David laughed. "I see what you"ve got in mind. We"ll catch up to the terrorists and take out the last vehicle in the column."
Hugh nodded. "Sounds better than walking a hundred miles or so, doesn"t it?"
"d.a.m.n straight!" David said.
"What if we can"t catch up to them?" Johnny asked, wiping sand out of his eyes with the back of his hand.
"Then you"d better hope these boots the quartermaster gave us have thick soles," Hugh replied.
"Oh, my feet will hold out," Johnny observed. "It"s my lungs filling up with sand I"m worried about."
"That"s easy to fix," David said, punching his brother in the shoulder.
"Just don"t breathe so often."
Hugh laughed. "Reminds me of a saying I read about the Mississippi River in school. They used to say it was so muddy, it was too thick to drink and too thin to plow, kinda like this air. Too thick to breathe and too thin to walk on."
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Jamal Ahmed instructed the driver of his large armored personnel carrier to move around the stalled convoy and go to the head of the line.
Ahmed, never one to take a personal risk needlessly, had been riding in the middle of the line of trucks and tanks and other equipment. He"d realized early in his career that taking point was the job for someone far less valuable than he.
As Ahmed"s vehicle pulled up to the crushed and ruined Bradley Attack Vehicle and the scorched and still-smoking Russian tank, he slammed his hand down on the dashboard of his car. He looked out through the windshield to make sure all of the hostile forces had gone, and then he exited the vehicle and strutted up next to the wrecks.
"What in Allah"s name happened here?" he demanded of a junior officer who was in the process of questioning those who"d been nearest to the action.
Sohail Shaeen responded with a quick salute and a deferential tone ofvoice. "It is still unclear, Commander," he said, glancing over his shoulder at the troops he"d been interrogating. "The men here were around the bend in the road when the incident occurred. They heard a series 195.
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of loud explosions and when they came around the turn, they saw what you see here."
Ahmed slapped his thigh impatiently with his open palm. "What of the troops in the two vehicles? What do they have to say for themselves for allowing such an ambush to take place?" he asked.
Shaeen shook his head and shrugged. "All of the men in the lead vehicles are dead, sir." Shaeen hesitated, dreading giving this next piece of bad news to his leader. "And there is another vehicle missing and unaccounted for."
Ahmed"s eyes turned dangerously dark. "Oh?" he asked in a low voice that made Shaeen cringe at the thought that he might be forced to take the blame for this too.
"Yes, sir. Another Bradley vehicle like that one"- Shaeen paused and pointed-"is missing. It took off the road after the hostiles and hasn"t returned. The crew does not answer our calls to them on the radio."
"Why have you not sent another vehicle to go and see what has happened?"
Ahmed asked, his voice growing harsher.
Shaeen spread his hands. "I was waiting for your orders, Commander. I did not want to risk another vehicle or any more men unless you ordered it."
Ahmed took Shaeen by the arm and pulled him off to the side where no one could hear their conversation. "And just what do you recommend we do?"
Shaeen"s face paled. "I think we should continue on, sir. The infidels have obviously set a trap for the other vehicle and it has most probably been destroyed. I see no need to send another to the same fate, and I understand we have a deadline to meet in getting to Riyadh."
"You are correct, soldier," Ahmed said. "We gain noth- 196.
ing by risking another vehicle. Now, get this mess off the road and get that truck unstuck so we can be on our way."
"Yes, sir," Shaeen said, giving another salute.
Ahmed ignored the salute and returned to his personnel carrier, which was filled with his personal guards. "Take me back along the convoy," he said to his driver. "I want to review the troops."
"Yes, sir," the driver said, knowing full well that Ahmed wanted to get out of the line of fire as quickly as possible. He"d driven for the man for several years now, and knew Ahmed took few risks with his own neck, though he thought nothing of sending his troops and other officers into dangerous situations. This was just as well with the driver, who alsovalued his own neck above that of others.
Bartholomew Wiley-Smeyth, like Hugh Holmsby, was not one to send his men to places he was unwilling to go. Therefore, it was he and a group led by Staff Sergeant Alphonse Green who were the next in line to greet the terrorist convoy.
Alphonse Green, called Al by everyone who didn"t desire their nose broken, was a thirty-year veteran of the SAS. He"d refused retirement the year before on the grounds that a man with his training and experience wouldn"t be able to retire and grow roses. If the service forced him out, he told them, he"d probably just get into trouble. His commanding officers, relieved that he"d be staying, had granted his wish and waived the mandatory retirement rules to allow him to continue his career.
Bart had chosen as his engagement point an area of the road that had a small bridge over a washed-out gully that was five or six feet deep.
He"d had Green and his 197.
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men wire the bridge with some of the C-4 plastique explosives left behind by the terrorists.
Once the bridge was mined, Bart instructed Green to blow it when the first vehicle was on top of the bridge. He then split his group up into two portions, with three men on one side of the road and Green and Wiley-Smeyth on the other.
Bart told the men to spread out and pour as much firepower into the stalled convoy as they could for exactly five minutes, and then they were ordered to retreat back out into the desert out of sight. The men were given GPS coordinates where they would rendezvous after the convoy had gotten on its way again.
One of his men asked, "Sir, do you mind if I ask why we are to fire for only five minutes?"
"Because," Bart answered, "we"re here to delay the convoy as much as possible with as little loss of life as possible. I figure we"ll have about five minutes of total confusion when we attack, and after that, they"ll begin to get their s.h.i.t together and come after us." He paused.
"Do you really want to face ten thousand men with only five of us?"
The soldier grinned and shook his head. "No, sir. I understand now."
"All right then," Bart said. "To your places and hunker down until the convoy arrives."
"Yes, sir," the men said, and disappeared across the road into the blowing sand.
Sohail Shaeen rode in a HumVee at the front of the line of trucks. He had a fifty-caliber machine gun mounted on a post just behind the front seat, and he was determined not to let the convoy be ambushed again. He 198rode in the pa.s.senger seat, and had two men in the backseat, and they were all using binoculars to scan the road ahead and the desert hills off to the sides of the road. The soldier manning the machine gun continually swiv-eled the barrel back and forth, his finger caressing the trigger while he hoped for an excuse to use the big gun.
As the HumVee began to cross the twenty-foot-long bridge over the gully, Shaeen glanced at the drop below and thought, This would be an excellent place for an ambush.
Just as he turned his head to tell the men in the back to be especially careful and observant, the bridge erupted in a giant explosion, blowing man-sized chunks of concrete and steel in all directions.
The front of Shaeen"s HumVee was lifted off the ground and slammed back down so hard, all of the specially made tires burst and flattened. The soldier on the machine gun was thrown head over heels to land flat on his face in the gully below. He rolled over, groaning, just in time to see a ton and a half of cement smash him into hamburger.
The second explosion picked the HumVee up and tossed it like a toy into the gully, where it landed upside down. Only luck kept Shaeen in the seat and saved his life as the big car crashed over him. Shaeen awoke some five minutes later to the sound of machine-gun fire and exploding grenades all around him.
At first, he couldn"t figure out where he was. Feeling with his hands, he soon discovered he was in the wheel well of the HumVee, stuck up against the floorboards that had saved him from being crushed to death.
Unable to open the crumpled door, he finally managed to dig down into the gravel and dirt enough to squeeze out from under the HumVee. When he stood up, unable 199.
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to see more than a few yards in the whirling sand and dirt of the storm, he heard the gunfire suddenly cease.
Pulling out his side arm, an old Reuger Arms .3 8-caliber revolver, Shaeen scrambled up the sides of the gully and stood there, his mouth open, unable to believe his eyes.
Two of the deuce-and-a-halfs that were following his lead vehicle were tipped on their sides with their metal sides twisted and scorched.
Bodies of his fellow soldiers lay sprawled all along the road, b.l.o.o.d.y bullet holes in their uniforms. More than a few were missing arms and legs. It was a scene he thought he"d never be able to forget.
He whirled and pointed his pistol as a car screeched to a stop behind him. He lowered it when he saw it was the personnel carrier used by Commander Ahmed.
Ahmed jumped out of the vehicle and walked rapidly toward Shaeen, his eyes angry and looking for someone to blame.
"Lieutenant Shaeen," Ahmed shouted before he got within twenty feet ofShaeen. "What is the meaning of this?"
Shaeen took a deep breath. It was all he could do not to shoot the arrogant b.a.s.t.a.r.d where he stood.
"The bridge was mined, Commander," he said, struggling not to add, "as any fool could see who would open his eyes."
Ahmed spun around, waving at the dead bodies and the two ruined trucks nearby. "And this?" he shouted, his eyes wild with anger and fright.
"Evidently, sir, the hostiles waited in ambush just over that rise over there. When my vehicle got onto the bridge, they exploded it. The trucks stopped to avoid falling in the gully, and the infidels must have opened fire on them with automatic weapons and hand grenades or rockets."
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"Allah give me strength," Ahmed growled as he looked at the ruined bridge and trucks. "It will take us hours to clear the way and construct a new bridge," he almost wailed.
Shaeen took another deep breath. The man"s arrogance was exceeded only by his stupidity, he thought. "Not really, sir. We have several repair trucks in the convoy. They will be able to construct metal rails to allow the trucks and other heavy equipment to pa.s.s within an hour."
Ahmed seemed to calm down at the news. Shaeen took the opportunity to step up close and speak in a low voice. "Sir, in the future, it might be best if we sent a couple of scout vehicles ahead. That way, if the convoy is. .h.i.t again, we should have some warning of it in time to counterattack."
Ahmed pursed his lips, nodding slowly. "That is just what I was about to suggest, Lieutenant Shaeen. Good thinking."
While the convoy was halted, making the necessary repairs to the road to continue along the way, Hugh Holm-sby and the Davidson brothers were crawling on their bellies alongside the road, inching their way closer to a jeep parked next to a deuce-and-a-half full of soldiers.
They"d been watching when the two men in the jeep parked it and got out to chat and smoke with the men in the truck. The sound of the storm and the talking and laughing of the men were enough to cover the sound of Hugh and the Davidsons moving up behind the jeep.
John slipped behind the wheel, checked to make sure the keys were still in the ignition, and then nodded at Hugh and David to climb aboard.
Hugh and David readied their Uzis, and when John 201.
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started the engine, they began to rake the deuce-and-a-half with fire, killing the two men from the jeep instantly and causing the men in the truck to dive for the floor.
By the time the soldiers had recovered from their surprise enough tobegin to return fire, the jeep was disappearing in the swirling clouds of sand like a ghost.
202.
After Jamal Ahmed began to send his point guards out ahead of the convoy, it was much harder for Bartholomew Wiley-Smeyth"s troops to completely disrupt the movement of the long line of vehicles and equipment.
The small groups of men continued to hit the terrorists every few hundred yards, and while they didn"t do quite as much major damage to the vehicles, they did manage to cause a significant drop in the terrorist troops" morale. Instead of a nice, quiet ride to inundate a vastly inferior enemy, the troops found themselves in a constant series of battles and confrontations with an enemy who wouldn"t stand still and fight.
It became like the plight of the bull moose in the north woods, pursued and attacked by swarms of small black flies until it runs out of the woods to escape the constant irritation. So it was with the terrorist soldiers, who became quite paranoid, and jumped and even fired weapons at every noise or change in the wind. Soon, they were fighting among themselves over cigarettes, bits of food or drink, or where they would sit in the trucks that were hauling them; no one wanted to be by the back of the truck, since many men sitting by the open rear of the trucks had already been picked off by SAS snipers alongside the road.
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Jamal Ahmed began to doubt El Farrar"s claim that they would be facing only a handful of SAS troops. He didn"t realize that as soon as one small group broke off from an attack, it would leapfrog ahead, traveling parallel to the road, and then would attack again. Ahmed began to feel that they were going to face thousands of hardened troops, and he wondered how his inexperienced troops would stand up against them.
Prior to taking his nap after arriving in Dhahran, Abdullah El Farrar instructed his pilot to take his second-in-command, Farid Zamet, on to Khorramshahr, where he could oversee the troops there.
Zamet frowned. "Do you think it wise, my leader, for me to try and fly in this weather?"
El Farrar glanced at his pilot, who"d broken into a sweat while trying to land in the high winds and reduced visibility at Dhahran. "What do you think, Muhamar?" he asked.
The pilot shrugged, though his face did pale a bit at the thought of flying again in such inclement weather. "It should be no problem, Excellency. I will curve out over the Persian Gulf, where the sand will not be so strong."
"There, you see, Farid?" El Farrar said. "The pilot says there is little risk."
Zamet nodded, but it was clear he would much rather stay on the ground.
The pilot was correct. The flight was fairly uneventful since theweather out over the Gulf was much less turbulent than that over land.
In less than an hour and a half, Zamet was at the port city of Khorramshahr, where the 204.
leader of the troops there, Haji Kuchkool, had his men ready for the journey to Tehran.
"Will you be traveling with us, or do you wish to remain in Khorramshahr?" Kuchkool asked Zamet.
Figuring he was much safer with the troops in the event the weather cleared and Ben Raines"s reinforcements arrived, Zamet said he would travel with the troops. "However, you will remain in command, Haji," he added. "I have no desire to usurp your leadership authority."
Kuchkool nodded, thinking how rare it was to find an administrative leader who knew his place.
"The journey should take us until late afternoon, providing we meet no resistance along the way to slow us down," Kuchkool told Zamet.
"Resistance?" Zamet asked. "How could we face resistance? We"ve been told the forces against us here number in the hundreds, not thousands."
Kuchkool laughed. "Mr. Zamet, you will soon learn not to believe everything you are told. Remember, these forces managed to defeat our troops after they were dug in and heavily prepared, so they cannot be too inferior."
Zamet grinned weakly. He hadn"t considered that.
Zamet and Kuchkool became increasingly confident as their journey progressed without any signs of significant opposition forces. By late in the afternoon, they were almost at the city of Tehran, and the thousands of oil derricks could be seen off to the left, standing like skeletonized trees in the dead of winter.