“There’s still the problem of the press, Mr. President. They want a news conference—”
“Not yet, damn it. Let ’em stew a little.”
“They’re not going away and your press secretary is taking a helluva beating.”
“Okay, okay… it’s an Air Force wing doing the fighting — let Cunningham handle it. About time he earned his four stars.”
Cagliari downed his drink, got ready to leave.
“Mike, what kind of tree should I plant in the park?”
“Ironwood, sir,” Cagliari said, not missing a beat.
Cunningham submitted to the press conference at the direction of his Commander in Chief.
“General, can you tell us who decides what targets the 45th will strike?” a reporter asked.
“The President, through the Joint Chiefs of Staff,” he said, starting to work a cigar.
“Does that mean the President selects or only approves the targets?”
“The President approves the overall operations.”
“Who recommends the operations or targets to the President?”
“The JUSMAG, the Joint U.S. Military Advisory Group, to the United Arab Command in Dhahran. It coordinates the requests of the UAC and transmits them to the Joint Chiefs for presentation to the President.” Cunningham braced himself for the next question.
“Do you mean the Arabs are picking our targets?”
“I wish that you would read the background papers we supply before you come to these conferences. I think that question has already been answered. Here goes again. We are providing the UAC, the United Arab Command, with military support in critical areas where they are weak. It’s their job to pursue the war, ours to make sure that the gaps are plugged. For example, we mostly provide them with intelligence and logistical support. The Navy is ensuring, as it has for some time, that the Strait of Hormuz stays open. And the 45th flies interdiction and suppression missions against selected targets the UAC can’t hit. Until the UAC can fly its own tactical air missions, we want to prevent their ground forces from being overrun. That’s why the UAC coordinates its requests through JUSMAG. We want to keep the participation of the 45th to a minimum and only use them when and where they are needed… ” Cunningham glanced at his watch, noted that he had gone three minutes past the scheduled end of the conference. “I’m sorry but we’re out of time. You’ll have to excuse me; thank you for your attention.” He stomped off the stage. No wonder, he thought, Reagan played deaf with reporters, blaming helicopter noise.
Jack found himself deep into it when he turned to the task of blending tactics and mission planning for the 379th. The situation on the ground was simple enough: the People’s Soldiers of Islam were trying to push across the Shatt-al-Arab into the city of Basra, the Shatt being formed at the confluence of the Tigris and Euphrates rivers in Iraq, where they joined to empty into the Persian Gulf. Swamps on each side of the wide river formed a natural barrier between Iraq and Iran, and only at Basra, sixty miles upstream from the mouth of the Shatt-al-Arab, did a narrow isthmus of hard ground and sand provide a corridor through the swamps and into the Arabian Peninsula. The UAC had thrown up a strong defensive line centered on Basra, and as long as that line held, the People’s Soldiers of Islam were stalemated on the eastern side of the river.
Bill Carroll pointed out how critical it was to interdict any buildup on the eastern side of the river and how the targets that had come down for their first missions had supported that goal. “Someone at JUSMAG has their act together,” the Intelligence officer said. “They want us to cut into the muscle of the PSI deep enough to make sure the UAC can hold at Basra. But the PSI is regrouping and bringing in SAMs, most SA-6s, 8s and 9s. It’s going to get hairier out there. The PSI hasn’t committed MiGs against us yet, but they will. And we’ve established that the fishing trawler Thunder reported is a Soviet intelligence-gathering ship out there to monitor our radio transmissions. As long as it stays in international waters, our Rules of Engagement say we can’t touch it.”
So the pieces for a war were all in place as indicated on the board, Jack realized, envisioning an updated military chess board spread across the desert of Arabia. He and his buddies were among those pieces, and just as in any chess game, strategy could dictate that they be sacrificed for the sake of a checkmate.
Mashur Ibn Aziz al-Darhali, a first cousin of Prince Reza Ibn Abdul Turika, was also thinking about sacrifice and survival as he drove his Mercedes 500 SEL along the lonely desert road running southwest from Dhahran. His contact had been most insistent that he make this rendezvous, and when he had refused, as befitted a prince of the royal family, the swarthy foreigner had asked him if his son was old enough to assume responsibility for his family. Mashur had ignored the remark but carefully noted the time and place of the meeting. As he approached the one hundred-seventy-kilometer marker he slowed to meet a rapidly approaching silver Mercedes. Both cars stopped at the kilometer marker on opposite sides of the road. The rear door of the silver Mercedes opened, and he was signaled to join the occupant in the rear seat.
The man was most polite and thanked Mashur for understanding his need to meet on such a lonely stretch of highway. The two men worked through the protective labyrinth of indirection and double meanings the Arabic language provided until Mashur divined the man’s simple request: he wanted a list of the targets the 45th would be ordered to strike twenty-four hours in advance.
Mashur protested that he was only a minor functionary in the United Arab Command and did not have access to such information.
The man smiled and asked him if King Fahd would be interested in Mashur’s backing of the fundamentalists who seized Mecca’s Grand Mosque in November of 1979 and had seriously threatened the monarchy.
Thoughts of a beheading in a public square with a short sword on sand-covered ground churned Mashur’s stomach. He had only been an immature youth at the time, rashly dabbling in politics. Nonetheless, he carefully noted the time and place to pass on the information to his contact. On the drive back to Dhahran, Mashur rationalized that he was not betraying his family or his king, only punishing the infidel Americans for their worship of false gods. Indeed, he would be serving his king, his country and above all his God…
Some frag order, Jack thought, as he tried to decipher the long message detailing the targets for the wing’s next missions. He had been through the message twice and still had not made sense out of many sections. Thunder had tried to help, only to find himself equally at a loss. Jack then had gathered up their notes with the message and searched through COIC until he found the sergeant he was looking for. “Hey, Casey, can you interpret this stuff for us?” The phlegmatic sergeant heaved his bulk into a chair and had the message sorted out in less than ten minutes.
Thunder marveled at the speed of the sergeant and how he added words and meaning to the seemingly garbled text. Jack was equally impressed. “Hey, Sarge, I thought a frag order was supposed to be short, a fragment.”
“Yeah, it’s supposed to only be a fragment of the day’s total Operations Order. In Nam a wing would only get the part that applied to them. Over here we get the whole damn thing.” He pointed out the part of the frag order that tasked the Saudis to fly a Combat Air Patrol to protect the 45th from any MiGs that might jump them.