Wizard for Uncle Sam - Chapter One

Chapter One.
Arrogance.

The muted roar of the fighter engine was music to his ears. Flying along at twenty-three thousand feet and just a hair under supersonic speed, “Champ”, otherwise known as Major Carl David Campion, was in his element. This new helmet visor was just another high-tech gadget he had gained a respect of. Speed, heading, altitude and most importantly; weapons status data; the heads up display showed it all clearly, even in the nearly complete darkness.

His crate was a lot like its pilot: It wasn’t getting older, only better; or so his wife always told him. Twelve years before, the F-16CJ Wild Weasel fighter he was flying had been commissioned in the same month that he himself had become a commissioned officer. Through these past twelve years, both the aircraft and pilot had been upgraded and modified many times.

“Voodoo lead, to all elements, stand by for scheduled course deviation, in five, four, three, two, one.” Carl heard the flight leader, Jim “Big Bones” Jiganti, over the built-in headphones.

Champ moved his left hand a fraction of an inch to the right, which in turn moved the nose of his bird in line with the other fighters and he returned to his quiet reverie. His g-suit made the automatic adjustment to its internal pressure in order to keep his blood moving despite the slight g-forces increase, making his eyes blur for a moment. He squeezed his leg muscles to send more blood flowing up, and his head cleared. It was an old trick, and one that came in handy more and more.

They had been gearing up, and getting hyped-up, for the night’s grisly work for about six months now. As the third plane of a four-fighter Wild Weasel formation he was literally the tip of the spear. His mission profile, as briefed, was simple and the very best kind. They were to fly along at their current altitude, using passive systems to scan for enemy radar installations. When the equipment found an enemy signal, “spotlight”, they would line up an attack run and kill-‘em. His complement of two High Speed Anti-Radiation missiles, HARM, would lock into and slam the radar units, and crews, into smoky bits and pieces.

His wingman, Charlie Macgruder, or “Big Mac” as his call sign indicated, was armed with a more generic weapons load: four Sparrow Air-to-Air Missiles and two GBU-24 ground-penetrating bombs. Big Mac’s task was to take out any airborne threats, to make for a smooth extraction, and dump his load of munitions to cover the rest of the radar site and support vehicles.

This teaming of high tech missiles and smart bombs made for a very effective combination. At a cost of twenty five million U.S. dollars for each radar site and their trained crews, Uncle Saddam was guaranteed to have a bad night. As the second of four groups just like his, it promised to be a busy night. If all went well, they would use half their respective loads on this target and still have enough to cover any other secondary, lower priority, targets they identified, or were vectored into.

Of course, the crew chiefs would be busier tomorrow than the pilots would be tonight. They would be patching the holes from any bullets or shrapnel that were lucky enough to hit the fighter. Better yet, with luck they would have several kills tonight, and the ground crews would spray paint over the stencils of radar sites on the sides of their pilots’ fighters.

According to the intelligence reports, the weasels would have a busy time of it for the next few nights. Tasked with clearing an air corridor into southern Iraq, they would make the first and potentially most important strikes in what had been affectionately called Desert Storm, Part Deux.

“Voodoo flight, this is Overlook; change vector to one, one, five degrees, and proceed one, eight, niner nautical to contact, over.” The stubbly hair on the back of Carl’s head began to stand on end. Their first target was vectored in for them by Overlook, the current code name for the E-3C AWACS, Airborne Command Aircraft.

At their current speed they’d be able to engage the target in a little less than three minutes. That was more than enough time to complete the pre-attack checklist and a quick recital of his favorite prayer, “Dear god, deliver us from evil, and please don’t let us fuck up.” The quiet snickers of his wingman and flight leader made the silence of their fourth pilot even more pronounced.

Captain Balthasar, “Bud”, Cooper heard his squadron mates laughing over the blasphemous prayer offered up, and not for the first time he simply wished Champ would shut up. “Bud”, he grumbled to himself, he hated that handle! As a devout Mormon, Balthasar, known as “Balto” to his family and non-pilot friends suffered from a severe sense of guilt. Here he was defending his country, surely as great of a calling as one could have, and yet being asked to rain down fire and death on people he did not and would never know.

These people were just like him. They were defending their homes, and country. Admittedly, they were in the wrong, but that didn’t help his feelings of grief. He shook his head, trying to clear his thoughts. Now was not the time to think of these things. Trying to concentrate on the mission, and not his own personal convictions, he checked the status of his weapons and made sure that his pickles were hot.

His one small comfort was that the HARMs strapped to his wings would mainly be aimed at the enemy’s equipment, and not the people using it. If the new Iraqi systems were as advertised they should be able to read the return signal from his missiles and run. Their chances were small, but even a small chance was better than none at all. Moving at over 1300 miles an hour, the force of the missile’s impact will push a cone of twelve thousand eight hundred and forty five tungsten fragments forward and into any object it hit. Combined with the enhanced explosives packed among the fragments in the warhead; when the missile exploded it would be like standing in the middle of a blizzard of super-heated, super-hard metal snowflakes moving outward at just under the speed of sound.

Bud shivered as he thought of the carnage that they would be responsible for tonight. He was glad that he wasn’t the one chosen to fire on the targets first; Champ was picked to have that so-called honor. He was strictly the backup on this target. If all went well, he’d go back to base this morning, with a full load of munitions and no blood on his hands. As he thought about all of this, he reckoned the chances of that were slim. Even if he didn’t fire tonight, he would tomorrow, or the day after. He really wasn’t cut out for this, but as he had found out about many of the things in life, he had no choice.

“Voodoo, Flight, you’re clear and vectored into target,” came the quiet voice from the AWACS controller. “Distance to target is three-five nautical miles. Drop to twelve-hundred feet and prepare to fire.”

“Roger flight control.” He confirmed the instructions, “Dropping to the deck.”
As he nosed the throttle control handle forward the fly-by-wire computers read his intent almost as if they had read his mind; the altitude dropped off as his airspeed increased. In just under ten miles his speed increased over the speed of sound and four “gees” were added to his weight. The low tone generator indicated the presence of the radar signals that were the bread and butter of the HARM.

“Voodoo, Flight, you have authorization to fire.”

“Voodoo three firing, Fox One away!” Champ announced over the encrypted communication-link.

Balthasar could just imagine Champ’s hand on the firing control. The action wasn’t quite like squeezing the trigger on a riffle, he thought, but the analogy was the same. He would push the button and feel a quick tug as the HARM separated from his left wing. At the same time Champ would “jink” the stick with his left hand to gain altitude and veer off to the right. Strike and evade, he thought.

The wing man’s tasking was to monitor the missile streak to and destroy its target. Careful not to look directly at the aft end of the missile, he carefully alternated between looking at his instruments and watching the missile through the Lexan bubble canopy in front of him. He silently offered a prayer for the doomed men in the control trailer as he saw that they continued to beam radar energy at the oncoming missile.


Big Mac also watched the missile streak in towards its target. “Well batter up, I guess,” he murmured as he prepared to lob his GBU-24 smart bomb into the target area. He would release in about five seconds completing the destruction began by the HARM. Utilizing the advanced optics packed into his helmet visor he looked to see where he wanted to place his munitions. Normally he’d pick as close to the middle of the group of vehicles as possible, confident that the seventeen hundred pounds of CEMTEX explosives would make the casing and the surrounding vehicle wreckage a maelstrom of force and steel. The carefully orchestrated maneuver was designed to have both munitions arrive at virtually the same time, was successful.

At the point of release, he looked to verify the targets, and looked on in shock, as his eyes registered nothing. There were no trucks, no trailers, no emplacements, no satellite dishes or anything else. His instruments stubbornly continued to show the target. Intractable, he followed his instincts and his trust in his equipment, instead of a reaction to what should have been flaming wreckage and secondary explosions; his right hand deployed his load of munitions. Twin detonations lit up the early morning sky, but to no effect.

There appeared to be nothing there to destroy, and he screamed into the link, “Voodoo lead this is two! Report no secondary explosions. I repeat, negative secondary!”

“Voodoo lead this is four,” Bud’s concern came through clear. “I concur with two’s report. No secondary explosions and no wreckage observed.”

“What the hell?” Colonel Jiganti shouted into his microphone. “Overlook, do you still show the target, over?” He looked about with shock and amazement as their fighters screamed away from their target at roughly one mile every six seconds.

“Voodoo lead, this is Overlook. Negative radar contact, the target disappeared at the time of impact.”

“We’re logging this one as a kill,” the controller announced with pride.

“But we didn’t hit anything,” Bud said quietly. If anyone heard him, no one gave a reply because they were all thinking the same thing.

*****

The range and view from the field is too limited, William thought to himself, even when you’re out standing in the middle of it. Orders for noise discipline didn’t cover your brain, thank God. Cold was beginning to creep into his bones on this long night and he began to think that maybe, just maybe, he was getting too old for this. The years of toil in foreign lands were beginning to show in the knees and more recently a spot in his lower back. At thirty-five, he was the oldest of the twelve men on his team. Hell, even the Lieutenant was only twenty-three.

He pulled his dead away from the padded eyepiece and tried to find the other members of his strike team. Looking left and right, he thought that maybe he could just make out a shape in the dark. Probably Havens, he’s just too bulky to hide very easily. How the man had ever made it thru Special Forces training he still didn’t know.

As big as he was, you’d think that he just wouldn’t be able to move that well. Flexible wasn’t the word he would use to describe the giant man, but there was no other way to describe him. The big man was a lot like a gymnast who had decided on football. William remembered the time he had seen Havens climb through the rubble of a demolished building. It was amazing how he slid his way through the debris like a snake through long grass.

No one else was visible though; a good thing, that. If William couldn’t see them the chances that Saddam’s boys would see them were slim-to-none, and if everything went according to plan they never would. That thought brought a smile to his lips, as he realized how much he truly enjoyed this part of his job.

The field of view from this area of the desert was broken up by the pumping platforms visible off in the distance. Just like home in East Texas, Will thought. He took a glance at his watch. It was time to look again to see if there was any change.

Scanning through the 10x optics of his SOFLAM laser designator, he saw that the vista hadn’t changed. The pumps were still there, along with the three Iraqi T-72 tanks and four BMP-2 armored cars. Thirty-some-odd Republican Guard troops were sleeping, dreaming happy thoughts, no doubt. They had posted a five man roving patrol earlier, but as the night progressed they had gradually begun to draw close together in a clump near the small fire one of them had lit to heat tea.

His opponents, of course, considered the night as another obstacle; to Will the dark was his best friend. It had taken nearly five hours to infiltrate to this small ravine that they had posted in, even with night vision equipment. All the while, the enemy soldiers had continued to stare into the darkness, oblivious to the menace that was creeping closer. Once in the ravine, the strike team had deployed to the left and right of his position, to cover the Iraqis, while the other members of Alpha Team had deployed to the south of this position, in order to cover the team’s extraction.

Alpha Team was tasked with securing three of the northern most oil fields, and this was number one on their list. As the largest, and most densely packed, it was logically the place where Saddam’s boys were most likely to be. For once the boys in intelligence had guessed right.

The way the vehicles had been placed, the main guns on the both T-72s and the BMPs could easily turn the entire field into a local version of hell. If the Iraqis were thinking like William, they could set this field on fire and be on the road to the next target in less than three minutes. They were laagered at a decent distance to raise hell if necessary, but far enough away that their eyebrows wouldn’t get singed.

It’s my job to make sure that doesn’t happen, William thought. The plan was: they would contact a flight of AV-8B’s loitering nearby, via secure communications; call them in as needed, and at his discretion. As the witching hour was approaching, he thought it was high time to do something other than just sit and watch. The human body’s circadian rhythms were funny things. Between the hours of midnight and two a.m. the human body, even if properly rested, begins to slow down.

Reviewing all the briefings he’d sat in on over the years, he figured that he and his squad would get anywhere from thirty to sixty seconds of time before the Iraqi’s even knew what happened, let alone be organized and able to react. There’s plenty of time for him and his new friends to play their own game.

The Harriers were the sudden lightning and thunder of the plan. William would sit back, paint the T-72s with the SOFLAM while the fighters launched laser-guided munitions; more than likely laser guided Mavericks or something like them. His right flanker would be doing the same with the BMPs, and the rest of the squad was tasked with catching stragglers and neutralizing them is they attempted to either fight or flee.

The depleted uranium twenty-five millimeter rounds from the AV-8B’s should carve thru the armored assets like cheese. Of course the secondary explosions of the magazines in the vehicles would add to the confusion, and general mayhem. Caught between the jaws of this particular trap, the rats had no chance. He just hoped that everyone remembered to get at least one captive. The intelligence garnered would be helpful.

Using the dimly illuminated keypad attached to his secure radio, he keyed in the 4-digit frequency code his SOFLAM was set on. Taking a second to reflect, he hit the transmit button, and sent the coded signal via high-speed burst to the waiting aircraft.

*****

Ten miles away, and fifteen thousand feet up, the AV-8B, Harrier II, flight leader received the coded text message verifying the target location and laser designation code. He quickly typed the four numbers into his targeting computer and armed two of the four AGM-65E laser guided missiles. The seeker heads immediately began scanning for the sweet spot illuminated by the Special Operation troops on the ground. Almost immediately they chirped their confirmation signals indicating they’d found their prey.

Marine Corps Captain Richard “Hammer” Hammons turned his fighter and began the graceful slide into proper attack posture. His wingman, and partner in crime, echoed his every move, dropping through the light cloud cover they followed the compass and laser beacon the target area.

Looking thru his Night Vision Integrated Systems, NVIS, Hammer saw the ground reaching up to grab at him. Leveling off at fifteen hundred feet he began to slow to two hundred and fifty knots. It was fast enough to be hard to see, but slow enough to see his targets. Using the return signal from the seeker heads he could see the targets a few seconds later.

“Damn, Hammer” his wingman Lieutenant Douglas Beaver said, “they’re makin’ this too easy!”

“Yeah, Beav they’ve got them all parked in a nice orderly row. Didn’t these chuckleheads learn anything from ’91?” Looking down it was hard to believe that the Iraqi’s had lined up all three of their tanks up in a v-shaped formation while the second laser designation showed the BMPs parked in a nearly perfect square.

“I’ll take the lead tank, you begin on the BMPs”, Hammer told his wingman.

“Ok, if you must, but remember that nice tie I got you for Christmas? I don’t remember you getting me anything.” Beaver replied.

“I’m Jewish you dolt”, Hammer said tiredly. “Now if you’d given it to me during Hanukah, I’d let you have these guys, as it is, be happy I let you come along at all.”

“Yessir, boss. Targeting the lead two BMPs. Will follow up Winchester on the back two.”

“Just don’t hit any of the pumps,” Hammer said, we don’t need the EPA on our asses.

In a space of thirty seconds the Harriers were almost nose-to-nose with their intended targets. Pressing his thumb down on the firing stud Hammer let loose his first Maverick.

“Fox one, one on the way.”

Slipping to his alternate frequency he announced via secure radio, “Get ready down there, target one is engaged.”

Riding down the pulsed laser beam the Maverick missile screamed along at eleven hundred fifty kilometers an hour. A bright flash from his four o-clock position indicated Beaver’s first missile launch as well. Three seconds after release he saw his missile impact with its target.

Both Pilots had banked their aircraft into a near stall to line up their second and subsequent shots. Going to guns or “Winchester’, Beaver had come to a point in front of and left of his second target. Leveling off, just behind his wingman, Hammer looked down in horror as the explosion from his missile continued to expand. A fireball nearly three hundred yards in diameter rose to meet them.

The pressure wave from the explosion threw both aircraft backwards nearly thirty yards. A second later, the suction caused by the pressure wave killed his engines. Captain Richard Hammons and Lieutenant Douglas Beaver dropped out of the sky like a very expensive lawn dart, straight into the desert sands.

*****

On the ground William, watched as the streaks of light resolved into the impact of almost two hundred and fifty pounds of PBX explosive. He’d taken his eye away from the eyepiece and his finger off the SOFLAM trigger, in order to save the optics and his own night vision.

Hunkered down in his ravine, William watched in horror, as the T-72 that he had targeted for the Harriers seemed to go blurry and then change into the shape of a pump station. Located as it was, and connected to the other pumps, it was fed oil from the pumps to be stored in two large tanks until such time as it was piped south. The force imparted on the station, by the missiles propelled a flaming-liquid crude oil into the air in a fan shaped pattern. Sgt. William Lawrence barely registered the loss of the Harrier, when the first wave of burning oil began to rain down on him.

The extraction team led by Lieutenant Harry Rickens, saw the sky to their west light up and continue to brighten. “Willy, come in, Willy, do you hear me, what the hell is going on? Did those idiot Marines hit a pump or what?”

“Answer me dammit!” He yelled into his radio. After a silent minute Lt. Rickens dispatched his left flanker to recon the situation.
Five minutes later he heard his earpiece chirp an incoming signal. “Sir, this is Gonzales. You’re not going to believe this…the infiltration team and at least two aircraft are gone.”

“Come again?” The Lt. asked.

“Sir, I can’t tell if the aircraft were shot down or just crashed. There’s aircraft wreckage and one hum-dinger of a fire down here. It looks like they hit a pump or sub-station or something. All of the pumps in the oil field are on fire or going to be shortly.”

The Lt heard the report and the sound of another pump exploding thru the earpiece and he watched the sky light up again.

“Extract!” The Lt shouted into his radio. “I repeat, Extract. Gonzalez, bug the hell out! Douglas, call Big Bird for extraction, this job is a goner.”

*****

Damn, it’s a cold night, Sean thought. It should’na be so damned cold in the desert. A desert was supposed to be hot and dry. Of course it was 0300 in the morning, and the sand didn’t hold and radiate heat all that well. Now where near as bad as the hills near Glasgow, now that was cold, but it was still chilly enough here to cool your beer.

At least his bum was warm, he thought. He was standing in the hatch of a Warrior Infantry Fighting Vehicle, running along at 45km/hour, and scanning ahead for the bad guys. The wind wasn’t too bad, and in the front of the column, at least he didn’t have to eat anyone else’s dust.

On the left flank with his mates from the Black Watch, 1st battalion of the 7th Armored Brigade, he was a part of the spear tip that was moving ahead of the pack watching for developments and targets. The Warrior was a fine machine for it too, Sean thought. Rolling along at this speed, the treads made little or no noise of their own. The engine especially muffled to provide tactical surprise. The only thing to give him away was the plume of dust the treads spewed up behind them.

A Special Air Service team augmented the three-man Warrior crew. The SAS lads were tasked with deploying out of the vehicle if they were needed to provide assistance, security, or to highlight targets for the Tornado fighter-bombers circling overhead. They would also deploy into, and begin their dirty work on, Basra when the convoy got close enough.

So far the 40-mile trip through Iraq, from their staging point in Kuwait had gone well. They’d encountered no resistance at all traveling off the roads and cross-country. Small wonder though, given that the Iraqis didn’t have access to GPS, or anything much more sophisticated than a compass. Remembering the briefings from captives in ’91, he wasn’t surprised when he’d learned that the Iraqi army either used the roads or stayed home. Their maps were useless; anything not on or near a road was considered unknown territory. ‘Here be dragons,’ and all that. On this night, there were more dragons than they thought they would ever need to worry about.

Each of the tank commanders had their list of targets, Sean thought, and I have mine. All we need is to come upon a placement of T-72s. His oldest son, only a few months away from going into the Royal Air Force had asked him to send back a piece of dad’s first official kill. Sean was interested in the T-72s, but his driver had said that anything with a track would do.

His reflections were interrupted as he noticed a quick movement, 10 degrees off the road to his right. His Warrior was responsible for a sweep 20 degrees wide, and this clearly fell into his purview. Finally, he thought, some action to help the night go by faster. The more nights completed and the sooner they could get back to a base and a decent pub.

“Boss, movement to the right 10 degrees,” he said quietly into his intercom.

“Aye, Sean, I saw it too,” the crew leader said. “This is Rabbit, spotted movement right 10 degrees from my current heading, will check it out, request Shrew and Vole look out for us,” Sergeant Timothy Granger called out via his Clansman secure radio link.

“I read you, Rabbit. Shrew and Vole will provide your backup. Shift right ten degrees in 5 seconds, and drop speed to 30,” Lt Robert Farris, announced from his position in “Vole” the command vehicle for this sortie.

Following the countdown, the three vehicles turned as one, and dropped their speed as ordered, their tracks digging into the sand as the decelerated and moved from the convoy. The three vehicles’ drivers automatically formed a spearhead formation, while the gunners peered through the rangefinders looking for the targets to fire upon.

Sean hunched down in the cupola to avoid some of the sand and to present as little of a target as possible. Looking to the left he saw the Forward Looking InfraRed vision system scanning to-and-fro, systematically looking for threats. Using his own MIRA night vision scope, he tried to look wherever the FLIR pointed. He knew that the optics in the IFV was more powerful than his own but he hoped to spot the target as soon as possible.

There it was again, the hint of movement. Just near the ground, and near a small rise in the ground. A perfect place for a tank berm, he thought. If it were done right only the business end of the tank would be visible. Little did they know, while they were well covered the tanks remained vulnerable. The scout units of the Black Watch trained to hit targets the size of dinner plates at 300 meters. They weren’t that far off now, looking left and right he tried to see if the target was by itself or part of a larger placement.

Seeing nothing he figured that they must have either thrown this one out as a reinforced scout or the laager formed into a point with this poor bastard in the front. The gunner saw the target at the same time and signaled a stop, the other two IFV’s following his lead. The turret began to swivel to come on line with the target. Sean ducked into the vehicle and slammed the hatch closed to block out the light, heat and exhaust from the launching TOW missile.

“Tallyho”, Chris the gunner shouted as he squeezed the triggers on his left and right handles. Watching through the optics system he noted the expected black out of the FLIR as the missile streaked past. Holding his sights on the exposed portion of the turret, he gently steered the missile on course, making fine adjustments with his fingers while the missile headed along, spooling out its’ fine control wires behind it.

Holding a little above and on center with the target, he aimed to have the best chance of the downward firing warheads to puncture the top, and thinnest portion of the armor. The target looked to be an antiquated T-72 tank. Sean nodded and smiled. The advanced TOW 2b would have no trouble blowing through the joint of the turret and the base of the tank. The resulting explosion would turn equipment and crew into many unrecognizable pieces

Flight time at this range was barely under a second, and the twin warheads performed exactly as advertised. Accelerating to supersonic speed one of the depleted uranium warheads struck on top of the turret and the other stuck the engine compartment near the rear of the tank. Fire blossomed into the night as the fuel in the tank began to expand, and burn. Both of the other IFV’s watched while the crew of Rabbit whooped it up like Comanche’s.

“First blood to the Black Watch!” Lt Farris announced into his secure comset. “Spotted and hit one each T-72, in a berm at these coordinates,” he said reading the numbers out quickly.

“Repeat coordinates, say again, please repeat coordinates,” the young Lt heard from his Command and Control officer.

“Alright, coordinates 67west grid A-9, map 3;” he relayed again.

After a few moments, “Please get close and do a visual inspection of the target Vole. We have a Challenger positioned down in the same area.”

“Dammit, HQ! We know the bloody difference between a T-72 and a Challenger, and I say we got the right one!” The LT screamed.

“Roger that, but check anyway, maybe his transmitter is out,” control said calmly.

“Alright, we’ll check,” He replied, a cold edge to his voice. “Corporal Smyth, time for you chaps to earn your ride. Do a quick recon of that tank and its berm for me.”

Corporal Smyth, the SAS team leader nodded his assent and turned to address his team, “Alright lads, let’s go look at the nice burning tank.”

Six men quietly deployed from the vehicle and moved forward cautiously leap-frogging one at a time until they could feel the heat from the fire. Without a word, Corporal Smyth motioned for his team to take up a defensive position. The team moved to their assigned positions and most noted that the burning tank looked a lot like one of their own.

He stared at the scorched earth until it shook as another of the tank’s rounds exploded. The team instinctively ducked to avoid being hit by shrapnel. Corporal Smyth pointed to his eyes, and then pointed at the tank. He looked at each of the team members as they nodded their agreement.

“Vole, this is Team 2 actual. Target is an English Challenger 2 MBT. repeat its one or ours,” Corporal Smyth reported. “Lads, look for survivors,” he shouted to his own men.

“What’s this?” his second said a moment later, “It looks like we’ve got turned around, I see signs of our own treads.”

“Where’s the berm?” Another man asked. “Did it get knocked down, there’s no sign of it.”

“Listen you lot, we’re pointed in the right direction and the remains of the berm have to be there,” LT yelled into the communications unit. “There’s no way that could be a Challenger, they’re all a mile behind us.”

“I’m telling you LT, we must’ve got turned around, we’ve crossed somebody’s tread marks and they look like ours, and there’s no berm here,” The corporal said crossly. More than one member of the team shook their heads. From where they were standing, there was no way that this tank could have been mistaken for a T-72.

“I’m lookin’ at the bloody GPS right now, and we’re faced right, and the rest of the formation still shows as behind us,” the Lt said climbing out of the IFV.

“As may be sir just look for yourself then,” Corporal Smyth said backing away.

The young lieutenant jumped down from the tank and ran across the scorched sand, approached the target, while the other two vehicles moved off left and right looking for more targets. What he saw made him stop short. They really had knocked out one of their own. But that was supposed to be impossible. After the first Gulf War all British tanks had been outfitted with a special version of an IFF, or identify friend or foe system, linked into their main command and control section. That way their C&C element would know where they were, and their status at all times.

It had gone terrible wrong this time though. Looking about he saw that there was no chance for the crew. Both of the warheads from the TOW-2b had hit perfectly, the fire would burn for hours before anyone could get close enough to approach the tank.

“Control this is Mace, Permission to fire on hostiles,” the lieutenant heard through his communication set, this from the young sergeant in charge of the lead tank making up the Mace unit, on the right flank.

“Permission granted, Mace open fire,” was the reply.

Lieutenant Farris had a moment to think about what had gone wrong as the 120mm projectile struck the side of his IFV. The armor piercing fin-stabilized discarding sabot round that hit the tank was moving at almost eighteen-hundred meters per second and the hardened tungsten warhead blew through the side of the Warrior like a shotgun through paper.

Inside of the vehicle, fragments of steel blew apart. The many pieces of gear, weapons, and humans inside the tank had been instantly turned into high velocity spall or internal shrapnel. All of this happened in the first few microseconds after impact; the secondary effects of the stored rounds and fuel tanks exploding took place seconds later.

Lieutenant Farris had time to hear a muted “Tallyho!” come through his earpiece before the turret of the exploding Warrior IFV landed on him.

*****

Desert Storm Part Deux had started, but with casualties on the wrong side.