THE VALLEY
Ahmed Defari – otherwise known as Objective Rapier – made a panicked telephone call to Quetta that evening. He begged to leave Zabul and was given the authorisation to make a run for it the next day. Up until then, he and his men had mostly remained below the occupiers’ intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance threshold. Yankee and X-Ray Platoons had put pressure on his men all day and the Taliban were reeling from the blows. With the infidel closing in on their stronghold, it was now time for them to make their escape.
What was left of Rapier’s army were only simple farmhands and not the Mujahedeen of old; nor did they resemble the Taliban of a year earlier. Rapier had decided to take on the SOTG that summer. At first, thanks to the information from Steph and Nadeem, he had broken the commandos and avoided the efforts of the SAS. Now the tables had been turned. They had discovered his cache, killed Abdul Rahman, caught Faisal Khan; now Rapier himself, who had once enjoyed free rein across Uruzghan, was trapped high up in the mountains of Zabul.
• • •
Matt Rix’s commando platoon had been waiting for the insurgents for six hours. Word travels fast through these valleys. Most of Yankee Platoon’s movements had been monitored and reported in the opposite valley, and Matt’s tactics were predicated on this. The Taliban can’t report what they don’t see and they will report what you show them.
Matt left his engineers and a commando team behind to maintain a presence in the village, fooling the occupants into thinking that they were still there. The remainder of his men melted away and out into the black of night. They traversed the mountain range, labouring under heavy load. They avoided walking on tracks or cresting the ridges, making use of what little moonlight there was to scan for the most secure path.
The platoon had all the modern devices of warfare: night-vision goggles, global positioning systems and, importantly, overwatch provided by a silent Predator drone thousands of feet above, tracking their movements and warning them of nomadic farmers and their many goats. The drone’s invisible laser, known as ‘the finger of God’, reached down from the heavens and illuminated potential threats. Matt’s forward scouts changed their course accordingly. They arrived in their ambush location five hours later, twenty kilometres away and into the next valley, securing the route that they knew the Taliban would surely be using. It would be here that they would make a run on foot for the border. The Taliban didn’t use maps, they didn’t overlay weapons’ effects, they didn’t war-game battles and plan escape routes, and they didn’t understand the huge array of technological advances stacked against them. They just followed the trails they knew. With mortars set up and snipers in position, the trap was set.
• • •
Morning broke with plumes of dark orange and deep blue appearing across a silent valley. The cool of the night was already giving way to the promised sweltering heat of the day. Ahmed’s men moved forward with caution . . . too much caution. Their deliberate movements, military-type spacing and constant scanning with binoculars gave Matt the ‘hostile intent’ that he required under the rules of engagement. They no longer looked like farmers or Bedouin – this was Rapier and his men.
Twenty sets of ruthless eyes silently focused on the enemy, tracking their every movement. All the while, one man, Matt’s number-one sniper, adjusted his sights.
‘All call signs, this is Yankee Alpha.’
The platoon readied the mortars and the sniper exhaled.
‘Without warning, men – ready ready . . . ready ready . . . ready ready . . . stand by . . . FIRE!’
BOOM! The Yankee Platoon sniper fired a single shot from the Blaser .338 sniper rifle. The crack echoed up and down the quiet valley. The target’s head exploded some seconds before the noise reached the group. By the time they heard the shot, he was dead. His jaw was missing, blown some six metres away, and his eyes were open.
The first audible blasts of the dual mortars came in a split second later, well before the enemy group could even register the death of one of their own. The mortars rained down around them, felling a couple of the Taliban.
Ahmed and his men were terrified; the sudden rain of mortars shocked them into action as giant thumps shook the surrounding mountains and showered them with rocks and debris. The mortars chased them all the way back down the dusty valley, slamming into the ground like God himself was thumping the earth behind them, hell bent on punishing them for all of their sins. The men who were still alive after the first salvo ran screaming all the way to their hidden bikes. It was a miracle that they were not all killed. Thanks be to God, thought Ahmed.
X-Ray Platoon had been following Rapier’s trail ever since they left Zabul; they chose the moment that the Taliban started their bikes to trigger the ambush.
The rounds, fired from only forty metres away, ripped through Ahmed and his men. Ahmed clutched his chest, now ripped open, and fell on his back in the dirt.
Ahmed watched as the clouds rolled across the morning sky. So this was his punishment for the poppy fields and the poison he had agreed to send to the people of his faith. It had never really sat well with him. A bearded face came into his view: a Westerner; his helmet was MultiCam and he still had on the goggles that gave him the green eyes in the night. His weapon was pointing at Ahmed’s face. Ahmed opened his mouth to speak but no words came out. He rolled slowly to his left and tried to raise his AK-47, he heard a loud shout and then a bright light burst across his eyes, and then the world turned black.