“Hold up one minute, sir, for the President.” “General?”
Sir.
“One of our Lear jets carrying Ambassador August and NATO General Marplade blew up over the Atlantic about five hours ago. We scored the biggest break in the world by unbelievable apprehensions and confessions. Double and triple verifications are coming in. It was Iranian terrorists.”
itr
Yes, sir.
“With this news in our pockets,” the President said, “and the Iranians in the dark, we feel we might pull off a counter strike even before our plane is reported missing. Now, has your team done virtual practice on any specific Iranian sites’?”
“Yes, sir, four or five of them.”
“How fast can you get to Washington?”
“I’m on the way. Do I have permission to do a little commandeering here and there?”
“Carte blanche. As soon as you’re in the air, establish communications with the Situation Room. They’ll be looking out for you.”
THE SITUATION ROOM—THE WHITE HOUSE-SEVERAL HOURS LATER
In the basement of the White House, the Situation Room was no futuristic phantasmagoria of a Hollywood intergalactic set, but a conference table ringed with brainy men. Gathered in, the Joint Chiefs of Staff, the director of the CIA, the secretary of Defense, the ranking man at State, the President’s defense adviser, and numbers of indispensable aides.
In the deep of night, Jeremiah Duncan arrived with a single aide, a Marine gunner. The two-man team accounted for the commander, chief planner, bombardier, and emergency copilot.
When the President assumed his seat and nodded to Major General Duncan, the animus about the table was tempered by a reluctant respect for the old Marine. It was merely a year ago that the Joint Chiefs had pleaded with Duncan to remain in the service for just this sort of eventuality. But, and it was a big but, at this table Duncan could be a rogue.
Jeremiah’s long tenure served him well. He played his presentation, knowing the President had to give Iran a whack or terrorist activity would ooze all over the European continent.
“Gentlemen, as we know,” Duncan said, plunging right into his remarks, “we have received a break that happens once in a lifetime. A German frau has ratted on her lieutenant husband, an American rat, and the Israelis in Frankfurt had the terrorists fingered before they could get out of town. A Lear jet is missing. The Iranian government does not know what we know. We can nail them.”
“But a lightning strike without rehearsals leaves a big margin for error.”
“Moreover, Duncan, we don’t know enough about your SCARAB’s capabilities.”
“Moreover, Duncan, we are going to lose precious time getting the SCARAB to the East Coast along with your RAM team.”
“Gentlemen, Mr. President, I used my discretionary powers and commandeered a C-5 jet cargo plane from Long Beach, folded up the SCARAB, and put it aboard along with twenty some Marines of the RAM team. We are ready to go.”
Pencils as sharp as daggers, pressed on foolscap pads, now lightened up. Assistants behind their bosses exchanged quick whispers.
“Have I got it straight? You brought your attack team and your airplane with you?”
Yes, sir.
Now there came a sincere clearing of throats and rapt attention.
“Marine Gunner O’Connell here has worked up plans for four potential raid sites in Iran. A Teheran power grid, a dam, and an oil terminal. Yet they won’t work in this situation.”
“You said there were four.”
“I’m coming to that. We learned as we went on to eliminate any plan which would require months of intelligence and massive use of resources. It defeats the rock-bottom mission of a lightning surprise attack.”
Gunner O’Connell asked for the screen to be lowered and operated a slide carousel of maps, photographs, tactics, and stat sheets.
“The genesis of this attack is to hit them in the next fifteen or twenty hours, in the middle of the night. RAM will be on its way to Iran even as Washington wakes up yawning tomorrow. Around noon Washington time, the Defense Department will report an American Lear jet is missing. A flash in the sky was seen. Some of our ships in the area are investigating. Gentlemen.” Dogbreath said, “I shit you not when I tell you the Iranians will still be squatting over their holes with their pants down.”
“What is your target, General Duncan?” the President asked.
Quinn clicked on a map of Iran. “Here,” Jeremiah said, pointing, “in
the dead center of the country between the Great Salt Desert and the Persian Gulf. As you know, it is a wild, bitter, mountainous region. Quinn?”
Click, click.
“This is the area around Mount Shir. It stands at around twelve thousand feet and is commanded by an overlook fortress. The fort is a couple centuries old, of mud brick, but from it the military is able to control an enormous, sparsely populated area. For generations Fort Urbakkan commanded the area, collected taxes from peasants and herders, decapitated smugglers, and exhorted tolls from caravans. It also contains prison cells for sabbath buggering. The garrison consists of about two hundred troops with a major in command. Since the ayatollahs have gained power, the fort has been used to detain high-ranking members from the shah’s regime while the ayatollahs decide their fate.”
“Who do they have there now?”
Duncan nodded to Charlie Bethune, the CIA chief.
“General Duncan contacted us as he flew out of California. We gave him the data we had on Fort Urbakkan. At present it is holding Bandar Barakat.”
Bandar Barakat! The name resounded off the walls of the Situation Room.
“Jesus Christ!”
“Barakat!”
“Charlie?” the President asked.
“If you can figure Bandar Barakat out, then you can figure out the Middle East. He was one of the top intelligence people under the shah. He smelled the ayatollahs taking power and turned double agent. Because of his Western intelligence contacts, he could still deliver information to the new regime. On our side of the equation, we thought we had buried a valuable mole in the new government. This source of Western intelligence would dry up if they whack off Barakat’s head. So, they imprisoned him and moved him up to Fort Urbakkan, where the VIP prisoner or prisoners are housed in a specific tower.”
The room hummed in admiration at the preciseness of the CIA data.
“Go on, Charlie,” the President said.
“Barakat is probably making like Scheherazade, giving just enough new information to remain alive.”
“What do we want this bastard for?” Admiral Clearfield, chief of Naval Operations, inquired.
“Good question,” Bethune answered. “Barakat had worked his way in Iran
to becoming chief coordinator for terrorist activities. Moreover, the
ayatollahs aren’t going to get rid of him until they find the money
he’s skimmed from the Saudis, who are financing a major part of his
operation. In our hands, Barakat can give us the names of terrorists,
their aliases, cells, organizations, training sites, bank accounts,
future targets being planned—“
“Do you mean to say,” Air Force Commander Hoyt interrupted, “you intend to take him out of this fort?”
“Precisely,” Jeremiah Duncan said.
“How do you know he’ll cooperate?”
“Read my lips .. . MONEY.”
Drawn smiles.
“Believe it or not,” Bethune said, “he still has friends in Western intelligence. That cautiously includes the CIA.”
“How does that figure?”
“He has more money sitting and waiting in the States than in Iran. It includes a prime building on Fifth Avenue. With the ayatollahs breathing down his neck, Barakat has to figure they’ll find and extort his fortune in Iran and Europe. On the other hand, we feel that he’s picked us as the winner and wants to run for it. One more thing, Barakat is an Arab. The Iranians don’t t
rust Arabs.”
“Are we all on the same page?” the President asked.
“With reservations,” General Bellicek, chair of the Joint Chiefs, noted. “Always with reservations.”
“And you think you can snatch Barakat?” the President asked Jeremiah Duncan.
“I sure as hell like the odds. If he is killed, the raid is still a success. If we spirit him out, we’ve won the lottery.”
“How do you envision this?”
/”~ “
Quinn.
Click, click.
“Here, we’ve an extended map that includes the NATO base at Tikkah on the Turkish border next to Armenia. We take the SCARAB out of the C-5, unfold the wings and blades, arm it with bombs and missiles we’ve designed, fuel it, and go.”
“Hold it a minute, Jeremiah. Are you suggesting we are going to avoid Iranian radar?” Hoyt of the Air Force asked.
“Yes, in two ways. We’re going to take a page from the Israeli attack on the Egyptians in the Sixty-seven War. The Israelis flew out to the Mediterranean away from Egyptian radar, then came in and attacked them from the rear. We will go back door ourselves. The SCARAB will follow the coast of the Caspian Sea and enter Iran at the Turkoman border.”
“You said there were two reasons.”
“I had this SCARAB prototype built with composites. It is not an all-aluminum plane, and the radar cross section is very low.”
Now came an hour of caution, nitpicking, alternate ideas: we haven’t thoroughly tested the experimental missiles and bombs, the SCARAB has to be refueled in midair, we need a diversionary attack or a carrier hit from the Persian or Oman Gulf ... air cover .. . the condition of the Marine RAM team will be exhaustion after flying fifteen hours .. . and finally:
“No disrespect, Jeremiah,” General Bellicek said, “but aren’t you a little too enamored of those Israeli wing-and-a-prayer raids? They have to win. We have to plan it so as not to take losses.”
“Yeah, but they work,” Duncan retorted, “and the one goddamn reason
they work is because they aren’t cluttered up with all the Yankee bells and whistles. One plane, in and out, twenty fucking Marines.”
“But does the SCARAB have the legs, Jeremiah?” General Hoyt pressed. “You are going to fly under enemy radar in rocky terrain. These are gas-guzzling tactics.”
“/~v “
yumn.
“Yes, sir,” the gunner said. He clicked the carousel forward several slides and spoke. “Using a bad-case scenario, we can reach Fort Urbakkan, pull the raid, and fly out for a few hundred miles. We have called for a fuel tanker from Diego Garcia to rendezvous at thirty-one degrees, forty minutes latitude, fifty eight degrees, twenty minutes longitude. That will give us four hours till daylight to scramble south to the Arabian Sea and land aboard one of our container ships.”
“How many tanker-to-SCARAB refuels have you tried?” Admiral Clearfield asked knowingly.
Duncan looked away, miffed. “Two,” he peeped.
Back and forth, back and forth. It was the kind of plan that made the American military clutch. One mistake would mean a catastrophe. To let go of this opportunity could be a sign of over caution or a fear of casualties. The terrorist would remember an American balk.
Keith Brickhouse, commandant of the Marines, broke his silence. “The PLO, the Iranians, and the rest of those terrorist bastards will increase their activities. They are going to say that America just doesn’t have the capacity to stop them. We are capable of this mission. We will be in and out of there before the muezzin calls the Moslems to prayer in Teheran.”
“And you’ll wish to hell you had had fresh troops going in,” General Hoyt said.
“Fresh troops is an oxymoron,” Duncan answered. “I have never known men to reach battle or who fight battles as fresh troops. Wars are won by men less exhausted.”
Silence. With the specter of American casualties and a failure, the Joint Chiefs and the President were overburdened.
“From time to time, war to war, Americans have shown the utmost ingenuity and courage. Such a time and place is right here now,” the commandant said.
Fourteen hours and twenty-two minutes had elapsed since Iranian terrorists had taken an American Lear jet out of the sky. Overhead a giant C--5 jet transport carrying RAM and its sleeping SCARAB pressed toward the Tikkah Air Base on the far reach of Turkey.
Aboard the C-5 each member of the Recreation and Morale team was issued a packet of maps, personalized for each Marine’s participation in the raid.
The mission and the importance of Bandar Barakat was explained. Jeremiah called for map blowups and went over the plan, minute by minute, inch by inch. Many the day and week they had drilled in specific maneuvering that was now fitted inside the scheme of the raid.
Every Marine had secondary and tertiary duties. All of them could double as corpsmen. Nicknames and personal names only spoken now, no calling a person by his rank. This they had also trained for, and it was hallelujah time when they got to call Major General Jeremiah Duncan “Dogbreath.”
Gunner Quinn O’Connell was the Mayday pilot, bombardier, second backup on the electronic systems, corpsman, and backup navigator behind the pilots.
Grubb, the field commander, and squad leaders Ropo and Marsh, Novinski on electronics, and the pilots, Cherokee and IV, were networked through their helmets to Dogbreath and Quinn.
More intelligence photos. More weather information.
Now a weapons and ammunition check. The twenty Marines were going in with serious firepower.
Duncan snarled time and again, he had pressed the President so hard to make an instant strike, he might have bought a pig in a poke. Would it not have been better to have practiced a virtual raid for a week? They’d find out.
A mere sixteen and a half hours had elapsed since the terrorist attack. The C-5 flew quite close to where the Lear jet’s scattered bits and pieces floated on the waves below.
The plane veered off course, following international waters so as not to fly in an air space where permission would be required.
They did aerobic exercises in the C-5, hard, hard, hard, hard. Major Hugo Grubb was a monster for conditioning. He could make a man’s hand fall off with finger exercises.
Chow included beer! Three per Marine. It would slow down the heart thump, drown out the jumping nerve ends.
One more time they went through a step-by-step account of the coming strike.
Two films were set up, one straight and one porno. By dawn light everyone was in their canvas bunk, dead out, snoring so loud their sound nearly drowned out the jet engines.
NATO AIR BASE’TIKKAH’TURKEY
RAM-A arrived ahead of schedule and was whisked to an isolated hangar, where they were sealed in.
The men stretched, yawned, belched, scratched, and passed air, cracking their bones into alignment. Quickly awake, they unloaded their gear from the C-5 and laid their packs and weapons against a wall.
A hushed moment among the gathering as the SCARAB was rolled down the C-5 ramp. Lord, it looked so small and fragile, an infant being born from the gigantic cargo ship.
The wings had been turned on a pivot for travel, running from tail to cockpit. They were rotated into normal flying mode and clicked in.
Cherokee entered the plane and hit the thumb switch to raise the nacelles housing the engines and propellers. He set them at 75 degrees so the blades would be well clear of the deck. The long and powerful blades had an upside and a downside. Downside, all takeoffs and landings had to be made in helicopter mode. Downside, when firing missiles from under wing racks, they also had to be in helicopter mode. Upside, the plane was hush like quiet in flight and unlikely to be heard by the enemy.
Showers!
Slabs of beef for breakfast with pasta and gallons of orange juice and high-voltage chocolates.
Captain Novinski and his backup man, Master Tech Sergeant Roosevelt Jarvis, entered. They set up a mini display and command console, directly beh
ind the pilots, activated and checked out systems and the display panels.
“SMAC?”
“Pretty as a picture.”
“SMAC locked in.”
“Matching area correlation?”
“A-Okay.” “NOE?” Jarvis checked the digital tracking map system.
Novinski and Jarvis were joined by the chief American navigator at the Tikkah Air Base. The three of them programmed in a flight plan. They activated the terrain-following multifunction radar that would take pulsations from the ground and compare them to their database and display their position to within a hundred feet.
The chief navigator pointed out choppy air corridors, hidden peaks, radar stations, and myriad dangers.
In the radio shack, the pilots received their radio frequencies as well as Russian and Iranian frequencies.
“Fellah?”
“Yo,” Corporal An war Fellah answered, taking a headphone set that
would include him in the command network. “When you get the red light,
it will indicate that we are being contacted by a tower or, God forbid, a fighter plane patrol. If they are speaking in Farsi,” Quinn said, “I’ll signal you to talk to them. Positive of the drill?”
“Gotcha.”
“Volkovitch, the same goes for you in Russian.”
u
Aye, aye.
Bomb carts rolled in sleek baby missiles. The “Duncan” missiles were short, light, but could penetrate a heavily resistant bunker. At Fort Urbakkan they would be shooting at a mix of mud and stone.
A second set of bombs were little fat ones, murderous against personnel, ugly cluster bombs to shower the enemy with thousands of razor-sharp steel squares and ball bearings.
The nacelles would remain at 75 degrees so the SCARAB could fire from helicopter mode without fear of hitting the propellers. Space under the wing was limited. The laser guidance system looked fine.
The bombing run, in Gunner O’Connell’s hands, had to be executed accurately and surely. To hit the targets dead-on, the SCARAB would be maneuvered as close as possible. Would the hovering SCARAB take Iranian ground fire in this period? Were the bombs squirrely? Could they be held fast during what had to be a wild, shaking flight?