Chapter 19

Wednesday late evening

Sarah’s house

Harborton Washington

“I love you too Ben, sweet dreams” Sarah sighed as she hung up from a phone call with Ben. She was really regretting her resolution to give everything a chance to settle down before they got together again. But maybe it was for the better. Something about the break-in was troubling her. Why just take a t shirt? And then there was that feeling she got as she left his house earlier. She could feel someone out there. What was strange is that she couldn’t determine whether it was a negative presence. Her spidey sense was tingling but she got no clear message from her Goddess.

After Ben had finished with the police report he had called to check on her and she mentioned her strange feeling and general sense of uneasiness. Sarah had spoken with her sisters just after Ben had called them. Kelly and Lizzy were so excited to spend time together they ended up settling in for the night after dinner to watch WWE and a movie then Lizzy had left for her home. She missed Ben and her sisters both!

At the same time though, she had had a wonderful date night with her dad. Sarah suspected he knew something was up the moment they had arrived at her favorite restaurant, Anthony’s. But she was sure that her mom had not let the cat out of the bag. Dad had told her several times that she looked different tonight. Sarah so wanted to tell him and her mom that she had found not only the love of her life, she had found her purpose and two new sisters!

Her dad confirmed her feeling about the medal she had found at Ben’s. She knew that her dad had served in the Navy but next to nothing about what he had done. Apparently, he had been a Hospital Corpsman and had served with Marines like Ben in combat during the first Desert Storm in Iraq. He had given her a really strange look when she had said that a ‘friend’ of hers had received the medal in Afghanistan. He had told her that most received the medal posthumously and that it was second only to the Medal of Honor in precedence. Then he had asked her to tell her ‘friend’ that Doc says hi and ‘Semper Fi’. She was sure that her dad didn’t know Ben, but her dad had just laughed at her surprised expression and said that any combat Marine would know what he meant.

Men could be so strange sometimes, yet they always say women were the mysterious ones Sarah thought as she settled into her bed for the night. Funny how her bed had never seemed lonely before, but now it did! She relaxed and focused trying to feel Ben. She soon got a mental picture of him as he was dropping off to sleep so she imagined a gentle caress of his cheek and a soft kiss. She could feel him smile in his sleep. She was going to have to ask him tomorrow if he could feel her kisses from afar.

Wednesday late evening

Ben’s house

Harborton Washington

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 felt even more intense than ever before. 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 blue of the sky overhead and the dark steely gray clouds that had just started boiling over the high mountains in front of him.

Early December 2001 6:30am 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 accent 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 neccessary. 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 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 PFC’s. 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.