It was dead-hard to achieve a sonic boom on demand, and only the best of the best could manage it. The F-16 pilot would have to pull up violently right over the Fedayeen’s heads, the jet engines’ thrust colliding with the air to create a massive midair explosion.
The lead F-16 bottomed out into a screaming turn above the enemy, the air in its tortured wake glowing like a ghostly steam cloud. Moments later the jet’s afterburners cut in, trailing a comet of fire as the F-16s climbed almost vertically.
Then: KABOOOOOM!
The earsplitting sound rolled across the open terrain, thundering over the British position like a tidal wave. As the jet climbed, the pilot fired off a blinding burst of flares in his wake, like a salvo of missiles pummeling the earth all around the Fedayeen’s positions. Barely thirty seconds later the second F-16 came screaming in and did a repeat performance, the sonic boom of its afterburners echoing like an atomic explosion across the battlefield.
Two sonic booms in quick succession: no doubt about it, the pilots of those warplanes sure knew what they were doing.
All around the desert to the south and west of their position, vehicle lights had gone out. The Fedayeen had doused their headlamps in an effort to hide themselves from the avenging F-16s.
“Zero Six Bravo, Viper Five Three,” came the voice of the lead pilot, “they’ve gone static and dark, so that’s shut ’em down for a while. We’ve got twenty minutes’ play time, but doing those low-level passes sure burns up the fuel real fast.”
“Roger, keep watching ’em,” Moth replied. “They start moving or showing any lights, smash in another low pass. We’re going to bug out west, and when we do I’ll give you a warning. Do not engage three wagons moving due west on black light. Repeat: Do not engage us.”
“Well copied.”
It was 0045 hours by now. The men had been in constant combat or on the run for approaching seven hours. After a week spent operating deep behind enemy lines, they had been on their chinstraps even before they’d got hit. It was only the adrenaline, plus the fear of being overrun, that was keeping them going.
The force prepared to move out, pulling men back from the rim of the wadi and loading up the vehicles. Using the cover of the F-16s screaming in for a second low-level pass, the wagons crawled toward the lip of the lake bed in preparation for turning west. But as the pair of warplanes roared overhead at treetop level, the Fedayeen opened up on them, spurts of 12.7mm tracer chasing the jets through the dark skies.
Already it seemed the militia fighters had woken up to the fact that the F-16s weren’t dropping ordnance, which wasn’t good news. The Dushka was designed first and foremost as an antiaircraft weapon, although it stood little chance of bringing down an F-16. But it just went to show how quickly the Fedayeen learned from the realities of the battlefield and adapted their actions accordingly.
The lead Pinkie was creeping over the western edge of the wadi when the nearest of the Fedayeen vehicles swung its guns round. Within seconds, 12.7mm Duskha rounds went tearing past the men in the wagon as the enemy hosed down the wadi.
With all the passengers blocking their arcs, the gunners on the Pinkies still couldn’t return fire. Figures dived off to either side, sprinting for their defensive positions and to find some cover. At the same moment the Dude and Grey sparked up the .50-cals and the GPMG, smashing rounds back into the enemy, targeting the long tongues of yellow flame spitting out of the darkness.
For a few instants they traded fire with bloody fire, then the wagon reversed course back into the cover of the lake bed. It was
impossible to exit from their position in the face of such a murderous level of fire, for there was no way they could fight when the crowded wagons were on the move.
Whether or not those low-level passes by the F-16s had led the enemy onto their position, Grey didn’t know. But he was burning up with frustration, and the Iraqis sure as hell seemed to know where they were now.
The F-16 pilot was onto Moth almost immediately. The warplanes were approaching zero fuel, and they’d clocked that they were under fire. It was clear that with each pass the Fedayeen were getting wise to the fact that the jets weren’t killing them, which made each less effective than the last. The lead pilot warned Moth they could manage two more shows of force, by which time they’d be sipping on fumes. The British force had to break out west in the limited time that the warplanes could buy them or they’d be overrun.
It was then that Grey had a flash of pure inspiration. He dived out of the wagon and sprinted over to Scruff, who was lying prone on the rim of the lake bed. He dropped down beside him so both men were gazing out into the open desert due west.
“When the jets come in, unleash with the SLAR on whatever targets you can hit,” Grey told him. “We’ve never seen a thermobaric warhead in action and neither will the fucking enemy. Fire off as many as you can as the jets do their stuff, and hopefully the bastard Fedayeen will think the F-16s have switched to dropping bombs.”
“Fucking nice one,” Scruff growled.
“Get one of the blokes to be your loader,” Grey added, “and smash the warheads into them fast as you can.”
“Got it.”
Spurts of 12.7mm fire went burning across the skies above him as Grey scuttled back to the wagons. He gave Ed the sketch and they put it out on the radios so all would know what was happening.
“Right, here’s the plan: we’ll smash the Fedayeen with the SLAR, and maybe the Iraqi infantry too. Presumably, the enemy’ll think it’s the F-16s in action and they’ll run for the fucking hills. They do that, we break contact and head due west. We’ll break through their
lines, and either we’ll hit the Syrian border or get a helo into a grid to lift us out.”
That done, Grey slid into the seat of his Pinkie and grabbed the GPMG. He swung it round, centering the metal sights on a pair of Fedayeen headlights. He paused for an instant to draw breath and waited for the roar of the warplanes as they headed in for their third low-level pass.
As the rumble of the incoming warplanes grew in volume, a monster round from one of the T-72s came tearing across the British position and slammed into the open desert a hundred yards beyond. There was a momentary delay and a second tank shell plowed into the ground just short of their position. Now the gunners had them bracketed.
Grey tensed for a third shell to smash right into them, the scream of the jet engines drowning out the roar of battle. As the lead F-16 streaked earthwards in a shallow dive, Scruff unleashed the first thermobaric rocket from the
SLAR
. There was a violent flash of flame from the weapon’s gaping muzzle, and the rocket went tearing toward the nearest Iraqi vehicle.
The compact warhead slammed into the target, impacting with a dull thud. A small scatter charge threw out a fine mist of fuel-air explosive, which enveloped and saturated the vehicle. A split second later the secondary, igniter charge detonated, instantly transforming the fuel-air mixture into a white-hot seething fireball.
As the flame front accelerated from the epicenter of the blast, the burning vehicle careered onward, the firestorm flaring and seething as it sucked in oxygen like a dragon devouring its prey. The blast wave flashed outward from the heart of the conflagration, tearing into the vehicles to either side before collapsing in on itself to form a crushing vacuum.
Moments later the incinerated vehicle shuddered to a halt, a gutted ruin. A black mushroom cloud of smoke belched skywards, right in the wake of the F-16. Scruff reloaded, aimed, and fired again. The entire horizon under attack from the SLAR seemed to dissolve into a sea of raging fire as a second vehicle was engulfed in a white-hot blast.
With the F-16s ramping up the afterburners, Scruff hammered in the thermobaric rockets, and the headlights all around them went out. Even the searchlights atop the T-72s were doused as the enemy forces killed their movement and their lights and went static.
For several tense moments the men of the tiny British force gazed out into a dark and apparently empty desert. The seconds ticked by. Seconds became a full minute, and still there was no sign of movement or light from the enemy. It looked as if the plan was working. Now was as good a time as any to make a run for it.
For a second time they pulled the men back from the rim of the lake bed and loaded up the wagons. Then Moth got the lead vehicle nosing out of cover and into the open desert. As he did so, the F-16s came in for their fourth and final pass. They screamed across the British vehicles and then they were powering south away from the battlefield.
The lead pilot came up on the air. “Zero Six Bravo, Viper Five Three. we’re bingo fuel and we’re out of here. Stay safe down there.”
Moth offered a heartfelt thank-you for everything that the American pilots had done for them. They’d not been able to unleash their bombs or their cannon, yet to a man the soldiers on the ground knew that without those warplanes they’d have been trapped in the lake bed, overrun, and killed or captured.
The three Pinkies pushed due west, the noise of the F-16s fading to a faint rumble on the still desert air. Hardly had the skies above them fallen silent than the first lights blinked on to their rear. The enemy was on the move again, but whether they’d seen the British force bugging out, no one knew for sure right now. As the three wagons careered onward, trying to put as much distance between themselves and the lake bed, a chilling thought hit Grey: even if they could break out west, they mightn’t have the fuel to make it to the extraction grid.
The last time Grey had checked on the diesel was at last light, shortly before the enemy had hit them, and it had been clear then that they’d need a resupply within the next twenty-four hours. He’d figured they had a hundred kilometers max of diesel on their
wagon. That was seven hours ago, and without factoring in all the desperate driving since then, plus the extra weight of the men they were now carrying. And he had little idea of the fuel states of the other vehicles.
He was dreading the moment when the first wagon shuddered to a halt as its tank ran dry.
The three Pinkies had made no more than five hundred yards from their last position when the enemy closed the noose. To their rear the lake bed they’d just vacated was transformed into a sea of fire as the Fedayeen hosed it down with 12.7mm Dushka rounds.
At the lip of the depression, the enemy pulled to a halt, and their fighters piled off the Toyotas. They swarmed into the low ground, AK-47s spitting fire, at which point they must have discovered that the British force had somehow evaporated into thin air. But a set of tracks led out of the wadi, and those could be traced and followed.
As they pressed onward, Grey did a quick check on ammo stats. He’d got two boxes of rounds left for the GPMG, so he was 800 down. In the rear the Dude was in an even worse state: he’d just slung the last belt of .50-cal ammo onto the heavy machine gun, which put him 500 rounds down. They’d each got their Colts, with 360 rounds apiece, but they were piss-all use against 12.7mm heavy machine guns.
A couple more up-close firefights with the Fedayeen, and they were going to get slaughtered. Grey had no doubt that the Iraqis would be bringing up reinforcements, and they presumably had 100,000 troops plus their war machines to choose from. The British force had survived thus far only thanks to the terrain, the distance, and the darkness, not to mention the battle-winning air cover.
It was some five minutes later, around 0130 hours, that Grey’s vehicle drew level with the scorched and twisted wreckage, which was all that remained after the SLAR strikes. As their wagon pushed in amongst the inferno, they passed the gutted shell of a vehicle spewing out great gouts of oily black smoke. Its tires were still burning fiercely, thick acrid fumes barreling into the sky.
The way ahead was all but obscured by the drifting, oily darkness. Visibility was down to near zero, and Grey couldn’t tell if there were any enemy left alive in there. They were moving through the Iraqi lines more or less blind. There was one upside: now that they were in amongst the worst of the carnage, the dense smoke should hide their position from those to their rear.
As the lead vehicle pushed ahead Grey, Moth and Dude pulled their
shemaghs
closer around their faces to filter out the fumes. They were hyperalert to any hostile presence, as was Raggy, who was still sprawled across the wagon’s hood. They crawled past the wreckage, the paint blackened and blistered from the scorching heat, the steel warped and twisted.
The flames were red-hot on the exposed parts of Grey’s face, and the intensity of the conflagration had rendered the vehicles all but unrecognizable. He heaved up his
shemagh
still further to better shield his skin. As he did so he said a quick prayer for the poor bastards who’d been caught in all of this. They may have been the enemy, but it was still a horrible way to die.
They were in amongst the gutted skeletons of the vehicles, scanning the smoke to their front, when Grey chanced a quick look to their rear. His heart skipped a beat and his pulse began to hammer away in his head ever more powerfully. He figured he could just make out a set of headlights probing the thick smoke.
It had to be those bastard Fedayeen.
He eyed Raggy on the hood and took a sideways glance at Moth. “Fedayeen to our rear, guys. They hit us again, we’re fucked.”
Moth grunted an acknowledgment and kept focused on his driving.
Raggy forced an exhausted grin. “Yeah, don’t I know it.”
To their rear the Dude hunched over his .50-cal, poised to unleash hell with his last box of rounds.
They were maybe forty kilometers short of the border with Syria, and that way lay their only hope of sanctuary. It would be a massive embarrassment should twenty-six elite British and American operators get hauled into custody in Syria. But it could hardly get a great deal worse: they’d lost scores of vehicles blown up, with more than likely a couple captured intact, and God only knew what specialist equipment had fallen into enemy hands.