A Treasure of Their Own

  Chapter Twenty Five

  The plan was to build a sniper’s nest in plain sight of the enemy. They chose a very vulnerable spot about two miles away from the main camp. In Ramon’s estimation, the area that they could observe would be the most likely spot for some kind of a hidden cave. After scouting the area that afternoon, Lt. Pierce and Sgt. Rivera agreed.

  The next morning, two front end loaders went out to the area and began building their nest. They scooped up enough dirt and rocks to build a ten foot high berm. Next they collected all sizes of rocks to fortify the nest with. On the pretext of lifting the rocks to be in place, the front end loaders lifted their buckets to the top of the berm. Several men took turns taking rocks out and others put rocks back in. They knew they were being watched so they had to be careful. While they were putting on their little charade, a couple of their co-workers were busy digging a four foot wide tunnel down the back of the nest for a hasty retreat when the need arose. And, all of them brought samples of their last ‘dumps’ to be placed at the back of the nest right next to the four foot wide tunnel. It was hoped that the smell would begin wafting over the area and that the rats would take advantage of extra wide back door.

  After they got through building their masterpiece, they all stood back and looked at the mound of dirt they had built. Each front end loader had brought more rocks than what was needed. They just dumped the extra rocks in piles not too far away from the nest as if they were through with their project. Actually, that was part of the plan.

  At dusk that same day, two trucks made a run out to the nest on the pretext of taking Ramon and Taylor to their assigned station. The two drivers, along with the two snipers busied themselves carrying equipment up to the top of the nest. Of course, everything in the backs of their trucks had been covered in heavy tarps to keep everything from getting gritty in the Afghan dust. As they pulled the tarps back from the material, they let them hang over the driver’s side of the trucks. That allowed the other two snipers that had been roped to the side of the vehicles to cut themselves loose and make their way undetected to their mounds of extra rock. Taylor and Ramon would not be alone during the night. They would have two extra sets of eyes with pre-assigned areas to scan.

  By the time the drivers left, darkness had pretty much settled in. Taylor and Ramon had settled in to their lookout positions. They had built fake ghillie heads to try to fool the Taliban into thinking they were always at the front of the barricade. Actually a couple of hidden scupper holes had been built by the engineers at various locations along the bottom of the barricade so they could watch the horizon without being vulnerable to a head shot. A lot of planning had gone into this gimmick. But if that was a master cave entrance like they thought it was, it could be the key to stopping the terrorist activity throughout an extremely large region.

  A couple of hours had passed and there was nothing sited, yet. The communications room had always had the practice of talking to the snipers. It gave the guys back at the base some kind of feeling for what was going on in the snipers’ heads and it helped keep them awake. Knowing that the enemy could very well be listening in on the conversation, Ramon had suggested a little code talk. Considering the nest to be the middle of a clock and the tallest rock on the pyramid of rocks across the way to be 12, if any of them spotted any kind of movement they would say something with a number in it. The number would indicate the hour of the clock that they spotted any movement. Movement? The last warning before departing was to watch for moving rocks and not just infrared images.

  Taylor and Ramon were lying flat on their stomachs and were scanning the terrain through the scupper holes the engineers made for them. Something brushed against her foot and she almost sat up in reaction to it. Ramon flashed his black light on long enough to see two beady eyes staring back at him. He ran the thin light down the creatures head and found the GPS emitter strapped to it. He turned the light off and whispered to Taylor, “The next sound you hear will probably be that varmint trap so get ready for it.”

  He looked at her silhouette just a few feet away and tried to think of something to say to calm her down. He quickly got back into his lookout position and once again pulled the binoculars to his eyes. The greedy varmint stepped a little too close to the trap and it snapped shut with a ‘clank.’

  Ramon jumped while Taylor just giggled at him. She whispered back, “And I thought I was scared.” She turned back to her lookout position.

  Ramon would have loved to be anywhere else with Taylor right now. All he wanted to do was just hold her in his arms, tell her how sweet she was and how much he loved her. His heart had been longing for her for years. And, tonight with both of their futures up for grabs, if something did happen to one of them he wanted her to know just how he felt.

  She had softened some in the past month or so. He settled himself down as he remembered the fact that God had a plan, a plan to do them both good. His job was not to do the planning just the following. He turned back to his scupper hole just in time.

  Lester’s voice came over the communicator, “You know, I could use two big fat burritos right now. No, make that four. Well, I wish I had a platter full.”

  Skidrow came in right behind him, “Is that all you can think about is food. Nighttime is time to think about women. I’ve whittled my list of women down from twelve to seven. Seven women, mmm, mmm, mmm. One for every night of the week. Come to me baby. Don’t be shy. There’s plenty of Skidrow to go around.”

  Back at the base, two AH-4 Apaches cranked, their crew strapped themselves in and checked their weapons. Lt. Pierce ordered a drone into the air immediately while the Apaches were warming up. Every available man grabbed their weapons, their ammo belts and headed for a waiting Humvee. The medics had already loaded their trucks and were the first ones to crank. Orders were to mount up, warm up but keep the lights off until they were ordered. It was evident from the conversation heard over the comm system that Ramon had been right about a massive cave in the area.

  Ramon began to sweat as his grip on his weapon tightened. Lester and Skidrow were keeping up some kind of banter in hopes that their attackers would not know they were being watched. They had to wait for the last possible second in the hopes they could catch as many off guard as they could.

  He glanced over at Taylor and she was twitching her nose and licking her lips, a sure sign that she was nervous. She looked at him for some kind of sign. He flattened his hand and motioned for her to get ready to slide down the escape hole. Two ‘rocks’ had moved directly in front of the nest. “Getting ready to dive,” he whispered into his comm mike.

  Lt. Rivera spoke, “Get a mark on that cave and be ready to seal it on my order.”

  Ramon whispered, “What if more come out when the fighting starts, or what if a team could roll down the cave? What could we find?”

  “Good thought, but my call.”

  “Lollipop,” someone whispered. There was a barrel beginning to creep out from underneath one of the ‘rocks.’

  Ramon’s adrenaline was pumping as he kept his eyes on the ‘rock’ right in front of him. His attention was focused only on what was unfolding in front of him, so it was only natural for him to let down his guard in other areas. As the terrorist with the RPG began to stand up he whispered sharply, “Dive, Honey.”

  She looked at him and hesitated as she wondered if she heard him right. He was not sure himself so he repeated what he meant to say a little more harshly, “Dive!” As she slid down the escape hole, Ramon stood and gave a five round burst from his M110 semi-automatic.

  The terrorist jerked as the rounds went right threw him. His involuntary movement caused the grenade launcher to fire. The RPG landed between Lester’s position and the nest.

  An explosion of voices and sounds filled everyone’s earpieces. “Game on.” “Roll, Roll, Roll, and get a video of that cave, NOW!” “Hang on and make your weapons hot.” “Medics, third in line and don’t lag.” “Lights on everything. Make it daylight ou
t there.”

  As the RPG exploded amid all the voices, a scream was heard. With one step, Ramon reached the escape hole and yelled, “Taylor” as he slid down. She was curled up on her right side and holding a bloody left side.

  “Let me see,” he commanded. Without waiting he jerked her over onto her back. Both hands were covering the wound and blood was oozing through her fingers.

  “It hit my breast and I think there is something still in there. My God, Ramon, it’s burning, it’s burning,” she moaned as she tried to rock back and forth. She kept raising her right knee and putting it down.

  Ramon pulled at her hands and told her again, “Let me see. I’ve got to see if there is a fragment.” As she relinquished her hold, half of her shirt was stuck to her hand and pulled away from her body revealing a big, bloody gash on her left breast. Tenderly Ramon touched the edge of the gash and felt something hard. “Hold on and let me see if I can get this thing out.”

  “Don’t, ‘Mone, it hurts when…….oh, my God…it hurts.”

  Ramon heard a barrage of RPG’s as they hit the front of the nest and threw dirt and stones all over the place. He bent over Taylor to keep anything from getting into the wound.

  Voices, sounds and vehicle noises were screaming through his earpiece. Right now he wanted to jerk it out but that was out of the question. If they were going to make it out of there he had to be able to hear what was going on, no matter how loud it was.

  He looked down at her as he waited for the falling debris to stop. Her face was contorted with pain. “I can’t put any pressure on that wound to stop the bleeding with that piece in there. Let me see if I can wiggle it out. It’s just gonna have to hurt,” he tried to persuade her.

  Without waiting for her permission, he gently squeezed the wound with his left hand. As the wound opened a bit, blood began to flow. He pulled gently on the piece of shrapnel with the thumb and forefinger of his right hand. It moved just a bit.

  She arched her back and moaned in pain, “Hurry. I don’t feel it pulling on anything. Oh, get it out... get it out, ple-e-a-se.”

  Ramon pulled a little bit harder and it slid right out followed by a gush of fresh blood. “Is that better?” he asked.

  “Yeah, much better,” she sighed as she tried to sit up to look at it.

  Ramon got to his knees and began taking off his shirt as he explained, “I’m going to roll up my shirt and tie it around you by the arms in an effort to make a compress to stop the bleeding. The whole left side of your shirt is torn off. Now just sit still.”

  A couple of rounds struck the rocks around them. Taylor screamed for the first time since she was a little girl. “Aw, shoot,” she moaned, “why did I do that for?”

  Ramon bent back down and slid his rolled up shirt behind her. Their faces were not very far apart. He stopped and looked her in the eyes and answered her in a firm voice, “You did it because you’re a female. That’s the way you were born. Just because your daddy didn’t appreciate you being born a boy doesn’t mean that everybody else feels the same way.”

  He pulled her up for just a minute and placed his shirt where it would be the best compress until the medics got there. Then he tied the arms together as tight as he felt he should. He reached for his weapon and his ammo belt and continued, “And I, for one, am VERY glad you’re a female.”

  He wanted to say more but a spray of bullets interrupted him. He bent over her quickly to protect her and finished by saying, “And I’m not going to let ANYTHING happen to you. I need you to count with me. I’ve got three more five shot sprays in this magazine. Have a magazine ready to throw to me, will ya’? Those Apaches are coming in and some of these bozos will be trying to pull them down.”

  He stood up, readied his M110 and declared, “And I intend to interrupt the peewaddling snot out of as many as I can.”

  She shook her head ‘yes’ as she pulled the ammo belt to her and pulled a magazine out of its strap. Out of all the noise that was going on around her, her own thoughts were the loudest. ‘Dive, Honey. That's what he said. He said 'Dive, Honey'. He just can’t love me. I’m not the type to love. But, he called me Honey.’

  Ramon shouldered his weapon and stepped out from behind the nest. As the Apaches approached and started spraying the open area between the nest and the mountain, Ramon decided to try knocking out some of the guys that had taken cover in the rocks. His untried theory was to sight down the barrel with both eyes open so he could watch bigger area with his peripheral vision. Hopefully he could catch someone taking aim at him and avoid being shot. Each spray would be a diagonal line toward his target. He knew he might waste a couple of sprays until he zeroed in on his target. Instead of lying down, he stood up sideways and walked with uneven steps toward his left to create as thin a silhouette as he could. Those that he couldn’t take out, he wanted to keep them guessing so they couldn’t get a good bead on the Apaches overhead.

  His first spray was too high. In the confusion of the moment, he forgot that the powerful M110 shot high at close range. The second spray found its mark and in the daylight of the Apache’s lighting system, he saw a weapon fall down the front of the rocks. He crab-walked back toward Taylor and chose his next target. His last spray sent a shower of sparks and rocks down on the shooter. He quickly ejected the magazine and Taylor threw him another. As he slammed it into his weapon, he again began to crab-walk back to his left to keep from being a still target.

  A bullet ripped a path to his right. He turned to see a standing shooter ready for a second shot. A quick burst took care of him. The Apaches were making mincemeat out of the terrorists in the open. The lights from the approaching Humvees bouncing their way to the ruckus caused a hasty retreat toward the cave. The Taliban snipers on the mountain began shooting in haste to help their comrades make it back safely. Lester and Skidrow got up and began to copy Ramon’s style of shooting at the marksmen on the mountain.

  Each pass the Apaches made caused the mountain to light up with sparks. For the moment, they were pinned down. If Ramon and company could keep this up, it would be a great break for the US Army.

  Humvees with their machine guns blazing were screeching to a halt all over the place. He could hear orders being shouted through his earpiece as well as on the ground. Lt. Pierce had given the order to try to corral the Taliban as close to the cave as possible and then the men in the Apaches were to spray the area with concussion grenades in the hope of shaking the enemy to their knees.

  As he used us his last spray, Ramon began to yell, “Medic, medic, behind the nest, man down behind the nest.”

  “On the way. On the way.”

  His last spray hit their target. That made six kills out of eight sprays. He ejected his magazine and side-stepped to Taylor. As she lifted the magazine toward him, the shirt compress rubbed into the wound and caused her to wince and drop the magazine on her stomach. He leaned over on his right leg to pick it up intending to ask her if she was OK. His mistake was that he had stood still for too long. A sniper found his mark.

  The shot hit the upper inside part of Ramon’s thigh. It barely grazed the bone but tore through his artery. The force of the shot flipped him to the other side of Taylor. She watched him in slow motion. His helmet flew off his head. She saw a splash of blood from somewhere. His butt hit first, then like a whip lash, he head hit. But it didn’t hit the rock. It couldn’t have hit the rock. As his arms finally hit the ground, his head turned eerily toward her. One eye was closed and the other rolled back in his head.

  Somewhere, a long ways away, a woman was screaming but it couldn’t have been her. Men came up to her. Men stepped between her and Ramon. Men began pulling on her. She could no longer see….would someone shut that woman up.

  “Put her under, she’s becoming unstable."