Angels Onboard

Ben was back. Back in the dirt and dust and penetrating cold of that high ridge he had dreamed of so often. It had been a few days since he had had this dream and this time it felt more intense than ever. Every detail was razor sharp and there were a few that he had never recalled. The sharp smell of his own sweat. The sounds of the men around him as they began digging into the rocky soil. Details that he had almost forgotten were obvious, like the deep cerulean blue of the sky overhead and the dark steely gray clouds that had just started boiling over the high mountains in front of him.

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Early December 2001 6:30 am local time

Toba Achakzai mountains near Khojak pass

Kandahar Province Afghanistan

The ghosts appeared out of the mist to his front. Ben could barely make out their shapes as the Scout Sniper detachment approached his temporary Command Post where he sat going over a tactical map of the area,

“Are you Cap’n Clarkson?” said the lead figure, an M40A3 cradled in his arms and a long awkward-looking rifle case slung over his shoulder.

“Yep that’d be me Gunny what can I do you for on this fine morning?” Ben replied.

“Nice to meet you, sir. I’m Gunny Stillwell.” The Scout Sniper NCO replied in a soft Georgia drawl as he laid the tactical rifle case out in front of Ben and unzipped it. “Sergeant Major said you might be needing to reach out and touch someone from here at the top of nowhere. He also mentioned that you’d know how to use it.” Gunny Stillwell said as he presented an old M40 to Ben. “Now I hear tell that this rifle has somehow lost its way off the books. I also might have heard that this particular antique has served him pretty well and he’d appreciate it back if possible.”

Ben respectfully lifted the scoped rifle from its padded case noting the scarred wooden stock and expertly refinished surfaces. “Gunny please give him my respects and thank him if you see him before I do.” Ben was deeply touched. Sergeant Major Winters was still looking out for him just as he had when Ben was a boot private making him his coffee back at Camp LeJeune. Sergeant Major Winters had been instrumental in Ben getting into Officer Candidate School and upon his graduation had been among the first to salute him as a newly minted Second Lieutenant.

Both Ben and the Sergeant Major had a love for precision shooting and had competed against one another in the Camp Lejeune Rifle Competitions held every year. He must have heard of Ben’s latest deployment and this mission and recognized that with no direct sniper support, Ben’s unit could use an advantage at the longer engagement distances necessitated by his perch on this barren ridgeline above the road. One rifle didn’t seem like much but a well-placed round has decided many a small unit action.

“Now if you don’t mind sir, I’d best be getting to getting on. We’ve got a long hump. They want us to go take a look at what’s happening over by the border to the Paki Tribal Areas.” Gunny Stilwell gave Ben a respectful nod (salutes in a combat zone are not a good idea!) and stood. “We’ll keep you posted if we see anything you might need to know about up the canyon there.”

“Thanks, Gunny, I’d really appreciate that and good hunting,” Ben replied as the ghost drifted back into the mists.

“Ben didn’t think he was going to have much of a chance to use the rifle and his CO would give birth to a large female bovine if he knew that one of his Company Commanders was even considering deploying himself as an ad hoc sniper. But the Colonel’s ass wasn’t the one hanging off of a mountain in the middle of East Bumfuck Egypt with virtually no support.

Well, the brass had assured him that the Chair Force was around somewhere if he needed them, and he thought they could probably get some carrier-based air support to him eventually although he was so far inland it would be right at the edge of their engagement envelope. Their artillery support was still on the ship and the battalion’s 81mm mortar section was back at the FOB (Forward Operating Base) and was so far out of range it would take UPS to deliver any shells they sent downrange. But there was good news too. They had a metric shit ton of ammunition thanks to the Special Forces cache that had been pre-positioned here and a plentiful supply of water and of Meals Refused by Everyone in case their mountain holiday needed to be extended.

The best news though was that the first stringers were having a party around Kandahar and the Taliban were about to capitulate any minute now. All significant resistance was breaking out to the north, Ben and his lone company were here in the south just in case- keeping an eye for any Tali’s breaking out and heading for the Tribal Areas across the border in Pakistan. Intel was supposedly solid and the brass had a firm grasp of the situation. Of course, these same folks guaranteed that the check was in your mouth and that they wouldn’t cum in your mail. Ben trusted his own men to do their jobs and the battalion CO not to fuck him unless it was absolutely necessary. Other than that he assumed that people and circumstances were out to get him and anyone around him. He was not going to become Afghanistan’s version of Custer at the Little Big Horn.

So as a consequence, even though they bitched and moaned his men started digging into the rocky soil where they could and filling sandbags the second, they unassed the Ch-53’s that had dropped them here. His men all had alternate positions and a secondary perimeter as well. Machine gunners had prepared fields of fire as well as they could considering the boulder field in front of them and the mortar team had pre-plotted targets covering any dead spots from the floor of the canyon up to the perimeter.

His mission was to keep an eye on the road leading from Kandahar east and south through the mountains into Pakistan and interdict any armed groups passing below him preferably by calling in air strikes on them. His secondary mission was to protect the aid and refuge teams deployed in the small village located about a mile away just south of where the road emptied into the valley. Somehow Ben didn’t think the 120 UN aid workers and doctors (about a quarter of them female) would consider themselves secondary should the Taliban make it to the vicinity of the village. They had been getting reports of the atrocities that the fleeing Taliban had been inflicting on civilians. It was pretty nauseating to think of what those murderous asshats were capable of.

Ben hated to do it but he was forced to split his command. In case the unthinkable actually happened and they encountered fleeing Taliban he had to make sure the civilians had at least a chance to hold out until they could evacuate back toward the FOB or until help arrived. So, he had one of his four platoons deploy in defense of the village along with a machine gun section. He sent his executive officer, Ist Lieutenant Broderick down to the village to act as a liaison with the civilian personnel. Broderick was a solid officer, and he was counting on him to help keep the 2nd platoon’s Lieutenant Unger in check at the village. Unger had potential but Ben would also vote him the lieutenant least likely to have sense enough to duck. God how Ben hated Marines determined to be heroes. They were a danger to one and all.

He had 3 platoons with him on top of the ridge as well as a small Headquarters section, but his weapons platoon was short a lieutenant and of course the machine gun section he had sent to the village. Their lieutenant had been injured in a minor shipboard accident right before the mission along with his First Sergeant. Luckily that platoon had a senior gunnery sergeant to take over who probably had more common sense than all his lieutenants combined. His 1st platoon and 3rd platoon were pretty green with lieutenants only a few months out of TBS (The Basic School For Officers) and most of the fire teams were run by senior PFCs. His squads were run by corporals. The platoon sergeants had been with him since he was a lieutenant and he knew he could count on them. This might end up a good training experience Ben thought, trying to find the clean end of what could be a really shitty stick if things went pear-shaped.

____________________________________________________

Toba Achakzai mountains near Khojak pass

Kandahar Province, Afghanistan

All morning Ben couldn’t shake the feeling that things were about to go sideways and shortly after 0900, he was proven right. It started with a sitrep (situation report) from the Scout Sniper detachment that had hitched a ride in with them that morning. 5 small pickup trucks (often called technicals) carrying what looked like mortar tubes and heavy machine guns, probably Soviet 12.7mm DSKs, were on the way west up the narrow canyon of the pass and would likely arrive within the hour. Ben had already been out walking the forward perimeter so he decided to stick around for a while and see what showed up.

Ben’s first thought was 'Whiskey Tango Foxtrot'? The Talis were supposed to be coming from west of their position, not east. He quickly relayed the sitrep to Battalion and ensured that he was cleared to engage. Since there were no Northern Alliance units operating in the area the only idea the S2 (intelligence) at Battalion had been able to come up with was these were Taliban who had been hanging out in Pakistan and for some reason known only to them had decided to take advantage of the confusion in Kandahar to score some reputation points. It made no sense to him but better minds than his had been trying to figure out Afghanistan since Alexander the Great with no better luck.

In any case, these mooks were about to have a very bad day. Ben had already pulled back his forward listening posts as the early morning mists had cleared off and there was no need to expose them needlessly. Ben issued a warning order to the platoons covering the road approach and then reconsidered. He kinda wanted to know what their plan was. Were they going to turn north at the junction and head toward Kandahar or turn south to where the aid and refugee camp was situated in the small village? He had the luxury to find out as these trucks were no match to what he could bring to bear before they could put the village or his men in serious danger. They also apparently had no idea that his men were in position to rain a world of hurt down on them from the ridgeline overlooking the road junction. He changed his order to 1st and 3rd platoons to not engage until the technicals passed the road junction which was about 500 meters to their front.

Of course, the Gods of War must have been laughing their asses as half an hour later the technicals came into view from around a corner and immediately stopped about 400 meters short of the intersection. Ben cursed and broke out his field glasses as everyone in the vehicles got out to have a fucking quilting circle or something. Ben still wasn’t too concerned until the Taliban quilting circle started to unlimber the mortar tubes. Sonofabitch. These were very uncommon 107mm mortars, not the standard 82’s. They had a range of almost 4 miles putting them well within the range of the village, and it looked like that was the direction they were orienting them to. Ben seriously doubted they could hit much from here but on the other hand it only took one round more or less in the right province and a whole lot of UN civilians and villagers could be in a hurt locker.

Shit, fuck, damn. And where they were setting up put them just outside the range of his company’s small arms fire. His mortars could probably take them out, but it might take a while and the boulder field where they were deploying made any sort of indirect fire mission against them problematic. He didn’t have time to have the 1st platoon get into position to take them under fire and those heavy machine guns could be a real problem once they were fully deployed. He also really didn’t want to give away his positions just yet if he could avoid it. So Ben amended his order again to let his men know to hold fire while he engaged the mortar teams 600 meters to his front.

God bless Sergeant Majors everywhere prayed Ben as he unlimbered the M40 from his back.

“Smitty you ever done any spotting for a sniper,” Ben said to his radio operator Corporal Reilly Smythe- AKA Smitty.

“No Skipper, cain’t say that I hev” the tall lean Marine replied in his mild Ozark accent.

“Well, you’re about to get some OJT” Ben replied as he handed the field glasses to Smitty. He then unclipped the leather shooter's sling from the bottom of the rifle and refastened it to make a loop around his upper left arm. After taking a half turn of the sling around his forearm, he took a prone position atop the flattish rock they were using to observe the mortars being set up.

“Okay Smitty, this is not a proper sniper's hide because we are not snipers. All we have to do is shoot and scoot. I’m going to try and at least get their heads down and maybe perforate one or two of them. Hopefully, we can persuade them to leave for healthier locations. I’m going to fire the 5 rounds in the magazine and then we are going to get the fuck out of Dodge before those heavy machine guns start chewing up this mountain.”

“You gottit Skipper. What do you need me to do?”

“I have no idea what range this rifle scope is sighted into. It’s not set for my cheek weld or for my eye relief so I’m trusting that the previous shooter has left it zeroed for 600 meters and just hope that everything else will work. What I need you to do is focus on the center of numbnuts number one’s chest. He’s the one who’s setting up the tube. Look for the impact and give me the windage left and right and the elevation I need to adjust to center my shots. I’ll have to apply Kentucky windage to bring my next shot online. “I’m going to work left to right on the targets, so you’ll need to switch your view to the next target quickly.”

Ben paused and threw up a little prayer. He and the Sergeant Major always shot from about the same position, and he had always left his scoped weapons zeroed at 600 meters believing that that was the most common long-distance shot during combat. Why the fuck can’t this work like Hollywood where the hero picks up some unknown sniper rifle from a dead bad guy and immediately shoots a fly in the ass at 1000 yards.? Ben wondered. First shot cold barreled shooting from an unknown distance was more of an art form than a science and he was going to have to have a shit ton of luck.

“Alright here goes. If I miss them altogether, I don’t want to hear a fucking word out of you Smitty gottit?”

“Wouldn’t dream of it sir”. Smitty replied laconically.

Ben relaxed into his prone position and acquired his sight picture. He knew he was shooting downhill with a vertical drop of about 200 meters. So, he held under his target just a bit as the bullet would drop less since it was fighting gravity less. He let his breath ease halfway out and then took the slack out from the silky smooth trigger. The break came clean and crisp and the shock of the recoil was a surprise.

He slid the sight picture to the right as he worked the bolt without his shoulder moving from the butt plate or his eye from the scope. Somewhere just inside his consciousness, he heard Smitty call out.

“Hit center mass, adjust left 4 elevation dead on.” recited Smitty.

Target two who had been setting up the base plate was frozen in shock. As Ben’s sight picture stabilized, he was already taking up the trigger slack.

“Hit, center mass no adjustments” said Smitty just after the second shot slapped into the target's upper body.

Ben shifted onto his 3rd target who had just dove flat onto the ground behind what he thought was cover but was, in fact, just a bush. He estimated where the target's center mass was and squeezed off another shot.

“Hit, unable to adjust.” Smitty said, then paused, “New target 3 meters to right of last. Machine gun in open.”

Ben slid his sight picture to the right as directed by Smitty and saw a brave but stupid Muhajadeen attempting to get his heavy machine gun loaded in the open. He had just got the feed cover down when Ben’s round punched through his sternum.

“Hit center mass, no adjustments. New target. 3 meters behind and 3 meters to the left of last. Machine gun behind rock.”

Ben moved his sight picture up and left slightly to the left and he could see the 2nd DPK barrel poking out from between two boulders. The gunner triggered a long burst that kicked up dirt and rocks 30 feet to Ben’s left, but the gunner had no real idea where Ben was. Ben wasn’t going to give him time to figure it out. This shot was going to be more luck than skill as Ben aimed his last shot at a point along the top of the protruding barrel and slowly took up slack. Again, the recoil took him by surprise and Ben could see red splattering over the rocks where the gunner's head used to be.

“Hit. unable to adjust.”

“I’m out Smitty, let’s get the fuck out of here!”

“Right behind you Skipper!”

Ben and Smitty worked their way back uphill crouched over moving quickly from boulder to boulder expecting a hail of 12.7mm fire at any second. Finally, they reached some decent cover and dropped to the sandy soil between car-sized rocks Gasping out of breath. Ben was gassed and he didn’t have 25 pounds of radio and batteries to lug around. Smitty was a beast.

“That was some nice shooting sir.”

“Thanks, Smitty but it’s always better to be lucky than good. Great job spotting by the way.”

Smitty just gave Ben a small, pleased grin in reply, “Looks like they’re beating feet outa here. I think you scared the bejesus out of ‘em Skipper!”

Sure enough, when Ben slipped his head around the corner of the rock, he could see that the Talis had snatched 3 of the bodies up and into the bed of the nearest technical and were unassing the area as fast as they could manage back the way they had come from. Ben closed his eyes and quietly recited what he could remember of a prayer his uncle Levi had taught him to help warriors on their way into the Upper World.

“That sounds a little like Cherokee to me sir,” said Smitty in a low voice.

“Yeah, it’s a warrior's death prayer my uncle taught me long ago”. Ben paused, “You speak any yourself, Smitty?”

“Naw, most folks where I’m from have a little of the blood in them though. I think my mom was a quarter. She usta speak a little at me when she got annoyed.” Smitty chuckled.

“Yeah, I remember you saying you were from around Rocky Mountain. My folks were from Tahlequah.”

“Small world sir.”

“Looks like the squirters are clear. Please let 1st Platoon know they need to send 2 teams down to the mortar pit there. One for security and one to spike those guns.”

“Aye aye sir. Say, I wonder why they took such a risk to get those 3 bodies and not the other two?” said Smitty quizzically.

“Yeah, I got a bad feeling that we are going to find out soon.”

_______________________________________________

Early December 2001 3 pm local time

Toba Achakzai mountains near Khojak pass

Kandahar Province, Afghanistan

‘Goddammit Corporal Smythe, I’m not asking- get your sorry shot ass onto that bird now!”

“Sorry sir no can do. Ain’t no one else dumb enough around to carry your radio. Besides, you got more holes in you than I do!” Smitty said with fire in his tone.

“Fuckit then fine. But I swear to god you get yourself killed and I’m gonna dig up your broke ass and kick it to hell and gone.” Ben said as he limped off through the falling snow back to the CP (Command Post).

Ben should have known; he’d never met an Okie who couldn’t out stubborn a mule. Smitty had been his RTO for over a year and was way too senior a Marine for the job but he just wouldn’t let the First Sergeant assign anyone else to carry Ben’s radio. Smitty was young and as tough as an old boot, but he had taken an AK round in the meaty part of his waist over his hip bone while providing cover fire for Ben as he retrieved a wounded PFC from 1st platoon. It was through and through and a little quick clot and a tampon had stopped the bleeding but Ben knew it likely still hurt like a motherfucker. At least they weren’t going to be doing much moving around for a while. They were stuck on this goddamn hill until the weather cleared or until the Taliban succeeded in wiping them out.

Ben still couldn’t believe that some Marine Corp Reserve Warrant Officer with more balls than brains had managed to land his Ch-53 in the tiny LZ to the rear of his position through the 50mph winds and blowing snow. Not to mention the potshots and RPG’s that were still coming up from the pass below them. All other flights of any kind were grounded but somehow This beautiful moron and his copilot had decided to ignore the grounding and re-route midflight to answer a desperate call for a dustoff. Luckily the large helo wasn’t heavily loaded, and they were able to jettison what cargo there was because they needed every foot of space for his wounded Marines.

Out of the 84 Marines he had with him on the ridge almost quarter were badly wounded. Most of the rest were wounded to some extent as well but refused to be evacuated. Both of his lieutenants were KIA as were 4 of his grunts. Ben himself had taken a round through the left upper shoulder and another graze in the meaty part of his right calf. But he wasn’t going to let these goat fuckers drive him off this hill. Besides if they bugged out the UN civilians were going to get slammed in the rear by the remainder of the Taliban that were currently occupied with him. Not to mention what they might do to the villagers in retaliation for their cooperation. Ben had sent the civilians off in convoy an hour ago with his 2nd platoon squeezing into the UN trucks to protect them. The slow-moving cargo vehicles needed time to clear the area and get back to Forward Operating Base Rhino.

Ben couldn’t believe that this shit show had started only 2 hours ago with another sitrep from Gunny Stillwell and the Scout Sniper detachment. This time Gunny had seen an entire convoy of Taliban leaving the Tribal Areas in Pakistan. Estimated numbers of fighters had been from 300 to 500 traveling in everything from buses and flatbed trucks to fucking bicycles. They only had about 10 miles to travel giving Ben about 30 minutes to request air support and give a frag order to his platoons in preparation.

Of course, since the Gods of War had decided it was Bravo Company’s turn in the barrel, the Weather Gods had opted to join in the fun and sent this fucking storm just as Ben had tried to get air support. At least visibility had been good enough for his mortar teams to get a dozen rounds off on the massed fighters as they assembled along the road below them. That had put a damper on the Taliban party but it hadn’t stopped that first assault wave entirely. By the time the Muj’s had started moving up the ridge, the snow had really started coming down. It quickly became a classic defense problem since the Taliban knew where Bravo Company was, but Ben’s grunts had to guess where the Taliban were coming from.

The dozen or so claymore mines they had set up in the obvious approaches had broken the first wave of the assault. But not before they had gotten close enough to fire RPGs into Ben’s outer perimeter and cause Bravo Company’s first casualties. The worst though was about 30 minutes later when the Muj’s had somehow managed to get a couple of heavy machine guns up the nearly vertical wall on the opposite side of the canyon. From that elevated position they had been able to strafe Ben’s entire perimeter with poorly aimed, but still effective heavy-caliber fire. If they had been able to coordinate better with the second wave of fighters moving up the ridge it would have been all over for Bravo Company. Luckily, his most experienced NCO, Gunny Keane, was leading the weapons platoon and immediately recognized what needed to be done. Even through the snow, his mortar and machine gun teams were able to locate the enemy machine guns well enough to silence them.

Ben had picked up his shoulder wound pulling a badly wounded PFC back from the PFC’s fighting position after he had nearly been overrun. Smitty had burned through 6 magazines behind him providing covering fire and had gotten dinged himself for his trouble.

Shortly after that Ben had picked up his second wound working his way between 1st and 3rd platoon’s positions after they had lost their respective platoon commanders. That time Smitty was the one doing the dragging as he hauled Ben’s ass back to the Company CP. Ben was just thankful that these enemy assholes couldn’t have outshot his blind grandma. The sheer volume of fire that had been coming uphill at them was enough to worry him though. There had to be at least a couple of hundred of them left. To paraphrase Ron White, he didn’t know how many Taliban it was going to take to completely kick Bravo Company’s ass, but it looked like the fuckers were going to use them all.

Finally, after an intense hour, they had been able to run the second wave off back down the hill. For the first time today, the timing had been perfect as they had received a reply to their repeated calls for a dustoff just as there was a lull in the fighting.

Now as the medevac bird was lifting off Ben had to figure out how best to deploy his remaining 55 Marines.

“Smitty, send out our sitrep to Battalion if you would please.”

“Already tried skipper. Radios fucked though. I just checked with 1st and 3rd and we can hear each other but no one can hear anything on the Battalion net.”

“Well fuck me to tears. I suppose they will figure out that we are still deep in the shit when the bird with our wounded gets back to the ship. Pass the word to 1st, 3rd and weapons to pull back into our secondary positions and to arm the last of our claymores.”

“Aye aye sir.”

“Any word from the Scout Snipers?”

“Nothing Skipper. They’ve been radio silent since that last sitrep.”

“Well shit, I hope they made it back out of the canyon,” replied Ben.

Ben turned to his senior Hospital Corpsman, HMC Comiskey. “Doc, how are all your Pecker Checkers doing? I notice that none of them took the evac.” Ben had seen that every one of the 4 Corpsmen the senior Corpsman had working for him had been wounded. A couple of them looked like they were barely going to make it themselves.

“No such luck Skipper. You are stuck with us. Navy probably won’t have us back anyhow after associating with the likes of you Jarheads.” chuckled HMC Comiskey.

“Probably not Doc, we are a scurrilous lot after all. Seriously, though please give them my deepest regards. I didn’t know that the Navy issued brass balls with their Corpsman ratings.”

“Aye aye sir. I’ll let them know,” replied HMC Comiskey with a brief smile.

As he and Smitty reached the CP, Ben remembered the Sergeant Major’s M40.

“Smitty, if for some reason I forget or am otherwise inconvenienced could you make sure that this weapon makes it back to the Scout Sniper platoon?” Ben pointed out the M40 now back in its padded case as the bottom of their sandbagged but shallow two-person fighting position. “If you can’t get it back to them I’d appreciate it if you could destroy it.”

“Aye aye sir, but it’s not going down that way. Nohow are a bunch of raggedy ass sheep shaggers going to kick us off this fucking ridge until we are good and ready to leave.”

“Amen to that” Ben chuckled. “Haha ‘Sheep Shaggers’! Shit Smitty don’t make me laugh it hurts too much!’

The next thing Ben remembered was Smitty shaking him back to consciousness. Ben couldn’t hear much of anything but he quickly figured out that the Taliban had found another of the big 107mm mortars and someone down below knew how to use it. He felt blood trickling down the right side of his now useless helmet.

“You okay sir?” Smitty said.

Ben could now hear him although everything was still fuzzy.

“Yeah. Good thing I don’t keep my brains up there.” Ben said as he examined a quarter sized hole in his Kevlar helmet. “What’d I miss?”

“They hit us with 6 or 7 well placed rounds and it looks like they got lucky and we didn’t. Most of the left flank of 3rd platoon and the right flank of 1st platoon is toast.”

“Well here the fuckers are now!” Exclaimed Ben as the lead elements of the Taliban force emerged out of the blowing snow less than 100 meters to their front.

He jammed his helmet back on and began firing his M16A4 in 3 round bursts. He could hear Smitty to his left doing the same. He felt the bolt lock back and knew he didn’t have time to reload another mag as a Muj appeared right in front of him and tried to spear downward at him over the sandbags with the spiked bayonet on his AK. Ben blocked the awkward lunge with the stock of his weapon and counterstroked with the butt upwards into the enemy’s crotch. The Muj went down to his knees as Ben leapt out of their shallow fighting hole, dropped his rifle and drew his 9mm sidearm from his thigh holster. Before the enemy fighter could react, Ben put a round through the back of the man’s head. Somewhere in the back of Ben’s mind, he knew he should be hurting from his wounds but at the moment he couldn’t feel a thing.

Ben whirled and saw Smitty wrestling with another enemy fighter and shot that man in the back 3 times and then was hammered to his knees as a blow struck his back trauma plate. He flipped over and shot the man standing over him under the chin then struggled to get out from under the dead man as he fell. He could feel more rounds impacting the body over him as he was able to struggle free. Another round slammed into his body armor this time from the front as he came face to face with a screaming Muj. Who had yet to realize that he was pulling the trigger on an empty weapon. Ben shot the scraggly bearded man in the forehead briefly seeing a look of surprise on his face as the man died.

Suddenly the snow flurries cleared, and Ben could feel the crack of high-velocity rounds as they flew by him from behind. He had just enough time to think that those rounds didn’t sound like AK rounds when another fighter slammed into him from the side, knocking his pistol from his hand. The man was swinging down on him with some sort of large knife or small machete when Ben was able to get a lock on the man’s right wrist with his left hand. With his right, Ben drew his Kabar from his back sheath and slid it through the man’s bulky jacket under his sternum and into his heart. As Ben threw the body away from him an explosion just in front of Ben slammed into him and flipped him onto his back again. He struggled to his feet just in time to see another Tali running at him firing a pistol. He could feel one round impact his front chest plate and the others passing by his torso. Just as the man got close he saw him swing the pistol upward slightly to target Ben’s head. Ben stepped sideways to his left and forward and as the man’s momentum carried him toward Ben he punched the 9-inch-long blade of the Kabar up under the man’s chin and into his brain.

As Ben yanked the blade free, he knew he was dead as two professional-looking fighters about 50 feet away discovered him standing there and pivoted to target him. Almost simultaneously one fighter was suddenly missing his head. The other was suddenly sporting a hole dead center in his sternum. As they fell Ben realized that someone was shooting a Barrett .50 cal. As Ben took a millisecond to consider the ramifications of that fact there was a flash and another explosion directly behind him.

Ben’s last thought as he went under for the 2nd time in 10 minutes was ‘Sonofabitch that hurts’ followed by ‘fuck that’s going to be embarrassing.

____________________________________________________

Early December 2001 5pm local time

Somewhere over the North Arabian Sea

Near the Pakistani coast

Ben could feel the familiar vibration and noise and knew he was onboard a CH-53. He tried to look around, but his vision was obscured with the face masks and multiple hoses and tubes surrounding him. Vaguely he could hear a Chaplain droning on in the background nearby. He started to stir when a hand fell on his shoulder calming him.

“Relax sir, it’s going to be alright. You did good.” a voice to his left said.

Ben turned his head slightly, “Smitty is that you?”

“Haha yeah, who else cap’n?” Smitty’s blurry figure chuckled.

“I could've sworn I saw your body?” Ben dimly remembered Smitty’s bloody body being slid respectfully into a black body bag.

“Maybe you did, but I’m still here.”

“How? Why?” queried a puzzled Ben.

“I just needed to let you know that it all worked out. The UN doctors and refugee workers all made it back safely and they are rushing a coalition transition team to the village to ensure the Taliban don’t try and take retribution on them.”

“Thank god for that. But Smitty so many of us died and I could have done better!”

“Skipper, it was just their time. And they did their job, with honor. And all of them are proud to have served with you.”

Ben just closed his eyes and for the first time in 20 years, he cried.

“I have to go for now, but I’ll see you on the other side. And Skipper if you don’t mind, say a little Cherokee for me. Now get some rest, Marine, you earned it.”

As Ben started drifting off, he thought he heard the copilot just in front of him contact the ship. “ETA 20 mikes. Please inform the Marine contingent, multiple angels onboard.”

Ben knew that from the moment they touched down on the ship until they were laid to rest, wherever that might be, there would be a full honor guard or at the very least one uniformed Marine with them standing watch 24/7.

His Marines were going home.