Paybacks Are Hell

Copyright © 2001 Creampiestories@yahoo.com
All rights reserved. No posting without this copyright attached. No modifications whatsoever allowed. Write me if you want a copy without the feedback form on the bottom to post on your site.

The old man waved to the boys waiting quietly in the makeshift redoubt as he made his way up the path with his goats. He smiled as they waved back, full of the exuberance of youth. He knew the 12-17 year olds would much rather play, but with warnings over the radio of imminent attack, they curbed their natural inclinations and watched the skies.

The old man considered them for a moment. One thing goat tending did was to provide plenty of time to consider things. These 20 boys were the 173^rd Air Defense Militia. It didn't seem right that they were denied their youth. He closed his eyes and prayed to Allah for the leaders of the Taliban to reconsider their position. He knew Allah was powerful enough to change their hearts, but he also knew they didn't listen to the true Allah. Instead, they followed a perverse image of Allah that had ruined his countty.

Already, his country's population was 70% women, and the remaining men were youngsters like these boys. Nearly every male was now pressed into military service, either willingly or as a conscript on the front line. If another war occurred like the one with the Army of Occupation, there probably wouldn't be enough men left to repopulate his country.

As the oldest man in the region, he understood things the idealist leaders did not. There would be no Army of Occupation this time, to hunt down and kill. The armies and allies of the United States would not come to possess their land. They would rain fire and retribution against his country, and then leave. It was a different mission they would have, and yet his leaders didn't seem to understand. They lacked wisdom in so many ways.

No one saw the flight of F-111Fs before they passed overhead. They had popped over the rocky hills, not 200 feet above the ground. From their backs came white flames from the afterburners. They literally rocketed past, moving at nearly 800mph, not 300 feet away. The old man and the boys were knocked off their feet by the sonic boom.

The old man stayed on his knees, and began to pray. The boys though, acted as they had been hastily taught.

The eldest, a 17 year old, grabbed the shoulder-launched missile launcher. He sited the rapidly vanishing bombers and fired off the rocket. He had forgotten to check behind him, so the hot flames of the missile ignited the robes of two boys. Their screams of terror made the other boys come to their aid.

They boys didn't even see that the bombers just flew off, dumping flares that caused the missile to become confused. The missiles were meant to bring down helicopters from a different age and were completely ineffective against fast moving aircraft with countermeasures. The missile was a waste, and also sealed the boys doom.

The following package of 4 F-16 Falcons was spaced two minutes back. Their mission was to suppress the enemy air defenses to allow the other trailing packages to transit without fear of SAMs. They saw the ancient Redeye missile take off and saw it miss the bombers of Alpha Package.

"Bravo 11, in," the lead said into his mike. He heard the clicks of acknowledgment from his wingmen, and selected a pair of CBU-59 Rockeye-II cluster-bombs. From his altitude of 20,000', he began to accelerate down, keeping the pipper centered on the launch site. Almost nonchalantly, he squeezed the release enable and the bombs dropped off at 1-second intervals.

"Bravo 11, out," lead said. His flight of 4 pulled back on their sticks to regain altitude and continue on to the target area. The AWACS circling 40 miles back directed another flight to overfly the site and ensure the enemy was inoperable.

The screaming of the boys on fire caused everyone to stop scanning the skies. It wouldn't matter if they did happen to see the bombs heading their way. The grandly named 173^rd Air Defense Militia was poorly armed. They had fired their only Redeye missile, and had only rifles left now. They wouldn't have reached the fighters, and had no chance of hitting the bombs.

The bombs were not designed to strike the ground and explode. Instead, at a pre-set altitude they dispensed 717 BLU-71/B bomblets. The bomblets spread out over a wide area before exploding into a haze of shrapnel that tore any soft target in the area. Really, dropping 2 of the Rockeye-II bombs was overkill.

The old man, still praying to Allah for the deliverance of his nation, was the first civilian casualty of Operation Payback.

The F-111Fs of Alpha package throttled back and climbed. They had come in over the deck in order to flush out any SAMs. They had succeeded, and the pilots listened with satisfaction as the second SEAD package to overfly the site reported no further action was necessary.

The lead pilot set his plane on autopilot and popped his thermos of cold soup. There was no enemy aircraft to worry about, so all he had to do was wait until he reached his target. He wouldn't even have to worry about leaving contrails to announce that he was coming. His chief worry now was fuel conservation. He didn't want to call for the tanker before he was out of theatre.

The penetration of their airspace was not completely lost on the Taliban military command. They knew the flights had come from Pakistan, and the reports said they were American. Praising Allah, they called the front-line units and ordered an immediate attack.

The front-line fighters had received their orders. Firing up their mostly out-dated vehicles, they rumbled towards the border with Pakistan. Their vehicles were mostly old trucks, the tops off so that the soldiers could fire their guns into the air during parades.

The term soldier was again a misnomer. There were some veterans of the war with the Soviet Union, but most of them had suffered some injury. The remaining soldiers were boys as young as ten. Their country, ravaged by war, called upon everyone for defense.

Unfortunately for them, they were too young to reason and relied on the wisdom of their wicked rulers. By moving towards the border, they were not a defensive army, but an offensive one. It made a difference in the Rules of War set down by the United States and their Allies.

Circling at 65,000' feet was a Global Hawk unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV). It had been circling for days, waiting for motion on the front. The operator thousands of miles away controlled it remotely, capturing the scene through the camera. The special equipment on the UAV gave it tremendous loiter capability, and stabilized the camera so that the picture didn’t move.

The Specialist moved the camera to check the other divisions within his view. This was easy, because the mountainous terrain forced the armies to stay on dirty roads. There were not many places to check. All showed the Opposing Force moving towards the border.

Toggling the display, he superimposed the border on his display. He smiled, thinking about how it reminded him of the NFL games where they put the first down mark on the screen. He stopped smiling when he considered what would happen when OpFor got their first down.

Global TV coverage showed President Bush announcing the Allies had began an attack on the positions held by Ossama bin Laden. He implored the Taliban to give him up, as he had done daily for the last two weeks. He also assured the Taliban that only military targets would be hit, and then only if they were acting offensively.

The cameras off, President Bush sat with reporters and advisors to pray, even as he expected the worst.

It took less than an hour for the rag-tag fleet of vehicles to reach the border. They paused then, and called headquarters to confirm they were to cross. A mutual praising of Allah ensued, and the command center ordered them to attack the Pakistanis. They were to make them pay for sheltering the forces of the Great White Satan.

Two levels of his superiors now surrounded the specialist. When he announced the border incursion, the colonel commanding the station immediately confirmed it. He transmitted his message to the commanding general, who had been watching via remote feed already. After waiting ten minutes lest there be any doubt, the general ordered an attack on the invaders.

The electronics surveillance plane circling 20 miles behind the border noted the communications between the armies and the command post. They had calculated the position during the previous hours, sending it to the AWACS. Upon receiving the codeword to initiate attacks on the armies, the AWACS directed the 4 F-16s of the weasel mission to the command site. Since it was only 20 miles inside the border, it didn't take long for the weasels to arrive.

Surrounding the command site was a battery of SAMs, but the radar wasn't activated. The Taliban army didn't know how to repair the radar, so the SAMs would be launched optically. All the SAM battery did was mark the command site that much better. They were no threat.

The weasel mission came in at 425 KIAS, at 500'. Five miles out, they popped up at 45 degrees. Seconds later, two Mk-82s came off the racks of each plane, sailing towards the site in a high arc. The F-16s sliced back down and away, egressing the area. They were miles away before the bombs landed on the control shack. The Taliban command center was eliminated.

Startled by the explosion, one of the SAM operators fired blindly into the sky. He had heard the White Devils of the Great Satan were invisible. Perhaps his heat-seaking missile would find a target. Allah would guide the missile, he was sure.

The missile launch had an altogether different effect. The weasel mission turned back to the site, arriving at 2000'. They switched to AGM-82 air-ground missiles, and used the camera to select the missile launchers. Each of the F-16s launched a missile, killing the remaining four SAM launchers as the stunned operator could only watch, horrified.

His team was the only ones still alive, and this time he could see the inbound F-16s. He could even see the Mk-82 500-pound bomb fall off the rack of the lead plane. He was too busy soiling himself to say a prayer in his last moments.

The Allies had been ready for the attack from the invading army. Waiting behind the lines were 15 flights of 4 F-16s and 10 flights of 4 F-15E Strike Eagles. They were vectored according to preplanning, and arrived at the border at 10000 feet minutes after the attack order.

They followed the roads in a trail formation, each plane in the flight following the one before it. The lead plane in each attack fired an AGM-82 at the head truck, which caused a massive traffic jam. It then flew on to attack intermediate trucks and especially the last truck on the road. There was no escape for the terrified "soldiers".

Following planes each released CBU-105 Sensor Fuzed Weapons at pre-planned intervals. These bombs, like the CBU-59 Rockeye-II, dispensed bomblets. In this case, each dispensed 10 BLU-108/B sub-munitions. Each of the 10 bomblets spun up to spread out 40 "hockey-puck" shaped infrared sensing projectiles.

The projectiles targeted warm vehicles, like the old trucks used by the invaders. These they hit with terrible accuracy. Virtually no vehicle within a 500x1200 ft area was left untouched, whether "killed" or merely immobilzed. Either way, the people manning the trucks or just near them were killed.

Each of the F-16s except the lead held four CBU-105s, while the F-15Es carried twelve for a total of 660 bombs. After the initial attacks, there were very few vehicles or people in the invading force left alive. The F-16s and F-15Es returned to base to rearm while the loitering UAV began to assess the damage.

The F-111Fs had been selected for the first attack on the caves sheltering Ossama bin Laden just because it was one of the few to be able to carry the GBU-28/BLU-113 penetrator bomb.

This special munition was developed to attack the hardened command bunkers of Saddam Hussein's army during Operation Desert Storm. It is essentially a 8-inch artillery tube filled with explosives. Weighing 5000-lbs, it could penetrate 20 feet of concrete and 100 feet of earth. It was this later use that put it in service this day.

The F-111Fs were directed to the cave site, receiving last-minute updates. Another UAV had been circling for weeks, pinpointing the places of activity. After the initial penetration into Afghani airspace, vehicles were seen to arrive at one entrance in particular. The F-111Fs were sent to this entrance.

Each F-111F carried two of these massive bombs. The bombers were spaced 15 seconds apart. With typical precision, the pilots sent each of the bombs, one after the other, into the mouth of the caves. The bombs eventually reached a depth of 2000' and set off cave-ins. Most of the people inside did not survive the attack.

Others in the area did note the rumblings, and fled the cave-ins. Ossama bin Laden, coward, was not in the command center. Instead, he was in another cave a half mile away and made it out. The survivors stood dazed, unable to comprehend the attack.

The UAV circled around, looking at each person until bin Laden was recognized. The A-6Es trailing the F-111Fs were vectored to his location.

Arriving 20 minutes after the F-111Fs, the 16 A-6Es of the Payback Package each carried 28 CBU-72 FAE bombs. Like the other cluster munitions, these bombs each contained sub-munitions. In this case, the sub-munitions were the BLU-73/B.

The BLU-73/B doesn't explode right away. Instead, it expels 75 pounds of ethylene oxide that forms a cloud 60 feet in diameter and 8 feet thick. Normally, a embedded detonator ignites the cloud after the cloud forms. This sets off a fireball with terrific concussive force.

This weapon was developed to detonate mines. However, during Vietnam the psychological effect was noted. It is a terrifying weapon, all the more so since the fireball is greedy for oxygen. When it explodes, air is sucked into the fireball. Anyone nearby has his breath stolen. People very close have their lungs pulled out of their body before they are smashed by the concussion or roasted alive.

The terrible fireball, concussion, and grisly death has led to the bomb being called "the poor man's nuke". Payback Package carried 448 of them.

The munitions carried by the Payback Package had been modified. Most of the detonators had been removed, so that the ethylene oxide cloud could cover a vast area. Most of it was trapped in the valleys where the cave entrances were. Heavier than air, some of the cloud actually went into the caves.

The UAV cameras followed bin Laden, shocked still by the seismic event of the penetrator bombs. His reaction to the 420 bombs was to duck and cover. The advanced camera left no doubt that his face registered fear.

Payback Lead had been circling, waiting for the planes to egress. Then he began his attack run, swooping down, calling "Payback Lead, in." Like the other toss deliveries, he began low and then pulled into a steep climb at max thrust. The bombs came off his rails and traveled miles to their destination, giving him time to slice and egress as well. Instead of calling "Payback Lead, out," he called "Go to Hell terrorist."

The UAV caught glimpses of the bombs exploding into the cloud. It saw the massive fireball, truly like a nuclear bomb. The shock wave, however, reached up to 65,000' and knocked it out of the sky.

The bomb damage assessment flight timed to arrive five minutes later captured on film the fire from miles away. Flying at 20,000', it was knocked about by the turbulence. When it overflew the caves, it appeared a scene from Hell.

That was appropriate.

(check http://www.fas.org for details on the devices used in this story)