He waited.
Down the line, one man fired a shot.
“Hold your fire,” He bellowed again. By that time, they were taking rifle fire from the Iraqi infantry. The .50-caliber kept working back and forth along their line of holes.
The ragged line of men was at five hundred yards. Still too far away. The farther they ran, the more tired they would be and the less accurate.
He knew: You don’t have to be accurate when you’re overrunning a position.
When the Iraqi were at four hundred yards, he gave the order to fire. They had been ordered before to put the AK- 47s on single shot. Conserve ammunition. They were low enough.
He saw one or two of the men in the long line coming at them stagger and fall. More took their places. At three hundred yards, they slowed to a walk but kept coming. The .50- caliber had to quit firing so it didn’t hit friendly forces.
Too damn many. How could he defend against a hundred men?
He kicked his AK-47 to automatic fire and began sending out bursts of three rounds. He heard other men down the line do the same thing. Now more of the Iraqis fell.
Still too many. They would be overrun.
The buzz came out of the north, then it turned into a whine and suddenly, in front of them the Iraqi soldiers fell by the dozens. A jet fighter slashed across the field and pulled up in a sweeping circle. Then another jet flashed across the field, firing some kind of machine gun or cannon. The Iraqi troops wavered. An officer barked at them and waved them forward.
Just then, a third jet slammed rounds into the line of Iraqis, and the officer went down along with twenty more men.
No more than forty soldiers were still standing. Two more times the silver jets slashed across the field and fired into the attacking soldiers.
Two Iraqis turned and ran back the way they had come. Someone with the Iraqis shot one of the men in the back. The other one continued. Four more men from the far end of the line ran back up the slope. Then six from the middle ran.
“Fire at them,” Sergeant an-Numan shouted. Six more of the attackers were put in the dirt before they made it over the ridge.
The field ahead of them was empty except for the dead and dying. The sergeant sent two of his best men up the slope, one on each end, to check over the other side. Six more men went into the field and gathered up all of the rifles and ammunition they could carry. They went back twice to collect the magazines for the AK-47s that the Iraqis carried.
Sergeant an-Numan took a drink from his canteen. He was delighted to be alive. He owed it to those U.S. fighter planes. He remembered seeing the white star on the blue field. The U.S. symbol.
A runner came into the end of the defensive line and soon found an-Numan. He opened the envelope and took out the gold bars of a second lieutenant. The handwritten note said: “Congratulations on holding your position. You are hereby promoted to second lieutenant. We have reinforcements coming. Before nightfall, you will have thirty more men to fill out your platoon. Keep up the good work. We may have stopped the onslaught of the hated Iraqis.”
An-Numan smiled as he pinned on the bars. Then he called in his scouts who had looked over the hilltop.
“Must be half a regiment out there,” his best soldier said. Looks like they were mauled bad by some of the same jets that helped us. I saw some of the trucks heading back toward the border.”
An-Numan smiled again, told the man he had just been promoted to sergeant and he should check the troops for any casualties.
The man stared at him a moment, then saw the bars on his shoulders and saluted. “Yes sir, Lieutenant, sir.” He grinned and ran to check on the men.
An-Numan looked over the battlefield. He’d have two lookouts tonight. One on the crest of the hill in front of them and one toward the far end of the small valley. There were no friendly troops at all on their right flank. He smiled. He was starting to think like a soldier.
25
The Air Force calls it a forward logistical temporary base, or FLTB. This one was the pits, decided First Lieutenant Pete “Gotrocks” Van Dyke. He was one of the lucky pilots assigned here with his Cobra gunship helicopter. There were six of the potent birds primed and ready for action sitting outside the tent in the early-morning darkness. They had seen considerable action already, and now he waited for the sun to come up so he would be able to find his target.
The little base was as temporary as they get. It consisted of six twelve-man tents with stakes pounded deep into the subsoil and sand heaped around the roll-down sides to prevent the insides of them from becoming sand dunes.
They were situated ten miles from the Iraqi border in the middle of what he could only describe as a desolate desert. There were no settlements within a hundred and fifty miles of them. The six Cobras and two search and rescue choppers would be rotated every six days to get the sand pumped out of their vitals.
They didn’t need a landing field. There was nothing but shifting sand and a few hardy shrubs and grasses for as far as anyone could see. The entire base had been flown in by choppers, dropped, erected, and maintained by more birds. The kitchen was the most important tent on the tiny base. The whole place had only forty men. Half of those were pilots, gunners, and aviation maintenance men. The rest were cooks and missile handlers and some headquarters guys.
Lieutenant Van Dyke came to the small ready room section of the ad tent and checked the assignment sheet. Not a formal situation. They received radio orders during the night for the next morning. At least that’s what happened the first and only two days of their existence on this desert wonderland.
He grunted when he saw that he and Jimmy pulled the supply line from Syria back into Iraq itself. Yes, lots of trucks, but no tanks. He called his munitions handlers and ordered a double load of 20mm rounds for the three-barrel Gatling gun in the nose turret, and a full helping of nineteen of the 2.75-inch rockets in the pods.
He hit the chow tent. Everyone ate together here. Rank meant little in this outpost. He had breakfast, then picked up Jimmy, his front-seat gunner, and they found their baby armed, fueled, and ready to rumble.
It was almost daylight when they lifted off with two other Cobras and flew together in a loose formation north into Syria, then slanted a little west to find the fighting.
Iraqi forces were still moving ahead, but slower now. Two of the gunships pulled the supply line assignment. There were only two good routes from Iraq into this part of Syria. Van Dyke took one and Lieutenant Platamone the other, and they raced along a hundred feet over the desert, aiming for the well-used roads.
Van Dyke’s showed first. They were still fifteen miles inside of Syria when the chopper pilot found three trucks heading down the road toward the front. He used the Gatling gun on them. Jimmy triggered the three barrels and blasted the first truck in line. That stopped the other two. Drivers hit the ditch and ran into the desert. The Cobra hovered, and Jimmy hit the middle truck with a 2.75-inch rocket, setting off the gas tank in a surging explosion that engulfed the other two rigs at once.
“Let’s find some more,” Jimmy said.
Three miles up the road, they ran into a line of troops marching to the front. “Saddam is getting short on trucks,” Van Dyke said. He came in low and stopped, hovering a hundred yards away, to let Jimmy have hunting time with the Gatling. The troops tried to disperse, but they didn’t have time. Jimmy poured a hundred rounds of 20mm into the troops, then the Cobra moved on without taking even one rifle shot in return.
Five miles on up the road, they came to the Syrian border. A lone stone building marked the spot. It was now vacant and used only as a landmark. Ahead, Van Dyke saw the sun glint off windshields. More trucks.