Today, though, would be different. Jawad could feel it in his bones.
None of the roads in Yemen were up to Saudi standards. Some of the highways in the Kingdom had been designed and built by companies like Bechtel, the largest American construction company, which had built some of its Interstate highways. The roads in this valley were worse than average even for Yemen, because only one led anywhere outside it. The others dead-ended somewhere within the valley.
In spite of this, Jawad’s tanks were still keeping up a respectable sixty kilometers per hour. Jawad grinned as he thought back to his days at the Armor School at Fort Benning, where Prince Ali and most of his platoon leaders had learned to become tank commanders. One of the instructors had declared, “The M1A2 doesn’t promise you the smooth ride of a family sedan.
But it can keep up with just about anything else on the battlefield.”
That first part was certainly true, Jawad thought. He had to be careful about keeping his teeth shut, because otherwise sharp bumps tended to clack them together. But he was hoping that the second part would be true as well, and they would finally bag a Houthi missile.
There! It was exactly where the reconnaissance drone had said it would be!
Only the tip of the missile was visible, and that already told Jawad something. This missile was something new, something bigger than any of the other ones he'd heard about like the Burkan-2H and Qiam 1.
Jawad already had his handset ready, with an extension cable attached allowing him to use it in the cupola. He used it now to order every tank in the platoon to increase speed. He’d deal with bruises and chipped teeth later, once they stopped this missile.
As they turned a corner and the missile came into full view, he could hear his tank’s M240 7.62 mm coaxial machine gun chatter, and the reason was immediately obvious — a Tosun was pointed straight at them. He’d told his gunners not to wait for his orders before opening fire on anything that looked like an anti-tank missile, and he was glad they’d listened. Their aim was confirmed by a secondary explosion, as one or more of the Tosun’s rounds exploded, taking its fire crew with it.
Jawad had missed the Tosun because the missile in front of him was the Khorramshahr 2, a thirteen-meter tall missile with a range of up to two thousand kilometers, and capable of carrying a warhead of up to eighteen hundred kilograms. Its use in Yemen had been suspected, but unlike the Burkan-2H it had never been captured intact or even clearly photographed in Yemen.
Just like the Burkan-2H, the Khorramshahr 2 was liquid-fueled. It was too dangerous to move while fueled, which meant it had to have propellant added after it was set up at its launch site. Of course, since the Khorramshahr 2 had more than double the Burkan’s eight hundred fifty kilometer range, it took longer to fuel.
No sooner had Jawad formed this thought than everyone could see another Khorramshahr 2 missile lift off about two kilometers away. The Houthis who had scattered from the launch site at the appearance of his tanks cheered.
Without the Houthis’ cheers ringing in his ears, Jawad might have given his next move more thought. As it was, though, Jawad roared, “Main gun fire!”
There was no need to specify the target. Even the dimmest gunner could hardly mistake his commander’s intention, with a thirteen-meter tall ballistic missile standing right in front of them.
Jawad had just enough time to think that he should have moved back into the tank’s body and closed the hatch when the tank’s M256 120 mm cannon fired an M908 High Explosive Obstacle Reduction round into the Khorramshahr 2 missile. The M908 was designed primarily to reduce concrete obstacles to rubble and was a commonly used round in Yemen, since it was effective against nearly any soft target.
Its results upon impact with the Khorramshahr 2 missile were nothing short of spectacular. Immediately following its detonation, the attached liquid-fuel tanker detonated as well.
Jawad barely had time to register the wall of flame headed his way before it killed him, but his tank and the other two behind it were not just incinerated. The shock wave from the blast tumbled all three like toys, and the sheer kinetic force of the explosion was more than any amount of armor could have withstood.
The fourth tank in the platoon, though, was saved from fire and blast by its position in the rear. It had been the only tank unable to turn the corner from behind the hill to exit the narrow road to the small clearing holding the Khorramshahr 2 missile. When he heard the “Main gun, fire!” command he had also reacted instinctively by ducking into the tank and slamming the hatch shut behind him.
That action saved the crew of the sole remaining M1A2 tank in Jawad’s platoon from the fate of the few Houthi survivors of the Khorramshahr 2‘s explosion. Though there were several who had fled as soon as the tanks’ engines could be heard, and so were not killed by blast or fire, they did not escape the Khorramshahr 2‘s payload.
VX nerve gas.
The force of the blast had ejected the warhead straight up which prevented its complete incineration by the burning rocket fuel, though some of the VX was consumed.
While the surviving M1A2 had a robust and well tested NBC (nuclear, biological and chemical) protection package, the Houthis didn’t even have gas masks. Not that masks would have mattered, since any exposed skin surface would allow VX to kill its victim. Only a ten-milliliter dose would have been fatal.
Every Houthi who had been fleeing the launch site received far more.
The sole M1A2 tank to survive radioed to base that they had destroyed one Khorramshahr 2 missile, but had seen another launch successfully.
Unfortunately, they did not see any of the Houthis they had left behind at the launch site gasping for air as they died, or they might have been able to give Prince Sultan Air Base some warning.
Because that was the target of the other Khorramshahr 2 missile, which carried the same VX warhead.
Like every country with a significant air force, the Royal Saudi Air Force dispersed its assets in widely scattered air bases. This was both to ensure the widest possible defensive coverage of Saudi air space, as well as to prevent an enemy from inflicting a crippling blow by hitting a single base.
Prince Sultan Air Base had been selected for one of Iran’s two VX warheads for many reasons. It was one of the bases closest to the Qatari armored force's march to Riyadh, and was a Sector Operating Center. It had been substantially improved by the US Air Force when it served as a base supporting Operations Enduring Freedom and Iraqi Freedom prior to the September 11 attacks. F-15s from No. 55 Squadron had been recently transferred there, and it contained two of the Kingdom’s key strategic assets — its Boeing E-3 Sentry fleet, as well as its Boeing KE-3A refueling tankers.
Since it was only about eighty kilometers south of Riyadh, attacking it would remove one of the capital’s principal defenders.
But that would not be the only result of the attack. Acting Supreme Leader Reza Fagheh had reconsidered his earlier concerns, and decided to pick a target with multiple impacts.
Prince Sultan Air Base was directly adjacent to the city of Al Kharj, where some of the remaining underground water sources were still replenished by rainwater drained from the Tuwaiq escarpment to the west. Some of the wells were up to a mile deep so that the water extracted was boiling hot when brought to the surface, and had to be pumped into pools to cool before use.
This water was the basis for much of Saudi agriculture, and helped Al Kharj grow from a town of 20,000 to a city of 250,000. Almost every crop imaginable was grown in Al Kharj, and it was also home to nearly its entire dairy industry, with about twenty-four thousand head of cattle.