Finished spooking the camels, A-Bomb pulled off and swung in for his own drop.
Doberman began to climb in a spiral intended to keep him away from both the helicopters and his wingman; in the dark good flight discipline was particularly important and he hit his marks precisely, climbing quickly, for a Hog, to ten thousand feet. Their straight-forward plan called for the two Hogs to remain in the area for thirty minutes, which hopefully would be long enough for the two helos to refuel and get underway.
Once the helicopters cleared, they could waste the triple-A battery and go home, where bed was waiting. Doberman’s body ached for rest, even if it was on a cramped cot stolen from the Special Ops Forces troops.
There had been no fireballs. That was a good sign.
If you believed in luck, this was exactly the sort of gig that depended on it. Rigging a bizarre plan, flying to a point on the map with a notoriously inefficient INS system, then hooking up with helos that had already been flying for hours on a course so convoluted they were coming south— only to have the whole thing almost screw up because of a group of wayward camels.
Luck?
Bullshit. How about giving credit to tons of skill, with great technical people coming up with a creative solution to an impossible problem? How about great navigational skill on his part, making mid-course corrections and dealing with an unexpected glitch in the shape of an anti-air gun? And give a little credit to impromptu finesse from A-Bomb, scaring the crap out of the camels to herd them away from the drop zone.
Luck was bullshit.
Doberman felt his leg starting to numb from inactivity. He danced it up and down, twisted his muscles and shook his knees around, trying to ward off the pins and needles.
Rosen and Tinman had done a hell of a job, conjuring up this drop-tank thing. Of course, Tinman had probably done this sort of thing before, like maybe for the Wright Brothers.
Silver crosses. Jeee-zus.
Rosen, though, she was pretty damn smart for a girl.
Check that. For a woman.
She was a woman. There was something sincere in her eyes, something warm, as if she really cared if they made it on their mission.
The refuel took longer than planned, and Doberman decided to wait until the helicopters were in the air before moving on. He played with the variables, but couldn’t quite squeeze enough time and fuel to allow the A-10s to splash the batteries after the choppers left. Reluctantly, he spun the Hogs onto their go-home course.
“Six is clean as a scared camel’s rear,” said A-Bomb.
“Very funny. You watch I don’t put you up for a medal for that.”
“Hey, I got the only medal I need, courtesy of Tinman. You notice that gun opened up on you, not me.”
“How’s your fuel?” snapped Doberman.
“Not a problem,” said A-Bomb. His words were almost lost in what seemed to be an uncontrolled chortle.
“You laughing at me, A-Bomb?”
“Hell no,” said A-Bomb. “I’m just thinking of those helicopter crews when they landed. There must have been a ton of camel shit everywhere. Got to be more toxic than anything Saddam could load into a Scud.”
CHAPTER 30
OVER IRAQ
25 JANUARY 1991
2210
The more Dixon walked, the less tired he felt. Whether it was because he was so far beyond fatigue that he’d become numb, or whether something biological had kicked in, Dixon couldn’t say. All he knew was that he was more awake and alert than he’d ever been in his life. The night was a little lighter than last night had been; whether because of that or some shift in his senses, he could see Turk and the way down to the road almost as if it were high noon.
The sergeant led him back to the road, then across and parallel to it. After about a tenth of a mile, he pointed out a rock that marked the edge of the minefield on the far side. Just beyond it was a dirt road that curved between two crags in the hills.
“The entrance off the road is down further,” the sergeant explained. “But this is shorter.”
Dixon followed silently. They quickly came to a pass and walked about twenty yards into the quarry. A rock face loomed ahead; they’d seen the top from the position where they’d taken the sergeant, but hadn’t been able to see its base because of the angle.
And the base was definitely worth seeing. There was a large metal door, the kind that might be used on a factory or warehouse.
“Old mine?” Dixon asked.
“Check it out,” said Turk, handing the lieutenant his NOD. “Brand new combo lock. Got to be hiding something, don’t you think?”
It wasn’t just a combo lock— it had a high-tech digital face and a massive panel.
“Probably booby-trapped,” said Turk. “Got a slot for a key, so you can’t just fudge the combination either.”
Dixon’s mind conjured up different possibilities: the Mother of All Scud Bases, Saddam’s own secret palace, or a vast underground base for the Revolutionary Guards. He saw the same end for each— a raid by Devil Squadron to send the bastards to hell.
Another vision mixed with the others: the memory of his mother’s funeral. It had been a bright, sunny day, perfect in every way but the most important.
She’d chosen the Job reading herself. For years his mother had cared for his dad, who suffered just like the biblical figure. Cancer had long ago left him an invalid; by the time he was twelve Dixon had reconciled himself to his father’s death.
Yet his father hadn’t died and in fact was still living at the nursing home Dixon had put him in when his mother suffered her first stroke.
His mother never talked of death, not the countless times it seemed likely that his father would pass away, and certainly never of her own. And yet he found the passages all noted in her top drawer, written perhaps years before, too long for any premonition, surely.
“What do you think?” Turk asked.
Dixon handed the viewer back.
“Underground bunker, or some sort of storage facility,” said Dixon. “Way out here, my bet would be a chemical or biological warehouse. Maybe even nuclear. NBC.”
He started to take a step forward but Turk caught him.
“Could be mined,” said the trooper. “The way I’m thinking about it, that minefield we stumbled into is set up for defense, so they don’t need too many men to guard the place, see? Things get tricky, you send a team in. You can locate your posts there and there, not worry about your flanks. And this way, too.”
Dixon nodded. He took the viewer back and began scanning the rocks, looking for a ventilation pipe. As he did so, he remembered that the trucks had been heading in this direction.
A coincidence?
You couldn’t drive them through the door; it was too small. The shadows thrown by the rocks might hide them temporarily, though.
Hard to tell. He scanned first for another entrance, then for a ventilation system. Finally he spotted a thin pipe a good forty yards back on the hillside, around in the opposite direction from the hill where they had placed the sergeant. He oriented himself, realizing that the bunker’s hill was connected by a long ridge to theirs.
“Intelligence people don’t know about this,” said Turk. “Otherwise they’d have told us. Hill wasn’t even named on our maps. Nothing special to them.”
“Yeah,” agreed Dixon. “But it’s real special now.”
__PART TWO___
II
SUGAR MOUNTAIN
CHAPTER 31
IN IRAQ
25 JANUARY 1991
2230
They moved down from the rocks so slowly and carefully that Dixon felt as if he were walking backwards. He held his submachine gun in front of him like a stubby balancing bar. Twice they stopped because vehicles were approaching on the nearby highway; each time they retreated back to the rocks, waiting until the trucks sped by.
Turk’s explanation that the mines were placed as part of a pre-positioned defense scheme made sense. Logically, Dixon knew
that if that were true, the road itself wouldn’t be booby-trapped or mined. But twice his foot slipped in the dirt and he felt an electric jolt in his muscles, sure he was about to be blown up.
The door was metal, twice as wide as the front door to a house and about half again as high. A truck probably wouldn’t quite fit through, though Dixon wasn’t necessarily sure. The locking mechanism had both a mechanical key and the combination – as well what seemed to be a trip wire that Turk pulled Dixon back from.
He pulled out a small penlight flashlight to look it over carefully. “This doesn’t look like anything I’ve worked on,” said the demolition expert. “But my guess is that you cut it or fiddle with the key and it sets off a charge. Maybe under there.” He pointed the flashlight at rocks just above them. “Drop a little avalanche on you. Or there could be a charge beneath us.”
Dixon put his hand on the steel door, feeling the surface as if his fingers could somehow tell how thick the metal was behind it. There were no straps, no bolts, just smooth metal.
“Safest thing to do is get back to the road there, shoot up the lock and see what happens,” said Turk.
“You think that’ll do anything besides telling the Iraqis we’re here?” Dixon said.
Turk thought about it. “Probably not. We might be able to get through it with our C-4. Depends on how thick the door is.”
“Riyadh will probably want to bomb the site,” Dixon told him. “I think we’re better off talking to them first. If we do anything, the Iraqis will know we’re here. Maybe they empty the site before the bombing, maybe they find us.”
“I ain’t arguing with you.”
Dixon took a step back. Turk caught him.
“Listen,” he said, pointing back in the direction of the highway.
A low cough rasped against the hills. Dixon and Turk sprinted up the road back into the rocks. They climbed a few yards up the hillside, taking cover as a truck approached. Dixon watched from his crouch, expecting it to speed past like the others.
But it didn’t. It stopped dead in the middle of the highway, not ten yards from them.
It was a Mercedes truck, a simple cab in front of a boxy back; nothing remarkable. A million similar trucks were driving in a million similar places at that very moment, delivering a multitude of things to a multitude of places.
But this one was here. Dixon had a clear line of sight, and took the NOD from Turk.
The driver and his passenger were debating something. Then the passenger got out of the truck. The two Americans hunkered against the rocks as the man shone a flashlight across the darkened landscape to find the path to the mountain entrance. Once he found it, he waved at the truck, which followed slowly as he began walking toward the rock face.
When he reached the door, he bent over the lock. He worked it very slowly. His back blocked Dixon’s view, but he could make out a second panel behind the electronic lock; that one took even longer to deal with. Finally the Iraqi bent over and pushed something with his foot; some sort of metal lever had risen from the dirt.
But not even this opened the door. The man returned to the panel and punched more keys before the door finally popped free. Gripping the edge, the man pushed it open. A dull red light turned on inside.
“You get all that?” asked Turk.
“Oh yeah, I got it memorized,” whispered Dixon.
“Fuckers spent half their defense budget on locks. Cheaper just to post guards.”
“Maybe they’re inside.”
“Yeah. Could be,” said Turk.
The man walked slowly to the back of the truck. He came out with what looked to be a large suitcase.
“Door’s damn thick,” said Turk, examining it through the NOD. “I don’t think we got enough C-4, unless I can figure out the weak spot.”
After the soldier had been inside for quite a while, Dixon realized he ought to time his disappearance; it might tell them how large the facility was.
Or maybe not. He noted the time on his watch, then took the NOD and looked at the driver, who was shifting nervously around in the cab.
Most likely the man had only a pistol, if that. They could take him out easily; Dixon could, simply by lifting the MP-5 and firing. He was ten yards away.
But were there others inside the truck or the mountain?
The Iraqi reappeared from the bunker and trotted to the back of the truck. He took an identical-looking suitcase from the back before returning to the mountain.
“Boxes of candy,” said Turk. “For Sugar Mountain.”
“Yeah, Sugar Mountain,” said Dixon. “A big candy store.”
“We can take out the guy in the truck,” said Turk. He lifted his silenced MP-5. “You think we should?”
The truck driver sat upright in the truck as if he had heard them. He turned on the truck lights and a moveable spotlight mounted on the doorway, playing it over the rocks. The two Americans ducked as the spotlight swung in their direction.
Should they rush him? They could easily ambush his companion when he came out.
If he spoke English, they could find out what or who was inside.
Maybe. More than likely, he didn’t speak English.
Hell, they could just go in and see for themselves. Assuming it wasn’t booby-trapped.
Or that there wasn’t a guard below. The suitcases could have been dinner.
Even if he did speak English and talk to them, what could they believe? They could force him to walk ahead if they went inside, force him to reveal any booby traps— but perhaps the people who had designed the structure had anticipated that. Given the elaborate mechanism to open it, surely they had.
Better to call in a bombing raid.
But what if they were bombing a gold mine?
Or a NBC, nuclear-biological-chemical storage site?
What if Saddam himself were inside? Now that would be the kicker to end all kickers.
“Let’s get him,” said Dixon, rising as the light snapped off.
“Hold on,” said Turk. “Here’s our candy man.”
The Iraqi shouted— it sounded like a curse— at the driver as the two Americans ducked back behind the rocks. By the time they realized the shout hadn’t been meant for them, the thick door had been swung back into place. The truck was already backing onto the highway.
The Iraqi who’d gone inside ran to the cab, pulling himself in as he continued to berate the driver— probably for turning on his headlights. The driver slapped them off and hit the gas as soon as all four wheels were on the hard pavement.
CHAPTER 32
FORT APACHE
25 JANUARY 1991
2350
They were louder than hell, at least as far as Sergeant Kevin Hawkins was concerned. But the two dark shadows growing in the southern corner of the gray-black haze before him were the prettiest damn things he’d ever seen.
Not quite, but damn Hawkins felt good about the AH-6G Scouts as they came into the base. Fort Apache was open for business with its own air force, to boot.
No slam on the Hogs. But they had to keep running south to get ammo and gas. The Little Birds were his.
The lead AH-6G blinked. One of Hawkins’s men answered with a recognition code, assuring the chopper crews that they had not been overrun. The lead bird flew forward toward the strip.
The civilian MD 530 MG the AH-6G was based on was itself a variant in a popular line of civilian and military utility choppers. The latest version of the helicopter, the MD 530N, came equipped with a NOTAR system which eliminated the rear rotor and made the small helicopter into one of the most maneuverable aircraft in the world. Those versions were in short supply in the service, however, and would never have been allowed up here.
But the AH-6Gs touching down on the Iraqi concrete weren’t slouches. Each had a pair of .50 caliber machine-guns and seven-tube 70 mm rocket launchers mounted on their stubby wings, and featured forward-looking infrared radar mounted under their chins. TOW anti-tank weapons and mini-guns— not inst
alled but packed in the helicopters’ small holds— added additional firepower.
Hawkins trotted forward as the whirlies spun down, hesitating long enough to make sure he knew where the tails were. He had once seen a trooper get his face shaved by the back-end of a helicopter, and the experience gave him a healthy respect for rear rotors.
“Captain Hawkins?” asked the pilot, pushing open the door and pulling off his helmet. His night flying gear weighed several pounds, and he was obviously an experienced flier— he had the bull neck that typically came from years of working with the heavy sights.
“You Fernandez?”
“Yes, sir. Where do you want us?”
“We’ll unload you here. We’re working on a little bunker and camouflage for you across the way,” said Hawkins, gesturing. “Won’t be O’Hare.”
“Hey, I’m used to LaGuardia. Anything you can do.”
“How was your flight?”
“Piece of cake, once I got it off the ground. We’re a bit heavy,” said the pilot. He turned back to his controls, which were arrayed around near state-of-the-art multi-use screens, and finished securing the helicopter. “Shit, how much runway you got here?”
“At the moment, just under a thousand feet. Iraqis left it so smooth we don’t even have to patch it.” Hawkins pointed toward the far end, where six of his men were laying out metal grids that had been parachuted in a few hours before. “We’re extending it. I should have fifteen hundred by the morning, maybe the afternoon.”
A frown flickered across the pilot’s face; he knew that wasn’t long enough for a C-130 to land.
“Hey Captain!”
Hawkins turned and saw Sergeant Gladis running toward him. Gladis was moving quicker than the helicopters had.
“We got something from Team Ruth you got to hear,” said the communications specialist. “Their radio’s breaking up big time, but you’re going to want to talk to Leteri or Captain Dixon yourself.”
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