89: Chapter 86 Pump Station Control Room

At 4:00 PM, Reza held the first battlefield meeting after the counterattack in the Pump Station's control room.

The attendees were Hassan, Karimi, Rajai, and Najjari.

The meeting had only one core topic: what to do next.

"We have three options now," Reza said. "First, hold the Pump Station and wait for Iraq's counterattack; second, continue to push south and occupy the Fao Peninsula; third, retreat eastward and consolidate our defensive lines within Iraq."

"Which one shall we choose?" Hassan asked.

"Choose the first," Reza said, "but do not take the other two options off the table. We need to make Saddam Hussein believe that we can continue to advance at any time, occupy the Fao Peninsula, and cut off all of Iraq's outlets to the sea. This belief is more valuable than actually occupying the Fao Peninsula."

"How do we make him believe it?"

"It is simple," Reza said. "Send a small unit to scout in the direction of the Fao Peninsula and pretend that we are going to advance. We do not need to actually fight; we just need to let the Iraqis see us moving. Their reconnaissance aircraft will relay the message back to Baghdad for us."

"And then?"

"Then we wait," Reza said. "Wait for Saddam Hussein to send someone to negotiate."

At 8:00 PM, Reza stood on the roof of the Pump Station, looking at the night sky in the distance.

To the east was the direction of Iran; the sky there was dark, with no firelight. To the west was the direction of Iraq; on the horizon, one could vaguely see flickering lights—perhaps burning oil wells, perhaps convoys still on the move, or perhaps distant artillery fire.

Karimi walked up to him and handed him a telegram.

"It is from Tehran. The Supreme Defense Council expresses 'high appreciation' for your actions and also requests that you submit your next operational plan as soon as possible."

"Appreciation?" Reza laughed. "That word is used quite cleverly. It is not 'support,' it is not 'approval,' it is 'appreciation.' Appreciation does not require taking responsibility, but one can enjoy the fruits of victory."

"Do you think someone in Tehran is holding you back?"

"I do not just think it, I know it," Reza said. "But it does not matter. As long as I keep winning on the battlefield, it does not matter what they say in Tehran. Victory is the best political talisman."

He took out the dark blue notebook and wrote a line on the latest page:

"Pump Station taken. The gateway to Iraq is wide open. Next step, let us see what move Saddam Hussein makes."

He closed the notebook and walked back to the control room.

Outside the window, in the Iraqi night sky, the roar of aircraft engines could be faintly heard.

The second wave of airstrikes was about to arrive.

October 13, 1980, 3:00 AM, Zubair Oilfield Pump Station.

Iraq's second wave of airstrikes came just after 1:00 AM. This time, it was eight MiG-23s, each carrying four 500-kilogram bombs, targeting the Pump Station's control room, the oil storage tank area, and the Iranian air defense positions.

Reza had made preparations in advance—the anti-aircraft artillery units had all moved to preset backup positions fifteen minutes before the airstrike began, leaving only a few scrapped trucks and dummy targets at the original positions. The Iraqi pilots bombed the dummy targets to pieces, but not a single real anti-aircraft gun was lost.

The airstrike lasted for forty minutes and dropped over thirty bombs. The Pump Station's oil storage tank area was hit again, and the fire was larger than yesterday's. The control room was hit by a near-miss, cracking a wall, but the structure was not damaged. The most troublesome thing was that the Iraqi airstrike destroyed the communication lines between the Pump Station and the rear, so now they could only rely on radio contact.

"Casualty report?" Reza asked Hassan.

"Seven dead, twenty-three injured. The air defense units suffered no losses, but two anti-aircraft guns were withdrawn due to mechanical failure."

"Notify the rear to send spare parts over. Also, have Fatima send over a batch of our stock of anti-aircraft missiles—not the Persia-1 Type, but the portable, man-portable kind."

"We haven't mass-produced that kind of thing yet," Hassan said. "Fatima has only made a few prototypes."

"A few sets is fine, just bring them to use. On the battlefield, a prototype is better than nothing."

At 4:00 AM, Karimi intercepted a key piece of intelligence from communication monitoring—the advance units of the two divisions Iraq had deployed from the Northern Military Region had arrived at a location about forty kilometers north of Basra, and were expected to reach the outskirts of the Pump Station this afternoon.

Two divisions, plus the two brigades that had previously returned from the front to reinforce, totaled over 30,000 troops. Reza only had less than 2,000 men on hand.

The force ratio was fifteen to one.

"Karimi," Reza said, "help me calculate the Iraqis' marching speed. Are the troops they deployed from the north mechanized infantry or motorized?"

"Mechanized infantry, mainly armored personnel carriers, with a small number of tanks."

"Then their marching speed will not exceed twenty kilometers per hour. From forty kilometers north of Basra to the Pump Station is a distance of about 120 kilometers. What will arrive this afternoon is the advance unit; the main force will not be fully in place until tomorrow."

"What do you mean?"

"We have at least a twenty-four-hour window. In these twenty-four hours, the only Iraqis we are facing are those two brigades that returned from the front to reinforce. The combined strength of those two brigades is about 5,000 men, and they have been marching continuously for ten hours; they are exhausted, and their combat effectiveness is reduced by at least thirty percent."

"You want to take out these two brigades first?"

"Not take out," Reza said, "but stall them. Keep them from reaching the Pump Station."

At 5:00 AM, Reza called Hassan and Rajai together and deployed a new operational plan.

"Hassan, your men are responsible for setting an ambush on the path the Iraqi reinforcements must take. Do not engage them head-on; use RPGs and landmines to hit their lead vehicle and tail vehicle—the lead vehicle blocks the road, the tail vehicle cuts off the retreat, keeping their convoy stuck on the road."

"Rajai, your men are responsible for setting up a second line of defense on the perimeter of the ambush area. If the Iraqis abandon their vehicles and try to break through on foot, your men are responsible for stopping them."

"The mission for both of you is not to annihilate them, but to buy time. The longer you stall, the better. For every hour you delay them, their arrival time at the Pump Station is delayed by one hour, and we gain one more hour of preparation time."

Hassan and Rajai looked at each other and nodded simultaneously.

At 5:30 AM, the two teams set off.

At 7:00 AM, Reza received the first message from Hassan: "Ambush position is in place, waiting for the target to enter."

At 8:00 AM, Karimi intercepted communication from the Iraqi reinforcement troops. The convoy had entered the ambush area and was expected to reach Hassan's preset first ambush point in fifteen minutes.

At 8:17 AM, the sound of explosions came over the communication channel.

Hassan had made his move.

The target of the first wave of attacks was the lead vehicle of the convoy—a BTR-60 armored personnel carrier. An RPG-7 was fired from behind a sand dune on the left side of the road, directly hitting the BTR-60's engine compartment. The armored vehicle spewed a cloud of black smoke, swerved off the road, and sank into the sand on the roadside.

The convoy's reaction speed was faster than Hassan had expected—the vehicles behind slowed down immediately, and the infantry began to dismount and deploy into combat formation. But Hassan's second wave of attacks was already prepared, targeting the tail vehicle of the convoy—a truck loaded with ammunition. The RPG hit the back of the truck, triggering a chain of explosions that blasted a large crater into the road.

With the lead vehicle destroyed and the tail vehicle blown up, the entire convoy was trapped on a stretch of road less than two kilometers long.

The Iraqi commander's reaction was typical Soviet-style tactics—use firepower to clear the way. He ordered all mobile armored vehicles to concentrate their fire and conduct suppressive fire on the sand dunes on both sides of the road, while engineers dismounted to clear the road, preparing to open up a bypass route.

But Hassan did not give him that chance.

The third wave of attacks targeted a fuel tanker in the middle of the convoy. After the RPG hit, the tanker exploded, and the burning fuel formed a wall of fire on the road, splitting the convoy into two disconnected sections.

The Iraqi commander's communication channel began to descend into chaos—the front section of the troops could not contact the rear section, and the rear section did not know what had happened to the front.

At 9:00 AM, Rajai reported: "The Iraqis have started to break through on foot. About two hundred men are moving from the south side of the road toward the desert."

"Stop them," Reza said.

Rajai's second line of defense proved effective. His troops had dug foxholes in the desert in advance and set up machine guns. The Iraqi soldiers breaking through on foot charged into the machine gun fire net without armored cover, and the first thirty-something men charging at the front all fell onto the sandy ground, while the rest immediately hit the dirt, not daring to move again.