Brown, Dale - Patrick McLanahan 05 (39 page)

 
          
By
the time their ’chutes opened, they were less than a hundred feet above
ground—they barely had time to get their bearings before they had to steer
their parachutes over the detention facility rooftop. Two of the Arab commandos
missed the building completely, and Briggs’s and Behrouzi’s ’chutes actually
ran into each other as they maneuvered for their target. Briggs obviously had
had a lot less recent practice in parachute infiltrations; he was drifting over
to the edge of the rooftop so fast that he had to dump all the air completely
out of his ’chute from fifteen feet to make it to the roof. Behrouzi and her
third Arab commando hit direcdy in the center.

 
          
“Are
you all right, Leopard?” Behrouzi asked as she helped Briggs to his feet. He
had taken a bad fall, landing heavily on his left leg, but he was on his feet
and moving quickly.

 
          
“We
lost two,” Briggs said to Behrouzi in reply, as he quickly clipped Simrad GN1
night-vision goggles to their helmets. Something was torn or sprained in his
left knee, but he tried to ignore the pain.

 
          
“No,
I directed them to land on the ground and secure the building,” Behrouzi said.
Her GN1 night-vision goggles and those of the commando with her were already
on. “Keep alert—please do not kill them.”

 
          
“I’m
hopin’ they don’t kill
me,”
Briggs
said. “Let’s move!” It was too easy to breach the roof access door and make
their way inside.

 
          
The
toughest resistance was on the second floor of the three- story building—all
the Iranian guards on the first floor had retreated up to the second as the UAE
commandos started their surprise assault; the majority of the Pasdaran guards
were already stationed on the second floor. Briggs didn’t care—if it moved, it
died. He was not going to try to be neat or merciful.

 
          
The
hallway was lit by emergency lights—those were shot out immediately. Briggs and
Behrouzi then threw infrared Cyalume light sticks into the hallways, which
would brightly light up the area only for persons wearing night-vision
equipment. When Briggs confirmed that Behrouzi’s first two commandos would stay
on ground level and would not stray into the line of fire, the killing began.

 
          
Briggs
led the way, Behrouzi following with a Dragon twelve- gauge, twelve-round
semi-automatic shotgun filled with breaching rounds, and the third commando
following as rear security, carrying a suppressed MP5 submachine gun. Trotting
through the four corridors, his Uzi with its sixteen-inch suppressor fitted and
loaded with thirty-round magazines of subsonic .45-caliber cartridges, Briggs
gunned down anyone in front of him that was alive. He rarely needed more than
two rounds to take down a guard—one shot to the chest, one to the head.

 
          
As
he finished the second corridor, he heard shots coming from the next corridor
to the left. He sprinted around the corner and saw a guard unlocking cell doors
and firing a pistol into a cell, then moving on to the next cell. Briggs
dropped the guard with a three-burst round from thirty feet. “Magicians! ”
Briggs shouted. “Strike a pose! ” He then checked the fourth corridor—all
guards subdued. Behrouzi sent her Arab commando to guard the main stairway, and
she and Briggs began checking each cell.

 
          
The
cells appeared to be small dormitory-type rooms, remodeled to be prisoner and
punishment-reprimand facilities. Usually it took only one shotgun blast on the
top outwardly swinging hinge to crack and pull the door open. When Briggs, now
with a Cyalume light stick around his neck, glanced into the occupied cell, he
saw two men lying on the floor, facing away from the door, arms outstretched
with only the middle fingers extended, and with one leg bent and crossed over
the other leg, pointing at the other man in the cell next to them. That was
Paul White’s unspoken code-sign for a friendly.

 
          
“On
your feet, guys,” Briggs said. “I’m here to get you out.”

 
          
The
first cell he breached had Knowlton and McKay inside. “Jesus—its Major Briggs!”
Knowlton said as he helped McKay up. “IVe got him, Hal. He’s hurt bad.”

 
          
“Thanks
for the flag outside,” Briggs said, handing Knowlton a pistol from a dead
Iranian guard. He was off, checking more cells. “Follow me and stay close.”

 
          
The
search was not pretty, and after a very short time Briggs wasn’t feeling too
heroic. There were prisoners in the cells other than Madcap Magician members.
Briggs did not kill them, just searched them to make sure they had no weapons,
but even though Behrouzi warned them in Arabic and Farsi not to leave the cell
or try to run until they had departed, all of them bolted for the door as soon
as Briggs and Behrouzi had left the cell, and they were gunned down by the UAE
commandos guarding the exits. They could take no chances with the lives of
their own.

 
          
But
the final tally heartened them all: nine Madcap Magician members well and
rescued. Two more members had been killed by the Pasdaran guards; one more was
critically wounded. The main captive missing was Paul White himself. “Carl, do
you have any idea where the colonel is?” Briggs asked.

 
          
“No,”
Knowlton replied. “He was separated from us right away.”

 
          
“Any
idea if there are any others in this building?”

 
          
“I
don’t know, Hal, sorry,” Knowlton said dejectedly. “I was unconscious most of
the time, exhausted. I don’t know how many men made it after the attack on the
Mistress
; how many we lost...” Briggs
quickly polled the other Marines, but they couldn’t be sure how many others had
been captured or killed in the attack, either. Their best guess was that they
had everybody. “I wasn’t able to make contact with the others or try to find
anything out, Hal, I’m sorry. ...” “Forget it, Carl,” Briggs said. “We’ll
search the entire building.” But there was no time for that—one of Behrouzi’s
UAE commandos ran upstairs to report that several heavy infantry vehicles were
on the way. “Shit, it didn’t take long for them to organize a response.”

 
          
“Our
best chance is on the road,” Behrouzi said. “We should try to steal a vehicle,
try to make it out into the open countryside. The
Pakistan
border is only a hundred kilometers east.”
Briggs knew she was right—if they stayed in that building, they’d quickly be
surrounded and chewed to pieces.

 
          
But
as they ran outside, they immediately drew heavy-caliber weapon fire from the infantry
vehicles. The commandos’ weapons were useless against the Iranian
infantry—they’d brought weapons only for close-range work, not to shoot it out
with infantry forces. “Back inside!” Briggs shouted. “We got no choice!”

 
          
Just
then, the first infantry vehicle began to sparkle, then jump, then it burst
into flames—and seconds later, they heard the OV-IOD- NOS Bronco fly overhead.
The UAE Bronco crew had not hightailed it for home after dropping their
paratroopers—they were burning most of their return fuel on covering their
commando’s withdrawal. “Now’s our chance! ” Briggs shouted. “Run for the
hospital! We’ll try to—! ”

 
          
The
night air suddenly erupted into an ear-shattering blast of gunfire. One of the
heavy armored vehicles following the infantry forces was not a troop carrier—it
was a ZSU-23/4 air defense vehicle. Its four 23-millimeter cannons fired at a
rate of 3,000 rounds per minute, blanketing the sky with deadly radar-guided
shells. The Bronco was shredded by the murderous gunfire, cut into pieces and
burning long before it hit the ground. The commandos and the rescued hostages
had no choice but to retreat back into the security headquarters building. Two
UAE commandos and two Madcap Magician Marines stayed on the ground floor, ready
to take out the first wave of attackers; the rest headed up onto the roof.

 
          
“One
lousy rescue this is turning into,” Briggs said. All of the Madcap Magician
Marines were now armed, and together they made a formidable force—but everyone
knew their options were quickly running out.

 
          
“You
came for us—that’s the important thing, Major,” Corporal McKay told Briggs.

 
          
“He’s
right, Hal—if you would have waited, we’d be dead,” Knowlton said. “No one was
talking, so we weren’t good sources of information; we knew the
U.S.
government wasn’t going to acknowledge us
or try to make a deal for us. They were going to discard us right away.”

 
          
“We
may still be discarded.”

 
          
“But
at least we’re fighting,” McKay said. The Marine had broken fingers, swollen
eyes, and could hardly breathe—but he was still ready to fight. “Thanks for
giving us that chance, Major—I mean, ‘Commander.’ ”

 
          
The
building was quickly surrounded by the armored vehicles and heavily armed
soldiers, and the assault began immediately. Heavy 100-millimeter breaching
cannons blew large, man-sized holes in the walls on the ground floor, followed
by dozens of volleys of smoke and gas grenades, then by Iranian Pasdaran
troopers in a hastily organized full frontal assault. The American and UAE
soldiers dropped several Pasdaran soldiers as they came toward the stairwells,
but were quickly forced to retreat as their number grew. The commandos were
much more successful at picking off the Pasdaran troopers up on the second
floor, but soon the second floor, too, was filled with gas. One American Marine
was shot in the chest and was carried up to the third floor by the others. Soon
they had to retreat from that position as well, but with each retreat they were
taking out plenty of Pasdaran troopers.

 
          
Up
on the roof, the sound of approaching helicopters meant that their time was
quickly running out. At the same time as the helicopters approached, the ground
units, carrying the dead Marine, made their way onto the roof. “Too many to
count,” was the simple report from a surviving Marine.

 
          
A
few moments later, three Iranian Navy SH-3 Sea King helicopters could be seen
through the darkness. All of them were trailing rappelling lines, ready to drop
soldiers onto the roof. All of the commandos took cover as best they could
around the raised rim of the roof.

 
          
Suddenly
a breaching charge blew open the roof-access door, and smoke and tear gas
poured through. Briggs fired, and two Pasdaran bodies piled up on the stairway
sill. They were quickly dragged away by other troopers, and no others emerged.
The doorway was open—a few grenades tossed through would make short work of
everyone on the roof. Briggs cleared everyone from the portion of the roof
facing the doorway and assigned commandos to cover it. “Anybody got any ideas?”
Briggs shouted.

 
          
“I
am afraid we need to consider a surrender, Leopard,” Behrouzi said. “We are
outnumbered and outgunned.”

 
          
“I
don’t think the Iranians are interested in taking prisoners, Riza.”

 
          
As
if to prove the point, just then one of Behrouzi’s UAE commandos jumped to his
feet, dropped his MP5 submachine gun, stretched his arms out, and began
shouting something in Arabic at a nearby SH-3 helicopter. “Get down, you fool,
no!”
she shouted in Arabic. But it was
far too late. A heavy-caliber machine gun on the SH-3 opened fire, and the UAE
commando was immediately cut down.

 
          
“They
aren’t going to let us surrender,” Briggs said grimly, “so we’re going to have
to fight our way off this roof. We’ve got the darkness to cover us. We’ll try
to pick up as many gas masks as we can along the way and take out as many of
them as we can. Everyone just keep moving, keep—”

 
          
Suddenly
one of the SH-3 Sea King helicopters exploded in a huge fireball, less than 200
feet from the rooftop. Then down below, one, then two of the armored vehicles
surrounding the security headquarters building burst into flames, followed by
several rocking explosions in the security building itself. Briggs and Behrouzi
cut down three, four, five Pasdaran troopers trying to rush up onto the
roof—but they weren’t attacking, they were
fleeing
some devastation behind them. Seconds later, another Sea King helicopter
exploded, followed by the ZSU-23/4 air defense unit. The ammunition cooking off
inside the ZSU-23/4 completely shredded the vehicle from the inside out.