Afghan Storm (Nick Woods Book 3) Page 20

  S3’s logistics man, Dean, took care of acquiring the six light police trucks and six hardened Humvees while also outfitting them up and confirming they ran like new. At the same time, S3’s chief finance officer back in D.C. dealt with the details of all the leases with the Afghan government. Nick knew it was a paperwork nightmare since S3 needed additional funds to pull off the unexpected leases, but the chief finance officer kept Mr. Smith in the loop.

  Nick had no idea whether it was CIA funds or additional State Department funds that were put into S3 to cover the leases, and he had stopped asking questions about that months ago. He had given up trying to understand it when at one point Mr. Smith had informed him that S3 was getting its funding from billing the CIA, the State Department, the Department of Defense, and the Afghan government.

  To Nick, the funding got murky in a hurry, and he had tried to keep up with it for a while, but he’d finally given up. He frankly didn’t care anymore about who paid who and who scratched who's back. He was focused purely on the mission of stopping the Taliban and putting Deraz into the ground. Errr, bringing him to justice, he reminded himself.

  Chapter 65

  Phase two of the Taliban plan to seize the capital kicked off when Mushahid’s forty fighters on the hill opened fire on the main highway below with two 12.7 mm heavy machine guns. Two Afghan police trucks were passing below on the road more than 1,300 yards away when Mushahid signaled his men to fire.

  The guns roared, their massive sounds echoing off the hills. The 12.7’s were comparable to the Browning .50 caliber machine gun used by the Americans since World War II. The 12.7’s poured hulking, 700-grain bullets into the trucks. The bullets shredded the vehicles and nearly tore them in half once the gunners found their range.

  Frantic police officers leaped from burning vehicles and hurled themselves toward a nearby ditch. The machine gunners didn’t even bother engaging the men, who were now firing back up the hill with their AKs. Mushahid had ordered his machine gunners not to engage single targets. Their ammunition was too valuable, and the distance too great for the men below to even reach them with their AKs. Plus, survivors were needed to call out for help from their command in Kabul.

  The urgent call for assistance was made, but like most things with the Afghan government, the response was slow. At the outset, there was a great discussion about whether to even respond. The hill and location were known well, and several officers believed only a few Taliban had climbed it and fired down onto the road.

  “The enemy won’t even be there by the time we get our troops on location,” one officer had said.

  “It will take two or three hours to climb to the top. Maybe more,” said another.

  But another ambush from the hill finally forced their hand and ended all discussion.

  Four Afghan army supply trucks were coming down the road toward Kabul. Their drivers were exhausted after a two-day drive out to resupply a far-flung Afghan base, and all the men could think about was getting back to base and cleaning up.

  One of the survivors from the two destroyed police trucks tried to stop them. The officers had walked up the road -- one toward Kabul, the other in the opposite direction -- to halt traffic and warn them not to drive further.

  Many civilian vehicles had ignored the officers’ admonitions, deciding to risk it. And since the Taliban usually avoided attacking civilians, these vehicles had passed safely. In fact, it had been so many hours since the heavy machine guns on the hill had fired that even the police officers thought the Taliban might have grown bored and departed.

  But without question, if any target might tempt the gunners on the hill, it was the four practically defenseless supply trucks. The convoy was already in a difficult situation. Originally, it had an armored Humvee with an M240 7.62 mm machine gun protecting it. However, the Humvee had broken down about three miles back, and the convoy commander had made the decision to leave it with its occupants on hand to protect it. Leaving it unattended would have resulted in everything being stripped from it within a couple of hours -- either by the Taliban or impoverished Afghans looking for weapons, gear, and metal that could be sold for scrap.

  So now the four defenseless supply trucks sat a mere ten miles from their home base with a haggard-looking police officer telling them they needed to avoid going any further forward. The convoy commander huddled with his senior men and quickly decided to ignore the officer.

  Police officers were rarely under fire, and the soldiers in the convoy felt the man was exaggerating the threat. The Afghan soldiers had been under fire from the hills dozens and dozens of times. Most of the time, the fire was inaccurate, and even when it wasn’t, the rounds from AKs and medium machine guns rarely caused much harm to their heavy trucks.

  “The alternate route, if we turn around, will take six or seven hours,” said the senior sergeant, weariness and frustration clear in his expression.

  “No,” said the convoy commander to his men, “we’ll hit it with speed and be showered and cleaned up just a couple of hours from now.”

  Chapter 66

  The trucks miscalculated. Mushahid ordered his two machine gunners to hold fire until the first truck was deep into the kill zone, and then both gunners opened up.

  The four trucks were roaring down the road, doing nearly forty miles per hour, but it didn’t matter. The two machine guns concentrated their fire on the first truck, and after a few missed bursts, corrected their aim to hit the speeding truck. The heavy weapons pulverized their target. Bullets knifed through the engine blocks, axle, and wheels. Tires exploded on impact. The first truck shuddered and rocked as the tremendous impacts slammed into it.

  Truck number two heard the heavy thunder from the two machine guns, but its drivers knew it was already too far into the kill zone to try to stop and escape back from whence they came. The two Afghan soldiers on the bench seat realized death was almost certain, but the only hand they had to play was to follow through and hope that luck -- or divine intervention, depending on what you believed -- would save their lives.

  The driver floored the truck and its heavy diesel belched out a blast of smoke as it accelerated down the road. The front truck, its driver having taken a round through the shoulder, veered off the road, careened into a ditch, and flipped twice once its bumper hit solid ground.

  The second truck driver worried about the occupants in the front truck, but also felt grateful that the road was now clear. He willed the truck onward as the first burst began impacting around him. The Taliban gunners had their range down and were in the zone, so rounds started striking home almost immediately.

  The driver felt the impacts through the truck and heard the heavy snapping of rounds that passed by as near misses. The truck’s engine took three hits and it screamed as metal chewed into metal, and the cylinders began tearing themselves apart. The engine exploded and ground to a halt.

  “Don’t hit the brakes,” screamed the passenger, grabbing the driver’s arm and trying to make himself heard over the din of all the incoming fire. “Let it coast through!”

  That was the driver’s plan, but the Taliban gunners had no way to know they had felled the still rolling beast. They picked up their fire and one round tore through the side window, passed through the driver, and exploded through the passenger with barely a pause. Twelve thousand foot-pounds of energy from the 700-grain bullet eviscerated them both instantly.

  Truck two also left the road, slamming into a boulder at fifty miles per hour and flipping end-over-end -- a nearly unimaginable feat for such a large truck.

  The passenger in the third truck screamed into the radio for the fourth truck to go back, emphasizing the danger of driving ahead. Truck three bounced and screeched atop the blacktop as its driver attempted to stop the twenty-thousand-pound vehicle before it was too late. The M939, universally known as a “5 ton” to every ground pounder in the American military, wasn’t designed for hard stops. Nor does it do well in reverse.

  But the experienced Af
ghan driver managed to stop it and get it going backward before the Taliban gunners aimed in on it. He screamed in terror as bullets ripped into the street and air as they adjusted their aim. He had the advantage of being two hundred yards further back, the trucks having practiced great dispersion.

  But with each burst, even at well over fifteen hundred yards, the heavy machine guns managed to send one or two rounds home. The bolt-like slugs clanged and thudded into the truck while the driver tried not to panic and drive the truck off the road. Driving this fast in reverse with such crappy mirrors took every bit of skill he had, but their luck held as bullets hit high and low into non-essential parts, corners, and glass.

  Their truck exited the beaten zone worse for wear, but with its occupants still in one piece.

  Chapter 67

  When the second ambush took place on the supply convoy, the Afghan army knew it had to act. Perhaps the Taliban would run before the troops arrived, but the army leadership could no longer ignore the problem. Four men had been killed in two different ambushes, several more had been wounded, and the main road into the capital city had been closed, preventing Afghan forces from using it.

  The government was losing face with every minute the highway remained blocked. Thus, they finally deployed one of their battalions from the 201st Corps. Unfortunately for the Taliban, they were a battalion from the 3rd Brigade of the 201st Corps. And that fact might not mean anything to hardly anyone outside of Afghanistan, but the 3rd Brigade was one of the Afghan government’s premier units.

  They were the first full battalion to graduate from their training and begin operating without the need of American advisors. They were also the battalion regularly posted at the presidential palace. In short, they were the best trained and equipped soldiers the Afghan government had, not counting its special forces.

  They carried the latest weapons -- modern M4s from the Americans. They carried loads of pride. And they carried a thirst for action because none had seen any real combat for months.

  The presidential duty had grown old, and an infantry battalion can only stand post at police checkpoints and respond to IED attacks so many times until they need to be left off their leash. The battalion had felt helpless for too long, and they were eager to release some vengeance.

  The battalion estimated from reports coming in that at most a squad or perhaps a platoon of Taliban were on the hill firing onto the road. Thus, the battalion commander only deployed a single company of just over one hundred men to deal with the threat.

  Every soldier in the company from its highest officer to its lowest private assumed the Taliban would either run once they arrived, or already be gone. This was the pattern the Taliban had used from its earliest days since being driven from power. Their fighters were elusive and not known for hanging around, fighting pitched battles.

  The company loaded up into MRAPs -- nothing but the best for the soldiers of the 201st, after all -- and rolled toward the hills that towered over Kabul. The massive trucks fought the same traffic that every vehicle fights along the crazed streets of the capital but picked up speed as they departed city limits. The men laughed and joked in the trucks. None expected a serious fight.

  Unfortunately for them, they were making a mistake that many an army has made, dating all the way back to Rome and Sparta.

  Chapter 68

  Mushahid gazed down on the road with a pair of binoculars, eyeing the advancing troops. He guessed there were probably a hundred of them, and they were definitely Afghan soldiers. He had no idea what unit they were from and didn’t care.

  The soldiers looked supremely confident, a few laughing and others smiling. These men were certainly not raw recruits pushed into the fight.

  They walked up the road from the direction of Kabul, a column on each side of the mostly empty road. Civilian vehicles still passed, but the people could sense a battle was approaching. Most turned around to find another road the capital.

  The two columns stopped to talk with the police officer who had been stopping traffic, and he walked with them closer to the killzone. Through the binoculars, Mushahid watched the man frantically point and gesture up the hill, where he and his men waited. The soldiers strained to see up the hill, but Mushahid knew they couldn’t be seen from 1,300 yards away. Plus, they were low to the ground, waiting in dug-in positions.

  Mushahid had to hand it to them, though, he had expected the Afghan army to pull up in trucks, which he would have had his heavy machine gunners light up. Infantry alone were not tempting enough targets for such heavy weapons, and he wanted the guns to have ammo for the next set of responding forces. They might bring up armored vehicles with weapon systems atop them to establish a base of fire, and Mushahid intended to destroy those vehicles.

  He glanced about his men’s positions, which he had spent hours selecting. The holes were hidden well and hard for him to see, and he had the advantage of knowing where to look. He almost felt a moment of sympathy for the men now ascending the hill. Never had so much talent and experience from the Taliban been brought into a single battle. These were some of the Taliban’s best fighters.

  Mushahid had six snipers armed with Dragunov scoped rifles. They carried several hundred rounds and had trained in Pakistan under the tutelage of a former Russian sniper from Chechnya.

  One sniper in any engagement was deadly, but six combined together was a scary thought.

  In addition to the six snipers, his men had ten light and medium machine guns. RPKs and RPDs, with belt after belt of ammunition that had been trucked in. Each man was supposed to have three thousand rounds with him. Simply an immense and unprecedented amount of ammunition for the Taliban to have on hand.

  And between the snipers and machine gunners were a couple dozen exceptional fighters with AKs and RPGs. These weren’t old men who had physical issues, such as bad sight. And they weren’t young boys, who had recently departed the madrassas (or Islamic religious schools) in Pakistan, but lacked combat experience.

  This was no typical band of Taliban. They were hand-picked men, who expected to fight to the death if necessary. Each knew of the pivotal role they now played in what would be the second step toward Kabul falling and the illegitimate Afghan government fleeing.

  Mushahid looked at the stacks of boxed-up ammo and thought about all the effort that had gone into this fight. A lot of men had helped tote all the ammunition up this monstrous hill, and he felt certain the Afghan government would soon regret having abandoned their post on the hill.

  The fact was he had no idea how many men it would take to reclaim the hill, but he felt confident that once they dealt with these troops below, they would find out.

  Chapter 69

  The Afghan soldiers gasped and huffed as they inched up the steep, slick hill. Dirt and loose rocks slid down the hill as they fought to stay upright and make progress along the nearly vertical cliff face.

  The hill was part of the infamous Hindu Kush mountain range, which extends from Afghanistan to Pakistan and all the way up to the edge of China. Near Kabul, the mountains soar between 15,000 to nearly 20,000 feet high.

  This hill was merely a steep part of some of the fiercer, oxygen-required heights behind it. An unpleasant welcome, if you will, to the often snow-covered peaks ahead. At just at 1,800 yards high -- or 5,400 feet -- this hill allowed the heavy machine guns to reach the road in the valley below with ease.

  Also unique about this hill was its fairly consistent incline. There were few dips or crevices that might provide cover and protection. Rather, it was mostly a clean -- albeit slippery -- surface of unsecured gravel and sand.

  From a tactical perspective, it was essentially a long firing range. Or a shooting gallery if you were on the wrong end, down at the bottom looking up.

  Still near the bottom, the troops had barely covered two hundred yards in their climb, and already many wondered if they could even make it all the way up the damned hill. One mile of elevation, with this stiff of an incline, was no joke for eve
n the most hardened soldier when they were carrying a full combat load.

  And for this unit, barracks life had softened them some. Their crisp, starched uniforms, which typically impressed so many visitors at the presidential palace, now stuck to them and revealed sweat pockets under their armor and gear.

  On the bright side, with each additional step the men presumed the hill had been abandoned. Surely the Taliban would have fired by now. So it was just put your head down, put one foot in front of the other, and make it to the top somehow. Confirm it was empty, then slip and slide back down. Back to base in three or four hours, tops.

  Mushahid scanned the line of troops with his binoculars. They were entering the range of his snipers. Keeping his voice low, he bowed and prayed, “May Allah be with us.” Then, just slightly louder, he said to the men around him, “Snipers, begin engaging targets.”

  At the maximum range of a sniper, you don’t hear the rifle actually fire. Rather, you either hear the bullet snap by (loud as hell) if it’s a miss, or smack into someone if it’s a hit. They usually scream almost instantly, and then the sound of a shot follows.

  This same process occurred to the company of soldiers of the 3rd Brigade. The first indication of being in someone’s scope for the men staggering up the hill was the sharp slap of a bullet slamming into a man’s chest.

  The men reacted instantly. They dove to the ground, some losing their footing and sliding as much as ten feet before coming to a stop. A man was screaming in pain, and more bullets snapped by and pierced into other targets.