Sword Point (40 page)

Hernandez shook his head from side to side. “I don’t like going into those villages, Sarge. The last time we did that it took two days to shake those rag heads We’re asking for trouble screwing with ‘em, if you ask me.”

Duncan turned serious. “I didn’t ask you. And in case you haven’t caught on, every time we hit a Russian convoy, we get visits from a pair of attack helicopters for the next twenty-four hours. Either way you split it, we’re up shit’s creek. We go for what we can deal with and run like hell. One way or the other I’m going to get this platoon back.” The two men looked at each other for a few moments before Duncan continued. “You know the drill.

Lineup and inspection in ten minutes. Get on it, Sergeant.”

Hernandez left without saying a word. What could he say? Duncan was right.

Duncan was always right.

As Duncan finished his bread, he dug a plastic bag from one of his pockets with his free hand. He took off the elastic band wrapped around it and pulled out a small dog-eared green army note pad and a pencil. Setting the pad on his leg, he began to write. Since their escape into the desert, he had been keeping a log of the platoon’s activities. Each evening Duncan recorded the situation, his plans for the night and his observations on the morale and conduct of the men under his command. Every morning he would summarize the activities of the platoon and describe the land they had traversed, what they had seen and the status of men, weapons, ammunition and food. His comments were terse, often incomplete and at times nothing more than random thoughts scribbled by a hand being driven by a tired and frustrated mind.

What the log did provide was a history of the platoon and its wanderings.

Duncan held few illusions about their ultimate fate. They had started with eighteen men on 28 June. On this day there were only thirteen men left with him. Two were dead-one killed outright in an ambush by Iranians and the second during a strafing run by a Soviet attack helicopter. Two men had been severely wounded. Though Duncan had tried to bring them along, the effort slowed the platoon and exposed the wounded men to death from infection and lack of medical care. Both had been left near the road in the hope that they would be found by the Russians and treated humanely as prisoners of war. The fifth man Duncan had lost was missing, unaccounted for. One morning the platoon had settled into hiding with all men present, but that evening Hernandez woke Duncan to report that Private Slatter was missing.

Sometime during the day Slatter had up and wandered off on his own. The platoon stayed in place that night in the hope that he would return.

He didn’t. Nor did he return the next day. With great reluctance, Duncan left the area where they had lost Slatter, never knowing what had happened or why.

This disturbed Duncan-not knowing. This concern for knowing and giving others the chance to know was what motivated him to record what they did.

If fate dealt them a bad hand and the platoon was wiped out, the story of their wanderings would be preserved. Duncan hoped that someone would find the log and see it for what it was. Perhaps the Russians would even turn the green notebook over to someone in the International Red Cross. For all the propaganda, Duncan knew that the Russians were, in reality, people. The Iranians, on the other hand, were fanatics.

Religious fanatics, yes. But a fanatic is still a fanatic and as such is totally insensible to anything or anyone not conforming to his narrow way of thinking. If the green book fell into the hands of the Iranians and was destroyed, it would mean that the platoon lost more than their lives-they would lose their souls. This Duncan feared more than death.

Watching his men, Duncan gathered his thoughts before he started to write.

When he was ready, he jotted down the night’s entry.

13 July. Nothing to report. Day was quiet. No Soviet patrols or Iranians spotted. Last of the food gone. Tonight we move down to the road and hit the

Russians. Need to pick up more Russian weapons and ammo. Only three men have

M-16s left and each of them are down to 60 rounds of 5.56. Targets have to be soft tonight, only have one
LAW
and 2
RPG
rounds. If we do not find a good target by midnight, we will go into town and take whatever we need from the locals. Don’t want to do this. The bastards chased us the last time we hit them and damned near caught us. Only going to do so if needed.

Duncan

Hernandez waited until Duncan had finished writing before announcing that the platoon was ready for inspection. Of all the men in the platoon, only

Hernandez and Sergeant Younger knew of the green book and its purpose.

Both

NCOs were under orders from Duncan to recover the book and keep the record going as long as they could if he went down.

Each night before the last ray of light faded and they moved out, Duncan inspected his platoon, checking the men, their weapons and the pitiful remains of their equipment. In spite of the desperateness of their plight, the grim reality of their chances of survival and their deterioration due to fatigue and approaching malnutrition, Duncan demanded discipline. His nightly inspections 288 were a method of reminding the men that they were soldiers. As he stepped in front of each man, Duncan looked him in the eye, searching for his deepest thoughts, gauging his will and ability to go on. He looked for doubts and fear. Usually he spoke to each one softly as he snapped the man’s weapon from his hands and inspected it for cleanliness and proper function. After handing the weapon back, he gave the man a once-over, adjusting gear and equipment, judging each man’s load as he did so to ensure that everyone carried a fair share. Though some of the men griped to Hernandez about the daily inspection, they stood and were inspected. They were, after all, soldiers, regardless of their plight and situation. Duncan used every opportunity to remind them of that fact.

As the last hint of daylight left the sky, Hernandez and another man took point duty and moved out. Duncan waited a few moments, then led the rest of the men out. Younger took up the rear. As always, they moved south, five meters between men, weapons at the ready. In an hour Hernandez would angle over to the southeast toward the road in search of an ambush site. With a little luck, the platoon would find an easy mark, be able to hit it and be alive in the morning to enjoy a full meal of Russian rations. Regardless of luck, they would be a little closer to friendly lines, wherever they were, in the morning. The pursuit of survival, like their trek, dragged on.

On the Southern Edge of the Dasht-a Lut 1945 Hours, 13 July (1615

Hours, 13 July,
GMT
)

The lead
BRDM
recon vehicle and the
BMP
moved off into the distance.

Kurpov watched them with detached interest. His three-vehicle platoon was in pursuit of an other phantom. An image on a photo had no doubt caught someone’s attention and he had decided it was a danger. An intelligence estimate had been sent down to Front Headquarters, where it was decided that action was needed. From there, orders had been passed to Army, Army had issued their own orders, and Division had done

the same. Kurpov leaned down and told his driver to move out, the final order in the long chain.

Kurpov’s mission was to locate an enemy armored column that had been reported moving north. Despite the dearth of fuel, a reinforced battalion was being dispatched to deal with the threat. The commander of the 89th

Motorized Rifle Division did not want to let the enemy get deep into his rear areas, as had happened to the 28th Combined Arms Army. Had aircraft been available, the threat would have been dealt with from the sky.

Everything that could fly, however, had been diverted to the west to keep a bad situation from getting worse. The 89th
MRD
, long since relegated to last priority in everything, had even less.

Kurpov followed the progress of his lead element and checked off their location on his map as they moved south. He had not been surprised by the order to move out. For over three weeks they had done nothing but spar with the American Marines across a front stretching from the Pakistan border to the Dasht-a Lut. The battles had been small, violent affairs fought by units numbering fewer than five hundred in most cases. Both they and the

Americans in the eastern sector were spread thin, responsible for far more ground than could be properly patrolled, let alone defended. The result was a strange frontier war in which the opponents made sudden thrusts to seize key terrain features or destroy isolated outposts. The thrusts were normally met with a counterattack from either air or ground forces. The fighting never lasted for more than a day and resulted in few changes other than in the number of soldiers left on each side. It did not take Kurpov long to figure out that the 89th
MRD

and the American Marines were engaged in a sideshow, a battle that wouldn’t influence the final outcome of the war. This, however, didn’t change the fact that men fought just as hard and the losers were just as dead.

As his platoon moved into the area known to both sides as no-man’s-land,

Kurpov began to grow more apprehensive. There had been no friendly air recon by either helicopters or the Air Force. The last report of the Americans was over twelve hours old. The American Marines had picked up the habit of faking a thrust in order to make the 89th

MRD
react. Sitting well to the rear, airborne intelligence-gathering platforms watched and tracked the movement of the Soviet force reacting to the Marine fake. When enough information had been gathered to make a good estimate of where the Soviet force would be at a given time, attack helicopters were dispatched to ambush sites along the route.

More than once the counterattack force rolled into such an ambush.

The Americans, however, didn’t always have it their way. One Soviet regimental commander, anticipating such a trick, had sent every antiaircraft weapon in the regiment with the counterattack force. In that instance, it was the Americans who had been surprised and had come off the worse.

In the gathering darkness Kurpov ordered his vehicles to close up. To the west he could not see the other recon platoon. Nor could he see the lead elements of the rifle battalion that was following them at a distance of fifteen kilometers. It had been reasoned that that distance was necessary in order to give the rifle battalion time to deploy against an enemy found by the recon patrols. Kurpov scanned the area to his front in frustration.

His three little vehicles were totally inadequate for their task. They were moving far too fast to properly check out the entire area. They could drive past whole companies of American Marines hidden in the wadis. It is hard to find someone who does not want to be found, especially when you are not given the time to search. Kurpov likened his predicament to that of a bear crashing through a thicket. If there was an elephant hiding in there, they might find it. But they would never see a snake until it was too late.

Private First Class Chester Hewett,
USMC
.” was glad to see the sun disappear over the western horizon. A native of Vermont, Hewett had never been in a desert before 6 June. The oppressive heat, the barren terrain, the extreme dryness were foreign to a man raised among pine trees and snow-covered mountains. Parris Island and Camp Lejeune in the Carolinas had been a shock to him. There the men had likened riding about in the monstrous LTVP-7 amphibious assault vehicles to living in an oven. Since their arrival in Iran, they had upgraded the status of the LT VPs to microwave oven. Fortunately their CO had them moving only at night. During the day the battalion hunkered down, with a third of the men on alert and the rest asleep.

In a short speech before moving out on their current mission, the Old Man had told them that they were going out hunting for bear, a term the battalion commander liked to use when they made raids deep into no-man’sland for the express purpose of picking a fight with the Russians. This raid was an all-armored affair. LAV-25 light armored recon vehicles thrown out in the lead had the mission of finding and tracking the Soviets. Once they had done so, the main body, consisting of a battalion of Marine infantry mounted in LT VPs and accompanied by an
M-IAI
tank company, would close with the Russians and strike.

Hewett’s platoon was the rear guard.

Their mission was to keep an eye on the back door, just in case it was the

Russians who got the upper hand.

With the booming voice that many had likened to that of a beached whale,

Hewett’s platoon sergeant called in the men on outpost duty. There was no need for whispers here. If there had been Russians around, they would have announced their presence a long time before. Rising from his shallow pit,

Hewett picked up his Dragon missile launcher. It was still warm from the sun. A cool breeze hit Hewett as he stood and stretched. It felt good until he remembered that the temperature that night would never get as low as the highest temperature he had ever experienced back home in Vermont. He had joined the Marines to see the world. Looking around at the barren wasteland, he decided that if the rest of the world looked half as bad as

Iran, Vermont was all he would ever need for the rest of his life.

In the darkness the recon elements of the two antagonists passed by each other unseen. Had they found each other, the fight would have been a reasonably even match. Instead, the recon vehicles continued to grope about in the night, each rolling forward into a head-on collision with their enemy’s main body.

A flash and the explosion of a vehicle hit in the distance signaled the first contact. Kurpov turned in the open hatch and faced west. He could see a red glow in the sky, a beacon marking the spot where an armored vehicle had died. But whose? Kurpov stretched himself until he was standing on his toes in an effort to see what was happening to the west. The crack of the radio and the frantic report by the other recon-platoon leader provided the answers he sought. Tanks! The other platoon had run into a pair of American tanks moving north. Two more flashes lit up the west. Each was followed by an explosion. The sudden termination of the other platoon leader’s radio transmission in mid-sentence told Kurpov that his friend Sasha was dead.