Airborne: A Guided Tour of an Airborne Task Force

Once again, I’m going to spin a couple of short yarns about just how units like the 82nd Airborne might ply their deadly trade in the real world of the future. To this end, we’re going to look a decade or so into the early years of the 21st century (yes, it really is that close!) at what kinds of things the paratroops from Fort Bragg might be asked to do. Interestingly, and unlike the other kinds of units that we have explored in other books in this series, the 82nd will probably keep doing the same jobs they have always done: peacekeeping, pre-invasion assaults, airfield raids. More difficult and involved jobs, and probably in new places around the globe, but still the same kinds of kick-in-the-door and bust-heads jobs that have been their specialty for over a half century. So read on, and see where and what the All-Americans of the 82nd Airborne may be up to in ten years or so.

Operation Fort Apache: Sudan, 2007

In the dusty courtyard outside the mosque, Hassan al-Mahdi stood flanked by members of his personal guard, watching men whirl to the beating of hand drums, their arms flung out for balance, their eyes closed, expressions of rapture on their faces as they sought oneness with Allah in the frenzied rhythms of the dhikr. Swirling loosely around their thin, ascetic bodies, the robes were blurs of color under a sky stained red with sunset, a deep bloodred that made al-Mahdi think of those whose path to God had demanded far more than spiritual exercises — those who had suffered the pain of martyrdom so that the Sudanese people might find their destiny. Earlier that day, a decision made by al-Mahdi in Khartoum had thrust them further toward that destiny than anyone outside his ruling council could have imagined.

His brown, almost black eyes narrowed in the fading light, al-Mahdi rubbed his fingers over his ritually scarred cheeks and reflected on the pivotal meeting that had taken place in the nation’s capital across the confluence of the Blue and White Niles. He was aware of his persuasive leadership abilities, and knew that without his will, his vision, the Islamic Leadership Council (ILC) would never have embarked upon the course they had chosen, never have called for a campaign of open hostilities against the West. However, he was not too proud to acknowledge that every great harvest originated with the planting of small seeds. His success today owed much to the efforts of his predecessors.

For years the Sudan had been quietly increasing its power and standing within the Middle East and Persian Gulf regions. Its rise had begun with the institution of Muslim shari’a law two decades before, and continued throughout the 1990s with radical economic reforms and the cleansing of non-Muslims in the rebellious south.

Also during that period, the Sudanese rulers had strengthened their ties with other Sufist regimes, sponsoring anti-Egyptian guerrillas in the northern border territories, smuggling foodstuffs and other supplies to Iraq during the interminable period of United Nations sanctions, firmly aligning themselves with Yemen and Iran in their campaign to excise the cancerous influence of the West from Arab politics and society.

At the same time, the Sudan had lured private European and Canadian financiers into investing in the development of its petroleum fields like a cobra doing a subtle dance to confound and draw its prey. Now that Western money, technology, engineers, and laborers had given the Sudanese people the means to extract and process the oil — enough oil to satisfy their needs for at least another decade — the infidels finally could be sent packing.

Hassan al-Mahdi had waited long for this day. A distant descendant of Mohammed Ahmad — the great Sudanese warrior who in the 19th century led a holy war against European colonialists, laid siege to Khartoum, and displayed its British governor’s head on a pole for all his troops to see — al-Mahdi had since childhood been filled with a sense of exalted and inexorable mission. While still shy of his thirtieth birthday, al-Mahdi had united his country’s two most powerful religious movements, the Ansar and the Ikhwan al-Muslimeen, under his sole authority, and convinced the tribal chieftains to proclaim him as their Mahdi, or messenger of God. Three years ago, he had wrested control of the military government in a swift and bloody coup, selected sympathetic generals from the former regime to command his army, launched a vigorous effort to improve his country’s economic infrastructure, and used the tax profits to increase his backing of anti-Western militias.

Now the culmination of al-Mahdi’s plans was at hand. At the council gathering that had ended not an hour ago, he had won approval for a positive campaign of harassment of Western — and especially American — nationals in Khartoum.

For the present, it was essential that these incidents appeared to be random outbursts of mob violence rather than orchestrated assaults. This would not only give the Sudanese government deniability, but allow it to express righteous outrage at the charges America was bound to raise in the United Nations. As long as the godless mongrels were unable to bolster their claims with definitive proof, any retaliatory steps they took could be labeled as acts of aggression. How would it appear to the international community if they sent military planes and warships against the will of righteous street fighters? Surely then, whatever response the Sudan initiated in its defense might be considered justifiable.

No matter how events unfolded, America and its allies would find themselves in an untenable position. At the very least, their citizens would have to flee the Sudan with their tails between their legs and their flags stuffed in their pockets. And if they were goaded into open hostilities, flare-ups of anti-Western violence would spread throughout the region like chain lightning, prompting further diplomatic and civilian withdrawals. Eventually the hordes of foreigners would return to their own lands, and the balance of power in the Arab domains would shift to those who remained faithful to the word of Allah.

Now al-Mahdi nodded to his guards, signaling he was ready to depart. Dusk had settled over the field and the circle of dust-blown men had nearly lost its cohesion, dissolving like a group of celestial objects that had been pushed out of orbit. Most of the elder devotees had succumbed to fatigue, while their youthful initiates dizzily spun out the remaining moments to nightfall. Al-Mahdi wondered if any of them had found the detachment from worldly concerns — the communion with Allah — that the ceremony was meant to bring about. As a youth he had occasionally joined in, but he had never been able to abandon himself to the delirious movement, and such bliss had always remained elusive. For him, the path to God was best attained through action.

The rusty tour bus coughed and wheezed down the avenue like an asthmatic dinosaur, moving past strings of cheap restaurants, banks, travel offices, and dreary government buildings whose sagging arcades hearkened back to the captive prosperity of British colonial rule. Ragged beggars, mostly displaced Nuer tribesmen from the south, crowded the bus route, dozens of them shambling through the souq shaabi, or “people market,” where the group of thirty American and European passengers had boarded. Others were drowsing in the solid, shadeless noonday heat.

This particular bus was scheduled to make four stops: the old Khartoum zoo, the National Museum, Morgan Family Park, and, for those willing to wait on endless lines for a stamp or sporadic fax service, the post office. Every one of the so-called tourist attractions was as cheerless as the populace. At the zoo a smattering of mangy lions, sad-eyed hippopotami, and blighted crocodiles baked in cramped, unattended cages. Half the rides in the amusement park were out of commission, and the rest just seemed to creak along like tired old men who could hardly wait to be free of their long and burdensome existences. With its ancient artifacts and reconstructed Egyptian temples, the museum alone could have been considered a true attraction for foreign visitors. Today, though, was Monday, and according to the brochures it was only open from Tuesday to Sunday.

Perhaps a quarter mile from the start of its route, the bus lumbered into a small, cobbled square that marked the intersection of Sharia al-Gama’a and Sharia al-Muk. Just ahead was the sprawling People’s Palace, behind whose sunbaked walls hundreds of administrative officials added their weight to the massive government bureaucracy. The bus driver slowed, squinting out of the dust-caked windshield. A small knot of local men in sandals and loose-fitting white jalabiyyas had gathered in the middle of the square, directly in the path of the bus. Frowning, the driver slapped the horn with his meaty palm to get them to scatter. Instead, perhaps five of the younger men began walking towards the bus, shouting insults at its passengers in Arabic.

The driver leaned his head out the window. “Out of the way!” he yelled. Almost before the words left his mouth, he saw that several of the men were carrying metal pipes. Nor was that all the driver noticed. As the noisy group moved forward, he spotted a makeshift roadblock less than ten feet/three meters behind where they’d been standing when the bus had first rolled into the square. Although it was little more than a pile of wood and twisted scrap metal, the barricade extended from one side of the street to the other, and would be impossible to bypass. His eyes widened with alarm. Over the last few weeks there had been increasing tension between the native inhabitants of Khartoum and Western travelers. Ostensibly, the cause had been an incident or two that had involved street gangs hurling threats at tourists, and in one case picking a fight that resulted in minor injury to the visiting son of an American agriculturalist. But these outbursts had seemed to have no connection with each other, other than the basic anti-Western sentiments shared by many locals, and after the obligatory diplomatic protests, things had quieted down.

For his own part, the driver harbored no particular ill feelings toward the Westerners, since he earned his living off them. But he was not going to risk life and limb by staying in the bus with the mob closing in. Jerking the gear shift into park, he sprang off his frayed bucket seat and pushed out his door, shouting praises to Allah at the top of his lungs, leaving his passengers to fend for themselves. Within moments the angry, cursing men were streaming around the bus, battering it with their clubs. Metal buckled under their furious pounding. Windows shattered. One of the men pulled a small automatic handgun from under his gown and shot out all the tires. Inside the bus, passengers were screaming in panic and confusion, some badly cut from the explosive sprays of glass while others crouched in their seats with their hands folded protectively over their heads. One old man clutched his chest in pain, groaned and then spilled limply to the floor mat. A young woman pulled a dazed, crying little girl in a blood-soaked dress to her breast. All were certain the howling mob would tear them apart if they tried to escape.

Now the bus began to rock and sway, the axles creaking as the robed mob gathered on the driver’s side and began shoving themselves against it in unison, leveraging it with their hands and shoulders. The left wheels lifted off the ground, bumped back down, lifted again and dropped again. Then, with the bus tilting farther to the right with each concerted push from the mob, it finally overturned amid the tortured grating of metal and helpless shrieks of the people trapped inside. One member of the mob had pulled a video camera from under his gown, steadied it on his shoulder, and caught the entire scene on tape. Twenty minutes later the recording would reach the barracks of his militia leader. An hour after that a copy would be given to Hassan al-Mahdi, who viewed it on a large-screen television in his sumptuous palace quarters, thinking it would play very well indeed, once it fell into the hands of the American media.

The newscasters were calling it the Valentine’s Day massacre: a mob attack on a tour bus that had left twenty of the Western sightseers aboard dead, and the remainder seriously injured. More than half of the fatalities had been Americans. Four were young children. In his residential quarters in the U.S. embassy compound, Neville Diamond, American ambassador to the Sudanese Republic, reached for his remote and clicked off the television set, cursing the “talking head” anchorman as he blinked into the void of its darkened screen. Enough was enough, he thought. CNN had been running the video footage of the tragedy day and night since an “unnamed source” had delivered it to the network’s Middle Eastern office. Running it until the sounds and images had become indelibly imprinted in the minds of viewers around the globe. The bus toppling over. Passengers screaming, their terrified faces visible through the smashed windows. And then the spurt of flame from the gas tank just before the booming explosion… Reporters were having a field day with the story, and somebody at CNN had even come up with a goddamn theme song to play whenever they repeated it.

Enough. Within hours of the incident — it seemed a pale, almost obscenely inadequate word to Diamond when you were talking about innocent people who’d been reduced to charred, mangled corpses. An incident? But that was what diplomats were supposed to call such things, wasn’t it? The British, French, and Germans had closed down their embassies and evacuated their staffs, simply packed up their troubles in the old kit bag and left the country. Only the U.S. had kept its diplomatic facilities open. It wasn’t a matter of holding the line because of principle or politics, although both had been factors in the decision. To pull out would be an acknowledgment of the complete disintegration of international relations with the largest country on the African continent, one that took up 2 % of the world’s total land surface and shared key strategic borders with nine other nations, Libya and Egypt among them. Human lives were the most important concern, however. There were perhaps two hundred non-American Western nationals currently within the borders of the Sudan. Businesspeople and their families, relief workers, students, travelers, even a handful of Greek and English expatriates whose families had arrived during the last years of the imperialist era. These foreign citizens would need a safe haven, and a portal out of the country should the political climate worsen. Without a friendly embassy as a fallback, they would be sitting ducks.

Diamond sighed wearily, checked his watch, and ran his palm back over his head to smooth a stray hair into place. Fifteen minutes until his meeting with the Sudanese Minister of State to discuss the possibilities for improving relations with the Western powers. He was not at all optimistic about its outcome.

“What do you mean the embassy is staying open?” al-Mahdi snarled, rising from his chair and slamming his fist down on the council table. Seated across from him, Minister of State Abdel-Ghani tried not to flinch.

“Just that, Highness. The American ambassador stated this to me unequivocally, citing his government’s benevolent intentions to help prevent us from becoming isolated in the world community. Due to the actions of a few renegade street thugs, as he put it.”

Al-Mahdi’s black eyes gleamed like chips of mica. “Diamond is a man of sophistication and experience. Surely he cannot be naive enough to believe the so-called thugs were acting without our council’s sanction.”

“He plays the typical American game, and it is pitifully transparent,” his senior advisor said from beside him. Ahmad Saabdulah was a wiry, compact man with thick black hair and hawkish features. “Everything is couched in moralistic rhetoric. They sit in our homeland and tell us what must be done for our own good, as if their national interests were of no consequence.”

“Perhaps we should clear the esteemed American consul of the impression that he continues to be welcome here,” al-Mahdi said. “In the most forceful way possible.”

There were seven ministers in the ILC. All were presently seated at the large circular conference table, watching al-Mahdi with intent faces. “I say we take the embassy,” he continued, his gaze briefly leveling on each minister as it passed around the table. “Much as our Iranian brothers did nearly three decades ago. Only we will not leave the operation to an unruly militia, but employ regular army troops to secure the compound.”

“You speak of an overt act of war,” Abdel-Ghani said. Uncertainty flickered in his eyes.

“These are the inmates of the fire and they shall abide in it,” al-Mahdi replied, quoting from the Koran. “Allah shall guide us to victory.” The ministers kept looking at him. “Are you all asleep, or does your silence mean we are in agreement?” he asked in a biting tone. “If we are, then let me see your hands.” Saabdulah’s arm came up first, rapidly followed by five more. Abdel-Ghani hesitated a moment, but then caught a sharp, meaningful look from his ruler and raised his hand. The vote, as always, was unanimous in al-Mahdi’s favor.

Ed Sanderson was what you’d call a meat-and-potatoes kind of guy To hell with his cholesterol count, just give him a juicy steak six nights a week, and a cheeseburger with fries on the seventh, and he’d be smiling. Oh, yes, easy on the seasonings too, please. A pinch of pepper, a sprinkle of salt, a dash of A-1 sauce would do him just fine. It was, Sanderson had always thought, an unfortunate irony that his culinary preferences and professional interests were so greatly at odds. As a renowned Middle Eastern expert, and the resident CIA station chief in Khartoum, he found himself sitting over a plate of fuul, a regional staple prepared from mashed beans and spices, far more often than a delectably fat-dripping hamburger. Likewise, he had a hard time getting hold of a good cup of his favorite Western-style coffee, Maxwell House or Chock Full O’ Nuts, with just a splash of milk and spoonful of sugar. In Khartoum your choices were limited to jebbana, a pitch-black brew heavily spiced with ginger and cinnamon, or the even tarrier, spicier Turkish blend called gahwa turki.

Now, sipping his jebbana from the unwieldy china bowl in which it had been served, Sanderson made a harder than usual effort to hide his distaste, concerned that his late-night visitor, the South African attaché, would mistakenly construe his sour expression as directed at him rather than the beverage. With the risk he’d taken tonight, Nathan Butto had once again proven himself to be a close friend and diplomatic ally. He was the last person on earth Sanderson wanted to offend.

“Nathan, what you’ve told me is incredible,” he said, and looked across his desk at the attaché. “Please understand, I personally have utmost faith in your information. But you must be aware that when I relay it to Langley and the State Department they’ll insist on being given the source.”

“Tell him what exactly I told you,” Butto said. “It came to me directly from a high-level minister in the Sudanese government. One who sits close to al-Mahdi’s right hand.”

“That as specific as you can be?”

Butto nodded. “My informant has already placed himself in great jeopardy. We both know that men have been tortured to death merely for expressing their disagreement with al-Mahdi’s opinion. He would be flayed alive in public if his identity were revealed.”

“For al-Mahdi to think he can overrun the embassy and get away with it, commit an act of flagrant aggression against the United States… it’s astonishing.”

“So you’ve already indicated, although I believe the word you used a minute ago was ‘incredible.’ ” Butto gave him a grim smile. “But in his mind he is both messiah and warlord.”

“And in mine he’s a delusionary sonovabitch,” Sanderson said. He raised his coffee to his lips, held it there a moment without taking another drink, and set it back down. “I’d better wake up Diamond, let him know the goddam jihad’s set to start in less than forty-eight hours,” he said, reaching for the phone on his desk.

“Indeed,” Butto said. “You say that with surprising accuracy.” Sanderson gave a grim smile in reply.

The President was used to working until all hours, having long ago given up trying to remedy his insomnia, deciding to instead put his restless nights to good use. On the other hand, the constellation of military advisors and cabinet officials in the briefing room with him — particularly the Secretaries of State and Defense — looked frazzled and overtired. Only the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs seemed to have all his burners lit, which said something for military discipline, now didn’t it?

“I still advise we get further confirmation of this leak before taking action of our own,” the Secretary of State was saying. “If we dispatch forces prematurely, and the Sudanese don’t move on the embassy, it’ll be more than a serious embarrassment to us. Every sheikhdom and caliphate in the region will be up in arms at our aggression against a sovereign Muslim state.”

The President shook his head vehemently. “I’m not waiting until the embassy’s been overrun and I have a hostage crisis on my hands. There are over three hundred U.S. personnel in the compound with their wives and kids included. Plus maybe a couple hundred citizens of Western nations who’ve gone there to seek refuge from armed gangs that have been running wild in the streets. These people have to be extracted.”

“I agree with you on principle,” the Secretary of Defense said, as the President had expected. Pick an issue and his view tended to be diametrically opposed to that of the Secretary of State. The two men were thick as thieves, however, their friendship seeming to thrive on argument. “My concern is the strategic difficulty of launching a rescue. It’s a sure thing we’re not going to get any help from other nations in the region.”

“Not even the Egyptians?” the President asked. “Their troops have been involved in border skirmishes with the Sudan for almost two decades.”

The Secretary of State shrugged. “True, but when push comes to shove, it’s sure to be the same old story. The Egyptian president’s got his own problems with terrorists and radical factions within his government. He won’t want to rile them over an issue that’s essentially got nothing to do with him.”

“Mr. President, I think we ought to look at shaking the mothballs off Operation Fort Apache.” This from General Richard Hancock, the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, who sat there rubbing his chin, a meditative expression on his face.

The President glanced at Hancock, gesturing with his hand for him to continue. “Fort Apache was cooked up in the nineties, but could have been tailor-made for the situation we’ve been discussing. It’s based on the idea that an airborne infantry battalion can be dropped into an urban area on or near a threatened or overrun embassy compound without external support from other nations.”

“Sounds to me like Charlie Beckwith’s old nightmare scenario,” the Secretary of State said.

“The extraction would be dicey, to say the least. We’d need to fly the choppers nonstop from the Red Sea to Khartoum and have them touch ground on a hot LZ,” the Defense Secretary said.

“That’s where the Osprey comes in. The MV-22Bs can do the job without any refueling, and three times faster than the old CH-46s or CH-53s. It’s agile, and, for all intents and purposes, self-deployable.”

“Which makes it ideal for plucking our evacs out of a brushfire,” the Secretary of Defense said.

“Exactly.” General Hancock sipped from the water glass at his elbow and then glanced at the Secretary of State. “You mentioned Colonel Beck-with a second ago. If he and the Delta Force had been given a piece of equipment like the Osprey at his disposal for Eagle Claw, the 1980 Iranian hostage rescue attempt might not have ended in a wash. Same goes for the Son Tay POW extraction ten years earlier.”

“Okay, let’s hear the rest,” the President said.

Hancock nodded. “Once the troopers have been delivered, they fight their way into the embassy, relieve and reinforce the Marine guard detachment, and then establish a perimeter around the compound. This done, they hold on until the helicopters of an offshore Marine Expeditionary Unit — Special Operations Capable [MEU (SOC]) can come into the compound and fly the evacuees to the waiting ships.”

“What about the paras?” the President asked. “Who gets them out after the people inside the embassy have been removed?”

“The troop evac’s been thoroughly integrated into the plan, sir. As the civilians are being taxied offshore, the airborne troopers and their Marine supporters will conduct what’s known as a ‘collapsing bag’ defense, tightening their perimeter with each successive relay of choppers, and finally exiting the area on the last relay wave.”

“There’s still the question of air support,” the Secretary of State said.

“I feel confident that the embarked MEU (SOC) will have what it takes to do the job,” Hancock said.

There was a sudden silence in the room. It stretched. At last the President looked at the Chairman and nodded soberly.

“Let’s get this train on track,” he said.

Long before dawn broke over the airfield, the “Green Ramp” assembly and aircraft-loading areas at Pope Air Force Base were alight with sodium lamps and bustling with activity, the readiness standard operating procedure (RSOP) moving along like clockwork. Indeed, like the gears and knobs of the famed Swiss clock against which the accuracy of all other timepieces are measured. As America’s quick-reaction ground force, the 82nd was trained and equipped to get a battalion task force ready for deployment to any corner of the world within eighteen hours of receiving its execute orders. These had come down by way of an encrypted redline telephone communication from a duty officer at XVIII Airborne Corps Headquarters, who had rushed to the emergency operations center to make the call after he received the classified message from a DoD courier.

The 82nd Division consists of three brigades, each of which remained on alert as the division ready brigade (DRB) for a standard six-week rotation. The DRB presently doing its tour was the 3rd Brigade (built around the 505th Parachute Infantry Regiment), and by N+1 (notification hour plus one) its commanding officers had hastily gathered in a briefing room and received the mission outline. The DRB always keeps one battalion, known as the Division Ready Force (DRF) on alert status. Today it was the 2nd Battalion of the 505th Parachute Infantry Regiment (2/505), and they were pegged for the drop into Khartoum. Two hours later, the 2/505th’s troops had rushed to a marshaling area in Fort Bragg to await the delivery of their urban camouflage BDUs and other equipment from nearby supply depots. Now Colonel Bill “Hurricane” Harrison, commander of the 2/505th, stood looking out over the tarmac of Pope Air Force Base, the complicated digital wristwatch his wife had gotten him for his birthday ticking off the minutes and hours till N+18. He was both un-characteristically tense and vastly impressed: the latter because of the seamless coordination of the procedures that were underway, the former because this would be his trial by fire, his first opportunity to lead his men into combat.

A hundred yards in front of him, a pair of big-bellied C-17A transports that had been flown in from the 437th Airlift Wing at Charleston AFB, South Carolina, were being loaded with cargo. Others assigned to carry the paratroops were already in the landing pattern. For tonight, the task force’s contingent of heavy lift was limited to a half dozen HMMWV “Hummers” armed with M2 machine guns and Mk. 19 40mm grenade launchers, and two M119 105mm Howitzers. Other than MANPADS Predator and Javelin anti-tank missiles, the soldiers themselves would carry only small-arms ammunition and a single day of rations and water. They would be moving swiftly and traveling light, the plan calling for them to drop into a soccer field near the Sharia al-Geish, or Ring Road, which swings around central Khartoum and comes within a half mile of the embassy. Once on the ground, they would then infiltrate the area around the embassy compound before anyone could raise a hue and cry. If all went well, they would complete the evac and be out of harm’s way within twelve hours of hitting the ground.

Hurricane watched the loading a while longer, then impatiently glanced at his wristwatch and frowned. Although it seemed as if an hour had crawled by since he’d last checked the time, it had, in actuality, been a whopping ten minutes. Time compression from the stress was taking effect. Taking a deep breath to slow things down, he jumped into his Hummer, driving from Green Ramp toward the marshaling area to inspect the troops. When he reached the area a few minutes later, he found the assembled paras outfitted, on their feet, and ready. Like Hurricane himself, they could hardly wait to be in the sky.

As he listened to his commanding officer, Lieutenant Colonel Wesley Jackson was having trouble deciding whether he’d walked under a figurative ladder or seen his lucky star the day he’d accepted command of HMM- 164, the Air Combat Element (ACE) for the 13th MEU (SOC). Seeing the six-month Indian Ocean tour as a golden opportunity for advancement, Jackson had accepted. Little had he known that he’d be flying into the middle of “bad-guy” country as a result of his decision.

“Our mission is to airlift the embassy personnel and refugees as the 2/505th defends the sector,” his CO was saying, his tone crisp and factual. Colonel Greg LeVardier pointed his laser pointer at a circled area on the digital map being projected behind him. “In addition, Echo Company will be deployed to reinforce the airborne battalion holding the perimeter. Fire support will be provided by artillery inside the…”

Jackson listened intently, the tiny down-curved thought lines forming at the edges of his mouth and eyes. Unlike the other Marines in the room, he took no written notes, a practice that would have brought a thorough and far-from-gentle reprimand from LeVardier had he been anyone else in the 13th. But Jackson’s blue-eyed good looks and athletic physique were only his most visible attributes, for he was also gifted with a unique eidetic memory that would allow him to retain everything that was said and done at the briefing in perfect detail. If the fact that he’d graduated Annapolis third in a class of seven hundred without ever jotting a word onto a sheet of paper hadn’t been proof enough of his infallible recall, LeVardier’s obliviousness to his lack of writing tools would have satisfied the most unyielding of skeptics.

“The third and final relay must be completed no later than 0800 hours,” LeVardier said, wrapping up. “Okay, that’s it. Any questions?” There were very few, and ten minutes later the soldiers rose from their desks and cleared the room, hastening to begin their preparations.

Flying low to evade the Sudanese air defense systems, the Globemaster III banked over the Drop Zone (DZ) beneath a sliver-thin crescent moon, having reached its destination three thousand miles and three aerial refuelings after takeoff. Braced in the jump door of the cargo compartment, Sergeant Vernon Martin, the flight’s jumpmaster, glanced down through the darkened sky, seeking the beacon lights of the cargo that had been dropped seconds earlier. His combat jacket flapped crisply around his body, and the combined roar of the wind and turbofans filled his ears. He grunted with satisfaction as his eyes picked out the pale orange glow of the lights far beneath him. Each piece of heavy equipment had begun its descent under twin twenty-eight-foot drogue parachutes, and had its earthward plunge further slowed by several big G-11X cargo chutes that had sprouted from the airdrop skids. The tiny beacons attached to the payload served a twofold purpose: They would help the paras avoid crashing into it when they touched down, and would make it easier to recover the vehicles and armament once the ready brigade was assembled on the ground.

Reassured that the vital gear had landed neatly within the soccer field’s perimeter, Martin cranked his head over his shoulder to see how the pre-jump sequence was going. At the “Ten Minutes Out” call, the troopers had stood up, raised their red seats, moved toward the jump doors in their cumbersome backpacks and T-10 parachutes, and clipped their static lines to the anchor cables that ran the length of the compartment. At “Five Minutes Out”—just before poking his head outside — Martin had given the command for each trooper to check his static line and the line of the man in front of him, backing it up with an arm-and-hand signal because of the loud drone of the aircraft’s engine. Now he tapped his chest with both hands, shouted his order for the equipment check, and watched the men begin looking over their gear from the head down, still holding the static lines, using their free hands to make sure everything from their helmet straps to their bootlaces were firmly secured.

“Sound off for equipment check!” he said after less than a minute, cupping his hands behind his ears.

“Okay!” the furthest para from the door called out, and slapped the man in front of him on the thigh. He, in turn, did the same to the next man forward. Lieutenant Everett Ives was first at the door, Sergeant Joe “Brooklyn” Blount behind him. Ives felt Blount tap him to indicate his equipment had made the grade, completed his own inspection, then turned toward the center aisle and gave the “okay” hand-signal to the last man on the inboard Chalk. The second Chalk repeated the procedure without missing a beat. Finally Corporal Tom Cousins, the first parachutist on that side of the aircraft, pointed to Martin and said, “All okay!”

Martin nodded approvingly and snatched another look outside. The sky was mercifully quiet, no trace of AAA fire disturbing the black of night, a strong indication the opposition remained clueless about the mission. Nor did Martin see any obstructions on the wings or fuselage that could foul the lines. A final downward glance reinforced his confidence. Bare of trees, stony outcroppings, and man-made structures, the level soccer field below made an ideal DZ — assuming that it was not surrounded by gun-toting American-hating fanatics. He turned back toward the men and simultaneously gestured to both port and starboard jump doors. “Stand by!” Ives and Cousins shuffled forward against the opposing shove of wind resistance and assumed identical stances of coiled alertness in the doors, their knees bent, upper bodies straight, eyes to the front.

Now the green light above the doors blinked on. This was it. “Go!” Martin shouted. A split-second before stepping into space, Joe Blount promised himself he’d down a whole pie at Vinnie’s Pizzeria on his next visit to Bensonhurst, just a little reward for a mission well done. Best pizza in the universe there at Vinnie’s. Have them pile everything on it and stand out on the sidewalk with the box, eat it right on 86th Street under the el, where John Travolta had strutted through the opening credits in that old flick, Saturday Night Fever. Stand there and gobble slice after slice until melted mozzarella and sauce were dripping from his nose and ears. Vinnie’s in Bensonhurst, a whole goddamn pie, yessiree. He sprang up and out into the North African sky, followed at one-second intervals by the other exiting troopers.

Sergeant Vernon Martin went over last, counting by thousands, seeing the parachutes below mushroom open as the aircraft’s slipstream whipped him toward its tail fin and his silk threaded out behind him. One thousand. Assuming the proper body position on trained reflex, he snapped his feet and legs together, knees locked, toes pointing toward the ground. His head was lowered, his chin tucked against his chest, and he counted silently,

“… two thousand, three thousand…”

Martin sailed downward, the earth rushing up with eye-blurring speed. Then he felt a terrific, wrenching shock through his entire frame, and knew the static line had released the T-1 °C from his pack. The chute inflated overhead, quickly slowing his descent. He reached up and grabbed his shoulder risers as he floated down, looked and saw Blount descending to the right under his own open chute. The kid was in trouble. His shroud lines had gotten twisted and he was falling with his back to the wind, a bad way to land. For a tense moment it looked as if he’d forgotten his training, and was trying to untangle his suspension lines with his hands. But then he began pedaling his legs as if he were riding a bicycle, grasping his risers behind his neck and pulling outward on each pair until the lines untwisted, “slipping” to avoid a collision with another jumper. He came down to earth with a smooth, practiced roll.

Martin got ready for his own landing. He released the rucksack clipped to his waist, and it fell away from him at the end of the retainer line, hitting the ground an instant before he did and absorbing some of the jarring impact. Then, holding the control toggles close to his face, he turned into the wind and went into his PLF sequence, twisting and bending his body so the shock of landing was distributed between his calf, thigh, rump, and the side of his back. Barely pausing to catch his breath, Martin spilled the air from his canopy, hit his quick-release snaps to disengage the parachute from his harness, and got to his feet. An instant later he was sprinting toward the rallying point.

There was a mission to accomplish and no time to waste.

Hoping he didn’t look as scared as he felt, Ambassador Neville Diamond let his eyes roam the gymnasium where five hundred human beings were packed together like cattle, their faces pale and sweaty in the abominably close quarters. Scant hours ago, Nathan Butto had slipped into the compound in the dead of night and met with Ed Sanderson, staying only long enough to deliver a brief but all-important communique he’d received from the American State Department: Cochise has left the village. It meant that the rescue team’s arrival was imminent. Sanderson had immediately rushed to Diamond’s quarters and told him to start rousing the occupants of the compound in preparation for the airlift. Within the hour, every last man, woman, and child had been hustled into the gym. A few of the children clutched dolls or favorite toys. Otherwise, they would leave with nothing but the clothes on their backs.

Diamond’s gaze lingered on a pretty little blonde girl across the crowded room who was clutching her mommy with one hand and a stuffed panda bear with the other. She looked sleepy, confused, and terribly vulnerable. Feeling his stomach tighten, he tore his eyes from the child and shifted his attention back to Sanderson, who stood beside him talking to the commander of the embassy’s small Marine guard detachment. The CIA station chief’s voice was low and deliberate. Controlled as ever. Having already briefed the guard on the evacuation plan, he was now underscoring the need to maintain calm and order among the civilians as the compound was vacated. Diamond thought that sounded fine. You sure as hell didn’t want anybody to panic and yell, “Fire!” so to speak. But then his gaze briefly wandered toward the puffy-eyed face of the little blonde girl, the face of his daughter Alissa, still clinging to her mother and her panda for dear life, and the tightness in his belly became a painful cramp. How calm could they expect her to be if fighting broke out? he wondered.

How calm would anyone be?

Minutes before the engagement began, Jamal Wahab was thinking about how much he hated Western foreigners, and Americans in particular. Hated their clothes, their language, their music, their food, hated everything about them. At twenty-four years old, he had never traveled outside the borders of his country, and rarely left the capital city, where he lived. He had been raised poor, the third eldest of seven children in a family where food had been scarce and material comfort was beyond even imagining. His father had eked out a meager living selling meat rolls on the street to Western oil company employees and their families. Those people had always had money enough to buy all the food they could eat, and all the comfort anyone could want. Those people had walked as if they owned the world, and Jamal Wahab had despised them for it. He was a simple man and knew little of politics. He had scarcely learned to read before his father died, and he’d left school to help support his younger brothers and sisters. As a teenager he’d joined the local militia and listened to his leaders call America the Great Satan and attribute their own nation’s problems to its decadent influence. And he had believed them. Jamal had, in short, needed someone to blame for circumstances he’d never understood.

Now, stealing toward the U.S. embassy in the predawn gloom, moving quickly with a squad of his brothers-in-arms, Jamal hefted his machine gun and wondered what it would feel like to kill an American. He had been told to fire only on the compound’s military guards and avoid harming civilians unless there was no other choice. But in his heart he knew that even if such an “unavoidable” situation didn’t arise during the takeover, he would make it come about. This morning he would kill an American. Perhaps one wearing the expensive clothes he’d always hated. Would such an act extinguish his burning rage or merely feed it? Only Allah knew. His nerves wound tight, Jamal hurried past the empty storefronts and no-name Eritrean restaurants lining the Sharia Pasha al-Mek, his close friend Ahmed racing along to his left, a big, rough-faced militiaman named Khalil to his right. All three men held their weapons at the ready.

They had come within a block of the embassy compound when Jamal saw the bulking HMMWV pulled against the curb near its side gate. Startled, he stopped running with a sharp intake of breath, grabbing hold of Ahmed’s shoulder. Though he did not specifically recognize it as such, there was a pintle-mounted Browning.50-caliber machine gun mounted on top of the Hummer’s roof. Its four-man crew wore black, gray, and white urban camouflage fatigues and carried M16A2 combat rifles, and their faces were smudged with black camouflage paint.

Jamal knew instantly these men weren’t embassy guards. Far from it. Somehow, the Americans had learned of the takeover and sent in forces to prevent it. “This area is off-limits,” one of the soldiers occupying the vehicle called out as he spotted the band of militiamen. The man standing in the gunner’s hatch swiveled the heavy machine gun in the group’s direction. “Halt and lay down your arms.”

Jamal looked at Ahmed, looked at Khalil, looked at his other comrades. “Show them how to die, brothers,” Khalil said in a harsh whisper. Jamal nodded, his heart pounding. Then, his hatred toward the Americans boiling up within him, he fingered the trigger of his gun and opened fire. Before he could hit anything, the Browning ratcheted out a short burst, the 50-caliber bullets cutting the front of his shirt to ragged shreds. He sagged to the ground in a shower of blood, his rifle turned uselessly skyward. Beside him, Khalil let out a whoop of suicidal defiance, reached into his pocket for a grenade, and was about to toss it at the Hummer when he too fell writhing in a hail of bullets. “Surrender your arms!” the American soldier warned the remaining attackers. Instead of obeying, they charged and were rapidly cut down. It was no contest.

The whole thing came down fast. The Sudanese militiamen knew nothing of tactics and had been relying largely on the element of surprise. Their plan, such as it was, had been to charge the compound at daylight and overwhelm a token contingent of Marine guards. Now they were running headlong into a battalion of crack American airborne troops armed with superior weapons and trained to conduct a tight, coordinated counterstrike. Despite their zeal and a considerable numerical advantage, they were over-matched and outfought with dispatch. Gunfire ripped through the awakening city for several hours after their attack commenced — occasionally punctuated by the flat thud of an exploding grenade — but by late morning the sounds of battle had almost ceased, and the scattered, decimated militia force had been run to ground.

The Sudanese losses were high, while the American casualties consisted of two troopers with superficial gunshot wounds, and Colonel Bill “Hurricane” Harrison had no difficulty holding his defensive perimeter. What he did was take a map, draw a two-block-wide circle around the compound, and declare everything within its radius to be under his temporary control, citing international rules of engagement that allowed the unlimited use of deadly force to safeguard an endangered embassy.

Needless to say, these developments did not sit well with Hassan al-Mahdi.

“This is worse than a defeat. We have been made to look like fools.” Al-Mahdi stood at the council table, fury storming across his features. “I will find out who alerted the Americans and deal with him. That is a promise.” He looked around the room. Joining the assembled ministers was Colonel Abu Hammik, commander of the Sudanese regular army garrison stationed at Wad Hamid, just north of the capital. He sat very stiffly in his badges, shoulder boards, collar tabs, and ribbons, listening to al-Mahdi’s tirade in silence, occasionally trading flustered, uneasy glances with the other men at the table. Even Ahmad Saabdulah was showing none of his usual inclination to stoke their warlord’s temper; when al-Mahdi’s rage grew to a certain critical level, it was best to keep one’s words to oneself. Unless, of course, he specifically asked to hear them.

“Am I alone in this room?” he said, raising his voice. “Or do you all fail to appreciate what has happened? The heart of our capital has been surrendered to American troops!”

“Obviously, this is unacceptable, Highness,” Foreign Minister Nizar Socotra said. He was a plump, neckless man with a gray scruff of beard, and his cupidity was exceeded only by his fawning devotion to his leader. “I have already lodged a complaint with the U.N. Security Council—”

Al-Mahdi brushed him aside with a ferocious swipe of his hand. “Do not speak of it. Diplomacy is a salve, and nothing more. The Americans cannot be allowed to stay where they are. We must regain control of our city.”

“I agree,” Saabdulah said. It was the first time he’d spoken since the emergency meeting had been called. “Our response to an outrage of this order must be forceful and expeditious. And for that we will have to commit our military… which, I assume, is why the esteemed colonel has been summoned here this morning.” Hammik dipped his head in acknowledgment.

“What sort of force can you muster?” al-Mahdi asked him.

“It should be possible to have an infantry battalion in the city within an hour,” he said. “There is, in addition, an armored company attached to it.”

Al-Mahdi noticed his Minister of State shaking his head even before Abdel-Ghani caught himself doing it. “You disapprove of the proposed action?” the warlord asked.

“The thought of tanks rolling through our own streets troubles me,” Abdel-Ghani said. “We would be exposing civilians to tremendous danger, and the consequent property damage of such an encounter—”

“This is a time for strength, not counting the cost,” al-Mahdi said. “You are growing far too tentative these days, Abdel-Ghani. It surprises me.” Abdel-Ghani was silent in response. Al-Mahdi allowed his gaze to linger on him a moment, then turned back toward Colonel Hammik. “Mobilize your infantry,” he said.

The composite prop/rotors on the engine nacelles tilted down for horizontal flight, the trio of Ospreys buzzed toward shore with Lieutenant Colonel Wes Jackson in the lead slot. Bare minutes earlier, they had launched from the flight deck of the USS Bonham Richard (LHD-6) after the three amphibious ships of Amphibious Squadron Three (PHIBRON 3) — the ready group assigned to berth and transport the 13th MEU (SOC) — had made a high-speed, all-night up the Red Sea to deceive Sudanese naval forces. It had been the hope of the amphib’s commanders that by lying in wait around the Horn of Africa, just outside Somalia’s territorial waters, they would escape detection until well after the Ospreys had been signaled to begin their approach.

Their rabbit-in-the-hat gambit had panned out beautifully. The PHIBRON and their escorts had encountered no resistance at all until they came within sight of the Sudanese mainland and were hailed by astonished coastal patrols. By this time, though, the first wave rescue birds had left their flight decks and were Khartoum-bound. Now Jackson briefly checked the multi-function displays in front of him, tweaked the autopilot to make a minor correction in altitude, and scanned the sky. He saw two flights of sleek Harrier fighter bombers on his left and right, the sunlight glinting off their skins as they escorted the Ospreys toward their destination. Within easy view up ahead lay the level, sandy curve of the Sudanese shoreline.

Cruising along at a steady 150 knots, Jackson sank back in his cockpit’s bang seat and ran the mission plan through his head for the umpteenth time. In his mind’s phenomenally clear eye, he could see the street grid of Khartoum just as it had appeared on Colonel LeVardier’s video-projected map, see the aerial layout of the embassy compound with the pickup coordinates superimposed over it, also as it had been presented during the briefing. Within minutes he would reach the LZ, an employee motor pool near the gymnasium where the evacuees had been gathered. The descent and subsequent takeoff from the embassy would be the hairiest parts of this carny ride; his flight would be deep in enemy territory and exceedingly vulnerable to ground fire. But, he’d trained his men well and they were ready. As ready as they’d ever be, anyway.

Thus far the operation had succeeded beyond all expectations: The paratroops had established their perimeter without sustaining any significant losses, and managed to tighten the ring around the compound while encountering only light opposition from a few straggling Sudanese militiamen. It was too good to last, though. The first, ominous rumblings of armor were heard—and felt—at noon by troopers positioned near the embassy’s north wall. Within minutes, the mechanized column was spotted approaching along the Sharia al-Baladaya amid a company of infantrymen. It was an odd, motley group of vehicles consisting of two ancient Russian PT-76 light tanks, several equally old BTR-60 armored personnel carriers, and a couple of newer looking BTR-40 armored cars. The Sudanese had obviously pulled them together on short notice for the express purpose of repelling the American paratroopers.

The sudden cackle of automatic weapons fire from one of the forward tanks instantly drove home the point that this was no mere showing of tail-and-breast feathers. These boys meant business. With machine-gun rounds slamming the ground near his feet, Sergeant Joe Blount quickly decided to demonstrate how a kid from Brooklyn responded when someone bullied him — especially if he was equipped with a Javelin antitank missile. Moments before the armor had turned onto the wide avenue bordering on the embassy, Blount had felt the rolling vibration of its approach underfoot, and hurriedly lifted the Javelin’s lightweight, disposable launch tube onto his shoulder. Now he squinted through the command launch system sight, zeroed the lead tank in his thermal view, and squeezed the trigger.

The missile whizzed from the launcher, its kick motor ejecting it on a stream of pressurized gas, its guidance fins unfolding, the electronic sensors in its nose unerringly guiding it toward its target. Within several seconds the missile’s software recognized that it was diving into the armor of the tank and detonated the warhead. The eruption that followed was so spectacular that for several heartbeats Blount and his fellow troopers could only stare down-range in wonder. The Sudanese tank rumbled and shook with a massive peristaltic convulsion, its armor bulging out and rending where pale blue fireballs punched their own exit holes. The balls of flame soared up and up like helium balloons cut from their strings, and climbed to a whirling hover before breaking apart. Finally there was a whoosh of trembling, superheated air, and the entire tank was blanketed by a wave of fire. The Sudanese foot soldiers that had been flanking the knocked-out juggernaut simultaneously ran for cover behind nearby buildings and started blasting away at the paratroops with their submachine guns. The fierce, relentless fight for the embassy would last for hours, and be paralleled by similar confrontations all around the airborne’s doughnut perimeter.

Hassan al-Mahdi’s orders to his military had been unequivocal: He wanted the compound taken at any cost. So far, the Sudanese lacked the currency to pay the price.

In the cockpit of his Osprey, Major Wes Jackson eased back on his thumbwheel control to rotate the propellers ninety degrees — effecting a vertical position in preparation for touchdown. Thankfully, the other two birds in his flight had also made it through the enemy ground fire outside the embassy, and were swooping onto the parking area off his port wing. The approach had been nerve-wracking, to put it mildly. Light flak had zinged upward from several different directions during the approach, forcing him into evasive maneuvers. Navigation had been another dangerous challenge — the streets around the American positions were clogged with battle haze and dotted with fiery buildings that had looked like burning match heads from above.

But despite these deadly hurdles, the first flight of Jackson’s rescue team had landed without taking any serious hits, and as far as Jackson was concerned, the reward was already more than apparent. Already he had seen the first lift of evacuees come spilling out of the gymnasium under the protective eyes of their Marine guards — women and children, their faces wan and frightened, yet flushed with open gratitude. Looking out his window at them, Jackson was nearly moved to tears. Never in his vivid and perfect recollection had he felt so proud of serving his country. Within a minute, the civilians had been seated in the cargo compartment, the rear ramp raised, and he was airborne, followed by the other two MV-22s. As he transitioned back to forward flight, he saw the second flight of three Ospreys coming in to land, with others following. So far, Operation Fort Apache was working like clockwork.

The 2/505th paratroops were literally fighting with their backs to the wall. The first group of evacuees had been delivered to safety out to the ships of PHIBRON 3 without a hitch. By 1630/4:30 PM, the second relay of Ospreys started to arrive and began loading up the remaining embassy personnel and refugees. With this lift the birds were also taking aboard the first groups of paratroopers as the 2/505 initiated the pullout phase of the operation. As the afternoon went on, they tightened their defensive ring to the very streets outside the compound’s gate — streets that, for all appearances, might have been swept by the explosive shockwave of a nuclear blast. Fighting at the perimeter line was fierce, the air layered with smoke and reverberating with the nonstop clatter of automatic weapons. Virtually every last civilian in the area had fled for cover at the outbreak of violence, many of them abandoning their cars in the middle of the road. The smoking metal corpses of those vehicles now cluttered every intersection and cross-street, their chassis torn and twisted from bullets and grenade explosions. Far more dreadful was the toll in human life. The bodies of dead and dying combatants lay sprawled on the sidewalks, the vast majority of them Sudanese militiamen and infantry troops. A few, however, were wearing the urban-camouflage uniforms of American paratroops and Marines. On the pavement outside the front gate, where the fighting was up close, eye-to-eye, and in some instances hand-to-hand, Colonel Bill “Hurricane” Harrison stood in the hellish thick of things, shouting orders to his soldiers as the enemy push intensified. When he was seventeen, he had read a biography of General James Gavin, to his mind the greatest combat general in American history. Gavin was a leader who had never expected his men to do anything he wouldn’t do himself. Later, after choosing his own career in the military, Harrison had occasionally wondered if he would have anything like the guts that Gavin had. As he stood there outside the compound, his troops outnumbered by perhaps four to one, bullets shuttling past his head, it never occurred to him that he was doing his boyhood hero proud. He was too busy carrying out his mission to be worried about posterity.

Just a few more hours to go.

Even before word finally crackled from his personal SINCGARS radio, Harrison had known that it was time for his men to retreat to the pickup area. He had heard the sound of rotors churning the air, looked skyward, and seen the fourth and final convoy of MV-22s and CH-53s approaching in the near distance. Their airframes were little more than silhouettes as he watched them descend through raftering clouds of soot and smoke. With a silent prayer of gratitude, he gave the final fallback order, his voice hoarse as he raised it over the throbbing clamor of battle. While four armed Osprey gunships laid down a heavy suppressive fire around the compound, the last company of paratroops sprinted for their own MV-22B transports. In less than five minutes, the last of the American transports were on their way seaward. At almost the same moment, demolition charges in the Hummers and guns reduced them to scrap metal. This was designed to keep the weapons and vehicles out of Sudanese hands. However, the President had ordered a more powerful demonstration of how America walks out of a country. This time, the U.S. was going out under its own power and there would be a message in it for the world.

Like Colonel Harrison, the pilots of the four AV-8B Plus Harriers cruising over the city had been awaiting orders to begin the last phase of Operation Fort Apache. Each of them was prepared to launch a salvo of four GBU-29 2,000- lb./909-kg. GPS-guided bombs from under his wings. The call to engage came in over their radios, and they reacted immediately. Diving like the predatory birds that are their namesakes, the fighter jets accelerated downward through bursts of light flak and released their destructive payloads.

The sixteen heavy bombs showered over the embassy compound in annihilating rain, the detonations of their 2,000-lb/909-kg warheads bringing up screams in the throats of the Sudanese forces they had caught by surprise, many of whom perished wondering what they had done to incur the wrath of Heaven. The GPS-guided bombs had been dropped in a specially planned pattern, designed to flatten every structure inside the compound walls. Suggested by the Joint Chiefs and approved by the President, it was a “scorched earth” statement to the Sudanese that they would not be permitted to take the American embassy as the Iranians had back in 1979. They got the message loud and clear.

The Osprey landed with a gentle thump and discharged the final wave of evacuated paratroops. His field jacket whipping around his body in the wash of its prop/rotors, Colonel Bill “Hurricane” Harrison quickly made his way down the cargo ramp and trotted over to the forward cabin. He waited as the cabin door opened and the pilot exited. “Helluva job you did today,” he said, extending his hand. “I’ll never forget it, long as I live.”

Lieutenant Colonel Wesley Jackson took firm hold of his palm and shook it. “Me neither, sir,” he said, and grinned with secret humor.

Hassan al-Mahdi stared out his window at the gathering crowd. On the street below, Abdel-Ghani’s severed head rotted on the tip of a wooden spike, a cloud of insects harrying it in the bright midday sun, the dead eyes gaping vacantly at those who had gathered before the palace. Today they had come here to shout insults at the grotesque remains of the Minister of State, who had been declared a traitor and summarily executed, despite concrete evidence for revealing the plan to seize the embassy to American intelligence. Tomorrow, al-Mahdi thought, the crowd’s fickle passions might well turn against him. And could he truly blame them if that happened? Thousands of his people had been killed in the midst of their own capital, compared to the handful of American soldiers that had lost their lives during the rescue. Just seven dead and less than two dozen wounded, according to CNN. And already the Western nations were calling for U.N. sanctions and an international trade embargo. As the economic noose tightened, and the suffering of his people worsened, so too would their anger intensify to open revolt and bring him low. His Bedouin ancestors had learned centuries ago that the desert was unforgiving. The men it had spawned were much the same. Now he was about to learn the lesson personally.

Operation Royal Banana: Belize, 2009

The volcano was earning its name tonight, making an aggressive spectacle of itself, its peak glowing brightly through the sparse clouds threading across the sky, infusing them with fiery veins of light. Comfortably warm in his shirtsleeves, General Hidalgo Guzman had brought his small group of advisors out into the mansion’s courtyard, wishing to enjoy the unseasonable weather while they finalized their plans. It was dry for autumn, a time of year when the coastal towns and villages stood braced for tropical storms blowing in from the Caribbean Sea. Normally, the highlands were soaked with rain, or at best blanketed with a mist that sent dampness deep under the skin. Indeed, Guzman had heard that a hurricane was brewing somewhere at sea. But here and now, things could not have been more pleasant.

All is perfectly clear to me, he thought. Clearer than it has ever been.

From where he sat, the dictator could see Volcan Fuego’s rugged upper slopes surmounting the roofs to the southwest, looking for all the world like the throne of a mythical, ruby-eyed Cyclops. To the southeast, Volcan Agua was visible in silhouette, as was Volcan Acatenango west of the city. No man had ever lost his way in Antigua; one could always find his bearings by searching the distance for the three volcanoes. Perhaps, Guzman mused, this was the true secret of its endless allure for travelers.

He breathed in the air of his garden, savoring the fresh tang of eucalyptus, and then lowered his eyes to study the two men sitting beside him. At the far end of the stone bench his Minister of Defense, Captain Juan Guillardo, acknowledged his gaze with a slight nod, eager to resume plotting tomorrow’s military action, his shrewd, narrow features making him resemble a coyote… or so it seemed to the General, anyway. Between the two men, Colonel Eduardo Alcazar, Guzman’s first cousin and Minister of State, had been nursing his thoughts in tight-lipped silence.

“You seem not to appreciate this fine evening, Eduardo,” Guzman said. “Or perhaps the dinner my staff prepared wasn’t to your liking. Your wife’s cooking is unmatched, I know, but we bachelors must make do.”

“I have other concerns on my mind,” Alcazar said. “Dismiss them if you want, but it would please me if they weren’t mocked.”

“You worry too much,” Guillardo said. “As long as they have our reassurances that the oil will flow freely — and cheaply — in their direction, the United Kingdom will never become involved. The most we can expect from them are diplomatic squawks in the Security Council.”

“History warns us otherwise,” Alcazar said.

“If you intend to bring up the Falklands and Kuwait again, please spare me,” Guzman said. “The dispute over that godforsaken pile of rocks occurred a quarter century and several British prime ministers ago. The present head of Parliament is no Thatcher. And remember, the oil strike has yet to produce the kinds of wealth that made supporting the Kuwaiti government so attractive to the rest of the world. Belize is a virgin land, with nobody to protect it.”

“What do you suppose he is doing in Washington if not discussing contingencies? Playing card games with the Yanqui President?”

“We’ve been over this a dozen times. His visit was announced weeks ago. The timing is coincidental.”

“Even if that’s true, there are political realities to be considered. The English monarch continues to be recognized as the Belizean head of state, and the two nations have existing treaties… ”

“And we have prior territorial claims.”

“Which were relinquished in 1992!”

“By a government whose legitimacy I’ve never officially recognized.”

Alcazar produced a humorless laugh. “How far back in time do you reach for justification, then? Will you tell our U.N. ambassador to cite the conquistadores for dividing the Mayan empire? It seems you’ve suddenly found that you have latino roots…”

“Don’t push me too far, cousin!” Guzman shot him an angry look. “You know the potential oil revenues we stand to gain from the annexation as well as I do. Even with Mexico taking their fifty percent, our share would amount to billions, perhaps trillions of dollars. Enough to transform our economy.”

As well as keep your hold on power from slipping away, Alcazar thought, his mind attaching the unspoken codicil before he could stop it. There was, however, no denying the truth of his cousin’s words. Even by conservative projections, the oil money pouring in from the new offshore field would fill Mexico’s almost bankrupt treasury and make Belize the Brunei of the Western Hemisphere — and having lost out on this manna from heaven was as galling to Alcazar as it was to his companions. Still, he was a pragmatist by nature, and his doubts over tomorrow’s planned invasion stemmed from political considerations rather than moral scruples.

Things would have been so different, so simple, had it not been for a bitter fluke of geography. But circumstances were as nature had created them millions of years before. The previous winter, a joint PEMEX/Texaco exploration team had discovered a vast stratographic trap just along the continental shelf of Belize and Mexico… and just beyond Guatemala’s territorial waters in the Gulfo de Honduras. Their survey showed it to be an offshore pool of a potential rivaling that of the North Sea find of the 1960s. The two nations had immediately entered into an agreement that split development expenses and future revenues right down the middle. Fate had handed tiny Belize, which had already grown prosperous from a booming tourist and agricultural trade, riches on top of riches.

Even as the pacts were being signed, Alcazar had known it only would be a matter of time before Guzman began claiming a portion of the wealth for his own financially bankrupt regime. But he’d underestimated the extent of his cousin’s jealousy and resentment, the covetousness of his grasp. Or perhaps Guzman’s waning support among the populace, as well as the growing strength of the revived leftist rebels in the countryside, had pushed him towards a move of desperation. Something that would rally public sentiment and increase his chances of political survival. In the end, Alcazar supposed Guzman’s reasons didn’t really matter. The fatal decision had already been made. The armed forces would roll into Belize the following morning, and nothing he could say would convince his cousin and the rest of the ruling junta to abandon the undertaking. His immediate task as Minister of State, then, was to anticipate, and if possible, moderate the inevitable world reaction.

If possible.

He could readily imagine the universal outrage his nation’s action would provoke, and knew England would not stand alone in expressing its condemnation. The security of Belize’s borders had been guaranteed by numerous international treaties and precedents; in fact, the allusion he’d made when speaking of history’s warning was not so much to the Falklands conflict — as Guzman had hastily jumped to assume — but to America’s decisive intervention when Iraq moved on Kuwait in 1990. What would happen if the current U.S. administration responded to Guatemala’s attack in a similar manner? Alcazar suddenly felt Guzman’s hand slap him on the back and, startled from his thoughts, turned to look into his grinning face.

“Relax, Eduardo, you’re full of knots,” Guzman said. “Like Cabrera in the last century, we soon will be having Fiestas de Minerva in the streets of the capital.”

Alcazar kept looking at him. What Guzman failed to mention, and perhaps realize, was that neither Manuel Estrada Cabrera’s pretensions of being a bringer of illumination and culture, nor his costly festivals to the goddess of wisdom, invention, and technical achievement, had prevented him from ultimately driving his nation to ruin.

“Very well,” he said without enthusiasm. “We’d best get on with our discussion. It’s late, and there are still numerous points that must be clarified.” Guzman regarded him a moment, sighed, and then shifted his attention to Captain Guillardo.

“Run through the details of the troop buildup again,” he said. “Leave nothing out; I want you to give me the position of every man and piece of equipment being used in the campaign.” Guillardo nodded and dutifully gave them to him.

The photographic intelligence (PHOTOINT) had first told the tale, though not because the U.S. intelligence services were watching closely. On the contrary, the early evidence of unusual Guatemalan troop activity along the Flores-Melchor de Mencos road was recorded by a commercial one-meter Space Imaging satellite that had been leased to the nations of Belize and Mexico for the charting of their offshore oil fields. This was in early September. The subsequent processing and analysis of these aerial views by photo interpreters had been so alarming they had hurried to quietly report their findings to government officials. Then, after a quick examination of the images, those officials had in turn raced to put them in the hands of local CIA station chiefs.

Within days, two boxcar-sized Advanced KH-11 “Crystal” photoreconnaissance satellites circling 160 miles/257 kilometers above the earth were jogged into orbital paths above northeastern Guatemala. Here they began transmitting a stream of digital images to ground stations, whose operators had been placed on heightened, round-the-clock alert. An advanced KH-12 Lacrosse synthetic-aperture radar-imaging (SAR) satellite was also routed over the area. This was due to the start of the annual rainy season, and the KH-11’s telescopic eyes would be easily blurred by the dense cloud cover that usually prevailed during this period.

The data flowing in from these overhead surveillance systems confirmed and added to the information originally gathered by the commercial satellites: Perhaps as many as three brigades of Guatemalan infantry and light armored units had been moved from various army barracks to assembly points along the highways to Belize, and were now concentrated within three miles/five kilometers of the border. There was also clear evidence of stepped up coastal patrols by Guatemalan naval forces outside the Belizean Cays. The consensus reached by CIA and State Department reconnaissance experts was that a military incursion into Belize was imminent. Upon being notified of this conclusion, and taking a firsthand look at relief maps prepared from the satellite imagery, the President held an emergency meeting with his Secretaries of State and Defense, both of whom agreed that the Belizean ambassador should be called to the White House and apprised of the situation with all due haste. The British Ambassador and the Joint Chiefs of Staff were also contacted, as was the newly elected Prime Minister of Britain, Herbert Foster.

On September 5th, hours after receiving a redline call from the President concerning the Guatemalan troop buildup, Prime Minister Foster announced that he’d accepted an invitation to Washington at the end of the month, citing an economic agenda as the reason for his trip. This was, of course, a cover story to satisfy the news media. His one and only true aim was to confer with the President in person about the worrisome developments in Central America. To aid in the subterfuge, the Belizean Prime Minister Carlos Hawkins was asked to remain in his own country. The first day of Foster’s visit was September 25th. That same day, a newly processed batch of PHOTOINT and SAR images showed that the Guatemalan troops, armor, and heavy artillery had moved into positions along the Belizean border.

By September 29th, a special joint U.S./British envoy was quietly dispatched to Guatemala City with a message that neither power would tolerate an act of aggression against a peaceful neighbor. The small group of high-level diplomats sat waiting outside General Hidalgo Guzman’s executive office in the Palacio Nacional for three hours before being told that he was too busy to see them. The following day, the President and Prime Minister Foster held a White House press conference in which they made public the situation in Central America, and warned Guatemala to stand down from its offensive posture or risk serious consequences. Their words were carefully chosen to leave no doubt that their two governments meant business. Guzman’s response, issued within hours through his U.N. ambassador in New York City, was that his ground forces were on routine training maneuvers and presented no threat to Belize or any other sovereign state in the region. That same afternoon, Prime Minister Foster flew back to London for a meeting with his chief advisors. At the same time, the President asked General Richard Hancock, the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs, to report to him ASAP with a full assessment of American military options. Whatever Guzman thought he was doing, the President, who had sprouted more than a few gray hairs during the Sudanese embassy evacuation of 2007, was positive of one thing: for the second time since he’d taken office, he had a major international crisis on his hands.

While Guatemala was hardly a military Goliath on a global scale, it was in comparison to Belize, all things under the tropical sun being relative. Unlike most of its regional neighbors, Belize was a representative democracy that settled internal political disputes with ballots rather than bullets. The crime rate was low and civil strife was nonexistent, unless one counted the heated, and occasionally foul-mouthed debates that were televised during election years. Roughly the size of Massachusetts, with less than 250,000 citizens, Belize had never developed the national means or inclination to expand beyond its borders, and strived to cultivate friendly and open relations with surrounding nations. The closest equivalent it had to an army was the Belize Defense Force (BDF), which was really little more than a local constabulary equipped with handguns, light automatic weapons, and a modest but well-maintained fleet of military Land Rovers.

The Guatemalan invasion force, therefore, surged across the border virtually unopposed, advancing toward Belize City in a long file of infantrymen and mechanized armor — the latter consisting of two light tank companies and perhaps a hundred French VAB armored personnel carriers (APCs). Simultaneously, militia units acting under the regular army’s direction began slipping into the country at various points along the flanks of the main column, conducting a series of disruptive strikes on its power and telecommunications grid, severing phone and power lines, and knocking out electrical plants and switching stations, particularly in key population centers. Used to watching over a peaceful citizenry, grimly aware that any attempt at resisting the Guatemalan military outfits would be like trying to hold back an avalanche with nothing but their bare hands, the BDF constables confronted by the advancing column gave up with only a few scattered outbreaks of fighting.

By seven AM, a mere six hours after the incursion began, the Guatemalan army had seized control of both of the country’s major airports. By eight o‘clock Guatemalan soldiers and tanks had massed before the Government House on Regent Street. By eight-fifteen its Guatemalan emissaries had been dispatched into the building to demand a formal declaration of surrender from the Belizean leadership. At nine o’clock Prime Minister Hawkins came out onto the steps of the building to acquiesce, cursing a bloody streak as he submitted to military custody. A descendant of the British pirates that had harried the coastline in the 16th century, he had inherited their roguish nature and hated yielding to anybody. However, nobody knew that much of the bluster was a well-played act.

Although he would always deny it publicly, General Richard Hancock had taken the name of the plan from a joke he’d overheard one of his staffers telling at the watercooler outside his Pentagon office. It had involved Guatemala’s biggest fruit export, General Guzman’s pants pocket, a visiting princess, and a punch line that went something like, “I’m sorry, Hidalgo, what I’d really prefer is a royal banana!” Hence the name, Operation Royal Banana.

“In summation,” he was saying, “the plan is to devastate the enemy with superior numbers and a tightly synchronized, highly maneuverable air-ground attack, with each tactical element enhancing our collective combat power on the battlefield.”

“Call me dense, but I’d like to hear the specifics one more time,” the President said. “If you please, General Hancock.”

Hancock nodded crisply, reached for the water pitcher near his elbow, and refilled his half-drained glass. The President had been accused of being many things by his political opponents, but nobody on Capitol Hill had ever called him dense. To the contrary, he had a tremendous head for facts and details, and was energetic enough to remain whipcrack sharp after working for days with little or no sleep. Now he looked at Hancock across the briefing table, keen-eyed and fresh although the past ninety-six hours, a period in which he’d finally obtained resolutions of condemnation and ultimatum against Guatemala from the U.N. Security Council and OAS, had been one of the longest of those furiously paced, round-the-clock stretches in memory. On the other hand, the Secretary of State, who was the President’s junior by almost ten years, seemed to be having trouble keeping up. He sat on his immediate right, dark half-moons under his eyes, his hair slightly tussled, his skin the color and texture of drying pancake batter. On the Chief Executive’s left side, the Secretary of Defense seemed just a bit further from the edge of utter fatigue.

At least they’re too tired to launch into their usual point-counterpoint routine, Hancock thought. It would be a godsend if he could get through the remainder of the briefing session without hearing them snarl at each other. He sipped his water, feeling it soothe the rawness at the back of his throat. At the table this morning, in addition to the President, his bedraggled national security team, the 82nd Airborne’s commanding officer General Roger Patterson, and Hancock himself, was the British team. Made up of the British Secretary of Defence, and Brigadier General Nathan R. Tenneville and Air Vice Marshal Arthur Raddock, of the 5th Para Brigade and Royal Air Force respectively, they were here to explain the British position and plans. Each of the men had plenty of questions for Hancock, and he’d nearly talked himself hoarse answering them.

Well, here went what was left of his voice. “To ensure strategic and tactical surprise, and give us the overwhelming numerical advantage I spoke about a moment ago, all three brigades of the 82nd Airborne Division, along with the 5th Paras, will drop into Belize within two hours of each other and rapidly take control of its major airfields,” he said. “As we’ve seen on the maps, there are only two of any size and consideration, the larger of them located 10 miles/16 kilometers northwest of Belize City, the other about 1.5 miles/2.5 kilometers from the center of the city. Once the airheads are fully secured, the 501st Airborne Infantry Regiment of the 101st Airborne (Air Assault) Division will be delivered with transport, scout, and assault helicopters to seek out and destroy fielded Guatemalan forces in Belize. At the same time, a MEU (SOC) — I believe it’s going to be the 26th — will take island and port facilities, and hold them open for follow-on forces and supplies. Finally, to suppress further Guatemalan aggression, the aircraft of the 366th and 347th Wings will conduct a short air campaign to destroy Guatemalan command-and-control facilities, as well as leadership and fielded forces targets. The importance of coordination, agility, and timing cannot be underestimated for the success of this operational plan. Our forces must drive the pace and scope of the battle.” Hancock paused, took another drink of water. “At this point, Mr. President, I’ll respectfully defer to General Tenneville, who can best give you the particulars of Great Britain’s role in the operation.”

“That’ll be great, I’m all ears,” the President said briskly, smiling at the British one-star. “Please feel free to get started.”

The Secretaries of State and Defense sagged a little in their chairs. The President glanced from one to the other, then looked over at Tenneville and shrugged. “Maybe we’d better have some coffee and doughnuts first,” he said.

A city of 75,000 souls on the banks of the Cape Fear river, Fayetteville is both home to Fort Bragg and a convenient stopover for Florida-bound snowbirds making their seasonal migration along I-95. Over the years, a cluster of motels has sprung up in the downtown area, offering clean, comfortable, and reasonably priced lodging to the heavy flow of travelers and visitors to the XVIII Airborne Corps headquarters. Nothing exceptional, mind you, but the guests who check into these places generally aren’t looking for mirrored ceilings, heart-shaped whirlpool baths, and glitzy nightclub entertainment. What they want is a decent meal, and a firm mattress on which to catch a good, quiet night’s shuteye before getting back on the highway. Unfortunately there was very little sleeping, and a whole lot of restless tossing and turning going on in Fayetteville’s motel rooms tonight. The noise of transport aircraft lifting off at nearby Pope Air Force Base was loud enough to keep even the weariest, bleariest motorists wide awake in bed, never mind that most had shut their windows to muffle the continuous racket. After two weeks of intensive preparation, Royal Banana had gotten underway precisely on schedule, and the first transports carrying U.S./British airborne forces, ordnance, and supplies were wheels up and heading towards their objective.

As a kid growing up in downeast Maine, Pfc. Drew Campbell had lived across the road from a small commercial airfield that had primarily serviced local charters — single — engine propeller planes carrying tourists, hunters, and airfreight shipments to areas along the coast. Watching the flights take off and land had sparked a lifelong fascination with aircraft, and Drew had spent most of his weekly allowance, and later on, after getting his first job with his uncle’s Penobscot Bay fishing operation, an inordinate chunk of his weekly paycheck on aviation books and hobby kits for building scale models of military airplanes. The one thing he had never expected, though, was to be flying into a hostile DZ aboard the noisy cargo hold of a Herky Bird transport, packed in with two Chalks of the 2/505th, his face smeared with camo paint, his lower back aching from a bulky 120-pound/ 55-kilogram load of parachute and combat gear that made him wonder how tortoises could lug around their shells all their lives while always managing to look so goddamned content. Well, c’est la vie, as his fiancée would say. If it hadn’t been for his uncle selling his fleet of boats and retiring to Boca Raton, he’d never have enlisted in the army, never have volunteered for jump training with the 82nd, and never have wasted a moment of his precious time thinking about tortoises and their burdensome lot. Not that there weren’t more important things to contemplate right now. Specifically, the tough job ahead of him, and his chances of staying in one piece until it was over and done.

In the troop seat to his right, First Sergeant Joe Blount seemed less worried about his own prospects for survival than those of the heroes in the X-Men comic he’d just finished reading, having squinted to see the pages in the red-lit semi-darkness of the hold. A veteran of Operation Fort Apache with a unit patch and Bronze Star to prove it, Blount was shouting something to the man on his immediate right about Cyclops’s mutant eye-beams being more than a match for the Sentinels’ photon blasts, whatever the hell that meant. According to some guys in the company, Blount could act so blase about the prospect of dropping into enemy fire because he didn’t appreciate his own vulnerability. However, Campbell had a very different sense of his inner workings. He believed Blount, who had once stood down a tank amid a hail of Sudanese antipersonnel fire, knew what could happen to him as well as anybody, but simply had more guts than most. Which, considering that he belonged to an airborne unit full of brave men, made him as extraordinary as the superheroes he was always jawing about. Never mind that he didn’t even have mutant powers to save his ass in a pinch.

Feeling it dig painfully into his shoulder, Campbell adjusted the strap of his chute harness, shifting it a millimeter to the left… only to have it begin hurting him in its new position two or three seconds later. How did those big turtles stand it, anyway? he thought, knowing that he would soon forget all about his discomfort. Soon, in fact, the Hercules would be nearing the drop zone, and the pilot would throttle back to a speed of 130 knots as he made his approach, and the troopers would get set to exit the plane.

Now Campbell glanced toward the rear of the fuselage, where the jumpmaster was impatiently staring at the lights above the door, as if he could make the green blink on through sheer willpower. But the red warning light continued to glow steadily in the dimness, indicating that their V-shaped formation of Hercules transports had yet to reach the target zone. Studying his own meshed, tension-white knuckles again, Campbell silently wondered what everything was going to be like when they finally got there. No way it’s gonna be dull, he thought tensely. I can damn well count on that.

The rapid taking of BZE International airport by the 505th and its support elements was key to the success of Royal Banana. Located just a few klicks outside Belize City, it would be a clear, easy-to-find rally point for the descending paras, and a vital aerial port for follow-on supplies and reinforcements. Campbell knew it, as did every man in his company. The enemy would know it too. Satellite photos had already confirmed that the airport’s perimeter was surrounded by air defense batteries and it was a sure bet there were also machine-gun teams covering its runways. These would be ready to catch the paratroopers in a lethal crossfire the instant they touched ground. Those first few minutes after landing, as they got out their weapons and jettisoned their chutes, would be a terribly vulnerable period for them. Still, the paras had a considerable numerical advantage in their favor, and, to some extent, the element of surprise as well. It was one thing for the enemy to be prepared for a massive airborne assault, but unless their intelligence was better than anybody suspected, they couldn’t be certain when, or even if, it would actually occur. Furthermore, the paratroopers would be coming down fast, jumping from an altitude of just five hundred feet.

“Get ready!”

The moment he heard the shouted command, Campbell snapped his eyes toward the jumpmaster, who stood to one side of the door giving his hand signal, both arms extended, palms up. Suddenly, Campbell’s stomach felt like a taut, twisted length of rope. It was almost time for the drop.

Regardless of which side they fought on that night, it was an awesome scene that all of the soldiers who lived through the battle would never forget: thousands of paratroopers swarming down onto the field from their swift, low-flying delivery aircraft, their inflated chutes filling the darkened sky like shadowy toadstools.

Even as his canopy bloomed overhead, Campbell heard the rattle of hostile ground fire and saw tracers sizzling through the air around him. The enemy had been roused, but there was nothing he could do about that, nothing he could do to defend himself… at least not until he’d made a successful landing. Keeping a tight body position, he clamped down his fear and let his training take over, concentrating on the specific actions that would have to be performed in the next twenty seconds: inspecting and gaining control of the thirty-five-foot canopy, getting oriented in relation to landmarks and other paras, and watching out for obstacles on the ground as he prepared to execute his PLF sequence.

A quick scan of the sky confirmed that he was falling at approximately the same speed as the troopers that had jumped with him. Good. He was right on target, with the lights of Belize City glimmering to the southeast, and the passenger terminals, parking areas, and outbuildings of the airport complex visible in the nearer distance. Also good. Below him the ground was dark, which meant he was coming down on tarmac or concrete. Not so good. He’d been hoping to get lucky and fall onto a soft cushion of grass, but you couldn’t have everything, and he had no problem with settling for two out of three. With less than five seconds to go before impact, Campbell checked his drift and pulled a two-riser slip into the wind, keeping his legs together and the balls of his feet pointed slightly downward. His head erect, eyes on the horizon, he unclipped the rucksack between his legs and felt it drop on its tether, hitting the ground with an audible, impact-absorbing thump. He came down with a jolt that sent streaks of pain through his right knee and shoulders, but didn’t think he’d been seriously hurt. Quickly spilling the air from his canopy, he pulled the quick-release snaps on his harness and began to unpack his weapon. All around him, he could see other jumpers landing and doing exactly the same thing.

“Campbell, you all right?”

It was Vernon Deerson, his fire team’s SAW gunner, scrambling over on his belly. He was already wearing his NVGs and had mounted an AN/PAQ-4C “death dot” on his weapon.

“Yeah,” Campbell said, also keeping his head low. His eyes searched the night as he rolled onto his side, got his M203-equipped M16 out of the carrying case against his left thigh. He’d heard the crackle of a machine gun from the rooftop of a nearby terminal and was trying to get a solid fix on its position. There was another burst of fire. Louder. Closer. And then another sound. A revving engine. “I think… ” Then headlight beams suddenly swept through the darkness and they both hugged the ground. A pair of jeeps had rounded the corner of the building, engines growling, the Guatemalan gunners in back raking the tarmac with fire as they came speeding toward the two paratroopers.

While the squadrons of USAF Hercules troop transports were nearing the DZs, the Gator Navy’s Amphibious Squadron Four — composed of the USS Wasp, USS Whidbey Island (LSD-41), and USS Iwo Jima (LPD-19) escorted by the USS Leyte Gulf (CG-55), USS Hopper (DDG-70), and operating with the USS John C. Stennis (CVN-74) — had come surging around the fluke-shaped Yucatan Peninsula, and then skirted the outer bounds of Cuban territorial waters to enter the Caribbean Sea. The huge, forty-thousand-ton Wasp was steaming toward its destination in the lead, its decks and hangars alive with activity. Behind a dimly lighted console in the Wasp’s Combat Information Center (CIC), Captain William “Wild Bill” McCarthy, commander of PHIBRON 4, sat watching his multi-faceted sensors and display screens, as personnel at separate terminals across the island /bridge monitored and processed a torrent of communications and reconnaissance information from a vast range of sources.

At its present speed, the ARG would elude the majority of the enemy’s naval defenses, but it was nonetheless certain to encounter some hostile patrol boats. Though McCarthy was confident they would present only a minor hindrance to his battle group’s forced entry of Guatemalan waters, he was anxious to get past them and move into position for the amphibious /helicopter assault’s kickoff. He knew that aboard John Stennis a brigade of the 101st Airborne “Screaming Eagles” were readying their attack choppers for essential air support of the parachute units inland. He also knew that the enemy would put up one hell of a fight for the airports, and that this counterattack would come by morning’s first light. He was bound and determined to have an unpleasant surprise waiting for Guzman’s forces when that happened.

Under house arrest in his living quarters on the second floor of the building, Prime Minister Carlos Hawkins exultantly sprang off his chair, his spirits lifted by the sound and fury outside his window.

“Hey!” he shouted to the armed guard outside his door. “Come on, open up, I’ve got an important message for your commandante!”

The door opened a crack and a soldier in a Guatemalan uniform looked in at him. “Sí,” the guard said. “What is it?”

“Okay, you listening close?” The soldier nodded. Hawkins grinned and leaned his head toward him. “Tell Guzman I hope the Yanquis give his arse a hard, bloody pounding!” he said.

As the onrushing jeeps sped closer, their machine gunners chopping out a vicious hail of fire, Deerson propped himself on his elbows. Spying the target through his night-vision goggles, he swung the red aiming dot of the PAC-4C on his SAW onto the front of the lead vehicle, and squeezed off a short burst. The weapon kicked against his shoulder, gobbling 5.56mm ball ammunition at a rate of almost 1,000 rounds per minute. The windshield of the jeep shattered in an explosion of broken glass, and the jeep went into a screechy, fishtailing skid, the wheels leaping off the road as the driver veered toward a large industrial Dumpster. An instant before the vehicle smashed into the Dumpster’s metal side, Deerson triggered a second laser-aimed volley that sent the gunner flying from the rear of the vehicle, his combat fatigues drilled with bullet holes.

The second jeep was almost on them when Deerson heard the bloop! of Campbell’s tube-fired 40mm HE grenade separating from its cartridge case, glimpsed the tiny silhouette of the projectile out the corner of his eye, and then saw the shell arching down over the jeep. The 40mm fragmentation grenade detonated in midair just inches above the open-topped vehicle, its explosive charge blowing the frag liner and converting it into a cloud of shrapnel that ripped into the jeep, penetrated its gas tank, and sparked its fuel lines to rupture in a dazzling blister of flame that incinerated both riders before they knew what hit them. Without wasting a second, Campbell and Deerson sprang to their feet and rushed into the darkness side-by-side, eager to link up with the rest of their platoon.

Captain “Wild Bill” McCarthy had been absolutely correct — the Guatemalans did indeed “put up a hell of a fight” for the airports, but it was a losing battle from the very beginning. Within just a few hours after the American and British paratroop units made their drops, both airfields had been captured from the vastly outnumbered enemy force. Scattered encounters persisted until dawn as the airborne troops seized runways, cleared terminals and hangars, and swept the offices, hallways and stairwells of every building. The heaviest flurries of resistance came at the perimeters of the airports, where the Guatemalans had set up roadblocks and artillery emplacements along approach and exit routes. The British and American paras, however, were skilled at night fighting, and had been given extensive practice in assault maneuvers prior to the mission being launched. This was training that gave them a crucial edge over their opposition. Though scores of Guatemalan infantrymen were killed in these firefights, and hundreds more taken prisoner, only two Americans and one member of the British 5th were fatally wounded as the paratroops overran the barricades using a variety of infiltration and urban combat tactics. The last of the Guatemalan troops at the airfields were neutralized shortly after 5:00 A.M.

By daybreak, both airports were declared fully secure, with rifle and artillery units setting ambush positions along the very avenues of approach they had cleared. Now that the airports had been taken, the paras’ job was to hold them and let the airhead develop behind them. It was a sure bet the bad guys would want them back.

The Guatemalan jeeps, tanks, LAVs, troop haulers, and cargo trucks rumbled toward the airport in a long, slow-moving line, kicking up streamers of dust that drifted sluggishly above the semi-paved road. The terrain on either side rose in low, thicketed bluffs, with shaggy fingers of tropical growth creeping downward from their slopes, barely shying from the hard track. Concealed by the foliage, a platoon of the 82nd’s 3/325th Alpha Company intently watched the convoy approach the kill zone. They had been lurking in ambush since dawn.

As he steered over the pockmarked road, the driver at the head of the procession was telling his partner about some good whiskey he’d looted from a Belizean resort near the coast. He was also telling him about a beautiful desk clerk at the hotel whom he had his eye on. She’d said she wasn’t interested and that she was engaged to be married. However, he intended to have his way with her regardless of what she told him. As soon as they finished off the Americans at the airport, he would get back to that hotel and show her what he thought of her refusal. He was about to tell his passenger exactly how he would show her when the leader of the hidden airborne ambush team squeezed the clacker of his remote detonator, setting off a camouflaged anti-vehicular mine that had been planted inches from the center of the road.

The air shuddered with an incredible blast, catapulting the jeep driver from his seat, the explosion sucking the scream from his throat. The jeep lurched wildly forward, its tires rupturing in squalls of rubber as hundreds of fragments sprayed from the mine and went tearing into them. All down the line, vehicles slammed each other with grinding metal-on-metal shrieks. An instant later, Alpha Company opened fire, hitting the convoy with everything they had. Machine guns, combat rifles, 40mm grenades and 60mm mortar rounds, as well as Predator and Javelin antitank missiles, streaked from the flanking brush. The Guatemalans desperately began fighting back, pounding the embankment with their own substantial armament.

Convinced his team needed a helping hand, Alpha’s commander ordered his radio man to call in for air support on his SINCGARS radio, which automatically began transmitting the team’s location to a GSS satellite receiver. Within minutes, a quartet of OH58-Delta Kiowa Warriors launched from the deck of the USS John C. Stennis, the Screaming Eagles of the 101st having arrived with their naval escort earlier that morning. Their electro-optical MMS “beachballs” occasionally poking above the treetops, they flew towards Alpha’s coordinates in nap-of-the-earth flight, and came buzzing down on the crippled Guatemalan mech unit with Hellfire missiles and 2.75”/70mm rockets flashing from their weapons pods. Evacuating their devastated armor amid a shower of flame and burning debris, the Guatemalans signaled their surrender with flares, frantically waving hands, and any white shreds of cloth they could find.

The formation of four F-15E Strike Eagles had flown non-stop from Mountain Home AFB in Idaho in two four-ship formations, accompanied by a group of two F-16C Fighting Falcons, and two F-15C Eagle fighters as escorts. The Strike Eagles were armed with a full combat load of laser-guided bombs, AGM-154A JSOW guided cluster bomb dispensers, LANTIRN targeting pods, and air-to-air missiles. In addition to carrying their own mix of air-to-air ordnance, the Fighting Falcons each bore a pair of HARM anti-radiation missiles and a sensor pod for targeting them. Their mission had been planned in precise detail and was highly specific: They were to level a Guatemalan army headquarters located about five klicks southwest of the nation’s capital. At the same time, other strike groups would be taking out a host of designated military installations in and around Guatemala City, as well as Army and Naval bases throughout the country. Airstrips, leadership targets, and communications centers were the prime focus of these operations, and a painstaking effort had been made to keep collateral property damage and civilian casualties to a minimum.

Jinking to elude the light flak coming from below, the lead aircraft’s pilot lined up the rooftop of the headquarters building in his HUD, monitoring the various readouts superimposed over the display’s infrared image. The weapons systems officer in the backseat had already activated the LANTIRN pod to range and lock on the target. All that remained now was for the pilot to release his ordnance. Ten seconds later he dropped bombs in two rapid salvos. The headquarters building went up in a rapidly unfolding blossom of flame that could be seen as far as thirty miles away in bright, broad daylight. Mission accomplished.

Within a matter of hours, the Guatemalan forces in Belize had either surrendered or were in full retreat, headed west for the border. In fact, the biggest problem that the Allied forces were having was keeping up, so rapid was the retreat of the invaders for home. The Guatemalan Army had never had much stomach for this adventure, and the overwhelming show of strength had broken them immediately. Already, the port and airfield facilities were pouring forth a torrent of follow-on forces that were being flown in. At the same time, the Belizean government had been liberated by units of the Army Delta Force, which had flown their AH-6 “Little Bird” helicopters to the Government House from the rear deck of the USS Bunker Hill. For Belize, the damage from Guatemalan looting and pillaging had been minimized, mostly because they had not been given the leisure time that Iraq had been given in Kuwait. As it turned out, this was a good thing for everyone involved. Except, that was, for the Guatemalan leadership that had survived the airstrikes.

The riots had been going on for days. General Hidalgo Guzman sat behind a broad oak desk in his executive office, the blinds drawn over the windows overlooking the square, the windows themselves tightly shut to dampen the angry clamor below. Days, he thought, staring down at the desk blotter, down at the loaded 9mm pistol he had slid from his shoulder holster and placed in front of him on the desk blotter. Days ago, he’d believed he was on the verge of attaining near-boundless wealth: a king’s ransom for himself and economic prosperity for his country. The perfect equation for holding onto power. He would have been a modern Cabrera, a bringer of light, a lordly figure whose stature would eclipse the three towering volcanoes on the national crest.

Then the airborne invasion had come, and his cousin, Eduardo Alcazar, had advised him to declare an unconditional cease-fire with the Americans and begin his withdrawal from Belize. Guillardo had advised against it, stating that favorable terms might yet be negotiated. Now both men were dead, having perished together in a bombing that had killed three other members of Guzman’s junta as well. They were dead, and much of Guatemala City was in ruins from the burning and looting that had followed the air strikes, and the mob outside blamed him for the destruction. Blamed him for the casualties the armed forces had suffered. Blamed him for the political isolation into which his country had fallen.

He could hear them in the plaza, shouting up at him, cursing his very name, demanding that he resign as President. But for a few loyal guard units, the army had joined their rebellion. He could hear them, yes. Their voices loud through the windows, so deafeningly, maddeningly loud out there in the plaza. It was only a matter of time before they came for him. His surviving Cabinet Ministers had fled the capital, advising him to join them, to remain in a hideaway until a means could be found to exit the country.

Guzman looked at the gun on his desk blotter and reached for it. Outside, he could hear the mob. He was no rodent. Not a lowly, fearful creature that would burrow down into a hole in the ground. He could now hear the mob calling for him, crying out for his blood. He would not cower.

“Gloria,” he muttered.

And then, taking a long, deep breath, Guzman reached for the pistol, shoved its barrel against the bottom of his jaw, and pulled the trigger, blowing the contents of his head all over the office walls.

The celebration had been going on for days. Out on the wide front steps of the capital building, Prime Minister Hawkins was dancing with a pretty little girl who had leapt out of the crowd to hand him a bright red flower. He put the stem behind his ear and laughed, and she giggled, and both clapped their hands. Behind her on the street, her older sister was talking to a paratrooper with an 82nd Airborne patch on his shoulder; a band was playing raucous salsa music; and people were waving banners, many emblazoned with the word LIBERDAD, many more covered with praises to the American and British soldiers who had ousted the Guatemalans from their nation.

Freedom, Hawkins thought, his smile beaming out at the festive citizens. Freedom, it was glorious, wasn’t it? Absolutely, immeasurably glorious.