The Vipers were all-purpose F-16 fighter-bombers, most likely carrying dumb bombs and air-to-air missiles. The kill box was an arbitrary grid in the sky that included Al-Kajuk; the F-16s would be tasked to standby until needed. Unlike the Hog, the pointy noses could fight off enemy interceptors, if any were so foolish to appear. And unlike the Hog, they’d been designed to fly this far behind enemy lines.
What Doberman couldn’t puzzle out was why Wong hadn’t contacted the AWACS, at least to update the situation. But the controller didn’t seem too concerned.
Bottom line: Wong would have called in if the erector had moved or if the Scuds had appeared. So Doberman should just go on in and take out the erector in the bomb-shelter hideaway under the road. Blow it up and the missiles in the mosque were useless.
No, they’d still be important targets— Saddam could turn this little party into World War III with them. But the erector was his priority target.
Piece of cake with the Mavericks— he could launch both and never get close to the SAMs.
Take out the erector, go for the SA-9s with the cluster bombs. Wouldn’t want the pointy noses getting hurt when they came in to admire his handiwork.
CHAPTER 33
NEAR AL-KAJUK, IRAQ
26 JANUARY 1991
1800
Wong touched his thumbs to his pinkies, then his ring fingers, then the others, again and again, controlling his breathing as he did. He’d begun the meditational exercise when he first heard the AK-47s below. It helped him maintain his poise, but it did not change the basic calculus of the situation: since there had been no answering fire by M-16s or MP-5s, he had to assume the worst. The three remaining Delta troopers had been ambushed and were dead. He and the sergeant kneeling on the ground nearby were on their own.
They were guarded now only by the Iraqi captain and one soldier. The others had gone to investigate the gunfire. The Iraqi commander surely recognized that the gunfire had come from Russian-made weapons, but he did not exhibit overconfidence, keeping his pistol trained on Wong the whole time. If nothing else, his enemy’s endurance was admirable.
The sun was at the horizon. The Scuds would be moving soon.
Captain Glenon would undoubtedly be on his way back. But a lone A-10A faced difficult odds against the SAM batteries, especially if Wong were not available to give him guidance.
Given the circumstances, it was time for a gambit.
“I wonder,” Wong asked the Iraqi captain, “if you would care to play chess.”
“Chess?”
“Why not?” said Wong. “I assume that we are not going anywhere for the time being.”
“I don’t see a chess set.”
“Pawn to queen four,” said Wong, giving the standard nomenclature for a time-worn opening move. It pushed the pawn in front of the white queen ahead two squares.
The captain laughed. “Thank you, no.”
“Perhaps you prefer white,” offered Wong. He nodded, as if sizing up the Iraqi. “You do seem like someone who would seize the initiative.”
“You think that you could play an entire game out in your head?”
“You couldn’t?”
The sharpness of his tone brought the desired response.
“Pawn to king’s four,” snapped the Iraqi.
“Queen’s bishop four,” replied Wong, mentally pushing a pawn out in front of his bishop.
Within three moves, he was well embarked on a Sicilian defense; he set his bishop on move six, castled on seven, and spotted his knight boldly on the eighth – the modern Dragon variation that was an aggressive, though tricky, defense that sought to turn the attack to black.
The Iraqi competently met the attack, though he hesitated over the moves, his eyes burrowing into the ground as he considered the invisible board. Wong studied his clean-shaven chin, trying to fit the accent and mannerisms into a profile. The man and his squad were obviously not Muslims, and were just as obviously members of an elite unit. That surely limited the possibilities.
A bodyguard unit?
For whom?
Wong took a step to left, contemplating the possibilities. He was appalled by his severe lack of knowledge regarding the Iraqi order of battle. It was a deficiency that would have to be rectified when he escaped.
As he was now confident he would do, for he could see the butt end of his M-16 in the shadow next to the rock.
“Where are you going?” snapped the Iraqi captain.
“Oh, I beg your pardon,” Wong said contritely. “I have a tendency to move around as I think. The combinations beyond this point are complex.”
“You’ve obviously played this opening many times,” said the man dryly.
“That’s why the next move is difficult,” said Wong. “Did you play very much in America?”
“I will play chess with you to amuse myself,” said the Iraqi. “But I will not be drawn into conversation.”
“Not even with a spy?” Wong glanced toward the Delta Force sergeant, who was sitting on the ground with his knees up. His fingers were curled together against his kneecaps. Wong hoped that the man had a concealed weapon in one of his boots or taped to his leg; that would, after all, be the Delta way.
But no matter. It was enough now that the sergeant caught his glance.
“I realize that you are contemplating a trick,” said the Iraqi captain.
“Absolutely,” said Wong cheerfully. “I’m playing for a pawn advantage. Properly played, the Sicilian Defense allows. . . ”
“Not in the chess game. Why do you think you’re so much more intelligent than I am? Why are Americans so arrogant?”
Wong might have made any number of replies starting with the fact that he was not arrogant, merely naturally gifted. Before he could speak, he heard a truck motor from the village side of the hill. He couldn’t be sure it was a Scud carrier— the odds were probably against it— but he had to assume it was.
In the next second he heard something else: an explosion at the foot of the hill, a quarter of a mile away, maybe less. The Iraqi captain turned in his head in that direction.
“Knight takes pawn! Check!” shouted Wong, diving for the gun.
CHAPTER 34
NEAR AL-KAJUK, IRAQ
26 JANUARY 1991
1800
Dixon heard the commotion as he ran up the hill. It was a distant, disorienting dream— American voices playing chess, followed by shouting, then gunshots.
The house flamed below. He fell forward like a soul tossed into the swirl of hell, momentarily removed from the raging torment. He rolled over to his back, then onto his stomach, realizing one of the voices was familiar— he grabbed at his rifle but saw nothing. There was a loud thud behind him, near the house— the thud of a light cannon, pumping a second shell into the ruined house. Dixon saw three or four rocks to his right. He pushed himself there on his elbows, dragging his gun and his legs. For a moment he worried about being captured. Then he coughed, his lungs filled with the dirt of the hill, choking. He dove behind the rocks, then noticed a branch a few yards below— a large, broken trunk that offered better protection. Jumping up, he ran to it, surprised when he made it without being shot. It seemed to him that he was surrounded, with bullets flying everywhere.
He thought of the woman in the house. The baby.
Had it died because he left the burner on the stove on?
Had it even been a gas stove? He couldn’t see it now – propane, gas? Or an old wood stove, the kind his mother used to talk about?
Why was he thinking about his mother?
The hill below him shook again. The Iraqis had some kind of armored vehicle or light tank, and were firing its gun into the remains of the building.
His mother ran from the smoldering ruins, waving her hands, trying to stop him.
He pushed his rifle over the tree, trying to clear his head.
Dixon realized as his hands touched the bark it wasn’t a tree at all. He was huddled against the burnt corpses of two dead Ira
qi soldiers.
CHAPTER 35
NEAR AL-KAJUK, IRAQ
26 JANUARY 1991
1810
The M203 attached to the M-16 did not have a hairpin trigger, and it took more than a heavy jostle to set it off. What it really took was a good pull on the trigger, but Wong couldn’t manage to slip his fingers in as he rolled. His hands flew around desperately, the ground shaking with a thud as a second shell hit the base of the hill in the distance. Finally the grenade flashed from the weapon; Wong rolled from his back as the 40 mm charge sailed square into the Iraqi commander’s face, knocking him off balance as he began firing his pistol.
The grenade ricocheted down the hill, exploding too far away to do any good— luckily for Wong, since any explosion this close would have killed him as well as the Iraqi. The Iraqi fell back, his gun flying with him.
Someone shouted. Wong spun around, his rifle now under control, and cut down a man near the Delta trooper who’d been captured with him. Then he slid around, unsure where the Iraqi commander he’d just shot had gone. He was confused by the gunfire at the base of the hill. As the Delta trooper grabbed a rifle off of the dead Iraqi, Wong ran to the top of the hill, spotting a knot of Iraqis. He flicked the rifle onto full automatic, peppering the three figures from the side. A shadow opposite the Iraqis jumped up; Wong realized it must be one of the missing members of his team. He could see something moving on the road directly below— three long tractor-trailers carrying tarp-covered cylindrical payloads.
Scuds.
A pickup followed behind, with three canvas-backed military vehicles.
A burst of submachine-gun fire to his right sent him to the ground. He scooted to the crest and peered down. Two figures were climbing the clear hill; he barely caught himself from sending a burst through Sergeant Golden’s chest, spotting the trooper’s chocolate chip fatigues at twenty yards.
The other side of the hill shook with a fresh round, something from a light tank.
The priority now was the Satcom— Wong turned to find it but instead felt the long, thin edge of a combat knife slide up against the side of his neck. The meaty curve rested atop the sternohyoid and sternothyroid muscles— not the placement he would have made, but nonetheless arresting.
“Rook takes knight,” hissed the Iraqi commander. “Checkmate.”
“I think if you examine your position carefully,” said Wong, shifting his weight shift to get a better balance on the slope, “you’ll find it’s a draw at best.”
The Iraqi jerked the knife. It was so sharp that Wong didn’t feel the cut, though he realized blood had begun to flow.
“I think, Captain, that you overrate your strategy,” said the Iraqi, twisting Wong around. “Stop!” he yelled to the others, “or your captain will die.”
The com specialist was stooped over the Satcom. The others on the hill were in the shadows and Wong couldn’t tell if they’d been seen or even precisely where they were. The Iraqi commander pushed him to move right; he did so.
“Now Captain,” the Iraqi told Wong, “we will be going down the hill.”
“As you wish,” said Wong.
The Iraqi pressed his left shoulder into Wong’s, forcing him forward, only to jerk the knife nervously against his neck. It would take considerable pressure to sever the artery or Wong’s windpipe. In Wong’s experience, the position was over-rated as a lethal hold; it was difficult to properly leverage the arm so close to the intended victim.
On the other hand, escaping it was not necessarily easy. Especially since he had to do so quickly— the Spec Ops troops could hardly be expected to value Wong’s life over their mission. Undoubtedly they were waiting for a good shot, even if it meant taking out Wong as well as the Iraqi.
“Excuse me,” said Wong, stopping momentarily. The Iraqi pushed hard against him and jerked the knife to the top of his chin.
Perfect.
“No tricks,” hissed the man.
“I was wondering if I might answer a call of nature,” Wong told him.
“No!” shouted the man. He pushed the knife hard against Wong’s throat, intending to intimidate him. But this was just what Wong wanted— the Iraqi’s legs were too close to his. As his weight shifted with the knife, Wong added to it, jerking his upper body into his captor’s and throwing both of them off-balance. They fell in a tumble. Wong pivoted and smashed his elbow into the man’s ribs as they swirled over. The knife jammed into Wong’s jaw. Wong could not turn himself into his opponent fast enough to escape a second stab, but he managed to duck enough that it fell on his shoulder. In the meantime, he pumped two quick jabs of his fist into the man’s face; the captain lost his grip on the knife and it clattered away as they fell into the dirt. The Iraqi managed a hard punch to Wong’s nose. He felt the snap and knew it had been broken.
That made him mad.
Wong reared back and slammed the top of his skull into the Iraqi’s forehead. The universe swirled. Wong thrashed his arms in every direction, raging as a thick flow of lava poured over him. He flailed and he writhed, and it seemed as if there was no longer one Iraqi but a dozen, all with knives and brass knuckles, pummeling him. He bulled his way through them, using elbows, knees, feet, fists, and head punching until finally he found his way to the surface of the inferno. With one last burst of energy he broke the molten iron bands holding his head back and staggered free, collapsing into the dirt.
He opened his eyes to see Golden’s worried face hanging over him.
“Shit, Wong— you OK?”
Wong pulled himself up as if doing a controlled sit-up. Without checking his other wounds, he reached to his pant leg and tore off a piece of material, then held it to the long cut at his jaw. Had he cared to, he could have felt bone inside.
“Wong? You in shock?”
“I am not in shock,” he told the sergeant calmly.
“You killed the fucker with your bare hands,” Golden told him. “You snapped his neck.”
“That is unfortunate,” said Wong. “He might have supplied us with considerable information. I apologize for losing my temper.”
Wong stood. His nose was bleeding as well as off-kilter. It stung, but was not a serious injury. There were various cuts and bruises on his body; the slash at his jaw was the worst injury. As long as he stopped the bleeding and did not get it infected, it would not be life-threatening.
“You’re lucky to be alive,” Golden told him.
“A clumsy escape, granted,” said Wong. “But within acceptable margins.”
“Margins! Like hell,” said the sergeant. “Lou was going to plunk you in about two seconds.”
Golden nodded at one of his men a few feet away. Wong merely shrugged and walked toward the Satcom.
“We had best get the attack underway,” he said. “Captain Glenon will have returned by now, though he is undoubtedly too high for us to hear. He is notoriously impatient and ill-tempered.”
“Company!” yelped one of the team members from the direction where the heavy-caliber weapon had been shaking the hill. “We have an armored car and two tanks coming up behind it now. Shit. T-62 mothers, and I’m looking at a platoon of Iraqis running up behind them.”
CHAPTER 36
OVER IRAQ
26 JANUARY 1991
1815
Doberman swung back to the north, hunting through the blur of shadows for the highway and culvert. It was his second orbit south of the target area, but he still had trouble getting his bearings, let alone finding what he wanted to hit. Between his altitude— he was a nudge over 12,000 feet— and the twilight, most of what he saw looked like light chocolate and dark mud.
Ten more minutes and he’d only dark mud. The infra-red seeker in his Maverick could be used as a primitive night-vision device, but the small angle on the viewer made it at least helpful to narrow the general area down before trying to find the target. Doberman’s normally excellent eyes weren’t cooperating; between the shadows and his fatigue he wasn’t even sure he had the highwa
y. What he thought was the highway jagged to the right, which didn’t seem right. He angled the Hog, nearing the northernmost edge of the circle he was drawing before he happened to glance to the left and saw a tiny brown brick at the left corner of his windscreen. He lost it as he began to turn, but he realized it must be the mobile SAM launcher.
Banking, Doberman quickly reoriented himself. And now the shadows had meaning— there was the village, there was the hill. He had the highway, knew now where the SA-9s would be. He mapped out a long wide loop that would give him an easy approach toward the culvert.
Be nice to hear from Wong about now. He’d tried twice already without getting an answer.
“Devil One to Snake Eaters,” he said, pushing his mike button in. “Yo, Wong, what’s the story? Come on! You up or what?”
Doberman took his eyes off the windscreen to double-check the frequency and repeat the call.
Nada.
Dark Snake, the Blackhawk that was supposed to be rendezvousing with the team, didn’t answer his hail either.
He came around at the southern end of his orbit, swinging into the approach. He was at nine thousand feet, roughly ten miles south of the culvert, lined up for a direct shot in. At twelve thousand feet, the Mavericks were accurate to roughly ten miles; the closer he got, the better his odds of hitting the target. The SA-9s protecting the Iraqi launcher had a range of about five miles at that altitude; that left him with a perfectly safe firing envelope of just under a minute, plenty of time to take two shots under ordinary circumstances.
But that would mean attacking the SAMs with the cluster bombs. Tricky in the dark.
Better to fire the Maverick, circle back, make sure he hit. Then he could dial up one of the SA-9s on the TV screen, blow it to smithereens. He’d then have the option of using the cluster bombs on the last launcher, or letting the F-16s worry about it.
Be nice to hear from Wong about now.
Gravity tickled his side as he righted the Hog and slotted into the attack run. Doberman saw a flash of light on the ground off his left wing; knew that meant the fire team was in trouble. But it was too late now— he pushed his head down into the Maverick monitor, easing the cursor toward the big shadow at the very corner of his screen. He waited for the shadow to move toward him— it was Zen, these final seconds, or maybe yin and yang, the target moving and the cursor moving, coming toward each other. It could be described by a mathematical formula: A x B = boom.
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