Chapter 4

The search for a woman for the new group didn't take very long. A woman, Emily Smith, had her spinal cord severed by a bullet, and she was confined to a wheelchair. She, too, was an expert sniper and was a wonder at camouflage. Jack brought her in and I helped in getting her into position for treatment by Alonzo. She was the daughter of an Englishman and a native Indian woman. They had emigrated to America shortly before Emily was born; thus, Emily was an American citizen. Not that we cared, but it did make some difference to the Navy.

We didn't know how well the treatment would work because she had no feeling below her waist; thus, she did not orgasm when she was fucked by Alonzo. I thought that was a horrible fate for a woman, so I especially hoped that the treatment would work on her. Three weeks later, she reported a pain in her left calf, and we all took that as a wonderful sign.

It may have been a result of the superlative physical conditioning of the SEALs, but whatever it was, they all seemed to advance faster through the conversion than did the ordinary citizen. At the end of six months, every one of the recruits had developed the "iron" skin and most of the other characteristics that I was accustomed to. By the time spring rolled around, we were ready to embark for Afghanistan. I contacted Susan, and she set up a plane to take the 12 of us to Kabul. From there, we traveled to Kandahar by military convoy.

As predicted by our guide, we were sniped at several times during the trip, and we arrived after dark. That would have been dangerous for anyone else, but we were not worried. We spent the night in a company barracks while everyone else caught up on their sleep. The next morning, we were issued our weapons and other supplies. We were pointed toward Pakistan and went looking for trouble.

To us, Afghanistan looked like mountains surrounded by more mountains. This was really nothing more than a scouting expedition to see what we could find. Woe unto anyone who dared take a shot at us. I was the only non-SEAL, so I was shepherded like everyones' pet puppy. Believe me, I appreciated that, not because I was afraid of being shot at, but because I was afraid of screwing up and embarrassing Alonzo who had vouched for me.

We moved at about 20 MPH for an hour in an easterly direction following what looked to me like a game trail. I was assured that this was what passed for a road in the back country, and I grunted like I knew that all of the time. We had traveled about 18 miles from the camp according to Alonzo's map when we were hit by a rain of AK-47 bullets fired on full automatic.

Those guys were good, because everyone of us was hit by at least one bullet. I picked up four hits, and I don't think that I was singled out. I had learned enough to know to drop to the ground and to get my rifle into position. We were using M-14s, the assault rifle version of the M-1 Garand in .30 caliber. We all wanted the heavier bullet than the M-16 used, because we wanted what we considered a more reliable stopping power than we could get from the .223, even if the velocity of that bullet was higher.

Anyway, Jack was the first to spot a target, and he fired in semiautomatic mode. There was a sudden burst of automatic fire from that direction and an AK-47 went flying through the air to land downhill from the man Jack had shot at. I heard several of our guys murmur, "Good shot, Jack."

Now that we had some idea of where the ambushers were hiding, Alonzo split us into three groups. Two went to the right and two went to the left to try to get behind the ambushers while the rest of us kept shooting in the general direction of the other side. We just wanted to distract them from the thought that they were being flanked.

We had to wait about 15 minutes before we heard a mass of fire coming from what were obviously M-14s firing on full automatic. We were strong enough to defeat the rifle's bad habit of muzzle climb. We had practiced back in California with M-14s, so we knew what we were doing. It was only a few minutes later that Alonzo got a report over his combat radio that the ambushers were no longer a threat.

Alonzo ordered us to approach the ambushers' location to see what we had accomplished and to try to pick up any useful information. On the way, he stopped long enough to bend the barrel of the AK-47 that had fallen down the hill into a "U" shape. He also smashed the receiver. That gun was a total loss at that point, so he just tossed it aside after removing the magazine.

When we got to the ambushers, we found 10 bodies riddled by .30 caliber rifle bullets. Let me assure you, that was a messy scene. We checked for papers, maps, and that sort of thing. We found a map with an "X" marked on it. Alonzo guessed that it was the location of the camp. We had to check it out. However, the rest of the weapons were treated the same way as that first AK-47 had been, and all of the ammunition was retrieved. A small fire was started, and the loose cartridges and magazines were tossed into the fire. We heard the ammunition going off as we left for that place marked on the map.

It was close to noon when we found the marked spot. It was a cave, but we had no idea how big the cave was. There was a general discussion of what to do, and Hadley came up with what seemed to be the best idea. He was going to seal the cave entrance with an explosive charge. That would trap anybody inside if there were not another entrance, and it could deny the use of the cave to later visitors. We set up a guard perimeter while he took care of planting the explosives. The resulting explosion was not all that big, but it did drop enough rocks to make it damned difficult for anyone to use this cave again.

Alonzo spotted another "X" that had been erased from the map. It was about 10 miles away, so it became our next target. We ate lunch from MREs (Meals Ready to Eat) before leaving this cave. Everybody but me had brought along Tabasco sauce to liven up the flavor of the MREs, but I thought that they tasted fine, so I hadn't bothered.

We approached the new location carefully, so it took us nearly an hour to get there. What we found looked to be a major camp hidden under some camouflage netting. This looked like a camp large enough to warrant at least 100 fighters, and that made it a prime target. A number of people were walking around the installation, so we knew that we were going to make one hell of a mess out of it before we left.

Alonzo wanted to spend the rest of the daylight hours working out just what was done in each tent so that we would not miss something important when we hit the place after dark. He assigned each of the former SEALs a sector to keep an eye on, and I was to be the runner who gathered the information and reported it to him whenever something significant was spotted. I was the obvious one for that lowly job because I lacked the training that the others had. Okay, I could live with that.

This was a very boring afternoon for me, and I suspect that most of the others found it to be the same. Every once in a while, I would be summoned to a watcher to relay some information back to Alonzo, but most of the time I stayed with him. He showed me what he was doing, and he was recording which tent had a visitor, how long the visitor stayed, and what, if anything, the visitor had carried into the tent. By supper time, Alonzo had a good picture of how the camp was organized and where the important people were located.

After we ate supper, he gave out assignments to each person. A few people went in alone, but there were also teams of two people. Our virtual invulnerability made the second person redundant as far as protecting the partner was concerned, but some of the tents were important enough that he thought that he needed to split the searching work load.

We were going in after the camp had gone to sleep. The sentries would be eliminated, but no one else would be attacked unless it was necessary until after the facility had been searched. When that was done, it was open season on the other side! We were all looking forward to that. When we left, there would be nothing left usable in the camp, and every one of the enemy we could find would be killed.

We were looking for names and locations of other camps and where we might find ISIL leaders that we could eliminate. We were going to spend the next few days doing our best to play hell with the ISIL operations in this area. The more ISIL personnel that we could eliminate, the happier we would be. Yes, I will admit it, I was thinking that this operation would be fun.