Crimson Letters From Kandahar Province

CRIMSON LETTERS

FROM

KANDAHAR PROVINCE

Ian DG Sandusky

A Wild Wolf Publication

Published by Wild Wolf Publishing in 2011

Copyright 2011 Ian DG Sandusky

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system or transmitted in any form or by any means without the prior written permission of the publishers, except by a reviewer who may quote brief passages in a review to be printed by a newspaper, magazine or journal.

First print

All Characters appearing in this work are fictitious. Any resemblance to real persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.

ISBN: 978-1-907954-09-2

www.wildwolfpublishing.com

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For my parents, Mary and Peter.

Without you, there would have never been a way.

The familiar is a funny thing, really.

To most it brings calming notes of tranquility – opportunities to lose oneself in the glow of nostalgia.

The familiar to others, however; is something unimaginable.

Something begging to be smothered.

Something dwelling just beneath the surface of a cold, smooth lake;

threatening to burst forth from the fetid water at any moment.

When destiny unravels, only one thing will remain.

The letters from a time forgotten.

Chapter I

It embodied the kind of place where even Satan himself would feel unwelcome. The dry air hung around his head in abrasive waves. Bombed out buildings stacked each side of the road; looming husks hanging in the late-afternoon light. The dusty sand road passed under the wheels of the Canadian Forces LAVIII as smoothly as the Southern Ontario tarmac that usually rolled under his former pickup’s rubber.

Quince peered across the barren landscape through his Oakley ballistic glasses from underneath his CG634 helmet. He scanned from left to right, checking the windows on the way up for jundi fighters trying to be the new mujahideen.

No surplus Soviet automatic rifles leered back from the gaping maws that hung as wide as toothless mouths in the sandstone buildings. No anti-materiel rifles either, he noted; thanking the God he wasn’t sure had a vested interest in him or not.

The Middle-Eastern sky shone brilliantly in a robin’s egg blue, interrupted by clouds hanging lazily in its midst. Quincent Meyer hated the cramped rear-seat of the Light Armored Vehicle he droned along the Afghani hardpan in. The buildings on either side were riddled with spent jacketed rounds that had met their ends in rough hewn brick, instead of shattering collarbones with exit-wounds.

Afghanistan could be known to none as paradise, and it certainly wasn’t any tropical retreat. Moisture always stayed at a premium, along with common dignity, respect, and the will to survive.

Actually, the will to survive here bordered on obscene – had Quince been thrown on the street, he likely would have offed himself sooner than you could say Osama Bin Laden. It had become bad enough that when outfitted in full BDU, the common ISAF Infantryman could make his undershirt stand upright when dried after a patrol in the inhospitable wasteland.

You couldn’t even spit in these parts without the ground hungrily lapping up the available liquid. You’d breathe, and the wind would thieve the humidity from the exhalation. You’d sweat, and the sun would burn the beads from the skin as fast as it could be excreted. The people that lived here had to be more resilient than he could imagine. The very landscape toiled against them, trying to force them off what nature intended to be uninhabited property.

Quince despised the land here in Kandahar Province. It lay rocky. It slept arid. It was repulsive. It looked alright in a picture, maybe even romantic. There were towering mountains peppered with caves that cast intricate shadows into the stony valleys as yet another day came to an end. Another day wasted in this hell.

Quincent Lee Meyer rode on patrol with the Royal Canadian Regiment, 4th Battalion; currently fulfilling its International Security Assistance Force duties. Security assistance? He didn’t know who they were assisting particularly. The Afghani soldiers they were training to be the replacement after the ISAF pulled out were coming along nicely, but they had a rather annoying habit of disappearing to participate in insurgent raids on forward posts.

It became incredibly grating when gratitude for battlefield education came back at you at three-hundred feet per second. The only person that this ISAF soldier felt he assisting was himself. And hopefully it pays off.

The patrol embodied nothing outside of routine, four LAV’s with seven infantrymen a-piece out for a Sunday drive. Two days ago, a convoy bringing food to the Red Cross distribution centre fell upon an ambush. That in itself in Kandahar was as commonplace as a red light in New York City.

Improvised Explosive Devices, jundi bombs, were the biggest threat they encountered on a daily basis on patrol. The big skirmishes had faded, and had been replaced with a deadly game of hide and seek.

Insurgents hid Russian-surplus tank or anti-tank shells beneath the sand along the sides of the road, with detonators leading out to where the LAVIII’s tire treads would most likely find them. They used to hide them right in the road itself, but the advent of the armored bottom (unlike the pauvre American G-Wagens) came a switch of tactics. But the change of tactics seen two days ago at the site of the ambush were more chilling than the mere change of placement for a warhead from the seventies.

Quince had seen the surviving tapes of it in his morning patrol brief.

It was nothing short of twisted, the things they made you do in the army. It wasn’t bad enough that he had lost fourteen of his brothers in arms, but he had to see exactly how it went down.

Watch steel enter flesh.

Watch life fade from their eyes.

To Quincent it was nothing short of an unbearable sight, but it was inherently necessary to better understand the foe he had been sent across the Atlantic Ocean to overcome. Wars were won on intelligence as much as they were by bombs and tanks. Fighting an opponent that vanished into the darkness as soon as you looked away required every advantage possible, even if it meant watching his friends die.

Fuckers.

The convoy had been heading down a street similar to the one he rode down now – narrow, dirty, and bordered on either side by high-walled abandoned structures. A pair of LAVIII’s led the way and followed behind a Red Cross truck, headed for the Aid station. The eight-wheeled sentries basked like giant lizards in the heat, their top-mount 25mm M242 Autocannons glittering like scales.

The gritty view from the helmet-mount cam offered little in the way of detail beyond fifty meters or so, but that was all you needed. The LANDWARRIROR system, the combat information system of the future, was many still years away despite the military’s best claims, but it was coming as inevitably as George Jetson’s grave.

Seven men rode in each General Electric LAV, the camera’s view being from one riding in the rear of the convoy. The soldiers faces were set, bronze casts in the mid-afternoon light. No emotion, no weakness. Golden gods in their own right, a platoon of Apollo’s streaming through a war-torn town. It truly was the shittiest kind of prophecy, knowing the end of this movie.

Despite knowing the outcome, while watching the film Quince had got that feeling.

That crawling, restless electricity flitting through his nerves. Hinky. That’s what the military men called it in the RCR. Hinky. When something brooded wrong but you didn’t know what. When something wicked this way came. When you wanted to run or shoot but couldn’t do either.

Hinky. Quince had known something about the scene felt downright hinky.

The foray started without warning. Most IED instances hit on open roads, where the patrol would be in a relative state of calm and security with nothing but sand to get in the way. The blasts would erupt from the side from abandoned vehicles, from behind rocks, or from the womb of the dust itself. This fared different.

The first blast had issued forth from beneath the lead personnel carrier. If the vehicle had been an earlier version prior to the retrofitted armor, it would have ripped the lines out and transformed the mover into a steel incinerator.

The LAV only jumped up in the edge of the flame, barely visible beyond the relief truck. At that moment, the real assault began. Materializing from thin air, terrorist fighters spewed forth from every window in the buildings, hammering down fire from all angles. AK-47’s probed the afternoon heat, jetting tongues of hate towards the exposed infantrymen below.

The men in the CADPAT Desert camouflage struggled to seek cover as jacketed slugs skittered around flak jackets, finding vital organs, defying the Kevlar. The audio feed registered spotty at best through the integrated helmet microphone, but the screams of wounded men resounded through the briefing room. Quince could hear clearly as his good friend Vic fell prey to the assault, run through by hot lead by the yelp of pain followed by howling screams.

Quince wanted to bury his head in his arms on top of the high school-esque desks that were standard issue for briefs, and feel the cold veneer on his forehead. He wanted to run from the room and stop hearing men finish their days that he had lifted beer-rations with, hearing about their prior lives on the mainland before being sent to this filthy sea.

The shots continued as the camera operator ducked for cover on the screen, shrouding themselves in three quarter-inch hardened steel from the metal hail descending without mercy. As the cameraman had glanced up, Quince couldn’t believe what he saw.

An Afghani man with a keffiyeh wrapped around his face stood mercilessly cracking off shots from a rifle almost as large as he was.

It was unmistakably a Steyr IWS 2000 anti-materiel rifle. Austrian made, and surely stolen, it was a gun worth over a quarter of a million dollars. Chambered for .50, it didn’t even shoot bullets, it shot kinetic kill vehicles for chrissakes. The thing could immobilize a tank in the hands of a trained user from a kilometer away, and here this jundi leaned out, merrily popping away from fifteen yards as if it were a child’s vermin gun.

It made his stomach roll, that this person – these people – were what he put his life on the line for daily.

They didn’t want him here, and he sure as shit didn’t want to be here anymore, so what the fuck was the point? This self-proclaimed mujahedeen held firm raining 207mm depleted uranium penetrators onto the ISAF the weapon had originally been sent to assist. Some Security Assistance Force, geniuses. Get your damn act straight and stop getting us killed by our own weapons.

Men were cut down like autumn timber, screaming like the trees never would.

The real shock came when the quivering camera operator looked over the brink to see the LAVIII leading the back careen upwards as what upon examination later discovered to be a PM-60 anti-tank mine of East German manufacture blew itself to smithereens.

The plastic-cased shaped charge turned the vehicle into a tumbling inferno, vaporizing those inside along with the rest of the non-metal contents. The aid-truck similarly rose in a column of expanding gases, sending hopes raining in smoldering pieces across the street.

The cameraman must’ve realized what horrific events were transpiring up ahead, and jumped from the cabin. He had risked putting himself of full view of the firing arcs. He had thrown himself into the flames. The epitome of desperation.

The feed jumped around before falling into the dust, showing the burning six-wheelers horizontally before the last Light Armored Vehicle opened its arms to be embraced by a billowing jet of fire, flash-frying the remaining crew before sending shrapnel flying in every direction. As the camera ceased its jerking movement, the platoon in the briefing were emotionlessly informed that the operator’s chest had been pierced by a fragment of the light-armor plating that formerly occupied a spot on the side of the Light Armored Vehicle before burying itself in PFC Chris Eichmann’s aorta, ending his short, twenty-one year life as it beat itself apart around the ragged metal shard.

The changed tactics had shaken the Land Forces Command higher-ups to the core. Some half-assed militia had out-smarted what could be considered a younger-brother to the most advanced military in the world. The one that liked to send Canadian men in as shock troops from the Second World War onwards.

These bastards were striking two hundred-thousand dollar vehicles down as they rolled, slaying trained operatives where they stood. It rang through the ranks as disconcerting, and the feeling had found its way down through informative sessions such as this.

The sergeant at the front of the briefing room had been incensed by the video viewing, and had taken each man’s struggle to heart.

Sgt. Handle had been so perturbed by the senseless waste of life that he had told them to take the lesson to heart, and be aware.

That was all.

No inspirational speeches about crusading into the godless wastes, no words of wisdom about maintaining spirit through undying patriotism towards the pseudo-modern country.

No, just a half-hearted mention to retain vigilance, and avoid catching a piece of spinning iron themselves.

Would be a real damn shame to waste the cash you invested in training me that way, wouldn’t it be, you Commissioned piece of shit.

So Quince rode high in his own LAVIII on this patrol, bravely enacting the Sergeant’s words.

He would show the unclean masses that we would not be intimidated by such an attack. No, we wouldn’t even acknowledge the fact that fourteen of our best friends have died, along with three relief workers volunteering to be in this shithole. This fucked up shithole.

Quincent rode high in the rear-seat of the LAV, mere inches from the main cannon that always made his ears ring in training. He hated this seat. Even on patrol, in this position you had to be as vigilant about insurgents taking pot-shots at you, as you had to watch out for the main gun swinging your way.

His listless brown eyes picked over the jundi-highrises, watching for any long-rifles coming his way. Finding the air above clear of protruding barrels, he reverted to scanning the thoughtless dust-devils swirling about the street.

Such whoresons. They didn’t even care about the men they put in the line of fire daily while they sat safely in air-conditioned field offices drinking Tim Horton’s coffee at forward-base Camp Rhino. Quince rode around in an outdated armored jeep with moisture pooling in his boots while the locals plotted revenge. Quince knew himself to be a man of few words, but shitty fucking deal came to mind at present.

It was the finest déjà vu. The same high walls passed by on either side. The claustrophobic street made him feel trapped, just as it had in the video. He wanted to scream. Wanted to run. Wanted nothing that came next.

The explosion that rang out in front of him couldn’t have been timed better by a Hollywood editor. The echoing crash reverberated throughout the small pass, making time stop in its tracks, pouring liquid nitrogen on the gears of the master clock.

It rippled outwards, a sound more truly felt than heard. It drove spikes of concussive wave through his heart, seeming to stop it dead. Ahead, the mounted infantry circled the metaphorical wagons as quickly as they could. Hatches were battened down as speedily as the human hands could snap them shut, and men ducked in similar fashion. The following LAVs, his included, pulled along the now-smoking wreckage of the lead armored jeep. Bullets began to fall, denting the steel and sending red spark streaks where they ricocheted.

Quincent took one final look around, the scene waiting for him to finish the action.

There came a sharp, blinding pain, and then everything went as black as a starless sky.

Chapter II

Quincent’s chest burned in lines carved by velocitized steel tearing through his muscles, connective tissue and cartilage. He could feel the segments of fragmented metal rip canals through his lungs, rend segments of flesh from his chest; streak across his face.

He awoke in typical fashion, sweating and freezing as the effects of the nightmare spirited away. The scars long healed still twinged intensely, sending spirals of forgotten pain through his body. Quince swiped at his right cheek where a particularly resentful chunk of shrapnel had ripped it wide open before the combat medic had sewn his ragged flaps of skin into unified pieces once again.

The sour sweat, the only physical remnant of the night terror, made the sheets stick to his muscular back and made him uncomfortable. His hands played over the raised scar tissue drawing tangled maps across the skin of his chest. They were embers burning brightly, and itched something awful.

Fuck.

He cursed the nighttime air that poured in through his window, sending the itching of a thousand ants across his epidermis. Shit, it was cold too. St. Albins, Ontario in September wasn’t exactly balmy, and certainly wasn’t tonight.

The wind coming through the screens to where he lay couldn’t have been more than a few degrees Celsius over freezing, but it made the crawling in his skin abate a little. That relief beyond words