The President believed that Delta Force was the best-trained force he had at his disposal, but the attack needed surprise on its side. Scovill’s point about a good plan violently executed now being better than a perfect plan next week came back to him. And he had seen the violence Task Force Alpha was capable of …
A replica of Harry Truman’s famous “The Buck Stops Here” plaque was on the table underneath the windows of the Oval Office. The President was staring at it now — it was decision-making time.
He punched the intercom button to his chief of staff. “Andy, I need to see the Secretary of Defense. Now.” He folded his hands and looked at the men. “Deploy Task Force Alpha.”
Leachmeyer was stunned. “May I ask why, Mr. President?”
“Certainly, Charlie.” He liked Leachmeyer and had plans for him in the future when he reorganized the DOD. “We’ve got to get them in place if we decide to use them. Right now they offer us speed and surprise. And I don’t think we can wait much longer.” He didn’t mention his gut feelings were mostly based on impressions — Stansell’s confidence, the sight of two F-111s punching holes in the prison’s walls, riddled target dummies, and Doberman pinschers …
The words FLASH SECRET were stamped at the top and bottom of the message that Stansell read to the group.
THIS IS A DEPLOYMENT ORDER BY AUTHORITY
OF SECRETARY OF DEFENSE.
UNIT: TASK FORCE ALPHA
DEPLOY: IN ACCORDANCE WITH OPORD WARLORD
LAUNCH: WITHIN TWELVE (12) HOURS OF MSG DTG
OPTIONS: NONE
SPECIAL INSTRUCTIONS: NONE
“My God,” Pullman said, “we’re goin’ to do it. I knew it, dammit, I knew it …”
Stansell handed the message to Mado, who read it and shook his head. He checked the message’s date/time group printed under the list of addresses. “We’ve got to be out of here in just over eleven hours. Any problems?”
A ragged chorus of “no’s” and “none” went around the room. Gregory read the message twice, not believing his luck, before he handed it to Dewa. She read the message without comment. The room rapidly emptied, leaving Stansell, Pullman, and Dewa alone. “Dewa, Chief, you both know … you won’t be going with us. I need you to stay behind and sweep up the place.”
Pullman went back to his trailer, looked around, made a quick decision, locked the door and headed for his quarters to pack. “Colonel,” he muttered under his breath, “I didn’t come to this party to be left behind when the music started.”
Dewa worked in her office, taking the wall maps down and going through the routine of preparing classified material for destruction. When she had finished she stood in the middle of a large pile of sealed burn bags surveying her handiwork. She crossed her arms and hugged herself. “Damn, damn, damn.” She walked over to a bookcase and pulled out an unclassified manual on the law of armed conflict. Sitting on the couch, she drew her feet up and searched through the section on POWs, finding what she wanted.
She stared at the blank wall across the room trying to decide what to do. The manual was very clear on the status of escaped POWs as opposed to a combatant who was trying to evade capture. Once a combatant was captured, he became a POW and could not kill anyone in an escape. That was murder and a POW could actually be tried and executed for it. No, she was no clubhouse lawyer, but Rupert Stansell was an escaped POW, not an evader, and two guards had been killed during his escape. She knew the Iranians too well — she was one. If they recaptured Rupe Stansell they would execute him…
The choice was hers. All she had to do was tell General Simon Mado and the man she had decided she wanted to marry would be left behind. Except, of course, he would never forgive her. Still … she reached for the phone, started to dial, then shook her head and slammed the phone down. She made no attempt to stop the damage to her makeup as she stared at the wall …
CHAPTER 34
The Iranian radar operator settled into the still-warm chair as he relieved the sergeant going off duty. “Are the Americans doing anything different?” he asked. The reply was a muffled grunt as the sergeant hurried out the door of the radar shack to catch the truck before it left for the run down the mountain to the comfort of his quarters in the town of Maragheh.
The operator resigned himself to his twelve-hour shift and searched through the drawers for the detailed checklist the Americans had supplied with the radar site. The only one that still followed it, he finally found the thick notebook buried in a stack of newspapers in a corner of the room and thumbed through it until he found the changeover checklist. Carefully he went through each step, checking them off with a grease pencil. He adjusted the receiver-gain, surprised to find it turned to its lowest setting. “How long has it been that way?” he mumbled to himself. When he checked the interrogation circuits he gasped as he counted twelve targets orbiting close to the border. A quick double-check confirmed they were still in Turkey but all were in the buffer zone NATO had established in Turkey next to the Iranian border.
He scanned the log for the previous shift and saw only two entries — the sign-on and sign-off of the departed sergeant. He continued to run the checklist until he reached the communications check section, keyed his mike and called the control center of Maragheh. After several attempts a voice answered his call. “Sir, communications check. Also, I have an unusual number of targets in the tri-border region.”
“You have a very short memory,” the officer told him, “that is the joint Turkish-American air defense exercise. Perhaps you recall I directed you to report only unusual activity? Only call me with important observations. Or will it take a forty-eight-hour tour-of-duty on the mountain to teach you to follow orders?”
“Sorry to disturb you, sir.”
The officer broke the connection, and the operator sighed in relief.
Chief Pullman heaved his bulk out of the red canvas parachute seat stretched along the side of the C-141 and peered out one of the small round windows above the seat rail. “Can’t see much,” he yelled at Kamigami, who was sitting next to him. The loadmaster keyed his mike, acknowledged a call from the pilot and walked back to the two men, telling them to strap in for the approach and landing at Incirlik Air Base in southern Turkey. “Ever been to Turkey?” he asked Kamigami. The Army sergeant shook his head. “Interesting place,” Pullman told him.
The passenger-services sergeant meeting the big cargo plane was surprised to learn that it was not the “Turkey Trot,” the normal shuttle C-141 that landed every Tuesday. “Chief,” he explained, “you haven’t got an in-country clearance to be here. That’s a biggy, I can’t let you off the airplane.” Pullman took him aside, spoke a few quiet words. The sergeant jumped into his pickup and sped away.
“We should have transportation and an officer out here in a few minutes,” Pullman told Kamigami. While they waited Pullman put the cargo handlers to work and off-loaded the C-141 as he checked off the cargo strapped to six pallets. As predicted a harried-looking lieutenant colonel appeared and demanded to see their orders. Pullman reached into his briefcase and handed him the deployment order from the Secretary of Defense. He pointed out that Incirlik was one of the addresses on the message.
“I’ve never heard of OPORD WARLORD—”
“And you won’t, sir, unless you’ve got one hell of a need to know. Your wing commander and his plans officer should know about it. I’d suggest you talk to them. Meantime I need your gym and a hangar for a few days. A little transportation would be appreciated. All in accordance with OPORD WARLORD, of course.” The L.C. reread the message, noted the date/time group and drove away, determined to find out why the men were on his base. Two pickup trucks heading for the cargo plane passed the officer before he had driven thirty yards.