* * * *
Jonas and Dylan lifted off in thePuma from Ad-Duwayd—one of the many dusty towns on the Saudi side of the border with Iraq. It was in these towns that the ground stations for the Joint Surveillance Target Attack Radar System (JSTARS) was located. They were in contact with Air Force E-8C radar planes running a high-resolution phased array Doppler radar.
The E-8C was basically a remanufactured Boeing 707 that became the eyes and ears for JSTARS. JSTARS did for ground combat (in terms of target identification and acquisition) what AWACS did for air combat. AWACS and JSTARS form a powerful information system capable of transmitting real time battlefield digital images to any number of ground stations using a surveillance and control data link.
The ground stations could bounce the signal off microwave relay towers or overhead military communication satellites to anyone with a laptop rigged with the correct encryption and imaging software. The microprocessor and fiber optics had revolutionized warfare. The old adageIf you can see it, you can kill it took on special meaning with the advent of a virtual battlefield portrayed by digital images.
The satellite phone call Jonas made to Admiral Trevor Barnes, the operational commander for the Fifth Fleet, resulted in a compromise. The heighten tensions over the expulsion of UNSCOM weapons inspectors and increased military activity by both the Iraqis and the American armada moved Iraq and America towards war’s brink. The fear of stumbling into another Gulf War produced orders straight from the National Command Authority to avoid any more territorial intrusion.
“You’re on you own, son,” reflected Barnes. “By the way, where are you?”
“You wouldn’t want to know, Admiral,” replied Jonas.
“I’ll tell you what I’ll do. Are you close to Ad-Duwayd or Al-Qaysumah?”
“Ad-Duwayd,” he said quickly, sensing there was some help coming.
“Okay, we’ve got a JSTARS ground station there. You land and fill up your tanks. I’ll call ahead and make sure someone meets you with an encrypted laptop. You’ll pick them up even if they’re on bicycles.”
“JSTARS—yeah that would work.”
“I hope so, son, it’s the best I can do.”
* * * *
They were lifting away from Ad-Duwayd and back toward the southern Iraqi border. ThePuma could search until close to dawn. If they were still searching by dawn, Dylan and Jonas knew it would be too late to save Harper. He flipped up the lid on the JSTARS laptop and established secure communications with the microwave tower standing in solitude somewhere in the desert behind them.
“What’s the usual search pattern with this thing?”
“On this computer about one hundred square klicks.”
Dylan sighed. They needed some luck.
Jonas thought for a moment. “Let’s start at Nukhayb and see if the Iraqis know anything.”
Dylan nodded. “Let’s get started.”
* * * *
The truck jolted to an abrupt stop. The front axle snapped as the wheels slammed into a large, unmoving rocky outcropping. The engine stalled and steam erupted from the ancient radiator. Great, a marker for the Iraqi soldiers to start from, thought Harper.
Harper scrambled down from the cab of the broken truck. Anderson and Stillwell hopped down from the end of the truck. Stillwell stared at him, holding his M-16, the dirt and grime of the day smeared across his features. He said, “You don’t have to worry about me. I’m okay.”
Hayes came around the end of the truck holding his own M-16.
Stillwell looked at the highway behind them. The tractor/trailers had come to a stop. “Sergeant, whatever happens, thanks for saving my life today.”
Anderson loaded a magazine of High Explosive Anti Tank rounds into the Barrett.
“Those things work?” asked Harper.
“Sort of,” replied Anderson. “It’s all I got left.”
They were painfully short on ammunition.
“Those are BTR-60s up there. The Soviets made a zillion of the things. We can’t outrun them, and I doubt we can outfight them. Those things will do fifty miles per hour on flat ground.” He waved his hand at the crevasse and craggy ground they were standing on. “They may be slowed up by this, but not enough to help.”
They were about two kilometers from the highway and four BTR-60 armored personnel carriers with four eight-man rifle squads. Thirty-two fresh troops against four exhausted Americans. Harper did not like his odds.
“Captain Anderson is going to try out his HEAT rounds on those things. If I remember correctly, the armor is thinner on the sides. I’ll provide overwatch for Captain Anderson. Hayes, it’s your job to get Stillwell home.” He picked up the canvas bag of tapes and tossed them to the Sergeant.
Stillwell watched the exchange. “You’re coming with us, aren’t you?”
Harper looked up at the highway again. One of the BTR-60 APCs was rolling off the transport flatbed. “Lieutenant, in about ten minutes four vehicles with mounted machine guns and four squads with automatic weapons are going to descend on us. Let’s be realistic.” He looked up at the sky. “Help isn’t coming. They bugged out on us.” He pulled the other signal beacon from around his neck and punched the ON button.
“This signal beacon is as useful as the truck here,” he said bitterly and tossed the beacon into the darkness. “Brian, this wasn’t your fight. You were set up like the rest of us. You’re not a warrior. Hayes and Anderson are.” He nodded to the truck again. “Burns and Kincaid knew the score when they signed up. You didn’t. Okay, I think there’s something on those tapes. I mean, there better be something on those tapes.
“In the next hour someone has to live and someone has to die.” He pointed a finger at Stillwell. “You live. You get those tapes back home and make someone listen. I’m going to give you a fighting chance.” He looked around to Hayes and Anderson. “It should have gone differently; I regret it is ending this way.” He paused. “You have your orders.”
Hayes and Anderson came to parade attention and saluted Harper smartly. Harper half grinned and returned the salute.
“Harper, we can all run now! You don’t need to stay,” exclaimed Stillwell.
“Lieutenant. It’s over. Get going—have a good life.’ He paused and said, “Sergeant—you two need to get home.”
Hayes grabbed the bag, tapped Stillwell, and started south.
“All right Captain, where do we go?” asked Harper.
* * * *
Duri listened with satisfaction. They first group had found the Americans and forced them from the road. It was a matter of minutes now. They were thirty kilometers from the point on the map. Duri tapped the driver and indicated he should drive faster. Next, he checked his Makarov ensuring one 9x18mm round was loaded in the breech.
* * * *
The insistent beeping from the other laptop finally got Dylan’s attention. He tapped Jonas and pointed to the other computer sitting at his feet. Jonas stared dumbly for a few moments concentrating on the dark gray colored lid before he heard the alarm beep.
Jonas set the JSTARS laptop to one side and picked up his original machine. Flipping up the screen, he gasped. The second beacon had gone off. He punched up the commands to show him the coordinates according to the army sector maps being used by JSTARS. He keyed the displayed information into the JSTARS laptop and waited for a few moments as the image loaded off the relay tower.
Jonas ran the mouse up to eight targets that appeared to be stopped on the highway. He clicked one and a box emerged on the screen identifying it as a BTR-60. He clicked the others and said quickly through the radio headphones, “Dylan, we’ve got to get here,” he said pointing to the screen.
“Fifteen minutes,” replied the former SAS man.
“They don’t have fifteen minutes,” whispered Jonas. The blips on his screen were moving off the highway and to the south.
* * * *
Harper loaded the last of his shotgun shells into the Mossberg. It had been a long day, he re
flected. Somehow, he never imagined he would die in a nameless patch of desert. He pushed the thought from his mind. He was still alive, and while alive he could use the best weapon he had—his mind.
Anderson set up the Barrett on a ledge a few feet from him. They were a couple hundred meters from the truck. Not much use in getting too far away. It was Stillwell and Hayes who had to escape. Their chances of making it to Saudi territory were extraordinarily low.
He settled down behind a rock and felt Lynn’s Bible one last time. It was too dark to see their pictures or read anything. It was enough to feel her Bible. To know it was something she treasured. To understand that even in this terribly lonely place she was still with him. “I did my best,” he whispered.
* * * *
Dylan was following the road from Nukhayb towards Ash-Shabakah. He tapped Jonas on the shoulder and pointed at the truck convoy ahead. “You said they had BTR-60s?”
“Yeah.” He glanced back at the screen in horror. The wheeled vehicles were racing away from the highway and spreading out into coverage.
“Those are BTR-60s down there.”
Jonas thought for a moment. “More friends to the party?”
“You’re learning. Right now we can take them out of the fight by smashing the tractor/trailer rigs.” He pointed back to the custom-made chain gun belt system.
“Do it.”
“You realize it’s an act of war,” commented Dylan.
“What would Harper do?”
Dylan chuckled. “He had this saying that he picked up at one of your gun shows:Peace through superior firepower .”
“So lets be peaceful.”
ThePuma ran ahead of the convoy and spun violently. Dylan pulled the targeting lens over his right eye and engaged the shoot-and-see fire control system. The chain gun unlatched itself from its mount and trained itself on the picture displayed on Dylan’s targeting lens.
He brought thePuma to hover twenty feet off the ground and pressed the trigger stud on his control stick. The chain gun ripped the darkness apart with 30 mm shells. The first tractor/trailer radiator and engine exploded, pulling the rig sideways across the path of the other tractor/trailer. The second truck collided with an angry screech of metal on metal.
Dylan focused on the diesel tanks and pressed the stud a second time. Sparks, petroleum, and metal rolled over the highway pavement; eventually something caught fire, but Dylan did not wait to examine his handiwork. He turned thePuma away from the carnage and continued along the highway ribbon towards the location identified by Jonas.
* * * *
The heavy machine guns mounted on the BTR-60s tore the truck apart. Two vehicles riddled the truck with mounted fire as they approached at a leisurely twenty klicks per hour. The other two vehicles ran quickly down the flanks forming up some five kilometers from the road before turning inwards on the box they had formed.
Unfortunately, someone knew what he was doing. Harper prepared for the inevitable as the two APCs came to a halt next to the truck. The side hatches pointing away from the truck body opened up. Incredibly, they thought someone could still be alive as they were using the APC as a shield between themselves and the truck.
Anderson needed no prompting to take advantage of the situation. He acquired the black opening through his night vision scope and gentle squeezed the trigger. The effectiveness of a HEAT round penetrating light armor when fired from a Barrett was questionable. However, the effectiveness of a HEAT round sailing through an open hatch was an entirely different situation.
The HEAT round first hit a soldier exiting the BTR-60. It punched him back through the hatch opening before a fireball erupted from inside the APC. Two other hatches blasted away from the front of the APC as ammunition and fuel exploded in a violent cook off.
The APC on the other side of the truck responded with a full barrage of automatic and machine gun fire. The rifle fire was panic driven and wild. Usually, this results in a waste of ammunition and a great deal of noise. Rarely is anyone hit unless they are stupid enough to fire their weapons straight up into the air. Tonight was the exception.
The ground around Harper and Anderson was pelted with rifle rounds. A burst of shells found Anderson lying prone. He never felt the impact of the bullets as the first one drove through the top of his skull and out the brain stem.
Harper hunkered down behind the rock as bullets walked across his position and then stopped. The frantic Arabic drifted over the desert night. The men from the second BTR-60 were checking on their comrades whom they had just shot through. Harper shrugged. The tactical commander might know what was supposed to happen; his troops were lacking in any fire discipline.
He turned to Anderson and whispered, “Let’s move captain.”
Anderson just lay there. Harper crawled across to the sniper and shook his shoulder only to smell the coppery blood scent and feel the stickiness on his fingers. “Oh no,” whispered Harper with remorse.
* * * *
Duri lifted his head from the dashboard he slammed into. He looked around for his driver, only to find him with a broken neck on the seat beside him. He shook his head to clear his vision and found the crackling flames from the two tractor/trailers and BTR-60s. They were a mass of twisted, jagged metal burning on the roadway.
He spat the blood from between his teeth before pushing his dead driver onto the ground. He was unsure as to what had happened on the road to Ash-Shabakah, but it was obvious one component of the trap was gone. It could not have been Harper, but then who and what? The road had simply exploded into a sheet of flame and metal.
He revved the Jeep’s engine and pulled alongside the burning wreck. It was time to leave Iraq. The chances of cornering Harper were too iffy for his comfort. He would simply proceed to Ash-Shabakah and then head south across the Saudi border. It was his operation; he certainly could maintain control—at least until dawn.
* * * *
Hayes peaked around a clump of dirt when he heard the heavy machine gun fire. The night was alive with red and orange fireballs. He looked back at the flanking BTR-60s. They were stationary while searching for them with night vision and infrared scopes. It was what he would do if their positions were reversed.
Stillwell moved even with Hayes and whispered, “Did they start World War Three?”
“Not sure, Lieutenant.” He eyed the BTR-60s.
“If they come forward to respond to this, we move. Harper’s making a big noise back there. He’s trying to draw the flankers back,” he explained referring to the two BTR-60s that had run long to form up the outer corners of the box.
Stillwell nodded. “Do you think he’ll get out?”
Hayes shook his head. “Lieutenant, I’m not real surewe’re going to get out.”
* * * *
Harper grabbed the Barrett’s muzzle and pulled it towards him. It was thirty pounds of weapon compared to the Mossberg’s six and half pounds. He slung the Mossberg over his shoulder and rolled away from Anderson. The Barrett felt clumsy and unfamiliar in his hands.
Still, it was a weapon. He figured there would be a round chambered—fed from the magazine by the recoil. He had no time for safeties and hoped they had not reset themselves. He needed to convince the other BTR-60s to come back for him—to do that he needed to appear like a small army. He had nine HEAT rounds left in the Barrett.
He sidled down the slope and leaned the heavy weapon over a rock as a rest. He pulled the stock tight to his shoulder and found the gray green night vision world through the scope. He brought the cross hairs to rest on the forward hatch of the second BTR-60.
Harper figured Anderson had adjusted the elevation and drift for the distance. He grabbed the Forend grip and held it tightly as he tightened pressure on the trigger. There was awhump as the recoil bounced him back against the hillside. The barrel lifted upwards and then settled back down. Harper wondered briefly if his shoulder was still in one piece, then said to himself, “I need to get one of these.”
The round pu
lled to one side, finding the engine block of the truck rather than the center of the hatch. The truck exploded and flipped over on its side, catching a couple of soldiers in its wake. Always the shooter, Harper looked at the cartwheeling truck and back to the Barrett. “Cool,” he muttered. He picked up the heavy weapon and started moving again.
* * * *
Hayes tapped Stillwell and started moving south as the flanking BTR-60s reversed their course and turned towards the burning BTR-60. Stillwell stared back at the night where Harper was and said, “We can’t leave him.”
“Lieutenant, those are our orders. We follow orders in this army. Don’t let him die for nothing!” snapped Hayes.
Stillwell nodded and started running behind Hayes.
* * * *
Dylan Scott looked at the burning vehicles on the desert floor. Tracer fire was coming from the two flanking BTR-60s as they raced back to aid their fallen comrades. Dylan pulled thePuma around the burning wrecks. In the light scattered by the flames, some men were still crawling, but they were out of the fight.
“Where’s Harper?”
Dylan shook his head sadly. “It looks like he shot his wad.”
“What’d you mean?”
Dylan pointed to the two icons on the map screen representing the flanking BTR-60s. “He made a big noise to pull these fellows back to this point. It’s got to be a diversion so someone else can get away,” explained Dylan. “It’s working too. These boys look like they’re coming in a hurry. But for it to work, someone has to stay behind and keep their attention.”
“So who’s running?”
“Haven’t the faintest idea. It’s your team,” replied Dylan.
* * * *
Harper tossed the empty Barrett away. He crept down towards the burning vehicles and rolled a dead soldier over. There was a string of four grenades and an AK-47 in his hands. Grenades would do nothing to the APC, but a big noise might keep their attention. The shotgun was pretty much useless, unless he intended to get inside the APC—an unlikely scenario.
PointOfHonor Page 35
