Force of Eagles (16 page)

“You’re in bad shape, friend. I’ve got to get you home.”

Carroll had, he decided, made the contact he needed if he was going to get the Kurds to help him with the POWs at Kermanshah.

Chapter 12: D Minus 23

Nellis AFB, Nevada

The major in charge of the Red Flag exercise starting that morning was at work before 0600 in building 201 putting finishing touches on the scenario. The sign on his desk identified him as The Warlord.

He looked up at the sound of heels coming down the hall. His administration clerk, a young buck sergeant, positioned himself so he could see whoever walked pass the open office door so early in the morning. Both men then watched Dewa Rahimi walk by carrying a box of…donuts? She was wearing a western shirt, jeans and cowboy boots. Her dark hair was held back by a red bandana. The sergeant stuck his head around the door and his eyes followed her down the hall. “Have mercy,” he intoned…

Stansell smiled at Rahimi when she came into the Intelligence section. He had been at work for over an hour reviewing message traffic. “Gone western?”

“Why not? This is Vegas. Besides, I love horses, ride a lot.”

“We had horses when I was a kid growing up in Colorado,” he told her. “My two younger sisters, everyone in the family rode.”

“Maybe we can go riding sometime?” It was an opening she had been looking for. When they were in Washington, she had only seen the colonel as a professional colleague. But now she found that she looked forward to seeing him.

“Some interesting message traffic came in over the wires last night,” he told her. “Rangers out of Fort Benning have been picked for the mission. Four platoons from two companies of the Third Batallion, 75th Infantry. I was expecting Delta Force…”

“So was I,” she said, trying to hide sudden doubts. Mado had implied that Task Force Alpha was going to be a composite of Delta Force and Combat Talon MC-130Es from the 1st Special Operations Wing. They were the elite units, ruthlessly trained for tough missions. Stansell’s job was to many the two units for a raid on the prison. Something was wrong.

“I don’t know much about the Rangers,” she told him, deciding not to surface her doubts. She recalled the meeting with Cunningham and how she felt when it looked like Stansell might be replaced as mission commander. She had thought she saw a possibility for compromise. No one liked the bearer of bad news, especially when based mostly on suspicions.

“We’ll find out.” Stansell too was obviously concerned. “There’s another message about movement reported near Kermanshah.”

She picked up the stack of messages and sat down at her desk. The important one was on top and Stansell had highlighted the second paragraph in yellow. She turned her computer on and called up one of the Defense Intelligence Agency’s data banks she could access. Her computer was linked by a telephone circuit to one of the DIA’s computers buried in the Pentagon’s basement. The two computers talked to each other in code, encoding and decoding any signal that went over the telephone circuit. Recently the security of the computer system had been questioned by the chairman of the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence, and the National Security Agency’s watchdog group had been turned loose and were tapping the DIA’s communications net.

On this Monday morning the watchdog COMSEC monitors picked up Rahimi’s traffic and the intercepted signals were fed into one of the giant Cray computers the NSA used for breaking codes. After two minutes, the computer selected a subroutine and answered a series of questions. The computer anticipated breaking the code in fourteen months. The system was secure.

Rahimi’s worry intensified as she jotted coordinates and numbers down off the computer. “Damn,” she said, and walked up to the big map of western Iran she had tacked to the wall. “An armored regiment is moving into garrison near Shahabad.” She drew a circle around a town forty-two miles southeast of Kermanshah. ‘They’re centered on the highway airstrip south of town.”

“Why there? Any clear connection with the POWs at Kermanshah?”

“It’s right on the old silk route between Tehran and Baghdad. The mountains channel any invasion force coming out of Iraq toward Kermamshah and Tehran down that valley. It’s a good blocking position.
And
a threat against a rescue attempt.”

“Do you have an OB?”

“So far only the reported ten tanks—Soviet T-72s—in the message. There’s bound to be more—antiaircraft artillery, surface-to-air missiles, armored troop carriers…”

Locke and Bryant came in then, and Locke immediately spotted the wall map. “Why the circle at Shahabad?”

Rahimi was explaining when Chief Pullman arrived. “Colonel, the commander is up the wall about the C-130s coming in today. Claims he doesn’t have room to park eight of ’em on the ramp. Wants to see you ASAP.”

Stansell shook his head. “I was expecting twelve. Dewa, work with Jack and Thunder and try to get a handle on what this does to us. The chief and I will try to calm the heavies.”

Locke pulled a chair up in front of the map and listened to the last of Rahimi’s information, and Bryant then motioned her to follow him outside when she had finished. “Let him mull it over for a while. I saw him do this at Ras Assanya. He’ll come up with something, it’s his strong suit.” They walked back into the office.

“Got me an idea,” Jack said.

Dewa looked at Bryant.

“What do you calculate for total time on the ground at Kermanshah?”

“With transportation in place to move the POWs, less than ninety minutes from the first bomb. Longer, maybe three hours if we fly in our own transport from shuttle,” she said.

Locke studied the map. “If we surprise them, that armored regiment can’t react and move the forty-two miles to Kermanshah in ninety minutes. Don’t know about the three hours. We can slow ’em down by taking out this bridge.” He pointed to a highway bridge half way between Shahabad and Kermanshah.

Dewa couldn’t hide the worry she felt, at the same time realizing how attached she felt to these men. Men she hardly knew.

*

Pullman drove Stansell to the headquarters building of the Tactical Fighter Weapons Center. “Which commander were you talking about?” he asked.

“Major General John O’Brian, head honcho of the Tactical Fighter Weapons Center,” Pullman told him.

The two were escorted directly into the general’s office. The wing commander of the 57th Fighter Weapons Wing and his Deputy for Operations were with O’Brian. “Well, Colonel Stansell,” the general said, “seems you’re staking quite a claim to my base. Eight C-130s and their support take up a hell of a lot of space. My working troops here tell me we’re full up with our own jets and the ones here for Red Flag. Now tell me what the hell is going on or kindly get off my base.”

Stansell hesitated. Why hadn’t Mado told O’Brian? “Sir, I’d be glad to explain, in private. We’re working on a need-to-know basis here”

“They’ve seen the message from Mado asking us to support Task Force Alpha,” the general said, gesturing at the two seated men. “Sorry, sir, this is close-hold information—”

“Wait outside,” O’Brian told the men. “Stansell, this had better be good.”

The chief closed the door behind the departing officers. “General O’Brian, we’re here to put together a team to rescue the POWs out of Iran.’

The general sucked in his breath. “You’re part of JSOA? Why didn’t someone tell me that?”

“We’re forming as a separate unit. We’ll be chopped to JSOA’s command later.”

“Now I’m not so impressed.” The hard look on O’Brian’s face made his feelings clear.

Stansell thought, he’s really going to be skeptical when he hears about the Army. “General O’Brian, I was planning on setting up a forward operation location on one of the dry lake beds you own. The Army contingent, most of our people, and the C-130s would operate out of there. We’d use Nellis primarily for support.”

Pullman’s back stiffened when he heard what Stansell was proposing, knowing who would have to get it organized.

O’Brian’s fingers drummed his desk. “When?”

“Tomorrow latest.”

The general walked over to a wall map of the Tactical Fighter Weapons Center. Nellis was a large Air Force Base, and when the bombing ranges and the Military Operating Areas were tacked on, the general controlled a piece of southern Nevada about the size of Switzerland. “I’m putting you at Delamar Lake. We renamed it Texas Lake for Red Flag. It’s a dry lake bed seventy-four miles to the north we use for C-130 operations. You should pass for a routine exercise. I’ll run cover for you but I’ll have to tell the Office of Special Investigations to be on the lookout for anyone interested in what you’re doing…When does Delta Force get here?”

Gawdamn, Pullman thought, the gray-haired fox doesn’t miss much.

“We’re getting Rangers and I plan to bring them tomorrow, no later than Wednesday.”

“Stansell, when you decide where to build a mock-up of your target let me know. You’ll need camouflage netting to hide it from the satellite the Russians monitor us with. And Mort, next time you want trailers ask.” The general drilled an astonished Pullman with his hard blue eyes. “I do talk to my troops. Now get the hell out of here. Your C-130s are landing in thirty minutes.”

As they retreated from the general’s office Stansell said, “Chief, why didn’t you tell me you knew him?”

“It didn’t seem important…I got his ass out of a crack when he was a second lieutenant. He was responsible for a big supply kit during a deployment exercise and some expensive tools were stolen. I found them.” Pullman wanted to change the subject before Stansell asked more questions. Actually, the chief had had to beat an airman almost senseless before he learned where the tools had been hidden. “What are you going to do with the 130s?”

“Find out how good they are and have them haul some valuable cargo.”

*

Lieutenant Colonel Paul “Duck”—what else?—Mallard followed the other four members of his C-130 crew into Red Flag’s auditorium. He had been there during Red Flag 85-1—the first exercise of 1985. Something’s strange, he thought. Normally a unit knew months in advance if it was going to be part of Red Flag. He looked around the large room, walls covered with plaques, flags and mementoes of past Red Flag exercises. He found the other seven aircraft commanders, each surrounded by his own crew. All of his forty crew members were there.

Mallard sat down next to his navigator, Captain Percy Dunkin. The tall skinny navigator was already asleep, probably still hung-over, Mallard figured.

“Room, ten-hut.” Pullman’s voice rang out from the back as Stansell walked down the aisle. Everyone but Dunkin jumped to attention. Mallard didn’t bother to disturb him.

Stansell proceeded to tell Mallard and his men that he needed volunteers for a tough, hazardous operation. It would include risky low-level flying, paradrops and short field landings. There might be casualties. Mallard spoke for his 463rd Wing. They were all in.

“Good. Welcome to Task Force Alpha. We start now. You’re going to launch out of here in one hour and fly a first-look low-level route to a dry lake. You’ve got to hit your Time Over Target plus or minus a minute, paradrop a dummy load on the panels that will be staked out there and do an assault landing on the lake bed. After you’ve landed you’ll be launched on your second mission. Captain Jack Locke will brief you on the route and target.”

Mallard’s copilot, First Lieutenant Don Larson, was staring at Locke. He almost twisted his head off when he made the connection and turned to look at the departing Stansell. “Colonel Mallard, I’ll bet my sweet black ass this is a biggy. Stansell is the guy that escaped out of Ras Assanya and Locke was the 45th’s Top Gun. We’re playing big leagues.”

“And you just may be lucky enough to get your ‘sweet black ass’ shot off,” Mallard said straight-faced, and punched on Dunkin until he woke up.

Forty-five minutes later Mallard’s loadmaster was signaling him to crank the C-130’s number-three engine. Dunkin was hunched over the navigator’s table still working on his map. I’ve got the world’s tallest troll for a navigator, Mallard thought. Not only is he an alcoholic, he walks around like the hunchback of Notre Dame. He also reminded himself that Captain Percy “Drunkin” Dunkin was also just about the best lead navigator in the Air Force.

Chief Pullman had a UH-1F helicopter, the venerable Huey, waiting on the ramp when Locke was finished with the C-130 crews. The captain was surprised when Pullman told him it was there to fly them to Texas Lake. “Don’t ask, Captain. How else you expect to get there before the Herky Birds and stake out the drop panels?” The chief threw a bundled-up parachute canopy and a bag of steel pins into the Huey and clambered on board. “Come on, we got work to do.”

As the helicopter lifted off and headed for Texas Lake seventy-four miles north of Nellis, Pullman unfolded a 1:50,000 scale map and pointed to a spot on the dry lake. He had to shout to be heard over the noise. “This is where Captain Bryant wants us to stake out the panels. He said to cut the parachute up and make a big cross.” When they reached Texas Lake the pilot sat the Huey down near the spot Pullman had marked on the map. Locke tapped the pilot on the shoulder and pointed to the southern end of the lake.

“What the hell?” Pullman yelled.

“Stansell said to throw them a curve,” Locke shouted at him as the Huey lifted off. “He was expecting C-1303 from the First Special Ops Wing. He’s really pissed.”

*

Dunkin was standing behind the copilot’s seat, clutching a map in one hand and steadying himself with the other. He had a death grip on the left side of Larson’s seat. Two stop watches were dangling from his neck, bouncing up and down from the light turbulence, and his battered yellow baseball cap was on backward. He claimed it was lucky.

“Where the hell is the lake?” Mallard shouted over the intercom.

“Over the next ridge. Trust me,” Dunkin answered. “We’re on time.” They were the first in the string of C-130s flying five minutes in-trail. “After you pop over the ridge in front of us level off at sixty-two twenty. That will give us thirteen hundred fifty feet above the ground just like a troop drop,” Dunkin said. “The panels will be on the nose. Loadmaster, six minute warning.”