As a precaution against surprise, Cerro had his two platoons disperse.
Advancing in a line, they could go over to the attack or assume a hasty defense if attacked. Cerro could feel the tension building as they approached. Every step took them closer to an unseen enemy who might or might not be waiting for them the way Alpha Company had waited for the first Iranian column. Their current situation suddenly reminded him of a great game of hide-and-seek. It was a hell of an analogy. But at that moment it was true.
Wanting to get on with it, Rahimi gave the signal. The two mortars began to choke down their first rounds as two heavy machine guns hammered away at the American positions. With a yell, Rahimi raised his arm and led his men forward. The first burst of American return fire hit him square in the chest, throwing him back against one of his own men. The militiaman eased his leader down and asked what he could do to help. Rahimi, gasping, simply told him to go forward in the defense of Islam. After the militiaman left, Rahimi fought off any fears or doubts about his impending death. He was, after all, dying as Iman Husain had died, in the defense of Persia and Islam. What more could a man ask for?
Rahimi did not hear the sound of Lieutenant Cerro's attack or the approach of attack helicopters that were the vanguard of the American follow-on forces. His death preceded those of his men by mere minutes.
They had failed. The American airhead held.
Major Dixon was clearing away the last of the day's work from his desk.
All those items he had worked on but had not completed were returned to their proper folders and filed away in his lower-right desk drawer.
Those items that were new but hadn't been acted on went back into his in box. He'd deal with them in the morning. Finally, those items he either didn't want to deal with or didn't know what he would do with were lumped together and thrown into a box labeled TOO HARD.
Content with his shuffling of papers, Dixon was preparing to leave when the phone rang. For a moment he debated whether he should answer it or simply go. His mind had become fried after dealing with a mishmash of deployment issues. It amazed him how ridiculous and misguided some of the division staff could be. On one hand he had to prepare the battalion for war when his equipment was already loaded and en route to Iran, and on the other he was being required to schedule time for inventories of station property the unit would leave behind when it finally did deploy. Fighting the urge to walk away, Dixon answered the phone with a slurred, disheartened "S-three, 3rd of the 4th Armor."
"Scott, Michaelski." It was the brigade S-3. "I thought I'd give you a heads-up. Orders are coming in now at Corps. We roll in fourteen days."
Dixon remained silent. "Scott, you still there?"
"Yeah, I'm here. Is this good poop or rumor?"
"It's fact. Word is the Russians are headed south at full speed and the people in Washington are getting a little nervous with nothing on the ground but grunts."
Dixon thought about that for a moment. "Will our equipment be there?"
The Navy assured the corps commander it will. In order to save time, the convoys haven't been running zigzag in the Atlantic. We also have permission to move them through the Suez. It will be there." The brigade S-3 seemed so sure.
"Is there anything we need to do right away? You planning any briefings or other bull tonight?"
"No, Scott, nothing. We won't have hard copy on this till morning. I'll be ready to talk to the S-threes sometime in the early afternoon. See you then."
"OK. Thanks for the warning, Mike. See you then." Dixon hung up the phone and looked at his watch. Time to go home. The next few days would surely be zoo time. Getting up, he put on his hat, pulled all the papers from the box labeled Too HARD and dropped them into the trashcan as he walked out of his office.
Chapter 7
Shoot first and inquire afterward and if you make mistakes, l will protect you.
In the Arabian Sea 0332 Hours, 16 June (0002 Hours, 16 June, GMT) The sleek gray frigate slid through the night with ease. Its decks were deserted and stripped clear of all but its weapons. The gun encased in its automated turret stood motionless but ready. Canisters sat benign, hiding sophisticated missiles the way a cocoon hides a wasp. The breaking of waves and the steady hum of machinery were the only outward signs that the ship was alive. Only in the center of the frigate, where its heart and mind were, was there a semblance of activity. There, in a small room called the combat information center, men sat before electronic devices, watching and listening to sensors that monitored the air and the sea about and below them.
To the casual observer it would have been difficult to tell whether the equipment was an extension of the senses for the men who sat before it or whether the men were simply another piece of the equipment. If the latter was true, then the man was the least reliable and most error-prone portion of the equipment. Somewhere in every system a man, susceptible to all the frailties that humans possess, was a part of it.
The most complex computers and processors of combat information that are capable of spewing out data in nanoseconds dump it eventually on a human who has to see, consider and decide what it means and how to use it.
The job of the men in the combat information center was to find an elusive submarine that had been stalking the carrier battle group they had been assigned to protect. This was not a simple task. The sea, far from being uniform and even, complicated the efforts of the frigate's crew with currents and thermal layers that hid and distorted sounds of creatures and things that passed through them. While the use of active sonar would ease the task of searching the sea, it would be akin to a hunter stomping through the woods and announcing his presence. So the frigate moved across the sea quietly, like a cat seeking a prey, its ears perked up and alert for any sign of movement or noise, sliding into the darkness.
Below the frigate a shadow passed undetected. The Oscar-class submarine's propeller turned ever so slowly, providing only enough motion to keep the vessel on course and under control. Captain Gudkov found it hard to believe his good fortune. After two weeks of effort he was finally penetrating the escort screen of the American carrier battle group he had been stalking.
The vessel's navigator, with little better to do as the submarine bobbed and weaved to break contact after one of the failed attempts, reviewed their movements over the previous two weeks and those of the carrier battle group. He found what appeared to be a pattern to the wanderings of the carrier battle group. When the navigator showed his findings to Captain Gudkov, the captain began to work on a way of using the discovery to accomplish his mission. Anything was worth a try.
While the crew rested after another failed attempt followed by a ten-hour pursuit, Gudkov and his navigator worked up a plan. The navigator, projecting the probable course of the American carrier battle group based on the pattern he had observed, estimated when the center of the group, where the carrier would be, would pass over a certain point. Assuming that the carrier battle group would follow a set pattern, Gudkov estimated where the Iskra could find the carrier at any given time. By being placed along the projected path of the carrier, the Iskra could shut down its engines and allow the carrier and its escorts to pass over the silent submarine without detecting it.
Gudkov thought the plan over and discussed it with his officers. Most, already frustrated with their failures, were willing to try anything.