The Rangers have the address of the place they are going to hit, and the layout. They have learned from far too many urban engagements how to play this. They take nothing for granted, they don’t underestimate their opponent, or overestimate their own prowess. This is always the worst part, putting the pieces in place. It is when they are most vulnerable and when you are least flexible to adjust the plan. None are worried, the soldiers have faith in their leaders, and the leaders have unwavering faith in their Rangers.
Their friends should be back, or called in that they killed the guy in the hospital. But it has been a while and no word. Not even anything on the news. They are starting to get worried, and one again their captive is muttering to himself.
“Energetically will I meet the enemies of my country. I shall defeat them on the field of battle for I am better trained and will fight with all my might. Surrender is not a Ranger word. I will never leave a fallen comrade to fall into the hands of the enemy and under no circumstances will I ever embarrass my country.”
The bad news that one of their own was killed only inspires the Rangers, the news that one of them might still be alive inspires them even more. As much as they hate it Bravo Company has to stay in place securing the hospital. Now Alpha gets a chance to get its hands dirty. Some people are pulling double duty, the recon elements are being yanked from certain positions to assist with the rescue. You want your sneakiest bastards going in for the take down.
Colonel Knight is waiting outside for Chong and Bell when they go rushing out. “I have a mission for you,” he says pulling Chong aside.
Command Sergeant Major Roc walks up and tosses something his way. Chong catches it easily, he opens his hand to see the three stripes of a Sergeant. He is getting promoted!
“We don’t have time to do this right,” Roc says, “you have proven yourself and we need you to lead a team on this. We will need a medic on scene in case our boy is injured. Are you up to it?”
“Yes Sergeant Major.”
Not that there was ever any doubt, then the commander puts his arm around the new Sergeant and leads him away to tell him of a mission that he will have a greater chance of success, than others.
Getting into position can be tricky, but while the building sleeps, getting to the roof is just a matter of not running into anyone who happens into the halls or stairwells at this ungodly hour. However once the fireworks start, getting out unseen will be a challenge.
Reconnaissance in an urban setting is a little more difficult than in the great outdoors. In the woods you can just sneak up with little chance of exposure. In the desert it is child’s play. You just have high power binos and look from far away. In an urban environment it is a little more tough.
They have to start almost half a mile away and sit and observe for a while. Then one team goes past the first and watches before signaling the next team up. They even do this bounding overwatch from rooftop to rooftop. The sniper teams climb to one roof, then spot a place for the next one. Slowly on the ground and up top the circle closes.
The sentries are easy to spot. They are the guys wandering up and down the street, they are also the ones adjusting weapons straps under their oversized jackets. They do move in a somewhat random pattern but nothing too difficult to beat. They are smart and even meander into the ally from time to time. On the target building roof there are two guys smoking cigarettes. From time to time they move to the edges and count the number of guards out there. They have exposed rifles however. Which means they will have to go first. The ones on the street might have concealed pistols, but more likely submachine guns.
The thing about being a good sentry is knowing how traffic flow, both vehicle and foot, is in your area throughout your shift. Just before dawn you get the hardcore partygoers stumbling home. There will be a van or two, usually delivery trucks making early morning runs. There is always a couple shift workers either coming home or heading out. A muscle car this time of night would stick out, but the minivan driving by wouldn’t raise suspicion. Anything parking too close would attract attention, so would a group of whites this deep into Chinatown.
By now, any white guys would have been harassed, beaten, or realized they were lost and left by now. A couple black guys are not so out of place, most likely a couple brothers who have yellow fever. Asian men and Black women are the two most unmarried groups in the country, for this very reason.
Boring guard duty breeds complacency, complacency breeds a lower state of awareness. That is not good to have in a sentry. So it takes a while for the pieces of the puzzle reveal the big picture. One of the rooftop guards stats scanning the scene below, something doesn’t seem right and maybe if he looks hard enough he can find the missing piece.
Sentries also usually smoke. It does two things, gives them something to do and gives them a shot of nicotine which helps them stay awake. However it does have a bad side effect (outside the lung cancer of course) lighting a match and putting it close to your face ruins your night vision. The light emanating from the ember burning towards your lips keeps your eyes from fully adjusting to the dark and you can’t see that the shadows are alive.
That light does illuminate your face when viewed by night vision devices. Three blocks away Isler watches a man smoke on top of the building. He lives as long as he keeps the weapon slung, as soon as he raises it, that cigarette and the face it is attached to is going to disappear.
As instructed the alley is walked a couple times a night. It can be kind of creepy, but being armed and having a bunch of armed friends nearby takes the power from the boogieman. If he would have had nightvision he might have seen the fireteam that is using the alley as an insertion point. He does not, and so he does not see them. When he is grabbed from behind his confidence disappears.
“Rangers motherfucker,” a voice hisses in his ear, “we own the night.” That is all he hears as his world fades from the blood choke put on him. He is gagged, disarmed, and restrained before he loses consciousness. Once satisfied that he has passed out, they throw his limp body into a nearby open dumpster.
“Got a light?” one of the passing partygoers asks one of the sentries on his way home.
That is when it hits him, there is a couple roving guards who should be out of the alleys by now, also the random people wandering the street are suddenly close to all the sentries on the ground. One lighting a cigarette for the pair of Asians, another three Asians are stumbling right into the path of a roving guard, and the two black guys are talking quite loudly drawing attention to themselves as they pass another.
Just as he draws in a deep breath the yell an alert, that breath is taken form him. No one hears the soft “thup, thup” from a couple blocks away.
“Roof clear,” the Isler reports.
Sergeant Chong cups his hands to block the wind from the flame. As soon as the piano wire goes over the man’s head, Chong drops the cigarette from his mouth and secures his hands. He follows the two to the ground.
A half block away that action attracted the attention of another sentry, as he reaches into his jacket to pull out his MP5K, he feels a knife enter between his ribs as a large black paw pulls the gun out of his hand. Distraction is only the friend of the one doing the distraction.
One Asian, stumbles into another, who pushes him off and right into a patrolling guard. The first two steps in his direction wild, the last is very deliberate. Too late does he realize that PFC Chin is about to take him out. In a blink the three rangers are on top of him and he gets the most efficient ass kicking of his life. It is quick, painful, and takes all the fight out of him in a matter of seconds. At least he is alive.
“Street clear.” is heard by all over the radio.
Phase one, insertion was done without incident. The first part of phase two, approach is complete, the guards are taken out and the teams now have to get in close. Isler starts at one end of the street, his spotter starts at the other as they shoot out the street lights with suppressed rifles. So far so good, however according to Murphy’s Law of Combat, no plan survives the first contact intact.
As soon as the street goes dark, two squads pour out of two nearby alleys. On the roofs to the North and South of the target building two man sniper teams appear. They are diagonal from each other so they can cover a alley and a street. Chong is the only one in street clothes that joins the assault team. He is handed his medic bag, body armor and rifle then falls into step with his entry team.
For some reason they are drawn into what their captive is saying. One has dropped to one knee so that he can better make out the words.
“Readily will I display the intestinal fortitude required to fight on to the Ranger objective and complete the mission, though I be the lone survivor.”
Unlike the teams you see in movies, there is no dramatic pause at the door, the one with the battering ram just busts the door and clears the way for the point man. The point man has just enough distance to give the ram space for a good backswing, however not enough that he isn’t through the door before all the splinters from the frame have hit the ground.
Inside they hear the crunch of the door getting crushed, knowing that there is another in the room to watch the captive, the one closest to the door heads into the hall to see what the source of the noise is. The other was kneeling listening to the last of the Ranger Creed when he is distracted by the noise from downstairs. Before he can realize what it is, he is taken out of the equation by a swift head butt. Not sure if that is enough, the Ranger topples his chair on top of his captor.
The first team heads right up the stairs, the second sweeps the first floor. The primary teams knows that they need to get to their brother before they can kill him. That is the hardest part of a rescue, getting to the captives before the captors have a chance to kill them.
They see a man shutting the room that their man is supposed to be in. The point man has a suppressed M4, it will give them an edge, if there are more targets for the rest of the team, they are in it too deep to need stealth anymore. Within twenty seconds of entry Chong is cutting Brown loose, immediately he starts treatment.
In that first minute the operation is going flawlessly. The first floor is cleared, the hostage is secured and the second floor is being covered. When the long burst of AK fire fills the building everything goes to shit.
Getting first hand intelligence is the best kind you can get. However when the people you are getting the information from need to be well informed. The ones they interrogated were not. For a large criminal organization, compartmentalizing information is good for survival. So when you send out prospects to your group to kill someone just out of surgery, they don’t have a lot of information to tell if they are caught. Unfortunately the information they did not have, would have been very valuable to have.
The Rangers were counting on their speed to get them in and out with minimal resistance. Once someone pops a can of firefight, the whole neighborhood would be up and it would be harder to extract with the police showing up. Taking down bad guys is what they do, but fighting local cops is not what they do. Running from them is fine; fighting is crossing a line none are willing to go near.
Everything was going smoothly, until they reached the end of the hall. No matter how well trained you are, or how practiced the movement you can only clear a building so fast. Any faster and you will miss something any slower and you lose the advantage of stealth and speed. It is in the room that is the farthest distance from the front door that the plan breaks down.
He opens the door and sees Rangers moving down the hall, he slams the door and dives for his rifle, lacking good discipline or shooting skills he just empties his gun t full auto at the door.
Rangers know better than to loiter in a hallway, and they also know not to hug the walls. Bullets tend to travel along the walls, so more towards the center is actually the safer place to be. As soon as the weapons starts firing, most drift into an open door or behind cover, the point man just drops to the floor.
At no point does his weapon leave his hands, he lands on his elbow with his rifle covering the door. As soon as the bullets stop firing he pops up and crashes through the door. He sees a surprised young man trying to eject the magazine. He gives him two rounds to the chest and sweeps his gun around the room quickly, “CLEAR!” is the signal that lets everyone know the threat has been dealt with.
The long burst of fire from the AK-47 wakes up half the neighborhood, and unfortunately for the Rangers, half the neighborhood is bad guys. Lights start turning on and armed men start dumping into the streets like a flood gate being opened.
Usually the soldiers are able to maintain radio discipline, even under the extreme situations they deal in, so this transmission lets everyone know how serious the situation is. “Oh shit, oh shit, street not clear, I say again, street compromised, too many tangos, we’re fucked.”
“How many,” comes the calm response on the radio.
Chong has just thrown Brown over his shoulder when he hears the radio call. Everyone freezes for a second, they turn out to make 360 security and wait for the order that will have to come within the next three seconds or they take matters into their own hands.
“Egress, egress, ramble and scramble, NOW!!!”
This whole night started with a call that no one had every heard, “Ranger Down.” It is going to end with one that no one has ever heard either. Ramble and scramble is an order that very select groups know. It is when the situation is so screwed that the best you can do is mitigate the losses on your side.
While it isn’t an everyman for himself, the teams know that trying to consolidate and fight out together will end in a massacre. Smaller teams can punch out easier, once in the clear they will reset and try to help others out. Urban fighting can end in massive losses if you don’t take control of the situation right away.
The sniper teams head for the roof exits and see that there are men streaming up the stairs. Unfortunately the bad guys know the importance of holding the high ground. Just as the group hits the door, they duck behind cover and prepare to fight their way out.
The team on the southwest corner throws two grenades down on top of the advancing gang. As soon as they hear the explosions they start running down shooting anything moving. They are able to punch out the back door and haul ass down the street. Once they are clear they find cover and turn back ready to cover any friendlies coming their way.
Ed has always hated the minivan. He doesn’t know why he let his wife talk him into getting it. However he was able to drive past the target building, park down the street and report what he saw. Now that he hears the ramble and scramble call, he knows what he can do to help out. From the drivers seat he is able to push a button and the back of the minivan opens.
Kyle has been lying in the prone position behind the M240 machinegun just waiting for the door to open and getting the green light to let loose some lead. When he sees the large group down the street closing in on his guys he is not shocked by the mass of them, it still takes him back. With the seats removed he has plenty of room to move and SPC Scott Darby will feed him all the rounds he can fire.
“Get some!” is all he needs to hear to unleash rounds.
The sniper team still stuck on a roof is happy to see that the bad guys didn’t really look around before heading to the edge and looking for targets. This is a situation they can take advantage of. And they have a little help. Three blocks away SSG Isler is on a rooftop that doesn’t have easy access. He tells his spotter to watch the fire escape ladder so no one can sneak up on them. Then he starts picking people off. He has the advantage of distance and being set in a hide position. His suppressed rifle doesn’t make enough noise to be heard over the racket currently blanketing the area. Right now his only concern is running out of Ammo.
Chong lowers the Brown to the ground and hands him a pistol. “This might get a little hairy.”
The ramble and scramble extractions aren’t really random. Rangers plan everything, they have a PACE plan, primary, alternate, contingency and emergency. This is just the emergency plan put into action. Every team should know their emergency plan. Chong’s team heads for the roof. The team on the first floor, exits out the back and punches through to the next street before they can be trapped in.
The sound of the choppers attracts a lot of attention. Bravo Company’s sniper team on the roof start to take out the guys on their roof top. Since they are firing suppressed weapons, no one knows that is happening at first, until the buddy to the left or right of them hit the ground. Quickly the snipers turn on the infrared strobes on their vests to signal who they are friendly and hopefully they will get an extraction.
Chief Warrant Officer Lancer wasn’t lying when he said he would get everyone up. The Little Bird helicopter is a welcome sight. It comes in fast and low, slowing only as it goes over the roof. The two snipers throw their rifles over their shoulders and grab for the quick extraction lines. The new system is a line dropped from both sides onto the roof. The helicopter will slow, but not stop, and they will only make one pass.
With the lines dragging along the roof they put their hands through the loops tied off a few feet from the ground. Once the chopper passes over the edge of the building, it lifts up, the weight of the body pulls the loop tight around the wrist and then they reach down and grab for a second loop that they link onto the rappel rig. This will keep them secure until they can get out of danger. Of course neither can resist pulling out their pistols and taking a shot at anyone firing at them as they make their escape.
With most looking skyward, the Chong and his team hit the roof. Anyone on a roof nearby is free game. They are able to clear out some breathing room with a few rounds launched form the 203s.
Once they toss the strobe the Blackhawk comes in hot. At the last second it flares and hits the roof with a solid thud. Everyone jumps in so fast they are piling on top of each other, as soon as he gets the signal, the Lancer lifts off. No one has time to strap in, but they can grab and hold onto the seat harnesses.
One team is still trying to get out down the alley when an armored car appears down the street. The hail of gunfire from the minivan was able to give the team in the alley some breathing room, but the Brinks armored van will take away that buffer.
Instead of inspiring dread, Darby smiles. “The bad guys have an RV,” he says to himself. He had been feeding rounds into Kyle’s machine gun, now he jumps over his friends and pulls the blanket off the Barrett. Quickly settling behind it he lets out a breath as his finger dances across the trigger. Three fifty caliber rounds are sent down the street before he inhales again.
In a swift movement he yanks the magazine out and slaps in a fresh one with sliver tipped bullets. Those first three rounds took out the tires and stopped the truck in place. When the tires blew out they lost control and steered into some parked cars. Of course no one was hurt, and the armored behemoth provides protection. Even from a .50 cal.
That would have been the case had he not loaded in the silver tipped sabot rounds. The next ten rounds go through the armor like rice paper. They were laying on top of each other when the van crashed, they were barely able to untangle themselves when the fifty caliber sabot bullets start penetrating the mass of criminals.
Darby smiles knowing that bringing the big girl was a good call. Fortunately he can’t see the mess he is making in the back of the vehicle. Seeing the damage he brought would haunt him.
Isler ran out of rounds a few minutes ago, he had to switch out with his spotter and cover their escape route with his sidearm. Once secure in the feeling that they can extract now they decide to rappel off the side of the building to minimize exposure. They know they only have a couple minutes before their ride leaves. Isler gives a quick call on the radio to let them know they are coming to make sure they don’t get mistaken for hostiles before approaching the minivan.
As soon as the chopper is gone, Ed punches the button and the back of the minivan starts to close as he pulls away. He will never talk bad about it again. Nor will anyone tease him about it. Whenever he drives it he will remember this moment, mainly because the smell of carbon and gunpowder will never fully leave the upholstery. In fact when he goes to trade it in years later, they will still be digging shells out of nooks and crannies.
The department of Homeland Security has enough information to piece together the big picture. He doesn’t care who they think they are, no one especially the military is above the law. He goes marching right into Harborview and demands to talk to the man in charge. Colonel Knight is calmly standing by one of the nurses stations when he comes up in a huff.
Before he can unleash, Knight hands him a paper coming fresh out of the fax. Without a word, he walks away and leaves the bureaucrat to deal with what is left of the situation. Knight does the “rally up” signal and walks out. It seems like the entire staff follows him as medics in scrubs, Rangers in civilian clothes and injured patients follow him. At the same time a few miles away, the perimeter set up by the waterfront is torn down and packed. They are on the road within fifteen minutes.
The paper is a set of orders that originate from Special Operations Command at Fort Bragg. It spells out a serious threat to national security, the details of which are still top secret. It also authorizes the Rangers as the only force in place to deal with it on such short notice.
With that, the man decides to go back to bed and delegate the details of the aftermath to someone very junior to him.
Rangers Lead the Way!
That is it. Finally! I hope you enjoyed it. I would like to make a few things clear. I wrote this for my own amusement, and this is the second draft. Second, I am not, nor have I ever been a member of the Ranger Battalion nor have I ever attended Ranger school. This is just something I have had in my head that I wanted to get out. Take it for what it is, something to be enjoyed.
