by Peter Nealen
He suddenly found that he was too tired to care. He would have been struggling to keep his eyes open if he hadn’t been riding the bow of a rubber boat, in the Persian Gulf. The weight of the load of passengers kept the bow from bouncing too much; it was more of a wallow. But there was still enough motion from the waves that he was still slammed into the gunwale jarringly every few dozen meters.
“How are we on fuel?” Hancock asked quietly. None of the hostages were talking, or even moving very much, so he didn’t have to raise his voice.
Brannigan reached down beneath him to feel the fuel bladder. “Maybe a third,” he replied.
“Fuck,” was Hancock’s response. The word was low and flat, but it carried, and several of the hostages’ heads lifted, wondering what was happening.
“Why?” Brannigan asked, wishing that he had some way to have this conversation out of their charges’ hearing. The last thing they needed was a bunch of panicky hostages on their hands.
“I still can’t see our ride,” Hancock replied.
Brannigan looked back out over the Gulf to their south. All that he could see was darkness and the waves. No lights, no faint, dark silhouette of the dhow.
“We’re not even past the southern tip of the island yet,” he said quietly, looking back at Hancock. The man was sitting up on the gunwale, his hand on the tiller, the Russian NVGs hiding his eyes behind their vaguely insectoid lenses. “They’re probably still over the horizon.”
“If they’re waiting,” Hancock said. “If you were a mobster, and saw that fireball, would you stick around?”
“We’ll just have to see,” Brannigan replied, hoping that none of their charges suddenly decided that all was lost. “What other choice do we have?”
“On that much fuel, not much,” Hancock said. Then he fell silent and drove the boat.
They passed the rocky mount that they had used as a landmark for the initial landing, only about forty-eight hours before. It seemed like a lot longer than that. Then they were on the open water, the island slowly shrinking behind them.
***
It took nearly another hour to get to the rendezvous. The first light of dawn would be starting to spread across the eastern sky in a short while.
And they were alone on the waves. There was no sign of the dhow.
Brannigan didn’t cuss, didn’t betray any sign that he was in the least bit perturbed, even as his guts twisted inside him. Their options had just become sharply limited. He sat up in the bow, looking over at the other boats, and circled his hand above his head. Rally up.
The other three boats motored in, and hands reached out to grab gunwales, lines, and other hands, until they had a little floating pontoon raft of four overloaded rubber boats, not unlike the one they’d formed before casting off that first night, bobbing on the waves.
“All right,” Brannigan said, his voice pitched low. There weren’t any enemy boats nearby to hear them, but he was going to maintain his field habits until they were out of the field. And being stranded on the water, in his mind, meant they were still in the woods, and caution was called for. “It looks like our friend Dmitri has either written us off or deliberately screwed us. The dhow was supposed to be here until dawn, and there’s no sign of it. It’s not even on the horizon. So, they’ve skedaddled, and left us to our own devices.
“We haven’t got enough fuel to reach Sir Bu Nair. We might paddle, but that’s going to be a long haul, and we’ve got wounded. The other option would be to turn back to Khadarkh, go to ground, and see if we can arrange some other passage off the island. I expect that any of the Iranians who are left are going to be pretty off-balance for a while.”
“If we can get to the harbor,” Ortiz said weakly, “we might be able to get the Oceana Metropolis out of port. Unless they’ve got it locked down.”
“Aziz, did the Iranians appear to have much of a presence outside the Citadel?” Brannigan asked.
There was a pause. “They had some patrols out yesterday afternoon,” Aziz finally said, “but who knows, after all that? How many of them can there still be left alive, after the fighting in the Citadel, and in the Old City?”
“You might be surprised,” Santelli said. He was looking back toward the dark hulk of Khadarkh. “Everybody look off to the east side of the island.”
All eyes, even those without NVGs, turned to look. Some of the hostages cried out, and were quickly silenced by their more sensible companions.
They were small and distant, but the two boats shining spotlights on the water and the shoreline could only be patrol boats. And given the situation on Khadarkh, they could only be crewed by Iranians.
It was still possible that the Al Qaeda fighters had commandeered them, but that was no better. Whoever was on those boats, they would not have the best interests of a bunch of American hostages in mind, never mind the mercenaries who had rescued them.
Brannigan’s mind was already racing. Their options were sharply limited. Sooner or later, if they weren’t found closer in to shore, the gunboats would expand their search out to sea. And the overloaded, wallowing rubber boats would be easy targets out on the water.
He watched the moving lights as the murmurs of fear and despair got louder around him. He ignored the noise. If they were going to stand any chance of survival, he had to plan fast.
“They’re searching systematically,” he said, his voice low and urgent, “circling the island clockwise. If we move a little farther out to the east, we should be able to get behind them, and move in to shore once they’ve passed. If we’re fast, quiet, and lucky, they might well miss us in the dark entirely.” He was all too aware of the nearness of dawn. Once the sun was up, they’d be exposed. And they didn’t have much ammo left, either.
But faced with the fact that the only alternative was being hunted down on the open water and slaughtered, it was better than nothing.
The murmurs got louder, especially from the middle-aged woman. None of the hostages wanted to go back to the island they’d just escaped. But Brannigan cut them off. “This ain’t a democracy,” he said. “If you don’t like it, feel free to try to swim to Dubai or Abu Dhabi. You’ve got a better chance with us, believe me.” He looked at his team. “Everybody got the plan?”
There were nods. Aziz didn’t respond at first. Only after Brannigan stared at him for several seconds did he finally nod grudgingly. He didn’t want to go back to the island any more than the hostages did. And he didn’t like the fact that they didn’t have any other choice. That much was obvious from his body language.
“Let’s go, then,” Brannigan said.
The raft broke up, and the coxswains turned their bows back toward the glowing tower of smoke above Khadarkh.
***
Brannigan lay flat against the bow, the Type 03 in his shoulder, watching the distant silhouette of the closest patrol boat, over a nautical mile distant. They were well out of weapons range, but that didn’t mean they were out of detection range. So far, there had been no sign that they’d been spotted, but that could change in a heartbeat.
The shore was a dark line ahead, looming higher on the horizon as they approached. And it was starting to get light; the image in his NVGs wasn’t quite washed out yet, but it was noticeably brightening. He could even see some of the ocean floor beneath the boat as they got into the shallows.
He took his hand off the rifle’s forearm, raised it over his head, looking down at the depth under the keel, then chopped it down sharply. Hancock killed the outboard, then hauled it up before it could plow into the sand and rocks beneath them. Probably pointless; they wouldn’t likely use the boats again. But old habits die hard.
In a tight knot, the four boats crossed the surf and beached on a narrow strip of gravel not far from their first landing site. The mercenaries in the bows were out before they were even on the shore, dragging the boats up as far as they could. Which wasn’t very far, as heavily laden as they were.
“Everybody off!” Brannigan hissed,
echoed by the others on the boats to either side. “Hurry up!”
Ortiz wasn’t moving very well, and his face was drawn and pale in the early morning grayness, but he helped chivvy the hostages off. The Saudis were close-mouthed, but generally cooperative, though not one of them lifted a finger to help. Their survival was as touch-and-go as the Americans’, and they had to know it. They just wouldn’t help if it meant helping the Americans at the same time..
Childress suddenly hissed a warning. Eyes snapped up, to see the nearest patrol boat starting to make a long turn to come around. Either they’d been spotted, or the Iranians had decided they couldn’t have gone that far.
“Come on, get off the beach!” Brannigan rasped. “Get up in the rocks and get down!” He didn’t know exactly what kind of weapons might be mounted on those boats, but if they were out in the open, the odds were good that they’d be machinegunned to death from well beyond small arms range. “Move!”
The sight of that boat turning about was enough of an incentive, even for the Saudi prisoners, to get people moving. In moments, even the wounded were scrambling up the short rock escarpment above the beach, trying to find a hole, a crack, even just a rock to hide behind.
They were still out of range of even a .50 cal by the time they had everyone up off the beach. As before, Brannigan and Santelli had stayed until the last, sometimes physically shoving civilians up over the rocky lip of the high-water line, to where Flanagan, Curtis, Hancock, and Childress were dragging them up, often by main force. There was no time to waste on being gentle.
Finally, the two of them scrambled up and ran for the nearest bit of terrain, a slight, rocky rise with a bit of thorny scrub growing in between the cracks in the stones. Brannigan threw himself down on his belly behind the tiny hillock, even as the gunboat chugged into view.
At first, the boat just slowly rumbled past the landing site, as if the crew was only out to take a leisurely trip around the island, and found the four rubber boats pulled up on the narrow beach little more than a curiosity. But then a massive, strobing blast of flame erupted from the M2 .50 caliber machinegun mounted on the bow, and heavy slugs were tearing the air apart overhead, the tracers looking impossibly huge as they floated overhead, the shockwaves of their passage actually physically painful.
They were shooting high, which was a phenomenon that Brannigan had come to expect in the Middle East. He’d never gone toe-to-toe with Iranians before that night, that he knew of, but everyone in the region, be they Arab, Kurd, or Persian, tended to let heavy guns get away from them pretty quickly. Massive, six hundred forty-seven grain projectiles sailed overhead, to impact somewhere off in the desert behind them.
“Hold your fire!” Brannigan hissed. He was sure most of his team would know that, anyway, but everyone was tired, battered, and probably more than a little punchy at that point. Wasting what little ammo they had left by retuning fire well outside of the 5.45mm’s range had the potential to be a deadly mistake.
The gunner was joined by a second boat, a few dozen yards behind. More thumping heavy machinegun fire roared overhead, and the mercenaries, the hostages, and the prisoners flattened themselves a little bit closer to the dirt and rocks. Jagged stone dug into chests, hands, and cheeks. Sand filled nostrils already painfully dry from dust and smoke.
“Sooner or later,” Brannigan said, just loudly enough that Flanagan could hear him over the thunder of the machinegun fire, “they’re going to figure out that they can’t finish us off that way, and they’ll come ashore after us. When they do, start with grenades. Let ‘em get just close enough, and we’ll blow ‘em to hell. We haven’t got much ammo left, so keep the rifles as a last resort.”
Flanagan nodded that he understood, and turned his head, without lifting it out of the sand more than a half an inch, to pass the word along to Curtis, who was clutching what had been Brannigan’s AK-12. Meanwhile, Brannigan started pulling his remaining F1 frags out of his vest. He had two left. Each of the rest should have three, even four.
They’d come loaded for bear. And it was a good thing, too.
The hammering fire continued for what felt like an eternity. Most of the rounds went harmlessly overhead, but some smacked into the rocks in front of them, the Armor Piercing Incendiary rounds detonating with little flashes and blasts of smoke and grit twice the size of a man’s head. Brannigan risked lifting his head just high enough to see over the rise once, but saw no infantry moving onto the beach. For the moment, the enemy seemed content to just sit offshore and blast away at them as the morning light intensified. Most of the mercenaries had already stripped off their NVGs as the dawn reduced the contrast in the image tubes until they were essentially useless.
After a while, the fire started to slacken, then it abruptly died completely. Brannigan risked another look.
One of the patrol boats was moving in toward the shore. It seemed to have circled around the other, and was angling in to come alongside the beach, where they would doubtless unload soldiers to move in on the mercenaries and their charges.
He fought the temptation to open fire. The boat was within effective rifle range now; he could probably hit a few of those figures lining the gunwales, ready to jump overboard and wade ashore. But better to save the ammunition until they were sure.
Let ‘em get close enough that you can see the whites of their eyes. He’d never thought, either as an enlisted Marine or as an officer, that he’d ever find himself using that old saw as sound tactical advice. But here he was.
The second boat had had its field of fire cut off by the first. It was a mistake that he hadn’t expected the Iranians to make, after the night before, and he momentarily thought that it meant the enemy was Al Qaeda. But the uniform khaki fatigues and the black, Chinese rifles in the hands of the figures dropping into the water confirmed that it was indeed, the Iranians coming after them.
They must have been as tired, shell-shocked, and punchy as he was.
He worked the pin out of a grenade and held it in his hand, clamping the safety lever to the knobbed body with his fingers. He eased one eye back up over the rocky top of the hillock, watching their foes wade ashore and set up on the rocky lip above the beach before starting to clamber over.
Two of the enemy soldiers got down on the rocks and started shooting, spattering the hillock with 5.56 fire. Grit and rock fragments showered down on Brannigan where he lay. They were laying down covering fire for the rest of the attackers to get up onto the flats.
Then, with a ragged chorus of yells in Farsi, alongside the all-too-familiar Arabic cry of, “Allahu Akhbar!” the Iranians were charging the hillock, blazing away with their rifles as they ran.
Wait. Don’t jump the gun. If you throw too early, they’ll land short. Conversely, he knew if he waited too long, the grenades would still go off after the Iranians had run past them.
“Now!” he bellowed, lobbing the Russian frag over his head and toward the beach. The safety lever came away with a faint ping, almost drowned out by the gunfire and shouting from the Iranians.
The shouts turned to panicked yells, and then were drowned out altogether by the chorus of earth-shaking thuds as the grenades detonated, most of them almost right at the charging Qods Force fighters’ feet.
Brannigan rolled over, hitching himself just over the top of the hillock, jamming his captured Type 03 into his shoulder, looking for the sights at the same time he tried to see the gunboat through the clouds of dust and black smoke from the exploding grenades. He was looking for the .50 gunner.
There. He imagined that he and the Iranian looked right at each other in that split second before the trigger broke. The Iranian must have been tightening his thumbs on the butterfly trigger of the .50, right before the 5.56mm round zipped just above the machinegun’s receiver and blasted a hole between his eyes.
The shoreline suddenly fell silent, except for the pained moans of the wounded and dying Iranians caught in the grenade blasts.
Brannigan lay behind his rifle
for a few heartbeats, waiting. The second .50 was still out there, though the boat was presently masked by the rise of the shore to the west. That could change at any moment.
But he also knew that they couldn’t stay put. He didn’t know how many men the Iranians had left, but it wouldn’t take that many to flank them and kill them all. They had to push forward.
He couldn’t necessarily have logically explained that right at that moment. He was as gassed as the others. It was just something he knew clear down to his bones, an instinct driven home by decades of training and fighting. When in doubt, attack.
He pulled a second frag out of his vest. He had one left. He pulled the pin, lobbed it at the beach, and hunkered down. The Russian grenades blasted shrapnel farther than a man could reasonably throw them, and fragments whickered overhead as the heavy thud shook the ground.
“On me,” he rasped, and then he was up and moving.
***
Esfandiari wasn’t sure why he was on his back. Or why he was lying on rocks and sand.
A moment later, the memory hazily returned. The memory of the world dissolving in an evil black cloud of smoke, the tiniest fraction of a second before the shockwave of the grenade explosions knocked him flat and rattled his brains for the second time in two hours. And with it came the pain.
He was bleeding; he was sure of that. He realized he couldn’t see out of one eye. Everything screamed in agony, a blinding, throbbing, burning pain that told him he’d take more than a few fragments along with the impact of the blast. His bruises and burns from the conflagration in the Citadel were forgotten in the fiery anguish that now wracked his body.
He turned his head and nearly blacked out. He felt around himself and found that he still had his rifle, clenched in his right hand. His left didn’t seem to be working quite right.
Then he looked up at the lip and saw the crouched silhouettes of men with rifles. And he knew they couldn’t be his.
