Air Battle Force (15 page)

The second phase of the attack didn't commence for ten minutes. The reason was simple: The rebels' typical pattern when under attack was to leave their families behind in town and try to escape into the mountains. In ten minutes they should just be discovering that their escape routes had been cut off—leaving them out in the open. At that moment the Tu-160s opened up their aft bomb bays.

And the real carnage began.

All the aft bomb bays carried twelve more Kh-15 missiles on rotary launchers, but the warheads on these contained fuel-air explosive devices. Explosive fuel was dispensed in a large cloud about two hundred meters aboveground and then ignited, creating a massive fireball over three hundred meters in diameter that instantly incinerated anything it touched. And each missile was targeted not just for the outskirts of Vedeno but for the town itself.

Within moments the place that was once the city of Vedeno was completely engulfed in fire. Over four square kilometers were leveled and burned instantly, and the overpressure caused by the multiple fuel-air explosions destroyed anything within seven square kilometers. The only thing left standing was the Caucasus Mountains, completely denuded of all vegetation and wiped clean of snow, with immense blankets of smoke and steam rising into the night sky.

“Good job, everyone,” Gryzlov said. He shook hands with the systems officers, then returned to the copilot's seat. The pilot was just checking in the rest of the formation—all aircraft in the green, all aircraft released live weapons, all aircraft returning to base. “Excellent job, everyone,” Gryzlov radioed on the secure command frequency to the other bombers in the formation. “I'm buying the first round back home.”

That evening

Air Force Colonel Daren Mace decided to drive his beat-up Ford pickup into town to look around before heading out to the base. The town of Battle Mountain was hardly more than a dusty bump in the road off Interstate 80 in northern Nevada. With the construction of the Air Reserve base, several civilian construction projects were also under way—a large chain hotel and casino, a sizable truck stop, several apartment buildings, and a small single-family-home subdivision—but even after three years since construction began on the base, the town had changed very little. It still had its old, isolated, mining-town rough edge.

Closing in on the big five-oh, Daren Mace had recently turned into the world's biggest health freak, which for him was a complete one-eighty from his previous lifestyle. Not long before, his favorite hangout for everything from mission planning to dating to doing his taxes was in a tavern somewhere—he was such a fixture in some of his favorite places that he could often be seen serving drinks or repairing equipment in his spare time. But then he found himself needing glasses for reading, found his flight suits getting a little tight around the middle, so he started an exercise regime. Now every day started off with a run. His consumption of beer, cigarettes, and pizza also declined, as did his blood pressure and cholesterol count, so he was able to maintain the same lean, trim figure he'd had most of his adult life, even though he was getting more and more deskbound in his military career.

Sure, the hair was turning grayer, and he was popping aspirins almost every morning to counteract the unexpected little aches he'd encounter. But those were all signs of maturity—weren't they?

Maturity was never one of his strong suits in the past. Born and raised in Jackpot, Nevada, several hours' drive northeast of Battle Mountain, the younger Mace found that his main concerns usually involved staying one step ahead of his strict parents, the game wardens during his many illegal hunting trips in the high desert, the fathers of his various love interests, and—first on the list—getting the hell out of back-country Nevada. The Air Force was his ticket out.

His twenty-three-year Air Force career wasn't all aches and pains. Because of his exceptional knowledge, his skills, and his ability to think, plan, and execute quickly and effectively, Mace was one of the youngest aviators ever chosen to fly the FB-111A “Aardvark” supersonic strategic bomber, at a time when there were only forty of the long-range nuclear-armed bombers in the Air Force inventory and only six navigators per year chosen from the entire force to serve on them. He didn't disappoint. He was not only a knowledgeable and hardworking bombardier and crew member, but he took the time to study the aircraft, all its systems, and its incredible capabilities. Mace soon became known as the primary expert in all facets of the “Go-Fast” supersonic strike aircraft.

So in 1990, during Operation Desert Shield, Daren Mace was the natural choice for one of the most important and dangerous missions conceived as a result of the Iraqi invasion of Kuwait and the tensions created in the Middle East—the American response to an all-out nuclear, chemical, or biological attack by Iraq or one of the other hostile nations against U.S. forces in the region. Should such an attack take place, Mace's mission was to take off in his FB-111A bomber from a secret air base in eastern Turkey and launch thermonuclear-tipped missiles at four of Iraq's most important underground command-and-control centers, all in one mission.

On January 17, 1991, the Iraqis attacked Israel with a SCUD rocket armed with what was thought to be a chemical-weapon warhead, and several more SCUDs hit areas of Saudi Arabia, close to where American troops were garrisoned. Mace and his squadron commander took off from Batman Air Base in Turkey on their deadly mission to stop the Iraqi war machine from launching any more weapons of mass destruction. Loaded with four three-thousand-gallon fuel tanks and four AGM-69A short-range attack missiles tipped with three-hundred-kiloton thermonuclear warheads, they zoomed in at treetop level under cover of darkness, at full military power or greater the whole way. They received the execution order: It would be America's first nuclear attack since World War II.

Except it hadn't been a chemical-weapon attack. It was determined that the Iraqi warhead did not contain chemical or biological weapons—the rocket had hit a dry-cleaning facility, and the chemicals released from inside the building mimicked chemical weapons. Within minutes an abort code was sent to the strike aircraft.

Moments before launch, the crew received a coded message. There was no time to decode it before launch, and they already had a valid strike order authorizing them to launch their missiles—but Mace canceled the attack anyway. Legally, procedurally, he should have fired his nuclear missiles. Instead Mace used his common sense and his gut feeling and aborted.

Now deep inside enemy territory, flying right over Iraq's most sensitive military areas, the crew had relied on the nuclear strike to help them escape. Without it they were in the fight of their lives. With no fighter protection, low on fuel, and heavily loaded with dangerous weapons, they were attacked mercilessly with every weapon in the Iraqi air-defense arsenal. Mace's aircraft commander was badly injured and his plane shot up and flying on one engine. Mace managed to do an emergency refueling with a KC-10 aerial refueling tanker that had crossed the Iraqi border to do the rendezvous before the FB-111 flamed out, then crash-landed his plane on a highway in northern Saudi Arabia.

In anyone's book, in any other situation, Mace would've been a hero. Instead he was ostracized as the bombardier who couldn't follow orders and had lost his nerve. He was bounced from assignment to assignment, squirreled away in remote operational locations, and then finally offered a Reserve commission. His fitness reports were always “firewalled”—meaning he always got the highest marks on job performance—but he was never considered for any command assignments, never believed to have the right stuff to command a tactical unit. His last assignment was as a protocol officer in the secretary of defense's office, where he'd been relegated to escorting VIPs and running errands for the honchos in the Pentagon.

Battle Mountain seemed to be the newest “squirrel's nest” for him.

Daren always seemed to gravitate toward bars and taverns located on the wrong side of town, and he did so again that night. There were four very small casinos in Battle Mountain, one open-all-day restaurant and eight that were open part-time, eight motels, four gas stations, and one truck stop. The truck stop had billiard tables, friendly waitresses, good burgers . . . and, next door, a brothel.

Donatella's looked nothing like the hundreds of antique stores, rock shops, or tourist traps that lined the highways. A flashing sign with a slinky black cat was the only visible advertisement. A long, wide ramp—the place was fully wheelchair-accessible—was enclosed and brilliantly lit, with a valet-parking attendant and buzzer-operated iron gate at the bottom and a doorman/bouncer and another buzzer-operated gate at the top of the ramp. It reminded Daren of entering an alert facility when he pulled nuclear duty in the FB-111s. There was even covered parking for motorcycles. Daren was impressed. He'd never been in a brothel before, so he decided to check it out.

Once buzzed inside, Daren found himself in a large, comfortable room, with two living-room areas to the right, a long mahogany bar in front, and a space to the right with several dining tables. His view of the bar, however, was blocked—by six lovely women in evening gowns standing before him. When the buzzer button at the bottom of the ramp was pressed, Daren assumed, it gave the otherwise unengaged ladies time to assemble at the front door for the “introductions.”

“Good evening, sir,” said the madam, who introduced herself as Miss Lacey. She extended a hand in a courtly, almost old southern manner. “How nice to see you.”

“Good evening, Miss Lacey,” Daren responded. He took a moment to make eye contact with each of the ladies arrayed before him. “How is everyone tonight?” They all murmured responses while maintaining their seductive poses and inviting smiles. He'd never seen anything like this before, not even growing up in Nevada. Brothels were strictly off-limits to kids under eighteen—his parents strictly enforced that rule, and Jackpot was too small to get away with much—and he was out of Nevada before he turned eighteen.

“I'd like to introduce you to the ladies.” Miss Lacey named them, one by one, using their “stage” names. “Please make yourself comfortable. If you'd like a tour, please feel free to ask at any time. Enjoy yourself tonight.” The ladies slowly departed, making eye contact again—the last sales pitch before working the room again.

Daren went to the bar. He automatically picked up a menu, just as he did at the truck stop, but was shocked to find it was a menu of sex selections, not food selections. A big guy behind the bar in a Hawaiian-print shirt stepped over to him. “Good evening, sir,” the bartender said. “I'm Tommy. What'll you have?”

Daren put a ten on the bar. “Sparkling water. How's it going tonight?”

“Not bad, not bad.” The bartender served him a bottle of Pellegrino and a chilled glass. “Are you military?” he asked as he poured.

“Yep.”

“Can I ask you a question?”

“You a spy or something?” Daren asked, grinning over the rim of his glass as he drank.

“No. I just wanted to know if you knew how long they keep recruits incommunicado after they start basic training?”

“You have a kid in boot camp?”

“My oldest son. I only just heard he was going into the service. Me and his mother split up—she didn't approve of me workin' here at Donatella's, even though the money's good—and she moved off to Reno with the kids. I found out he's in San Antonio.”

“The only phone recruits can normally use is in the orderly room,” Daren explained. “They can't hang out in the orderly room until the weekends, and only if they've finished all their other duties, which they can rarely do. Most of the time, even if they're all caught up, they're too exhausted after the first week to do anything else but sleep and eat.”

“So what do I do?”

“Wait till next weekend. The drill sergeants are good about reminding recruits to call home often. In fact, most DIs withhold money from recruits' pay for phone calls, postage, stationery, haircuts—that sort of thing.”

“Is that right? Thanks,” Tommy said. “He's my oldest boy, and I hardly seen him at all since the old lady moved to Reno. I should've taken the time and gone to his high-school graduation—I didn't know he enlisted and had to report right after graduation.”

“I can help you find out when basic training is over. You get the time off and go,” Daren suggested. “You won't recognize him. He'll have lost a bunch of weight, he'll call you ‘sir' until you're sick of it, and he'll be as hard as a rock.”

Tommy looked amazed, since he himself was six feet four and weighed more than three hundred pounds—no doubt his son was more than a chip off the old block. “No shit? That I gotta see. Thanks again.” He went about his business.

A few moments later one of the courtesans came up to Daren. “Hi there,” she said. “I'm Amber.”

“How are you tonight, Amber?”

“I'm fine, really fine.” Amber looked as if she was in her mid-twenties. Her blond hair was real, but the life had gone out of it, and she obviously overdosed on mousse to fluff it up. She was thin, verging on gaunt, but she was adorned with a fabulous set of breast implants that could have easily weighed more than the rest of her entire body.

“Would you like a drink?”

“Yes, thanks. Same as you is just fine.” While her drink was being served, she stepped around him, letting her fingertips trace a line across his chest, and started kneading his shoulders. She certainly had
very
strong hands—she might even have been a masseuse at one time, but Daren thought she'd probably earned those strong hands in a number of other pursuits. “Hard day at work, handsome?”

“Just got into town.”

“New job?”