Reconnaissance was handled by remote-controlled aircraft and the sophisticated Fox recon vehicles that sense chemical warfare devices. Zwick’s tank corps was equipped with the M1A2 Abrams, “Whispering Death,” the world’s best main battle tank manned by the world’s best tank crews. Multiple-launch rocket systems and self-propelled 155 mm. howitzers added firepower.
Amazingly, the technology all worked.
Colonel Zwick commanded a unit of the 2nd Armored Cavalry that engaged Iraq’s Tawakalna Division in the Battle of 73 Easting, annihilating the enemy. In one hundred hours of fighting, the Armored Cav routed three Republican Guard divisions, destroyed the Iraqi’s 10th and 12th Armored Divisions and the 17th Infantry Division. They destroyed 4,000 Iraqi combat vehicles and took 24,000 prisoners. Only 42 American soldiers were killed and 192 wounded.
So how difficult could it be, Colonel Zwick wondered, to take back a missile silo from a bunch of half-baked terrorists? Not hard at all. Unless the bastards could pull the trigger on the missile. That changed the equation.
The Kiowa descends, hovering a moment over the security building where the blown doors are clearly visible. The sound of gunshots is drowned out by the chopper’s engine, but tiny puffs of smoke come from nearby trees, commandos firing at them. Neither the colonel nor the captain flinches, and the pilot takes evasive action, the chopper banking then cutting a figure-8 above the missile base.
With a look of disdain, Captain Clancy watches the commandos take aim from positions in the trees and behind makeshift bunkers. “Dumb bastards are hiding, can’t tell a recon mission from an assault.” Unlike the colonel, Captain Clancy didn’t have the benefit of higher education, unless you count El Salvador, Grenada, Panama, Iraq, Somalia, and Haiti. Years ago, he was a grunt who couldn’t stay out of trouble in Basic Training at Fort Campbell, Kentucky. Though he regularly led his unit in the rugged physical tests and otherwise showed respect for his superiors, Clancy was an improviser on duty and a brawler off duty. The former troubled commanders who prefer followers, not independent thinkers. The latter caused concern in the New Army.
Clancy busted up bars, never backing down from an insult or a fight. Once in a tavern, he tore off a woman’s red dress and wore it as an ascot. His defense to the M.P.’s was simple. In the war games, his unit was green. Red was the enemy. The woman turned out to be a lieutenant’s wife, and Clancy was either going to end up in the stockade or on a bus home until a J.A.G. lawyer suggested the Special Forces. It was the perfect place for someone who could think on his feet and react with controlled fury when the coach called his number.
During the invasion of Panama, dressed in black and wearing night vision goggles, Clancy leapt out of a hovering MH-6 Little Bird helicopter onto the roof of the Càrcel Modelo prison. As Delta Force snipers picked off guards in front of the prison, Clancy blew open a steel door with plastique explosives, then with three other commandos, raced down the stairs. He shot three guards with a laser-scoped MP-5 Heckler & Koch machine gun, then used more explosives to blow open the cell of a CIA operative who would surely have been killed in retaliation for the invasion. Clancy led the operative up to the roof and the waiting chopper, which was shot down as it lifted off. A U.S. armored personnel carrier evacuated Clancy, the other commandos and the operative with no loss of American life. Just another day in the Special Forces.
Clancy loved all the action, but Desert Storm was his favorite. On G-minus-2, two days before the start of the ground war, he led a recon team across the border into Iraq. His job was to find a route through the mine fields and tank traps and also draw enemy fire so Colonel Zwick’s 2nd Armored Cavalry could locate Iraqi positions. Clancy had the perfect temperament to be a human trip wire. He enjoyed being shot at nearly as much as he enjoyed shooting back.
On the Saudi-Iraq border, hundreds of thousands of Coalition troops were gathered: the British Desert Rats, French Foreign Legionnaires, the Arab Task Force, and of course, the might of the U.S. Army, the 82nd and 101st Airborne, the 1st and 24th Infantry, the 1st and 2nd Cavalry, the 1st and 3rd Armored Division. But across the border, inside Iraq, scuttling through mine fields and over trenches, were the Night Stalkers, some on foot, some in Light Armored Vehicles (LAV’s), daring the enemy to shoot, then firing back with their 25-millimeter Bushmaster chain guns.
On G-minus-1, Clancy and his men did the job too well. Brazenly hurdling flaming tank traps, the Night Stalkers apparently convinced the Iraqis that the main invasion was underway. The Iraqis responded with heavy artillery, 122 mm. rockets, tanks and FROG missiles. Which, of course, was what Clancy wanted all along, because it gave him a chance to stand and fight instead of just “flashing our petticoats and running home to Mama,” which was what he called decoy missions.
Clancy stood atop his unarmored HUMVEE, firing TOW missiles at the Iraqis T-62 tanks, taking out three with direct hits, while his men pinpointed artillery positions and picked off Iraqi infantry with machine gun fire.
Now, as the Kiowa dips to five hundred feet, Clancy can imagine the crackle of small-arms fire from the ground, though he cannot hear it. He and the colonel peer down and see commandos running haphazardly from the security building, firing rifles at them. A lone bullet pings off a landing skid.
“Amateurs,” Clancy says. “We’ll go through them like a knife through an eyeball.”
“I think the expression is, ‘a knife through butter,’” the colonel says.
The captain smiles, and the scar at the corner of his mouth stretches and whitens. “Not where I come from, colonel.”
-34-
Run Jericho, Run
Jack Jericho carefully slides the grate from its grooves and pulls himself out of the sump and onto the floor of the missile silo. He is directly below the suspended Peacekeeper missile. As he gets to his feet, he is shocked to find himself ten feet behind a man in a dark suit. The man, whose long hair is tied back in a ponytail, is staring straight up into the burners of the rocket. Jericho drops into a stalking crouch, takes a step and comes down on the outside ball of his foot, rolls to the inside ball, then lowers his heel. He’s practiced in the woods, so that the stalking crouch could bring him close enough to a deer to hear its breathing. Now, deliberate as a heron stalking a frog, he approaches the man from behind.
There is a sense that is part sight and part sound, and yet it does not depend on the eyes or ears. A warning reflex, an electrical synapse more finely tuned in prehistoric man where the rustle of leaves or the breaking of a twig could mean danger or death. Sensing movement he can neither see nor hear, the man whirls around. Jericho leaps out of his crouch and grabs him by his ponytail, yanking his head back, and sliding the saw-toothed knife under his neck. “Who are you!” Jericho demands.
Startled, Brother David peers over his shoulder at Jericho, but it only takes a moment to regain his composure. “Bitte tue mir nichts!”
“What! What the hell are you saying?”
David trembles. His look is pure terror. He is a good enough actor to fool Jericho, who releases the pressure on David’s ponytail, then gets a look at his profile. There is something familiar about the man. “Who are you?”