The 'Fortress Enterprise' Scene from TO KILL IS NOT ENOUGH: The Mahdi
This scene is essential to the book; it boils down the confrontation between the West and jihad into a single symbolic moment. The Enterprise is trapped in the Suez Canal, surrounded by thousands of jihadists who want to capture it as a trophy for their new Caliphate. 'Big Jake' Garner is the head of the Enterprise SEAL team. He's in charge of defending the one entrance into the ship: a gaping hole made by a MIG dubbed 'The Devil's Den.' This is a shear adrenaline rush. It was exciting to write and it's fun to read. I always feel a rush of pride for Old Glory when I read this scene. It'd make a Heck of a movie scene!
Fortress Enterprise was capturing the world’s imagination. The Egyptians threw everything they had at the American icon, determined to destroy or capture it in front of the world. Instead, the world watched the few against the many; the Spartans against the Persians; American grit and technology against the new Caliphate’s fanaticism and numbers. Fortress Enterprise held fast, enduring wave after wave of attacks. Each time the Caliphate boasted that this would be the triumphant effort. Day followed bloody day and Fortress Enterprise was blackened and battered—but the Stars and Stripes still floated over the Suez Canal. Even ardent anti-American countries were captured by the resolve and heroism of the Americans, comparing it against the mass surrenders of the Arabs so commonplace during the Gulf Wars. Secretly, though they were jealous of and mistrusted America, they rooted for Fortress Enterprise to weather the storm and save them from dealing with an expanding Caliphate.
Of course no one on Fortress Enterprise knew anything about their secret supporters. They were too busy with the business of survival. It wasn’t easy. More often than not every day reached a climax where Fortress Enterprise stood on the precipice of being overwhelmed. Today was just such a day.
Admiral Drake’s insistent voice came over Colonel Garner’s earpiece, “Bridge to Big Jake; we’re at T-minus thirty minutes. The big dogs are on station! All hands clear the decks!”
Big Jake was Bob Garner’s call sign. It originated from Garner’s love of old westerns and his unflinching All-American attitude. If you wanted a stand up guy next to you in a dark alley Big Jake was the guy.
Garner, who was at his usual place—the hottest spot of the assault—knew what the admiral meant.
“We’re ready admiral,” Garner reported.
“Bridge copies,” the admiral answered. “We’re going to need at least thirty minutes Big Jake. We need to ensure maximum Tangos; let Osama commit all of his forces onto the battlefield.”
“We’ll give you as long as you need admiral,” Garner replied. He knew what that meant. They were to hold the fort until Admiral Drakes made the call; then all Hell was going to break loose. Still thirty minutes in the Devil’s Den could be a long, long time.
Devil’s Den was the nickname for the twenty foot hole in the Enterprise’s hull. It was made by an Iranian F-14 more by accident than suicidal intent. The huge fighter had a wing shot off by an Enterprise F-18 flying off the Lincoln. Most of the Enterprise planes and pilots were able to labor off the deck at night with minimum fuel loads and redeploy to either the Lincoln or the Roosevelt. They could only do so at night when the winds were right and with a minimum fuel load. The lack of a thirty plus knot for takeoff hampered flight operations on the Enterprise more than any Egyptian or Iranian fire from the shore. That left the Enterprise with her helicopters as her air arm; a far cry from the wide ranging carrier warfare she was designed for. The Big E was flung back to a time and place before the big wooden sailing ships. This was not Trafalgar or the Spanish Armada; this battle was more akin to the clash between the Cross and the Crescent at Lepanto or Octavius and Anthony at Actium.
This was hand-to-hand brutality on island fortresses.
Back in the American Civil War battlefield of Gettysburg the Devil’s Den was an angle of huge boulders within which blue and gray clashed. On the Enterprise it comprised the watery interior of the midships. The storage bays and machinery rooms were a misshapen shambles of twisted metal and undulating decks. Yet through the gaping hole in Enterprise’s side the enemy could enter the ship and gain access to the inner corridors of the Big E. It was the only way into the ship other than scaling the cliff-like sides of the ship. That, therefore, was where the enemy threw their weight. It came in wave after wave of men crossing the Canal on any kind of boat imaginable. Fishing vessels, skiffs, rafts, rubber dingies—anything that could move even a few men burdened as they were with AK-47’s and ammunition.
Garner had his men, SEALS, sailors and marines, positioned under cover in the wreckage, waiting for the enemy. He had a good view of the invasion fleet winding its way through the flotsam and jetsam in the canal and past the superstructures of one of the Israeli destroyers and the half sunk USS Mason. The crews of both ships were now aboard the Enterprise. The Egyptians had tried to use the hulks as recon stations and advanced outposts but Garner and his SEALS made a habit of sweeping the ships every few nights—the Egyptians gave up after a few weeks. No one wanted to go aboard the deathships and face slaughter by the American “ghosts.”
Normally Garner would have sprayed the approaching boats and their crews with M-249 and M-2 machine gun fire but ammunition was being rationed. That changed their tactics for defense. Garner had to be more judicious with his light-fifty; that meant he only took shots that resulted in multiple kills. It became a morbid game with the SEAL and marine snipers. As the enemy approached, Garner tried to line up multiple targets in his scope. This wasn’t difficult since the Egyptians were packed like sardines in their boats. The fifty caliber projectile was designed for kills at over a mile; with shots under two hundred yards the projectiles could tear through three, four, sometimes five soft human targets before losing velocity. It was truly morbid. Garner and his fellow snipers knew that. However, when a human being is faced with slaughtering or being slaughtered they found what humor they could; it was a way of retaining sanity by viewing the situation as unreal.
Besides, there was a real hatred for the jihadists—very real. A few Americans and Israeli’s were captured alive in the first few days. The jihadists tortured them on the shore so that those on the ships could see—if they could stomach it. Admiral Drake didn’t have to endure that cruel show for long before he gave standing orders for his snipers to finish any Allied man captured by the enemy—in the name of mercy. Conversely he issued orders for any wounded enemy troops to be tossed overboard. If they were able to swim to the shoreline of the Canal they were allowed to do so without molestation. If they sank and drowned, oh well, he had neither the supplies nor the inclination to deal with them. They had more of a chance than his men were given; that was mercy enough.
Boom! Big Jake’s light fifty filled the metal cavern of the Devil’s Den with a low concussion. The fifty caliber slug plowed through the torsos of three men before hitting another man in the shoulder with enough velocity to throw him from the boat. The other men ducked, covering their faces as showers of blood sprayed them. Fire poured down on them, forcing them into the bottom of the boat where they hunkered behind the bodies of their slain comrades.
“Three-and-a-half,” Garner muttered, making the mental tally a full two hundred and seventy-nine. He turned the scope on the target again, observing, “The bastards aren’t even going to help that guy out of the water.”
The wounded man was screaming for help from his fellow jihadists, clawing weakly at the side of the boat with his one good arm. No one dared reach over the side to help him. No one even gave him a second glance. When he gained a hold of the gunnels, the boat pulled him through turbid water chock full of bodies. Corpses thumped into the wounded man, threatening to dislodge his precarious hold. His head was thrown back in agony and fear, prompting Garner to consider putting him out of his misery—no, the man wasn’t worth a second bullet, not after what Garner had seen—he eased off the trigger.
Another corpse struck the man, breaking his hold. He slipped back into the water with a cry of despair. The man’s mouth was wide open, he had strong white teeth that seemed to gleam through the smoke—it was a rarity that struck Garner—he must be an affluent man. The fear in the man’s face turned to anger. He began to shake his fist and curse; not at Garner or the Enterprise, he cursed his comrades who left him to die. A following boat ran over him, sending him beneath the dark water. As the lead boat neared the Devil’s Den, Garner saw the man’s fist above the water. It unclenched as it slid beneath the waves, reaching like a claw to the air and life; the jihadist sank through the dark waters of the Canal to add his corpse to the layers of rotting men on the slimy bottom.
“Prepare for boarders!” Garner called out, laying his light fifty down and brandishing his SCAR-H. “Ready the cannon! Ready, ready fire! Let the bastards have it!”
Four boats hit the Devil’s Den simultaneously with twenty or thirty packed in behind them. The cannon roared. It wasn’t artillery that Big Jake ordered; it was water. In an effort to conserve ammunition Fortress Enterprise had become an efficient and brutal killing machine. As soon as the boats reached the threshold of the Devil’s Den two crews of firefighting sailors unleashed a torrent of high pressure water. Powered by pumps driven by the indefatigable nuclear power plants buried deep in the bowels of Enterprise the water cannons knocked the jihadists from their boats and back into the Canal to endure death by drowning. One thing almost all of these desert warriors had in common was that they couldn’t swim; but they drowned with incredible proficiency. It saved bullets and men, because they were going to die anyway. Not a single enemy had made it past the Devil’s Den and into the Enterprise. Garner and his men weren’t about to allow that to change.
Still, the fight wasn’t without its moments. The jihadists fired blindly into the Devil’s Den, forcing the defenders to stay under cover and return fire. Men fell on both sides, but after five minutes of slaughter the jihadists in the lead boats were all dead or drowned. The wreckage at the approach to the Devil’s Den made it impossible for any assault to continue. Hundreds of bodies and dozens of half sunk or sinking boats created a buffer.
“Five minutes,” Admiral Drake announced. Then the Admiral made another call on his SEAL frequency, ordering, “Big Jake to the bridge!”
Garner patted his lieutenant on the shoulder and left the Devil’s Den. On his way, he helped one of the three wounded marines out into the corridor where medics stood by. Usually the men were patched up and put right back out there—they couldn’t afford men being down—but in this case the man had a belly wound. The medics put him on a stretcher and carted him off to the infirmary. If he survived, the marine would get a few days or hours of bed rest before being given a stationary firing position. Then he would work his way up to a more active defensive position until he was fully healthy or wounded again. Combat on Fortress Enterprise was medieval.
Garner hurried up the stairs to the bridge. When he arrived, the command staff was already there. Admiral Drake nodded, and said, “You’re just in time for the show.” Garner went to an open spot and looked over the sandbags through the bullet proof glass. The whole panoply of Fortress Enterprise and the western flank of the Suez Canal lay before him. Two weeks of non-stop combat had changed things. The Canal had more debris than water visible now. The Enterprise strike group was now a huddled island of metal. The ships were literally cabled together to form a huge metal island. Four of the support destroyers had been sunk or were sinking. Their superstructures rose above the oily waters like blackened monuments in a flooded graveyard. Yet rising above everything was the Enterprise, still afloat, still indomitable.
The shoreline was a beehive of activity. Thousands upon thousands of men were readying for the next wave of the push. Scores of Egyptian built M-1 and Soviet built T-72 tanks were moving in from the west, training their armor piercing shells on the superstructures of the remaining ships. Beyond the tanks artillery was commencing a barrage. The five inch guns of the remaining destroyers were answering fire. Geysers of water and men rose all around Fortress Enterprise. A shudder ran through the deck as a shell struck the Enterprise. Garner reflected a moment. A month earlier he would have flinched in shock at something like that on this ship; now it hardly even registered.
“Fortress Enterprise, cease artillery fire!” ordered Drake. He nodded to the south. “Here come the fast movers.”
F-16 Wild Weasels came through first. Their special electronics equipment targeted the radars of any active surface-to-air missile site or Zeus batteries. Several HARM missiles left the F-16 rails and streaked into targets on the ground, erupting in bright orange clouds of flame and smoke. After the Weasels came the Warthogs. From fast lethal darts to blunt, slow bludgeons; the two fighter aircraft couldn’t be any more different. The ugly but deadly A-10’s entered the battlefield and sought out their favorite prey: the tanks. Uranium tipped 30mm shells tore up desert, men and metal, leaving behind tanks with arc-welder bright flames sprouting from their shattered carapaces. Thick, oily plumes of smoke marked each dead tank.
That still left thousands upon thousands of troops surging off the shores of the Canal and into their makeshift invasion craft. There were so many of them that even Garner wondered if they had enough ammunition for them all. It was like being on the crest of an anthill while the host of angry ants returned from foraging—there was nowhere to go and seemingly no way to resist it.
“Here come the big dogs!”
Garner looked north. Low, almost on the horizon he saw a smudge of black smoke on either side of the Canal. Slowly the smoke resolved itself into two lines of aircraft, thirty to a side. Like prehistoric condors the B-52’s came in low and hot, flying at a hundred feet and four hundred knots over the battlefield. The BUFF’s, Big Ugly Fat Fuckers, plowed through the heavy air, forcing their way into the battle. As they reached the edge of the enemy formations the fifty year old bombers pulled up to fifteen hundred feet. A hail of small arms fire greeted them.
The lead BUFF’s dropped their loads, scores and scores of squat ungainly bombs. The bombs themselves came apart shortly after falling from the bomb bays and pylons, unleashing clouds of small spherical bomblets—cluster bombs. Garner let out a gasp of astonishment as the bomblets began to go off. He couldn’t distinguish a single explosion; there were simply too many of them. They melded into a wide swath of destruction, causing the water to churn up into frothing red and black steam. Explosions of hundreds, thousands of bomblets pulverized the desert into dust. It took five minutes for the bombers to pass, laying their carpet of miniature death and destruction over every square inch of the battlefield around Fortress Enterprise. It was so intense and destructive that even Garner had to wonder after the dust settled—it was that terrible.
When the bombers faded into the gloom of the sunset and the smoke cleared nothing moved on the battlefield. The A-10’s hunted for something to kill, buzzing over the devastation, picking off tanks and sometimes even single men. When nothing moved they flew back and forth, watching and waiting. There was nothing more to shoot. Thousands upon thousands of jihadists were no longer a threat. The battlefield burned but it was silent.
Fortress Enterprise was capturing the world’s imagination. The Egyptians threw everything they had at the American icon, determined to destroy or capture it in front of the world. Instead, the world watched the few against the many; the Spartans against the Persians; American grit and technology against the new Caliphate’s fanaticism and numbers. Fortress Enterprise held fast, enduring wave after wave of attacks. Each time the Caliphate boasted that this would be the triumphant effort. Day followed bloody day and Fortress Enterprise was blackened and battered—but the Stars and Stripes still floated over the Suez Canal. Even ardent anti-American countries were captured by the resolve and heroism of the Americans, comparing it against the mass surrenders of the Arabs so commonplace during the Gulf Wars. Secretly, though they were jealous of and mistrusted America, they rooted for Fortress Enterprise to weather the storm and save them from dealing with an expanding Caliphate.
Of course no one on Fortress Enterprise knew anything about their secret supporters. They were too busy with the business of survival. It wasn’t easy. More often than not every day reached a climax where Fortress Enterprise stood on the precipice of being overwhelmed. Today was just such a day.
Admiral Drake’s insistent voice came over Colonel Garner’s earpiece, “Bridge to Big Jake; we’re at T-minus thirty minutes. The big dogs are on station! All hands clear the decks!”
Big Jake was Bob Garner’s call sign. It originated from Garner’s love of old westerns and his unflinching All-American attitude. If you wanted a stand up guy next to you in a dark alley Big Jake was the guy.
Garner, who was at his usual place—the hottest spot of the assault—knew what the admiral meant.
“We’re ready admiral,” Garner reported.
“Bridge copies,” the admiral answered. “We’re going to need at least thirty minutes Big Jake. We need to ensure maximum Tangos; let Osama commit all of his forces onto the battlefield.”
“We’ll give you as long as you need admiral,” Garner replied. He knew what that meant. They were to hold the fort until Admiral Drakes made the call; then all Hell was going to break loose. Still thirty minutes in the Devil’s Den could be a long, long time.
Devil’s Den was the nickname for the twenty foot hole in the Enterprise’s hull. It was made by an Iranian F-14 more by accident than suicidal intent. The huge fighter had a wing shot off by an Enterprise F-18 flying off the Lincoln. Most of the Enterprise planes and pilots were able to labor off the deck at night with minimum fuel loads and redeploy to either the Lincoln or the Roosevelt. They could only do so at night when the winds were right and with a minimum fuel load. The lack of a thirty plus knot for takeoff hampered flight operations on the Enterprise more than any Egyptian or Iranian fire from the shore. That left the Enterprise with her helicopters as her air arm; a far cry from the wide ranging carrier warfare she was designed for. The Big E was flung back to a time and place before the big wooden sailing ships. This was not Trafalgar or the Spanish Armada; this battle was more akin to the clash between the Cross and the Crescent at Lepanto or Octavius and Anthony at Actium.
This was hand-to-hand brutality on island fortresses.
Back in the American Civil War battlefield of Gettysburg the Devil’s Den was an angle of huge boulders within which blue and gray clashed. On the Enterprise it comprised the watery interior of the midships. The storage bays and machinery rooms were a misshapen shambles of twisted metal and undulating decks. Yet through the gaping hole in Enterprise’s side the enemy could enter the ship and gain access to the inner corridors of the Big E. It was the only way into the ship other than scaling the cliff-like sides of the ship. That, therefore, was where the enemy threw their weight. It came in wave after wave of men crossing the Canal on any kind of boat imaginable. Fishing vessels, skiffs, rafts, rubber dingies—anything that could move even a few men burdened as they were with AK-47’s and ammunition.
Garner had his men, SEALS, sailors and marines, positioned under cover in the wreckage, waiting for the enemy. He had a good view of the invasion fleet winding its way through the flotsam and jetsam in the canal and past the superstructures of one of the Israeli destroyers and the half sunk USS Mason. The crews of both ships were now aboard the Enterprise. The Egyptians had tried to use the hulks as recon stations and advanced outposts but Garner and his SEALS made a habit of sweeping the ships every few nights—the Egyptians gave up after a few weeks. No one wanted to go aboard the deathships and face slaughter by the American “ghosts.”
Normally Garner would have sprayed the approaching boats and their crews with M-249 and M-2 machine gun fire but ammunition was being rationed. That changed their tactics for defense. Garner had to be more judicious with his light-fifty; that meant he only took shots that resulted in multiple kills. It became a morbid game with the SEAL and marine snipers. As the enemy approached, Garner tried to line up multiple targets in his scope. This wasn’t difficult since the Egyptians were packed like sardines in their boats. The fifty caliber projectile was designed for kills at over a mile; with shots under two hundred yards the projectiles could tear through three, four, sometimes five soft human targets before losing velocity. It was truly morbid. Garner and his fellow snipers knew that. However, when a human being is faced with slaughtering or being slaughtered they found what humor they could; it was a way of retaining sanity by viewing the situation as unreal.
Besides, there was a real hatred for the jihadists—very real. A few Americans and Israeli’s were captured alive in the first few days. The jihadists tortured them on the shore so that those on the ships could see—if they could stomach it. Admiral Drake didn’t have to endure that cruel show for long before he gave standing orders for his snipers to finish any Allied man captured by the enemy—in the name of mercy. Conversely he issued orders for any wounded enemy troops to be tossed overboard. If they were able to swim to the shoreline of the Canal they were allowed to do so without molestation. If they sank and drowned, oh well, he had neither the supplies nor the inclination to deal with them. They had more of a chance than his men were given; that was mercy enough.
Boom! Big Jake’s light fifty filled the metal cavern of the Devil’s Den with a low concussion. The fifty caliber slug plowed through the torsos of three men before hitting another man in the shoulder with enough velocity to throw him from the boat. The other men ducked, covering their faces as showers of blood sprayed them. Fire poured down on them, forcing them into the bottom of the boat where they hunkered behind the bodies of their slain comrades.
“Three-and-a-half,” Garner muttered, making the mental tally a full two hundred and seventy-nine. He turned the scope on the target again, observing, “The bastards aren’t even going to help that guy out of the water.”
The wounded man was screaming for help from his fellow jihadists, clawing weakly at the side of the boat with his one good arm. No one dared reach over the side to help him. No one even gave him a second glance. When he gained a hold of the gunnels, the boat pulled him through turbid water chock full of bodies. Corpses thumped into the wounded man, threatening to dislodge his precarious hold. His head was thrown back in agony and fear, prompting Garner to consider putting him out of his misery—no, the man wasn’t worth a second bullet, not after what Garner had seen—he eased off the trigger.
Another corpse struck the man, breaking his hold. He slipped back into the water with a cry of despair. The man’s mouth was wide open, he had strong white teeth that seemed to gleam through the smoke—it was a rarity that struck Garner—he must be an affluent man. The fear in the man’s face turned to anger. He began to shake his fist and curse; not at Garner or the Enterprise, he cursed his comrades who left him to die. A following boat ran over him, sending him beneath the dark water. As the lead boat neared the Devil’s Den, Garner saw the man’s fist above the water. It unclenched as it slid beneath the waves, reaching like a claw to the air and life; the jihadist sank through the dark waters of the Canal to add his corpse to the layers of rotting men on the slimy bottom.
“Prepare for boarders!” Garner called out, laying his light fifty down and brandishing his SCAR-H. “Ready the cannon! Ready, ready fire! Let the bastards have it!”
Four boats hit the Devil’s Den simultaneously with twenty or thirty packed in behind them. The cannon roared. It wasn’t artillery that Big Jake ordered; it was water. In an effort to conserve ammunition Fortress Enterprise had become an efficient and brutal killing machine. As soon as the boats reached the threshold of the Devil’s Den two crews of firefighting sailors unleashed a torrent of high pressure water. Powered by pumps driven by the indefatigable nuclear power plants buried deep in the bowels of Enterprise the water cannons knocked the jihadists from their boats and back into the Canal to endure death by drowning. One thing almost all of these desert warriors had in common was that they couldn’t swim; but they drowned with incredible proficiency. It saved bullets and men, because they were going to die anyway. Not a single enemy had made it past the Devil’s Den and into the Enterprise. Garner and his men weren’t about to allow that to change.
Still, the fight wasn’t without its moments. The jihadists fired blindly into the Devil’s Den, forcing the defenders to stay under cover and return fire. Men fell on both sides, but after five minutes of slaughter the jihadists in the lead boats were all dead or drowned. The wreckage at the approach to the Devil’s Den made it impossible for any assault to continue. Hundreds of bodies and dozens of half sunk or sinking boats created a buffer.
“Five minutes,” Admiral Drake announced. Then the Admiral made another call on his SEAL frequency, ordering, “Big Jake to the bridge!”
Garner patted his lieutenant on the shoulder and left the Devil’s Den. On his way, he helped one of the three wounded marines out into the corridor where medics stood by. Usually the men were patched up and put right back out there—they couldn’t afford men being down—but in this case the man had a belly wound. The medics put him on a stretcher and carted him off to the infirmary. If he survived, the marine would get a few days or hours of bed rest before being given a stationary firing position. Then he would work his way up to a more active defensive position until he was fully healthy or wounded again. Combat on Fortress Enterprise was medieval.
Garner hurried up the stairs to the bridge. When he arrived, the command staff was already there. Admiral Drake nodded, and said, “You’re just in time for the show.” Garner went to an open spot and looked over the sandbags through the bullet proof glass. The whole panoply of Fortress Enterprise and the western flank of the Suez Canal lay before him. Two weeks of non-stop combat had changed things. The Canal had more debris than water visible now. The Enterprise strike group was now a huddled island of metal. The ships were literally cabled together to form a huge metal island. Four of the support destroyers had been sunk or were sinking. Their superstructures rose above the oily waters like blackened monuments in a flooded graveyard. Yet rising above everything was the Enterprise, still afloat, still indomitable.
The shoreline was a beehive of activity. Thousands upon thousands of men were readying for the next wave of the push. Scores of Egyptian built M-1 and Soviet built T-72 tanks were moving in from the west, training their armor piercing shells on the superstructures of the remaining ships. Beyond the tanks artillery was commencing a barrage. The five inch guns of the remaining destroyers were answering fire. Geysers of water and men rose all around Fortress Enterprise. A shudder ran through the deck as a shell struck the Enterprise. Garner reflected a moment. A month earlier he would have flinched in shock at something like that on this ship; now it hardly even registered.
“Fortress Enterprise, cease artillery fire!” ordered Drake. He nodded to the south. “Here come the fast movers.”
F-16 Wild Weasels came through first. Their special electronics equipment targeted the radars of any active surface-to-air missile site or Zeus batteries. Several HARM missiles left the F-16 rails and streaked into targets on the ground, erupting in bright orange clouds of flame and smoke. After the Weasels came the Warthogs. From fast lethal darts to blunt, slow bludgeons; the two fighter aircraft couldn’t be any more different. The ugly but deadly A-10’s entered the battlefield and sought out their favorite prey: the tanks. Uranium tipped 30mm shells tore up desert, men and metal, leaving behind tanks with arc-welder bright flames sprouting from their shattered carapaces. Thick, oily plumes of smoke marked each dead tank.
That still left thousands upon thousands of troops surging off the shores of the Canal and into their makeshift invasion craft. There were so many of them that even Garner wondered if they had enough ammunition for them all. It was like being on the crest of an anthill while the host of angry ants returned from foraging—there was nowhere to go and seemingly no way to resist it.
“Here come the big dogs!”
Garner looked north. Low, almost on the horizon he saw a smudge of black smoke on either side of the Canal. Slowly the smoke resolved itself into two lines of aircraft, thirty to a side. Like prehistoric condors the B-52’s came in low and hot, flying at a hundred feet and four hundred knots over the battlefield. The BUFF’s, Big Ugly Fat Fuckers, plowed through the heavy air, forcing their way into the battle. As they reached the edge of the enemy formations the fifty year old bombers pulled up to fifteen hundred feet. A hail of small arms fire greeted them.
The lead BUFF’s dropped their loads, scores and scores of squat ungainly bombs. The bombs themselves came apart shortly after falling from the bomb bays and pylons, unleashing clouds of small spherical bomblets—cluster bombs. Garner let out a gasp of astonishment as the bomblets began to go off. He couldn’t distinguish a single explosion; there were simply too many of them. They melded into a wide swath of destruction, causing the water to churn up into frothing red and black steam. Explosions of hundreds, thousands of bomblets pulverized the desert into dust. It took five minutes for the bombers to pass, laying their carpet of miniature death and destruction over every square inch of the battlefield around Fortress Enterprise. It was so intense and destructive that even Garner had to wonder after the dust settled—it was that terrible.
When the bombers faded into the gloom of the sunset and the smoke cleared nothing moved on the battlefield. The A-10’s hunted for something to kill, buzzing over the devastation, picking off tanks and sometimes even single men. When nothing moved they flew back and forth, watching and waiting. There was nothing more to shoot. Thousands upon thousands of jihadists were no longer a threat. The battlefield burned but it was silent.
