Not that Hawkins really cared what the explanation might be. He only cared that he found the damn concrete, secured it, and then made it into an airfield. If he succeeded, a pair of Special Ops helos would fly in tomorrow night with supplies, and stay for more than just dinner. He’d also start getting serious parachute drops with enough equipment to turn this little sidewalk in the middle of the desert into Saddam’s worst nightmare.
Assuming he could find it. Hawkins double-checked the positioner again. The line display on the unit, dubbed by its makers “Magellan”, told him his target lay straight ahead.
His eyes told him there was nothing there. What should he believe?
The positioner relied on information supplied by a set of dedicated satellites high overhead. The system had not been completed before the start of the war, and there were grumbles about its accuracy. But it had always worked perfectly for him.
So he trusted it, more or less.
“All right, we move north. Let’s go,” he told his team of Delta Force troopers. His voice sounded confident, and he knew anyone hearing it might think he had spotted the base.
Or not. These guys were pretty much on to his style by now, which was straight-ahead, no-turning-back, no matter the insanity.
“Captain, building at two o’clock.”
Sergeant Nomo’s warning— which somehow managed to sound like a whisper though it was nearly as loud as a shout— stopped the team. Hawkins trotted up to his position on the northeast flank of the unit.
A jagged wall stood over a low dune two hundred yards ahead. Nomo had found Apache’s lone structure, a twenty-by-twenty poured-cement foundation the analysts said stood about three feet high.
Quickly, Hawkins had the team reorient into groups to surround their target. The team’s lone infra-red viewer, more precious than gold in the Gulf, revealed no warm bodies in the chilly night. But this deep in Injun country, they were taking no chances. The men moved out slowly, the lead troopers in each group armed with silenced MP-5s. While not absolutely silent, the submachine gun was difficult to hear more than a few yards away.
Which was why the loud report of a gun a few minutes later sent every member of the team diving into the dirt.
The shot came from the left flank, near the end of the runway. There was no possibility it had come from the troopers, at least as far as Hawkins was concerned. When no other shots fired, he began making his way in that direction, one hand on his viewer as he scanned to see where the Iraqis were positioned.
“What do we have, Vee?” Hawkins asked as he reached the flank team leader without spotting anything.
Sergeant Olhum Vee pointed toward a ditch with the end of his M-16A2. The rifle had a grenade launcher attached to the barrel. “Got to be in the ditch,” he said. “Teller and Garcia are swinging around. We have them covered.”
“How many?” Hawkins asked.
“Don’t know,” said Vee. “Nobody saw anything. There’s no place to hide besides that ditch; can’t be more than four men, tops. Maybe just one or two.”
“There’s a culvert on the other side,” Hawkins told him, gesturing toward the other end of the runway. “But it’s empty. We’ll move in slow
It took Teller and Garcia five long minutes to get into position. By then, the rest of the team had the area well covered: nothing else was moving.
Hawkins watched as Teller and Garcia bolted upright behind the ditch where the shot had come from. They jumped into it without firing.
Were they trying to take the Iraqi’s alive? Hawkins and Lee leapt up, running to assist their men— who were leaning against the edge of the ditch, laughing their butts off.
There were no Iraqis.
“What the hell?” said Vee.
“Relax,” said Garcia. “It’s a crow banger.” He held up a handful of spent cartridges and pointed to a small device near his feet. “See the wires? One of us must’ve got the last one, ‘cause it’s empty now.”
Hawkins bent down to examine the device as the rest of the team gathered at the top of the ditch. Similar to ones used on some American farms, the miniature cannon was intended to scare off animals. Activated by trip wires in the desert, it fired blanks.
“Damn fucking lucky it wasn’t a mine,” said Hawkins, which stopped the laughter. “Let’s make sure this place is secure. And watch where the hell you step from now on. You may end up with more than camel poop on your boot.”
CHAPTER 9
Dixon’s legs felt like they were going to fall off. He dragged them forward, desperate to keep his momentum up. The number five man in the team, Jake Green, kept looming behind him, and Dixon felt him sneering every time he had to cut his pace to keep from running over the Air Force lieutenant.
The thing was, Dixon thought he was in excellent shape. He had run and won a 10K race just before coming over to Saudi Arabia, and had managed to work out nearly every day since the deployment began. He thought he shouldn’t have any trouble keeping up with them.
But the Special Forces soldiers practically galloped through the desert, even with their overstuffed rucksacks. Each member of the team, Dixon included, carried more ammo on him than a good-sized gun store. Dixon’s brown desert camo suit was covered by a vest stuffed with smoke grenades and clips for his MP-5; his pockets were so jammed with extra bullets for his Beretta that he couldn’t sit properly. Each trooper had a gas mask in a leg pocket; a full chem suit sat at the top of his ruck. The rest of the gear varied, depending on the team member’s assigned role. The point man and the tail gunner both carried silenced Berettas and MP-5s. The team’s pathfinder worked with a geo-positioner from the number two slot in the line. All but Dixon carried a pair of “night eyes”— AN/PVS-7 goggles, which could be attached to a helmet and turned the terrain a fuzzy but viewable green.
Maybe there was something in the goggles that made them move so damn fast, Dixon thought to himself, struggling into a trot to keep his place. He was behind the jumpmaster turned communications specialist, Sergeant First Class Joey Leteri, the number-four man in line. The trooper packed an M-16 with a grenade launcher, and humped not only his own ruck but the satellite com gear as well. But just like the others, he was moving quicker than a race horse threatened with the glue factory.
Suddenly, Leteri stopped short. Dixon felt himself being pushed into the ground by Green.
“Tents,” whispered the trooper, who was the team’s medic. He pointed over Dixon’s shoulder toward the left; in the dim twilight the only thing Dixon could see was the shadow of hills that were part of an old quarry some miles away.
Sergeant Winston came back to them. “Aren’t supposed to be any Bedouins this far north,” he told them. “But we think that’s all they are. They got camels. We have to take a jog east near here anyway. Cornfield’s about four miles on. That OK with you, lieutenant?”
It was the first time anyone had made even a glancing reference to the fact that Dixon, though an observer, technically outranked everyone here. There was no question from Winston’s tone that it had better be okay.
“You take us where we’re supposed to be,” said Dixon. “That’s more than fine with me.”
“Yeah,” said Winston, pulling his SAW to his chest before moving down the line to tell the tail-gunner what was going on.
Resentment began mixing under Dixon’s fatigue as the team got back underway. He didn’t need to be in charge— didn’t want to be, because frankly he had no damn idea what the hell to tell anybody to do. But he wanted to be respected, or at least accepted.