Chapter 6

The intelligence types back at the base were very excited to have our captive and wanted to know if we could do it again. Alonzo's answer was one word: "Certainly." Then he went on to explain that this capture had been an accident of being in the right place at the right time. He figured that we could capture just about anybody; we just had to know where to find them.

That didn't slow down the intelligence types one iota. They claimed that they could give us a specific place to look for a specific individual within two days. All we had to do was to be patient while they questioned the current captive. Well, the bar at the base was pretty well supplied, so we could make a profitable use of the couple of days that the intelligence types promised us.

By the time Alonzo made it to the bar, Sarah was already enjoying her free beer that she earned by that remarkable shot with her RPG. By the time the bar closed, we had all consumed a lot of beer and had been making regular visits to the latrine. The interesting thing was that we never got drunk. We just got pleasantly happy and easily amused by all that alcohol. One thing that was different was that we were able to sleep that night for the first time in months. By the next morning, we were completely recovered from that trip to the bar and were ready to do it again.

Just after noon, Alonzo was called from the bar to the intelligence tent. They had a job for us. The Hammer, an obvious pseudonym, was holed up in a camp about 70 miles away from our base. The problem was that the camp was also home to close to 150 ISIL fighters. That didn't worry Alonzo if they knew where in the camp the target was to be found. Ah, that was the rub. If that were known, helicopter gun-ships could have been sent in, followed by a platoon of regular SEALs.

No, we were going to have to identify where, specifically, The Hammer was hiding and pick him up before he was killed by himself, one of his people, or accidentally by us. Okay, Alonzo thought that was doable, but it was not going to be as easy as he had hoped at first. That was going to make a major difference in his plan of attack. Well, he had some ideas, but he couldn't finalize a plan until he had seen the camp in question.

He was given satellite photos that showed the camp in infra-red, so that he had a good idea of who went where within the camp, even though it was well camouflaged. He picked three likely prospects for The Hammer to be using as an office based on the traffic going to and from the place.

The tentative plan was for us to split into three 4-man teams and each hit one of the tents. If Alonzo's assessment were correct, The Hammer had to be in one of the three places, and one of the groups would find him. He had selected a rendezvous point that would be relatively easy to defend, and we would all meet there as soon as we either had captured The Hammer or had verified that he was not in our particular tent.

Alonzo, Helen, Jess, and I formed one team and were to hit the most likely prospect. The other two teams would hit the other two possible tents. Each team leader was issued a flare gun to signal when The Hammer had been found, and for the rest to run for the rendezvous as fast as they could move. We would play it by ear from there.

We had quit drinking as soon as Alonzo was called to the conference, and we were cold-sober by the time we finished supper. We were going in tonight because The Hammer might decide to move his headquarters without the courtesy of notifying us first, so we had no time to waste. Besides our rifles and plenty of ammunition, Sarah took her RPGs, Aubry and John took their mortars, and Jane took some of the latest version of tear gas. Every one of us also took a few hand grenades. It was my feeling that those 150 ISIL fighters didn't stand a chance.

We were transported to about five miles from our target, and we were to walk in from there. Baring something screwing up the plan, we were going to spend tomorrow closely examining the ISIL camp with the idea that we would go in tomorrow night. Even though we were heavily loaded, we made it to the place where we were to camp in about an hour. Our extra strength and stamina made that possible.

We had our camp set up before dawn, and were lazing around waiting for the daylight we needed to see what was going on in the camp. Well, as everybody knows who had ever read or heard about warfare, no plan survives contact with the enemy. As soon as they finished breakfast, the whole camp was forming up to move. Some men were already striking the tents, and soon a line of trucks drove up. Dammit, our whole plan was shot to hell! If we didn't attack right now, we were going to lose all chance to capture The Hammer.

Everybody was busy either dismantling the structures or loading stuff into the trucks. We had to hit the trucks and men now, or give up on the whole idea. The only good thing about this was that there was a group of men standing to one side out of everybody's way. The Hammer was a member of this group.

Alonzo called in Emily and Sue, our two snipers, and pointed out The Hammer. He wanted bullets put into the legs of The Hammer. The idea was to make it impossible for him to run away under his own power. If he were hit below the knee by a .30-06 bullet, he would survive, but not be going anywhere. Each of the women were to shoot at a different leg. That way, at least one of them would put the man down on the ground. After that, the rest of the men in the group could be killed. The group was only about 250 yards away, so the shot was doable by an accomplished sniper.

The rest of us opened up on random workers with our rifles while John and Aubry went after any concentration of the enemy with their mortars. Meanwhile, Sarah ran closer to the line of trucks and fired her RPGs into them as quickly as she could reload. Jane and I appointed ourselves as her protectors and shot and any enemy troops who started to harass her.

I must say that these ISIL troops were not amateurs. They had to be seasoned combat troops because they started to return our fire only a minute or two after we opened fire. We knocked most of them down fairly quickly because of the superiority of the .30-06 bullet over the Russian AK-47 ammunition that they were using. Of course, our mortars made a hell of a difference, too. As it turned out, a few of them got smart and ran away; I have no idea how many actually escaped or what they did after they were out of sight.

Jess and Alonzo ran to The Hammer as soon as we had the situation well in hand. Alonzo went because he was the boss and Jess went because she could speak any language that The Hammer was likely to use. Both of his legs were smashed beyond recovery, but it did not make any difference. By the time Jess and Alonzo reached him, The Hammer was visiting Allah in paradise or wherever. One of the bullets had severed an artery in his left leg, and he had bled out before any help could arrive. Dammit, there went our mission, but there was nothing that we could have done about it. The only consolation was that his laptop computer had survived. Surely, intelligence could get some useful stuff from it.

Alonzo radioed a report back to base about what had happened. We were asked to hang around and protect the place until a team of Intelligence officers could get there to see what they could find that might be useful. We were all kind of down because of the failure of our basic mission, so we did not mind doing what we could to get something useful from the debacle.

We were stuck at the ISIL camp overnight before the new guys could show up. We lazed around and amused ourselves with sex while we waited for them. Oh, Alonzo did put out sentries, but that was an automatic thing with him.

When we got back to base, we were debriefed and sent to the bar to wait for our next assignment. I was the only one who was surprised that we were not chided for screwing up the mission. Jess took the time to explain to me that very few such missions were even this successful, so there was nothing to blame us for. I guess that she was correct, because we received another mission three days later. Boredom was setting in, so we were happy to accept any mission, almost no matter what it was.