by C J Klinger
Greg fervently hoped the Colonial was correct. His life depended on it. When the meeting was over, Colonial Barzani took his men back to Erbil. They would return at 0430 the following morning. At 0500, the first Some Black Hawks would lift off with the Mecrats and the American Special Forces. They would fly south, then circle west and north to come in behind the IS emplacement about five miles west of Karemlesh on the road from Mosul. The remaining Black Hawks would lift off right behind them with the Kurdish Dizha Tiror and follow their flight path until they were directly south of Karemlesh. At that point they would turn north to attack the south side of the town. Their job was to eliminate the IS fighters holding the prisoners and then act as a wedge to keep the two separate Islamic forces from joining up. Just before these actions were to take place, the regular Peshmerga forces would attack the lightly defended east side. As soon as the battle was engaged and the waiting IS troops were focused to the sounds of the battle on the east side of Karemlesh, the Mecrats and the American Special Forces would attack them from the rear. The Mecrats would run in on foot and the Special Forces would fly in to close proximity. Two of the Black Hawks were armed with rocket pods and 40 MM canons to eliminate any heavy weapons they saw.
Satisfied they shook hands and wished each other good luck the next day. Greg assigned guard duty for the night and ordered everyone including the Mecrats to chow down and get some rest. The Mecrats would stand guard duty on a rotating basis with the Special Forces. With their heightened senses and superior night vision, it would be unlikely that anyone would get within two miles of the camp without being detected.
Greg rolled his mat out inside the silent C5A and for the first time that day thought of Cathy. He did not know what the future held for him and the beautiful doctor of neurology, but he knew he missed her very much. If that was love, or the start of love, he was okay with it. They would just have to ride it out and see where it went, just like tomorrow’s battle. Either way, it would probably be an all or nothing encounter.
Chapter 30
Greg woke with a start; all around him men were sitting up and checking their gear. The mess detail that accompanied them from Nevada was preparing breakfast outside and he could smell the welcoming aroma of coffee. The Mecrats stood up from their racks and walked down the ramp in file, ready for whatever the day would bring. Seeing them gave Greg a sense of security. They were prepared for anything the IS had to offer.
A moving series of lights on the road from Erbil let him know the Dizha Tiror were on their way. At 0445 the Black Hawk MH-60Ms began spooling up. Greg had a fondness for the Special Forces work horse. The venerable helicopter had pulled him out of more than one jam. The Mecrats were the first to load up, two per Black Hawk followed by an additional five Special Forces soldiers per ship. The Rats would sit in the open door ways with their legs dangling outside. It was the only way they could fit inside the cramped compartment along with the five, fully equipped Special Forces soldiers. Two more choppers would carry twenty more Special Forces soldiers. The remaining five Black Hawks would carry the fifty Kurdish, Dizha Tiror soldiers, who were going to focus on freeing the hostages.
The three commanders watched their men load up and then got aboard when they were satisfied. At 0500 the first Black Hawk lifted off. By 0515 all the choppers were in the air.
# # #
In Nevada, it was Three-fifteen in the afternoon when Cathy left the lab. She shouldn’t have gone into the lab today; her thoughts had been elsewhere all day long. Greg had not shared the details of his mission with her and at the time she had been grateful, but now she decided that not knowing was worse than knowing. The base commander, Colonial Bridges had promised to keep her informed of the outcome so she wouldn’t have to endure the long wait for the C5A to come lumbering out of the sky. All day long she had waited for news from his office. When none had come by the time she left the lab, she had been both relieved, but still anxious for it to be over.
“Is this the life that a soldier’s wife endures?” she thought. Then she realized it was not the first time she had thought of herself as being Mrs. Gregory Donavan. “Wow that was quick, Girl. You are smitten.” She had to admit she was. Then she had a horrible thought, what if he was so severely injured that the only way to save his life would be to make him into another Mecrat. The thought horrified her and at the same time made her understand why all the Mecrats had opted not to have their next of kin notified they were still alive, even though their bodies had been buried. “How will they stay sane?” she asked herself. For that matter, how will she stay sane waiting?
# # #
Abdullah watch the glow of the predawn from the center of the road leading from Mosul to Karemlesh. For several hours he had paced back and forth going over the details of the preparations in his mind. His Islamic fighters were camped on both sides of the road. Some of the more devote ones were preparing for Morning Prayer, but most of them were more interested in a political Islamic State than a religious one. The idea of having a unified Sunni nation that would eventually include Syria, Saudi Arabia and most of Iraq was the dream that motivated them. The West was their enemy because they fought the idea of a Sunni Islamic State with a Caliph at the top. The other enemy were the Shi’ites, who had deprived them of their rightful claim to Iraq. The centuries old bitterness had erupted frequently between the two sects, but this time, everyone felt the day of reckoning was close.
Abdullah shared their political ambitions, but also wanted America to pay a price for how they had made his father, a good man suffer because he was a Muslim from Iraq. The irony was his father had loved his new country and had abandoned many of the Islamic attitudes about women and social restrictions. He had relished the right to vote and was enjoying the rewards of capitalism through hard work. That is until the white, Christian society of America could not distinguish him from the Sunni terrorists who had come out of Saudi Arabia to destroy the World Trade center buildings. His family’s economic fall and his father’s death had marked Abdullah for life.
Overnight news that a huge American plane had landed at the old international air field northwest of Erbil got his attention. Abdullah had briefly contemplated sending a band of his best fighters to destroy the plane and whatever the Americans had brought with them, probably supplies for the Peshmerga, who were always begging for arms. He discarded the idea because whatever supplies they had brought were probably already in the hands of the Kurds and his attack would give away his plans to ambush the attacking force. Still it worried him. If the curriers were to be believed it was one of their very large, 4 engine transports jets. Such planes could carry tanks and heavy artillery, something the Islamic State lacked in any great quantity. Finally he said, “Inshallah,” a word he hated to use. The habit of leaving the future up to the whim of God was not his style.
# # #
The Black Hawks skimmed the surface of the farmland rushing past below them. Greg sat next to Randy in the open door way trying to keep out of the rushing wind stream. Greg had donned his special helmet with a wireless communicator built in. He and Randy had been sharing helicopter experience when Captain Mallow’s voice broke into their conversation. “Two minutes, Major Donavan.”
Greg expanded his network to include all the Mecrats, some of whom were at the edge of his communication range. He repeated Captain Mallow’s warning. They would be landing in fields approximately five miles from the waiting IS fighters. Flying at fifty feet above the terrain in predawn light it was not likely the Islamic forces would see them. There was a possibility they could hear them, but Greg had asked the commander of the advancing Peshmerga forces to fire several artillery rounds while in route to Karemlesh. The noise would make the IS fighters focus on the east and hopefully mask any blade noises from the Black Hawks.
The warbirds slowed and settled on a field of what appeared to be lentils. Greg sent a silent apology to the farmer whose lively hood he was threatening, but then thought the farmer in question might possibly be o
ne of the people being held in the center of Karemlesh waiting to be executed. It was a good trade off if they were successful and would not matter if they were not. The Mecrats hunched over and moved away from the spinning blades. At nine feet in height, they would be uncomfortable close to the spinning, titanium-carbon fiber rotor blade. Once they were safely away from the Black Hawks they checked each other’s weapons pack. The Browning Company had developed a custom, handheld fifty caliber machine gun for the Mecrats. The guns were chain fed from a reservoir in their back packs. Each of them had almost as much fire power as a World War II fighter plane. Two of them, 6RAT and 7RAT, Escobedo and Welkins carried modified, continuous feed, forty millimeter grenade launchers. There were only ten Mecrats, but as Greg had predicted, they carried the firepower of a battalion.
The Special Forces were consolidated into four Black Hawks, leaving the choppers equipped rocket launchers and forty millimeter cannon pods free to attack the IS forces without having to worry about landing troops. Greg listened to his radio for confirmation that the Kurds had begun their attack. When he got the signal, he climbed up into his pulpit on Randy’s back. He did a circular motion to Captain Mallow in the lead gunship and the Black Hawk began to lift off. The other Black Hawks quickly followed suit. He waved his hand in a circular motion for the Mecrats and pointed east. They first ran toward the north side of the Mosul-Karemlesh road to put a little separation between their attack route and that of the Special Forces. At Greg signal they turned toward Karemlesh just becoming visible in the dawn light. The Special Forces’ Black Hawks were slightly ahead of the Mecrats on a parallel course on the south side of the Mosul-Karemlesh road. The pincer attack would leave an avenue of escape in the middle for the Islamic forces to escape toward Mosul if they broke and ran. Greg expected some of them would run at the sight of the Mecrats. Some would get away, but not all of them. Those that did get way would become propaganda emissaries about the wrath of Isra’il, the Islamic Angel of Death.
The Mecrats sprinted across the fields parallel to the road toward the unsuspecting Islamic forces five miles ahead. If Greg had any questions about their performance limitations, he got his answers during their eighty mile-an-hour dash. At eighty miles-an-hour it would take less than four minutes to cover the space between them and the waiting Islamic Terrorists. Four minutes is more than enough time for a good gunner to pick out a target, but the low light, the unexpected direction of attack and the distraction of the approaching Black Hawks effectively disguised the Mecrats approach until they were right on the Islamic forces. Screams of terror announced the warriors’ first awareness of the charging giants.
Ahead on his right flank, Greg could see the lead Black Hawks open fire with rockets and forty millimeter cannons. An Islamic soldier handling a machine gun mounted on the bed of a pickup tried to swing the heavy gun around, but he and his truck disintegrated before he could complete the turn.
The fifty Special Forces soldiers dropped down lines from the descending Black Hawks and immediately started firing at the Islamic fighters trying to readjust to the new threat.
Simultaneously the Mecrats roared into the outer perimeter of the Islamic line firing their heavy handheld weapons. Three of them had activated their wing pods and the ten foot black, bat-like wings sprung from the pack on his back. Several of the other Rats followed suit. Greg fired over Randy’s shoulder at what appeared to be an Islamic commander trying to rally his forces to meet the unexpected threat. Many of the fighters were paralyzed by the sight of the huge winged apparitions coming at them out of the early dawn light, but not all of them. Greg saw one helicopter take a bad hit and veer off to one side. He didn’t have time to look to see if it crashed.
The truck mounted machine gun that had hit the Black Hawk swiveled his weapon on the Mecrats. He got off one burst before 6Rat took him out with a spurt of 40 millimeter cannon fire, but that one burst had a devastating effect. One of the Rats toppled backwards like a statue being torn off a pedestal. A shock of pain went through all the Mecrats including Greg who was connected to the Rats by his wireless equipped helmet. Before he had a chance to see who had been hit, an enemy round pinged off Randy’s helmeted head and grazed Greg’s ribs. He realized how vulnerable he was twelve feet in the air and jumped down to ground level. Randy’s voice came through the din of battle, “Stay behind me, Boss.”
Suddenly there were shots from the town. Part of the Dizha Tiror contingent had broken away to attack the IS fighters from the town side. It was too much for the surviving fighters to bear; they bolted toward Mosul driving their vehicles over the bodies of their wounded and dead comrades in a rush to escape the avenging angels. Approximately a hundred of the remaining Islamic fighters fled in full flight toward the safety of Mosul followed by six Mecrats with wings spread out shouting in Arabic, “The Angels of death have come for you.”
Two of the Mecrats were clustered around their fallen comrade, 2 Rat, Jerry Billingsworth. Greg and Randy trotted up to the pair. They were motionless, just staring down at their fallen comrade. Greg squatted down next to 2Rat to survey the damage. Three fifty caliber rounds had gone right through his chest cavity where his brain was encased. There were no signs of any signal or empathetic images coming from the prone Mecrats. For the second time in his life, Jerry Billingsworth had been killed in action.
Hearing gunfire coming from the town, Greg stood and said, “We still have work to do. Jerry would have wanted us to finish it.” He looked round at the assemble Mecrats and said, “6Rat, 7Rat, you two stand guard over his body. No one touches him. Clear?”
“Yes Sir,” they responded simultaneously, bringing their weapons up to chest height.
Greg stood up and the other seven Rats formed up on either side of him. He sent them a mental message, “Remember, we’re soldiers, not butchers.” It was his way of reminding them not to take vengeance on any captured IS fighters remaining in the village.” They didn’t respond, but Greg got the impression of reluctant agreement. They left the Special Forces who were rounding up prisoners and checking on the wounded, theirs and the Islamic warriors’ as well. Three of the Black Hawks had left to assist the Peshmerga wrap up their engagement on the east side of town. From the sounds of gun fire coming from the center of town, Greg estimated the Dizha Tiror was running into fierce resistance from the Islamic fighters who were guarding the town’s people. It would be a delicate task to root them out without getting the innocent men, women and children killed in the cross fire. Greg flicked his com unit to the Kurd’s band and called Colonial Barzani for an update.
“We have managed to free the people from the square, but the IS fighters are holed up in several buildings and we are having a hard time rooting them out,” The Colonial said. Greg could hear sound of automatic gunfire in the background.
Greg pulled a small map of the town out of his back pack and said, “Perhaps we can help with that, Colonial.” With the colonial’s help thy isolated the four buildings in question. The Mecrats were looking over his shoulder as he marked the buildings based on the colonial’s verbal description.
“’We’ll attack from the west side, Colonial. Have your men watch for my Mecrats and hold your fire when we enter the buildings.” Greg didn’t want any of his men shot by friendly fire.
The colonial’s reply was cryptic, “I can’t wait to see them in action, Major Donavan. Good luck.”
Greg pointed to 1Rat and 3Rat and then to one of the buildings. He did the same for 4, 5, 8 and 9Rat. Finally he pointed to Randy and himself and then to the last building. Without a word they broke up into pairs and started into the town.
Karemlesh was not large town, but it was neat and orderly with modern, two and three story buildings. It was nothing like the mud hut compounds Greg had experienced in southern Iraq. He was surprised at the number of domed Christian churches, all of whom had their crucifixes broken off and replaced by the black, Islamic State flag. The captured citizens had been held in the large courtyard in front of the ce
ntral church. Greg remembered from his intelligence briefing that most of the citizens of Karemlesh were Shabak Christians who spoke the ancient language, Aramaic, the same language spoken by Christ and his apostles.
The paired Mecrats spread out through the streets leading to the central location. Randy and Greg came up to three Kurd soldiers hunkered down behind a parked truck. One of them pointed toward the building that Greg had assigned to him and Randy.
One of the soldiers said in accented English, “There are two or three of them in the second floor.”
Greg asked, “What kind of weapons?” He didn’t want Randy to be exposed to a fifty caliber machine gun fire. It was unlikely the IS fighters would have been able to carry one up to the second floor during the lighting attack by the Dizha Tiror, but they could have placed one up there in anticipation of drawing the Peshmerga into the center of town.
In response, the Kurd pointed to a series of holes in a car parked across the narrow street. “Automatic weapons, probably AK47s,” he said.
Greg made his decision. He pointed at the second story windows and said to the Kurd, “Give us some covering fire.” When the three Kurds opened up, blanketing the entire second floor with stone shattering fire, Randy ran around them into the street. Greg was right behind adding to the covering fire with his M16 assault rifle. Because Randy wore Greg’s preacher stand on his back, he did not have the normal five hundred round back pack the other Mecrats carried. His weapon was a modified, canister-fed, ten gauge shotgun. It was useless at this range, but would be perfect for the close quarters they would encounter inside the building. Randy and Greg crossed the street in seconds. Instead of stopping, Randy lowered his head and literally ran through the front façade of what Greg thought was a grocery store. A cloud of dust and splintered wood preceded them into the ground floor. Greg saw a set of stairs in the back of the room and headed in that direction. The ceiling was approximately ten feet tall, giving Randy enough room to stand up. He lowered his fist and then rammed it up punching a huge hole in the ceiling next to a supporting beam. He grabbed it and pulled on it with all his weight. The beam cracked with loud splintering sound and fell along with half of the second floor and two of the Islamic fighters. One fell at Randy feet and the other five feet away. Both were in shock from the sudden turn of events, long enough for the Mecrats to disarm them. He pointed his shotgun at them and motioned for them to sit down.