Stroh let Murdock shoot off steam, then lifted his brows.
“Hey, I was in there punching for you. I told them you were outside the blast area. They said for twenty-four more corpses, they’d risk going back and getting you.”
“That half-track could have killed off half of us. From now on out, I want guaranteed transport out of an assignment and guaranteed backup in case that first transport fucks up. If we don’t get that, mister CIA master crafter, the Third Platoon just won’t go.”
“Murdock, get some sleep. We’ll talk in the morning. Looks like the war is going better than we expected. Most of the front is at a standstill or the Syrians are mounting a counteroffensive. Our airpower has just about closed off the Iraqi supply lines. So relax. I don’t have any new assignment on the books for you. Relax and sleep in.”
That was when Murdock realized how tired he was. Not even a shower. He found his compartment, dove into the bed, and only managed to get his rubber boots off before he slept.
First Lieutenant Pete Van Dyke circled his Cobra gunship over a sector he hadn’t seen before. It was to the north part of the thirty-mile front. The fighting was going for the Syrians now. He had been assigned to interdict any vehicles he saw behind the main fighting line on the Iraqi side.
His new gunner had his first day of combat yesterday and quickly proved that he could do the job. He was a natural using the Gatling. So far today he had cut up four small trucks with 20mm cannon fire and knocked out two larger transport trucks with 2.75-inch rockets.
His name was LeRoy and he came from Georgia.
As they hunted targets, Van Dyke tried not to think about the two close friends he lost in the raid on the big plant in the desert yesterday with the SEALs. He had lifted off his Cobra just prior to the attack on the Chinooks and been out of range of the explosions. Then, when he shepherded the SEALs on their hike west, he wasn’t there when they needed him with the half-track.
Van Dyke was pleased that the SEALs had made it out with no casualties. He had wondered why the big Chinooks didn’t stop for them. He’d seen more than seventy men crammed into the Chinooks.
“Hey Cap, we got another truck running back toward Iraq,” LeRoy’s slow drawl said in the IC. “Shall we give him a boost getting home?”
“That’s a roger, LeRoy. Let me move in closer for you.” A minute later, LeRoy’s Gatling gun riddled the machine with the 20mm cannon fire from the three barrels in the nose.
Van Dyke swung up sharply when he saw men near the truck lift rifles, and he slanted away to make a harder target. They had taken a dozen rounds of ground fire on this sortie, but none had hit a vital spot.
When Van Dyke was well out of rifle range, he lifted the Cobra up higher again to check his four-mile sector. “Let’s see what we can find, LeRoy. Should be some more targets out here. We have another ten minutes of hunting time before we head back.”
Below, a thousand yards ahead, he saw the Syrian infantry being pushed back. He swung in for a better look. “LeRoy, check out the infantry down there. Looks like the good guys are retreating.”
“Peers so, Lieutenant. Wonder why?” A moment later, the gunner spoke again. “I got him, Cap. There’s a damned tank down there behind those trees just shooting to hell and gone at the Syrians.”
“Yeah, a tank. First one we’ve seen all morning. Wish to hell we had had a TOW missile. They’re made to order for tank killing. Can we do him with the rockets?”
“We can do a job on the tread if we can get in close enough, Lieutenant. We gonna try?”
“If you can knock the tread off one side, the tank will be dead in the water, and the Syrian Infantry should be able to finish him off.”
“That’s a go, Lieutenant. Let’s get him.”
Van Dyke turned around and came in to shoot at the side of the tank. He saw little ground fire and slanted in to a hundred yards. He felt a rifle round hit his machine, then another. He held the rig steady for a moment and felt three or four rockets fired. Then he surged upward and out of the way of the small arms fire from below. He turned so they could see the shots. One hit the top of the tank and did little damage. Two hit the dirt well below where the tread rolled the tank forward. The heavy machine crushed a small dirt bunker and probably tapped Syrians inside.
Van Dyke came in again, closer this time. He was no more than fifty yards away when he steadied the machine and felt LeRoy get off four rockets aimed at the tread. This time, his aim was better, and two of the small missiles hit the tread area and blasted the track into pieces. The tank swiveled around toward him as the near side tread couldn’t move.
He felt two more small arms rounds jolt into the plane, then a dozen rounds ripped through the nose of the ship, and he knew the tank’s .50-caliber machine gun had found him. He checked and saw that LeRoy wasn’t hit. The plastic cowl over both seats had shattered. The prop wash of the rotors slashed through the cockpit, and he urged the machine higher and away from the ground fire.
“LeRoy, you okay?”
“Yes, Cap, just a little chilly.”
Then they both felt more of the machine gun rounds pound into the sides of the slender fuselage that went back to the tail. Suddenly, the flight controls went mush; then, a few seconds later, the controls wouldn’t respond at all. He felt the top rotor lose power and go into freewheeling.
“We’re going down, kid. Fire off the rockets.”
Another burst of the .50-caliber machine gun rounds ripped into the machine, and one round caught First Lieutenant Pete Van Dyke in the neck just below his flight helmet. He slammed against the far side of the cockpit as the Cobra gunship dropped straight down from three thousand feet.
It hit the desert, and the rest of its fuel exploded. That set off the rest of the 2.75-inch rockets, which detonated in place. In two minutes after impact, there wasn’t enough left of the gunship to identify. The two bodies had been incinerated in the white-hot fire that raged on three hundred gallons of aircraft fuel.
General F. Jablah settled back in his big chair and watched aides move markers on the wall map that showed the front lines. Today it had shrunk to a three-mile fighting zone. A mile on each end of the strip had been closed off and the enemy overwhelmed, captured, or slain. A few went screaming back toward the Iraqi border.
Yes, the war was going well. His troops had performed brilliantly once the first onslaught had been blunted and then stopped. His aircraft had helped rule the skies. The allied planes that came, especially the Americans, had also helped. The last three days there had been no reports of Iraqi planes over the fighting zone.
He was not sure why. A daring raid with fighter-bombers into the major Iraqi airfield near Baghdad had been the clincher. There were reports that Saddam had sent most of the surviving 250 fighters and 200 helicopters he had left into Iran so they wouldn’t be bombed. He had done the same thing in the Gulf War ten years ago.
Now it was a case of mopping up, pushing the last of the infantry units across the border, and making them suffer as much as possible without sustaining any more Syrian casualties than absolutely necessary.
He had used his airpower here effectively. First a bombardment and strafing by helicopters and fighters, then the infantry would sweep in and mop up any of the opposition that hadn’t run for the border.
Another two days and it would be over. He watched the center of the map where there had been a nearly twenty-mile thrust toward Damascus. Now the thrust had been stopped and pushed back ten miles. Elements of his tank and infantry had smashed through light resistance near the border to cut off a ten-mile corridor of Iraqi troops, guns, and trucks. They were surrounded and would all be taken prisoners or killed.