The nomads started to move. A camel clambered to its feet and trundled off — and right behind where the camel had lain, the gunship commander clearly saw a man raise something to his shoulder. Seconds later a flash of light obscured the scene — but he knew what it was. “Missile attack!” he shouted. “We’re under—”
The SA-14 antiaircraft missile hit the engine compartment of the hovering lead gunship, tearing the engines to pieces in a millisecond and sending the big helicopter spinning out of control sideways across the desert. In rapid succession a dozen more shoulder-fired antiaircraft missiles shot out across the night sky, and almost all of them found their targets. In seconds all the Russian helicopters were on the ground. Only two of the half dozen Mi-6 transports and one Mi-24 gunship landed upright, and three of the fully loaded Mi-6s were on fire. A few troops ran out of the other downed helicopters, some carrying wounded.
“Open fire, fire at will,” Jalaluddin Turabi ordered on his command radio. The six antiaircraft squads deployed around the area threw aside their SA-14 launchers and uncovered their thirty-seven-millimeter machine guns from their hiding places in the sand, mounted them, and began firing at the survivors. A few Russian commandos returned fire, but in a matter of minutes the battle was over.
Turabi and his security forces carefully approached the hulks of the downed helicopters. The echoes of gunshots and the crackle and groaning of burning metal and burning Russian soldiers disturbed the desert stillness. Their grim job took nearly an hour — examining and, if necessary, dispatching almost three hundred Russian commandos strewn across the desert floor. “Three officers and twenty-one enlisted recovered alive, four armored personnel carriers still operational,” reported one of Turabi’s senior platoon chiefs. “One helicopter gunship may be flyable. Want to try to fly it out of here, sir?”
“Burn it,” Turabi said. “Get the prisoners to Mary, and get replacement missiles and ammo sent out here on the double. This might be only the first wave of Russian troops moving into this area — we need to be ready in case the second assault is inbound.” Turabi had fought the Russians before, as a youngster recruited into the Afghan resistance in the 1980s, and he knew that they rarely moved in small numbers. When they moved into an area, they usually did it with large, overwhelming force, giving themselves at least a ten-to-one numerical advantage.
“Yes, sir,” the platoon chief said. “Outstanding job, sir. It was a perfectly executed ambush. Brilliant idea using the camels to disguise our positions. The Russians must’ve actually thought we were a bunch of desert rats. They flew right up to us as if they didn’t even know we were here.”
Turabi surveyed the area. The massive burned hulks of the Mi-6 helicopters looked like the carcasses of some sort of prehistoric dinosaurs littering the desert. The smell of burning flesh and jet fuel was almost overpowering, but Turabi had seen too much death on this campaign to be sickened by it now. He scowled at his senior chief. “Two months ago, Anwar, we were nothing but a bunch of desert rats,” Turabi said. “But at least we had a purpose and a mission. What are we now? Nothing but a bunch of invaders and murderers.”
“We are soldiers.”
“Soldiers fight to defend their homes and repel aggressors,” Turabi said. “We do neither. We attack and pillage and kill, for no apparent reason. That makes us marauders, not heroes.”
“Tomorrow we might be as dead and crispy as those Russians,” the chief said. “Tonight we are victorious. That is good enough for me right now.” He bowed his head briefly in respect and left to carry out Turabi’s orders, obviously uncomfortable with the direction this discussion was taking.
Jalaluddin Turabi had to remind himself—again—to be careful about verbalizing his doubts and inner conflicts with his men. It was a very successful operation, well planned and executed. Their losses had been minimal; the Russians’ overconfidence cost them dearly. It was necessary for the men to know he was proud of their courage and discipline. Instead he had moaned to the senior chief about how all of this was a waste. How were the men supposed to react after hearing something like that?
This war was far from over, Turabi reminded himself, and he was farther than ever from home. He had to rely on these men, and they had to rely on him, if they had any chance whatsoever of making it home again.
“Oh… my… God,” faltered General Anatoliy Gryzlov, chief of staff of the Russian military forces. He immediately slammed the phone down, jumped from his seat, and dashed to his private elevator, which took him down to the underground Central Military Command Center at Frunze Embankment. “What in hell happened out there in Turkmenistan?” he thundered as soon as he entered the chamber.
“An ambush. They were waiting for us, sir,” the senior controller replied. “We’re repositioning satellites to get a better look at the northeast quadrant of Mary, but we feel it was a freak occurrence — our forces were just in the wrong place at the wrong time. The opposing force could not have been more than company size, well hidden, and armed with shoulder-fired antiaircraft missiles.”
“Ni pizdf!” Gryzlov swore, banging a fist on the desk. He thought for a moment, but he had already made up his mind long before he reached the command center. “Get the entire staff in here immediately. I was briefed on an air-invasion plan as a contingency operation — I want that plan set in motion immediately. I want all the airspace around Turkmenistan closed off and ten tactical-attack air regiments on the ground in Mary and Ashkhabad within forty-eight hours.” He picked up the direct line to the president’s office in the Kremlin. “I want to speak with him immediately—I don’t care who he’s meeting with.”
“What in hell is so important, General?” Sen’kov said a few minutes later when he came on the line. “I’m in a very important meeting with—”
“Mr. President, I lost three hundred soldiers last night in Turkmenistan.”
“Sraka,” Sen’kov muttered. The line was silent for a moment, and then Gryzlov could hear Sen’kov ordering the room cleared. “All right, damn it, get over here as fast as you can.”
“I will tell you what happened and what I will do about it now, Mr. President. I’m not going to waste more time taking crap from you!”
“Watch your tongue, General!”
“Yimu adin huy kto ty yest!” Gryzlov said. “I don’t care who the hell you are now, sir. All I care about is teaching those Taliban bastards the dangers of raising a weapon at a Russian soldier!”
“Relax, General. Get over here and—”
“Sir, I’m sending in an air strike against the known Taliban positions in Mary,” Gryzlov interrupted. “First I’m going to order a complete air blockade of Turkmenistan. No one enters or leaves the country without my express permission.”
“The American secretary of state’s delegation is due to arrive in twenty-four hours.”
“The Turkmen foreign ministry should warn that delegation not to attempt to enter the country, especially around Mary,” Gryzlov said. “I will not allow even one beat-up old crop duster to interfere with my operation. It will be in the Americans’ best interest to stay well away from Turkmenistan. President Thorn is famous for staying away from trouble — make him understand that it would be wise to stay out of this conflict.”