The AH-1Zs were the door-kicking force for Boogie and Balls, the force elements of the double-barreled attack. Like the nose of the camel in the old Bedouin fable, the helos would open the way for the considerably larger portions of the ungainly beast that was waiting to climb inside the tent and take it over, at least for awhile.
Following the waypoints on their flight plan, the helos continued on their convoluted journey into Iran, and approximately twenty minutes into their flight, encountered the first of their two objectives.
The SAM site lay about fifty miles from the Iraqi border and about six miles from the desert airstrip that was the helo sortie's secondary objective of the night. The SAM site was a high-to-medium envelope threat, comprised as it was of SA-10 launchers and their search-track radars that were capable of engaging aircraft out to sixty thousand feet, as well as older SA-9 platforms.
The SAM site — actually there were two of them, counting the Roland battery and revetmented "Shilka" ZSU 1-23-4 triple-A guns at the airstrip — posed a serious threat to the hump of the camel and had to be taken out first thing. One AH-1Z gun ship was deemed enough to do the job, with the second helo tasked with securing the airstrip and the third along for backup. And so it came to pass as the Vipers neared the first mission objective.
At this stage in the mission, the attack choppers had been flying nap of the earth or NOE as opposed to the low-level and contour flight paths inbound to their targets. NOE was the safest way to fly, but it was also the slowest, so it was reserved for the most critical and dangerous stretches of the trip and for the final few seconds before reaching the engagement zone.
Now, only a short distance off the desert, the lead chopper executed the pop-up maneuver called unmasking and sprang from under ten feet to an altitude of about thirty feet above ground. Below, the heavy vehicles that made up the launchers, radars, power supplies and transportation for the missile battery were visible to the aircrew in the greens and blacks of night vision head-up displays.
A human figure sprang into action, firing a Kalashnikov variant as he ran toward one of the trucks, crying out a warning, but it was too late for him or anyone else on the ground. In an instant, HARM anti-radar missiles shoot off the launch rails at either side of the AH-1Z, slamming into the radar trucks and blowing them sky high in a thunderclap of flame.
Zuni strikes followed the HARM rounds off the launchers, taking out communications trucks and support vehicles, and blowing apart other Iranian soldiers regardless of whether they were trying to hide or trying to fight.
As the AH-1Z circled the target, the pilot brought its nose cannon into play, slaving it back and forth to spray red tracer fire into whatever happened to be left semi-intact in the zone of death and fire below, including soldiers trying to surrender with their hands raised in the air, these latter being blown limb from limb by the firepower directed against them.
Modern war and modern society has desensitized Americans to the full implications of what their weapons did to the things they struck. To the young combatants onboard the chopper, the Iranians had about as much reality as Nintendo simulations.
The other two choppers had by this time passed on toward the main objective, reaching it only a few minutes later. The small desert airstrip lay vulnerable beneath the moonless, star-flecked sky. The runway was large enough to land a C-5B Galaxy — a plane dubbed "Fat Albert" by its crews — loaded about one-third to capacity.
The C-5 — the hump of the camel — would be barreling in behind the gun ships, but it would be full to capacity with men and materiél, including fuel bladders to re-tank the helos. Much of the weight would be reduced by LOREX-dropping the mechanized armor and heavy guns it carried, and then the transport would circle and land to debark the troops onboard.
First the airstrip had to be secured, and the second and third gun ships were soon engaged in doing precisely this. The work went quicker because there were fewer targets to contend with here, and the battle — if you could call a turkey-shoot a battle — was over almost as fast as it had begun. Their grim work now accomplished, the Vipers hovered at a safe distance, giving the inbound Fat Albert a wide berth.
The giant strategic heavy-lift aircraft was minutes behind the gun ship sortie, and soon the earsplitting roar of its four massive TF39-GE-1C turbofan engines (they are said to have the equivalent power of forty-eight railroad locomotives) began to churn up the night almost as physically as the growing cloud of exhaust-blown sand that was disturbed by its slipstream and wing vortexes spread through the crystal-clear desert air.
The C-5 came in low, its rear ramp already lowered, and parachutes began to blossom. One after another, paletted and cushioned multipurpose Barack Obama Ground Combat Vehicles (GCVs) — commonly called "Bam-Bams" — mine-resistant and highly mobile JLTVs and crates of weapons, ammo and gear came popping out the back end of the enormous metal bird.
In a matter of minutes, the cargo load was down on the ground close but well-clear of the landing strip, and the C-5 was turning in the air to make a second pass for a landing. Passing through clouds of smoke and fires from the burning Pasdaran military vehicles that flanked the landing strip, the super-transport screamed as reverse-thrust buckets came down and friction brakes were applied to landing gear. Before it had rolled to a complete stop on nitrogen-filled tires, Detachment Omega was hustling to ramp-off and get down to the job of unpacking its combat gear.
Minutes later, with the sounds of automotive engines coming to life in the background, Top Sgt. Death was on secure JTRS communication to the final element of the mission.
"We're on the ground, boss," the NCO reported. "Hoo-ah. We're good to go."
Many miles away, and approaching their common objective from a different angle, Colonel Stone Breaux affirmed the transmission and told the Detachment Omega team members onboard the C-130H-30 Hercules.
The smaller transport plane was coming in at a higher altitude. The landing of the first element at the airstrip was a signal that the assault on the largest and most difficult of the mission's twin objectives would soon commence.
Now it was the turn of the element onboard the Herky Bird.
Within a matter of minutes, the C-130H-30 had reached the drop zone for the HALO insertion that would send a company of Army special forces operators under Breaux's command gliding on the wind toward their target several miles inland.
The plan was fraught with risk, besides being somewhat alien to Breaux, who was straight-leg infantry through and through. The paratroop landing had to coincide with Balls' main ground assault or Breaux's element would be caught in a quagmire with no way out.
But neither Breaux nor the others tried to think very hard about that as the stick of parachutists lined up behind the jumpmaster and waited for his signal to take a walk into space and hit the silk.
At about the same time as this was happening, the second element of the coordinated assaults inside Iran had reached its first phase line. Boogie was a company-strength unit whose mission was to secure a smaller and less heavily fortified or defended objective than the first air-ground element, Balls, which had the job of taking control of one of Iranian leader Faramoosh Mozafferreddin's presidential palaces.
These so-called palaces were much more than castles on the desert as the name might imply. Some of them were really small cities, complete with apartment blocks, villas leading onto artificial lakes with artificial pleasure islands in their midst, housing for sizable contingents of troops and SAM batteries to protect them from air strikes.