"Here, in these frames, we can pick out some of the weapons components that have been in the process of reaching sites inside Iran. There are several, but I want to draw your attention to these specifically…"
Again the remote clicked, and clicked again. Starkweather got out a laser pen and directed the red pinpoint beam at the image of the contents of one of several long crates that had been lashed to the Antonov's deck.
"These are artillery tubes, Mr. President. Not ordinary artillery tubes, by any means, however. Such tubes are for super-howitzers, monsters with a three hundred thirty-millimeter bore that we know the Russians have been developing along the lines of one of the prototypes of the infamous Bull super gun.
"You can see the strategic implications on this next map. The increased artillery range it gives Iran would enable it to possess the equivalent of accurate ballistic missiles at a small fraction of the cost. From inside the borders of Iran their batteries could then hit targets in Syria, Jordan, even Turkey or US bases in Iraq."
The president knew about the super guns from previous intelligence reports, but the graphic detail of the CJCS's presentation brought the dangerous implications of this development home to him in a very powerful way.
"I'm told we can hit many of the installations these guns have already been set up at, but not all of them."
"Correct, Mr. President," the CJCS went on. "Not all of them. And even one surviving installation poses a global danger. Those others are in hardened installations. Deep underground facilities or DUFs. We can damage those DUFs with conventional cruise missile strikes, but only direct nuclear intervention can destroy them using standoff weapons."
"Can't do it. No nukes. At least none we're forced to admit having used. It has to stay covert. And I'm assuming that the small nuclear blasts we can hide won't do the trick."
"Correct, sir. But I wasn't suggesting we exercise our white-world nuclear option, Mr. President."
"Then what did you mean, Bucky?"
"A force on the ground, sir. A trained force of special operators. A sizable force, perhaps multinational in scope. A regional force under the control of a US commanding officer stationed in the area. If you will, Mr. President, you may think of it as a special forces or covert version of the Desert Storm coalition of 1991."
The president leaned forward, clearly interested. The CJCS had just set the gears in his politically attuned mind turning. Here was a concept that might resonate with Congress and the voters alike.
"Go on, general," the president advised Starkweather. "You got me interested."
"Well, sir. What we have in mind is based on the urgent need to put a big cancellation mark on Iran's still nascent but developing capability to set up those super guns and fire advanced hybrid artillery shells in a new bid for regional dominance. The shells are part conventional projectile, part guided missile, and they have so-called clip-on capability — "
"— what the hell's that again, Buck?"
"That, Mr. President, means they can be easily refitted with unconventional warheads, such as nuclear, biological or chemical armament. Conventional warhead modules are basically removed by technicians and the unconventional modules installed. The system is fully modular. The advanced projectiles can be very rapidly converted."
"Shee-yitt."
"That's absolutely right, Mr. President," the CJCS went on. "And plenty of it, unless we do something. We know Iran has a few of the super guns already set up in fixed and mobile launch sites. We don't think they have the exotic, or unconventional warhead clip-ons yet, or only enough to run tests on. We want to stop them cold before that happens. And that means destroying their capability on the ground.
"What about our Soviet friends?"
"We think the Russians will see that backing off on this one will be the better part of valor. We've left them pretty much with a free hand in the Caucasus, which was their main objective in starting the war anyway. The Mideast is basically a sideshow to the homeboys at Two Dzerzhinsky Square. We think they'll back off."
"Okay. Go on."
"Mr. President, for the rest, I believe the Army's liaison from the Pentagon, General Clifford, should continue. It's the green suiters who'll be leading the charge."
Clifford took the floor.
"The multinational brigades will be led by Detachment Omega, the Army's first-responder special forces unit. We are, at this stage, calling the initiative Operation Sand Viper. Here is what we have in mind…"
The president was listening. He liked the name Sand Viper. It had media appeal. He could probably even sell it to the house majority on the other side of the aisle. On the legal pad in front of him, he doodled a picture of a snake biting a mustachioed man on the backside while, with the trace of a smile, he listened to the rest of what the Pentagon liaison had to say.
"Oh, and one more thing I should mention, Mr. President," Clifford went on with studied casualness, unclipping a laser pen from his tunic pocket.
"Yes, general. What's that?"
"We think it's possible the Iranians may have something even bigger than those three hundred thirty-millimeter tubes stashed away — " he pointed with the laser beam to a spot on a map that an aide had just set up on an easel, " — Right here."
The president suddenly stopped doodling. He wasn't smiling anymore either.
A few thousand miles and several time zones away, the US president's Soviet counterpart sat pondering matters of similar importance. The Soviet premier's poputchik was behaving just as planned. The swaggering puppet was eager to absorb as much Russian weaponry and manpower as he could.
All in all, it was a display on an even grander scale than the Russian incursion into Egypt under Nasser in the late fifties that lasted until the late sixties and the ascendency of Sadat. Starchinov's predecessors in the Kremlin hierarchy had then sought to arm Egypt as a counterbalance to the West's sphere of influence in Iraq.
In those days, at the start of the Cold War, it was Baghdad that was the most pro-western of the Arab states, and Egypt that was seen to be slipping from the American-led alliance. In time, of course, the opposite situation had prevailed. For decades Egypt, absent Israel, had been the most powerful Western surrogate in the region, whereas Iraq had become a pariah state. So it went, in a dialectic swing that Karl Marx had seen and described long ago.
Now it was Iran's turn to swallow the Soviet bait. So far, Starchinov's poputchik was hungry for as much of it as he could have. The premier's last reports told of secret junkets on the Ilyushin mini-jet the Kremlin had supplied, one that had been bugged with sensitive yet undetectable listening devices that beamed virtually everything said by the Iranian autocrat to his trusted aides to a Soviet orbital listening post.
However, the Kremlin leader also knew that the West had detected these new inroads into Iran and would take steps to counter them. It was, of course, inevitable that they would, and in the political sphere there was little if anything they could do about it.
The military sphere posed a separate set of challenges where an entirely different array of rules applied. Just as the Western alliances had waged a covert war against Nasser in the old days, so they were already showing signs of doing this today against his own strategic maneuverings.
Starchinov would have to counter these countermoves. At the least he would need to stage holding actions until the deep installations that Soviet technicians and construction crews were already busily digging in the Iranian deserts to house the new super guns that the poputchik of Iran was acquiring.
After these preparations were completed, it would be too late for the US and her allies to do anything about it. They would never use thermonuclear weapons on first-strike terms, which was the only effective means to destroy the underground bases. Nor could they use small, subkiloton "tinynukes" on such an objective either. They were extremely limited, little better than conventionals.