Afghan Storm (Nick Woods Book 3) Page 21

  “Snipers!” screamed an officer. “Suppress them!”

  The riflemen fired up the hill, shooting at the larger rocks and pieces of cover they hoped might be hiding the snipers. Unfortunately for them, their M4’s 5.56 mm bullets had a max effective range of six hundred yards at best. On the other hand, the Dragunovs above them on the hill lobbed a 7.62 mm bullet with a max effective range of eight hundred yards on point targets, and 1,300 yards on area targets, which a long column of men strung out on a slope would certainly qualify as.

  The head of the column had closed to within eight hundred yards of the practically invisible snipers, and the concealed sharpshooters were putting their expert lessons from Pakistan to good use. They were taking their time, conserving ammo, and hitting targets that were fully exposed, choosing not to fire at partially obscured targets that would likely result in misses.

  Further down the hill, the column had bunched up in places as men waited for those ahead to get beyond difficult obstacles. This was a huge tactical error, and Mushahid’s machine gunners took advantage of it when they opened fire moments after the snipers commenced firing.

  The gunners were firing 7.62 mm rounds from their medium machine guns, and just because the M4s couldn’t reach them, didn’t mean they couldn’t reach the bunched up men below. The machine gunners dropped small bursts of well-aimed fire into clumps of men, adding to the panic and havoc below. The machine gunners, similar to the snipers, were conserving their ammunition for the real battle to come.

  Chapter 70

  The company of troops on the hill were pinned down. Badly. Very accurate fire from the snipers and machine gunners rained down on them from above, and the men lay in fear. Few bothered firing. Too many had died doing so.

  Besides, the extreme distance, the height up the hill, and the lack of targets made it pretty much pointless. But the company wasn’t defenseless. It had seven M240 medium machine guns -- the same state-of-the-art machine guns used by the U.S. Army and Marine Corps.

  These weapons fired 7.62 mm rounds, the same caliber as the enemy was using to great effect against them. All that was needed was getting them into use.

  The company commander knew what needed to be done. Get the machine guns firing. And once the enemy was suppressed, the company could get moving again. They’d fight their way up the hill, route out the snipers, and throw grenades into the machine-gun nests. It would be a great victory for his company, but none of this would happen unless he got those machine guns into the action.

  The company commander picked up his radio and yelled over the sound of the incoming bullets from up the hill, “Platoon commanders, get your machine gunners up and firing.”

  No answer came back on the net, and no movement took place on the line. A bullet whizzed by, and the company commander ducked lower. He screamed louder into his radio, more fear in his voice than intended.

  Pressing his receiver into his ear as hard as he could, he heard one lieutenant reply despite the snapping bullets overhead. Thankfully, the lieutenant did more than just reply, he started shouting and gesturing to his men. And that action created a ripple effect among the men. Action resulted in more action, and men hollered and gestured up and down the line.

  Other lieutenants got into the game, and soon every medium machine gun in the company was blasting up the hill, spewing hundreds of bullets in a deadly stream. The men cheered their comrades and cursed their enemies. A few regained their feet and renewed their efforts to reach the peak.

  But the snipers and machine gunners on the hill under Mushahid were not amateurs. They had survived countless battles and seen momentum in battles shift too many times to count, same as it was starting to do below. The Taliban fighters redoubled their efforts, ignored the bullets snapping by, and poured more fire into the troops below.

  The thought of saving ammo was gone. It was either stop the Afghan soldiers or die under the weight of their momentum. And like most battles, it was effectively decided in seconds.

  On the hillside, suddenly courageous officers and charging soldiers fell to expert sniper fire. And the Afghan army M240s sputtered and ceased firing under merciless machine gun fire from above. A few brave Afghan soldiers removed the shot-up machine gunners and assumed their place, but they, too, were silenced.

  The Taliban on the hill had the angle; they had prepared fighting holes, and they weren’t out of breath or confused about where to fire. The battle turned back to a full bloodbath, and with most of their officers and senior NCOs lying in pools of blood, the Afghans broke. They fled down the hill, even leaving some of their wounded and dead.

  Mushahid ordered his men to cease fire. Shooting the men retreating down the hill was pointless. Those men were broken and wouldn’t be fighting again today. And his men needed to conserve their ammo and prepare for the next attack by redistributing ammo.

  Chapter 71

  The ambulances arrived first. Mushahid Zubaida watched the scene from atop the hill through his binoculars.

  It was painful to watch fellow Muslims in such pain, even for a hardened veteran such as himself. Below, on the slope and street, men rushed to wounded and motionless men. Those found to still be alive were hauled to the street and loaded up in decade-old ambulances, which had rushed out to the battlefront from Kabul.

  The infantry company had pulled itself together and made every effort to save those who could be saved. Even civilian vehicles had been enlisted to help rush wounded soldiers to hospitals and better care.

  Mushahid gripped the binoculars harder than he should. He yanked them down in disgust. How had so many good Afghans been tricked and bribed by the Americans into fighting against their own countrymen?

  It was beyond his ability to understand. Perhaps it was money and the security such a steady paycheck would provide.

  Regardless of what it was, it made him sick nonetheless. Good men. Fellow Afghans. Brothers in faith. And yet Mushahid and his men had been forced to cut them down like sheep.

  Typical warfighting sense would say to fire on the men below, making their exit difficult. But Mushahid couldn’t do it. He would only kill his fellow countrymen when it was absolutely necessary. It was a perspective espoused by Rasool.

  It took a long time for the rest of the Afghan troops to arrive by Western standards, but within two hours of the rifle company from the 201st Corps being decimated, the three remaining companies from the battalion walked up the road.

  They, too, had parked their vehicles out of sight to prevent providing such tempting targets. The Americans, having monitored the fight over the radio, had begged the Afghan government to allow it use air power to blast the Taliban off the hill. But the suggestion had been quickly shot down. No way would the government allow air operations just days after demanding them to cease.

  The battalion commander had requested the government allow the Americans to use drones on the hill. Most Afghans wouldn’t know it wasn’t artillery when they heard the explosions, the battalion commander had argued. This request received more discussion than the request from the Americans, but it, too, was eventually turned down.

  The Afghan government would not show weakness or lose face. The American Apaches had mistakenly slaughtered too many Afghan soldiers for the government to forgive so quickly.

  “These are some of our best trained men,” the Prime Minister had said to the head general of the Afghan Armed Forces. “They are supplied with American weapons -- the very best armament available. If these men cannot take this hill, just ten miles from our country’s capital, then we soon won’t have a country to defend.”

  Thus, hours later, it came down to the men walking down the road. Their uniforms were crisp and they had the look of garrison soldiers, but they had a raw fury pent up inside them. Too many fellow soldiers had died on this hill, and their own leaders were playing political games that would cost many of them their lives.

  This they all knew. But that came with the territory of being a grunt, no matter what army
you served in. Grunts got shit on and used, from one end of the globe to the other. And while the men on the road might bitch and curse about the situation, in the end, they were soldiers. And soldiers follow orders. They’d take the damn hill or die trying.

  Chapter 72

  Inside Kabul, no one could hear the fighting above the road on the hill. The sound of machine guns and explosions failed to carry back into the massive city. The distance was simply too far.

  But word of the disastrous carnage soon spread as ambulances raced into town. A fear began to grip the city as news of the battle grew into larger and larger exaggerations with each telling. Before long, most of the city believed the Taliban had the city under siege. No supplies or reinforcements could move in. No one could run and safely flee.

  It was an absurd fear, the kind that can only take root in a country entrenched in decades of war and conditioned to believing bad news.

  No one thought to check the many other roads in and out of the city. Instead, people assumed the worst and rushed around to grab food and water. Kabul had seen much war in its day, and its residents knew what was needed to survive. Whether it was the Soviets invading or the fighting that followed in the civil war, the people of Kabul had learned due to necessity how to survive without power and water.

  As the madness of fear spread, the Afghan president decided to hold a press conference to calm the people. Against the desires of his police and military advisors, he held the press conference in a highly visible manner on a public street corner.

  In front of dozens of cameras allowed through a security barrier of troops, he assured his country that a battalion of elite troops was in the process of driving the Taliban off the hill above the road. He also refuted claims that the city was under siege, promising residents that they had no reason to panic. It was just all irresponsible rumors that had grown out of control. He ended by saying that despite the fighting on the city’s outskirts, the facts were that Taliban attacks against the government were actually down.

  “Fear is the Taliban’s greatest weapon, and I ask the people of Afghanistan to ignore the rumors and sickening tactics used by our enemy,” the president said.

  In the question and answer period that followed, he angrily knocked down several inquiries regarding the permission for the Americans to operate again. Or, to even resume air operations, since he had so swiftly rejected the use of ground forces.

  “Our Afghan police and military forces are more than sufficient to defend our great country,” he said. What he didn’t say was that China and Iran had offered emergency aid packages that totaled to billions of dollars as a way to gain influence and access to the country’s rich resources of mines and minerals. The Afghan president had decided to switch teams and secure a better deal. Besides, the Americans were already on their way out prior to the nasty friendly fire incident.

  He was just speeding events up as he saw necessary.

  Just a few miles from the street corner where the Afghan president had given his press conference, S3 had temporarily set up shop in an abandoned warehouse inside Kabul.

  Nick, Marcus, and Mr. Smith had agreed that while the servers from Ahmud al-Habshi gave up little actionable intel about the coming attack, it would have to go down in Kabul.

  “As goes Kabul, so goes Afghanistan,” Mr. Smith said during one of their strategizing conference calls.

  And indeed, he was right. In a country of thirty million, more than three million lived in Kabul. The next largest city was Kandahar, which had less than 500,000 in it. Most of Afghanistan was rural and tribal. The country’s capital city of Kabul decided everything. Who the country allied with. How much the people would be taxed. Which tribal leaders were to be tolerated and which were to be squashed. Whether heroin, the country’s preferred and most reliable cash crop, would be legalized.

  This had necessitated the movement of S3’s combat units (the Primary Strike Team, the three support squads, and their sniper element) into the capital city. They had also brought some security and support staff, but these were only for the defensive protection of the warehouse.

  This meant that Nick had only twenty-four shooters, the four enlisted Afghan policemen, and three two-man sniper teams to stop whatever the Taliban might be planning. And while no one had any idea of what that plan might be, staying at Bagram Airfield would have been strategic suicide. Not only was the base a solid hour away from Kabul, but getting into the capital after the turn of events would become almost impossible. In the event of an attack, all roads into Kabul would be closed down by Afghan checkpoints that would take forever to circumvent with approvals from on high to soldiers and police who were illiterate and often without even the benefit of having radios on hand.

  So despite not knowing the Taliban’s next move, their present location would at least allow them to respond quickly. But the location was not their only advantage. With authorization from the president of Afghanistan, the entire S3 unit had been re-outfitted to both blend in and operate better within the city.

  Staffers from Mr. Smith’s office had worked out an agreement with the Afghan president’s Chief of Staff to provide the entire S3 unit with Afghan police uniforms, including assault vests and helmets. His shooters would still be carrying their personal (American) weapons, but at least with the added element of authority provided by the police uniforms, they were less likely to draw attention. Plus it wasn’t all that uncommon to see the occasional M4 here or there among the better-equipped Afghan police forces.

  Regardless of his tough talk and unwavering, brave face presented to the press, the Afghan president could feel a storm coming. But no matter how obvious or imminent the danger looming upon the horizon might be, the president was ultimately caught in a very precarious and delicate situation.

  Publically, he could not afford to allow American troops into Kabul, or he’d risk not only losing face with the Afghan people, but it could greatly jeopardize the large financial deals they had with China and Iran. Privately, however, he gladly welcomed any additional support. And the contracted company of Shield, Safeguard, and Shelter proved to be just the ticket. The way he saw it, this seemingly government-unaffiliated operation would grant the city an additional thirty elite troops aiding in security, with hopefully none of the nasty side effects.

  It wasn’t the perfect solution, but it was the best the president could do under the circumstances. Because at this point, there was no way to prevent whatever was coming. There was nothing to stop the dark and rising thunder clouds about to roll in. All he and his country could do was hold tight and pray that somehow they could make it through.

  Chapter 73

  While the Afghan president calmed his people and S3 settled into their warehouse inside Kabul, the three Afghan army rifle companies avenged the destruction of their sister company with a ferocity that would have impressed most American infantry battalions. They kicked off their assault with a twenty-minute barrage of artillery fire.

  Enthusiastic gunners, who rarely got to fire their artillery pieces in real action, bombarded the hill with their heavy weapons. Nearly twenty minutes of ear-splitting, ground-rocking explosions pummeled the hill. The heavy guns ceased, and commanders screamed and cursed for two minutes until the battalion’s mortars finally opened up.

  The mortar bombardment was supposed to commence immediately following the cessation of firing by the artillery, in order to prevent any movement or retreat of Taliban forces on the hill. And in the moment following the artillery ceasing fire, as the dust settled and an eerie silence returned, the two minutes had felt like a lifetime. But the mortars soon followed, pounding the hillside, explosions “whoomping” instead of shrieking in, as the artillery had.

  The battalion mortars had far fewer shells to lob up onto the hillside since they had to transport their supplies to the fight itself. (Unlike the artillery unit, which fired from a static base and had days’ worth of ammunition.)

  Nonetheless, the mortar gunners imagined with ev
ery shell that they dropped down the tube that their own shells were ripping apart the hated Taliban on the hill. And mere minutes after the mortars ceased firing, the warriors of the battalion kicked off their attack, screaming as they went up the hill.

  The soldiers launched their attack with yells and cheers, some sprinting and charging for all their worth. It was a sight to behold, but the yells ended quickly. Grunting and struggling replaced the enthusiasm.

  Two hours later, the exhausted Afghan troops reached the top. An impressive feat to have scaled the heights at such a clip, but nothing could assuage the disappointment each man felt to find not a single enemy fighter had remained on the hill.

  The Taliban had slipped away and not endured a single round of artillery or mortar fire. Sweating and cursing, the angry troops rested briefly and prepared for their climb back down.

  Mushahid Zubaida had changed his original plans with great reluctance. But he had concluded he must retreat off the hill and avoid the upcoming battle following wave after wave of damning intel reaching him. First, he had informants describe the Afghan president’s press conference on the street corner. This was reported by handheld radio from several spies inside Kabul.

  More intelligence arrived by an informant in the artillery unit that described their preparations for a massive bombardment on the hill. A sympathetic officer with the unit had scribbled a note and handed it to a kitchen worker who was leaving the base for supplies. The man had taken it straight to another Taliban spy who had radioed it immediately to “whoever the friend of Allah is out on the hill beyond our gate.”

  The final straw came from a young boy serving as a spotter down on the road below. He waited several miles from Mushahid’s position, watching the road and playing with a kite. Given that the Taliban had banned kite flying when they ruled the country, it seemed the perfect cover for passing Afghan soldiers who had waved at the brave lad.