Sniper Elite (19 page)

“Hell,” Gil said. “He knows I'd never beat up on an old man.”

“By the way,” Steelyard said. “The Iranian broad went into labor half an hour after surgery . . . so congratulations. It's a boy. Damn kid will probably grow up to hunt your ass down in twenty years. That or drive a nuke into Times Square.”

Gil smiled. “Ever heard the parable about the partisan and the horse?”

“Yeah, I've heard the damn thing.” He stuck the cigar back into his teeth. “Don't play granddaddy with me, boy. What you know about life, I can fit under my foreskin.”

After fast-roping from two different Night Stalker helos to the valley floor six miles south of Waigal Village, Captain Crosswhite and eight SEALs from SEAL Team Six made their way two miles northward over rugged, forested terrain. Along for the ride was their Afghan interpreter, Forogh. He was as much a member of the team as any of them, equally armed and wearing the same multicam ACUs.

The column was stretched out over roughly eighty yards along the winding mountain trail, everyone wearing an IBH helmet with integrated radio headset and night-vision goggles. Their primary weapons were suppressed M4s. Most of them carried a variety of secondary weaponry as well, along with assorted types of explosives.

Alpha was walking point when the bleating of a goat caused him to stop short. He held up a fist and lowered himself into a crouch at
the edge of the trail, then called Crosswhite forward over the radio. The rest of the team found cover among the rocks and trees.

Crosswhite arrived and took a knee beside Alpha. “What do we got?”

“Goats,” Alpha said in a low voice—whispers carried in the dark. “Every fucking goat in Afghanistan, I think.”

Crosswhite scanned the clearing ahead where a rock slide had shattered the forest centuries before. He saw what looked like hundreds of goats scattered among the rocks, most of them resting peacefully with their forelegs folded in front of them. A few kids wandered about. “What the fuck are they doing here?”

Alpha pointed out a pair of goat herders bedded down beneath a lone tree near the stream that ran through the rocks. Then he spotted two more herders fifty yards farther off, bedded down at the tree line where the forest began again. “Can we cut through these animals without waking those men up?”

Forogh arrived to take a knee between them, resting a hand on Crosswhite's shoulder. “No. The herd will spook and make a lot of noise if we try to cut through. They are very jumpy animals.” His accent was thick, but he was easily understood. “I am afraid this is a problem. Do you see the goats sleeping uphill to both sides of the gorge? Going around them will take a lot of time. We'll have to go very far up the hill to avoid spooking them.”

“Then fuck it,” Alpha said. “Let's take out the herders from here and keep moving.”

Crosswhite shook his head. “This is an unauthorized mission. We can't go murdering anybody. We'll have to think of another way. What if we just crawl slowly through them, Forogh?”

Forogh shook his head. “That is a bad risk. Wait a moment . . .” He rose up for a better look into the clearing. “Something is wrong here.”

Aside from the odor of goat shit, the scene looked innocent enough to Crosswhite. “What is it?”

Forogh crouched back down. “They don't all look like goat herders to me.”

Crosswhite strained his eyes, trying to discern in his greenish-black field of vision what Forogh was seeing that he was not. All four men wore herder's robes. There was an AK-47 leaning against the tree in the center of the clearing, but the land was hostile and this was to be expected. He checked his watch then double-checked the GPS he was using to keep track of their position. So far, they were keeping to the schedule, but they were beginning to lose time now, and the steepest part of their ascent still lie ahead of them. “How do you know they're not herders?”

“Because I was a goat herder,” Forogh said. “These men are not goat herders . . . at least not all of them.”

“Then why all the fucking goats?”

“Wait here.” Forogh began to creep forward.

Crosswhite knew Forogh from around the base, but he had never worked with him in the field. “Does that
haji
know what the fuck he's doing?” he asked Alpha.

“If he says something's wrong,” Alpha replied, “I believe him—we should let him do his thing.”

Crosswhite crawled forward on his belly to stretch out with his M4 covering the man sleeping near the AK-47. Innocent goat herders or not, if one of them came awake and grabbed for that weapon, he'd have to go.

Forogh slipped up to a goat and crouched beside it, stroking its neck for more than a minute before finally coaxing it to its feet, holding it by the horn and guiding it along through the crowd. Using the goat as an escort, he was able to pass through the herd without spooking the rest of the animals. He crept to within ten feet of the tree where the herders slept and crouched behind a rock, letting the goat go and cradling his M4.

A moment later, Crosswhite heard him speaking softly over the
radio net. “We can take these men. They're heroin smugglers—using the herd for cover. There will be more of them up the trail guarding their cargo. They're probably headed for Waigal the same as us.”

“How do you know that?” Crosswhite said.

“I can't explain right now. You'll have to trust me.”

Crosswhite slid back into cover to confer with Alpha. “What the fuck do you make of that?”

“If he says they're smugglers, I believe him.”

“Well, that alone doesn't give us the right to kill them,” Crosswhite said.

“You're in command,” Alpha replied with a shrug.

By now, the rest of the team had closed ranks, and the column was stretched over no more than fifty feet. All of them keeping watch in every direction.

Crosswhite got back on the net. “Forogh, I have to know why you think they're smugglers before I can authorize taking them out.”

After a slight pause, Forogh replied, “They
look
like smugglers.”

Crosswhite looked at Alpha, feeling the devil beginning to bite at his ass. “What the fuck am I supposed to do with that?”

Alpha didn't need to think it over. “I trust him, Captain.”

“You willing to risk prison on his advice?”

“I've risked my life on his advice more than once, and I'm still alive.”

Crosswhite drew a breath and made his decision. “Forogh, how do you suggest we deal with these fucking goats?”

“Can you make your way over here the same as I did?” Forogh asked.

“Christ if I know. Stand by.” He looked at Alpha. “Here goes nothing. Watch those
hajis
on the tree line.”

Crosswhite crept out to a goat and crouched beside it the same as Forogh had done and began stroking its muzzle, making his way down the animal's neck. When he seemed to have the goat's confidence,
he coaxed it to its feet and tried taking it by the horn. The animal immediately jerked its head away and butted him in the leg, its horn thudding against the suppressed HK Mark 23 pistol strapped to his thigh. He grabbed the horn again, this time much more firmly, and stood still, waiting to see what the animal would do. It bleated in protest, but this did not seem to rile the others nearby, so he set out along the same path as Forogh, leading the reluctant goat. They had another brief wrestling match along the way, but Crosswhite covered the distance to the rock and let the animal go, crouching beside Forogh.

“You did that very well,” Forogh said.

“I felt like a fucking idiot,” Crosswhite muttered. “So what's next? We can't bring the rest of the team through like that.”

“Kill those two men,” Forogh said, pointing around the rock.

Crosswhite looked at him. “How do you know they're not goat herders?”

“Kill them, and I will show you.”

Crosswhite stared at him for a long moment, then scanned the high ridges along both sides of the canyon. Going around the herd to make their way back down into the trees would take a lot of time, and there was no guarantee they wouldn't spook the herd. Moreover, if Forogh was right about there being a band of smugglers farther up the trail, they could very easily end up in a damn firefight. Had this been a sanctioned mission with UAV overwatch, there would have been no problem. Infrared would tell them in two seconds whether or not the enemy was waiting up the trail. As it was, however, they were operating the old-fashioned way—on wit and instinct alone.

“Give me your piece,” he said.

Forogh took the MK 23 pistol from his own holster and handed it over.

After informing the rest of the team as to his intentions, Crosswhite leaned his M4 against the rock and rose up. He drew his own pistol and checked briefly on the other two men still sleeping forty
yards away at the edge of the tree line. He stepped carefully around the rock and crept toward the tree, gripping a pistol in each hand. Each MK 23 was chambered with a .45 caliber and fixed with a high-efficiency marine suppressor. Unlike the carbine's supersonic .223 caliber ammunition, the pistol ammo was subsonic, so there would be no sound at all when he fired, other than the cycling action of the pistols themselves. As an ambidextrous shooter, Crosswhite would—in effect—be able to kill both men with a single shot, thus further limiting the risk of alerting the other men or spooking the goats.

He crept to within four feet of the sleeping men, sighted on both their faces, and squeezed the triggers. Their heads exploded open like a pair of busted cantaloupes, and he dropped into a crouch, whipping around to cover the other two men. No one and nothing stirred. It was like nothing had happened.

Forogh was beside him with his M4 a few moments later, and they traded weapons again.

“Now show me how you know they're smugglers.”

Forogh crouched beside the closest corpse and jerked open the dead man's robe to reveal the garb of an Afghan mountain warrior, complete with grenades and a bandolier of AK-47 magazines. “Do you see? They are using the herd as cover. I have seen this before.”

Crosswhite breathed a sigh relief and turned to measure the distance between the other two men. “What about them?”

“We should take them alive,” Forogh suggested. “They are the real herders. They will be happy to tell us how many men are waiting up the trail.”

They reached the sleeping men a short time later to see that one of them was rather old, the other in his late twenties maybe. Crosswhite stepped hard on the younger man's throat and pressed the suppressor into his eye socket. Forogh clamped a hand over the old man's mouth, and put the pistol against his head, speaking harshly to both of them in hushed Pashto.

Both herders nodded their heads in fervent understanding, clearly petrified. They were rolled onto their bellies, and their hands were secured behind their backs with nylon zip ties.

Needing no prompting from Crosswhite, Forogh began to question the old man at once. “We can call the team forward,” he said at length. “There are eleven smugglers with five burros bedded down fifty meters up the trail. The old man says
probably
no one is standing guard, but he doesn't know for sure. In the morning, they will continue up the trail to Waigal Village. Apparently, the village is expecting them sometime tomorrow.”

Crosswhite was crouched across from Forogh, watching around warily. “Ask him where the fuck they came from. Why isn't there any goat shit back the way we came?”

Again, Forogh questioned the old man at length. “He says they travel an old goat trail down the eastern rim up that way.” He thumbed north over his shoulder. “He says his people use . . .
have
used this clearing to rest and water their herds for centuries. He says the Taliban began to move opium through this area about six months ago, for a new market in Tajikistan. I believe he is telling the truth.”

“Okay,” Crosswhite said. “What will they do if we leave them alive?”

“Are you are asking me or them?”

“You.”

“I think they will take the herd back the way they came, up the ridge to the east and down the other side into the next valley.”

Crosswhite called the rest of the team forward, and the SEALs took up covering positions all around. By now, the goats were aware of their arrival and didn't seem to care one way or another. He broke out a map and gave orders for the old man's hands to be freed. He shined a red light on the map, and Forogh made sure the old man understood where they were.

“Ask him which direction they'll go,” Crosswhite said.

The old man pointed out their route.

“Okay, Forogh, tell him this: They are to wait here until noon tomorrow before they leave. You tell him if they leave any sooner than that, they will be shot. Make sure he understands.”

Forogh admonished the old man, and the old man nodded his head up and down, babbling away. “He says he understands. They will do as you order. He says they want no trouble. They love America.”

Crosswhite nodded. “Yeah, everybody loves America. Just make sure they know they'd better stay their asses in this fucking clearing until high noon tomorrow.”

“He promises to do as you order,” Forogh says. “Also, he says you smell like cigarette smoke and asks if you will share some of your American cigarettes with him.”

Crosswhite chuckled. Taking a pack of Camels from his arm pocket, he shook out half the pack and offered them to the old man. “Tell him not to blaze up before first light.”

“Blaze up?”

“Not to light any cigarettes before morning.”

Forogh translated and the old man shook his finger, babbling away. “He asks you not to worry. He says he fought against Russia with the Mujahideen and knows how to smoke safely in the night. Also, he would like to know if they may have the weapons of those two dead men by the tree.”