As he finished the second corridor, he heard shots coming from the next corridor to the left. He sprinted around the corner and saw a guard unlocking cell doors and firing a pistol into a cell, then moving on to the next cell. Briggs dropped the guard with a three-round burst from thirty feet. “Magicians!” Briggs shouted.
“Strike a pose!” He then checked the fourth corridor—all guards subdued. Behrouzi sent her Arab commando to guard the main stairway, and she and Briggs began checking each cell.
The cells appeared to be small dormitory-type rooms, remodeled to be prisoner and punishment-reprimand facilities. Usually it took only one shotgun blast on the top outwardly swinging hinge to crack and pull the door open. When Briggs, now with a Cyalume light stick around his neck, glanced into the occupied cell, he saw two men lying on the floor, facing away from the door, arms outstretched with only the middle fingers extended, and with one leg bent and crossed over the other leg, pointing at the other man in the cell next to them. That was Paul White’s unspoken code-sign for a friendly.
“On your feet, guys,” Briggs said. “I’m here to get you out.”
The first cell he breached had Knowlton and McKay inside.
“Jesus—it’s Major Briggs!” Knowlton said as he helped McKay up.
“I’ve got him, Hal. He’s hurt bad.”
“Thanks for the flag outside,” Briggs said, handing Knowlton a pistol from a dead Iranian guard. He was off, checking more cells. “Follow me and stay close.”
The search was not pretty, and after a very short time Briggs wasn’t feeling too heroic. There were prisoners in the cells other than Madcap Magician members. Briggs did not kill them, just searched them to make sure they had no weapons, but even though—Behrouzi warned them in Arabic and Farsi not to leave the cell or try to run until they had departed, all of them bolted for the door as soon as Briggs and Behrouzi had left the cell, and they were gunned down by the UAE commandos guarding the exits.
They could take no chances with the lives of their own.
But the final tally heartened them alclass="underline" nine Madcap Magician members well and rescued. Two more members had been killed by the Pasdaran guards; one more was critically wounded. The main captive missing was Paul White himself. “Carl, do you have any idea where the colonel is?” Briggs asked.
“No,” Knowlton replied. “He was separated from us right away.”
“Any idea if there are any others in this building?”
“I don’t know, Hal, sorry,” Knowlton said dejectedly. “I was unconscious most of the time, exhausted. I don’t know how many men made it after the attack on the Mistress, how many we lost …” Briggs quickly polled the other Marines, but they couldn’t be sure how many others had been captured or killed in the attack, either. Their best guess was that they had everybody. “I wasn’t able to make contact with the others or try to find anything out, Hal, I’m sorry …
“Forget it, Carl,” Briggs said. “We’ll search the entire building.”
But there was no time for that—one of Behrouzi’s UAE commandos ran upstairs to report that several heavy infantry vehicles were on the way. “Shit, it didn’t take long for them to organize a response.”
“Our best chance is on the road,” Behrouzi said. “We should try to steal a vehicle, try to make it out into the open countryside.
The Pakistan border is only a hundred kilometers east.” Briggs knew she was right—if they stayed in that building, they’d quickly be surrounded and chewed to pieces.
But as they ran outside, they immediately drew heavy-caliber weapon fire from the infantry vehicles. The commandos’ weapons were useless against the Iranian infantry—they’d brought weapons only for close-range work, not to shoot it out with infantry forces. “Back inside!” Briggs shouted. “We got no choice!
Just then, the first infantry vehicle began to sparkle, then jump, then it burst into flames—and seconds later, they heard the OV-IOD-NOS Bronco fly overhead. The UAE Bronco crew had not high-tailed it for home after dropping their paratroopers—they were burning most of their return fuel on covering their commando’s withdrawal. “Now’s our chance!” Briggs shouted. “Run for the hospital! We’ll try to-“
The night air suddenly erupted into an ear-shattering blast of gunfire. One of the heavy armored vehicles following the infantry forces was not a troop carrier—it was a ZSU-23/4 air defense vehicle. Its four 23-millimeter cannons fired at a rate of 3,000 rounds per minute, blanketing the sky with deadly radar-guided shells. The Bronco was shredded by the murderous gunfire, cut into pieces and burning long before it hit the ground. The commandos and the rescued hostages had no choice but to retreat back into the security headquarters building. Two UAE commandos and two Madcap Magician Marines stayed on the ground floor, ready to take out the rest headed up onto the roof. the first wave of attackers “One lousy rescue this is turning into,” Briggs said. All of the Madcap Magician Marines were now armed, and together they made a formidable force—but everyone knew their options were quickly running out.
“You came for us—that’s the important thing, Major,” Corporal McKay told Briggs.
“He’s right, Hal—if you would have waited, we’d be dead,” Knowlton said. “No one was talking, so we weren’t good sources of information; we knew the U.S. government wasn’t going to acknowledge us or try to make a deal for us. They were going to discard us right away.”
“We may still be discarded.”
“But at least we’re fighting.” McKay said. The Marine had broken fingers, swollen eyes, and could hardly breathe—but he was still ready to fight. “Thanks for giving us that chance, Major—I mean, ‘Commander.””
The building was quickly surrounded by the armored vehicles and heavily armed soldiers, and the assault began immediately. Heavy 100-millimeter breaching cannons blew large” man-sized holes in the walls on the ground floor, followed by dozens of volleys of smoke and gas grenades, then by Iranian Pasdaran troopers in a hastily organized full frontal assault. The American and UAE soldiers dropped several Pasdaran soldiers as they came toward the stairwells, but were quickly forced to retreat as their number grew. The commandos were much more successful at picking off the Pasdaran troopers up on the second floor, but soon the second floor, too, was filled with gas. One American Marine was shot in the chest and was carried up to the third floor by the others.
Soon they had to retreat from that position as well, but with each retreat they were taking out plenty of Pasdaran troopers.
Up on the roof, the sound of approaching helicopters meant that their time was quickly running out. At the same time as the helicopters approached, the ground units, carrying the dead Marine, made their way onto the roof. “Too many to count,” was the simple report from a surviving Marine.
A few moments later, three Iranian Navy SH-3 Sea King helicopters could be seen through the darkness. All of them were trailing rappelling lines, ready to drop soldiers onto the roof. All of the commandos took cover as best they could around the raised rim of the roof.
Suddenly a breaching charge blew open the roof-access door, and smoke and tear gas poured through. Briggs fired, and two Pasdaran bodies piled up on the stairway sill. They were quickly dragged away by other troopers, and no others emerged. The doorway was open—a few grenades tossed through would make short work of everyone on the roof. Briggs cleared everyone from the portion of the roof facing the doorway and assigned commandos to cover it.