“Major, please, I’m doing the best … wait … target identified!” the weapons officer cried out suddenly. “I see it!”
“Be sure it’s not a decoy, Lieutenant.”
“I see the Sidearm impact point—the Sidearm hit a wall right in front of the unit and missed by just a few meters. Locked on!”
“Well, kill it, then, pilot, don’t just narrate,” Behrouzi screamed up to the pilot—the pilot of a Bronco controlled the attack missiles, while the weapons officer controlled the Gatling gun. Just then, the commandos heard a loud, sustained fwoooshhh!
as the first Hellfire missile left its launch tube, followed by a second launch a few seconds later. In this engagement, since the range of a Hellfire and a Rapier were almost the same, the first one to fire would probably be the winner—and Behrouzi’s crew won.
“Target destroyed!” Junayd shouted. “Target destroyed!”
“Very good,” Behrouzi said. “Be on the lookout for antiaircraft artillery sites, but it’s rare to find antiaircraft artillery units active on a naval installation.
“Now I want a careful surveillance of the facility, looking for any evidence of where those captives might be held,” Behrouzi went on. “You have the diagram of the security headquarters, correct, Lieutenant?”
“Yes, Major,” the weapons officer replied. “Our navigation coordinates are programmed for the detention facility, which is right next to the base hospital. We’ll look there first.”
“The longer you take, the less fuel you’ll have for your return flight, Lieutenant,” Behrouzi reminded the cockpit crew in an almost humorous tone.
“I understand … I have the hospital … I see the detention facility. It appears to be dark inside, Major—no sign of occupation. I see only a few lights on in the ground-floor security headquarters. The building appears deserted, no perimeter lights on in the detention facility, no vehicles outside. The hospital looks as if it is fully staffed.”
Behrouzi turned to Briggs and said in English, “You must decide, Leopard,” she said. “The crew says the detention facility appears deserted—no lights, no sign of activity. The hospital appears to be fully staffed. Shall we try?”
“The detention facility,” Briggs said immediately. “We may have only one chance at this.”
“I was in the security business for ten years,” Briggs said resolutely. “Prisoners always go to the secure facility. If they’re hurt and you’re going to treat them, you bring the doctors into the facility, not take prisoners out to an unsecure area.
And I never allowed anyone to park outside my secure areas—too easy to hot-wire a car and blow through a gate, or set booby traps, or take cover during a raid. We go in the detention area, inside the perimeter fence. Directly on the rooftop if possible.”
“Very well, Leopard,” Behrouzi said, her smile showing that she was pleased with his resolve. She pulled out her chart of the Chah Bahar Naval Base and, in Arabic and English, briefed their intended target, then ordered her three commandos to get ready.
The Bronco pilot made a high-speed approach from the seaward side of the base at very low altitude.
The weapons officer designated targets for the Hellfire missiles, identifying occupied buildings that looked as though they were headquarters buildings or communications centers, and at the same time took shots with the Gatling gun at every power transformer, large vehicle, fuel-storage tank, or anything else that he thought might disrupt things down on the base and cover their activities.
The last run was at the security headquarters, which was the lower floor of the security and detention building. They shot Hellfires at the spots where they knew important rooms were located—the communications stations, the armories, the power transformers—and shot out yard lights and any lighted doorways with the 20-millimeter Gatling gun.
“I see a long strip of cloth tied to the outside of a window on the second floor,” Junayd yelled back to the cargo bay.
“Does it form a letter?” Briggs shouted back. “A letter in the Roman alphabet?”
“Yes,” Junayd replied, using maximum power on his FLIR targeting scope. “It forms the letter M.”
“That’s one of our guys,” Briggs said, smiling broadly for the first time. “Madcap Magician. They’re down there. Let’s get ready!”
The weapons officer Junayd saved two Hellfires to blow big holes in the side of the security headquarters. About 600 yards from the building itself, the pilot started a hard climb, so he was directly over the detention facility at the crest of the climb at 600 feet. At that point, the five commandos in the Bronco’s cargo section made their static-line parachute jumps.
Briggs was going out first. He braced himself against the open door at the rear of the cargo bay, hands and toes outside. As the Bronco started its steep climb, Briggs found himself looking directly down into the security headquarters complex, a square three-story building surrounded by twelve-foot-high barbed-wire fences. Then, just before the Bronco reached the top of its climb, Briggs simply let himself fall through the opening.
He heard the roar of the twin turboprops at maximum continuous power only for a brief instant, and then he heard the wall of air-raid and emergency sirens from the base. The static line yanked his ‘chute out of its pack immediately. He heard the loud crack … whuumpp! of four other ‘chutes opening above him—very close above him. He looked up and saw Riza dumping air out of her ‘chute right away, trying to catch up with him. The three UAE commandos were doing the same, all attempting to land at the same time as their leaders.
By the time their ‘chutes opened, they were less than a hundred feet above ground—they barely had time to get their bearings before they had to steer their parachutes over the detention facility rooftop. Two of the Arab commandos missed the building completely, and Briggs’s and Behrouzi’s ‘chutes actually ran into each other as they maneuvered for their target. Briggs obviously had had a lot less recent practice in parachute infiltrations; he was drifting over to the edge of the rooftop so fast that he had to dump all the air completely out of his ‘chute from fifteen feet to make it to the roof. Behrouzi and her third Arab commando hit directly in the center.
“Are you all right, Leopard?” Behrouzi asked as she helped Briggs to his feet. He had taken a bad fall, landing heavily on his left leg, but he was on his feet and moving quickly.
“We lost two,” Briggs said to Behrouzi in reply, as he quickly clipped Simrad GNI night-vision goggles to their helmets.
Something was torn or sprained in his left knee, but he tried to ignore the pain.
“No, I directed them to land on the ground and secure the building,” Behrouzi said. Her GNI night-vision goggles and those of the commando with her were already on. “Keep alert—please do not kill them.”
“I’m hopin’ they don’t kill me,” Briggs said. “Let’s move!” It was too easy to breach the roof access door and make their way inside. The toughest resistance was on the second floor of the three-story building—all the Iranian guards on the first floor had retreated up to the second as the UAE commandos started their surprise assault; the majority of the Pasdaran guards were already stationed on the second floor.
Briggs didn’t care—if it moved, it died. He was not going to try to be neat or merciful.
The hallway was lit by emergency lights—those were shot out immediately. Briggs and Behrouzi then threw infrared Cyalume light sticks into the hallways, which would brightly light up the area only for persons wearing night-vision equipment. When Briggs confirmed that Behrouzi’s first two commandos would stay on ground level and would not stray into the line of fire, the killing began.
Briggs led the way, Behrouzi following with a Dragon twelve-gauge, twelve-round semi-automatic shotgun filled with breaching rounds, and the third commando following as rear security, carrying a suppressed MP-5 submachine gun. Trotting through the four corridors, his Uzi with its sixteen-inch suppressor fitted and loaded with thirty-round magazines of subsonic .45-caliber cartridges, Briggs gunned down anyone in front of him that was alive. He rarely needed more than two rounds to take down a guard—one shot to the chest, one to the head.