“We got some help tonight—apparently some other ISA cell is going to stir up some shit for us tonight,” Wohl said. “Maybe it’ll keep the ragheads off balance, maybe it won’t. Forget about them and concentrate on your work tonight. Our job is to go in, check the escape-and-evasion areas, rescue anyone that might be out there waiting for us, and come back alive. Let’s get loaded up.”
Wohl had picked the men personally for this patrol, so he really was not looking into each individual’s face as he went down the line just before boarding the chopper—he could usually recognize each man by his build or choice of weapons or voice or attitude.
He came to the last and most senior man in his squad, the “wheel,” who would coordinate the flight crew’s activities with the ground team. Monroe had his balaclava on, shielding his face against the freezer-like chill of the hangar. “Ready to do it tonight, Monroe?” he asked him. No response, just a thumbs-up and a rather nervous shuffling of the feet. Wohl looked and saw the man’s right finger extended out of his mitten, covering the trigger guard of his suppressed IAI Uzi .45 submachine gun—this bad boy, he thought, was ready to go …
… but unfortunately, he wasn’t going to go! “You are one stupid son of a bitch, Briggs,” Gunnery Sergeant Chris Wohl said in a low voice. “You are just too stupid for words. Did you really think I wasn’t going to notice you on my aircraft?”
Hal Briggs pulled off his balaclava. “How’d you know it was me, Gunny? You didn’t even look at my face or my eyes.”
“You’re the only one who always sticks his trigger finger outside your mitten and covers the trigger guard when he gets nervous,” Wohl said. “I noticed it the first mission we flew. Now, what the hell are you doing out here? I thought the flight doc ordered another week of bed rest.”
“I’m sick of bed rest,” Briggs said. “I’m fine. I’m ready to go.”
“The doc didn’t sign you off yet.”
“Fuck the flight surgeon, Gunny,” Briggs said. “I’m ready to go on this patrol—hell, I’ve got to go on this patrol or I’ll go nuts.”
“You were ordered to stay in bed, sir,” Wohl said. “The doc ordered it, and I ordered it. Sick or not, sir, I’M- going to kick your ass if you don’t start obeying orders.”
“You can do an operational evaluation on me,” Briggs suggested.
“Plenty of room in the Pave Hammer. Besides, Monroe can’t fly tonight—he’s got a cold or a sinus infection or something.”
“Bullshit,” Wohl said. “Stop treating me like your senile old aunt baby-sitting you when you want to sneak out to the drive-in, Briggs. You wanna override doctor’s orders and go on a patrol, just come out and say it.”
“I’m saying it already, Wohl,” Briggs said. “I want to go.”
“Disapproved,” Wohl said quickly. “You look OK to me, but I did talk to the doc today—he said he found blood on a towel in your room. You been hiding shit from the flight doc, Hal?”
“Dr. Sabin checks the towels in my damned room?” Briggs exclaimed angrily. “I want him to stay the hell out of my room.”
“Did you or didn’t you?”
Briggs didn’t reply. Instead, he asked, “How do you feel, Gunny?”
“I feel fine.”
“You sure?”
“Stick your tongue up my ass and take my temperature if you really care,” the Marine said irritably.
“Otherwise, get out of my face.”
“Why didn’t you get hit, Wohl? We were standing side by side, less than an arm’s length away from each other. Three guys went down when that antiaircraft artillery site opened up on us—two guys on one side of you, then me on the other side of you. You’re sitting in the middle and don’t get a scratch. Why the hell not?”
“Because a Marine sucks in a triple-A and spits out fire, Briggs,” Wohl said with a perfectly serious expression. “We eat barbed wire and piss napalm.”
“Yeah, yeah, hoo-rah and all that jar-head shit.”
“it aren’t jar-head shit, Briggs,” Wohl said earnestly. “I don’t know why I didn’t get hit, Briggs. Maybe I’ll get it on this trip—would that make you happy, Briggs?”
“C’mon, Gunny, I didn’t mean it that way. I’m just bored and ready to get my ass in the air again, and I can’t believe I got hit by the golden BB. I’m too young and too good-looking to get nailed by a triple-A site older than my uncle”
“I’ll tell you what I believe, Briggs: I truly believe I won’t get hit because I’m a U.S. Marine. I truly believe I’m too tough and too strong and too dumb to get hit by a little Iranian Zeus-23/4.”
“Give me a break, Chris “I’m serious as a stock market crash, Hal,” Wohl said. “You see, you’re smart, a real college boy, not a correspondence-course college boy like me. You knew it was a ZSU-23/4, knew about how deadly it is to low-flying aircraft that stray within lethal range … hell, you probably know its rate of fire, its reliability, its crew complement, its maintenance procedures.”
“Yeah, I do. So?”
“So I’m not being critical, Briggs, but maybe you got tagged because you believed you’d get tagged. You thought it was perfectly logical and understandable and proper that if we come across a Zeus-23 that’s not supposed to be there, you’d get hit by a ricochet. I, on the other hand, believe that only lily-livered pussy-whipped, pudd-pounding, tired-ass, numb-nut legs—or any officer—are weak enough to be put down by something as low- tech as a Zeus-23.”
“What about Barnes and Halmar?”
“They got it because they were sitting next to you.”
“Gimme a break, Gunny.”
“The point is, Briggs, I did not allow myself to die. I’d allow myself to die rescuing our shipmates, die with one or two fellow buddies on my shoulders, but not die by a lousy piece-of-shit Iranian ack-ack gun. And if it doesn’t kill me, it makes me stronger.” Wohl paused, shrugged, then added with a faint smile, “Or it could’ve been the non-stop praying I’d been doing, and the extra thin-line Kevlar jacket I was wearing that night.
“Now, stop screwing around and go get Monroe out here so we can get this show on the road. You want to help, go monitor the situation display in the command center. Just don’t let the flight doc see you.”
Monroe wasn’t too far away—he’d told Briggs that it would never work, so he’d been standing by, ready to go—and soon he was aboard the CV-22 Pave Hammer tilt-rotor and the rescue mission was under way. Again, Briggs was left behind.
Dammit, he thought, it wasn’t fair! Just because he didn’t snarl and growl like a bitch in heat like all these other borrowed Marines, he had to sit on his ass and get his room searched by the flight surgeon without his knowledge!
After returning his prized Uzi and its spare magazines to the armory, Briggs checked in with the command center. Nothing would be happening for at least twenty-five minutes until the CV-22 went feet-dry. Last mission, they hadn’t made it that far—an antiaircraft artillery site on Tumb as Sughrd, or Lesser Tumb Island, had opened fire on them as they passed nearby, and they’d been hit by a half-second burst. The CV-22 had sustained minor damage; three crewmen had been wounded by flying shrapnel, including Briggs.
This time, with a little luck, Madcap Magician was going all the way into the claws of the beast: Bandar Abbas, the largest military complex in Iran and one of the largest in the Middle East. Intelligence had suggested that the survivors of the Valley Mistress might have been taken to Suru prison. They were going to check out the prison’s security and try to find any weaknesses, in case they decided they had to break in; then they would check the safe areas.
Like all areas of every country in which they operated, Madcap Magician had a series of safe areas and escape-and-evasion plans formulated that every crewman was required to memorize before each mission. During the infiltration, every crew member was kept apprised of the team’s present position, their heading, and speed, so in case the aircraft was forced down, every man knew where he was and which way to proceed to the nearest safe area. At specific times for each area, a survivor would make his way as carefully as he could to a contact point, where—with a little luck—a rescuer would be there to find him.
But every day that went by lessened the chance of a successful rescue. The Iranian army, the Revolutionary Guards, reserves, and Basic militias were everywhere, near every city, town, highway, road, railroad, bridge, and river, looking for infiltrators. A guy on the run couldn’t hold up for very long even if his health was perfect—if he was
