by David DeLee
SIEGE AT
TIAMAT BLUFF
A BRICE BANNON
SEACOAST ADVENTURE
DAVID DELEE
COPYRIGHT
SIEGE AT TIAMAT BLUFF
Published by Dark Road Publishing
Siege at Tiamat Bluff, Copyright © 2019 by David DeLee
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Siege at Tiamat Bluff and all works contained within are works of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any similarities or resemblance to actual events, locales or persons, living or dead, is wholly coincidental.
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Semper Paratus
“Always Ready”
SIEGE AT
TIAMAT BLUFF
"Breathe soft, ye winds, Ye waves in silence rest."
John Gay - "An Epistle to a Lady" 1714
PROLOGUE
March 2003
Northern Iraqi Kurdistan
It was General William Tecumseh Sherman during the Civil War who coined the phrase: War is Hell. And he was right. Right on the freakin’ money. No one understands how horrific war is like a soldier does. No one possibly could. Unless they’ve experienced it, lived it. Died a little because of it.
The general’s sentiment was probably no less true then than it is today. The sounds, the smells, the desolation of it all. But, to my way of thinking…the searing, hot, dry, heat of the desert, the arid air that baked into the regions of Northern Iraq in the early months of ’03 epitomized the image of Hell in my mind, way more so than them good ole Union boys had to deal with in the southern part of these United States back in the day.
I’d been in the Sandbox almost nine months already before U.S.-led coalition forces launched their incursion into Basra Province, kicking off the 2003 invasion of Iraq, led by a Special Forces amphibious assault from the Persian Gulf. Over the next six days, massive airstrikes bombarded the country and dropped Airborne troops from the sky. U.S., British, Australian, and Polish forces joined up to fight with the Kurdish rebels with the objective of securing the northern part of the country.
The opening volley of a war that would last just three months, and cost me my life.
I lead a small CIA paramilitary team. We were called the Special Activities Division back then. S.A.D. An appropriate acronym, as it turned out. And maybe that’s why they later changed it to Special Activities Center. Our group worked alongside Army Special Forces and with Kurdistan Peshmerga fighters to plan and coordinate an attack on a Sunni Muslim insurgent group controlling the area known as Iraqi Kurdistan in the north.
They held a number of mountaintop locations. Dug in, they had advantageous positioning, defensible against ground attack, but they were wildly vulnerable to airstrikes.
Guess what we did?
That’s right. We ordered a barrage of Tomahawk cruise missile strikes, coordinated with our six-pronged ground offensive, we aimed at taking the little buggers out and securing the area for the coalition.
Not surprisingly, we were met with heavy resistance. The fighting was fierce but we made good progress. We took out several of our objective strongholds hours earlier than we’d projected. As the insurgent’s defensive positions crumbled and they began to fall back, over the course of three days we advanced, taking town after town.
But as we moved farther north, we got bogged down, found ourselves trapped under sustained enemy fire for hours: mortars and a fortified DShK Soviet heavy machine gun nest. The deep valleys blocked our radio signals, preventing us from coordinating more air support or calling for reinforcements. Still, we fought back. The Special Forces guys with us made excellent use of their .50 cal. sniper rifles. One team of crazy Green Berets even launched a Mk 19 grenade launcher attack from the back of a ratty, old Toyota Tacoma. A move that allowed the Peshmerga to advance and strike hard with their 82mm mortars artillery.
Loud, the sights, the sounds, the smell and feel, it was like the wraith of God reigning down.
In the end, we drove the insurgents from the last of their strongholds and chased them into the hills, valleys, and godforsaken gorges, like scurrying little vermin. It was there, surrounded by caves in the rock walls north of anything close to resembling civilization, where everything went south—metaphorically speaking; as we were traveling eastward into the northern hills.
Overnight we continued our pursuit of the insurgents, pushing them farther and farther into the mountains, but also toward the Iranian border.
And here’s where things got sticky.
In a climate where our President accused Iran, Iraq, and North Korea of being an “Axis of Evil”, where Iran got caught building a nuclear reactor over U.S. outrage, and the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) reported the discovery of two clandestine nuclear sites under construction at Natanz and Arak—their purposes unknown at that time—relationships weren’t exactly rosy between a theoretically neural Iran and the coalition forces, we pursued the insurgents all the way to the damn Iranian border.
There, some of the insurgents were turned back, others, as they tried to cross the border, were arrested and detained by Iranian military forces. And yet some were taken in. Given sanctuary.
The insurgents that couldn’t reach the border, or were denied entry, hunkered down in the surrounding foothills and caves. We spent most of the rest of the next night just maintaining our position, keeping the insurgents pinned down, preventing them from advancing or escaping. There wasn’t much else we could do, not without air support.
But every time we called for assistance. We were denied.
Too close to the Iranian border, we were told. Command wouldn’t risk an incident with Iran. Instead, we were told to sit tight and wait for additional orders.
They left us there like sitting ducks.
That wasn’t a situation I could tolerate. The hours dragged on. The cold night sky was lit up with tracer fire and mortar explosions. The boom and rat-a-tat-tat of gunfire filled the air. I made a decision. We were going to advance, take out the remaining insurgents, and accomplish the mission, bureaucratic posturing and orders to the contrary be damned.
A Green Beret sergeant named Cook helped me dismount an M2 heavy machine gun from a Humvee. Carrying the thing by hand, together with a small squad of his men, my commandos, and a handful of Peshmerga fighters, we set out on foot, picking our way through the mountainous terrain. After several hours of sporadic engagements, we managed to seize the high ground before pushing through the valley, taking out additional small pockets of enemy combatants one cave-dwelling nest at a time, driving the rest back toward the Iranian border.
Even then the fighting was fierce. I learned later we killed over three-hundred insurgents, while only twenty-two Peshmerga lost their lives, with zero casualties for the coalition forces.
Unfortunately, we also riled the Iranian border patrols so badly, they joined the fight against, well, against everyone. In the predawn light, we couldn’t tell enemy combatant from Iranian national, fr
om coalition troop, or Peshmerga fighter.
As dawn broke, an AC-130 gunship arrived. It executed a pylon turn, circling the target area overhead, and pounded the area with its 25mm GAU-12 Equalizer cannon and 105mm howitzer rounds. We could also hear extraction choppers in the distance.
We thought we were done. We were out of there. Saved.
Two UH-60 Black Hawk helicopters arrived as the AC-130 completed its strafing run, but it was too late. The Iranians had had enough and began firing on the choppers.
The Black Hawks didn’t fire back.
Not hard to understand why. If they had it might’ve sparked a war with Iran. Not something the U.S. was prepared to do. The choppers kicked up sand and pebbles and dust as they hovered erratically trying to land in the evac zone while avoiding incoming fire. One chopper got low enough. I ordered the Special Forces unit to retreat and they successfully hopped on board the first Black Hawk.
It rose into the swirling dust storm its own rotor blades created, carrying the troops away.
I watched them go. Five of us were left along with a handful of Peshmerga fighters.
The second Black Hawk moved into position.
We remained behind cover, waiting, trying to provide cover fire for the hovering chopper without sparking a war. The chopper was slow to drop into position.
I called over the radio, “Get us the hell out of here!”
But my transmission fell on deaf ears. We watched from the ground, helpless, as the chopper lowered, then rose, dropped again, but never got close enough to the ground for us to make a run for it.
“Come on,” I muttered. “Come on.”
Amid a barrage of raining rocket launcher munitions, mortar fire, and small arms tracer bullets— Like I’d said; God’s wraith—my life, our lives, depended on that chopper reaching the ground.
It never did.
We were hunkered down in gullies and behind rocks and swirling sand in a godforsaken part of the world—Hell. We watched as my commander onboard the Black Hawk, a full bird colonel crouched by the cabin doors, looking down on us, a grim expression on her face, and callously waved a hand into the air. Up. Up. Up.
They were retreating.
The chopper rose, wobbled as the pilot dipped and swerved to avoid getting shot out of the air.
He got it out of range and we watched as the Black Hawk grew smaller, became a black dot in that unforgetting early morning sky, as it faded away in the harsh, searing white sky.
As it left us behind to die, or worse.
We watched as that core military oath we’d been taught, believed in, lived by and died for, leave no man behind, crumbled and died.
We were left behind.
CHAPTER ONE
Today
An orange, round racing buoy floated on a tranquil, undisturbed sea. The smooth ocean surface rippled gently, reflecting brilliant flashes of twinkling sunlight under a clear cerulean sky. The sun burned white overhead. Early January on the New Hampshire seacoast, the air was clear and cold.
Seagulls circled near the sandy shore of Hampton Beach. Peaceful. Tranquil. Serene.
In the distance grew a low hum could be heard. The sound of small outboard motors, maybe jet skis, or some other small watercraft. The engine buzz grew steadily louder. Getting closer.
The orange buoy bobbed unexpectantly. Violently.
Something underneath disturbed it.
The water nearby bubbled, like a pot of water coming to boil. It turned white and frothy.
Like a water volcano, the ocean surface erupted!
Water sprayed ten feet into the air. A spout like a fountain suddenly turned on.
At its center, a dark, grey, torpedo-shaped object breached the surface. Water cascaded down its grey flank, slick along its darker grey side as a dorsal fin and flippers appeared. The sleek body shot skyward, arched, then barrel-rolled.
What at first looked like a breaching dolphin, closer inspection made it clear it was not. Not a living one anyway!
As its tail cleared the water, the air filled with a high-pitched whine, the sort of sound associated with the engine noise of a jet ski catching air. Forward of the dorsal fin was actually a polycarbonate canopy—the same sort used in fighter jets—and the engine hum came from a supercharged two-hundred-forty horsepower, four-stroke MerCruiser engine encased in the dolphin’s hind section.
This dolphin was actually a personal submersible hydrofoil watercraft.
In the dry cockpit under the clear canopy, grinning like a fool, Brice Bannon pushed one handstick forward and pulled back on the other, putting the dolphin into another barrel roll before splashing back down.
Ocean water washed over the panoramic, nearly 360-degree view around him. Bannon pressed the foot pedals forward, putting the craft into a dive. The watercraft dove and zoomed northwest underwater toward the next buoy.
Over the watercraft’s state-of-the-art sound system, the legendary county singer Jerry Reed sang “Eastbound and Down.” And like Jerry and Burt Reynolds in the Smokey and the Bandit movies, Bannon had a long way to go and a short time to get there.
He leveled out, keeping the craft—which he’d nicknamed Flipper—at a submerged depth of five feet. He goosed the throttle, pushing Flipper to her max underwater speed of twenty-one knots, having the time of his life.
But, if he was going to win this race, he’d have to spend more time on the surface where Flipper could reach forty knots or more. Reluctantly, he pulled the handsticks back and aimed Flipper’s bottlenose bow toward the surface which he breached once more.
From his earpiece came a gruff voice as familiar to Bannon as his own. “’Bout time you came back up for air. You in this to win it or what?”
John “Skyjack” McMurphy, Bannon’s best friend, and brother-in-arms over the span of his Coast Guard career. It was the big, ruddy Irishman who’d talked him into competing in the First Annual Hampton Beach Submersible Hydrofoil Race for Charity in the first place. Seventeen competitors racing for a ten-thousand-dollar grand prize for the charity of their choice, along with a five thousand, and twenty-five hundred, second and third place purse.
Bannon belly-flopped Flipper and punched the throttle. He turned to his right to see a black and white whale-patterned hydrofoil racing at top speed but a hair behind him. With his canopy open, McMurphy’s red hair whipped wildly in the wind and the sea spray casting off Orca.
Bannon shook his head. The man was nuts. New Hampshire winters were notorious for cold weather and a lot of snow. This season had been no exception. The air temperature hovered at little more than freezing and a fresh two inches of snow had fallen the night before.
He’d at least put on a parka, Bannon thought.
“Unless I’m mistaken,” he called out to his friend. “I’m still ahead of you.”
“That’s because some jerk behind me was getting too close for comfort. Almost sideswiped me once already. I lost time avoiding a collision with ’em.”
Bannon twisted around to port. There he saw a dark green hydrofoil coming up fast behind them. It was an ugly design in Bannon’s opinion, patterned to look like a barracuda. Not the most attractive of sea creatures to begin with. It’s painted mouth realistically represented the predator’s sharp, piranha-like fangs. Its flat, black eyes were disturbing and appeared to look everywhere at once.
It was the closest of the watercraft racers to Bannon and McMurphy.
The three of them had a commanding lead over the remaining field of fourteen who jockeyed for position well behind them, their crafts leaping and diving, leaving a great plume of white sea spray in their collective wakes.
Bannon passed buoy three on the final leg of a four-mile, oddly-shaped pentagon course. The final one-point-one-five-mile straight away would take them shooting passed the viewing stand set up on the beach. Stands that were overflowing with cheering spectators who’d braved the winter cold to come out and watch what promoters hoped would be an annual event.
From there, th
e racers were expected to make a tricky fishhook turn around buoy four then speed through the final mile to the finish line. With a final look at the closing barracuda, Bannon told McMurphy, “Looks to me like we’ve got this.”
McMurphy said something about not counting his chickens when Bannon glanced left again, catching a movement out of the corner of his eye. Miraculously, the barracuda had closed the gap between them. They were suddenly neck and neck.
Bannon checked his speedometer. The needle hovered at four-point-one knots. For the barracuda to catch up like that, it had to be seriously overpowered. A violation of the rules laid down by the race organizers. But that was a problem for later, Bannon thought as he squeezed his throttle. The first order of business was to win the race. They could worry about dealing with cheaters later.
Flipper surged forward, skimming smoothly over the calm ocean water. McMurphy, in Orca, raced a hair’s breadth behind him on his starboard side. Still, the barracuda was coming up fast, angling closer to Bannon on the left.
Jerry Reed had turned Flipper’s speakers over to Commander Cody who sang about driving his father to drinkin’ in his Hot Rod Lincoln.
“What is he doing?” Bannon said more to himself than anyone, keeping a wary eye on the ugly craft speeding closer, gaining on him.
“What?” McMurphy asked.
“Crowding me,” Bannon said. There was no reason for it. No tactical advantage for such a maneuver on a long straightaway.
Bannon goosed the throttle but was already getting everything out of Flipper he was going to legally get.
The barracuda surged forward, right on top of Bannon now.
He glanced over and caught a glimpse of the pilot, distorted by sea spray and water filming the canopy. Bannon saw a man in his late fifties or early sixties with solid white hair, cut short. A military crewcut. His features were tanned, weathered, craggy. His jawline chiseled. He glared at Bannon from behind a pair of dark-lensed Nike Tailwind sunglasses.
