Alone and Unafraid (American Praetorians Book 3) (29 page)

The lead Hind juked to avoid two of the streams of heavy anti-aircraft slugs, only to succumb to a missile.  The warhead detonated just off the Hind’s stubby wing, shredding part of the wing, and setting one of the fuel tanks on fire.  The bird weaved drunkenly for a moment, then turned off, getting even lower, as smoke started to stream from one of its engine housings.

The second Hind dropped like a stone, pivoting almost in midair and spewing flares.  The pilot was good; both of the other SAMs went over the helicopter, one of them detonating
on a flare.

The Eurocopters were going low, trying to swoop in on us, but one of them miscalculated, and flew right into one of the Sunni anti-aircraft gunner
s’ sights.  Heavy slugs punched through metal, ceramic, flesh, and bone.  The bird spun out of control and crashed just short of the mosque on the far side of the Sulaykh Bridge.

The others veered off, especially when one of the Dillon SUVs’ gunners sent a stream of minigun fire at one.  He missed,
but the solid line of tracers was bound to give anyone pause.

The Hind was still there, but the sheer volume of fire was forcing the pilot to evade and slip further to the east.  Somebody down there
really
wanted those Hinds dead.  Three more SAMs rose into the night sky, reaching out for it.  Flares dealt with two.  The third detonated right above the rotor disc.

Hinds are tough.  They’re flying tanks.  But shoulder-fired SAMs have been taking them down since the ‘80s in Afghanistan.  This one did the trick.  The rotor hub came apart, pieces of the rotors flying through the air, and the fuselage dropped like a stone.  It smashed nose-first into the canal, crumpling into a burning fan of wreckage with the impact.
  More black smoke rose into the night sky.  No one was walking away from that one.

Jim pushed across the bridge as the Eurocopters went low and fled, skimming the rooftops.  With their heavy support knocked out, they weren’t sticking around.  I just hoped we could get clear of the city before we ran into one of those heavy guns.

There was more fighting going on close by; we could see explosions, muzzle flashes, and tracers, as well as hearing the blistering roar of gunfire.  We had to be close to the dividing line again.  I was gripping my rifle with white knuckles. 
Please, just let us get clear without anybody else getting fucked up.
  I hoped the guy in the back was okay, though I was afraid he wasn’t going to make it to Baqubah, much less Erbil.

We took fire at least five more times in the next three and a half miles, but nothing bad enough to stop us.  I breathed a little bit easier once we were out in the fields, with the city looming behind us like a scene from hell.  We weren’t home free yet, but I hoped the worst was behind us.

It wasn’t.  I’d finally tried calling Alek.

“Yeah, Dave’s on his way to meet up with you in Kirkuk,” he told me, “along with Rizgar Mohammed and two companies of Peshmerga.  There’s been some more fighting down there, but the main reason the Kurds are sending reinforcements is because of the two Iranian Army battalions that are heading for the city.”

“I didn’t need to hear that,” I said, gusting a sigh.  “Fuck.  How far out are they?”

“Most of the estimates the Asayish are giving are about a day at the most,” he replied, “but they’re pushing hard.  They’ve steered clear of Kurdistan proper, but apparently they’re in-country to support Saleh, and Saleh’s saying the Kurds have to give up the Kirkuk oil wells.  There are two divisions heading for Baghdad right now.”

I looked at my watch.  It was only about 1900.  Depending on how reliable the Asayish estimates were, we could get through Kirkuk before the Iranians got there.  “Could” being the operative word.  It depended on any number of factors completely out of our control,
including the State weenies’ cooperation, which might be a bridge too far.

“We’ll push as hard as we can,” I told him, “but we’re pretty shot up.”  That was an understatement. 
My truck’s windows were a hash of bullet and shrapnel marks, and the engine was sounding rougher with each mile.  I was pretty sure it had soaked up a few rounds.  “I’m not convinced we’ll get halfway to Kirkuk without a vehicle breaking down.  And that’s assuming we get through Baqubah without getting hit again, too.”

“Do what you can, brother,” he said.  “I’m working on getting our air support spun up, and seeing if we can get you some top cover by the time you get to Kirkuk.”

No sooner had I gotten off the phone with Alek, than Mike called.  “Dude, stay the hell away from Baqubah,” he said.  “It’s out of the way anyway, but the fighting there’s gotten as bad as Baghdad.  It looks like the whole fucking town is on fire.”

“Alternate RV at Khalis?” I suggested.

“Affirm,” he said.  “There’s still some sporadic fighting going on, but the main effort seems to be in Baghdad and Baqubah.  We’ll link up at the square where the highway T’
s.  I’d suggest we take the west route, around the town proper, instead of going straight through.”

“Agreed,” I said.  “I’ll coordinate with Ventner.”

I didn’t get the chance to call Ventner before one of the Subs went down with a flat tire another half mile down the road.  It was a miracle it had gone that far, but somebody had been thinking and provided all the up-armors with RunFlats.  It just hadn’t made a difference with Jim’s truck earlier because a RunFlat can’t very well run while shredded.

We threw out a perimeter, with everyone with a rifle out of the vehicles and holding security.  The first thing I did upon getting out of my truck was check on the casualty Black and I had pulled out of the square.

He was gone.  There was probably nothing more we could have done for him, but it still left me numb and angry, looking down at his ravaged corpse.  Now that I could take the time, I saw that it was Creeper, just with most of his hair and beard burned away.  Damn it.  I hadn’t gotten to know the guy very well, but he’d seemed to be a decent sort, and a good man in a scrap.

I walked over to where Ventner had stepped away from the RSO, Erikson, who looked positively sick.  He saw me coming and came to meet me.  “I don’t think she needs much more raw honesty, right now,” he commented.

When I took my eyes off the surrounding fields long enough to glance at him, I saw he was just as watchful as I was.  “Mike called, said to avoid Baqubah,” I told him.  “It’s as much of a shitstorm as Baghdad.”

“No surprise,” he said.  “It wasn’t my first choice for a checkpoint, but the RSO had to have her oar in the water, and it was the first town on the way north.  Of course, we had to have a halt in a town, for some damn reason.”

“Is it going to be a problem?” I asked.

He shook his head, looking back the way we’d come.  Baghdad was an ugly glow on the horizon.  “Not now.  Not after that.”

“Fair enough,” I said.  I glanced around at the nearby vehicles.  Most of the tires seemed reasonably intact.  “I do think we need to be ready for more halts like this, though.  We soaked up a lot of metal.”

“I agree,” he said.  “At this point, I’ll be happily surprised if we make it to Kirkuk by dawn.”

I told him about the Iranians.  He rubbed his eyes tiredly.  “It fucking figures,” he said.  “It never rains, but it pours.  Damn it.  There isn’t much in the way of routes around, either, is there?”

“Not much.  That ridgeline to the north presents a pretty good obstacle.”  I didn’t say how I knew that, and he didn’t ask; I suspect he knew more about our activities in Kurdistan and Basra than we’d ever told him.

“Nothing to do about it, then,” he said.  “We’ll just have to push as hard as we can, equipment breakdowns notwithstanding.”  He looked at me.  “I’m starting to think somebody’s trying to tell me it’s time to retire.”

“Maybe so,” I said, clapping him on the shoulder as I turned back to my truck, “but then what would you do to break up the monotony?”

I laughed as he chuckled and flipped me off.  Hey, you’ve got to have a sense of humor in this business.

Chapter 18

We had to stop five more times on the road to Kirkuk.  Three of those times we were able to get the broken-down, shot-to-shit vehicle
that had ground to a halt up and running again.  We had to leave five vehicles stripped and abandoned on the road from the other two.  Each stop cost us time, cutting into the remaining hours of darkness we had to conceal us from the casual observer, as well as closing the gap between our arrival in Kirkuk and the Iranian column.  The sun was already well above the horizon by the time the city came into sight.

Dave was waiting with Rizgar at a power station about five miles outside of the city.  Dave and his boys had two Rangers and a couple of up-armored F-350s; I had no idea where they’d scraped those up. 
All four vehicles had machine gun mounts, brand new M60E6s, and what looked like mountains of ammunition in the beds.  Rizgar was rolling heavy with his two companies, equipped with two T-72s, four BMP-1s, and half a dozen BRDMs, along with several of the ubiquitous up-armored Humvees.

Dave and Rizgar came out to meet us, and after the requisite handshakes and backslapping,
they took a good look at the convoy.

“Holy shit,” Dave said.  “I’d heard it was bad, but…holy fuck.”

“Could have been worse,” I said.  “We only lost two vehicles.”

He was scanning the scarred, bullet-riddled column.  “It looks like more than that.”

“We did have a couple break down on the way,” I said, as we walked toward his vehicles.  “That’s why we’ve got a couple of up-armored clown cars in the mix.”

“Well, you guys can have one of the Rangers and one of the F-350s,” he said.  “That should relieve a little bit of the crowding.  Those fuckers are nice; our new sponsors got them to us somehow.”

I didn’t say that it would have been better if Renton’s people had gotten them to us down south; it probably hadn’t been practical, and wouldn’t have made that much difference anyway.

We got down to business.

“
Saleh’s got a short mech battalion sitting in a FOB just outside the city, here,” Dave said, spreading a map across the hood of one of his trucks, and pointing out a position straddling Highway Two.  It was blocking the main route that would have taken us around most of the city, instead of through.  “No air support to speak of, but they’ve got enough firepower in there to present a serious threat.  If they link up with these Iranians coming up behind you, which they probably will, they’re going to be more than a handful even for the Pesh.”

Rizgar looked like he was going to object, but at that point Mike, Hassan, and Hussein Ali came up, and things got even more uncomfortable.

Hussein Ali may not have been wearing his old PPF uniform, but the hostility between Arabs and Kurds goes back a long, long way.  I honestly didn’t know how this was going to go, and I hadn’t had time to express to Hussein Ali that if he ever wanted him or his boys to become Praetorians, they’d have to play by our rules, and that meant playing nice with the Kurds.

I should have trusted the crusty old bastard.  He walked straight up to Rizgar, shook his hand, gave him the kiss of peace, and said, “Salaam aleikum, Habibi.” 
Then he and Rizgar had a short, rapid-fire conversation in Sorani, which I hadn’t even known the old man understood.  When it was over, they both had huge, shit-eating grins on their faces.  I still don’t know what was said, but apparently it was the right thing on both sides.  I looked at Hassan, who just smiled and shrugged.

I looked over at Dave, and spread my hands.  Not what I was expecting, but at that point, there was no way in hell I was looking a gift horse in the mouth.  Something had gone right. 
We needed to go ahead and push before something else went wrong.

Ventner, Toran, and a couple of their team leads joined us, and the gathering around the hood of the truck became a full-bore planning session.  It was abbreviated; we didn’t have a lot of time, and none of us doubted that whoever was coming out on top in Baghdad, somebody with Saleh’s IA had called ahead that the Americans were heading north. 
We also had limited options and a picture of what the enemy was going to do that was incomplete at best.

There was some friction as to the role of Rizgar’s Peshmerga.  They were willing to work with us, but not as much to hang back and cover the State Department personnel.  Some bad blood had developed over the years, as Washington pig-headedly refused to let go of the “One Iraq” policy, and, in spite of the disintegration of Iraq as a country, refused to support an independent Kurdish state.  “No, no good,” Rizgar said, shaking his head.  “
You are our friends; we want to help you, but these others…”

“Rizgar, my friend,” I told him, “By protecting them, you are helping us.  We are contracted to get them to Erbil. 
You’ve got the heavy armor that can protect them up close better, while we scout and stay mobile.  I need your help on this, brother.”

He still didn’t look happy.  But he nodded.  “Yes, okay, my brother,” he said.  “We will do this.  You owe me, though.”

“Add it to my tab,” I told him.  He just grinned.

With what little mission planning we could manage done, there was another round of handshakes, and we dispersed to our vehicles.  There wasn’t time for much else.  We had to get rolling.

“Well, fuck.”

Saleh’s short battalion was apparently armed to the teeth; he hadn’t wanted to fuck around when it came to dealing with the Kurds.  The Iraqi government had wanted the Kurds out of Kirkuk for a long time, and while we’d seen a lot of this coming north through Tikrit a couple months back, it looked like Saleh had reinforced the units up here.

There were three Abrams, five Bradleys, and a couple of Strykers, all flying Iraqi flags, sitting athwart Baghdad Road, leading into the city. 
Even accounting for the usual level of tactical competence among the regular IA, and Rizgar’s reinforcements, there was no way we were punching through that with what we had.  T-72s don’t tend to stand up well to Abrams.

We were sitting on the side of the road, within range of the tanks’ main guns, but being as non-threatening as we could be, at least with machine guns mounted on the backs of the trucks.  I was enjoying the new Ford, especially being able to see out a windshield that wasn’t thoroughly scarred by shrapnel and bullet impacts.  There was quite a bit more room in the cab, too.

I continued to study the reinforced platoon sitting there on the road through binoculars.  The vehicle commanders, at least, were alert and watching us, though several of their men were still sitting or squatting around, their rifles on the ground.  The fact that they hadn’t melted in the face of the Peshmerga told me they had enough backbone to make a fight of it.  I was pretty sure the Kurds were hitting the IA almost nightly, though when obliquely asked about it, Rizgar just looked innocent, as though he had no idea what I was talking about.  Sure, motherfucker.  Even if I hadn’t worked in Kurdistan for months before going down to Basra, I didn’t fall off the turnip truck yesterday.

The thing was, I didn’t necessarily want to fight these guys.  Sure, I thought Saleh was a scumbag and an IRGC stooge, but these guys weren’t the mission.  Getting those people in the convoy to safety was the mission, and if we could do that without going toe-to-toe with Saleh’s troops, so much the better.  Besides, we were not in a position of strength in this situation, and I never like going into a fight without some kind of advantage.

Sure, Alek had called a few minutes before to let me know that he had our converted Iroquois gunships on standby less than fifteen minutes away, at a Forward Air Refueling Point that the Pesh had set up just outside of Kirkuk, but the fate of the ISOF Hinds in Baghdad was pretty fresh in my mind.  Ten years ago, Iraq might have been permissive for aircraft, but it sure as hell wasn’t anymore.  The Saudis, then the Caliphate, had been funneling Chinese, Russian, and American MANPADs in to Syria, and Iraq for years now.  The Iranians had been doing the same, mostly with Chinese and Russian missiles.  While there had always been risk, it was getting greater every day.

I’d been all for bypassing Kirkuk entirely; while it would take us a little bit out of our way, we could bang northwest on Highway Eighty, hit Makhmur Road, and take it straight up to Erbil.  Unfortunately, Saleh’s commander had apparently thought of that as well.  There was a full company sitting on Highway Nineteen, on the way to Eighty, and two platoons were sitting on Highway Two.  They had us boxed.

“Can’t we go cross-country?” Nick muttered.  “These fuckers can’t cover
every
single route.”

“We might have to,” I said.  “At the same time, what happens when one of these nice, heavy up-armors bogs down or gets another flat on the way?  We had a rough enough time getting up here on the highway; going cross-country’s going to be murder.”

“Trying to run that blockade with what we’ve got is going to be even worse,” he pointed out.  He was right, too.

The more I thought about it, sitting there watching those troops, the more I didn’t see another way around it.  It would mean taking a chance; we were down in the flats, without any cover or concealment to speak of.  Somebody was going to spot us and send word.  Worse, we’d be moving slow, and giving the Iranian column behind us more time to catch up.

I was sure that the Kurds weren’t going to offer any more support than what we already had.  They had enough on their plate getting ready to face off against Saleh’s forces, reinforced by the Iranians, who were there for Kirkuk, after all.  We were a side note.  A politically valuable side note to Saleh and the Iranians, possibly, but a side note nonetheless.  We sure as hell weren’t worth risking Kirkuk, not to the Kurds.

Hell, I’d be surprised if Rizgar and his people didn’t get pulled as soon as it looked like they were needed to fight Saleh’s forces.

The Iraqis on Baghdad Road were starting to take an interest in us.  Peering through the binoculars, I could see one of the officers leaning over the side of his Abrams and yelling at the troops, gesturing in our direction.  A few of them were starting to stir, getting up and looking toward us.  “Time to go,” I said.

“Don’t have to tell me twice,” Nick replied, throwing the truck into gear and making a U-turn to head back down the road toward the rest of the column, which was waiting about a mile back.  “Let’s hope they’re not so curious that they decide to come after us.”

“Even those Strykers can’t make the road speed to catch up with us,” I assured him.  “And I’m sure the commander knows it.  We’ll be out of sight soon enough.”

“Yeah, we’re out of sight of Baghdad, too,” he grumbled.  “And look at us, still in the shit.”

“We knew we’d still be in the shit until we got to Erbil,” I said.  “At least out here, we’ve got more maneuvering room.”

“Yeah,” he said, as he opened up the throttle, the engine roaring as we sped away.  Whoever had designed that truck had seen fit to put a fittingly large and powerful engine in it.  I liked it more with every mile.  “I never did like cities before.  Now that we’ve had to fight in several of them, I like ‘em even less.”

“You and me both, brother,” I said.  I leaned forward to watch the rearview mirror, waiting for the Iraqis to come after us.  They held their position, though.  Whether they had orders to stay put, were too damn lazy to move, or the commander realized that he wasn’t going to be able to catch us, I didn’t know.  I was not under any illusions that they weren’t going to report being scouted.

We were back at the column in minutes.  Rizgar had the tanks at front and rear, with the other armored vehicles around on the flanks.  Ventner and Mike were waiting at the lead Suburban.  As soon as Nick pulled us up alongside, I pushed the door open and got out.

The last forty-eight hours were starting to catch up with me.  My eyes were burning, my joints were protesting every movement, and I ached all the way to my bones.  The wound in my thigh was a constant, burning throb, even when I wasn’t moving.  The caffeine pills I’d popped as soon as we stopped were keeping me awake and reasonably alert, but I still felt like I could sleep for a week.  Unfortunately, we didn’t have a week.  When we got to Erbil, I could sleep.  And I would.  I’d pass out for a day straight…

“It’s got to be side roads,” I told Ventner without preamble.  “I know it’s going to be slow, but it’s the only chance we’ve got to avoid the blockade.  Saleh’s people have all the major paved roads locked down.  There’s still a chance they’ll try to intercept us, but I think they’re going to focus more on Kirkuk than on us.  At most, they might try to send some faster vics after us, but we should be able to handle them, especially if Alek’s got the helos overhead.”

Ventner turned to Dave, who had walked up as I was speaking.  “Do Saleh’s forces have any air assets to speak of up here?”

He shook his head.  “The vast majority of the Iraqi
rotary wing assets belong to ISOF these days, and most of them headed down to try to deal with the ISIS offensive in Baghdad.  If they do have any helos under their control up here by Kirkuk, they haven’t used them lately.  We haven’t seen any Su-25s or F-16s, either.”

“There are enough heavy guns between us and the Kurds to give any unfriendly helos pause,” I said hopefully.  “At any rate, the quicker we get moving, the less time they’re going to have to mobilize any air assets they might have to come after us.  I’m not comfortable hanging out here much longer.”