Acts of Vengeance

CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE BATTLE JOINED

Gritti listened to the sharp exchanges of automatic fire, trying to distinguish the staccato sound of M249 SAWs — Squad Automatic Weapons — from the intermittent crackle of the Kalashnikovs. The smoke blanket was drifting southward, still obscuring the hillside where his three fire teams had penetrated the Sherji positions.

He motioned to Master Sergeant Plunkett. “Who’s firing the SAWs?”

Plunkett knelt next to Gritti. “The first fire team. Corporal Ricci reports a clean hit, maybe twenty Sherji down.”

“Pull ’em back, set up again a hundred yards north. What’s going on with second and third?”

“Nothing. They’re still under the smoke, no enemy contact.”

Before Gritti could answer, he heard the muffled bark from the fifty-caliber Barrett sniper rifle. It meant the snipers were finding targets. If they could spread a little fear and confusion, the Sherji’s interest in overrunning the perimeter might be dampened. And if the fire teams were successful in ambushing the advancing enemy, the marines still had a chance of holding out until darkness.

He heard another rapid exchange of automatic fire, this time more AK-47 than SAW. That was a bad sign. The bastards were shooting back, probably at real targets. The advantage of surprise hadn’t lasted long.

From beneath the smoke blanket came a long burst of M249 fire. “That’s third fire team,” said Plunkett, listening to the brittle sound of the automatic gun. “Hitting the right flank of the main force.”

Gritti nodded and pointed with his hand toward the hillside. “The smoke’s drifting to the east.” They had only a few more minutes before the fire teams were exposed. “Advance the next three fire teams past the perimeter. We have to bottle them up while we’ve still got cover.”

It was a hell of a gamble. He would have half his available marines outside the perimeter, dispersed inside the enemy’s advancing troops. He was counting on the Sherji’s being unprepared for a counterattack.

Another long rattle of automatic fire came from the hillside, answered by a crackle of individual bursts.

“D team’s not answering, Colonel. A is under fire. B is pinned down, in the open now. They say the Sherji are moving up maybe a battalion-sized force, going straight for the perimeter.”

“Have we got more smoke?”

“No, sir. We used everything we had.”

“Okay, we’ll try to pincer them, put teams on either side.” He saw Plunkett’s dubious look. “Well? Damn it, Master Sergeant, speak up if you’ve got a better idea.”

“No better idea. I was wondering how long you think we can hold out before…” He left the thought unfinished.

“Before we run up the white flag?”

Plunkett nodded.

Gritti peered back out at the hillside. Long wisps of smoke were drifting eastward, leaving the terrain naked and exposed. He heard another sharp exchange of automatic fire. It wouldn’t take much, he thought. If he just had another company, he could chase these assholes right back to their hooches.

But he didn’t. So what was he trying to prove? Was he prepared to sacrifice fifty brave young men to demonstrate that they could die like marines?

He felt Plunkett looking at him. “When we can’t hold out any longer, Master Sergeant. Until then we fight.”

“Runner One-one,” came the voice of Guido Vitale. “You’re cleared to push.”

Maxwell acknowledged. He and his first flight of Hornets were cleared inbound to the target area.

“No joy from Boomer,” said Vitale. “We think it’s his batteries. Since you won’t have forward air control from the ground, the Cobras will mark targets.”

“Runner One-one copies.”

Without a forward air controller in position, spotting targets would be tough. The FAC was inbound to the target area, aboard one of the CH-53Es in the assault force. Until he was set up, they depended on what the Cobra pilot spotted. And on what they saw from their own cockpits.

The battle line ran roughly east to west. From the previous strike, Maxwell had already gotten a look at the marine perimeter. The toughest job was distinguishing the Sherji positions from the friendlies.

He had three divisions, four Hornets to a division. Each jet carried twelve M20 Rockeye canisters, as well as a standard load of AIM-9 and AIM-120 air-to-air missiles and a full load of twenty millimeter. They no longer had an altitude floor. They could come in as low as they needed.

He punched his elapsed timer and rolled the Hornet into a turn toward the target area. Thirty seconds behind him, his wingman, Pearly Gates, would push. Every thirty seconds, another Hornet would head for the target. A steady rain of cluster bombs was on its way to support the marines.

He hoped they were still there.

Armor.

Gritti felt a chill run through him. It was the news he feared most.

Plunkett confirmed it. “Yes, sir. Three light AVs. A team just reported contact. They’re coming out of cover and heading up the hill.”

Gritti ran his hand over the stubble on his jaw, feeling the fatigue, resisting the despair that hung over him. If the tanks reached the perimeter, it was all over. With armor running interference for the Sherji, they would roll over the marines’ position on the hill.

A fully equipped marine unit would have an antitank platoon with TOW missiles — tube launched, optically tracked, wire-guided weapons that could convert tanks to scrap metal. But he had come with a TRAP team whose single mission was the rescue of downed pilots. For that purpose they had grenades, M203 grenade launchers, and a handful of mortars. Useful weapons against infantry; damned near useless against tanks.

“We pick a fire zone where the tanks have to pass. We’ll use what’s left of the mortars and grenade launchers. It’s our only shot.”

Plunkett nodded and began barking the instructions. In midsentence he stopped. “Too late, Colonel. They’re already here.”

So they were. Gritti could see them, a column of three armored vehicles, charging out of cover three hundred yards away. A rooster tail of dirt spewed up behind each vehicle.

“Ready with the grenade launchers. Maybe we can slow them down while we get the forward fire teams back.”

While Plunkett passed the new orders, Gritti’s mind was racing, trying to come up with a new plan. It no longer made sense to stand and defend an indefensible position. They would have to fall back, retreat through terrain the tanks couldn’t handle. But he couldn’t abandon the fire teams who were already behind the enemy’s front positions. The Sherji would hunt them down like wild game.

Shit! Some commander he was. Why hadn’t he anticipated the tanks? Why hadn’t the goddamned wind stayed calm so the smoke would last? His TRAP team was about to be converted into a dozen isolated fire teams.

On top of everything else, his radio — the piece-of-shit PRC-117 UHF that was supposed to keep him satellite-linked with his commanders — was dead as a rock. The batteries were drained.

Gritti turned his attention again to the oncoming tanks. The first was winding its way down a terraced hillside. Trotting along in its wake was a platoon-sized group of Sherji, carrying their AK-47s. The vehicles would be in firing range in another fifty yards. When they were close enough —

Boom! Boom! Boom! The earth around the tank erupted in plumes of dirt. The tank exploded.

Gritti stared in astonishment. It took his fatigued mind several seconds to understand. Then he saw the twin tailpipes, the canted vertical stabilizers of a jet swooping low over the destroyed tank.

Half a minute later, more explosions.

Boom! Boom! Boom! The earth erupted ten feet in front of the second tank.

As the tank veered around the destroyed lead vehicle, a bomb took out the third tank. An oily ball of fire mushroomed upward from the destroyed tank.

Another twin-finned fighter swept overhead. One after the other, long-nosed, stubby-winged F/A-18s raked the Sherji positions with cluster bombs. As Gritti watched, the surviving tank backed up, reversed course, and was clanking at high speed toward the canopy cover from which it had emerged.

Another near-miss. A bomb hit three feet from the tank’s left side, kicking it sideways, destroying its left track. Seconds later the hatch flew open. The crippled tank’s three-man crew bailed out and ran pell-mell across the exposed hillside. Twenty yards from the low scrub brush, they were cut down by a hail of automatic fire.

“That’s Corporal Brady’s team earning their pay,” said Plunkett, watching the action with his glasses.

“Get the fire teams back to the perimeter,” Gritti ordered. “They have to get out of the way of the bombers.”

While Plunkett issued the instructions, Gritti heard something else — a familiar beating noise above the din of the explosions and the roar of the jets.

Rotor blades. Whopping, thrashing the air, coming from the south. A beautiful sound.

Gritti and Plunkett looked at each other. Each wore a two-day stubble of beard. A layer of grime and camo paint covered their faces. Their eyes were red-rimmed with fatigue and stress.

“Master Sergeant,” Gritti said, “it appears that the cavalry may be on its way.”

“About damn time, sir.”

The beat of the rotor blades swelled in intensity. A pair of Whiskey Cobras popped over the southern ridgeline, their noses low, the chin-mounted rotary cannons swiveling from side to side looking for targets. A second pair appeared behind them. As the Cobras swept over the marines’ perimeter, the brittle roar of the high-velocity cannon drowned out the other battle noises. From the lead Cobra’s inboard pylon a salvo of 2.75-inch rockets screeched toward a gun position in the trees. A geyser of flame and debris gushed upward from the foliage.

A deeper throbbing sound pounded on Gritti’s eardrums. Behind another pair of protective Whiskey Cobras appeared the CH-53E Super Stallions. Three of the cargo helicopters were hauling swing loads — fighting vehicles suspended in slings beneath the aircraft.

Gritti tried to count the helos. He couldn’t. They kept coming, one wave behind the other.

“Jesus,” said Plunkett, staring at the apparition. “It looks like Apocalypse Now.”

Gritti nodded. He could feel the throb of the blades all the way up through the soles of his boots. Marines were fast-roping out of the hovering craft. The Stallions with the swing loads were lowering the heavy vehicles to the earth.

So far, Gritti observed, no SAMs. No fireballs from destroyed helicopters. No mortars being lobbed into the perimeter. The heavy guns of the Sherji had fallen silent. He liked the way this was going.

His ambush teams were making their way back. The first wave of the assault force was entering the southern perimeter. Gritti heard the deep chuffing of diesel engines, and seconds later a pair of LAV-25s — light armored vehicles — rumbled over the ridgeline and into the perimeter.

In trail behind the two light tanks appeared an HMMWV Hummer. As Gritti rose to his feet, the Hummer rolled across the clearing and ground to a halt.

From the right seat of the vehicle emerged Lt. Col. Aubrey Hewlitt, Gritti’s executive officer and second-in-command of the 43rd Marine Expeditionary Unit. He wore perfectly starched desert-camo BDUs, a sidearm, and the ubiquitous Fritz helmet.

Hewlitt peered at Gritti, unsure of what he was seeing.

“What the hell are you staring at?” said Gritti.

Recognizing his boss’s voice, Hewlitt stared. “Sorry, Colonel.” He stared for another second. “If you’ll pardon my saying so, sir, you look like shit.”

It was too good to last, thought Maxwell. Something always happened that you didn’t expect.

Now it was happening. “Runner One-one, pop-up contact! Snap vector, bearing 345, twenty, low, in the weeds.”

The warning came from the E-2C Hawkeye — the turbo-prop airborne early warning aircraft — deployed in an orbit twenty miles south of the Yemeni coastline.

Fulcrums again? From where? Had they somehow gotten across the Red Sea from Eritrea or Chad? How did they arrive undetected?

They didn’t, he decided. They would have been picked up by the Hawkeye. These guys were locals.

“Bogeys bearing 330, fifteen, weeds.”

Maxwell still had no ID on them. Bogeys or bandits? Bogeys were unidentified, while bandits were bona fide, no-shit hostiles. They had to be bandits if they were coming in low from the north.

If they waited any longer for an ID, it would be too late. They were already within missile range.

“Runner flight, jettison stores,” Maxwell called on the tactical frequency. He hit the emergency jettison button and felt a whump through the Hornet’s airframe as his remaining Rockeye containers and the centerline external fuel tank were punched away. The Super Hornet was no longer a lumbering bomber. It was a slick-winged fighter.

They were low, still pulling up from a pass on the Sherji positions. Above and behind were Leroi Jones and Flash Gordon, about to roll in on ground targets.

The bogeys were coming in on the deck, fifteen miles away, head-on. The merge would come in less than a minute.

“Radar air-to-air.” Maxwell switched his APG-73 radar from bombing mode to air-to-air. Within a few sweeps of the radar, he saw an EID — electronic identification — on the incoming bogey. It was what he expected — a MiG-29.

Fulcrum.

He looked again. No, not just one bogey. Damn it, there are three more. “Four bandits, twelve o’clock, ten miles low,” called the controller in the Hawkeye, confirming Maxwell’s radar display.

His RWR shrieked a high-pitched warbling sound. He was being targeted by a Russian Slotback radar.

“Runner One-one spiked at twelve, defending!” he called, rolling his Hornet and pulling hard. He hoped Pearly was staying with him. “Runner One-two, press!” he called, giving the tactical lead to Pearly.

A classic setup. The MiGs were getting the first shot. His best chance to defeat the missile — he guessed that it was a radar-guided Alamo — was chaff, a cloud of radar-decoying aluminum foil.

Rolling back to the left, he saw it. Coming up at him, trailing a wisp of gray smoke, the missile was flying a classic pursuit curve. Toward Maxwell’s jet.

“Brick, break left!” Pearly Gates’s voice was urgent. “Bandit ten o’clock low.”

Maxwell swung his head — and there it was, the cobralike shape of the lead MiG-29 silhouetted against the landscape. The MiG was in a climbing turn toward him.

But he had a more immediate problem — the incoming Alamo. The missile was in a maximum-rate turn, arcing upward.

Another barrel roll to the left, pulling hard, seven Gs. The missile was closing on him, curving toward his tail.

Whoosh.

Straining under the heavy G load, he watched the Alamo sizzling past his tail, then felt the concussion as the proximity fuse exploded the warhead a hundred yards behind him.

How close? Maxwell braced, waiting for the same sickening sensation of two days before — loss of control, warning lights, engine fire.

“You okay, Brick?” asked Pearly Gates.

“I think so. Everything is still working.”

“Runner Two, Fox Three on the lead group trailer.”

“Take him. I’ve got the leader engaged.”

“Roger. Yo-yo. Runner One-one engaged defensive with the leader.” Pearly was on his own while Maxwell fought the lead Fulcrum.

“Runner One-three and — four have the trailers,” called Leroi Jones, leading the second section of Hornets. “We’re sorted.”

Maneuvering to defeat the Alamo had cost him airspeed. The lead MiG’s nose was pointed well inside Maxwell’s turn radius, gaining a precious angle on him.

The fighters passed, a hundred yards apart. As the desert-colored MiG swept past, Maxwell glimpsed the yellow helmet, a visored face watching him. Puffs of vapor were spilling off the MiG’s wings from the high G load.

Who is this guy? What was with the yellow helmet?

Was it Al-Fasr?

As the MiG passed behind his shoulder, Maxwell swung his head, keeping the fighter in sight. He hauled the nose up, up, then rolled toward the MiG.

The MiG’s nose came up, countering Maxwell. Climbing, the two fighters pulled back toward each other. Again they crossed, noses high.

Now what? Maxwell asked himself. In a one-vee-one with a MiG-29, there was no way out. The aging Russian fighter was as fast as a Hornet. If you tried to bug out, the MiG had a free shot at your tail.

Now he was in a turning fight with a Fulcrum. And the guy flying it was matching the Hornet move for move. Definitely not your average undertrained and demoralized MiG pilot who just wanted to save his ass.

It had to be Al-Fasr.