In the rear of the main cabin of the SCARAB an operating table and supplies of blood, surgical tools, and medicines were secured on the ceiling. A pulley rope allowed them to drop easily into place. Dr. Wheat checked over his supplies. Christ, keep the casualties down. The table was again stowed and secured to the roof.
Jeremiah Duncan and his pilots went over the exterior of the SCARAB, an
inspection that lasted an hour and a half. In that time a tanker truck
entered the hangar and filled the plane with fuel. This was a dicey
moment. With this size load and full gas tanks, there was a remote
possibility of fire during takeoff. Jeremiah had spotted the danger
months earlier, and hoped he had beaten the problem with the Bell and Boeing engineers.
“Gentlemen, the SCARAB is ripe!”
The Marines went to their combat packs and weapons, waiting for the command to fall in.
“You will first evacuate your bowels and bladders. No one will be permitted to leave until he takes an airsick pill.”
Groan! Boo!
“You will take the airsick pill because the Marine Corps says you need an airsick pill. Well be riding some nausea-causing waves of air, and we will bounce until your gut humps up into your throats. Puking is not an option, but if you must do so, vomit in your evacuation bags.”
When all had evacuated who could, they fell in near the boarding ramp. Personnel were loaded forward to aft, so Jeremiah did a round of handshakes and entered behind Cherokee and IV.
Directly behind the pilots and a step higher than their heads, Duncan had a mini-console installed. Duncan, with Novinski on one side of him and Quinn on the other, could read a number of displays from it, to monitor the speed, fuel, terrain, communications, as well as the systems that would come into play at the time of their attack.
“Intercom, we all hooked up?”
“Yo, Quinn.”
“Yo, Cherokee.”
“Yo, IV.”
“Yo, Grubb.”
T
Ropo, on.
“Marsh, yo.”
“Novinski here.”
“All troops present and accounted for, sir.”
The hangar door yawned open. A tow cart inched SCARAB out into the
dying light. With the nacelles at 75 degrees, the SCARAB could be
rolled a short distance on the runway in a fuel-saving maneuver for takeoff as compared to full helicopter thrust.
“Dogbreath, this is Cherokee. Shall we go for a rolling start?”
“This is Dogbreath, let me think. We’ve got a monster load on. Any half-power stunts promulgates six or seven risks I can think of, none of them pleasant. Ninety degrees and full thrust, get this son of a bitch up in the air.”
“Yo.”
Cherokee switched on the engines, a whine and then the SCARAB’s whispering thunder.
“Thrust,” Cherokee ordered.
IV took the long handle to his left and levered it down. The SCARAB hesitated an instant, rose, hung, then popped up.
“We’re at a thousand .. . eleven hundred,” IV said.
“Beep the nacelles down.”
Cherokee’s Fred Astaire feet tickled the rudders as his hand on the joystick held the nose still.
“Nacelles at forty-five degrees.”
“Let’s do some flying .. . but first I want to sing you all a little song.”
Arrayed at the cramped console behind the pilots, Novinski engaged the FLIR to be able to see the ground at night.
Jeremiah and Quinn hovered over the displays depicting Fort Urbakkan’s layout. The fort’s main installations stood three hundred feet down a courtyard next to a headquarters building with radio and telephone capacity. Next to headquarters, an enlisted barracks and mess hall, next the officers quarters. Across the back wall, the supply building and arsenal.
Opposite this, a stable for mules to negotiate the final miles along the cliff-side road to Urbakkan. Then a small prison and punishment court.
Quinn took a radio message and decoded it. THERE IS NO
EVIDENCE OF COMMANDING OFFICER BEING BILLETED IN
MOSQUE.
“That makes the cheese more binding,” Dogbreath said.
Quinn?
“Yo, I read it.”
“Do you think we should save a rack of missiles in case the mosque is armed?” Duncan asked of Quinn.
“No. This intelligence gives us the advantage of entering right over the main gate with no potential enemy able to get behind us. This baby flies so quietly, we’ll make our entrance without being detected. I say we come in and over the main gate, hover and unload our missiles and bombs right down the bowling alley. As soon as the buildings and their munitions go, we come down right alongside Barakat’s tower.”
“Let me think about it,” Dogbreath said. And he did, until his eyes washed out from glaze and concentration.
“Cherokee, this is Dogbreath.”
“Yo.”
“We’re probably going to scratch the mosque as a target. That means we can fly directly over the main gate.”
“No problem.”
“Novinski, this is Dogbreath.”
“Yo,” answered Novinski, sitting next to the general.
“Any of those gadgets give me a reading of how noisy it is outside?”
“Yo,” Novinski said. “Whispering Jesus, singing a lullaby. Under eighty decibels.”
Dogbreath shook his head in amazement. The SCARAB was eight times more quiet in the turbo-prop mode than as a helicopter. Should we make a bombing run or hope that the Iranians are totally off guard? We need a few minutes to get into the fort and for Quinn to squeeze off his missiles. I vote for Quinn.
Dogbreath turned and smiled and waved to RAM in the rear. They sat
knee to knee in hard-ass bucket seats, their combat packs, helmets, and
weapons crammed on the deck in the center aisle. Dogbreath found
something else to fret about: the main cabin was not pressurized, and they’d have to go on oxygen if the SCARAB went high to save fuel.
The first point of the flight was to fly into the northernmost tip of Iran, avoiding Tabriz radar. The SCARAB took to her zigzag preprogrammed course like an old pro. Although the entire mission was made more difficult by mountains, she cruised un excitingly No calls from Tabriz!
Sensing that radar coverage was poor and feeling the SCARAB might not be picked up at all because of her composite materials, Dogbreath ordered her up over the mountaintops to save fuel.
They flew close to plan toward the IranianArmenianAzerbaijan borders.
“Volkovitch and Fellah, this is Dogbreath.”
“Yo.”
“Yo.”
“Are you scanning your frequencies?”
“Fellah here. Tabriz tower is speaking normally. Apparently, they didn’t see us or hear us.”
“Volkovitch?”
“No news from the Russians in Baku.”
“Novinski?”
“Yo?”
“Anybody’s radar suspect we’re up here?”
“Sure doesn’t look like it.”
“Dogbreath to Cherokee and IV. We’re looking very clean. Let’s make a run for the Caspian Sea just south of Arbail,” Dogbreath ordered.
The SCARAB descended as she approached the Caspian Sea and banked right to follow the coast. A high mountain range along the coast would give them cover from inland installations. Intelligence had the mountains well photographed. A dodge here and a twist there would keep them from being spotted.
Those not eating candy bars slept sitting up.
At the Iranian-Turkoman border, Dogbreath ordered the pilots to stay north and cross a deep marsh that would allow them to come around the back door into Iran and give a wide berth around Teheran.
Into a mad swirl of clashing hot and cold winds, the SCARAB chopped and chopped and dropped suddenly, then dropped into a wadi with her tail almost completely whipped around. Cher
okee quickly took her off automatic pilot.
The craft was sorely protesting her load and altitude.
“Novinski, this is Cherokee, how is your terrain following?”
“We’re in a tight-ass valley. The cross winds are too crazy. We may not be getting accurate readings,” Novinski said.
“I’m going visual. You stay on the multifunction radar,” Cherokee said.
“Yo,” IV said.
Cherokee put on his night-vision goggles, whispered an “Oh, Jesus.”
“I’m going up a thousand feet and clear that ridge.”
That ridge didn’t want to be cleared, hurtling wind into chainsaw mountaintops. Debris spewed up, some of it pelting the SCARAB.
“Shit!” Novinski noted as the bottom fell out on the far side of the ridge. Another roller-coaster wadi compelled Cherokee and IV to fly by the seat of their pants.
During the violent weather and turbulence, Dogbreath kept his mind on his display panels, unaware of the tension about him.
Should I have taken a spare pilot from El Toro? Damned, how could I? We only have a total of twenty men with arms. Marginal, marginal, well, hell, can’t do anything about it now. What’s that? he asked himself as perspiration beaded over his forehead. Goddammit, I should have taken an airsick pill. I cannot puke in front of these people!
“Quinn, this is Dogbreath.”
“Yo.”
“We’ve scratched the mosque as a target, so let’s examine your frontal assault plan.”
SCARAB dropped into a long, flat valley, and the air became dirty, woefully dirty. Quinn looked back and saw RAM tossed up and down, like a film with broken threads. Yelps!
“Congratulations, men,” Cherokee said, switching on the loudspeaker system, “we made it again.”
Quinn gave a fuel reading to IV. The bitch was drinking up too many calories. IV fine-tuned the angle of the prop blades.
“Quinn to front cabin. We’re cleared of Teheran radar.”
“Dogbreath to Cherokee.”
“Yo.”
“We’re using up too much fuel. It is touch and go if we can reach the tanker plane or not. Since we’re cleared of major radar and there are no patrols in the area, shut down the terrain follower and take her up to twenty thousand and look for some smooth air.”
“I’ll see if I can run into a tailwind going our way,” Cherokee said.
“Attention, all hands,” Dogbreath said. “We will be climbing, looking for better air. Prepare your oxygen masks for deployment over your ugly faces.”
Bad time for humor. The rear cabin looked like carcasses hanging from hooks in a butcher’s freezer.
SCARAB climbed happily.
“Satellite report coming in,” Quinn said. “A few commercial flights to and from Teheran.”
lime?
“We are sixteen minutes behind.”
“Here we go,” Cherokee sang as his engine mellowed, caught a tailwind, and lifted her speed to a respectable five hundred subsonic knots per hour. . Dogbreath’s head nodded as he joined his men snapping out a thirty-second nap.
“Novinski, this is Dogbreath.”
“Yo.”
“What will the wind be doing at twelve thousand?”
“One-forty at twenty-three knots, but definitely swirling over Urbakkan.”
He clicked on the SCARAB’s loudspeaker. “This is Dogbreath. The wind doth bloweth, too strong and from iffy directions. I’d like your input. We scratched napalm as one of our ordnance and replaced it with phosphorous. We are now considering the idea of a direct courtyard landing after dispensing missiles and bombs. If we drop a phosphorous curtain, as we have practiced, we will have to fly out and circle the fort. I likewise fear that the courtyard mud might be flammable, and a fuck-up wind shift send the fire right back at us. Of course, the phosphorous could well insure our success ... if it goes perfectly.”
“This is Grubb. I don’t like working with fire, it doesn’t
cooperate.”
“Novinski here. How about something like this: ditch the phosphorous about ten miles downwind from the fort. It will save us nearly seven hundred pounds.”
“This is Quinn. Can’t ditch it all. We need some to have flare capacity when we rendezvous with the tanker plane.”
“IV.”
“Yo.”
“No phosphorous drop. If we light up the fort too soon, it could give the Irans several minutes to organize. We may need the flares on the way home.”
“Yo” confirmations. Dogbreath pulled down his night-vision goggles and peered from one display panel to another. The phosphorous was a damned-if-you-do, damned-if you-don’t decision. “What character this plane has,” he thought. “If we come through this, it will be a big player in the Marine Corps’ future. How do you feel, Jeremiah Duncan?” he asked himself. “Pretty good, I believe we’ve got everything covered.”
“Attention, all hands, this is Dogbreath. We are making a variation of the landing. We will not make passes over the fort but fire our artillery from the hover position, then drop right into the courtyard. Marsh, Ropo,” he said, calling the squad leaders.
“Yo.”
“Yo.”
“This is Dogbreath. We will pick up twenty minutes, and Cherokee will reduce speed so that we hit our target precisely on the minute.”
H-hour minus twelve minutes .. . eleven minutes.
“All hands, check your weapons, ammo clips, and gear. Do not carry anything out of the SCARAB you can’t shoot or eat or wipe your ass with. Keep your oxygen masks on until you debark.”
H-hour minus seven minutes.
The front cabin people were all wearing night-vision goggles, and the FLIR gave a pretty picture of what was passing beneath them.
“Jesus!” Dogbreath thought. “What if we just put the SCARAB down in the courtyard and loudspeaker to the Iranians that we are an Iranian plane dispatched to take Barakat away to Teheran! No ... if we landed and set up a perimeter, we’d get into a nasty fire fight when they caught on. No, we’ve got to knock out our targets. But what an idea! Never will get a chance at it... Okay, Dogbreath, scratch that one ..
.”
H-hour minus three minutes.
Holy shit, Mother McGee! IV saw it first in the sallow green, grainy glow that lit up their screen. Further glows flashed on the display panels.
“The minaret is sticking up like the hard-on I had this morning,” Cherokee said. “IV, start lifting the nacelles.”
“Forty-five .. . fifty .. . sixty .. . seventy-five .. .”
“Nothing moving down there, Dogbreath,” Novinski said.
A slight engine and propeller thump was smoothed by Cherokee’s hand.
“We are in helicopter mode,” IV said.
“This is Dogbreath. Quinn?”
Quinn O’Connell took a reading from his display screen, then locked on to the far end of the courtyard with a laser beam. Its light could not be seen by the Iranians. There it is! The communications tower. The beam further lit up the installation buildings.
“I am locked on the headquarters building and need minimal adjustments to target officers billet and enlisted barracks. Give me ten seconds between racks.”
“Jesus,” Dogbreath said softly, “they’re all asleep down there.”
“Cherokee, this is Quinn. Take her up another few hundred feet so I can get a better visual.”
“Rotors at eighty-five degrees. We are in helicopter mode.”
As the SCARAB drifted over the fort wall, Quinn’s fingers unlocked the bomb-rack releases. If Dogbreath’s bombs were working, they’d follow the laser beam into the target.
Quinn squeezed the bomb release. “God forgive me,” he whispered. Even as the missiles hurled down on the first sleeping target, he had lined up his second target.
Everything turned into slow motion, as if moving in a dream—clouds billowed, thunder, blinding light, and madly careening air.
The pulsating waves of air billowed before a stiff wind
.
“Quinn, this is Cherokee. Hold your second rack. I’m taking her up some or we’ll start shaking like a dog shitting peach seeds.”
“Yo.”
The SCARAB caught the tail end of the blast, and it shook her. Little bits of the mud buildings sent up a shower of debris, pelting the craft.
“This is Quinn. I’m locked on the arsenal.”
“This is Cherokee. I need another minute and a half—“
“Novinski, this is Dogbreath. Can you confirm that there is only a little panic activity near the installations?”
“Novinski to Dogbreath. They’re running around in circles, not even armed.”
“Cherokee to Quinn. You are free to release the balance of your racks.”
“Two fired .. . three fired .. . four fired.”
Fort Urbakkan jumped and rocked and broke apart, leveled to the ground, a deep hole gouged from the site of the arsenal.
One end of the courtyard filled up with pajama-clad, screaming, kneeling, quivering men, like ants trying to scurry from boiling water.
“Novinski, Quinn, IV ... how many Irans down there?”
“Fifty, maybe more.”
“They’re still climbing out of the rubble. Seventy-five,” Quinn reckoned.
“I’d say fifty,” IV said.
For the first time since the mission began, Dogbreath blinked. He froze time to get the words out of him .. . “Dogbreath to Quinn. Fire all cluster bombs.”
The scene below became a horror of Irans being showered with hundreds of thousands of razor bits of steel and exploding ball bearings.
“Dogbreath to Cherokee. Land her as far away from those people as we can and as close to that tower as we can get.”
Aye, aye.
“Attention, all hands, this is Dogbreath. We are descending to land.
It appears that we have neutralized our primary targets.”
The RAM people were so glad to be getting out of the SCARAB, they forgot fear for the moment. The plane touched down softly, sending up a small billow of dust. Ramp down!
Lets go!
Twenty Marines poured out at high port and split off. Marsh’s squad made for the tower while Grubb set up a perimeter in front of the SCARAB. Meeting no opposition, Grubb moved his men carefully down the courtyard.