Each of the twelve active spotters were assigned to a particular HM-41 howitzer, with three dug in and available as a reserve. Once the two spotters failed to send a ”click” over their radios each minute to their howitzer crew, they were immediately replaced by the one-word command “active” sent by radio to a spotter held in reserve.
The main challenge each spotter faced was avoiding the assignment of multiple rounds to a particular target. It wasn’t easy, because sometimes a target was lased by another spotter from an angle difficult for the first spotter to see. The problem became more serious as the number of targets shrank.
However, the good news was that few Basir shells were truly wasted. Even when the same target was hit twice, more shrapnel was flung out by the second hit, and there were so many vehicles and men in such a small space that additional damage and casualties were almost inevitable.
Of course, the spotters’ good luck couldn’t last forever. Omar Abu-Rabia was one of the surviving Saudi soldiers and a veteran of the fighting in Yemen, who had been trained at the US Army Sniper School at Fort Benning.
Most of the Saudis fortunate enough to be selected for training outside of the Kingdom were either members of the royal family or closely connected through business or religious ties.
Omar was an exception because he was an outstanding shot. He grew up firing his grandfather’s WWI vintage Lee-Enfield rifle, which he said the British officer who had given it to him as a present called “Smelly.” His grandfather spoke no English, so had never questioned the name. His grandfather passed it to Omar after his deteriorating eyesight made use of the rifle more of a threat to those around him than whatever he was aiming it at.
Omar used Smelly to great effect in defending his grandfather’s camel herd from packs of wild dogs and the occasional viper.
Only after he was at Fort Benning did he finally learn from the oldest instructor there that the term Smelly had nothing to do with the rifle’s smell, but instead came from the acronym for Short, Magazine, Lee-Enfield. For some reason, that instructor was delighted to find that one of the students at Benning had grown up using a Lee-Enfield rifle, and took a personal interest in Omar’s progress from then on.
The vehicle where Omar’s M-24 rifle had been stored had been destroyed, but he was finally able to find a rifle that would serve.
The Barrett M-82 was intended primarily as an anti-material rifle for the destruction of targets such as parked aircraft, trucks and fuel silos. However, its .50 caliber round worked even more effectively on human targets, because its large size guaranteed incapacitating or killing the enemy soldier no matter where he was hit.
Finding a night vision scope to mount to the Barrett took more precious minutes. Finally, though, Omar was ready to avenge his fallen comrades.
He caught his breath when he looked through the night vision scope and saw the web of laser designations pointing to the remaining vehicles.
Quickly, though, his training came back to him. Focus on the closest target first.
Omar methodically worked his way through the spotters closest to him. A successful shot was easy to confirm, since the laser designator either veered wildly off its previous course or winked out altogether. Of course, it was possible that in the latter case he had only hit the equipment rather than its operator. As far as Omar was concerned it didn’t really matter, although the size of the Barrett’s round made him think it was likely that both had become casualties.
Four of the spotters quickly fell victim to Omar’s accurate fire. However, he forgot one key part of his training. Since the spotters possessed nothing more dangerous than a beam of light, he considered it an unnecessary waste of time to move his position. After all, Omar appeared to be the only one doing something to stop the slaughter of hundreds of Saudi soldiers and the destruction of just as many combat vehicles, and there was clearly no time to waste.
The problem was that Captain Dabiri had anticipated the spotters coming under fire, and was actually surprised it had taken this long. Once the fourth spotter failed to check in, Dabiri had all the information he needed to calculate Omar’s likely position. The next six Basir rounds bracketed that spot.
Omar has been lining up his shot on the fifth spotter when the first round impacted and threw off his aim. The second hit while he was trying to reset his aim, and sent a piece of shrapnel into his right leg. Cursing, Omar was tightening a bandage around the wound when the third round made the task unnecessary.
The fourth round guaranteed that Omar’s body would never be discovered.
The fifth and sixth rounds impacted on an empty tent that had been filled with sleeping soldiers, and an APC that had already been rendered immobile by shrapnel from earlier shells.
However, the volley’s task had been accomplished. Nothing more would disturb the rest of the spotters from directing fire on the blockaders’ remaining vehicles.
Only a single M1A2 tank and five APCs survived the Iranian artillery attack, while over three hundred Saudi soldiers had been killed and more than four hundred wounded.
The Iranians lost six spotters.
Colonel Bijan, Captain Dabiri and his men then rushed to prepare the HM-41 self-propelled howitzers for the road to Doha. Whether they would be able to do so without interference would depend on how quickly Saudi Arabia’s military leadership realized an artillery attack had been responsible for the destruction of their blockade force.
Chapter Fourteen
Prince Ali bin Sultan rubbed his eyes, willing them to remain open. Sleep on the Bell 412 helicopter that had flown him from his command post of armored forces in Yemen to Riyadh had been impossible, and he had been taken directly from the helipad to this conference room at the Ministry of Defense. Looking at the neatly pressed uniform of Prince Khaled bin Fahd, the Air Force commander, he wondered whether it would have been possible to share the jet that he had used to return to Riyadh several hours earlier.
Given the size of Khaled’s ego there probably wouldn’t have been enough room, Ali thought acidly.
The Crown Prince walked in and immediately noted the contrast between the immaculately turned out Air Force commander and the armored commander still in the tanker coveralls he’d been wearing when the helicopter picked him up from Yemen. Ali knew the smile the Crown Prince gave them both as he sat down.
It was the same smile Ali gave his children when they’d been fighting over their toys.
Ali willed himself to relax. He had to keep reminding himself that the Crown Prince had gone to the same American armor training school he had.
It wasn’t that the American military didn’t have officers who placed a high priority on “proper appearance.” It did. But after more than two decades of constant battlefield operations, those officers were a distinct minority.
“I know you’ve both been briefed on what we know about the attack on our blockading force at the Qatari border. I’ve called you both here to get your assessment of what happened, and to make recommendations on what we should do in response. Ali, you go first,” the Crown Prince said, nodding in his direction.
“The attack included an electronic warfare capability we haven’t seen before in this region. Because of this signal jamming, it took over an hour after the start of the attack for word to reach Riyadh, and another hour after that before the full scope of the disaster became clear. The survivors disagreed about what had happened, including whether it had been an air or ground attack. If it had been a ground attack, there was also disagreement about whether the attackers had used tanks or artillery.”