Diamondhead (5 page)

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Authors: Patrick Robinson

Tags: #Suspense, #Fiction, #Political, #Thrillers, #Weapons industry, #War & Military, #Assassination, #Iraq War; 2003-

BOOK: Diamondhead
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Mack Bedford watched aghast as the entire thing burst into a bright-blue chemical flame, the inferno in the interior now blasting through the hatch like a blowtorch gone berserk. A blowtorch from hell. Someone was trying to get out, but his entire head was on fire. He never even had time to scream before he died. It looked like Billy-Ray.
 
The roar of the fire drowned out the next missile that streaked across the river, leaving a fiery tail, and smashed into Mack’s second tank, the one that contained Chief Frank Brooks and the master gunner, Saul Meiers. No one had a prayer. Once more the missile ripped through the steel of the tank and detonated into a sensational fireball, incinerating everything in its path.
 
Lieutenant Commander Bedford just stood there, as did Lieutenant Mason, both of them in shock at the sudden and terrifying impact of the hit from the insurgents. Again they watched as someone, this time the tank commander, battled to get out, but it was a grotesque charade. Everyone in the tank was plainly on fire, burning alive, caught in the roaring chemical flame that extinguished life instantly. The SEALs, on their rescue mission, were gossamer moths trapped in the devil’s inferno.
 
Men were leaping from the other two tanks, anything to get clear before the next Diamondheads came in. Mack Bedford stood there, staring, in some kind of a dreamlike trance. He could not quite work out who was dead and who was alive. Was this hell, and had he died with his men?
 
The roar of the flames drowned out everything. The billowing smoke was rising a hundred feet in the air. No one could even see the far bank of the river. SEAL team leaders were hustling everyone into positions beyond the shattered convoy. Someone rushed up to Mack shouting,
“THIS WAY, SIR—WE GOTTA REGROUP—WE GOTTA GET CLEAR OF THIS FIRE!”
 
Mack joined the rest, running over the rough ground, keeping the burning convoy between his men and the death-trap missile launchers across the river. Like everyone, he was scared to climb back into the tanks to open fire on the enemy. It seemed nothing could stop the Diamondhead on its chosen course, and its deadly mission.
 
He assumed a loose command, instructing that no one move until he was certain the insurgents had made an escape. SEALs had already phoned for help from every available quarter. Within fifteen minutes, rescue helicopters would arrive, but there was no one to rescue. It was impossible to live within the periphery of the Diamondhead missile. They waited in silence as the flames crackled beneath the desert sun. And then slowly they rose up from the sands and began to walk toward the pile of tortured metal, which contained the tortured, charred remains of their friends and colleagues.
 
It was still too hot to get close, but they walked around the outside until, one by one, they saw a strange sight on the far side of the river. There were a dozen robed Arabs, their hands held high, walking toward the bridge. The Americans watched, amazed. One of them yelled, “Don’t do anything, guys! This is the oldest trick in the book. They’ve unloaded their weapons. They’re surrendering as unarmed civilians. They know we’re not allowed to touch them!”
 
And this assessment was accurate. The jihadists knew the rules well. Rather than retreat into the desert and face an aerial bombardment from U.S. aircraft, they chose to deny what they had done and pose as a group of local Bedouins, going about their peaceful, lawful business, innocent of any form of attack on the forces of the United States of America.
 
Mack Bedford looked back at the dying flames of the tanks, and tried to hold back his tears for Charlie O’Brien and the rest. He stared again at the bridge, and the anger welled up inside him—
But these fucking towelheads crossing the river. . . . Jesus Christ! . . . They’ve just murdered my guys!
 
The silence seemed to cast a mantle of unreality over this tiny corner of Iraq, a land of such unaccountable hatreds. There was no movement among the stone-faced SEALs as they watched the little group of wraithlike figures still walking toward the center of the bridge. Still with their hands held high.
 
From here their sandals made no scuffing sound on the sand-swept flagstones of the bridge. It was as if the Americans were watching through a long-range slow-motion camera lens, watching the advance of this murderous little cabal that had caused lifelong heartbreak for these serving U.S. troops.
 
But the Arabs kept coming, kept walking. Only the Foxtrot Platoon commander recognized them as the missile men he had watched through his binoculars across the river. And once more he raised the glasses and stared at the oncoming killers, unarmed now, but still with that unmistakable loathing etched on their faces.
 
There was no doubt in anyone’s mind that these were the perpetrators of this shocking crime, committed in cold blood with four of the internationally banned Diamondhead missiles. And now there was a murmur of restlessness among the Special Forces as they watched the bizarre scene on the Euphrates Bridge.
 
Team leaders, fearful of the rule-book consequences of attacking men who carried no weapons, were muttering softly.
Steady, guys. . . . Take it easy. . . . Let ’em keep coming. . . .
 
Now, as the twelve Arabs reached the center of the bridge, their footfalls could be heard in the hot, shimmering air. It was a flat, subdued, yet poisonous sound, and still they held their hands high. On the far bank, women and children were gathering to watch as the twelve men walked quietly toward the infidels of the U.S. Special Forces, their sworn enemy.
 
Everyone on the western side of the river would remember the quiet. And every one of the Americans standing there would recall the sudden sharp metallic snap, as Lt. Cdr. Mackenzie Bedford rammed a new magazine into the breech of his M4 automatic rifle and began to run hard, straight at the bridge. These were not the “hours of the wolf.” Mack Bedford
was
the wolf, an all-American wolf, snarling, blood-thirsty, right out of the deep forests of the great state of Maine.
 
Lt. Barry Mason reacted first. He swiveled around and set off in pursuit of the SEAL team commander.
NOSSIR . . . NOSSIR . . . FOR CHRIST’S SAKE, STOP . . . DON’T SHOOT!
 
Mack reached the bridge first, a full twenty yards in front of the lieutenant. There was a desperation in Barry’s voice as he yelled, “DON’T DO IT, SIR . . . FOR CHRISSAKES, DON’T DO IT!”
 
He was racing across the ground now. But not fast enough. Mack Bedford’s gun spat fire, cutting down the four leaders in a hail of well-aimed bullets. The big SEAL stood facing them, his rifle leveled straight at his enemy. Lieutenant Mason was almost on him, arms outstretched, but Mack rammed his finger on the trigger and sprayed bullets into the oncoming group. No one had time to run. No one had time to plead. The SEAL commander just kept firing. And one by one the Arab missile men fell dead into the dust, until they formed a ghostly white shallow hill, their robes fluttering in the hot, dusty southwest wind.
 
Lieutenant Mason hit his boss with a full-blooded block about one hundredth of a second too late. They both crashed to the ground, and as they did so the Americans stampeded forward, shouting and cheering. From across the river there was a sound of weeping and wailing, as the women ran toward their fallen loved ones.
 
Lieutenant Mason helped the boss to his feet, and the Americans engulfed the two officers. One young SEAL, with tears rolling down his smoke-blackened cheeks, kept repeating, over and over, “Thank you, sir. Thank you. My brother was in that tank.”
 
There was no voice of dissent among the thirty Americans who had cheated death that morning. Several of them came up and offered a handshake to the SEAL commander. Others said loudly, “Those bastards had it coming!” or “’Bout time, too!” or even, “We ought to do that a whole lot more often!”
 
For a couple of minutes, Mack Bedford seemed unreachable, as if the bloodlust of the wolf had subsided. He stood there at the bridge, and merely continued to say, “They killed my guys. They murdered my fucking guys. And I owe them that.”
 
Across the river, residents of the village were walking forward to claim their dead, carrying the bodies back to the east bank of the river. Three SEALs stood in a line facing them, rifles leveled, but there were no recriminations, no shouts of anger from the Iraqis. Not on this day, when the death toll on both sides was comparable—twelve insurgents, twelve SEALs, and eight Rangers.
 
In the background the burned remains of the tanks still sent black smoke into the sky. And every soul on either side of the river, mourning their dead, understood what had been done, and why the outcome was as it was. Here in this ancient biblical land of Mesopotamia, an ancient pact from one of the most celebrated books of the Old Testament, Exodus, had been enacted—
life for life, eye for eye, tooth for tooth.
 
High above, two U.S. Army Chinooks were making their approach, clattering down toward the rough ground beyond the burned-out hulks of the tanks. Each of them contained medical supplies, nursing staff, military investigators, and combat-ready Special Forces. But at this point none of it was necessary. There were no wounded. Anyone in proximity to the missile was not only dead but cremated. For most of them, there were no remains. In time there would be white crosses, erected in scattered communities back in the USA, bearing simply name and rank in commemoration. A fallen soldier, known to God.
 
The dust storm created by the mighty rotors of the Chinooks obscured the horror scene on the road. And through it walked the SEAL officers who must ascertain precisely what took place. Only one of them, the Camp Hitmen CO, Cdr. Butch Ghutzman, outranked Mack Bedford.
 
They met at the cornerstone of the bridge and talked briefly. The tanks were still too hot for examination and would be for several hours. Commander Ghutzman looked across at the Iraqis still carrying away their dead and asked Mack, “What the hell’s going on over there?”
 
“I guess they’re looking after their casualties, sir.”
 
“They get shot or shelled or something?”
 
“Shot, sir.”
 
“In the middle of the bridge? Were they making some kind of a charge on our guys?”
 
“Nossir. They were pretending to give themselves up. I shot them.”
 
“Jesus. Were they armed?”
 
“How the hell do I know whether they were armed?”
 
“You understand why I ask the question?”
 
“Affirmative, sir.”
 
It was only a rough garret set high in the roof of a squalid gray stone house three streets back from the riverfront, directly across from the area the Americans were now evacuating. Huddled in the corner murmuring into a cell phone, in Arabic, was an elderly Iraqi, a veteran of the ill-fated Desert Storm and now a trusted “stringer” for the al-Jazeera television network based in gleaming modern offices in Doha, the capital city of Qatar. That phone call represented the vital link al-Jazeera holds to the battlefields of Iraq, the embodiment of its determination to make the United States look bad, really bad, at every available opportunity.
 
The al-Jazeera network is the most controversial Arabic news channel in the Middle East. It was founded in 1996, and since then it has burgeoned from a small localized station broadcasting only in Arabic to a vast international network, broadcasting twenty-four hours a day in English. It has forty foreign bureaus worldwide with dozens of correspondents. Its staff has been recruited from all the big Western television newsrooms—the BBC, CBS, CNN, and CNBC. Al-Jazeera may be counted on, implicitly, to report any form of negligent or ill-disciplined U.S. military action anywhere in the Middle East.
 
On this day the newsroom was busy. Bill Simons, a former BBC editor, tired of its childlike left-wing bias, had elected to pack up and join the Arabs, moving his life from South London to downtown Doha, on the east coast of the Qatar Peninsula. Bill knew a good news story as well as anyone, and the urgent tones of Abdul calling from faraway Abu Hallah on the banks of the Euphrates set his journalist’s antennae alight.

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