If it turned out to be an attack, his force might then play a more active role.
He was hopeful that it would be the latter.
Chapter Two
From his seat in the AH-1Z Viper's front cockpit, the gun ship's weapons systems officer or WSO (Whizzo) gazed down upon a landscape of utter devastation.
The gunner had fired off virtually every last round of ordnance the helo had carried into combat — minus a small reserve of armor-busting Hellfire missiles, unguided Zuni rockets and a few thousand rounds of twenty mike-mike depleted uranium (DU) cannon rounds for the return trip back across the fence into the land of the Sheiks and the home of the rich.
Hovering several hundred yards slant-range of the target, the gun ship was now lighter by nearly a ton as it hung above the burning witch's cauldron, swaying in the air as the snake driver — seated in the second cockpit above and behind the gunner's capsule — used cyclic and collective pitch controls to compensate for the powerful thermal updrafts generated by the conflagration.
The helicrew's OPPLAN called for transiting from the attack site once it had visual confirmation that the target had been neutralized and cover the withdrawal of the special forces unit in theater. The snake driver was about to beeline for the RV point when his WSO warned him of trouble.
"Moose, hold off on the transit," Marine Airman 1st Class Johnny Costanza advised over cockpit interphone, "I've just received an Urgent Arrow priority alert."
The snake driver eased back on the cyclical pitch control stick, causing the pitch of the AH-1Z's dishing main rotor to change from the thirty-degree cant for forward locomotion to a flat, horizontal rotation for stationary flight. At the same time he eased back on the collective to slow the revolutions of the tail boom rotor. The helo stabilized into a low hover some twenty feet above the desert crust.
Urgent Arrow was the code phrase for battlespace intelligence derived from the Global Hawk long endurance UAV that had been tasked to overfly the op zone and transmit near-real-time and real-time tactical intelligence to the National Military Command Center at the Pentagon, from which the operation was remotely coordinated.
Because Global Hawk needed satellite relays to transmit the data to receiving stations on the Washington Beltway, there was a time-lag of several seconds in the Pentagon's link to the UAV. Viper's line-of-sight links were instantaneous, however. The WSO's console-mounted thermal scope dedicated to UAV downlink showed what the large, plane-like unmanned aerial vehicle's long-range cameras were seeing from about twenty thousand feet above the battlespace.
What appeared to be a mechanized Pasdaran scout patrol was moving across the desert toward friendly troops. The Whizzo hit the keypad on the instrumentation panel facing him a few times to increase magnification, and nodded his head. There it was in all its glory. No question now. Enemy.
But he did one more thing too, and that was key IFF per international rules of engagement. Since the Gulf War's high friendly casualty rate, US rules of engagement called for IFF interrogation, even with a visual confirm, unless first fired upon. As he'd known it would, IFF returned a negative confirm. The WSO keyed his mike again.
"Urgent Arrow shows two Bimps and a command vehicle approaching on Vector Bravo X-Ray Charlie Seven. I estimate we'll have 'em on thermal in thirty seconds."
"Good copy," the snake driver said back. "Let's frag them muthafuckin' goat dick suckers."
"That's affirm. I'm up for it."
The snake driver pulled back on the cyclical, again canting the helo's dishing rotors into an angle some forty-five degrees from the horizontal and increased the revs to the aluminum-honeycomb and stainless steel tail boom rotor. The AH-1Z shot forward, nose slightly down, tail slightly up, in hunter-killer mode as it closed with the enemy formation.
Within a matter of minutes the Viper's gunner had the unfriendly patrol sighted on forward-looking infrared. The FLIR scope presented a slant-range view of the two BMPs and an armored scout car. The helo closed fast at thirty knots but suddenly the false color FLIR images began to break up. The two armored personnel carriers each turned and rolled away from the contact's position on the desert, heading for the cover of nearby berms.
The Iranian patrol had spotted the gun ship and was taking evasive maneuvers.
The WSO already had one of the fleeing BTRs framed in his target acquisition reticle. He hit the joystick pickle button and the helo's onboard fire control system calculated a solution for a Hellfire strike. A heartbeat later, the helo bucked as one of the last remaining anti-armor missiles cooked off the AH-1Z's left stub wing dispenser and screamed down at the target Bimp on a contrail of white smoke.
"Go, bitch, go!" shouted the WSO as the round streaked on its slanting trajectory. "Notch my gun, you sucker!"
"Impact! Impact! Good kill! Good kill!"
The night exploded as the warhead slammed into the upper glacis of the target armored vehicle, blowing a gaping, petaled hole in the steel-plate armor of the vehicle and killing most of the men inside. Those still alive spilled from the ruptured hull as the vehicle heeled over and began to snap, crackle and pop on the desert floor, sending up voluminous clouds of dense black smoke. The AH-1Z's crew saw a few figures tumble from the wreckage just before the ammo and fuel stores began cooking off, creating a spate of secondary explosions.
Before the Viper turned to go after the surviving vehicles, the gunner turned his head to swing around the slaved M197 tri-barreled autocannon beneath the first cockpit. He hit the pickle and cooked off a sixteen-round burst — the maximum per salvo — of depleted twenty mike-mike uranium bullets at the survivors, seeing most of them blown apart in sprays of blood, one of them cut literally in half by a fusillade across the midsection. The WSO was about to finish off the stragglers when an explosion rocked the chopper.
"Hoo-ah," shouted the pilot. "That's some close shit." A rocket had just gone streaking by.
And close it had been. The surviving Bimp had turned and struck back at the helo while it was busy trashing the other armored vehicle. In retaliation the BTR crew had launched a Sagger antiaircraft missile at the AH-1Z. The Sagger had missed the chopper but exploded close enough to the target to box its ears.
The helo had been rocked hard by the midair detonation. Shrapnel spewed from the warhead casing's fragmentation sleeve had torn holes in the gun ship's main rotor and right engine nacelle, damaging sensitive propulsion systems.
Now, close behind the first, another Sagger missile streaked upward. The snake driver took immediate evasive action, jinking hard left and pulling for altitude. The incoming missile's vapor trail hissed past the cockpit canopies as the enemy warhead whooshed up into the night sky. In a moment the desert was lit up by the pulses of strobing explosions high above the sand.
Another near-miss.
Heavy tracer fire was now spurting up at the helo too, as both the scout car and the surviving Bimp opened up with their NSV 12.7 millimeter heavy machineguns, replacements for the lighter DShKs on earlier versions. The Bimp's crew was all over the desert now, taking up positions in swales and declivities on the uneven desert floor — anywhere they could find cover. Small arms and light machinegun fire soon merged with streams of bullets from the heavy MGs directed at the AH-1Z.
The helo swiveled on an invisible axis in the sky as the WSO acquired the most dangerous of the two remaining vehicles, the second BTR-70 armored carrier, for a follow-up Hellfire strike. Pin flares were now being sent up from the desert floor, their hellishly flickering white phosphorous light illuminating the battlespace.