Paul McKellips - Jericho 3

The Alpha Team climbed the back wall of the vacant house on the north side of the target street. Back in the grove of trees, tension grew as the snow subsided. The winds were howling and blowing, but the snow was diminishing. Camp couldn’t tell if his body was warm from adrenaline or if the temperatures were rising from the midday warm-up. The clouds had breaks in them but looked much darker.

The temperature gauge on Camp’s watch registered 33-degrees Fahrenheit. The moisture was borderline snow and rain.

Crossing out of Sherwood Forest and through the field, Alpha Team returned to Bannu Road. There were two more sets of tire tracks.

The pace increased as the two squads spread out. Lynch and Veggie were on either ends of the Tac4 as they double-timed carrying Banks.

Suddenly, the two scouts on point raised their hands and dove into the ditch on the east side of Bannu. Fifteen other Alpha members did likewise and settled. Veggie and Lynch covered the white body bag and the Tac4 with their own bodies.

Three pick-up trucks full of Pakistani ISI drove past them. Alpha Team, sprawled out in the water ditch next to Bannu Road, remained motionless and undetected.

“They’ll follow our tracks in the snow. Call in the drone.” Omid whispered to Captain Sanchez lying next to him.

“And cause an international incident by attacking members of a sovereign nation’s military? Not on your life. We roll!” Sanchez said as Alpha erupted out of the ditch and sprinted down Bannu Road.

“Brick, when we get to the riverbed take squad one up and along the road, and we’ll head down through the riverbed. Give us cover if you can. Muster at Toledo,” Sanchez said into the helmet comms while running at full speed.

Three, four-wheel drive Toyota pick-up trucks pulled outside in front of the second house on the south side of the second street in Datta Khel Village. Six men emerged from the cabs, and another 12 jumped out of the truck beds anxious to warm themselves by the fire that certainly would welcome them beneath the smoke stack pouring out from above.

Seventeen men carrying weapons and another unarmed man sauntered through the gate and up to the house. They were in no particular hurry. The Pakistani ISI soldiers were oblivious to the conditions on the ground as Kazi’s eyes examined the snow-covered ground. He held up his hand, and everyone stopped as he pointed to numerous sets of waffle-like boot prints in the snow.

AK-47’s rose immediately, and the men spread out front and back around the house. Within seconds they realized the full carnage of an event that had taken place 30 minutes before they arrived. The bodies of three of their comrades were still warm to the touch. But the boy was missing.

The Commander sent a detachment of six to follow the tracks in the snow which led over the wall, across the street, and over the next wall to the vacant house. Within a few short minutes, the Pakistani soldiers found the boy and brought him back and quickly removed the tape and rag from his mouth and cut the plastic restraints.

“White suits, white suits,” the boy screamed in Pashtu.

Kazi walked up to the boy as the ISI Commander was trying to calm him down.

“How many?” Kazi asked.

“I don’t know… maybe eight,” the boy said. “I told them. Then they took him.”

“Told them what?” Kazi demanded. “They took what?”

“They were looking for the American. They came for him.”

Kazi ran out of the room and down the long hallway to the room with the curtain walls. The SkitoMister was exactly where he had left it. Kazi stroked the machine like a woman’s face.

“They can’t be far. Four on the ground, the rest in the trucks,” the Commander said as he walked toward the front of the house.

“Put the machine in my truck. We’ll head to Miran Shah right now,” Kazi said as two soldiers picked up the SkitoMister and carried it out to Kazi’s truck.

The boy knelt down alone next to his father’s body and started crying as ISI soldiers and Kazi left the house as fast as they had arrived.

The four ISI runners were standing on Bannu Road after emerging from the grove of trees in Sherwood Forest and running through the field. The footprints they followed led north toward the Hindu Kush, the border with Afghanistan, and the same direction they had just driven in from.

The Commander slowed down, and the four got into the back of the two vehicles. Kazi and his two soldiers turned the opposite direction and headed south toward Miran Shah.

Sanchez took his squad down along the riverbed. Omid stayed up with the scouts at point since he needed to chart a different egress on the fly. There was no visible trail, and the conditions had gotten worse. Camp and Finn ran on opposite ends of Veggie and Lynch who carried Banks on the Tac4.

Brick’s squad was running at full speed when they heard the sounds of approaching vehicles. The 40-mile-per-hour speed of the ISI Toyotas was no match for Brick’s team, Special Forces or otherwise.

They had just crossed a one lane bridge over the shallow mixture of water and ice from the Hindu Kush run-off when AK-47 fire sprayed the fields wildly all around them.

“Dino, Jazz… C4 discharge on the bridge, now!” Brick screamed as he and three other Alpha soldiers kept running.

Dino and Jazz descended the banks on both sides of the one-lane bridge and mounted their C4 bricks, then took off running. AK-47 fire danced on Bannu Road as Dino and Jazz ran z-patterns up the winding road.

“Above their heads, no shoot to kill,” Brick yelled as his team turned on a dime and opened fire at the Pakistani soldiers.

The nearly simultaneous C4 explosions sent the wooden bridge and a cloud of fire, ice, water and snow 70 feet into the air as the Toyotas veered to each side of the tributary trying to avoid open water below. The Commander’s vehicle flipped over sending four ISI soldiers airborne and down the embankment into the frigid water.

Brick and the squad kept running as bullets fell harmlessly to the ground behind them.

The explosions and fireball illuminated the riverbed as Sanchez kept his squad moving on the parallel path below.

“All clear,” Brick yelled into his helmet comms as the split Alpha Team kept humping toward muster at Toledo, a cave complex less than two clicks away and at the base of the Hindu Kush.

The snow turned to freezing rain as midday approached. It hid the mountains behind a gray, wind-whipped scrim of water and threw hailstones chattering to the earth. It flooded the gravel yards of the hillside and transformed the footpaths into freeways of chocolate-colored water.

Inside Toledo, the tempest knocked out comms and turned their muster into a dark, flooded cave, soaking body armor and wrecking bags full of electronics. Soaked soldiers stood miserably as Camp, Billy Finn and Omid gathered with Sanchez and CW2 “Brick.” The half-crazed, wandering eye Manson stood guard over the Tac4 holding Banks’ body bag.

“How’s the SAT phone?” Sanchez barked to Geek.

“Checking it now, sir.”

“We can’t stay here… these conditions are nothing for the Taliban and the tribesmen. You can count on 20 of them less than two kilometers behind us already,” Omid said as he pled his case for urgency.

“We need to get a strike on that beacon in the house,” Finn said to no one in particular.

“Screw the damn mosquito machine. We’ve got to go now!” Omid yelled.

“Geek? Give me something, brother,” Sanchez begged.

“Nothing, sir… maybe we’ll have better luck higher up.”

“Brick… we’re too damn wet. We’ve got to do better than point-six kilometers per hour, or we’re going to freeze up here,” Sanchez said as Brick nodded. “Let’s move.”