Sergeant Worth took careful aim and squeezed a round. It hit the box behind which the sniper was hiding. It had no effect. Worth squeezed off a second round. It hit the building behind him and just over his head. On the third shot, Worth scored a hit, just grazing a gluteal muscle on one side that was slightly higher than the other. The target raised his head, took a quick look around at the direction of the fire, and raised to the knee on his wounded leg and planted his other foot in preparation to run. As he stood to run, the Corporal’s bullet caught him square in the chest, just an inch away from the heart. He fell backwards and lay still.

Due to their engine noises, the approaching American convoy didn’t hear the firing until they were less than a kilometer away. They reached the locked gate a few minutes later. The engineering platoon leader quickly ordered the bulldozer unloaded and the gate bulldozed open and out of the way.

Some of the Mexicans had run out of the mess hall with their hands raised. Others remained in the mess hall lying on the floor. When Captain Sabata and company advanced, those who exited the mess hall were motioned to lie on the ground spread eagle. Captain Sabata’s Rangers trained their rifles on those just outside the mess hall as other Rangers went through the mess hall doors to cover those inside as well. Captain Sabata shouted and was repeated in turn by his Spanish speaking Rangers, “Any movement will result in your being shot.”

The convoy drove to the center of the compound. Mexicans who attempted to run but were turned back at gunpoint as prisoners were herded to the area around the mess hall. The Military Police Company quickly moved in, ordering each prisoner to stand in turn to be searched and then secured with plastic hand ties. Then they were taken to the trucks and loaded in for transport across the border. As a truck became full, it departed. The trucks filled rather quickly, so that a truck departed every few minutes. A military police specialist rode shotgun in the cab in each truck, and two MPs armed with shotguns rode in the back. Talking was not permitted. The MPs told them in Spanish not to speak. When one Mexican in the first truck decided to disobey by making a smart remark, the MP rose from his seat adjacent to the tailgate and butt stroked him across the face. The man’s head arched backwards and slammed into the canvas of the truck. With bloodied lips and several broken teeth on the left side of his mouth, he sagged forward but did not quite pass out. The prisoners looked at one another but said nothing. There would be no reports of brutality by the MP Specialist, and no recrimination.

Meanwhile, the MP Company Commander and Colonel Paterson were briefly going through Jesus Gonzalez’s office in a quick review. All papers, file cabinets, ledgers, and even the safe were packed and loaded into a truck. They found a forklift to handle the safe and file cabinets. The forklift was too small to go through the office door, so the engineers simply chain sawed the door large enough for it to fit into the room. Captain Sabata was ordered to report to Colonel Paterson.

“Captain, have your men quickly question who is El Jefe here. We want to be sure to capture him. Carry on.”

Captain Sabata told his Rangers to ask each prisoner in turn as they were stood by the MPs to be searched, who was the El Jefe and other leaders. Word was quickly passed to the Hispanic members of the 82nd to question all about El Jefe. Many mentioned the name of Jesus Gonzalez, but as they turned to look for him, none of them could identify him. Half a dozen, however, identified Luis as Gonzalez’s secretary and bookkeeper. Three others identified Fiero as one of the team leaders. An MP was assigned to individually guard each of them.

Alpha Company, 82nd Airborne loaded all weapons from the arms room into trucks. Other Alpha company members were collecting AK-47s from the dead and wounded. Three paratroopers were assigned to guard each truckload of weapons as it was filled and drove away, headed for Fort Bliss.

The battalion surgeon reported to Colonel Paterson there were eleven American dead, twenty-six wounded, nine of them seriously. He had called in the air ambulances that would be arriving any minute to evacuate the nine. The body count for Mexican dead and wounded was still ongoing. He had forty-seven wounded Mexicans to date, eighteen seriously.

“Doctor, the critically wounded American soldiers will go out of here first on the air ambulances. I don’t want to hear one word of humanitarian bullshit about some Mexican being more severely wounded and having a higher priority than any American soldier. If I do, I will personally kick your ass so hard that you will never walk again. My soldiers have the highest priority, understood?”

“Sir, I must protest. I have to triage all the wounded without regard to which side they are on.”

“Doctor, you are relieved of your command. Get your Number Two in here.”

“You’re not my commander, Colonel. I’m only attached for this operation. I’m in Health Services Command. Only doctors can command doctors.”

“When we get back to Bragg, you can file all the official protests you want. I think you will find there is no room for you in the 82nd Airborne and probably not in the United States Army. I will spread the word that you value the lives of Mexican raiders more than you do the United States soldiers in every newspaper in America, now get out of my sight!”

The Major, Medical Corps, swallowed hard, turned on his heel, and walked out. The Colonel didn’t hesitate for even one second to give him the chance to reverse his course. He knew that his military career was over. Having served as a General Medical Officer for five years, he had just been selected for a residence in surgery at Walter Reed Army Medical Center. He also knew Colonel Paterson could pull enough strings that his residency selection would be withdrawn. He heard rumors that several very good friends of the Colonel’s were highly placed in the Army Medical Department. It had something to do with the invasion of Iraq in 2003.

The UH-60 air ambulances came in and set down fifty meters apart behind the mess hall. They were quickly loaded with the critically wounded. A Captain, Medical Corps, reported to Colonel Paterson.

“Captain, I want you to re-evaluate Major Johnson’s triage. I’ll tell you the same thing I told him. American soldiers have first priority on those air ambulances. I don’t give a damn how badly wounded some Mexican is. After the seriously wounded Americans are air evaced, you can take out the seriously wounded Mexicans if there is still room on the air ambulances, but not before. Let them ride in ground ambulances. Do you have any trouble with that?”

“No, sir, I don’t.”

“Fine, I have relieved Major Johnson. You are in command, and your word is law. Anybody wants to argue, I’ll send a couple of MPs they can argue with. Go to it, Doctor.”

The MP Company commander reported in. “Sir, I have 176 prisoners. We have thirty-eight dead Mexicans. I don’t know how many wounded. I have ordered the bodies brought to a ditch the engineers are digging for a mass burial should you give the order to do so. Otherwise, we can stack them in the packing sheds. They will get awfully ripe in this heat very quickly in the packing sheds, so I don’t know which is better. In 24 hours, they will be grotesquely swollen, maybe to the point of exploding.”

“To hell with the ditch; no mass burial. Put them in the packing sheds and let them stink. That way the Mexican government can’t accuse us of covering anything up, literally or figuratively. Their loved ones can identify and claim them, provided anybody loved them in the first place and they haven’t rotted beyond recognition by the time any relatives or friends can get here.”

“Colonel, we have also collected 332 AK-47 rifles, two dozen sniper rifles with fine telescopic sights, several unopened crates of grenades, thousands of rounds of small arms ammunition, several unopened crates of handguns without markings, RPGs, cases of dynamite and Simtex, and four Stinger missiles. We are making an accurate inventory of everything.”

“Excellent, Captain, if there is nothing else, carry on.”

The ground ambulances pulled out with four wounded and a medic in each one as they were loaded.

The sniper teams reported in. They had accounted for sixteen dead Mexicans. No wounded Mexicans were included in their report. They brought in weapons from several of the dead Mexicans who had broken through the cordon in various locations. Two HUMVEEs were sent to collect the dead Mexicans and deposit them in the packing sheds where the bodies were being laid out in a row, heads towards the aisle to make identification easier. When they were finished, the drivers hosed the blood and debris out of their HUMVEEs. One MP who could speak and read Spanish was going through each row, searching the bodies for any papers or identifications. Personal items were left on the bodies after they were noted along with any identification papers. A video camcorder recorded each deceased as any identifying papers were read aloud or personal identifiers described. Only any information of military value was removed.

Colonel Paterson, accompanied by the two battalion commanders and the MP company commander, toured the farm. They found nothing that was of particular military value except the firing ranges. Colonel Paterson decided they weren’t worth destroying. Perhaps the Mexican police or army could use this place as a future training ground, he decided.

“It gripes my ass that we don’t have the leader of the operation.”

“It might be that he wasn’t in town, so to speak, Colonel,” opined the MP Captain.

“Possibly, Captain, but I still don’t like it. Run some of the prisoners who haven’t left yet through the dead in the packing sheds. See if they can identify him among the dead. Get to it, Captain.”

The Colonel and his party returned to Gonzalez’s office. The Ranger Lieutenant Colonel commanding the Ranger Battalion decided to use the bathroom in the building to pee. In so doing, he noticed that the rug on the floor adjacent to the shower didn’t scuff when he caught it with the toe of his boot. He gave it a kick. It didn’t move. “Must be glued down,” he thought. He looked at it again, curiously. He reached down to grab it but when he pulled on it, it was surprisingly heavy. He immediately unholstered his personal handgun in Kimber Classic .45 ACP, opened the bathroom window and called, “Soldier, in here on the double” to the nearest trooper. A PFC reported into him, saluting Colonel Paterson as he walked past.

“Trooper, I want you to take hold of that rug and pull it up when I give you the nod. Stand in the shower while you are doing it and pull it towards you.” He took a Mini-Mag penlight out of his blouse pocket turned it on, pointed his .45 and the beam of light at the rug and nodded at the soldier. A trap door came up with the rug, revealing a tunnel.

“Colonel Paterson, I believe we have something of interest in here. Would you care to come and look?” he shouted over his shoulder, not taking his eyes off the tunnel entrance.

Colonel Paterson stepped around LTC Sharp and looked into the tunnel illuminated by the flashlight. “Well, I’ll be damned, an escape hatch. Let’s get somebody down there and see what we find. Where’s that MP Captain? Let’s see if he has any CS2 or flash-bang grenades. Soldier, find the MP company commander, tell him what we found, and what I want. Go to it.”

Five minutes later, Captain Williamson appeared with three specialists, two gas masks, two CS2 grenades and two flash-bang grenades. He called down in Spanish for anyone there to surrender before they threw in the grenades. No answer. He nodded, and the MP Specialist tossed in a CS2 grenade and slammed shut the trap door. No sounds were forthcoming. The Specialist donned a gas mask, as did the second Specialist, who opened the door and threw down a flash-bang grenade and quickly closed the trap door. After it went off, both Specialists quickly entered the hole, armed with 9-millimeter Berettas and flashlights. After ten meters of tunnels, they came to a closed door. They banged on it with their handguns and called out in Spanish, “Come out, or we will dynamite the door.” The door slowly opened and out came Jesus Gonzalez, hands on his head. One Specialist put a gun to his head, the other into his back, as they squeezed him past them in the narrow tunnel and pushed him towards the trap door. Jesus Gonzalez looked up into the smiling faces of Colonel Paterson, LTC Sharp and Captain Williamson.

Chapter 23

“When you’re lying wounded on the Afghan plains,

And the women come out to cut up your remains,

Just roll to your rifle and blow out your brains

And go to your God like a soldier.”

Rudyard Kipling

On a very early spring night in 2021, the specially trained Chinese mountain soldiers, wearing the traditional dress of a not too distant Pakistani Pushtun tribe of the Northwestern Frontier Province, spread out and moved quietly on the outskirts of a small Hindu village at the foot of the Panjal Range. Wherever they found peach, plum or apricot trees, they girdled it with saws so that it would die. While one squad, armed with submachine guns and grenades, formed a perimeter around one side of the village to cover their retreat, another stealthily moved into the village. Underneath their waistcoats, they carried Beretta semi-automatic nine-millimeter handguns with suppressors screwed on to the end of the extended barrels. It was 02:00 local time, and no villagers were awake. A few dogs barked but were quickly silenced by bullets in their heads from suppressor equipped pistols. As they came upon the cattle scattered throughout the village, they shot them in the head as well. One bullet was sufficient. They had practiced shooting cattle at the abattoir and had become thoroughly familiar with the anatomy of the bovine head. There, the heads were sectioned on a band saw after each cow was killed so that they would know the path of the bullet they fired, and how effective was their bullet placement.

Previous visits to this village by Chinese agents identified the most attractive young woman residing there. After they completed their mission of slaughtering cattle, they entered her house. The woman was held down with her mouth taped shut with duct tape and made to watch as her husband was beaten. Keeping their faces covered so that their race could not be determined, and speaking only Pashto, they beat her husband into semi-consciousness. Then his hands were tied behind his back and his feet at the ankles. His wife was then tied spread eagle to the bed. Over the next hour, the dozen men gang raped her and then beat her and left her tied and gagged so that she could not immediately raise an alarm. At dawn, the village discovered over fifty cattle slaughtered and left to rot in their yards, pens and streets. Several hours later, her husband managed to free himself and crawl through the door to seek medical help for his wife and himself. He could only describe the attackers by their waistcoats, turbans and language. Some authorities prefer the spelling and pronunciation of Pakhtun and Pakhtunwali to that of Pushtan or Pushtun.

Three weeks later, an old, heavily laden donkey was led alongside a mosque in Jabori. The mullah was calling to the faithful for evening prayers. The man tending the donkey poured a little grain on the ground along with a few pieces of vegetables, hobbled the donkey, and went around to the front of the mosque to join the others in prayer. Only, he didn’t enter the mosque, but instead blended to the far side of the entering throng, then turned abruptly and walked away. One alley away, a man on horseback with a British Enfield .303 rifle slung over his shoulder held the reins of a second horse. The donkey man mounted it, and together they slowly rode for another three blocks. Reaching down into a saddle bag, the horseman removed a remote-controlled radio device. He flipped a switch, pointed the antenna at the mosque, and pushed a button. Seventy-five pounds of Simtex loaded on the donkey exploded. The wall of the mosque collapsed. The rider replaced the radio back in the saddle bag, and the two riders casually trotted their horses away.

Over forty Muslims were killed in the blast; another hundred were injured to various degrees. Among the dead was the elder, the khan, of the Shinwari clan. The Pushtuns are a very proud people with a rich cultural heritage. Part of that cultural heritage is Pakhtunwali, or Way of the Pakhtuns. It is a code of the most demanding honor, of culture, of their society, of life, that is governed by three primary obligations. The most important of these obligations is revenge, known as badal. The others are melmastia and nanawati. Nanawati requires the Pakhtun to offer shelter and to protect, even at the cost of his own life, anyone in distress, even an enemy, who demands it. Melmastia requires the Pakhtun to feed and shelter anyone who comes to his home. Compared to that of revenge, the other two of hospitality and asylum pale to insignificance. Badal requires revenge for the slightest of insults or even a perceived insult, even if it requires a hundred years. Badal is usually extracted in blood and murder.

The district commissioner initiated an investigation. The provincial governor telephoned Islamabad, requesting more Pakistani soldiers to expand patrolling in the district. Fearing an escalation and more bloodshed, Islamabad promised an investigation team as well as more soldiers. Since there is a modest arms and accessories industry in the district, every civilian man is armed with at least a rifle and a blade of some nature. Provoking the Shinwari clan, a fierce and close-knit clan, vowing badal, guaranteed further violence. The only question for the Shinwalis was in which direction to unleash it.

Witnesses not attending the mosque described the two horsemen riding away. They were overheard conversing in Hindi. The horse holder looked and dressed like a Hindu. Neither man was recognized as being a local citizen. At the last sighting, they were observed approaching the line of control that separates India from Pakistan in the Kashmir.