The chopper then turned its malevolent attentions on the troops stationed on the upper levels of the building below the now vigorously burning roof. The Iranians were at this stage pouring everything from Kalashnikov fire to 40 millimeter canister grenades at the chopper, hoping to knock the airborne predator out of the sky before it killed them all. Automatic fire strobed the windows with flame.
Darting this way and that like a gigantic black mosquito, the AH-1Z raked the side of the building with its under-nose mounted 20-millimeter chain gun, thousands of glowing tracers spurting in a deadly arc across the entire facing wall, shattering glass and chewing up the interior of the rooms. All enemy fire from those uppermost floors was rapidly suppressed. As the Iranians either ran or were taken out, and their shooting tapered off, the Viper just hung there, swaying slightly as it poured out fire. The heavy caliber DU (depleted uranium) rounds from the slaved, electrically driven, tri-barreled machinegun just kept chewing up walls and furniture, reducing everything in sight to splinters amid a cloud of dust and exploding debris.
Below, on the ground, C-Squad's shooters now had their blood up and were eager to join the fray. Cheering like madmen and howling like banshees, they rushed the building, taking incoming automatic rifle and light machinegun fire as they charged hell-bent for leather. Several Eagle Patchers dropped in their tracks and never got up again. Their buddies ran forward, automatic rifles blazing at the hip in vengeful anger. As they breached the building's lobby, the fighting deteriorated into close-order combat in a narrowly confined space.
Those on both sides who had bayonets fixed to their rifle muzzles now used these ancient offensive weapons without hesitation or mercy. Opposing troops engaged each other in a combination of pointblank gunfire and fierce bayonet-stabs into the throats, chests and abdomens of their antagonists.
The fighting was hard, fast and viciously savage, with heavy casualties developing on both sides. After the dust cleared, Omega combat personnel found they had prevailed. They then went about the business of taking prisoners and counting friendly and unfriendly dead. Fresh reinforcements were called in, and these soon began circulating through the building, taking still more casualties from booby-traps, snipers and enemy diehards as they conducted door-to-door and floor-by-floor security actions.
It was in the basement of this building that an element of the now beefed-up force (it had started out as only C-Squad, but as the fighting intensified, more men had been poured in until its ranks had swelled to near-company strength by the time the building fell) encountered something, and made a discovery, that was to change the complexion of the entire mission.
It was not what they had expected to find or anything with which they had been trained to deal. They did not encounter any of the weapons of mass destruction that they had been drilled to detect and destroy. Instead, the Eagle Patchers came under suicidal fire from an entirely unexpected direction.
The building had a large underground parking area that ran its entire length. Except for the odd vehicle parked here and there, the garage was deserted. But under the dim glow of overhead mercury vapor lamps — many had been shot out to deliberately darken the area — Breaux's combat teams saw a large eighteen-wheel truck of a kind used internationally to transport containerized cargo.
Hardly had this discovery been made than they were suddenly taking fire from the truck.
The beefed-up C-Squad, now C-Detachment, went into action, immediately deploying to counter the determined fire from the truck. With superior numbers in favor of Force Omega, the engagement was one-sided and brief. The fire-fight reached its climax when one of the shooters emerged from inside the cab of the big rig, from where he had been pouring fire at C-Detachment, and advanced toward the Americans, pumping out grenades from an under-mounted rifle launcher to cover his clip changes.
While he threw cans at the US commandos, he shouted something in Arabic that might have been intelligible to one of the native speakers that manned each assault element, had it not been drowned out in the din of battle. Minutes passed and more fire was traded, until a multiround burst caught the gunman in his chest and he went down in a bloody heap. Then the Americans loped in to secure the truck.
Inside they found nothing to explain the suicidal resistance they'd encountered. The truck was empty except for some large packing crates and corrugated cardboard cartons, some of which had ostensibly contained bulky home appliances. There was nothing in the truck worth dying for, as far as any member o f the team could surmise.
There was something else though — the Iranian soldier who had attacked them, shouting oaths and seeking martyrdom, was still alive when the victorious US troops reached him.
He didn't stay that way for long. He somehow managed to bite something taped to his wrist and died in a shuddering paroxysm of flailing arms and lashing legs. To make it all even stranger, it was now discovered that he had been firing a Galil, an Israeli-manufactured automatic rifle which closely resembled the AK-variants used by the Iranians. His uniform also presented the
Eagle Patchers with an enigma, as it was not a Pasdaran uniform. The soldier was garbed in Israeli battle dress, his fatigues bearing a patch with a six-pointed star.
The squad leader immediately called up Breaux on the force's JTRS radio net. The boss would want to know about this A-SAP.
Chapter Eighteen
The ruined, sandblasted and time-stained concrete buildings were scattered throughout the dusty corner of the desert, a mere stone's throw from the highway. The area was known to the long-haulers who traveled the route as a truck park, the modern-day equivalent of the caravansaries that had dotted the ancient Middle East.
The structures, first erected during the 1960s as pumping stations along a now derelict oil pipeline stretching between Turkmenistan and Mazandaran, had long ago been abandoned, and the heavy equipment that had filled them scrapped. For decades the remaining concrete shells had been used by long-haul truckers as refuges from the shamal, bandits and the biting desert cold, places to sleep off the fatigue of the road in relative safety or to perform makeshift repairs to their rigs.
This morning the old pumping station was empty, the concrete shells of defunct pump houses sitting abandoned and forlorn beneath the pale light of the setting moon. Yet in the distance there now arose a sound familiar to the wayfarers who frequented this place. The rumbling of powerful diesel truck engines began to be faintly heard. A truck convoy was drawing near.
Above the keening of the wind, the rumbling steadily rose in pitch and intensity. Before long, the sound of the approaching diesel-powered leviathans rolling from the highway onto the flattened earth between the buildings had reached a deafening crescendo. Soon the rectangular black shapes, showing only amber and red running lights stopped, their air brakes squealing, their motors sputtering and coughing as the drivers killed the ignitions.
Doors were thrown open and men with muscles cramped from long, tedious hours of sitting in crowded cabs emerged into the night, stretching and rubbing their hands against the chill air. As they emerged, some of these men eyed their former traveling companions surreptitiously, stealing up close behind them as they reached into the pockets of their coats for the peg-ended steel wire garrotes they carried concealed there.
Soon the muffled screams and choking death rattles of the unfortunates were whipped away by the rising desert wind, and the bodies hidden in the utter darkness that followed moon set. With sunrise, the buzzards would scent the carrion, and begin to circle.