Dick Couch - Out of the Ashes

“Sir, we are secure with two live pilots and seven EPOWs — if you want to call them enemy POWs. No friendly casualties, but one of the pilots needs medical attention. This looks like the Syrian site recorded by the Global Hawk. We’re processing the site now and will have data transmission to you in five mikes. Oh, and we have a senior member of the Saudi Oil Ministry and a member of the royal family in tow.”

“You what!”

“Stand by, Colonel, and see for yourself.”

Within minutes, Op-Center was receiving imagery of the site and head shots of the captured Saudis. There were two of the prince, one head shot and one of a half dressed, very overweight Arab with a bag over his head. Moments later, Dawson was back on the net.

“You still with me, Mike?”

“Right here, sir.”

“OK, we’re about to take down the Saudi military’s air traffic control system and send the helos at best dash speed. Probably take them less than thirty mikes to get to your posit.”

While the MH-60Ms streaked across the desert to the site, Volner and his team found DF-21D missile mockups and launchers inside the blockhouse. All were recorded digitally and uplinked back to Op-Center. They set charges on the crashed Navy helicopter.

Brian Dawson came back on the net just as Volner and his team were finishing their site exploitation. “Mike, I have your extraction birds about twenty minutes out.”

“Roger that, Colonel, we’ve rigged the wrecked helo with explosives for command detonation, and we’ve swept the site. What about our fat prince and his friends?”

“Question them, but don’t hurt them. We have most of what we need.”

Per their standard field interrogation, the team separated and politely questioned their captives — in English. The prince refused to speak at all, Jawad Makhdoom babbled on about doing what he was told, and the Northrup Grumman engineer spilled his guts. The technicians spoke among themselves in rapid, heated Arabic. Two on the team, ostensibly on guard duty, stood in the background and said nothing. Both spoke fluent Arabic and Dari. They learned a great deal about the site and the instructions given to these men by the prince through the chief engineer. When the extraction helos were a minute out, the captives were freed and told to start walking west. The team marked a landing zone some hundred meters from the blockhouse. Before he left, Volner turned to where the prince was still seated by the blockhouse. He dropped to one knee and spoke in his ear.

“Listen, you fat sack of shit,” he said in a low voice. “My orders are to leave you here unharmed. Otherwise, it would be a bullet to the back of the head, after I castrated you. Now that broken helo over there is going to explode about five minutes after we lift off. If you and your helo are still here, then you go up with it. I hope you don’t make it. And by the way, your American contractor told us everything, and I mean everything, about your little operation here. I guess you didn’t pay him enough to buy his loyalty.”

Volner turned and followed his team to the LZ. A short while after they were collected by the Pave Hawks, a sharp explosion consumed what was left of the wrecked Navy MH-60R. Jawad Makhdoom watched from the cover of some desert scrub and contemplated what to do next. His technicians looked to him for direction, but he had none. Then a Sikorsky S-92 swooped low overhead with a fat man in the copilot’s seat wearing a set of headphones and very little else.

Night had fallen in the Arabian Gulf as Ponce and her ducklings made their way toward the Strait of Hormuz. “Evening, Commodore,” Ponce ’s commanding officer, Captain Jackson Bowling, said as Joe Armao appeared on Ponce ’s starboard bridge wing. Bowling was sporting a light windbreaker, a Ponce ball cap, and was holding a mug of steaming coffee.

“Hello, Captain, beautiful night to be at sea.”

“Amen to that, Commodore. How’d your conference call with the head-shed go?”

“Like always, lots of gratuitous advice.”

The two men were simpatico — of an accord. They were sailors at sea doing what they loved to do and potentially going into harm’s way.

Ponce was operated jointly by Navy officers and sailors and government civilian mariners from the Military Sealift Command. As the ship’s captain Bowling had all the challenges of operating a Navy ship at sea with the additional task of molding Navy officers and sailors and his complement of civilian mariners into a cohesive team. Ponce ’s captain was a former mustang, an enlisted Navy sailor who had then moved into the officer ranks. This assignment was a difficult one and one that would not lead to a promotion for him. Yet he had taken the job for one reason. He loved being at sea.

“Yeah, I figured that,” Bowling replied. “A lot of folks ashore are wanting to tell you how to do your job. Any change from what we were originally briefed on back in Bahrain?”

“No, not much,” Armao began, looking around to ensure they were still alone on the bridge wing. “Pretty straight-stick mine countermeasures operation and one we’ve practiced many times. The intel folks are saying it looks like the Iranians loaded up somewhere between eighty to one hundred mines, tops, on their dhows and there were damn few moored acoustic mines in the lot. Looks like we’ll be dealing primarily with shallow-moored contact mines.”

“Not rocket science, huh?”

‘No, not really, Jackson, but you know the biz, so it will be slow going and there are always risks in this game. If we go about it methodically with the assets we have, we may even be done before the other Sea Dragon helicopters they’re flying in from Norfolk get here.”

“Sounds like a plan, Joe. Anything more, anything you’re allowed to tell me, that is, as to why this was such a pissant effort by the Iranians? I mean, they have way north of five thousand mines, including some pretty sophisticated stuff. This is little more than a nuisance.”

“Well, we’ll see how we do clearing these bad boys before we declare victory and say it was only harassment mining. With what we’ve learned so far, and believe me, the intelligence community has been in overdrive on this, Iran is desperate to have us lay off Syria. Back when they were laying these mines, we were making it pretty clear we were going to go into Syria. So the dhows dumped the mines. My best guess is this mining effort was a ‘look what we can do if you mess with us’ ploy by the Iranians. I figure by now the diplomats are working overtime to sort this out.”

“Meanwhile, we got a mission,” Bowling replied. “I figure I’ll have you in the vicinity by daybreak. We can start our clearing operations at first light.”

“Chase, that’s good news indeed,” Wyatt Midkiff said as Chase Williams called him with his initial report.

“Thank you, Mr. President, now that we’ve actually put eyes-on those DF-21D fakes in that blockhouse, and have imagery, I suspect we’re ready to completely stand down against Syria.” The cryptic reports from the downed pilots about the fake site were one thing, but the documented evidence collected by the JSOC team was the clincher.

“That’s correct. Jack Bradt is talking with General Albin as we speak. You pulled us back from the brink on this one, Chase. I’m also cheered your JSOC team has rescued our two American captives. I’ll be anxious to hear from you once your extraction helos have them and your team out of Saudi territory.”

“The extract team is outbound as we speak, and I’ll call you immediately when they’re clear of Saudi airspace.”

“Excellent. I understand your team got some information from the Saudis they interrogated as to why they did all this in the first place.”