The ten Det Echo SEALs remaining ashore were trapped, pinned down by heavy fire and very nearly surrounded.
"Backstop, Backstop!" Wolfe called, using the call sign for the mission's Pentagon controllers. "Echo is pinned down and cannot move! Request air support fucking now!"
"Backstop, Backstop! Echo is pinned down and cannot move! Request air support fucking now!"
"Where the hell is Sierra Foxtrot Four-one?" Forsythe demanded.
"ETA four minutes," a technician replied.
"Too long! Our people are out of time! What about fire support from the Cyclones?"
The two PBCs each mounted a pair of Mk 38 Bush-masters, 25mm chain guns capable of firing a blistering two hundred rounds per minute.
" Sirocco reports they are still out of effective range, sir." Bushmasters had a range of 2,500 yards — about two and a third miles. Though they were now en route to the rendezvous point, they were still a good two miles offshore.
"Damn it to hell!"
Garrett watched the green-monochrome image for a moment. The last of the SEALs on shore were scattered in a ragged defensive perimeter across the southern slope of the ridge, perhaps half a mile from the beach. The view was partially obscured by drifting clouds of smoke, but he could see the sharp pulse and flash of exploding mortar rounds, the drifting streams of tracer fire, and the flicker of muzzle flashes from enemy positions. The
Iranian troops must have suffered heavy casualties already, but they'd pushed up close and pressed hard; they were on three sides of Det Echo now, and reinforcements — in the form of a convoy of BMPs racing down the coast road from the west — would be there in moments.
SEAL Detachment Echo was doomed.
Unless…
2
It might work. It offered a chance, at least.
"What about using the UAVs?" Garrett asked.
"They're empty, Captain," Myers said. "Or haven't you been listening?"
"No… I mean what about using the UAVs themselves as weapons? Fly them into enemy positions… or send them in low enough to scare the enemy and make him duck. All the SEALs need is a few minutes to break contact, and then the cavalry will arrive."
For a second a startled silence gripped the basement communications center. "Well? How about it?" Forsythe asked.
There was a flurry of activity, and calls to the patrol boats off shore. The three Unmanned Aerial Vehicles were being controlled by technicians on board the Sirocco, though the audience watching from the bowels of the Pentagon could control camera angles, within limits, as well as image magnification through a remote satellite hookup.
"Okay!" a technician said, pointing. "They're going to try it with UAV-3!"
On the screen, the green-hued landscape tilted suddenly as the operator on board Sirocco put the Fire Scout UAV into a steep left bank. A targeting reticule floated across the screen, centering on a small cluster of figures behind the Iranian lines. The cluster grew larger on the screen… and larger… until Garrett could see the mustached faces of several Iranian soldiers and the glowing hot tube of an 81mm mortar in front of them.
At the last moment possible those faces turned suddenly toward the Predator's camera, eyes widening, mouths gaping… and then the soldiers were scattering in every direction.
An RQ-8B Fire Scout looked exactly like a small, smooth-skinned, torpedo-nosed helicopter with no cockpit. The aircraft had a takeoff weight of a ton and a half, and its four-blade rotors spanned just twenty-seven and a half feet. Garrett could only imagine the feelings of a soldier suddenly confronted by that apparition stooping on his position out of the night sky.
The mortar position blurred as the Fire Scout streaked past at 125 knots. "Yee-ha!" a voice cried over the speaker system. "Video games rock!"
"Who said that?" a Marine general, Thomas Schaler, demanded.
"Someone on the Sirocco, sir," the technician reported. "I think they're having fun out there."
Garrett suppressed a grin. For years, now, there'd been speculation within the military as to whether a generation of kids raised on joysticks and video games would amount to anything. Evidently, the answer was yes.
A secondary monitor showed another group of Iranian troops diving for cover — the machine gun nest that had been pinning the SEALs in place.
"Echo, Echo, this is Backstop," Admiral Forsythe called, using a telephone handset patched into the sat-com link. "We're keeping the bad guys occupied for a moment. Now's your chance to break contact!"
"Copy that, Backstop. Thanks."
UAV-2 continued to relay the overall tactical view from an altitude of several hundred feet. Garrett could see the SEALs rising from cover now and beginning to hurry on down the slope toward the beach. It was less an orderly withdrawal than a headlong plunge, but there was no time for finesse. Those Iranian BMPs would be along in minutes.
For several gut-twisting minutes UAV-1 and UAV-3 buzzed the Iranian lines. UAV-2 revealed the confusion in their ranks, as tracer streams crisscrossed through the air, trying to knock down the wildly swooping teleoperated aircraft.
"Shortstop, Shortstop, this is Night Rider," a new voice called. "We have a delivery for you. Where do you want it? "
The watching officers and technicians broke into a chorused cheer. Night Rider was the call sign for Sierra Foxtrot Four-one, a pair of Air Force F-117 stealth fighters flying out of an American air base in southern Iraq.
Help for the beleaguered SEALs had arrived at last.
"We have seven light armored vehicles on the coast road," the combat controller on board the Sirocco was heard to reply. "Wait one and we'll illuminate the lead target."
Besides unguided rockets and its regular sensor suite of cameras and radar, the Fire Scout also mounted a laser target designation system, allowing a remote operator to laser a target for incoming smart munitions. Garrett saw the square targeting cursor drift across the screen as the aircraft swung toward the west. He could make out the road now, and the darker, colder surge of the waters of the Gulf. And there, traveling in close-spaced line-ahead, the white-hot engine signatures of several vehicles. The UAV operator on board the distant Sirocco selected the lead vehicle, the cursor positioned itself over the target, and the words target lock and laser active appeared alongside.
"Night Rider. I have the target. Weapon release… "
Long seconds dragged past. The people in the communications center held their collective breath.
Then the lead vehicle, an armored BMP-2, exploded in a silent flare of white light, and the men and women in the room cheered again. On the screen, the Fire Scout was already selecting a second target. The rest of the Iranian convoy, however, had pulled to a halt behind the burning armored vehicle, and now appeared to be trying to turn around.
At the very least, the SEALs had just won a desperately needed respite.