“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
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 marry 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.