Victory Point - Ed Darack [116]
“They’re egressing,” Grissom called out after scanning the ridges with his binoculars. “Konnie, keep the mortars raining down.”
“A-10s rollin’ in,” Pigeon interjected.
“Good. We need Dustoffs for the wounded. Get ’em in here. But work those A-10s for everything you can. Gun run after gun run on those fuckers running into the mountains,” commanded Grissom.
After Dorf’s mortar barrage, the enemy quit firing on Fox-3’s position, but a small group of Shah’s men, positioned just to the west of the mortar team on a small peak known to the grunts as Hill 2510 (for its altitude—in meters—on their maps) took a couple potshots at them. Returning fire immediately, the Marines around the mortars silenced the minuscule ambush. But then, as the Air Force A-10s raced toward the Chowkay, Shah’s main effort once again sprang forth, and began firing on Fox-3; not with the furor of the first ambush, but well coordinated and deadly, nonetheless.
“Middendorf, I need a mark for the A-10s.” Pigeon radioed the lieutenant with grids of Shah’s men’s current positions, asking not for high-explosive rounds, but for white phosphorus illumination mortars—to mark the extremists’ positions for the high-explosive rounds plugged into the A-10s’ seven-barrel high-speed rotary guns, soon to be available for close air support. With two mortar tubes now up and running, Middendorf and his Marines had the targets marked for Pigeon, who then passed a series of preliminary attack instructions to Grip-21 and Grip-11, the call signs for the two A-10s. But Grip-21’s inertial navigation guidance system went faulty, preventing the pilot from undertaking attack runs as he’d been accustomed to doing. Pigeon, who graduated at the top of his flight school class at Meridian, Mississippi, had, like all Marine combat aviators, close air support indelibly stamped into the DNA of his very being. He’d chosen the job as FAC—forward air controller—one of the most respected tours a Marine aviator can undertake—in order to be on the ground with those he’d trained for so many years to support. And now he was experiencing the ground side of things at their most intense. Ever concerned about a possible friendly-fire event, particularly with Grip-21’s guidance system out of commission, Pigeon made a handshake deal with the Air Force pilots—he would give a detailed “talk-on” to the A-10s of Fox-3’s position, then the FAC, once oriented, would talk the attack aircraft onto the enemy’s positions based on Fox-3’s location. But it took over twenty minutes before the A-10s positively identified Fox-3’s location, during which time Pigeon’s radio started to lose power and malfunction. But the determined FAC was able to get Grip-21 to launch a five-inch-diameter white phosphorus rocket onto ground in an area where he suspected Shah’s men had taken up positions; using that brightly burning mark, Pigeon talked the A-10s onto specific locations where they unleashed bursts of 30 mm rounds at a rate of one hundred per second. As Pigeon worked to fix his radio, the two Grip A-10s climbed in altitude and took up a holding pattern far to the west of the activity. But the Chowkay’s summer heat once again proved its potency, overheating Pigeon’s radio anew after he got it working, keeping the Grips from unleashing their cocked might for another set of runs.
“Venom-11,” Grip-21 began, “we’re being replaced by Boar-11 and Boar-21. They’ll be checking in soon. Good luck.” With mortars continuing to rain down on Shah’s fleeing men, all of the terrorist’s attacks, save for the occasional sniper shot, had ceased. But some of the most difficult work still lay ahead: Pigeon needed to