Wynne's War (18 page)

Wynne disagreed with both camps. He believed this solider was telling the truth. The man, half-psychotic—had the twitch in his thumbs; he'd break down at the drop of a hat—but there wasn't any lie in his eyes and he never contradicted himself. The group responsible for his debriefing split about 90–10: 90 percent of them thinking the SEAL was a Section 8, the other 10 that he was providing actionable intelligence. Wynne, another Special Forces captain, and the JSOC colonel they answered to were the outliers.

They fought it out for two days. The other SF captain who agreed with Wynne wanted to go right then, insert another team by helicopter and perform the raid. He managed to convince a few of the analysts, but most of those in the room wanted to ignore the SEAL entirely. Didn't think he was credible. Didn't think there was any chance of there being actual American POWs. By day two, they were arguing drones and Delta Force, coming in the back door through Pakistan, and there were a couple of spooks from Langley who wanted to send in a team of their own. They were shouted down, and somebody got pushed, and a young major got in a shoving match with one of the analysts and Wynne stepped in to break them up.

This is when the colonel spoke from the back of the room. He'd been with 5th Special Forces Group at K2 when they moved into Northern Afghanistan in October of 2001, and he proceeded to remind them that SF had negotiated this terrain on horseback. He said a reprise of this method would provide a number of advantages to any kind of rescue operation. Stealth. Speed. Reliable transport. Renewable fuel source. He said if it was his op, there's no question he'd use horses. And he wouldn't use these shaggy Afghan ponies. He'd have real horses choppered in, American horses, and he'd bring in someone to train them.

Which was where Russell came in, said Billings. Wynne had seen the footage of the incident with the horse and then he'd seen the stories about Russell's grandfather. It took the captain less than thirty-six hours to get him transferred.

“So it's a rescue?” Russell asked.

“It's a recon,” Billings told him. “We don't know what we're going to find, but we can't afford to just ignore it.”

Russell sat a moment, trying to think all of this through. He had questions, but before he could ask them, Wheels said, “It's an ass-covering mission. It's us covering our asses in case all this turns out to be true. So we can look good to the press. So we can actually look like we tried.”

The lieutenant had stared at Wheels for several moments.

Then he'd turned and exited the room.

 

Over the next several days, their way would take them through arroyos of sandstone polished smooth by winds and weather, overhangs of granite. The soldiers, staring up from their horses at these vaults, saw, etched in the rock, ancient pictographs, runic engravings, who could say from what millennium: sun and moon and stick-figure representations of hunters and the beasts they pursued. They slowed their mounts to study the carvings, then emerged into bright daylight, the trail winding down into a forest of twisted juniper and pine.

On the fourth day, pausing to take their midday meal, a shadow fell across Russell's lap where he sat on the ground cross-legged, and he turned to see the captain, blocking out the sun. The man beckoned him with a brief twitch of his index and middle fingers, and Russell rose and followed him to the other side of the trail about fifty feet from where the soldiers sat eating. Wynne passed a hand across his face.

“We need to check on our scouts,” he said.

Russell regarded him a moment, and Wynne added, “I'm thinking Zero and Corporal Grimes.”

“I can go,” said Russell, but the captain shook his head.

“Yourself excluded,” said Wynne, “those are the two best riders?”

Russell thought, excluding himself, the captain was their best rider, but he said, “Yessir. Ziza and Wheels.”

Wynne considered this for a long moment, his blue eyes fixed on something at the horizon's edge.

Then he nodded. He turned and began to call orders to his men.

Russell helped Wheels drop gear, sort through his saddlebags, strip his load-out light as he could get it: three MREs, twelve pints of water, ten thirty-round magazines for his rifle. The two Rangers stood there in the noon heat with the air buzzing on the bare rock slopes and their nerves tight as a snare. Russell boosted his friend into the saddle, held the reins while Wheels got himself situated, and then handed them up.

“I don't reckon I got to tell you to be careful,” he said.

Wheels looked down at him. His eyes quivered back and forth.

“You see any bad guys,” said Russell, “do not engage.”

“Don't need to tell me about engaging,” Wheels said, gesturing toward Ziza. “Tell him about engaging.”

“Just try not to get shot,” said Russell.

“Will do, doggy daddy.”

“And don't let Ziza get you in a tight. You can hurt a horse at this altitude. You can hurt a horse in this heat.”

Wheels nodded. He squared his ball cap, crimping the bill with both hands and then smoothing his palms across his thighs.

Ziza was already in the saddle. He rode up beside the two of them and looked at Wheels. Then he chucked up his horse, pushed it to a slow trot, and started down the bed of cracked clay they'd be using for a trail. Russell tapped his fist lightly against Wheels's shin and the man glanced down at him.

“See you this evening,” he said, and pushed his horse forward to follow the commando. Russell watched the riders maneuver along the creek bed and disappear around a ridge.

He barely had time to worry. The two men had been gone just a few hours when they were spotted riding back down the creek bed toward camp, the two Afghan scouts trailing behind, startled expressions on the men's weathered faces and their horses stepping wearily in the heat shimmer and mirage. Ziza rode his big bay up through camp and into the half circle where the men stood watching. He nodded to his captain and motioned back down the creek with a tilt of his head.

“We have hostiles,” he said.

“How far out?” Wynne asked.

“Five klicks,” said Ziza. “Maybe less.”

The scouts had entered camp by this point and sat their horses nervously. Russell studied them. If they still thought volunteering for this post to get out of the Afghan National Army was a good decision, they didn't anymore.

Ox stepped toward Ziza's horse and brushed his knuckles across its cheek. “Is it an ambush waiting down there for us or what the fuck?”

“It's not an ambush,” Ziza said. “They're walking around with AKs, but they don't even have ammo belts. Some aren't carrying weapons at all.”

Wynne waved up the scouts and Ziza addressed them in Dari. The leaner of the two paused a few feet from the captain and stood with his eyes slightly out of focus and the pupils tilted upward, as though attempting to read the words he was searching for off the inside of his skull. Finally the scout said in English, “He is having much fear, this man.”

“Of what?” Wynne asked.

“He is having fear of this place we see. Ziza and your man see it also. There is much wrong in this place.”

Bixby was standing beside Wynne listening intently. “Can we go around?” he asked.

The scout squinted for a moment, thinking. Then he shook his head.

“We must to go backwards.”

“Backwards,” Wynne said.

“Yes. These are too many. We don't have enough man to make the battle. We must to go backwards.”

The captain told him they weren't going backward. He ordered the team to mount up.

In these mountains when it rained it rained without warning, and soon the stretch of sky above them had clouded and a light drizzle fell. The men donned their ponchos and followed the captain along a wadi where a shallow stream had begun to flow. Another hundred or so meters and Wynne walked his horse up the bank beside the brook, turned in his saddle, and motioned for the riders to do likewise.

Wheels looked over at Russell. He pointed to the stream that had appeared to their left.

“Flash flood.”

“Apparently,” Russell said.

For the next several hours, they rode in a steady pour beside what had become a river, the brown water rushing and carrying lengths of driftwood past, brambles, the body of a small goat. Russell thought he saw a clear plastic bottle, but he couldn't be certain, and it stayed in sight for only a few seconds before the water took it away. Wynne led them on, and the rain began to slacken and then suddenly it stopped. Lightning strobed the hilltops to the north, and the sky grew paler and they could see strips of blue in the canopy above. Another hour and the sun broke through the evening sky, and soon the entire front had moved off to the east and the earth all around them steamed as though it had been removed from an oven. Wynne brought the column to a halt, dismounted, and waved up Ziza. When the man reached him from the rear of the line, Wynne asked him how close they were.

Ziza glanced around at the terrain, vapor rising from the rocks and tree trunks.

“I'd say about another thousand meters,” he said. “We found the scouts behind that spur. We could set up overwatch on the ridge.”

Wynne looked to the rise of land where the commando pointed. He nodded and then directed Rosa to get his rifle.

“You're with the sergeant,” Wynne told Morgan. “You're spotter.”

“Roger that,” Morgan said.

“I'm taking Ox, Perkins, and Russell. We get into trouble, Mother, Hallum, and Zero are the cavalry.”

“Who's Mother?” asked Wheels.

“I'm Mother,” Bixby said.

Wheels studied the ground a moment. Then he looked back over at Bixby.

“Then who's Father?” he asked.

Russell shook his head. He rose and walked over to Fella, made sure of the picket line to which she was tethered, a simple picket line—a hemp rope strung wither-high between two trees. Each of the horses had been secured to lines such as these about the sparse grove, short lengths of hay twine tied in breakaway knots to lead lines and bridles. Russell checked the line and checked the lead and then he spoke to the horse and rubbed a hand along her neck. If they were killed out here, these animals would likely be found and taken by the very men whose compound they were about to assault. Russell thought about that. He told his horse that everything was going to be all right.

They formed up behind a low berm in the early dusk—Wynne and Russell, Perkins and Ox—kneeling and checking magazines, grenades, tightening their harnesses and belts. A light haze lay over the valley and up along the pine-covered slopes where tree trunks stretched horizontally and foliage seemed to grow from rock. Russell glanced over and saw a heron standing in a shallow pool about twenty yards distant, little more than a puddle, fed from some invisible source. The bird turned its head on a long gray neck to study them with a detached, avian interest. Then it looked away.

When Rosa was in position on the ridge overlooking the enemy compound, Wynne nodded to the three of them, and they followed him along the spur of the mountain. The evening had turned cool and cloudless, and the four soldiers went silhouetted against the fading sky—shades of rose and crimson and a dark band on the horizon where night was forming in the east. They stepped soundlessly through a sparse grove of scrub oak and cedar—the rich smell hitting Russell with the force of an actual blow and bringing back the small dresser that had stood in his grandmother's sewing room—and then along the bed of what was once a stream. They went down thirty meters, and Wynne raised a fist and they halted and took a knee. The captain proned out on his stomach and crawled to the lip of the creek. Russell watched him maneuver his rifle up and stare for several minutes through its scope, then slowly push himself backward, dragging along the silt. He rose to a crouch and came over and squatted beside them.

“Compound's just to the left,” Wynne whispered. “Adobe walls, steel doors on the entrance.”

“They're going to be reinforced,” said Perkins.

The captain nodded. He reached a hand back, got his radio from his belt, and pressed the talk button.

“Underchild Actual to Underchild Five,” he said.

There were a few moments of silence and then Rosa's muffled voice came through the walkie-talkie:

“Go ahead, Underchild.”

Wynne glanced at Russell and then looked up at the sky.

“How is your line of sight? Over.”

“Line of sight's good,” said Rosa. “Looking into the compound. We got a Tango just inside the walls and we got another on the northeast corner.”

“You have eyes on the gates?”

“Affirmative.”

“Steel?” Wynne asked.

“Say again.”

“I say again: verify—are the gates steel?”

“Wait one,” said Rosa. The radio crackled and went silent. When the voice came back it said, “I verify. Looks like steel to me.”

Wynne glanced over to Sergeant Perkins. “We're going to have to blow them,” he said.

Perkins nodded.

Wynne lifted the radio to his lips. “How many Talibs are you counting? Over.”

“They're not Talibs.”

“Say again.”

“I say again: they're not Talibs. They're white.”

Wynne's brow furrowed. He looked over at Ox and then he looked at Perkins and then he studied the ground between his knees.

“Chechens,” he said. He repeated the word into the radio.

“Affirmative,” Rosa said.

Russell had heard about Chechen militants who'd come down to fight the infidel alongside their Taliban brothers, but until now it was just a story. They were supposed to be harder than the locals. They were supposed to be better trained.

Wynne said, “Do you have a shot?”

“I have two,” Rosa said.

“Say again.”

“I say again: two Tangos, two shots.”