The Alexandria Connection (16 page)

‘Anything else?’ Ahlstrom rasped.

‘Yes. Before you take up your official duties, we will organise psychotherapy sessions to address your gambling and drug dependence. Your sexual peccadillos are entirely your affair, provided they are discreet. Wives of other scientists and staff are off-limits,’ Rachel said matter-of-factly, proffering Ahlstrom a pen.

‘Let me congratulate you on your award, Professor Ahlstrom. I will be in the audience to see you receive it. And welcome to EVRAN.’

O
’Connor clawed his way over the broken granite and paused at the top of the ridge, breathing hard. He stayed behind cover, and focused his binoculars on the village of Laniyal below them. The stone houses were built on such steep slopes that the Afghans could step on to the roofs of those that were below the dirt track. O’Connor signalled for CPO Kennedy to join him and for the rest of the patrol to stay down and hidden.

CPO Kennedy crawled forward on his hands and knees. ‘What’ve we got?’

‘Not sure yet, but that little bastard will have alerted them that we’re on the way. Wait . . . look, in among the trees in the orchard,’ O’Connor warned.

‘Got it . . . RPG . . . and there – in from the other side of the track . . . another RPG.’

O’Connor turned to Kennedy and grinned. ‘Remember the Zulus?’

‘Right on. The buffalo horns.’ The Zulu tribe in southern Africa were perhaps the first to perfect it – an ambush in the shape of the horns of the buffalo. The ‘horns’ would not be the ones to open fire; instead they would allow the enemy to pass through. When the adversary collided with the head, the horns would close the trap and a quarry would be encircled.

‘Well, we’re not playing that game.’ O’Connor turned and signalled for the combat air control team to come forward.

‘This is going to get a bit sticky,’ O’Connor said, after he’d pointed out the ambush to Ventura and Rayburn. ‘What’ve we got in the air?’

‘We’ve got a drone out of Creech above us, but if that’s just the welcoming committee down there, we’re gonna need a bit more than that,’ Ventura replied, reaching for his radio.

Rayburn set up the SOFLAM laser tripod behind a gnarled cedar tree, took the cover off the lens and focused through the eyepiece. He held the tiny red dot, first on the RPG team in the orchard, and then on the team below the road.

Beside him, Ventura’s radio crackled in response to his request for more assistance. ‘This is Burglar One Three. We’re inbound,’ the co-pilot of the huge four-engined C-130 gunship radioed. ‘Time over your location, ten minutes. What’ve you got down there, over?’

‘This is Tailpipe Two Two,’ Ventura replied. ‘We’re not sure yet, but we have two RPG teams on the approaches to Laniyal, grid 359753 and intel indicates a possible larger force. Our location 300 metres to the north-east on top of the ridgeline . . . not cleared to fire, repeat not cleared to fire without permission, over.’

‘Burglar One Three, copied . . . not cleared to fire without permission.’

O’Connor pondered his next move. Clearly they were expected, and even more clearly, they were not welcome, and if the intel was anything to go by, they were well and truly outnumbered; but already, he could hear the familiar sounds of the four Rolls Royce turboprops of the C-130. High above, the Ghostrider was beginning to circle, and the crew were standing by, the images of the village on their screens. His mind made up, he turned to Ventura. ‘Take out the RPGs, and we’ll see how they react.’

‘Bombs, missiles or cannon?’

O’Connor smiled grimly, observing the rocket grenade teams through his binoculars. ‘Cannon should do it,’ he said. ‘We may need the heavy stuff for later.’

‘Tailpipe Two Two, this is Burglar One Three, we’ve got you visual on the ridgeline.’ Ghostrider’s weapons fire controller was coming through loud and clear. ‘Two targets locked on – 300 metres to your south-west, over.’ The Taliban’s body heat showed clearly on the sensor screens, and the laser point ensured that regardless of which weapon suite was used, the targets could be engaged.

‘Burglar One Three, roger . . . you’re cleared to engage. Request cannon, over.’

Rayburn continued to paint the team in the orchard with the tiny red dot of death, and the orchard erupted as the massive thirty-millimetre rounds ripped into trees and body parts. Seconds later, firing at 200 rounds a minute, a burst from the cannon on the world’s deadliest aircraft dispatched the second RPG team.

‘Movement,’ CPO Kennedy hissed, indicating the trees further down the ridge. ‘Fifteen, twenty . . . holy shit . . . that’s just the first wave. There’s gotta be another hundred of these camel jockeys behind ’em.’

‘I see ’em,’ O’Connor replied.

The Taliban and al Qaeda commanders might have been young, but Jamal and Yousef were already experienced veterans, fighting for a cause that they believed in just as passionately as the West believed in freedom. Once the RPG teams had been hit, Jamal knew that the Infidel had tumbled to his plan. Apart from an intimate knowledge of the mountains, the only advantage he had was an overwhelming superiority in numbers, and it was time to exercise that.

Jamal turned to Yousef. ‘We’ll attack them up the ridgeline . . . once we’ve got them engaged, hit them from the flank.’

‘The Infidel’s dead meat,’ Yousef snarled.

O’Connor knew well what he was up against. The enemy were as brave as any on the world’s battlefields, and he wasn’t about to take them for granted. ‘Spread the guys across the ridge,’ he ordered the chief, ‘but tell them not to fire until I give the word. Ventura, Rayburn . . . you stay here and stay down. This is going to be a busy morning.’

‘Affirmative,’ Ventura acknowledged, ‘Burglar’s got ’em on their screens. They’re suggesting bombs before they get too close.’

‘Hit ’em, but danger close,’ O’Connor agreed. ‘Bombs on the way, Chief . . . pass it on.’ The 250-pound guided bombs came in at just under US $100 000 each, but cost was the last thing on O’Connor’s mind. The shock waves and noise would be horrendous, and he had to let the SEAL team know what was about to arrive on their patch of dirt.

The pilot lined up the huge aircraft for the run, while the rest of the superbly trained crew supported those in trouble on the ground below them, doing what each did best: fire control officer, electronic warfare officer, flight engineer, loadmaster, low-light TV operator, infrared detection set operator and the five aerial gunners who did the heavy lifting. The IDS operator held the cross hairs on the white figures thousands of feet below, and the first of the sleek cylinders of whispering death descended toward the ridge.

The earth shook and red-hot shards of metal screamed through the air, shredding the foliage from the trees and ripping into the insurgents. Some of the shrapnel reached dangerously close to O’Connor and his men, and the blast echoed around the mountains. The screams of the wounded rent the mists. O’Connor ducked as a burst of machine-gun fire, and then another, kicked up dust, dirt and shards of granite around their position.

‘That’s coming from across the river!’ Kennedy yelled.

‘Fuck,’ O’Connor muttered, as a bullet took a chunk out of his arm.

‘Where are they? I don’t see them,’ Ventura yelled, moving to the other side of his tree.

‘Across the river . . . clearing . . . halfway up the mountain.’

‘I’ve got them!’ O’Connor yelled, spotting the muzzle flashes as another 250-pound bomb exploded closer to his position. The air was now thick with bullets as the Taliban down the ridge pushed up toward them. ‘Ventura – can you see those guys across the river yet?’

‘No . . .’ Ventura desperately searched for the enemy position.

‘Clearing . . . right two knuckles, muzzle flashes in the orchard 50 metres down from the first of the houses on the left of the village. The bastards have put women and children on the rooftops.’

‘I’ve got them now,’ Ventura yelled as sustained bursts raked the SEALs’ position.

‘What else have we got in the air?’

‘Drone . . . but Bagram’s diverted two Vipers. They’ve only got forty minutes fuel though.’ ‘Viper’ was the pilots’ nickname for the F-16 Fighting Falcon, one of the most advanced fighters in the world.

‘Use the F-16s first then, the drone can stay all day – and warn them about the kids – danger close. And keep the gunship on those bastards down the ridge . . . they’re starting to spoil my day!’ O’Connor yelled, picking off two more Taliban as they ran toward him. The flashes from the 30-millimetre high explosive rounds increased in volume as the huge C-130 gunship circled and the computers kept the 30-millimetre chain guns aimed at the Taliban ridgeline below O’Connor and his men.

Ventura pressed the transmit button on his handset and began to talk the fighters in. ‘Bandit One Nine, this is Tailpipe Two Two . . . we’re taking heavy machine-gun fire from the ridge across the river from our position. Enemy at grid 355752 below the houses . . . danger close . . . women and children on the rooftops, traffic is an AC-130, Burglar One Three at 8000 feet and a drone, Night Thruster Two, at flight level two four zero, over.’

‘This is Night Thruster Two,’ Captain Rogers broke in, ‘am now at flight level two zero, and holding five miles to the north,’ he warned. Far away in Nevada, Rogers was once again wishing with every fibre of his being that he was back in the cockpit of Bandit One Nine’s F-16 fighter.

‘Bandit One Nine, copied that, wait out.’ Major Michael Brickley was on his third tour of the Middle East. He was one of the United States Air Force’s most experienced fighter pilots, and he knew well the problems of identifying targets on the ground.

‘Tailpipe, this is Bandit, I have you on the ridge to the
east
of the river . . . the target is among the trees next to the clearing below the village on the
west
side of the river, right?’

‘Affirmative, Bandit, we’re above the east bank of the river.’

‘Do I have clearance?’

‘Affirmative, over.’

‘Roger . . . beginning my run.’

‘Bandit Two Nine, copied out.’ Brickley’s wingman was holding five miles to the east, waiting his turn at the target. At 350 knots, Brickley rolled into the attack, and the sensors inside the LITENING targeting pod below the fuselage acquired the flashes of the machine guns 200 metres below the rooftops where the women were trying to shield their terrified children from the deafening noise. He held the consent button down, allowing the onboard computers, fed by the aircraft’s sensors, to take account of the aircraft’s speed, now around 600 feet per second, the wind direction and velocity, and the aircraft’s altitude and height above the target. The bomb left the starboard pod and whispered toward the al Qaeda force on the ground; Brickley began his pull out of the dive.

‘Bandit One Nine . . . Bandit Two Nine, missile on your tail!’

They were the last words Major Brickley heard. His wingman had picked up the smoke trail of a Scorpion missile launched from Laniyal, but this latest generation of surface-to-air missiles could defeat anything in the air.

O’Connor watched the F-16 explode in a fiery ball, debris raining down on the valley. Above the crackle and thump of bullets and machine gun fire, O’Connor thought he heard a cheer from down the ridge. Across the river, the guided bomb found its mark, exploding with a deafening blast of fire and smoke in a direct hit on the al Qaeda fighters in the tree line. Further up the ridgeline, the children were screaming in terror, two of them badly wounded from the shrapnel. The ridge erupted again as another 250-pound bomb found its mark, and the roar of the second F-16 echoed down the valley as the wingman pulled out of a screaming dive, fighting against a maelstrom of anger, shock and fear. It was every wingman’s nightmare to see his leader die in a ball of fire, but an ice-cool calm had to override everything else. A fighter pilot couldn’t afford his judgement to be clouded by emotion.

Another machine gun opened up below O’Connor’s position. ‘This one’s in a bunker!’ Kennedy yelled.

‘And there are bunkers across the river as well!’ Ventura shouted to be heard above the noise as he picked up yet another machine gun still firing from the opposite village.

O’Connor hugged the ground as chunks of wood flew off the battle-scarred tree he was sheltering behind.

‘Medic! Rayburn’s been hit!’ Kennedy yelled, and he took over the SOFLAM laser tripod.

‘Bastards,’ O’Connor muttered. No wonder the firing was still sustained; it was coming from bunkers in both locations. Time to call in bigger guns. ‘Turn up the heat on these assholes, Ventura!’ O’Connor ordered, picking off a Taliban fighter less than a hundred metres in front of his position.

‘Burglar One Three, this is Tailpipe Two Two, request missile strike on our ridge, enemy one hundred metres to the south, bunker system, danger close, over.’

‘Burglar One Three, you got it . . . we see them, wait out.’

‘Night Thruster Two, this is Tailpipe Two Two.’ Ventura spoke determinedly into his handset above the fury of the battle, calling in everything he could lay his hands on. ‘We’re still taking fire from across the river. Women and children no longer on the rooftops, but there’s a bunker system below the village. Request bomb strikes . . . do you have Burglar One Three’s flight path?’ The aerial battlefield had become almost as busy as a regular airport, and the last thing Ventura or anyone in the air wanted was a collision between a drone and a Hercules or a missile or bomb hitting the wrong target.

‘This is Night Thruster. I have Burglar One Three visual.’ Rogers and Brady, his sensor operator, had been following the battle on the screens in front of them, and although they didn’t have the same sweep of vision that a normal pilot had, the cameras and infrared systems in the drone were so sophisticated they gave a detailed view of the ground, even from 20 000 feet.

‘Burglar One Three is turning to the east,’ Brady confirmed.

Well aware that the Taliban might have more surface-to-air missiles, the Hercules gunship pilots calmly circled, the computers holding the withering fire on the laser designator. Behind them, in the rear of the aircraft crowded with armaments, the aerial gunners sweated profusely, loading and reloading the huge guns.

Back at Creech, Brady held the crosshairs on the few figures still moving in the tree line across the river from O’Connor. ‘Target locked on . . .’

‘Confirm weapon configuration,’ requested the intel analyst behind Rogers.

‘Two Paveway IIs.’ The massive 500-pound bombs, with their nose-mounted laser seekers, were capable of destroying all but the deepest reinforced bunkers. ‘Holding on target.’ The screens pixelated as the first of the bombs struck within one metre of the aiming point and the al Qaeda position fell silent.