Swords of Exodus [Dead Six 02]

“The price of freedom is

the willingness to do sudden battle anywhere,

any time and with utter recklessness.”

—Robert A. Heinlein

Prologue: Set in Stone

SrA VALENTINE, M.

521st Expeditionary Security Forces Squadron

U.S. Air Force

Zargabad District, Western Afghanistan

Seven Years Ago

My shoulders ached. Dust filled my nose as the column came to a halt. I let my M4 hang on its sling as I pulled off my eye-pro and wiped my face with my shemagh.

Word came down the line that we were going to be here for a while. The cavalry soldiers we were embedded with fanned out and took up good defensive positions. Being a team of enablers, we were just expected to stay put unless they needed us. That was okay with me. My rucksack wasn’t sitting right on top of my body armor and needed to be adjusted. After a quick check of my area, to make sure I wasn’t near any pressure plates, I set my pack down and plopped down next to it.

“That’s a good idea,” said my partner. Senior Airman Arlene Chambers was a dog handler. Her military working dog, Muttley, was tired from the oppressive heat and sat next to her, panting.

At least there was shade. The village of Murghab was so far from the nearest US FOB that our only support came via helicopter, and was uncomfortably close to the Iranian border, but it was picturesque in its own way. Our patrol had come down a narrow dirt path that ran alongside a small, babbling creek. On the other side of the trail was a six-foot mud wall. Behind the wall was a row of tall poplar trees that sighed in the hot breeze and kept us out of the sun.

A Cavalry NCO stopped to check on us as he made his way up the line. “How you doing, Air Force?” Sergeant Hanover wasn’t really checking on
us
so much as he was checking on Chambers.
She wasn’t the only female out with us in Murghab. We had a two-woman Female Engagement Team up in front, interfacing with the Afghan women as part of our ongoing counterinsurgency efforts, but Chambers was easily the
best looking
female out with us, and she knew it.

My partner smiled at him. “Oh, I’m a little tired but good to go.” She cracked open a bottle of water and tilted it forward. Muttley lapped at it eagerly, wagging his tail as he drank.

“How’s the dog doing?” Hanover asked, kneeling down so he could pet Muttley.

“He’s hot, but I’m watching him. He’ll be good for the rest of the op I think. We’re still flying out after sundown, aren’t we?” There had been talk of extending our mission another day. It’d already been two days since a pair of Chinooks had dropped us off outside of the village.

“I’m okay too,” I said with a sarcastic grin. “Thanks for asking.”

Hanover laughed at me. “Patrol’s been extended.”

“What’s going on?” Chambers asked. “Why are we stopping now?”

“We ran into some contractors up there. PMC guys in armored trucks. The ANA commander is flipping out because I guess nobody told him they were operating in ‘his’ AO. Our ‘terp is trying to convince him that nobody told us, either, but he’s pretty pissed.” We’d only been operating with this Afghan National Army unit for a couple of days, but it had already become apparent that its commander enjoyed theatrical temper tantrums if it helped him get his way. I guess he thought it showed his men that he was willing to stand up to the Americans. All it really did was make Captain Drake, the Cavalry troop commander, want to punch him in the face. Hanover’s radio squawked. “Alright,” he said. “I gotta get up there. We’ll call you if we need the dog to check anything.” Muttley was pretty good at sniffing out explosives and drugs, both of which could easily be found in Afghanistan.

“Have fun!” I said encouragingly as Sargent Hanover jogged forward. I then stood up to stretch. So far, the mission to Murghab had been a bust. No contact with insurgents, no weapons caches, and thankfully no IEDs. It had been three days of just walking around, talking to the locals. It was still better than sitting back at the Expeditionary Air Base, stuck in a guard tower for twelve hours at a time. At least we got to get out into the war.

I scanned the village for threats, doing my best not to get complacent, as the leadership dickered with the ANA, the locals, and the PMC guys. Across the creek were more buildings made of mud, then a two-story mosque that was a lot nicer than anything else in the village. It wasn’t made of mud, which was pretty remarkable for a village this remote, and was topped with a blue minaret. The generator behind it indicated that it even had electricity.
Fancy.

Up the trail, I could see the PMC vehicles Hanover told us about. They were MATVs, like the ones US forces used, but painted white instead of tan. The dirt road they were parked on was one of few in the village wide enough for a big vehicle to use. The contractors were clad in Desert Tiger Stripe fatigues and mismatched head gear, and a couple of them were walking down the line with Captain Drake.

The ANA took the halt to mean that it was chow time. They were easy to spot in their mint chocolate chip digital camouflage fatigues, and were already stripping off their armor, laying down their weapons, and breaking out the rations. ANA units varied widely, from
pretty decent
to
dangerously incompetent
. This particular unit gravitated more toward the incompetent end. When we bedded down in strongpoints for the night, they busted out the hashish and started getting high. It was ridiculous.

“Great,” I said to Chambers. “The ANA’s hungry. We’re going to be here for a while.”

Chambers stood up, keeping one hand on her M4 and another on Muttley’s leash. “They already had breakfast a few hours ago!” It was only about ten thirty in the morning, but we’d been on the move since first light.

“Second breakfast, I guess. Like hobbits.”

Chambers laughed at me. “Nerd.”

“I’m just saying. Afghanistan would be way nicer if hobbits lived here instead of Afghans.” I paused for a second and looked around. “Hey . . . where’d the little dusties go?”

“Yeah, you’re right,” my partner agreed, looking around. A troop of Afghan children, aged five to probably thirteen, had been following us around all morning, begging us for treats and candy. “I haven’t seen them in a while.”

The air was suddenly filled with music as the nearby mosque began its call to prayer. Islamic music blared tinnily over a loudspeaker, making it difficult to be heard.

“That’s weird too,” I said, raising my voice. “Don’t they usually do it after noon?”

A wry smile appeared on Chambers’ face. “Do you think they have an atomic clock in there or something? This is Afghanistan. It’s whatever time they say it is.”

“You don’t know that. Maybe they have a sundial or some—”

Chambers suddenly fell to the ground, landing in a puff of moon dust. She had a very surprised look on her face. I was about to ask her if she was okay when I saw the blood. I’d heard the shot. It just happened so fast it didn’t register. My heart dropped into my stomach as I processed what was happening. “Medic!” I screamed. “Contact right!”

The ambush began in earnest. I fell to my knees and tried to apply pressure to Chamber’s wound as gunfire erupted from every direction. I tried to ignore that and focused on keeping my partner alive. Bullets buzzed and snapped overhead like so many angry hornets, pock-marking the mud wall we’d been leaning on. I screamed for the medic again as blood poured out from under my hands. Chambers’ eyes were wide as she writhed in agony. Muttley whined and licked her hand.

Oh God, oh God, oh God!
I let go of the wound long enough to fumble for my medical pouch. I had some hemostatic gauze in there that might stop the bleeding. The bullet missed the plate on her vest, blasting right through the soft armor of her vest and deep into her side.

“I got this!” A Cavalry medic materialized at my side. “Give me that.” He took the gauze package out of my hand and went to work. I didn’t move. “Hey!” he said, looking up from Chambers to stare me down. “I got this! Cover me!”

I nodded my head, turned, and tried to process the chaos around me. The ANA had been caught completely off guard. They scrambled for the weapons they’d laid down, and most of them didn’t have time to get their armor back on. A low
BUUUUUURRRP
sound echoed through the village as the PMCs opened fire with the minigun mounted on their MATV.

The mosque.
The shot had come from the mosque. Above the cacophony of battle a very loud rifle report resonated from the direction of the mosque. An ANA soldier’s chest exploded, sending him tumbling to the ground in a cloud of dust.

“Shooters in the mosque! Shooters in the mosque! They have a fifty-cal up there!” No one seemed to hear me. Orders were shouted over the radio. Complex ambush. Many insurgent personnel. Multiple wounded. KIA. Assault through. MEDEVAC delayed until attack helicopters could be spun up to escort.

Boom!
Someone found an IED.
Christ.
All the while, the medic struggled to stabilize Chambers. She was either unconscious or dead. I couldn’t tell.

Something strange happened to me then. There was a coldness deep in my belly. It slowly made its way up, enveloping my heart and spine. My heart rate slowed, and my breathing slowed with it. The sounds of gunfire faded just a little, and everything seemed to slow down enough that I could process what was going on.

I was
Calm.
I hadn’t felt like that since the day my mother died. My fear faded into the background. A plan rapidly formulated in my mind. The Cav guys were getting ready to counterattack, but this village was prepped for an ambush. There would be IEDs. The soldiers would have to move carefully, sweeping everywhere they went. They wouldn’t get to the mosque before the shooters got away.

That wasn’t going to happen. Before I realized it, I was moving. I left my partner with the medic and slid down into the ditch, splashed through the creek, and scrambled up the other side. Sprinting forward, I slid to a halt behind a mud wall, next to the two contractors who had been talking to Captain Drake. One had his head wrapped in a brown bandanna and carried an AA-12 automatic shotgun. The other was a grizzled-looking SOB with a trimmed, graying goatee, a body armor vest loaded with ammunition, and a brown South African-style bush hat. Around his waist was a leather gunbelt. A big revolver hung from one side, and a big knife hung from the other.

The old guy snapped off several shots from his stubby FAL carbine before covering back down behind the wall. The heavy rifle had a deep bark to it, being more powerful than the M4 I was carrying. “There are shooters in the mosque over yonder, son,” he said to me, coolly. “You boys might want to do something about it.”

A hole exploded in the mud wall we were using for cover as the enemy sniper put a round from his fifty through it. “They have a fifty-cal rifle up there,” I said. “We need to take it out before the MEDEVAC chopper arrives. I can’t do it by myself!”

“What about the rest of your troops?”

“I’m in the Air Force. My partner will die if that chopper is delayed. Will you guys help me or what?”

The old man with the FAL nodded. “Alright then, let’s get it done. Lay down some fire, I’ll move first.” As he bounded off to the right, seeking the cover of another building, I started rapidly firing shots into the second level of the mosque. Civilians were running around in terror in front of it, and I hoped my rounds were going over their heads. The other contractor, the one with the shotgun, removed the drum from his weapon and replaced it with a box magazine that I guessed was loaded with slugs. He looked through the holographic sight bolted to the top of his boxy weapon and tore into the mosque.

These contractors didn’t seem to be concerned with the rules of engagement. Neither was I. You couldn’t tell who was who. The snipers in the mosque weren’t the only enemy personnel shooting at us. The ones we could see were dressed the same as the Afghan villagers. Some of them may have
been
Afghan villagers. I didn’t give a damn.

A man dressed in dirty white linens stepped around the corner of a mud hut.
Weapon!
He had an AK-47-type rifle with the stock folded. I put my red dot on his chest and cranked off probably half a dozen shots. He fell to the ground and I shifted my fire back to the mosque. The Cav soldiers behind me opened up on it as well. Several M4s and a SAW streamed rounds into the building.

“Now! Move!” the old contractor shouted. He leaned around the corner and fired. His friend with the AA-12 and I bounded over the wall and sprinted forward and to the left. The big rifle in the mosque roared again, kicking up a huge divot on the trail behind me. We took refuge behind a small building before the sniper could fire again.

From behind me, I could hear one of the Cav NCOs shouting at me. “Airman Valentine! Where the fuck are you going?” I ignored him. More shooters appeared in the doorway of the mosque, firing on us even as civilians ran into the building past them. We shot back. People fell to the ground. There wasn’t any going back now.

Coughing from the smoke and dust, I removed the partial magazine from my M4 and replaced it with a full one. I stood above the bodies of two dead men. Unlike the Taliban insurgents we normally encountered, these two looked like they’d been pretty squared away. They both wore desert camouflage uniforms, and each had been wearing body armor. On the floor in front of them was a Steyr HS50 rifle, a monstrous bolt-action chambered for .50 BMG.

“Holy shit, son.” It was the leader of the contractors. The old man shook his head. “I think these boys are Iranians, judging from the equipment.”

“Huh,” I said absentmindedly. I was going through adrenaline dump and was coming down off of the
Calm.
My hands were shaking. I could barely stand.

“You okay, kid?” he asked.

“Yeah . . . yeah. I just need a minute.”

“That was some damn fine work . . . C’mon, let’s get back downstairs. Your friends are here.” We were on the second level of the mosque. The two contractors and I had cleared the place before the Cav had arrived. “What’s your name, kid?”

“Valentine. Mike Valentine.”

“John Hawkins,” he said. “People just call me Hawk. I’m with Vanguard Strategic Solutions International.” He handed me a business card. “When you get out of the Air Force, you give me a call. I’ll put you to work making four times what they pay you for this.”