Chapter Eight #2
Walker heard the creak of the gate as it swung open. Would that wake anyone inside? An unseen guard or security element?
He felt the assault train begin to move and knew that the man who had picked the lock and the explosive breacher had moved to the side, allowing the stack to push into the courtyard.
Walker and Staub followed and covered the ten yards to another door on the inside of the compound in seconds.
The assaulter with the lockpicks moved back to the front of the train and put his skills to use.
With Staub on rear security, Walker stepped out to watch the breacher work.
The door cracked open, but it was not the result of a surreptitious entry. Someone inside had opened it. A man in a white robe. He was carrying an AKM rifle.
Just as he had been trained, the breacher pivoted to the side of the door and the Zero Unit assaulter behind him put three suppressed rounds into the chest of the man with the AKM, immediately flowing into the structure, followed by the assaulters behind him.
The enemy had gotten their vote.
Had anyone heard? Suppressed weapons like the M4s carried by GB and the Zero Units were just that, suppressed, not silent.
Pashto language from the assaulters came over Walker’s headset, still measured and controlled, professional.
Walker knew they were pushing through the bottom floor of the two-story structure, just as they had done time and time again at the behest of the Central Intelligence Agency, hunters searching for their prey.
Walker and Staub trailed.
Front room, clear.
Second room.
Clear. No movement.
From the third room, Walker heard the unmistakable sound of suppressed gunshots. The Zero Unit was stacking bodies.
More Pashto over the radio.
Walker did not need their interpreter to know what was being said. Ground level secure, moving to second floor.
Walker and Staub entered the room of the engagement, now being held by one of the Zero Unit shooters. They knelt and checked the faces of the dead men; military-age males with AKMs. They were all too young to be Abrar.
More suppressed shots from the upper deck.
As Walker and Staub turned to reenter the hallway, Ali came over the radio to let the Americans know that there were two more dead tangos upstairs.
Target was secure. Negative on Abrar. It was a dry hole, but they had one prisoner.
Both men knew what that meant. The Zero Unit would conduct a quick battlefield interrogation, something American units had been directed to call “tactical questioning.” This was the gray area in working with host nation forces in a sovereign country.
Both Walker and Staub knew better than to insert themselves into the Zero Unit interro gation.
Zero Units could be extremely persuasive when left to their own devices.
“What the fuck?” Staub said. “After all that, did we hit the wrong house? Abrar should be here.”
“Where’s the rug?” Walker asked.
“I didn’t see it,” Staub said. “Maybe upstairs?”
“It was delivered here, but the tracking device either died or couldn’t transmit inside. But it was here.”
“Let’s look upstairs.”
As they turned toward the staircase, Nate’s voice came through their headsets.
“Movement in the house across the alley.”
Walker paused and looked at Staub.
“Could just be neighbors,” Walker said.
“Then where did Abrar go? He didn’t just disappear.”
“Unless our recon team missed him leaving.”
“Possible, but unlikely.”
They stepped into the room with the prisoner and were not surprised to see that he was stripped naked and bleeding from the head. He was being held down by four Afghan operators while a fifth had a gloved hand around his genitals, a blade pressed into the soft flesh. The prisoner was talking.
“What’s he saying?” Walker asked Ali in a hushed voice. Walker did not want the prisoner to know that Americans were on target. He was more apt to talk if he thought he was solely in the hands of Afghans, who would not hesitate to separate his manhood from his body.
“There’s a tunnel connecting the two houses. Abrar is next door.”
“Where’s the entrance?”
The Zero Unit men were already hoisting their prisoner to his feet.
“He will take us to it.”
The prisoner was marched down the stairs naked and crying. Walker almost felt sorry for him.
He led them to a living room with toshaks, floor pillows, and back pillows lining two of the walls. A large iron chest was against another wall. It had been opened by a Zero Unit operator in a quick clearance. It held plates, bowls, mugs, and utensils.
“Show us,” Ali said in Pashto. They had learned the hard way that anything could be rigged to explode.
The naked man bent forward and grabbed a handle on one side of the iron box. He struggled to lift it and pull it aside to reveal a hinged wooden trapdoor.
Ali looked to the Zero Unit squadron commander, who nodded.
“Slowly,” Ali said in Pashto, indicating that the prisoner should open it.
Shaking, the man knelt and dug his fingers into a groove cut into the floor on the side opposite the hinge, and lifted.
Unsuppressed, the rifle firing from below on full auto seemed to shake the room as the 7.62x39 rounds tore through the naked prisoner, stitching him from his groin, up his torso, and into his head, which snapped back. He then fell forward, gravity pulling him into the underground shaft.
Two Zero Unit operators began firing back through the top of the wood door as another pulled a grenade from a pouch and crept forward.
As the two shooters ran dry, he pulled up what was left of the trap door and tossed the grenade into the darkness, letting the door fall back into place. An explosion followed.
The squadron commander told his shooters to hold on the door and turned to the two Americans.
“Flexing to new target,” he said, in broken but understandable English.
As Walker opened his mouth to respond, they heard the unmistakable sound of suppressed 7.62 rounds of Nate’s snipers.
Nate’s voice cracked through the Americans’ headsets, still calm but now with added edge. “Tangos inbound from the house to the east. Dropped three. Others took the alley, coming at you.”
“Shit!” Walker said.
“Here we go,” Staub responded.
Walker turned to the squadron commander. “Snipers took out three tangos moving on this house.”
“We will reconstitute in the courtyard and break out under the cover of our security element.”
That would have been Walker’s call too.
The Afghan officer moved toward the front of the house barking orders in Pashto into his radio.
“A little spicier night than we expected,” Staub said.
“No shit,” Walker replied.
They exited into the courtyard with the assault force. They had left two men behind to hold on the trapdoor, another two in the hallway leading to the front. Two more would stay in the courtyard.
With a clear line of sight to the heavens, Walker keyed his mic. “Raptor, what do you see?”
“Three dead tangos in the street to the east. Security element has pushed and taken up positions on the new target house. No squirters.”
“Roger. Psycho, you copy that?”
“Loud and clear. We are spread pretty thin, but have both houses in an L. Move when ready.”
“Good copy.”
Staub was conferring with Ali and the Zero Unit commander.
“They’re ready, boss. They are going to do a dual entry, front and rear. I’ll go with Team One to the front. You go with Team Two to the rear.”
“Wish we could soften this place up with some 105 rounds.”
“Well, we don’t have an AC-130.”
“No, we don’t. Let’s grab this fucker and get back to base.”
The two Americans broke out of the courtyard with their respective elements, sprinting along the street to their breach points, with Zero Unit security sending rounds through windows to keep anyone from shooting out.
Cover and move.
Walker was second to last in the line of march so he could coordinate with the snipers and air ISR asset.
As a Zero Unit breacher knelt to place a charge on the rear door, bullets zipped through the wood just above his head. The point man returned fire.
Walker heard the breaching charge from Team One detonate at the other side of the structure.
There was a split second when he was aware of another explosion.
His mind briefly wondered what it could be because his Team Two breacher had not yet placed his charge on the rear door.
As the building came down on top of him, Walker had one final thought before he was consumed by darkness, fire, and dust: What the hell are we doing here?
Walker awoke to the rhythmic whomp of rotor blades.
“Glad you’re alive, partner,” a dirt- and grime-covered John Staub said from the bench seat above him.
“What happened?” Walker asked, attempting to push himself to his elbows, wincing in pain at the effort.
“Stay down, brother. We’re en route to Bagram.”
“Did the whole fucking house come down?”
“It should have, but the booger-eaters fucked it up and the explosive went low-order. Only took down half.”
“How many did we lose?”
“Eight that we know of. Two unaccounted for. Probably dead. QRF inbound. Zero Unit was not leaving until they had all their men.”
“Site secure?”
“As secure as you can be in Afghanistan.”
“Dave and Nate?”
“They stayed with the unit to coordinate. Standby Zero squadron is inbound to assist.”
“Abrar?”
Staub shook his head. “He was in the half that came down. A wall collapsed on you. Your body armor and helmet saved your life. The boys were using carpets as stretchers to move the wounded to the HLZ. We found you in the rubble and carried you to the helo in that fucking carpet from Naji.”
Walker turned his head to the side, aware that he was lying on a maroon rug.
“It was in a part of the house that didn’t come down,” Staub continued. “And, I’m fine, by the way. Thanks for asking.”
Walker leaned his head back on the floor of the fuselage and closed his eyes.
“Don’t you go dying on me,” Staub said.
“I wouldn’t do that to you.”
Walker thought of the absurdity of it all; an American on a Russian helo flown by an Afghan in a war with no end.
“Camus,” he said.
“What was that?”
“Albert Camus.”
“Who’s he?” Staub asked.
“A philosopher.”
“Of course he was.”
“The Myth of Sisyphus.”
“I don’t want syphilis.”
“Not syphilis, Sisyphus. The absurdity of pushing a boulder up a hill only for it to roll back down.”
“I’m thinking maybe that helmet didn’t work so well after all.”
“Maybe not. Just feels like that’s what we are doing here. ‘Destroying the village to save it.’ ”
“You’re an odd bird, Chris.”
“I know.”
Staub paused and evaluated his friend.
“And another thing,” he said.
“Yeah?”
“You’re welcome.”
“Shit. Guess I’m going to owe you favors forever.”
“Not forever, just for a very long time.”