Bloodbath

by David Alexander

  The squad leader immediately called up Breaux on the force's JTRS radio net. The boss would want to know about this A-SAP.

  Chapter Eighteen

  The ruined, sandblasted and time-stained concrete buildings were scattered throughout the dusty corner of the desert, a mere stone's throw from the highway. The area was known to the long-haulers who traveled the route as a truck park, the modern-day equivalent of the caravansaries that had dotted the ancient Middle East.

  The structures, first erected during the 1960s as pumping stations along a now derelict oil pipeline stretching between Turkmenistan and Mazandaran, had long ago been abandoned, and the heavy equipment that had filled them scrapped. For decades the remaining concrete shells had been used by long-haul truckers as refuges from the shamal, bandits and the biting desert cold, places to sleep off the fatigue of the road in relative safety or to perform makeshift repairs to their rigs.

  This morning the old pumping station was empty, the concrete shells of defunct pump houses sitting abandoned and forlorn beneath the pale light of the setting moon. Yet in the distance there now arose a sound familiar to the wayfarers who frequented this place. The rumbling of powerful diesel truck engines began to be faintly heard. A truck convoy was drawing near.

  Above the keening of the wind, the rumbling steadily rose in pitch and intensity. Before long, the sound of the approaching diesel-powered leviathans rolling from the highway onto the flattened earth between the buildings had reached a deafening crescendo. Soon the rectangular black shapes, showing only amber and red running lights stopped, their air brakes squealing, their motors sputtering and coughing as the drivers killed the ignitions.

  Doors were thrown open and men with muscles cramped from long, tedious hours of sitting in crowded cabs emerged into the night, stretching and rubbing their hands against the chill air. As they emerged, some of these men eyed their former traveling companions surreptitiously, stealing up close behind them as they reached into the pockets of their coats for the peg-ended steel wire garrotes they carried concealed there.

  Soon the muffled screams and choking death rattles of the unfortunates were whipped away by the rising desert wind, and the bodies hidden in the utter darkness that followed moon set. With sunrise, the buzzards would scent the carrion, and begin to circle.

  ▪▪▪▪▪▪

  Caught in the middle of a nasty fire-fight before its objective, Boogie was pinned down on the desert by Iranian defense cadre. Earlier on, in the surprise attack by Takavar forces, the unit had received its baptism under fire, and its men were in no mood for gratuitous heroics. All they wanted now were results, and the only casualties they were willing to accept were the enemy's.

  And so nobody complained about Angry Falcon air support stealing the glory when the choppers were called in to soften up the enemy's defenses. This they did speedily, rocketing and shooting up the installation with their nose cannons and missiles. Within a short span of time the target objective was reduced to a mass of blazing ruins.

  Boogie then moved in to secure the area. Omega Force encountered small arms fire, savage in some parts of the base, but not on an order of magnitude that the invading force was not well-equipped to handle.

  Now Boogie hived off into separate squads of mechanized and straight-leg ground patrols. The armor rushed in ahead of the foot troops, plowing 25-millimeter cannon fire, heavy MG salvos and LAW and TOW rocket strikes into enemy gun emplacements and Iranian armor. The AH-1Z helos continued to circle, shooting up the steel pylon supporting the base radio mast and sending the antenna dishes clustering its upper tier crashing to the ground. The choppers also shot up the upper floors and rooftop of a large building that was being used as a sniper nest by Pasdaran defenders.

  Because of the stiff opposition, the teams were not able to secure the compound for the better part of an hour. Then they fanned out to complete their recon by fire. Yet here too, they discovered nothing.

  Here too, the installation had turned out to be a dry hole.

  ▪▪▪▪▪▪

  The nonmilitary vehicles, mostly high-end SUVs, flew the flags of the Union of People's Fedayeen of the Islamic Republic of Iran and the Revolutionary Command Council, the latter defined by the Iranian Constitution as the supreme legislative and executive authority of the state. Anyone daring to attempt to stop the motorcade would have been shown a pass signed by the highest ranking members of Tehran's ruling elite. The rights of a holder of such a pass could not be dismissed, and the name of the questioner would have been taken down for later investigation by MISIRI and the inevitable punishment which would follow such an investigation.

  But there had been no opposition on the road, and the vehicles that made up the motorcade ate up the miles. Driving hard, they reached their destination shortly before sunup.

  Dr. Jubaird Dalkimoni saw to his relief that the truck convoy had arrived before him exactly as planned. The bodies of those who would not have the honor of martyring themselves for the holy cause were scattered on the ground. This too, had been expected. The others, the Trusted Ones, had done their work swiftly and well -- as they had been trained to do.

  Dalkimoni emerged from the rear of the air-conditioned limousine and stepped toward the men who were waiting in a small semicircle, prepared to greet him. They had built a fire in an old oil drum, burning trash to make a wan flickering flame adequate to warm their hands against the receding night's chill.

  Dalkimoni smiled as he approached them, opening his arms to enfold the first of the men at one end of the crescent, and embrace him as a brother in arms. Soon, he thought, as he moved to the second man in line, they would all be going to a place where such contrivances would no longer be necessary.

  With luck, many others would forever join them there.

  ▪▪▪▪▪▪

  Breaux had flagged down one of the assault force's JLTVs and ridden the almost half-mile distance to the building that had been assaulted by C-Detachment. With a screech of tires, the son-of-a-Hummer rolled down the steeply graded ramp, soon disgorging the strike force's commander in the midst of the underground car park.

  The place, which had been in semi-darkness at the time of the fire-fight, was now well-lit with sodium-arc lamps -- part of the gear the American forces had brought along -- powered by taps applied to the building's electricity. The truck and the bloodied corpses of the Iranians who had defended it, stood out in stark detail, grimly lit by the harsh blue-white glare of the portable lamps.

  Breaux was quickly briefed by the unit's leader and then had a look around for himself. As he surveyed the corpses strewn around the captured truck, Breaux had no doubt that the men who his force combatants had surprised here had been about to embark on a covert behind-the-lines mission of some kind.

  The Israeli uniforms and weapons that they ported alone bespoke this fact. The truck was found to have had mechanical difficulties, which explained its presence in the garage.

  Inside the truck's cargo area, they found mounts on floor and ceiling for cargo that would require strong cushioning against the shock of rough desert road transport. There was no manifest of any kind found inside the truck's cab or on the persons of the corpses to describe what this cargo might have been, though.

  All that Breaux knew for sure was that men had been prepared to die here, rather than surrender, and this fact told him that the cause for which they'd martyred themselves had to have been of great importance to them. The truck told him more as well. His mind flashed back to the road beyond the Elburz, flashed back to the team's undercover work in Germany earlier in the mission, flashed back to the high meadows of the Swiss Glarner Alps. There was surely a connection between this truck and the Bonn-Karachi truck convoy route. But what exactly? That question didn't yet have an answer.

  The findings of the team equipped with NBC agent sniffers confirmed Breaux's growing fears, however. The sniffers showed heavy traces of chemical toxins and radioactivity clinging to the interior of the cargo bay. The tru
ck had contained something extremely deadly and, to judge by the fittings in the cargo bay, fairly large and bulky. Breaux thought that there weren't too many things that fit that description -- besides a bomb.

  ▪▪▪▪▪▪

  Breaux had a difficult choice to make.

  He now suspected that there had been other trucks, containing a dirty hybrid nuclear device that had left the presidential palace for the same destination or destinations. But the unit's safety window was beginning to close. It was time to withdraw from the presidential palace. Satellite imaging showed a large contingent of VII Brigade reserve troops on its way to stage an assault to take back the palace.

  Detachment Omega could not permit itself to be trapped here. The invasion's personnel requirements had been calculated to be sufficient to storm and secure the Mashdad presidential palace. The force could not prevail in a siege situation with as many troops as the Iranian military chose to throw against it.

  The V-22 Ospreys that were to evacuate Detachment Omega were already in flight from Oman. The convertiplanes, which had refueled over the Persian Gulf, had a current ETA of fifteen-plus minutes. Breaux's teams were already forming up in the compound, ready to embark on landing. Breaux had his orders: they were to evacuate along with the rest of his hard-chargers.

  But as the final V-22 came in to pick up the troops, Breaux issued entirely different orders. A platoon-sized detachment of hand-picked volunteers was to fly toward the highway in the Osprey with Angry Falcon AH-1Z support. It was to search for any large trucks it found similar to the one in the underground car park and destroy them after warning the drivers to evacuate. If capture seemed immanent, the American troops were to blow the aircraft and themselves up rather than surrender to the Iranians. Breaux and his volunteers had now also found a cause worthy of martyrdom.

  ▪▪▪▪▪▪

  Jubaird Dalkimoni walked to the first of the four trucks to inspect the precious cargos each carried onboard. He actually needed only two of these big lorries; the others were for backup in the event that the first two failed for some reason to perform as expected. Yet a fifth truck had malfunctioned, and its cargo offloaded to one of the present vehicles, he had learned; but this possibility had been anticipated, thus the redundancy built into the plan.

  The operation, Dalkimoni knew, would be his crowning achievement, and would represent a major victory for the Rais.

  Faramoosh Mozafferreddin would in the end emerge victorious in an uneven conflict with the Western democracies that had lasted the course of many decades.

  The victory would bring incalculable glory to the Iranian leader. It would destroy the American presence among the Arab states of the Gulf and it would pour the holy fire of Islam's righteous wrath down upon the Israelis in a bloodbath unequaled by anything in antiquity, just as the Rais had promised long ago.

  In the first dull glimmers of early morning, Dalkimoni stepped into the first truck to inspect the cargo. The false fronts of the packing crates had been moved aside by his soldiery, and the smooth metallic surface of one of the Winged Bulls of King Darius was exposed to his view.

  Beautiful, awesome, he thought. A beauty as terrible and fierce as that of the desert sun that was now rising over the land to cast its scalding rays over the parched and desolate earth.

  Since prehistory, men here had worshipped that celestial power, and now Dalkimoni would unleash that same elemental force in the service of his country and his cause. He could now die, in the knowledge that the culmination of everything to which he had devoted his life was about to be realized in a single obliterating flash of terrible glory.

  Dalkimoni moved closer within the confining shadows of the truck's cargo hold. He reached out to touch the ovoid weapon slung between the welded steel cocoon of its support assembly. Such protection against shock was necessary to ward off premature detonation. The nuclear explosives were sensitive to the slightest vibration. They were as delicate as eggs.

  Yet these were dragon's eggs. The fiery beasts that would emerge from them would consume the Middle East, changing it for a thousand years. They were indeed that consuming fire that Mozafferreddin had promised years before, during the cowardly attacks of the Western coalition's many shock and awe campaigns against Iranian WMD installations.

  Then, the Leader had pledged that sacred fire would eat up all of infidel Israel. He had sworn this by Allah, sworn his holiest of oaths before the assembled nations of the earth, sworn it at the unbelieving warmonger in the White House with heroic defiance.

  And the Rais had meant it. Had meant every word that he had uttered, there in the confines of his bunker beneath the presidential palace, that same bunker beneath the complex of buildings that had once been the US Embassy in Tehran.

  Over the years of his long and provident rule the Rais had proven that he was not like other men. Surely not like the cowardly Americans. He did not calculate his actions in days, weeks, or months. He thought in terms of years, in decades, in centuries. Surely the Leader wove his plans for all eternity.

  Mozafferreddin had known then that he was powerless against the United States' formidable technological might, even the courage and prowess in battle of its soldiers. But he had been ready to sacrifice for victory, and to plan even in defeat. Even then, the germ of his nuclear weapons program was taking root. Slowly, steadily, irresistibly, despite the brutal economic sanctions and the UN inspections imposed by the unfair peace treaty he had signed, the expertise and technology base grew.

  In time, the four Winged Bulls -- Al Assur, the Warrior, Al Tammuz, the Anointed, Al Gerra, the Fire Bringer and Al Samas, Lord of Light -- had been fashioned from bomb-grade U-235 extracted by cascades of gas centrifuges hidden deep below the Leader's many presidential palaces.

  And here they now were, these terrible weapons of glory. Ready for use against the hated enemies of the Rais.

  Dalkimoni continued his inspection. The nuclear weapons were complete and perfect in every regard, except for the arming and blast initiation modules engineered from the Columbine Heads he had spirited with him to Tehran. These he now screwed into special receptacles in each bomb casing. They were not yet armed, however, but they soon would be. For the time being, Dalkimoni issued instructions for his soldiers to move the false crates into position and to seal the trucks' cargo holds.

  Then he approached the drivers. Those who would deliver the weapons were each given what Dalkimoni told them were "visas for heaven." On one side of each wallet-sized Mylar card were printed the arming codes for the nuclear weapon onboard an individual truck. On the other side, prayers and greetings for the guardians of the gates of Behesht Zahra -- heavenly paradise. On meeting these celestial gatekeepers they were to present their visas, and gain admittance to an eternity of unceasing delight.

  As to arming the weapons, they were instructed to do this just before crossing the two borders. The first would be detonated away to the north, inside the Americans' puppet state of Iraq -- this weapon's team carried the designation Al-Marduk. The second nuke would explode in the west, beyond the border crossing with Syria -- Al-Tiamat was its team's designation.

  Dalkimoni assured the drivers that the visa cards they carried would not fail to win them a place of honor in the next world. In heaven these cards would be read by the Prophet himself, and would instantly assure their bearers of the blessings reserved only for Islam's heroic mujahideen.

  In their eyes, Dalkimoni saw that they truly believed every word he told them. That was good. The ration of hashish issued to each man would also help, the doctor well knew. It would make it easier for the simpletons to chew on the ration of bullshit about heaven he now expected them to swallow hook, line and sinker.

  ▪▪▪▪▪▪

  Breaux's team rotored low across the parched desert crust toward the rising sun in the V-22. Meanwhile, the rest of the unit was extracting westward, to the safety of Drop Forge inside friendly Jordan. Those on the way back had grumbled at deserting the boss, but Breaux had l
aid down the law, and they'd done as ordered.

  Breaux's destination was the main trunk of the Tehran-Isfahan highway. There, he might chance to interdict the route of the other trucks he suspected would form a convoy, as trucks usually did along the route.

  He realized his strategy was a long-shot. Hell, it was worse than that. It was Quixotic and probably suicidal. On the other hand, what would you call who-knew-how-many nukes making their way across the highway? Genocidal. And genocide beat suicide any day of the week. Besides, what other option did he have? Calling in B-52 strikes against every truck in Iran just wasn't going to cut it.

  No. Breaux had to bet on those trucks being on the Tehran-Isfahan stretch of the Bonn-Karachi truck route. It was the most likely place to find them in a region of the world where few highways existed capable of supporting heavy vehicle traffic. This fact alone brought the chance of locating the rigs within the realm of the possible. The highway amounted to the only transport corridor the trucks could use.

  But then what? On this point Breaux figured he would just have to improvise.

  ▪▪▪▪▪▪

  The two Iranian Mig-29 Fulcrums had been scrambled to deal with the escaping convertiplanes. Two of the Viper attack helos were along to ride shotgun, but they would be of little use against the speed, armament and sophisticated avionics of Russia's personal best.

  This was especially so since, with covert Soviet retrofitting, the relatively few first-line MiG fighters that the Iranian air force possessed had been upgraded with the latest that the Mikoyan Design Bureau had to offer. The planes were not only faster and more maneuverable than ever before, but they could be equipped with anybody's weapons, thanks to their hybrid missile launch rack systems. The wing strakes on the retrofitted Fulcrums could take French, British and American air-to-air or air-to-ground munitions, as well as natively manufactured Russian bombs and rockets.