VIKING HAMMER (AND THE UGLY BABY)

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01.Masters of Chaos Pages 8/17/04 12:00 PM Page 313 Viking Hammer (and the Ugly Baby) About two kilometers farther, as the soldiers closed in on the town of Gulp, they came under fire again. The team sergeant and the other medic hauled out the Mk 19 and returned fire while the rest of the force assaulted the town. They captured Gulp at 9 a.m.—hours earlier than the captain had expected. The Kurds ran through the streets and searched the rubble left by the previous week’s bombing. The mosque was untouched, but, as the Kurds had claimed, it contained sandbagged fighting positions and a command post. The soldiers also found a suicide vest rigged with explosives and a gas mask. During the previous year, many residents had left as the fundamentalist group had imposed draconian Islamic practices and the fighting had escalated. After a brief rest, ODA 091 and several hundred pesh merga split off south to head up the adjacent valley. The split team of ODA 081—the captain, the team sergeant, two medics, one weapons sergeant, and one communications sergeant—continued with Sheikh Jafr’s Kurds toward Sargat. The Kurds wanted to charge ahead at a run, but the captain insisted that they clear the road for the vehicles bearing their heavy weapons. They made good time for the next two kilometers, but then started taking fire from two entrenched positions in the mountains on their right. The team brought out its Mk 19 and the M240, and the Kurds followed with their heavy DShK and PKM machine guns. When the Ansar firing subsided, the force continued on again. The team sergeant and a medic stayed behind with the Mk 19 to cover the advance. After shooting about 250 rounds, Grit decided that they should catch up with the rest of the team. He was not surprised that they had to fight their way up the valley and suppress the Ansar positions in the mountains one by one, but he had no idea what was in store next. Just outside Sargat, the valley widened into a bowl. As Grit and the medic entered it, they came under intense machine-gun fire from the surrounding mountains. The bulk of Ansar fighters had dug in around Sargat to mount its defense. Grit looked around for cover, but the land was as open as a golf course. To the right was a broad field divided by rows of low rock walls barely three feet high. The two men saw their teammates crouched behind the walls farther ahead and dashed for the 313
01.Masters of Chaos Pages 8/17/04 12:00 PM Page 314 314 M asters of C haos nearest one. The soldiers were pinned down. The hidden fighters began lobbing mortars as well, which soon started to land uncomfortably close. The militants knew what they were doing: pin down the prey with machine guns, bracket it with mortars, then adjust fire for the kill. The lethal area for mortars is a 100-meter radius. The team sergeant watched the mortars land closer, no more than twenty-five meters away—they could not survive this for long. Grit and the twenty-eight-year-old staff sergeant were huddled face to face behind the rock wall. They looked at each other and burst out laughing. It was a death-defying reaction, and the first step toward mobilization. “Hey man, we gotta go,” the team sergeant told him. Grit had been
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VIKING HAMMER (AND THE UGLY BABY)

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