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Title: "Operation Charlie Foxtrot" Part 2 "Sunrise over Al-Musharraf" Fandom: Over There (Sgt. Scream) Characters: Sergeant "Scream" Silas Prompt: 005. Outsides Word Count: Approx. 1,400 Rating: PG-13, adult language Author's Notes: None at this time. If I think of any, I'll let you know. "Over There" is written and produced by the always-innovative Steven Bochco Productions, for the FX cable TV channel. I'm not making any money from this derivative work, just borrowing the squad for a bit o' fun.
"Operation Charlie Foxtrot" - Part 2 "Sunrise over Al-Musharraf"
Al-Musharraf neighborhood
The sun was still low on the horizon, but its light was just starting to turn the Baghdad skyline to the east a reddish orange. The air in the neighborhood of Al Musharraf was fairly still, while single stray birds flitted from one apartment block to the next in search of a morning meal. Very few people were about, especially because curfew notices had been posted by the local PSYOPS unit, warning arrest for anyone caught out on the streets without authorization between 2200 and 0600 each night.
Obviously, the insurgents never obeyed the curfew notices, taking to the streets well after dark to perform their nefarious handiwork. The large-scale predawn raids were planned by the brass to curtail those activities.
Led by military policemen in M-1114 Armored Humvees, the convoy from Camp Victory began to deploy to their staging areas and assigned sectors. Crew served weapons and sniper teams rapidly broke off from the command groups to silently locate and occupy their assigned observation positions on the "high ground" - the rooftops of the tallest buildings in the sector.
Dim yawned at the tailgate of the squad truck, cradling his M-4 and grenade launcher on his lap. He stifled the noise and simply covered his mouth as if adjusting the scarf he wore to keep sand particles out of his face. He knew that Scream was serious about pre-dawn operations. Anything that could draw insurgent fire was a source of an unending stream of profanities from Sergeant Silas, so the squad learned - and quickly - how to handle themselves in the field.
Doublewide slid the small Plexiglas partition between the cab and the cargo bed of the truck open, to get Scream's attention. "Map says we're here, Sarge," she whispered, just as Mrs. B applied the squeaky brakes as gingerly as she could to keep the noise down.
Scream nodded, after taking a fast glance around the truck's surroundings, wary of points where an ambush might come. He grabbed the boom microphone of his tactical radio, calling Lt. Underpants at the platoon command post.
"Rawhide One to Rawhide Six Actual," Scream whispered. "We're at point Alfa and ready to dismount."
"Roger that," Underpants replied, his voice tinny in the radio's earbuds. "You're on the spear, Sergeant. Switch to tactical channel Bravo for mutual support and deploy in exactly five mikes. Execute the search pattern I mapped out. Over."
"Deploy in five mikes and execute search pattern; Roger that, Rawhide Six."
"And, Sergeant?"
"Sir?"
"Don't fuck up out there."
"Of course not, sir. What do you think we are, rookies?"
After Scream signed off the radio and switched to the company frequency to monitor the other platoons preparing to execute the sweep operation, Dim worked his way over to the squad leader and popped a piece of chewing gum into his mouth, silently grinding it between his teeth.
"Hate to break it to you, Sarge, but we're still rookies."
"Not in front of the insurgents, Dunphy," Scream said. "And you'd better keep your fuckin' voice down. Some of the ragheads speak damn good English, even better than Smoke."
"Yeah," Nassiri chimed in. "If you count that ghetto slang Smoke spits out English."
"Go fuck yourself, Tariq," Smoke growled. "You don't wanna go yellin' into a house without my big gun backin' your ass up. They might gut slit you for bein' on the wrong side."
"Shut up, children," Scream said, just loud enough to get the squad's attention. "We're about to get the go order from Captain Baron. Wire up your shit. Lock and load."
The soldiers grimly charged their weapons and brought their night vision monocles down, staring out into the pre-dawn night through the light-sensitive green haze.
***
Mehal Wakhar was accustomed to the sounds of war around her home. She had been a resident of Al-Musharraf ever since before the American campaign to unseat Saddam Hussein from the presidential palaces deep inside the capital city. When her husband, Wahil, announced his intention to fight the Americans who were now in charge of things and trying to put the country back into the hands of the Iraqis, Mehal made blustery remarks and called him an idiot. But she kept her place, and held her tongue.
The small, electric clock with bright red numbers that the couple owned read 5:40. Mehal rolled over and discovered that Wahil wasn't present under the thin sheets with her. She sighed softly - the idiot was out planting bombs again. Bombs that were just as likely to blow her foolish husband's own hands off as it might cause trouble for the American armored vehicles.
Unlike many of the poorer Iraqi women, Mehal had some education because her parents were schooled in Europe. They passed a lot of their ideas on to their daughter, despite her own goal of marrying in Iraq and exploring a traditional Muslim wife's life. Even with the worldly knowledge her parents provided, Mehal, like many of the working class men, were dangerously close to illiteracy. Many of the women were worse off, since "strict" Muslim tradition forbade women to behave outside of their place in life.
The closest thing to education the residents of Al-Musharraf had available was the public school attached to the area mosque, run by the mullahs and clerics. It was often used as a gathering place by the radicals who listened to the militant Muslims chanting about taking arms against the Americans, and the lectures about Jihad being the "holy" war. Mehal questioned the ideals the radicals - and even the legitimate mullahs - preached from the school, as more and more Iraqi women were starting to do, thanks to American teachers fanning out to the neighborhoods to improve the lot of the civilians.
In Mehal's mind, the sounds of motorized vehicles in the street were mesmerizing, lulling her back to sleep, even though her subconscious might have questioned what sort of dumb Iraqis would be violating curfew, let alone driving their cars or trucks around. Unless...
As Mehal snapped upright in bed, she heard several sets of footfalls crunching on the gravel along the sidewalk below her bedroom window. She feared that Wahil and his cohorts were stomping around with their unstable car bomb materials. Then again, her fear could be worse. The Americans might know about Wahil's nocturnal activities...
***
Scream checked the readout on his handheld GPS, furrowing his brow at the coordinates the unit displayed while he groped in one of his pockets for a stapled sheaf of note paper that the Intel briefer at Camp Victory had passed along. A number of agents and informants had been canvassing Al Musharraf before the raid, tracking down the rumored insurgent enclave, and trying to locate the homes, weapons caches and hideouts of the enclave's members. Scream's squad had been assigned the task of hitting a suspect's home while the rest of the platoon worked the search from the company's start line. The squad was essentially unsupported.
"Hold up, Tariq," Scream said to Private Nassiri, who was at the head of the tiny column of American soldiers, acting as the point man. "Our first sweep objective is close by."
"I still don't like the idea of busting into these houses without the rest of the platoon, Sarge," Nassiri objected, backing against a solid wall and training his M-4 in the direction the squad had been walking. The rest of the squad stopped in their places and took a knee to cover the windows, doors and rooflines within sight.
"Neither do I, Nassiri. We can blame Lt. Underpants if we get out of this without having our asses handed to us."
"I thought you were gonna keep us poor saps alive, Papa Bear," Angel quipped from the trail position, as he nudged PFC Michael "Doc" Smith, one of the platoon medics, a few feet forward to get away from an alley entrance.
"Just keep your ears open and your mouths shut, and you'll come away without any permanent holes. Let's turn this rat hole over and see what scurries out."
"Wait, Sarge," Smoke whispered from the rear of the squad. He cocked his M-249 and listened in the darkness. "Someone's comin'. I can hear two sets of footsteps."
"Angel, lay eyes on with Smoke and report," Scream ordered. Meanwhile, Dim, Doc and Tariq clustered near the front door of the suspect house.
"Sarge, it's Mrs. B and Doublewide," Angel reported within seconds of being ordered to cover Smoke. "We're all coming to you."
When the squad reformed in front of the house, Scream glared at the two women as they cradled their M-16's in the dark. "What the hell are you two doing up here? We're on a tight time line. Underpants wants this house hit before first light."
"The lootenant sent us up here to help you," Mrs. B replied. "He was gettin' sick of us sittin' around the platoon CP."
"That dumb bastard's gonna get us all killed somehow," Dim mumbled under his breath.
"Stow it, people," Scream growled. "Okay. Here's the deal. I can use your guns for sure. Mrs. B and Doublewide, you two secure this entry point. We're gonna sweep the house an' haul out any prisoners we find for the spooks to interrogate. If you see anyone with guns in the street that ain't wearing Army camo, you sing out and fire warning shots. They take a crack at you, you have my permission to drop their asses in the dust."
Scream eyed the women through his green night vision goggles, gauging their expressions. "Know this, you two. There won't be any dumb shit, hear me? Don't get yourselves shot. And don't kill any civilians. Underpants'll have a field day if he finds out you iced a civvie. Other than that, you're on the team, so let's kick some ass."
Tariq braced himself against the door jamb, reaching for the knob with a small breaching charge ready to slap against the lock. Scream and Smoke trained their weapons on the doorway from a few feet away, while the rest of the squad lined up to follow them in.
"Do it Nassiri!" Scream ordered.
Mehal Wakhar glanced at her digital clock, wishing she could fall back to sleep. 5:43 AM. Her eyes began to drift shut as she rested her head back onto her pillow. Then the sheard the muffled THUMP from downstairs...
Next Part: House to House
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