by Robert Gandt
He hoped they were still there.
<>
Armor.
Gritti felt a chill run through him. It was the news he feared most.
Plunkett confirmed it. “Yes, sir. Three light AVs. A team just reported contact. They’re coming out of cover and heading up the hill.”
Gritti ran his hand over the stubble on his jaw, feeling the fatigue, resisting the despair that hung over him. If the tanks reached the perimeter, it was all over. With armor running interference for the Sherji, they would roll over the marines’ position on the hill.
A fully equipped Marine unit would have an anti-tank platoon with TOW missiles—tube launched, wire-guided weapons that could convert tanks to scrap metal. But he had come with a TRAP team whose single mission was the rescue of downed pilots. For that purpose they had grenades, M203 grenade launchers, and a handful of mortars. Useful weapons against infantry, damned near useless against tanks.
“We pick a fire zone where the tanks have to pass. We’ll use what’s left of the mortars and grenade launchers. It’s our only shot.”
Plunkett nodded and began barking the instructions. In mid-sentence he stopped. “Too late, Colonel. They’re already here.”
So they were. Gritti could see them, a column of three armored vehicles, charging out of cover three hundred yards away. A rooster tail of dirt spewed up behind each vehicle.
“Ready with the grenade launchers. Maybe we can slow them down while we get the forward fire teams back.”
While Plunkett passed the new orders, Gritti’s mind was racing, trying to come up with a new plan. It no longer made sense to stand and defend an indefensible position. They would have to fall back, retreat through terrain the tanks couldn’t handle. But he couldn’t abandon the fire teams who were already behind the enemy’s front positions. The Sherji would hunt them down like wild game.
Shit! Some commander he was. Why hadn’t he anticipated the tanks? Why hadn’t the goddamned wind stayed calm so the smoke would last? His TRAP team was about to be converted into half a dozen isolated fire teams.
On top of everything else, his radio—the piece-of-shit PRC-117 UHF that was supposed to keep him satellite-linked with his commanders—was dead as a rock. The batteries were drained.
Gritti turned his attention again to the oncoming tanks. The first was winding its way down a terraced hillside. Trotting along in its wake was a platoon-sized group of Sherji, carrying their AK-47s. The vehicles would be in firing range in another fifty yards. When they were close enough—
Boom! Boom! Boom! The earth around the tank erupted in plumes of dirt. The tank exploded.
Gritti stared in astonishment. It took his fatigued mind several seconds to understand. Then he saw the twin tailpipes, the canted vertical stabilizers of a jet swooping low over the destroyed tank.
Ten seconds later, more explosions.
Boom! Boom! Boom! The earth erupted ten feet in front of the second tank.
As the tank veered around the destroyed lead vehicle, a bomb took out the third tank. An oily ball of fire mushroomed upward from the destroyed tank.
Another twin-finned fighter swept overhead. One after the other, long-nosed, stubby-winged F/A-18s raked the Sherji positions with cluster bombs. As Gritti watched, the surviving tank backed up, reversed course, and was clanking at high speed toward the canopy cover from which it had emerged.
Another near miss. A bomb hit three feet from the tank’s left side, kicking it sideways, destroying its left track. Seconds later the hatch flew open. The crippled tank’s three-man crew bailed out and ran pell-mell across the exposed hillside. Twenty yards from the low scrub brush, they were cut down by a hail of automatic fire.
“That’s Corporal Brady’s C team earning their pay,” said Plunkett, watching the action with his glasses.
“Get the fire teams back to the perimeter,” Gritti ordered. “They have to get out of the way of the bombers.”
While Plunkett issued the instructions, Gritti heard something else—a familiar beating noise above the din of the explosions and the roar of the jets.
Rotor blades. Whopping, thrashing the air, coming from the south. A beautiful sound.
Gritti and Plunkett looked at each other. Each wore a two-day stubble of beard. A layer of grime and camo-paint covered their faces. Their eyes were red-rimmed with fatigue and stress.
“Master Sergeant,” Gritti said, “it appears that the cavalry may be on its way.”
“About damn time, sir.”
The beat of the rotor blades swelled in intensity. A pair of Whiskey Cobras popped over the southern ridgeline, their noses low, the chin-mounted rotary cannons swiveling from side to side looking for targets. A second pair appeared behind them. As the Cobras swept over the marines’ perimeter, the brittle roar of the high-velocity cannon drowned out the other battle noises. From the lead Cobra’s inboard pylon a salvo of 2.75 inch rockets screeched toward a gun position in the trees. A geyser of flame and debris gushed upward from the foliage.
A deeper throbbing sound pounded on Gritti’s eardrums. Behind another pair of protective Whiskey Cobras appeared the CH-53E Super Stallions. Three of the cargo helicopters were hauling swing loads—fighting vehicles suspended in slings beneath the aircraft.
Gritti tried to count the helos. He couldn’t. They kept coming, one wave behind the other.
“Jesus,” said Plunkett, staring at the apparition. “It looks like ‘Apocalypse Now.’”
Gritti nodded. He could feel the throb of the blades all the way up through the soles of his boots. Marines were fast-roping out of the hovering craft. The Stallions with the swing loads were lowering the heavy vehicles to the earth.
So far, Gritti observed, no SAMs. No fireballs from destroyed helicopters. No mortars being lobbed into the perimeter. The heavy guns of the Sherji had fallen silent. He liked the way this was going.
His ambush teams were making their way back. The first wave of the assault force was entering the southern perimeter. Gritti heard the deep chuffing of diesel engines, and seconds later a pair of LAV-25s—light armored vehicles—rumbled over the ridgeline and into the perimeter.
In trail behind the two light tanks appeared an HMMWV Hummer. As Gritti rose to his feet, the Hummer rolled across the clearing and ground to halt.
From the right seat of the vehicle emerged Lieutenant Colonel Aubrey Hewlitt, Gritti’s executive officer and second-in-command of the 43rd Marine Expeditionary Unit. He wore perfectly starched desert-camo BDUs, a sidearm, and the ubiquitous Fritz helmet.
Hewlitt peered at Gritti, unsure of what he was seeing.
“What the hell are you staring at?” said Gritti.
Recognizing his boss’s voice, Hewlitt snapped off a salute. “Sorry, Colonel.” He stared for another second. “If you’ll pardon my saying so, sir, you look like shit.”
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It was too good to last, thought Maxwell. Something always happened that you didn’t expect.
Now it was happening. “Runner One-one, pop up contact! Snap vector, bearing 345, twenty, low, in the weeds.”
The warning came from the E-2C Hawkeye—the turboprop Airborne Early Warning aircraft—deployed in an orbit twenty miles south of the Yemeni coastline.
Fulcrums again? From where? Had they somehow gotten across the Red Sea from Eritrea or Chad? How did they arrive undetected?
They didn’t, he decided. They would have been picked up by the Hawkeye. These guys were locals.
“Bogeys bearing 330, fifteen, weeds.”
Maxwell still had no ID on them. Bogeys or bandits? Bogeys were unidentified, while bandits were bona fide, no shit hostiles. They had to be bandits if they were coming in low from the north.
If they waited any longer for an ID, it would be too late. They were already within missile range.
“Runner flight, jettison stores,” Maxwell called on the tactical frequency. He hit the emergency jettison button and felt a Whump through the Hornet’s airframe as his remain
ing Rockeye containers and the centerline external fuel tank were punched away. The Super Hornet was no longer a lumbering bomber. It was a slick-winged fighter.
They were low, still pulling up from a pass on the Sherji positions. Above and behind were Leroi Jones and Flash Gordon, about to roll in on ground targets.
The bogeys were coming in on the deck, fifteen miles away, head on. The merge would come in less than a minute.
“Radar air-to-air,” Maxwell switched his APG-73 radar from bombing mode to air-to-air. Within a few sweeps of the radar, he saw what he expected: an EID—electronic identification—on the incoming bogey. MiG-29.
Fulcrums.
He looked again. No, not just one bogey. Damn it, there were three more. “Four bandits, twelve o’clock, ten miles low,” called the controller in the Hawkeye, confirming Maxwell’s radar display.
His RWR shrieked a high-pitched a warbling sound. He was being targeted by a Russian Slotback radar.
“Runner one-one spiked at twelve, defending!” he called, rolling his Hornet and pulling hard. He hoped Pearly was staying with him. “Runner one two, press!” he called, giving the tactical lead to Pearly.
A classic set up. The MiGs were getting the first shot. His best chance to defeat the missile—he guessed that it was a radar-guided Alamo—was chaff, a cloud of radar-decoying aluminum foil.
Rolling back to the left, he saw it. Coming up at him, trailing a wisp of gray smoke, the missile was flying a classic pursuit curve.
Toward Maxwell’s jet.
“Brick, break left!” Pearly Gates’s voice was urgent. “Bandit ten o’clock low.”
Maxwell swung his head—and there it was—the cobra-like shape of the lead MiG-29 silhouetted against the landscape. The MiG was in a climbing turn toward him.
But he had a more immediate problem—the incoming Alamo. The missile was in a maximum-rate turn, arcing upwards.
Another barrel roll to the left, pulling hard, seven Gs. The missile was closing him, curving toward his tail.
Whoosh. Straining under the heavy G load, he watched the Alamo sizzling past his tail, then felt the concussion as the proximity fuse exploded the warhead a hundred yards behind him.
How close? Maxwell braced, waiting for the same sickening sensation of two days before—loss of control, warning lights, engine fire.
“You okay, Brick?” asked Pearly Gates.
“I think so. Everything is still working.”
“Runner two, Fox three on the lead group trailer
“Take him. I’ve got the leader engaged.”
“Roger. Yo-yo. Runner One-one engaged defensive with the leader.” Pearly was on his own while Maxwell fought the lead Fulcrum.
“Runner One-three and four have the trailers,” called Leroi Jones, leading the second section of Hornets. “We’re sorted.”
Maneuvering to defeat the Alamo had cost him airspeed. The lead MiG’s nose was pointed well inside Maxwell’s turn radius, gaining a precious angle on him.
The fighters passed, a hundred yards apart. As the desert-colored MiG swept past, Maxwell glimpsed the yellow helmet, a visored face watching him. Puffs of vapor were spilling off the MiG’s wings from the high G load.
Who is this guy? What was with the yellow helmet?
Was it Al-Fasr?
As the MiG passed behind his shoulder, Maxwell swung his head, keeping the fighter in sight. He hauled the nose up, up, then rolled toward the MiG.
The MiG’s nose came up, countering Maxwell. Climbing, the two fighters pulled back toward each other. Again they crossed, noses high.
The fight had settled into a classic rolling scissors.
Now what? Maxwell asked himself. In a one-vee-one with a MiG-29, there was no way out. The aging Russian fighter could still outrun a Hornet. If you tried to bug out, the MiG had a free shot at your tail.
Now he was in a turning fight with a Fulcrum. And the guy flying it was matching the Hornet, move for move. Definitely not your average undertrained and demoralized MiG pilot who just wanted to save his ass.
It had to be Al-Fasr.
Chapter Twenty-Two
The Trouble With SAM
North Central Yemen
1305, Thursday, 20 June
“Splash One!” called Pearly Gates.
It was the brevity signal for an aerial kill. Pearly Gates saw his AIM-120 radar-guided missile slam into the right intake of the second MiG-29. The fighter split in half, spewing debris and pieces from the shattered airframe. Exactly one second later, the main fuel cell erupted in an orange fireball. From five hundred feet, the flaming wreckage tumbled to the floor of the desert.
Where were the trailers? Pearly picked them up on his situational display, then went outside again for a visual ID.
There. He saw the dark shapes of the two trailing MiGs, a mile behind the destroyed fighter, fast and low in a combat spread.
He heard Leroi Jones call, “Runner one-three and four have the trailers locked.”
Okay, the trailers were covered. But that left Brick and the lead MiG still in a furball somewhere.
“Runner blind on One,” Pearly called, declaring that he didn’t have Maxwell in sight.
“One’s blind on you, engaged neutral,” Maxwell answered.
Pearly called the Hawkeye. “Battle Axe, Runner Two. Vector for Runner One-one.”
“Runner One-one is ten miles, merged plot,” answered the controller in the Hawkeye.
“Runner One-two inbound.” Pearly reefed the Hornet’s nose around in a climbing turn, switching his scan from outside back to the APG-73 radar.
Then he saw the two blips—Maxwell’s Hornet and the MiG-29. The blips were nearly superimposed.
Another AIM-120 missile shot was out of the question. They were too close together. The autonomously guided missile was as likely to home on Maxwell as the MiG.
Maybe a heat-seeking Sidewinder, which was a “fire and forget” weapon. He’d wait until he had a clear shot.
In the next second, Pearly’s blood ran cold.
“Burner six! Burner six hot!” It was Ironclaw, the EA-6B Prowler, reporting an SA-6 surface-to-air missile.
At the same time Pearly heard the warbling sound from his RWR. The SAM was airborne. Locked on Pearly’s Hornet.
He saw it, bursting into the hazy sky like a fire-tailed comet. He hit the chaff dispenser button on his throttle, releasing a trail of the finely cut aluminum foil into the wake of his jet.
“Runner One-two spiked, defending,” he yelled on the radio, declaring that he was leaving the fight. “Shit, it’s an SA-6.”
He rolled perpendicular to the missile and punched his chaff program dispenser. Make it maneuver. Make it break lock. Out-turn the sonofabitch. He pulled the Hornet’s nose down, seeing the rugged terrain of Yemen fill up his windscreen.
By modern standards, the Russian-built SA-6 wasn’t a highly sophisticated missile, but it was still deadly. Pearly guessed that the radar-guided weapon was smart enough not to be fooled by chaff or the electronic jamming being provided by the Prowler.
He was right. It was coming up in a corkscrew pattern, constantly adjusting its flight path to stay locked on to Pearly’s Hornet.
As the missile came nearer, Pearly yanked the Hornet into an orthogonal roll—a high-G, square-cornered maneuver—using the maximum G load the Hornet’s fly-by-wire control system would allow. The missile followed. Still accelerating. Still tracking him.
Pearly’s heart hammered in his chest. The goddamn missile was like a hunter from hell. He could see the nose of the thing pulling lead, making tiny directional changes as it homed on Pearly’s jet.
Coming closer. So close now he could see the control fins on the tail. Any second now, it would detonate. Pearly saw the missile coming for him.
Wait, he told himself. Wait until. . .
Now. He jammed the stick hard into the corner, completing the last right angle corner of the roll.
He heard the dull moan of the rocket engine
as the SAM zoomed past him. Not close enough to detonate the proximity fuse.
Peering over his shoulder, he saw the missile wobbling in a ballistic arc. Without a target, the SAM was flying an unguided descent back toward the earth.
He had escaped. But just barely.
Pearly eased back on the stick, leveling the Hornet at only two hundred feet above the terrain. For the first time since he saw the SAM, he resumed breathing. The feeling of relief flowed over him like a warm bath.
But only for a few seconds. The feeling was rapidly replaced by a fresh emotion. Rage. Those ragheads tried to take me out with that goddamn rocket!
The anger swelled in Pearly Gates as another thought took hold of him. They’re still down there, the bastards! Loading up another one to shoot at us.
He heard the Hawkeye calling. “Runner Two, status check. Do you have battle damage?”
Pearly’s left thumb went to the mike button to acknowledge. Then he removed it.
“Runner Two, do you read Battle Axe? Answer up.”
He didn’t answer. Instead, his fingers went to the stores page on his multi-purpose display. He had no air to ground weapons with which to fight the SAM. Except one. He selected A/G GUN.
<>
Gritti sat in the Hummer and stifled a yawn. Jesus, a short nap would be heaven. He’d never been so tired in his life.
But he couldn’t sleep now.
Hewlitt was giving him a worried look. “Maybe you’d better chill out, Gus. You can keep the Hummer and run the operation with—”
“Fuck that!” Gritti snapped. “I’ve been fighting this asshole for three days. Do you think I’m gonna miss the last hour of the battle?”
“Just thought I’d ask.”
The sounds of the skirmish across the valley had abated. The Sherji had put up a brief fight when the Marines broke out of the perimeter, trying to defend what was left of their armor and artillery. With the Whiskey Cobras and a flight of Hornets spewing high explosives on them, they quickly ran out of enthusiasm.