Team Razor

Mosul, Iraq

Chago’s mother named him Chao Chen Goh after his great-grandfather, who was a national hero in China for his courage under fire in World War II. She’d been furious when her son’s drill sergeant started calling him “Chago” in basic training and her anger soared to DEFCON 1 when the name stuck. The fact that a dozen years later he was a decorated US Special Forces staff sergeant and an elite Tier II operator did little to help her get over it. Chago knew she never would, but that was okay with him. Nickname aside, he was sure there was no better way to honor his great-grandfather’s legacy than by being part of America’s tip of the spear in the war on terror.

This was Chago’s eighth deployment. On several of his tours he’d worked directly with the Kurdish forces in Northern Iraq and spent several years living in and around Mosul. Back then it had been a bustling city with a thriving middle class, thanks in large part to the constant flow of “black gold” being pumped out of the nearby oil fields.

Not anymore, Chago thought as he looked through the narrow rear window of the M-ATV (Mine Resistant Ambush Protected-All Terrain Vehicle). He saw heatwaves rippling across a flat open area of a once lively residential neighborhood. The streets were now eerily quiet and the apartment buildings had been reduced to rubble by a joint Iraqi and US Coalition attack on ISIS forces in this sector the day before.

Looks deserted… But the tangos are out there… Watching. Just waiting for a clear shot, he thought.

Chago knew there were Special Ops snipers, drones and Joint STARS surveillance planes monitoring their AO (area of operation), but he still scanned the few buildings that remained standing for threats. He was focused on a caved-in apartment complex when he heard Staff Sgt. Bobby Floyd’s voice over the roar of the M-ATV’s 370 horsepower 7.2 liter engine:

“Just so you know, Chago, inside this here truck we speak our minds,” Bobby said from the driver’s seat.

Eight deployments and this dude’s treating me like a Gomer fresh out of boot camp, Chago thought. He wasn’t mad though. He was the new guy on the team and was keenly aware that he was the replacement for Bobby’s best friend, Staff Sgt. Able Diaz, who had been KIA in an op just a few months earlier.

“That’s cool with me,” Chago said from his rear seat directly behind Bobby’s.

“Well I’m just tickled to death that it’s cool with you, because on this deployment we ain’t gonna be holding your hand and hugging it out when one of us says something that hurts your feelings,” Bobby said.

“Good to know,” Chago said.

“Why’re you breaking his balls?” Staff Sgt. Maceo “Mace” Hendricks asked.

“I’m not,” Bobby said. “I’m letting him know how things work around here. It don’t bother me none that he puts soy sauce on his cheeseburgers, but being a Chinaman I expect he’s a little more sensitive than the rest of us.”

“Asian-American,” Chago said.

“Come again?” Bobby asked.

“He said he’s Asian-American. Not a ‘Chinaman,’” said Chief Warrant Officer Bear Bernstein, who was sitting in the front passenger seat next to Bobby.

“You see! That’s exactly what I’m talking about. I call you the Jew and you’re not offended because you love your heritage. I call Mace the Black Guy and he may not like it, but he’s enlightened. What you call forward thinking, because being the musical prodigy that he is, he knows I may be a Kentucky redneck, but I’m way blacker than he’ll ever be.”

“You’ve never called me ‘the Jew,’” Bear said.

“And you’ve never called me ‘the black guy,’” Mace said.

“That’s only because you’re both so abnormally large I know you’d kick my ass.”

“So what’s your fuckin’ point?” Mace asked.

“I only speak one language. Down home, grade A, good ol’ Kentucky boy English. It’s my understanding that our new friend, Mr. Chago, here, speaks six.”

“And…?” Bear asked.

“He ain’t saying it, but he’s thinking all kinds of fucked up shit about us in six different languages. That just ain’t right,” Bobby said with a big grin on his face.

That got them all laughing.

“You’re just pissed off and talking trash because you didn’t check the AC before we left the base,” Mace said. He felt like he was sitting on a wet sponge as he moved from side to side in his seat, then slammed his right forearm and fist against the M-ATV’s heavily armored rear passenger door in frustration.

The truck’s three-inch-thick bullet-resistant windows, designed to save lives in combat, didn’t open out or roll down, and temperatures inside the M-ATV were already up over a hundred and rising. The four elite US Special Forces operators sitting inside the mobile hot box baked in their seats with sweat dripping down from under their helmets and tac vests.

Chago opened a water bottle, tilted his head up and splashed water on his face: “I’m melting in here, man,” he said.

“Feels like I’m dipping my balls in a bowl of soup,” Bear Bernstein said.

“Matzo ball soup?” Bobby asked.

“Had to go there, didn’t you?” Bernstein shot back.

“Yeah, I did and speaking of food,” Bobby said as he pulled off his helmet, ran a callused hand across his shaved scalp and felt the heat coming off it: “I can fry a fuckin’ egg on my head.”

Their SOCOM (Special Operations Command) M-ATV variant was a million-dollar twelve-ton armored truck with a busted AC. Not busted all the way, just enough to piss everyone off when a trickle of chilled air came through the vents every two minutes, then crapped out again.

“You triple checked everything except the Goddamn air, didn’t you?” Mace asked Bobby.

Before they left their temporary COP (Combat Outpost) in the desert, they’d done a thorough PCI (Pre-Combat Inspection) followed by a PCC (Pre-Combat Check) to make sure all their comms gear and every single weapon was working. After the radios checked out, they test-fired their 9mm SIG P226 sidearms, M4A1 rifles and the dual roof-mounted 240 Bravo .50 caliber machine guns into the base’s firepit to make sure they were all fully operational. The only weapon they hadn’t test-fired was the roof-mounted Mk 19 grenade launcher, and as for the AC, well, Bobby could answer that…

Bobby, in the driver’s seat, turned and looked over his shoulder at Mace, the truck’s gunner, who was sitting diagonally behind him in the right rear passenger seat. Bobby shouted into his lip mic. “I turned the truck on and the fuckin’ AC was working. How the hell was I supposed to know it was gonna die on us?” he asked.

Mace used his fingers to hold his nose: “Damn Bobby,” he said.

“What?” Bobby asked.

“You got smoke and flames coming out your grill, bro. You brush your teeth since we deployed to Iraq?” Mace asked.

Bobby started to fire something back, but chose the classic non-verbal response instead. He raised his right hand, closed his fist, extended the middle finger.

“Thanks for not speaking. Stick to hand signals from here on,” Mace said.

“Asshole,” Bobby said.

“Dude, for the sake of the team you gotta work on your oral hygiene. Until then, think of your face as a claymore and keep your Front Towards Enemy.” Mace lowered his lip mic, tilted up his water bottle to cover his smile, and then took a few long swallows to keep himself from laughing.

Bear did his best to tune out the bullshit his sergeants were giving each other while he listened to mission updates on his SINCGARS (Single Channel Ground and Airborne Radio System). He was also watching the action in real-time on an 8 x10 inch monitor.

For today’s op Bear and his SF staff sergeants were acting as advisors to the Iraqi Army, trailing half a mile behind an Iraqi Counter Terror Service armored column. The column was working its way towards a sector in Mosul that was still under ISIS control. In addition to Bear, Mace, Bobby, and Chago’s M-ATV, there were six larger eighteen-ton MRAPs in a staggered line behind them, acting as rear security for the Iraqi lead elements.

Chago reached over and tapped Bear on the shoulder and asked: “Chief, at your three o’clock, is that what I think it is?”

Bear used his sleeve to wipe beads of sweat off his face, then scratched at his rough beard before turning his head to the right to look through the M-ATV’s side window. He didn’t detect a threat warning in Chago’s voice, so he took his time scanning the neighborhood that had been liberated from ISIS just two days ago. Liberated, in this sector anyway, meant flattened.

When a few hundred ISIS fighters who were dug in and bunkered up in dozens of buildings had refused to surrender, the team’s GCC (Ground Combatant Commander) had ordered the coalition bombers to take them out. Bear looked over at the devastating effects of five-hundred-pound bombs dropped from twenty thousand feet up by the B-52s, and from the lower level precision air-to-ground attacks by the F-15E Strike Eagles. The three- and four-story enemy-occupied buildings were gone, pounded into mounds of bricks, concrete, and rebar with pieces of broken furniture and loose wires sticking up at odd angles.

Bear knew there was a whole lot of bad guys buried underneath the piles, but other than some dust swirls and a rangy black mutt with big patches of its fur burned away, he didn’t see anything moving. Even from ten yards out, he could see the dog’s skin was bright red and probably infected.

“Sergeant, if you think that’s a burnt-up dog then yeah, you’re right,” Bear said.

“Yeah, I know… but, what’s in its mouth?” Chago asked.

The dog was shaking its head from side to side, making it hard for Bear to get a clear view. When it stopped moving and turned towards him, he saw why his sergeant was so insistent. The dog had an arm in its teeth and was gripping it by the bicep. The arm was small, with two tiny bangle bracelets around the wrist, just above the little hand that hung limply down towards the ground.

“Shit,” Bear said.

Chago: “I’d like to shoot it and bury that arm.”

Bear nodded and said, “Know how you feel, but after you open that rear door and get taken out by an ISIS sniper, you’d have animal rights activists pissing on your grave for the next hundred years because you were KIA while trying to shoot a canine.”

“No doubt,” Chago said just as they all saw three emaciated dogs charge in and attack the burnt-up mutt. It was dead in seconds and the three starving survivors growled at each other as they ripped and tugged at the child’s arm.

“Get us the fuck outta here,” Bear said to Bobby.

“Copy that,” Bobby said, glad to be moving.

“TOC, this is Red One, We’re Oscar Mike,” Bear said into his radio, alerting the Tactical Operations Center that they were “on the move.”

Bear, Bobby, Mace and Chago were part of a twelve-man Special Forces A-Team, call sign Razor, and they’d spent most of the day watching a shootout between dueling ISIS and Iraqi artillery batteries that managed to hit just about everything except each other. Barrage after barrage of 122 and 105mm rounds crumpled buildings and destroyed entire neighborhoods. US F-16 and coalition airstrikes were far more precise in their targeting, but added to the chaos on the ground where fires raged throughout the war-torn city.

The desert sun did its part too, torturing Team Razor along with half a million terrified civilians suffering through another day without power or running water. The Iraqis baked in their homes, their windows shut and sealed to protect them from the late afternoon breeze that guided massive plumes of toxic smoke from burning oil fields across Mosul. The black clouds were nearly as deadly as the artillery shells and had already killed thousands of the young, the old and the infirm. The windows stayed shut until the wind died, while the bombs kept falling.

A fly buzzed around inside the team’s truck as they drove slowly through the wrecked neighborhood. Their M-ATV was designed with a V-shaped hull to deflect IED (Improvised Explosive Device) blasts away from the crew, but it was defenseless against winged insects.

Chago swatted at it. “I think I got him,” he said, just as the fly landed on his right cheek and took a sharp bite out of him. “Son of a bitch!” he shouted.

“You’re screwed, dude,” Mace said.

“Whattaya mean?” Chago asked, wiping a trickle of blood from his cheek.

“That’s an ISIS fly, bro. They have them bite the mullahs, then send them out to recruit new members,” Mace said with a straight face.

Chago looked over with a raised eyebrow and chuckled: “You’re so full a shit, Mace.”

“Laugh all you want, but we’ve all seen it.”

“Comes on quick too,” Bobby said, looking back over his shoulder at Chago as he drove. “In a few hours you’re gonna be prepping for your trip to paradise, stuffing C-4 and det cords under your tac vest.”

“Better take his ammo,” Bear said from the front passenger seat.

“Assholes,” Chago said, shaking his head.

It had only been four weeks since he’d been assigned to Razor and he knew the veteran members were still breaking his balls to break the ice. Honored to be a part of this elite team, he had no problem taking a little shit from these legendary warriors.

Chago was briefed on Razor’s history and the heavy casualties the Special Forces A-Team had taken over the past six months. Their OIC (Officer in Charge) and four sergeants were killed in an ambush in Afghanistan, another sergeant was killed in a separate op off the coast of Yemen, and John Bishop, their 18B weapons sergeant and one of the most decorated soldiers in American history, left the Army and was now a civilian. Despite these losses, Razor was now fully operational and the replacements, including the new OIC and NCO Chao Chen Goh, were all combat veterans with multiple deployments to both Iraq and Afghanistan.

Bear, Bobby, Mace and Chago were the lead in a line of seven armored vehicles driving a half mile behind an Iraqi column of trucks and tanks. The column was fighting its way through Mosul to rescue a company that was surrounded and about to be overrun by ISIS jihadists. The M-ATV and the big eighteen-ton MRAPs (Mine-Resistant Ambush-Protected vehicles) were tasked with rear security in case any Islamic State fighters tried to sneak in from behind and back-shoot the main column.

“They’re looking good,” Mace said, nodding his head in approval as the Green Beret advisors watched a live feed delivered to their monitors by a drone flying high above the action.

“Long as they stay on the main road they’ll have plenty of room to maneuver,” added Bobby.

Right on cue the Iraqi commander ordered the armored column to turn left onto a side street.

“God damn it!” Bear shouted, his voice amplified by the tight confines inside the M-ATV.

“Bad move,” said Chago.

The side street was a tight squeeze for the Iraqi armor, and once all the M1A1 Abrams tanks, Humvees and troop carriers were bunched together in the narrow road, thirty ISIS fighters immediately opened up on them with AK-47s on full auto. Hundreds of 7.62×39mm rounds pinged off the steel-plated vehicles.

The Iraqis returned fire, blasting away with turret- and roof-mounted .50 caliber machine guns. Five ISIS attackers were flattened by the heavy rounds, and the survivors ducked into doorways and fled around corners. None of the Iraqis were hit by the small arms fire, but these seasoned soldiers had learned some hard bloody lessons in the battle for Mosul… they all knew what was coming next.

From four blocks away, two technicals (white Toyota pickups with heavy weapons in the truck beds), accelerated towards the lead M1A1. The tank gunner fired his 120mm main gun and the first pickup erupted in a fireball. The second Toyota came to a stop after being riddled with rounds from the tank’s .50 cal. There was a brief moment of silence followed by a massive explosion when the dead driver’s hand released its grip on the detonator, and fifty pounds of ordnance lit off.

From side streets four more cars raced towards the center of the column, and again the battle-tested Iraqis blew them to pieces before the drivers got close enough to self-detonate and inflict any damage.

“Not too shabby,” Bobby said with pride.

Bear, Bobby, Mace and Chago had spent weeks training the Iraqis in advance of the offensive to displace ISIS from Mosul.

“Didn’t like that turn off the main road, but these guys are really good,” Bear said. “Way better than what we saw back in ‘07 through ‘09,” he added.

“Yeah, they got game,” Bobby said. “Wonder when these ISIS boys are gonna get tired of gettin’ splattered. Only thing they’re blowing up is themselves.”

“And civilians,” Mace added.

Chago made eye contact with Mace and nodded his head in agreement. “Roger that,” he said, recalling the intelligence briefing that detailed many of the horrors that ISIS was inflicting on Mosul’s civilian population. As ISIS fighters lost more and more ground, they were increasingly targeting the locals, initially through sniper fire and IED attacks, but now they were going house to house, killing the men and abducting the women.

Over the roar of M1A1 cannons and heavy machine guns, all four Green Berets heard the radio warning from a Joint STARS surveillance plane flying thirty thousand feet above the city to the Iraqi commander of the armored column:

“Big Eye to Bravo One. Artillery fire. I say again… Incoming.”