“Shock 26 copies all, over.”
Coleman peered over Smith’s shoulder, orienting himself to the cavalry officer’s map. In the way of military operations, Smith was using phase lines to control the progress of his Apaches as they conducted a reconnaissance that moved from west to east. After hearing Coleman’s estimates for the convoy’s start time and rate of travel, Smith had done some quick calculations to project where the jihadis might currently be. The information Rapp had passed to Coleman via Kennedy suggested that the convoy would enter Afghanistan at the popular Torkham border crossing, approximately seventy-five kilometers southeast of Jalalabad.
With this in mind, Smith had task organized his troop into two teams of four Apaches each, with an additional two in reserve. The gunships were stacked north to south, with Smith’s two platoon leaders, radio call signs Shock 16 and Shock 26, controlling their own platoons. Shock 16 commanded the northernmost team while Shock 26 was in charge of the southern aircraft. The north–south running phase lines, named after whiskey brands, were placed over easily identifiable terrain features like roads, valleys, or rivers and were arrayed from west to east. The phase lines controlled the aircraft’s eastern progress in the same way that yard lines on a football field delineated the ball’s position with respect to either end zone.
Even though Coleman believed the convoy was much closer to the border, Smith had begun his reconnaissance twenty kilometers west of Torkham. The cavalry officer’s reasoning was sound—he could only conduct the reconnaissance in one direction. If the Apaches began at the border and then followed the road northwest, the slow, deliberate pace of the reconnaissance gave the potentially faster-moving convoy the opportunity to lose themselves in any of the secondary roads and villages that branched from Highway 7 into Afghanistan’s interior. By beginning closer to Jalalabad and following the highway toward the Pakistani border, the gunships stood a better chance of intercepting the convoy away from prying eyes—another necessity, from Coleman’s perspective.
But so far, the cavalry troop had come up empty.
Coleman leaned over Smith’s shoulder, examining the tactical map. The reconnaissance’s limit of advance was FOUR BRANCHES. To Coleman’s eye, only six or so kilometers stretched from the dirt road that was JAMESON to the dry riverbed that served both as FOUR BRANCHES and the unofficial border between Afghanistan and Pakistan.
“We’ll find them,” Smith said, this time over the helicopter’s intercom system rather than the radio. “Recons are almost always this way—long periods of boredom followed by brief moments of excitement.”
Coleman nodded, but he wasn’t convinced. The cavalry officer knew his craft, but Coleman was no stranger to the no-man’s-land that formed the border area. In some ways, this search was easier than others Coleman had been a party to because the convoy had to stay on paved roads rather than make use of the network of goat paths that spiderwebbed through the mountain crossings. But vehicular traffic still came with its own challenges.
Even at this time of the day, traffic along the route wasn’t exactly sparse. Much of America’s supplies for the war effort came through Pakistan, and while Rapp had provided Coleman with a description of the target vehicles, the constant flow of cars and trucks meant that the helicopter aircrews stayed busy. Each time a potential vehicle was discovered, it had to be cleared, and this further halted the recon’s progress.
Then there was the elephant in the room.
While Rapp, and by extension Coleman, was confident that the fighters and their deadly cargo were progressing northwest to Jalalabad, numerous more sparsely used roads branched off from the main thorough-fare. If Rapp was wrong about the Iranians’ destination or perhaps, more unsettling, wrong about their route of travel, there was every likelihood that the convoy would disappear along a gravel path or a hardpacked dirt road.
If this happened, Coleman would be back to square one.
“Shock 6, this is 16. I’ve got a three-vehicle convoy headed northwest approximately two klicks west of phase line FOUR BRANCHES. Grid coordinates as follows, over.”
Coleman listened as the platoon leader relayed the series of letters and numbers that converted the convoy’s position into a grid reference system employed by military maps. Captain Smith annotated the convoy on the clear acetate covering his map with his ever-present grease pencil. The coordinates corresponded to a stretch of road just north of the small town of Sadat.
“Shock 6 copies all,” Smith said. “Can you send me a TADS shot, over.”
“Roger that, 6. Stand by.”
“My birds have an upgraded sensor package,” Smith said to Coleman as he fiddled with the tablet strapped to his kneeboard. “In addition to new optics, the system can data-burst still images across the HF radio. Not near the fidelity of a Reaper or Predator, but we should at least be able to take a look-see.”
Coleman nodded, only partially paying attention. Locating the convoy was the easy part.
Interdicting it was something else entirely.
Next to hostage rescue, vehicle interdiction was the most difficult mission set in a SEAL team’s mission portfolio. Decimating a moving convoy was easy. Drop a couple of Hellfires on the vehicles and call it a day. But stopping moving vehicles in a way that negated the occupants’ ability to kill you while keeping them alive for questioning was especially difficult.
And that was just the tactical portion of the operation.
Coleman wanted to spring his trap away from prying eyes or potential collateral damage. The road snaked north through the mountains before branching northeast through a valley containing a settlement and at least one mosque. The populated area was a nonstarter. Coleman needed to hit the vehicles before the convoy broke out into the open.
“Shock 6, this is 16. Images sent, over.”
Smith’s tablet pulsed.
The cavalryman tapped the screen and a picture of three vehicles moving single file up an incline replaced the digital map.
“That’s them,” Coleman said.
“You sure?” Smith said.
“Positive. We’re looking for a Suzuki van and a pair of Toyota Corollas. That’s our convoy.”
Coleman had to hand it to the Iranians. The Quds Force operatives knew their business. Suzuki vans were extremely common in Pakistan, while the Corolla seemed to be the Afghan car of choice. The trio of vehicles would blend in nicely with the traffic crossing the border. Even more importantly, the Suzuki had more than enough cargo space to transport the Iranian-modified shoulder-fired missiles.
“Okay,” Smith said. “Where do you want to take them?”
“Here.”
Coleman indicated a section of road that offered several tactical advantages. One, it changed direction by more than ninety degrees from northeast to northwest. Two, the pass was sandwiched between a pair of mountains, which would block the view of what happened from the populous valley to the northwest or the city of Sadat to the south. Most importantly, the stretch was located just before the summit. This meant that the convoy would be traveling at its slowest as the drivers navigated both the steep incline and the twisty road that would eventually lead to the valley below.
It was about as perfect as Coleman would find.
“Where do you want to set up?” Smith said.
“My support by fire team here,” Coleman said, pointing to another section of map. The ridgeline he indicated would offer a commanding view of the road and unobstructed access to the kill zone.
“What about your main effort?” Smith said.
That was a very good question.
“This will be a precision engagement,” Coleman said. “I’ll need your birds to trigger the ambush by knocking out the rear and trail vehicles. How will you do that?”
Smith frowned as he looked from his map to the image on the tablet.
“In a perfect world, I’d hit the lead and trail vehicles with Hellfires, but that’s not gonna work. The spacing is too close. I’m afraid your HVT would catch shrapnel from one or both missiles. I have the same concern for a rocket engagement, so that leaves thirty-millimeter.”
