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line for triangulation . . . “There.” The location came up on the computer screen. The lieutenant lifted a radio for the 4th Squadron command post.
“ANGEL-SIX, this is PEEPER, we may have a posit for the enchilada. . . .”
M-Troop’s four Apaches and six Kiowas were but twenty klicks away from the position, conducting a visual search. A minute later, they turned south.
“WHAT IS HAPPENING!” Mahmoud Haji demanded. He hated using this phone-radio lash-up, and just getting in contact with his own army commander had proved difficult enough.
“We have encountered opposition south of King Khalid Military City. We are dealing with it.”
“Ask him the nature of the opposition,” Intelligence advised his leader.
“Perhaps your guest could tell me that,” the general on the other side of the conversation suggested. “We’re still working to find out.”
“The Americans cannot have more than two brigades in theater!” the man insisted. “One more brigade-equivalent in Kuwait, but that is all!”
“Is that so? Well, I have lost more than a division in strength in the last three hours, and I still don’t know what I’m facing here. Two Corps has been badly mauled. One Corps has run into something and is continuing the attack now. Three Corps is so far untouched. I can continue the attack to Riyadh, but I need more information on what I’m facing.” The commanding general, a man of sixty years, was not a fool, and he still felt that he could win. He still had about four divisions’ worth of combat power. It was just a matter of directing it properly. He actually felt lucky that air attacks from American and Saudi forces had been so light. He’d learned a few other lessons fast. The disappearance of three command sections had made him cautious, at least for his own safety. He was now a full kilometer from the radio transmitters attached to his
armored command vehicle, a BMP-lKSh, his handset at ;nd of a lengthy spool of commo wire. He himself was
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surrounded by a squad of soldiers, who did their best not to listen to the excitement in their commander’s voice.
“DAMN, LOOK AT all those SAM tracks,” a Kiowa observer said over the radio, from eight klicks north. His pilot made the call while the observer did a count.
“MARAUDER-LEAD, this is MASCOT-THREE. I think we have the enchilada.”
“THREE, LEAD, go,” was the terse reply.
“Six bimps, ten trucks, five SAM tracks, two radar tracks, and three ZSU-23s in a wadi. Recommend approach from the west, say again, approach from the west.” It was far too much defensive firepower to be much of anything other than the Army of God’s mobile_command section. The SAM launchers were all French Crotales, and those little fuckers were scary, MASCOT-THREE knew. But they should have picked a different spot. This was one of those situations where you were better in the open, or even on high ground, so that your SAM radars could see better.
“THREE, LEAD, can you illuminate?”
“Affirmative. Tell us when. Radar tracks first.”
The Apache leader, a captain, was hugging ‘the ground to the west, creeping forward at thirty knots now, coming up on what he thought was a ridgeline that would tip over into the wadi. Slowly, slowly, letting his own mast sensor do the looking. The pilot flew the airplane like a kid learning to parallel-park, while the gunner manned the sensors.
“Hold it right there, sir,” the gunner advised from his front seat.
“THREE, LEAD, start the music,” the pilot called.
The Kiowa lit up its laser-illuminator, an invisible infrared beam that aimed first at the far radar track. It was actually a wheeled vehicle, but nobody was being particular. On notification that the target was lit up, the Apache tilted its nose up and loosed first one Hellfire, then another five seconds later.
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THE GENERAL HEARD the shouted warning from a thousand meters away. Only one of the radar vehicles was actually transmitting, and that intermittently as an electronic-security measure. It was radiating now, and caught the inbound missile. One of the launcher trucks rotated its four-tube mount and fired, but the Crotale lost lock when the Hellfire angled down and went harmlessly ballistic. The radar vehicle blew apart a moment later, and the second one six seconds after that. The commanding general of the Army of God stopped talking then, and ignored the incoming conversation from Tehran. There was quite literally nothing for him to do but crouch down, which his bodyguards made him do.
ALL FOUR APACHES of the troop were hovering in a semicircle now, waiting for their troop commander to ripple off his Hellfires. This he did, about five seconds apart, letting the Kiowa guide them in, switching from target to target. Next came the SAM-launcher vehicles, followed by the Russian-made gun tracks. Then there was nothing left to protect the BMP command tracks.
IT WAS UTTERLY heartless, the general saw. Men tried shooting back, but at first there was nothing to shoot at. Some people looked. Others pointed. Only a few ran. Most stayed and tried to fight. The missiles seemed to come from the west. He could see the yellow-white glow of rocket motors racing through the darkness like fireflies, but he couldn’t see anything shooting them, and one after another the air defense vehicles were destroyed, then the BMPs, then the trucks. It took less than two minutes, and only then did the helicopters begin to appear. The security detachment for his mobile command post was a company of picked infantrymen. They fought back with heavy machine-gun fire and shoulder-launched rockets, but the ghostly shapes of the helicopters were too far away. The man-portable missiles couldn’t seem to find them. His men tried, but then the tracers lanced out, reaching for them like beams of light into an area now bright with ve-
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hicle fires. A squad here, a section there, a pair there. The men tried to run, but the helicopters closed in, firing from only a few hundred meters away, herding them in a cruel, remorseless game. The radio handset was dead in his hand, but he still held it, watching.
“LEAD, TWO, I got a bunch to the east,” a pilot told the Apache commander.
“Get ’em,” the flight leader ordered, and one of the attack choppers ducked south around the remains of the command post.
NOTHING TO DO. No place to flee. Three of his men shouldered their weapons and fired. Others tried to run, but there was no running and no hiding. Whoever flew those aircraft were killing everything they saw. Americans. Had to be. Angry at what they’d been told. Might even be true, the general thought, and if–
“HOW D’YA SAY tough shit in rag-head?” the gunner asked, taking his time to make sure he got every one.
“I think they got the message,” the pilot said, turning the chopper around and scanning for additional targets.
“ANGEL-SIX, ANGEL-SIX, this is MARAUDER-SIX-ACTUAL. This sure looked like a CP, and it’s toast now,” the troop commander called. “We are RTB for bullets and gas. Out.”
“WELL, GET HIM back!” Daryaei shouted at the communications officer on the line. The intelligence chief in the room didn’t say anything, suspecting that they’d never talk to the army commander again in this lifetime. The worst part was not knowing why. His intelligence assessment on arriving American units had been correct. He was sure of that. How could so few do so much harm… ?
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“THEY HAD A pair of brigades–regiments, whatever– there, didn’t they?” Ryan asked, getting the latest upload from the battlefield onto his projection TV in the Sit Room.
“Yep.” General Moore nodded. He noted with some pleasure that even Admiral Jackson was pretty quiet. “Not anymore, Mr. President. Jesus, those Guardsmen are doing just fine.”
“Sir,” Ed Foley said, “just how far do you want to take this?”
“Do we have any doubts at all that it was Daryaei personally who made all these decisions?” It was, Ryan thought, a dumb question. Why else had he told the citizens that? But he had to ask the question, and the others in the Sit Room knew why.
“None,” the DCI replied.
“Then we take it all the way, Ed. Will the Russians play?”
“Yes, sir, I think they will.”
Jack thought of the plague now dying out in America. Thousands of the innocent had already died, with more yet to follow. He thought of the soldiers, sailors, and airmen at risk under his distant command. He found himself thinking, even, of the UIR troops who’d followed the wrong banner and wrong ideas because they hadn’t had the chance to select their country or its leader, and were now paying the price for that mistake of birthplace. If they were not completely innocent, then neither were they completely guilty, because for the most part soldiers merely did what they were told. He also found himself remembering the look in his wife’s eyes when Katie had arrived by helicopter on the South Lawn. There were times when he was allowed to be a man, just like other men, except for the power he held in his hands.