SEAL Team Bravo: Black Ops IV (4 page)

“Yeah, it’s weird. So what’s going on?”

Will shrugged. “I’ll be damned if I know. Maybe they’re just having a bad day.”

Nolan grinned. “Make that a very bad day. When those Warthogs come in, they’ll tear ‘em to pieces.”

He looked at Boswell. “They’re near enough, Lt. We should hit them now. When the shooting starts, they may come at us for protection from the air attack.”

The Lieutenant nodded and looked across at Grant for confirmation. “Sounds right to me, what do you think, Lucas?”

Nolan struggled to hide his frustration.
We’re a SpecOps unit, for Christ’s sake, not a high school debating society.
But he let it go.

“Looks fine to me. Like the Chief said, it would be best if we stayed well clear of those A-10s. So yeah, we should stop them here. The sooner we kill ‘em, the sooner we can call in our ride home.”

Boswell nodded. “Give the order, Chief. They don’t get any nearer.”

“Lt, there’s something wrong,” Nolan objected. “I don’t like it. They’re up to something. I only wish I knew what it was.”

Boswell looked unconcerned. “It looks fine to me. Give the order, Chief. Tell the men to open fire. Let’s corral them ready for the airstrike.”

Nolan nodded and keyed his mic. It was true; they couldn’t let them come any nearer.

“Listen up, men. We have to halt that group and hold them until the Warthogs come in. Commence firing, try and hold them back.”

He’d retrieved his SWS Mk11, and he dropped to a kneeling position where he could rest the bipod on a flat chunk of rock. It made a perfect sniper stand. He sighted through the Leupold riflescope, and the group of hostiles came up large in his field of vision. The Platoon opened fire. A hail of lead slashed out at the oncoming group, and the enemy fighters slowed. Some fell as the massive combined firepower rippling out from Bravo Platoon smashed into their ranks. Dan opened up with the Minimi, firing in short, even bursts that tore into the oncoming crowd, and the noise of the gunfire was interrupted by the quick, accurate bursts from the men’s Heckler and Koch 416 assault rifles. Vince’s rapid, single shot sniper fire punctuated the roaring bursts of the machine gun. He’d removed the suppressor, and the whip crack noise of his shooting provided a lethal accompaniment to the din of the gunfire. Nolan kept his finger off the trigger. He still couldn’t work out the feeling of unease that tore at his guts.

“Aircraft coming in, our guys are here!” someone shouted over the commo. “Yeeh-hah!”

He felt even more uneasy. It was far too easy. He looked up in time to see a pair of A-10 Thunderbolts hurtling in fast and low from the northwest, their fuselages painted in mottled light-brown and green camouflage. The marines had arrived. As he watched, the two aircraft banked to port and dived in for their first attack run. He looked back at the hostiles, and his mind went numb. It was all laid out in front of them to see. A massacre was about to happen at high speed, a collision of jet-powered technology with an almost stone age primitive people. The surviving fighters had jumped into the irrigation ditches either side of the road. In their center was a large group of Afghan civilians, mainly women and children who’d been kept hidden from the Seals. The Taliban had outsmarted them.

Oh, Jesus, no!

He keyed his mic and shouted, “Abort, abort, there are civilians in the firing line!”

“Belay that! This is Bravo One, press home the attack!” Boswell was shouting into the commo patched through to the controller on the Orion. “Do not pass on that order. The attack is to proceed as scheduled.”

“Copy that, Bravo One,” the controller’s voice came back to them. The platoon commander had spoken, and then the Warthogs opened fire. The effect was devastating. The aircraft seemed to slow in the air as the Gatling guns poured out their heavy caliber rounds into the target. People ran screaming, desperate to find cover, but there was to be no respite for them. Some made it to the irrigation ditches, only to be forced back by the Taliban sheltering there. Some were shot down by their own people rather than allow them to escape the massacre.
 

“Lt, for Christ’s sake, you have to stop this,” he shouted to Boswell.

There was no reply, and he looked into the officer’s eyes. They were glazed with excitement, satisfied that America’s mortal enemies were being mown down like wheat before the harvester, except these weren’t the enemy. They were a Taliban sacrifice and an American public relations disaster. Finally, Boswell came to his senses, but it was too late. They watched the A-10s come to the end of their attack run and looped in the sky for the return, pumping out bunches of flares in case of ground to air missiles. Then they came again, and the nauseating hammering of the Gatling guns echoed across the dusty plain. Once again, Nolan could see the civilians running, screaming, bleeding and dying. He heard Boswell shouting at the controller, “This is Bravo One, abort, abort, abort. I say again, abort!”

But the Warthogs were already turning for home. The pilots hauled back on their sticks, and the squat, ugly killing machines zoomed up into the sky to separate in a ‘V’ formation, prior to forming up for the return journey to Bagram Air Base, outside Kabul. They would know that too much time spent in Pakistani airspace invited disaster, in the shape of a visit from a squadron of Pakistani F-16 Fighting Falcons, more than a match for the A-10s. The firing had stopped, and in the distance, Nolan could see the surviving Taliban fighters climb out of the ditch and start to jog back towards the town, leaving the casualties bleeding and dying in their wake. He turned to Boswell.

“Lt, there never was any intention to fight us. That was a public relations battle, and they sure as hell won it. Why the fuck didn’t you stop those Warthogs?”

The Lieutenant shook his head. He ignored the Chief’s hostility. “I thought, well, I thought they were using them as a human shield, not a sacrifice. And then,” he faltered. “I just…it was all too late. Chief, I never would have let it happen if I could have stopped it. Jesus, how can they do that to their own people?”

“That’s the nature of the beast,” Lucas Grant offered. “These people are animals, Lt. Don’t let it worry you; killing their own comes as second nature to them.”

If only it was as simple as that. Can’t they see? We were led by the nose.

“We need to check for survivors,” Nolan asserted. “Some of them will need medical help before we leave. We’re running short on time. We have to take care of it and call in the helos for exfiltration. It’s time we were outta here. When the Pakistanis get wind of this, we’ll hit real problems.”

Boswell nodded. “Yeah, I’ll call them in now. They’re about fifteen minutes out, so that’s how long we have left.”

Nolan nodded and turned to Will, who was hovering nearby. “I need four men to come with me and check out those poor folks, see if there’s anything we can do for them.”

Behind him, he heard Lucas Grant murmur; “A bullet in the head might do some of them a favor after those Warthogs have shot them up.” He ignored him, and keyed his mic.
 

“Vince, you and Dan round up the rest of the men and form a defensive perimeter, in case any of those Taliban decide to double back and take pot shots at us.”

“Copy that, I’ll get right on it.”

He started up the road with Will and three other men, among them Jack Whitman, a promising new recruit to the Platoon. He was slightly above average height like Nolan, and finely muscled with the body of a martial artist. Whitman had one ambition in his life, and he’d achieved it. To become a Seal, and he hardly ever stopped smiling. Except now, his expression had changed as they approached the grim pile of bodies to survey the butcher’s bill, the grim toll of death, and the dying. At first, he thought Whitman was sickened, and then he looked again. His eyes were glazed.

With what, horror, or something else? What is it?

Whitman caught him watching him, and his expression changed.

“Someone will pay for this screw-up,” he muttered.

“Maybe, Jack. But who?”

The Taliban, for sending their people out to be murdered? Who will hold them accountable? Maybe it was the fault of those A-10 jockeys, or Boswell for not calling a halt. But we’re all to blame, all of us. These poor bastards just want to live in peace. Instead, they have to deal with a constant flow of soldiers from both sides. Hard men, with hard faces set like stone against the task they’re ordered to do. Armored and heavily armed. The devastated infrastructure of Afghanistan, and Waziristan, which counts itself an ally, is a grim testament to the level of destruction we’d wreaked. Or did Jack Whitman mean something else entirely? Is he horrified or enthralled? No, that’s not it. He’s horrified, like the rest of us.

“Help me, please, help me!”

He ran over to where a man was trying to extricate himself from underneath a pile of broken and ruined bodies. Nolan struggled to free him, and Jack Whitman joined him to help. They finally freed him, looking in horror at the bloodied wreck of humanity they’d saved. The man opened his eyes. He shook his head and stared at them. His lips moved, and he spoke, in English.

“It is not as bad as it looks. The blood is mostly someone else’s. By a miracle, I was spared the worst of the attack. I believe I was shot on the right side of my body. I went down, and other bodies fell on top of me and took the worst of the attack.”

“Exactly where were you hit?”

He pointed to a place just under his shoulder blade. “That’s where it hurts most, anyway.”

Nolan bent down to look and discovered a shard of metal, a fragment from the casing of a cannon round from the A-10 strike, had fallen from the sky at high speed and embedded itself deep into the man’s lower shoulder.

“I’ll need to put a dressing on this, Sir. It won’t take a minute.”

“Thank you.”

He closed his eyes. Clearly he was in a lot more pain that he’d admit to. It was going to hurt even more in the next minute. He was bleeding badly, yet the metal fragment stuck out in such a way that the only way to strap on a dressing was to remove it, and fast. Before the man’s body literally emptied of blood.

“I can do it.”

He looked at Whitman. “You sure?”

“Yep. I spent a couple of years as a Navy Corpsman. They said it’d help my application for the Seals.”

“Right. Did it help?”

Whitman grinned briefly. “Not a bit.”

Nolan grunted. “Okay.”

Jack bent down, unwrapped a sterile dressing, and gave it to Nolan to hold. “I’d ask you to keep it clean, but I guess that’s out of the question.”

Nolan looked at his filthy hands and nodded. “It is.”

Whitman felt around the wound, looking for vulnerable organs, anything that was at risk of further damage. The man’s eyes flicked open with the pain.

“What are you doing?”

“I’m about to put the dressing on, Sir. Nearly there, but I have to remove the metal fragment.”

“Will it hurt?”

“A little. Best if you close your eyes.”

“Very well.”

As his eyelids closed, Jack jerked out the shard. Immediately, a fresh spurt of blood jetted out of the open wound. He was ready for it and jammed the dressing against the hole, staunching the flow.

“If you’d put your hand on the dressing, Chief, I’ll strap him up.”

“Sure.”

Jack stood up to take out another dressing from his pack. Something caught in the corner of Nolan’s vision. It was more an unconscious feeling than something he actually saw, but years of battle experience fired off the alarm bells.

“Jack, get down! Sniper!”

The warning probably saved Whitman’s life. The heavy .303 caliber round fired from a Taliban sniper rifle, a Lee Enfield, hit the Seal just as he automatically dodged sideways in response to the shout. The bullet was aimed at the area of his neck. Instead, it struck him on the side of the chest, square on the ballistic plate in the center of his armored vest. Whitman was flung back by the force of the heavy bullet. Nolan ignored him for the present and keyed his mic.

“Enemy sniper, estimated position three hundred meters due north. It looks like he’s hiding in an old stone building, probably a ruined shepherd’s hut, just before the town. Nail the bastard. He just shot Jack.”

“Is he okay?” Boswell.

“I’m checking him out now. He took it on his ballistic plate. You have to take out that sniper, or he’ll nail a few more of us, and next time we may not be so lucky.”