The AH-1Z stood no chance of inflicting damage to the buried portion of the deep underground facility, or DUF, which was sheathed in layers of stressed concrete and steel and impervious even to a low-yield nuclear strike. The DUF was too deep even for a B61-11 nuclear glide bomb to destroy with complete confidence in the results.
Yet a nuclear strike would, in fact, take the base down. But this would be an explosion from within, not without. Breaux and his team had penetrated the base interior and implanted a Mk 54E SADM or special atomic demolition munition at its core level.
The blast of the compact mini-nuke, carried in a camo-patterned H-912 transport container, weighing a little under 150 pounds, and packing a 1.5 kiloton blast yield (the "E" stood for enhanced), was calculated to shatter the foundations and implode the structure down around it, burying any residual radioactivity and hermetically sealing it beneath millions of cubic tons of rubble, wreckage and sand. Iranian patrols that had gotten in the way had been eliminated and hidden out of sight.
Long before the bodies might have been found, the base would go the way of Sodom and Gomorrah.
Breaux's reflections were shattered by a series of hi-lo tones in his earbud.
"Magic Dog, be advised that arrival of Lynch Pin is imminent. Repeat. Lynch Pin imminent."
"That's affirm," Breaux said back. "Out."
Breaux now no longer needed the remote voice to inform him of the approach of the two aircraft. His pulse quickened as he heard the sounds that harbingered their arrival.
It began as a distant rumbling just a decibel or two above the audible threshold. Then it became a steady chugging, distorted by weird harmonics. Seconds later the two aircraft appeared as false-color aperture imagery in Breaux's thermal view field, the smaller, nimbler dragonfly shape of the AH-1Z Viper gunship darting in ahead of the larger, wider V-22 tilt-rotor, now in heliplane mode.
The ghost ships skimmed incredibly low across the surface of the desert, scudding like wraiths through the moonless blackness of the cold, arid night. Above the site of the Iranian NBC installation the two ships parted company. The AH-1Z took up a position several hundred yards from the base and hovered there while the V-22 broke toward B-Command's rendezvous point and LZ.
There was no communication from either ground or airborne personnel. Although they had secure radio links, the teams would continue to follow EMCON procedures and maintain radio silence. Both groups, the Osprey and Vipers supplied by Marine aviation, had their orders, both had been briefed on the OPPLAN, and both knew the parts they were expected to play.
The AH-1Z continued to loiter low above the ground. Waiting. Waiting. Hanging and waiting.
Breaux held the wireless remote-detonation unit in one tactical-gloved hand while he input the nuclear gold code necessary to arm and trigger the SADM at the small keypad on the face of the unit, watching a line of asterisks appear on the small LED panel.
Authorization approved, flashed the panel, a few moments later. Proceed to detonation countdown?
Breaux nodded at Top Sgt. Death who was seated beside him in the dune buggy and Death put shooter's plugs in his ears. Breaux did the same.
Breaux pressed the return key.
Detonation countdown initiated. Mark.
Breaux watched the numerals flash across the screen as the countdown sequence went from ten to zero in as many seconds. The mini-nuke was set with a backup timer in case remote detonation failed.
At the zero mark nothing happened for another second or two as the ignition processor in the dull gray steel canister chewed on stop bit number X-789B-00-5, then accepted it as valid, and began the ignition sequence. The nuke dutifully obliged, and shaped charges imploded a core of plutonium to critical mass, causing a nuclear chain reaction enriched by a tritium booster.
Breaux heard a dull rumbling beneath the earth, then felt the first shock waves radiating outward from the blast in the desert's bowels. The DPV's chassis shook and the lights around the base perimeter were suddenly extinguished.
There was no visible blast. The force of the explosion was contained and encapsulated within concrete and earth, but the concrete blockhouses, steel antenna pylons, barracks buildings, Quonset huts and other structures on the surface trembled as if struck by a severe earthquake. As they began to implode, then disintegrate, Breaux heard the shouts and screams of terrified Iranian troops caught amid the devastation.
Their terror would be intense, though mercifully brief. At that moment, the AH-1Z Viper began firing Hellfire missiles into the epicenter of the blast zone. Now there was flame, now there were explosions, now death strode forth from hell as a reaper of souls. As the missiles struck, seeding the earth with toadstools of flame, the gun ship circled the kill zone, pouring down twenty millimeter automatic cannon fire, glowing red tracers streaking into the molten mass of burning lava to which the base had been reduced.
"Man, that was some awesome shit," Sgt. One Eyes observed.
"Top, we're out of here," Breaux told First Sgt. Death, and the DPV swept away into the night, toward the distant LZ, leaving a cloud of dust behind it.
Across the desert Force Omega personnel were breaking cover. They fell back toward the extraction LZ from hide sites and lookout posts spread out along a circular perimeter a mile in circumference.
All but one six-man team.
Team Fang remained in position on both sides of a stretch of desert blacktop. The team's orders were to remain there and cover the withdrawal of the main body of B-Comm. Team Fang would be the last SFOD-O personnel out of the op zone.
Breaux held onto the roll bar of the DPV as Sgt. Death highballed the souped-up and heavily armed road racer across the undulations and declivities of the desert surface. Death followed the track of a GPS unit that had the waypoints to the rendezvous point already programmed in.
Across the desert, other teams making up B-Comm were doing likewise. At the LZ, the V-22 had set down with its huge engine nacelles and giant paddle-blade prop-rotors tilted up in helo mode, ready for a rapid takeoff. Its rear loading ramp was lowered. Pilot and copilot scanned the horizon through NODs, the copilot standing at the base of the ramp and carrying an M-249 Minimi SAW charged and fed from a 7.62-millimeter box mag, just in case things got hairy.
Mobile detachment VI of the 12th Battalion of the Ali Khamenei Division of the Iranian Revolutionary Guards, or Pasdaran, was stationed at a lonely outpost in the desert not far from Omega's strike zone. The motorized contingent had been on a routine night patrol trawling for smugglers which had been using the route to run contraband into Turkey along the northwestern Iraqi border north of Amadiya when it heard the rapid, pulsating booms of multiple explosions.
Its commander, Captain Yahya Shah, had radioed headquarters for orders and to request support. Both were immediately given. Shah's contingent was of company strength with Shah and three other men in a scout car and the rest of the unit in two BTR-70s, each BTR containing a platoon-strength element. Several of Shah's men, including Shah himself, were equipped with Belgian copies of the Litton binocular M-912A night vision goggle, Gen-III-class gear, and the best night vision equipment the Iranians possessed.
With the arrival of another company from battalion HQ imminent, Shah judged his own small force sufficient to reconnoiter the source of the blast and issued orders to roll toward it.
If nothing else, his troops could establish an observation post near the epicenter of the blast. If it had been a military strike, they could then spot for artillery and aircrew, even other follow-on mechanized forces.