“Of course. Henry, there may be - and I really don’t know for sure, yet - a Soviet unit, a small one, somewhere on that base, which was going to try to rescue your hostages from the Abu Salaam faction.”
“Will they fight alongside the Libyans?”
Dobrynin winced. What was Nevsky’s plan? “Not unless they are attacked, Henry. Maybe the Libyans won’t fight, anyway.”
“They are fighting, Anatoli. With Russian weapons and, we believe, Russian officers.”
“Henry, please counsel restraint. You and I have worked hard together to bring our two peoples closer!” The Russian’s voice carried uncharacteristic emotion.
Mother of God, thought the Secretary. “Try to communicate with your soldiers in Libya, Anatoli. Try to get us some more information.”
“I will try, Henry.”
“There is very little time.”
“I know. Goodbye, Henry.”
“Goodbye.” Holt put the phone down quickly and stood up. “Mr. President, there is a new problem.”
Uqba ben Nafi, 0515 GMT (0615 Local)
Stuart watched from the roof of the Operations Building as the gunfire from Adams and King chewed up the armored column forming on the road from the golf course. He had been monitoring spot net and had taken the spot when he heard Flashlight Six go off the air. I hope that brave man got out, he thought.
The three-minute hailstorm of high-explosive shells, spread by the destroyers’ computers over an area 200 meters along the road and fifty meters on either side of it, had destroyed or disabled every vehicle in Stuart’s view, including two that had tried to move off to the south. Stuart’s only spot had turned both the latter vehicles into boiling cauldrons of flame and greasy smoke. The overpressure from the gunfire had also blown out every unbroken window in the Operations Building, and several soldiers who had not heeded warnings to get down and cover up had been cut.
“Stonewall, Black Widow. Cease fire, clear your guns, and stand by, over.”
Four more rounds exploded among the ruined hulks and scorched bodies. “Black Widow, Stonewall. My guns are clear, standing by.”
“Roger. Good shooting. Black Widow, out.” Stuart stood and stretched. After a moment’s hesitation, Lieutenant Calloway got up and looked out at the burning vehicles. “Shit, man, I climbed all those stairs for nothing.” He sounded pissed off, but he was smiling.
Stuart smiled. “You going down to take a look? That column came from north, where we couldn’t see them.”
“Yeah, we’ll send out a recon patrol. I just squared that with Major Donahue.”
“OK,” said Stuart. “Good luck, and be careful.”
“Yo. See you later, Navy.”
Two vehicles, the tank and the BMP who had gone after Lieutenant Brown and Corporal Links, had escaped the gunfire. They were now moving slowly east on a narrow lane between rows of barracks north of the battle, stared at as they went by Libyan civilians and military personnel who normally worked on the base. The sergeant commanding the tank, Abdul Hasaffi, was scared, and ashamed, and angry. Give me another shot at these American murderers, he prayed.
Eight AH-1T Sea Cobra gunships, from Marine Attack Helicopter Squadron 143 (HMA-143), launched from Saipan, crossed the coast at 1,000 feet of altitude and headed south. They stayed above the flight path of the air force transports until they were well south of the air base, then broke into flights of two and gained more altitude to look for the Libyan tank formation, which had been seen in the satellite photos taken before dawn. The sun was now red and huge on the horizon, and shadows thrown by date palms and citrus groves seemed miles long and very deep.
First contact with the Libyans was made by 1st Lt. Billy Dynan, flying tail number 103. His gunner, seated in front of him down in the nose, had spotted dust trails, pinkish in the morning sun. Billy Dynan made a wide circle to the south and counted eight black tracked vehicles moving north in the shadows of a row of date palms. He pressed the white button on the control stick of the Cobra, which keyed the radio microphone.
“Viper Flight, this is Viper One-Oh-Three. Eight tanks moving north on the road near intersections of grids one-zero and one-two. Tall row of date palms to the east. Converge on me, over.”
Each Cobra was armed with one three-barreled 20mm Vulcan cannon, two pods, each carrying seven 2.75-inch rockets, and four TOW antitank missiles. The patrol order gave the flight commanders the option of either attacking or standing off and calling in naval gunfire. The pilots preferred to attack. The attack plan called for two Cobras to position themselves on either flank of the tank column to engage specific vehicles with the wire-guided TOW missiles, while four more conducted rocket attacks from the rear of the formation. The rocket attacks, destructive in themselves, were also intended to protect the TOW-firing Cobras, since they had to stay relatively still while the gunner guided each missile to its target.
Colonel Asimov felt the beat of the helicopter rotors through the noise of the tank engines. He shouted into his microphone for the tank commanders to man their antiaircraft machine guns, and for each BMP to get a man ready with an SA-7 missile. Asimov had flown in helicopters in Afghanistan, as had Lieutenant Malenkov, who commanded the BMPs, and neither had any illusions about the vulnerability of helicopters to ground fire.
Viper 103 and 100 dove toward the tanks from the west. 103’s gunner fired the first TOW while the Cobra was still descending. The missile roared away from its tube, rose a little, then streaked toward its target, a medium tank. The gunner adjusted the optical sight attached to his helmet and centered the tank in the cross hairs. The missile pulled two coils of fine wire behind it as it flew, connected to the helicopter and its computer. When the gunner moved his head to keep the target centered in the sight, the movement was transmitted to the computer by cables running from his helmet. The computer sent these movements as corrections to the missile along the fine wires.
Asimov saw the helicopters hovering out to the left of the column, 3,000 meters away and out of machine gun range. They wouldn’t hover like that unless they were firing wire-guided missiles, he thought. He trained the turret of his tank out left and ordered his gunner to put H-E frag shells in the loading tray. He shouted into his microphone for other tanks to do the same, then squeezed the green trigger that loaded the gun and immediately the red trigger that fired it.
Lieutenant Malenkov’s BMP driver slewed his vehicle out of line and reversed it into a deep shadow beneath a clump of date palms. Malenkov ordered his other two scouts to speed up and spread out in front of the tanks. The rear hatch of Malenkov’s BMP opened and a Libyan soldier emerged, carrying an SA-7 antiaircraft missile and its grip-stock. “Give me that,” said Malenkov. The soldier disappeared inside the vehicle to get another missile. Malenkov checked that the missile’s canister was correctly attached to the gripstock. He heard the American helicopters approaching rapidly from the south.
Swinging around to attack the targets from the south, Viper 106 and 108 flew thirty meters off the ground as they chased the rapidly dispersing tanks. The two Cobras flew in formation, with Six above and slightly behind Eight. The gunners fired the 2.75-inch rockets, alternating HEAT and flechette antipersonnel rounds at the tanks as they passed, then firing the cannons. Gomez, the gunner on Viper 106, watched as his cannon, firing thirteen rounds per second, opened up one of the smaller tanks like a zipper. Then he saw two rockets strike a larger tank, sending the turret spinning into the air as the tank erupted with flame.
Viper 106 and 108 stayed low, circling wide over the brown fields, waiting for Viper 101 and 105 to make their first run at the still-dispersing targets.
Second Lieutenant Matt Jaeger, flying Viper 101, hovered in the ground effect as his gunner fired the TOW. They were east of the tanks, and Jaeger hoped that the sun rising behind them would make them difficult to see. Viper 105, fifty meters away, had fired a TOW also. Jaeger could not make out any tanks in the long morning shadows, but the gunner kept saying he was locked on. Ju
st hurry up, thought Jaeger, feeling horribly exposed, hanging like a Christmas-tree ball, waiting for a stream of bullets or a missile to shatter his helicopter.
Viper 100 thumbed his mike switch. He was lower and closer to the tanks, and he was watching as they aligned their guns on him and 103. “Three, this is One-Double-Zero. My TOW won’t release. I’m pulling up and out; I’ll drop back and cover you, over.”
“Roger, One-Oh-Oh. Stay close, over.” Billy Dynan shifted to intercom and shouted into his microphone. “Shit, Dave! Those tanks are shooting at us!” He saw the flashes of the tanks’ cannons as they fired.
Dave Tolliver had his eye stuck into the rubber-protected optic. “Steady, Billy, steady; five seconds!”
A cannon shell burst on the ground in front of the helo, throwing a shower of dirt and metal fragments over the Cobra and throwing the aircraft up and twisting it to the left. The TOW missile, following the movement of the gunner’s head, turned left and flew up and then down as Billy pulled collective and tilted the nose forward to gain speed. The TOW exploded in the barley field. “Aw, damn, Billy, you fucked up my shoot!” said the gunner into the intercom.
“Fuck this, man,” said Billy, pulling the helo up sharply. “Let’s give this to the Fast Movers! These assholes aren’t the easy targets we were told about!”
Lieutenant Malenkov set the SA-7 missile on his shoulder and followed the strafing helicopters as they flew overhead. He squeezed the trigger to the first stop and held the helicopter in the optical sight, watching the red light in the center. When the light turned green, the infrared sensor in the missile was locked onto the target, and Malenkov pulled the trigger through to the final stop. The missile roared from the launcher, singeing the back of Malenkov’s neck. Malenkov lowered the gripstock and watched as the Strela raced toward its slow-moving target. The helicopter disappeared in a flash, and Malenkov watched as the rotor, spinning slowly, fell by itself to the ground.
Matt Jaeger’s gunner reported a hit, and Matt saw a bright orange flash between the date palms. Viper 107 reported their missile had impacted a tree. Both helos saw machine gun tracers arcing toward them and agreed to break off and return to the ships, having given the position of the tank formation to High Tor, controller of attack aircraft aboard Nimitz. The Viper flight reassembled to the east of the tanks, one helo down and one damaged by machine gun fire, and flew north. The damaged helo crash-landed on the eastern end of the air base as the rest of the flight heard High Tor direct two flights of A-7s to their target.
Colonel Asimov received his damage reports while still on the move. One T-72 destroyed and one crippled by rockets, another lost to a wire-guided missile. One BMP split open by cannon fire. Heavy losses, but the helicopters had been driven off. The Libyans fought rather well, he thought. I hope the Americans haven’t found Kirov.
“Colonel, this is Malenkov, over.”
“Yes, Lieutenant.”
“We are sure to be hit again. Suggest we spread out more and speed up, over.”
“You go ahead, Malenkov. Find a hull-down position short of the runway, and tell me what you see.”
USS Inchon
Lieutenant Colonel Loonfeather stared at the status board in frustration. The Libyan defense of Uqba ben Nafi was far better organized than he had anticipated, and the reports coming in suggested major Russian involvement in the combat. A patrol sent out by the infantry into the golf course had brought back the papers of a Major Gurevich, and reported several other bodies in Russian uniforms.
One of the RTOs was monitoring the chatter of the helicopter pilots attacking the tank formation south of the base. They heard the pilots estimate the strength of the force at between eight and twenty tanks. That could be the entire force photographed earlier by the reconnaissance satellite, or only a part of it. Since Loonfeather found that pilots tended to exaggerate, he suspected that there was another force out there somewhere among the fields and date palms and citrus orchards, prepared to attack, in minutes.
He heard the RTO listening to the helicopters announce that they were breaking off, that they had damaged the column but not stopped it. A flight of A-7s was on its way, warned about the missile threat. Loonfeather made his decision. “Bob, I’ve got to get in there.”
“I know what you’re thinking, Rufus, but we need you here. This operation is about to reach its most critical phase.”
“Yeah, I know, but this isn’t the operation we planned. The Libyans are well set up and reacting better than we expected. We’ve already been lucky twice, once finding out about the ZSUs before they could have done much more damage, and once by having that gunfire-spotting team end up in the wrong place at the right time to call in the naval gunfire on the tanks coming from the golf course. But everybody is wide awake now, and the tank force approaching from the south could reach the airfield any time. And, as much as I like Major Donahue, he has never commanded anything larger than a company, he’s new to the Five-Oh-Deuce, and he has never been in combat.”
Brimmer frowned and then shrugged. “Well, Colonel, it’s your call. I think we should land the marines without further delay, before those tanks are in a position to shoot at the helos.”
“I want to go in in the first wave, and I think you had better have a second company ready, on call.” Loonfeather unclipped his lieutenant colonel’s oak leaves from the collar of his khaki TW shirt.
“You’re going to be a bit conspicuous in that uniform, Rufus.”
“I don’t have time to change, or at least I hope I don’t. I want to go now, Bob.”
“OK. I’ll square it with Flight Ops. At least let us provide you with a flak jacket and a helmet.”
“And a weapon, my friend, please.”
“Good luck, Rufus. You’ll beat them.”
“Thanks. I leave you to carry on the more important work here.” A wolfish grin split his dark, sharp features.
Brimmer grinned in return. “You lucky bastard!”
The first four A-7s from Nimitz spotted the Russian-built tanks as the attack aircraft made their run in from the sea. They continued south, to deliver their attack from behind the tanks, hoping to hit lightly armored engine grill doors and fuel cells rather than the heavily protected front slopes and turret faces.
“Stallion Leader to Stallion Flight. Three-Oh-Two and I’ll make the first run, Three-Oh-Three and Four to follow.”
“Hit ‘em hard, Chief,” answered Three.
Lieutenant Commander Bruce “Brute” Bowman turned the A-7 north, checked to see his wingman was in position, and started a shallow dive toward the tanks from an altitude of 3,000 feet. The tanks were well spread out, tossing dust plumes behind themselves as they ran away from the center of their maneuver formation. “Two, Leader.”
“Right here, Brute.”
“I’m going to rocket the two big ones near the tree line on the right. Pick a couple farther left.”
“Roger, I have two.”
“Let’s blast ‘em, then drop the CBUs.”
Lieutenant Commander Bowman lined up his first target and fired five HEAT-tipped rockets from each underwing pod, feeling the aircraft shudder as they departed. He then raised the nose of the A-7, turned it left, and fired the rest of his rockets at a second tank, watching tracer rounds from the tank’s machine gun coming back to him like a cone of red sparks. Brave gunner, thought Bowman as he pulled up over the approximate center of the tank formation and dropped the 500-pound Rockeye cluster bomb unit from beneath the right wing, and a split second later, the other CBU from the left. This staggered drop caused the aircraft to yaw and rise as the weight fell away unevenly, but Bowman wanted maximum dispersion, and controlled the aircraft easily.
The CBUs blew apart 500 feet above the ground, releasing 247 bomblets each, dispersed in an oval cloud fifty meters wide by 100 meters long. The Rockeye was the antivehicle version of the CBU, and the bomblets were heavy-density steel cases filled with 1.1 pounds of high explosive. On detonation, the bombs would prod
uce steel fragments moving at up to 4,000 feet per second, and of sufficient density to penetrate six inches of armor plate. The effect on even heavily armored vehicles was devastating, either blowing off chunks of metal within the tank, which would ricochet through the crew compartment like shrapnel, or by blowing through the hull of the tank and shredding hydraulics, electrical systems, and crew members.
As Bowman and his wingman finished their bombing run, each released two parachute-stabilized magnesium night-illumination flares. These were sometimes effective in decoying heat-seeking SAMs. “Three and Four, this is Leader,” said Bowman, savoring his run. “Concentrate on the lead elements, over.”
“Roger, Leader. Three and Four coming down.”
Asimov watched with a bitter taste in his mouth as the last two American aircraft streaked away, dropping flares behind them. At least they waste their flares, he thought. Asimov’s only SAMs were in his armored personnel carriers, and Malenkov was now far in front of the tanks.
This attack had been far more devastating than the last, costing him four tanks destroyed and one stopped with a broken track. Only the rapid dispersal of his force had prevented its total destruction. Asimov’s own tank, well back in the formation and close to the tree line, had escaped damage, and he had had a front row seat of the carnage as first rockets and then the diabolical bomblets had rained upon the tanks. He stopped long enough to direct a Libyan captain with a deep gash in his scalp to assemble the surviving crew members to separate and await assistance, then directed his driver and the one other undamaged T-72 to continue up the track to the edge of the long runway, half a kilometer away. He then called Major Kirov. “Kirov, where are you, over?”
“Colonel, we are digging in just south of runway 03/21. The perimeter fence was shredded by the American shelling, and there are many huge craters we can use for fighting positions. Leading elements are in place; some have camouflage nets over them already.”
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