Hammer of God (Kirov Series Book 14) (8 page)

The morning call of the Muezzin
had been answered by the Iraqi troops that day, and many were still bent in
prayer when the sound of the engines came rolling on the clear desert air. They
were soon shocked to realize that the tiny garrison aircraft were attacking
them, and the whole encampment soon erupted with the sound of battle. Men leapt
up from their prayer mats and ran for their rifles, tents emptied as bleary
eyed officers came out from their breakfast to see what all the commotion was.
A troop of camels bolted when the first planes roared in, their small bombs
opening what would become a century of oil wars in Iraq and the Middle East. The
planes wheeled overhead, Lewis guns rattling and chewing up the dry desert loam
as they made their strafing runs.

Men were running in all
directions, but soon the officers managed to get crews to their artillery and
they began to return fire on the airfield. Colonel Roberts flinched as the
first 18-pounders landed on the flat, dry field. Then he saw a salvo land right
in the midst of a flight of trainers, the explosions sending one plane cart
wheeling up as the rounds came in. He tightened his helmet strap, running past
a Vickers heavy machinegun position and down the line to the mortar teams. He
had six 2-inch mortars and two 3-inch trench mortars which would seem a feeble
reply, but he got them firing just the same.

That same day the news would
reach the Grand Mufti in Baghdad, and he was so outraged at the British attack
that he immediately spoke the word that would haunt Western powers for decades
after—
jihad!
Hands were quickly on the wheels controlling the valve to
the pipeline that stretched all the way to Haifa where the British took
delivery of oil from Iraq, and it was shut down, stopping the flow. British
pounds sterling would no longer be accepted for this vital resource. It would
now have to be paid for in blood and steel. By nightfall the damage was tallied
on both sides. The British had lost 22 aircraft, 8 dead, and 32 others wounded
by the Iraqi shelling. It was news of this event that came to the fireside
meeting with Churchill, Wavell and Fedorov, and galvanized the plans for
Operation Scimitar.

“Another few days like that and
we won’t have a single plane air worthy here,” said Roberts to Sergeant
Jeffers. “To make matters worse, Air Vice Martial Smart drove out to the field
last night, headlights off, and ran right into a ditch. He took a hard knock,
and will have to be evacuated to India. I’m to assume overall command of the
garrison. I hope your men are ready, Sergeant.”

“The men are digging in, sir. But
there’s little in the way of timber available for top cover on the trenches,
and those damn 18 pounders will be on us again at first light.”

“We took out three yesterday, but
the Iraqis are bringing up reinforcements. Damn! We need artillery. What about
those two 4.5 inch howitzers outside the Officers Mess?”

“Those date back to the Great
War, sir. Haven’t been fired for decades. They’re just for show.”

 “Yes? Well, we’ve a new great
war to fight now laddie. Get them squared away for action. The Wogs have two
bloody divisions in and around Baghdad, and this lot here is already more than
enough to finish us off if we just sit here like this.”

 “It won’t be the first time a
British garrison has stood up under tough odds, sir. Shall I have the men tear
down that old shed for wood to strengthen our positions?”

 “No Sergeant, we aren’t going to
sit here watching the planes fluttering about while we take another pounding
tomorrow.”

“Then what will we do, sir?”

 “We’re going to do just what
well trained British infantry is paid for. As soon as the sun sets, we’re going
to attack!”

Chapter 8

RAF
Habbaniyah was a
sprawling complex tucked away in a wide bend of the Euphrates River west of
Fallujah, some 500 acres of land surrounded by seventeen miles of steel
fencing, studded with block housed machinegun positions every 300 yards. Yet
the base was very vulnerable to any determined attack, being dominated by a low
plateau that was now seething with over 9000 Iraqi soldiers. The tiny garrison
there was as far from help as any in the British Empire might be, or so they
thought. The sign at the main gate to the base pointed in one direction to
Baghdad, listing the distance at 55 miles. Below this another arrow pointed out
the Mecca of the empire, reading: “London 3287 Miles.”

The base was laid out in typical
British efficiency, between the river and a water canal that ran along its
southern perimeter, and marked a thin boundary between the facility and the
ground rising to the plateau. It had a Civil Cantonment for the service
personnel families and wives, a hospital, mess halls for officers, sergeants
and rankers, all laid out in a patchwork connected by roads with proper names:
Grantham, Kenley, Cranwell, Andover. On Tangmere Road there was a cool cluster
of shade trees known as the “Command Garden” near the HQ building, and opposite
this, on the north side of the base near the river, was the Air House, now
absent commanding officer Smart. There was even a racetrack, polo pitch, and
golf course for recreation to finish off this little island of civility in an
otherwise desolate and wild land. Now these open spaces had been used to
disperse planes from the crowded airfield on the southwest quadrant of the
base.

Colonel Roberts had men haul away
the old WWI howitzers that had been sitting as show pieces out in front of the
Officer’s Mess, and they had been put to good use that day. And the men of the
Number 4 Flying School had an exhilarating day as well, proud that they were
now renamed “Habbaniyah Air Striking Force.” They were pressing everything that
could fly into the battle the following day, and dusk found the base still in a
hustle of feverish activity.

Flight Lieutenant Maurice Skeet
was in charge of a flight of old Vickers Valentia biplanes, a round nosed
transport with an open cockpit and room for twenty people in the long enclose
fuselage. He had been looking for Air Vice Marshall Smart to see if he could
get permission to move his flight to a safer location on the polo pitch
earlier, but in the heat of the moment he had gone away unsatisfied. The
resulting Iraqi artillery bombardment that day had riddled his Valentias with
shrapnel, rendering them all unserviceable. As the planes had been rigged out
as makeshift bombers, they now were a liability sitting there with live
ordnance.

“Come on then, he said to his
crews. We’d best get those bombs off and back into the magazines. One of the
Wogs might just get lucky and put a round right on top of us. Start with number
2792—that one has four 500 pounders—then on to the rest. Then it’s into the
nearest ARP for the lot of us. We’ll get no digs in the billets tonight. Too
much of a target.” The A.R.P. was short for the “Air Raid Precaution” trenches
that had been dug all around the base.

The crews set to work, but down
south on the perimeter, Colonel Ouvry Linfield Roberts had the men of the
King’s Own Rifles,and several companies of Assyrian Levees, ready to go ‘over
the wire’ and make a night attack on the plateau. The Iraqis had been bringing
up reinforcements, occupying and closing the bridge over the Euphrates to the
east at Fallujah, and even sending a small force of armored cars up to Ramadi
to the west. Slowly but surely, they were sealing off the base to isolate it
from all outside contact or supply.

Now Colonel Roberts had to decide
what to do about the situation, and he had a mind to take aggressive action in
spite of the disparity in force. They were lucky their air strike had not
provoked a general attack by the enemy. Earlier that day eight Iraqi armored
cars and three tankettes had approached the Fallujah gate, but when confronted
with three of the British armored cars mounting AT rifles, they turned away.
But they’ll soon realize that’s about all we have to stop them, thought
Roberts. I can’t let them sleep on it tonight. We’ve got to move them off that
plateau.

As the sun set, Roberts gave
orders to black out the entire base. Any light might only serve as a beacon for
enemy planes, and the order seemed to produce good results. As darkness settled
over the base they heard the sound of an aircraft overhead, but it passed on by
uneventfully. Some minutes later they heard bombs falling and exploding in
Ramadi to the west, which the enemy had mistaken for their own encampment.

Captain Cottingham came over from
one of the native companies to complain about a gun position north of the river
that had been shelling the Cantonment that day.

“Then take your company across and
get after them,” said Roberts, sending No. 8 Kurdish Rifles to their first
action of the war. For his own part, Roberts was taking two companies of the
Kings Own Rifles, and he had the No. 4 Assyrian Company in lorries ready to sortie
out should his small force get into trouble. The men assembled to either side
of a perimeter blockhouse, moving out with all the stealth they could manage.
It was soon found that the enemy had patrols out as well, and the chatter of a
machine gun broke the hushed darkness.

Three British Armored Cars,
nicknamed “Coffee Pots,” led the way out the Uxbridge Gate and across a narrow
bridge over the canal. They then swung off to the right to find a way up onto
the plateau while the Kings Own Rifles fanned out. No sooner had they assembled
for the move up the furrowed gullies of the plateau flank, when they were taken
under withering machine gun fire.

“Bloody Hell!’ said Lt. Colonel
Everett. “They’re dug in, and with Vickers guns.” The British had armed much of
the Iraqi army that was now made their enemy, and the attack planned by Roberts
soon became a difficult situation, with men pinned down on the dry slopes and
casualties starting to mount. Everett got to a telephone and reported this to
Roberts, who quickly sent up a truck with a Vickers MG and a 3 inch mortar for
support. The night was soon thick with the sound of rifle fire and machine
guns, and Major Cooper was desperately trying to get the two old 4.5-inch
howitzers into shape to fire again. It would take an artificer flown in from
Basra to sort those guns out now, so for the moment, they had only a few trench
mortars and anything they might capture from the enemy.

Two squads of A company made a
rush on one Iraqi position, driving off the Wogs with a bayonet charge and taking
possession of two 3.7 inch guns, which they promptly turned on the enemy
farther up the slope. But it was clear that Colonel Roberts’ attack was not
going to get up that hill tonight, and might not even make it safely back over
the canal to the base.

“This is no good,” he said,
exasperated as a runner brought in the casualty count. “We’ve too few men to
see them picked off like this on that slope. Everything depended on our getting
up there unseen.” At that moment there came an odd thumping sound in the
distance, and he turned his head, listening.

“Those aren’t guns,” he said,
first thinking he was hearing shell fire. Then he thought it must be bombs
falling again on Ramadi, but he was very wrong.

Just south and east of the
plateau, four helicopters were coming in very low over the waters of the wide
Habbaniyah lake. Their lights darkened, they were heading for the wrinkled
shore at the base of the plateau, where wadis and gullies had been cut into the
dry ground. Thus they were below this undulating terrain, heard but not seen,
when they reached the shore and hovered in billowing clouds of dust. Men in
dark uniforms and Kevlar body armor leapt from the open doors, sliding down
ropes on either side of the helos and then fanning out to immediately establish
a perimeter on the LZ. The heavy weapons caches were lowered last, and what
amounted to a light company in actual numbers was soon assembling into five man
teams.

Troyak had command on the right
flank with four squads of his Black Death Marines. Their faces were streaked
and blackened with war paint, eyes mounting infrared night optics under their
dark helmets. Two men were already setting up the 82mm mortars, and others were
sorting out the remaining heavy weapons and getting them off to the rifle
teams. On their right, squads of the Argonauts had deployed off the three X-3
helos, which were now loudly revving up to begin their attack from above. The
helicopters were going to bring the considerable weight of their firepower
against the enemy first, and the men of the King’s Own Rifles were soon treated
to an amazing display.

Dark, noisome shadows thumped and
hovered over the plateau, the night optics and thermal imaging clearly seeing
the enemy gun positions, their barrels still hot from the day’s long work in
bombarding the base. Now the deadly fire of modern precision weapons began to
rake the positions with terrible effect. The hiss and roar of ground attack
missiles split the night as they lanced in. The four
Shturm
AT missiles
found old Iraqi Armored cars and blew them to pieces in a heartbeat. Then the
gunners on the ‘Big Blue Pig’ rotated the long barrel of the 30mm autocannon,
and its rapid pulsing fire punctuated the night, sending hot streaks of tracer rounds
down on the enemy below.

The rocket pods of the X-3s soon
joined the action, their missiles blasting into the enemy machine guns and
3.7-inch howitzer positions. Several guns were blown into the air, and went
tumbling down the slope, and the whole scene on the plateau dissolved into
utter chaos. Then Troyak heard the snarl of the four barreled rotating Minigun
on the KA-40, a grim smile on his face as it began raking the unseen enemy. He
waited, eyeing his service watch until the hands struck midnight, which was the
time designated for his advance. The seconds ticked off, and then he shouted to
his men in a hard voice.

“Marines! Follow me!”

The Black Death surged up the
furrowed wadi, reaching the crest of the plateau where they saw the chaos of
the battle. Fire of burning trucks and tent sites was masked by rolling smoke,
and there came an enormous explosion as the autocannon hit a supply dump and
ignited the ammunition there. The helicopters were now well to the east, having
raked their way along the entire enemy position with their lethal guns and
missiles, and now swerved off into the sky, like evil black fire-breathing
dragons.

They heard the full throated
shout of the teams on their left: “
Argos Fire!”
Then the Argonauts
charged up the slope, their assault rifles soon barking out fire as they
advanced. Between the two forces there were no more than sixty men, but each
man carried a modern assault rifle, and every squad had a machinegun. They had
firepower exceeding that of the entire battalion of the King’s Own Rifles on
the north side of the plateau, and they were using it.

Troyak worked his way forward,
crouching low and leaping into what was once an enemy dugout. He whistled for
his Marines to move up, establishing a line, and then using his night optics to
surveill the situation. There was one brave Vickers MG position that had
survived the helo assault, and it was chattering at the Argonauts as they
advance with wild indiscriminate fire.

“Zykov! RPG!”

The corporal was ready with the
weapon, and quickly blasted the bunkered position with a thundering roar. Then
the sound of the auto grenade launcher the Russians had used so effectively in
their mission to Ilanskiy cut through the night, and a hail of deadly bomblets
saturated the ground ahead of their advance. The Iraqi soldiers that caught a
glimpse of the Marines were terrified by these big men looming out of the
night, with faces blackened and studded with night vision equipment that looked
like devil’s horns, eyes that seemed to glow with an ungodly light. They heard
them speaking and growling in a strange language, then saw the horrific fire
erupting from their weapons.

 One officer, trying to rally his
men, instinctively fired a pistol at Troyak, but the heavy reinforced Kevlar
body armor took the glancing round, and he was unharmed, gunning down the man
in reprisal. The word soon spread that demons from hell had risen in the night,
men so fearsome that they could not be killed. Hundreds dropped their rifles
and simply fled, their eyes wide with fear.

This was the last resistance of
any consequence. There were upwards of 9000 men on the plateau, but they were
all wildly streaming to the east, abandoning their guns, leaping onto any truck
that would still run, or atop horses and camels as their officers vainly
shouted at them, waving curved Scimitars in the night. The rout had begun, and
the line of sixty men moved forward, driving it relentlessly on with withering
automatic weapons fire cutting down any group of the enemy who had the thought
to turn and fight.

On the north side of the plateau
the King’s Own Rifles watched the helicopter assault in utter disbelief. Some
first thought that the planes had been sent up to support them, but Colonel
Roberts knew that was not so. He gaped at the fireworks in the sky, hot missile
fire, the rattle and pock of the auto cannons, the howl of the miniguns. It was
as if a host of wild Jinn had swept in from the dark lake, breathing terror and
death as they came.

When Lt. Colonel Everett saw the
enemy lines break and run, he finally took heart. His men would have braved
their task in spite of the odds, wearing down the will of the Iraqis to resist,
day after day, as the Tiger Moths bombed from above, and he continued to mount
aggressive night forays against the flanks and shoulders of the plateau. But
they did not have to work quite so hard this time around. Men from another
world were coming up the high, stony
plateau like banshees
in the night.
Though he could not see the commandos and Marines, he
could hear their assault, and when the Iraqi troops turned and fled in terror,
he blew hard on his whistle and gave the order to charge on up the hill.