Chapter 6, The Amazing Adventures of Ralph Kroder, a work in progress

Unknown weapons

       You have to look at the dead ones. Especially the ones you killed. Maybe you can get an understanding of why they wanted to kill you. Well, that wasn’t a difficult answer. You are here, in their country. Sometimes their country. Not all the time. There were Chechens from the Caucasus, a cold place, and you killed them in an African desert. There were others from the Caucasus – Dagestanis, Azeris, Karabach, Abkhazian, Ingush, Ossetian, Turks and even an occasional Russian. You had seen the dead from just about every Muslim country on Earth, from Turkey to Indonesia, and Muslims from almost all European countries, several from the States -- St. Paul, Flint, Chicago, Queens.

       The dead always had one thing in common: Every body had a beard. Age did not matter, from barely discernable on teenage terrorists to full beards on men who should have known better than to think they could kill all the infidels in the world. And the beards were in all colors -- red, brown, black, salt and pepper, full gray and as white as Santa Claus’s.

       Ralph reached the first bodies, the four who took all eight of his first shots. He stood centered on the four, who were laid out nicely, numbers three and four slightly behind one and two, two face down and two face up, depending on the way each fell from his horse. The two who lay face up each had two holes around center mass. “Three inches apart,” Ralph said. “Could have had better shot placement.” He shrugged. “But, it got the job done.” He knew the myth about John Browning’s .45-caliber cartridge: Hit a man any place on his body, even in an arm, he’ll go down. Studying his marksmanship, Ralph remarked, “I don’t know anybody who shot a jihadist in the arm on purpose.” A hit on a target’s arm was the result of bad marksmanship techniques.

       The four in front of Ralph were dressed much the same – gray or brown trousers stuffed into brown leather boots; gray or brown pullover shirts with no decorations; turbans that once were white but now were a grimed gray; wide leather belts with saber scabbard and pistol holster.

       “Huh,” Ralph said when noting the pistols still holstered and sabers clutched in dead hands. “They could have shot me. Or shot at me.” His experience in three wars showed lack of marksmanship from jihadists. Or, as one of his soldiers said, “Ragheads can’t shoot for shit.” As for competitive rifle firing, Ralph would agree. Most American soldiers were not as trained as they should have been, but just about any U.S. soldier could outshoot a jihadist. But Ralph also knew that the jihadist way of war, “Spray and pray,” worked up to a point. “You put enough bullets downrange, some of them will run into a body,” he had said when his soldiers disparaged jihadist accuracy. “The thing to do is, use cover and concealment, gain fire superiority, and fire and maneuver. That’s what we’re trained to do, and it works.” What worked for jihadists more often were the explosive devices planted, hidden, buried and emplaced just about everywhere. Attached to doors and windows, beneath floor tiles, in culverts, beneath road surfaces, paved, gravel or dirt – any place a soldier would walk, touch or travel by vehicle. The army had mine detectors and engineers trained in their use, but detectors would not find every explosive device. Nor would bomb dogs, no matter their sensitive noses and training. No body and no thing will find everything, Ralph knew.

       He went to the nearest body, first right-center and his second target. Unsnapping the holster flap, he took out the semi-automatic pistol. “Lighter than a 1911,” he said. He pushed the magazine release. “Seven shot, maybe eight. Single stack.” He pulled back and locked the slide and picked up the ejected cartridge. “Thirty-something caliber.” Lettering on the left side of the slide read, “National Armory 8mm Model 42.” He let the slide go forward and then held the pistol at arm’s length, checking the sights. “Better than the 1911. If they could shoot worth anything, they could have hit me. Six pistols. Of course, they were riding horses at a full gallop. Still, if they had been properly trained, they would now be checking my pistol. And looting the golf cart.”

       He returned the pistol to its holster and checked the other bodies. Two of the remaining five had similar pistols, while numbers five and six, the two who tried to run away, carried 8mm revolvers.