Chapter 8

This highway was close enough to Iran that it did not have much casual traffic. There was too much chance for fighting to break out at any odd moment, so most traffic traveled other routes. We did not encounter the ISIL convoy until mid-afternoon, and there were only two other vehicles to pass us between sunrise and then. Around here, it payed to be cautious!

Finally, we got the call from the FO that the ISIL convoy was in sight. Alonzo told the FO to get the hell out of there—there was no reason for him to collect a stray bullet. The man was more than happy to comply with that suggestion, and he disappeared. Meanwhile, we made sure that we were ready.

It was a very long 10 minutes before the convoy showed up. Helen was at the far end of our line and would see the convoy first. Her job did not really start until Alonzo's team at the other end of the line had fired. That was the signal for everybody to start shooting, and Helen had to make sure that she plugged that end of the escape route if not all of the trucks were close to her.

Alonzo was going to let the first truck go past him and not shoot until the second truck was opposite his position. Of course, if there were too much space between the first and second truck, Alonzo would shoot at the first truck to keep it from escaping, no matter where the rest of the convoy might be. The practical range of the M-2 machine gun was easily half a mile, so that first truck was going to be dead meat. It would not be allowed to get away because that was the usual place for the detachment commander to be along with his staff. They were prime targets, so Alonzo was going to make sure that he destroyed that truck.

It was conceivable that one or two trucks might escape, but you could bet that there was no way that first one was going to. Actually, I could not see how anything could escape if it was hit by one of the explosive and incendiary bullets. I didn't know for sure, but I suspected that the Mk .211 round must cost on the order of $5-10 per cartridge, or even more. I would not be surprised that if one hit one of us, it would smart right fiercely!

When the trucks showed up, they were traveling about 30 MPH and spaced out about 12-15 yards apart. That was very close to Alonzo's guess, so we were spaced perfectly for our ambush. At what looked to me to be exactly the proper moment, Alonzo started shooting, and the other machine guns joined in as soon as they heard the first shot fired.

That was when the neighborhood got real noisy. There was the sound of guns firing and bullets exploding. The first truck in line got stitched in a quartering fashion across its rear end. There was no way that I could tell for sure because of the rate of fire of the machine gun, but it seemed to me that the truck's fuel tank exploded by the time the third or fourth bullet struck the truck.

There was a tremendous pillar of flame and smoke that erupted from the truck. The whole truck was thrown into the air by the force of the explosion, and bodies were thrown out in all directions. It was my job to watch to see if any men escaped that truck as effective fighters, and I was certain that none did. Not all of them might be dead, but none of them were going to be shooting at anybody in the near future.

As soon as the first truck blew up, Alonzo switched to shooting at the second truck in line. There was little difference here between the fate of this truck and of the first truck. Only one short burst of firing was necessary to take care of each of these two trucks, and the third burst of three or four rounds took care of that third truck. My God, these bullets were like the fist of God when they struck something. Those Norwegians sure as hell knew what they were doing when they designed this bullet! The Mk .211 bullet was absolutely amazing to see in action. We could have been making an advertising film for them.

The other teams were having the same kind of results as Alonzo's team did. I guess that it might have taken 20-30 seconds for everything to happen, but that convoy virtually ceased to exist during that time. I could see it now, our two snipers, Emily and Sue, were going to want to switch to .50 caliber rifles and the Mk .211 cartridge. Sheesh, Alonzo might go along with that just for the psychological blow that would be to the enemy. At any reasonable range, the bullet could easily penetrate a wall made of bricks or concrete blocks, so it was easy to think up uses for the monster.