“We pick a fire zone where the tanks have to pass. We’ll use what’s left of the mortars and grenade launchers. It’s our only shot.”
Plunkett nodded and began barking the instructions. In midsentence he stopped. “Too late, Colonel. They’re already here.”
So they were. Gritti could see them, a column of three armored vehicles, charging out of cover three hundred yards away. A rooster tail of dirt spewed up behind each vehicle.
“Ready with the grenade launchers. Maybe we can slow them down while we get the forward fire teams back.”
While Plunkett passed the new orders, Gritti’s mind was racing, trying to come up with a new plan. It no longer made sense to stand and defend an indefensible position. They would have to fall back, retreat through terrain the tanks couldn’t handle. But he couldn’t abandon the fire teams who were already behind the enemy’s front positions. The Sherji would hunt them down like wild game.
Shit! Some commander he was. Why hadn’t he anticipated the tanks? Why hadn’t the goddamned wind stayed calm so the smoke would last? His TRAP team was about to be converted into a dozen isolated fire teams.
On top of everything else, his radio — the piece-of-shit PRC-117 UHF that was supposed to keep him satellite-linked with his commanders — was dead as a rock. The batteries were drained.
Gritti turned his attention again to the oncoming tanks. The first was winding its way down a terraced hillside. Trotting along in its wake was a platoon-sized group of Sherji, carrying their AK-47s. The vehicles would be in firing range in another fifty yards. When they were close enough —
Boom! Boom! Boom! The earth around the tank erupted in plumes of dirt. The tank exploded.
Gritti stared in astonishment. It took his fatigued mind several seconds to understand. Then he saw the twin tailpipes, the canted vertical stabilizers of a jet swooping low over the destroyed tank.
Half a minute later, more explosions.
Boom! Boom! Boom! The earth erupted ten feet in front of the second tank.
As the tank veered around the destroyed lead vehicle, a bomb took out the third tank. An oily ball of fire mushroomed upward from the destroyed tank.
Another twin-finned fighter swept overhead. One after the other, long-nosed, stubby-winged F/A-18s raked the Sherji positions with cluster bombs. As Gritti watched, the surviving tank backed up, reversed course, and was clanking at high speed toward the canopy cover from which it had emerged.
Another near-miss. A bomb hit three feet from the tank’s left side, kicking it sideways, destroying its left track. Seconds later the hatch flew open. The crippled tank’s three-man crew bailed out and ran pell-mell across the exposed hillside. Twenty yards from the low scrub brush, they were cut down by a hail of automatic fire.
“That’s Corporal Brady’s team earning their pay,” said Plunkett, watching the action with his glasses.
“Get the fire teams back to the perimeter,” Gritti ordered. “They have to get out of the way of the bombers.”
While Plunkett issued the instructions, Gritti heard something else — a familiar beating noise above the din of the explosions and the roar of the jets.
Rotor blades. Whopping, thrashing the air, coming from the south. A beautiful sound.
Gritti and Plunkett looked at each other. Each wore a two-day stubble of beard. A layer of grime and camo paint covered their faces. Their eyes were red-rimmed with fatigue and stress.
“Master Sergeant,” Gritti said, “it appears that the cavalry may be on its way.”
“About damn time, sir.”
The beat of the rotor blades swelled in intensity. A pair of Whiskey Cobras popped over the southern ridgeline, their noses low, the chin-mounted rotary cannons swiveling from side to side looking for targets. A second pair appeared behind them. As the Cobras swept over the marines’ perimeter, the brittle roar of the high-velocity cannon drowned out the other battle noises. From the lead Cobra’s inboard pylon a salvo of 2.75-inch rockets screeched toward a gun position in the trees. A geyser of flame and debris gushed upward from the foliage.
A deeper throbbing sound pounded on Gritti’s eardrums. Behind another pair of protective Whiskey Cobras appeared the CH-53E Super Stallions. Three of the cargo helicopters were hauling swing loads — fighting vehicles suspended in slings beneath the aircraft.
Gritti tried to count the helos. He couldn’t. They kept coming, one wave behind the other.
“Jesus,” said Plunkett, staring at the apparition. “It looks like Apocalypse Now.”
Gritti nodded. He could feel the throb of the blades all the way up through the soles of his boots. Marines were fast-roping out of the hovering craft. The Stallions with the swing loads were lowering the heavy vehicles to the earth.
So far, Gritti observed, no SAMs. No fireballs from destroyed helicopters. No mortars being lobbed into the perimeter. The heavy guns of the Sherji had fallen silent. He liked the way this was going.
His ambush teams were making their way back. The first wave of the assault force was entering the southern perimeter. Gritti heard the deep chuffing of diesel engines, and seconds later a pair of LAV-25s — light armored vehicles — rumbled over the ridgeline and into the perimeter.
In trail behind the two light tanks appeared an HMMWV Hummer. As Gritti rose to his feet, the Hummer rolled across the clearing and ground to a halt.
From the right seat of the vehicle emerged Lt. Col. Aubrey Hewlitt, Gritti’s executive officer and second-in-command of the 43rd Marine Expeditionary Unit. He wore perfectly starched desert-camo BDUs, a sidearm, and the ubiquitous Fritz helmet.
Hewlitt peered at Gritti, unsure of what he was seeing.
“What the hell are you staring at?” said Gritti.
Recognizing his boss’s voice, Hewlitt stared. “Sorry, Colonel.” He stared for another second. “If you’ll pardon my saying so, sir, you look like shit.”
It was too good to last, thought Maxwell. Something always happened that you didn’t expect.
Now it was happening. “Runner One-one, pop-up contact! Snap vector, bearing 345, twenty, low, in the weeds.”
The warning came from the E-2C Hawkeye — the turbo-prop airborne early warning aircraft — deployed in an orbit twenty miles south of the Yemeni coastline.
Fulcrums again? From where? Had they somehow gotten across the Red Sea from Eritrea or Chad? How did they arrive undetected?
They didn’t, he decided. They would have been picked up by the Hawkeye. These guys were locals.
“Bogeys bearing 330, fifteen, weeds.”
Maxwell still had no ID on them. Bogeys or bandits? Bogeys were unidentified, while bandits were bona fide, no-shit hostiles. They had to be bandits if they were coming in low from the north.
If they waited any longer for an ID, it would be too late. They were already within missile range.
“Runner flight, jettison stores,” Maxwell called on the tactical frequency. He hit the emergency jettison button and felt a whump through the Hornet’s airframe as his remaining Rockeye containers and the centerline external fuel tank were punched away. The Super Hornet was no longer a lumbering bomber. It was a slick-winged fighter.
They were low, still pulling up from a pass on the Sherji positions. Above and behind were Leroi Jones and Flash Gordon, about to roll in on ground targets.