The Humvees started growling, and they were lucky they had stopped. Up ahead, elements of a battalion of the Qusay Mechanized Division had taken up residence in a small walled compound where the canals approached one another, squeezing the road between them. It was a perfect place to block that highway, and when they heard a big gun firing, they knew the enemy had at least one tank, and probably more.
“Harrier, this is Falcon-1 on point. We have contact at the bottleneck. Taking heavy fire, and the enemy has tanks, over.”
“Roger Falcon-1. Strongpoint that position and hold. Help is on the way. Over.”
“Strongpoint? Shit, Sarge. That’s heavy gun fire coming our way. They got tanks.”
“I can see that, Neal. So we back it off, that’s all. They probably can’t see shit in the darkness, so we fall back a thousand meters out of gun range and strongpoint there.” He gave them a wicked grin.
It wasn’t a fight for light recon infantry in unarmored Humvees, and they were very lucky they had stopped when they did. The ground between the canals was about 800 meters where they were, but it would narrow with each meter forward on that road. Now they were taking flanking fire as well, as the Humvees rumbled about and powered away to the south. If the enemy had waited, they might have hit the mined roadway ahead, but someone on the other side got jumpy, fired, and gave what would have been a perfect ambush away.
They raced south again, the last tracers of enemy fire zipping past them in the dark. A kilometer south, the King stopped again, and put his troop into a line abreast formation. The Tharthar Canal was about 650 feet wide at this point, but an exposed mud flat hugging the far side actually narrowed that water width to about 300 feet.
They would wait, edgy, and expecting enemy tanks to come lumbering down the highway towards them any minute, but none came. Instead a Stryker came up behind them, and Lieutenant Nedelman got out to look for someone in charge. He saw King’s Humvee and leaned in the driver’s side window.
“What have you got?”
“Tanks ahead, sir, and we took plenty of MG and small arms fire. These buggies weren’t cut for that, so we backed off.”
“Good call. Did you get the grid spot on that fire?”
King looked at his digital map. “Has to be 43.8 East, 33.9 North. Right there. Map shows outbuildings east of the smaller canal, but we took fire in here where the two canals compress to flank the road. That’s a doomsday road, sir. You can’t maneuver in there. We need to be on the other side of this smaller canal on the right, and that means we’ll need engineers to lay down a bridge.”
“You say they have tanks?”
“Lobbed at least three rounds at us, but they didn’t hit anything. I don’t think they expected us. We must have surprised them.”
“Alright Sergeant, good collar. We’ll need something heavier to make the arrest, so stay put. I may have to call in a fire mission.”
“You might want to wait on that, sir,” said King, “at least until something heavier does come up behind us. Hit them now and they’ll have two choices. They can either skedaddle up Highway-23, hemmed in by canals on both sides, or they can come down here where there’s room to fight. Hell, my guess is that their main body is east of the canal on our right. That’s probably just a road block up ahead.”
The Needle Head simply nodded. “I’ll take that under advisement. Carry on, Sergeant King.”
He walked away, back to the Stryker, and Sanchez gave the Sergeant a bemused look. “What’s he mean, Sarge? Is Needle Head going to call for artillery?”
“He’s thinking about it.”
“Well that will piss those guys off.”
“It just might. Reporter, if this thing starts going south on us here, that’s where you head—south. Bug out and run to one of the vehicles at the rear.”
A report of enemy tanks is always a sure fire way to get some heavy metal heading your way. Needle Head kicked the can up to Battalion, and they kicked it up to Brigade. That ended up diverting 2/5 Combined Arms Battalion up that same road, and they had 28 M1-A2C’s with them, and engineers. At the same time, 2/8 CAB deployed east of the narrower Ishaki Canal, and the two heavy battalions were going to sweep north and see if the enemy wanted a fight.
There was a brief, sharp exchange of fire, and to Sergeant King and his men, the sound of those Abrams tanks firing was a great relief. They weren’t going to try and blow though that position in Humvees with HMGs, but the Abrams got the job done.
Just before dawn Lieutenant Nedleman, came over and told them they had fingered a battalion of the Qusay Division, and that Brigade had sent them packing north towards Samarra.
“That’s where the brigade going,” he said. “But we’ve got another mission. From here we head east to a big airfield they have up here….”
Balad Air Base was a huge complex, measuring four by six kilometers, with two 4000 meter runways. Code named “Anaconda,” it had been the 2nd largest US airfield complex in the war fought in our history, and would likely be developed in the same way here.
At that hour, no one had any firm intelligence on just what the Iraqis might have there. They had no air force worth the name to base at the many airfields in the country, but denying their use to the Americans was always a good play. Situated 50 kilometers to the east on the Tigris River, it would be a long ride through hostile country, for this was the proverbial “Sunni Triangle,” the fertile ground that had spawned Iraq’s ruling Baath Party and the Hussein regime. Half that 50 kilometers would be over sparsely populated arid ground, but as they approached the Tigris, the terrain would become a patchwork quilt of cultivation and small farms fed by small canals, with occasional larger villages. They would make for the town of Dejail, on Highway-1 less than 15 klicks from the base.
“Sarge, we’d better get some intel before we get to that air field,” said Corporal Neal, always thinking of complications that might lie ahead.
“That’s what we’re out here to do, Neal. We’re Recon.”
“Right but the air force could at least clue us in as to whether the place is even occupied. What if we run into a situation like the one we just left? What if the Hajis have tanks on that field?”
“Well, we ain’t alone, Neal. We got the whole battalion. All we have to do is lead the way and let the Stryker and Bradley boys know what’s up ahead.”
“Assuming we don’t get our asses blown off.”
“Don’t worry, Corporal. We’re going to time the approach to the field at night, so they won’t see us coming.”
“But Sarge, this whole region is Sunni Arabs. Someone’s going to see us. We’re not going to sneak the whole squadron up on that field unnoticed.”
The Sergeant didn’t like irritating facts like that, and just grumbled, chewing on some tobacco that he spit out the window from time to time. Neal wasn’t wrong, he knew, but that didn’t make this mission any easier, or his sour mood any better.
Balad AFB was about 45 kilometers southeast of Samarra, and that town was known to be the deployment zone for the entire Samarra Mech Division. As it happened, there would be more than one Iraqi battalion near the airfield by the time the light recon troops got close. On the field itself was 5th Battalion Samarra Mech, which had 27 squads of infantry in older Chinese APC’s and a lot of supporting elements, including six BM-21 rocket launchers, three 122mm guns, and three heavy 120mm mortars. There were no tanks, but that heavy ordnance alone was bad news for the leading recon units if they were spotted and identified.
The 1st Mech Battalion of the Qusay Division that had been chased from the blocking position on Highway 23, had also retreated towards the Tigris and was only about seven kilometers from the airfield. On the other side of the Tigris, the Karukh Mountain Brigade had come down from the Kirkuk region, with four infantry battalions, one guarding a ferry site on the Tigris just five klicks from the base.