D-Day, Bandar Cisman
Instead of a flight helmet, he wore a padded wire set with headphones on each side and an adjustable boom mike. Air through the open window rushed through Luis' hair. The pilot wore the same. Both sets of headphones were connected by wire to a central box.
His gun was a fine weapon, Luis thought. His instructors had called it a PKB. It had spade grips he clutched to his chest, and fired, so they'd said, about eight hundred rounds a minute. Who could count so fast, Luis wondered. No matter, it fires fast enough.
The pilot, Harley, had lined up on his first target and begun firing rockets mounted on the wings. Harley had experience with these, apparently, because it took him only four shots before one struck the boat, blasting off one corner and setting the rest alight.
'I used to be better than this,' the pilot cursed. 'Curse of old age. Try your luck, Luis.'
No, Luis found, firing from a plane is different from firing from the ship. He missed with his first several bursts completely. He was getting the range right, but the lead required was throwing him off. Way off.
'Next pass,' Harley called, 'start shooting before you think you're lined up on the target and let the plane walk it in for you.' Harvey made a sweeping gesture taking in the stacks and stacks of ammunition crates. 'It's not like we've got any shortage of machine gun ammo, amigo.'
Luis nodded, 'Si, senor.'
Hovering two miles west of Bandar Cisman, Cruz watched the rockets go in, even as the CH-801's side-fired tracers drew bright lines in his NVGs, lines that faded only slowly. He glanced left and right. At the limits of vision, about a mile for objects of that size, he saw the other two Hips hovering as well.
'That works,' he said. Passing the message on to the other two helicopters, he lifted his Hip's tail, applied power to the engines, and closed on the town.
'Move, Marines. MOVE!'
Cazz stood behind the clamshells, physically prodding the disembarking men into a semblance of order. Feet churning the gravel and sand, they snaked forward, in a reformed double line, around the sides of the helicopter. Automatically, they stooped forward as they moved. Sure, the chopper's blades were high, butcha nevah know.
Ahead, five or six meters in front of the blades' reach, the platoon leader of Second Platoon, a ‘youngster' of forty who'd retired from the Corps as a major, stood directing his squads into a platoon line. North and south, the other two platoons did the same. The only difference was that First Platoon, to the north, oriented to the southeast while Second, to the south, oriented northeast. The town was now boxed.
Cazz's RTO, another youngster of thirty-seven, tapped his shoulder with the handset of a radio. 'Sir, I've got the mortars.'
Taking the handset, Cazz said, 'Slow fire, and I mean slow. Center of mass of the town. I want their attention and I want them scared . . . but not dead.'
'Shot, over,' came the reply, in mere seconds. In another forty or so, the Marines heard the freight train sound of a falling one-twenty, followed by a bright flash that silhouetted the one-story buildings of the place.
'That's the ticket,' Cazz said. 'Give 'em one every five minutes, no more, until further notice.
Ahead, at a range of three hundred to three hundred and fifty meters from the town, the Marine skirmish line went prone and began a slow, rattling fire on the buildings. 'Scared,' the man had said.
CHAPTER FIFTY
The dove, descending, breaks the air
With wings of incandescent terror.
-T.S. Eliot
D-Day, MV
The occasional fall of mortar shells, to the southwest, was at best dimly perceptible, and then only if one was looking and knew what one was looking for. Nobody on the ship really was. They were much more concerned with reconfiguring, refueling, and arming the three Hips that bounced now on the flight deck.
Cruz saw Stauer standing to the left of his Hip, beckoning with one hand. He popped his door open, told his Russian copilot, 'Your bird, but sit tight,' unbuckled himself and stepped to the PSP deck.
'We've already made the arrangements,' Stauer shouted over the roar of the choppers. 'You'll-two of you-be outfitted with auxiliary fuel tanks and two rocket pods apiece. Then those two are going to Nugaal to pick up Welch, his team, the accountant, and a party of seventy-one civilians with not much more than the clothes on their backs. Your third bird will still support the Marines at Bandar Cisman.'
'That's going to fuck up the pickup of Buckwheat's boys,' Cruz objected, shaking his head doubtfully. 'It's also going to interfere with striking Bandar Cisman before the Marines go in. I thought we planned on one Hip to pick up Welch's team and the accountant.'
'Yeah,' Stauer agreed. 'But it got complicated. Doubly complicated. The accountant will cooperate, but only if his family-his extended family-is safe. And Terry liberated twenty-nine slaves. He says he won't leave them behind.'
'Gonna cost us.'
'Yeah. I'm worried about Buckwheat, not so much about the rest. I directed the birds dedicated to the strike on Bandar Qassim to continue to screen up the east coast to the town of Foar, engaging anything coming our way, then cut northwest toward Bandar Qassim Airport and extract Buckwheat. They should be able to do that, get back here, rearm and refuel, in time to go north again and hit anything coming our way. I've also directed Chin in The Drunken Bastard to move north ten miles and guard.'
What are the risks? Cruz wondered. I'd planned on the extra Hip at Bandar Cisman to be able to shift to help out Reilly if he couldn't handle the tanks. Maybe he can, maybe he can't. The ground up by Buckwheat is broken as hell. Sure, the CH-801's can lift on a short run, but they still need about three hundred feet. And the Marines' mortars need more ammunition . . . but I suppose Borsakov can take that.
