The Takavar had high morale and had been expected to put up tough and determined resistance once the attack commenced. But the blue forces combat personnel were far stronger and had struck with both speed and tactical surprise in their favor. They would prevail; of this Breaux had no doubt.
Breaux could now hear the sounds of the Force Omega 81-millimeter mortar shells landing at the other end of the palace grounds. Every time one hit, the earth trembled slightly and the salvos of Iranian small arms fire suddenly halted.
Breaux smiled grimly. He wasn't surprised. Few weapons of war could put the damper on a mud-soldier's fighting spirit than dropping some mortar cans on top of his head. All it took was the sight of what one mortar shell could do to the human body to make the survivors drop everything and take cover when the ripping silk sound preceded the next salvo.
He almost pitied the Iranian purple-beanies. He could picture them scuttling for cover as the fire came hurtling down on them. But such was war, and fuck them anyway; better they were on the receiving end than his own men.
By now all of the paratroop force was fully deployed on the ground. They had jettisoned their chutes and harnesses and were ready for action. Breaux's people knew the drill backwards and forwards by now, and were already methodically going about their appointed tasks.
Some were unshipping Claymore mines they'd carried in with them, crimping caps, unwinding det wires, and setting up the convex antipersonnel mines for remote detonation. Others were forming up into mobile assault squads and getting ready to do some fast-and-dirty door-kicking. One of those details was already on its way to secure the multistory apartment building with Blue Man already set up on the roof.
Breaux keyed his comms and called up the assault team.
"Stingray, this is Magic Dog. We are down and dirty. Say your situation."
"We are shit hot and ready to kick some fucking You-Ran ass, boss. And I thank the Lord above for making me a mud-suckin', sand-eatin', pussy-lickin' straight-leg grunt. God bless the Army and piss on the Marines. Amen."
It was Sgt. Mainline at the other end of the link. Breaux rogered that transmission as he heard the steady pounding of automatic weapons fire punctuated by the sporadic explosions of heavier armament in the background. Mainline went on to quickly and succinctly give an account of the shape of the battle so far.
"We've just breached the enemy's forward security defenses. Combat teams are already penetrating the palace grounds and setting up a security perimeter. Friendly casualties have been extremely light."
"Let me know if things change. Otherwise, go the whole nine yards."
"Fuckin'-A, boss."
Hardly had Breaux broken contact with Stingray when Blue Man came back on the net with an update.
"Activity on the rooftop of the building to your left."
Blue Man watched Iranians setting up a machinegun emplacement on the flat of the roof through his infrared magnifying nightscope. It's okay to look, boss. You won't see anything, though."
Breaux cautiously craned his neck. He didn't.
"Taken them down," he ordered.
"Consider them wasted, boss."
Blue Man was already drawing a bead on the head of the bereted NCO who was ordering the other troops around as they set up the MG. Others were piling sandbags in front of it and hauling in ammo crates.
The shot was near the limit of the PSG1's six hundred meter range, but still well enough inside it for Blue Man to be confident of making it. Windage was favorable too. With his target in the crosshairs, Blue Man squeezed off a round. The gun bucked once as the 7.62 x 51 millimeter bullet exited the weapon's polygon-bored heavy barrel at a muzzle velocity many times higher than conventional rifles produced, while its low-noise bolt closing feature reduced the sound of the shot to a low-decibel, subsonic crack.
Almost instantaneously a red blossom appeared where the bridge of the nose had once been on the face of the Iranian NCO on the distant roof as the heavy slug impacted, crushing bone and cartilage and plowing a track through brain tissue clear to the base of the skull.
The Iranians had only enough time to react to the sight of their commander doing a spastic death jig. Some even began to smile, thinking it was some kind of a joke by the otherwise humorless noncom. But then they heard the delayed crack of the subsonic round and knew what was really happening as the Iranian pitched sideways and sprawled over the edge of the rooftop, before Blue Man aimed and fired a second of the twenty hollow-nosed bullets in the PSG1's magazine.
Three quick trigger-pulls later he had put as many additional rounds into three unfortunate members of the MG squad setting up on the rooftop. The survivors had ducked down in panic, shouting and randomly firing rifle bursts in blind fear reactions. Two of them made the mistake of running toward the open door of the rooftop cupola, snapping off automatic AK salvos as they beat boot leather.
Blue Man dropped them in their tracks before they reached the cupola's dubious safety and their twitching bodies served as an object lesson to the rest of the team who had wisely chosen to remain where they were. They were not about to go anywhere soon, but the muzzle flashes of their weapons had drawn the attention of Angry Falcon which fired two Zuni rockets onto the rooftop, blowing the machinegun emplacement apart and instantly killing all of the survivors.
Far below, Breaux's crew now began to deploy throughout the complex. The cat was out of the bag. The Fat Lady was singing her ass off. But the good guys were now on the ground, in position and ready to whale.
Chapter Seventeen
Some distance away, far beneath the desert crust, opposition forces were shrugging off surprise and the lethargy of sleep and preparing to counter the shock assault from air and ground.
Some land-mobile battalions of the Iranian Takavar are housed in underground bunkers scattered strategically across the vast salt-pan deserts that cover much of central Iran. The submerged complexes are buried about fifty feet below the surface crust. They are completely covered by two-foot-thick slabs of stressed concrete which extend approximately twenty feet beyond the edge of the complex, affording protection from missile strikes at any angle.
The bunkers, which apart from being hardened are segmented into modular units sheltering one hundred troops each, and with separate units for mess, sick bay, water, ammunition storage and the like, were designed for nuclear-chemical-biological warfare and built to specifications enabling them to sustain blast overpressure from up to a ten megaton nuclear strike. Since the Gulf War, the bunkers — most of which survived the decades since Desert Storm intact — were upgraded and extended, so that heavy vehicles and mechanized armor can be safely stored on-site.
It was in such a bunker complex beneath the desert that the troops of the General Hassan Firouzabadi Mechanized Brigade (Pasdaran VII Brigade) were now rousing themselves to wakefulness and running to their war machines to mount up. The heavy concrete-and-steel blast door that protected a steeply sloping ramp was raised on pneumatic pistons.
From deep within the darkness, like the growling of the spirits of the dead, came the throbbing of engines and the clanking of armored caterpillar treads as the VII Mechanized Brigade rolled up onto the floor of the desert. The brigade belonged to the feared King Cyrus the Great Division and it flew the banner of the twin eagles rampant above crossed ram's horns emblem of the Shahanshah, the reverenced sign of the ancient Fatamid caliphs, feared and obeyed throughout the Mideast. With sleep now a memory, the brigade was eager for battle. Tonight they would bring glory to their standard.