Acts of Vengeance

CHAPTER TEN LIMA BRAVO

Colonel Gritti felt the dank sea air blasting through the open hatch of the CH-53E Super Stallion. Next to him, eyes sweeping the horizon, the machine gunner hunched over his fifty-caliber gun.

A hundred yards in trail was the second Stallion. Bracketing the cargo helicopters were the AH-1W Whiskey Cobra gunships, one in the lead, one in trail. The formation skimmed the surface of the Arabian Sea at two hundred feet.

The southern shoreline of Yemen swept beneath them in a brown blur. Gritti keyed his boom mike: “Warlord, Boomer is feet dry.”

“We see that, Boomer,” answered Guido Vitale. “The SEAD package is on board. Your signal is Lima Bravo.”

“Boomer copies. We have Lima Bravo.”

Lima Bravo was the go signal. The TRAP team was cleared to proceed with its mission.

Gritti gazed aft in the crowded interior of the cargo helicopter. His marines were crammed into the rows of bench seats on either side of the cabin. Each wore full battle gear, carrying a hundred-pound pack. Every young face wore a rapt, tense expression.

Two and a half decades as a grunt, thought Gritti. That was how long it took him to rise through the commissioned ranks of the Corps to what he considered to be the best job in the world — Commander of the 43rd Marine Expeditionary Unit. It was one of only seven such elite outfits deployed around the world. For a marine, this was as good as it got.

As he always did just before going into action, Gritti felt the weight of his responsibility. These kids expect me to get them in there — and back again.

Well, by God, he would. To the best of his ability. This was what they had trained for, and he knew there was no other outfit on the planet that could do this job as well as the 43rd MEU.

Still, he couldn’t get over a nagging feeling. What had they missed? Did they have enough firepower? Could they shoot their way in, pick up the downed pilot, and shoot their way out?

He had placed another entire rifle company on status sixty — a one-hour alert — ready to reinforce them. Just in case.

The formation of helicopters crested the high ridgeline that paralleled the southern coast of Yemen. Descending the far slope, they continued north into the great desert plateau of the Saudi peninsula. This was the ingress route that was supposed to keep them away from major settlements and clear of any identified threat sectors.

Gritti watched the monotonous landscape sweep beneath them. Thank God for global positioning satellites. Without GPS, how the hell did anyone find anything in this barren wilderness?

Out the open left hatch, he could see the range that extended into north Yemen, paralleling the Red Sea. When they were abeam the crossroads village of Al Hazm, the formation would turn westward and enter the rugged highlands.

But he still didn’t know where they were going. Not exactly.

“Warlord, Boomer. Do we have LZ coordinates yet?”

“Negative, Boomer. Yankee Two hasn’t checked in. Your target is still X ray.”

Gritti peered out the hatch again. Damn it, this wasn’t good. The downed pilot hadn’t come up on the SAR frequency and given coordinates for a landing zone like she was supposed to. What did it mean? That her battery was dead. That she had been compromised.

That she was dead.

Well, it didn’t change anything. They were committed. They would continue to X ray, the code name for the position she reported in her first contact.

Gritti tried to shove the worries from his mind. It would be okay. They had the best intelligence sources in the world. Every scrap of information indicated that Al-Fasr’s forces were standing down, just as Babcock had assured them. The TRAP team would rescue the pilot. No sweat. They’d hit the ground, grab the pilot, get the hell out, go back to Dubai or wherever.

Then he would throw the biggest goddamn party these kids ever saw.

From the cockpit of his F/A-18E, Maxwell gazed down at the arid landscape. He shook his head in frustration. If he and his Hornets were ordered to deliver their loads of antipersonnel bombs from four miles up, they were as likely to hit friendly forces as the enemy.

It was stupid. Criminal, even. Wars were fought by warriors, he remembered hearing from Josh Dunn, but rules of engagement were written by politicians.

He tried the SAR frequency again. “Yankee Two, this is Runner One-one. Are you up on this channel?”

Nothing.

He tried again. “Yankee Two, do you copy Runner One-one?”

Still no answer. B.J. wasn’t talking.

It could still be okay, he told himself. If the battery was dead on her radio, she would know to stay close to her original position. When she saw the TRAP team helos, she could mark her spot with a smoke flare, and they would make the pickup. The radio problem was a minor glitch.

Yeah, right.

Maxwell knew from experience that specialized military operations seldom went as planned. Something unexpected always popped up. There was always a glitch.

Like the MiGs. That had been a major kick-in-the-balls glitch. The fact that no one had foreseen the insertion of enemy fighters was enough to erase any confidence Maxwell had in their own intelligence resources.

That was one glitch that wouldn’t happen again. This time they wouldn’t be caught flatfooted. On CAP station was a flight of F-14s. The Tomcatters had lost their skipper to Al-Fasr’s MiGs, and they were looking forward to a return match.

If the enemy turned on air defense radar, a section of two Bluetail Hornets was poised to launch HARM antiradar missiles. Included in the SEAD package were two EA-6B Prowlers with highly sophisticated electronic detection and jamming capabilities and two HARMs each. On its station high over the Arabian peninsula was the AWACS, with its ability to pick up any emission in this part of the Middle East.

Maxwell called the AWACS. “Magic, this is Runner One-one. What’s the picture?”

“Picture clear, Runner One-one,” came the voice of Capt. Tracey Barnett. “The only radar activity is at San‘a airport. We’re watching, but we don’t think it’s hostile.”

“Runner One-one, copy.”

No radars up except the air-traffic control facility in the capital of Yemen. For all they knew it might be relaying contacts for Al-Fasr. Even if it was, Maxwell doubted that Fletcher would permit a HARM attack on the site.

It didn’t matter. With the assets in his SEAD package, they had the airborne threat covered.

That left the close air support mission. It was the task of Maxwell and his Super Hornets to handle any ground opposition the TRAP team ran into.

From twenty thousand feet. It was a joke.

Maybe Babcock was right, he thought. Now that Al-Fasr had flexed his muscles, maybe he just wanted to kiss and make up. Killing Josh Dunn and Tom Mellon and making war on the United States of America was nothing more than a political statement. Now that he had humiliated the Navy, he would allow them to recover their survivors and slink back out to their ships. Babcock and the guys in suits would take over and negotiate with Al-Fasr as if he were a legitimate diplomat.

The thought filled Maxwell with loathing. He felt himself torn between strict compliance with his orders and dealing with Al-Fasr and his terrorists.

Maybe, reflected Maxwell, he no longer belonged in the Navy. At one time he had thought commanding a strike fighter squadron was the highest calling in the world. That was before Whitney Babcock and Admiral Fletcher and Jamal Al-Fasr.

He peered down again at the unfertile brown landscape of Yemen. Stay focused, he told himself. Get this job done; get B.J. out of there. And while you’re at it, maybe put a cluster of bombs on Al-Fasr’s head. Then think about what to do with the rest of your life.

“Warlord, this is Runner One-one,” he said, calling Vitale aboard the Reagan. “Any contact with Yankee Two?”

“Negative, Runner One-one. Nothing yet. Boomer is proceeding to X Ray, as briefed. He’s fifteen minutes out.”

Maxwell peered down again at the hostile brown landscape. It looked as forbidding as the back side of the moon. In fifteen minutes he would see the column of helicopters making its way across the terrain to Yankee Two’s last reported position. Four miles below.

She held her breath, listening for the sound to repeat itself.

There. She heard it again, wafting through the hills, faint but coming closer. The distant beat of helicopter blades.

It was coming from the east, which meant it could be either friend or foe. She didn’t dare show herself. Not yet. What a cruel joke if she dashed into the open, waving and igniting smoke flares, only to confront another helicopter full of Sherji.

The damned radio. As abruptly as it had begun working, it quit again. Exasperated, she had poked the thing, shaken it, banged on it with her fist. The little red power light remained dark. She couldn’t communicate with the SAR helicopter, tell them where the landing zone ought to be.

Okay, she’d stay concealed, get a visual ID on whatever was coming this way. If they were the good guys, they would go to the last set of coordinates she had transmitted. That was a quarter mile away from where she now crouched in the shadow of a pair of large boulders.

She had selected this open space because it was close enough to the original location that she could get their attention. Seeing the place in the light of dawn, she was filled with doubt. It was a small clearing on the slope of the mountain, covered with large rocks and scraggly waist-high shrubs. The slope looked steeper than it had in the darkness.

It would have to do. Maybe they could snatch her up in the sling.

The whopping noise was coming nearer. Definitely the sound of a helicopter. More than one, judging by the pulsating throb, and that was another good sign. The SAR team would not come in-country with just one chopper. They’d have escorts. Gunships, probably.

Despite her fatigue, B.J. felt herself filled with new energy. She was getting the hell out of Yemen. She made a silent vow that she would never return to this evil place — unless she was delivering high explosives.

She checked her signaling equipment. The flare lay on a rock beside her, the toggle ready to yank. They were the same old day/night flares that pilots had carried for a half century. One end for day smoke, the other for a night flare. When she saw the helos she would get the smoke going. Then she would start firing off the pencil flares, and then —

Another sound.

B.J. held her breath. This wasn’t the beat of helicopter blades. She was hearing engine noises, vehicle sounds, the clatter of a half-track.

Coming her way.

She snatched up her flares and survival satchel and scrambled up the slope, toward the high ridge that overlooked the clearing. Her heart was racing again.

Reaching the summit, she crouched and peeked over the ridgeline. Half a dozen armored personnel carriers were assembling in a line behind the crest of the ridge. She could see tracked vehicles with heavy gun mounts. Sherji — she guessed at least a hundred — were fanning out ahead of the APCs, taking up positions behind boulders and shrubs. They were spreading camouflage nets over the mobile guns.

She saw something else — movement on the slope directly below her.

Not all the Sherji were digging in. A platoon-sized group was scurrying up the slope of the ridge where she lay hidden.

B.J. fought back the panic that was seizing her. She wanted to jump up and run like a jackrabbit. Get the hell out of here. Flee, bolt down the hillside, race across the clearing.

Brilliant, she thought. Really cool. They’ll shoot you before you’ve gone a hundred yards.

She stayed crouched while she scuttled down the back side of the ridge, away from the advancing Sherji. At the base of the ridge, she entered a narrow ravine, sheltered on each side by a growth of prickly shrubs.

Staying low, she put another quarter mile between herself and the concentration of Sherji.

The sound of the incoming helos was nearby, thrumming against the hills like the beat of a primitive instrument.

They were sitting ducks. Al-Fasr knew they were coming. And where.

She looked at the useless PRC-112 radio. She should have known. They had captured the radios and maps from the Tomcatters. The bastards knew everything the SAR team knew.

A wave of rage swept over her. Technology! Brilliant fucking high-tech devices that don’t work when you need them, and when they do work, they help the enemy more than us.

In a fit of rage, she banged the dead radio — whap — against the edge of a boulder.

Instantly, she felt silly. It was childish, acting like a kid who lost her candy. But hell, it did make her feel better. Now she could just toss the thing and —

She heard a familiar noise.

Hissing. It was coming from the radio. The little red power light was on again.

“Go! Go! Go!” yelled the master sergeant.

One after the other the marines spilled out the aft cargo door of the Super Stallion. The last out was Colonel Gritti, with Master Sergeant Plunkett trotting along beside him. They kept running until they had reached the shelter of the trees at the edge of the clearing.

Gritti stopped and looked back. Across the clearing, he saw the other Super Stallion discharging its load of marines. Hauling their hundred-pound packs, the marines were fanning out around the landing zone. After they’d secured a perimeter, they would send out search patrols while the Cobras flew cover.

It was a hell of an LZ, Gritti observed. It happened to be the only open spot remotely close to the last position reported by Yankee Two. The clearing had enough rocks and shrubs to make it damned difficult for the pilots. The pilot of his own CH-53E had managed to settle directly over a bathtub-sized boulder, ripping a hole in the belly and inflicting God-knew-what damage to cables and plumbing.

At least they had landed, which permitted the marines to hit the ground quickly instead of fast-roping out of a hovering chopper. They could reboard and get the hell out just as quickly.

Overhead, he saw the Cobra gunships sweeping the area while the marines established the perimeter. Gritti signaled for the communications specialist, a corporal named Oberhof, to bring the PRC-117D Manpack transceiver.

Gritti barked into the mouthpiece of the radio, “Roscoe, this is Boomer. Any sign of our customer?”

“Roscoe One, nothing yet,” came the voice of the lead Cobra pilot.

“No joy from Roscoe Two,” called the second Cobra pilot.

Where the hell was Yankee Two? Gritti wondered. If she had popped smoke to mark her position, they could have been in and out in minutes, mission accomplished. Now they had to do it the hard way.

Gritti was getting an uneasy feeling. It was a bad sign that they’d gotten no more radio transmissions from the downed pilot. Now that they were in the pickup zone, they were seeing no smoke, no flares, no sign of Yankee Two.

“Boomer, Roscoe Two,” called the second Cobra. “I’m gonna fly directly over Yankee Two’s grid coordinates and check it out.”

“Boomer copies.” Gritti had just released the transmit button when he noticed something. “What the hell is that?”

He rose to his feet, staring at the apparition. Plunkett was staring too.

Something rising from behind the ridge — an erratic, wispy smoke trail, curling into the sky. Toward the Cobra gunship.

“Goddammit!” Gritti mashed hard on the transmit key again. “Roscoe Two, you’re targeted. Flares! Flares!”

The Cobra pilot heard the warning. A luminescent stream of glowing fireballs appeared in the wake of the gunship. By now the pilot had seen the threat coming toward him. He banked the Cobra hard to the right, dropping the nose, diving for the ground.

Too late.

Whump! The missile hit the helicopter amidships.

Gritti watched, transfixed, as the Cobra buckled in the middle like a smashed beer can. It tumbled end over end to the earth, then exploded in a sheet of flame that covered the hillside.

Gritti had no time to react. In the next instant he heard the staccato rattle of automatic weapons fire. He whirled, trying to locate the source of the firing. It came from across the clearing, from the rocks and trees where his troops were setting up the perimeter.

A burst of automatic fire kicked up the dirt five feet from where he stood.

He dived for cover. Plunkett was doing his own version of the belly crawl toward the nearby boulders. The sound of gunfire was spreading, a mixed clatter of automatic weapons. He picked out the distinctive three-round bursts of the marines’ M16A2 combat rifles. It was interspersed with an intermittent crackle — Kalashnikov AK-47s. Lots of them, judging by the sheer intensity of the gunfire.

The firefight was spreading, the gunfire becoming more intense. Rounds whined overhead, pinging into the rocks, shredding the skinny shrubs on the hillside. From just inside the tree line, thirty yards away, Gritti heard the angry brrrrrrrrp of a submachine gun — one of their own Heckler & Koch MP-5N nine-millimeters, a short-range weapon used for close-in fighting.

Gritti crawled over to where Plunkett was huddled. “Get an assessment, Master Sergeant. Where are they and how many? Have we secured the perimeter?”

Plunkett nodded and grabbed his own transceiver, calling the team’s squad leaders.

A hundred yards away, the other Cobra was in a low-level run on a target behind the ridge. As Gritti watched, a torrent of LAU-68 rockets belched from the inboard pylon. With luck the Cobra could hold them off while they got the perimeter nailed down.

He called the pilot, a captain named MacKenzie. “Roscoe One, this is Boomer. What are we up against, Mac?”

“An old fashioned ambush, Boomer. At least a hundred gomers are dug in here on the two western quadrants. Maybe more. Looks like they got some light armor under nets, which I’m trying to — Whoops, hang on a sec. I’ve got a problem here.”

While Gritti watched, the helo pulled up from its attack and veered back toward the clearing. A cloud of gray smoke streamed from the gunship’s turbine exhaust.

“We just took hits,” MacKenzie called. “Red lights are coming on all over the panel. We gotta get back inside the perimeter.”

The Cobra wheeled, dipped its nose, and lurched toward the clearing. Bullets pinged into the fuselage as the stricken helicopter heaved itself up over a final clump of boulders. Losing power quickly, the gunship settled toward an open space in the clearing. As the Cobra’s slowly rotating blades expended the last of their energy, the helicopter smacked down hard.

Gritti winced as the sound of the landing carried across the clearing. A geyser of dirt and smoke and broken metal cascaded into the air. The blades drooped like broken wings over the shattered fuselage. The skids splayed outward, nearly flattened from the hard landing.

While the cloud of debris was still settling, Gritti saw a cluster of marines pulling the crew out of the wrecked helicopter.

“MacKenzie’s okay, just shook up from the landing,” Plunkett reported. “The gunner, Sergeant Porter, was killed by an incoming round.”

Gritti nodded. The Cobra gunships were not only his close air support, they were his tactical reconnaissance assets. Now he had lost them, with three of the four crewmen killed. The mission was turning into a disaster. What else could go to hell?

In the next few seconds, he knew.

Kabooom! An ugly brown mushroom exploded in the clearing, sending pieces of shrapnel whizzing over Gritti’s head.

Another. Kabooom!

Mortars. Another round exploded, this one twenty yards from the nearest CH-53E.

They were finding the range.

“Launch the helos,” Gritti barked at Plunkett. “Get the Stallions out of here.”

The master sergeant stared at him for a second. “Colonel, those choppers are our only transport out of this place.”

“They’ll be dog meat in half a minute. Tell the pilots to get clear. Find a place to loiter until we get this thing stabilized.”

Plunkett nodded unhappily, then turned back to his radio.

In seconds, the blades of the big cargo helicopters were kicking up minitornadoes of whirling dirt. The first one — the Super Stallion that Gritti had arrived in — lifted and tilted to a nose-down attitude. Free of its load of troops and equipment, the powerful chopper accelerated quickly across the open clearing and away from the firefight.

The second Stallion was lifting, still transitioning to forward flight, when the next mortar round arrived.

Ka-whoom! The incoming round took off the tail boom. Without its tail rotor, the machine whirled out of control. The nose tipped forward, and its long refueling probe dug into the earth. Slowly, majestically, the chopper pirouetted around the stuck boom, tail high, rotating until it came back down on its port side.

Another geyser of dirt and smoke and broken metal. Pieces of the shattered rotor blades slashed across the clearing like rapier blades. Black smoke and dirt billowed from the hulk of the destroyed helicopter. Fire gushed from the ruptured fuel tanks. Within seconds the Super Stallion was transformed to a fountain of orange flame.

From a hundred yards away, Gritti could feel the intense heat of the blaze. None of the crew — pilot, copilot, crew chief — emerged from the wreck. The big helicopter was a burning inferno.

Stunned, he stared at the calamity. It was a marine commander’s worst nightmare. They were in Indian country, cut off and surrounded.

He toggled the channel selector on the UHF TACSAT radio back to the command frequency. “Warlord, do you read Boomer?”

“What’s your status, Boomer?” answered Vitale aboard the Reagan. “We’ve lost datalink on your escort aircraft. Have you made contact with Yankee Two?”

“Three of my aircraft are destroyed. Negative contact with Yankee Two. For your information, we are engaged at close range. We need close air now. Do you copy that?”

A silence of several seconds passed. Gritti could hear the rattle of automatic fire coming from all sides of the clearing. He knew that Vitale was discussing the situation with the Battle Group Commander.

Another mortar round exploded in the clearing. Pieces of shrapnel zinged over Gritti’s head.

“Negative, Boomer. Same rules of engagement. The Hornets will provide high cover only.”

Gritti stared at the transceiver. He had heard wrong. He must have heard wrong, because not even the Navy could be that fucked up. “Warlord, for clarification, I repeat, we are defensive.” Gritti heard the rage building in his voice, and he didn’t care. He was losing marines while this idiotic conversation took place. “We are surrounded, and the enemy has armor and artillery. We need close air support, and I mean very fucking close. Do you copy that?”

Another silence. Gritti could visualize the scene in CIC. Vitale explaining the situation to Fletcher. Fletcher covering his ass, waiting for a decision from up the chain. Babcock, the thumb-up-his-ass civilian, presiding over the gathering like Lord Nelson.

While Gritti waited, he heard a burst of automatic fire not more than thirty yards away. It was the distinctive hollow crackle of a Kalashnikov. If the cavalry was ever to come charging to the rescue, he thought, this would be a hell of a good time.

“Sorry, Boomer,” he heard Vitale say over the command channel. “The rules of engagement stand.”