The transcript, p.3
The Transcript, page 3
The room went silent once again. Chief Gimlin chuckled a “what the fuck” under his breath. Meldrum raised an eyebrow.
The warlord just confirmed that they have Yetis or whatever this Baramou is. He said they actually exist, Meldrum thought. These people don't even have electricity; how could they know what a Yeti is unless it actually exists our here?
Barton spoke up next and addressed the chuckling Senior Chief directly: “Shut the fuck up.”
He turned to Amir, placing a stern “do-not-fuck-with-me” hand on his shoulder, and said hissed into his ear: “Let’s focus and get back to work.”
The negotiations continued. Meldrum remained standing for what seemed like hours watching the three-way discussion between the CIA agent, a scared shitless inter-preter, and a warlord with an AK across his lap.
Meldrum couldn’t tell how the negotiations were going, both Barton and the warlord held stone faces speaking to each other. Suddenly the warlord slapped his leg and spoke loudly and directly at Barton.
Meldrum felt everyone beginning to tense. Muscles began to tighten, and fingers crept tighter around trippers. Meldrum’s SAW was held at the ready.
All he could hear was the silence of killers in a crowded room, and the howling wind coming from a window. Then above that wind, a howling of another kind that rose as gunshots rang out in the distance.
Part VII
Gunshots sounded in the distance as another noise rose above the wind…a noise that sent shivers down Meldrum’s spine. A howl, or was it a roar? A sound alien and for some reason all too familiar for the ancestral memories deep inside Meldrum’s psyche. An animalistic noise that turned his pupils into pins and his heart into a drum. Every man turn-ed his head, toward the stone hut’s window. The warlord’s words mumbling then off Meldrum’s lips, “Bara-mou.”
The SEALs were moving.
Meldrum, Patterson, and Gimlin exited the hut; weap-ons at the ready. The two SAD operatives stayed behind to secure the money and hold the hut. Barton and Amir took cover outside behind a cart. The rest of the platoon had taken up positions and were pointed into the wilderness that surrounded the village.
“I need a report right now!” Lieutenant Patterson cried.
“Sir,” Rivera yelled, “we heard gunshots about three hundred meters into the wood line. We received no contact; we haven’t seen any Taliban or any signs of an attack. But we heard that weird ass fucking scream, sir!”
Another Seal suddenly yelled out, “I got movement, one military-aged male my twelve ‘o clock; coming out of the wood line!”
The SEALs readied their weapons, could this be a suicide bomber? A Taliban scout?
“Hold your fire, hold your fire,” yelled Patterson. “Tha-t’s one of the villagers.”
A man was sprinting up, an older man whose beard was starting to go white. Meldrum noticed right away the man’s clothes were torn and he was bleeding from his scalp. His eyes were wide and panicked, he was dead sprinting at Meldrum’s position before he was stopped by some other local men who wrestled him to the ground. They were yell-ing and speaking to him, but the man struggled and fought. He was mouthing something Meldrum couldn’t make out.
Amir and Barton ran up with Gimlin and Patterson in tow. The other villagers had seemed to calm him down, but the man was blank-faced with a “thousand-yard stare” pointed straight ahead. He whispered something to Amir who after paused in confusion and asked him again a series of questions. Amir stood up, confused, turning to the others with fear in his eyes.
“He said…he said he and his son were hunting in the woods. They attacked them. They killed his son and dragged him away.”
“What do you mean they?” Barton demanded.
Amir repeated what the man said, adding, “I don’t know, he called it a monster. There was a group of them, they were big and whatever they were, they almost grabbed him. They were ambushed, and he said when he fired his gun, one grabbed his rifle and snapped it in two before, before—”
“Before what?” Barton growled.
“Before they ripped off his son’s head…like a chicken.”
“Bullshit. Has to be Taliban. This guy’s lost it.” Gimlin started eying the wood line. He spat.
Suddenly, shrill screams rang out. Everyone looked up, and Meldrum’s eyes grew wide. A group of children fled from the wood line and the horrible wail of a woman filled the air as they ran back to the village.
Just past the edge of trees, a woman was being ravaged: beaten by a man who lifted her up and slammed her body on the ground.
No, Meldrum thought. That’s no man.
“What the fuck is that!” a SEAL called out.
It was taller than a man. Draped in fur, it swung its hauntingly human eyes off the woman at its feet and onto the village. It stared at them with an uncanny intelligence. No man there had a chest so wide or shoulders that broad, or muscles that bulged under thick black, brownish hair. Meldrum thought back to the legends of his youth.
“There’s no fucking way,” someone said.
“Is,” Meldrum yelled, “Is that fucking Bigfoot?!”
Part VIII
The creature or whatever it was, placed its foot on the struggling woman. Meldrum could hear ribs break as she screamed in pain. The beast placed its weight on her chest as it reached down and gripped her arm, ripping it off in one sickening twist. The creature then tore into the arm with its teeth, chomping down on the tender flesh.
The creatures’ eyes never removed themselves from the men: it sized them up with growing malice and challenge. With a mouthful of flesh, it began to grunt and hoot. Drop-ping the arm, it began to beat its chest. It screamed horribly. Meldrum swore he could feel his chest reverberating with its roar. As if summoned by the scream, more dark shapes be-gan to emerge from the wood line.
The Afghans had retreated into their huts in a controlled panic. They barricaded themselves and huddled behind cover as the men pointed rifles with shaking hands at the doors and windows, praying that it wasn't their hut chosen. Only the Americans remained in the open to face the Baramou.
Meldrum scanned left to right; more tall figures emerged from the cover of the dark forest. There must have been twelve to fifteen of them now stepping out into the open, but Meldrum could see more shadows hanging back deeper in the woods. The newcomers resembled the first creature that still stood over the body of the woman. However, these creatures were shorter and less muscular; they looked almost emaciated compared to the big one. Some held rocks and others makeshift spears, all of them bearing their large fangs, and all of them moved towards the village.
The tall one, the obvious leader of this troop, began to shift its screaming; sounding more like a gorilla and the wailing of a banshee. The others followed suit, beating their chests, joining in with the same screams. Meldrum’s ears rang, and his trigger finger itched.
“Sir, what are your orders?” a team leader laying in the prone yelled. The SEALs had their guns up and ready.
“Hold fire, hold fire!” Patterson shouted back. He turned to Barton, “Do you know what the fuck this is?”
Barton kept his eyes on the creatures and kept Amir behind cover. “The intel didn't cover this, Lieutenant. But if I was a betting man, I’d bet think these things aren’t here to win hearts and minds.”
The creatures were foaming at the mouth. They shook fully grown trees like they were saplings. Some smacked the ground with both hands generating a sound like a gunshot. The younger ones had tasted human blood and their empty stomachs demanded more. Others remembered the Hunters From The Sky and were eager to chase them off the mountain again.
Rocks were being tossed now, baseball and basketball sized stones that could easily kill a man. Some landed on the huts and a few amongst the Americans, closely missing a few surprised SEALs. But the SEALs still held their fire and watched their heads. Unsure of how to proceed they still kept their fingers on the trigger, but didn't engage.
The tallest of the creatures beat its chest and let out a final roar. Blood frothed from its mouth. Its fangs bared like yellow stained daggers and a geyser of hot breath spewed forth into the cold mountain air. Then it charged. Its muscles rippled as it thundered towards the SEALs.
Then its brethren followed.
“Oh shit,” yelled a SEAL, “here they come!”
The SEALs all saw how easily the creature had torn that arm off that woman. Like pulling a leaf from a tree. They didn't doubt that if one of those things got close enough, they would suffer the same fate.
Meldrum could see the whites of the creatures’ eyes now closing in. Now they looked a little more human; an ape and Neanderthal mix; something out of a textbook. Those eyes carried a little more intelligence now, a little more fear, a whole lot of savagery.
Some Baramou ran on two legs, others hunched over in a horrid gallop. The creatures’ mouths were open, four dagger-like fangs flashing yellow in the cold mountain air. They were getting closer.
Lieutenant Patterson shouted, “Open fire!”
Part IX
Meldrum had already picked his target, the tallest of the creatures now stomping towards him. Kneeling behind a low wall, he lined up his optic center mass on the leader; maybe a hundred feet away. Its great size made target acqui-sition easy. Meldrum wasn’t sure what the goal of the crea-ture’s charge was, not that he had time to care. His finger slowly depressed the trigger, and his M249 came to life.
A hail of 5.56 spewed from his barrel. Red blossoms began to burst across the chest of the Baramou, resulting in a bellowing of rage.
What the 5.56 NATO round lacked in mass and stopping power, the SAW made up for in volume. Meldrum had a one-hundred-round “pork chop,” and he intended to use it.
The lead Baramou was getting closer, and Meldrum shifted his fire to its lower body. The M249 machine gun lived up to its moniker, “the SAW,” cutting the creature down at the legs. Hot led shredded the soft tissue below the creature’s waist. The rounds shattered bone and cut through flesh.
The creature fell face-first in the dirt, collapsing into a tangle of limbs. It tried to pick itself up, struggling, fighting through wounds that would have killed any man. It strug-gled back to its feet, it was so close now that Meldrum could hear its blood now beginning to gurgle in it's throat.
As the creature moved to continue its attack, Meldrum let out a burst to its upper torso. The doomed creature absor-bed the rounds in its neck and face, turning it into a mess of blood and gore.
The creature finally fell, but Meldrum fired another burst for good measure.
“Die mother fucker,” he whispered.
He fished out another pork chop and reloaded. More shapes were closing in and he let the SAW rip.
The Baramou were used to their numbers working to their advantage. Their savagery allowed them to overcome the meager attempts the humans of this valley threw at them. Even the previous hunters from the sky had fallen to their savage attacks and ambushes from the darkness. Brutality, surprise, and fear were their weapons against the humans they wielded with terrifying effectiveness. But in this instance, those weapons fell short. The creatures had miscalculated.
Around Meldrum, other SEALs made short work of the attack. Those that didn’t have an M249 quickly dispatched the other creatures by the time-honored strategy of shooting them in the face. Once the bodies hit the ground, the rest of their magazines followed in quick succession. Baramou be-gan to lay crumbled and motionless in the early afternoon sun.
Those that remained began to turn and run. As they fled, the SEALs sent more rounds their way. They began to seek cover behind the trees, still hooting and screeching. Some of the Baramou dragged their dead and dying off, into the cover of the forest.
“Ceasefire!” shouted Lieutenant Patterson. “Ceasefire!”
The SEALs let off their triggers and changed magazines. From behind the trees, angry eyes peeked and hungry mouths hung open. The hoots and hollering sounded like a troop of panicked monkeys.
“Hit that tree line with 203’s, suppressive fire into that tree line!” shouted Patterson.
Four distinct thumps sounded and a second later 40mm grenades exploded and the fight was over. With a kill radius of fiver meters per, anything not killed by the explosions got peppered with metal fragments and shrapnel. Meldrum and the other M249 gunners let loose into the forest, sending over suppressive fire in the form of a wall of lead.
Shouts of “Cease fire” began again.
Silence on the mountain took over as the SEALs scanned ahead. Barrels smoked and blood was beginning to be absorbed by a parched ground.
The SEALs walked cautiously to the tree line. Gunshots rang out as the SEALs made sure all the bodies were truly dead.
“I think we go them all. Think they ran off.” Meldrum mused to one of his teammates as they surveyed the carn-age. As he walked up to a new body, he saw it was still brea-thing. The creature looked at him with a mix of feral rage and fear. It began to move, lashing out towards him with furious, desperate hands. If this was a horror movie, Mel-drum was sure the creatures would have killed most of them, with only one of them left standing after a night of sheer terror. Meldrum fired a burst into the Baramou’s torso.
“This isn’t a movie,” he said to himself.
The warlord exited the hut with his entourage, staring wide-eyed at all the bodies still bleeding out on his soil.
Barton stood up with Amir and walked up to him. Barton turned to Amir and said, “Tell him: Are we ready to make a deal?”
A Memory of Mons
From the memoirs of COL (ret) Michael Raeford
As of writing this memoir, I am of eighty-nine years of age and I have lived an excellent life, documented by my hand upon these pages. While most has already been writ-ten, I have decided to end things with the following confess-ion, a confession of an event that has forever haunted me.
I will take you back, once again, to the conflict I simply remember back then as “The War.” It was August 31, 1944, back when I was a young non-commissioned officer in the 3rd Armored Division on our drive across Europe.
We had thrust into Belgium and were closing in on a large force of Waffen SS and Wehrmacht soldiers. The Allies had been pushing the Germans back, and as luck would have it, we managed to push Army Task Group Straube into a corner in what would later be known as the “Battle of the Mons Pocket.” The Germans were battered and bruised, and our generals smelled blood. We would attempt an encircle-ment and force the Germans to surrender or we would blow them all to hell!
It was there that I found myself, a young platoon ser-geant, given the task of leading some fifty-odd soldiers into battle. We were a mixed batch, made up of “old breed” such as myself, and fresh recruits off the boats. Our task was to assault into that town of Mons; a formerly sleepy little hamlet in the Belgian countryside.
While we were told the Germans were disorganized and demoralized, we still faced some 70,000 of them, almost all from the 5th Panzer Division, still holding the line. The way they had already savaged the initial attacks on Mons told us all we needed to know about their desire to fight.
The night before the battle, I laid awake. The Germans may have been on the run, but that made them that much more dangerous. I remembered from my youth what happ-ens when you corner a wolf. The Germans would fight savagely to stop us from advancing, as the Rhine lay a few days away, and beyond that the Fatherland itself.
I laid there feeling that many in my company, myself included, would not survive. After all the killing and death I had seen from Africa to Italy, I could only imagine myself dying in a pool of my own blood, wrapped in my own guts, in Belgium dirt, after a burst from a Kraut’s machine gun.
A heavy blanket of dread fell over me, and I found myself doing something my pride at that time would never admit to: I prayed. I must confess at that time I was not a deeply religious man; I had always considered myself an atheist in the foxhole. I had seen enough death to last a man ten lifetimes. I simply felt that if prayers were being heard in this terrible period, God and his angels must be deaf.
Nevertheless, I found myself reciting what my mother had begged me to memorize: a prayer to St. George, the patron saint of the Army.
I did so deeply that night, several times. My dread was soon replaced by a strange comfort. I like to think that it was just self-acceptance, but the events that followed would make me believe my prayers had been answered.
We mustered early that next morning, the air smelled of diesel and freshly churned mud as sherman tank engines droned like war drums all around. Artillery fire had begun in earnest to rain steal upon the Germans just out of sight. We began our slow march to our assault positions. German artillery began in earnest. We crouched behind trees and shrubbery, anything to conceal us as we overlooked Mons. I could see gray and black shadows darting about far below. The downwind carried the now whispers of Germans yelling in our ears. They sang songs full of defiance, demanding that their bodies form a bulwark against us.
Again, the wave of despair flowed, into my mind as well as the minds of my men around me. We huddled low behind cover. We sank, a little deeper into the earth, and we flinched a little harder at the artillery that whistled overhead.
I could feel my death down there. We all could.
It was oppressive, this feeling that descended on us. Despite our progress, it felt as if we would fail here. Almost like clockwork, our artillery began to increase. Normally, this would have been encouraging. But not this day. If the Germans didn’t know we were about to attack, they did now.
I found myself whispering that prayer to St. George. The men around me heard my whispers and asked to join. Soon, the lot of us were praying to whom we barely believed in, to a God we had doubts even existed. But soon as the order was given to prepare to advance into Mons we stopped praying. This was it, the moment had come.
