by Peter Nealen
The searing heat of the burning helicopter scorched his face as he followed Jahangir and one of his remaining squads around the helipad and toward the inner wall. In a moment, they could take the attackers under fire from above, and end this.
With the missiles recaptured, he could still salvage the operation. Riyadh would die, the apostates choking on their own bodily fluids.
***
Brannigan scrambled back to the breach. “Speed it up!” he barked. “We’ve got to go, now! Slide down the rope; I don’t care if it burns all the skin off your hands! At least you’ll be alive! Move!”
Ortiz, wincing visibly with the pain of his wound, immediately started chivvying his people toward the ropes faster. Two more ropes had been staked down and dropped down the cliff face, so they could get more people down more quickly.
One of the Saudis appeared to have taken charge, barking at his fellow prisoners in Arabic. Brannigan wished that Aziz had stayed up top; his language expertise was needed. But the prisoners seemed to become more cooperative after the haranguing, though a few of them still seemed sullen about it. They held out their hands to have their flex cuffs cut, then descended the rope, though more slowly than Brannigan would have liked.
“I can’t!” the middle-aged woman wailed. She shrank back from the edge. Two weeks as a hostage of bloodthirsty IRGC thugs hadn’t been enough to cure her of fear of heights.
Everybody’s got something.
“Hold on to my neck,” the big, blond kid said. He’d dropped his rifle, pretty well confirming Brannigan’s earlier suspicion that he’d run through all his ammo. “I’ll climb down, you can just ride on my back.”
Brannigan wondered why the woman’s husband wasn’t making that offer, then realized that this was probably Trevor Ulrich’s widow.
Shaking, the woman wrapped her arms tightly around the young man’s neck and squeezed her eyes shut as he grabbed the rope and went over the edge. Her shriek as he fast-roped down to the boats was audible even over ringing ears, roaring fires, and the occasional burst of gunfire that was still cracking through the fortress.
Brannigan returned to Flanagan and Curtis. “Give me the Pecheneg,” he said, “along with the rest of your ammo. Joe, give Santelli all but two of your mags. Then get to the ropes and get down.”
“Wait a second,” Flanagan started, but Brannigan cut him off.
“That wasn’t a request, Joe,” he said. “Carlo and I will be the last ones down. Move your asses.”
The two men were visibly reluctant as they yielded their positions to Brannigan and Santelli and moved to the ropes. Brannigan had handed off his AK-12 and the rest of his mags to Curtis, and got down behind the PKP. A quick check confirmed that he had about half a belt left on the gun, and one more in its ready pouch. It wasn’t much, but it was going to have to be enough.
More fire started to snap overhead from the far side of the burning vehicles. Brannigan returned it, the PKP rattling and stuttering as flame spat from the muzzle. The barrel was starting to glow a dull, cherry red in the dark. In his NVGs, it glowed a brilliant white.
“Up high!” Santelli warned, turning his AK toward the curtain wall and tearing off a fast series of shots. Brannigan looked, and saw figures against the sky, on the battlements. They’d be sitting ducks down below. He shifted, couldn’t get the barrel of the PKP elevated enough from the prone, and scrambled to a kneeling position, burning his hand as he lifted the smoking-hot machinegun, and ripped off the rest of the belt at the top of the wall, dragging the barrel across the battlements, blasting pits in the stone and forcing heads back from the crenellations.
Another roaring burst came from behind them, hammering both men with the muzzle blast, also aimed up at the inner wall. “Last man!” Flanagan roared hoarsely. “Come on!”
Brannigan dropped the empty machinegun and turned, running to the ropes. Santelli rapped off three more shots, then followed.
Brannigan went over the edge so fast that he almost missed the rope. He clenched his hands on it at the last moment, feeling the friction sear his grip through his gloves as he clamped down, stopping his fall after nearly three feet. Then, clamping his boots together on the rope beneath him, he loosened his grip just enough to begin to slide down the rope again.
His gloves smoked as he shot downward, almost keeping pace with Santelli, who was cursing loudly as the rope abraded the palms of his gloves away. Flanagan was half a length ahead of Santelli.
Brannigan hit the bow of the left-most boat a moment after the other two go to theirs. The third and fourth boats were already out on the water, lying low with their heavy load of bodies. All four boats were overloaded, almost the point of swamping.
His boot slipped on the wet rubber, and he went over backward, landing on someone who grunted in pain at the impact. But he was aboard, and he yelled at the coxswain, “I’m in! Go!”
“Pull the stake!” Hancock yelled in reply. They’d staked the boats to the cliffside before ascending, to keep them from floating away. Struggling with the weight of his gear, the thrashing bodies under him, and the overloaded rubber gunwale that seemed to want to collapse whenever he needed to push against it, Brannigan managed to sit up, reach forward, and yank on the line holding the boat to the cliff.
It didn’t budge. He reached for his knife, praying that it hadn’t fallen out and gotten lost. It was still clipped to his belt, gritty and salt-encrusted as it was, and he felt it grate as he opened it. It was still sharp, though, and it took only a couple seconds of sawing to get through the rope. The final strands parted, and they were free. “Go!”
Hancock cranked the throttle, and they were pulling back from the cliff and out into the water. They were moving slowly, though. Too slowly. Between the reduced power of the outboard in reverse and the heavy load of the boat, they weren’t going to be far enough from the cliff by the time some Iranian poked his head over with a machinegun.
Turning over and trying to get a better position on the gunwale, Brannigan saw that he’d landed on Ortiz, who was already hurting. The man was now crunched down inside the boat. Most of the inside of the hull was a packed, jumbled mass of humanity; the hostages were staying inside instead of riding the gunwales like the mercenaries would have, if only out of habit.
Ortiz managed to get himself partially upright, leaning his head against the bow, and with a wince of pain, wrenched the captured Type 03 out from under him. He shoved it at Brannigan. “Here,” he grunted, pain evident in every word, “you probably know how to use this better than I do.”
Brannigan accepted the rifle, grateful to have a weapon in his hand. He pulled the magazine, feeling the rounds at the feed lips and weighing it in his hand before driving it back home in the weapon’s mag well. About half full, give or take maybe five rounds. “You still have any more mags?” he asked.
“I think I’ve still got one,” Ortiz replied, though it took him a moment to draw it out of a pocket. “Make that two.”
Brannigan accepted them gratefully, stuffing them into his vest as he pointed the rifle up at the cliffside. Just in time, too, as a silhouette appeared in the wall breach. Putting what he could see of the sights in the general vicinity, he fired five rapid shots, the brass sailing out over his shoulder to fall into the water.
***
Farroukhshad yelled at his men as the fire from the gap in the wall slackened and died. With the destroyed APCs in the way, that machinegunner had had far too narrow a kill zone, and it had made trying to rush the infidels impossible. The corpses laid out in the dirt were ample testament to that. And he simply did not have enough men to make a human-wave assault practical. Farroukhshad was suitably fanatical; he never would have been appointed as an officer in the Qods Force if he had not demonstrated it sufficiently for the Council of Guardians. Even more so, he never would have been picked for this particular mission if he had not been deemed religiously and politically reliable. But he was also a tactician, much like his commander, and knew that glorious
failure was still failure. Even if Allah was ultimately pleased by their dedication, his family would likely suffer at the hands of the Revolutionary Guard and the Baseej. So he held his men back until the fire slackened enough that they could rush through the gap.
The first, the youngest and most viciously enthusiastic of his fighters, were on their feet, variously shouting, “Allahu Akhbar!” and, “Marg bar Amryka!” They were certain that the attackers were American commandos. Who else could they be?
They were met with no resistance, and Farroukhshad followed, his own rifle in his hands. Some of the other platoon leaders, especially the un-mourned Twelver lunatic Mehregan, preferred to carry pistols in place of rifles, as emblems of their authority, but again, Farroukhshad was a practical soldier.
He saw the first soldier run past the discarded, smoking PKP at the breach, kneel in the rubble, and aim his rifle. Gunfire cracked from below, and the man reeled back, blood squirting from his shoulder.
Farroukhshad paused just past the first burning AMX-10. More gunfire was hammering at them from below, bullets filling the gap in the wall with harsh snaps and occasionally skipping off the sandstone with showers of grit to ricochet into the courtyard with angry-hornet buzzes. The infidels still had some fight left, even as they fled.
The roar of gunfire, the crackle of the burning vehicles, and the sheer amount of heat and smoke in the courtyard served to mask the faint, sweetish smell of burning time fuse. Neither Farroukhshad nor any of his men noticed the charges plastered against the missile bodies, shadowed by the camouflage netting and the curves of the missile fuel tanks themselves.
When the first missile detonated, hammering Farroukhshad flat on his face in the dirt, it was far too late. He was presumably already dead, crisped by the fireball and his internal organs pulped by the overpressure, by the time the second missile exploded, closely followed by the rest, in a rapid-fire cascade of thundering explosions.
The precursor chemicals for the sarin gas were hardly an afterthought. Any damage they might have done was overshadowed by the sheer, fiery destruction of the exploding rocket fuel.
***
Esfandiari was cursing, calling down every plague Allah could send on the infidels, the apostate Saudis, and even those of his own men who were too quick to hunker down below the battlements when the infidel commando raked them with machinegun fire. It had been a brutal night, so far, and even the hardened killers of the Qods Force were feeling their own resolve being battered by the sheer ferocity of the attackers, and the nearly unthinkable destruction they had already wreaked on the Citadel. It had been hard enough getting past the burning Super Puma, its inferno heat driving them back from the wall twice before they’d managed to mount the battlements. Khadem catching a bullet between the eyes as soon as he’d reached the crenellations had only made matters worse.
The fire from below had ceased, and Esfandiari rose above the battlements and sent a long burst ripping down toward the breach, firing before it even fully registered in his mind that there was no longer anyone there. The commandos had fled down the cliff.
“After them!” he screamed, his throat raw from the exertion, the gunfire, and the smoke of the night’s fighting. “Kill them all!”
Below, he saw Farroukhshad’s men already moving forward, rushing the breach in the wall, pursuing the infidels as soldiers of Allah should, without mercy or respite. He ceased his own fire as the men neared the breach; even in his rage, he would not risk accidentally killing his own men. He had lost enough that night already.
He was about to order his men down to join Farroukshad when the missiles began exploding. The shockwave blew him backward off the battlements, even as the fireball that filled the outer courtyard singed his eyebrows and half his beard off. He was smoking as he landed on his back with a brutal impact, staring dazedly at the stars above and wondering what had just happened.
***
Brannigan had just gotten the first burst off when Hancock started turning the boat. They were still close to the cliffs, and there were still rocks close to the surface, but if they were going to get some distance quickly, preferably before the missiles blew up, they needed every bit of power that the little outboard motor could muster. He had to roll onto his side to keep the Type 03’s muzzle trained on the breach above, finally setting in lying on his back, facing sternward to shoot over Hancock’s head. More rifle fire was coming from the other boats, as the rest joined in, trying to force the Iranians back from the breach by filling it with bullets.
The bow pointed away from the cliff, Hancock rammed the outboard into drive and opened the throttle. The little motor howled, churning the water behind them, but only pushed the boat forward sluggishly, the gunwales too close to the water, the stern nearly sinking under the load of more bodies than the boat had been built for.
Then the night exploded.
The walls shielded them from most of the explosions. Hancock had even angled to the south, getting them out of a direct line through the breach to the missiles. And the inner and outer walls funneled most of the fireball and the shockwave up, toward the sky.
A brilliant, roiling ball of yellow-orange flame boiled up into the sky, propelling a sinister cloud of smoke, dust, and deadly chemicals. There was a chance that there was some sarin in that cloud, but if there was, it was a miniscule amount, as most of the precursors had doubtless been incinerated by the fireball before they could mix. Dust and debris shot out through the breach, pelting the ocean with rocks and bits of metal, narrowly missing the boat. Brannigan heard fragments whicker overhead, far too close for comfort. But the boats stayed afloat, and there were no screams of wounded men struck by shrapnel. There were a few cries of terror from hostages, but they were quickly identified and dismissed.
He realized that that could change, though, as the cloud of debris thrown skyward started its long fall toward the earth. “Get us out from under that crap!” he yelled.
“This is as fast as this sucker’s going to go,” Hancock bellowed in reply. “Either we make it, or we don’t!”
Chunks of wreckage started to rain down out of the sky. In the dark, it was impossible to tell what was what. It didn’t matter whether it was a piece of sandstone the size of a fist, or a chunk of rolled steel from a destroyed armored vehicle. At terminal velocity, it could kill a man just as dead. Brannigan hunkered down in the boat with the rest of the hostages, covering his head with his hands, and prayed as debris bounced off the rubber gunwale or hit the ocean with hammering splashes.
Hancock ducked his head but kept his hand on the tiller, the throttle twisted as far as it could go, driving them out of the deadly rain.
***
Esfandiari rolled to his side, narrowly avoiding a chunk of shrapnel that fell smoking to bury itself in the dirt only centimeters from his head. It hadn’t been a deliberate movement; he was still too dazed by the shock of the explosions. But another fragment, possibly a stone, struck his calf with bruising force, and he cried out.
The pain shocked him back to consciousness, and with it came a white-hot, burning rage. The hostages had escaped, and the weapons he had been ordered to turn against the apostates had been destroyed before he had been able to force the apostate technicians to re-target their guidance systems.
He was a dead man. He knew it already. Even if he had not been poisoned or otherwise mortally wounded by that explosion, the Council of Guardians would surely order his execution for his failure. He gritted his teeth against the pain as he got his feet under him, debris still raining down out of the night sky. He would not simply surrender to failure. He was a servant of Allah, and Allah demanded much of his warriors. At the very least, he would make sure that the infidels and their apostate allies never saw another sunrise.
“Get up!” he snarled, hauling Mokhri off the ground. The man was limp, blood flowing from a wound in his head. Too much blood. He was dead.
Esfandiari let the corpse fall in disgust, and began kicking those of his troops who
were still moving to their feet. “Get to the gate!” he coughed. His entire body felt like one enormous bruise, his face was smarting from the flash-burns of the explosion, and his throat was raw and on fire. He was probably far more seriously wounded than he knew, but adrenaline and rage were fueling him now. “Get whatever vehicles are left running. We will move to the harbor and take the patrol boats.”
“What use are patrol boats, Commander?” one of the soldiers, his face a mask of blood from a scalp wound asked.
Esfandiari almost shot him dead right there. “The infidels are escaping by sea,” he snapped. “We will intercept them and kill them all. At least we will have that to offer to Allah when we face the Judgement.”
Allah smiled upon those who killed his enemies. That was one thing that he and the apostates could agree on.
Staggering, stumbling, nursing wounds, burns, and a few blast injuries, the surviving Iranians started down toward the barbican gate. The fight was not over yet.
CHAPTER 19
The flames were dying down as the boats lumbered through the Gulf toward the south end of the island. The fires in the outer courtyard were still burning fiercely, and the boiling mushroom cloud was still lit by the sullen red glow from beneath as it climbed into the sky. But the ancient stone fortress supplied little in the way of fuel, and once the remains of the vehicles were burned out, the fires would die.
As they got farther away, Brannigan thought he could see spots where the detonations had breached the outer wall, places where the fires were visible lower than the top of the wall. It had been a hell of a blast. The Old City was probably in even worse repair than it had been from the earlier fighting.
He wondered vaguely how the powers that be were going to handle this. Washington would have to make some kind of statement; they always did, even about things they knew nothing about. Would anyone have figured out that a private rescue mission had been launched? Or would the entire conflagration be put down to the “native” Khadarkhi insurgency, i.e., the Al Qaeda fighters smuggled in by the Saudis?