Strike Force Delta (29 page)

But in the southern part of the city, down by all those warehouses, nothing was going on except the fire Ryder himself set off about ten minutes before. This part of the city was almost completely dark. No headlights. No streetlights. No one in the streets at all.

Ryder knew that the relative inactivity in this part of town had baffled Murphy from the beginning. More out of curiosity than anything else, Ryder streaked in that direction again, wondering if he could get another eyeball on the place and find a clue as to why it was so quiet there while the rest of the city was going through a little bit of hell.

First he circled the warehouse he'd set ablaze. The
fire was slowly dying away, and none of the structures on either side of it had been affected. The smoke was still too dense, though, for him to see inside and determine exactly what it was that he had hit. He widened his circle and stayed at about one thousand feet. One thought that came to him was that the city's massive SAM weapon might actually be hidden down here, thus all the secrecy. If that was the case, though, he was certainly providing them with a fat target. Yet he saw nothing that would indicate any kind of SAM activity below. Plus why would a couple dozen blocks of the city be virtually blacked out just to hide one weapon?

Ryder checked his watch. The operation was just 42 minutes old, and so far things seemed to be going well. But there were several more aspects that had to go their way, or the tide could turn very fast. Plus fuel and ammo would soon become a concern for all of them, especially the air assets.

But then again, Ryder did have some extra bombs, one at least that was expendable. Though in a way he knew he was just looking for trouble, he turned the Bombcat over on its back, picked out an anonymous warehouse below, and dived on it.

A flick of his cannon opened a hole in its roof—he could see dim light inside. He released the bomb at about the same time, Stuka-fashion. It slammed into the roof almost where he'd opened the hole. He banked hard right and felt the explosion over his left shoulder. He turned up and out and saw that just like the first warehouse he'd hit, this one had a couple secondary explosions as well, indicating that something within was not just flammable but also explosive. But again, the
flames were so intense and the smoke so thick, it was impossible for him to determine exactly what it was he'd hit.

At that moment, he saw two green flares rise up over the central part of the city. Someone needed another five-hundred-pound bomb, probably Kennedy's crew.

Ryder turned in that direction and streaked away, leaving the warehouse to burn behind him.

Somehow the Chief made it back to the middle of the city. He'd run from the carnage at the intersection, commandeering a technical several blocks away. The first thing he did after climbing aboard was ask the driver if the middle of the city was still there, or had it been hit by the B-52s as well?

The driver didn't know, so it was a surprise for both of them that even though they had to drive through a lot of smoke and flames, they found the city square virtually intact. Upon seeing this, the Chief thought the B-52s must have hit the southern part of the city then, down near the warehouses. There was almost a dark amusement about this. How strange would it be if the south end got flattened and the middle of Khrash was saved? Would that mean that Allah had a cosmic sense of humor?

The Chief shook away these thoughts and stuffed another wad of qat into his mouth. If it was a miracle that the city square and the Holy Towers were still standing, then he was going to take advantage of it. But still, it was utter confusion here, in the center of town, with dozens of his fighters running around, shooting in the air, shooting at anything that moved, not hitting anything but one another. Many others were not armed at all.

The Chief knew he'd screwed up thinking that this
was just going to be a smash-and-grab raid for the Americans. He'd also guessed wrong that the Americans would attack at dawn. Obviously the Americans were coming both on the ground and in the air, and not just with helicopters, either. He saw the beat-up jet fighters, too, and above it all heard the terrible noise of the B-52s doing their work.

He jumped out of the technical and ran into the first open shop he could find. He retrieved the owner's AM radio and tried to tune in the three stations that broadcast in Khrash. But two were being blocked out by interference and the third had a man's voice the Chief did not recognize speaking in Arabic, telling people in the countryside to stay away from Khrash, as it was being bombed by the U.S. Air Force
and
was being invaded by the U.S. 4th Army.
Damn
, the Chief thought. Did this mean the whole Crazy Americans thing had been a ruse all along?

Now he had to think. Just before the rout at the intersection, he'd sent out two of his most trusted lieutenants to find the Taliban and Al Qaeda commanders. Their message: that the situation was getting desperate, as if they didn't already know, and that their off-duty fighters were needed. He'd also sent out two more miniconvoys to get to the two other bells in the city and start ringing them like crazy. Ringing the bells would also signal their
jihad
brethren that they needed help.

If and when the bells started ringing or his messages got through, the plan changed from one of protecting against a small attack to one that was an all-out defense of the city. It called for many of the Al Qaeda fighters to flood the area and perform their particular specialty: laying Improvised Explosive Devices along the major
streets surrounding the center of the city. These were the hated IEDs, killers of so many American soldiers fighting in Iraq. The Al Qaeda recipe for building an IED was deviously simple: take an unexploded artillery shell, bury it in the dirt of the street, and attach a cell phone as the fusing device. Call the cell phone and the bomb explodes. (That's why there weren't many cell phones to be had in the city, either.)

There was also a piece of the plan that had to do with the main roadway through Khrash. It was a multilane boulevard that was always crowded with dozens of yellow striped taxis. Per the plan, these cabs would be parked very haphazardly all over the road leading into the center of the city. Not only would these cars provide firing spots for ambushes, but many would also hold powerful bombs that could be detonated by the city's defending forces.

The plan also had provisions for some secret weapons. Very low-tech ones. The Chief was to round up several dozen of his lowest police officers and
kardisses
and the Al Qaeda experts would turn them into instant martyrs. Men who would have explosives strapped to their bodies, then be stuffed with qat, given civilian clothes, and released into the battle to detonate themselves as close as possible to the invading troops. Because it would be a waste to give these people real weapons, they were to be given wooden poles with knives attached to them instead.

If the American 4th Army was coming, then these things and more had to be done. But by all indications none of them had happened yet. Even above the roar of the battle, the Chief couldn't hear any bells ringing. Nor
had any of his messengers returned after finding the Taliban and Al Qaeda commanders.

This was not good for the
jihad
side.

He finally got to his headquarters, located on the first floor of the second Holy Tower. All of the windows had been shattered by the repeated sonic booms. The furniture had been turned over, and his papers were everywhere. But it made no difference. He was still king of the court.

He sent for all his officers; his bodyguards scrambled about the building to find whoever was left. His arms master was the first one to stumble though the office door. The river-borne shipment of arms and ammunition, at one time destined to simply add to the city's already burgeoning stockpiles, was suddenly very important. The massive arms losses resulting from the Americans' unexpected bombing of the three mosques had left the city on the verge of being defenseless.

Incredibly, the arms master told the Chief that the arms shipment was not only still on, but it had been spotted already coming up the west side of the Farāh River, moving in the shadows of the overhanging trees covering the Iranian side. Rifles, ammunition, RPGs, high explosives, fuel, and one box of videotapes, all courtesy of the Iranian secret police. This was very good news. Heartened again, the Chief told the arms master to do whatever was needed to get those weapons safely ashore.

The arms master departed, but he was not gone two seconds when the assistant police chief bounded in. The Chief told him about the arms shipment, but the assistant
remarked that they might have more rifles than people to shoot them. The Chief didn't know what the assistant was talking about at first. Then it dawned on the Chief. Making sure no citizens were leaving the city was one thing—but what would he do if his own fighters started deserting?

That's what the assistant chief was telling him: Many of the Chief's fighters
were
fleeing, toward Iran, some trying to catch rides with Al Qaeda fighters who were also leaving. The Chief was infuriated. The assistant had caught 10 of his policemen trying to leave the city by running across the Habeeb Bridge. He'd had these men gunned down by their own comrades and their bloody bodies left on the span as a warning to others. But there was no indication this act had stemmed the tide.

That's when the Chief knew he had to take matters into his own hands. To his mind now, the most important thing was to get some bells ringing. In some ways, it might be their last hope. And if he couldn't entrust the job of ringing them to someone else, he would have to ring them himself.

As it turned out, the closest bell was right on top of the Holy Tower itself. It was the loudest in the city. Still, the Chief was not sure if it alone would be loud enough to be heard over the commotion caused by the huge American invasion and the seemingly never-ending B-52 strikes.

But he had to give it a try.

He climbed the stairs to the roof, his five bodyguards walking out ahead of him, indicating that it was clear.

The Chief put his hands over his ears before emerging
onto the flat surface. He was expecting the noise to be deafening up here. He was also tempted to put his hands over his eyes, because if he didn't, he expected to see more than half the city leveled, the result of the Americans' brutal carpet bombing.

But as it turned out, he didn't have to do either. It wasn't half as noisy up here as he would have thought. In fact, the sound of the wind was the biggest racket. And looking out now over the city from 11 stories up, he was astonished to see that Khrash was still standing. There were many individual fires here and there. And he could see muzzle flashes and hear gunfire down on the streets.

But what looked and seemed and sounded like a massive invasion, massive bombing, and massive rout of his forces on the ground appeared a lot different up here.

Over in the Old Quarter, the place he'd run from, he could clearly see the fighting was still going on. But there were not dozens of tanks roaming the streets of the ancient neighborhood. He counted exactly two. And in the midsection of the city, down near the Taliban slum and the utilities circle, he wasn't looking at a re-creation of the Normandy beachhead, with thousands of troops and guns and vehicles. In fact, he could just barely make out small packs of American soldiers being followed by the accursed Zabul fighters, chasing what seemed to be a tidal wave of his fighters back into the city square and the Farāh River beyond.

What the hell was going on here?

Where was the American 4th Army? Where were the B-52s?

If he had to guess, the Chief would have said he saw
fewer than 30 Americans, maybe a hundred or so Zabul, a couple helicopters, and two jet fighters at the most—and no damage that looked like it might have been caused by the heavy bombers.

Then it hit him. It was a farce. From the ground it looked like a wave of hell was heading their way. From one hundred feet up, nothing of the sort. The Chief clenched his teeth hard. They'd fallen for it; even now he could see streams of his fighters running through the city square and not stopping, so convinced were they that an American horde was right behind them. Instead it was just a handful of magicians and a couple tanks.

They'd been tricked.

Fooled . . .

By the Crazy Americans.

All the more reason that he wanted to ring the bell now. Maybe they could turn this thing around yet.

The Chief had brought a hammer with him. He walked over to the huge very old bell, drew back, and was about to swing at it when . . .

Suddenly the American helicopter arrived. It was so close that the Chief could see the eyes of the pilot and the six gunmen jammed into the open cargo bay looking back at him. They stared at each other like this for what seemed like the longest time. And the americans did look like monsters! Then the Chief saw the patch for the first time actually attached to something other than Harbosi's severed hands. The Chief felt something go
snap!
in his head when he saw it.

Then the men in the helicopter opened up.

Again, there were five bodyguards up here on the roof with him. None of them had seen the copter approach—in fact, they didn't know if it had come up
behind them or had being flying at such a low altitude it had risen straight up after spotting them. In any case, the fusillade that came out of the copter was devastating. Four of the Chief's bodyguards were literally torn in half. His fifth guard had his head blown off. The Chief himself felt a great weight hit him at the same time the barrage from the helicopter did. He was thrown on his back, what seemed like molten steel washing over his body.

But somehow he saw the helicopter depart; the men were still shooting at him as it sped away. That's the only reason the Chief knew he was not dead, not yet anyway. He looked down at his chest and saw that he'd been hit not by bullets but by pieces of the bell that had been shattered in the fusillade. It was now in a million fragments—yet somehow he was still in one piece.