Macon Jefferson, holding the bunker with another man, felt a little better when he saw Hartley. “Time to blow this mutha,” the chief told them. He quickly connected two wires to the actuator, a small box with two guarded switches and a timing dial. He set the dial to zero, lifted both guards and threw the switches. Nothing happened. “Don’t look out,” Macon said quietly. “There’s a sniper out there.” The chief looked anyway, counting seven craters on the causeway. A single shot hit the sandbagged opening inches from his face.
“Mortars must have cut the wires,” the chief growled. “Why haven’t you guys taken the sniper out? He can shoot. Maybe the next bastard won’t be as good.” He scowled at the fresh scar the bullet had left. He picked up an M-16, checked it. “Stick your helmet into the opening in three minutes,” he ordered, jogging out of the bunker. He moved fifty yards down the wall and scrambled up the loose dirt of the steep bank, stopping just below the ridge. Carefully he scooped out a shallow depression that pointed toward the spot he judged the sniper fired from. “I got the angle on you… ” The chief took off his helmet, laid his cheek against the stock, looked over the sight, and waited. He saw the flash before he heard the report when the sniper fired at the helmet flashing in the port of the observation bunker. Hartley swung the barrel ten degrees to the left and squeezed off a single shot. He could see the sniper’s jaw and rifle stock come apart in the rapidly fading light. He checked his watch, calculating he still had seven minutes before the next barrage.
He jogged back to the bunker and picked up a fresh reel of wire, telling the men to cover him, then moved along the edge of the causeway to a spot near the middle. He knelt and attached the new wires to the leads coming from the charge planted eight feet in the earth, threw the old wires aside, reeled the wire out as he trotted back. Twenty feet from the observation post a series of shots erupted. Hartley surprised the watching men with a sudden burst of speed as he piled into the bunker. One shot had cut a bloody furrow across the back of his left thigh. “I told you he wouldn’t be as good,” he grunted, handing the new wire to Macon. “So I was wrong. Blow him while I stuff this leak.” He shoved a wadded-up dressing into his wound and bound it tightly with a compress bandage from the first-aid kit on his belt.
The causeway erupted in a shower of noise, dust and dirt. Macon asked him why he didn’t crouch when he ran. “Don’t do any good when you’re my size. Now get some shovels and fill this gap in,” he replied, waving at the road cut through the embankment. He checked his watch and walked back to his command bunker to call Waters.
“Rup,” Waters was saying to Stansell, “see if the Engineers can get three thousand feet of taxiway open. Enough for an F-4 take off.” Waters hadn’t shaved in two days and his face and flight suit were streaked with sweat. Energy, though, still radiated from him. “After that, get over to the bunkers you’re using for evac and make sure someone is in charge; then get back here.”
The crew of the C-130 was sprawled out on the cargo deck waiting for the order to launch another shuttle mission out of Dhahran. They were weary from repeated attempts to get into Ras Assanya and discouraged because they had only been able to land once. The overweight major who had taken over running the operation drove up in his air-conditioned truck and walked toward the C-130 with clipboard in hand. “I’m putting you into crew rest,” he said. “Ras Assanya is reporting they have only two thousand feet of runway open. I’m not about to send you into that.”
Toni D’Angelo turned and walked toward the flight deck, the men trailing her, and the major realized they were going to Ras Assanya no matter what he said. “Captain Luna,” he yelled at their backs, “stop using Grain King Zero-Three for your call sign.”
“Screw you,” from Toni, climbing up the ladder.
Captain Luna dropped the Hercules down onto the deck when they were forty miles out of Ras Assanya, hugging the coast line. The moonlit night gave him plenty of visibility, and Dave’s radar navigation kept him on the course he had to fly in order to be recognized as a friendly aircraft by the Rapiers.
Two miles out, Luna popped the bird to twelve hundred feet and dropped his gear and flaps, configuring for an assault landing. When he saw a flashing light at the southern end of the taxiway he queried the tower’s frequency. No answer. He did not see the large crater that had been the tower’s bunker.
He brought the Hercules down final with its nose high in the air, carrying as much power as he could. The moment his main gear touched down on the taxiway, he shoved the yoke full forward, slamming the nose gear down, raking the throttles full aft and lifting them over the detent into reverse. He stomped on the brakes, dragging the cargo plane to a halt.
A pickup dashed onto the taxiway in front of them and a figure jumped out with two hand-held wands and motioned them to back up. Luna threw the props into reverse and backed down the main taxiway until he reached another taxiway leading into the bunkers. The lone figure ran down the taxiway motioning him to follow, waved the Hercules to a stop in front of a bunker with open blast doors.
“My God, look at the litters lined up,” Toni said, pointing to the casualties waiting evacuation. “How are we going to get that many on board?”
“We shut down and reconfigure for litters, that’s how,” Luna said.
“Captain, that takes thirty, maybe forty minutes,” the loadmaster complained.
“We’ll do it in fifteen. Get busy.”
Chief Hartley was already in the back of the Hercules directing the offloading of mortar shells and anti-tank weapons they had been waiting for. He told them the base was expecting an attack across the isthmus connecting the base to the mainland at any time. “They been pounding the crap out of us for two hours. We got some gettin’ even to do.” The battle-weary and wounded chief bundled into his truck and went off with the load into the night.
The men tending the wounded swarmed onto the Hercules and helped the crew rig the stanchions that allowed litters to be stacked five-high. The wounded were then carried on board as soon as a set of stanchions were in place, leaving trails of blood across the cargo deck. Bill Carroll helped carry on board one of his sergeants badly wounded in a rocket attack. He strapped the litter into place and checked with Toni D’Angelo, who was standing at the rear of the cargo bay supervising the loading. “These are the ones our doc says can be saved if we get them to a hospital… The aid stations look like slaughter-houses.”
Toni looked at his name tag and checked the passenger list that had been handed her. She found the captain’s name at the top, indicating he had top priority to be evacuated. “We’ll do what we can, Captain. Why don’t you ride up front with us?”
It was an offer hard to turn down. God knew, Carroll wanted to get out of there, find his sanity again. He even started to pull himself up the steps leading to the flight deck, then abruptly stopped and hurried out through the crew-entrance hatch. “What the hell am I thinking of,” he mumbled to himself.