More than courage Read online

  No longer having any need for caution, Burman rose up unto his knees as he slew his MP-5 about. "Get out of here, Yousaf."

  Not understanding that his commanding officer had already resolved to stand and fight so that he could escape, Hashmi did exactly what Burman did not want him to, the Syrian-American got to his feet and started to pull Burman to his. "Come on, come on."

  Caught off guard, Burman turned to Hashmi in an effort to order him to leave him and to run. But he never was afforded the opportunity to issue his last command. In the midst of Hashmi's efforts to get his commanding officer up a Syrian soldier reached them. With a great arching swing, the Syrian brought the butt of his AK around and smashed it against the unprotected head of Erik Burman, sending the Special Forces officer sprawling.

  The end of Kilo Two was quick and bloody. Having successfully evaded one antitank missile through a combination of luck and MORE THAN COURAGE

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  timely maneuvers, the commander of the only surviving Syrian BRDM knew he had to take decisive action. Since the extreme reach of the TOW missile and the flat, open nature of the terrain made withdrawing tantamount to suicide, he saw that he had but one choice left. In order to sur.vivc, he had to rush the American humvee.

  Sergeant Sam Harris was reaching down for a third TOW missile when he heard a change in the pitch of the BRDM's engine as its driver threw it into gear and lurched forward. Raising his head through the open hatch, Harris watched the BRDM close with them at an alarming rate, firing as it did so. In an instant Harris realized he wouldn't have time to get off another round before the Syrian recon vehicle was inside the minimum arming range of the TOW missile. "Everyone out! Grab your weapons and all the AT-4s you can and bail out, NOW!"

  Kilo Two began to shake as the BRDM's gunner finally found the range. Mendez was the first out. Grabbing his M-16 and an AT-4 light antitank rocket, Kilo Two's driver used his elbow to push the lever down and shoulder the door open. As soon as his foot hit the ground, Mendez fell forward in a controlled manner as if executing a parachute landing. Once prone, he began to roll away from the humvee, taking care to protect his rifle and the rocket launcher.

  Davis was kneeling on the right rear seat facing the back of the humvee in the midst of digging through personal gear and equipment, searching for another TOW missile when he heard

  Harris's order. Though he was vaguely aware of the humvee's rocking motion, Davis was caught off guard by Harris's command.

  "What? Now?"

  Having abandoned the TOW launcher and slipped down into the humvee, Harris reiterated his order. "Get out, NOW!"

  Davis threw open the door next to him, dove through the

  °Pening headfirst and was on the ground and crawling away as test as his hands and knees could propel him before it dawned on 78

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  him that he had forgotten to grab any weapon on the way out.

  Angry at himself for being so stupid, Davis stood up and prepared to dash back to recover his rifle.

  As soon as Davis left, Harris reached over the back of the passenger's seat to grab his MP-5, just as Kilo Two's thin armor shell gave way to the hammering of 20-mm high-explosive rounds.

  The interior of the humvee was suddenly alive with bright flashes of detonating small-caliber cannon shells and a shower of sparks thrown off as fragments tore through the interior, ricocheted off equipment, and ripped into Sergeant Harris's exposed haunches.

  Allen Kannen had almost reached the cover of Kilo Two with the charred body of First Lieutenant Ciszak in his arms when he saw Davis dive out the rear passenger door. At first Kannen had thought that Davis was coming out to assist him. Only when Kannen saw 20-mm rounds striking the exposed rear of his humvee did he appreciate that as noble as his effort to save the stricken Kilo One members might have been, his decision to leave Kilo Two and force them to remain in place until he returned had exposed the recon vehicle and his fellow crew members to deadly fire. It was a decision that made his rescue mission a costly error.

  Within the humvee, just as some shards of white-hot metal fragments from exploding 20-mm rounds peppered the exposed thighs and back of Sergeant Harris, others were tearing through the casing and warhead of the TOW missile that Davis had uncovered before he bailed out. These fragments ignited the propellant of that missile that was designed to carry it 3,700 meters. This lethal combination of hot fragments and volatile rocket fuel instantly engulfed the interior of the humvee. Even before the sheets of flame leaping out the open doors and hatch in the roof reached their peak, the warhead of the TOW missile detonated, killing Harris with merciful speed.

  Outside Kannen watched as the humvee hard shell was torn from the chassis while a chain reaction of explosions erupted, caused by the detonation of another TOW missile and a pair of smaller rocket launchers that had been tucked off to one side of MORE THAN COURAGE

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  the cargo compartment. The successive shock waves generated by the initial blast and subsequent detonations knocked him off his feet and hammered Davis into the ground. Mendez, already down, felt the pressure push his body deeper into the sand. Those who could see Kilo Two watched with sadness and fear as a vehicle that had served them as home and transport for six weeks became a giant fragmentation bomb.

  Ken Aveno watched in stunned silence as the meaning of what his eyes beheld and his ears heard sank in. His CO and Sergeant Hashmi were missing and perhaps dead. Kilo One and Kilo Two had been destroyed and all or some, of their crews killed. While Kilo Three was safe, it was long gone and could do little to help him at this moment. Nor could Kilo Six, as Aveno listened to the echo of that vehicle's machine gun hammering away as it tried to make good its escape.

  Dumbfounded and forlorn, Aveno felt despair overwhelm him. His command had lasted two minutes, perhaps three.

  Lost in his grief and guilt Aveno did not hear Amer's warning about a squad of Syrian soldiers emerging from the village and moving quickly toward them. Despondent and forlorn, all Aveno could do was to stare at Kilo Two as detonation after detonation

  shook the stricken humvee. Without a word, without a whimper, first Lieutenant Ken Aveno slowly squatted down onto the ground and crossed his legs. Ignoring Amer's efforts to persuade him to get up and flee, the acting commanding officer of RT Kilo settled down to await whatever fate the cruel god of war held for him.

  Arlington, Virginia

  13:35 LOCAL (17:35 ZULU)

  The Pentagon had no need for a tocsin to alert assigned personnel that there was a crisis. The hurried pace and grim expressions worn by those considered to be the Pentagon's key players as they moved through the miles and miles and miles of endless loops and corridors was warning enough. The purposeful gait of staffers quickened as they dashed from one impromptu meeting or briefing to the next. Even if certain people did not have an active role in the crisis du jour, the heightened alertness was transferred across the entire spectrum, from top to bottom and agency to agency in a manner similar to that of an excited electron transferring some of its own energy to other electrons as it pinged madly about.

  Lieutenant Colonel Robert Delmont picked up on the telltale signs as he emerged from the locker room and headed back to his office, maneuvering his way through the unusually heavy flow of traffic coursing through the hall. At first he wasn't all that concerned.

  If the crisis had involved something he was responsible for he was confident that someone would have dispatched an NCO or a junior officer to find him.

  This illusion disappeared the moment he stepped through the door of the Army's special operations section. In an instant his attitude changed and his pucker factor multiplied by a factor of ten. The tension in the air was palpable. Those staff officers who Were not on phones listening intently or jabbering away were starlng at their computer screens, twirling track balls or madly 82

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  pounding away at their keyboards. Delmont reached his cubicle, pulled the chair out, and flung his gym b
ag under the desk. Peering over the divider at his office mate in the next cubicle, Delmont asked, "What's going down?"

  Totally absorbed in studying a situation map displayed on his monitor, Lieutenant Colonel Thad Calvert was startled by Delmont's question. "Where in the hell have you been? The general has been screeching your name for the past half hour."

  "I told Dorothy I was going out to run. Didn't she tell anyone?"

  Calvert

  grunted. "Like everyone else, Dorothy hasn't had a chance to catch her breath since the doodoo hit the fan."

  "Well, I'm here now. What's going on?"

  "The general told me that as soon as you graced us with your presence, you were to grab everything you had on some operation code-named Razorback and get your sorry little ass down to the Sec Def's briefing room ASAP."

  When Delmont heard the word "Razorback," he realized that RT Kilo had either uncovered the mother lode or had stumbled into a dung heap. Either way, Delmont now knew that it was

  "his" operation that in some way had caused the current crisis.

  Taking only enough time to scarf up the important Razorback files, Delmont made haste for the wing of the Pentagon where the Secretary of Defense held court.

  Once the guard at the door had checked his access roster and cleared him for entry, Delmont braced himself for what awaited him when he entered the briefing room where the Sec Def's crisis action team was meeting. Compared to this, exiting out of an aircraft at forty thousand feet is a piece of cake, he thought as he entered the room. His entrance caused a pause as all eyes turned to see if the newcomer was of any importance or the bearer of fresh news from the field. Embarrassed at creating such a stir, Delmont nodded at the Secretary of Defense as a means of apologiz ft*

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  ing before he looked at his superior, Brigadier General James Palmer. With a searing glance and a slight tilt of his head, Palmer directed Delmont to an empty seat directly behind him.

  The Air Force colonel who had been in the middle of his briefing picked up from where he'd paused during Delmont's entry. "We have been able to confirm that the person who initiated the request was Airman First Class Jay Jones."

  At the mention of this incident Major General Worton of the Air Force turned toward the Secretary of Defense. "I would like to reiterate, Mr. Secretary, that the call monitored by the AWACs crew was not a specific request. Airman Jones initiated the call by repeating 'Cherokee,'

  which is a code word used to request

  immediate air-ground support but 'failed to respond to the controller's call for confirmation. Nor did Jones or anyone else follow up with any details about the nature of the emergency. We don't know why Airman Jones had to make the call when the correct procedure calls for the air liaison officer, Lieutenant Ciszak, to make the request. The only logical explaination my people can offer is that Lieutenant Ciszak, was unable to make the call himself due to enemy action, forcing Airman Jones to initiate it himself. Efforts to ascertain the nature of the emergency or reestablish contact with the air liaison party with Recon Team Kilo failed."

  Sporting a grim expression, the senior rep from the Army War Room leaned forward and added his own postscript. "Efforts by group headquarters in Turkey to contact anyone within RT Kilo have also had negative results. The last transmission they received from the team commander came in just after two thousand hours local stating that they were preparing to initiate this evening's

  ^operations."

  Across the table, Ted Writt, a high-ranking CIA officer in his early forties wearing a three-piece suit leaned forward. "We had a bird coming up on station at that time. An immediate request from the Air Force allowed us to focus on the area in question.

  ^ur spot analysis of the site shows three burning vehicles. As 84

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  soon as we have hard copies of that imagery Langley will send it here."

  The Secretary of Defense nodded before turning to the briefing officer, who responded by continuing. "As General Worton indicated, Mr. Secretary, we received only the code word before losing contact with RT Kilo. The senior controller aboard the AWACs immediately dispatched a flight of two F-15s that were on station waiting to strike the target if the commanding officer of RT Kilo was able to determine if it was, in fact, the chemical warfare lab we've been looking for. A second flight consisting of two Navy F-18s from the Truman carrying a mix of cluster bombs and seven hundred and fifty-pound general-purpose bombs were diverted from a routine patrol over northeastern Iraq. On reaching the area in which Kilo was operating, both flights identified the afore-mentioned derelicts as well as numerous dismounted personnel scattered east and west of the built-up area. As already mentioned, neither the senior controller aboard the AWACs or operations personnel in Turkey were able to reestablish comms with Kilo. Since the pilots were unable to tell who was who on the ground, they were unable to intervene. After staying over the area as long as their fuel permitted, the crews of the F-15s and F-18s departed without being able to render any assistance."

  When the briefing officer had finished, the Chief of Staff of the Army looked at General Worton even though his question was directed at the briefer. "How high were those aircraft when they were making those observations?"

  The Air Force Chief of Staff straightened up as he took up the challenge being hurled at Worton and his briefing officer. "You know very well that the minimum operational altitude is fifteen thousand feet."

  The Army Chief's response irritated every Air Force officer in the room. "So, in your usual fashion your people responded to my people's call for assistance by zipping in at five hundred miles an hour and buzzing about for a couple of minutes at fifteen MORE THAN COURAGE

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  thousand feet before fluttering away without doing a dammed thing."

  The Air Force Chief snorted angrily. "Two of those men belong to me."

  "And twelve are mine!" the. Army Chief countered.

  At the head of the table a hand slapped the smooth surface, causing all eyes turned to the Sec Def. "I hope I do not need to remind anyone in this room," he stated calmly but firmly, "that every one of those people, on the ground and in the air, are my responsibility. When I go to the pressroom tonight it's my head the American media will be calling for. So, if you gentlemen don't mind, let us proceed with this briefing so I can at least create the illusion that I know what I'm talking about when I have to face the members of the fourth estate."

  The Sec Def turned back to the briefing officer. "Unless you have anything of relevance to add, Colonel, you are dismissed."

  The Air Force colonel left the briefing room as quickly as decorum permitted. For the better part of a minute the Sec Def scanned the solemn people lining both sides of the long conference table before speaking. "Can anyone tell me what went wrong? How is it that this mission went south after all previous operations were managed without a hitch? Anyone?"

  The silence that followed was oppressive, especially for those Wearing Army green. The Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff looked at the Army Chief of Staff, who looked at the Army Deputy Chief of Staff for Plans and Operations, who in turn looked at Brigadier General James Palmer, head of the Army's Directorate of Special Operations. Realizing this nonverbal passWg of the buck stopped with him, Palmer spoke. "Although we cannot be sure what transpired on the ground, Mr. Secretary, Lieutenant Colonel Delmont, the special project officer charged With overseeing Razorback, can provide us with his assessment."

  Palmer turned to Delmont. "Colonel?"

  With all the grace of a man upon whom a ten-ton weight had 86

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  just fallen, Delmont stood up and walked to the spot where the Air Force briefing officer had stood, collecting and organizing his thoughts as he did so. After a pause during which he cleared his throat, he launched into his impromptu briefing. "For some time now the Syrians have been employing a form of ambush designed to deal with our airborne incursions
into their air space. Popularly known as SAMbushes, this tactic involves the concealment of surface-to-air missile batteries near locations that are technically immune from attack due to their proximity to sensitive nonmilitary targets such as schools, mosques, and civilian medical facilities.

  To draw our aircraft into these well-laid ambushes the Syrians set up dummy facilities such as chemical warfare labs that they knew our national intelligence assets were looking for. One of the primary reasons the recon teams such as RT Kilo were organized and deployed under the operational plan known as Raz^rback was to make up for our lack of human intelligence sources on the ground. We needed to ferret out which facilities were real and which were decoys."

  Delmont paused in order to give the Secretary of Defense the opportunity to ask questions and respond to any challenges.

  When he saw that neither were forthcoming, he continued with a bit more confidence.

  "Razorback has been largely successful. RT Kilo, the eleventh Special Forces recon team to be dispatched, was searching for an approximately located and previously unidentified Syrian battery that was deployed in an area where there were no known targets of value. The conclusion that the CIA and DIA reached was that the battery was protecting a chemical warfare lab that had once been part of the Iraqi program. While we cannot yet be sure what went wrong, we can make some assumptions as to why today's mission did not go off as planned. Either the security detachment assigned to protect the missile battery and/or lab from ground attack detected RT Kilo as they were approaching the site or RT

  Kilo drove into a successfully executed ambush intentionally laid for them. After we obtain and analyze the information being col MORE THAN COURAGE

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  lected by the CIA and the Air Force my office should be better able to determine what actually happened."

  With his improvised presentation succeeding, Delmont went on to describe RT Kilo's basic operational procedures even though he couldn't be sure if Kilo was still adhering to them.