Swords Of Exodus Part 1

SWORDS OF.

EXODUS.

by Larry Correia & Mike Kupari.

To Jess, for putting up with my c.r.a.p, to Emmee, for forgiving me for being gone so much, to Wally, for making me an EOD Tech, and to Glenn and Zog, for showing me the ropes.

Team d.u.c.h.ess: How is this happy fun time?

SWORDS OF.

EXODUS.

"The price of freedom is the willingness to do sudden battle anywhere, any time and with utter recklessness."

-Robert A. Heinlein.

Prologue: Set in Stone.

SrA VALENTINE, M.

521st Expeditionary Security Forces Squadron.

U.S. Air Force.

Zargabad District, Western Afghanistan.

Seven Years Ago.

My shoulders ached. Dust filled my nose as the column came to a halt. I let my M4 hang on its sling as I pulled off my eye-pro and wiped my face with my shemagh.

Word came down the line that we were going to be here for a while. The Cavalry soldiers we were embedded with fanned out and took up good defensive positions. Being a team of enablers, we were just expected to stay put unless they needed us. That was okay with me. My rucksack wasn't sitting right on top of my body armor and needed to be adjusted. After a quick check of my area, to make sure I wasn't near any pressure plates, I set my pack down and plopped down next to it.

"That's a good idea," said my partner. Senior Airman Arlene Chambers was a dog handler. Her military working dog, Muttley, was tired from the oppressive heat and sat next to her, panting.

At least there was shade. The village of Murghab was so far from the nearest US FOB that our only support came via helicopter, and was uncomfortably close to the Iranian border, but it was picturesque in its own way. Our patrol had come down a narrow dirt path that ran alongside a small, babbling creek. On the other side of the trail was a six-foot mud wall. Behind the wall was a row of tall poplar trees that sighed in the hot breeze and kept us out of the sun.

A Cavalry NCO stopped to check on us as he made his way up the line. "How you doing, Air Force?" Sergeant Hanover wasn't really checking on us so much as he was checking on Chambers. She wasn't the only female out with us in Murghab. We had a two-woman Female Engagement Team up in front, interfacing with the Afghan women as part of our ongoing counterinsurgency efforts, but Chambers was easily the best looking female out with us, and she knew it.

My partner smiled at him. "Oh, I'm a little tired but good to go." She cracked open a bottle of water and tilted it forward. Muttley lapped at it eagerly, wagging his tail as he drank.

"How's the dog doing?" Hanover asked, kneeling down so he could pet Muttley.

"He's hot, but I'm watching him. He'll be good for the rest of the op I think. We're still flying out after sundown, aren't we?" There had been talk of extending our mission another day. It'd already been two days since a pair of Chinooks had dropped us off outside of the village.

"I'm okay too," I said with a sarcastic grin. "Thanks for asking."

Hanover laughed at me. "Patrol's been extended."

"What's going on?" Chambers asked. "Why are we stopping now?"

"We ran into some contractors up there. PMC guys in armored trucks. The ANA commander is flipping out because I guess n.o.body told him they were operating in 'his' AO. Our 'terp is trying to convince him that n.o.body told us, either, but he's pretty p.i.s.sed." We'd only been operating with this Afghan National Army unit for a couple of days, but it had already become apparent that its commander enjoyed theatrical temper tantrums if it helped him get his way. I guess he thought it showed his men that he was willing to stand up to the Americans. All it really did was make Captain Drake, the Cavalry troop commander, want to punch him in the face. Hanover's radio squawked. "Alright," he said. "I gotta get up there. We'll call you if we need the dog to check anything." Muttley was pretty good at sniffing out explosives and drugs, both of which could easily be found in Afghanistan.

"Have fun!" I said encouragingly as Sargent Hanover jogged forward. I then stood up to stretch. So far, the mission to Murghab had been a bust. No contact with insurgents, no weapons caches, and thankfully no IEDs. It had been three days of just walking around, talking to the locals. It was still better than sitting back at the Expeditionary Air Base, stuck in a guard tower for twelve hours at a time. At least we got to get out into the war.

I scanned the village for threats, doing my best not to get complacent, as the leaders.h.i.+p d.i.c.kered with the ANA, the locals, and the PMC guys. Across the creek were more buildings made of mud, then a two-story mosque that was a lot nicer than anything else in the village. It wasn't made of mud, which was pretty remarkable for a village this remote, and was topped with a blue minaret. The generator behind it indicated that it even had electricity. Fancy.

Up the trail, I could see the PMC vehicles Hanover told us about. They were MATVs, like the ones US forces used, but painted white instead of tan. The dirt road they were parked on was one of few in the village wide enough for a big vehicle to use. The contractors were clad in Desert Tiger Stripe fatigues and mismatched head gear, and a couple of them were walking down the line with Captain Drake.

The ANA took the halt to mean that it was chow time. They were easy to spot in their mint chocolate chip digital camouflage fatigues, and were already stripping off their armor, laying down their weapons, and breaking out the rations. ANA units varied widely, from pretty decent to dangerously incompetent. This particular unit gravitated more toward the incompetent end. When we bedded down in strongpoints for the night, they busted out the has.h.i.+sh and started getting high. It was ridiculous.

"Great," I said to Chambers. "The ANA's hungry. We're going to be here for a while."

Chambers stood up, keeping one hand on her M4 and another on Muttley's leash. "They already had breakfast a few hours ago!" It was only about ten thirty in the morning, but we'd been on the move since first light.

"Second breakfast, I guess. Like hobbits."

Chambers laughed at me. "Nerd."

"I'm just saying. Afghanistan would be way nicer if hobbits lived here instead of Afghans." I paused for a second and looked around. "Hey . . . where'd the little dusties go?"

"Yeah, you're right," my partner agreed, looking around. A troop of Afghan children, aged five to probably thirteen, had been following us around all morning, begging us for treats and candy. "I haven't seen them in a while."

The air was suddenly filled with music as the nearby mosque began its call to prayer. Islamic music blared tinnily over a loudspeaker, making it difficult to be heard.

"That's weird too," I said, raising my voice. "Don't they usually do it after noon?"

A wry smile appeared on Chambers' face. "Do you think they have an atomic clock in there or something? This is Afghanistan. It's whatever time they say it is."

"You don't know that. Maybe they have a sundial or some-"

Chambers suddenly fell to the ground, landing in a puff of moon dust. She had a very surprised look on her face. I was about to ask her if she was okay when I saw the blood. I'd heard the shot. It just happened so fast it didn't register. My heart dropped into my stomach as I processed what was happening. "Medic!" I screamed. "Contact right!"

The ambush began in earnest. I fell to my knees and tried to apply pressure to Chamber's wound as gunfire erupted from every direction. I tried to ignore that and focused on keeping my partner alive. Bullets buzzed and snapped overhead like so many angry hornets, pock-marking the mud wall we'd been leaning on. I screamed for the medic again as blood poured out from under my hands. Chambers' eyes were wide as she writhed in agony. Muttley whined and licked her hand.

Oh G.o.d, oh G.o.d, oh G.o.d! I let go of the wound long enough to fumble for my medical pouch. I had some hemostatic gauze in there that might stop the bleeding. The bullet missed the plate on her vest, blasting right through the soft armor of her vest and deep into her side.

"I got this!" A Cavalry medic materialized at my side. "Give me that." He took the gauze package out of my hand and went to work. I didn't move. "Hey!" he said, looking up from Chambers to stare me down. "I got this! Cover me!"

I nodded my head, turned, and tried to process the chaos around me. The ANA had been caught completely off guard. They scrambled for the weapons they'd laid down, and most of them didn't have time to get their armor back on. A low BUUUUUURRRP sound echoed through the village as the PMCs opened fire with the minigun mounted on their MATV.

The mosque. The shot had come from the mosque. Above the cacophony of battle a very loud rifle report resonated from the direction of the mosque. An ANA soldier's chest exploded, sending him tumbling to the ground in a cloud of dust.

"Shooters in the mosque! Shooters in the mosque! They have a fifty-cal up there!" No one seemed to hear me. Orders were shouted over the radio. Complex ambush. Many insurgent personnel. Multiple wounded. KIA. a.s.sault through. MEDEVAC delayed until attack helicopters could be spun up to escort.

Boom! Someone found an IED. Christ. All the while, the medic struggled to stabilize Chambers. She was either unconscious or dead. I couldn't tell.

Something strange happened to me then. There was a coldness deep in my belly. It slowly made its way up, enveloping my heart and spine. My heart rate slowed, and my breathing slowed with it. The sounds of gunfire faded just a little, and everything seemed to slow down enough that I could process what was going on.

I was Calm. I hadn't felt like that since the day my mother died. My fear faded into the background. A plan rapidly formulated in my mind. The Cav guys were getting ready to counterattack, but this village was prepped for an ambush. There would be IEDs. The soldiers would have to move carefully, sweeping everywhere they went. They wouldn't get to the mosque before the shooters got away.

That wasn't going to happen. Before I realized it, I was moving. I left my partner with the medic and slid down into the ditch, splashed through the creek, and scrambled up the other side. Sprinting forward, I slid to a halt behind a mud wall, next to the two contractors who had been talking to Captain Drake. One had his head wrapped in a brown bandanna and carried an AA-12 automatic shotgun. The other was a grizzled-looking SOB with a trimmed, graying goatee, a body armor vest loaded with ammunition, and a brown South African-style bush hat. Around his waist was a leather gunbelt. A big revolver hung from one side, and a big knife hung from the other.

The old guy snapped off several shots from his stubby FAL carbine before covering back down behind the wall. The heavy rifle had a deep bark to it, being more powerful than the M4 I was carrying. "There are shooters in the mosque over yonder, son," he said to me, coolly. "You boys might want to do something about it."

A hole exploded in the mud wall we were using for cover as the enemy sniper put a round from his fifty through it. "They have a fifty-cal rifle up there," I said. "We need to take it out before the MEDEVAC chopper arrives. I can't do it by myself!"

"What about the rest of your troops?"

"I'm in the Air Force. My partner will die if that chopper is delayed. Will you guys help me or what?"

The old man with the FAL nodded. "Alright then, let's get it done. Lay down some fire, I'll move first." As he bounded off to the right, seeking the cover of another building, I started rapidly firing shots into the second level of the mosque. Civilians were running around in terror in front of it, and I hoped my rounds were going over their heads. The other contractor, the one with the shotgun, removed the drum from his weapon and replaced it with a box magazine that I guessed was loaded with slugs. He looked through the holographic sight bolted to the top of his boxy weapon and tore into the mosque.

These contractors didn't seem to be concerned with the rules of engagement. Neither was I. You couldn't tell who was who. The snipers in the mosque weren't the only enemy personnel shooting at us. The ones we could see were dressed the same as the Afghan villagers. Some of them may have been Afghan villagers. I didn't give a d.a.m.n.

A man dressed in dirty white linens stepped around the corner of a mud hut. Weapon! He had an AK-47-type rifle with the stock folded. I put my red dot on his chest and cranked off probably half a dozen shots. He fell to the ground and I s.h.i.+fted my fire back to the mosque. The Cav soldiers behind me opened up on it as well. Several M4s and a SAW streamed rounds into the building.

"Now! Move!" the old contractor shouted. He leaned around the corner and fired. His friend with the AA-12 and I bounded over the wall and sprinted forward and to the left. The big rifle in the mosque roared again, kicking up a huge divot on the trail behind me. We took refuge behind a small building before the sniper could fire again.

From behind me, I could hear one of the Cav NCOs shouting at me. "Airman Valentine! Where the f.u.c.k are you going?" I ignored him. More shooters appeared in the doorway of the mosque, firing on us even as civilians ran into the building past them. We shot back. People fell to the ground. There wasn't any going back now.

Coughing from the smoke and dust, I removed the partial magazine from my M4 and replaced it with a full one. I stood above the bodies of two dead men. Unlike the Taliban insurgents we normally encountered, these two looked like they'd been pretty squared away. They both wore desert camouflage uniforms, and each had been wearing body armor. On the floor in front of them was a Steyr HS50 rifle, a monstrous bolt-action chambered for .50 BMG.

"Holy s.h.i.+t, son." It was the leader of the contractors. The old man shook his head. "I think these boys are Iranians, judging from the equipment."

"Huh," I said absentmindedly. I was going through adrenaline dump and was coming down off of the Calm. My hands were shaking. I could barely stand.

"You okay, kid?" he asked.

"Yeah . . . yeah. I just need a minute."

"That was some d.a.m.n fine work . . . C'mon, let's get back downstairs. Your friends are here." We were on the second level of the mosque. The two contractors and I had cleared the place before the Cav had arrived. "What's your name, kid?"

"Valentine. Mike Valentine."

"John Hawkins," he said. "People just call me Hawk. I'm with Vanguard Strategic Solutions International." He handed me a business card. "When you get out of the Air Force, you give me a call. I'll put you to work making four times what they pay you for this."

I nodded jerkily and put his card in my pocket as we arrived on the lower level of the mosque. My heart dropped into my stomach when I took in the carnage.

The air was dirty and stunk of burnt powder. Several dead bodies were scattered on the floor in pools of blood. Several more Afghans were wounded. Only a couple of the Afghans had been armed, but they'd used the civilians seeking shelter in the mosque as human s.h.i.+elds. I didn't know whose rounds had struck who, but it didn't make any difference to those that had been hit.

"Holy f.u.c.king s.h.i.+t." One of the Cavalry soldiers appeared in the doorway. He turned and yelled for a medic. The same medic that had been treating Chambers pushed past him and ran to a wounded Afghan man. I left Hawk where he stood and approached the medic, stepping over bodies as I went.

"What happened to Chambers?"

He took a deep breath and shook his head. "I'm sorry, man. She didn't make it."

I nodded at him as my chest tightened, but I couldn't choke out any words. I knew he'd done the best he could. I wasn't angry at him. I just needed air. The mosque felt as if it was suffocating me. The air stank of death. The wounded survivors stared at me with wide eyes. The dead seemed to be staring at me too.

Stepping back out into the sunlight, I leaned against the wall of the mosque and slid down to the ground. I unsnapped my helmet and set it on the ground next to me. I took off my safety gla.s.ses and buried my face in my hands. People came and went past me, but I paid them no mind.

After a few minutes, I was tapped on the shoulder. It was Captain Drake. I immediately came to my feet. "Relax, Valentine," he said calmly. "What the h.e.l.l happened?"

He listened quietly as I explained, his face a mask.

When I was finished, he simply nodded. "We got a problem. You ran off with some civilian contractors without orders from any of my NCOs. There are a bunch of dead civilians in there. You've been briefed on the ROE. You know how this is going to play out, don't you?"

I felt like I was going to throw up. My partner was dead and I was probably going to be court-martialed. This day couldn't have gone any worse. At that moment, if I could've gone back in time and taken that bullet for Chambers, knowing full well that I was going to die, I would have done so.

But there is no going back, is there?

The Cavalry officer put his hand on my shoulder. "I'm sorry about Airman Chambers. And between you and me, that was some impressive s.h.i.+t you pulled off there. I can't believe some Air Force puke can shoot like that. I'll vouch for you when the time comes. I'll tell them the truth, but I'll vouch for you."

"Thank you, sir."

He left me alone.

In the distance could be heard the sound of a helicopter.

The room rattled slightly as an outbound C-130 took off. I stood at the position of attention in the office of Colonel Christopher Blair, the commander of the 521st Air Expeditionary Wing. I had on a clean uniform and was freshly shaved. I was in enough trouble without going in front of the Wing King looking like a bag of a.s.s. The colonel told me to stand at ease after he sat down. I relaxed a little and moved my hands behind my back.

"Senior Airman Valentine," he began, folding his hands on his desk, "I'm afraid I'm in kind of a bad position here. On one hand, your actions in the village of Murghab were commendable. You advanced under fire and without support onto an enemy position, and cleared that position with almost no help. Senior Airman Chambers was killed by an enemy sniper team, and your actions resulted in that sniper team being neutralized. On the other hand," he gestured at the computer on his desk, "your actions, while not technically insubordination, did involve you disregarding your chain of command, standing general orders, and the rules of engagement. Furthermore, you were aided by employees of a PMC, which is to say, civilians. As a result, six Afghan noncombatants were killed and four more were wounded."

"Sir, the enemy personnel in the mosque were using those people as human s.h.i.+elds. They were also firing indiscriminately through the crowd."

"So the report says. That works in your favor. Not working in your favor is the fact that you and these two civilians entered and cleared a mosque without any Afghan personnel with you, which is a violation of the current ROE."

"Sir, we were under direct, immediate, and lethal fire from that position. Half our ANA had either been killed or run away. The ones that stayed were shooting up the entire village in a panic. They were useless."

"Also noted, Airman. Now listen to me. You stirred up a s.h.i.+t storm. An epic s.h.i.+t storm. The Afghan government is calling for you and the contractors from Vanguard to be put on trial by an Afghan court. There is no way that is going to happen, but they're incensed, to say the least. Worse, the Army wants to crucify you. A lot of people who weren't on the ground with you say that you're an undertrained Air Force kid with no business being in their battle s.p.a.ce. They say you blatantly disregarded the ROE, killed a bunch of civilians, and they want you court-martialed. You committed the mortal sin of creating headaches for staff officers somewhere."

"Sir-"

"Now, before you get too upset, the Cavalry unit you were with spoke very highly of you and Airman Chambers. They said you two had been a valuable a.s.set to them on other missions and that you made the best decision you could while under fire."

"What does the Air Force say, sir?"

"I'm going to be honest with you. Some people above my level are telling me to throw you under the bus, recommend you for a court martial, and wash my hands of you. If word of this gets out, they say, it'll reflect badly on the Air Force, and the last thing we need is more bad PR."

I took a deep breath and lowered my head slightly. I was going to Fort Leavenworth. I could already see it.