“Copy that, Yankee Two. Stand by for a minute.”
His four Hornets were armed with cluster bombs — CBU-59s and Mk 20 Rockeyes — designed for low-level release, to decimate personnel and equipment. Dropped from high altitude, they were as likely to hit the friendlies as the Sherji.
He considered. It wouldn’t do any good to ask Battle-Ax again for clearance to go on down. It was Fletcher and Babcock’s show. Boyce’s hands were tied.
Orders were orders. That was what it meant to be a professional military officer. You took orders, then executed them to the best of your ability. That was the career he had chosen.
Well, it had been a nice career. At least he got to command his own squadron for a while. Kiss it good-bye.
“Yankee Two, can you spot targets from your position?”
“Affirmative,” she answered. “I’ve got a front-row seat.”
“We’re inbound. Give us an orange marker smoke. All targets referenced on the smoke, okay?”
“You’ve got it,” B.J. answered. The weariness had left her voice. She sounded buoyant. “Here goes your smoke. Give ’em hell, guys.”
“Nothing? What do you mean, nothing?” Babcock was almost screaming into the handset. “We were supposed to have the accord from Al-Fasr in our hands this morning. Instead, we have a bloodbath going on in Yemen!”
“Yes, sir,” said Perkins, his aide in Washington. “Bankhead has been waiting at the embassy in San‘a all night. He says they’re stonewalling. He doesn’t know why.”
Like all his SatComm communications from the Reagan, this phone call was digitally scrambled. Still, Babcock couldn’t help worrying that someone — anyone other than Perkins and his two deputies, Triolo in Aden and Bankhead in San‘a — might somehow decrypt the message.
It would be a public relations disaster. If the press or any of the howling jackals that inhabited the United States Congress learned of his agreement with Al-Fasr, not only would his own head roll, but the ensuing scandal could topple the administration.
Not that he was the first. Hadn’t scores of security advisers and presidential deputies before him made clandestine deals with foreign operatives? The Iran-Contra affair was just the tip of the iceberg.
“Tell Bankhead to establish contact with Al-Fasr. I don’t care how. Smoke signals or carrier pigeon, that’s his problem. I need a SatComm hookup with him today, before this thing goes any further. Understand?”
Perkins understood.
Babcock hung up the secure phone and stewed for a minute. What was Al-Fasr up to? It didn’t make sense that the Arab would double-cross him. Why would he? The man had just been handed the keys to Yemen. The existing government could be deposed in a matter of hours — with the full support of the United States. Al-Fasr would be transformed from a fugitive, like bin Laden, to a head of state and staunch ally of the most powerful country on the planet.
It was possible, he supposed, that Al-Fasr was crazy. But not likely. For nearly twenty years — since they were at Yale together — he had observed Al-Fasr’s career, his rise in the military, his growing status as the scion of a powerful Arab family. The man had a formidable intellect mixed with a streak of iconoclasm. He could bring something new and modern to the feudal political system of the Middle East.
Not that he and Al-Fasr were friends. More like fellow visionaries. Al-Fasr was more of an idealist than Babcock, more romantic and impetuous. But never one of those Islamic extremists. He wasn’t crazy.
Until now. Now Babcock wasn’t sure.
It was glorious.
B.J. wanted to stand up and cheer. The first Hornet — Maxwell’s, she presumed — was coming in from the east, skimming the edge of the long spinelike ridgeline. Against the glare of the low morning sun, the fighter was nearly invisible. The sound hadn’t yet reached the plateau where B.J. huddled with her radio.
One of the Sherji moving up the slope spotted the jets. He stood and yelled something in Arabic, pointing at the oncoming fighters. Confused, they stopped, peering at the apparitions flashing toward them.
The bomblets were already dropping. The swarm of dark objects hurtled toward the ground.
Blam! Blam! Blam! Blam! A dozen Sherji who had remained standing were cut in half. The hillside erupted in a wave of exploding dirt and shrubs and flesh. In a fifty-yard-wide swath, the cluster bombs ripped up shrubs and rocks and running soldiers.
Those who survived the wave of cluster bombs were on their feet, running for the cover of the trees when the second Hornet arrived. The next swath sliced through them like a scythe.
“On target!” B.J. yelled over the radio. “That stopped the advance wave. Runner One-three and — four, move your aim point a hundred yards, three o’clock. I see a concentration of troops in those trees.”
She saw the incoming Hornets bank to the right, adjusting their aim points. They skimmed down the ridgeline, bearing down on the target. The bomblets looked like blackbirds swarming to a nest.
The trees disintegrated in a geyser of foliage and dirt and shrapnel. B.J. could see panicked and wounded Sherji running for cover.
Somewhere nearby, a big gun belched fire. Then another. The guns were concealed beneath camouflage, but she saw the ringlets of smoke that followed each burst.
“I’ve got another target. A heavy gun emplacement, fifty-seven millimeter, maybe.”
Maxwell answered. “We’ve each got one CBU canister left, and the cannons.”
She gave him the bearing and distance of the gun emplacement from the smoke marker. As the Hornets rolled in on the new targets, B.J. could see tracers and hear small-caliber guns firing on the jets. Good luck, she thought. Hitting a jet moving at five hundred knots was a feat of marksmanship far beyond these hooligans.
The first load of bombs ripped through a stand of trees, exploding a vehicle but missing the gun emplacement. The gun belched another round into the air.
“Runner One-two, move your aim point thirty yards, three o’clock.”
“Runner One-two, wilco.”
The bombs cut through the camouflaged emplacement, shredding equipment and vehicles and bodies. A secondary explosion — an ammunition cache, she guessed — belched a mushroom of dirt and flame.
“On target! On target! Keep it up.”
B.J. scanned the ridgeline and the plateau where the marines were dug in. On the far side, something glinted. She saw movement, dark shapes skulking through the bush.
“Bull’s-eye one-five-zero degrees, a thousand yards,” she called. “Looks like another troop concentration. They’re approaching the marine perimeter from that hillside on the west. Do you see them, Runner?”
Several seconds passed. “Runner One-one tallies the target.”
B.J. watched Maxwell’s Hornet roll into a shallow dive, aimed at the hillside where she had spotted the Sherji.
It sounded like a giant buzz saw. The Hornet’s twenty-millimeter cannon spat fire at the horrific rate of six thousand rounds per minute. A swath of earth erupted on the hillside, decimating everything in its path. Troops leaped from concealment and fled toward the gully below them.
From the TRAP team’s perimeter, another hail of machine-gun fire opened up, cutting down the retreating Sherji.
Maxwell’s Hornet pulled off the target as the next was bearing down on the fleeing enemy. And the next. More swaths of dirt and fire.
The Sherji were in full rout. As they retreated down the slope, the marines lobbed mortar into their ranks.