Echo Six: Black Ops 4 - Chechen Massacre

ECHO SIX: BLACK OPS 4

By Eric Meyer

First Edition

Copyright © 2013 Eric Meyer

Published by Swordworks Books

All rights reserved. Without limiting the rights under copyright reserved above, no part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in or introduced into a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form, or by any means (electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise) without the prior written permission of both the copyright owner and the above publisher of this book.

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, brands, media, and incidents are either the product of the author's imagination or are used fictitiously. The author acknowledges the trademarked status and trademark owners of various products referenced in this work of fiction, which have been used without permission. The publication/use of these trademarks is not authorized, associated with, or sponsored by the trademark owners.

"Make it fast, I hear something. He's coming back."

"Gimme a couple of minutes, try and distract him. I'm almost there."

Captain Ed Silva, US Marine Corps, watched as his fellow prisoner worked feverishly on the blade. There was almost no light; only a feeble candle flickered, failing to drive away the gloom. It was all they were allowed in the dark, dank cave that was their cell. And may one day be their tomb. They were never allowed to leave. By the feeble flame of the candle, the Taliban guards forced them to work and to eat; when there was food to eat. Rock walls, roughly hewn out of the mountain, ran with damp, and dark patches of mold. It was their home, the filthy, cold, clammy cave that held them in cruel isolation from the outside world. The foul stench added to their misery, human wastes, rotting food, and stale, unwashed bodies.

The cave had been their prison for eighteen months, since the five men were imprisoned in the dank hellhole after their capture. Forced to work for sixteen hours a day, their grinding, mind-numbing task was to chip away at the rock walls, enlarging the cave system and driving it deeper into the mountain. Each morning the guard arrived, unlocked the cell door, and entered. They only assumed it was morning, for their watches and possessions had all been stolen long before. With no access to the outside, to the sky, it was impossible to gage the time of day or even the season.

The guard brought them a bag of tools, five hammers, together with five crude, blunted, worn out chisels; tools with which they had to hack at the iron-hard rock for every waking moment of every day of their lives. Sometimes, not always, a second guard brought them food. Stale bread, and a bowl of rice containing lumps of stringy lamb, on good days. There was not always lamb. At the end of their shift, the guards came back to collect the tools. Stealing a chisel to fashion a weapon was out of the question. They'd made it clear to the prisoners; the penalty for a single missing tool was the death sentence. One prisoner would be brutally killed.

A few days ago, one of the guards made a mistake. When they took out the tools to start work, the guards had missed a broken steel chisel hidden at the base of the bag. Rusty, blunted, and with part of the handle missing, it was nonethless a gift from the gods. A hunk of steel they could turn into a weapon. Ever since, Sergeant Colin Chapman, a Brit from the 1st Battalion, Coldstream Guards, had been working at the metal night and day, using pieces of rock that lay all around them to sharpen and shape the blade. When it was finished, they would use it to threaten a guard, seize his weapon, and break out. It was their only chance; the poor diet, overwork, and lack of sunlight or fresh air were slowly killing them. If they got out, they knew their chances would be poor.

Their best guess was they were being held in a cave system in the Tora Bora area of Afghanistan. Once the hiding place of Osama bin Laden, the caves had been largely ignored by NATO since the famous battle when the primary target, the architect of the 911 attacks, escaped across the border into Pakistan. Since then, the Taliban and their Al Qaeda allies had cut new entrances and passages into the cave system, turning it into a literal fortress; a fortress to use in their so-called 'holy war' against the ISAF forces and the Karzai government.

For the prisoners, it was a bitter pill to swallow, knowing they were helping their enemies, but when their only choice was to work or to die, the options were somewhat limited.

"He's outside the door," Silva hissed, "Put it away, now!"

Chapman hurriedly stuffed the blade into a cleft in the rock and covered it with a piece of stone that fitted the hole exactly. He threw himself to the floor as the door opened. Rashid Jahani peered inside, his black beard jutting forward, and his eyes alight with suspicion, as they always were. He was dressed in Afghan pants, the baggy garment tight at the ankles, with canvas jump boots like the Brits used. For a coat, he wore an American combat jacket with a heavy leather belt around the waist, a long, Afghan shirt underneath, and on his head a black turban. He always carried a folding stock AKM assault rifle slung over his back, and a pistol tucked into an open holster; ready to draw in an instant, ready to slay the infidels.

Jahani was the Taliban second-in-command of the cave complex, an embittered fighter with a long history of slaughter. He'd traded shots with the Soviet invaders, the Afghan Northern Alliance, and NATO, when they arrived to pacify the beleaguered country. He was elderly for an Afghan, in his mid-forties. But he seemed to thrive on his hatred of all things Western, and they'd learned to be careful when he was around. He’d made it clear he considered he should have been appointed commander of the complex, and his failure to win promotion added to his fury. He took out his anger and frustration on the prisoners, visiting them most days to inspect the work, and to look for any excuse to punish them still further.

This time, he saw nothing out of order and tossed the canvas sack with their tools to the floor. One of his men stood behind him, with an AK-47 assault rifle cocked and ready to fire. Jahani barked an order, and Silva picked up the bag and retreated to the far end of the cave. Satisfied, he drew his pistol to swap roles with the other guard.

They'd already noted the weapon was a Chinese copy of the Russian Makarov 9mm, a pistol that could help them break out, if only they could snatch it from him. Each man eyed the big automatic hungrily, always waiting for a chance to make a grab for it, but that chance never came. He was too careful. He nodded to the other guard, who shouldered his assault rifle and picked up two rusty and encrusted buckets from the floor. Protected by the pistol, he stepped into the cell and dumped them on the floor, their food and water for the next twenty-four hours. Barely enough water to drink, some of it already spilled on the bare rocks. Washing was a forgotten luxury. The prisoners never grew accustomed to the stink, although strangely the Afghans didn’t seemed to notice it. At another command from Jahani, the man lifted their shit pail, deliberately spilling some of its contents, and placed it outside the door. He tossed an empty pail into the cell. They were finished. But Jahani wasn't satisfied, not yet, not until he'd vented his fury.

"You are too slow!" he shouted, his voice shrill like a girl’s. He spoke broken English with a mangled accent. The last man to find it amusing was buried out on the mountainside under a pile of rocks. "You work faster, or you not get food."

Captain Silva, the senior man in the cell, stepped forward. Jahani eyed him warily.

"We don't have enough food as it is," he pointed out. "If you cut our food, we'll do less work."

Without a word, the Afghan moved toward him, his pistol raised, and his hard, pockmarked face contorted in anger. Silva knew better than to move, and he waited while Jahani slashed down with the heavy blued barrel of the gun. The front sight ripped through the skin of his face, and blood poured from the gaping wound, but Silva stayed motionless. He'd seen it before. They all had. Any attempt to move away from Jahani's furious attacks would result in a more severe beating.

"You keep quiet! You not speak, you work. No work, no food! Then you die!"

He gave the dimly lit cell a final sweep, then turned and stomped out. The heavy steel-reinforced timber door slammed shut, and they heard the bolts sliding across. Once more, they were entombed in their fetid prison, suffocating in the damp, stinking, and airless atmosphere. They started toward the bag and took out the tools. If the guards didn't hear them hammering at the rock, it would mean more punishment; another lesson they'd learned. While three of the men hammered, Corporal Chas Baker, US 91st MP Battalion, ran across to Ed Silva and began wiping away the blood from his wound.

"We don't have much in the way of dressings, Cap, but the real problem is infection. I'll have to use some of the water to clean it."

"We need that water to stay alive," Silva reminded him.

"We'll manage," the Corporal ignored the objection. "I've enough of that old shirt to wipe clean the wound. You'll have to hold it down hard until the blood congeals."

Silva didn't reply. The shirt had belonged to a prisoner who'd been beaten to death several weeks before. When they dragged his body away, all that was left was the ragged, filthy garment. As Baker worked, he glanced around the dark cave and shuddered. They were dying. All of them were too thin, much too thin and emaciated, like the archive photos he'd seen of Holocaust victims. If they shaved off their facial hair, which had grown wild in the months they'd been imprisoned, they'd look much worse. Rags of uniform hung off their skeletal bodies, and their hair hung down long and unkempt. Lice were their constant companions, and despite Sergeant Chapman's heroic efforts to fashion a knife out of the chisel to use in an escape attempt, he knew their chances of survival were almost zero. Baker seemed to sense his despair.

"Don't you worry, Captain. When that knife's ready, we'll break out."

He didn't remind the Corporal there were only five men left to break out; himself, Baker, Guards Sergeant Colin Chapman, Second Lieutenant Jesse Whitefeather USMC, a Native American with Apache blood in his veins. Whitefeather was a first class sniper, and Silva knew he’d been considered one of the best in the entire US Military by his Marine Corps General.

Marines are like that,
he thought to himself.

He’d be lucky to survive the coming weeks and months, let alone fix a hostile target in the crosshairs. Then there was a Frenchman, Legionnaire 1st Class Francois Durand of the French Foreign Legion, hard and tough, at least when he’d come in here. He’d quickly lost his Frenchman’s arrogance that they’d get out of there and beat the Taliban monkeys at their game. He corrected himself; they weren’t five men, not anymore; five scarecrows, each unrecognizable from the other. Walking corpses, living out their limited time until starvation, disease, and overwork finished them off. There'd been eleven of them when he was first imprisoned. Once, a bunch of drunken Al Qaeda fighters had entered the cell, looking to slake their thirst for blood. When they left, they'd dragged out two more corpses with them. He nodded absently to the MP Corporal.

"Sure we will, but we better start hammering at the rock. If they don't hear five of us working, they'll be back."

He didn't say what he was thinking.

No matter what we do, in the end, it will end the same way. We’re all going to die in this stinking hole. The cave will become our tomb.

Absently, he noticed the marine, Jesse Whitefeather, had his head cocked to one side.

Strange.

“What is it, Jesse? Hear something?”

The brown, implacable face turned toward him, the expression neutral as ever. He was a full-blood member of the Apache tribe; a man who’d demonstrated time and time again his strength. Especially his inner strength when men began to lose heart and lose hope. Jesse would always be there, helping, encouraging, cajoling. He was a big man, over six feet tall, and when he arrived in the caves, he was immensely fit and strong. Despite their starvation rations and overwork, something still flared in his eyes. A light that came from inside and never went out. He had a quiet confidence, a sure knowledge of what he was doing and where he was going. It helped to keep the rest of them going.

Sometimes, they kidded him he had magical powers or maybe had knowledge of old Indian tricks. Whitefeather just nodded and stared back with that calm, confident neutral gaze. Silva had no doubt the marine would be formidable in action. If ever they got the chance.

“No.”

“No? What is it? You looked as if, I mean…”

The marine held up a hand for silence, and they waited for long moments. Finally, his head turned to face them.

“Someone is coming.”

“I can’t hear anything, Jesse. You sure?”

He stared at Silva. “Not hear. Feel. I feel it.”

The Captain nodded.

Humor the guy.

“Okay, you could be right. Let’s make sure that knife is well hidden. They could be here any minute.”

Jesus Christ, it’s got to him, the incarceration. I didn’t think Jesse Whitefeather would lose it, not before the others.

“Captain, it is not the guards. Our people are coming.”

The other men were silent, tense and anxious, knowing that the toughest amongst them was having delusions. If it happened to Whitefeather, it wouldn’t be long for the rest of them. Finally, Corporal Baker tried to calm the atmosphere.

“Hey, Lt, you gotta take it easy. There ain’t no one coming, not after all this time. You’re just dreaming, imagining things. Why don’t you sit down, and drink some water? I’ll handle your work for a coupla hours.”

The Indian nodded his thanks but ignored the offer, picked up his tools, and went to start work. The other men looked at each other.