Chapter 35

Flashback – Major M – Joint meeting

What a hell of a fucking week I'd gone through! Nothing like getting hauled before the boneheads each day and grilled - but now they brought in the big guns for some serious ass chewing.

I should have known better: Sgt. Blaine got pissed off, went on a rampage and I was catching the hell for it. I had sent messages each evening telling him to fucking stop it and he just replied 'Bite me!', and kept doing what he was doing. It wasn't bad until the General started hearing about it, then I needed to do something so I came up with a hell of a plan and lied my ass off!

Now we're before the joint committee and they are ready to give me hell, but I'm not going to let that happen.

Bonehead One asks, "Major, while one of the sites your team was sent to observe being totally destroyed might be appropriate to be called accidental, would you care to explain why every site they have been directed to observe has been destroyed? Now OPFOR troops are on alert and are being sent to the area where your team is located."

The General (who thank God totally bought my lie) interrupted, "Excuse me, but this man is under my command and if there's any ass chewing to be done on him - I will do it. Now listen while I tell you about the brilliant plan we developed."

I kept my fingers crossed and hoped they would believe the lie. Because if they didn't buy into it, well my career was over...

It was over almost as quickly as it started: They bought it hook, line and sinker and we were, as one of them described, 'brilliant military strategists.' What really described my situation was that I was lucky as hell and a damn good liar.

As we were leaving the General praised me, "That was one hell of an idea having your team start destroying the sites and then 'leaking' the information that it was a Mossad operation. The country totally bought it and sent a large contingent of their forces to find all these Mossad teams which left large gaps in their other defenses."

I waited and he continued, "However next time I don't want you going out on a limb like this - you need to bring me in from the very start."

I again lied and replied, "Aye Sir! I will certainly do that."

Now to get back and try to keep Sgt. Blaine from continuing to fuck things up - easier said than done. I couldn't force him to do anything, so I needed some reward which would get his attention. Then I came up with the perfect idea and I would of course have to follow through with this promise. Otherwise he might pull a Mr. Smith on me...

Flashback – Jack – Undisclosed location

I took some pictures and watched as smoke and stars rose out of the newly destroyed weapons bunker which now resembled a Fourth of July celebration. Banzai looked over at me and grinned, "Damn Jack that was the best explosion yet."

I replied, "Yeah that was a good one. Look at all the white phosphor rounds going off. So what's next on the list?"

He grinned and said, "It looks like there's some sort of underground hanger we need to destroy."

I smiled and mis-quoted, "I love the smell of burning jets in the morning."

We jumped up and headed back towards the vehicle we'd commandeered. I laughed and thought how this whole interesting week started. Banzai got majorly pissed off at that new FRAGOs the Major sent and we'd been running amok ever since, destroying all the targets in the process.

You see since we were the only team left the bastards gave us targets of interest spread out across this whole fucking desert. How in the hell they expected us to recon targets that far apart and remain undiscovered was beyond idiotic. So Banzai decided to fuck the stealth part of the mission and just take out the damn targets. While initially it sounded like a good idea, now I wasn't so sure because Banzai was out of fucking control and having way too much fun.

We commandeered a vehicle, drove close to the site, observed the facilities, discovered its weaknesses then slipped in and blew the fuckers to hell. Yeah this was much better than all the sneaking around bullshit. But it sure attracted a hell of a lot of attention and the missions were getting dicier all the time.

Banzai would send in the nightly reports, including pictures of the smoking ruins just to piss off the Major and it worked perfectly. The Major was majorly pissed and kept ordering Banzai to stop, but we were having too much fucking fun and kept send him our replies to 'Bite me.'

I belted myself in and prayed. Banzai took off driving like a bat out of hell (he was one out of control mother in this damn Russian jeep and thought all of this goat herder country was his private rally track). I held on for dear life (again) and asked, "So just how long do you think we can keep this up?"

He laughed and said, "Either until we run out of targets, get caught, or the Major comes through with what I really want."

I grimaced when the 'Lion Of Babylon¹' tanks came out of hiding and started after us because I knew what was coming next.

¹ The Lion of Babylon or Asad Babil was an Iraqi-built version of the Soviet T-72 main battle tank, assembled in a factory established in the 1980s near Taji, north of Baghdad.

Banzai whooped, "Damn now it's time to have some real fun! Jack man the machine gun!"

I countered, "Only if you promise to keep the wheels on the ground this time, last time you almost threw me out."

He laughed, "Stop being a grumpy old fart and get on the gun before one of their gunners gets lucky and hits us."

He had a point since the tanks did have the top hatch of the turret open with gunners manning each one. I yelled, "Okay but if you don't slow down some I won't be able to hit anything."

He yelled, "I don't care about you hitting them, I just don't want them hitting us."

I climbed into the top hatch, racked the action on the machine gun and started shooting at the fucking tanks! I got lucky as hell and nailed one of the bastards that was shooting at us. The rest were like prairie dogs and dashed back into their holes. Banzai yelled, "Good shooting Tex, now it's my turn.

Banzai spun the wheel, circled the tanks, rolled down his window and started firing at them with his pistol - yeah his version of Cowboy and Indians. I knew what he wanted next so I prepared myself and as we drove close to the side of one tank, I pulled out a charge and chucked it into the treads. It detonated and blew the tread off the tank. It made me feel like I was on the old TV show Rat Patrol.

Banzai finally yelled, "Jack get your ass back down here so we can get the hell out of Dodge!"

That was music to my ears so I climbed back into my seat, belted in and held on for dear life. As we took off across the fucking desert we outran the tanks (again).

I had just settled down and thought about a snooze when we hit a big fucking bump (again), caught air (again) and Banzai hollered, "Damn that was fun, I think I will go back and do it again! Only this time even faster!"

He spun the wheel so hard I swear we went up on two wheels as we looped back around and this time he really punched it. The jeep caught air and I felt like I was a stunt passenger from one of the Dukes Of Hazzard jump scenes.

I braced for the impact, but the damn jeep came down much more softly than I imagined. I still grimaced and continued my question about the Major from earlier, "Do you think the Major really knows what we want?"

Banzai dodged a ravine (thank God he didn't try to jump it like some we encountered earlier) and answered, "Hell yes he knows what we want. He's just being a typical officer."

Yeah I liked Major M, but he was still an officer...

Flashback – Ben – Undisclosed location

I enjoyed the scout part of our missions especially when it was against a worthy adversary. The RG were good but not really good enough so I had become bored – it was much more fun taking out the targets and then sending the results to the Major. I was sure he was catching hell about it – this should teach him, fuck with us and pay the price. But he was okay for an officer – much better than working for Mr. Smith – so I didn't want to go all Mr. Smith on him, at least not yet.

What I really wanted was to get the hell out of here and go to Russia. It didn't help that on our first destroy mission we snagged this Russian made GAZ 2975² jeep which was loaded with RPGs. This thing was built like a tank, got great fuel mileage and was fun as hell to drive. So every time we relocated this GAZ reminded me of Russia and made me more determined to get the Major's attention. And it sure beat humping it from site to site. Shit, if we had walked it would have taken us at least a week between sites.

² The GAZ-2975 "Tigr" (Tiger, Russian: ГАЗ-2975 «Тигр») is a Russian high-mobility multipurpose military vehicle, manufactured by Military Industrial Company LLC (GAZ Group division). It is the military version of the GAZ-2330 "Tigr". It is equipped with armor, a powerful diesel, turbocharged, air-cooled engine and five-speed manual transmission.

We did have to be sort of careful though because these goat herders did have an air force. But we had liberated a bunch of SA-18 'Igla'³ manpads⁴ which were effective as hell against the fighters once we disabled the FOF⁵ circuitry.

³ SA-18 Igla manpad - The 9K38 Igla (Russian: Игла́, needle) is a Russian/Soviet man-portable infrared homing surface-to-air missile (SAM). "9K38" is the Russian GRAU designation of the system. Its US DoD designation is SA-18.

⁴ Manpad - Man-portable air-defense systems (MANPADS or MPADS) are shoulder-launched surface-to-air missiles (SAMs). They are typically guided weapons and are a threat to low-flying aircraft.

⁵ FOF – Friend Or Foe

Plus this GAZ was fast as hell or at least fast enough to outrun the old Soviet style tanks they sent after us. I saw a ravine, steered the GAZ into it, let it slide down the bank, drove it over into some scrub brush and turned off the engine.

Jack asked, "What's going on?"

Flashback – Jack – Undisclosed location

I about crapped my pants as Banzai headed right towards a ravine. I knew we couldn't jump it and then at the last possible moment, he slammed on the brakes (thank God I was belted in or I would have kissed the windshield) and side slipped the jeep into the ravine. It still felt like it was going to tip over at any moment. Thank God it didn't. He pulled into some brush and shut off the engine. I asked, "What's going on?"

He had a faraway look on his face, was all serious and said, "Jack something doesn't feel right."

Shit! I'd learned when Banzai had a feeling it usually wasn't a good thing. I questioned, "Can you be more specific?"

He answered, "Not really. There's a cave over there, let's cover the GAZ with the camo net and wait."

I reminded him, "What about our tracks?"

He replied, "The wind is already covering them."

I continued, "And what about our gear."

He answered, "We won't need it."