Afghan Storm (Nick Woods Book 3) (6 page)

BOOK: Afghan Storm (Nick Woods Book 3)
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Chapter 17

 

Watching
through his scope to check for range, Nick saw the villagers had finally closed
to three hundred yards.

“Now!” he
yelled.

Marcus and
Red opened fire on the mob, their AK-47s adding to the hell Nick and Truck were
already unleashing. Both Marcus and Red were using
the older style AK-47s, which fired a larger bullet than the newer, more
modern variants. Their AK-47s fired 7.62 x 39 mm bullets, a much heavier bullet
with stronger knockdown power. The
AKs also sported expensive ACOG
scopes, and at three hundred yards, you would almost have to try to miss.

The mass of
villagers slowed, the casualties too disheartening, the fire too heavy. As the
assault up the hill ground to a halt, the remaining villagers looked for cover.
Unfortunately for them, there was none. A few took a knee. Others dove into the
prone. And finally, they commenced firing.

Their fire
up the hill picked up in volume, but would have only been overwhelming if they
had been trained in fire discipline or had any concept of accuracy. A few fired
from under their arms, others from the hip. Only a few truly aimed, but even
then their weapons were too worn and poorly cared for to be precise machines.

The four
Americans were dialed in, completely focused on the task at hand. They ignored
narrow misses and stayed locked on their sights and the execution of firing
accurately: taking their time, aiming well, and pulling (not jerking) the
trigger.

Nick finally
found the man in the white turban -- Tariq -- in his scope and moved his point
of aim to center mass. The man was yelling and shouting, leading with strength
despite the situation.

Nick noted
this, briefly respecting the man before sending a round straight through him.
He nudged his rifle to the right and aimed in on a man who had taken a knee and
was now firing up the hill. His bullet struck the shooter in the face, and the
man dropped hard. At this distance, Nick could shoot three-inch groups from the
Dragunov sniper rifle with barely a strain. And with a ten-round magazine and a
weapon that was semi-automatic instead of bolt action like the M40 he’d started
on in the Marine Corps, he was bagging his limit today.

The barrel
of Truck’s machine gun was steadily growing hotter, brass and links piling in
front of him. He saw a man lugging a machine gun up the hill and fired a burst
low into the ground in front of him. Rounds and rocks ricocheted up into the
man and he dropped. Truck readjusted his aim and fired three more rounds to
make sure the man was dead, then rotated toward a cluster of men.

Again
keeping his aim low -- as all great machine gunners do -- Truck skipped a burst
directly into their ranks. Rounds shattered shins, knees, and ankles, sending
the men to the ground. Truck poured more bullets into the targets who were now
gripping the ground in terror.

Marcus knew exactly how
the men below were feeling. Being a prior Marine Corps Gunny, he’d both
witnessed and participated in numerous assaults. Therefore, Marcus set to
picking his shots with purpose and relying on some hard-earned instincts.      

Keeping his eyes
constantly moving, Marcus quickly sized up individual targets and focused on
the greatest threats. Ultimately, Marcus knew that engagements were won and
lost
based on leadership. Consequently, he looked
for men yelling or pointing, and he promptly fired a heavy round from his AK-47
through them. The 7.62 x 39 mm, 120-grain bullet hit them so hard that most
didn’t require a second shot.

Red, however, followed no
such strategy and picked off the men below with how he’d always done
everything. With a mad, unshakable determination. He watched the surviving men
below him with deep satisfaction. Among the surviving few, Red recognized a
subtle change had swept over them.

What had been a hoard of
confident warriors running headlong into battle now looked like a frantic
scattering of startled chickens. Red could see it in their actions, if not in
their eyes. It was a look that Red knew very well.

It was the same look that
eventually dawned upon every big man who went to square up with little Red.
Every single time. There was that small, but deliciously validating moment. The
very moment they realized just how greatly they’d underestimated their
opponent, and how much they were going to hurt in the morning. Red called it
the “Oh Shit! Moment.”

 

 

Chapter 18

 

The entire
fight with the villagers ended in ninety seconds. All fire from the villagers
had stopped though many moaned or cried from their positions.

“What do you
say, sir?” Red asked, looking at Nick. “We can’t leave any survivors, right?”

He had
crawled out from the net and now stood, waiting for Nick’s answer.

Nick
hesitated, looking to Marcus.

Marcus, an honorable man
if there ever was one, shook his head “no” without a moment’s hesitation. His
years as a drill instructor at Parris Island had molded him into a man with the
highest standards and uncompromising integrity. Marcus would never be the type
of man that would agree to shoot survivors.

“Marcus is
right,” Nick said. “Besides, we don’t need to waste our ammo.”

“We could
use their weapons and ammo,” Truck said, standing to join Red outside the net.

 

Nick knew Truck was hardly
the shining example of a healthy conscience. He was a bull-headed man who had
not only been kicked out of Special Forces for beating the shit out of an
incompetent officer, but he’d also been fired as a military contractor after he
defied orders, abandoned his company vehicle, and ran pell-mell into a Taliban
ambush. Although knowing the stories behind these incidents had made it easier
for Nick to understand Truck’s actions, Nick believed the results might have
been a little less devastating to Truck’s career if he had avoided trying to
solve all his problems with violence.

Nevertheless,
Nick leaned Red and Truck’s way. The last thing they needed was someone
hobbling off and alerting the entire country that there were four armed
Americans hiding in the mountains.

Marcus slid
forward under the net so he could see Nick better.

“Don’t do
this, Nick,” he stressed. “We’re better than this. Besides, the timeline favors
us. We can pack our shit up, head further up the mountain range, and work a
circular route toward Ahmud al-Habshi’s compound. Even if someone stumbles upon
the men below, they won’t have time to track and find us before dark. Not to
mention, there won’t be time to get a warning out to al-Habshi. There are no
cell towers here, and there’s not enough time to get down the hill, locate a
vehicle, and drive there before dark.”

Nick gripped his face with
one hand and nodded toward Marcus. Maybe I’m getting soft, he thought. Marcus
had made several good points. For once, time was on their side. And besides all
that, Nick already had a hard enough time sleeping at night.

“We let them
live,” he said to Red. “But take Truck with you and collect any ammo that will
fit our weapons.”

And catching a glance from
Marcus, Nick added, “If you see anyone you think might survive, tie off their
wounds if you can. But be sure to hogtie ’em with paracord if they look like
they might be able to run.”

 

As Red and Truck turned to
leave, Nick finished his orders and warned, “Oh, and be careful you two.
There’s always a chance someone might be playing possum.”

Truck and
Red collected ammo without incident and returned to their camp.

“Most of ’em
had bled out by the time we had walked down to ’em,” Red reported softly.

“A few may
survive,” Truck added, attempting to sound hopeful as he looked toward Marcus.

Marcus
shrugged in acknowledgement. It wasn’t that he struggled with their deaths.
After all, people die in war, and the villagers had made their choice when they
attacked up the hill. Nonetheless, he vehemently opposed executing wounded men
who could no longer defend themselves, and he didn’t think that made him any
less of a man or a warrior. In a more normal situation, he would have argued
that they should provide first aid for the fighters, but it wasn’t like the
four of them had enough medical supplies to help them.

“Alright,”
Nick said. “What’s done is done. Change your socks if you need to and get your
packs ready. We’re going to be humping all out on this last leg of our
journey.”

He had to keep his team
moving. It would do them no good to dwell on the past. What happened to the
villagers hadn’t been fun or fair, but neither was having your hand forced and
being backed into a difficult and violent decision. The way most people see it,
war is meant to be a worthy struggle between mighty warriors and heavily
trained armies. But what they don’t want to see is that war is a cold-hearted,
nasty bitch, who neither understands nor cares anything about honor. War has
never made any hero without the witnessing or participation of some horror. So
when war comes knocking, there isn’t anyone who’s safe anymore. Everyone has a
decision to make, and nobody gets off easy. And the worst part is that when
it’s all over, nobody really walks away truly feeling like a winner.

The men
prepped for the last all-out movement, then broke down their netting. They
debated leaving it and its stakes to spare some weight but decided the mission
could go haywire, and it might be worth having if they needed to hide on any
more mountainsides.

Just minutes
later, they were ready to go. And while it was impossible to ever get used to
the weight on their backs, their bodies had adjusted as much as they ever
would.

“This will
be our first movement during daylight,” Nick said, “so keep alert and be ready
for contact.”

Red stepped
off on point, and the men of S3 followed him toward their target destination,
the compound of Ahmud al-Habshi. They had endured ten days and nights of hell
to get to this point, and their time to meet him was well over due.

 

 

 

Chapter 19

 

Ironically,
the primary target of Shield, Safeguard, and Shelter was closer than they could
have anticipated.
He
wasn’t shacked up, hiding in some rural province of Afghanistan, nor was he
lounging in some comfortable mosque deep within the safety of Pakistan.

No. Less than one mile
away, while Nick Woods and his band of shooters made their final approach
toward their secondary target, their primary target was ascending the very hill
they had occupied and defended against a mob of enraged villagers.

Rasool
Deraz, the leader of the Taliban, had to take the hill slowly, but like so many
Afghan men and women, he had strong legs and was surprisingly durable to be in
his sixties and without any form of modern medical care. The Old Lion, as he was
called, had been twenty miles away when word arrived about a bloody firefight.
One of Rasool’s lieutenants had worked the radio and quickly confirmed that no skirmishes
had broken out between villages, and there had been no reports indicating any
trouble with the Pakistani soldiers in the area.

The Pakistani
army had recently negotiated with Deraz and the Taliban before entering the
Federally Administered Tribal Areas. Had the Army not, they would have been
sent running with their trucks piled high with body bags.

Rasool
carried a sneaking suspicion about what might have happened on the hill, but he
wanted to confirm it for himself. So he and his entourage of more than two
hundred hardened fighters had roared down the road in their trucks to the site
and began ascending up the rough terrain on foot. Upon hearing the news, the Pakistani
army had packed up and cleared the area, wary that they could be blamed for the
slaughter of the villagers.

A lot of
blood had been spilled between the Pakistani army and the people in the area.
The Pakistani army had fought with both the locals and the Taliban fighters
from Afghanistan, who were in Pakistan seeking sanctuary while they refitted
and rested.

In this incident, however,
the typical suspects had been effectively ruled out. No reported Army
interference or village squabbles meant that there was a new culprit to
consider, and in Rasool’s experience, new or unexpected parties equaled
something much more dangerous. The unsettling nature of that realization was
great enough that Rasool had resigned to see the scene for himself. But this,
of course, called for a much larger production than Rasool would have liked.

Wherever Rasool went, his
men went with him, with little to no exceptions. Therefore, what should have
been a simple inspection quickly evolved into a full-blown military exercise,
featuring a cavalcade of two hundred plus men crammed, clinging, and piled into
fewer than twenty, four-wheel-drive Toyota trucks.

Although he appreciated
the concerns of his men, Rasool also felt the precaution was largely
unnecessary and ultimately frustrating due to the amount of time it took to
orchestrate a simple trip down the road. Rasool had wanted to get to the hill
as soon as possible in order to be with the wounded and provide what little
comfort he could to the ones who lay dying.

His impatience amplified
when he was informed that he would not be permitted to ride in the lead truck.
He attempted to protest, but his men “strongly insisted” that he travel in a
truck far back at the end of the procession. This, in turn, meant that it would
take longer for his truck to get there. Or it could very well ensure that he
didn’t make it there at all, if something happened further up the line and
either forced the trucks following it to stop or turn back altogether.

Leader or not, there was not
much Rasool could do as a group of his men ushered him into his truck
-- one that had been specially armored with additional
steel inside the doors -- and sped off far ahead of him and his driver.

No matter
how hard Rasool tried, his men went to extremes to care for him and protect
him. How he wished he could make them see that his life was nearing its end and
of little value.
If
there was only some way he could get them to understand that it was now their
turn, that their young lives offered so much more opportunity to advance Islam.
But they were all too stubborn and too proud to accept it.

A personal
bodyguard and long-time friend -- Mushahid Zubaida -- oversaw his protection at
all times. When Deraz needed to move in the open, as few as ten men traveled
with him. Although drone strikes had been almost non-existent for months,
Mushahid remained cautious about large numbers of fighters whether they were in
Afghanistan or Pakistan. Using his best judgment to protect Rasool, Mushahid
would call as many as fifty or a hundred men to encircle the Taliban leader.
However, Mushahid believed discretion provided the best defense.

The country
of Afghanistan was mostly on its own now. Its primary protector for the past
decade -- America -- was, for the most part, a distant memory. There were still
some American military units in Afghanistan, but the remnants were mostly
military contractors now. As far as Rasool could tell, these military
contractors were there to suck money that the U.S. government had transferred
to Afghanistan while merely performing low-level security at bridges and dams,
as well as training the Afghan army and police force. But both the military and
police forces of Afghanistan and Pakistan were heavily infiltrated by Taliban
members or sympathizers. Even the units that hadn’t been infiltrated were laden
with men who had little dedication to the fragile government of Afghanistan.
These men were in it for the paycheck, and that’s why the Taliban under Rasool
were within months of fully taking over the entire country.

Mushahid
constantly berated Rasool that if he didn’t become more cautious, then he
wouldn’t live to see what he had spent a decade trying to achieve: the complete
collapse of the Afghan government and the re-establishment of a Taliban
government. That was the first step in their grand plan, anyway.

“You risk
yourself too much,” Mushahid regularly harped at him.

Rasool
always reminded Mushahid that if Allah willed his death, there was nothing
Mushahid or any of his fighters could do to prevent it. But Mushahid would
always argue that Allah also gave Rasool the good sense to know better and to
realize how crucial he was to the movement.

“Your death,
if it must come, will only come by natural causes,” Mushahid had once said. “No
one, especially some American infidel, will ever cause your passing as long as
I’m alive.”

Rasool Deraz
had no doubt Mushahid and the others would willingly take a bullet for him.
This zeal for his protection -- for the cause, really -- was why Rasool tried
to stay away from direct fighting. When danger had lurked near in the past, his
personal force of two hundred men had charged into it like a colony of angry
fire ants.

Rasool knew
the feeling. He had been the same once, protecting older, venerable religious
leaders himself. He had first fought against the Soviets back in the ’80s when
the communist superpower had invaded his home country of Afghanistan. He had
then worked his way up the ranks in the civil war between Afghan warlords that
followed the power vacuum that ensued after the Soviets left.

Eventually,
the religious order known as the Taliban had practically won that civil war in
Afghanistan except for a few provinces in the north. In fact, the Taliban had
its mortal enemy -- the Northern Alliance -- on the ropes when al-Qaeda hit the
Twin Towers in New York on September 11.

Then the
Americans arrived decisively. Initially, the superpower relied mostly on their
planes and some advisors. The bulk of the fighting had been done by local
Afghans in the Northern Alliance. Had the Americans stayed with this strategy,
they may have won. But eventually, they made the major mistake of trying to
rebuild the country and turn it into a democracy, sending in thousands of U.S.
troops to help facilitate this. None of these American troops understood the
culture, of course.

Barely
twenty-one-year-old lieutenants would demean and yell at sixty-year-old tribal
elders. Soldiers would enter private homes and have women searched. They’d even
go so far as to enter mosques without removing their boots.

And with
every cultural mistake against the populace, the Taliban gained support and new
fighters. Loads of propaganda helped feed this.

Now, victory
in Afghanistan was within sight for the Taliban again. Just as the Soviets had been
beaten down over a ten-year period, the Americans had become weary nearly
fifteen years after invading the country. Only now the Taliban were led by
Rasool Deraz, a humble man who somehow found himself at the top of the
organization. He had never sought the spot, but the Americans had killed or
captured the Taliban’s leaders through the years. And with each loss, Rasool
was promoted and held in higher regard.

Now,
sixty-three years old, he stood atop the Taliban and would soon lead the
culminating victory of a decades-long movement for supremacy in Afghanistan. He
felt completely unworthy in this role, but it was fate that had put him here,
and he would do his best to honor and serve Allah as long as it was willed.

BOOK: Afghan Storm (Nick Woods Book 3)
11.47Mb size Format: txt, pdf, ePub
ads

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