Force of Eagles

by Richard Herman

  “Standby,” the jumpmaster bellowed at the runway clearing team. The seventeen men were split into two sticks and lined up on the ramp. They would not use the jump doors but go straight off the end of the ramp. The jumpmaster pointed at the first line They were standing back-to-belly, right hands clenching their static lines, left hands against the man’s back in front. Their weapons were strapped to their sides, locked and loaded.

  The green light by the jump doors switched from red to green as Dunkin yelled, “Green Light,” over the intercom.

  “GO!” the jumpmaster shouted when he saw the first flicker of green. It was not the usual static line-jump with the men going out at one second intervals. The first stick of eight men ran off the ramp, pushing each other, the first two out of the plane before Dunkin had finished saying “green light.” The Rangers were so close that the deployment bag on the leader’s parachute hit the second man in the face. Two swings and they were on the ground.

  The jumpmaster pointed at the second stick of nine jumpers and seven seconds later gave the next Go. Again, the men ran off the ramp, the last two out being unhappy Air Force sergeants—the Combat Control Team that would act like a control tower and clear the C-130s to land. “Hate group gropes,” one of the Air Force sergeants mumbled, but no one heard him and he landed 1,600 feet down the runway from the first stick.

  Most of the Rangers hit the ground with a standard parachute landing-fall and absorbed the shock with a roll that started at the feet and up the leg to the buttocks and then to the upper back muscles. One Ranger did it on the wrong side of his body and came to his feet with a bent M-16. He shrugged off his harness, dropped the useless weapon, and ran for his first objective…to help clear and secure the only building on the deserted airstrip.

  Other Rangers set up covering positions at each end of the runway while the remainder ran down the runway, throwing debris and rubbish off to the side as they checked its condition. Six men pushed an abandoned car that had its wheels removed off to one side, and the runway was clear. The Combat Control Team ran along the runway, carrying their portable UHF radios and also checking the condition of the runway. “It’s in great shape,” the controller said, “with a couple of brooms we can even land fighters if we have to.” They set up their radios, contacted Spectre 01 and cleared the C-130s to enter the landing pattern.

  *

  The Pentagon

  Harsh static exploded out of the small speaker in front of Cunningham, rasping at his nerves. The telelight confirmed that he was listening to channel one, the SatCom link to Mado aboard Spectre 01. He spun the volume knob down and looked over his console at the Air Force major sitting at the control panel below him in the next row, calmly working the buttons on the panel in front of her, trying to reestablish contact. The SatCom did not rely on the older KY-57 scrambler for security but used a rapidly shifting frequency rotation. Occasionally the receiver and transmitter frequency shifts drifted apart and had to be realigned; otherwise, only a grating noise could be heard, a perfect discouragement for unwanted listeners. The major keyed her mike: “Please standby while the system realigns.”

  “Damnit,” Leachmeyer shouted, “get a clear transmission or we’ll get someone in here who can.”

  “I’m in manual override now. One moment.”

  Cunningham leaned toward Leachmeyer, who was sitting next to him. “It’s a system limitation. She’ll sort it out.” On cue, Mado’s voice came through crisp and clear.

  “Roundup, this is Blue Chip,” the major transmitted, “please repeat your last transmission.” Cunningham liked the way she had handled the situation.

  “Blue Chip, this is Roundup,” Mado answered. “Romeo Team secured the prison at 0303 Zulu. The airfield was secured at 0311 Zulu.” A ragged cheer broke out over the main floor.

  “They’re ahead of schedule,” Dewa told the general. Her eyes were on the master dock as she counted the minutes. She did not need to consult a briefing book to follow the mission’s timetable, it was etched into her head. Ninety minutes on the ground…

  Cunningham noted that they were receiving objective accomplishment times between three and eleven minutes late. Not too bad, he thought.

  “I want a head count,” Leachmeyer ordered, “and start moving the POWs in five minutes. Use the jeeps on the C-130s if you have to.”

  Dewa shook her head. “General Cunningham, the C-130s are still landing and they need those jeeps to secure the road. There’s a vital highway intersection—Objective Red—near the prison that we have to control. It seals off the western approach to the prison—”

  “Charlie”—Cunningham interrupted her to settle Leachmeyer down—“let them do it as planned. They’ll move the POWs when they’re ready. We’re not running the show.” He could see the President over Leachmeyer’s shoulder. He was pacing back and forth in the Command and Authority Room, obviously agitated, wanting to control the action.

  “Delta Force would be out of there by now,” Leachmeyer grumbled.

  “They’d be fighting for their lives,” Cunningham shot back, “because every swingin’ dick in Iran would’ve known they were coming. Christ, Charlie, why do you think we sent Task Force Alpha in? Now let them do their job.”

  *

  Kermanshah, Iran

  Two-man teams of Rangers were working down the long corridor of each floor, testing the cell doors to see if they were unlocked and throwing open the small shutters set in each door to check on the inmates. Each Ranger had a list of the POWs and methodically checked off names. Outside, the guards who survived the attack were huddled in a corner of the quadrangle. Two were seriously wounded. Trimler had turned the first-floor guards’ office into a command post while his RTO established contact with Roundup in the orbiting AC-130.

  “Sir,” a Ranger checked in. “Head count on first floor complete. We count ninety-seven, including Colonel Leason.”

  Another Ranger pounded up the stairs from the basement. “Captain, we’ve got a casualty in the basement. A guard shot a POW before we could secure our area.” The man was obviously shaken. “God…it’s a torture chamber down there…the poor bastard was shoved in a box no bigger than a wall locker…”

  “The POW?” Trimler asked, his anger scarcely under control.

  “Dead, sir. We’re getting him out now.”

  “The guard?”

  “Four holes in him, sir. He’s still alive.”

  “Bring the body up.” Trimler’s anger was surging. “Get the first-floor guard in here. Now.” A few moments later the guard was shoved into the room, his ankles were unshackled but the adhesive tape was still over his mouth and his wrists were handcuffed behind his back. Bill Carroll skidded around the corner right behind him with a young Iranian in tow.

  “Who the hell…” Trimler barked.

  “This is Mustapha Sindi,” Carroll said. “I told you about him. Leads the Kurds. The trucks are outside.”

  Trimler turned to the guard and pointed to the central control box that unlocked the cell doors on the first floor. “Open it,” he said. Fear and confusion ran across the guard’s face as he shook his head no. Mustapha let loose a barrage in Farsi and ripped the adhesive off his mouth. The guard paled, spoke a few words.

  “Free his hands,” Carroll told them. “He’ll do it.”

  “What the hell did he say?” Trimler asked.

  “Mustapha told him he had two choices: open the doors and live or meet Mulla Haqui. Of course he would also live if he met Haqui”—there was no humor in Carroll’s voice—“for two more days of torture.” The guard was freed and rapidly punched the four-digit combination into the control box. A green light flashed on and the guard pulled a lever. They could hear the central-locking bar that ran along the tops of the cell doors slide back. The first floor was free.

  “Get Leason in here and load ’em,” Trimler ordered. “Do another head count as you load. We’ll move them as soon as the road is secured.” He turned to his RTO. The man was ready and told h
im that he had established contact with the AC-130 gunship on the PRC-77. “Relay our status,” Trimler told him. “Trucks in place, ninety-seven POWs being loaded, will move them out when the road is secured.”

  Two more Rangers appeared in the door. “Ninety-five on the second floor,” the first one told them.

  “Eighty-seven on the third.” This from the last Ranger. “Counting the POW in the basement,” Trimler said, “that adds up to two hundred and seventy-nine. We’re three short.”

  Another voice: “They’re accounted for.” It was Leason, the senior ranking officer. The men gaped at him: dirty and haggard, barefoot, clothes ripped and torn. “Staff Sergeant Macon Jefferson was executed. Lieutenant Colonel Jeffrey Landis and Captain Mary Hauser are being held in the basement of the administration building.”

  Carroll bolted out of the room, closely followed by Mustapha.

  Another Ranger reported in, “Problems, sir. We can’t unlock the cell doors on the second and third floors.”

  *

  Duck Mallard flew his C-130 down final, its nose in the air. He planted the main gear twenty feet beyond the spot the Combat Control Team had told him to use as a touchdown point, drove the nose down and ripped the throttles full aft, lifting them over the gate and throwing the props into reverse. He stomped the brakes and dragged the heavy plane to a halt in less than eighteen hundred feet.

  Before the plane had slowed, the rear door under the tail was up and the ramp down. Mallard paused on the runway for a moment as the ramp came full down and two motorcycles and three heavily loaded jeeps drove off. The drivers were careful as they deplaned, but the moment they were clear of the ramp they mashed the accelerators and sped away. They were the first of the Ratsos, the jeep teams who had to secure the road.

  Mallard then taxied off the runway onto hard ground, where one of the sergeants on the Combat Control team had marshaled him. The second C-130 was already touching down.

  The two modified dirt bikes led the three jeeps off the airfield and turned down the dirt road that led to the prison. The jeep teams took spacing and started to talk to each other on their MX-360 radios. Each Ratso was a mobile firing platform. An M-60 machine gun was mounted on a post in the back seat and another on the hood in front of the passenger seat. Besides carrying four men, the jeeps were stuffed with four light antitank weapons, claymore mines, and four Dragons—medium range antitank missiles that could reach out over a thousand yards and be carried by one man.

  At the first intersection the lead motorcycle deliberately took the wrong turn and scouted up the road while the others sped by. He didn’t see any traffic so he raced after the jeeps that were following a gravel road that looped around the southeastern edge of town. Another team behind them would guard that intersection. They had to pass the prison and reach Objective Red, the main intersection on the southern edge of town where the road to the prison junctioned with the main highway between Kermanshah and Shahabad. The intersection was in a low pass formed by hills on both sides of the highway, and if the armored regiment garrisoned at Shahabad moved, they would come through the pass to the intersection.

  The lead scout slowed his bike as he approached the prison, looking for Romeo Team’s road guard, and caught a glimpse of two men in the ditch on the right side of the road in front of him. That should be the M-60 team, he figured. He turned to look at the prison on his left—and died in a hail of gunfire from what he thought were deserted barracks. The dirt bike spun and threw him into the ditch, then crashed down on his lifeless body. The M-60 team returned fire, attempting to suppress the threat coming at them from behind the prison.

  The carefully planned raid called WARLORD died with the scout, and a new operation began—the battle for Kermanshah.

  *

  “Through here,” Carroll yelled at Mustapha as he cleared the broken glass out of a window. The Kurd looked at the prison’s administration building and decided he didn’t want to go in. Doucette’s five-hundred-pound bomb had done its job too well. The top floor had collapsed onto the ground floor, and a fire was burning in the rear half of the building. Mustapha shook his head and followed Carroll through the window. A jagged, gut-wrenching scream stopped them both—a guard trapped in the dying flames. “Let the bastard burn,” Carroll said.

  Mustapha couldn’t let it go. He moved quickly through the wreckage, homing on the shrieking man, saw him through a curtain of flames trapped under fallen masonry. He raised his Uzi and shot the guard.

  “MARY!” Carroll’s voice carried through the building.

  “Down here, in the basement…”

  Carroll looked at the pile of debris between him and the voice and felt the heat of the fire still pressing on his back. And then a figure came staggering out of the rubble, covered with dust and blood.

  *

  “Lifter, this is Ratso Nine. Objective secured.” It was the last of the jeep teams checking in on the PRC-77. Lifter was the airfield’s call sign. Stansell watched Gregory and his S-3, the battalion’s operations officer, mark their maps with Ratso Nine’s position at the nearest intersection to the airfield. Stansell hovered just behind them in the temporary command post they had set up in the deserted building. Gregory was commanding the action on the ground while he ran the show in the air. Stansell was making grease marks on a small acetate-covered board he could tuck under his arm and carry with him. A map was taped to one side and a matrix for tracking the status of aircraft to the other.

  “Ratso Three and the two M-60 teams all report the barracks are quiet,” the S-3 said. “But that fire had to come from somewhere.”

  “Where are Ratso One and Two?” Gregory asked. “We’ll sort that problem out later. Right now we worry about getting past the prison and taking Objective Red.” Stansell was impressed by how cool the lieutenant colonel was. The RTO asked Ratso Three where the first and second jeep teams were.

  “Making an end run,” was the reply. Gregory approved.

  “Lifter, this is Ratso Nine.” The RTO acknowledged the latest radio call. “I’ve stopped a big gas truck with two civilians. They say they’re making a fuel delivery to the airfield.” The men could hear the confusion in the Ranger’s voice. “They’ve got the recognition code.”

  “Repeat,” Gregory ordered. The jeep team confirmed the two civilians had the correct recognition code.

  “Ask what type of fuel they’re carrying,” Stansell said. The question was relayed and the answer came back. The truck was full of JP-4 and was a pumper from the main airport eleven kilometers north of town. “It’s welcome,” Stansell said. “Bring it in.” Gregory ordered an escort team to take one of the extra jeeps and bring the truck in, but to stay well clear of all activity until it and the drivers could be checked out…

  *

  Ratso One and Two, the lead jeep teams, threw quick U-turns when the motorcycle scout was killed. They told Ratso Three to hold while they doubled back. The Ranger navigating in Ratso One had his map out and pointed to a break in the buildings off to their left. It was not a road but open lots that led into the outskirts of town. The two jeeps bounced across the rough field, past the low buildings and onto a paved street. Both the driver and navigator had memorized the map and knew where they were as they raced for the intersection that was Objective Red. A police car saw the two speeding jeeps and chased them through the almost deserted streets. Ratso Two’s rear gunner swung his M-60 around and sent a short burst into the car. It bounced off a parked truck, rolled over and burst into flames.

  The two jeeps twisted and turned through the town until they hit the main highway, then turned left, darting through heavier traffic. A short burst from an M-60 determined the right-of-way at an intersection, and six minutes after making the U-turn, Objective Red was secure.

  *

  “Up there,” Andy Baulck pointed to what was left of the one guard tower at the rear of the prison. “The captain wants to know what’s goin’ on behind the wall.”

  “I’ll take this one,”
Wade said. The corporal had been Baulck’s best drinking buddy since the fight with the C-130 loadmasters at Texas Lake. Baulck motioned him forward and he worked his way up the tower’s ladder. He moved slowly, careful not to make any noise. The ladder had fallen back on itself and Wade had to pull himself up through the last four feet of scaffolding. He poked his head above the wall and pulled it back down, reminding Baulck of a pop-up target on the firing range. Slowly, Wade raised his head again and took a longer look. Then he was back down. “Place is crawling with troops. Maybe fifty of ’em. They’ve got something inside a shed, the doors are open.” And then they could hear a diesel engine on the other side of the wall cough to life.

  *

  The first-floor guard kept shaking his head and punched another series of numbers into the control box that unlocked the cell doors on the second floor. The red light stayed on. “He wasn’t assigned to this floor and doesn’t know the code but is scared shitless,” a Ranger said. “We’re going to have to start blowing the doors.”

  “Takes too long,” a buck sergeant grumbled, his eyes drawn into a squint. “Damn, I know what I’d do if I was in this cage.” He ran out into the corridor and banged against the door of the first cell in his rush. “You know the numbers to the lock box?” he asked the POWs still trapped inside. A voice gave him four numbers and he ran back to the office and shoved the frightened guard aside. He keyed in the numbers and the green light flashed on. The lever was moved down, and the ninety-five POWs on the second floor were free.

  “Hey, Bro,” another Ranger asked, “how’d you think of that?”

  The twenty-year-old Ranger from the streets of Watts mumbled, “My cousin’s locked up in San Quentin. He says they got lots of time to do nothing but study the guards and watch everything they do. That’s what I’d do…that’s what they did.”