Airborne (1997) (57 page)

Thus far the operation had succeeded beyond all expectations: The paratroops had established their perimeter without sustaining any significant losses, and managed to tighten the ring around the compound while encountering only light opposition from a few straggling Sudanese militiamen. It was too good to last, though. The first, ominous rumblings of armor were heard—
and felt
—at noon by troopers positioned near the embassy’s north wall. Within minutes, the mechanized column was spotted approaching along the Sharia al-Baladaya amid a company of infantrymen. It was an odd, motley group of vehicles consisting of two ancient Russian PT-76 light tanks, several equally old BTR-60 armored personnel carriers, and a couple of newer looking BTR-40 armored cars. The Sudanese had obviously pulled them together on short notice for the express purpose of repelling the American paratroopers.

The sudden cackle of automatic weapons fire from one of the forward tanks instantly drove home the point that this was no mere showing of tail-and-breast feathers. These boys meant business. With machine-gun rounds slamming the ground near his feet, Sergeant Joe Blount quickly decided to demonstrate how a kid from Brooklyn responded when someone bullied him—especially if he was equipped with a Javelin antitank missile. Moments before the armor had turned onto the wide avenue bordering on the embassy, Blount had felt the rolling vibration of its approach underfoot, and hurriedly lifted the Javelin’s lightweight, disposable launch tube onto his shoulder. Now he squinted through the command launch system sight, zeroed the lead tank in his thermal view, and squeezed the trigger.

The missile whizzed from the launcher, its kick motor ejecting it on a stream of pressurized gas, its guidance fins unfolding, the electronic sensors in its nose unerringly guiding it toward its target. Within several seconds the missile’s software recognized that it was diving into the armor of the tank and detonated the warhead. The eruption that followed was so spectacular that for several heartbeats Blount and his fellow troopers could only stare down-range in wonder. The Sudanese tank rumbled and shook with a massive peristaltic convulsion, its armor bulging out and rending where pale blue fireballs punched their own exit holes. The balls of flame soared up and up like helium balloons cut from their strings, and climbed to a whirling hover before breaking apart. Finally there was a whoosh of trembling, superheated air, and the entire tank was blanketed by a wave of fire. The Sudanese foot soldiers that had been flanking the knocked-out juggernaut simultaneously ran for cover behind nearby buildings and started blasting away at the paratroops with their submachine guns. The fierce, relentless fight for the embassy would last for hours, and be paralleled by similar confrontations all around the airborne’s doughnut perimeter.

Hassan al-Mahdi’s orders to his military had been unequivocal: He wanted the compound taken at any cost. So far, the Sudanese lacked the currency to pay the price.

In the cockpit of his Osprey, Major Wes Jackson eased back on his thumbwheel control to rotate the propellers ninety degrees—effecting a vertical position in preparation for touchdown. Thankfully, the other two birds in his flight had also made it through the enemy ground fire outside the embassy, and were swooping onto the parking area off his port wing. The approach had been nerve-wracking, to put it mildly. Light flak had zinged upward from several different directions during the approach, forcing him into evasive maneuvers. Navigation had been another dangerous challenge—the streets around the American positions were clogged with battle haze and dotted with fiery buildings that had looked like burning match heads from above.

But despite these deadly hurdles, the first flight of Jackson’s rescue team had landed without taking any serious hits, and as far as Jackson was concerned, the reward was already more than apparent. Already he had seen the first lift of evacuees come spilling out of the gymnasium under the protective eyes of their Marine guards—women and children, their faces wan and frightened, yet flushed with open gratitude. Looking out his window at them, Jackson was nearly moved to tears. Never in his vivid and perfect recollection had he felt so proud of serving his country. Within a minute, the civilians had been seated in the cargo compartment, the rear ramp raised, and he was airborne, followed by the other two MV-22s. As he transitioned back to forward flight, he saw the second flight of three Ospreys coming in to land, with others following. So far, Operation Fort Apache was working like clockwork.

The 2/505th paratroops were literally fighting with their backs to the wall. The first group of evacuees had been delivered to safety out to the ships of PHIBRON 3 without a hitch. By 1630/4:30 PM, the second relay of Ospreys started to arrive and began loading up the remaining embassy personnel and refugees. With this lift the birds were also taking aboard the first groups of paratroopers as the 2/505 initiated the pullout phase of the operation. As the afternoon went on, they tightened their defensive ring to the very streets outside the compound’s gate—streets that, for all appearances, might have been swept by the explosive shockwave of a nuclear blast. Fighting at the perimeter line was fierce, the air layered with smoke and reverberating with the nonstop clatter of automatic weapons. Virtually every last civilian in the area had fled for cover at the outbreak of violence, many of them abandoning their cars in the middle of the road. The smoking metal corpses of those vehicles now cluttered every intersection and cross-street, their chassis torn and twisted from bullets and grenade explosions. Far more dreadful was the toll in human life. The bodies of dead and dying combatants lay sprawled on the sidewalks, the vast majority of them Sudanese militiamen and infantry troops. A few, however, were wearing the urban-camouflage uniforms of American paratroops and Marines. On the pavement outside the front gate, where the fighting was up close, eye-to-eye, and in some instances hand-to-hand, Colonel Bill “Hurricane” Harrison stood in the hellish thick of things, shouting orders to his soldiers as the enemy push intensified. When he was seventeen, he had read a biography of General James Gavin, to his mind the greatest combat general in American history. Gavin was a leader who had never expected his men to do anything he wouldn’t do himself. Later, after choosing his own career in the military, Harrison had occasionally wondered if he would have anything like the guts that Gavin had. As he stood there outside the compound, his troops outnumbered by perhaps four to one, bullets shuttling past his head, it never occurred to him that he was doing his boyhood hero proud. He was too busy carrying out his mission to be worried about posterity.

Just a few more hours to go.

Even before word finally crackled from his personal SINCGARS radio, Harrison had known that it was time for his men to retreat to the pickup area. He had heard the sound of rotors churning the air, looked skyward, and seen the fourth and final convoy of MV-22s and CH-53s approaching in the near distance. Their airframes were little more than silhouettes as he watched them descend through raftering clouds of soot and smoke. With a silent prayer of gratitude, he gave the final fallback order, his voice hoarse as he raised it over the throbbing clamor of battle. While four armed Osprey gunships laid down a heavy suppressive fire around the compound, the last company of paratroops sprinted for their own MV-22B transports. In less than five minutes, the last of the American transports were on their way seaward. At almost the same moment, demolition charges in the Hummers and guns reduced them to scrap metal. This was designed to keep the weapons and vehicles out of Sudanese hands. However, the President had ordered a more powerful demonstration of how America walks out of a country. This time, the U.S. was going out under its own power and there would be a message in it for the world.

Like Colonel Harrison, the pilots of the four AV-8B Plus Harriers cruising over the city had been awaiting orders to begin the last phase of Operation Fort Apache. Each of them was prepared to launch a salvo of four GBU-29 2,000- lb./909-kg. GPS-guided bombs from under his wings. The call to engage came in over their radios, and they reacted immediately. Diving like the predatory birds that are their namesakes, the fighter jets accelerated downward through bursts of light flak and released their destructive payloads.

The sixteen heavy bombs showered over the embassy compound in annihilating rain, the detonations of their 2,000-lb/909-kg warheads bringing up screams in the throats of the Sudanese forces they had caught by surprise, many of whom perished wondering what they had done to incur the wrath of Heaven. The GPS-guided bombs had been dropped in a specially planned pattern, designed to flatten every structure inside the compound walls. Suggested by the Joint Chiefs and approved by the President, it was a “scorched earth” statement to the Sudanese that they would not be permitted to take the American embassy as the Iranians had back in 1979. They got the message loud and clear.

The Osprey landed with a gentle thump and discharged the final wave of evacuated paratroops. His field jacket whipping around his body in the wash of its prop/rotors, Colonel Bill “Hurricane” Harrison quickly made his way down the cargo ramp and trotted over to the forward cabin. He waited as the cabin door opened and the pilot exited. “Helluva job you did today,” he said, extending his hand. “I’ll never forget it, long as I live.”

Lieutenant Colonel Wesley Jackson took firm hold of his palm and shook it. “Me neither, sir,” he said, and grinned with secret humor.

Hassan al-Mahdi stared out his window at the gathering crowd. On the street below, Abdel-Ghani’s severed head rotted on the tip of a wooden spike, a cloud of insects harrying it in the bright midday sun, the dead eyes gaping vacantly at those who had gathered before the palace. Today they had come here to shout insults at the grotesque remains of the Minister of State, who had been declared a traitor and summarily executed, despite concrete evidence for revealing the plan to seize the embassy to American intelligence. Tomorrow, al-Mahdi thought, the crowd’s fickle passions might well turn against
him.
And could he truly blame them if that happened? Thousands of his people had been killed in the midst of their own capital, compared to the handful of American soldiers that had lost their lives during the rescue. Just seven dead and less than two dozen wounded, according to CNN. And already the Western nations were calling for U.N. sanctions and an international trade embargo. As the economic noose tightened, and the suffering of his people worsened, so too would their anger intensify to open revolt and bring him low. His Bedouin ancestors had learned centuries ago that the desert was unforgiving. The men it had spawned were much the same. Now he was about to learn the lesson personally.

The volcano was earning its name tonight, making an aggressive spectacle of itself, its peak glowing brightly through the sparse clouds threading across the sky, infusing them with fiery veins of light. Comfortably warm in his shirtsleeves, General Hidalgo Guzman had brought his small group of advisors out into the mansion’s courtyard, wishing to enjoy the unseasonable weather while they finalized their plans. It was dry for autumn, a time of year when the coastal towns and villages stood braced for tropical storms blowing in from the Caribbean Sea. Normally, the highlands were soaked with rain, or at best blanketed with a mist that sent dampness deep under the skin. Indeed, Guzman had heard that a hurricane was brewing somewhere at sea. But here and now, things could not have been more pleasant.

A map of the Airborne invasion of Belize.

All is perfectly clear to me,
he thought.
Clearer than it has ever been.

From where he sat, the dictator could see Volcan Fuego’s rugged upper slopes surmounting the roofs to the southwest, looking for all the world like the throne of a mythical, ruby-eyed Cyclops. To the southeast, Volcan Agua was visible in silhouette, as was
Volcan Acatenango
west of the city. No man had ever lost his way in Antigua; one could always find his bearings by searching the distance for the three volcanoes. Perhaps, Guzman mused, this was the true secret of its endless allure for travelers.