But there was nothing amiss out in the desert night. All around them was a flat, sere landscape broken only by massive sandstone pillars that jutted up here and there like the pegs of broken teeth in a giant's mouth. The squad leader was about to stow his field glasses and report back to Breaux when he saw the constellation of tiny, yellow stars; fairy lights that shimmered and danced on the horizon line as they passed between the pillars.
Sgt. Hormones continued to train his field glasses on the fairy lights, studied the spectacle awhile, nodded to himself in confirmation at what he'd surmised, then climbed down to report.
"Boss, the coast is clear. There's a road or highway about five klicks due east. I saw the headlights of some cars or maybe trucks heading south just before."
Breaux ordered Jeckyll up top with Hormone's scouts. Jeckyll was to set up his dual-screen tablet laptop and mobile tactical communications equipment and do a fast map recon to pinpoint their position. A security detail armed with SAWs and SRAWs was also sent topside onto the flat desert crust.
Breaux decided to climb up and eyeball the scene for himself, ordering the main force to fall out below. After breathing the stink of death for hours it was good to feel the bite of the chill night wind against his face and inhale the cold, fresh desert air. In the distance, more dancing pinpoints suddenly sprang into being, then just as quickly disappeared.
Yeah, there was a road there, alright.
Jeckyll had by this time set up his rig and performed a preliminary map recon.
"Boss, we're about forty klicks southeast of our last position," he reported. "The road we've seen is called Highway Seven, which runs between Teheran and a place called Chah Rabat at the mouth of the Gulf of Oman."
"What's our position relative to Masariyah?" Breaux next asked.
Jeckyll told him that they were less than thirty klicks away from the hoped-for extraction site.
Breaux nodded and told Jeckyll to try and raise the rescue team over mobile SATCOM tactical VOIP. This turned out to be a tougher bill to fill because the equipment was still not working right.
Finally Jeckyll managed to connect to Eisenhower, the Nimitz-class carrier anchored off the Omani coast that was coordinating the extraction effort. A complicated arrangement followed in which the team communicated through three parties with the chopper rescue detachment gearing up to go from Misery Island.
After the palaver over the airwaves, Breaux realized that the unit could still reach the extraction site at Masiriyah, at least in theory. It would be a little later than originally planned, because they'd lost all their motorized transport and had been forced to stage a fighting withdrawal.
But Breaux figured that with luck maybe some new transport might be picked up on the highway. If the team could commandeer itself some trucks, that could change the time-frame completely.
Breaux issued orders for the rest of the troops to climb out of the hole in the earth and form up by squad. Special Forces Operational Detachment Omega was to march toward Highway Seven and deploy along its flanks. He would tell them what to do next when they got there.
Chapter Thirteen
From here to a vanishing point in the north between the rock-ribbed ramparts of the Zagros mountains, the highway stretched ruler-straight, paralleling the easternmost bifurcation of the coastal mountain range right up to the Turkish border. In fact, Jeckyll's map recon made clear that the highway was part of the Bonn to Karachi truck route that Breaux's crew had begun to investigate back in the Swiss Alps several weeks before.
Along this route traveled the trucks that had departed from Germany toward Pakistan, carrying contraband dual-use technology destined for the new Soviet Union. And, going in the other direction, the Neo-Soviets were using the selfsame route to shuttle military gear into Tehran to complement the clandestine air cargo flights across the Elburz and northern Iran to installations beyond the border.
But more surprises were to come. As Breaux and the team scouted out the highway, they saw, around a distant bend, the procession of wheeling, flickering star points that marked several pairs of approaching headlights. Breaux watched the headlights appear and disappear as the road looped around the colossal sandstone pillars that rose for several miles along its flanks. As he watched, a light bulb flashed on in his head.
"Top, you thinking what I'm thinking?"
"About dem trucks?"
"Yeah."
"I t'ink we both got the same idea."
"Switzerland."
"I gotcha."
"Jeckyll," Breaux next said, turning to his main technical. "Do a fast computation on travel time between here and Frankfurt for that truck convoy we saw leave. See if it's possible that it's the same one."
"On it."
Jeckyll entered data into the PC and in a couple of minutes came back with the answer.
"Affirmative," he replied. "Allowing for downtime on the road that could definitely be the same convoy. Pretty neat if we hitch ourselves a ride on those trucks, huh?"
"You know it," Breaux replied, and ordered the rest of the unit to get their heinies in motion. The team needed to deploy along the flanks of the road and be ready to interdict the convoy. In order to do that it would need to be in position well in advance of its approach.
The team reached the road while the convoy was still at least a mile away. It was rolling on, doing about thirty miles on the road, moving at a steady pace down the highway.
Breaux ordered Sgts. Mainline and Death to set up fire positions with SRAW rockets and Chicken Wire to get ready with his M-60E3 "Pig" GPMG. On his signal they were to launch rocket salvos and small arms fire at either side of the road, though placing their strikes wide enough to make sure the blacktop stayed undamaged.
If the lead truck — or any of the others behind it — ignored the warning salvos and tried to barrel their way through the blockade, Top Sgt. Death was to open up and shoot the driver of the lead vehicle.
The ambush went down pretty much as Breaux had anticipated. The salvo of SRAW rocket strikes did its work, and the lead truck stopped short, its hood thrown back against the windshield and its shattered engine block gushing flames and dense black smoke. The other trucks behind it followed suit with barely enough clearance to keep from slamming into each other as their drivers stomped on their brakes.
The men in the truck cabs saw the night begin to swarm with armed commandos and came out with their hands up, doing exactly as ordered. For the truckers, the road to Karachi had just dead-ended. The convoy was now in Eagle Patcher hands.
Breaux set his people to checking out the captured trucks before they were commandeered as transport. Inside their cargo areas, most of the rigs were loaded with weaponry, heavy machinery, spare parts and miscellaneous components. Breaux ordered everything videotaped for the intel people back at the Pentagon and Langley to whack off over and then had two of the trucks cleaned out.
One wasn't very full and posed little problem. The remaining three were packed to the bursting and the other two had to be laboriously emptied by means of backbreaking grunt work. Once that was done, the crew piled into the first three vehicles. The final truck was driven off the road and blown up with a missile strike.
As to the drivers, Breaux ordered them blindfolded, gagged, tied up and left near the wreckage with some food and water nearby. It would take them awhile to work themselves loose, and by that time it wouldn't make much difference to the force whether they provided directions to pursuers or not.
Breaux's crews climbed aboard their new transport, again making for their planned extraction site. They drove through the night and into the gloaming of early morning. At the same time as this was happening, the Sea Stallions and their AC-130H Spectre escort had already launched from Misery Island and were en route across the Arabian littoral to the pickup site.