Then the Raptors would bare their claws.
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Balls swept in toward its strike objective as Boogie converged on the mission's secondary target. Code-named Ripped, the complex at Kermanshah was a medium-sized installation that had recently been identified as engaged in missile warhead and artillery projectile manufacturing. It also served as a storage entrepot for finished product.
Being far smaller in size than the mission's primary objective, the presidential palace at Mashdad, the Kermanshah installation was accorded a correspondingly smaller takedown force. An assortment of low-rise cinderblock buildings and Quonset huts was scattered across a bulldozed stretch of desert about the size of two city blocks. This was Kermanshah.
The facility was encircled by a twenty-foot high hurricane fence generously topped by coils of razor wire. It was either manned by a detachment of specialist Takavar or Pasdaran regulars; the intel was somewhat fuzzy on that score.
The troops had some heavy metal at the ready in case of attack, that much was clear -- quad Shilka guns mounted on a BTR track chassis, sentries in two guard towers located to place intersecting fields of .50 caliber machinegun fire on approaching targets and maybe some smaller stuff too, such as Plamya automatic grenade launchers, known to be a favorite toy of Iranian Takavar forces.
Breaux and Omega's planning staff had proceeded on the assumption that the Iranians had the surrounding desert divided into a grid system like the Germans had set up at Normandy, so spotters could radio in grid coordinates and the guard posts put fire on them without even needing visual contact with enemy forces.
The firepower at Kermanshah was enough to pin down a medium-sized assault element, but Boogie packed enough firepower to overwhelm the base defenses, plus it would have the advantage of surprise in its favor.
Apart from the armaments on the GCVs and mine-resistant and highly mobile JLTVs, which included TOW missiles, the team was armed with Dragons -- lighter-duty analogs of the TOW, capable of shoulder- or tripod-launch -- 81 millimeter mortars that could be set up to drop fire inside the compound, and a SADARM-(Sense and Destroy Armor) ILS top-attack rig for use against roving enemy armor. These had proven highly effective on Omega's mission into Vojvodina during the Second Balkan War conflict to destroy nuclear-capable SAM missile TELs sometime before.
The Eagle Patchers of Boogie also had two guardian angels in the form of AH-1Z Vipers that had been assigned the troop for offensive and supporting fire during the attack. The AH-1Zs were shadowing the unit as it approached the target.
The presence of the helos was a time-saver, the added security they offered making it feasible for the mechanized troop to use the Isfahan-Shiraz highway that ran close to Kermanshah instead of navigating open desert.
If a stink brewed up, the Vipers could stamp it canceled in a hurry.
The mechanized force rolled on toward its objective, the ground elements keeping in contact with the two trailing gun ships while themselves keeping a weather eye cocked for trouble that might materialize from the outlying desert or the road.
There were a lot of wadis in the vicinity, some of them deep, twisting, meandering ravines cut by flash-flood waters. It was possible in theory for unfriendly patrols to be holed up somewhere inside them and remain unseen by either the helos or the Eagle Patchers until friendly troops were practically right on top of them.
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Breaux steeled himself for a hard landing. The stick of HALO chutists that had walked from the hold of a C-130 two hundred miles away and a few thousand feet up was now nearing the end of its long, tapering, downward glide.
Limned in his head-mounted display, hardly twenty feet below and directly ahead of him, lay the south corner of the Mashdad presidential palace that was the strike's primary target. The light-amplifying screen in front of him showed that the darkened landing zone was clear of troops and other combat hazards.
The complex was now under attack by Eagle Patcher ground and heliborne elements. Gorilla's mechanized infantry forces were converging on the palace from the opposite end while the single AH-1Z fired missile strikes and automatic cannon at targets of opportunity, drawing defensive fire in its direction while the paraforce dropped in unseen like Santa down the chimney.
Breaux's multifunction see-through HMD displayed alphanumeric readouts in three colors. The blue altitude line similar to a fighter cockpit's dropped between numeric brackets to show the rate of descent. The relative positions of the other members of the paratroop detail were displayed as small human symbols in red, relative to the wearer's position in yellow.
Breaux keyed his lipmike and gave the troop last-minute instructions before they hit the ground running. By now the chutist stick was only a few feet above the rooftop level of the multistory apartment block rising up from the south end of the mini-city.
As Breaux dropped below the level of the roof parapets he could see inside some of the windows of the upper floors where lights dimly shone. But his attention was now tightly focused on the bare ground in front of him and his thoughts raced ahead to what had to be done very quickly during the next few minutes.
While making their descent the paratroops were as vulnerable as clay pigeons at a skeet-shoot, but they would be more vulnerable still as they hit the ground and shucked their chute harnesses, disoriented and slowed by the changeover to land combat. Breaux, like all the others, had to stay agile and alert.
Within seconds, Breaux was down on the ground, striking the paved surface with both feet and simultaneously pulling the quick-disengagement hand grip to get rid of the chute which was now a major encumbrance. With a quick tug on the hand grip, the parafoil broke away and scudded along the pavement in the direction of the wind.
Breaux immediately had his main weapon, an AKS-74 with an under-mounted M-203 grenade launcher, in his tactical-gloved hands, moving quickly to a defensive position to get clear of the other Eagle Patchers coming down behind him and to cover their flanks while they too unharnessed on the ground.
As he watched the airborne element come gliding down all around him, a muted warble sounded in his ear and one of the soldier-icons on his NVG display flashed blue, signaling a transmission from a member of the paraforce.
"Blue Man in position."
"You're not supposed to be. How'd you get there?" Breaux returned.
"Boss, I figured the rooftop was just big enough to take the chance, and it was so close I couldn't resist. So here I am."
Blue Man was the team's sniper designation, named for Tuareq rifle marksmen of the North African desert. Blue Man had orders to enter the multistory apartment block at the center of the complex once it was deemed secure and then go to the rooftop to cover and spot for the team.
Blue Man was equipped with a Heckler & Koch Präzisionsschützengewehr-1 (PSG1) sniper rifle with a very accurate digital scope developed by DARPA to replace the standard Zeiss Hensoldt 6 X 42 LED-enhanced scope and manual reticle. Blue Man would be able to pick off or pin down Takavar that Eagle Patcher ground elements might not be able to spot.
But Blue Man wasn't supposed to be up there yet, not without a team having first secured the building. Still, there he was. Breaux told him to stay alert and report in at regular intervals. He'd be informed when a security detail would be in the building to provide security backup.
Meanwhile the rest of the chutist stick was almost fully landed. So far there was no hostile engagement with the paratroops. The diversionary assault fire from Gorilla and the helo -- code-named Angry Falcon -- was obviously doing its intended job, and it was obvious to Breaux that said fire was intensifying as the defenders responded with a fierce resistance.
The Takavar were not Special Revolutionary Guards. They were regular Iranian army, members of the elite 23rd Commando Division. But they were elite cadre nevertheless, having received specialist forces training at the 23rd's combat training center at Imam Daneshkadeh Afsari Ali Military Academy, and been awarded the right to wea
r the purple berets of specialist commando troops.
The Takavar had high morale and had been expected to put up tough and determined resistance once the attack commenced. But the blue forces combat personnel were far stronger and had struck with both speed and tactical surprise in their favor. They would prevail; of this Breaux had no doubt.
Breaux could now hear the sounds of the Force Omega 81-millimeter mortar shells landing at the other end of the palace grounds. Every time one hit, the earth trembled slightly and the salvos of Iranian small arms fire suddenly halted.
Breaux smiled grimly. He wasn't surprised. Few weapons of war could put the damper on a mud-soldier's fighting spirit than dropping some mortar cans on top of his head. All it took was the sight of what one mortar shell could do to the human body to make the survivors drop everything and take cover when the ripping silk sound preceded the next salvo.
He almost pitied the Iranian purple-beanies. He could picture them scuttling for cover as the fire came hurtling down on them. But such was war, and fuck them anyway; better they were on the receiving end than his own men.
By now all of the paratroop force was fully deployed on the ground. They had jettisoned their chutes and harnesses and were ready for action. Breaux's people knew the drill backwards and forwards by now, and were already methodically going about their appointed tasks.
Some were unshipping Claymore mines they'd carried in with them, crimping caps, unwinding det wires, and setting up the convex antipersonnel mines for remote detonation. Others were forming up into mobile assault squads and getting ready to do some fast-and-dirty door-kicking. One of those details was already on its way to secure the multistory apartment building with Blue Man already set up on the roof.
Breaux keyed his comms and called up the assault team.
"Stingray, this is Magic Dog. We are down and dirty. Say your situation."
"We are shit hot and ready to kick some fucking You-Ran ass, boss. And I thank the Lord above for making me a mud-suckin', sand-eatin', pussy-lickin' straight-leg grunt. God bless the Army and piss on the Marines. Amen."
It was Sgt. Mainline at the other end of the link. Breaux rogered that transmission as he heard the steady pounding of automatic weapons fire punctuated by the sporadic explosions of heavier armament in the background. Mainline went on to quickly and succinctly give an account of the shape of the battle so far.
"We've just breached the enemy's forward security defenses. Combat teams are already penetrating the palace grounds and setting up a security perimeter. Friendly casualties have been extremely light."
"Let me know if things change. Otherwise, go the whole nine yards."
"Fuckin'-A, boss."
Hardly had Breaux broken contact with Stingray when Blue Man came back on the net with an update.
"Activity on the rooftop of the building to your left."
Blue Man watched Iranians setting up a machinegun emplacement on the flat of the roof through his infrared magnifying nightscope. It's okay to look, boss. You won't see anything, though."
Breaux cautiously craned his neck. He didn't.
"Taken them down," he ordered.
"Consider them wasted, boss."
Blue Man was already drawing a bead on the head of the bereted NCO who was ordering the other troops around as they set up the MG. Others were piling sandbags in front of it and hauling in ammo crates.
The shot was near the limit of the PSG1's six hundred meter range, but still well enough inside it for Blue Man to be confident of making it. Windage was favorable too. With his target in the crosshairs, Blue Man squeezed off a round. The gun bucked once as the 7.62 x 51 millimeter bullet exited the weapon's polygon-bored heavy barrel at a muzzle velocity many times higher than conventional rifles produced, while its low-noise bolt closing feature reduced the sound of the shot to a low-decibel, subsonic crack.
Almost instantaneously a red blossom appeared where the bridge of the nose had once been on the face of the Iranian NCO on the distant roof as the heavy slug impacted, crushing bone and cartilage and plowing a track through brain tissue clear to the base of the skull.
The Iranians had only enough time to react to the sight of their commander doing a spastic death jig. Some even began to smile, thinking it was some kind of a joke by the otherwise humorless noncom. But then they heard the delayed crack of the subsonic round and knew what was really happening as the Iranian pitched sideways and sprawled over the edge of the rooftop, before Blue Man aimed and fired a second of the twenty hollow-nosed bullets in the PSG1's magazine.
Three quick trigger-pulls later he had put as many additional rounds into three unfortunate members of the MG squad setting up on the rooftop. The survivors had ducked down in panic, shouting and randomly firing rifle bursts in blind fear reactions. Two of them made the mistake of running toward the open door of the rooftop cupola, snapping off automatic AK salvos as they beat boot leather.
Blue Man dropped them in their tracks before they reached the cupola's dubious safety and their twitching bodies served as an object lesson to the rest of the team who had wisely chosen to remain where they were. They were not about to go anywhere soon, but the muzzle flashes of their weapons had drawn the attention of Angry Falcon which fired two Zuni rockets onto the rooftop, blowing the machinegun emplacement apart and instantly killing all of the survivors.
Far below, Breaux's crew now began to deploy throughout the complex. The cat was out of the bag. The Fat Lady was singing her ass off. But the good guys were now on the ground, in position and ready to whale.
Chapter Seventeen
Some distance away, far beneath the desert crust, opposition forces were shrugging off surprise and the lethargy of sleep and preparing to counter the shock assault from air and ground.
Some land-mobile battalions of the Iranian Takavar are housed in underground bunkers scattered strategically across the vast salt-pan deserts that cover much of central Iran. The submerged complexes are buried about fifty feet below the surface crust. They are completely covered by two-foot-thick slabs of stressed concrete which extend approximately twenty feet beyond the edge of the complex, affording protection from missile strikes at any angle.
The bunkers, which apart from being hardened are segmented into modular units sheltering one hundred troops each, and with separate units for mess, sick bay, water, ammunition storage and the like, were designed for nuclear-chemical-biological warfare and built to specifications enabling them to sustain blast overpressure from up to a ten megaton nuclear strike. Since the Gulf War, the bunkers -- most of which survived the decades since Desert Storm intact -- were upgraded and extended, so that heavy vehicles and mechanized armor can be safely stored on-site.
It was in such a bunker complex beneath the desert that the troops of the General Hassan Firouzabadi Mechanized Brigade (Pasdaran VII Brigade) were now rousing themselves to wakefulness and running to their war machines to mount up. The heavy concrete-and-steel blast door that protected a steeply sloping ramp was raised on pneumatic pistons.
From deep within the darkness, like the growling of the spirits of the dead, came the throbbing of engines and the clanking of armored caterpillar treads as the VII Mechanized Brigade rolled up onto the floor of the desert. The brigade belonged to the feared King Cyrus the Great Division and it flew the banner of the twin eagles rampant above crossed ram's horns emblem of the Shahanshah, the reverenced sign of the ancient Fatamid caliphs, feared and obeyed throughout the Mideast. With sleep now a memory, the brigade was eager for battle. Tonight they would bring glory to their standard.
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On its way to the Kermanshah complex, Boogie was well clear of the Iranian VII Brigade's line of advance, since the main force of the Firouzabadi was preoccupied with reaching the Mashdad presidential palace which, according to reports, was under attack by a sizable paratroop force. Nevertheless, Boogie was to come under fire by a far smaller platoon-sized element of Takavar that was lurking just beyond the downslop
e of a deep wadi athwart the Eagle Patchers' line of advance.
In the wake of sporadic yet insistent special operations strikes against Iranian WMD facilities located in the vastness of the desert reaches, the general staff in Baghdad had opted to deploy small mobile units in strategic locations.
These light commando forces were downsized but heavily armed and, for Iranian troops, well-trained.
Each motorized desert platoon was equipped to fight spoiling attacks and stage ambushes against Western counter-WMD units sent into Iran. They had studied the enemy's methods of operation and had trained hard.
They were motivated, their unit morale was high and many of their troops were seasoned desert fighters. So it was not much of a surprise that neither Sgt. Death's Boogie Force or the two Viper gun ships spotted the telltale silhouette of the camouflaged periscope that poked its way up from above the crest of a sandy rise. Behind it, a spotter peered at the oncoming formation through one of the newest and most accurate night-vision scopes that Iran had imported from Germany.
Minutes later, Boogie was suddenly taking fire from seemingly everywhere at once. The jackhammering of automatic weapons began to fill the air and an RPG rocket strike came shrieking in, blowing up a JLTV, killing the troops inside and cooking off the stored armaments it carried, including the TOW missile in its roof-mounted launcher.
As the US armored vehicle burned, the rest of Boogie ate gravel and took up defensive positions. The chattering of small arms fire intensified as 80 millimeter mortar shells now rained down on the Americans with the characteristic sound of zippers opening to explode near the armored vehicles.
The mortars initially fell wide of the mark, but the Iranians in the mortar pit were getting updates from a spotter behind binoculars flat against the top of a desert rise, and they were beginning to walk their fire toward the center of the massed enemy armor.
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