“Oh, we can do our job,” said Hawkins. His tone changed abruptly. “All right. Let me introduce you Major Gold. He’s English and he’s now in charge of the assault. Wong’s in with him.”
Hack followed past a stack of filled sandbags and a much larger pile of unfilled ones, walking down a wide ramp bulldozed out of the desert. Hawkins disappeared around a corner; Preston found himself in a small maze, working his way through a series of Z-turns in the dark. Finally he saw a pair of guards — British SAS men, who stood as motionless as the sandbags lining the walls.
Just beyond them was an open doorway, a hole in the earth filled with a faint red glow from the light within. Hack had to duck his head to enter; his neck muscles pulled taut, cramping with fatigue and cold.
“Major Preston, Major Gold,” said Hawkins. “You know Captain Wong.”
Gold and two lieutenants were standing over a map table a short distance away. Wong, arms crossed and face almost on the map, frowned at some of the sqiggle marks on the paper. Gold extended a thin, long hand to Preston, who shook it and tried to look relaxed while the rest of the staff and some NCOs were introduced. His neck muscles had gone completely spastic, and he could feel the strain in his vertebrae.
“You’ll be with my guys,” Hawkins told him. He jabbed his finger at a corner of the table where a diagram of the Iraqi base had been cut and pasted together from intelligence photos. A thick red marker had been used to outline buildings and other features of the base, which had been labeled “SPLASH” with capital letters and thick underline above the diagram.
“We come in here, right over the runway, turn across the apron, and take a run at the MiG hangar right behind two Apaches,” said Hawkins. “Depending on what we see, we come down as close to the plane as we can. My guys take the hangar, move around here, secure this end of the field. Second team is going across this way, behind the hangar, to cut off any approach from the highway. SAS teams should be keeping the Iraqis on the base busy. Burns has a separate team on the tanker. They come at us this way, fuel if we can.”
The captain switched from the diagram of the base, running his hand across a large topo map where Splash was rendered to much smaller scale.
“We’ll fuel it,” interrupted Preston.
Hawkins ignored him. “If there’s too much resistance, we land here, beyond the approach to the runway, where we’ll be covered from these guns. At that point, you and Wong wait until we secure a path to the hangar.”
“If we land there,” said Wong, “in effect our portion of the mission will have been called off. The timing is severe. We should expect the Iraqis to send troops from Catin, which would be an additional risk.”
Hawkins didn’t contradict him. Catin was a built-up area about ten miles away. Symbols on the larger map indicated that the Iraqis had a battalion of troops and possibly helicopters based there.
“We can do it,” said Preston. “Piece of cake.”
“That’s the spirit,” said Gold. He had a singer’s voice, a rich baritone that vibrated even in the cave like bunker. “James, review the timetable, would you?”
One of the two lieutenants began running down the game plan for the assault, accenting the highlights with a flick of his hand, as if he were throwing confetti over the map. Splashdown would begin at precisely 0550, with an attack on the SA-2 site southwest of the attack area; the assault package was now so large that the planes would need to escape over the missile site’s coverage area. In any event, it was well past time to make sure that the enemy site was truly dead.
At the same time, two Devil Squadron Hogs, led by A-Bomb, would eliminate the most potent defenses at Splash itself; based on the latest intelligence, these had been expanded to include two short-range mobile missile units, more than likely SA-9s. A number of ZSU anti-aircraft weapons would also be targeted; any remaining would be the first priority for the wave of Apache gunships that would spearhead the assault at 0555. Defenses neutralized, the Apaches would cover the arriving ground troops, who would strike at the buildings where the prisoners might be at precisely 0600.
Four separate groups would launch the assault. One each was devoted to the possible prisoner buildings, with a third smaller team to be used to secure the highway leading to the base, preventing reinforcements from arriving. The fourth, made up of Delta and two different SAS squads for a total of twenty-four men, would concentrate on the hangar area and plane as Captain Hawkins had just described. Wong and Hack, along with a British airman with expertise on MiG systems, would fly in with Delta.
“You are to take the upmost precautions,” said the lieutenant. The major nodded over his shoulder; Hawkins merely frowned.
All told nearly one hundred and sixty men would be making the assault. Four Chinooks and a pair of American Spec Ops Blackhawk MH-60 helicopters, dubbed Pave Hawks, had been added to the original package. There were now a total of eight transport and six attack helicopters in the plan. Two MC-130s had been added to refuel the whirlybirds on a staggered schedule, some before the landing and some after. Besides the Hogs and Tornados, four F-16s would be available to provide ground support. Two F-15s were watching in case the MiG managed to get off before they arrived, and four Navy F-14 Tomcats had been shanghaied to escort the package — a development that struck Hack as more difficult to arrange than cooperation between the Americans and Brits.
“It’s a very tight schedule,” said the lieutenant, summing up. He sighed contentedly, as if he had just summed up the planned menu for an elaborate meal.
“We need to be aboard the helicopters now,” said Hawkins.
“Jolly good,” said the British major. “Good luck to all.”
Hack tried to surreptitiously unkink his neck as he followed Hawkins back out through the maze and down to the helicopter landing area. The Delta force soldiers stood around their gear, leaning against some sandbags thirty yards or so from the helicopters, most of them smoking cigarettes.
“Jerry, give Major Preston the 203 and show him how to use it,” Hawkins said.
“I’d rather have an M-16,” said Hack. “I’m not too bad with it.”
“A 203 is an M-16 with a grenade launcher,” Hawkins said, his voice so sarcastic that Hack wasn’t sure he was telling the truth until the weapon was thrust into his hands. The Delta sergeant told him he wouldn’t need the launcher, then demonstrated how to work it. It was a fairly straight-forward device mounted below the rifle barrel; it fired 40mm grenades which looked more like fat shotgun shells than what Preston imagined a grenade to be.
“This is what they look like,” the sergeant told Hack, showing but not giving him the grenades. “One shot at a time. Give ‘em loft, but not too much loft. You know what I’m saying?”
“Shit yeah,” said Hack.
The sergeant snorted. “Three hundred yards is the most they’ll carry. Aim at something a hundred and fifty away, look through the quadrant — you paying attention, Major?”
“I’m all ears, Sergeant.”
“You look through here, edge it up a little, just to be safe because you never done this, then push.” He hit the trigger. “Make sure you got it against your shoulder snug. It ain’t gonna knock you over, but you want to be more accurate than not. You use an M-16 before?”
“I have a marksman badge,” snapped Preston.
The sergeant smiled, as if to say, “Ain’t that sweet.”
“Excuse me, Major,” said Wong, “but I wanted to review our priorities before we start.”
“Flight gear is number one,” said Preston. “There must be some sort of life-support shop near the plane. I think the hangar, but maybe with the fuel truck or in that area. I want to talk with the men who…”