Chapter One

Amman-Baghdad Highway, 1991

THE DIRTY YELLOW ball of fire grew to a brilliant white pillar of iridescent flame, searing a trail up into the night sky.

"Everybody down!" Devon shouted, dropping as he squeezed his eyes shut against the glare of the rocket motor climbing into the desert sky. He dug his fingers into the sand as the ridge rumbled and shook, rattling his body like a tambourine. Underneath his gut, the ground rippled as the shock wave from the rocket launch dissipated into the desert.

As Devon forced his eyes open, a Scud missile slowly lifted from the cloud of desert dust and smoke, balanced on a tail of fire over the barren Iraqi desert. It accelerated, rising faster and faster, all too like the grainy films of the Nazi V-2s on their way to London.

This one angled into the heavy clouds to the west, toward Tel Aviv.

"Get the damn Hog down here before they get off another one!" Devon yelled at Baker, still struggling up the sandy slope. Devon craned his neck and searched overhead for the A-10 Wart Hog and its Maverick missiles, but his night vision had been completely wiped out by the glare of the rocket motor.

He shivered, his heavy desert battle dress uniform sweat-drenched after leading his kluged-together four-man Special Ops team at a dead run from the helicopter drop point to the top of the sand ridge. He quickly scanned all around their position. To the south, the Night Stalker Blackhawk helicopter scuttled low over the tops of the dunes toward Saudi.

Staff Sergeant Wilbert Baker fell to his knees beside Devon, breath coming in deep gasps as he slipped off his heavy rucksack. He unfolded the satcom-mode antenna and tested the transceiver with a couple of quick squeezes of the handset. Baker softly clucked into the microphone, listened for the return echoes, and then switched to the air-to-ground mode. Soft bursts of static confirmed they were on the air.

Sergeant Larry Tuggle, the third American soldier on the team, pointed toward the highway, his freckled hand barely visible in the reddish gleam of the climbing rocket. "Rag-heads crawling all over the desert, Chief. Can't stick here too long."

Pinpoints of light flicked around the mouth of the wadi, a ravine cut into the desert floor by the infrequent torrential rains, where the highway bridge formed a shelter from the sky.

"Look over yonder," Tuggle continued. " 'Rackies got no light discipline."

"It's like they's hanging out a sign sayin', Come on down," Baker added, nearly invisible in the dark as he hunkered low behind the top of the ridge.

On the far side of Baker, Aragon, their French Coalition member, scanned the distant highway with a pair of binoculars.

A quarter of a mile across the desert, movements of the individual Iraqi soldiers teased Devon's eyes. He scrubbed the sand from his face and yanked the laser designator from its carrier. Hands shaking, he flipped off the lens covers. If the Iraqis had another Scud, they'd try to quickly launch, almost in salvo with the first—if for no other reason than to confuse the Patriot missiles at the other end of the ballistic arc.

Devon swung the scope over the area, blinking to regain his night vision. He ignored the clinging particles of grinding sand, pressed the eyepiece back against his face and centered the invisible beam.

Sharp in the magnification of the scope, a gaggle of bodies waddled around a second missile teetering in the erector. The missile slowly moved toward a vertical position.

Baker's deep voice rumbled in his ear. "Hog's in firing position, Chief. Mark 'em… now!"

Devon triggered the laser beam, holding the center spot on the missile as the launch crew locked the tube in its firing position, then ran out of his peripheral vision.

Devon flinched as a fiery streak crossed the sky. Suddenly, the infrared amplifier overloaded and a green bloom filled the lens. Devon took his eye away from the scope and looked up to catch a faint blur against the stars. The Hog's turbines whined overhead as it pulled out, chased by flaming debris catapulted from the exploding Scud. Devon dropped back to the ground as the glare and roar of a secondary explosion washed over their exposed position.

Devon, heart hammering, pressed his face into the cold grit of the ridge until the glared died.

"The fuel truck!" shouted Aragon. "Extraordinaire!"

The fire silhouetted the Frenchman on the top of the ridge, practically dancing.

Baker shook his head. "That boy—he's gonna get us in trouble."

"Let him prance." Devon pressed the eyepiece back against his face and searched the darkness behind the flaming tanker. "For now, the Iraqis are too busy to care about us." The wavering flames across the desert floor blurred in the scope.

"If they got any sense, they'd be watching for the Hogs," replied Baker, referring to the A-10s patrolling high in the fading light of the quarter moon.

Copyright © 2004 by John M. Taylor, Jr.