Zero Six Bravo (31 page)
Like every man in the Squadron, Grey had total confidence in the Chinook pilots. This was like calling for the fire brigade with the house burning down around you, and you and your kids trapped on the top floor. It might seem impossible, but somehow they’d chop their way in with axes or put ladders against the burning walls and pluck you out of there. Likewise, the Chinook aircrew would know they were flying into a shit-fight pretty much blind, but that’s what those Special Forces pilots did best.
Once they’d split from the main force and gone on the run, Gunner and his Rupert passenger had become a CSAR (combat search and rescue) case, which was one step more serious than a hot extraction. They were on the run, position unknown, and with no way of making comms with Headquarters. The only way to find them and pull them out was to launch a CSAR flight and scour the Iraqi terrain for a lone quad heading for the Syrian border.
But right now the remnants of Six Troop were in a known static location, and they’d passed their grid to Headquarters. The enemy forces were close, but when had that ever stopped the Chinooks flying a hot-extraction mission? If the men had to choose between getting plucked out by a pair of helos or staying to fight the kind of forces that had them surrounded, they’d choose the hot extraction every time—even with a couple of F-16s inbound.
“Headquarters has just managed to make contact with the OC,” Ed explained. “He’s come up on comms, which is fucking great news. There’s a load of blokes with the OC, and only enough Chinooks to pull one lot out at a time, so they’re going to try to get that lot out first. They’re trying to establish exact casualties, but they’ve prioritized getting the OC out first. We’ve got to buy ourselves some time, get a grid sorted with Headquarters, so they can pull us out when they can.”
According to the word from Headquarters, the OC of M Squadron had gone into a hide somewhere to the northeast of the wadi of death. His small force was totally unsighted, but they could still hear tank fire rumbling across the darkness and see the light of flare rounds being fired, along with the occasional burst of tracer arcing across the heavens.
This pretty much confirmed what Grey already suspected: that it was their force—the remnants of Six Troop—that had drawn the bulk of the enemy fire. The enemy had opted to follow their line of march from the wadi of death; that much was pretty obvious from their present place of hiding. Seemingly from all around them they could hear the grunting of powerful diesel engines as the enemy continued to scour the desert terrain.
“What about the third force?” Grey asked. “The wagon and the quads that went north from the wadi.”
Ed shrugged. “Nothing’s been heard of them at all. They’re a CSAR job, unless they come up on air. HQ’s suggested a grid for us to head for where they’ll try to get the helos in for a hot extraction: 64732857. Take a look at the maps, mate.”
Grey plotted the grid. Headquarters would be choosing an extraction point from what they could see on the maps and satphotos,
plus what they could tell from Blue Force Tracking. They weren’t able to take account of enemy forces on the ground, especially without any air cover to give them eyes on the battlefield.
“It’s no good,” Grey told Ed. “It’s smack bang on the far side of that Fedayeen hunter force. There are masses of enemy that way. Get another.”
Ed radioed Headquarters and came back with a second grid. It was further to the southwest and Grey figured it was just about doable. But Moth took one look at the map and he wasn’t happy. From a JTAC’s perspective the grid was bad news.
“It’s no good. It puts us twenty clicks short of the Syrian border. That’s a no-no for any fast air. Those F-16s won’t operate that close to the Syrian border.”
Moth’s words were drowned out by a long burst of 12.7mm fire that went flaring past overhead. It didn’t mean that they’d been spotted, necessarily, but it was a sharp reminder of what was out there just beyond the rim of the wadi.
“Like, how’s it no good?” Ed demanded.
“Fast air’s all we can get over us quickly this far north of Baghdad,” Moth explained. “Fast air won’t operate that close to the Syrian border ’cause at the speed they fly they’ll risk straying into Syrian airspace. We’d have to wait on that grid for extraction with no air cover over us, which is a fucking nightmare.”
“So where are those F-16s, anyway?” Ed asked.
Moth grabbed his satcom. “
Viper Five Three
,
Zero Six Bravo
: What’s your locstat?”
“We’ll be in your overhead in five—repeat: five—minutes,” came the pilot’s calm reply.
A second and a third burst of 12.7mm rounds went thundering over their position. It felt as if the fire was getting closer. Leaving Ed and Moth to sort another grid for the helo pickup, Grey went to check on the enemy. He scuttled over to the wadi rim, coming up on Scruff’s shoulder.
Scruff stretched an arm toward the north. “Tanks.” He swung the arm south. “Iraqi infantry.” He swung it further south, then west.
“Fedayeen. Take your pick, mate, but sooner or later we’re going to have to start smashing ’em.”
Having moved to block the route south, the Fedayeen had swung east and west to almost encircle them. Grey couldn’t believe how quickly the Iraqis had got them surrounded. Furthermore, it looked as if they’d worked out that the British force had gone to ground. They were moving methodically across the desert, lights on full beam, searching as they went, and bit by bit they were converging on their hidden position.
To the north the squat forms of the T-72s were crawling forward, their blazing searchlights sweeping the desert to either side of them. And Grey didn’t doubt that to the west the truck-mounted infantry were closing in, lights on full beam. The Fedayeen wagons were the nearest threat—no more than five hundred yards away—the tanks maybe double that distance but creeping ever nearer.
Grey glanced at Scruff. “Hold your fire until the last possible moment. Let’s get the jets in.”
He ducked down and scuttled back toward the vehicles. As he did so, he fancied he could hear the faint rumble of jet engines at high altitude and far to the south of their position.
Fucking great,
he told himself.
Let’s get the bombs in.
“Same old same old—we’ve got enemy on all sides,” Grey reported, once he was back at the wagons. “Moth, get the jets in to mallet the Fedayeen, ’cause they’re right on top of us.”
Moth gave a thumbs-up. He got on the air and began to talk the F-16 pilots around the battlefield. As the jets bore down on them, he gave a detailed sketch of their own and the enemy positions. That done, he asked the lead pilot to smash the Fedayeen vehicles that were nearest to their place of hiding, and just as soon as they were ready to engage.
“Am in your overhead carrying out my air recces,” came the lead pilot’s reply. “Stand by.”
“They’re preparing to smash the Fedayeen,” Moth reported to Grey and Ed. “Any moment now.”
“
Zero Six Bravo
,
Viper Five Three
,” the pilot came up on the air. “No can do. There are vehicles everywhere that I’m looking. They are too numerous to ID friend from foe, and I can’t de-conflict with your position.
Zero Six Bravo
, I can’t do the drop.”
Moth spat out a string of curses. He turned to Ed and Grey. “He can’t do the drop! The Fedayeen are too close to us.”
“Fuck that!” snarled Grey. “Get him to smash the tanks. We’ll get the guns working on the Fedayeen.”
“
Viper Five Three
,
Zero Six Bravo
: Can you see those Iraqi main battle tanks a thousand yards due north of us? If you can, get in and smash them.”
“Affirmative, we see them. Trouble is, you’ve got remnants of your squadron in unidentified locations all around the battlefield. We understand from Command and Control that you’ve been split into several units . . . Command has asked us not to execute any drops until all units are accounted for. There’s too much risk of a blue-on-blue.”
“But what about those battle tanks? Isn’t it obvious they’re not bloody friendlies?”
“Negative. From where we’re sitting I can see vehicles to every cardinal all around your position, danger-close. There’s so many we can’t differentiate friend from foe so as to ID enemy targets. There’s too much risk of friendly fire to make any drops.”
Moth paused over the satcom. He was racking his brains to think of a way to direct the pilots onto the enemy and to give them the confidence to make the drops. Maybe he could use his laser to paint the vehicles he wanted hit. But the one thing he couldn’t do was find and identify all friendly forces in the area, and especially not when some of them were scattered across the field of battle in unknown locations and with no way of coming up on comms.
He fixed Grey and Ed with a look of utter desolation. “Pilot says there’s so many vehicles surrounding us on all sides they can’t differentiate targets. They can’t do any drops. There’s too great a risk of friendly fire.”
There was a moment of crushing silence as the three men stared at each other in disbelief. They were surrounded and about to get torn to pieces, and they had a pair of warplanes smack bang above them, but they couldn’t do any drops. It was a nightmare scenario.
The whole point of going into a hide had been so they could call in air power. That they had done, only to be told that the pilots were unable to hit the enemy. They were boiling up with frustration. What the hell were they supposed to do now—bug out of the lake bed and get the wagons on the move again? And if so, where to? As
the F-16 pilots had so eloquently told them, they had enemy forces surrounding them to every point of the compass.
“
Zero Six Bravo
,
Viper Five Three
,” came the lead F-16 pilot’s voice again. “There
is
one thing we can do for ya. We can come in lower than a snake’s belly doing low level passes with sonic boom. That’ll scare the crap out of those Iraqi sons of bitches.”
“Stand by.” Moth turned to the others. “Pilot’s offering to fly low-level shows of force.”
“We’re about to get overrun, so that’s got to be better than fucking nothing,” Grey replied. “Get the jets in.”
“Get the jets in,” Ed confirmed. “Low-level shows of force—maybe they’ll buy us some time.”
Moth radioed the pilots. “Bring your jets in right over our position, on a north–south bearing, and as low as you can get them.”
“Affirmative. Preparing to fly show of force, coming in from a northerly bearing bang on top of you guys. We’re three minutes out and closing, and we’re coming in lower than a snake’s belly.”
Grey let his head sink into his hands, exhausted. How long could they hope to hold the enemy off like this? The Iraqi infantry might opt to stay hidden, for the F-16s could easily tear their trucks to pieces. Likewise the armor, for they’d be reluctant to lose a squadron of main battle tanks to air strikes. But Grey felt certain there was only one way to stop a force as brainwashed and fanatical as the Fedayeen, and that was to kill them.
With the jets unable to mount any attacking runs, he figured they’d have to try to break out, which would likely mean a stand-up fight in the open desert. And all things considered, he’d prefer to take on the Iraqi infantry rather than the die-hard lunatic Boys from Bayji or a fleet of Iraqi T-72s.
He’d once been on a mission to a certain African country where the rebels had been fighting a war for decades. They’d learned to defeat a main battle tank by digging a hole in the likely path of attack and hiding in it. As soon as the tank had driven over them, they’d climb out, board its rear, and kill the crew with small-arms fire. They’d captured scores of enemy tanks that way and had
even learned to operate them, turning them against the government forces.
But to do that took days of careful planning, and a serious fighting force to back you up. The tanks had to be channeled along specific routes where the tank trappers were hiding. And with the best will in the world—not to mention a good dose of suicidal bravery—no one from the remnant force of Six Troop was going to pull off a trick like that. If nothing else, the desert was far too open, offering the tanks any number of avenues of attack.
He didn’t rate their chances very highly against the Iraqi infantry, either, but if they could catch them in their trucks, the KrAZ-225s made for big, bulky targets. They could slam the LAWs—plus some
SLAR
warheads—into those and maybe incinerate the lot of them in their vehicles. Then they could head west for the raging inferno that marked their position and try to pass right through them. They’d have the Iraqi tanks to their north and the Fedayeen to their south, but—assuming the infantry had been incinerated—they might just make it through. And with the F-16s flying shows of force, maybe they could sneak away and lose them all.
There was a rushed heads-up amongst the men, and they agreed on Grey’s idea as a plan of attack. Assuming the F-16s’ low-level passes had the desired effect, they’d bug out under the cover of their fly-bys, then head west, stopping only when they had to fight. They’d mallet the Iraqi infantry and force a path through. It was a plan born out of sheer desperation, but what other options did they have right now?
Ed got back on the radio, trying to get another set of coordinates agreed with Headquarters, and a hot-extraction grid set to the west of their position. As he did so, Grey issued a set of combat orders: the men were only to engage the Fedayeen if they opened fire or started advancing on the British position. Once the route west was declared on, they were to move out pronto.
A few seconds later there was a faint rumble from the skies to their north. It grew rapidly to a throaty roar, like an avalanche was sweeping across the open desert. For an instant this dark, shadowed
arrow loomed out of the pitch-blackness like some monster alien spacecraft, a thunderous snarl tearing apart the night with ear-shattering violence.
The warplane flashed overhead so close that you could have thrown a rock at it. The howl of its jet engines was powerful enough to rattle the Pinkies, as if a giant hand had grabbed hold and was shaking them about. The Dude was sitting atop his heavy machine gun and ducked involuntarily as if the jet was about to rip his head off. He’d known it was coming, but still, the sheer force and ferocity of the thing was awe-inspiring and fearsome.
