Strike Force Delta (27 page)

Moments later, he found himself talking to lieutenants he'd sent out to check on the city's other two mosques and realized the news was the same. Both had been demolished as well, as had their neighborhoods, and everything within was lost. Just like that, more than half the city's storage of weapons and ammunition and explosives and fuel was gone.
Ballsy
was the American word for it.
Insane
was what the Chief thought of it. But it was the first time the Chief thought that maybe Jabal Ben-Wabi had a reason to pee his pants anytime the notion
of the Crazy Americans was brought up.

This did not deter the Chief, though. Not completely, anyway. There was still a fight to be had here—and it would best be coordinated back at the Holy Towers. That's why after hearing that all three mosques had been destroyed, the Chief ordered his bodyguards to get him back to his main headquarters right away.

And this they were doing, preparing to rush him back, when they first heard the sounds of B-52s dropping bombs.

The Chief's convoy made it exactly a half-block when he ordered his driver to stop and took cover along with everyone else. The distinct racket made by B-52 engines and their bombs was known to anyone who'd fought with the Taliban. They knew the only hope of survival was to get down at the first sound of a bomb whistling through the air and stay there until the mighty airplanes passed over or blew you to bits.

So they hid in a tea shop. Huddled on the floor, hands pressed against their ears, the Chief and his bodyguards waited for the final blow. When it did not come, though the racket and chaotic sounds of a massive air raid continued, they crawled back out onto the street, saw the light glowing from the eastern edge of town, and assumed the Strato-fortresses had dumped their loads over there first. Which meant that they would be back, usually very, very soon.

Again the Chief wanted to convoy back to the Holy Towers, but no sooner had he and his bodyguards started out a second time when they heard two more tremendous explosions in their vicinity. Looking just down the street, they saw a huge hole had been blown in the Old Quarter's wall not 200 yards away and that several
more buildings had been blown away even closer to their position.

Again they thought these were bombs from B-52s—it was only when one of the ugly jet fighters that had leveled the mosque suddenly streaked over their heads that they realized that at least one of the mosque bombers was back and that it had just delivered the one-two blow a few blocks away.

Seconds later they saw the black-uniformed soldiers start pouring through the hole in the wall. Not the Chief nor any of his men stayed around long enough to count exactly how many Americans were rushing through the breach. Instead, they finally got aboard their vehicles and squealed away in retreat.

But for a third time, they didn't get very far. They reached the intersection a few blocks up from where the mosque used to be and found it crowded with religious fighters fleeing what they perceived to be a massive American ground attack through the hole in the wall. Explosions, jets in the air, the
chop-chop
of helicopters added in. The sounds of their comrades being slaughtered just down the street only confirmed the reason for their alarm.

In fact, there were so many fighters and their vehicles in the intersection, there was no way the Chief and his convoy were going to be able to get through.

Believing that the center of town may have been pulverized anyway, and due to the fact that when his fighters saw him they started shouting for joy because they knew he would know what to do in their sudden crisis, the Chief realized reluctantly that he had to make some kind of a stand here—at the first intersection.

But what he really wanted to do first was get to a bell and start ringing it—so his Taliban and Al Qaeda brothers would know enough to join the fight. If that message didn't get out soon, he knew, they were looking at a catastrophe.

His cell phone was dead, killed by electronic interference. So he tried a phone in one of the shops bordering the intersection. He was calling his cadre back at the Holy Towers, located about a half-mile from his current position. If he could get through and the buildings were still standing, someone there would be able to start the bells ringing and get the reinforcements in gear.

But just as someone at the headquarters was picking up the phone, the line suddenly went dead, At almost the exact same time, they all heard another huge explosion go off to the east, in the vicinity of Kuhada Circle, the Chief knew.

It had been at that precise moment that Ozzi had blown up the city's telephone exchange, mere seconds before the Chief would have been able to put out the all-points signal to immediately bring hundreds of Al Qaeda and Taliban fighters into the fray.

It had been that close.

Once the Chief realized he was stuck here, at the intersection, he dug down into his bag of tricks. Obviously the Americans weren't coming the way he thought they would. There would be no Mogadishu here. So he screamed at his men to start erecting barriers across the west-facing street, the road that eventually led to the center of town—but he also ordered them that they should erect these barriers of the flimsiest materials they could find.

Then they were to fire at the soldiers accompanying the tanks for just about thirty seconds. Then they were to allow the tanks to bust through the barriers . . . .

It seemed like a suicidal order, allowing the tanks to essentially roll over them, but again, the Chief had fought in the streets before.

This was combat and there really was such a thing as the fog of war. Things happened fast but always seemed to the participants to be moving very slowly. There was also the tendency especially of tank commanders to run over or break through anything standing in their way. Now these two T-72s were heading for the intersection, their orders no doubt were to clear it of the Chief's fighters.

This was a piece of his own brand of psychological warfare. Why would the Chief instruct his men to erect barricades the flimsier the better? Because he wanted to actually
encourage
the armored vehicles to smash through them, which was their natural tendency to do. Doing so was a critical mistake, though, because once the tank hit the barricade, his fighters would simply let it go past them—then they would attack it from the rear. The key to this deceit was that no way could a tank turret turn fast enough to fire backward at these attackers. Two or three well-placed RPGs could disable just about any tank from the rear, thus trapping it in the middle of a swarm of fighters. When the crew sought to escape their burning tank, they could be slaughtered almost at leisure. When the Chief fought in Chechnya, this odd strategy had worked every time.

The tanks were now within five hundred feet of the intersection. The first in line fired one round as it was building up speed. The round landed not six feet in front
of the first barricade. Curiously, it was not an explosive charge but actually a smoke round. It ignited on impact, and within seconds the entire intersection was obscured by thick white smoke.

The Chief's men ceased firing on cue and fell back, disappearing behind the barricades as ordered. The Chief knew what was going to happen next. The tank would burst through the intentionally weak barriers, apparently triumphant. But then his fighters hiding nearby would emerge quickly and attack the tank from the rear. That was the trick.

Sure enough, the first tank went through the barricade with ease—just as the Chief wanted it. The smoke obscuring the scene made it hard to get a complete handle on it, but very quickly the bravest of his men ran out and prepared to fire their RPGs at the tank's vulnerable hindquarters. But just after the second tank went through, a sudden storm of tracer fire erupted, coming from many directions, bullets pinging and bouncing off things everywhere. A moment after that, the worst of the smoke bomb blew away . . . and finally the Chief and his bodyguards, under cover about fifty feet away, could see what was happening. Both tanks had indeed burst through the barriers. But they had done so with their turrets
already
turned backward. The two machine guns on the top of the swivel as well as the huge tank gun itself opened up in a fantastic display of pyrotechnics and fiery lead.

The Chief saw thirty, forty of his fighters cut down before his eyes. The brutality was incredible. Tank shells exploding and simply vaporizing five or six of his best men at a time. The others chopped in half by the huge .50-caliber rounds. It was unexpected and it was
madness. The Americans knew the trick. They had beaten the Chief at his own game. He came very close to peeing his pants.

As this, he got up, turned on his heel, and started running as fast as he could in the opposite direction.

Behind him, all his bodyguards and most of his remaining fighters were doing the same thing.

Curry had watched all the action from afar. He was still carrying all his bombs; his cannon was still fully loaded. He was loitering over the western edge of Khrash, across the Farāh River, above the small slice of Afghanistan that quickly turned into Iran after one went over a steep two-lane mountain pass.

He was cruising at five thousand feet, barely making 150 mph, close to stall speed for an F-14 in flight. He was going in circles, trying to save fuel. When he put his NV goggles down he could clearly see what was happening over Khrash. Copters buzzing around, providing air support for the ground troops when needed, hitting targets of opportunity whenever possible. Above them, the
Psyclops
plane flying in even larger circles than he was, broadcasting both the sounds of a horrific land battle and noises mimicking a second B-52 raid.

And every once in a while he caught glimpses of Ryder doing his sonic-boom nosedives. Curry had wondered more than once whether Ryder was just brave or committed or, maybe, was a candidate for
being
committed. On the other hand, though he knew Ryder well, Curry had not walked a mile in his shoes. So it was not his place to judge. But the way the guy was flying and acting and bringing it to the mooks, scaring them to death as opposed to blowing them up, simply put, Curry
had never seen anyone fly like that—even in the best of weather, during the daytime. Doing it at night, in very smoky skies, with antiaircraft fire all around him, the guy was flirting with disaster. But maybe that's exactly what he wanted to do.

These thoughts were suddenly distracted by a glint of light below, picked up by Curry's NV goggles. It turned out to be a single headlight, the only one working on a small red truck that had just pulled onto the Farāh River bridge from Highway 212 and was now making its way across.

It was exactly what Curry was looking for.

The red truck was actually the first of three. Curry sank a little lower, down to twenty-five hundred feet. Thanks to the NV goggles he could see each vehicle had at least six people jammed into it. Each vehicle also had bags or satchels tied to the roof or stuffed in the back.

Curry clenched his fist in triumph. This was the best thing he could have ever seen. It meant that their plan was probably working. Not only was it clear these people were making a hasty retreat out of Khrash and across to Iran, but he also could tell by the fact that they had motor vehicles that they were probably Al Qaeda types. And they weren't staying to fight.

Because there were only a few dozen of them, the Ghosts' bold idea was to create enough confusion and panic within Khrash that any Islamic fighters reluctant to meet Allah this particular day would naturally start moving west, get on the bridge, and get out of town. These three were trying it. And Curry knew there would probably be more to come.

Now flying too high to be heard over the commotion over the city, he waited for the three small trucks to get
to the opposite end of the bridge. Then he swooped down and with very economical bursts from his nose cannon blew them off the road.

Then he went back up high again—into the smoke and darkness—and waited for his next victims to show up.

Nothing was routine in combat. But what Dave Hunn and the guys in 1st Delta squad had been doing for the past twenty minutes came very close.

They'd moved steadily out from their jump-off point, Weak Point East, and been methodically chasing the city's religious police fighters and leftover Taliban out of their slummy buildings, pushing them west, toward the center of town and ultimately the Farāh River.

They had already cleared three blocks beyond the slum, this after being on the ground not even 30 minutes. What they were doing quickly fell into a pattern. They came to a building and more often than not, especially in the past 15 minutes, these buildings were either empty or holding a few die-hards or mooks wounded and left behind by their comrades. If that was the case, instead of wasting time and going inside, Delta would riddle the structure with their heavy weapons, hurl in a few hand grenades, or fire an enemy RPG they had captured during their miniblitzkrieg. There would be explosions, bright flashes of light, and a minor quaking of the earth; sometimes part of the building would come down. The Delta guys would spray the rubble with gunfire and pepper it with more grenades. No screams from those trapped under the tons of rock would confirm that the leftover bad guys had been killed. Delta would then mark the building by planting an American flag somewhere nearby and move on. If they thought there were
still people alive and unbroken beneath the rubble, they would leave the house unmarked—as a signal, for those following in their path.

This was the second wave, coming in behind 1st Delta, made up entirely of the Zabul tribe foot soldiers, essentially mountain men with weapons. Their role was nasty but necessary. They would come to a house that wasn't flying an American flag. They would first yell into the house, “Akbah! Salama-La-kin?” Roughly translated: “Brothers! How are you?”

If they received any reply, they would douse the rubble with something flammable and set it ablaze, finishing off those Muslim fighters still alive inside. Once the screams died down, then the Zabul would raise an American flag. And then they, too, would move on.