Leon Uris (13 page)

Cherokee Cottrell, who claimed to be half Sioux, had been on the wagon for five years when Jeremiah pulled him from obscurity to pilot the SCARAB.

A Hardvard failure, Todd Wetmore IV, a super talent with something to prove to his family, came in as copilot and navigator.

A weirdo, Captain Novinski, without whom nothing electronic was purchased by the Corps, found and installed and tested every system now in use or on the planning boards.

Dogbreath got his titanium wing. It was six feet longer than the production wing of aluminum composite. Stronger and more rigid, the black wing made the craft faster, lighter, and able to carry more weight.

The Allison turbo-prop engines were pushed, then pushed again.

Marine Gunner Quinn O’Connell wore many hats: backup on the electronic board, bombardier, Mayday pilot, and mostly logistics expert. He was given twenty potential worldwide targets to prepare for a counterinsurgency attack.

All the members of RAM Company doubled as
medical corpsmen.

Jeremiah attached bomb racks to carry a mix of sixteen missiles, ultra-light, laser-guided, with explosive capacity not yet seen in combat.

What was created was a dual-capacity roto-tiller that could fly as a helicopter and convert in seconds to a standard turbo jet aircraft. She had a decent subsonic speed of 500 knots and, with spare fuel tanks, a range of two thousand miles. She could carry two dozen men plus pilots and topped out at an altitude of twenty thousand feet.

Every square inch and every pound allowable held a basket of systems, from laser-targeted lockons to ground-view.

She carried her own ordnance, crafted to fit her limited space and weight capacities. Her demonstrations were awesome, a lethal bombardment followed by a landing or ground hovering as twenty Marines debarked out of a rear ramp.

Nearly a year passed. The SCARAB was worked into higher levels of performance, as were the men of the RAM team.

In Europe in particular, terrorists kept upping the level of violence with increasing daring. Outside America, her buildings, businesses, and citizens were targeted even though the nation itself had not undergone an attack. This, everyone agreed, was only a matter of time.

The inevitable happened. An Air Force Lear jet crossing the Atlantic from Germany and carrying an American ambassador and an American NATO general blew up in midair.

A series of incredible breaks linked together…

In Frankfurt, an Israeli Mossad agent identified Iranians entering Germany and followed them to a rundown hotel in the foreign workers’ part of town. The Mossad informed the CIA.

Air Force Lieutenant Sumner Smith was officer on duty at the small-craft section of the Rhein-Mein air base. Contacted by the terrorists, Smith had agreed to plant a briefcase bomb for a hundred thousand dollars.

The pilot of the Lear jet was able to send a Mayday call at the time of the explosion.

In a heightened state of alert, German police were able to catch the terrorists, six Iranians, at the airport and the
autobahn
hastening to leave Frankfurt.

Lieutenant Smith’s wife, a German national named Helga, discovered the hundred thousand dollars. In a nasty marriage, she took the money to the police.

Four of the Iranians confessed, as did Lieutenant Smith.

The president of the United States clamped on a lid of secrecy. There would be no public announcement. If pressed, they would say an aircraft was missing and they were investigating.

With confessions in their pockets and further confirmation, the President saw a window of opportunity to strike back!

“Jeremiah Duncan here,” Duncan growled.

“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.”

“Yes, sir.”

“With this news in our pockets,” the President said, “and the Iranians in the dark, we feel we might pull off a counterstrike 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 highranking 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…M-O-N-E-Y.”

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 trust 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.”

“Quinn.”

“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 overcaution, 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.