by Peter Nealen
The passage leading to the barbican gate was now filled with a hulking mass of steel and treads, topped by a 20mm cannon. The Iranians had brought at least one of the AMX-10s back inside.
The turret swung, and the cannon belched flame, the thunder of its hammering reports making Curtis’ PKP sound like a popgun by comparison. 20mm shells thundered by overhead, the tracers briefly lighting the courtyard with actinic flashes before sailing out through the gap in the wall and over the ocean.
“They still don’t want to shoot too close to the missiles!” Flanagan shouted. “We’ve still got a few minutes!”
“What a time for you to become an optimist!” Curtis all but screamed. “They can still roll up on us and shoot us like fish in a barrel! I can’t scratch that fucking thing!”
“Fall back!” Flanagan yelled at him. “I’ll place charges as we go! Just stay close to the missile carriers!”
The AMX was advancing, the treads squealing and rattling. The dim forms of more Iranian fighters could be seen jogging behind it. Another raving burst of 20mm fire split the night, but it was still too far off target to be much more than merely terrifying.
Cursing, Curtis scrambled to his feet, hauling the Pecheneg off the ground. He stayed on a knee at first, leveling the machinegun and sending another burst at the oncoming troops behind the APC. Bullets skipped off the vehicle’s armored flanks, but did little more than that.
Flanagan was already moving, but he wasn’t falling back, not yet. Even as Curtis screamed at him, he dashed forward to the first missile, now only a few dozen meters from the advancing AMX, reached into the gap, and yanked the igniter. Then he ran back to the next and did the same with that charge before running to the third, slapping a charge on the side of the missile body, and popping smoke.
“You’re going to get my ass killed, you crazy fucking cracker!” Curtis yelled between bursts as he fell back alongside Flanagan. “If the fucking armored vehicle doesn’t get us, then you’re going to turn us all into a fucking fireball!”
For once, Flanagan didn’t have a comeback, and his silence wasn’t calculated to get a rise out of his old friend. He was breathing hard, his AK bouncing against his side, as he ran from missile to missile, pausing only just long enough to pull a charge out of his pack, slap it against the missile, and prime it before running to the next. And that APC was getting closer and closer with each second, advancing faster than he or Curtis could run. As soon as it was close enough, a gunman could conceivably shoot them down from one of the top hatches without risking hitting the missiles in the process.
Movement caught his eye as he ran to the second-to-last missile. Someone was in the breach, and for a second, he thought he was dead. One of the Iranians had somehow managed to get around behind them, and they were cut off.
But then the figure hauled itself the rest of the way up the rope, grabbed the tube of an RPG from the stack they had left next to the wall, and aimed it at the AMX-10. Flanagan had just enough time to throw himself flat before the RPG fired with an earsplitting bang.
The projectile bounced off the APC’s front glacis plate, hissing into the sky before detonating high above. But it was enough to give the AMX driver pause, and the APC suddenly stopped and reversed, the gunner trying to depress the turret at the same time that the figure with the RPG 27 tossed the spent tube and grabbed for another one.
Flanagan dropped his pack, pulling his AK around to the front and sending half a mag roaring at the turret. The bullets wouldn’t do any good against the armor, but he was hoping he might damage the sights or the vision blocks. That was possible, anyway, even if it wasn’t probable.
The man with the RPG got the tube back on his shoulder and fired again, before the cannon depressed all the way. The shock of the launch slapped against Flanagan as the projectile roared past him, then it hit the turret ring and detonated.
With a flash and a bone-shaking wham, the turret blew off, sending the 20mm tumbling end over end through the air. Flanagan flattened himself against the ground, praying that the cannon wasn’t about to land on top of one of the missiles. They probably would not survive the resulting chain reaction.
But the remains of the turret came down on the back deck of the APC with an ear-shattering clang, even as the armored fighting vehicle started to burn. The 7.62 ammunition for the coaxial machinegun started to cook off with a loud crackling noise, the bullets hissing through the air when they weren’t hitting the inside of the vehicle with muted pings.
Flanagan wasn’t as worried about the cook-off; contrary to Hollywood, exploding rounds in a fire didn’t end up having much velocity. They could still hurt, but it wasn’t quite the same thing as being shot. And any that might possibly hit them were getting launched up through the turret ring.
Of course, what goes up must come down, and there was a lot of very volatile rocket fuel not very far away. Even so, there simply wasn’t time to worry about it.
He got up and continued his dash down the line of missiles, setting charges as he went. The fire coming from the direction of the gate had fallen away to almost nothing, between the shock of the explosion and the simple obstruction of a burning armored vehicle in the middle of the courtyard. Another one could still get by, but none of the Iranians seemed to be in a hurry to get too close to the stricken APC.
Flanagan was grateful that he couldn’t hear the screaming that was presumably coming from what was left of the crew.
He got to the last missile, Curtis only a few paces behind him, slapped his last charge in place, and yanked the igniter. He could smell the sweetish smoke of the burning time fuse, and then he ran to join the figure next to the RPGs, who was now on a knee in the shadows, AK-12 up and trained on the far end of the courtyard.
“I was starting to think you weren’t going to show up,” Flanagan said.
“I almost didn’t,” Aziz said seriously. “This is still nuts.”
“Well, for what it’s worth, I’m glad you did,” Flanagan said, overcoming his instinctive dislike of the other man enough to say it. “We’d have been toast if you hadn’t.”
“Does that mean I get a cut of your share?” Aziz asked.
Flanagan looked at him. That hadn’t had the tone of a joke, but then, he didn’t know Aziz well enough to know if he just had one of those dry senses of humor that made it hard to tell. “Fuck you,” he replied.
Aziz just shrugged. “So much for gratitude.”
Curtis glanced back at them, first at Aziz, then at Flanagan. He didn’t say anything, but his shrug when he looked at Flanagan spoke eloquently enough. What’s this guy’s problem?
Flanagan shrugged back. There would be time enough to confront Aziz about his attitude when they weren’t in the middle of a firefight with their backs to a hundred foot drop over the ocean. He got down in the prone and pointed his AK toward the far end, checking his watch.
The rest needed to hurry. Those fuses weren’t going to burn forever.
***
Santelli wasn’t comfortable with the situation. Childress was on point, with Santelli taking up the rear, and the Saudis between them. He’d distrusted the lot of them enough to have left their hands flex-cuffed behind their backs, but there were still ten of them between him and Childress if things went south, and he didn’t trust any of them farther than he could drop-kick them. The kid was way too exposed, but he didn’t see any other way to go.
Childress disappeared up the stairs, going around the turn at the landing, and Santelli gave the Saudi ahead of him, who was being slow and mulish, another shove. “Come on, move,” he snarled. “Unless you want to stay here and die.” The look he got for the shove deepened his suspicion that the Saudis spoke English as well as Arabic, but the skinny man didn’t say anything.
He had already picked out a couple of separate groups among the Saudis. There were the tight-lipped, angry-looking ones, mostly with thin beards or mustaches, who gave him and Childress the stink-eye every chance they got. The others were the sk
inny, scared ones, who deferred to the angry ones. He figured that the angry ones were the officers, or at least whoever was in charge.
The angry ones seemed to be intent on making things as difficult as possible. They’d obviously figured out that their “rescuers” were Americans, and they didn’t like it. Which made Santelli that much more suspicious about this whole setup. Between the missiles in the courtyard and the sullen Saudi prisoners in the cellar that seemed to hate their rescuers as much as they hated their captors, he smelled a rat.
“Friendly!” he heard Childress call from up above. He couldn’t hear the response, but as he came up around the corner, he saw Brannigan and a portly man, going bald, carrying a rifle, at the rear of a knot of people who were clearly Americans. Hancock was ahead, already stacking on the door to the anteroom that led out toward the helipad.
Childress was moving forward, and Santelli turned his full attention to the Saudis. One of them, a taller man with cadaverous features and burning dark eyes, was watching Childress intently, looking around the hallway as if looking for an opportunity.
“Hey, you!” Santelli yelled at him. When the man turned bitter, contemptuous eyes on him, he moved his AK’s muzzle fractionally, just enough to be a threat. “Don’t get any funny ideas,” he warned.
The Saudi stared at him for a moment. This wasn’t the picture of the Saudis that most Americans got. This man was as just as much of a fanatic as the Iranians. But he finally looked away as Santelli stared him down.
Childress moved up and joined Hancock, along with a big, blond, corn-fed kid who was also carrying one of the Iranians’ rifles. Together, they flowed into the anteroom, clearing it before bringing the hostages in. Santelli moved up, herding the Saudis against the wall, making sure the American hostages were secured first. He didn’t want his charges getting too mixed with the Americans. It might make matters a bit sticky once they got out where bullets were flying again.
Especially if these guys were the hard-core Wahhabis that he suspected some of them were. The Saudis were always treading a fine line between courting the West for influence and supporting the fanatics.
“Carlo?” Brannigan asked, as he paused next to Santelli. “Who the hell are these guys?”
“Saudi prisoners,” Santelli explained as they chivvied the Saudis through the door and set up security on the hallway, just in case. “Found ‘em down in the cellars. The Iranians were torturing one; he didn’t make it. Couldn’t just leave ‘em there.” Although he was already starting to wish that he had.
“Hell,” Brannigan muttered. “It’s all starting to make sense now.”
“What is?”
“Doc found a targeting map upstairs, with targets marked inside Iran,” Brannigan explained quickly. “And there are Saudi prisoners here, in uniform. I don’t think those missiles out in the courtyard are Iranian, Carlo. I think we stumbled into the middle of a new phase of the Saudi-Iranian proxy war.”
“As in, it ain’t gonna be quite so ‘proxy’ anymore?” Santelli asked.
“Looks that way.” Brannigan spared a glance over his shoulder. “Captain Ortiz? Can you take up security on this door for a moment?”
The portly man with the rifle complied, asking, “What do I do?”
“Point your rifle down the hall, that way,” Brannigan instructed. “If anyone comes down that hall, shoot ‘em.”
Ortiz nodded. “Easy enough,” he said. He stationed himself at the threshold, his rifle pointed back toward the stairs at the end of the hall.
***
Brannigan turned and stared at the group of Saudis, which were now grouped in one corner. He was wet, dirty, his face darkened by smoke, and he towered over all of them, his AK cradled in his big hands, ready to snap into action.
“Who’s in charge here?” he demanded. “And don’t even try to bullshit me and pretend that none of you speak English. I will kneecap every one of you and leave you here if you try.” His voice left no room for interpretation. He was dead serious.
“I am,” a cadaverous-looking man with angry black eyes replied, in heavily-accented English.
“Who are you, and what are you doing here?” Brannigan asked. “I’m presuming those are your missiles out in the courtyard, not the Iranians’?”
The man said nothing, his mouth pressed into a thin line. Brannigan brought the muzzle of his rifle up fractionally. “Clock’s ticking, friend,” he said.
“We have the right to set up defenses on the territory of an ally,” the man said tightly.
“Except I don’t think those are defenses,” Brannigan said. “Let me guess; the warheads are CBRN? Probably chemical. What’s the agent? Sarin? VX?”
The man’s eyes had flickered slightly. “Sarin, then. No wonder you people didn’t want the Navy anywhere near this place. Word might get out that Riyadh’s got chemical weapons, and was positioning them for a first strike on Iran.”
The sounds of combat from outside were intensifying. Brannigan didn’t break his stare, although every eye suddenly jerked toward the door leading outside, as the unmistakable thunder of a 20mm cannon sounded somewhere outside, entirely too close. A moment later, there was a pair of loud thunderclaps that could only be RPG detonations.
“Can we continue this conversation later?” Hancock yelled from the doorway. “It’s getting hot out there, and we need to move if we’re going to get out at all!”
Brannigan turned a basilisk glare on the lead Saudi. “I’m still half-inclined to leave you here. We came for the Americans, not for you.”
“If we leave them here, then the Iranians are going to murder them all as soon as we leave,” Villareal protested. “I don’t like it either, and it’s going to be tight, getting everybody onto the boats, but we can’t just leave them to the mullahs’ mad dogs.” He paused, then added, “Besides, if this situation is as serious as it sounds, they might provide some important intel to somebody back Stateside.”
Brannigan didn’t say what he thought of that proposition. He’d address it later; Hancock was right. They had to get moving. He jerked a thumb toward the outside. “Get moving. If one of you twitches wrong, I’ll blow his head off. I don’t trust any of you, understand?”
He really didn’t like this situation. If the Saudis hadn’t been mean-mugging them with every step, he might have been able to simply treat them as nothing other than more hostages than they had planned on. But there was something sinister about the entire setup, and he couldn’t help but think that the Saudis would do their damnedest to bury him and his men if they ever found out that they knew about this little operation in would-be mass murder.
He’d deal with that when they weren’t about to be overrun by angry Iranians.
Hancock and Childress didn’t need any more prompting. As soon as he’d made his decision, they were out the door and moving toward the helipad.
***
Esfandiari was running down the steps toward the barbican as fast as he could when there was a flash and a rumbling boom from the outer courtyard. He ducked instinctively, thinking that one of the missiles had been hit and detonated. A sudden chill went through him at the thought; he knew well what was in the warheads, and he had the sudden horrifying thought that they were all dead.
But then he reminded himself that the chemical agent was a binary one, and would not be mixed until the warhead was on its terminal flight path. Damage could still be done, but even if one of the missiles exploded, it would not result in a full release of sarin gas into the fortress.
He looked back toward the courtyard, and saw the sullen glow of flame flickering beneath a growing pall of belching black smoke. The crackle of exploding ammunition soon reached his ears.
The infidels destroyed one of the APCs. He was momentarily incredulous. What had they brought with them, and where had they come from? Any helicopters should have been detected and shot down, riots or no riots.
Straightening, conscious once again of the fact that his men were watching, he composed hi
mself and continued down the steps. Two more of the AMX-10s were rumbling back into the barbican, accompanied by most of Farroukhshad’s platoon. He jogged to the nearest APC, which had halted just short of the gate leading to the outer courtyard, the crew doubtless worried about meeting the same fate as the first vehicle.
“Where are Farroukhshad and Jahangir?” he bellowed.
“Here, Commander,” the younger man replied. Farroukhshad was little more than a tall, lean silhouette in the darkness, his eyes glinting in the faint light coming from the burning APC.
“Farroukshad, take your platoon and the armored vehicles, and secure the courtyard,” Esfandiari ordered. “Jahangir, you and your men are with me; we must secure the Citadel and stop the infidels from escaping with the hostages.”
Both men were dedicated officers in the IRGC. They did not ask questions. They simply immediately began to issue their own orders, gathering their respective platoons to follow their commander’s instructions. Both platoons were at higher than normal strength; Esfandiari had split the remains of Mehregan’s platoon between the two of them.
With forty men behind him, Esfandiari started back up the steps toward the Citadel at a run.
Marg bar Amryka.
CHAPTER 17
Brannigan came out onto the upper courtyard, flipping his NVGs back down over his eyes as he cleared the door. Hancock was already halfway to the sally port, Childress close behind him, but the hostages were lagging and stumbling; it was dark and none of them had night vision.
Hancock looked back and saw that they were outrunning their charges, and quickly took a knee next to the Super Puma, yelling at Childress to get the rest of the hostages and the prisoners around the back side of the helo. If there was going to be opposition, it would be coming from the front of the Citadel.
Santelli, Ortiz, and Brannigan were herding their charges toward the helo as quickly as they could when the first rattling fusillade of rifle fire banged into the Super Puma’s fuselage.
Hancock shot back, his AK-12 stabbing flame as he fired a long, stuttering burst on full auto in response. Brannigan, still four paces from the helicopter, pivoted and dropped on his belly, his own rifle pointed back toward their attackers. Just in time, too, as another string of 5.56 rounds smacked through the Perspex windshield of the Super Puma, right over his head.
