by Robert Gandt
He could hear the thunder of low-flying jets. The sound of the anti-aircraft guns was a steady rumble, punctuated with the whump of an exploding bomb.
Time to exit.
He assembled the headquarters staff—half a dozen technicians, two cryptologists, and a sergeant. Outside the stucco building waited his command battalion, a hundred Sherji who were all hardened veterans of his Yemen campaign. Within the Bu Hasa Brigade he had kept these troops under his direct command. Just in case.
The Sherji were huddled in the cobbled pathway between rows of brown plastered buildings. They had one serviceable APC, three rusting trucks, and Al-Fasr’s personal Land Rover. The bulk of the Brigade force, nearly a thousand more Sherji, were deployed along the southern perimeter with orders to execute a leap frog withdrawal back to the lakes in the north.
“Has anyone seen Abu Mahmed?” Al-Fasr asked one of the Sherji, a captain named Akhbar.
“He’s not in Mashmashiyeh, Colonel,” said Akhbar. “I saw him leave in one of the fighting vehicles.”
“Leave? To where? In what direction?”
Akhbar pointed westward, away from the river.
Al-Fasr kept his face expressionless while he considered this information. Abu was supposed to be commanding the eastern flank, drawing the enemy away from Mashmashiyeh and Al-Fasr’s own retreat. Did Abu withdraw without waiting for orders?
He put the matter out of his mind. He was running out of time. He would deal with Abu later. It was critical that he get the Brigade out of Mashmashiyeh and make sure nothing of value was left behind to the enemy.
With that thought, he remembered an item of great value. His insurance policy.
He turned to Akhbar. “Go get the prisoner. He will come with us.”
Akhbar nodded and ran fifty meters down the pathway to the hut where the prisoner was confined.
In less than a minute he was back. “We are too late, Colonel.”
“What do you mean? What’s happened to the prisoner?”
“The prisoner is gone. One of his guards, Karim Kouri, is dead.”
Al-Fasr stared at Akhbar, still pondering this latest news, when he heard something. It was only a whisper, a fragment of sound within the din of explosions outside the village. In a mini-second of comprehension he knew where the sound came from.
“Get down!” he yelled. He was diving beneath the Land Rover when the bomb detonated.
< >
USS Ronald Reagan
“Would someone explain to me what the hell just happened out there?” said Admiral Hightree.
Boyce shifted the cigar to the other side of his mouth and deliberately avoided looking at the admiral. Hightree wasn’t a fighter pilot. He had an air-to-mud background, coming up through A-6 Intruders. Some of the finer nuances of the air-to-air business had to be explained to him.
“Looks like Brick let the Iranians off the hook,” said Boyce.
“I thought I gave him the order to splash the Iranians.”
Boyce kept his eyes on a spot somewhere in space. “Well, you did, but you sort of cut him some slack. I believe you said ‘cleared’ to kill.”
Hightree’s right eyebrow lifted into a question mark. “’Cleared?’ You said that, not me.”
“Did I? Well, hell, Jack, it worked out the way you wanted, didn’t it? We didn’t lose any fighters, and we didn’t get into a pissing contest with Iran. Not yet, anyway.”
“Goddamn it, Captain Boyce, when I give an order, I don’t expect you and everyone else in the chain of command to interpret it your own way.”
“Yes, sir.” Boyce knew that Hightree had to blow off some steam now. Admirals liked to be treated as admirals. After he’d huffed and puffed, Hightree would cool down and be secretly very damned glad that Maxwell had pulled it off.
Boyce settled back in his padded chair and watched the blips separate on the tactical display. The Iranians were landing at Dezful. Maxwell and his fighters were returning to their station on the BARCAP. Gritti’s Marines were landing.
In the red-lighted darkness of the CIC, he allowed himself a secret smile. Hightree was right, of course. A direct order was supposed to be obeyed. He would have to chew Maxwell’s ass out when he returned to the ship. But, hell, that was part of the job.
< >
Karkeh valley, Iran
He wasn’t dead.
Rasmussen was sure of this because his head hurt like hell. And he was thirsty. Dust clogged his nostrils, and his chin bobbed on his chest, bouncing with the motion of the vehicle. He noticed with disgust that he’d vomited on his shirt front.
Slowly, like a peephole opening in his consciousness, it came to him. He hadn’t gotten off a shot with the Kalashnikov. He hadn’t forced them to kill him. Someone had clubbed him from behind.
He was a prisoner again.
He gazed around him. He was in the back of a Land Rover, tethered by a nylon line to the seat frame. His wrists were bound with a plastic tie-wrap. A stream of blood from the gash on the back of his head was still wet and sticky.
In the distance he heard the deep Whump of an explosion. He turned to look back at the village, a half-mile away. A hundred-meter-wide cloud of black smoke was boiling upward from where the brown stucco buildings had been. Pieces of plaster wall and tile and rubble were flung into space like foam from a waterfall.
Holy shit. He knew what it had to be, even though he’d never seen such a weapon actually employed. An FAE—Fuel-Air Explosive. They were going to use the things in Desert Storm, he remembered. Maybe they did. They were vapor cloud bombs, a concussion weapon to pulverize the Iraqis hunkered down in the underground bunkers along the Kuwait border.
Mashmashiyeh had just been pulverized.
Abu was watching also. He wore an interested expression, like that of a man observing a firepower demonstration. “It is finished,” he said. “Jamal Al-Fasr has kept his appointment with Allah. Now he is a martyr whose death we will have to avenge.”
Rasmussen noticed the way Abu said it. He didn’t seem especially saddened by the death of his leader.
They were bumping along in the open Land Rover, driving through a patchwork of low-hanging brush and high reeds. Abu and Rasmussen sat in the back. The driver and a machine-gunner occupied the open front.
Rasmussen took his eyes off the billowing black cloud over Mashmashiyeh. “Where are we going?”
“Shut up. You have no need to know.” To emphasize the point, Abu reached over and clubbed Rasmussen’s cheek with the butt of his pistol.
Rasmussen shut up. Abu was right. He didn’t need to know anything. He had resigned himself to the living death of captivity. It would be better if he’d been in Mashmashiyeh when the bomb flattened the village. He would be as dead as Al-Fasr.
It was odd. He could almost feel a twinge of sadness that the Colonel was gone. The man was a terrorist and a murderer, but in all the years of Rasmussen’s confinement, Al-Fasr was the only one who had treated him with dignity. They were fellow professionals.
Abu was something else. He was not a military professional. He had a different agenda, one that Rasmussen had not figured out. It had nothing to do with Babylon or the dream of a new country. For reasons that Rasmussen could not fathom, Abu seemed pleased that Mashmashiyeh was under siege.
More bombs were exploding to the east. Rasmussen could see the dark shapes of fighters. He recognized the distinctive twin-tailed silhouettes of the Hornets and beneath them, working the targets like low-flying hawks, the Harriers. In the distance a pulsing sound reverberated through the steady whump of the explosions.
Helicopters. The thumping of their blades rolled over the marshes like a drumbeat. They carried troops, Marines, probably. It occurred to Rasmussen that many were still in grade school when he was shot down in Iraq.
He felt a fresh wave of despair settle over him. They were so close, only a few miles. He could almost see them. They were Americans, and they didn’t know he was here.
< >
Ma
shmashiyeh, Iran
Al-Fasr dragged himself from beneath the Land Rover. A noise like a tornado roared inside his ears. He coughed, choking on the dust that lined his throat and clogged his nostrils. He felt a trickle of blood dripping from his nose.
He wobbled to his feet and gazed around at the tableau of devastation. His driver lay slumped over the steering wheel. The roofs were gone from the buildings on either side of the road. Bodies were tossed like bundles of laundry against the sides of buildings, into the drainage trench beside the road. A dying donkey lay on its side, thrashing its legs.
The mass of the Land Rover had saved him. By diving under the vehicle, he had shielded himself from the direct concussion of the bomb. It had to be a Fuel/Air Explosive, he thought, detonated from overhead. The bomb smashed the village like a sledgehammer.
He felt dizzy, all his organs walloped by the impact of the explosion. His ears were still filled with the roaring noise. He tried to focus, make himself think. Take command. Get your troops together. Execute the withdrawal plan.
There was no one to command. Everyone he could see in the village was dead. He braced himself against the vehicle, trying to gather his thoughts, when another explosion split the air, this one a kilometer away. Across the river he could see the eruption of billowing flame and smoke.
The AAA radar command site. It had just been obliterated.
Seconds later, another explosion. And another, in a chain along the defense perimeter. They were using Fuel/Air Explosives to neutralize the defense perimeter. It was working.
Through the roiling clouds of black smoke and billowing dust, he saw something else. Dark, pulsing blobs, flying in column. Helicopters. His hearing was too impaired to hear the beating of the blades, but he knew what was happening.
They’re coming. I’ve got to get out of here. Head north, up the river to the lake.
He dragged the dead driver out of the seat. The Land Rover was covered with plaster and dirt. He tried the ignition and, to his astonishment, the motor started. For another long moment he sat there, pondering what to do. His brain was still numb.
You have a way out. Follow your plan.
He put the Land Rover in gear and started down the littered path. He drove over piles of debris and shattered machinery and bodies of dead Sherji until he reached the edge of the village. Across the clearing he could see the old bridge over the river Karkeh. Coming from the bridge were two Sherji, carrying automatic weapons. Al-Fasr recognized them. They had been guards at the bridge.
“Where are you going?” Al-Fasr demanded.
They stared, not recognizing him at first. Then one said, “Is it you, Colonel?”
Al-Fasr nodded, barely hearing them. He knew he was probably unrecognizable, his face blackened from the explosion. “Get in the vehicle,” he ordered. His own voice sounded distant and tinny.
“The Americans are coming, Colonel,” said one of the guards. He pointed to the east. “Helicopters and gunships.”
“I know. We will head north, to the lake country. Come with me.”
He could see the dark blobs of the helicopters swelling in the distance. Yes, he thought, the Americans were coming. The assault force was aimed at Mashmashiyeh. It meant that their intelligence sources were better than he had given them credit for. They had not only declined to take retaliatory action against Iran, they had located the headquarters of the Bu Hasa Brigade with unerring accuracy.
How? Where had they obtained their information?
A germ of suspicion was growing in his brain, but he was still unwilling to give it a name. Not yet. He would think about it after he’d extricated himself from this snare.
The two Sherji climbed into the Land Rover. He shoved it into gear and lurched down the litter-strewn street to the concrete bridge. He stopped, making sure the bridge wasn’t being targeted by another jet.
Nothing in immediate view. He charged ahead, speeding across the bridge, his nerves twanging in expectation of another bomb. Another earth-shuddering explosion that would rip at his guts and sear his lungs with the flash of another Fuel-Air detonation.
He reached the eastern end of the bridge.
Veering hard to the left, he drove over the embankment and down the cleft in the terrain where the river flowed. He shoved the Land Rover’s front through the thick wall of reeds and swamp grass and found it—the path along the river bank, sheltered by an overhang of scraggly trees.
The ancient path had been used for centuries by the river people and their livestock. It was barely wide enough to accommodate the Land Rover. He drove as fast as he dared without accidentally sliding into the muddy river. Perched in the back, his two Sherji maintained a nervous lookout for the marauding helicopters.
Five kilometers upstream was another village, smaller than Mashmashiyeh and populated by nomadic tribes people who fished the river and raised grain in the marsh country. It would be a suitable place to stop. Perhaps he could acquire a boat and—
One of the Sherji was tapping his shoulder. “Colonel, ahead of us. Something coming.”
Al-Fasr tried to peer through the canopy of foliage. He didn’t see anything. Nor could he hear anything approaching. His ears still rang from the blast of the bomb.
Then he saw it. Through the boughs of the overhanging trees, the dark shape of a helicopter.
< >
“Attention all Gippers, this is Grits,” Gritti barked into the PRC-119. “Signal Corkstop. Repeat, Corkstop. Sea Lord, confirm that all Gipper leads acknowledge Corkstop.”
“Sea Lord, roger,” answered the Hawkeye controller.
Gritti put down the mike and waited for Sea Lord to hear from the flight leaders. Corkstop was the signal to cease firing.
The airdales would be pissed, Gritti knew. Most of them still had unexpended ordnance on board. Back on the Reagan and Saipan, another wave of strike jets was waiting to join the fray. They wouldn’t be needed.
The air assault had gone well. Almost too well, because the Sherji were being exterminated faster than Gritti’s Marines could capture them. The Marines were already inside the Bu Hasa positions, and he couldn’t risk any more close air strikes.
First had come the Hornets launching HARMs—anti-radiation missiles—against the air defense radars. Then the Harriers from the Saipan, who laid waste to the Sherji forward defense positions with their anti-personnel cluster bombs and napalm. More Hornets and Tomcats arrived with laser-guided bombs.
Then the pièce de résistance—the 550 pound CBU-72 FAE bombs.
Even Gritti, who had no sympathy for any specimen of America-hating rag head terrorist, shuddered when he saw the roiling orange and black clouds rising from the Sherji positions. It was the next best thing to a tactical nuclear weapon. The poor bastards under the vapor clouds were being transformed to Jell-O.
“What’s our casualty count now, Sergeant Major?”
“Four wounded,” said Plunkett. “One serious in Bravo Company. A 7.62 in the lower back. None killed. They’re all on their way back to the Saipan.”
Gritti nodded. It was better than he dared hope for in the initial assault. No matter how good your intelligence, how well you covered the contingencies, you never knew for sure what you were up against until you had your boots on the ground.
“Grits, this is Bird Dog,” came another voice on the PRC-119. Bird Dog was the call sign for Lt. Col. Aubrey Hewlitt, commanding the southern half of the pincers. “Chicago is secure,” he said.
Chicago was the place name for the village of Mashmashiyeh—home base of the Bu Hasa gang. “We’re still rounding up gomers, but they’re mostly in bad shape. The FAE did a number on this place.”
“What’s the status of Zapper?” Gritti asked. “Zapper” was the code name he had picked for Col. Jamal Al-Fasr, his number one enemy.
“No sign of Zapper yet. There’s a large number of dead Sherji from the air strike, and we’re checking bodies. He’s either one of the dead, or he beat it out of town out before we showed up.”
“Where are you now?”
“I’m in what we think is Zapper’s main hooch. Hard to tell because the roof is gone and the place is blown all to hell. We’re gathering intel material and interrogating prisoners. I’ve found something that I think may be of interest to your friend, Brick Maxwell.”
“Bring it along. I’ll see him in debrief.”
“Roger that. Bird Dog out.”
Gritti replaced the mike on the ManPack unit and gazed off to the south. From his viewpoint at the edge of the river, he could only see the flat expanse of marsh and reed-covered banks. Further away, in the direction of Mashmashiyeh, a pall of smoke was forming an overcast.
Al-Fasr was close. Gritti could sense it in the air. You’re out there, you sonofabitch. Still on the run.
But not much longer.
Whenever he wanted, Gritti could close his eyes and see with perfect clarity the smiling, mustached face of the Bu Hasa terrorist commander. Terrorists were the rats of the world, in Gritti’s opinion, and Jamal Al-Fasr was the king of the rats.
This, he would admit only to himself, was the real reason he had not yet turned over his command to Colonel Parente and returned to the Pentagon to pick up his general’s star.
He wanted Al-Fasr.
Revenge was sweet, but Gritti knew it was bad motivation for a military commander. It clouded your judgment, took away your objectivity. Acts of vengeance seldom worked out the way you wanted. Gritti knew all that because he had learned it the hard way.
In the case of Jamal Al-Fasr he would make an exception.
Sea Lord, the controller in the E-2C Hawkeye, reported that all the air strike flight leads had the cease fire order. No more bombing. And the pilots weren’t happy about it, just as Gritti expected.
Tough shit. He would use the Marine AH-1Ws—Whiskey Cobra gunships—for the finishing work, chasing down elements of the Sherji, hosing any remaining armored vehicles with TOW missiles and the Gatling gun. The rest of the job was grunt work.
“How many prisoners?” he asked Plunkett.
