew the men would arrive gaunt and weak. Like men who
had survived a hundred-mile march. Granted, their forty miles didn’t come close
to that, but with the crushing amount of gear they had to carry and their need
to be alert -- not a day passed when their adrenaline didn’t spike three or
four times from some false alarm -- it might as well have been.

And it wasn’t like they’d arrive
at their destination and be greeted by a finish line, cheering supporters, and
plenty of rest. Instead, they’d arrive and be forced to fight and make perfect
split-second decisions, or they’d all be dead within hours after firing the
first shot.

Besides the exhaustion,
Nick also knew they were all increasingly banged up. A twisted ankle here, a
throbbing knee there, and that didn’t take into account the bumps, scrapes, and
bruises each had collected in spades.

Nick realized his plans to
cover the distance on foot had erred on what their conditioning could endure.
Sure, they were in the top three or four percent of athletes in the world in
terms of physical conditioning, but the mission required more than Nick had
ever dreamed when he drew it up on paper.

The terrain -- the ups and
downs, the slanted slopes, the loose rocks, the requirement to only move at
night -- all had slowed them down and made Nick and Marcus’s conservative
estimates on distance per night seem like a naive, unrealistic wager made by
some drunk and desperate gambler on the Las Vegas strip.

S3 would reach their objective,
and they’d be ready to fight, but it was going to be pretty ugly. And that was best
case.