AZERBAIJAN PROVINCE, IRAN - DAY ONE; Officer Karl Hagman peered out from the perch on the edge of a natural rock escarpment, staring at the wrinkled rolling terrain. Long shadows across the landscape slowly disappeared as the sun began to rise on the eastern horizon. The team was airlifted to the west of the terrorist training camp the night before and made its way to the current position before daybreak. They now waited for dusk to carry out the attack using the man-portable, antipersonnel rocket system, the Shark. The total system weighed just twenty-five pounds, including the launcher with two missiles.
Karl and his team almost had this guy once before in Qsar Shirin, but had lacked the time to find the coward’s spider hole. Days prior to today, the CIA received word from an informant that the Al-Qaeda leader, Abu al-Zarqawi was in the camp below. The terrorist was a high-value target and until days ago, his whereabouts had been unresolved.
The Black Angel leader studied the patterns of one man throughout the day. The man wore one of the black robes associated with Al-Qaeda leadership and was seen addressing new arrivals as they came off Iranian military trucks throughout the day. More than three dozen men arrived inside an eight-hour period, Karl could only wonder if Middle East Command had any idea what was coming their way.
Sean was in charge of the portable missile system, which had a range of twelve-hundred meters and carried a thermobaric warhead which most techies described as a fuel-air bomb. It was useful in taking out soft targets like buildings and vehicles and it was decided it was going to be used against the single brick building in the otherwise tented community. It was approaching sixteen-hundred hours (4:00 P.M.) when Karl noticed a man being dragged kicking and screaming into the brick building.
Karl began to wonder if somewhere out there, the mullahs were not planning something bigger. Intelligence said the Iranians were fast-tracking their nuclear weapons program with the help of Russia. Terrorists with nuclear weapons was not a pleasant thought. Karl instantly let the notion pass when he spotted at first one, then two trucks loading up with armed men. The team leader thought to himself, This doesn’t look good. There was no fear, just anticipation.
Half a dozen robed terrorists carried the infamous RPG, rocket propelled grenade. Less than a kilometer of desert floor was all that separated them from the team’s position. A cool breeze began to come up the escarpment and gave the helmeted warrior a brief respite from the day’s heat.
Karl peered through his binoculars when he thought he heard the screams of a man, carried on the same wind. The temperature was beginning to drop and the descending sun began to cast shadows across the landscape.
It was dusk when Karl saw something taking place in the courtyard. The militants began to muster out onto the field and the officer saw a man being dragged out of a building, thought to be the command center. The prisoner’s hands were bound behind him and stripped naked. Karl took a long hard look through his binoculars.
Was that the informant?
He heard a footfall that caused him to quickly turn around with weapon raised. It was Sean who approached him through a narrow rock opening that led up to the ledge.
“Are you seeing that?” asked Sean pointing in the direction of the camp. “That isn’t the informant, is it?”
Karl replied, “You read my mind."
He then touched his earpiece to send word to the team. “Everyone, pack up your gear. We're leaving pronto. Hunter, contact Mother. Let her know we’re on our way to the extraction point.”
A deep voice came back, “Roger that, Sean.”
Karl got his gear together and turned for one last look through his field glasses. The prisoner was in a kneeling position, the executioner let swing a large sword. The poor unfortunate was decapitated only after several multiple slashes of the blade.
Those bastards!
An hour later, the Black Angel team was making good time, heading west toward the extraction point when Hunter’s voice came over the net, “Karl, we have bad guys coming at us from the south?” Karl who was bringing up the rear jogged up to Hunter's position. Hunter pointed in the direction of their approach. In the distance, Karl now saw the headlights of vehicles. They appeared to be thirty minutes, or less, away.
“That’s going to hamper things a bit. We have six hours before pick up. You see that outcrop just to the left of their approach.” Karl pointed to a rock formation that rose from the rugged mountainside.
“Elijah get up there with your Steyr and if this becomes a firefight, light them up.”
Karl checked his watch. “We’re still on schedule if we can escape detection.”
“Our extraction point remains three kilometers to the west of here.”
Sean’s voice came over the net, “This is Sean. Have you seen those torches coming from our rear?”
The small convoy of trucks they watched approaching unexpectedly detoured taking a near ninety-degree turn to the west. Karl examined his GPS for the reason and found the terrorists were following a rough dirt track. Karl identified the transports as wheeled vehicles, incapable of traversing rugged terrain. They were limited to the dirt road. Further examination showed the track began to run south where it met one more range of mountains. The move had to be an attempt to put themselves between his suspected location and the border, some twenty kilometers away.
The troops on those transports would have to disembark; that would put up to sixty men in the team’s path. Karl considered the options and decided the team should also make a ninety-degree pivot and run parallel to the track taken by the enemy. Given their current location and the location of the dirt track, that would put one click between them and the enemy.
Karl watched the enemy transports disappear behind low hills through his field glasses. Karl noticed at the same time fog beginning to form to the west. Karl turned to see what kind of distance separated them from the enemy who were approaching on foot from behind. It looked like two kilometers, plenty of distance and plenty of time. Karl stopped counting the torches after reaching twenty-five. Without saying a word, Officer Hagman motioned to the team to begin its advance.
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Joe raised his right hand above his head in a tight fist and everyone froze in place. Karl drew up next to him, “What is it?”
The officer nodded in the direction they were headed. “I saw something, just ahead of us. I think it was a man.” Officer Bogart said in a whisper.
Just at that moment, Karl and Joe heard rocks sliding down the slope to their front. Everyone instantly hit the ground. A freak breeze blew a portion of the fog away giving everyone a faint glance of men wearing ghillie suits. These were not the amateurs Karl was watching that afternoon. These were Iranian Special Forces.
“Everyone, defensive positions,” whispered Karl over the squad’s communications net and his team began to fan out on either side of his position. The night-vision goggles they wore did not penetrate the thick veil of fog that now obscured everything ten meters out. The team had taken up firing positions across the track the enemy would take, with their firearms up and pointed in the direction of the hostiles. Behind them, some two-hundred meters down the path they had just come was a rock ledge that offered a better defensible position.
In that brief moment, Karl caught sight of half a dozen men, most carrying AK-47s. One, however, carried what appeared to be a large-caliber sniper rifle. That was very bad news. If caught in the open, Karl and his team could be picked off one by one if it was in the hands of a professional.
Everyone stared into the growing mist before them, straining to see any movement. The figures disappeared into the fog and so far, no one else had seen any further signs of the enemy. All that appeared were dark areas of stunted, desert shrubbery and boulders. Karl wanted to avoid detection if possible.
He forced his muscles to relax; the strain of a lengthy operation could cause one’s reflexes to slow. Suddenly, communications came alive. “We’ve got movement
to the right.” Karl tensed up again.
He pressed the communication contact and whispered, “Everyone, prepare to engage hostiles, but let them pass if possible.”
The mist cleared for a moment and Karl saw them again, just for an instant and grumbled to himself, “That was at least a dozen men.”
All of a sudden Karl began to hear the faint metallic ring of silenced assault guns going off to his right, a note unmistakable to anyone who served in Special Forces. An instant later there were some muffled shouts ten degrees to his front, and then nothing. Karl felt the blood chill in his veins when he realized they were discovered.
Breathing hard and now perspiring in an icy sweat, Karl crawled backward and rolled to a position next to where Sean was hugging the earth. “We have got to get back to that plateau.”
Sean nodded in agreement and said, “I saw at least one sniper.”
Karl pressed his earpiece. “Everyone backtrack to the rock ledge. Repeat, head to the rock ledge behind us.”
He was about to begin working his way backwards in a crouched position when figures began to emerge from the fog to his front. Karl hit the ground, placed his finger on the trigger, peered down the telescopic sight at the first ghillie-clad figure he saw just long enough to hit him in the midsection. The Iranian folded like a jackknife. Figures could be seen falling to the ground when they heard their comrade scream in pain. One or two fell backwards as if hit by a fastball. The team’s silenced weapons hammered away at the few spots where they’d seen the enemy drop. At the same time, someone to Karl’s right tossed a grenade down among the enemy positions, followed by one more, then another.
Friendly gunfire fell silent. A fast check over the com-link had shown everyone escaped injury. No one understood what, if any, casualties the enemy sustained other than the three they had seen go down in their sights. The enemy wasn’t looking to overrun the position, yet. It was time to make tracks.
“Everyone reverse track one-eighty, go!” The SAD officers faced the equivalent of two platoons of special forces. Of the dozen enemy combatants Karl had seen, only three were down, another nine, or more still unaccounted for.
An alert came over his earpiece. “Sir, the mist is beginning to clear to our left.” Karl looked in the direction. He was right. They didn’t have any time to waste. The one thing Karl noticed was his adversaries did not appear to be wearing any special kind of headgear and were likely at a technical disadvantage. Karl drew some comfort from the fog beginning to lift, which would provide a tactical advantage. They had to try to avoid further contact with the enemy. Karl slowly lowered the weapon. “Let’s get moving.”
The communiqué was received down the line by those officers still hidden in the hazy conditions.
Karl picked himself up and then began stepping backward, steadily making his way over the broken ground. The slope of the ground began to give way to rocky highlands. The officer kept his eyes focused to his front with narrowed eyes, looking for any sign of movement. Then Karl saw them, a half-dozen figures emerging from the fog. Their outlines resolved themselves into sharp detail.
The booming of what could have been a small cannon came across from the right! Karl turned to see one of his men, his head involuntarily snapped backward before he collapsed to the stony ground where he remained, unmoving. A sniper’s bullet found its mark.
Karl had a sick feeling in the pit of the stomach when he realized there was nothing he could do for the fallen comrade. Everyone was as good as dead unless he did something. All Karl could think of at the moment was it had been an honor serving with Officer Joe Bogart, the newest member of Black Angel. What happened today was not supposed to have occurred. Either the enemy was tipped off, or the informant gave them up, or both.
Dim shapes burst through the veil of the fog as several men ran up closing on Karl’s team from the direction where Joe had fallen. Several of them tumbled to the ground, while one more doubled over and tried to stay on his feet with a bullet hole in his thigh. Those who may have been following the fallen never appeared. The team made tracks up the path, the one defensible position from the enemy troops who were arrayed in front of him. Probably fifty more were now heading for the team’s rear.
A small rocket whistled by, followed by the echo of a tremendous explosion somewhere behind them as the enemy tried to strike at the invisible quarry with an RPG (rocket-propelled grenade). To the right, a brief flash of a silenced weapon stabbed out into the darkness answered by the cry of agony.
Almost at the same time, Karl heard more automatic gunfire as the enemy came at them from the other flank. “Keep moving” Karl shouted out, “They’re firing blind.” Yet more automatic fire could be heard now from the front, and Karl shouted, “Run, boys!”
The small group reached the foot of the cliff and the narrow goat path that led up to their objective.
“This way,” Karl bellowed, “Follow me.”
The order of the team dissolved into a group of running men. The bullets could be heard whizzing about as the enemy fired at the sounds of the men running. There was no letup; the AK-47s kept going off.
The team leader stepped to the side to let everyone pass. “Keep going. I’ll see you at the top.”
He wrestled his pack from his back and took out two Russian PFM-3G’s, and laid them on the path the enemy would have to take. “This should slow those guys down a bit.”
The so-called “butterfly mines” were pressure-sensitive and carried thirty-seven grams of C-4 high explosives, more than enough to kill, or maim anyone within a five-meter blast radius. Karl raced up the path following his team when he placed the charges several meters apart.
When he reached the summit, Karl surveyed the positions of his men; they were all in optimal firing positions. This location was, however, no good. If attacked from the rear, the enemy would come from an elevated position, a distinct disadvantage. The team leader now recalled that this range of mountains ran parallel to the Iran-Iraq border, eventually becoming hilly countryside the further south one traveled. There was no choice, they were going to have to give up on the current extraction point, as there was no way to bypass the fast encircling Iranians. They were going in-country for a while. How long? Karl did not know, as it depended entirely on the reaction of the enemy.
By the racket of gunfire still going off below, the enemy believed the team was trapped up against the side of the cliff. Karl took a grenade from his belt and tossed it over the ledge for good measure. Moments later everyone heard the deafening explosion echo about the mountain surroundings.
Karl steeled his heart. He and his team had been in tight fixes before, but this was proving one of the most dangerous. The only shelter for his team was the safety of distance and yes, it would have been better to head north along the mountain ridge before turning again toward Iraq, but that route was at the moment cut off. The rock formations to the south would offer some concealment from attack helicopters that were sure to arrive at daylight, if not before.
Karl whispered out once he decided on the course of action, "Every one, close up on me.” The squad fell into a column behind him as they made double-time along the mountain track.
Five minutes passed and Karl heard the echoing explosion of one of his mines. The first to explode was buried under sand in the middle of the footpath. The team leader fell out of line, motioning the team to continue moving ahead. Karl pulled the remote detonator from his pocket, disabled the safety switch, got a green light and pressed the lighted button firmly. The sharp note of a second explosion was immediately heard echoing through the mountains. Karl had placed the second mine in a small crevice in one of the walls of the dirt track and activated the remote detonation toggle switch. It was quite likely it caught a good number of the enemies in its blast. It was placed first along the path and would catch those who were following the poor guys who went up first.
The sun would be up in a few hours a
s Officer Hunter Jefferies tapped into his encrypted satellite link with SAD headquarters to inform them of their current situation. One more pickup point had to be designated; the team had not been able to reach the original extraction point before daylight. Their rescue would have to wait until the next evening.
At the higher altitude of the rugged mountains, the wind became more noticeable as the veil of the fog disappeared. Two hours into their march, the men, weighed down by their Kevlar armor, were becoming exhausted from their labors. Karl hit some loose rocks and tumbled to the ground; his comrades paused as he picked himself up. An hour later, gasping for breath, the team leader licked his lips as he forced himself to straighten up to get a better look at what was following, chest heaving.
Elijah, also gasping for air, said, “It looks like we lost them.”
“I’m not so confident of that, but I hope you're right.”
Karl had to tell himself, I have got to keep going, as his oxygen-starved muscles continued to ache. Comradeship, discipline, and self-sacrifice were still in evidence, but the physical demands were extreme and they would soon run out of water. The team was very lucky to come face to face with the enemy in the fog. The heavy mist could at the moment be seen below, obscuring the lower elevation. Karl studied his men to see how they were holding up...everyone was exhausted.
Elijah, who was walking just ahead of Karl, turned and glanced over the team leader’s shoulder and his expression hardened. “Here they come, sir.”
Everyone turned around to see the faint glow of torches emerge from the fog below. First one, then another, torches held by scouts of a growing contingent of the enemy. It must be the second group the team had seen coming from the north. The last thing the team could afford to do was to get into one more firefight with ammunition now running critically low. To further complicate things, it would soon be light out; the last thing they needed was to be caught out in the open when the Iranian Air Force turned up.
Karl yelled out, “They're following our tracks! We need to throw them off our trail by making for those rocks along the ridge line. Leave as little evidence as you can. We will be able to better lose them once we’ve gotten into rocky terrain.”
The team nodded in agreement.
Karl took the GPS out of his thigh pocket and took a look at what lay ahead. The officer glanced at his wristwatch: zero four hundred hours. It would be dawn soon.
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DAY TWO - Karl and his team were bivouacked on the rocky mountainside during the day, waiting for night to fall. It was still winter in this part of the world; however, the temperatures would climb into the nineties as the sun rose into the sky. Karl looked out on the rocky, arid landscape, giving him cause to unconsciously recall memories of Afghanistan. As often happened, it was memories of the successful missions that helped him keep the danger of the situation from overloading the primordial part of the mind. Kept him in balance. Kept him in control of himself.
In the middle of these thoughts, Karl turned his head to catch a glimpse of the four remaining team members. The thought of any one of them being captured alive was too much to imagine. Karl knew what awaited anyone who fell captive to the Quds Forces. The interrogation techniques of Iranian Intelligence were well known to the western world for its barbarity. The poor man Karl had seen the previous evening was evidence of what awaited a captive’s fate.
Several times during the day, Karl had seen Russian-built attack helicopters, the MI-24 Hind. Karl could tell by the lazy circles they made during their search routine the enemy had no idea of his team’s position.
The officer at that moment spotted a Hind attack helicopter approaching from the south. Its flight path would put it almost on top of the SAD officers in a couple of minutes. With those things flying about, they wouldn't make the distance they need to before dawn. Karl forced himself to the ground as he watched the approaching war-bird. Something was not quite right about the path of the MI-24 Hind. For one, it was not circling; it was following a straight course, one that paralleled the border. Karl thought he saw small objects falling from it, but the shimmering heat made it difficult to make out anything clearly. The Russian attack copter kept on moving off.
He had served in the region long enough to be aware of the nature of this enemy. They would not give up so easily. Their pride was at stake.
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WASHINGTON, D.C. - The Junior Senator, and President-elect had nothing but well wishers and fawning media people enter and exit his Washington office throughout the day. God, he was feeling good! Martinez just loved the attention and the adoration. The reverence his colleagues showed him made him feel like something more than a man, and for those that did not darken his doorway, the new President was taking note.
“Mary, no more visitors,” Martinez shouted from his desk.
“Yes, Mr. President.”
Damn if Nelson isn’t right, the secretary does sound like a damn parrot, the President thought as he lit up one more cigarette, throwing the still burning match into the trash can.
There was a resolute knock at the door.
“Damn it, I said no more visitors!” shouted Martinez.
“Not even from your biggest fans,” came the response as the door swung open and in walked Jason Simon, Shmuel Weisser and Donald Abraham.
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Karl glanced at his watch and then at the enemy force as it made its way across the rubble-strewn ground, heading in their direction. Another half-hour and the Iranians would be on top of them. Darkness had just fallen as the men of Black Angel waited in their ambush positions, night-vision gear in place. Karl watched as Sean went through a series of tests to make sure the Shark was functional from behind some rock cover. Once Sean ensured everything was a go, he gave Karl the thumbs-up.
Operating on the principle of a range laser, the missiles, when launched, would follow the path of the unseen beam and detonate on target. Karl hoped this would stop his pursuers, conclusively.
Every officer pulled his camouflage netting over himself to minimize their heat signatures in case the enemy below had night-vision equipment. Each man adjusted his telescopic sights to the proper settings and waited for the word from Karl to engage. Except for Sean, everyone then remained as motionless as a pride of lions lying in wait for their prey. Their current position was chosen in as much as it offered the advantage of height and fields of fire on a point where the pursuers were forced to bunch up. The natural bottleneck was thirty meters wide with a sheer rock face. On the other side there was a twenty-foot drop. The SAD officers were positioned on a boulder-strewn mountainside looking down at their approach.
Karl eyed the cautious way the enemy approached the pass, their attempts to become less of a target by dispersing being defeated by the confined area. The team leader understood his counterpart down below suspected a trap; however, the Iranian Commander must have been convinced the odds of ten to one worked heavily in his favor. The thing the enemy leader did not count on was the pair of thermobaric-warheads.
Karl popped his head up above the boulder for a moment to check on the enemy’s progress. They were making good time, remaining erect as they approached. The main body closed to half the distance and the scouts already made their way through the choke point.
The minutes passed by slowly.
The thermobaric warhead had a killing radius that would envelop anything caught inside the confines of the rock-strewn pass. The blast, if it didn't kill the enemy, would permanently maim the survivors, preventing them from continuing with their pursuit. His snipers would then pick off the scouts who made it through the gap unscathed.
The timing had to be perfect.
Karl just lowered his head behind his hide when the sniper round ricocheted off the large rock not inches from where his head was. The shock wave of the impact shattered the rock into dozens of pieces. It was something the officer experienced once before in Albania. Karl cou
ld just make out the report of the sniper's rifle five seconds later. That was a fifty-caliber. The trigger man was a little over one kilometer away. The sniper was also a very good shot.
The last time Karl been taken under fire by a fifty-caliber weapon was in Kosovo where his team wasted time on what amounted to a United Nations security detail. The shooter in that instance was using a Russian OSV-96, fifty-caliber sniper rifle. That sniper paid for his mistake with his life.
“We’ve got a least one sniper down there. He’s using a fifty. Elijah, can you take him under fire?”
Elijah and Karl were not carrying the customary Russian SV-98 in as much as the mission called for light-kit. Instead they had with them the Austrian Steyr-Mannlicher SSG 04. It had half the range and hitting power of the guy on the other side. It was an unfair fight until the distance closed. It was not likely this enemy sniper would cooperate.
Karl could see Elijah brace himself before rolling to a more advantageous position. Peering through his rifle scope, Karl heard him come over the com-link. “They’re still too far off to hit anything with this peashooter.”
“Let go with a few rounds. We want those guys to remain stationary.”
Elijah rolled on his back behind some boulders and took a moment to remove the silencer. Silencers worked on the principle of slowing the bullet speed down to subsonic levels, but it was too slow to be effective at these kind of ranges. Elijah adjusted his sight; when he was ready the officer rolled into a new position to keep the opposing sniper off balance. Predictability was a soldier’s enemy when up against a good sharp shooter. Not heeding the advice of instructors back at “The Farm” on the topic was akin to getting oneself shot, usually in the head.
Karl rolled to a new location and took the briefest of looks to determine if the Quds Forces were still moving. Karl knew he had less than five seconds to make the assessment, the time it took the one-and-a-half ounce projectile to travel the distance. Karl counted to himself as he studied the terrain. One one-thousand, two one-thousand, three one-thousand…. Karl pulled his head back behind the rock cover. Four one-thousand, five one-thousand, six…. Karl was watching the mountainside behind him when he heard the whizzing bullet pass within inches followed by the explosion of a block of rock that took a direct hit.
This guy was good. Too bad that sniper was on the wrong side and soon to meet his maker, Karl thought.
The past quarter hour, Elijah played the deadly game of cat and mouse with the opposition. The SAD sniper accomplished what Karl needed by keeping the enemies’ heads down, forcing them to slowly crawl through the choke-point. Karl’s hand signaled to Sean and caught his attention. Now was the time to let it go!
Sean followed his instructions to the letter; only the officer took one too many seconds to sight in the target. That had given the enemy sniper time to take his shot. The impact of the large bullet missed, but managed to kick up enough material to temporarily blind Sean who was at the moment holding his face in both hands.
Karl was going to have to act fast, or the opportunity would be missed. The missile launcher was still intact. Karl rolled to Sean’s position, grabbed it and rolled back to his previous spot. The officer took it and rolled to a crevice between two rocks. Karl was going to have to hope the sharp shooter didn’t spot him and paint the target himself. The officer counted off to himself while aiming at the approximate location of the fifty men. One one-thousand, two one-thousand, three one-thousand, four one-thousand… Karl dropped below the opening until he heard the bullet whiz by before he repeated the process.
Cold sweat dripped from his nose as Karl repainted the place where he hoped the thermobaric warhead would have the greatest effect. The missile would travel at just over one-hundred meters per second. This was going to be close.
There was the sharp roar of the solid-fuel missile-engine when Karl pressed the trigger as he began counting off the seconds. One one-thousand, two one-thousand, three one-thousand, four one-thousand…his sight picture lit up, and the missile struck home.
Karl dropped quickly below the crevice, again shutting his eyes tight…five one-thousand…he thought he heard the crack of the fifty-caliber-bullet striking rock just before the deafening explosion, which was instantly followed by a heat wave. Karl hesitated for a few moments before yanking his binoculars up to his face after rolling to a new location to eye the area of the blast. The officer ducked at three one-thousand, four one-thousand...nothing happened, five one-thousand...still nothing.
Karl could make out half-a-dozen figures who must have been bringing up the back of the pack, frantically running away in a zigzag pattern. As Karl scanned the charred, black landscape with binoculars in the area of the blast, nothing was moving. Karl felt his spirits rise as the fight began to go their way for the first time.
“Karl, do you see anything?”
“I don’t see anything moving. Marvelous,” Karl growled with pleasure as he motioned his team to continue their flight. "Keep your heads down, the sniper may still be out there," stated Karl motioning his team to continue on as he stepped aside.
“Sean, are you okay?”
Sean paused and nodded. “Yes, just a few scratches. Boy, I thought I had bought the farm that time.”
Karl, with a bit of gallows humor, laughed. “Sean, you would have never known what hit you. Now, let’s get going.”
D-DAY+
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