A twelve-year-old boy was guiding a small herd of goats across the hillside. He was using a long stick to prod the goats along, humming some tuneless song. Kamigami unsheathed the big black anodized Bowie knife he chose to carry as he watched the boy come straight at them.
“Turn point in thirty seconds,” Von Drexler’s WSO announced. “We’re five minutes out of the Initial Point.” The WSO could hear the lieutenant colonel breathing over the intercom, his breath coming in ragged pants. “We’ll be flying down a mountain valley and we’ve got enough light to squeak it down a couple hundred feet.”
Von Drexler didn’t answer. He was trying to concentrate on the routine of flying but his restless mind kept jerking him back to one overwhelming fact — they were flying over hostile territory — a land owned by a people who hated Americans and would kill him if he was captured. He berated himself for trying to develop Mado as a sponsor, someone to back him for promotion. Von Drexler remembered all too well the first private conversation with the general at Nellis … Mado had promised him that Task Force Alpha was nothing but a cover for the real mission.
“Turning now,” the WSO said, the flight computer and autopilot did the work. Von Drexler should have dropped down to four hundred feet and threaded their way down the valley well below the mountain peaks. It would only take a few tweaks on the autopilot, overriding the flight-computer with slight heading changes. And it would have dropped them underneath a hawk that was soaring high above the valley in search of early morning prey.
The hawk sensed the approaching jet before she saw it, folded her wings back and swooped for the ground. She had only dropped twenty,feet when they collided. The hawk was a small female and weighed slightly more than a pound, but the impact forces were horrendous. The bird disintegrated when it struck the left-hand glove, the shrouding that streamlined the air flow where the leading edge of the wing pivoted next to the fuselage. Most of the hawk was sucked into the intake of Von Drexler’s number-one engine.
Both men felt the impact and saw a slight RPM fluctuation on the left engine, little more than a hiccup. “Bird strike,” the WSO said, relieved to see everything normal.
Von Drexler scanned his instruments, took a breath, and made a decision. He keyed the radio and transmitted in the blind. “Mover Two-One aborting, repeat aborting.”
Doucette’s voice: “Say emergency.”
“Bird strike. Left engine.” Von Drexler had hit the panic-button.
“Roger,” Doucette replied, “run your emergency checklist and if the RPM and oil pressure are within limits, press ahead.” He was trying to calm the man, but Von Drexler had already reversed course and was climbing.
“Get back down in the weeds,” Von Drexler’s WSO shouted, nudging on the stick to get his attention. But the pilot did nothing, and the F-111 continued to climb out well above the mountain peaks. The radar-warning gear started to chirp, telling them they were in the beam of a search radar. Von Drexler sat motionless. “Oh, shitksy,” the WSO groaned, and took control of the jet, nosed it over and headed for the deck …
“You fucking turkey,” Doucette raged in the confines of his cockpit. It was all he could do not to transmit his anger over the UHF for the world to hear.
Some luck, though, was still with them — the radar operator at Maragheh was awake but still in bed, thinking about a certain double-jointed woman he knew in town.
But luck was a fickle lady.
“Roundup, this is Romeo One.” Trimler was holding the headset of a PRC-77 FM radio against one ear so he could hear what else was going on around him. The Ranger team had moved into position but were still in the trucks parked along a road paralleling the front of the prison. They had stopped so the left sides of the trucks were facing the guard towers and the right sides were shielded from view.
Carroll had reassured him that the Kurds would keep any unwanted traffic off the road and that the other trucks were ready to move in once the prison was secured. The two Rangers with the mules were perched beside him, ready to move. The mules in this case were Laser-Target Designators, short bulky-looking rifles that only shot a laser beam at a target. A laser-guided bomb would catch the reflected energy off the target and home on the spot the Ranger aimed at, hitting within inches of the aim point.
“Come on, answer, damn you,” Trimler muttered. He didn’t know that Mado was busy talking to the President of the United States on the SatCom. He checked his watch and unable to wait any longer, motioned the Rangers to deploy. The men rolled out of the right side of the trucks into a ditch at the side of the road. Trimler followed the radio-telephone operator with the PRC-77 into the ditch. The trucks drove away, leaving a clear view across the road toward the prison that was three hundred yards directly in front of them. All heads were down … with the trucks gone, only the long shadows cast by the rising sun and the ditch offered them cover from the guard’s positions in the towers.
Trimler radioed again. This time another voice answered — Thunder Bryant. “Read you five by, Romeo One. Your company is one minute out.”
Trimler pointed at his watch and held up one finger. One minute to go. He pointed at his eyes with two forked fingers and then pointed to their objective — the command for spotters. Two men stuck their heads above the ditch, and one trained his binoculars on the guard towers, watching for any sign of detection, while the other searched for the inbound F-111 s.
“A guard’s looking right at me,” the spotter watching the towers said. “Hold on … negative. He’s watching something on the horizon.” The men could now hear the rumble of a distant jet coming their way.
“Spectre Zero-One, Mover Two-Three,” Doucette radioed. “IP now.” The F-111 was moving at over 560 knots as it streaked over the Initial Point and turned inbound to the target. Doucette had the jet down at two hundred feet as they made the run. They were right on time and the Pave Tack pod was deployed below the weapons bay as Contreraz refined on the target.
“Rog, Mover,” Beasely replied, “cleared in hot.”
“Spectre, Mover Two-One has aborted for a bird strike,” Doucette told the AC-130. “I’m single ship, going for right wall and admin building on first pass.” Doucette scanned his weapons panel, double checking the switches. He didn’t want to reattack because of a switch error. But he did plan to reattack and punch a hole in the left side of the wall — Von Drexler’s target.
Contreraz confirmed that the video tape recorder was on and buried his head in the scope, still working the radar, about ready to transition to the Pave Tack pod. His left hand was by the scope, flicking a switch, changing the scope’s picture from radar to the video picture coming from the Pave Tack pod. He kept refining his cursor placement, then switched to infrared, moved the cursors again and activated the system.
On board the AC-130 Bryant and Mado were engaged in a furious argument. “They should hit the left side first,” Mado shouted.
“Negative. Too late to change now. Mover Two-Three has got to ripple two bombs off into the admin building to get the guards. Call Jack in. He can punch a hole in the left wall.”
But Mado had made his decision. He twisted his intercom wafer switch to UHF and hit the transmit button. “Mover Two-Three, hit the left side of the wall.”