Zur Khane is practiced in an octagonal arena and is a style that is heavily dependent on muscular strength and stamina. The sergeant had the look of a Zur Khane practitioner, one accustomed to many confrontations in the octagon.
Again the sergeant gestured contemptuously for Breaux to lunge at him, spitting on the ground. Breaux had another idea. He flung the knife, knowing it would miss, but used his opponent's distraction to tuck down and roll sideways for his lost rifle.
As the sergeant bore down on him, Breaux fired from a prone position on his back, emptying half his clip. At close range the burst cut the Iranian practically in half.
Breaux was up and running as his opponent fell. Amid the chaos of battle he still heard the distinct sound of the BTR's guns chattering away. Mounting to the surface of the road, he scoped out the situation. Somehow the enemy war wagon had survived multiple rocket strikes.
Bodies were piled up in front of it, however, and it was clearly mortally damaged. To make sure it would blow, Breaux ordered that jerry cans of gasoline be thrown beneath the BTR by troops covered by diversionary fire. Once this had been done, using the last of their remaining rockets, the squads fired a final salvo.
In combination with the gasoline, the BTR began to burn, and its gun fell finally silent.
The battle was over. Dense, moonless darkness still covered the arid desert landscape.
The fire-fight, though intense, had been brief, and in this remote corner of the desert there was the likelihood that it had gone undetected.
However, even in the event the unfriendly patrol had never gotten off a radio distress call, with the coming of daylight its absence would be noted and a search mission would be launched.
Although Breaux's force would be long gone from the scene of battle by then, the longer discovery and identification was delayed, the better.
Breaux ordered that enemy dead be buried and the wreckage of the patrol's vehicles be pushed into the wadi and draped with camouflage netting, then covered with sand and rock to further disguise and conceal the wreckage. With any luck it would be several more days before the vanished patrol was located, and if a shamal blew up, the additional sand deposited by the storm might delay discovery even longer.
Once these actions were carried out, Breaux ordered the graves detail to put friendly dead in body bags and place them aboard the unit's vehicles. Having parked these in hide sites well-removed from the ambush site that was the major scene of the engagement with the Iranian patrol, the vehicles were completely intact.
After scout patrol squads were again sent forward as pickets, and final preparations were made, the convoy moved out again, towards its hide site across the Turkish border.
Chapter Eleven
The mission into the Elburz had been completed but Breaux had not yet been able to extract Detachment Omega as he had warned Rempt he would do on completion.
Bad weather had settled in shortly after the force's return to its borderland encampments. A period of biting cold and fierce shamals, blizzards that combined frozen rain, hail and sandstorms, had grounded inbound V-22 and helo flights. Until there was a hole in the weather to afford an opportunity window to extract, Breaux and his people were grounded.
This was not good. The tension in the camp, temporarily dispelled by the covert mission and the subsequent fighting withdrawal, had returned, and the adverse weather conditions had worsened flaring tempers. Breaux was still being held accountable by the Peshmerga for the killing of one of their own, and he had been warned of plans for revenge.
Not that he needed much warning: the beard-and-turban contingent was making it plain, in the way they'd done before the mission, that they were still out for blood. As far as Breaux was concerned, so be it. If the tribesman wanted another funeral or two, then that's what their sorry-assed little vendetta would cost them.
As soon as the weather cleared, he would leave the Koran-thumping assholes to the hell on earth that they and their sheep-fucking ancestors had created. Breaux understood the geopolitical realities that led America to at times cast its lot with the fucked-up nationalities of the far-flung corners of the earth, but the ground truth was another matter entirely.
That ground truth had driven American soldiers half-insane in Indochina, as members of the most advanced culture on earth were forced to live day to day with one of the most primitive. As far as Breaux went, dealing with the Peshmerga had been like taking a time trip back to the stone age. He'd be glad to return to civilization. Even eating fast food and breathing carbon monoxide was better than this shit.
Another throwback Breaux would be glad to leave behind was Rempt. Here was an especially toxic spook. In hindsight, Breaux had almost been glad to find himself engaged in actual combat during the gone-sour ambush on the road.
What had preceded it was sickness and perversity, acts unworthy of a soldier and an American. Breaux would need to wash the memory of his time in the Elburz borderlands from his mind, and he knew it had already cost him another little piece of his soul.
The weather worsened as winter storm systems marched across the face of the land. Above the thirty-fifth parallel, in the extreme north of the Mideast, the rocky, arid deserts and stony gray mountains are often swept by freezing rain, pelted by hail and scoured by blizzards of wind-driven sand.
The weather picture complicated the mission, increasing the challenges to the planning cell based at Incirlik, Turkey. They were professionals, however, and had conducted numerous clandestine paramilitary operations in the regional theater over the years.
They knew the vagaries of the region's storm systems, and were certain that a window of opportunity would open up within the time frame for the operation. Plus they had some very accurate meteorological data available to them.
For the moment the biggest problem would be in keeping the operation sterile and tightly compartmentalized. The operational detachment had been taken from one of the Western European NATO countries, and had been told nothing concerning the operation, other than that their objective would be the destruction of an Islamist terror group based on the eastern flank of NATO.
In operations such as these, where foreign nationals are used as surrogates, the procedure is based on the quick turnaround. The operational detachment is trained, briefed, sent out to do its job, debriefed and returned to its home nation, all within a few days' time.
Here, the delay caused by the weather posed several problems and risks. The airborne assault elements and ground forces both needed to be kept at the base near Incirlik in a state of seclusion. They could not be permitted to roam from the base.
But experience had taught the planners that even the most thoroughly indoctrinated troops can be ingenious in breaching security when claustrophobia sets in. The planners didn't like that.
It came as some relief when the chief meteorologist brought them the favorable report for which they had hoped. The operational detachment would be able to commence its assault on the target at two hundred hours. The planning cell wasted no time in bringing their end of the operation to a close.
Nightstalker was on again.
The unmarked black helicopters converged on the strike zone amid worsening weather conditions. Although the night skies had been clear when they had lifted off from Incirlik several hours before, the helo crews had encountered the tail end of a fierce shamal that had barreled its way across the mountains west of Tabriz like a runaway express freight.