Force of Eagles (29 page)

“My commander at Ras Assanya, Colonel Waters, ordered me out during the evacuation…” Slowly he then told her about what happened at Ras Assanya. “When I finally got to safety, I followed the last order Waters had given me. I was going to do my damndest to help the POWs…”

“What could one person do?”

Carroll shrugged. “My job was intelligence. I saw the way my Wing was hung out to dry as a political pawn and didn’t like it.” He choked down the bitter taste. “If I can do anything it will be something. Besides, some of the POWs are good friends—Doc Landis…”

“And the woman.”

Carroll could only look at her in surprise.

“You talk in your sleep…Never mind, I have a message for you from your government—”

“Big deal.”

“Please listen. There
is
something you can do. They want to rescue the POWs and they need trucks or buses waiting outside the prison at Kermanshah for transport. The Kurds will help—you helped them—and I can get you money, gold…”

“The Kurds will get into more trouble with the Iranians—”

“You haven’t heard. The Kurds have more motive than their debt to you. The prison commandant wanted to clear out the old barracks behind the walls. There were five Kurdish families living there. They were poor and looking for a place to stay during the winter. The guards lined them up and shot them—men, women and children. Mulla Haqui will help. He understands revenge.”

“So do I,” he told himself. “We have the trucks,” Carroll said. “How did you get the message?”

“The man you saw earlier this evening—he is my contact. You’ll see him again.”

“Zakia, who do you work for?”

She shook her head, turned over, and went to sleep.

*

The White House

“Mike, why am I worried?” The President was walking down the steps to the Situation Room in the basement of the White House. Michael Cagliari, his National Security Advisor, and Andy Wollard, his chief of staff, trailed behind him.

“The situation is unstable,” Cagliari said. “Sometimes you have to read between the lines of the PDB. But it’s there.” He made a mental note to get on Bobby Burke’s case about the President’s Daily Brief that was supposed to summarize the best intelligence available. The beautifully printed document was only seen by four people and was beginning to read like standard bureaucratic cover-your-ass stuff.

A Marine guard held the door open for the President as he approached, and they could hear the shuffling of people standing up now inside the small wood-paneled room. The guard shut the door behind them. The President glanced at Admiral Scovill, chairman of the JCS, as he sat down and looked around the room. He saw a man he did not recognize sitting behind Bobby Burke, the CIA Director, and Charlie Leachmeyer. There was also a colonel sitting next to Simon Mado he had never met—but he knew a good deal about Rupert Stansell. “Well, Terry, what do you have for us this late in the afternoon?”

Scovill knew how the President worked. “Sir, I’d like to introduce Allen Camm, the CIA’s DDI.” The President nodded. He would never forget the new face or name, a valuable trait that always astounded his aides.

“And Colonel Stansell,” the President added, “glad we’ve had a chance to meet finally.”

“Mr. President,” Scovill said, returning to business, “we’re going to need a Go order on the POWs.”

“Lay the situation out.”

“Yes, sir, that’s why Mr. Camm is here.” Camm stood and moved to an easel near the President. He set a stack of twenty-by-thirty-inch briefing charts on the easel, each labeled with distinctive block letters at the top and bottom announcing that what was on the charts was TOP SECRET. Camm ran through the charts, filling the assembled in on the current situation, carefully avoiding anything that might lead to a question that would reveal the existence of Deep Furrow. He was saving his bombshell for last.

“Finally, sir,” Camm said, “an agent reported yesterday that the Albanian Embassy in Tehran informed the Iranian government that Delta Force was preparing a mission to rescue the POWs and would mount the operation out of Iraq.” Susan Fisher had worked out a logical explanation for the CIA learning about the Albanian-Islamic Jihad connection without revealing how the CIA had learned about it.

“How in hell did the Albanians get involved in all this?”

“Our information indicates that the Albanian Embassy in Washington has been supporting the Islamic Jihad’s operations in the United States,” Camm said as he flipped to the last chart, “and the Jihad is reporting through the Albanians. Of course the domestic side of this is in the jurisdiction of the FBI, and I don’t believe the Bureau has cracked the Jihad’s operations yet. So, bottom line, we don’t know how the Jihad learned about Delta Force.” Camm was scoring bureaucratic points by pinging the FBI and covering his own sources.

The last of Camm’s charts was a map with the launch base and Kermanshah highlighted. “Since my office is not privy to the current plans to rescue the POWs, we cannot evaluate the accuracy of the warning passed to the Iranians. But they
have
been warned and we are monitoring their reaction.”

Camm scanned the men’s faces in the stunned silence that hung in the room. Burke gave him a slight nod of approval.

“How many sources confirm what you’ve told us?” Leachmeyer asked. “The information the Albanians passed is our original plan. We now launch out of Saudi Arabia and refuel in Turkey on the way out.”

“Only the one agent in Tehran,” Camm said. “But this agent has a proven track record.” It was necessary to claim a CIA agent in Tehran had discovered that Delta Force had been compromised. Director Burke would be most unhappy if he suspected Camm was running a counterespionage operation
inside
the
U.S.

“Ironic,” the President said. “We originally set up a cover for Delta Force to prevent this from happening. Now our first team is compromised while—what are you calling the cover operation?—is secure.”

“Task Force Alpha, sir.” This from Mado. “And we can’t be totally sure we are free from compromise.”

Cunningham snapped an iron will over his reactions, insuring his face revealed nothing. That bastard Mado. He watched Leachmeyer for his reaction. The relief on Charlie’s face was obvious. No wonder the President likes playing poker with you, he thought. “Mr. President,” Cunningham said, “my Office of Special Investigations is watching over Task Force Alpha. So far, sir, they have reported nothing.”

The President pulled a cigar out of his shirt pocket. “CIA?”

“We have nothing to indicate a compromise of Task Force Alpha,” Camm said. For once being totally honest.

“Simon,” the President said, “I appreciate that you are the cornmander in the field and see things we don’t. You qualified your statement about Alpha not being compromised. Why?” He lit the cigar. No one else in the room would smoke.

“Sir, our intelligence specialist is an Iranian-American. She is fluent in Farsi and an accomplished analyst. But lately I’ve had doubts I can’t pinpoint. I consider that at least a warning not to be ignored—”

“Mr. President,” Stansell put in, “the analyst’s name is Dewa Rahimi. She has been thoroughly checked out and worked for the Air Force Special Activities Center. She was born and raised in the U.S. and has never even been to Iran. Her family there has been nearly wiped out by the Ayatollahs. I’ve never had any doubts about her…”

“Gentlemen,” the President said, his voice a flat monotone as he stubbed out the cigar, cutting off further discussion, “
get
your
act
together
. Is Delta Force ready?”

“Yes, sir,” Leachmeyer said.

“And Task Force Alpha?”

“We’re very close,” Cunningham said. “The Rangers are ready. We’re arranging ground transportation for the POWs and getting a portable tacan beacon in place—”

“Who’s providing your ground support inside Iran?” Burke asked.

“We have established contact with Captain William Carroll. He’s with the Pesh Merga, the Kurdish liberation movement,” Cunningham said quickly.

“How did you find him?”—Burke was astonished—“establish contact?”

“Through the Israelis.” Cunningham stared at Burke. “We were the only ones to ask them for information,” he said, adding a mental “you asshole.”

“Gentlemen”—the President leaned forward, hands clasped together on the table in front of him—“does the word fubar mean anything to you? I’ll help you—fucked up beyond all recognition. Why do I get the feeling that word is becoming operative here? It means neither operation is secure, neither is compromised. I want the POWs
rescued
.” He turned to Leachmeyer. “Charlie, move Delta out, since it’s ready. Hide them, move them around, get them into place unobserved…General Cunningham, I want Task Force Alpha brought on line as fast as possible so it is a viable option. Tell me the moment they’re ready. Everyone—
no more
leaks
. I don’t care if you have to lock up every swingin’—” he caught himself—“that knows about this.”

*

“Dammit, Mado. What in the hell were you thinking of in there?” Mado and Stansell were standing in front of Cunningham’s desk, and the general’s cigar was smoking. “The only reason we’re still in business is because Stansell here managed to spread a little dust over your gut feelings. Is your head up your ass and locked?”

“You want me to lie to the President?” Mado shot back.

“No. But I don’t want unsubstantiated doubts surfaced either.” At any other time he would have fired Mado on the spot. But time did not permit him that luxury now. “We hash out our doubts and differences in here—among ourselves. We present a united front to the President. He’s got enough on his mind without having to referee our differences. That’s my job. Stansell, get the hell back to Nellis. Mado, I want you here.” The two men left.

Cunningham’s aide appeared at the door. “Meeting with the Joint Chiefs in five minutes, General. In the tank.”

“Dick, keep an eye on Mado. I don’t trust that son of a bitch.”

*

Nellis AFB, Nevada

The six men sat in the small briefing room in Red Flag’s building watching the TV. Torch Doucette hit the rewind button when the VCR tape was finished. “Let’s look at it again,” he told the other five F-111 crew members. Doucette’s WSO, Ramon Contreraz, wanted to escape from the room. He had caught the embarrassment of Von Drexler’s WSO when they ran the Audio Visual Tracking Record of Von Drexler’s last mission. The other F-111 crew tried to fade into the woodwork.

Doucette started the tape and let it run a few moments before he hit the pause button. “Right here, Colonel,” he told Von Drexler, “when the two F-16s jumped you and came to your six o’clock, you should have milked it a little lower and simulated pickling off a single high-drag bomb.”

“And what good would that have done?” Von Drexler rasped. “We’re supposed to put those bombs on a target.”

“In the real world,” Doucette told him, “it would explode behind you. Because it’s retarded you would escape the frag pattern but the bandits might fly right through it—nailing ’em. If nothing else, it does tend to break the bad guy’s concentration when he’s rooting around in the rocks working on a low-level intercept and a bomb explodes in his face.”

Von Drexler shook his head. “Too much seat of the pants…”

Contreraz could hear the patronizing tone in Doucette’s voice. It was going to be a classic face-off between the best pilot in an Air Force wing who only knew how to fly the jet and the worst pilot who only knew how to get promoted.

The tape was rolling again. “You flew down this canyon at almost eight hundred feet,” Doucette said. The sarcasm in his voice left no doubt about what he thought of flying that high above the ground.

“I don’t trust the TFR in 399,” Von Drexler tried. The other pilot stifled his reply in time. He had flown the same aircraft, tail number 399, the day before and the APQ-146 Terrain Following Radar had worked perfectly.

“Colonel Von Drexler,” Doucette said, sweetness dripping from every word, “the terrain-following radar is our
raison
d’etre
. Either use the damn feature or get used to hand flying the jet down in the rocks.”

“If I experience a malfunction at the altitude you’re suggesting I won’t have time to take corrective action—”

“Then it’s not your day. Flying low and TFing is what we get paid for.”

“Too many birds migrate through here this time of year,” Von Drexler complained. “I don’t need a damn bird strike.”

“The birds have all been briefed to break down when they see an F-111,” Doucette said with a straight face but also reminding the lieutenant colonel that the natural tendency of
any
bird was to drop downward. “You pull up, that’s your part of the contract with birds.”

The wall of the prison mock-up that Chief Pullman had built in the desert appeared on the TV screen. “You had an early acquisition of the target because of your altitude. In the real world, you wouldn’t get a video through the Pave Tack until you’re inside six miles…”

“Damnit, Doucette, quit talking about the real world. This is the real world—”

“Then after you tossed the bomb and pulled off to downwind, you broke off too fast. The bomb’s time of flight is approximately thirty seconds and you’ve got to gauge your turnaway so your wizzo can lase the target during the last eight or ten seconds. Also, you need to do your own bomb-damage assessment to see if you need to reattack.”

“I was simulating a high-threat environment—”

“That’s what we’ve got electronic countermeasures for,” Von Drexler’s WSO said, “to take care of those threats.” He felt he had to speak up. “Colonel, you’re job is to drive the truck, mine is to deliver the mail. We’ve got to stick around the target long enough for me to do that.”

“I think that about says it all,” Doucette said.

Chapter 29: D Minus 6