Rogue Forces (33 page)

N
EAR
A
LLIED
A
IR
B
ASE
N
AHLA
, I
RAQ

E
ARLY THE NEXT MORNING

The two eight-man teams of Turkish
bordo bereliler
, or Maroon Beret, special operations Rangers arrived on station at about three
A.M
. They had executed a picture-perfect HALO, or high-altitude low-opening parachute jump, into the area about five miles north of Tall Kayf. After landing and stowing their parachutes, they verified their position, checked personnel, weapons, and gear, and headed south. Once near the checkpoint about two miles from the XC-57 crash site, they split up into two-man recon teams and proceeded to their individual objective points.

It took less than thirty minutes for the Maroon Berets to determine that all of the intel passed to them from Captain Evren’s unit stationed outside Allied Air Base Nahla was true: the Iraqis had
deployed four infantry platoons around the XC-57 crash site and were setting up sandbag machine gun nests to guard it. The rest of the brigade was nowhere to be seen. Evren had also reported that the Americans were still inside the base, training and conditioning but remaining very low profile as well.

The Iraqis were obviously expecting something to happen, the Ranger platoon leader thought, but they weren’t putting up more than a token defense. They obviously weren’t looking for a fight over the reconnaissance plane. The Rangers could stop their operation if the Iraqis had deployed any more forces in the area, but they hadn’t. The operation was still on.

The timetable was razor-thin, but everyone was executing it perfectly. Aviation elements of First and Second Divisions had sent squadrons of light infantry in low-flying UH-60 Black Hawk and CH-47F Chinook helicopters from six different directions, all converging in the area around Nahla, under the protection of AH-1 Cobra helicopter gunships. The helicopters came in under a blanket of jamming across the entire electromagnetic spectrum that cut off all radar and communications other than bands they wished to use. At the same time ground forces were rushing in to reinforce them. In less than thirty minutes—the blink of an eye, even on a modern battlefield—the four Iraqi platoons surrounding the XC-57 crash site were surrounded themselves…and outnumbered.

The Iraqi defenders, using night-vision goggles, could see the red lines of Turkish laser designators crisscrossing the field ahead of them, and they hunkered down behind sandbag machine gun nests and the XC-57 wreckage. The assault could begin at any moment.

“Attention, Iraqi soldiers,” they heard in Arabic from a loudspeaker aboard a Turkish armored infantry vehicle, “this is Brigadier General Ozek, commander of this task force. You have been surrounded, and I am bringing in more reinforcements as I speak. I order you to—”

And at that moment one of the Chinook helicopters that had just touched down to off-load soldiers disappeared in a tremendous fire
ball, followed by a Cobra gunship that was hovering a few hundred yards away on patrol and a Black Hawk helicopter that had just lifted off. The entire horizon to the north and northeast of the XC-57 crash site suddenly seemed as if it was on fire.

“
Carsi, Carsi
, this is
Kuvvet
, we are taking heavy fire, direction unknown!” the Second Division task force commander radioed. “Say ETE. Over!” No response. The general looked over his left shoulder toward Highway Three, which his eastern battalion should have been racing up to flank the Iraqis…

…and through his night-vision goggles he saw an eerie glow on the horizon about three miles behind him—and the flickering of some very large objects burning and exploding. “
Carsi
, this is
Kuvvet
, say your pos!”

“Good strike, Boomer,” Patrick McLanahan said. The first AGM-177 Wolverine strike missile released a CBU-97 Sensor-Fuzed Weapon over the lead vehicles in the easternmost battalion driving southbound as part of the Nahla operation. Dropped from fifteen thousand feet, the CBU-97’s dispenser released ten submunitions, each of which deployed four skeets and laser and infrared seekers. As the submunitions fell toward the column of vehicles, they started to spin, and as they did they detected and classified all the vehicles below. At the proper altitude each skeet detonated over a vehicle, sending a molten blob of copper down onto its prey. The blob of superheated copper easily penetrated the usually thinner top armor of the Turkish vehicles, destroying every vehicle on the road for a quarter of a mile.

“Roger that, General,” Hunter Noble said. “The Wolverine is maneuvering for the western column for the second GBU-97 pass, and then it’ll attack the troops closest to Nahla with the eighty-seven.” The CBU-87 Combined Effects Munition was a mine-laying weapon that dispensed over two hundred bomblets over a three-thousand-square-foot rectangular area, effective against soldiers and light vehicles. “The second Wolverine is in a parking orbit
to the south in case the Iraqis have trouble with the Mosul brigades.”

“Hopefully we won’t need it,” Patrick said. “Let me know if—”

“Problem, Patrick—I think we lost the first Wolverine,” Boomer interjected. “Lost contact. It might have been shot down if it was detected on radar when it made its attack.”

“Send in the second Wolverine on the western battalion,” Patrick ordered.

“Moving. But Jaffar’s guys might make contact before it arrives.”

The eastern column of Turkish infantry vehicles was initially stopped cold by the first Wolverine attack, but the survivors were soon on the move. As they raced forward to meet up with the center battalion, several Iraqi antitank teams in spider holes along the highway opened fire, destroying five Humvees and an M113 armored personnel carrier. But the Iraqis were soon coming under intense fire from other Turkish troops, and they were trapped in their spiderholes. A line of three Humvees had discovered three spider-holes and quickly destroyed the first one with forty-millimeter automatic grenade fire.

“
Wa’if hena! Wa’if hena
! Stop!” the Turks shouted in Arabic. They exited their Humvees, weapons raised. “Get out now, hands on your…!”

Suddenly they heard a loud CCRRACK! and one of the Humvees exploded in the blink of an eye. Before the explosion subsided they heard another CCRRACK! and the second Humvee detonated, followed by the third. The Turks flattened on their stomachs, searching for the enemy who had just blown up their vehicles…

…and a few moments later, they saw who it was: the ten-foot-tall American robot, carrying the impossibly large sniper rifle and a large backpack. “Time to run along,” the robot said in electronically synthesized Turkish. It leveled the big rifle and ordered, “Drop your weapons.” The Turks did as they were told, turned, and ran after their comrades. The Iraqis leaped out of their spider holes, scooped up the Turks’ weapons and their remaining antitank missiles, and went looking for more targets.

“Jaffar’s guys are doing pretty good on the eastern side,” Charlie
Turlock said. “I think we have the rest of this battalion broken up, thanks to the Wolverine. How’s it going on the west, Whack?”

“Not so good,” Wayne Macomber said. He was “tank plinking” on every large armored vehicle that came within range, but the column of Turkish vehicles coming toward them seemed endless.

“Need some help?”

“General?”

“The second Wolverine is five minutes out,” Patrick said. “The first one went Tango-Uniform. But we still have two companies on the east that I want to get turned around first. We have to hope the Iraqis hold.”

“Colonel Jaffar?”

“I am sorry I left such a small force at the reconnaissance plane,” Jaffar radioed amid loud engine noises and a lot of out-of-breath gasping. “Some of our vehicles broke down as well.”

Patrick could see where Jaffar’s battalion was relative to the four platoons guarding the XC-57, and like the second Wolverine he was not going to make it before the Turks started their attack. “General, I’m closer,” Charlie Turlock radioed. “Whack and I together might be enough to at least slow the Turks down long enough.”

“No, you have the eastern flank, Charlie; we don’t want anyone stunting around from that direction,” Patrick said. “Martinez, I need you to sprint ahead of Jaffar’s guys and engage.”

“With pleasure, General,” replied Angel Martinez, piloting a CID unit accompanying Yusuf Jaffar’s battalion. Martinez was a jack-of-all-trades in Scion Aviation International: he had police training; he fixed and drove trucks and construction equipment; he could even cook. When they were looking for volunteers to go to Iraq, his was the first hand up. On the long flight over, Wayne and Charlie gave him ground school lessons on how to pilot a Cybernetic Infantry Device; when Wayne Macomber ordered him to mount up after they had arrived at Nahla and were going to take down the local security force, it was his first time actually piloting a CID.

Now this was only his second time—and he was going to face an entire Turkish army battalion.

“Listen up, Angel,” Charlie radioed. “The armor and the rail gun are great, but your main weapons aboard a CID are speed, mobility, and situational awareness. Your main weaknesses are massed platoon-or company-level weapons because they can drain your power quickly. You have to move to avoid heavy weapons being able to concentrate fire on you. Shoot, move, scan, move, shoot, move.”

“Charlie, you drilled me on that mantra so much I say it in my sleep,” Martinez said. He was racing ahead of Jaffar’s battalion with breathtaking speed, well over fifty miles an hour across the open field. “Target’s in sight.”

“The Turks are concentrating on the platoons ahead of them,” Whack said, “but the minute you open fire they’ll—”

“Projectile away,” Martinez said. He dove to the ground in a prone position, selected a Turkish armored personnel carrier in his sights, and fired. The APC didn’t explode or even stop when the tungsten-steel alloy projectile hit, because the sausage-size slug passed right through it as if it never existed—but every man inside the vehicle was shredded to bits by shards of the APC’s thin steel fuselage flying uncontrollably inside the vehicle. “Damn, I must’ve missed,” Martinez said.

“No, but you gotta remember to go for the engine compartment, transmission, magazine, or the tracks, not just the crew compartment,” Whack said. “The projectiles will pass through the thin steel or aluminum easily. Every infantryman aboard may be dead, but the vehicle can still fight if the driver or commander made it.”

“Roger that, Whack,” Martinez said. As soon as he stood up, he started taking fire, including automatic forty-millimeter grenade rounds. He dashed sideways for a hundred yards, searching for the origin of those rounds. He soon found it—not one, but two APCs.

“Angel, keep moving!” Charlie shouted. “Those two APCs have you lined up!”

“Not for long,” Martinez shouted back. He took aim and fired directly through the front of one APC. It immediately shuddered to a stop, and soon a fire broke out in the engine compartment. But
Martinez couldn’t enjoy the view, because two more APCs had zeroed in on him. He immediately loaded their locations in his target computer’s memory, aimed, and fired. But they moved quickly, and he was only able to get one before having to run because he was being bombarded by the other. “Guys, I have a feeling they anticipated finding us out here,” he said. “I’m getting clobbered.”

“Target on the run and shoot at as many as you can when you stop,” Whack said. “Don’t target while you’re stopped.”

“It looks like they’re gunning for us for sure,” Charlie said. She fired four ballistic rockets from her backpack, which had infrared and millimeter-wave radars that guided them to a group of four Turkish armored personnel carriers that had appeared out of nowhere from the east. “At least it gives Jaffar’s troops a chance to—”

“
Helicopters inbound, bearing northwest, five miles
!” Patrick shouted. “They look like gunships accompanied by a scout! Too low to spot them farther out!” Before Martinez could search for the newcomers, the Turkish Cobra gunship launched a Hellfire laser-guided missile.

“Evasive moves, Angel!” Whack shouted. Now that the scout helicopter, a U.S.-licensed but Turkish-built Kiowa, had to keep its laser on Martinez, it was an easy target for Macomber’s rail gun, and he blew the sensor ball atop the helicopter’s rotor mast apart seconds later…but not before the Hellfire missile hit Martinez on the left part of his chest.

“Angel’s down! Angel’s down!” Whack shouted. He tried to run over to him, but sustained fire from the battalion in front of Jaffar’s security platoons kept him pinned down. “I can’t get to him,” he said as he fired at more oncoming APCs, then reloaded his rail gun. “I’m not sure how much longer we can hold these guys off. I’m down to fifty percent power and ammo.”

“The Wolverine will be overhead in one minute,” Patrick said. “More helicopters inbound!”

“I’m going to try to get to Martinez,” Whack said.

“The Turks are too close, Wayne,” Patrick said.

“We might have to retreat, but I’m not leaving without Martin
ez.” Whack fired several more times, waited for the return fire to subside, then said, “Here I—”

At that moment several dozen flashes of lights erupted from the west, and moments after that Turkish armored vehicles started exploding like firecrackers. “Sorry I am late once again, gentlemen,” Yusuf Jaffar radioed, “but I am still not accustomed to your speed. I think you may get your comrade, Macomber.”

“On the way!” Whack fired the thrusters on the boots of his Tin Man armor, and in three jumps he was with Martinez. At that moment the earth in front of him began to sizzle and pop like water sprayed on a hot pan as the Wolverine began sowing bomblets and antipersonnel mines on the Turkish troops. The air was getting thick with smoke and the screams of trapped Turks. “You okay in there, Angel?” Whack knew from his biometric datalink that Martinez was alive, but most of the left side of the robot was shattered, and he couldn’t move or communicate. Whack picked up the robot. “Hold on, Martinez. This might hurt a bit on the landing.”