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  Hell to Pay

  Combat Team Oblivion Series 1

  By

  ANDRIK RØVSON

  Published May 2019

  Betts Publishing

  Copyright © 2019

  All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed, or transmitted in any form or by any means, including photocopying, recording, or other electronic or mechanical methods, without the prior written permission of the publisher or the author and Copyright holder, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical reviews and certain other noncommercial uses permitted by copyright law.

  Prologue

  A dusty place that no one wants to be...

  Kassim was a short boy, for his age, his parents worried he'd be a dwarf or stunted, as so many children then adults are in this poor country. Getting enough was always difficult and having enough a blessing. He'd volunteered to stand watch on a small herd of goats and a few sheep for the summer, to augment his family's meager food supply, to provide a bit more of the good things beyond rice and oil, the least anyone could survive on. His mother's face had lit up when he came home with a few spices, bought with his first week's pay of about ten dollars, along with a heavy hock of lamb from his employer who'd recognized his small stature was malnutrition.

  He was the hero at ten, the oldest, the second man of the family and puffed up with immense pride as he'd set out on the next week of his dreary, dull job. Keeping a bunch of noisy, stinking goats in one group, without losing a single one hadn't been that hard, since he'd taken his boss's advice and driven them carefully up to a high meadow with lots of good browse, hemmed in by the mountains on both sides. A big dog helped, getting old he tailed them up the steep path, still earnestly pissing along the way even though nothing came out after the third stop. They made a good team and because the long trek meant he couldn't return home each night, he'd found a nice spot that overlooked the meadow. A long day repairing the small cote on the side of the wide expanse of the hidden meadow insured the animals were close by and unable to wander off at night. There weren't any predators, long ago killed when automatic rifles became wide spread during the Russian invasion in the eighties. That left human thieves, none of which would take the effort to hike up the mountain for four hours like he had the first day.

  Life was good, quiet except for the bleating of the goats. A few got stuck, stupidly, their paws trapped in a cleft, easily freed giving him a sense of accomplishment. He'd found the small seep where the herd's owner had described, made various improvements, obvious to his young, imaginative eye, a natural engineer with a curious bent who'd made things, starting with kites that grew exotic quickly, from age six. Here he could let his mind run free, pondering the opportunities he'd heard others had chased, in the big city, Kabul. He was hungry to learn, to do, to become something, unlike most of his friends whose greatest ambition was to buy a plastic toy and games to play on it, like the older boys and some girls too.

  Their country was changing, even down to the village level where his family scraped by, the children of a lame soldier who repaired things, from clothes to old electronics with tubes and wires, not the more recent things, all solidly connected with chips, those you threw away when they stopped working. Kassim hated that, any waste, a natural recycler, he'd repaired things even his father couldn't fathom or try. That was how he'd acquired the short wave radio he listened to now, along with the small solar panel, cracked, but he found still working, sorta, to keep its battery charged. It was enough for him, all those exotic stations, languages, news on the hour. That was his next target, a broken watch, one he could fix well enough it would keep good time. He'd found one in the street, took it apart, asked his father who was always too busy, shooing him off when he'd produced the cheap, broken watch. He'd got it working but it stopped a few days later, ridiculed for wasting hours to fix it, only to have it die once more. But he'd learned something and for him, that was worth more than the watch.

  His dog, whose name was 'dog', a little joke the dog didn't understand, growled lightly. He knew warnings should be as quiet as possible, that the threat might run off or attack if they heard a dog barking.

  “Shhh”, Kassim patted his scruffy, thinning fur, happy he didn't have too many fleas, allowing the old dog to share his small dirt bed, nestled in a protective ring of thorn branches that kept them both nice and warm on the long cold nights up on the mountain. “I see dog, quiet.” Dog understood, long used to people – their words and more importantly, their actions were a subtle language he'd acquired, which made him valuable enough to keep feeding long after most dogs would have been slowly starved so their replacement could eat.

  Across the valley a line of men appeared, coming up the high mountain vale from the other side of the mountain. Each form had a rifle on its back, with various packs and bags studding their outline, all he could make out in the distance. With eyes like an eagle, like most kids in their country, they all saw things at night without effort, if they had enough vitamins, which Kassim did. Those bitter tasting little pills from the occasional aid worker were the one thing his mother horded to ration out, once a week to her children. He was stunted because of too little protein, not vitamins, a healthy dwarf in the making if his job as a herder failed.

  His modest assignment and responsibilities, that had been within his grasp, keeping the goat herd safe, seemed doomed to failure now. These gaunt fighters, for their group's composition of all males, none very young, none very old, all shambling along in an orderly file could be nothing other than Taliban on the move. Worse than losing the herd to feed them, for they'd eat them all and carry off the cooked portions their empty bellies couldn't hold, his village was going to be taken over. The Taliban was a roving tribunal, issuing decrees, handing out sentences they carried out instantly, then extracting their taxes in food, supplies, and often amusement with any female they took, sanctifying their rapes with a temporary marriage. They were a traveling circus of outrage, theft, and death whose only gift was the hour they left, threatening to return.

  Kassim had lived through their last visit and had no illusions about this one. He had to tell his father. The disabled ex-soldier had been beaten but spared because of his family, but this group might not have a merciful leader. Each Taliban faction made it's own rules, all backed up by the Koran, of course, but the Holy book's chaotic assembly of verses, most contradicting the others allowed a selection of a few to justify anything, from murder to rape – all sanctioned by Allah who seemed to enjoy the random, destructive exuberance of his followers.

  “Stay,” dog looked at him, then turned his head towards the men now halfway across the meadow. They were sure to hear a soft bleat from his goats and send a few men to find their herder who had to be sleeping nearby. It was a death sentence for dog if he stayed. They'd shoot him to insure he didn't fight back, that was their way, eliminate any opposition instantly. He held his head and looked in the old dog's clouding eyes. He couldn't sentence him to a death by their hands, but racing back to the village, even downhill, would probably blow up his ancient heart. He didn't have any choice.

  “Come, shhh,” dog nodded, dipping his head like he often did when Kassim told him to do something, chase down a goat running off, or guard the herd as he walked off to relieve himself, far from his camp area. It confirmed his choice to take him along when he ran. Dog was almost human, more than these curs trudging toward his campsite, luckily built nearly fifty meters up the slope from the small cote filled with goats and sheep. He had a chance but he had to go now, leaving everything behind him, even his precious shortwave radio. Kicking some rocks over it after he'd wrapped it in cloth, he picked up his canteen and moved out, going higher up the mountain to a path he'd found just the day before.
Hopefully it led east toward his village, not west, where the Taliban were coming from.

  “Anything interesting?” Major Arthur C. Clarkson was on his third cup of coffee, a bad habit he'd let loose when he'd been assigned the graveyard shift in the comm center. His commanding officer made it clear he didn't want any flack or requests for a new assignment for at least six months. Someone had to do it and he suggested he do it well, making lemonade out of a shit detail. With a prodigious brain constrained to a dull, predictable job with very little variety each day, or night really, since he arrived in the dark and left at dawn, Major Clarkson had been slowly climbing the plywood walls of the comm center, ready to rush out and howl at the moon with the wild dogs that ran the perimeter, searching for scraps. He felt a certain affinity to their plight.

  “Major?” a stern looking young NCO who'd been assigned to his shift for probably the same reason, to get a troublesome, bright individual out of an office somewhere, staffed by Beta males and females who got anxious when someone of actual ability shared the same space. “I got something, I think, can you...”

  He was on her like a hungry dog tearing at a fresh carcass, “what, let me hear the recording, quiet,” he turned to the entire room, “nobody say anything until I say otherwise, shut up, NOW!”

  The other ratings went silent and stared at their screens or focused on what they were hearing as a fresh second lieutenant, his nominal in command, responded with her usual soul killing disgust and scowled. He knew she would scribble in her notepad about his brash treatment of his 'troops'. He should have done this earlier, assert control, the silence was nice compared to the rumbling din of background noise that usually prevailed, mostly not so quiet conversations about sports or sex.

  “Hassan bin Madras, Afghan Army Serial Number 5400322, Hidathra, Kathira Province. Contact, thirty plus Taliban, two hours to attack this location, on the way from the West, high confidence, my son has seen them, please respond. This is Code Alpha 222, Repeat, Code Alpha 222...” and it recycled, the man speaking slowly and clearly, awaiting someone to transmit back on the fives.

  “Have you replied?” the Major downed his entire cup of coffee and held out his hand for his aid who followed him like a puppy so he'd refill it to his exact specifications, “and a donut or something, go.”

  “Yessir,” usually a radio operator, Corporal Jones was happy to play nursemaid to their constantly wired commander since his job put him in the shadow of his boss's wrath, something he dealt out instantly if you messed up. This safe haven provided his sole reward for taking this crummy job. It had tightened up the Comms shack, things got done, on time and they'd lost the two slackers who'd never done anything during their shifts, so overall the Major was a plus, but he had his moods.

  “And?” the Major suffered no fools – not a martinet who lived by endless volumes of Army Regs and standard protocols – he wanted people to do their jobs correctly.

  “That's why I called you over, his serial number checks out, that code word is confirmed, Alpha 222.”

  Two nearby Tech-Sargents who'd been whispering to each other, allowed for the moment, went silent, looked around to see if anyone else had heard the very restricted code word.

  “Sir, you should clear the comm center and take this yourself, or I can assist. My red book code list say its a DIA signal that we're required to mark top secret, restricted.”

  The Major stood up, nearly bumping into Corporal Jones who'd raced up with his refill, trying to please his boss with sterling service. “Oh, shit, put that down and,” he turned to the room, “clear out, everybody. I don't care where, go to the BX or the rec area, until further orders, shut it down, go, NOW!”

  One Sargent, the most senior NCO started a sentence but the Major's finger pointing at him along with an evil eye clomped his lips closed and he tromped out, tailed by the snitty lieutenant who took her notepad with her, scribbling the whole way.

  “Now who do I call and in what order?”

  Oh the beauty of being short. Clocks ran backward for you while they clicked forward for all other stalwarts, lifers, and commoners. Jacob Estes Bowie drowsed in his rack, luxury denied him for the last four years of his Army career. If you want to hit the dirt running and never stop, then choose his job, get selected as a member of the Super Special, Extremely Secret Forces who didn't officially exist. Nobody wore rank, shaved or bathed, if the mission profile required it. Uniform was optional most of the time, so the appearance of a group of rag tag, extremely well armed and equipped hard men and increasingly, a few women, was the sign the extreme badasses had landed to take over.

  But that was history at last. The mission he'd just completed had been the closer, a beast that had lasted four weeks of pure hell, random fights, long hikes ending in a group of adult men splashing water from a small dirty pool in their faces, giggling like a pre-teen pool party was taking place. With that refresher after a long desert approach they'd swept through a once hidden camp like angels of death on a mission from God or the Devil. They'd been nipped, which happened rarely, one man down, recovering as he was shuttled back home via Germany, which he said was nicer than stateside. All those blond German nurses, so solicitous and friendly to a 'real man', as they described men in units like his. Maybe he had it better, facing a long rehabilitation that would drive him nuts to get back in the field, but them's the chances you take in his world.

  But not now, he was as good as out. “Short-timer,” he muttered, wriggling into the soft mattress, a touch too squishy for his taste, used to dirt covered by a half inch of light weight foam, his one luxury in the field, carried by one of his team, happy to make life easier for someone they all respected. What would he do now?

  Cathy rose up in his mind, a beautiful blond with a mind he was restless to know better. Their times together had been windows two weeks long, their trains pulled up alongside, then roaring off, to meet again in six months. It was torture gladly endured but now it was over and they could see what being together longer than fourteen days felt like. Might blow up. Who could predict anything in life, the big things were even harder to pull off, like this job he'd maxed after the first year. He felt like that guy in Avatar, climbing into the heavy metal cage that sensed and amplified every twitch and wiggle of his body, becoming a supercharged soldier able to win any battle. That was him, had been, the ultimate badass running an apex team of other badasses who did not consider failure possible.

  So much for that life, he was short, right? As much as he told himself he was ready to pull the plug something twisted in his gut, like a bad piece of fruit that wouldn't come up and would definitely come out, later. What was that? Hadn't he, the light speed tactician planned for this day, this week really, since he was due for a wake-up to catch the stateside shuttle in what, three days? Effectively he was done, so working through transition to civvy life was justified. He'd seen others get that face, happy but wistful for a time in their life that was passing away, like childhood, or your first love.

  “Chrissy Martin,” he spoke without realizing others could hear him.

  “Shut up, give me my rack time, I'm up in an hour fuckhead.”

  Jabo got up, he couldn't sleep anyway. Anything over four or five hours felt slothful. He was done, time to hit the shower then jog to the mess hall. He liked to burn off his favorite, 'shit on a shingle', before he slammed it down. A few chunks of stiff bacon, big glass of orange juice and he could relax in the gym, some weights, a treadmill on slow watching the military news channel. Nobody could stand CNN or their fellow cable news stations anymore – there wasn't any news, all comment by people who he couldn't relate to anymore, a few steps from traitors in his mind, not that he told anyone but he doubted few would disagree. He was coming back to a very different country after only three full years overseas.

  Dressing in camo's, crisp ones from his locker where four other sets hung, ready to don, one for each day in country, another for transit to CONUS, where he'd land, transition wearing greens one last
time, then walk out a free man into the arms of his true love, Cathy. It scared him, all that change in a place without the rigid, practical outlook of an Army Base. He'd handle it, he always had, always would.

  “Sir, are you Lieutenant Bowie, SSRT Six?” The private had a sheet in his left hand, so he could return the salute Jabo ripped off, protocol and a pain in the ass on base, but he didn't care.

  “You found me, now git,” he smiled as the private's nervous posture loosened, a bit lost at the informality of a very important person. His Texas drawl, more pronounced than usual, let him enjoy the way it felt to talk normal again. It mystified the private who required a sweep of his hand to skedaddle. The nervous young soldier acknowledged with a second salute Jabo ignored.

  “Let's see, should be my orders at last, Jabo E. Bowie is hereby ordered to...” He stood in the door, getting a shout from the same guy he'd roused when he said his old flame's name out loud to shut the 'god damned door'.