The Reaper Read online

  “Roger that.”

  “I’m going to keep moving to the right and work my way from left to right.”

  “Got it.”

  Pemberton knew what to do. As I fired each round, he was going to move the light along the row of eyeballs.

  I squeezed the trigger and saw a large puff of smoke through my scope. Low. I hit the wall and not the dude.

  I reached up on my elevation and went up two clicks on the gun, two minutes. That way I had given myself a bit of leeway. Either I was going to hit the very top of his head and crease his skull or hit him right between the eyes. I reset the trigger and felt and heard the little click. I wanted to reduce the pull. That was crucial for such a precise shot, particularly with the two-stage trigger my weapon employed.

  An instant after I squeezed the trigger, I saw the target’s eyes roll back just as his head first tilted straight back and then plunged forward like his head was on a spring.

  I thought I’d hit him, but it was only when I heard a splash on the ground, what sounded like a chunky liquid being spilled, that I was more or less certain the round had found its mark. Nearly simultaneously with the sound, I saw Pemberton moving to my left as he brought his floodlight onto the second of the four men in line. That next target ducked below the ledge. For the next few seconds, I was reminded of the Whac-A-Mole game at Chuck E. Cheese’s as the three remaining heads popped up at irregular intervals and locations.

  Each time a head came up, I fired another round, taking that guy out. After the second, I could hear a few of our guys on comms laughing.

  “You’re getting them, Irv!” Lindley said. “This is un-f’ing-real!” I recognized Lindley by his signature expression.

  I was gaining confidence and feeling pretty good about getting these guys. They’d been making our lives miserable for a while. Now it was our time to return the favor.

  After the third guy had gone down, I fired another round, hoping to end things, but I missed. I could make out a figure on all fours crawling away from us, just a hairline of his lower back visible above the wall. No way I could make that shot. No way I wanted that guy to get away.

  Torres was positioned to Pemberton’s left, the barrel of his grenade launcher barely poking above his helmet. He was maybe six feet away from me.

  “Torres, dude, you’ve got to launch one of those directly behind the building. Let him know that he’s got no place to run.”

  Torres nodded and brought the weapon into firing position. Before I could tell him to wait, I felt concussive pressure stuffing my ears. Every sound went muffled and it felt like someone had taken a huge pair of pliers to my head.

  I was pissed, but I knew that it was my own fault. No one had told me to not wear my ear protection. That was my choice and now I was paying for it. I was notorious for not using those foam earplugs because they were a distraction when I was concentrating on a target.

  I instantly felt bad for jumping Torres’s ass, but I couldn’t take the words back. We still had to eliminate that target, and I had no time to answer Torres’s puzzled look.

  I don’t know if it was the sound of the explosion that broke the last guy’s discipline or if he tired as he moved farther away from the near wall, but he seemed to rise up a bit, exposing most of his back to me. I knew that a shot to the spine would incapacitate him immediately. I reaimed and squeezed off another round and watched as the body went flat on the roof and lay still.

  I looked over toward Pemberton who was still holding the flood. Next to him, Brett looked at me and flashed a thumbs-up.

  I nodded and said, “That was pretty cool.”

  “Sure was,” Brett said, “but I got shot.”

  “Are you serious?”

  “I am, but the damage isn’t.” He held up his hand and I could see a thin trickle of blood going from the meat on the outside of his palm tracking down his wrist.

  Brett had already earned a Purple Heart when a Stryker he was riding in was blown up in Iraq during a previous deployment we were both on.

  “I just got nicked. Don’t say anything.”

  I knew that he didn’t want any attention for that wound because he might get put up for a medal or citation.

  I kept my mouth shut about Brett’s wound, but I told the rest of the guys that we’d continue toward our objective. First, I wanted to mount the building where the Taliban guys had been. Once I could verify that things were clear, the guys could proceed a few blocks, Pemberton and I would hop onto the next building, and we’d kind of piggyback our way until we could get to our primary target.

  Pemberton was still pretty upset about his weapon not firing, so I gave him some time to work on it while we were on the roof.

  “I can’t freakin’ believe this shit. Third mission and I look like a piece of shit in front of everybody.”

  “I know, it sucks.” I was looking through my scope, making sure the area was clear. I didn’t want to turn around and look at Pemberton. “We’ll get back home and we’ll figure it out. We’ll work something out so that this doesn’t happen again.”

  A few minutes of silence followed. Then I could hear Pemberton muttering something. I thought he was talking to himself, but when I listened closer, I realized he was talking to one of the corpses.

  “When you woke up this morning, I bet you didn’t think this was how your day was going to turn out. Well, I didn’t either.”

  I thought that was true for the rest of us as well. We’d still made little progress toward our initial objective, covering maybe one of the five clicks we had to cover. We’d taken fire immediately, been pinned down by four guys, and we were still making our way cautiously forward, about as slowly as we’d ever moved.

  I took a second to look back at Pemberton to see how he was doing. Sure enough, his back was against the wall and he was talking to one of the dead guys.

  “This is ridiculous.” Pemberton let out a big sigh and shook his head and kind of chuckle-snorted.

  I’d seen the dead guy’s eyes just staring straight ahead. They were what gave away his exact position, what I’d used as a frame of reference through my scope, and they were still revealing things. He was dead. We weren’t. It couldn’t have been more simple or more complex.

  As soon as we caught up with the rest of the squad, we encountered more enemy fire.

  “Now,” I said. “Now, this is ridiculous.”

  We established a defensive perimeter and Keyes and the rest of first and second squad were laying waste to our attackers with their MK-48s and M4s. Those belt-fed machine guns are nice and light at a little over eighteen pounds and they can fire 500 to 625 rounds a minute. Whoever those guys were that took us on were hopelessly outgunned with their AKs.

  I wasn’t feeling sorry for those guys at all. I saw one of the Taliban combatives hiding in the bush. He had his back to us and he was hunched over. I watched him through the scope. Something caught the moonlight and reflected back in the objective lens of my scope. I could see that he had some kind of radio, nothing more than a little walkie-talkie but it could still do us harm.

  It was weird to have this intense firefight going on and, in the middle of it, kind of in a no-man’s-land, this solitary guy. I didn’t know if he was communicating with the other dudes or if that device could trigger some explosives. Didn’t matter. He had to go down.

  While I was watching him, he turned slightly and the barrel of his AK glinted off my infrared light, almost like sparks.

  I turned to Pemberton. “You want this guy.”

  “I got him.”

  Again the death click.

  I could see that Pemberton wanted to bite through the barrel of that Win Mag.

  I shrugged and then aimed and took the guy out.

  By this time the line guys were moving forward doing what they were supposed to do. You don’t want to just stay in one spot when ambushed. I could see that they’d already gone past the feet of the dead dudes.

  Things had quieted for a bit. Those firef
ights are more like match fights. They lasted about as long as a couple of kitchen matches take to burn out. Some of the squad members were taking the enemies’ weapons, others clearing buildings. I was checking the rooftops and, in looking up, I could see that the sun was starting to creep up over the horizon. I couldn’t believe that much time had passed.

  Once we got within a click or two of the objective, Pemberton and I and the members of the third squad, broke off from the main element. We had to cross a narrow ravine. Fortunately there was a bridge we could use to cross it. It was just a narrow piece of lumber, no wider than a two-by-four, so we had to cross one at time. That meant that the six squad guys and then Pemberton and I would go over. We couldn’t risk walking it, so we had to straddle the plank and kind of hunch our way across. While waiting my turn, I looked over my shoulder. I could hear gunfire and could see rounds impacting the building behind where our remaining element was.

  I’d been on dozens and dozens of operations, but I’d never seen anything like this. I started wondering where the heck we were. Was every Taliban fighter in the country gathered in Helmand Province?

  It was my turn to cross, and I about fell off when I heard Mac start screaming. Talk about a hard-charging Ranger. That was Mac. At first I couldn’t figure out what he was hollering about, but when his banshee shriek kept up, I knew he was just pumping himself and the other guys up.

  When he finally put words to his shouts, yelling, “Get some,” in a throat-tearing tone, I smiled.

  “Let’s do what the man says,” I told Pemberton.

  We broke off from the squad into a spot behind a low stone wall. I wanted to observe the firefight through my scope to surveil them in case some random guy popped up again and tried to take out some of the guys in contact. I heard a high-pitched wail, not human this time, and then saw a huge cloud of sparks and dirt rise dangerously close to the main element. In the light, I could see our guys hunkered down behind a big wood and metal plow and a wheelbarrow, while around them piles of dirt and rock were fluming into the air and landing not more than fifty to a hundred feet from their position.

  That 105 howitzer round was right on target though. Through my scope, I saw a head and then a rifle. That rifle was attached to a body and that man and his weapon started to shoot. I had no idea who it was, but just like before, here was this lone guy seemingly in the middle of nowhere firing away. I was so in the moment, so in the fog of war, I instinctively slid my safety off. I slowly started to squeeze, taking the slack out of the trigger, when the head shifted position slightly and I saw light reflecting off it. I immediately lowered the weapon and released the tension on the trigger. Only our guys wore that kind of infrared reflective strip of tape on our helmets.

  I rose to one knee and pinched the bridge of my nose until my head could clear. I tried to chase the thoughts out of my mind, but what if I hadn’t seen that reflective glint until a second later? That really drove home something I knew but obviously needed reinforcing. Be a hundred percent sure that is exactly who you intend on shooting and have no doubt in your mind.

  Pemberton and I pushed on to a little building about a hundred meters away from the original target. We got on top and began searching. The sky was getting lighter, the cows were lowing, and sure as shit, the locals were awake and coming outside. Bombs were being dropped, jets were flying overhead, gunfire was being exchanged, and all that noise and chaos was like a wake-up call for these people. I couldn’t believe it. Only later did I realize that these villagers had been experiencing these kinds of things for the majority of their lives. Like people who live near railroad tracks or a busy highway or a fire station or whatever, all those sounds had just become white noise to them. Sad.

  We were up on top of this building and we could hear the C-4 getting strapped on, blowing up the main objective’s building’s front door. Later we learned that luckily for us, the guy was still in there. I don’t know why he hadn’t left like the rest of the people had. Get out of the house and get some fresh air?

  I don’t know if his leaving would have made a difference. Later on in the deployment my questions about why people chose to stay or leave got answered. It was because of the amount of firepower we had. We used every asset available—F-16 jets, AC-130 gunships, mortar rounds. With all that weaponry at our disposal, we present ourselves as a much larger threat. On the ground, we were a forty-man element, but with those guns in the air, it must have seemed like an entire battalion or two was just outside their doors. As one of my old football coaches used to say about some of the blitz packages we used—they won’t know whether to shit or go blind. Simply put, confusion and chaos reigned and flight or fight got all jumbled up.

  After the objective was somewhat secure, Pemberton and I stayed on the roof providing cover for the guys conducting a sensitive site exploitation (SSE). They examined all the stuff inside the house, looking for cell phones, documents, computers, hard drives, everything. Pemberton and I were surveying the surroundings making sure those guys were safe. Pemberton cracked open his bolt and started to fix his weapon again. I observed a bad guy popping his head around the corner. He was looking at us and I wondered, what’s this guy doing? He was three hundred meters away. So I continued to watch him watch us. I could just see his eyes and forehead peeking around the corner. He’d go back behind the corner and slowly come back out. He did that about ten times as I continued scoping him.

  I told Pemberton, “Dude, if this guy has a weapon and decides to come out, I want you to take him.”

  If his gun was working, I wanted Pemberton to get that experience of a three-hundred-yard shot—a pretty typical and average shot for a direct action sniper. I wanted him to take it. I’d had my share for that night. I wanted him to be a part of it and stop thinking like he screwed up big-time.

  He put his bolt back in. “I’m going to try it, man.”

  By then, we’d been watching this guy for fifteen minutes, and for some reason he decided to get really cocky. He stood straight up and slowly started to walk out. He was walking really stiff. Only one arm was moving. We couldn’t see his opposite arm.

  Nobody walked like that unless they were carrying something or they’re trying to hide something. Still, after what had just gone on, I wanted to be sure.

  The man slowly pulled around his AK-47 and pointed it right at the building we were on.

  This guy’s got to be kidding me.

  He cranked off a few rounds. Boom, boom, boom. I heard one snap and the other two rounds hit the building’s side.

  Pemberton was right on it. I was looking at the guy, spotting his round for him, when Pemberton hammered him. The guy spun around and dropped.

  I looked at Pemberton with my mouth dropped open and my eyes wide. “That hurt so bad.” I’d wanted to be able to hear everything and hadn’t put in my ear protection once again.

  That Win Mag, without a suppressor, produced such a noise that it felt like the building was still shaking seconds after the round was fired and that my brain was rattling around in my skull.

  Pemberton was smiling this face-splitting grin, glad that his weapon was back in action and he’d gotten some on that operation. I was glad for him too.

  After that, it was finally over. There’d be another time to look back on all the could-haves and might-haves and all the rest. For now, we just wanted to get the hell out of there. Though the sun coming up was usually a signal for people to get out of bed, we were dog tired and hungry and would put off going to bed until we ate. Mostly, though, we were glad we’d escaped without any serious casualties.

  My hearing was getting back to normal; it no longer sounded like somebody had clamped a jar over each of my ears. That was a good thing because nothing beat the sound of victory, the chatter of a bunch of guys who’d gone out and done their jobs, erased their mistakes, and put a serious hurtin’ on some guys.

  4. A Ranger in the Making

  After a really hectic few days, it was good to have two days off. I had
n’t really been able to settle into my room yet. It was also good to have the time to get a better sense of where we were and what the reason was for things being so hot. Guys like to settle into a battle rhythm, but when you don’t have any kind of a buildup, and are forced to hit the ground running, seemingly sprinting with no finish line in sight—or even mentioned—you get a bit worn down. You know, we’re supposed to follow orders and do our jobs and just perform, but we’re human beings and uncertainty isn’t our friend.

  Before my deployment to Afghanistan, I tried to keep up with what was going on there, but it wasn’t like I had a lot more sources of information than a civilian would have—television news and newspapers. Of course, when guys came back, we’d talk to them about what they’d done, but it wasn’t like we were conducting a State Department or Defense Department briefing regarding the overall battle plan and strategic maneuvering for the region. We were just guys doing a job and wanting to know what the chow was like, what kinds of operations they went on, the environmental conditions, that kind of thing.

  As it turned out, the Helmand Province and the area in and around Kandahar was particularly important. The U.S. had never really maintained a large military presence there, from what I was told, and it was only after I returned from this deployment that news of a big push in the area came out. In fact, I was sitting on my couch watching CNN in September of 2009 when I heard that the U.S. was going to send the marines in there, and this was the first time since 2001 that the U.S. would have boots on the ground there. I sat back and laughed, thinking, Wait a minute, didn’t I just spend two and a half months right there?

  That’s really when it started to make sense to me why the fighting was so fierce in that area. The place was a Taliban safe haven. A lot of the fighters who had fled from the action at the beginning of the war had made their way there. At the time, we were told that this was also the area from which up to ninety-eight percent of the opium, and eventually heroin, that enters the U.S. originates. The Taliban would use the profits of that sale to fund their terrorist activities. I remember thinking in those early days in the country when we were being so heavily fired on, from where the heck did these guys get all their armament?