CHAPTER ONE: FIRE FROM THE SKY

The place, date and time: southeastern Iraq, March 2003, early morning. Dawn was just breaking as three diminutive figures entered the desert landscape of basins, dunes and rock outcroppings that surrounded the city of Basra. A fine-tuned killing machine was at work in the area, and its prey was Saddam Hussein's soldiery.

The trio – Angelica, Claes and Liesel – were clad in the local garb worn by Iraqi children and sported deep, wholesome tans. These disguises, coupled with their fluency in Arabic, enabled them to blend in flawlessly with the local populace and had proven to be invaluable when it came to gathering intelligence.

The team's method of tracking their quarry was simple, devious and highly effective. Posing as a forlorn child seeking to know where her soldier brother's unit was stationed so she could pay one last call on him before he left to combat the Coalition infidels, Liesel successfully obtained information on troop movements and unit positions. Angelica and Claes could not help but grin as they recalled how their sister-in-arms had melted Iraqi soldiers' hearts and loosened their tongues with teary eyes and pitiable, compelling pleas.

Crouching behind a large dune, the extra-normal junior operatives set up their equipment. The first piece was a miniature, olive-green, rubberized spotting scope, and the second piece bore a resemblance to an equally small pair of olive drab, tripod-mounted binoculars attached to a trigger via a coiled length of cable. The latter was a laser designator, used in conjunction with a Global Positioning System to mark enemy targets for destruction by warplane-launched, laser-guided munitions.

"Scanning for targets," announced Liesel over her satellite radio.

Angelica stared through the spotting scope's lens, scanning from left to right across the barren ridgelines that lay ahead. She abruptly stopped her scan upon noticing an Iraqi bunker complex built into the face of some hillsides half a kilometer away. It was cleverly camouflaged, but not cleverly enough to deceive Angelica's enhanced eyesight.

"I've got a fix on a target," she exclaimed.

Claes produced a palmtop computer and began keying information into it. All of their data would be helpful with the reports they would be delivering later to their supervisors back at headquarters.

"Good to go! Laser designator ready," Claes responded.

Claes aimed the designator at the front of a bunker. Liesel picked up the satellite radio and began speaking into it.

"We have two Tornadoes on deck, geared up to rock and ruin," Liesel declared, her ear pressed to the satellite radio.

"Target is marked," said Claes, squeezing the trigger that fired the invisible, infrared laser beam into the enemy bunker's firing slit.

A pair of Royal Air Force Panavia Tornado Interdictor Strike aircraft streaked across the firmament twenty thousand feet above the scene, so high they were well nigh imperceptible. One of the warplanes banked sharply and swooped down, letting loose its ordnance. As the bombs plunged earthwards, their internal computers homed in on the laser signature and their tail fins directed them on their collision courses with the bunker.

The three girls braced themselves, keeping their mouths open to prevent damage to their hearing.

Within several moments, the first bomb hit the target and detonated. More soon followed. Before long, the hillsides were an inferno of fire, smoke, flying earth and hurtling steel. Peering through the spotting scope, Angelica could see scores of figures wearing Iraqi military uniforms swarming out into the open to flee the pulverizing bombardment. The few who succeeded were running in the direction of the dune where she and her comrades were sheltering, and Angelica was quick to point this out.

"Time to finish the flyboys' job," said Claes purposefully.

Liesel nodded her assent. Angelica – eager as always – had already left the concealment of the dune and was scampering towards the enemy.

The girls were each armed with a Heckler and Koch MP7 PDW, and soon began putting these small but deadly weapons to good use. Each time they squeezed their triggers, a 4.6mm bullet exploded through the brain of an Iraqi soldier; the lifeless body would snap back through the arid air and flop onto the sandy ground. Before long, the survivors of the aerial slaughter were survivors no more.

"Hostiles eliminated, exfiltrating area," Liesel reported over the radio as the threesome gathered their gear and seemingly melted away into the desert without a trace, their objective of inflicting maximum casualties on the enemy while receiving no damage in return fulfilled.

This was but the first of many such missions to come. Over the next few days, the team swarmed around Iraqi positions like a pack of wolves. Covertly moving by night in mufti, they annihilated the enemy. Ripping, gouging, probing and slicing, they systematically disabled Iraqi lines of communication, destroyed trench lines, attacked command bunkers and even clobbered safe areas in the rear. No position was safe from them.

Few would have known that the efforts of Angelica, Claes and Liesel played no small role in ensuring that Coalition forces were able to take Basra with minimal effort and casualties – the participation of the Social Welfare Agency in the Second Gulf War was a closely guarded secret.

END OF CHAPTER ONE