In addition to all this, Mozafferreddin's larger "palaces" showed just the tip of the proverbial iceberg aboveground. These also harbored extensive subterranean networks of bunkers, research labs, military command posts, motor pool areas, and much else beneath the visible portion on the surface.
While Mozafferreddin's guests or members of the Iranian maximum leader's extended family — most of the presidential palaces were rarely visited by the Rais himself — cavorted with harem girls in the lake or indoor Olympic pools, or sipped cool drinks beneath imported shade trees, or even played golf on the eighteen-hole courses some of the palaces featured on their country club-like expanses, cadres of weapons scientists might be at work in the underground portion of the palace developing who-knew-what diabolical weapon of mass destruction.
Faramoosh Mozafferreddin, who considered himself the reincarnation of the ancient Persian potentate Abalgamash, legendary warrior king of the ancient Warakhshe dynasty, used this over-under scheme in virtually every weapons design facility that he'd built, and there were hundreds scattered throughout Iran, each one of them engaged in a cellular manufacturing or research process that compartmentalized the individual cells.
Few besides the Rais himself possessed a working knowledge of the entire picture of Iran's weapons development programs.
The same Iranian strategy that had led to the rounding up of human shields against fighter plane and Reaper air strikes, and that had filled the sleeping areas of the a supposed "goat cheese factory" at Qom with innocent Iranians above a chemical weapons plant, divided the presidential palaces into heavens and hells reminiscent of the ancient kingdoms of light and darkness ruled by Marduk and Tiamat of ancient Mesopotamian legend.
Those in the heavenly realm disported above, while those in Abaddon slaved over infernal machinery in the fiend's workshop.
The presidential palace at Mashdad was the objective of strike force Balls. It was a large palace as Mozafferreddin's palaces went, but the fact that it was more than just a glorified country club for the Iranian elite had been indicated by Western underground remote sensing scans using spy satellites.
For years Iran had built no underground facilities, aware that US satellites possessed remote-sensing capabilities using thermal imaging, synthetic aperture radar imaging and magnetic anomaly detection. Then the Iranians got more adept at maskirovka, or camouflage and concealment, and tunnel hardening techniques, and started digging bunkers again. But the NSA's hardware also got better, so that it was getting increasingly more difficult for Faramoosh Mozafferreddin to hide his bags of dirty tricks underground.
For one thing, earthbound magnetic anomaly detection by space-based platforms had become more accurate, and projects using massive amounts of metal were impossible to hide. The largest of the Soviet-supplied super guns might be buried beneath a false dome in the Mashdad palace. It was believed that this gun could blast a projectile through the dome and into orbit, at least if the Soviets had supplied Iran with artillery tubes following the original plan for the original-design Bull super gun — the so-called Project Babylon super gun that Bull had once designed for Iraq — as indicated by evidence found on the Antonov transports.
This is why the main push was to take over Mashdad. Remote, space-based sensing had also indicated the possibility of large-bore barrels of the smaller, but still formidable, three hundred thirty millimeter tubes at a secondary installation. The OPPLAN included a provision for these to be assaulted as well.
Balls and Boogie were preparing to take down these two objectives. Boogie was a mechanized ground force driving light armored vehicles. Boogie would be landed close to its objective, a medium-sized research facility. Using man-portable rocket launchers and small arms fire, in addition to the weapons on its rolling armor, Boogie would storm the lightly fortified weapons research station, conducting a recon by fire. Boogie's operational plan called for support by two of the three Viper gun ships that had shot up the SAM site and secured the landing strip several miles to the southwest.
All three AH-1Z Vipers had refueled using portable fuel bladders dropped along with the other paletted cargo from the C-5B Galaxy's hold, and two of the attack helos had dusted off to fly toward Boogie's staging area. As Boogie reached its phase line, the helos were bird-dogging the team at a distance of about a kilometer, running a security operation in case of attack as Boogie rolled its armor toward its attack position near the installation that was its target.
The combined SFOD-O special forces contingents would seize their individual objectives, thoroughly search the sites for evidence of the super gun technology, and destroy in place any weapons found with special demolition charges.
As of 0300 hours, Lima, all strike units were well en route to their tactical objectives under the OPPLAN.
Chapter Sixteen
The stick of paratroops waltzed out the side of the plane into the darkness of a moonless desert night, their night vision preserved by the red lights that had softly illuminated the cabin of the C-130H-30.
The gear that had been lashed down in webbing against the bulkheads or balanced on the deck was now securely strapped to the backs, fronts, legs, arms, and in some cases, heads, of the treeheads jumping out of the hold of the plane and free-falling through space.
Now that gear was secured against their bodies, clipped to MOLLE harnesses, and in the cases of grenades, combat knives and rifles, taped into place so that gun barrels were pointing down on landing, blades stayed secure in their scabbards, and cotter pins didn't catch on external objects and come loose.
One after another the members of SFOD-O jump teams cast their fates to the desert winds as they fell through the C-130's prop-wash and steeled their bodies for the sudden jerk of the chutes unfurling and opening. And one by one this happened. One airfoil parasail after another popped into being above the desert-camo-fatigued soldier below it, until the entire stick of paras was underway.
As the Hercules disappeared into the night, the airborne force began the first leg of its controlled, tapering descent, a descent that, if all proceeded according to plan, would land the troops right in the heart of the Mashdad presidential palace just as Balls' mechanized ground component — code-named Gorilla — and its single dedicated AH-1Z helo gun ship were attacking from the outside.
If there were any major snags, if the timing was too far off the mark, or something unforeseen happened, there could be major trouble. But the team had its collective mind fixed on the objective. Nobody was thinking of failure. Breaux hadn't trained them to do that. To the fighters and killers of Omega the word didn't exist.
The stick of SFOD-O paratroops had no way of knowing about a conversation that had taken place several hours before inside a villa of a presidential palace distant by many miles from their current position. Had they been privy to the conversation, they might have felt differently about the chances of their mission's ultimate success. They might have had serious misgivings, to say the least.
The speaker was Bashar Mozafferreddin, the Iranian president's eldest son, a man despised and feared by Iranians second only to his aged but still feared father. Bashar, who enjoyed pulling the teeth from the mouths and nails from the fingers of those who had fallen out of favor with him, and was rumored to have personally clubbed an adversary to death, was sitting at one side of a comfortable sofa of black Milanese leather that, like most of the villa's furnishings, had been custom-designed to his specifications.