Whether deliberate or unintentional, the action on the part of the Iranians had the effect not only of degrading the ability of the AH-1Z to hide in the night and strike from cover of darkness, but also affecting the helo's missile fire solution capability. The gunner's thermal sights were confused by the flares with the result that the Hellfire went dumb, slamming into the ground near the Bimp but not scoring a direct hit.
The close call left the BTR unhurt, except for shrapnel strikes on its armored skin. But the explosion did dislodge the machinegunner from his position inside the embrasure up top of the vehicle, temporarily putting the MG out of action. Turning, the AH-1Z overflew the BTR, raking the nearby scout car with DU rounds. The driver and unhorsed machinegunner were killed instantly and the vehicle set ablaze.
Now the pilot hovered the AH-1Z as the WSO acquired the Bimp with their last remaining Hellfire missile. He cooked it off, scoring a direct hit. The armored carrier burst into flames and began to burn up on the desert.
The helo swung around to finish off the Iranian personnel on the ground. The spluttering light of the pin flares had died by now and infrared targeting was once more effective.
However, as the AH-1Z hunted its prey, neither the snake driver nor the WSO saw one of the surviving Pasdaran troopers rise to his knees clutching a French-made Matra Mistral shoulder-fire missile launcher. Remaining at a half-crouch, the Iranian aimed the forty-millimeter weapon, acquired the target and quickly fired.
The bird left the pipe amid a whoosh of back-blast, and his comrades began to cheer as the warhead streaked toward the blind side of the helo. It struck a second later, blowing apart inside the second cockpit canopy and instantly ripping the snake driver limb from limb.
The WSO ejected, breaking his shoulder and collarbone as the explosive charges that ejected the survival capsule slammed him with crushing force against the instrumentation console. As the chute opened and he sailed down to earth, already losing consciousness, his last glimpse of the battlefield was the sight of the broken hulk of the Viper crashing to earth and erupting into a meteor shower of flame.
He had hardly hit the ground when the Iranian troops began running toward the downed capsule, smashing out what was left of the cockpit glass and dragging the semiconscious airman out onto the freezing sand.
Once in the mob's hands, the leader gave the signal. The bayonets attached to the enemy's AKM rifles thrust downward again and again, until their vengeance was satisfied, until all the bayonet blades were painted with the hated one's blood. Not satisfied with this, they further desecrated the corpse by cutting off its head and booting it across the sand. The Iranians had no word equivalent to "hoo-ah." But what in their language came closest, they shouted as they kicked it back and forth between themselves.
Breaux and Sgts. Death and One Eyes were taking fire as they hard-charged toward the LZ, goosing the DPV to wring every last ounce of power from its overworked V-8 engine. The trio didn't know it, but they had been spotted by scouts attached to the second Iranian scout patrol, a follow-on unit at full combat strength that had been dispatched to aid the smaller patrol that had called in a report on the helo strike.
Breaux punched up Urgent Arrow UAV data from Global Hawk on the integrated tablet PC unit fitted onto the console of the vehicle. The unit had an integrated touch screen display, JTRS and organic radio capability and was GPS-capable. Less than a minute later, the picture was clear to Breaux. The UAV showed the tactical situation in both thermal and synthetic aperture radar imagery modes.
In SAR mode, which encompassed a wider field of view than TI, Breaux was able to observe his own unit, the pursuing Revolutionary Guard and other SFOD-O units nearby making for the LZ. The bad news was that the pursuing enemy force was a sizable one, but the good news was that so far no hostile aircraft were in the vicinity.
Breaux keyed buttons on the MIL-SPEC magnesium alloy housing of the tablet's flat-panel display and called up a moving map display linked to GPS, showing waypoints to the LZ. He noted to his satisfaction that the dune buggy was only a short distance from the kill basket Breaux had established for just such a contingency.
In the course of the team's patrol of the area over the last two weeks, Breaux had noticed telltale cratering surrounding a stretch of desert track. From his combat experience in Mideastern deserts and in the rocky hill country of Afghanistan with splinter factions of the mainly Tajik Jamiat-I–Islami Mujahideen, Breaux recognized the cratering for what it was — an indication of a subterranean river that coursed beneath the desert, rising close to the surface before again plunging down into the deep layers of aquifer a few hundred yards down. The precise pathway of the part of the river close to the surface was marked by the procession of pits in a straight line that paralleled the desert roadway.
Breaux had dispatched a team to reconnoiter the largest pit, and found what he'd suspected — about thirty feet below a thin shelf of rock, there was a cavern, and at the bottom of the cavern, there flowed the river he'd known would be there.
Breaux realized he had stumbled onto the perfect place to set up a kill basket on extraction, should unfriendly forces appear. The roadway went right across the roof of the cavern, and with properly placed C-4 demolition charges, the entire roadway could be blown down into the cavern in a matter of seconds, burying an entire mechanized column amid tons of rubble.
Breaux's close attention to extraction security would now pay off. He quickly cued his comms and called Team Fang manning the detonator block a few hundred yards from the sides of the roadway.
"One Zero Foxtail to Big Bear," Breaux said. "You listening?"
"Five by five," Gunnery Sgt. Mainline answered. He was crouching behind a tripod-mounted binocular TI spotter scope. Sgt. Mainline commanded a three-man team, one member of which was already warming up their dune buggies for a fast exit. "Got the frag bait on thermal."
"As soon as we pass, hit 'em, then head for the LZ."
"Hoo-ah," Sgt. Mainline said back. "They are fragged. They are history. They are smoked. Shit — I love the Army! Every day I thank almighty God for the Army. Makes my dick hard, makes my shit hot. I love the fuckin' Army."
"Just do it, gunny," Breaux told him.
"That's a roger. Out."
Breaux hoped the gunny was as good as his bravado, for Team Fang's sake. A lot of enemy hardware was rolling toward the LZ and it was coming on fast. The extraction Osprey would be heavily loaded, even with the buggies and other field equipment left behind. The A/C would be more vulnerable to ground fire on takeoff than was normal.
Top Sgt. Death, behind the DPV'S wheel, tapped Breaux on the shoulder, pointing into the night.
"Complications, padrone," he said.
"No shit," Breaux replied, as he saw what Death meant. Complications were right.
Against the now lightening horizon, danced the telltale form of a Mil Mi-8 "Hip" helicopter. The chopper was basically a transport helo, but had limited multi-role applications — its rocket pods and, in the Mi-8MTKO variant, optimized for night reconnaissance operations, 12.7 millimeter front-mounted heavy machinegun, gave it limited offensive capability. Tonight it was plenty.
All at once the Mi-8's nose cannon opened up on the DPV. Bullets spanged off the dirt and rubble as Sgt. Death drove a zigzag path across the lunar terrain, the dune buggy's oversize tires keeping the wide-carriage vehicle stable at high speeds. Sgt. One Eyes jumped behind the TOW launcher mounted atop the tubular metal crash frame surrounding the top of the vehicle and got ready to counter-strike.