Black dog escape, p.1
Black Dog Escape, page 1
Black Dog Escape Copy
W.L. Bach
Endure All Publishing LLC
All events and characters in this book are completely fictional. Any resemblance to actual people is entirely coincidental.
Copyright © 2023 by W.L.Bach
All rights reserved. No portion of this book may be reproduced in any form without written permission from the publisher or author, except as permitted by U.S. copyright law. For permissions contact the publisher at endureallpublishing.com.
ISBN: 979-8-9879630-1-2
Book Cover design by ebooklaunch.com
Printed in the United States of America
Dedicated to those men and women in uniform who put their lives on the line to keep America free. Their service is not free. It comes with a cost that we all must bear.
Book One
one
The blacked-out MH-47 Chinook helicopter creaks and groans as it ascends the dark, forbidden valley in Afghanistan. The crew had stripped the aircraft of excess equipment to be able to climb to this altitude. The monstrous motors decelerate and I feel the pilot slowly turn the big machine. My heart rate increases. I unstrap the seatbelt and chamber a round into my MK-17 sniper rifle. The helo lurches as the rear ramp opens onto a ten-foot ledge protruding from a sheer rock wall. I stride quickly down the ramp and leap to the ledge below. Looking back, I see that the pilot is holding the nose of the helicopter in mid-air above the valley floor with only the ramp touching the ground. The crew chief gives me a thumbs up, reaches for a button and the ramp begins to close. The Chinook drops off the mountain like a black whale diving below the surface of the ocean.
The oxygen is deathly thin at this altitude, causing me to inhale with deliberate force. The cold air hits the back of my throat like needles. The whoop whoop of the rotors slowly fades as the helicopter descends into the valley. I need to move quickly away from this insertion point in case anyone heard the Chinook. I patrol towards the other side of the rocky mountain top, heading for the firing position I’d picked out on the map back at the Tactical Operations Center.
It’s early October; the mountains around Deh Rawod are already encased in the bleak landscape of winter. The waning crescent moon highlights dirty white patches of snow. The jagged shale rock slips under my weight. I walk on the balls of my feet to avoid sending a rock down the hillside and alerting the villagers.
I make my way around the eastern side of the mountain above the target, shift to my knees, then down on my stomach, the sniper rifle cradled in my arms. Belly-crawling towards my destination, I clear my jumpy mind and focus only on moving like an animal—feeling the soft spots with my hands, moving my knees up, inching forward—rest, breathe, creep forward. Two hours later, I reach the location and carefully raise the rifle into the firing position. It fits there in the same way my old German Shepherd lays his head on my shoulder.
I let out a slow breath of icy steam, adjust the scope on the MK-17 sniper rifle, and aim 600 meters down the rocky hillside into a medieval, mud-walled compound. The chill wind blows across my face. I estimate a ten-knot crosswind and 50 degrees of declination to the target. I turn the knobs on my scope to compensate, slide my eye back to the black rubber eyepiece and peer down the valley into the compound below. The sharp wind carries the pungent smells of juniper, cedar and a cooking fire from somewhere down the valley.
I check the scope; the target's vehicle is still there. Mullah Jalami has been trying to coerce local village elders to support attacks on Americans. He came to our attention after a raid three weeks ago, fingered as the local Taliban emir by one of the detainees. Now it was time to put him out of business for good.
Jalami would exit the meeting in the mud hut sometime this evening and move to his Toyota Hilux pick-up truck, escorted by bodyguards. I calculate that I have five seconds to make the shot before he’ll find cover behind the mud wall encircling the compound. Rolling my head to ease out the stiffness in my neck, I adjust my left foot to shift off of a sharp rock that is making my leg numb, and put my eye to the rifle again—there’s movement. My pulse quickens as the mud hut door opens.
Here we go. A tall, dark, bearded figure with a red turban exits the compound with two bodyguards. The target always wears a red turban, the local mullahs wear white. Gotcha. I slow my breathing, swing the crosshairs onto the target’s chest, release the safety, and ease my finger into the trigger housing. Suddenly, a cascade of small rocks tumbles from the ledge above me.
Instinctively I roll onto my back, pull the silenced pistol from my thigh holster and aim. A figure with a gun is leaning over the ledge, silhouetted against the moonlight. I fire a quick, silent shot and watch the figure drop.
Spinning back to the long gun, my heart now racing, I re-acquire the target. The red-turbaned Taliban emir of Deh Rawod is walking towards his Hilux pick-up, flanked by two bodyguards. Breathe in, breathe out, aim, smooth trigger pull. The 7.62mm heavy grain bullet rips through his chest and knocks the emir off his feet. The bodyguards leap for cover. One jumps behind the truck, the other runs for the door of the mud hut. I swing a bead on the one heading for the door and take him down with a shot to the right leg.
The wounded man lies there for a moment, then starts to crawl for the door, shouting for help. I set my sights on the door and wait for help to arrive. The door flies open and a short, fat, bearded figure steps out, blindly firing an AK-47 into the mountain above me. I let him take another step out of the doorway, then squeeze off a round. His head comes apart like a rotten melon.
There won’t be any more Taliban charging out that door for a while. The injured bodyguard has made it through the front door. I give up on the bodyguard under the truck, drill a round into the truck engine, stand up, and sling the sniper rifle over my shoulder.
As I scramble up over the ledge above me, I see the figure slumped back against a large rock. I kick over the body to have a look and realize that something is terribly wrong. It’s not a man, but a young girl, maybe 12 years old. A long shepherd staff lies at her side.
two
I unlocked the Sea Wolf bookshop, the brass bells on the doorknob softly jingling and alerting Emilio, my full-time tenant. He stretched his front legs languidly and padded down the Old English row, sauntering past Milton, Percy and Shakespeare before rubbing against my leg and head-butting me. I'd taken him in one cold September day when Mrs. Johnson, proprietor of the Port Townsend Bakery next door, found him in the dumpster covered in powdered sugar. She pressed me in her maternal way, so I took the kitten—now a cat—who has become my night watchman, mouse catcher and moveable animal rug. I’ll admit I’m not really a cat person, but Emilio is no trouble, and customers don’t seem to mind his demands for attention. His only failing is that he drools like a dog with a wet, dripping tongue. Best thing about him, he likes an occasional thimble of whiskey.
I tossed my keys on the Indian mahogany captain’s desk, pulled off my wet coat, checked Emilio's water and started up a batch of coffee as soft rain pelted the sidewalk. With a Starbucks across the street, not many customers bought my coffee, even if it was fifty cents a cup. I brewed it anyway—I liked the smell of coffee, and enjoyed sipping a cup as I made my rounds through the shop. I smiled to myself as I remembered my old platoon chief and his coffee. We were on a long zodiac transit in big seas with cold spray splashing over the bow and drenching us. I was literally freezing to death when I looked back and saw the chief balancing a cup of coffee in one hand and the outboard motor tiller in the other. He shook his head, yelled out over the noise of the engine and raging sea, “New guy, come here!” I scrambled to the back of the heaving rubber boat where he poured me a hot, steaming cup of black coffee—still the best thing I’ve ever tasted, even though half of it splashed all over me.
I liked to walk through the bookstore in the morning, and often got lost in thought as I passed my friends, the books. The shop was 20 feet wide and 40 feet deep. Two long rows of dark oak bookcases ran from front to back down the middle. Along the walls were two more sets of eight-foot-high bookcases. The floor was original weathered oak planking, rough in a few spots, but beautiful to the eye. I loved contemplating the weathered floor as I walked around the shop. What history did these scratches and dents hide? A gunfight here, a sea chest dragged across the floor there, a spill of blood in the corner?
My sea captain’s desk sat to the right of the front door. Above it hung a small American flag that had flown in Iraq, along with pictures of SEAL Team mates all over the world. On the other side of the desk, near the windows, were a few old chairs and tables for customers to browse books or sit and sip coffee. There was also a small table that held the coffee pot and cups. The walls of the shop were eight-inch-wide stained spruce planks. They made the place look dark, but the wood grain was gorgeous and gave the room a feeling of warmth and history. Brass lamps hung from the ceiling, giving off a soft light and creating strange, oblique shadows. I was pretty sure I’d seen a raven and a wolf shadow-dancing on the walls.
Outside, the blue and white sign, Sea Wolf Books, hung above the windows. I’d named the store after my trawler, Sea Wolf. I’d lived aboard the Sea Wolf, now moored at the Port Townsend Marina, before I’d bought the parish house. It was a bit of a money pit, but I loved the old boat. Every man needs something other than a woman to dump his money into.
October brought the first rains of fall to Port Townsend. On Fridays, we get the tourist crowd that migrates up to our isolated town for the weekend, but by the end of summer they’re all gone. T his Thursday morning, other than a few weary souls slogging along the sidewalk in the drizzling rain, it was dead outside.
Suddenly there was movement in the back of the shop. I quietly pulled a 9mm Sig Sauer P226 from the bottom drawer of my desk and moved on my toes down the non-fiction row. At the end of the bookcases, I swung the pistol around the right corner and aimed. A pigeon was flapping in the corner. I sighed as I stashed the pistol in my belt at the small of my back. Emilio had played with the pigeon and chewed off a wing and most of the beak. Blood was splattered in the corner. I picked up the bird, twisted its neck and tossed it in the trash can outside. I have to remember to shut that high window before I leave for the day.
I returned to my desk, where my gaze inevitably wandered to pictures of SEAL Team friends on the wall behind me. I scanned the faces and places we’d been deployed, memories flooding in of good times and bad. I started to make a mental count of how many guys were now dead, deeply injured, divorced and how many had dropped completely off the grid, like myself.
I opened a small door in the bottom of my desk and took out a bottle of Glenfiddich single malt 12-year-old Scotch and a tall glass. When I first earned my Trident, the warfare insignia of the SEAL Teams, our Executive Officer, a tough and grizzled Vietnam vet, summoned me to his office. I knocked on his door and stepped in smartly when I heard his gravelly voice call out, “Enter!” I stood in front of his gray metal desk, expecting an ass-chewing for something. My eyes widened when he poured two very tall glasses of Glenfiddich. Handing me one, he toasted, “Welcome to the Teams.” He stood there and watched me down the whole glass as if it was iced tea. Glenfiddich became my whiskey of choice after that.
I poured the smokey liquid into the glass, all the while arguing with myself about why I needed a drink at ten in the morning, knowing full well where it would end. A feeling inside was pushing for the drink to fill the dark void, make me forget. Another thought was arguing to put the golden poison away, but Glenfiddich won out. The first glass went down in two burning gulps.
The front door jingled and Mrs. Johnson stepped into my shop with a wicker basket in the crook of her fleshy arm. I set the bottle of whiskey on the floor out of her view. She was wearing a yellow flowery dress and a pink apron. Her long gray hair was tied in a bun and had traces of flour in it, making it look amusingly like a powdered donut. She and her late husband, Herb, had started the bakery next door after moving up from Seattle. She was a little too much into town gossip for my taste, but she had a big heart.
"I've brought you a little breakfast," she said kindly, lifting the lid on the basket and releasing the aroma of fresh baked blueberry muffins.
"Wow, those smell amazing. Thanks, Mrs. Johnson."
"No problem at all, Jack.” She smiled, set the worn basket down, pulled out three large muffins and placed them on my desk with a napkin.
“Hyacinth is coming to Port Townsend this weekend, and I was wondering if you might like to join us for dinner this Saturday at the Belmont?" she asked, holding her tongs in the air in anticipation.
With a continuous supply of warm muffins in jeopardy, I couldn't help but answer, "Sure, that would be great." Mrs. Johnson had been going on about her daughter since I’d moved here last year and opened the bookstore. It didn’t take her long to wheedle out of me that I'm divorced and currently single.
"Saturday at six?" she asked rhetorically as she smiled and waved on her way out the door, the aroma of blueberries wafting in her wake.
What had I gotten myself into? Mrs. Johnson was nice, but a bit overbearing. I had visions of her daughter as the type to try and organize your life and closets as soon as she met you. As it turned out, I couldn’t have been more wrong.
I only had two customers all morning. The first, a young girl with black fingernails and spiky hair, asked if I had any used editions of Harry Potter. She looked disappointed when I told her that I only carry antique books. But when Emilio appeared around the corner, yawning and stretching, I knew I’d made a customer for life.
“Oh, what a beautiful cat!” She hit me with a volley of questions. “Can I pet him? What’s his name? Is he friendly?”
“Emilio’s friendly and will soak up all your time if you let him.” The cat seemed to have a way with women. Maybe I could learn from him. When the bell on the front door rang, I left them to their love fest and returned to the front of the shop.
The man entering pushed the door open slowly, then looked around as if to make sure we were alone. He was an old salt, and wore rubber sailing boots, dirty blue overalls, and smelled like he was living rough.
“Do you have a maritime section?” His voice was scratchy with some New England in it. I could’ve sworn I’d seen him on the docks, but couldn’t place him.
“Sure, right over here—anything special you’re looking for?’’
“Books on shipwrecks, especially here in the Straits of Juan de Fuca,” he said, taking off his dirty ball cap.
“I don’t think I have any books on shipwrecks, but you’re welcome to look around.”
I left him to it. He cocked his head to the right as he read the titles, touching the spines as if reading them with his fingertips. After he finished, he shuffled over to my desk, where I was eyeing the bottle of Glenfiddich on the floor.
“Could you find any books on shipwrecks in this area for me?” I wondered if his sails came all the way up the mast and figured this search would be a big waste of my time, but a customer is a customer.
“I’ll see what I can do. Anything more specific than Puget Sound shipwrecks?”
He looked down for a minute, as if he was wondering whether he could trust me, then finally decided. “I’m looking for anything on HMS Hawthorn.”
“Hawthorn, right,” I said, jotting down the name on the pad I keep next to my keyboard. “Stop by tomorrow, I should know if there’s anything around by then. Can I get a name and phone number?”
He held out a weathered hand. “Cap’n McMillan, but friends call me Cap. I don’t have a phone, but I’ll come by tomorrow,” he said, heading for the door. The girl with the spiky hair set down Emilio, pulled out her cell phone and walked out ahead of him. Cap stopped at the threshold and looked me square in the eye. I had the eerie feeling he was searching my soul. He turned and the door clanged behind him.
I sent a query to an online book search site while wolfing down my second blueberry muffin. The rain had slowed to a soft gray drizzle. I sat back in my sea captain’s chair, whistling for Emilio. He came bounding into my lap with an electric purr. The whiskey at my feet was begging for a second opening. I picked up the bottle, but something about that shipwreck intrigued me. I put the bottle back into its cubbyhole.
I recalled reading something about HMS Hawthorn during a visit to a museum in Seattle. I hit a search site and punched in HMS Hawthorn. A bazillion entries cascaded across my screen, but one on the third page caught my attention. A researcher from the Maritime History Department in the Royal British Columbia Museum had written a detailed description of the shipwreck.
Her Majesty’s Ship Hawthorn was a 14-gun merchant ship destined to deliver a load of gold and goods to the Royal Trading Company in Victoria in 1840 in exchange for otter pelts. On September 17th, while tacking west near the mouth of the Strait of Juan de Fuca, she foundered in a storm, and all hands were lost. No one knew the exact location of the wreck, but a fur trapper named Jeremiah Benton working his traps on the southern side of the Strait claimed to have seen the ship go down. Benton kept a diary of his trapping days in the shadow of the Olympic Mountains and supposedly had included details about the shipwreck in his diary. The diary had been published by a small printing house in Seattle in the late 1800s, but no one had seen a copy of the actual diary since the early 1900s.
I closed up the bookstore at five o’clock and took my usual walk down Water Street to the Downtown Gym, leaving Emilio curled up on my desk. The Downtown Gym was my kind of place—cut-off sweats were common attire, and they didn’t sell designer coffee and $10 smoothies in the lobby. They did have a beer vending machine behind the counter, where Old Tommy passed out tattered towels and dispensed advice on everything from chicken pox to the best crab bait.
