Clear by Fire (12 page)

This would be his last operation in Afghanistan, and he planned on making it a memorable one. The war was winding down, and
America was tired of fighting a conflict with no foreseeable end. But as the United States was losing its resolve, the enemy was growing stronger and much more threatening. Men like him, the true believers, had been fighting the jihadists in one country or another since 2001, and there was no way they were giving up because the American people were losing focus.

The colonel had been given greater latitude to prosecute the fight than any man before him, but it would never be enough to win. He lived by the Clausewitz motto: “You must pursue one great decisive aim with force and determination.”

Barnes was about to show everyone the depth of his determination, especially that piece of shit Karzai. Fate might have chosen that man to rule Afghanistan, but Barnes believed in making his own destiny. Karzai had done more to undermine America’s policy in Afghanistan than the Taliban. He was a thief and a liar, and Barnes relished the idea of putting an end to his reign.

His attention swung back to the cockpit, where low ridgelines hid Forward Operating Base Kamdesh from his view. The FOB was a black site and its location wasn’t on any of the maps most military commanders had access to. But Barnes knew that it lay just over the next ridge, hidden from prying eyes.

The copilot held up one finger and the colonel got to his feet, grabbing the case by its plastic handle. He felt the helicopter shudder beneath his boots as it began to slow. The pilot gently popped over the final rocky outcrop, swung the nose toward the landing pad, and flared for landing.

Stepping off the ramp as soon as the wheels touched the ground, Barnes kept his head low as the spinning rotors beat the loose dirt and sand into a thick cloud of brown dust. He knew his men were right behind him as he held his breath against the hot exhaust, and he stayed bent over until he was clear of the blades.

Two bearded Special Forces soldiers were sprinting down the hill toward the landing pad. One of the men had a rifle slung casually
across his chest and was trying to keep his flip-flops from coming off his feet as he ran. He used his right hand to keep the rifle from hitting his bare knees, which protruded well below the tiny black shorts he was wearing. The other Green Beret was dressed in a tan tank top, cutoff fatigue pants, and unlaced boots. He was unarmed, except for an angry expression.

Obviously, they weren’t expecting him.

Barnes could hear the engine being pushed to full throttle, and the two men running toward him waved their hands in an attempt to get the pilot’s attention. The pilot ignored them and lifted the helicopter off the pad, pushing it toward the valley floor below.

The men were yelling something now, but it was still too noisy for the colonel to hear them, so he kept moving forward.

“This is a restricted base, you can’t be here,” the one man yelled as the distant thundering of the rotors drifted away. He stopped, hopping gingerly on one foot as a piece of gravel found its way between the thin sole of the flip-flop and the exposed flesh above it.

Barnes suppressed a grin and motioned that he couldn’t hear them. Holding his hand to his ear, he continued to close the distance between them. Stopping two feet away from the Green Berets, the colonel placed the black case on the ground and made a show of searching through his pockets.

“I have orders here for . . .” The annoyed expression on his face deepened as he searched for the elusive papers. “Shit, I know it’s here somewhere. Tell your captain that Colonel Barnes is here for the prisoner.”

The soldier with the rifle had gotten the rock out of his foot and took a menacing step forward as Barnes’s right hand disappeared around his back.

“You don’t have clearance to be here,” the man replied over the thick wad of chaw stuck in his cheek.

There was a subtle click as Barnes slipped the knife from its Kydex sheath at the base of his spine. The Green Beret turned to spit a long
stream of brown tobacco onto the gravel pad as the colonel’s blade sliced down into his throat. A look of utter bewilderment was frozen on his face as his hands rushed to his mangled throat. Thick jets of oxygenated blood arced through his fingers and onto the front of Barnes’s uniform.

The colonel pushed him hard in the chest and took a step to his left. A metallic cough echoed from his rear as Harden fired his suppressed M4. The 5.56 round hit the second soldier in the eyeball, blowing the contents of his skull out of the back of his head.

He was dead before the expended brass bounced off the gravel.

“Move,” Barnes ordered.

He pulled the knife from the man’s throat and wiped the gory blade across the dead soldier’s T-shirt. It wasn’t the first time he’d killed an American, but for many of his men, this would be their first step down the dark path.

The Anvil Team moved up the hill and into the FOB’s perimeter. As he passed the dead soldiers, his radio operator, Jones, delivered a rifle shot to each of the men’s foreheads. They called it “moonroofing” and it was standard practice on the team to ensure a combatant was dead.

Barnes sheathed the knife and lifted the black case off the ground as suppressed gunfire erupted in the tranquil twilight. It was supposed to be a silent raid, but the detonation of a fragmentation grenade told him they had lost the element of surprise.

“So much for that,” Barnes said as an invisible defender opened up on full auto. The long burst echoed off the rock face and bounced across the valley. The colonel handed the case to Jones and loosened the sling on his rifle in eager anticipation.

More gunfire rang out, followed by another explosion.

“Heavy contact, building two,” someone said over the radio.

“Roger, moving.”

At the top of the rise, Barnes could see two of his team firing into building two. Someone inside was engaging his men with a belt-fed
machine gun, and the bullets tore chunks out of the plywood wall, filling the air with splinters.

A muffled yell rose over the din. “Frag out.”

Barnes watched the grenade tumble through the air and land near the wall, where it exploded with a distinctive thump. Rounds buzzed angrily over the colonel’s head and he turned to his left to see muzzle flashes coming from the commo shack.

Jones had a small gray box in his hand, and the digital readout on its face glowed red before blinking green.

“We’re jamming,” the black man said, putting the electronic jamming unit back into its pouch. He barely flinched as a bullet hit the gravel in front of him and ricocheted off with a whine. Raising his rifle toward the commo shack, he fired three quick rounds and started toward the building.

“Hold tight,” Barnes said.

Firefights were perversely calming to him, like staring into the flames of a fire, and he found himself unable to look away. The colonel felt the goose bumps crawling up his arms with a chill, like a dose of the most exclusive drug.

Jones shrugged and clicked the push-to-talk button on his chest. “Contact, building four.”

“Roger, red team moving.”

The small incline that led up from the landing zone gave an unparalleled view of the FOB. The cluster of plywood buildings sat nestled in the shadow of the mountains, with the dominant terrain being the communications bunker, built atop an artificial hill. Whoever was holed up in the tiny shack could shoot down at his men but didn’t have the angle to hit Barnes or Jones.

Looking at his watch, he noted that it had only been three minutes since he’d stepped off the bird. Harden had five more minutes to clear out the FOB before Barnes would step in. The colonel had learned from General Swift that it was always best to let your men do their job, and while most leaders wanted to get into the fight,
Barnes knew that his men were more than capable of handling the situation.

He knew that any decision made during the first ninety seconds of an engagement was usually too far behind the power curve to matter. It was only after the situation began to settle that a commander’s orders could affect the outcome.

Reaching into his sleeve pocket, Barnes took out a can of dip. Placing a pinch of tobacco into his lip, he watched as three of his men jogged toward the commo shed.

The first man moved to the edge of a Hesco barrier. The cubes of felt and reinforced wire were filled with dirt and used to defend positions. Using the lip of the bastion to steady his rifle, the operator engaged the door of the commo shed.

Once the base of fire was set, his partners began maneuvering up to the building by successive bounding. It was choreographed chaos and beautifully executed.

Ensuring that he didn’t cross into the line of fire, the first man moved in a shallow arc to the far side of the gentle incline and took a knee. Flicking the safety off his rifle, the soldier fired at the target while the second man sprinted up the middle. Once he was five meters in front of the other assaulter, he went to a knee, engaged the target, and allowed the other man to move up.

It had taken them less than a minute to close the distance, and he watched as his soldier prepared a frag. The other operator was sprinting to join his teammate, trusting the support position to deal with any threats that might suddenly appear.

One of his men yanked the door open, and a soft white light spilled out of the interior, bathing the breach point in a welcoming glow.

“Frag out,” the radio crackled.

The explosion went off, muffled by the thin plywood walls, which bowed under the pressure. Three shots echoed inside, followed a moment later by three more.

“Building two clear.”

“Building three clear.”

“We need a breacher at jackpot,” Harden said.

“Moving,” came the reply.

Barnes stepped up to the top of the hill and watched the two men exit the commo shed. One of them popped a green ChemLight and dropped it at the threshold so that everyone knew the building had been cleared.

“Four’s clear.”

A loud thump rose from across the compound followed by, “Positive breach at jackpot.”

Jones grabbed the black case and began walking to the center of the FOB. Barnes took a moment to watch the sun disappear behind the mountains. The deep red and vibrant oranges stood in stark contrast to the burned and bullet-marked buildings that lay before him.

“Jackpot secure. We have the package.”

“Good copy. Anvil 6, Anvil 7, objective secure,” Harden told Colonel Barnes over the radio.

“Anvil 6 copies all,” he replied.

Barnes unbuckled his helmet and slipped the noise-canceling headset off his ears. He hated wearing helmets, and if it weren’t for the need to stay in contact with his team he wouldn’t have worn the headset either.

Placing the helmet under his arm, he headed toward building one. His boots crushed the shiny brass under his feet as he walked over a blackened divot made by a grenade.

The tan wall and tin roof of building one followed the same basic design as the rest of the black site, except that someone had spray-painted skulls on the exterior walls. Over the door someone had stenciled “The Scorpion Den” in black spray paint.

The “team room” was where SF teams spent their downtime. It was the modern equivalent of the Viking mead hall, minus the women and booze, where warriors gathered to share tales of battle
and sexual conquest. A plate of food sat cooling on the table, and the last occupant had even paused the movie he’d been watching before the attack. It was an eerie reminder of the transience of life.

Jones was already inside, sitting at one of the tables with an open Toughbook computer attached to a satellite uplink. The black case sat open next to the computer and Barnes set his helmet, with the headset nestled inside, behind the case. He looked down at the metal cylinder inside with its eerie biohazard sticker on stark display.

The door to the team room swung open and Harden appeared, pushing a visibly frightened Arab in front of him.

“Mr. Hamzi, it’s good to see you again,” Barnes said as Harden forced the man roughly onto the couch. The colonel lifted the metallic tube out of the case and walked over to Harden. Jones was talking to the pilot on the radio as the Anvil Team second in command gingerly accepted the tube from his boss.

“The bird is inbound, sir,” Jones said without looking up from the laptop.

“Good. Take a team down to the village and make sure everyone masks up. We don’t want any cross-contamination.”

“Yes, sir. The perimeter’s set and I have Hoyt and Villa securing the commo shed.”

“Sounds good to me. Make sure you get the video footage.”

Harden nodded and left the room, while Barnes ran his hand through his blond hair and sighed as he walked over to the couch. Slipping the knife from its sheath, the colonel took a seat across from the Arab.

As he twisted the blade slowly in his gloved hand, the blood from the SF soldier was visible on his tan fingers. Barnes’s father had taught him that the threat of violence was usually worse than the actual act. A man’s fear was always amplified by the deep thoughts couched within his own consciousness.

As a child, he’d stolen his dad’s shotgun and snuck out to the pasture to play cowboys and Indians. Swinging the shotgun from
one grazing cow to the next, he pretended they were marauding savages attacking the peaceful homestead. In an instant, his finger brushed the trigger and the twelve-gauge went off, knocking him to the ground.

Dazed, he sat up in the dirt and gingerly touched his collarbone. He thought it was broken but immediately realized he had a bigger problem as one of the cows fell to its knees, a gaping hole in its flank.

He had rushed home to hide the shotgun, but there was no way to disguise the dying cow. An hour later, his father found him hiding in the barn. His father took him out to where the cow lay bleeding out from the double-aught buckshot that had torn open its side.

Barnes hadn’t seen his dad pick up the broken piece of fence post as they walked across the pasture because he’d been too busy trying to come up with a plausible story. Suddenly, his mind was blank, and he couldn’t take his eyes off the gnarled piece of wood in his father’s hands. His tiny imagination ran full bore, quickly filling his mind with endless possibilities.