Nick finely focused his FLIR and methodically searched the checkpoint. There was no need for him to add to the hell on the ground. The checkpoint was out of action. Two vehicles were burning and their weapon operators were dead. Pro-Gad soldiers were in disarray and no one was attempting to fire into the sky – a sure sign that they knew such an action would be fatal. Nick had no need or wish to pull the trigger just because targets remained. The area was not obliterated, it hadn’t been bombed into the Stone Age; it had simply been rendered non-operational. Better still, twenty to thirty pro-Gad were now out of work and unlikely to return.
Both aircraft watched as men ran out into the desert. These soldiers were about to spread the word – ‘the Apache came to the mountains and we had no chance’. Desertion was a genuine option for these men and it was gathering momentum across the country. The gentle nudge of eighty rounds of 30mm was all the persuasion they needed.
With panic around the fire on the ground, Nick took the patrol out over the desert to the west and set up to run in on the final target, another checkpoint. The previous attack would have been audible to the men manning it, but they could not have known what had happened. Thundering guns and explosions, all over in less than a minute, was all they knew. Helicopters, probably, but confusion would be in every mind.
The third checkpoint guarded the junction between the main road to Tripoli and the road leading east to Garyān. It was surrounded by desert, there was nothing else there and it was isolated and vulnerable. Keeping the patrol far enough away not to be heard, Nick slaved his infrared sight to the coordinates, zoomed into the maximum magnification and immediately recognized the distinctive junction, the low, thin trees and a barrier across the road. He stepped out a field of view, decreasing the magnification, and watched a heavy truck approach from the north. It drew up to the barrier and stopped. An armed man emerged from a shack beside the road and stepped up to the driver’s side. The soldier and the truck driver appeared to talk. The soldier pointed in the direction of checkpoint two and then at the mountains. Nick concluded they were trying to make sense of the confusion. After a minute the soldier opened the barrier and the truck rolled onward towards the front line.
Nick wanted a clean target, no visitors, and he took a few more seconds to search the rest of the checkpoint. It was lightly defended by sand berms driven into piles by a digger. Decent enough protection in a land battle, but no match for the Hellfire and 30mm that was about to come from the sky. Unseen and unheard, they made their final preparations for the attack. This time Nick was the shooter and Reuben was the looker.
With missiles ready, their seeker heads searching for his laser code, they banked in unison hard to the right, rolled out on an easterly heading, and Nick settled his sights on the lead technical behind a defensive berm. Still out of sound range, he breathed out slowly, paused, checked his missile had locked on to his laser, which in turn pointed directly at the technical, and spoke to Little Shippers: ‘All good, firing.’ His left index finger lifted the trigger guard and squeezed the thick, clunky trigger.
A quarter of a second later a roar and fire signalled the departure of a Hellfire missile from the right-hand side of his aircraft. The heat haze from the rocket motor obscured his infrared vision for a brief second and the 20lb warhead, boosted by a powerful solid fuel rocket motor, climbed before curving down to meet the terminal end of the laser energy on the technical. Nick kept his eye focused on the infrared image with his laser pointing at the target. In the rear seat Little Shippers allowed his left eye to watch the arc of the missile against the black night, first climbing, then apparently straightening, heading for the ground and hammering into the target. The Hellfire hit smack in the middle of the vehicle at the front of the flatbed, shredding the weapon mounted on the rear and ripping the cabin apart. A ferocious explosion was the giveaway sign of more ammunition inside going up with the missile impact. The whole truck burned intensely. Isolated checkpoint three was being destroyed.
‘Too much obscuration from the fire, breaking off. Your target,’ Nick called, and Little Shippers banked left, away from the attack, and invited Reuben to take on the shooter role.
He was already in position and ready to fire. Within 20 seconds the checkpoint building and another technical erupted in fire as thousands of white-hot Hellfire fragments smashed them beyond recognition. There was nothing left. The checkpoint had been totally dismantled in one pass lasting less than 30 seconds. Vehicles burned and the shack was reduced to splinters, a burning hole left where it once stood. At the first explosion the barrier soldier had run up one of the sand berms and he was rolling down the other side as the second technical was engaged. The berm had saved him, absorbing the Hellfire fragments and the shock wave. He rolled to the bottom of the sand bank, got up, then stumbled to the ground. Immediately he got to his knees and, once back on his feet, sprinted north. After about 20 seconds he slowed, stopped and dived headlong on to the ground, then curled up with his knees against his chest and held his head in his arms as if he was bracing and protecting himself. He was expecting to die.
Nick had no wish to kill him. This man was the bearer of the message, part of the cognitive effect, and Nick led the patrol away: ‘Done. Regroup at the western holding point. My lead, one-hundred, one-hundred.’
With enough fuel and still plenty of ammunition left, they turned for home, contemplating another daunting coastal crossing. The easy desert transit went quickly. Flat, empty nothing was soon broken up by lights, roads, buildings and the hinterland. With 30mm guns actioned, infrared over right eye and all systems slaved to the trigger, the patrol spread their formation wide and hunted for hostility among the compounds, ditches, roads and trees.
With the coast in sight both front-seaters’ eyes were drawn to a long slow stream of traffic ending at a military checkpoint just a couple of miles to their left. This was the road to Zuwara in the west and Az-Zawiyah and Tripoli to the east, a critical artery and a pro-Gad supply route. The regime had to control it, and that made them vulnerable.
With his right-hand trigger Nick sent out a pulse of laser energy that returned the bearing, distance and precise coordinates of the checkpoint. His right thumb tracked the target with the infrared, keeping it steady on the checkpoint, while with his left hand he stored the information in his target database.
Pressing the transmit switch on the floor with his left foot, he spoke to Reuben in Valkyrie Two: ‘Checkpoint left nine o’clock two miles, stand by for data.’
Two seconds later, Reuben’s onboard modem told him a new data package had arrived.
‘Seen. Good data. Ready your QBOs.’ Reuben now had the tactical picture and was ready to react.
Nick took the patrol out over the sea to relative safety while he made his plan of attack. They had passed the checkpoint close enough for the pro-Gad soldiers to hear them and start running. The recent experience of checkpoints along the same road only a few weeks before would have struck fear through their hearts. The pattern was well established: a checkpoint was set up, however surreptitiously; NATO would identify it and helicopters would be heard; seconds later, the checkpoint was destroyed. Manning a military checkpoint was both boring and dangerous work.
This checkpoint was outside Nick’s target area and he needed NATO permission to strike an opportunity target. He got on the net to Matrix and described what he could see. Within seconds the answer came: ‘You are clear to attack. Report BDA.’