Combat Ops

The guy fired, but his rounds drummed along the dirt beside me. I rolled, came up, peered around the tank, saw him rushing forward between houses.

I bounded after him, sweating profusely now, my eyes itching with dust. Once I got into the alley, I caught a glimpse of him before he turned another corner. I jogged ten meters, reached the corner — and a long row of houses stretched before me.

He was gone.

But then I looked down into the dirt, tracked his boot prints, and heard a child’s cry coming from one of the houses.

I jogged forward, eyeing the prints, heard the noise once more, turned and rushed toward the nearest front door, pushed it open, and burst into a small entrance area.

It all hit me at once:

The smell of sweet meat cooking…

A small kitchen area to my right with a worktable and some fresh flowers in a vase…

A woman cowering behind that table with a young girl, perhaps thirteen or fourteen, and a boy, maybe eleven or so, their eyes bulging, the girl beginning to weep. The mother pulled the children closer to her chest.

And there, at the back of a room, another man, well-trimmed beard, turban, but with sideburns that seemed very Western. He put a finger to his lips, then pointed down the hall, where he suggested my Taliban guy had gone.

Then he held up a hand. Wait.

He shouted back into the hall. “All clear now. You can come out…”

I shifted to the left side of the room, moving toward the wall, and watched with utter surprise as this local guy who’d already volunteered to help me kept tight to the wall, gave a me a look, and then, as the Taliban fighter moved forward, my new ally tripped him.

And that was when I moved in, leaping on his back and knocking him face first onto the dirt floor. He tried to reach back for a pistol holstered at his waist, but I grabbed his wrist while my new friend grabbed the fighter’s other arm. With my free hand I tugged out a pair of zipper cuffs, and we got him bound in a few seconds.

I rose, leaving the fighter still lying on the floor, and eyed the family. In a moment of weakness I lowered my shemagh. “I’m sorry,” I said in Pashto.

“It’s okay,” said the man in English. “I know who this guy is and who he works for. I’m glad you’ve captured him.”

“Where’d you learn English?”

He grinned weakly. “It’s a long story. I’ll help you get him up, so you can be on your way.”

I pursed my lips at the wife and children. The wife shook her head in disapproval, but the girl and boy seemed fascinated by me. I shrugged and got my prisoner ready to move, confiscated his weapon, and led him outside.

When I turned back, the entire family was standing there beside the front door, watching me. I raised my shemagh to conceal my face and gave them a curt nod.

As I led back my prisoner, I cursed at myself for sending my boys off alone and without communications to capture those other men. We should have paired up. And we were taking an awful risk operating without comm. What the hell was I thinking? The frustration, the rage, and a bit of the guilt had clouded my judgment.

And what was worse, by the time I made it back to the bazaar and started down the main road toward the Hummer, I spotted a bonfire in the middle of the road.

But it turned out to be our Hummer.

I started running forward, forcing the prisoner to do likewise.

Another crowd had gathered to watch the infidel truck burn, and our mechanic driver was lying in the dirt with his hand on his forehead, bleeding from a terrible gash.

Kundi was there as well, and he marched up to me with several cronies drifting behind him. He spoke so rapidly in Pashto that I couldn’t understand him, but he gesticulated wildly between the bazaar, the truck, and the people gathered. Then he pointed at me, narrowed his gaze, and this much I caught: “Time for you to go home.”

“No,” I said sarcastically. “We’ve come here to save you.” He eyed the flaming truck, the stench of melting rubber threatening to make me gag. “Thanks for the welcome.”

I pushed past him and led my prisoner over to the mechanic. “What happened?”

“They pulled me out. We can’t fire till they fire at us. They didn’t have any guns, then suddenly I’m lying on the ground. I don’t even know who hit me…”

Brown, Hume, and Treehorn came charging back down the street. No luck, no prisoners.

“Sorry,” Hume said. “The other three got away.”

“Because they got help,” said Treehorn. “They’re working for Zahed, but they live here.”

I snorted. “Yeah, it’s good times.” Then I shoved the prisoner toward Treehorn and shifted into the middle of the street. I pointed to the fallen mechanic and screamed at the top of my lungs, “WHO DID THIS?”

The locals threw their hands in the air, then dismissed me with waves and started back toward their shops. Nolan hustled over to the mechanic and hunkered down to treat him.

Kundi came forward once more. “Where is Captain Harruck?” he asked in broken English. “I want to talk to him.”

“He’s busy right now.”

“You tell him I want to talk.” Kundi turned away and started back toward the bazaar.

“So I guess we’re walking,” Brown said, staring grimly at the burning Hummer.

I began to lose my breath. I wanted to move all the women and children to a tent city just outside town, then call in an air strike and level the entire place and tell them we were turning it into a parking lot for a Wal-Mart Supercenter.

Then we’d go to Zahed and say, This will happen to your village if you don’t turn yourself in. I couldn’t understand how helping these people would help us win the war. I was willing to bet that even that guy who’d helped me would stab me in the back if push came to shove.

I was ready to leave, but of course the mission had just begun.

FIVE

We reached the edge of town, where in the distance two more Hummers bounced across the desert like mechanical dragons wagging long tails of dust. I squinted and saw that one truck contained the rest of my team, while the other was carrying Harruck. In about five minutes they reached us and screeched to a stop.

“Man, they were fast,” said Paul Smith from the other truck. “They ditched their ride and scattered like roaches. We asked around. No one’s talking. They’re all too afraid to say anything. No shock there.”

“All right,” I said, then took a deep breath and crossed to Harruck as he hopped out of the cab. “We shot one, got one.”

“What the hell, Scott? You shouldn’t have followed them into town, for God’s sake! Maybe you can operate outside the ROE, but I can’t. And I won’t. I’ve spent a long time trying to work something out with them.”

“With who? That guy Kundi? He’s a scumbag who will burn you. Come on, Simon, you already know that. They’re all opportunists, scammers, users…”

“Which means we have to play them just right, Scott. Just right. We need to be the ones they think they can trust.” He glanced at my men, feeling the heat of their gazes. “Look, we’ll talk about this later.”

“They burned our Hummer,” I said as he turned away.

He whirled back. “What?”

“They beat him up and burned our Hummer.” I cocked a thumb at the mechanic, now sporting a bloody bandage on his forehead. “Nice, isn’t it…”

“What the hell did you expect?”

I shrugged. “I don’t know.”

“Do me a favor, just… for now… don’t try to help…”