Assassin (John Stratton) (3 page)

Stratton noted most of the lighting was electrical, coming from inside the houses. They obviously had a generator since the buildings were a few hundred kilometres from the nearest power lines. It would account for the distant droning they could all hear. But the wind was moving across his front, following the river, making it difficult to interpret the sounds coming from the hamlet.

The houses appeared to be joined together to form one long complex. There were no lights outside that he could see. The figures continued to move around the vehicle. A pick-up truck, Stratton decided. The thermal patterns around the wheels and engine compartment remained almost white in their intensity. The men appeared to be unloading something from the back. They carried the items around the other side of the building and out of sight. It seemed the side of the complex they couldn’t see was the front.

‘A couple more hours and these buggers are going to get well and truly battered,’ Jones said.

Stratton checked the ground to the left and right beyond the ends of the complex. It looked to be clear of life. Nothing seemed to live out in the huge open spaces. He guessed the hamlet had originally been a farm. Perhaps it still was. But it was no longer occupied by the farmer
and his family. They must have been booted out by the Taliban.

‘The eye would pick up anything that was out there,’ Jones said.

He was referring to the eye in the sky running surveillance for the operation. There were in fact two ‘eyes’ covering the task, although the British were aware of only one of them. That was a Royal Air Force Raptor, an unmanned aircraft circling 4500 metres or so above them. The other surveillance unit was operated by the CIA, a manned craft flying at twelve thousand metres. It was employed to observe many other aspects of the regional conflict. But it had been assigned to the task at the hamlet.

‘The eyes don’t see everything,’ Stratton said. He’d had one experience in particular in Iraq that had served to remind him of the shortfalls of hi-tech surveillance. It was in the desert north of Ramadi, inside the Sunni Triangle. He’d been preparing to move to the edge of the town across country with three other members of his team and had been waiting for the all-clear from a Raptor. When it finally came the team moved off, across a stretch of parched farmland. They were exposed. Out in the open. But because the eye had given the all-clear to move, their confidence was high that they would not be seen.

They got halfway across the field when a dozen men appeared in front. It turned out they were insurgents living in a series of tunnels and underground habitats that they used primarily for ammunition storage. The meeting was purely coincidental. The insurgents had been waiting for
nightfall before moving out on a mission of their own. The eye in the sky hadn’t picked up any clues to their existence.

Stratton’s men went to ground. But not quickly enough. The insurgents saw them in the darkness and opened fire immediately. Stratton and his team scattered. Two of them were quickly wounded, one seriously, but they managed to get to cover and defend their position until support arrived. The task wasn’t the only thing aborted because of the incident. One of the men’s careers was ended that night due to his injuries. Another was off ops for several months.

Needless to say, from that day on, whenever Stratton heard the ‘all-clear to proceed’ from an eye-in-the-sky operator, he proceeded, but with great caution.

‘Have you been given a time to hit these guys?’ Wheeland asked Stratton from below.

Stratton looked down the side of the bank to see the American standing there, cool as you like, smoking a cigar.

‘That’s going to be up to your Spooky,’ Stratton replied, going back to searching the horizon. ‘They’re calling the shots on this operation. They want daylight visibility.’

‘That’s because I asked for a daylight hit,’ Wheeland said. ‘We’ve got night eyes. But I don’t want anyone getting away for whatever reason.’

Stratton could see the point. Things could get lost in the dark despite the use of sophisticated night optics.

‘You ever seen Spooky in all its glory, Stratton?’

‘A few times.’

‘Beautiful sight, ain’t it?’

Stratton had to agree. The Spooky the American referred to was not dedicated to the CIA, despite its name.

‘Are you joining the primary move or will you be follow-up?’ Stratton asked him, hoping for the latter.

‘You’ve got to be kidding me,’ Wheeland said, laughing. ‘We’re on the primary move, my man. Hell, we may even be out in front of you.’

Stratton got the intended bravado but he was bothered by it nonetheless. ‘Do you have something specific you need to find?’

‘Yep,’ Wheeland said. And he left it at that.

Stratton got the feeling he wanted him to mind his own business. He wasn’t offended. He respected the man’s secrecy. He would have preferred to know more precise boundaries, though. Where not to go, for instance, or when to leave Wheeland and his buddy to themselves. He resented the lack of detail. ‘Would you like us to clean any particular structure before you go in or will you clean them yourselves?’ he said.

‘I tell you how we’re gonna play it, Stratton,’ Wheeland said, as he thought it through. ‘We’ll take it one step at a time. One building at a time. One room at a time. You go ahead and do your thing. And when I say back off and leave it to me and Spinter, that’s exactly what you’ll do. How about that for a plan?’

Stratton made his way down the bank. ‘OK,’ he said. ‘Let’s see how that works out.’ Wheeland’s attitude was
beginning to annoy him but he kept it to himself. He expected the American was feeling the same way about him. He walked past the spook towards Burns and the ops HQ team.

Spinter came up to his boss as he watched Stratton walk away, ensuring they were out of earshot of anyone. ‘That guy’s trouble,’ he said. ‘He’s too inquisitive.’

‘Relax,’ Wheeland said. ‘He’s got his own concerns. He won’t be a problem.’

The teams settled in and waited for the first sign of light to edge its way over the eastern mountains. Stratton had a brief confab with Burns and settled himself just below the edge of the riverbank. Sunrise was the best time of day for him, in most parts of the world, but definitely in Afghanistan. Out in the wastelands there was no movement anywhere. No animals. Practically no life, just scrub. There was the constant chirp of unseen crickets. The wind when it changed pace. But sound was not a great part of the landscape. It wasn’t missed. The drama of the plains and surrounding peaks was enough to keep the senses occupied.

Stratton raised his head a little above the bank to take another look through the thermal imager. The lights remained on in the windows of the complex. He saw no one moving around. The men had gone and the vehicle engines had grown cold.

As the daylight gradually increased, he identified several other Hilux pick-ups in the shadows.

Burns came along the line of men, pausing to have a brief chat with each team leader.

‘All good?’ he asked when he got to Stratton.

‘We’re all set.’

‘Spooky’s on his way in.’ Burns looked around for Wheeland and saw him sitting a few metres away. ‘You all set, Wheeland?’

‘Hunky-dory,’ the American said.

‘It looks like we have a full house,’ Burns said. ‘Eye in the sky estimates a couple of hundred Taliban all told inside the various structures. Fifty or so arrived during the night before we got eyes on. We can’t see their vehicles from this side.’

‘The more the merrier.’

Burns checked his watch, looked to the skies and walked back to his position.

Fifteen minutes later the light had grown significantly. It seemed like the sun was going to break over the mountains at any second. They heard a muffled crack from nearby and a flare fired by the sergeant major shot into the air from the riverbank. It gave an audible whoosh, then burst into a bright white light. After a few seconds it went out. It was nothing more than a signal.

The silence did not return. Before the flare disappeared all of the squadron’s men began to fire short bursts of machine-gun fire at the buildings. The powerful rounds ate through the weak mud brickwork easily. The hand-helds added to the battering. A thundering blast came from the line of men along the bank as a rocket shot from its housing on the shoulder of one of them and tore along a few feet from the ground. It struck one of the pick-ups, which
burst into flames instantly. Several more rockets followed in quick succession, exploding holes in the buildings where they struck.

The attack was a moderate one due to the limited ammunition. It was only a persuader. Sufficient for the squadron’s purpose, which was twofold. The first aim was to give the Taliban the impression that a large and invasive attack from the river was commencing on their position. The second was to drive them out of the front of the buildings onto the plain the other side. The teams weren’t carrying enough ammunition to engage the Taliban, whose numbers were greater than their own, in an extended gunfight. They left that specific task to a huge American gunship. An AC-130 ground-attack aircraft.

Spooky.

Stratton didn’t fire his weapon, content to observe. There were enough guns thumping away at the complex. He saw a dark object in the sky, six or seven hundred metres above ground and on a heading that paralleled the river towards them. It took shape quickly. He couldn’t hear its turboprops above the cacophony of guns and rocket fire.

Spooky came in at around 300 mph, dropping all the time as it approached the impact zone. Spooky’s sensors combined televisual, radar and infrared inputs to provide a broad, high-intensity visual capability at any time of day or night and virtually any poor weather conditions. Its main armaments were on the left side of the fuselage, to allow for a concentration of firepower.

Flying on a line that would take it across the squadron’s front and beyond the complex, the gunship could suddenly be heard. Its 40mm Bofors cannon opened up. The distinct staccato-like sound dominated the contact as the devastating rounds the size of salt cellars spat into targets at the front of the buildings out of view from the river. Stratton couldn’t distinguish the explosions above everything else but before long he saw thick plumes of smoke begin to rise into the sky, coming from, he assumed, the pick-up car park on the other side of the complex.

Spooky’s 105mm howitzer cannon opened up next, the first salvo striking the generator housing. Every light in the complex went out. Stratton knew the plan called for the destruction of all the buildings except the largest one on the east side. The Taliban radio, phone and microwave transmissions had all been concentrated in that structure, identifying it as the operations room. They had been clearly instructed not to touch it with anything other than small arms gunfire. Only targets fleeing the operations room could be targeted, not the structure itself.

Spooky gained height as it made a long turn out across the river and down the side of the mountain, keeping the complex on its left. The pilot was sticking to the same briefing as Stratton. Like the concentration of fire from the riverbank, it was intended to drive the Taliban to break from the buildings in the opposite direction to the river. No one wanted a head-on fight. Spooky was doing its job.

The RAF Raptor reported dozens of men fleeing from
the buildings and heading into the valley. From its vantage point, it must have looked like rats deserting a burning barn.

Wheeland watched it all with great interest. ‘When do you want to advance, Stratton?’ he shouted above a rattling machine gun a few metres from him.

Stratton sighed to himself. With a task like this the bottom line was, for Stratton at least, zero casualties. In fact, zero injuries. Nothing about Afghanistan was worth getting hurt for, let alone dying for. In the early days it had been fun. Fresh. A new enemy. New kit to try out. New toys to play with. New terrain. The reasons he, and people like him, joined the military. Now the conflict was old. The equipment was getting old. It was mundane. Bombs and ambushes. That’s all it was now. He wasn’t about to let Wheeland put any of his men at risk.

‘Captain Burns will give the advance,’ he said.

‘The way I understand it, he’ll pretty much do whatever you say,’ Wheeland countered.

Stratton knew the more passes Spooky made the more damage it was doing, the more Taliban it killed and the safer the assault would be for the men. Time was comfortably on their side. He suspected the American was worried that the longer they took to get going, the more time the enemy had to alter or destroy whatever it was he wanted. If that was so, it was the price Wheeland was paying for keeping everything to himself. Another minute wasn’t going to hurt.

‘Here she comes again,’ Jones said.

They all looked towards the gunship as it came in for
another run. Its 40mm opened up again and the complex appeared to shudder as dozens of rounds hit it. The howitzer blew something else to bits, out of sight to the teams on the riverbank.

Burns walked over to Stratton at a brisk pace. ‘Raptor reports approximately a hundred and fifty Taliban running into the valley.’

‘This is the bit I like best,’ Jones said. ‘You can see some of the Talibuts on the right there.’

He was right. They looked behind the buildings at a dozen or so men running as fast as they could into the plain.

‘Why don’t we get going and get a better seat?’ Wheeland said.

His comment landed on deaf ears.

‘Spooky’s turning in on them now,’ Burns said.

They all watched as the lumbering whale of an aircraft turned at the bottom of its run, this time further into the valley to come back at the target from the opposite direction. Like an eagle that had spotted its prey caught out in the open, it came in for the kill. Its talons flared, demonstrating for the watching soldiers the other special weapon that it carried. One that until now had remained silent. A weapon designed specifically for engaging widespread targets like this. A 25mm, five-barrelled, electrically powered Gatling gun affectionately known as the Equaliser. Although why it was called that was unclear to most. There was nothing equal about the weapon. On the contrary. It was a very one-sided piece of ordnance.