Phoenix Sub Zero

The admirals who had sent the Javelins had miscalculated, Morris thought. With the new explosive, the missiles had been overkill. Although difficult to see from the ridge of sand, from where Morris lay, there was nothing left of the bunker to sift through. The idea of survivors was the dream of a Pentagon bureaucrat. Morris stood and signaled the men in, the fires from the explosion calming and dying down, the smoke still billowing out of the crater of what had once been the headquarters bunker of the Combined Armed Forces of the entire god damned UIF. Morris’s radio earpiece crackled with terse reports from the other platoon commanders as the seals surrounded the bunker, the reports confirming Morris’s analysis that there would be no survivors to take alive, no General Sihoud to interrogate. Morris got closer to the hole, peered in, nodded, and gave the orders to begin the extraction.

* * *

Ahmed had not yet mouthed his first word to tell Sihoud to continue through the tunnel when the tunnel suddenly turned upside down, the walls burst, and what had been an escape route became an airless tomb.

For the next five minutes the collapsed tunnel was filled with the booming noises of the explosions. Then all was silent.

* * *

All this way, Morris thought bitterly, just to watch a bunch of million-dollar missiles overdo the work the seals could have done with precision. He and his commandos left the bunker compound at the same fence holes they had cut and ran at a six-minute-mile pace to the DPVS, cranked the engines, and headed four miles farther northeast. Three of the buggies had failed — sand in the supercharger blowers, Morris figured, making a few of the DPVS heavy with added men. When Morris’s satellite navigation unit blinked, he gave the order and shut down the buggies. The units were parked side by side in three rows of seven, the last man out of each DPV pulling a pin out of an assembly under the seats. The commandos ran a hundred yards to the north and hit the sand. A few seconds later the DPV destruct mechanisms kicked in and blew the buggies into smoldering ruins, the fires from their explosions guiding in the extraction air craft.

Morris waited, frustrated, knowing that the extraction had been planned later, assuming there would be a longer action at the mosque. But he hated waiting on bus drivers, particularly Air Force bus drivers. After what felt like twenty minutes but was closer to five, Morris heard the beating of the rotors. The four V-22 tilt-rotor Ospreys flew overhead, circled, and tilted their rotors to the horizontal, descending vertically and touching down on the sand. Morris and the men climbed into the odd aircraft, half-chopper, half-transport, and buckled in. Morris’s V-22 lifted off and tilted the props, the aircraft now a turboprop high-speed transport. As the plane accelerated south toward occupied southern Iran, Morris took one last look at the burning remains of the mosque.

There was no way anyone could have survived the explosion. Still, Morris had hoped to load Sihoud’s dead body aboard the V-22 with them, the ultimate war trophy. Well, every mission, he told himself, screwed up somehow. This mission’s screw up was just an overabundance of firepower.

Morris leaned back in the seat, and although only a hundred feet over UIF territory and only minutes removed from combat, fell into a deep sleep.

* * *

Chah Bahar was a peaceful village on the sea. Ahmed had gone home on leave to see his wife and four-year-old son Nadhar. The sun was warm as he walked the street with his family hours before he had to fly back to Ashkhabad.

Abruptly out of the south, the sound of jet engines, too big and heavy for UIF jets. His ears were filled with the sounds of the Western Coalition Stealth bombers, the whistle of the descending cluster bombs, the oddly muffled cough from his wife as the shrapnel hit her. He felt himself running, Nadhar’s body in his arms. As the first bombs hit, he and Nadhar fell to the dirt, Ahmed on top, the bombs exploding around them. His ears rang from the low pass of a black bomber. He braced himself as the fuel-air explosive canister hit the ground and detonated, the explosion smashing into him. He felt the impact of shrapnel, then the conflagration sucked the air out of the sky, leaving him gasping, certain he was moments from death, but finally the flames faded and he drank in the air. Even before he looked Ahmed sensed his son had been hit by the shrapnel. And Col. Rakish Ahmed, supreme commander of the Combined Air Forces of the United Islamic Front of God and chief of staff to General-and-Khalib Mohammed al-Sihoud was obliged to watch as his son died. The final wave of Stealth bombers flew over then, their bellies full of another round of cluster bombs.

Ahmed was forced to leave Nadhar’s body and run for cover.