Debrief

"Don't worry, Clarke," Asher replied. "I've been undercover in the backwater areas of Afghanistan and Pakistan many times. I know how it is."

"You all watch yourselves over there," Hawkins told us. "Good hunting. Dismissed."

Murdoch stopped me as I was heading out the door. "You know, Clarke, General Hawkins is about to retire."

"Our chaplain too. So what?"

"Word's come down from on high. I'm not supposed to tell you yet, but what the hell. After this mission, I'll be in charge of your unit. I'm rotating everyone out and finding new personnel."

"We get results, Murdoch."

"Yes, you do. However, your era of soldiering is over, Clarke. There's no place in the world anymore for one-man commando squads who think they're John Wayne."

"I'm not a one man army, Murdoch. I have an entire team backing me up, including you. I'm only twenty-nine and I just received my gold shield from the Brigade. I still got many years left in me."

"Wrong. You need to get out. War's changed, Clarke. There's a new way of fighting now."

"Oh? What is that? Call down airstrikes liable to kill more civilians than enemies? Keep sending in troops nonstop and don't let them do what they need to do to win even when they get tired? Let great soldiers like Pat Tillman die and then lie to the public about what happened to them?"

Murdoch grimaced and I went on, enjoying myself.

"Bungle the institution of new government in occupied territory and let the bad guys keep retreating and getting stronger? Forget politics and let evil scum like Aziz fester and run around alive?"

"It's precisely because of politics that we're keeping him alive. I hate the bastard as much as you do, but he needs to stand trial. You bring him back. Maybe if you do, I'll consider letting you stay where you are."

I glared at him and then walked out to face my team. Chen had them all lined up. Petite raven-haired Tess in her white doctor's coat, the mustached Hispanic dwarf Mike with his demolition bag, lanky brown-haired Wouter, tall noble Yoshi and all the rest. I gave them the mission.

I told Farouk, who looks like an average middle-aged Arab man, and Baxter, who's a hippie geek, to monitor the Internet in case the Scorpion Pharaoh moved up his timetable. I told Tess to be ready in case Aziz had harmed Deeyah. Shap introduced to us this Muslim cleric he'd recruited to counsel Deeyah after her ordeal, a guy named Sheikh Khalid bin Azim. He was part of the Sufi Islamic sect like Deeyah, a group of mystics that try to grow closer to God in thought and deed. Islamic radicals don't like these people, but I do. They're Islam's most peaceful and tolerant folk.

The Sheikh was quite an average-looking Arab, like Farouk, only he was a lot older and wiser. I talked to him briefly and learned he'd been around the world and seen all kinds of things. He agreed with Farouk that there were many paths to God and that people of all creeds should work together towards enlightenment. The Sheikh felt this way despite being of a different Islamic sect than Farouk. Like Shap, he was very dedicated to sharing religious traditions, pacifism and easing spiritual pain. We all got along well with him. It gave me some hope that maybe Islam could find peace with the world someday.

I asked Jodi Lee to go with Asher's party. She's freckled and has dark copper hair but put her in a veil and she can pass for an Arabian woman, especially with those long stuffy veils the Taliban like to force women to wear. The farewell kiss that gorgeous butch blonde Tanya gave Jodi Lee would really have made Taliban mullahs upset. I loved Tanya. It was too bad she only liked girls.

Yes, Doug, I know she's not the only woman on my team like that. You don't need to remind me of Sabra the mechanic, Maureen the nurse and the other three. I'm like you. I have my preferences but I got no problem with other people having theirs.

Asher, Jodi Lee, and four other scouts left the base that night. The rest of us followed on the morrow. Little did we know how much our lives were about to change.

***

It took five days' journey to get to the mission area, counting the fuel acquisition delays. You can never get supplies when you most need them.

Finally, we arrived in the village near where we suspected Aziz to be. We got an e-mail from Asher three days before our arrival that confirmed Aziz was there. He had a sizable base in the caves outside the town, just like Asher's intelligence showed. The terrorist militia protecting Aziz was bigger than we thought, Asher said also. Aziz had just over a hundred crazy Taliban goons, mostly people he'd brought in from outside Afghanistan. There were also a few locals too ignorant or corrupt to care whom they were letting command them. The Scorpion Pharaoh was getting rich thanks to international heroin sales and had his bullies heavily armed. My infiltrators thought we could still take them and I agreed.

Then we lost contact with Asher. I was worried but I put it in the back of my mind. It wasn't the first time he'd gone off the grid.

We canvassed the village and found nothing, just another normal bunch of Afghan citizens that barely looked surprised at the presence of foreign troops. We took a day to give them some chocolate and medical care. Then Shap and the Sheikh stayed behind as liaisons with five men for security while the rest of us headed for the village's outskirts. Aziz's stronghold was in a cave in the nearby hills. They were waiting for us.

The area around the cave was desert hill country. Aziz had set up a terraced poppy farm several miles wide. Poppies are used to make heroin, if you didn't know. They'd covered the outer perimeter with claymore mines. I lost six good men before we even got close to the caves. I'd taken losses before, but this was bad. Fortunately we had some good US Army minesweepers with us who were able to clear our way. You know Vince and Steve, right, Cat? They maintain the video arcade machines downstairs.

Anyway, we made it through the minefield. Then the mortars started raining down. It was obvious Aziz's militia had spotted us coming. I split my team up and sent them to flanking positions. Wouter and Farouk coordinated everything. Tanya and her spotter Andrei found the enemy mortar teams and took them out. The Russian military trained Tanya. They don't mind females getting into combat like most nations. She could score headshots at two thousand yards — one shot, one kill.

About eighty of the Scorpion Pharaoh's bullies came running out of cover around the caves after the mortars stopped. They were as fanatical and crazy as we expected. My team and I met them with our weapons. I recall Wouter and Yoshi did especially well that day.

Yoshi wasn't just our cook, he was also a trench fighter and heavy machine gunner. He came from a long line of old time Japanese warriors, men like Sanada Yukimura and Oda Nobunaga. They were some of the meanest dudes in history and definitely not people you would want to mess with. Yoshi exhibits his heritage well when you get him pissed off.

Wouter is good at spotting enemy positions. He also excels at close combat, as you know, Doug. Our Dutch boy got right in the enemy ranks during Operation Sweetheart and took out nine with his rifle and bayonet. He helped the rest of us find and take down a bunch of others. I didn't do so bad myself using my grenade launcher and M4 assault gun. Chen, Tanya and the others got plenty of kills too.

We took some additional losses in the fighting. Several of my team got wounded and had to fall back. The worst was our photographer. Baxter got tagged in the stomach with an AK rifle round by a big red-turbaned terrorist from Kashmir. Our files said he was Ramzi al-Zarquawi, Aziz's main henchman. Farouk gunned down this villain an instant after he got Baxter. Tess and her assistants pulled Baxter off the field under heavy fire and treated his injuries.

Damn these terrorists for going after non-combatants! Medics and press save more lives than anybody else in the military does.

You don't believe me about photographers, Cat? Think for a minute about the psychological effects of seeing the battlefield's horrors captured on film. They can be very helpful in getting people to lay down their arms. Ah, I see you agree.

There were a few kills on our side also, including Chen. He died right next to me covering my back in the poppy fields when an enemy sniper got him. Tanya used the shot to find and pick off that guy, but just like with Baxter it was too late. That happens often in battles. Don't let the movies fool you. War is hell.

We made it through the terraced farm and then things got especially bad. An old Russian Type 80 battle tank rolled out of a Quonset hut near the main entrance to the caves. Aziz must have held it over from the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan in the 1980s. That beast's cannon and machine gunners killed a dozen of my troops in their initial volley. They got Andrei and Tanya with the first high explosive cannon shell. The rest of us had to scatter and hide.

I didn't have any tanks with me and our rockets and grenades weren't doing enough damage. I had to call Hawkins for some air support. He sent down an American A-10 Warthog plane that took out the T-80 with a missile. Those were good pilots. Jodi Lee thanked them for avenging Tanya by giving them a fun night a couple weeks after the battle. If I had been inclined, I would have offered the same.

Don't be angry at me. My troops who got killed knew the risks. Yeah, I probably could have deployed them better if I had more advance intelligence. Or maybe not, since no plan survives the battlefield. I asked my commanders to parachute in some reinforcements. Murdoch told me only my team had clearance to be in the area but he would try, the lying son of a bitch. It looked like we would have to solve this mess on our own.

We rallied and surged forward up the final hill, storming enemy positions. Our other snipers besides Tanya, Richard from Germany and Jake from Brazil, got the terrorist radiomen. That helped. Yoshi and our other heavy machine gunner, Loyd from the SAS, took out some would-be suicide bombers before they could get close to us and that helped too. The rest of us also fought hard.

Soon we had the bad guys overrun. They tried collapsing rocks over the main cave entrance to block us but Mike blew things back open with some C4. I deployed most of my team to surround the caves and cut off enemy escape routes. It was an old iron mine, so we had some maps of the place. We knew there were only two ways in or out and covered both. Wouter and Farouk were in charge of each entrance, with my other two sergeants backing them. You know Doug's chief bartender Ray and my assistant security chief Connor? That's them. Back then, they were both Marines.

Once we went into the mine, the maps were pretty much useless. The terrorists had modified the caverns and set up a bunch of traps. Mike, Yoshi and I led ten men inside and got ambushed. Five kills on our side and twelve on theirs later, we were hurting. I radioed Wouter for additional personnel and Farouk led ten more of my team into the caves. A global positioning device helped them find where my advance force was. They helped us beat back the terrorists and we moved on.

In a dark twisting tunnel, a frantic screaming woman in a veil jumped out at us waving a shotgun.

Now, I don't care what morality tells you. When you're fighting enemy soldiers, shoot the women first. Any female military or terrorist operative has had to work ten times as hard as her male counterparts to be accepted by their organization. She will often be quicker on reaction, abler in combat and far more dangerous than many men will be. You need to kill her first and fast.

I'm glad I hesitated this time, though. The woman stripped off her veil a second before I could pull the trigger and revealed herself as Jodi Lee.

"Goddamn it!" I told her. "Don't scare me like that! What happened? Where's Asher?"

"They're holding him deeper in these caves," Jodi Lee answered after she had recovered herself. "We got ratted out by the villagers shortly after we infiltrated Aziz's militia. Aziz has them scared of him, just like you thought."

"Shit! How'd you escape?"

"I didn't. I was the only one they didn't catch. My veil helped hide me. Aziz never suspected a woman might be a spy. The people in the village kept me secret and gave up the men. They had to, or Aziz would have killed them and their families. He suspected we were coming to get him and had all the people around here on edge."

"What happened to Asher and the others?"

"Jamal and Rashid are dead, Nouri and Tyler too. They fought back and Aziz's soldiers shot them on the spot. Asher let himself be captured. I've been watching Aziz torture him for the past three days."

"You didn't try to save him?"

"I was waiting for you!"

Forgive me for not repeating what I said next. There's a lady present.

I told Jodi Lee to take up position as our guide through the caves. I also shared our losses with her, including Tanya. She got really upset when she heard. I pitied those terrorist fools. Jodi Lee had to put up with all manner of atrocities scouting out the enemy. Tanya was always Jodi Lee's greatest comfort when she came back to us, and now Tanya was dead. Yeah, Doug, I mourned Tanya too. I'm sure the twenty-four terrorists Jodi Lee killed during Operation Sweetheart are also mourning Tanya, wherever the hell they are now.

We fought on through the caves and cleared out several enemy storage rooms and barracks. Jodi Lee, Yoshi and Farouk were quite brutal as they took down Aziz's forces. I was too. You don't want to back down when you're underground on enemy turf. We were reinforced once more by Ray and five other guys. A couple of the younger terrorists surrendered and we took them captive. The rest were so ready to die we had to oblige their hopes.

After a few hours of exploration, we caught the Scorpion Pharaoh himself in one of the deepest chambers. He was cowering on a prayer rug, whining to Allah about how his defeat was inconceivable. I told him that word didn't mean what he thought it meant right before I put him in flex-cuffs and had Farouk and Jodi Lee take him and our other prisoners outside. The rest of us kept searching the caves and found Aziz's hostages.

It makes me shiver today to describe what Aziz did to Asher. The Scorpion Pharaoh gave my friend all sorts of scars, physical and emotional. Worst of all, he cut out Asher's tongue. That's why our albino comrade only communicates in sign language these days. It's a real credit to his mental strength that Asher was able to pull through that ordeal and smile once he saw us, not to mention tell Mike with gestures how to disarm the bomb Aziz had wired to him. Shap and other counselors praised Asher for months after our return to the base.

Strangely, Aziz didn't give Deeyah any physical wounds at all. He was just keeping her locked up and malnourished, separating his men from her. I guess family does count for something with devil wannabes like the Scorpion Pharaoh after all.

Yoshi, Ray and I had to shoot the women guarding Deeyah. They were serious bitches. Watching over this valuable prisoner was the only thing Aziz had let them do in his militia. Well, that and getting themselves killed fighting us. I don't even want to know how Aziz got these women so worked up for his cause. Please restrain your own speculation.

Deeyah collapsed into my chest sobbing when I busted open her cage door and told her who we were. I think she fell for me at first sight.

There were some other prisoners too, locals who weren't practicing Islam like Aziz demanded. Some were tortured worse than Asher was. They were very happy we liberated them. I let Baxter take our picture with them after the battle. You want to see? Here we go.

We came out of the caves bloody and bedraggled. I called Murdoch to extract us, but he said he was still working on getting clearance. It made me wonder if he even wanted us to get out alive.

Then I found out Aziz had wiggled out of his flex cuffs on the way out of the cave while Farouk and Jodi Lee had their backs turned. He knocked out Jodi Lee, then grabbed Farouk's gun and shot our other prisoners. Farouk tackled Aziz and tied him up again, but then Aziz chomped down on a cyanide pill he had palmed.

Damn it, why didn't I anticipate that could happen? Murdoch and Hawkins were going to be very disappointed we couldn't bring the Scorpion Pharaoh back alive for trial. Oh well.

***

As you can imagine, I was real torn up after the battle. I had seen the appalling side of war before but not anything like this. My team had taken losses like they never had — thirty dead, twenty-one wounded. The people we rescued had seriously suffered too. Erika and Keira have both done films about post-traumatic stress disorder. After Operation Sweetheart, you could say I had a serious case of that. I felt I had let my team down, especially Asher and Jodi Lee.

All I had experienced overwhelmed my usual coping mechanisms. Shap was ready to help but for some reason his sermons just couldn't get through to me like they always had in the past. The Sheikh tried also, but we couldn't connect. I wasn't familiar enough with his religion. In my youth, I sought spiritual help from my tribe's witch doctor and some missionaries of Erika's church in Johannesburg. I never really fit in with my tribe or the missionaries and had long ago left them behind. Maybe they could have assisted me with my new problem. Maybe some professional psychologists or existentialists could have too. I really don't know.

It didn't help that we were stuck in the war zone for a whole week while Murdoch arranged our exit convoy. The locals were grateful we had removed the menace of Aziz but they also made us aware there were other people like him waiting to fill the void. We weren't authorized to go after them either. Why does hunting terrorists always have to be like Whack-a-Mole and then the arcade staff takes away your coins?

The rest of my team got through the operation okay. Tess, Mike and Yoshi gave Asher a lot of assistance with his trauma. There's nothing like good friends to treat you right. Jodi Lee bestowed a traditional Aussie Aboriginal cremation on Tanya, which was a very beautiful thing to see. We buried Chen and our other dead near the village. We didn't have much family outside the team and we wanted to give the locals something to remember us by. They were all right with us by the time we left. I don't think they'd easily give in to Taliban oppression again. At least, that's what I hope.

Deeyah seemed to feel no pain after the Sheikh spoke with her. She helped us with the locals by giving out free music and good will. She's very popular over there, as I told you. They all recognized her and appreciated that an Arabian celebrity was supporting our efforts. With her on our side, we didn't seem as much like foreigners anymore.

I got to know Deeyah and so did the rest of the team. Nobody made any innuendos to her at first since we wanted to keep things social. I'd had a few celebrities before, USO entertainers and U.N. goodwill ambassadors, but I didn't like to actively pursue. Deeyah seemed to recognize that in me and it further attracted me to her. Hard-to-get works every time.

We eventually got back to the base and faced the shit-typhoon waiting for us. Hawkins was glad Deeyah and Asher were alive but saddened that we let Aziz die. Don't even ask me if I tried to explain it wasn't our fault. A good soldier never complains about things he can't control.

Murdoch really got on me about Aziz. He told me if he had been in charge of the operation on the ground, the outcome might have been different. I really wanted to see that motherfucker go out and try to live up to his word.