Within four more minutes, the five-vehicle convoy was under way. At the last moment the guards heaved back the gates, and high above, on either side of the entrance, Ranger machine gunners opened fire, raking the boundary wire three hundred feet away, across no-man’s-land, just in case an insurgent group was feeling ambitious.
Mack Bedford stuck his right arm out of the window and gave a thumbs-up to the lead tank, which contained Billy-Ray Jackson, Charlie O’Brien, the crew, and enough ammunition to start Desert Storm all over again. They rumbled through to the outer rim, where the automatic reinforced-steel barrier rose to allow them through. When all five vehicles were out, the gate clicked electronically shut and automatically activated four land mines inside the entrance, strategically placed to obliterate any transgressor.
They turned right, heading southeast down the sandy highway that follows the Euphrates River, through the burning-hot, silt-covered alluvial floodplain where temperatures can reach 120 degrees. This flat, arid area, which receives only eight inches of rain per year, was once the cradle of Mesopotamian civilization. Today it is a glowering region of rabid hatreds and violent reprisals.
The mighty seventeen-hundred-mile-long river at this point had flowed through eastern Turkey’s Taurus Mountains and right across Syria before narrowing through the limestone cliffs of western Iraq. It ran softer, wider, and browner now, south of the desert town of Hit, and clusters of date palms occasionally dotted the left side of the SEALs’route. The riverside palms looked almost biblical, but there was nothing biblical about the aged Russian machine guns that frequently spat fire at passing American vehicles, straight between the trees, though mostly from the far side.
Mack Bedford’s men were on high alert all the way along their five-mile race to Abu Hallah, the heavy guns of the tanks often swiveling to face areas of rough ground cover or copses of palm trees, where unseen Muslim fanatics might be lying in wait.
The men of Foxtrot Platoon had been in Iraq for five months now, and were well versed in the requirement for acute vigilance in all of their sorties beyond the great walls of Camp Hitmen. And this week was turning into an extremely dangerous time, given the continued existence of the Diamondhead, and the Iranians’ apparent willingness to keep supplying it, United Nations or not.
Lieutenant Commander Bedford spotted the black plumes of smoke rising from the western bank of the Euphrates two miles out. He signaled a halt to the convoy and stood up, fixing a pair of powerful binoculars on the uproar up ahead. From what he could see, there were two tanks still ablaze. He thought he could see U.S. Army ambulances, but the smoke, dust, and fire obscured the view.
He signaled for the convoy to continue,
flank speed,
the SEALs being a branch of the navy rather than the army. “Step on it, Jack, for Chrissakes,” he muttered. “This looks like a real shit-fight.”
All five armored vehicles accelerated, their already hot engines screaming in the grim silence of the Syro-Arabian desert. In front of a billowing dust cloud they surged onward. Inside the tanks, Mack Bedford’s men slammed magazine clips into their rifles, the gun crews staring through the sights of the big swiveling barrels that would almost certainly be turned onto their distant enemy across the river.
As they approached Abu Hallah they could see the gray outlines of buildings on the far bank beyond the bridge. Almost immediately opposite those buildings were the remnants of the morning task force. Two tanks had been hit and destroyed. The only surviving armored vehicle was positioned behind them, away from the river, with its gun pointing directly across at the buildings. The smoke, however, was still so intense that there was scarcely any hope of taking a decent shot at anything.
The closer they came, the more obvious it was that this had been a major disaster. Mack’s warriors could see the ambulances now, and the fire trucks, not to mention the pure hopelessness of trying to carry the dead away from the searing heat and melting metal.
The rescue services were from the U.S. ar-Ramadi base, some fifty miles to the south. They had been on another rescue mission, a roadside bomb farther north, but had turned back immediately when news came in of the attack on the SEALs at Abu Hallah.
Mack Bedford exercised a hard-earned caution about getting too close to burning vehicles when there was still a lot of gasoline in the immediate area. He signaled his convoy to halt, well short of the fires, around fifty feet beyond the bridge. He alone jumped out onto the road and walked toward the disaster area. A young SEAL lieutenant, dressed in battle cammies and carrying a rifle, walked toward him. The two knew each other well, and Lt. Barry Mason said simply, “Thanks for coming, Mack. Afraid there’s not much we can do right now, except wait. We got ’em pinned down in that building over there. But they got us pinned down right here, and I’m not anxious to break cover until we’ve cleared ’em out.
“Jesus Christ. You shoulda seen the missiles they hit us with. Both of ’em went straight through the fuselage of the tanks. Holy shit. Like a goddamned hot knife through butter.”
Mack Bedford could already feel the heat in more ways than one. “These fires start when the explosive reached the fuel tanks?”
“Hell, no. They seemed like part of the missile. Everything ignited right away. The guys never had a chance. They were burned alive. I could see two of ’em trying to get out, but the flames were kinda blue and burned like chemicals. We couldn’t get near them. Christ, it was hot. No survivors.”
“Obviously the Diamondhead,” said Mack.
“No doubt,” replied Lieutenant Mason. “Couldn’t have been anything else. Fucking thing. Never seen anything more horrible than that. And this is my third time in Iraq.”
Mack nodded. For the first time he could see tears streaming down the young SEAL’s face, a certain sign of the shattering cruelty he had witnessed along the south road down the Euphrates.
For a few moments, neither man spoke. They just stood back and stared at the misshapen, seared, and twisted metal of the tank, each of them trying to fight away the terrible thought of their brothers who had been incinerated inside the cockpit. For Barry Mason it was all about sadness, remorse, and, inevitably, self-pity, as the brand-new memories of his lost friends stood starkly before him. For Mack, it was something altogether different. Deep in the soul of the SEAL commander there was a constantly burning flame of vengeance. Mostly, it just flickered and could be ignored. Mackenzie Bedford knew full well that all military leaders need to be free of cascading emotion, because anger and resentment are the first cousins of recklessness. But all of them carry this unseen burden, and they constantly grapple to avoid being forced into hasty decisions.
Mack Bedford often found it more difficult than most to hold back the demons that urged him to lash out at his enemy with all the uncontrolled violence he could summon. He even had a name for the surge of fury that welled within him. He called it the “hours of the wolf,” a phrase he recalled from some morbid Ingmar Bergman movie. It was a phrase that perfectly described his feelings, mostly in the hours before dawn, when he could not sleep and yearned only to smash his enemy into oblivion.
Right now, standing on this burning desert road, watching the molten iron tombs of his fellow SEALs and three Rangers, Mack entered the hours of the wolf. And deep inside he could sense that familiar burgeoning rage, currently aimed at everything about this godforsaken hellhole in which he must serve.
He turned his head sideways to the hot wind and stared across the river, at the ancient stone dwellings, built mostly on just two floors, all of them pockmarked with bullet and shell holes. Mack could see them clearly through his binoculars. Abu Hallah was an insurgent stronghold, no doubt—a place where Islamist fanatics came and launched attacks on U.S. troops before vanishing once more back into the desert.
“Did you see where the missiles came from?” he asked Lieutenant Mason.
“Nossir. But they came straight across the river, from one of those houses, and they did not swerve. Just came straight at us.”
“Two only?”
“Yessir. One hit the lead tank, clean as a whistle. The second one came in right behind it, smashed into the next tank, just as if they had been individually aimed from two firing posts.”
“Were you stationary at the time?”
“Nossir. We were making about thirty miles per hour. By the time my vehicle had stopped and I hit the ground, both tanks were blazing like a couple of goddamned bonfires. Except with that blue flame I mentioned. Never saw anything catch fire that quick.”
“Jesus Christ,” said Mack. “And we don’t dare flatten those fucking houses across the river, because they’re probably full of unarmed civilians and someone will put us all in jail.”
“And it’s hard to know if the missile men are still in there,” said Lieutenant Mason.
“Tell you what, Barry. I can see a small group of vehicles just beyond the houses. I’m gonna drive back down this road and take a look. I’ll take my guys with me and turn around. If I see one sign of a hostile enemy on that side of the river, I’m taking them out.”
“Probably make us both feel a whole lot better, right?”
“Guess so,” said Mack, who was now conscious of the ever tightening knot of pure anger in his stomach, the old familiar one that heralded the hours of the wolf.
He signaled for his driver to come forward and for the four tanks to follow. He climbed aboard the armored car and led the way down the road for four hundred yards, stopped, and instructed the tanks to turn around, back toward the fires, and to aim their main artillery at the buildings across the river.
“Don’t fire. Just be ready.”
Positioned now at the rear of the convoy, Mack trained his binoculars on the small gathering of Arabs and trucks on the other side of the water. There was a stone wall, however, between the SEAL commander and the insurgents, and Mack’s car backed up another fifty feet to improve the angle. Now he could see clearly.
There were two unmistakable tripods placed in the ground midway along the wall. He could not identify the equipment mounted on top of the tripods, but since he was most certainly not looking at a highway surveyors’ unit preparing for a new freeway, Mack assumed the worst. He was looking at a missile sighting system and a guidance assembly, almost certainly identical to the ones that fired the new and improved French-made MILAN 3.
Mack knew enough about the MILAN to understand it fires in two stages, the first burn being for one and a half seconds, just to eject the missile out of the launcher. The second stage burns for eleven seconds, accelerating the missile to two hundred meters per second. The guys in the U.S. tanks never had a chance.
He had every reason to believe the secret Diamondhead may have been a shade faster, with perhaps a tougher cone protecting the warhead. As he stared at the small group across the river he suddenly observed the arrival of a new vehicle. And this was not a rough 4x4 desert truck; this was the sleekest of Mercedes-Benz limousines.
He watched the chauffeur hold open the door for the man who occupied the rear seat. Out into the desert stepped an immaculately dressed Western man wearing a dark pinstriped suit, with a blue tie and a scarlet handkerchief stuffed into the breast pocket of his jacket. He was essentially bald, with slicked-back dark hair on either side. Even from this side of the river Mack Bedford could see the jutting Roman nose.
The Arabs clustered around the new arrival, shaking his hand and smiling. He walked to the first tripod and spoke briefly. He examined a long tube that had been in the back of one of the trucks. Then he returned to the tripod and stared through the sights. For five more minutes he spoke to the men, all of whom were wearing Arab dress. Then he placed his arm around the shoulders of one of them and steered him to the limousine, which immediately accelerated away.
Mack walked back north, along the line of his tanks, instructing them to move on up toward the fires and to prepare to shell the wall that shielded the missile launchers. All four began to rumble forward, and the commander jumped into his own vehicle for the short ride.
As they came to a halt Mack climbed down from the right-hand side of the vehicle. As he did so there was a roar from the lead driver, whose head was above the hatch.
“INCOMING! . . . HIT THE. . . . ”
But it was too late. The missile from the other side of the Euphrates lanced across the water, belching flame, and slammed straight through the starboard-side fuselage of the lead tank, the one that contained Billy-Ray Jackson and Charlie O’Brien.