another dangerous challenge — the streets around the American positions were clogged with battle haze and dotted with fiery buildings that had looked like burning match heads from above.
But despite these deadly hurdles, the first flight of Jackson’s rescue team had landed without taking any serious hits, and as far as Jackson was concerned, the reward was already more than apparent. Already he had seen the first lift of evacuees come spilling out of the gymnasium under the protective eyes of their Marine guards — women and children, their faces wan and frightened, yet flushed with open gratitude. Looking out his window at them, Jackson was nearly moved to tears. Never in his vivid and perfect recollection had he felt so proud of serving his country. Within a minute, the civilians had been seated in the cargo compartment, the rear ramp raised, and he was airborne, followed by the other two MV-22s. As he transitioned back to forward flight, he saw the second flight of three Ospreys coming in to land, with others following. So far, Operation Fort Apache was working like clockwork.
The 2/505th paratroops were literally fighting with their backs to the wall. The first group of evacuees had been delivered to safety out to the ships of PHIBRON 3 without a hitch. By 1630/4:30 PM, the second relay of Ospreys started to arrive and began loading up the remaining embassy personnel and refugees. With this lift the birds were also taking aboard the first groups of paratroopers as the 2/505 initiated the pullout phase of the operation. As the afternoon went on, they tightened their defensive ring to the very streets outside the compound’s gate — streets that, for all appearances, might have been swept by the explosive shockwave of a nuclear blast. Fighting at the perimeter line was fierce, the air layered with smoke and reverberating with the nonstop clatter of automatic weapons. Virtually every last civilian in the area had fled for cover at the outbreak of violence, many of them abandoning their cars in the middle of the road. The smoking metal corpses of those vehicles now cluttered every intersection and cross-street, their chassis torn and twisted from bullets and grenade explosions. Far more dreadful was the toll in human life. The bodies of dead and dying combatants lay sprawled on the sidewalks, the vast majority of them Sudanese militiamen and infantry troops. A few, however, were wearing the urban- camouflage uniforms of American paratroops and Marines. On the pavement outside the front gate, where the fighting was up close, eye-to-eye, and in some instances hand-to-hand, Colonel Bill “Hurricane” Harrison stood in the hellish thick of things, shouting orders to his soldiers as the enemy push intensified. When he was seventeen, he had read a biography of General James Gavin, to his mind the greatest combat general in American history. Gavin was a leader who had never expected his men to do anything he wouldn’t do himself. Later, after choosing his own career in the military, Harrison had occasionally wondered if he would have anything like the guts that Gavin had. As he stood there outside the compound, his troops outnumbered by perhaps four to one, bullets shuttling past his head, it never occurred to him that he was doing his boyhood hero proud. He was too busy carrying out his mission to be worried about posterity.
Just a few more hours to go.
Even before word finally crackled from his personal SINCGARS radio, Harrison had known that it was time for his men to retreat to the pickup area. He had heard the sound of rotors churning the air, looked skyward, and seen the fourth and final convoy of MV-22s and CH-53s approaching in the near distance. Their airframes were little more than silhouettes as he watched them descend through raftering clouds of soot and smoke. With a silent prayer of gratitude, he gave the final fallback order, his voice hoarse as he raised it over the throbbing clamor of battle. While four armed Osprey gunships laid down a heavy suppressive fire around the compound, the last company of paratroops sprinted for their own MV-22B transports. In less than five minutes, the last of the American transports were on their way seaward. At almost the same moment, demolition charges in the Hummers and guns reduced them to scrap metal. This was designed to keep the weapons and vehicles out of Sudanese hands. However, the President had ordered a more powerful demonstration of how America walks out of a country. This time, the U.S. was going out under its own power and there would be a message in it for the world.
Like Colonel Harrison, the pilots of the four AV-8B Plus Harriers cruising over the city had been awaiting orders to begin the last phase of Operation Fort Apache. Each of them was prepared to launch a salvo of four GBU-29 2,000- lb./909-kg. GPS-guided bombs from under his wings. The call to engage came in over their radios, and they reacted immediately. Diving like the predatory birds that are their namesakes, the fighter jets accelerated downward through bursts of light flak and released their destructive payloads.
The sixteen heavy bombs showered over the embassy compound in annihilating rain, the detonations of their 2,000-lb/909-kg warheads bringing up screams in the throats of the Sudanese forces they had caught by surprise, many of whom perished wondering what they had done to incur the wrath of Heaven. The GPS-guided bombs had been dropped in a specially planned pattern, designed to flatten every structure inside the compound walls. Suggested by the Joint Chiefs and approved by the President, it was a “scorched earth” statement to the Sudanese that they would not be permitted to take the American embassy as the Iranians had back in 1979. They got the message loud and clear.
The Osprey landed with a gentle thump and discharged the final wave of evacuated paratroops. His field jacket whipping around his body in the wash of its prop/rotors, Colonel Bill “Hurricane” Harrison quickly made his way down the cargo ramp and trotted over to the forward cabin. He waited as the cabin door opened and the pilot exited. “Helluva job you did today,” he said, extending his hand. “I’ll never forget it, long as I live.”
Lieutenant Colonel Wesley Jackson took firm hold of his palm and shook it. “Me neither, sir,” he said, and grinned with secret humor.
Hassan al-Mahdi stared out his window at the gathering crowd. On the street below, Abdel-Ghani’s severed head rotted on the tip of a wooden spike, a cloud of insects harrying it in the bright midday sun, the dead eyes gaping vacantly at those who had gathered before the palace. Today they had come here to shout insults at the grotesque remains of the Minister of State, who had been declared a traitor and summarily executed, despite concrete evidence for revealing the plan to seize the embassy to American intelligence. Tomorrow, al-Mahdi thought, the crowd’s fickle passions might well turn against
Operation Royal Banana: Belize, 2009
The volcano was earning its name tonight, making an aggressive spectacle of itself, its peak glowing brightly through the sparse clouds threading across the sky, infusing them with fiery veins of light. Comfortably warm in his shirtsleeves, General Hidalgo Guzman had brought his small group of advisors out into the mansion’s courtyard, wishing to enjoy the unseasonable weather while they finalized their plans. It was dry for autumn, a time of year when the coastal towns and villages stood braced for tropical storms blowing in from the Caribbean Sea. Normally, the highlands were soaked with rain, or at best blanketed with a mist that sent dampness deep under the skin. Indeed, Guzman had heard that a hurricane was brewing somewhere at sea. But here and now, things could not have been more pleasant.
