Chapter 6: Ambush
Cinnamon Pop Tarts
Under the two rifles and crowded on the seat between Al and him rested their vests. Attached to each were pouches containing a radio, ammo, a small med kit, a flashlight, and other items they wanted on their bodies. A blanket rested on the seat back, ready to throw over the vests and rifles if needed.
Mike pulled the hand-mic from his vest and lifted it to his ear. With the MI-17’s long gone, it was quiet, nothing around to make noise, people or animals, just two pickup trucks.
“Truck Two, Truck One, radio check, over.”
“Truck One, roger, read you lima charlie, over.”
It was Bruce’s voice on the other end of the radio. “Roger, we should be at the first rally point in about two hours.”
“Good copy, Two out.”
A map and GPS were spread out on Al’s lap. He lifted a thumbs up while he scanned the map. The sun crested the mountains to show the reality of the road and terrain to the left and right. The ground was far more rugged than the map had indicated. Fields of rocks and boulders poked out of the ground to either side of the road. Some were only the size of a football most were footlocker sized or bigger. The map also didn’t illustrate the poor condition of the rocky dirt road or how it undulated and weaved through the high and low ground. Their speed never got above 25 MPH as the truck bucked up from hitting a rock or suddenly dipped down into a hole, all while avoiding jagged rocks to either side of the road.
Julia leaned forward over the seat between them. “What’s that you were saying to Truck Two?”
Mike looked over. “I said…”
“Hold on.” She reached under the material covering her head and pulled the yellow foam out of her ears. “Okay, now what happened?”
“I was telling them it would be about two hours till we got to the first rally point.” The burka was pulled up on her head. “Chances are pretty good we won’t run into anyone, but as the sun comes up, you’re going to have to pull that over your face. Just in case.”
She dropped her shoulders. “Got it.”
Al looked back, smiled, and returned to looking at the map and the terrain.
“Wait a minute.” Julia put both hands on the top of their seat and pulled herself forward. “Truck One, Truck Two? I thought I’d be hearing some much more imaginative names than that. I assumed you Special Forces guys would have some awe-inspiring, fearsome names.”
Mike looked back at her grinning face.
“You know, like,” her voice deepened. “Viper Breath One Nine, this is Snapping Turtle Five One, what’s your status, over?” She changed her voice and responded. “Snapping Turtle Five One, this Viper Breath One Nine, rolling, moving to your location, roger, roger, out.”
Al chuckled and glanced back at her. “Viper Breath One Nine?”
“What?” Julia said in mock indignation. “That’s a cool name.”
“It is a cool name,” Mike said in a humorous voice. “And if we were still in the Army calling another unit, we would use our designated call signs. But here, for simplicity and ease, we’re using Truck One and Truck Two.”
Julia rolled her eyes at them. “That’s disappointing."
“Tell you what, next time we all go on a mission together, you can pick all the call signs you want.”
She tapped him on the shoulder. “Now you’re talking." She smiled. "Just a little levity at the start. We may not get the chance later.”
Mike glanced at her in the mirror, a grin on his face. “Well, you’re in it now. What do you think?”
“I’ve never been in a helicopter whizzing all over the sky. It looked like we were getting up close and personal with all the fields, rivers, and everything else. That was pretty exciting.”
With one eye on the road, he turned. Julia had closed her eyes. She looked like she was reliving the flight.
“This place is kind of beautiful in its way.” She put her forearms on the back of their seat. “It has kind of a charm when you think about its history, the high mountains, the quaint little towns we flew over. It’s kinda cool.”
Al snorted. Mike lifted his shoulders. Neither man chose to respond verbally. They knew that looks could be deceiving.
They rode in silence.
Mike relaxed but kept his eyes on the road, watching for headlights from ahead or behind. No one would be coming through the densely packed boulders that extended from the roadside to the mountains beyond.
Al glanced at the map and GPS every now and again but mostly scanned front and to his right. They’d made plenty of other road trips through this country. This was just another. Relaxed but vigilant.
The right front tire hit a buried rock, and the rifles shifted. Two hands reached out and placed the butt ends where each man felt comfortable their M-4 was in easy reach.
Julia watched the two men shift their weapons while their heads moved as if they were on a swivel. She looked left, right, and behind but didn’t see anything.
“This is all new to me, and you guys looking around like that are making me nervous? Do you mind if I talk? ”
“Sure, talk away,” Mike said. “Nobody’s around to hear us, or I’m pretty certain to see us. The looking around, it doesn’t hurt to maintain some security posture.”
“Oh, okay.” She looked left and right. The moon created some interesting shadows off the boulders, but that’s all they appeared to be.
“As I was saying before about this country, I know I’m romanticizing it. We’re not on vacation I realize the reason we're here is deadly serious. But, in my job, I’ve done as much research as any university professor on this country, or more, I'd guess. It has a rich history, as far back as Alexander’s armies invading and him marrying Roxanne.”
“Well.” Mike turned a lopsided grin on his face. “If there is one thing this country is famous for it’s getting invaded.”
“There is that.” Julia conceded.
“There’s another thing,” Mike said, eyes shifting from the rearview mirror to the road. “I learned it my first deployment over here. No matter how much we try to change things here, improve the economy, improve lives, it won’t matter. And as soon as we left, it went back to how it was before we got here.”
Julia tilted her head. “Even though there’ve been problems, I thought we were doing good. Al?”
Al glanced around at her. “He nailed it. You don’t turn off greed, religious intolerance, ignorance, and institutional illiteracy even in the twenty years we were here. Soon enough, everyone here will slide back into the old way of doing things.”
“That’s kind of depressing.” She stared over the truck hood onto the road. “Mind if I change the subject?”
Mike shrugged. Al didn’t react one way or the other.
“Like I said,” she started. “I know a lot about this country, way more than what’s likely to help us.”
“Fantastic,” Al said.
Mike glanced over at Al and grinned. “Let’s hear some fun facts that I don’t know. It’s going to be a while before we stop.”
Julia leaned onto the top of the front bench seat. “Did you know that opium production has grown well over three hundred percent since we first invaded?”
“I didn’t know that, but it doesn’t surprise me,” Al said.
“Me either. I didn’t know it was that much, but we’ve seen plenty of fields while out on patrol. It’s one of the crops they rotate throughout the year. In fact, we've done foot patrols through marijuana and opium fields.”
“Okayyy. How about this one.” Julia moved closer to the back of their seat. “Did you know that in a single year, while US forces were here, two point four million Pop-Tarts were airdropped in Afghanistan?
“Did you know?” Mike smiled. “That I have been on the receiving end of many of those drops, and I can’t remember a time that they weren’t all cinnamon flavored. I hate cinnamon Pop Tarts.”
Al chuckled. “I like Cinnamon flavored Pop Tarts. Only not when the resupply bundle’s parachute doesn’t open." He looked back. "It crashes to the earth, spreading smashed up Pop Tarts and everything else, all over the drop zone.”
“All right, how about this one,” Julia said, smiling. “Did you know that a majority of Afghanis, when we invaded, had never even heard of 9/11?”
Mike grunted. “Yeah.”
Al looked back and nodded. “We’ve met plenty of these people for sure. They don’t exactly keep up with world events. They’re too busy living in a mud hut with their animals trying to eke out a living farming.”
“Here I was thinking I was going to stump you.” She glanced at both men and grinned. “Here's one. Did you know about six months prior to all UN forces leaving Afghanistan, an Army Colonel on loan to the CDC was in Kabul with his Afghani girlfriend? They were visiting her relatives. Within hours, they were kidnapped by assailants unknown. There were no ransom demands. They just disappeared.”
Both men chuckled. Al turned back and stared at Julia for a brief moment.
“Dumbass,” Mike grinned.
Julia frowned. “Looks like I won one, but that isn’t the reaction I was expecting.”
Mike looked back. “Enlisted guys always love to hear about some high ranking officer who gets in trouble for doing some stupid shit.”
“How do you know it was something stupid?”
Mike pursed his lips, eyes looking down at her. “Come on. He was in the city with only his Afghani girlfriend, right? I'm sure he wasn’t even armed.”
Al chuckled again. “Tell us more. Any embarrassing side stories?”
Julia grinned back at them. Their amusement was infectious. “Like I said, he’s Army but on loan to the CDC. He’s head of the Epidemic Investigative Service, their investigative arm. His specialty is palaeoepidemiology." She spread her hands out. "As you can tell from the name, it is a syncing of epidemiology and archeological sciences.”
“Obviously,” Mike and Al said together.
“Jinx.” Julia crossed her arms over the back of their seat. “His girlfriend was at the University of South Carolina getting a PhD in epidemiology. He gave a seminar there a couple of times. It was love at first sight.”
“So she’s an American?” Mike said.
“No. But she lived more than half her life there.”
“Okay, we got a little background, now get to the good stuff.”
“The good stuff? Oh, did I mention he’s married and not to the girl he traveled with? He’s not assigned to any command in Afghanistan and wasn’t authorized to be here. He just up and took leave and came here with his girlfriend. Nobody knew where he went or that he was gone till he never came back from leave. His wife had no idea. She thought he was on a deployment to India.”
The front seat erupted in laughter.
Al slapped his knee. “Oh man, I hate officers.”
They laughed again.
The plan was to land seventy-five miles away from the Tal Bez Valley in a desolate, mostly uninhabited area. From experience, Mike knew in this terrain it would be a long, slow trip, taking most of the day. It was early afternoon, and the sun blazed down on top of unprotected arms hanging from truck windows. There was no wind, no relief from the heat. The truck’s roof kept the sun off their heads, but they were all hot and sweaty. It was hard not to doze the heat drained them of energy during the monotonous drive. An easy way to wake up Mike found, accidentally touching the outside of the truck. It might not have been hot enough to fry an egg on the truck’s hood but place your bare forearm on the dusty surface, and it would be a mistake you only made once.
The hard packed, rocky dirt road weaved and wound through the mountains and hills. If the rarely traveled road went in a straight line for more than a couple of minutes at a time, Mike would have celebrated, but it kept swerving left and right. At times they were lucky to exceed five miles an hour. But, it led them toward their target, the Tal Bez Valley.
Twice, somehow, a couple of boulders had fallen onto the narrow road. His first thought was ambush, but there was nowhere for the bad guys to hide but the rock fields. With Julia behind the wheel pulling with the winch and the men pushing, they could move them enough to drive around. If you were in Afghanistan long enough, you could always find something weird and unexplainable.
The route avoided rivers. Rivers meant water, and water meant crops and people. Water also meant the possibility of small enclaves not on the map, not ideal if they wanted to avoid people. These small groups of homes were located in random spots near the rivers and were hard to avoid. Those mud buildings no doubt had been there as long as the river flowed.
His past deployments were different in various ways the one constant was always the dirt, dust, and heat. None of it bothered him anymore. The running joke back at Fort Bragg to prepare for a deployment to Afghanistan was to open your car windows during summer, turn the heat on high, throw handfuls of dirt and sand into the vents, and drive everywhere you went at ten miles an hour or less.
What mattered to him was their final destination. Etched in his mind were pictures of Baabaa Hotak. He’d recognize him as soon as he put eyes on him. That’s all Mike would need, Hotak close enough to see either through a scope or close enough to touch. His second target would be the big man with the machine gun. He gripped the steering wheel tighter. The so-called enhanced interrogation techniques were never a thing for his Team, but maybe this one time. He twisted his hands on the wheel, loosening his grip only enough to still feel the friction burn on his palms.
They’d devised a plan for their group to ditch the trucks. Tom would take point. Their little patrol would move into the hills around the valley for a look around. Then, they would find a nice overwatch location. The next day, when the sun came up, they would find out what the Afghani’s were doing. After that, it would be his time.
He glanced at Al. His friend stared straight ahead, watching the terrain. In the rearview mirror, Julia slept, a little smile on her face. A slight smile crept onto his face, and he allowed himself to let go of the tension in his shoulders. He knew he had to stop reliving the past and stay focused, but it was hard not to think about Hotak.
The view in front of them was a series of low mounds that led into hills on both sides of the road and mountains beyond. If you could see past the war and the tragedy, Julia was right, Afghanistan had a charm about it. To the right was another rock field. To the left, about twenty meters away, was a short, seven or eight foot drop that fell into a wadi. In some parts of the country, he’d seen dry river beds that became raging torrents from the spring rains. Here, this one, he doubted if water had touched the inside of the meandering wadi for years. It had been their companion for the last five minutes as it meandered in lazy turns through the wide area it occupied. In random places, the wadi split into separate canals and then split again. In the distance, the wadi stretched, twisting and turning out to the west into the dry, sun-scorched land. Up ahead, the wadi system turned northeast and connected to the hills they were approaching.
A drop of sweat rolled down his forehead into his eye. He lifted his arm and wiped the sweat away.
“Whoa!”
Mike opened his eyes in time to see a sharp rock jutting out of the ground. He yanked the wheel, and the truck jerked to the side, but the truck bounced and heaved off the rock. The rock had ripped through the tire. Mike hit the brakes and sighed.
Julia jumped up awake. “What happened?”
“No worries, we got a flat tire, that’s all.”
Al glanced over. “I’m surprised we’ve only had one so far with the way this road is.”
Mike shrugged. “New tires will only take you so far if you decide to rip out the sidewall.” He was annoyed with himself for losing focus, but it was what it was. “I’ll get the jack and get started. Al, you want to get the spare?”
“Not a problem.”
They all got out and stretched. It was good to get out and touch your toes, reach for the sky, and relieve a little of the fatigue of driving for hours. Mike left his hat inside the cab, exposing his scalp to the sun. It was wool. It itched and was hot as hell to wear.
”Truck One, Truck Two over.”
Mike reached back into the cab and grabbed the hand-mic. “Roger.” He stood, wiped the sweat off his face with the hat, and threw it back in the cab. He thought better, grabbed the rollup hat from the truck, and put it on his head. The sun was brutal, and his head would easily get burned in the time it took to change the tire.
“What’s up?”
“We got a flat tire.”
It was Tom’s voice on the other end. “Need any help?”
Mike looked around. Al was in the truck bed digging out one of the spare tires. “Roger, why don’t you come up and provide us with some security, over.”
“Will do on my way.”
“What can I do?” Julia said.
Mike threw the hand-mic through the open window and pulled the jack out from behind Julia’s seat. “I’m good.” Mike put the jack under the truck. “But it sounds like Al could use some help.” He winked at her. “I’d say that cursing is a sign.”
Julia turned to help Al.
Tom was halfway between the trucks, his rifle in his hand. Bruce stood next to their truck, looking backward. Mike didn’t see Ahmad. He assumed the interrupter was sleeping in the back seat as Julia had been. His eyes shot back to Tom.
Tom stopped, cold eyes fixed on their front. Mike was turning to look when he heard Tom yell.
“Get down!”
An RPG rocket raced harmlessly over their heads. A second RPG gunner fired his weapon. He was a better shot.
Eyes briefly meeting, Mike and Tom dropped to the ground. Behind Tom Truck Two was a burning wreck pushed back by the explosion. The hood was gone, and so was Bruce. There was no sign of the man. He was just gone. The truck’s hood could have taken him with it. Flame rose from the engine block. There was no worry about the fuel tank exploding. The RPG rocket had taken care of that. The truck's windshield was still in place. Cracks spiderwebbed across its surface as smoke poured from all four blown-out windows. Mike took one last look at the burning truck. Before the attack, there’d been no sight of Maheem. Now, Mike guessed, there never would be. If Maheem was in the truck, there was no helping him.
AK fire started haphazardly. Tom fired two rounds from his rifle to the front right. Mike squirmed closer to the side of his truck. He didn’t try to look over the hood to see where the enemy fire came from. Tom rolled several times to the left. A line of bullets struck the ground sending dirt and gravel into the air where he’d been.
The machine gun went after Tom again. He continued to roll. AK-47 rounds started to impact the truck. Reaching up into the cab Mike pulled out his rifle. The machine gun started hammering the windshield and engine compartment. Glass from the windshield splintered and shattered, a piece cut his hand.
“Get to the wadi!” Mike lifted the barrel of his M-4 over the hood of the truck and fired off five quick rounds then ran.
The wadi was close. Stooped over, it was a race for the low ground. Enemy fire picked up. The AKs from the ambush site behind them sounded indistinguishable from one long burst of rifle fire. Several bullets snapped past his head. He ducked lower. An RPG fired again, and for a second time, it missed their truck. The rocket exploded about 100 meters away into a mound of dirt and rock. The rifle fire intensified. Mike dove for the ground and low crawled as fast as his knees and elbows could push him. Heart racing he threw himself over the edge of the wadi and tumbled down crashing into the sand and earth below. The fall felt like forever but was only about ten feet. A pained groan pushed out of his chest. He tried to roll when he hit and brace himself for the impact, but it still hurt like hell.
Immediately on his feet, Mike watched Al and Julia tumble into the wadi, nearly knocking him over. With a hand under each of their arms, Mike lifted and propelled them in the direction they had driven from.
“Go.” He pointed south down the wadi. “Run.”
Where was Tom?
An RPG fired from the ambush site, and immediately an explosion lit up the road sending a ball of flame and smoke into the air.
The second gunner was the better shot. And their second truck was gone. Pieces of truck and remnants of their supplies rained down, littering the ground above him and in the wadi. They were in it now.
Propelling himself on a boulder next to the wall, he looked over the edge of the wadi. The AK's rate of fire slacked off. The ambushers now fired single shots in the hope their bullets would find a target peeking over the edge of the wadi. Mike ducked behind the wadi's dirt wall. Rifle rounds whizzed overhead. The Afghanis waited for one of Mike’s group to fire back so their AKs could concentrate on that rifle. The machine gun searched the area. His indiscriminate shooting harmlessly pummeled the back of the wadi. The gunner didn’t know where they were. He was hoping to get lucky. Between machine gun bursts, he heard someone shouting in Pashtun. That wasn't good. The bad guys were preparing to clear the kill zone and come after them.
Up ahead, Julia and Al turned the corner of the meandering wadi. Mike ran behind them, turning the corner. He barely avoided running into the two of them. Tom was on a knee rifle facing the corner they’d run around.
They were all breathing hard, trying to catch their breath. Julia looked close to panic.
“What happened?” She whispered. Her breathing was short and shallow.
Tom peeked around the corner. “Our flat tire must have messed up their ambush. One of the RPG gunners got antsy, couldn’t wait, and fired off a round over your truck. It was on after that.”
Mike slapped Tom on the back. “What do you think? Two RPG gunners, a machine gun crew, we’ll call that another two people, and there was so much rifle fire, I’m guessing ten or so AKs. We’ll call it a squad.”
“Agreed.” Tom looked back and winked. “That was close.”
“Yep.” Mike glanced at Al. He was speaking to Julia in a low voice.
Mike nodded. “It sounded like the guy in charge was getting them ready to move on us.” He turned to Tom. “Stay here and cover us. Count to ten, then move. I’ll cover you. We’ll leapfrog back.”
“Roger that.” Tom’s eyes focused on the way they’d come from.
Mike faced Al and Julia. “Run as hard as you can till you get to the third bend in the wadi. However far that is from here, we’ll meet you there.”
Al nodded and grabbed Julia’s wrist, pulling her along. Mike watched them go. They were both unarmed. Mike let a long breath escape. At least everyone was in one piece. Everyone in the Wadi.
Tom fired.
Mike jerked his head around.
“One down. Get moving.”
“Moving.” Mike turned and ran.
Behind the next bend, Mike settled to one knee and waited his rifle sighted in. Tom was about to move when an AK fired. Dirt exploded off the wall into his face. He jerked back and lifted a hand up to his eyes. Muzzle pushed around the edge of the dirt wall he fired off a couple of rounds with his eyes closed, then jumped up and sprinted. Dirt covered his face and eyes, one eye was shut the other red.
Tom passed Mike’s position and kept moving. The big guy was no sprinter, but a bullet in the back was a mighty incentive to move faster than Tom had ever run before. With Tom no longer in front of him, Mike waited the front sight post of his iron sight a blur his attention on the corner where Tom got dusted. One breath. Two breaths. Ten breaths. They were being careful or worse. No movement in front of him. He lifted up, turned, and sprinted. Soft sand alternated with hard-packed dirt on the wadi floor. The walls to each side were about ten feet high of solid sun-baked earth. It was all the same color inside, a light brown to tan dependent on whether it was in the shadows or exposed to the sun.
To his left front, Tom waited at the next twisting corner of the wadi. Halfway down the stretch of the canal, Tom lifted his rifle and fired past him. A man screamed. Now he was motivated by a bullet to the back and increased his speed, but the going was tough. His boots gripped the intermittent hard packed earth, then sank and dragged into the sandy surface of the wadi’s bed.
As he sprinted past, Tom discharged his weapon once more. However, instead of a cry of pain, there was a sudden outburst of machine gun fire. The bullets hit the opposite end of the wadi wall, causing a cloud of dust and dirt to billow into the center of the wadi. Mike was nearing the next turn, he swiftly maneuvered around it, lowered himself to the ground, and readied his rifle. He closed his mouth and attempted to inhale air through his nostrils, trying to catch his breath. Still, as he took deep breaths, the barrel of his M-4 swayed up and down. The machine gun was spraying the area tearing up the walls and dry river bed. Sand and dirt kicked up into the air with each impact. The sharp high pitched machine gun and rifle fire echoed down the wadi. It was deafening. Tom's red eyes saw Mike in position, and he ran as fast as his feet could take him.
As Tom got closer, Mike stood and started running behind him. “Let’s get to the next turn.” He turned and followed Tom, who hadn’t broken stride.
The two men rounded the third corner of the dry canal. Crouched around the bend, Al held a knife out, ready to use. Julia sat in a low squat, her back against the wall.
“How many magazines you got?” Mike said to Tom. He glanced at Julia. She had lost the panic-stricken look on her face, but she sure as shit wasn’t happy.
“Just the one.” Tom patted the mag in his rifle. “Probably about fifteen rounds left.”
“Same, same.”
They were all breathing heavily. The adrenalin and heavy running were making their hearts and lungs work over time.
“Al.” Mike handed his rifle over, took Tom’s weapon, and put it in Al’s other hand.
“Cup your hands.” Mike pointed low towards Tom’s knees. “I want a look over the top.”
Tom hoisted him up. Two men were already up over the dry river system. He ducked down quickly. With his fingers, he motioned Al to give his rifle back. “Check around the corner.” Al nodded and moved.
He turned his head to Tom. “Keep me steady when you lift me up.”
“Roger.”
Back braced on the wadi’s wall, Tom lifted until Mike’s eyes crested the lip. He pulled his head back down. He’d acquired two men. They were only about fifty meters away. He pressed the butt of his rifle into his shoulder and looked down the sights. He took a half breath, held it, and lifted up. The rifle fired once, then twice, then a third time. The first Afghani fell and slid over the edge of the wadi into a section Mike and Tom had vacated. The other man fell where he was. After a moment, the man pulled himself to the edge and into the wadi. Both rifles had disappeared with their owners.
“I got two walking around the far corner.” Al paused. “Wait.” He lifted Tom’s rifle and fired one round. He stood and handed Tom his rifle. “We got to go.” He took Julia’s hand and pulled her up, his eyes on the expression on her face. His attention shifted toward Mike and Tom. “I missed, and I’m pretty sure they’re getting ready to bum rush us.” He coaxed Julia to start running. Mike and Tom followed, keeping a watch behind them.
At the next bend, Mike grabbed Al’s sleeve. He nodded to Tom. Tom took a knee facing the way they'd come.
“This isn’t going to work. We’re going to buy you a little time.” He glanced at Julia and then back at Al. “There’s probably two or three pickup trucks behind the ambush site.” Mike took a deep breath, trying to calm his breathing. “You and Julia circle around and try to find them. Circle wide and stay low. We’ll lead them away from you. When you get there, guard or no guard, grab a truck and get out of here. We’ll all meet up at the compound I showed you on the map.”
“I thought you said you weren’t sure about that guy.”
Mike shook his head. “I’m not sure about anything right now. There’s no way that ambush wasn’t for us. We got lucky.”
Julia asked in a hushed tone, "Lucky?"
"Indeed, lucky," he replied, his voice seething with anger, although not directed at her. He briefly acknowledged Julia with a nod before turning back to Al. "Now, hurry up and leave."
Julia looked up, her eyes widened in concern. "But how will you reach the compound?"
"Leave that to us. Just stick with Al," he replied, his tone laced with a deeper level of fury than she had ever heard before. "Now, get going."
Julia made eye contact, then turned and ran.
Al held out his hand. “Just in case.”
Mike took it. “Just in case.”
Al took off after Julia.
Mike kneeled next to Tom. “Anything?”
“I’ve seen some movement. They’re trying to figure out what to do since you messed up their plans by taking out their topside option.”
Mike looked back as Al ran out of sight.
“Ready for a run?”
“I hate running, but yes. So, what are we going to do?”
Mike snorted. “Fuck if I know.”
Thank You for Reading!
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