“We better try to get a little sleep while we can,” I said.
“Yeah, we might have a tough day ahead.”
“That’s probably an understatement. Night, Jana.”
“Good night, Matt.”
I switched off the overhead lights, pulled down all the window shades in the cabin, and looked across the small aisle at her one more time as she pulled a blanket up around her shoulders. Her very presence overwhelmed me. “Jana?”
“Yes?”
“I’ve never met anyone like you.”
“What do you mean?”
“I only met you a few hours ago, but I feel like I’ve known you all my life.” An awkward silence followed, the sort that takes place while one party watches the other try to lever a 10 ½-D from his mouth. She was the most fabulous example of womanhood I had ever seen and I just mucked everything.
In the dim light of the cabin, I couldn’t tell whether she frowned or smiled. She said nothing. I resisted the urge to heave myself from the aircraft and fell asleep to the rush of jet engines pushing us toward Israel.
65
5:24 PM EASTERN EUROPE SUMMER TIME (LOCAL)
10:24 AM EASTERN DAYLIGHT TIME
TIME REMAINING: 3 HOURS, 52 MINUTES
TEL AVIV, ISRAEL
After landing at Ben Gurion airport in Tel Aviv, we were fitted in desert camo fatigues and escorted toward a very different kind of aircraft, a Chinook CH-46E helicopter. Its twin rotors were already spinning and the noise was deafening.
The Marine walking us across the tarmac was a tank of a man. He nodded to Jana and shook my hand with a vise that would get high marks in Mississippi. “Sir, ma’am,” he shouted over the roaring whoosh-whoosh-whoosh of the massive blades, “Colonel Mack Masters. We’ll put you in near the front of the Shithook. The ride’s a little better there. I understand you’ve been briefed already, and I’ll bring you up to date at the staging area.”
We climbed aboard, strapped in and put on helmets, and moments later left the asphalt in a pulsing roar of power. I looked around the spacious but full interior of the Sea Knight and counted sixteen Marines, serious looking to a man, along with a cadre of formidable looking weapons and two FAST attack vehicles. They looked to be the newest version of what the Marine Corps calls an IFAV, short for Interim Fast Attack Vehicle. Shaped like stubby SUV’s, the DaimlerChrysler vehicles matched our fatigues and were crowned with machine guns whose exact type I couldn’t make out from a distance though judging from the size they were .50 calibers.
“Jana, you okay?” I said when I noticed she was tensed up with her eyes closed.
“I didn’t mind the nice little jet we came over on, but I’m not wild about this ride.” She grabbed my hand and held on tight. I still had the embarrassment from the plane gnawing at my psyche and holding her hand felt weird, but I wasn’t about to push away a lady in need. She gave a quick tight smile and said, “Thanks.”
“No problem.” Thank you.
We rode in silence for the rest of the trip, which was under an hour. I felt the aircraft slowing and then descending as the pilot throttled the big engines back. Marines may be a raucous bunch when they’re off duty, but these were on the clock and they were quiet and intense. The Chinook dropped down into a sandstorm of its own making and eased its wheels onto the hard floor of the desert. We stepped out and looked around to see an inhospitable landscape in every direction: dirt, rocks, and some small mountains that looked to be a few miles out.
While the Marines unloaded gear and the IFAV’s, Colonel Masters took us aside and spread a map on top of a large rock. “This is the Petra area. We’re here, about five miles south of the target.” He pointed to a spot on the map. “We inserted a Recon team last night by HALO. They’ve scouted the area and report the presence of only a few personnel and they look to be local hires. That’s good news for us. Very bad news for them if they decide to make trouble.”
The engines whined to a stop and the activity around us increased as a small command post was set up. Masters continued, “Four men will stay here at the staging area. Until the area is secure, you’ll stay here, as well. Sunset’s about an hour from now. Once we have full cover of darkness, three fire teams will move from here in those two sand rails. Three more will approach from a similar staging area on the northwest side of the target, and three more from the northeast.
“Once we’ve established a wide perimeter, we’ll call in the air assault element, eight Blackhawks. They’ll provide cover as we move into the hot zone. Once we’ve secured the zone, one of the Blackhawks will fall back here and pick you up.”
“I hate to bring this up, Colonel, but are any defensive measures being taken around likely targets in case we don’t find him in time?”
“Yes, I’ve been advised that reliable intel indicates the targets to be Haifa, Tel Aviv, and Jerusalem. Israel has spun up the Iron Dome in all three locations.”
“Any idea where that intel came from?”
“No sir, that information was not provided.”
I nodded and Masters whistled to a Marine who was carrying a case of ammunition and motioned him over. When he arrived Masters said, “This is Gunny Sergeant Walt Cunningham. Once I leave here, he will be personally responsible for you. His orders will be to protect you absolutely from any and all threats. He will accompany you back to the target area aboard the Blackhawk. Sergeant, this is Mr. Decker and Mrs. Fulton.” The Sergeant nodded in our direction. “They will be your charge and from this moment they will not leave your sight.”
“Yes sir!” Cunningham stood rigidly at our side, daring so much as a sand beetle to come our way.
“Any questions?” Masters said to us.
“None here,” I said. He looked to Jana and she shook her head.
The desert sunset was spectacular. The sun slid into the horizon, leaving a fiery orange sky in its wake and casting a red glow over the barren landscape. The air cooled, going from stifling to pleasant and headed toward chilly within the space of a half-hour. I stood and stretched, then shook my head as I looked around.
“What?” Jana said.
“Look at this land. It’s beautiful here in the colored shadows of sunset, but fact is it’s nothing but one big slab of sand and rock.” I pointed toward Israel. “Right over there lays a tiny sliver of land that millions of people have been fighting over for thousands of years. I’ve seen land worth fighting for; ever take a stroll through Yellowstone?”
“Always wanted to but haven’t gotten around to it yet.”
“It’s incredible. Stunning beauty that’ll literally take your breath away. But this?”
Cunningham stiffened when Masters walked up. “We’re about to get underway. You can listen to a lot of the operation on the radios over in the command center if you like. Sergeant, these people are yours.”
“Sir, yes sir!”
Masters pivoted smartly on his heel and left. We walked over to the command center, which was a tent with a table and a lot of communications gear. We listened for a couple of minutes as the order was given for the operation to commence. After that the exchanges were sparse and brief as the Marines closed in on their unsuspecting prey.
66
7:10 PM EASTERN EUROPE SUMMER TIME (LOCAL)
12:10 PM EASTERN DAYLIGHT TIME
TIME REMAINING: 2 HOURS, 6 MINUTES
PETRA, JORDAN
“I’m tracking three targets, Commander,” the operator of the low-power radar console said.
“Position and speed?”
“Converging from the northeast, northwest, and south. Thirty kilometers per hour and slowing ... now stopped. Seven kilometers out, right at the limits of this system. I sure would feel better with a little more reach.”
“Can you identify?”
“Not specifically. Land vehicles. Sand rails would be my guess.”
“Very well. Make ready the perimeter and start sealing the doors. Do it quietly,” the commander of the mercenary force said.
>
“This is Kingworm. Ground teams report in,” Mack Masters said into his headset microphone.
“Nightcrawler six.”
“Nightcrawler three.”
One by one, the nine Fire Teams responded.
“Fireflies, status,” Masters said.
“Fireflies ready, Kingworm,” came the response from the team leader of the air assault element as the eight Blackhawk choppers hovered at the ready several kilometers back so their engines couldn’t be heard at the target site.
“Proceed to target! Proceed to target!” Masters said, sending a team of America’s deadliest men toward their prey.
“Commander, I now have multiple inbound bogies, count three on land and eight, repeat, eight, airborne!”
“Forget the ‘quiet’ part of the order. Emergency seal on all outer doors, now. Tell the perimeter to engage the ground targets as soon as they’re in range. Raise the anti-aircraft positions and engage immediately!”
“Kingworm, Firefly Leader. Our aircraft have just been painted. Taking evasive maneuvers!”
Masters couldn’t believe what he was hearing. Recon had reported an undefended bunch of rocks in the middle of the desert and now the Blackhawks were being targeted with anti-aircraft radar? Less than thirty seconds earlier the eight Blackhawk helicopters, armed to the teeth, had roared overhead. The rock formation marking the target was dead ahead. Two massive overhead explosions detonated in rapid succession and his radio squawked again, “Blackhawks down, repeat, Blackhawks down! We’ve lost Fireflies two and four!”
Masters and the others in the IFAV’s plowed forward at maximum speed, bouncing over the rough terrain. He ordered the Fire Teams to continue, then flipped a switch to monitor the communications between the Blackhawks.
“Firefly Leader, Firefly Eight. I’ve locked onto the origin of the SAMs and I am weapons-hot.”
“Firefly Eight, Firefly Leader. Take out the SAMs.”
The IFAV’s were less than a kilometer from the target. The Blackhawks swarmed overhead like invisible wasps. Masters heard the shriek and saw two trails of fire arc to the ground, followed by an earthshaking explosion on top of the canyon fortress.
“Direct hit, site eliminated, paint is gone, repeat, paint is gone,” an unidentified chopper reported.
“Kingworm, Firefly Leader. We need rescue here.”
“Acknowledged, Firefly,” Masters said before relaying the request back to the command post. He could clearly make out the canyon walls ahead through the night vision goggles that all the Marines were wearing. They were no more than a few hundred yards away when the trail of fire coming toward them blinded him and everyone else before the night vision equipment could adjust to the unexpected bright light. The driver swerved and the incoming missile hit immediately to the right of the IFAV. The vehicle tipped to the left but settled back down and kept going.
“Enough of this crap,” Masters said to his colleagues in the vehicle. “I’m calling in Spooky.”
Our guard stuck to Jana and me like glue, even in the midst of the drama unfolding on the radio. With the airspace declared safe once more, the Chinook was spinning up to go to the site in a rescue role.
“Sergeant, did I hear them say Spooky’s coming?” I said.
“Yes sir. Spooky’s the code name for a specially outfitted aircraft, the—.”
“AC-130U,” I said. “Some military equipment I’m not terribly familiar with, like the Chinook. But my firm built the fire control software that’s on the latest batch of 130’s, the ones that went into service last year. A million lines of code. Took us four years to write it and marry it to the hardware.”
“I’m impressed, sir.”
“Thanks, Sergeant. Have you ever seen one in action? Up close?”
“No sir.”
“I haven’t either. We had a mockup of simulators set up in a huge hangar when we were developing the systems. We also did a lot of it through pure computer simulation, virtual reality modules.”
“What exactly does this thing do?” Jana said.
“It shoots things. No, let me rephrase; it annihilates things. It’s the most sophisticated ground-support weapons platform in the air, bar none.”
“And where’s it coming from?” she said.
“It left our base in Turkey a couple of hours ago. ETA at the target is ten minutes,” Cunningham said.
The radio continued to broadcast the unexpected firefight. One of the crew from the Chinook came running into the command center/tent and said, “We have a problem on the rescue. Firefly Leader is reporting flares on the ground near the crash sites, so we know we have survivors. We can go get ‘em, but that’s about it. Our corpsman was on one of the IFAV units and sustained injuries. He’s the only member of the team with medical training. We can’t do anything for injuries beyond basic first aid.”
“You don’t have an aid station back at the staging area?” I said.
“This was a hastily prepared mission and we didn’t expect this level of resistance.”
The radio operator contacted the Captain of the Ronald Reagan and apprised him of the situation. He said he’d get a medical team en route with all due haste, but their arrival would be at least an hour away.
“I’m a trauma nurse. I’ll go,” Jana said.
“Ma’am, there’s no way I can allow you to go into a hot zone,” the ever vigilant Sergeant Cunningham said.
“You want your colleagues to lie out there in the sand and die?”
“No United States Marine wants another one to die, lady.”
“Then get out of the way or come along to protect me.”
“Lieutenant,” Cunningham said to the Chinook pilot, “as soon as Spooky arrives, let’s go get our men.”
Eight minutes later we got the call that the AC-130U was approaching the target. We left the ground in a mighty roar, the two massive rotors churning sand and dirt into a billowing cloud underneath us. The pilot and co-pilot wore helmets with night vision gear. The rest of us stared out at a black void for the first couple of minutes before the fires of the two crash sites came into view. The co-pilot worked the radio, keeping the airborne Blackhawks and the incoming AC-130U updated on our position to avoid a mid-air collision in the black skies, as the pilot eased the big bird down. A hundred feet off the ground he switched on a bank of floodlights on the Chinook that lit up the ground below like a football field.
Having seen charts of the area, I looked around and realized that we were no more than a hundred yards from the narrow slit that served as the entrance to Petra. I saw one of the IFAV’s parked at the mouth of the opening. A firefight was in progress between the Marines on the outside of the entrance and someone inside. I couldn’t hear the guns over the din of the Chinook, but the muzzle flashes were fast and furious, providing a bizarre stroboscopic light show against the rock walls that surrounded the city.
Just as we touched down, the AC-130U, Spooky, passed overhead. The pilot throttled the engines on the Chinook back to an idle and we stepped out. We were halfway between the two crash sites, which were fortunately within fifty yards of each other. The pilot and co-pilot splayed an array of floodlights such that they lit the area in every direction. Sergeant Cunningham and Jana went right, carrying a field litter and medical kit. The co-pilot and I went left.
“Over here!” someone yelled, and we picked up the pace. Spooky droned overhead again, slowly circling the area.
“How many men were in these choppers?” I asked the co-pilot as we jogged.
“They were in attack configuration tonight, just two men each.”
We got to the site and found one man cradling his dead friend in his arms. “Chrissake, he was just twenty-four years old. Got married last month. He’s just a damn kid ... just a damn kid ... ”
He looked like a kid. Baby face, smooth skin, looked like he could’ve just stepped out of a college classroom. Except for the gaping hole in his chest. The sand was thick with his blood.
“Shake
it off, Dragon” the co-pilot said, obviously addressing the man by his handle. “This is battle, shit happens, and we have a job to do.”
Dragon nodded.
The advice sounded cold, but I knew it was necessary. Soldiers didn’t have time to grieve on the battlefield. That came later.
“What kind of shape are you in?” the co-pilot said.
“I think I have a broken leg, sir.”
“We’ll get you back to the Shithook then come back and get your buddy.”
The tears had dried and he never made a sound as we picked him up and laid him on the canvas stretcher. It had to hurt like hell. He was back to hardened Marine status. Or maybe it was just easier for him to deal with the physical pain as opposed to the emotional trauma of seeing half his young friend’s chest missing.
We were about halfway back when Spooky engaged, and I almost dropped my end of the stretcher. The slow-flying aircraft was banked in a tight counter-clockwise circle around the city, firing out its left side. Its firepower on paper was impressive. Seeing it in person burned images into my mind I will never forget.
There were several streams of fire coming from different ports down the left side of the fuselage. One of them was a 25mm electric Gatling gun. As a targeting aid, every fifth round fired is a tracer that leaves a visible fire trail from the muzzle to its point of impact. The gun was firing so fast–1800 rounds per minute–that the fire trails were unbroken. It looked more like a laser than the firing of a conventional weapon, and it sounded like the high-pitched whine of an electric motor. The rest of the guns were spitting out plenty of lead too, but none compared to this thing.
Perhaps the most amazing thing of all was the precision with which these weapons fired. The targeting systems–my company’s handiwork if this was one of the new AC-130U aircraft–were a technological marvel. Inside the plane, the fire control operators located their targets on television monitors. Thermal imaging television that could see through smoke, fog, dust, or rain as if it didn’t exist. Once a target was spotted, the gunners locked onto them with a radar fire control mechanism that stayed locked on whether the target moved or not. The aiming of the guns was handled by computers tied into the radar and the television pointing systems. Even though the aircraft was moving, including normal bumps along the way, the guns in their isolated gyroscopic mounts stayed targeted exactly where the computers told them to be. The interior of the airplane was like the ultimate video game.
Seven Unholy Days Page 30