Afghan Storm (Nick Woods Book 3) (4 page)

Chapter 10

It had been less than
twenty-four hours since their near run-in with the Pakistani army, and despite
the detour having cost them an entire night, Nick was filled with relief. After
crossing back over to their original infiltration route, they had not seen a
single sign of troops lurking anywhere in their vicinity.

Still it had been
unsettling to go from marching night after night in the wilderness with little
to no trace of human existence, and then to nearly run smack dab into the
middle of an army campground. Back on their route, the men of S3 remained on
edge. Phantom patrols seemed to be hiding behind every rock and bend, wearing
on the ragged nerves of the already fatigued shooters. Eventually, after a few
hours of no visible threat, the men began to settle down, and their original
routine continued.

Remaining faithful to the
routine, the S3 team suffered through another night of painful, arduous hiking.
Nick looked and felt like shit. He reeked from nine days of no bathing, and his
clothes could be heralded as “the next big thing in fashion,” that is if
Bum’s
Wear Quarterly
were an actual publication. He was also now sporting a
throbbing ankle and sharp lower back pains from some kind of wrenched nerve or
muscle spasm.

He could tell that the others were silently pushing through various
dings, twists, and injuries, as well. They knew their target was close.
Computer geek Ahmud al-Habshi sat in his compound just eight miles away, and in
two nights, they’d bag his ass, seize his computer gear, and drop any idiots
who were stupid enough to tangle with them.

Nick and his team were
ready to do the job they’d been hired to do. They’d walked too many miles and
slept far too little; they not only itched for some action, they needed it.
After all, al-Habshi’s compound was just the first step in this whole mission.
They still had Deraz, the terrorist masquerading as a spiritual leader, to hunt
and take down.

Unfortunately
for the men of S3, their luck ran out again. On the very next night, Red called
a halt and pointed out more Pakistani army troops ahead.

Nick nearly
screamed with rage. For more than ten years, America had asked Pakistan to deal
with the mutinous tribes along their lawless border. President Bush had pleaded
with the country and supposed ally, and President Obama had followed, trying to
convince them, as well.

But Pakistan
had tried and learned its lesson. The area was officially called, “the
Federally Administered Tribal Areas,” and the inhabitants were almost all
Pashtuns. They were fierce fighters, who were practically impossible to
control.

The area’s
ferocious independence went back to the 19th Century, during the British
colonial period. The British failed to ever gain full control of the tribes and
settled on allowing the dangerous region to serve as an effective buffer to
Afghanistan. Pakistan itself failed to control the area once the British left.
In the ’70s, those passing through the Khyber Pass were warned by the Pakistani
government to stay close to the road for their safety.

Things were
dangerous then, but they grew far worse after 2001 when the Americans with the
help of the Northern Alliance drove the Taliban from power in Afghanistan.
Those Taliban members who survived the onslaught of the world’s greatest
military power fled to the Federally Administered Tribal Areas.

They quickly
gained influence there, and the cross-border attacks into Afghanistan grew so
bad that America convinced Pakistan to do something. (Probably with billions in
aid packages.) Pakistan deployed 80,000 troops into the Federally Administered
Tribal Areas in 2004, but even that sizable force failed to tame the area.

Pakistan was
forced to sign a truce with the Pakistani Taliban, and though it deployed
troops into the area eight more times between 2004 and 2006, control had never
been established. The final treaty had stated the Taliban wouldn’t attack
either Pakistan or Afghanistan from the tribal areas while granting them the
privilege of carrying weapons and basically ruling the place as they pleased.

Nick knew
these details by heart as he and his team had studied the area extensively
prior to the mission. And what pissed him off the most was that just ten days
ago, when they were planning their mission and studying the satellite and drone
imagery, there’d been no Pakistani army units in the area. Somehow, these
troops had moved in during the past several days.

The cynical
part of Nick was sure these troops were here to hunt them down. But their
actions hinted the opposite. This newest set of troops was once again
completely unprofessional. They weren’t looking for men, and they certainly
weren’t looking for a fight. Fires blazed, laughing men sang, a few even
danced.

It truly
seemed this was merely another fake incursion into the tribal regions by the
federal government, meant to appease America and release a few billion dollars
more in aid. Nick assumed that the Pakistani army had most likely warned the
tribes they’d be coming, giving the belligerent locals plenty of time to
prepare and hide ammunition and pro-Taliban banners and flags.

The team
pulled back, huddled, and talked out their options. In this case, going down
the hill was a no go. Numerous homes dotted the hillside and valley on the
lower slopes. (They’d have to go above the troops, where there were fewer
homes. Still, there were homes up there, too, according to their maps.)

“We’ll just
have to be careful,” Nick told the team.

And careful
they were as they approached the first set of homes. They slipped along walls,
through alleys, and even in front of huts themselves. And somehow, even
carrying all their gear and water jugs, they managed to infiltrate through the
small enclave of homes.

The men of
S3 had also pulled off some masterful teamwork. Covering danger areas, using
hand signals, and moving like shadows through the dark.

But just
when they thought they were in the clear and a good hundred yards from the last
compound, they saw movement followed by the sound of a dog growling.

“I got him,”
Red whispered.

Red dropped
his AK, allowing it to hang across his body in its tactical sling, while he
pulled a Glock .45 pistol. Red pulled a suppressor from his pocket and twisted
it on as quickly as he could, then moved away from the group toward the threat.

The dog approached
closer, his growl growing louder as his eyes now saw what only his nose had
smelled. Nick noticed the hair on the large dog raise and knew it was seconds
from barking or charging them.

“Shoot,
Red,” Nick said.

Pfft. Pfft.
Pfft.

The beast
dropped, hit by three subsonic bullets from Red’s pistol.

“Let’s go,”
Nick said.

Although
they were on the outskirts of the enclave, Nick signaled the team forward,
anxious to get away in case some villager unable to sleep investigated. Red was
digging around in the dirt, picking up his shell casings.

“Come on,”
Nick hissed. “We gotta move.”

They stepped
out quickly, wanting to get as far away as possible from the enclave, as they’d
just left their first potential clue since entering Pakistan.

Chapter 11

The early
morning silence was shattered by the sound of a boy yelling.

Tariq
Hijazi, the village’s chief enforcer, raced toward the commotion equipped with
his AK-47. He carried the AK not because of the shout, but because any
self-respecting male over the age of twelve carried their weapons with them in
this part of the country. Always.

A couple
hundred yards from his compound, Tariq pushed through a group of men to have a
look at the boy, who he now saw was crying over a dog.

The dog was
dead. He yanked the boy out of the way and nudged the dog over with his sandal.
Three bullet holes marked the head of what had been the enclave’s biggest and
strongest dog.

His first
thought was that the tribe of ul-Haq was behind this. This tribe resided in the
mountains on the other side of the road below them. Often, boys of each tribe
would try to sneak up on each other’s homes as part of a way to show courage.

It was a
dangerous game that often left young boys dead, but whoever had made these
three shots was no boy. (They were spaced a couple of inches apart --
remarkable shooting in the dark, and pretty good shooting in daylight.)

“Tariq,”
someone said behind him.

“Shut up,”
he hissed. “I’m thinking.”

The dog was
facing down the draw. Tariq followed the direction of the dog’s look and
spotted a single shell casing ten yards away. He shoved a sleepy yet curious
boy out of his way and picked it up.

It was a
short, pistol casing. On the base, it was marked “.45 AUTO.”

Tariq
pinched the casing in his hand. Could it have been an American? The .45 was a
popular American round, and the shooting had been exceptional. And clearly
silenced, since it hadn’t been heard. So, someone with an expensive (and hard
to obtain) pistol attachment had shot the dog with incredible skill in the dark
of night.

The tracks
in the dirt moved down the hill, and Tariq easily determined that the person
who had done this wore boots. Further possible proof. Most Pakistani and Afghan
men wore tennis shoes or sandals. Boots were a luxury beyond most of their
means.

Perhaps it
was an American, or perhaps it was a wayward soldier for the Pakistani army.
The Army had moved hundreds of troops into the area, but the terms had been
spelled out prior to the incursion. And a silencer among their troops?
Completely unnecessary and almost impossible to fathom.

The Pakistani
army wouldn’t interfere with villagers or search tribal enclaves, and local
villagers were supposed to leave the Army alone. But someone -- either an
American or a foolish soldier in the Pakistani army -- had made a big mistake.
Many of the urban-raised soldiers saw the tribal villagers as nothing but
uneducated and dangerous religious zealots.

Tariq wasn’t
sure who he hated most: an American or a so-called “Muslim,” who had turned his
back on the true teachings of Islam.

“Round up
our warriors,” Tariq Hijazi commanded to the men around him. “We will hunt down
this fool.”

Chapter 12

Nick and the
S3 team had pushed hard after the incident with the dog. They now camped four
and a half miles east of the enclave.

In the other
direction, less than a mere four miles separated them from Ahmud al-Habshi’s
compound. But depending on what was being discovered and decided about the dead
dog they’d left behind, that four miles might as well be another hundred miles.
If they had a hunting party after them, then Ahmud al-Habshi would be their
last concern.

Worries of
such a threat had caused them to look for a hideout up on a finger -- a high
piece of ground -- that ran down from the ridge, instead of in one of the small
valleys nestled just beneath the higher hills, as they had been. If they were
being tracked, they’d be found either way. And it was better to be up high and
able to defend yourself than down in some gully hoping they didn’t toss
grenades down on you.

As the sun
and the heat climbed higher and higher, the men sweated under their nets. Each
man was awake and alert, fighting off fatigue with the kind of energy that can
only come from the feeling of being hunted.

Although
they couldn’t be sure, the suspicious and volatile reputation of the people in
this area made it easy to assume that danger was not far behind them. The
villagers, or possibly even the Pakistani army if they had been alerted, might
have spread out and could approach from above, below, or from either side.

There’d be
no sleeping today.

Nick laid on
his stomach, rolling dirt between his fingers and chewing on their situation.
He looked down at the dirt, then dragged his hand across the dry, dusty ground.
Damn it, he thought, he was sick of all the humping and more than ready to infiltrate
al-Habshi’s compound.

“Hey, guys,”
Red whispered. “We’ve got a serious problem.”

Nick turned
and saw Red, who was behind him, holding his hand out with two shell casings in
it.

Truck saw
the casings, as well, and scoffed, “Sorry, you little commie environmentalist,
but there are no recycling bins in the area.”

“No,
asshole,” Red replied, clearly not in the joking mood. His eyes were fixated to
his palm. “I only have two casings. I thought I fired two rounds into that dog,
but I just remembered to reload my pistol and the magazine is missing three
rounds. I left a casing back there.”

That wasn’t
good, Nick thought. And then he remembered the stress of the moving through the
huts and how he’d ordered everyone to move out immediately.

“It’s my
fault,” he said. “I shouldn’t have rushed you back there.”

“It wouldn’t
have mattered. I thought I only fired twice.”

“It doesn’t
matter,” Marcus said. “We live as a team, and we die as a team.”

No one said
anything for a moment, and Marcus added, “Truth be known, it should have
occurred to me to grab that dog. We could have carried it out of there, and the
bloody mess could have easily been buried under loose dirt.”

Nick slung a
handful of dirt to the ground with frustration. The situation was spiraling out
of control. It was out of the norm for him to have overreacted to his fear. It
was out of the norm for Red, such an incredible point man, to have accidentally
fired three rounds instead of two. He was typically used to the adrenaline. And
Marcus never missed anything.

What the
hell was happening to them? He wiped his nose and knew it was the fatigue. This
mission just pushed the parameters of what any team could achieve.

He ran his
hand through the dirt and wondered if he’d signed their death sentences the
moment they crossed the border.

“It is what
it is,” Nick finally said. “Let’s stay sharp and with luck, we’ll hit this
compound tomorrow.”

He picked up
another clod of dirt and sifted it through his fingers. He saw movement,
dropped the dirt, and raised a pair of binoculars along the trail behind them.

“Speak of
the devil,” Nick said.