Dark Days: A Ryan Weller Prequel (EBOOK)

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CHAPTER 1
Afghanistan 2014

Sweat rolled down Ryan Weller’s forehead and ran into his eyes. It fell in droplets from his chin, and he shook his head to fling the water off. While a small flow of air kept the bomb suit’s visor from fogging up, it did little for the rest of his body. Perspiration soaked his clothes, and he breathed through his mouth to avoid the foul stench of his body odor.
The 120-degree heat trapped within the interior of the 75-pound Kevlar and ballistic nylon suit felt like it was cooking Ryan alive. Outside, the sunbaked desert landscape temperatures topped a sizzling 95 degrees.
The U.S. Navy Explosive Ordnance Disposal Technician, Petty Officer First Class (EOD1), crawled forward on his hands and knees toward the suspected Improvised Explosive Device, still fifty feet away. The team had identified it as a 122-millimeter Russian-made artillery shell rigged with a cell phone detonator. Ryan was making “the long walk” to examine it up close.
An Army squad had spotted the IED and called in the EOD team. While they waited for EOD to work their magic, the Army squad had spread out around the village’s squat homes and mud huts to provide security. Members of the eight-man Navy Special Operations team augmented the security force and listened to Ryan’s reports over wireless headsets.
Ryan had to sweep every inch of ground between the EOD van and the primary bomb for secondary devices. While it was his nature to charge forward, Ryan slowed his mind. He concentrated on each rock, bush, scrap of paper, garbage bag, old rag, and any other item that could hide a weapon of destruction.
The troubleshooter knew that someone held another cell phone, most likely identical to the one attached to the IED with its number pre-programmed on speed dial. The bomb makers liked to wait until the EOD tech was squatting over the bomb before detonating it. Then, there was the possibility of snipers, who would shoot to wound, leaving the tech to lie in the dirt, bleeding and in agony. Those who tried to rescue the tech became targets of opportunity. The Taliban bomb makers were ruthless, and they’d perfected a myriad of ways to screw up a bomb tech’s day: booby traps, trip wires, motion sensors, armed raids on the bomb site, and suicide bombers, to name a few.
Ryan asked himself again why he had chosen to become a bomb tech. He could have been a boatswain’s mate chipping paint or an aviation electronics technician fixing radar and radios. Although the Navy needed those ratings, they weren’t right for him. Ryan needed to challenge himself, and he had chosen this job because Navy EOD worked underwater and deployed with Special Forces. As far as EOD teams went, the Navy was the elite of the elite.
Easing forward, Ryan did his best not to disturb the ground around him. His fingers moved a small rag doll someone had dropped. Covered in moon dust, a fine powder-like substance pervasive in the Middle East, the doll had lost one eye and patches of hair. He wondered if the little girl who’d dropped the doll missed it. Ryan checked it for a possible IED and then tossed it aside.
Under a bush, Ryan saw a secondary device: a six-inch round metal canister with clear packing tape holding hundreds of nails to the outside. A detonator wire snaked into a hole in the top of an inch-high neck. Groaning in disgust, Ryan wormed his way toward it. He stopped when he spotted a thin tripwire running across his path.
“What’s going on?” EOD1 Jackie Hudson asked.
“Got another IED,” Ryan said. He liked having Jackie on the other end of the line. She sat in the armored truck that carried their gear, staring at the live video feed from the camera strapped to Ryan’s helmet. Jackie had come through the EOD pipeline at the same time as Ryan, so they were old friends. She wore her sandy blonde hair in a French braid and tucked it inside her uniform blouse. The long sleeves of her blouse covered the tattoos that inked her right arm from wrist to shoulder. He knew her to be a cool professional. She was the lead tech on this walk and had the final say on what happened downrange, even though Lieutenant Greg Olsen would oversee every move while leaning against the back of the van.
“Where’s the wire go?” Jackie asked her tech.
“Give me a minute,” Ryan said while edging closer. His eyes scanned every inch of ground between himself and the bomb for pressure triggers, motion sensors, or a command wire running back to the cell phone on the 122mm shell. If the Taliban detonated the nail bomb right then, Ryan would be a goner. The suit could deflect some of the blast, but it wouldn’t stop the nails from impaling his body. He exhaled a long, slow breath and closed his salt-stung eyes.
If only I could get a breath of fresh air.
The heat, sweat, and lack of air inside the suit triggered a feeling of claustrophobia in Ryan. It was always this way when he got hot in the suit. His skin prickled, and his muscles ached.
“Fight through it,” he instructed himself through gritted teeth. Focusing on the bomb, he started a breathing exercise to help combat his rising heart rate and to quell the panic in his chest.
“Take your time, Ry,” Jackie’s soothing voice purred over the radio. “You got this.”
“Yeah,” he said, gazing at the tripwire. It crossed his path and disappeared into a bush. He traced the wire through the leaves to where it wrapped around a thick branch approximately four inches off the ground.
“I’m cutting the wire.” Ryan pulled a set of side-cutting pliers from his tool pouch and carefully snipped the trip wire.
As Ryan circled the nail bomb, he swept his small metal detector across the rocky soil, searching for more triggers. The bomb maker had taped a motorcycle battery to the canister and then soldered the detonator leads to the battery’s terminals to provide power to the cell phone trigger and detonator.
“At least we know it’s not attached to the other bomb,” Jackie said.
“Are there any other triggers?” Greg asked.
“Don’t know, boss,” Ryan said. The two men were often mistaken for brothers. They were both six feet tall, with brown hair and similar builds.
“It’s got a motion sensor,” EOD2 Jeff Nelson said, his Louisiana bayou accent coming through the radio, adding, “See that plastic tube on top of the battery? That looks like the lean angle sensor on my motorcycle.” Jeff had a small collection of motorcycles and was a certified Yamaha and Suzuki technician. He worked part-time at a shop in Virginia Beach when the team wasn’t on deployment.
“That’s new,” Ryan said, commenting on a twist the bomb makers had added to their repertoire.
“Can you cut the wire from the battery?” Greg asked.
“Ryan, come back, and we’ll send Johnny 5,” Jackie said, referring to the Talon robot that reminded the team of the tracked vehicle from the movie Short Circuit.
“Roger that,” Ryan replied, sliding backward into the narrow corridor he’d already cleared. He got to his feet and walked to the van.
Ryan pulled off his helmet and let the fresh air wash over him. Greg handed him a Gatorade and a towel to wipe his face. They watched as EOD3 Brian “Red” Spencer—so-called because of his thick pelt of bright-red body hair—ran Johnny 5 down to the nail bomb. He was a master at manipulating robots, having grown up in front of a video game console. Red used the cutters on the robot’s arm to deftly snip the wires to the battery.
“What do you want to do with it?” Red asked, hovering the robot’s claw over the bomb.
“Bring it back so we can see what that tube is,” Greg said. “I don’t want to feed Nelson’s ego, but we need to know if he’s right.”
Red hunched over the controls again, his eyes fixed on the small video monitor. He made Johnny 5 grab the bomb by the neck and lift it.
Suddenly, the little robot disappeared in a blinding flash. Nails and metal shards rained down all around the blast site.
Ryan dove into the dirt, rolling away from the van as everyone else scattered.
Fortunately, the EOD van wasn’t close enough for the shrapnel to hit it.
Jeff Nelson spit a stream of tobacco juice on the ground. “Guess that there was a motion sensor on a backup battery.”
“Goodbye, Johnny 5,” Red whispered sadly.
They stared at the burning bush that marked Johnny 5’s last stand.
“I do believe the good Lord is trying to talk to us,” EOD2 Kenny Moazzami said, scratching his cheek. Even though he was nearly twenty-five years old, a web of acne scars and whiteheads covered his face. “Which one of you is Moses?”
“Shut up, Moz,” Jackie said.
“Yeah, have some reverence,” Senior Chief Paul Vrebal said. He was the newcomer, having joined the team in-country to fill the Chief’s billet. As the senior First Class on the team, Ryan had been performing the Chief’s duties up to that point. He had been glad to turn them over and get back to working the bombs. His occupation of the billeting slot would almost assure him a promotion to Chief during the next examination cycle.
Ryan pulled his helmet out from where it had rolled beneath the truck when he’d dived for safety. He wiped the dust off the faceplate. “Shall we get back to it?”
“You good to go?” Greg asked.
“Unless you want to shoot that cell phone with a sniper rifle,” Ryan said.
“Probably not a good idea,” Greg replied, turning to look downrange at the bomb.
“Well, we’re fresh out of robots, so it’s just me.” Ryan put the helmet back on.
“Hold on,” Greg said. “Your idea to shoot it isn’t bad. Take the water disrupter.”
Jeff and Red scrambled to get the powerful water cannon and its collapsible stand out of the truck.
“Comms check,” Jackie said over the radio.
“Five-by-five,” Ryan replied, also signaling Okay with his fingers.
“Good luck,” Greg said, slapping his friend on the back.
Ryan walked along his cleared path to where Johnny 5’s track base smoldered beside the blackened branches of the bush. He kicked the robot. “Thanks for taking one for the team, Johnny.”
Once past the burning bush, Ryan got down on his hands and knees and began the slow creep forward. He swept the metal detector back and forth, scanning each stone and bush for more secondary devices.
It took another thirty minutes for him to move to the “game show,” or primary bomb site. He got up on his haunches and squatted over the artillery shell. Like every other shell used to build an IED, the brass tip housing the point detonating fuse, which allowed the shell to explode on impact, had been removed. The insurgents had packed Russian PVV-5A plastic explosives around a detonator inside the threaded fuse well, and electrical tape held an ancient Nokia cell phone to the shell casing. Ryan counted five wires sprouting out of the back of the phone. One wire ran to the detonator in the nose of the 122mm shell.
“Does that thing have enough juice to detonate five bombs?” Ryan asked, wondering if the tiny phone battery could ignite all the bombs on its circuit.
“It must,” Jackie replied.
Ryan pulled the water disrupter and its stand from his pouch. He set up the stand and positioned the disrupter to fire a high-pressure blast of water at the phone, destroying it and eliminating its ability to detonate the bomb. Ryan plugged the control leads into the back of the silver disrupter tube. Just as he was about to stand, the display on the cell phone lit up. He froze as adrenaline flared in his gut and rushed through his limbs.
“Oh, shit,” he muttered.
“Don’t ‘oh, shit’ me,” Jackie said. “What’s going on?”
“Someone’s calling the phone.”
“Why are you still standing there?” Greg demanded.
Ryan leaned forward. By all rights, he should have been pink mist. He couldn’t tear his eyes away from the tiny screen, watching it until the call ended. Every flash of the incoming number meant a spark of electricity might detonate the bomb and kill him. Ryan was thankful he was already on his knees, or they would have buckled a long time ago.
“Seven missed calls,” Ryan read out loud.
“Don’t fire the disrupter,” Greg said. “We need that phone. We can trace the calls.”
Ryan knew the lieutenant was right, but he also knew whoever was on the other end of the line was using a burner phone. The best they could hope for was to ping the towers and trace the burner to an area of operation. Only then would they stand a chance of uncovering a lead to the bomb makers and a potential treasure trove of intelligence and material their lair might contain.
Ryan used a utility knife to slice away the electrical tape that held the phone to the mortar shell, and then he carefully lifted the phone and snipped all the wires attached to it. Whoever had built this bomb had done a shitty job of soldering the detonator connections to the battery terminals. The positive wires fell off as Ryan turned the Nokia over to examine it.
The tension eased from Ryan’s shoulders. The end was in sight. He slipped the phone into his tool pouch and shifted to the front of the 122mm to remove the detonator from the plastic explosive. Ryan eased the silver tube out of the clay-like material and laid it on the ground.
A small plume of dust exploded by Ryan’s right knee, peppering his leg with debris. Before he could register the near miss of a sniper’s bullet, a volley of return fire erupted from the Army soldiers. Ryan flung himself to the ground, willing the men to kill the sniper.
“Get out of there, Ryan!” Jackie yelled.
Ryan wanted to get up and run. The only safe path through the torrent of bullets was the path he’d cleared to the van in plain view of everyone. Sweat rolled down Ryan’s face, and his breathing increased.
Why is this suit so damned hot!
Gunfire raged around him as he lay on his belly, staring at the nose of the Russian artillery round. Ryan had rendered safe the cell phone and the detonator, but that didn’t mean something else couldn’t cause the shell to explode. He reached out with his pliers, snipped the leads on the detonator, and shoved it into his pouch.
The firefight trickled to sporadic pops. Ryan lifted his head to see troopers breaking down a door at the end of the street. Two minutes later, they called an “all-clear” over the radio. They had killed the sniper.
“Let’s find out where those other det cords go,” Greg said. “Ryan, get back here and hydrate. Moz and Nelson, start tracing leads.”
Two hours later, the team had recovered four more 122mm rounds. The planters had buried them in a line along the road. If they’d gone off, the middle one would have taken out the EOD van. The team moved the unexploded ordnance to a slight depression outside the village, rigged it with blocks of C-4 explosive, and blew it sky high.
The EOD team grouped around the van to watch the fireball roll into the air.
Standing with his arms crossed over his broad chest, Greg said, “EOD—where every day’s a blast.”