Airborne (1997) (56 page)

Sergeant Vernon Martin went over last, counting by thousands, seeing the parachutes below mushroom open as the aircraft’s slipstream whipped him toward its tail fin and his silk threaded out behind him.
One thousand.
Assuming the proper body position on trained reflex, he snapped his feet and legs together, knees locked, toes pointing toward the ground. His head was lowered, his chin tucked against his chest, and he counted silently,

“...
two thousand, three thousand ...”

Martin sailed downward, the earth rushing up with eye-blurring speed. Then he felt a terrific, wrenching shock through his entire frame, and knew the static line had released the T-10C from his pack. The chute inflated overhead, quickly slowing his descent. He reached up and grabbed his shoulder risers as he floated down, looked and saw Blount descending to the right under his own open chute. The kid was in trouble. His shroud lines had gotten twisted and he was falling with his back to the wind, a bad way to land. For a tense moment it looked as if he’d forgotten his training, and was trying to untangle his suspension lines with his hands. But then he began pedaling his legs as if he were riding a bicycle, grasping his risers behind his neck and pulling outward on each pair until the lines untwisted, “slipping” to avoid a collision with another jumper. He came down to earth with a smooth, practiced roll.

Martin got ready for his own landing. He released the rucksack clipped to his waist, and it fell away from him at the end of the retainer line, hitting the ground an instant before he did and absorbing some of the jarring impact. Then, holding the control toggles close to his face, he turned into the wind and went into his PLF sequence, twisting and bending his body so the shock of landing was distributed between his calf, thigh, rump, and the side of his back. Barely pausing to catch his breath, Martin spilled the air from his canopy, hit his quick-release snaps to disengage the parachute from his harness, and got to his feet. An instant later he was sprinting toward the rallying point.

There was a mission to accomplish and no time to waste.

Hoping he didn’t look as scared as he felt, Ambassador Neville Diamond let his eyes roam the gymnasium where five hundred human beings were packed together like cattle, their faces pale and sweaty in the abominably close quarters. Scant hours ago, Nathan Butto had slipped into the compound in the dead of night and met with Ed Sanderson, staying only long enough to deliver a brief but all-important communique he’d received from the American State Department:
Cochise has left the village.
It meant that the rescue team’s arrival was imminent. Sanderson had immediately rushed to Diamond’s quarters and told him to start rousing the occupants of the compound in preparation for the airlift. Within the hour, every last man, woman, and child had been hustled into the gym. A few of the children clutched dolls or favorite toys. Otherwise, they would leave with nothing but the clothes on their backs.

Diamond’s gaze lingered on a pretty little blonde girl across the crowded room who was clutching her mommy with one hand and a stuffed panda bear with the other. She looked sleepy, confused, and terribly vulnerable. Feeling his stomach tighten, he tore his eyes from the child and shifted his attention back to Sanderson, who stood beside him talking to the commander of the embassy’s small Marine guard detachment. The CIA station chief’s voice was low and deliberate. Controlled as ever. Having already briefed the guard on the evacuation plan, he was now underscoring the need to maintain calm and order among the civilians as the compound was vacated. Diamond thought that sounded fine. You sure as hell didn’t want anybody to panic and yell, “Fire!” so to speak. But then his gaze briefly wandered toward the puffy-eyed face of the little blonde girl, the face of his daughter Alissa, still clinging to her mother and her panda for dear life, and the tightness in his belly became a painful cramp. How calm could they expect her to be if fighting broke out? he wondered.

How calm would
anyone
be?

Minutes before the engagement began, Jamal Wahab was thinking about how much he hated Western foreigners, and Americans in particular. Hated their clothes, their language, their music, their food, hated
everything
about them. At twenty-four years old, he had never traveled outside the borders of his country, and rarely left the capital city, where he lived. He had been raised poor, the third eldest of seven children in a family where food had been scarce and material comfort was beyond even imagining. His father had eked out a meager living selling meat rolls on the street to Western oil company employees and their families. Those people had always had money enough to buy all the food they could eat, and all the comfort anyone could want. Those people had walked as if they owned the world, and Jamal Wahab had despised them for it. He was a simple man and knew little of politics. He had scarcely learned to read before his father died, and he’d left school to help support his younger brothers and sisters. As a teenager he’d joined the local militia and listened to his leaders call America the Great Satan and attribute their own nation’s problems to its decadent influence. And he had believed them. Jamal had, in short, needed someone to blame for circumstances he’d never understood.

Now, stealing toward the U.S. embassy in the predawn gloom, moving quickly with a squad of his brothers-in-arms, Jamal hefted his machine gun and wondered what it would feel like to kill an American. He had been told to fire only on the compound’s military guards and avoid harming civilians unless there was no other choice. But in his heart he knew that even if such an “unavoidable” situation didn’t arise during the takeover, he would
make
it come about. This morning he would kill an American. Perhaps one wearing the expensive clothes he’d always hated. Would such an act extinguish his burning rage or merely feed it? Only Allah knew. His nerves wound tight, Jamal hurried past the empty storefronts and no-name Eritrean restaurants lining the Sharia Pasha al-Mek, his close friend Ahmed racing along to his left, a big, rough-faced militiaman named Khalil to his right. All three men held their weapons at the ready.

They had come within a block of the embassy compound when Jamal saw the bulking HMMWV pulled against the curb near its side gate. Startled, he stopped running with a sharp intake of breath, grabbing hold of Ahmed’s shoulder. Though he did not specifically recognize it as such, there was a pintle-mounted Browning .50-caliber machine gun mounted on top of the Hummer’s roof. Its four-man crew wore black, gray, and white urban camouflage fatigues and carried M16A2 combat rifles, and their faces were smudged with black camouflage paint.

Jamal knew instantly these men weren’t embassy guards. Far from it. Somehow, the Americans had learned of the takeover and sent in forces to prevent it. “This area is off-limits,” one of the soldiers occupying the vehicle called out as he spotted the band of militiamen. The man standing in the gunner’s hatch swiveled the heavy machine gun in the group’s direction. “Halt and lay down your arms.”

Jamal looked at Ahmed, looked at Khalil, looked at his other comrades. “Show them how to die, brothers,” Khalil said in a harsh whisper. Jamal nodded, his heart pounding. Then, his hatred toward the Americans boiling up within him, he fingered the trigger of his gun and opened fire. Before he could hit anything, the Browning ratcheted out a short burst, the 50-caliber bullets cutting the front of his shirt to ragged shreds. He sagged to the ground in a shower of blood, his rifle turned uselessly skyward. Beside him, Khalil let out a whoop of suicidal defiance, reached into his pocket for a grenade, and was about to toss it at the Hummer when he too fell writhing in a hail of bullets. “Surrender your arms!” the American soldier warned the remaining attackers. Instead of obeying, they charged and were rapidly cut down. It was no contest.

The whole thing came down fast. The Sudanese militiamen knew nothing of tactics and had been relying largely on the element of surprise. Their plan, such as it was, had been to charge the compound at daylight and overwhelm a token contingent of Marine guards. Now they were running headlong into a battalion of crack American airborne troops armed with superior weapons and trained to conduct a tight, coordinated counterstrike. Despite their zeal and a considerable numerical advantage, they were over-matched and outfought with dispatch. Gunfire ripped through the awakening city for several hours after their attack commenced—occasionally punctuated by the flat thud of an exploding grenade—but by late morning the sounds of battle had almost ceased, and the scattered, decimated militia force had been run to ground.

The Sudanese losses were high, while the American casualties consisted of two troopers with superficial gunshot wounds, and Colonel Bill “Hurricane” Harrison had no difficulty holding his defensive perimeter. What he did was take a map, draw a two-block-wide circle around the compound, and declare everything within its radius to be under his temporary control, citing international rules of engagement that allowed the unlimited use of deadly force to safeguard an endangered embassy.

Needless to say, these developments did not sit well with Hassan al-Mahdi.

“This is worse than a defeat. We have been made to look like
fools.”
Al-Mahdi stood at the council table, fury storming across his features. “I will find out who alerted the Americans and deal with him. That is a promise.” He looked around the room. Joining the assembled ministers was Colonel Abu Hammik, commander of the Sudanese regular army garrison stationed at Wad Hamid, just north of the capital. He sat very stiffly in his badges, shoulder boards, collar tabs, and ribbons, listening to al-Mahdi’s tirade in silence, occasionally trading flustered, uneasy glances with the other men at the table. Even Ahmad Saabdulah was showing none of his usual inclination to stoke their warlord’s temper; when al-Mahdi’s rage grew to a certain critical level, it was best to keep one’s words to oneself. Unless, of course, he specifically asked to hear them.

“Am I alone in this room?” he said, raising his voice. “Or do you all fail to appreciate what has happened? The heart of our capital has been
surrendered to American troops
!
”

“Obviously, this is unacceptable, Highness,” Foreign Minister Nizar Socotra said. He was a plump, neckless man with a gray scruff of beard, and his cupidity was exceeded only by his fawning devotion to his leader. “I have already lodged a complaint with the U.N. Security Council—”

Al-Mahdi brushed him aside with a ferocious swipe of his hand. “Do not speak of it. Diplomacy is a salve, and nothing more. The Americans cannot be allowed to stay where they are. We must regain control of our city.”

“I agree,” Saabdulah said. It was the first time he’d spoken since the emergency meeting had been called. “Our response to an outrage of this order must be forceful and expeditious. And for that we will have to commit our military ... which, I assume, is why the esteemed colonel has been summoned here this morning.” Hammik dipped his head in acknowledgment.

“What sort of force can you muster?” al-Mahdi asked him.

“It should be possible to have an infantry battalion in the city within an hour,” he said. “There is, in addition, an armored company attached to it.”

Al-Mahdi noticed his Minister of State shaking his head even before Abdel-Ghani caught himself doing it. “You disapprove of the proposed action?” the warlord asked.

“The thought of tanks rolling through our own streets troubles me,” Abdel-Ghani said. “We would be exposing civilians to tremendous danger, and the consequent property damage of such an encounter—”

“This is a time for strength, not counting the cost,” al-Mahdi said. “You are growing far too tentative these days, Abdel-Ghani. It surprises me.” Abdel-Ghani was silent in response. Al-Mahdi allowed his gaze to linger on him a moment, then turned back toward Colonel Hammik. “Mobilize your infantry,” he said.

The composite prop/rotors on the engine nacelles tilted down for horizontal flight, the trio of Ospreys buzzed toward shore with Lieutenant Colonel Wes Jackson in the lead slot. Bare minutes earlier, they had launched from the flight deck of the USS
Bonham Richard
(LHD-6) after the three amphibious ships of Amphibious Squadron Three (PHIBRON 3)—the ready group assigned to berth and transport the 13th MEU (SOC)—had made a high-speed, all-night up the Red Sea to deceive Sudanese naval forces. It had been the hope of the amphib’s commanders that by lying in wait around the Horn of Africa, just outside Somalia’s territorial waters, they would escape detection until well after the Ospreys had been signaled to begin their approach.

Their rabbit-in-the-hat gambit had panned out beautifully. The PHIBRON and their escorts had encountered no resistance at all until they came within sight of the Sudanese mainland and were hailed by astonished coastal patrols. By this time, though, the first wave rescue birds had left their flight decks and were Khartoum-bound. Now Jackson briefly checked the multi-function displays in front of him, tweaked the autopilot to make a minor correction in altitude, and scanned the sky. He saw two flights of sleek Harrier fighter bombers on his left and right, the sunlight glinting off their skins as they escorted the Ospreys toward their destination. Within easy view up ahead lay the level, sandy curve of the Sudanese shoreline.

Cruising along at a steady 150 knots, Jackson sank back in his cockpit’s bang seat and ran the mission plan through his head for the umpteenth time. In his mind’s phenomenally clear eye, he could see the street grid of Khartoum just as it had appeared on Colonel LeVardier’s video-projected map, see the aerial layout of the embassy compound with the pickup coordinates superimposed over it, also as it had been presented during the briefing. Within minutes he would reach the LZ, an employee motor pool near the gymnasium where the evacuees had been gathered. The descent and subsequent takeoff from the embassy would be the hairiest parts of this carny ride; his flight would be deep in enemy territory and exceedingly vulnerable to ground fire. But, he’d trained his men well and they were ready. As ready as they’d ever be, anyway.