Strike Force Delta (31 page)

Fox was riding in the back of the Scramble chopper. He'd been surfing the air currents above Khrash ever since the attack began. The copter had been providing air support for Hunn's attack team mostly, though between Hunn's own highly destructive tendencies and the follow-up troops of friendly Zabul fighters, there really wasn't much the Scramble ship had to do except watch as the wave of American flags whipping in the breeze got larger and larger, sweeping east to west across the midsection of the city.

It was clear to Fox early on that it wasn't really a battle he was watching below him. It was something else. A grand hoax. A ruse on the already panicking defenders of Khrash and their R and R guests. The smartest thing the Ghosts could have done was send the message early on that the Crazy Americans were in town. That alone obviously put the dirty little city on edge. Add in the surprise attacks on the mosques, the middle of the night “miniinvasion,” and all the psych-out stuff the
Psyclops
plane could blanket the city with—no, it wasn't a battle, at least not yet.

But whatever it was, now they were back at Obo to start Round Two.

“Frankly, sir,” one of the mechanics told Fox as he climbed off the copter, “we never thought we'd see you again.”

Then the mechanics told Fox about the call they'd just received from Murphy.

Fox couldn't believe it . . ..

“Li's alive?”
he asked them over and over.

“That's what Murphy thinks,” was their reply. “Something to do with videotapes, the bad guys not having them.”

By this time the copter crew had loaded all the bombs and ammo on board and they'd filled the tanks with the last bit of gas. Then Fox told the two Marines to jump aboard and the Scramble ship took off.

The Marines were extremely happy to get out of the Obo for good. That is, until they traveled up and over the mountains and saw the fires of the city of Khrash on the horizon. They were lighting up the night for miles around.

That's when one Marine leaned over to the other and said to him drily: “And we didn't want to miss
this
?”

As for Fox, he got Murphy on the yellow phone and had him repeat the news about Li. And it was great news—except they didn't really know if she was still alive, and if she was, they didn't know where she was at the moment, other than she was most likely in the city that they were in the process of severely fucking up.

Fox went pale at the thought of this. Was there a chance she'd survived because the mooks had run out of videotape only to be killed in the Ghosts' unorthodox attack?

And if that had happened, who the hell was ever going to tell Ryder?

The trouble was, Fox and the Scramble copter had another mission to fulfill.

Murphy's plan called for an airborne assault on the center of the city if by the 50-minute mark everything was still going well for the Ghosts. The Scramble copter was to lead that assault. Fox was to be the CO.

The idea was to attempt a thrust at the heart of Khrash, a direct attack on the building that Murphy and the Spooks believed was the headquarters of the city's notorious religious police. They had deemed it both a military and a morale-busting target. To that end, all of the team's air assets were to head for the center of the city at exactly the 50-minute mark and provide cover for what was to come.

The target was the Holy Towers buildings, the tallest structures in Khrash.

When the Scramble copter arrived over the target, the two other Blackhawk copters were already waiting for it. Ryder's F-14 was also in the vicinity, while Curry stayed out west, continuing to attack anything that moved over the Habeeb Bridge toward Iran. He'd been very busy doing this for the past 15 minutes, as indeed the trickle of fighters trying to escape had turned into a torrent, just as the Ghosts had hoped.

The pair of Blackhawks and Ryder's F-14 each performed several strafing runs up and down the designated building, preparing the way for the Scramble copter to land on the roof, this while the
Psyclops
plane cruised farther overhead, still blaring the deafening sounds of battle to the ground below. More than once, as Fox saw Ryder's F-14 streak back and forth, he wondered how the hell, in the heat of this miniwar, they could get a message to him about Li. Of them all, this guy had the most right to know. But because of the lack of any communications among the Ghosts—their gravest weakness—there was no way Fox could think of to do it.

And again, he had to concentrate on the matter at hand.

The pilot of the Scramble copter waited for the other air assets to exit the area; then he slammed the Blackhawk down on top of one of the two Holy Towers. The troopers on board quickly jumped out to take on any opposition, but the rooftop was empty, except for the five dead mooks shot earlier by one of the other Blackhawks.

This was perfect for the Scramble crew. As the Delta troopers set up a defensive perimeter around the
rooftop, Fox and the two Marine mechanics started working on the real reason they'd come here.

They unfurled another American flag, this one also given to them by the crew of the
Psyclops
plane. Unlike the other flags being thrown up on every building the Ghosts captured, this one was huge, six feet by ten feet. They had brought a staff with them. Now hooking the flag to the staff, they carried it to the southern edge of the tower's roof. By this time the Delta operators had gathered around them. On cue, several of these operators started shooting off flare guns—because they were on the highest buildings in the city, there was no doubt most people below, friend and foe alike, could see the sudden pyrotechnic display.

In fact, the display was so high and so bright, Fox and the others on the roof heard a distinct quieting of gunfire below. Knowing they'd gotten a lot of people's attention, they raised the huge flag up over the 11-story Holy Towers buildings for all to see.

It wasn't quite the flag raising over Iwo Jima—but it was damn close. And the intent was the same. The message: The battle continued, but American troops had made it this far. They could almost hear their comrades cheering down in the streets.

The hail of enemy gunfire came at them just a second later.

Fox first became aware of it when two bullets went zinging by his right ear. Suddenly the air was filled with enemy rounds, impacting on the roof, off the scramble copter, and even the flag staff itself.

But where was the enemy fire coming from?

Fox went down on his stomach, crawled to the edge
of the building and for the first time realized the enemy fire was coming from the almost identical tower next to the one he was on. This building looked like it was full of the city's defenders. These were the people who were shooting at them.

There was only a about a 10 foot separation between the two towers. As Fox and the others watched in horror, two mooks firing at them from the roof of the second tower began running towards them, as if to leap across the distance and land on the roof they currently occupied.

This was insanity, and Fox knew it. Why would these two want to jump over to their roof where they would be killed immediately . . . unless.

Fox instantly opened up on the two gunmen—everyone around him did too, as if they all figured it out at the same time. The two mooks both jumped off the first tower together. The American fusillade caught them in mid-air. Suddenly both mooks blew up in twin balls of flame and dust.

Then everything got quiet again. Fox felt all the air go out of him. These guys hadn't just been gunmen, they were suicide bombers.

And that was not good.

Somehow the crews of the other two Blackhawks figured out what was going on. They returned with a vengeance, strafing the second tower mercilessly, this as Fox and the others on the roof of the first building traded intense gunfire with enemy fighters in the other.

It went on like this for what seemed to be the longest time. It was almost like to great man of wars ships battling each other at close quarters on the open sea. Meanwhile,
Fox could see other enemy fighters in what looked like full retreat, running through the city square, heading for the river and what they hoped would be sanctuary in Iran beyond.

Why then were the mooks defending the first Holy Tower so ferociously? Was it simply because they housed the headquarters of the religious police? Or that the big American flag was now flying up here? Or was it something else?

He had to find out.

Something told him the answer lay at the bottom of the building. He gathered eight of the Delta guys with him, plus the Marine mechanics and down they went.

It turned out to be almost a replay of the assault on the prison at Loki Sato in West Africa. With Fox taking the lead, he and the other troopers burst through the top door of the building and started making their way down. They made a head long dash down the stairs, cluttered by refuse, garbage and dead or dying Islamic fighters.

Meanwhile the Scramble copter took off, and began circling the building, firing at any enemy gunmen its could see. As it turned out, this first tower was virtually empty. Fox and his squad met only a few mooks on the way down and they looked to be so high on qat, they offered only token resistance before fleeing or dying.

It only took a couple minutes before Fox and company arrived on the ground floor. Sure enough here was the headquarters of the city's religious police. The place was empty and appeared ransacked. Enemy fighters were running right by the window, some armed, some not. But they weren't bothering to stop or do anything about the Americans suddenly in their midst.

It was at that moment that Fox and the others realized
why. A commotion was happening about a block away. Fox dared to stick his head out the door and saw a truly beautiful sight: it was Kennedy's 2nd Delta squad and the two Zabul tanks.

They had finally reached the center of Khrash.

Yet even as these reinforcements flooded into the city square firing and chasing the still retreating mooks, enemy gunmen in the second tower were still firing down at them.

Why would they be doing this?
Fox wondered again. There was something else here; he knew it. But what?

Or who?

Once he was sure that Kennedy and his men had secured the front of the building, Fox turned to the Delta guys and asked: “Do you think this place has a basement?”

It took them five minutes to find the door to the lower level—it was hiding behind a false wall in the police chief's office—and another five minutes to actually get it open, but Fox and his squad finally gained entrance to the Tower's basement.

The first thing that hit them when they got the door open was the smell. It was horrendous. Body sweat, urine, death or near death.

They rushed down the stairs into a dark hallway. That's when they heard moaning, groaning, crying. The hallway was lined with plain white doors. Fox shot the lock off the first one and kicked it in. Within, they found two men, chained to the wall. Both were emaciated. Both showed signs of having been beaten and tortured. Both were wearing U.S. Air Force flight uniforms.

Next door down the Delta guys found two Afghani
Army officers, one dead, the other dying. In the room next to that, two Filipino women. On and on, 22 people in all. Hostages. POWs. Kidnap victims. All of them awaiting execution. An incredible discovery.

As one of the Delta guys said to Fox: “Everyone's here except Judge Crater and Jimmy Hoffa.”

Fox just nodded.

“And Li . . . ,” he whispered.

The Farāh River ran swiftly from north to south. Flowing out of the mountains in Afghanistan, it bordered Khrash on the west, at points defining the border with Iran.

The river had been a lifeline to Khrash for centuries. Where the river cargo years ago had been such exotic things as fresh fruit, figs, and cooking oil, these days it was almost always guns, ammunition, and explosives, along with some luxury items such as C-size batteries, Bic lighters, and blank cassette tapes, including videotapes.

The river caravan of seven boats had left the Iranian city fifty miles downstream just after sundown the day before. Because they had to sail against the current and the 30-foot boats were powered by small diesel engines, those fifty miles upstream could take as long as 10 hours.

But because the smugglers, who were actually members of the Iranian military police, knew there was a sudden desperate situation in Khrash, they'd traveled the night full out, in an effort to get the much-needed arms and ammunition to their Islamic brothers.

That's why they were now just a mile from Khrash, hidden under the overhanging trees on the Iranian side,
looking into this city where nothing ever really happened and wondering whether World War Three had suddenly broken out there.

On the seven boats were tons of military supplies, especially guns and ammunition, a cargo too expensive by weight and too dangerous by origin to be driven over the mountains to Khrash. Usually these deliveries would be made with no muss, no fuss, on one of the many docking areas that could be found up near the Habeeb Bridge. But at the moment the Habeeb Bridge seemed to be on fire. The smuggled weapons would have to be dropped off at a more secure location farther downstream.