Flash Point

by James W. Huston

  The Pave Lows streaked toward the mountains of eastern Turkey and their rendezvous. The Captain turned on the radar and activated the terrain-following function. The vector came up on the screen and the pilot followed it into the valley.

  The copilot checked their fuel consumption against the prediction. They were within a hundred pounds of where they expected to be. On the ICS, he spoke to the Captain. “You see ’em?”

  The pilot responded immediately. “Two tallies.”

  Approaching the rendezvous, the Captain slowed to one hundred knots. He picked his tanker, the lead, and climbed to five hundred feet. They had practiced tanking with the MC-130Ps many times, always at night, always on night-vision devices; but they hadn’t practiced much in the mountains of Turkey. The terrain was as difficult and remote as it was possible to get. It made the backside of the moon look attractive. The Combat Shadows had picked the rendezvous spot during one of their several recent training missions. It was a valley with enough room to fly in a good six-mile circle yet be completely protected from detection by the mountains all around.

  The MC-130P saw the Pave Low coming and turned on its formation lights for the rendezvous. The pilot of the lead plane climbed and extended the refueling probe past the spinning rotor blades. He waited until the Combat Shadow tanker was ready and drove his probe home to refuel. He was very conscious of the catastrophe that resulted the last time the United States tried to rescue hostages from Iran. Jimmy Carter had ordered it. The H-53s had landed to refuel. No problem. Except on taking off one of the helicopters had run into one of the refueling planes, causing death, destruction, conflagration, failure, and embarrassment. The pilot would make sure that didn’t happen this time.

  Iran was America’s long-running tar baby. Everything that happened there turned out badly, including a U.S. Navy Aegis cruiser shooting down an Iranian airliner because it thought it was under attack. The Captain still remembered the images of the bloated bodies floating in the Persian Gulf carried worldwide on CNN.

  The other Pave Low plugged into the second MC-130P. The helicopter bounced slightly in some turbulence sending a wave up the refueling hose, not enough to cause a problem, but the pilot tried to steady the Pave Low to make sure the hose didn’t rupture. If they couldn’t refuel, they couldn’t get back.

  The commandos in the back were becoming restless. They had checked everything three times and were tired of waiting. But waiting was part of their training. They tried to sit quietly, most staring straight ahead as their airplanes took on the fuel they would need to make it home.

  In less than ten minutes the two Pave Lows were ready. They backed out of the refueling baskets and turned together toward the east, with the Captain in the lead and his wingman behind him.

  They knew they were less than forty minutes away from the scariest sixty seconds of their lives.

  Farouk was furious. Their operation was in shambles. The Sheikh was dead, and Farouk was the only one of the council who had survived—he had been out watching for other intruders as the Sheikh had insisted. It was all on his shoulders now, but for what? To become the Sheikh? Perhaps to call himself the Sheikh? Who would know he wasn’t? He could take the name and carry on the lifelong mission, but he knew he didn’t have the leadership skills, the knowledge of the inner workings of the teachings of the Isma’ilis. He also knew that the men who had done this were out there. The Iranians had shot one of the planes down, and the pilots were on the ground. Farouk understood that the one thing he must do now was to find them and capture them. To get hostages to embarrass America.

  He realized now that they had miscalculated. They had found one American spy with his laser designator, but there must have been two. How stupid he had been to conclude the one spy had been operating by himself. He had been so pleased with himself when they’d found the one that he hadn’t checked the area thoroughly for other camouflaged boulders. But there had to be at least one more. How else could they have known exactly where to drop their bombs to penetrate the mountain like that? There had to be someone else on the ground.

  He knew something else as well—that when there was a downed U.S. airman, they would come to get him with airplanes. Fine. Come. The few handheld SAMs the Assassins had been able to accumulate had survived the attack. He and his men would be waiting.

  Woods almost lost his footing as they climbed over the rocks above their hideout when his head was suddenly filled with static. His radio had come alive with a voice, but he had missed the words. Then he heard the voice again, clearly this time.

  “Watchmaker 08, this is Sidewalk 71, inbound to Point Whiskey, ETA fifteen minutes. How do you read? Over.” The lead AC-130U Spooky was in charge of the operation until the Pave Lows arrived. The helicopters were to be TOT, Time Over Target, fifteen minutes after the gunships. It would give the gunships fifteen minutes to clear out any opposition to the rescue attempt. It was also the job of the Spooky to find the downed aircrew.

  Woods turned to Wink. “They’re on their way. Fifteen minutes out from Point Whiskey.”

  “How do you know they’re on our side?” Zev asked suspiciously.

  “They used our mission call sign, Watchmaker.”

  “Who is it?”

  “Sidewalk somebody.”

  “Who is that?”

  “Beats me. American voice, though.”

  Wink moved more quickly. “I don’t remember anybody on our call sign assignment sheet named Sidewalk,” he said. “Do you?”

  “No, but it changes every day. We’ve got to get higher on this hill so they can get us.”

  Zev wasn’t so sure. He looked around in the dark, shifting the backpack that was full of his gear. He had left most of it behind under the boulder. “How do you know they’re Americans?”

  Woods hadn’t thought about it. “How would the Iranians know about Point Whiskey?”

  Zev was unconvinced. “What is that?”

  “Alamut. Our target.”

  “Did you have a chart for your flight?”

  “Sure.”

  “Did it mention this Point Whiskey?”

  “Sure. It was marked.”

  “Where is this chart now?”

  “It went down with our airplane. Burned up.”

  “You know for certain it was burned? You think the Assassins didn’t search the wreckage? How do you know they didn’t recover it?”

  Woods was tired of trying to imagine how horribly wrong things could go. He knew an American voice when he heard one. “You’re paranoid. I guess we’ll just have to take the chance.”

  “And what of your mission call sign? You never transmitted it before?”

  “I don’t think so,” he said, trying to remember.

  “What about your wingman?”

  “Nope.” Woods transmitted, “Sidewalk 71, Watchmaker 08, read you loud and clear.” He looked at Zev. “What exactly is your prob—”

  The radio spoke in his ear again. “Watchmaker, state your posit.”

  Woods turned to Zev. “What’s our distance and direction from Alamut?”

  “We are 265 for five thousand three hundred meters. But you must not transmit this on a radio.”

  “I’ve got to give them our position!”

  “You think they don’t speak English? They’ll know where we are!”

  “These are Americans.”

  “You think the Assassins don’t know what your rescue frequency is?”

  Woods couldn’t believe that they could have someone inbound and this Israeli was seriously not going to let him give them information. He regarded Zev with new skepticism, suddenly realizing he didn’t know whether Zev was an Israeli or not. He didn’t know anything about him at all. Zev might be one of them, there only to lure in the SAR attempt just to shoot them down and give them more hostages and problems. He could be one of their guards, an outpost to find people just like him. He looked at Zev’s large sniper-like rifle skeptically. What if he did what Zev didn’t want him to do? He thought
of the Beretta in his survival vest and reached for it, holding it in his right hand with the radio in his left.

  “What are you doing?” Zev asked, amazed.

  “I want to be ready if they sneak up on us,” Woods replied.

  “You Americans,” Zev said.

  “Wink, you still got the authentication table?”

  “Yeah,” Wink replied immediately. “In my G-suit pocket.”

  “Give it to me,” Woods said.

  Wink pulled open the flap and reached inside his shirt pocket. It was empty. He checked his leg pocket. It too was empty. “It’s gone.”

  Zev asked Wink, “Did you have a radio too?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Where is it?”

  “Lost it. I tried to talk to Big on the way down in the chute, but the landing jarred it out of my hand.”

  Zev started walking again. He had heard enough. He spoke to Woods angrily. “How do you know the Assassins aren’t using his radio to talk to you? Or even the Iranians? They could be one hundred feet from us right now! You behave like a Boy Scout . . .” he grumbled.

  Woods didn’t know what to do. If it was the SAR team, and he didn’t identify himself, it would cost them their only chance to get out of Iran. If it was the Assassins with Wink’s radio, they were dead. He lifted the radio to his mouth and pushed the transmit button. “We are 265 for 5,000 meters from Whiskey.”

  “Roger. Copy. Nice to hear from you. Any injuries?”

  “Negative. Minor knee damage to one.”

  “Are you both ready to go?”

  “Affirmative. There are three of us.”

  A pause. “Roger. Who’s the third?”

  “We’ll tell you when you get here.”

  “You number one alphabetically?”

  “Negative. Number two.”

  “Stand by.” There was a long pause while Woods, Wink, and Zev walked quickly around a series of small rocks. “Number two, state the name of your first dog.”

  Woods grinned. “BJ.”

  “Roger. Authenticated. ETA 5 minutes. Move to a good LZ.”

  Woods’s relief was instant and complete. “Roger! We’re on the move. Be advised, there’s at least one and maybe two ZSU-23s nearby.”

  “Roger. Copy.”

  Woods stuck the radio into the chest pocket of his flight suit and zipped it closed until only the antenna and cord for the earpiece stuck out. The radio was slightly heavy against his chest. “It’s them. No doubt about it. They used the SAR authentication,” Woods said. “We’ve got to get to where we can be picked up.”

  “How authenticate?” Zev asked warily.

  “Name of my first dog.”

  “You don’t think the Assassins could have thought of that?”

  “No, I don’t,” Woods replied, “because I made up the question on my SAR card that they’re reading from. If they’d asked any other question I would have known it was a setup.”

  “This way,” Zev whispered, heading up the rocky hill and slightly away from Alamut.

  The pilot of the AC-130U felt his gut tighten as they approached the target. They had fifteen minutes to suppress any air defense in the area, but one in particular was of such great concern to him that he had almost vetoed the operation. He had read the report of the SA-6 radar lighting up the F-14s before the lead was shot down. The wingman had reported a clear indication of an SA-6. Clear, he had said. But no lock-on, no fire control radar, just the SA-6 in the search mode. Odd. Then they revised their approach to go in lower, and they got hit by a ZSU. No SAM site on the imagery, but that didn’t surprise him. The SA-6 was every bit as mobile as the ZSU-23. Good camouflage could beat good imagery. The SA-6 might still be there. Or, as the latest intelligence insisted, it was a new tactic of the ZSUs. Carry an SA-6 search radar, all the planes will panic and get down on the deck to avoid the SAM envelope, and fly right into the ZSU’s waiting bullets. That’s what was said to have happened to the F-14s. He didn’t buy it. At least not at first. American intelligence claimed to have HUMINT—human intelligence—that confirmed that. Still. If they were wrong, and there was an SA-6 site nearby, this mission might be about to lose some very nice people and a very expensive airplane.

  He glanced at the IR screen, then the ALLTV screen, the all-light television that could see just about anything in all light conditions. Nothing. “Any ESM?” he called on the ICS to the EWO, the Electronic Warfare Officer.

  “Negative. Nothing, yet.”

  He spoke to the crew over the ICS. “We’re approaching the target. Everybody ready?”

  “All ready,” came the reply.

  The Spooky flew at fifteen thousand feet directly over the small mountain where Woods and the others stood. As soon as they were on the other side of the mountain the ZSU saw them. Its radar instantly started doing the calculations necessary to shoot down the huge target in the dark.

  “I’ve got an SA-6 radar!” the EWO shouted. “I’ve got a ZSU radar!” he yelled even louder.

  The sensor operators in the back of the Spooky checked the direction of the strobe for the two radars. They were coming from the same place. The ALLTV operator zoomed in that direction and saw the wheeled, lightly armored ZSU, its four barrels distinct in the contrast. “Good picture of the ZSU,” he called calmly.

  At the right seat in the Battle Management Center in the back of the Spooky, the Fire Control Officer watched the television picture. He had seen enough. “Keep looking for the crew. We’ve got a target,” he said, selecting the 105-millimeter gun for the first salvo. He checked the status of the gun and it was ready. The airman had loaded the fifty-pound shell into the side-pointing gun long before. All three guns were pointed at the ZSU. He fired the 105-millimeter howitzer cannon and the four-plus-inch round blasted out of the plane down toward the ZSU faster than the speed of sound. The Fire Control Officer then selected the 40-millimeter cannon and began firing down the same track. The crosshairs on the ALLTV were locked on to the ZSU. The cannon screamed as its nearly two-inch-wide bullets ripped downhill at the ZSU. They watched the first 105 shell hit the ground slightly above the ZSU. Suddenly on the ALLTV they saw the tracers from the ZSU’s 23-millimeter four-barrel cannon coming back at them, screaming uphill faster than the speed of sound.

  “Jammin’ him?” the pilot asked the EWO.

  “All over him,” came the reply.

  “Any SAMs?”

  “Just that SA-6 radar, still in search.”

  “It’s bogus,” the pilot said, relieved.

  “We’re getting another ZSU radar, bearing 140,” the EWO reported.

  “That’s number two’s target.

  The second gunship flew past the first, headed southeast to take on the second ZSU. The gunships set up parallel orbits around each ZSU. It allowed them to keep a constant bearing on the target for firing, a consistent pylon turn around the target. No escape. Just an old-fashioned gunfight: Keep shooting until one of you is dead.

  “Any sight of the aircrew?”

  “Nothing,” the sensor operators said. They were checking every hill nearby with the IR, but couldn’t find anyone.

  “Watchmaker, you got a glint patch?”

  “Affirmative.”

  “You got him?”

  “No, sir, nothing.”

  The glint patch was a small patch worn on the flight suit underneath a squadron patch. It Velcroed to the flight suit, and made it visible to infrared or ALLTV, by showing up as a strobe. “We should have it by now,” the sensor operator said, concerned.

  The first thing they heard was the shell slamming into the earth.

  “What the hell—“ Woods exclaimed as they dived to the ground. “What was that?”

  “Gunship,” Wink declared. “I’d bet anything. One of those Hercules things, with guns out the side.”

  They heard a supersonic crack and glanced up to look for some muzzle flash, but could see nothing in the dark sky.

  “I thought they’d be coming with helos,” Woods
said, worried.

  “They’re probably on their way. They sent the bouncers first, to clear the floor. Come on,” Wink said, standing, as the gunfight began below them in earnest. They could see red tracers racing up into the black sky, into pure emptiness, as far as they could tell. But the sound of the returning fire was growing louder. It sounded as if the Spooky had all three guns going as they heard another airplane fly overhead and another ZSU light up the sky to the southeast.

  One more 105 shell hit the ground in the valley below them, almost making them miss the distinctive sound of an AK-47 bullet glancing off a boulder ten feet away.

  The Captain of the Pave Low studied the new image on the screen in the middle of the cockpit. A digital picture of their location and the terrain around them in a 3-D format, it showed all the hills, mountains, valleys, and changes in altitude of any kind in the terrain. He had decided which of the hills was the most likely to be the one where the downed aircrew were hiding. It fit the range and bearing of the call the Spooky had gotten from them. What he wasn’t sure about was the location of the ZSU.

  The Captain continued straight for the hill, his night-vision devices illuminating the darkness in front of him. His rotor wash was stirring up pebbles and sand below him as he strove to get as low as he could without his landing gear hitting the ground.

  He glanced again at the computer screen. Seven minutes until they were over the target. He spoke softly into his intercom to have the loadmaster in the back alert the commandos. “Seven minutes.”

  “Watchmaker, you got a firefly?”

  “Affirm,” Woods replied, as Zev looked through his massive nightscope for whoever had just shot at them.

  “Light it off, we still don’t have you.”

  “Wilco,” Woods replied, reaching into the side pocket of his survival vest. He pulled out the 9V battery and the small black box, maybe two ounces, and hooked it up. Another bullet whizzed by them.