by Joshua Hood
“The Ronin element and the Pathfinders from the 82nd have already inserted here,” Anderson said, pointing at the northeastern edge of Mosul. “They will link up with members of the Peshmerga and move down to objective Johnny Walker, which is here.” He pointed to a spot on the map near the airfield.
The colonel motioned for his executive officer to switch slides. “Once they hit their rally point, the Pathfinders will break off and secure the primary drop zone in preparation for the drop, while Ronin moves onto objective Jack Daniel’s to locate HVT one.”
“Who is going to be controlling the air assets?” Warchild asked.
“Strike Team Texas,” Anderson said, pointing at Parker, “will insert with members of the Marine Raiders at objective Wild Turkey, and set up an overwatch position, while Strike Team Nevada, augmented by Team Utah, will set the blocking position to the north.
“Once the high value target—call sign Elvis—is located, Warchild, it is up to you to prosecute the target.”
“Parker, I need steel on steel, you got me?” Anderson said, pointing at the bearded operator, who was trying to catch Renee’s eye.
“Roger that, sir,” he replied, focusing his attention back on the colonel.
“Good. The first flight of C-17s will be over the drop zone no later than 0345, so the window to set up security isn’t very big. I’ve been told that they will drop no matter what, so that area has to be clear.”
Anderson waited for the slide to change, revealing a satellite image of the airfield. Random gun emplacements dotted the perimeter of the tarmac, and groups of trucks were bunched up near fighting positions.
“We have preplanned targets on these known positions, but other than that, we have no idea what they have in store for us. I imagine we will take some fire on the initial assault, but the idea is to bomb the shit out of them and get them running for the hills. We will have an AC-130 Specter gunship on station, as well as a full complement of F-15s and F-18s coming out of Turkey. Parker, if you need them, we will also have an eighty-one-millimeter mortar section, but we need to leave that organic to the troops on the drop zone.”
Colonel Anderson dropped the pointer and looked hard at the soldiers under his command. “I want you to remember what these pieces of shit did,” he said fervently, “and all the Americans that are without loved ones because of them. There are no rules of engagement. If it moves, you kill it, and if it stops moving, make sure it stays dead.”
CHAPTER 51
* * *
The stark stillness of the desert night invited doubt, and Mason found the utter isolation unnerving. Waiting had never been his strong suit, and he knew that the Pathfinders were getting edgy. Mason was well aware that fear could kill a man faster than any bullet, and while he wasn’t afraid of death, he was terrified by the specter of his own failures.
“Do you think they will come?” he whispered to Zeus.
“I’ve never trusted the Kurds. They are a flighty people,” the Libyan whispered back.
Mason checked his wrist-top GPS for the tenth time, more out of frustration than anything else. He knew he was at the correct grid, but the Kurds were late, and the main assault was less than an hour away. If they didn’t show up soon, he would have to move on without them.
Shifting the sling off the back of his neck, he squeezed his shoulders up toward his ears, holding the stretch for ten seconds before releasing it. The relief was immediate but lasted only a few seconds. He was running over the contingency plan again when a tiny flash of light emanated from a rocky outcrop to his south.
Kane waited to ensure that he wasn’t imagining things, but when the light flashed again, he lifted his red lens map light and flashed two short beams in response.
Mason headed toward the outcropping. Zeus joined him, matching his pace to the right. Only the sound of their feet crunching over the desert floor filled his ears. When they were five feet away, a man materialized out of the shadows.
“Peace be with you, brothers,” the Kurd said, letting his AK-47 dangle from the sling around his neck.
“And to you,” Zeus replied in Arabic. “We were not sure you were coming.”
“Ahh, yes, we were held up on the road, but we took care of the problem,” he replied.
“What kind of problem?” Mason asked, lowering his rifle as they embraced in the traditional manner.
“We came upon a patrol coming from the city, but do not worry, they will not be coming back,” he replied, kissing the sides of Mason’s cheeks.
The Kurd was the same height as Mason, with strong shoulders and a jovial, honest smile lit by the green hue of night vision. He pounded Mason firmly on the back as the American rotated his monochromatic NODs up onto his helmet and took measure of the men standing before them.
“I am forever grateful for what you did for my niece. It is a terrible situation, what is happening in Mosul.”
“Allah allowed us to be of service,” Zeus replied as he too embraced their new ally.
“His name be praised. You may call me Joe,” the man said.
Mason signaled the Pathfinders that it was safe for them to come up. “Okay, Joe, my name is Mason, and this is Zeus. What can you tell us about the defenses around the airfield?”
“The terrorists have been working hard since they took the city. We have been hard-pressed to keep them on their side of the river, but even now, they threaten to crush us. When the army fled, they left behind many big guns and tanks. It will not be easy getting close to them.”
“Can you do it?”
“Yes, but as I told Sara, the man that you seek does not leave the airfield.”
“Have you seen him?”
“I have not, but my son”—he paused to point at one of the fighters who appeared from behind the rocks—“he has seen him. They call him the Lion of Syria. He is an evil man.”
“Yeah, he’s a real asshole,” Zeus said.
The Kurd was appraising them as well. “We can get your men to where they want to go, but for you two, taking out the Lion will not be so easy.”
“Well, Joe, if it was easy, everyone would do it,” Mason said.
That made Joe laugh. “As you say,” he replied. “But we are wasting time. I have brought trucks if you wish to leave.”
Mason followed Joe to the backside of the outcrop, where four pickups were waiting. The Pathfinders crammed into the beds of the last two, and the Peshmerga dispersed quickly between the vehicles.
“You will ride with me,” Joe said, motioning to the first truck, which had a 240 Bravo machine gun mounted to the roof.
Mason and Zeus squeezed themselves into the back while Joe got in beside his son, who quickly lit a cigarette.
“We took the machine gun off one of the fighters,” Joe noted. “It is much better than what we had.”
“I assume they have gotten into the armories?”
“Oh yes. All of their fighters are much better armed now than when they came. Your government has seen to that,” he said sadly. “Maybe next time, your president will take all of his guns with him.”
“Yeah, that would be nice,” Mason admitted.
“I cannot figure America out,” Joe’s son finally spoke, blowing a cloud of smoke into the air while struggling to start the old truck. “They armed the Iraqis after they fought them but give us old trucks and battered AKs. How does this make any sense?”
“I have no idea,” Mason said honestly.
The route Joe took sent them wide of their final objective, but twenty minutes later, Mason could see Mosul’s lights as the small convoy bumped along. In the front seat, Joe worked a handful of radios, checking in with the men he had scattered at various observation points around the city. Every time one of the outposts would tell them that an area was clear, Joe’s son would steer the convoy in that direction, only to be waved off as they drew near.
Al Qatar’s men were roaming the edges of the city in armed bands that seemed to pop up every time Mason thought they had fo
und a way through. Finally, Joe ordered one of his commanders to make an armed feint four kilometers to the north of their current position, while the convoy moved south.
His well-trained men avoided getting pinned down by the enemy and also managed to open up a lane for the convoy to maneuver through.
Mason knew they were cutting it close. He was already trying to visualize how they were going to locate al Qatar before the bombardment began.
“Do not worry, my friend, I will get you where you need to be,” Joe yelled from the front seat, noticing the American checking his watch. “The man you are looking for isn’t going anywhere, especially after all the time he has spent setting up all of his guns.”
“What do you mean, all the guns?” Mason asked, suddenly concerned.
“Oh, they have been quite busy.”
“That’s kind of important information,” Mason said.
“Everyone knows this.”
Mason flipped his radio to the air-to-ground net, hoping to relay the intel before the jets got on station, but before he could key up, a voice filtered over the net:
“Able 7 to Tomahawk Base, we are on station, how copy?”
“Roger that, Able 7, you are cleared hot. Good hunting, boys.”
“Good copy. Able 7 to Able flight: let’s get some.”
Zeus looked at him, his eyes wide with disbelief. The timeline had been pushed up, and no one had bothered to let them know.
CHAPTER 52
* * *
Al Qatar stepped onto a small porch that ran the length of the terminal building and lit a cigarette. The flame from the lighter briefly illuminated the PVS-14s hanging around his neck. A welcome breeze wound its way over the hangars and through the hidden gun emplacements that his men had worked so hard to camouflage from the American drones. It had been a hot day, and the temperature was beginning to drop as the residual heat evaporated slowly into the night.
He could hear faint snatches of nervous conversation along with the occasional tink of metal-on-metal contact while his men waited for the Americans.
Al Qatar raised the PVS-14 night-vision monocular to his eye and scanned the horizon. He could see the lights coming from the Kurdish encampment to the east, but the sky itself was still empty, like an endless, inky-black ocean.
The tip of the cigarette burned brightly when he took another drag, and the small amount of light caused his NODs to flare as they greedily gobbled up the extra little bit of light.
“What if they don’t come?” Jabar asked.
Al Qatar hadn’t told him that his source had never called, and the question sparked an uneasiness the jihadist had been fighting all day.
“They will,” he said, feigning a confidence he didn’t have.
The Americans had to come.
“I have always hated the waiting,” Jabar said, refusing to leave al Qatar alone with his thoughts. The Iraqi was just about to go back inside when he heard a faint rushing sound emanating from the north.
“Quiet,” he snapped.
Al Qatar raised the night-vision optic toward the sky and surveyed the sky in a frantic arc, the stars coalescing in shiny green blurs. The city lights blossomed yellow as he searched for the source of the sound, and he almost missed the flashing light cutting across the sky.
The Americans had come.
“Get to the trucks,” he commanded even as a part of his brain screamed at him to run.
He was caught in the open, not sure if he should run back into the terminal building or head toward the concrete bunker fifteen feet in front of him.
Jabar took off in a sprint, and al Qatar was just about to follow when an explosion detonated a hundred feet to his rear. The concussion shoved him forward, knocking him off his feet. Al Qatar tried to brace for the fall, his arms shooting out as he was twisted into the air.
He hit the ground and felt a sharp pain in his wrist as his hands skidded across the gravel. Shrapnel clattered, and a fierce heat washed over him a second before a fireball engulfed the airfield.
DShKs clattered to life from the roof of the terminal building, sending a trail of tracers bending into the sky. Al Qatar had instructed the gunners to wait until he gave them the signal to engage, but apparently they were too amped up to remember.
His brain yelled for him to get to cover, and his boots scratched the rocky sand as he scrambled to his feet.
The first missile screamed overhead, a flaming streak of light that slammed into the roof of the terminal, vaporizing the crew in a shower of sparks. Al Qatar shielded his face, changing directions to avoid being hit with the debris that geysered into the air.
A second fireball blossomed near the south end of the field, the concussion washed over the row of Black Hawks, sending a wave of glass tinkling across the asphalt. He screamed in terror. Fuel from ruptured helos splashed across the tarmac to his left, and the gentle breeze he’d been enjoying a moment ago now carried the earthy scent of burning blood.
He felt like an animal caught in a trap. He wanted to activate the towers and save himself, but al Qatar knew that it was too early. Worse than that, he knew that this was only the opening salvo.
The bunker appeared before him like an open grave, and he dove headfirst into its black embrace, trembling as he crawled to safety. The radio jammed into his belt went clattering across the ground, and he heard a voice yelling “Fire, Fire, Fire” from the speaker.
His fingers clawed through the darkness, vainly seeking the radio. When his hands finally closed around it, he pushed the transmit button, hoping it was not too late to get his gunners to hold their fire. The radio beeped loudly, informing him that his transmission hadn’t gotten through, and he cursed loudly—waiting for them to clear the net.
The men manning the weapons knew their job was to die, and they had all sworn to sacrifice themselves to Allah in exchange for an eternity in paradise. But most of them were high on amphetamines, and one of them was “hot miking” the radio, which meant no one else could use it.
He needed to get them to stop shooting, but as more jets rolled in to drop their payloads, more of his men tried to shoot them down.
One of the pilots came in so low that al Qatar could see the heat coming out of the F-15’s engines a second before the bombs dropped from the pylons beneath its wings. They seemed to hang weightless in the air as the afterburners kicked on with a thump, and the aircraft shot back into the night sky.
The ordnance blasted into the already burning terminal, and the bright explosion backlit the chunks of concrete flying like matchsticks. Al Qatar saw a man’s torso tumbling through the air.
Terrified by the slaughter, some of his men decided that it was time to run.
He got to his feet, moving to the front of the bunker, and bellowed for them to take cover. They knew better than to expose themselves to certain death, but as he raised the radio to his lips, he realized suddenly why they were running.
There was no mistaking the low droning sound filtering down from the darkened heavens, and al Qatar felt a wave of unadulterated fear wash over him the moment the AC-130’s Vulcan cannons came to life in a roar of leaden death.
The powerful rotary cannons sent his mind reeling back to the dark night in Iraq eleven years before. It had been the AC-130 Specter that had kept him trapped inside the building and forced him to witness the death of his brother.
Once again, he found himself at the gunship’s mercy, forced to watch the steel rain falling on his men.
The AC-130’s Vulcan cannons suddenly fell silent, and he knew from past experience that inside the massive aircraft, the pilot was switching to another weapons platform. During his time in captivity, he had come into contact with mujahedeen who had faced the fearsome predator and managed to survive. They had all told the same tale: there was nowhere you could hide from the sophisticated gunship, but if you were bold enough, you could exploit its weaknesses.
Al Qatar raised the NODs to his eyes, scanning the night sky to see where the AC-130 wa
s in its orbit. Through the PVS-14s he saw an infrared targeting laser settle on one of the hangars, and a second later the gunship opened up with its 105 mm howitzer, firing a high-explosive round right through the center of the building.
He realized the Americans must have someone on the ground designating targets for the aircraft. For whatever reason, he decided immediately it was the man who’d killed Ali.
“There is someone spotting targets for the airplanes,” he shouted into the radio. “Use your night vision and follow the laser!”
Al Qatar sprinted from the bunker, gripped with a sense of purpose that exorcised the fear holding him in place.
The gunship fired another round through the roof of the hangar.
“Allah, be merciful,” he prayed, running toward a stack of crates hidden under a camouflage netting.
“I see him. I see him,” an excited voice shouted excitedly as the gunship switched over to its 40 mm Bofor cannons, and began decimating the positions he’d worked so carefully to hide.
“Kill him,” he yelled.
The rounds hit the ground in rhythmic bursts of threes and fours, as a fighter fired an RPG toward the source of the laser.
Al Qatar heard another RPG scream toward the east side of the airfield as one of his men began engaging the gunship. He managed to get off two long bursts before a missile slammed into the position, cutting the man and his gun into a hundred pieces.
The terrorist had no way of knowing if they had hit the AC-130, but he heard its engines roar as the pilot throttled up, yanking the bird out of its lethal arc. Al Qatar could see the camo netting now, and forcing a last burst of speed out of his tired legs, he dove through the opening.
His hands shook as he tore the lid off the wooden crate and grabbed the plastic launcher from within. The Stinger surface-to-air missile weighed almost thirty pounds, and it was awkward to get into action in the dark. Al Qatar activated the PAS-18 thermal imaging sight before slamming the battery coolant unit into the hand guard and lifting the unit onto his shoulder. Sweat was pouring down his face, burning his eyes, as he waited for the sight to come online.