by Tom Clancy
The man on the other side of the table nodded. “This is possible. What do you ask of me?”
“A simple question. You are a man of God. Can you condone those acts committed by the UIR?”
Indignation: “The taking of innocent life is hateful to Allah. Everyone knows that.”
The Russian nodded. “Then you must decide for yourself which is more important to you, political power, or your faith.”
But it wasn’t quite that simple: “What do you offer us? I have people who will soon look to me for their welfare. You may not use the Faith as a weapon against the Faithful.”
“Increased autonomy, free trade of your goods to the rest of the world, direct flights to foreign lands. We and the Americans will help you to arrange lines of credit with the Islamic states of the Gulf. They do not forget acts of friendship,” he assured the next Premier of Turkmenistan.
“How can a man faithful to God do such things?”
“My friend”—he wasn’t really, but that was what one said—“how many men start to do something noble and then become corrupted? And then what do they stand for? Perhaps it is a lesson for you to remember. Power is a deadly thing, most deadly of all to those who hold it in their earthly hands. For yourself, you must decide. What sort of leader do you wish to be, and with what other leaders will you associate your country?” Golovko leaned back and sipped at his tea. How wrong his country had been not to understand religion—and yet, how right was the result. This man had clung to his Islamic faith as an anchor against the previous regime, finding in it a continuity of belief and values which the political reality of his youth had lacked. Now that his character, known to all in the land, was carrying him to political power, would he remain what he had been, or would he become something else? He had to recognize that danger now. He hadn’t thought it all the way through, Golovko saw. Political figures so rarely did. This one had to do so, and right now, and the chairman of the RVS watched him search his soul—something the Marxist doctrine of his youth had told him did not exist. It turned out to be better that it did.
“Our religion, our Faith, it is a thing of God, not of murder. The Prophet teaches Holy War, yes, but it does not teach us to become our enemies. Unless Mahmoud Haji proves these things are false, I will not stand with him, for all his promises of money. I would like to meet this Ryan, when the time comes.”
BY 13:00 LIMA TIME, the picture was firming up nicely. The numbers were still pretty unattractive, Diggs thought, with five concentrated divisions on the move facing four brigade-sized forces, which were still dispersed. But there were things that could be done about that.
The small Saudi blocking force north of KKMC had held for three spectacular hours, but was now being enveloped and had to move, despite the wishes of the Saudi general staff. Diggs didn’t even know the kid’s name, but hoped to meet him later. With a couple years of proper training, he might really turn into something.
At his “suggestion,” King Khalid Military City was being evacuated. The one part about that which hurt was turning off the intelligence assets there. Especially the Predator teams which now had to recall their birds for their withdrawal to WOLFPACK’S line north of Al Artawiyah. Now that they’d all had time to think about it, the battle was like a huge training exercise at the NTC—three corps instead of battalions to face, but the principle was the same, wasn’t it?
The lingering concern was an Iranian heavy division now known to be crossing the swamps west of Basra. The enemy’s operational concept did leave one blank spot. In bypassing Kuwait, they had not had a covering force in place, perhaps because they thought it unnecessary, more likely because they didn’t want to tip their hand, figuring to patch the hole as they were doing now. Well, every plan had a flaw.
So did the plan he’d put together for Operation BUFORD, probably. But he didn’t see it, despite two hours of looking.
“Are we agreed, gentlemen?” he had to ask. Every Saudi officer in the room was still senior to him, but they’d come to see the logic of his proposal. They were going to fuck ’em all, not just a few. The assembled generals nodded. They didn’t even complain any more about leaving KKMC to the enemy. They could always rebuild it. “Then Operation BUFORD commences at sundown.”
THEY FELL BACK by echelon. A few Saudi mobile guns had appeared and they now fired smoke to obscure the battlefield. As soon as they landed, half of Major Abdullah’s vehicles backed off their positions and hurried south. The flanking units were already moving, fending off encirclement attempts which the enemy had adopted, probing expensively for the extreme ends of the Saudi line.
Berman’s helicopter had never arrived, and the afternoon of noisy and confusing action—you couldn’t see crap down here! he had come to learn—had been instructive. Calling in four more air strikes and seeing the effects on the ground was something he would keep in mind, if the Saudis clawed their way out of the trap the other side was casting about them.
“Come with me, Colonel,” Abdullah said, turning to run for his command track, ending the First Battle of KKMC.
61
GRIERSON’S RIDE
THE VIEW ON THE MAP was just awful. It was easy for anyone to see, a lot of long red arrows and short blue ones. The maps on the morning TV shows were not all that different from those in the Situation Room, and commentary—especially “expert” commentary—talked about how American and Saudi forces were badly outnumbered and poorly deployed, with their backs to the sea. But then there was the direct satellite feed.
“We’ve heard stories of fierce air battles to the northwest,” Donner told the camera from “somewhere in Saudi Arabia.” “But the troopers of the Blackhorse Regiment have yet to see action. I can’t say where I am right now—the fact of the matter is that I just don’t know. B-Troop is stopped for refueling now, pouring hundred of gallons into those big M1 Abrams tanks. It’s a real fuel-hog, the troopers tell me. But their mood remains the same. These are angry men—and women back in the headquarters troop,” he added. “I don’t know what we will find at the western horizon. I can say that these soldiers are straining at the leash despite all the bad news that has come down from the Saudi high command. The enemy is somewhere out there, driving south in great strength, and soon after sundown, we expect to make contact. This is Tom Donner in the field with the B-Troop, 1st of the Blackhorse,” the report concluded.
“His poise isn’t bad,” Ryan noted. “When does that go on the air?”
Fortunately for all concerned, the television uplinks were over military channels, which were encrypted and controlled. It wasn’t time for the UIR to learn exactly who was where. The negative commentary of the “defeat” of the Saudi army was, however, going out. That news, leaked in Washington, and studiously not commented on by the Pentagon, was being accepted as gospel. Jack was still worried, however amusing it might have been in the abstract that the media was doing disinformation without even being asked.
“This evening. Maybe sooner,” General Mickey Moore replied. “Sunset over there is in three hours.”
“Can we do it?” POTUS asked.
“Yes, sir.”
WOLFPACK, FIRST BRIGADE, North Carolina National Guard, was fully formed now. Eddington took to a UH- 60 Black Hawk helicopter for a flyover of his forward units. LOBO, his 1st Battalion Task Force, had its left edge on the road from Al Artawiyah to KKMC. WHITEFANG, the 2nd, was arrayed to the west side of the highway. COYOTE, the 3rd, was in reserve, his maneuver force, leaning to the west, because that’s where he thought the possibilities were. His artillery battalion he split into two segments, able to cover the left or right extremes, and both able to cover the center. He lacked air assets and had been unable to get anything more than three Black Hawks for medevac. He also had an intelligence group, a combat-support battalion, medical personnel, MPs, and all the other things organic to a unit of brigade size. Forward of his two frontline battalions was a reconnaissance element whose mission was, first, to report, and second, to take out the enemy’s eyes when th
ey appeared. He’d thought of asking the 11th ACR for some of their helicopter assets, but he knew what Hamm had planned for those, and it was a waste of breath to ask. He would get the take from their reconnaissance efforts, and that would have to do.
Looking down, he saw that the forward line of M1A2s and Bradleys had all found comfortable spots, mainly behind berms and mini-dunes, where possible just behind high ground, so that at most the top of a turret was visible and mainly not even that. Just the track commander’s head and a pair of binoculars would suffice in most cases. The tanks were spaced no less than three hundred meters apart, and mostly more than that. It made them an unattractively diluted target for artillery or air attack. He’d been told not to worry about the latter, but he worried anyway, as much as circumstance allowed. His subordinate commanders knew their jobs as well as reservists could, and the truth of the matter was that the mission was right out of the textbooks written by Guderian and practiced by Rommel and every mounted commander ever since.
THE WITHDRAWAL STARTED with a ten-mile dash at thirty-five miles per hour, enough to outrun artillery fire, and to look like the rout that Berman initially thought it to be—until he remembered that he made a practice of leaving enemy fire behind at least fifteen times as fast as these mechanized vehicles were doing. They were riding with top hatches open, and Berman stood to look behind, past the brown-black fountains of exploding artillery shells. He’d never known what a defensive stand was like. Mainly lonely, he thought. He’d expected bunched vehicles and men, forgetting what he himself did to such things when he spotted them from the air. He saw what had to be fifty columns of smoke, all vehicles blown apart by the Saudi National Guard. Maybe they didn’t take training seriously enough—he had heard such things—but this team had stood their ground against a force at least five times as large, and held them for three hours.
Not without cost. He turned forward and counted only fifteen tanks, plus eight infantry tracks. Perhaps there were more he couldn’t see in the clouds of dust, he hoped. He looked up, into what he hoped was a friendly sky.
IT WAS. THE score since dawn was forty UIR fighters down, all of them air-to-air, against six American and Saudi losses, all of them ground-to-air. The opposing air force had been unable to overcome the advantage of the allied airborne radar coverage, and the best thing that could be said for their effort was that they had distracted efforts to attack the ground forces, which would otherwise have been totally unimpeded. The ragtag collection of American-, French-, and Russian-made fighter aircraft looked impressive on paper and on the ramp, but less so in the air. But the allied air forces were far less capable at night. Only the small collection of F-15E Strike Eagles was really all-weather capable (night is considered a weather condition). There were about twenty of those, UIR intelligence estimated, and couldn’t do all that much harm. The advancing divisions halted right before KKMC, again to refuel and rearm. One more such jump, their commanders thought, and they’d be to Riyadh before the Americans were organized enough to take the field. They still had the initiative, and were halfway to their objective.
PALM BOWL KEPT track of all that, feeding what radio intercepts it was garnering from the southwest, but now facing a new threat to the north from an Iranian armored division. Perhaps the UIR had expected that, with the Kingdom out of the way or at least heavily engaged, the Kuwaitis would be intimidated into inaction. If so, it was wishful thinking. Borders could be crossed in two directions, and Kuwait’s government made the correct assumption that doing nothing would only make things worse for them, not better. It turned out to be another case of one more day needed to patch things up, but this time it was the other side which needed the extra time.
The Air Cavalry Squadron, 4th of the 10th, lifted off twenty minutes after sunset, heading north. There were some light motorized units on border guard duty, soon, they thought, to be relieved by the unit now crossing the Tigris-Euphrates delta. It comprised two battalions of troops in trucks and light armored vehicles. They’d chatted quite a bit on their radios, the commanders moving units back and forth, but strangely unprepared to be invaded by a nation not a tenth the size of their own. For the next hour, all twenty-six of the Buffalo Cav’s Apaches would hunt them with cannon and rocket fire, burning a path for Kuwait’s own light mechanized brigade, whose reconnaissance vehicles fanned out, searching for and finding the lead elements of Iranian armor. Five kilometers back was a battalion of heavy armor guided by the reconnaissance information, and the first major surprise of the night for the UIR was the sundering of nightfall by twenty tank guns, followed two seconds later by fifteen kills. The next lesson applied was that of confidence. Their first contact with the enemy a successful one, the lead Kuwaiti elements pressed the attack with gusto. It was all coming together for them. The night-vision systems worked. The guns worked. They had an enemy with his back to unsuitable ground and noplace to go.
Listening at PALM BOWL, Major Sabah heard the radio calls, again experiencing things at second hand. It turned out that only one brigade of the Iranian 4th Armored Division, mainly a reserve formation, had gotten across, and had driven blithely and unwarned into an advancing armor force. It was, Sabah thought, just about as fair as what had happened to his country on the morning of 1 August 1990. By sunset plus three hours, the only usable access route into southern Iraq was completely blocked, and with it, easy reinforcement of the Army of God. Throughout the night, precision-guided bombs would drop bridges to make certain of that. It was a small battle for his small nation, but a winning one to set the stage for her nation’s allies.
The Buffalo Cav was already moving its ground elements due west, while the Air Cav squadron returned to refuel and rearm, leaving a buoyant Kuwaiti army holding the allied rear and spoiling for another battle.
THE UIR I CORPS had been in reserve until this point. One division was the former Iranian 1st Armored, “The Immortals,” accompanied by another armored division comprised mainly of surviving Republican Guards officers, and a new class of enlisted men untouched by the 1991 war. II Corps had made the breakthrough at the border and held the lead for the advance to KKMC, though in the course of combat action losing more than a third of its strength. That task accomplished, it moved left, east, clearing the path for I Corps, as yet untouched except by a few air attacks, and III Corps, similarly untouched. II Corps would now guard the flank of the advancing force against counterstrikes fully expected from the seaward side. All units, following their doctrine, sent out reconnaissance forces as darkness fell.
The lead units, advancing by bounds, skirted around King Khalid Military City, surprised to find no opposition. Emboldened, the commander of the reconnaissance battalion sent units directly into the city, then found it virtually empty of people, most of whom had driven out during the previous day. It seemed logical when he thought about it. The Army of God was advancing, and though it had taken a few heavy blows, nothing the Saudis had could stop it. Satisfied, he pressed south, a little more cautiously now. There had to be some opposition ahead.
EDDINGTON’S MP DETACHMENT had done its job conveying people south and out of the way. He’d seen a few faces, downcast mainly, until they’d gotten a look at what was waiting between KKMC and Al Artawiyah. WOLFPACK couldn’t hide everything. Saudi MP units brought up the rear, passing through the recon screen at 21:00 local time. They’d said that there was nothing behind them. They were wrong.
With his soft vehicles in the lead and his fighting tracks guarding the rear with their turrets turned aft, Major Abdullah had thought about making one more stand, but didn’t have the combat power to hold much of anything against what he knew had to be behind him. His men were exhausted by twenty-four hours of continuous combat operations, and the worst off were his tank drivers. Their position in the front of their vehicles was so comfortable as to cause them to fall asleep, only to be awakened by the shouts of their tank commanders, or the lurch of heading off the road into a ditch. His additional concern was that he’d expected to
make contact with friendly units—battlefields, he’d learned in the past day, were anything but friendly places.
They appeared as white blobs at first on the thermal-imaging scopes, the vehicles straggling down the highway. Eddington, in his command post, knew that there might be some Saudi stragglers downbound, and had warned his recon screen to expect it, but it wasn’t until the evening’s Predators took to the sky that he was sure. Through the thermal viewers, the distinctive flat top of the M1A2 tanks was clearly visible. This information he relayed to HOOTOWL, his recon detachment, which lessened their tension as the shapeless thermal blobs on their ground-based viewing systems gradually turned into friendlier profiles. Even then, there was the chance that friendly vehicles had been captured and converted to enemy use.
Troopers cracked chemical-light wands and dropped them on the road. These were spotted and the advancing trucks stopped practically on top of them, even rolling slowly as they were, without lights. A handful of Saudi liaison officers assigned to WOLFPACK verified their identity and waved them south. Major Abdullah, arriving at the screening position ten minutes later, jumped out of his command track, along with Colonel Berman. The American Guardsmen handed over food and water, first of all, quickly followed by GI coffee out of their MRE packs, the sort with triple the normal amount of caffeine.
“They’re a ways back, but they’re coming,” Berman said. “My friend here well, he’s had a busy day.”
The Saudi major was at the point of collapse, the physical and mental exertions like nothing he’d ever known. He staggered over to the HOOTOWL command post and, over a map, relayed what he knew as coherently as he could.
“We must stop them,” he concluded.