Red Hammer 1994 (36 page)

Rawlings leaned his lanky six-foot-two frame against the window and sighed. He was an Irishman with red hair, freckled skin, and pure blue eyes. Usually he fought persistent sunburn, but not here. An Alabama boy, born and bred, Rawlings loved the climate of his youth. The English weather was getting old.

But it wasn’t just the weather. He didn’t like change, and the army had been nothing but change. If it weren’t for the challenge of Special Forces, he would have called a military-career quits long ago. But there wasn’t much for a physical-education major to do these days.

In the distance, battle-dressed British Commandos patrolled the grounds, while mobile Rapier antiaircraft batteries set up shop near the crossed runways at the center of the base. Woodbridge was home to numerous RAF military squadrons and the NATO host to two squadrons of US Special Forces aircraft. Woodbridge had a twin, RAF Bentwaters, four miles down the road. The 21st Special Operations Squadron flew the MH-53J Pave Low helicopter, while the 67th SOS handled the HC-130P, a variant of the C-130 Hercules cargo plane. The Papas, as they were called, served as tankers for the helos. The extra gas gave them twice the operational range, permitting clandestine forays deep into central Europe. The end of the Cold War had thrown the war-planning process into complete chaos. Targets became obsolete overnight, and new target folders were taking years to develop. Creative mission planning became the watchword.

Rawlings released the folds of fabric and frowned. Even his normally fertile imagination drew a blank. He wandered to an old burgundy leather couch and crashed into the supple contours formed through years of rough duty. Rawlings was dressed in a blue-and-white rugby shirt, well-worn Levis, and neon-splashed running shoes. He pulled the sleeves to his elbows and leaned back to examine the ceiling, placing both hands behind his neck.

The Brits had been polite but firm. Under no circumstances was Rawlings to leave the building or make contact with his men across the campus in the enlisted quarters. And none of the phones worked. It was all very disconcerting.

Rawlings, a senior captain, was six months into the job as the commander of an Army Special Forces A-Team. His current orders had them conducting training with the British Special Air Service, direct action and strategic reconnaissance missions mostly. His A-Team was attached to Company B, 1st Battalion, 10th Special Forces Group based at Fort Carson, Colorado. The group’s area of expertise was the European theater, from the Arctic to the Med. All the Special Forces Groups were assigned an area of the world for specialization, but the once top-dog 10th had been racked by an identity crisis since the wall came tumbling down. He and his men had been in Great Britain for four weeks, had wrapped up training, and had packed for home when the mysterious lockup came down from on high.

As Rawlings sprawled on the couch and stared at a stack of old
Jane’s Defense Weekly
’s resting on a hardwood coffee table, Warrant Officer Frederico Gonzales snuck up. Gonzales was the second officer in the Team, a veteran of twenty years of special operations from one end of the globe to the other. Burly, with a wide, friendly grin, the medium-height Hispanic’s flashing black eyes, olive skin, and thick, jet-black crew cut contrasted sharply with the fair-skinned Rawlings. The assistant Team commander stood with his hands on his hips, one knee bent. His baggy cotton pants and loose sweatshirt made him look borderline fat. Gonzales’s body language strongly hinted for the Team commander to start the conversation. The warrant officer certainly wasn’t.

“I haven’t heard a thing,” is all he could say in his soft southern drawl. Gonzales had expected more and showed it with a sour face. Rawlings frowned. He hadn’t quite connected yet with his second in command, the result—he thought—of the army’s ingrained habit of keeping a good percentage of each Special Forces team together for what seemed an interminable period by conventional military standards. Operational efficiency was the justification; it was necessary for the Special Forces where personal relationships and teamwork were paramount. But the downside was the proclivity to exclude a new member until the man had earned his stripes. It was even worse for the Team commander. Most of his men had been together for over five years. The time, with the Brits, had helped. Rawlings had slipped into a comfortable leadership role. The men were beginning to warm to him.

“Something big, man,” Gonzales answered, his voice fingerprinting him as a Latino from a Texas border town. “Got to be.” The Brits had trouble understanding his inflected English, much to his annoyance. Gonzales had found a home in the army at the tender age of seventeen and never seriously considered anything else. A high-school dropout, he was now considered a hero in a town that numbered under one thousand and braved an unemployment rate of thirty percent.

Rawlings rose to place the exchange on an even footing. He ran his fingers through his short-cropped hair, stumbling for the appropriate words. “I’m gonna try to find out what’s going on. Maybe the guys over at the hangars know something.” Rawlings was chewing on a stubby thumbnail as he spoke. Gonzales wasn’t impressed. His expression judged it as patently stupid. Man, those guys have guns out there, and they’re jumpy as hell, he seemed to say.

A push on the swinging doors at the entrance to the lobby brought the young British soldier behind the front desk to attention.

Both men turned to watch a uniformed British SAS major step smartly forward. It was Major Banks, the American Special Forces liaison officer from the SAS battalion staff. He had been an amiable host, popular with the enlisted men, even graciously playing tour guide. Banks moved gracefully and mumbled a curt greeting with a face as lifeless as stone. Rawlings and Gonzales parted and bracketed the major.

“You’re to gather your gear,” he said coldly. “Be prepared to leave in ten minutes. You’ll be taken to a hangar for staging. First flight available, you’ll be off.”

Rawlings folded his arms. “Off where? What the hell is going on, Major?” he said with a touch of anger.

“’Fraid I can’t provide the details, gentlemen.” Perspiration gathered at his temples. It was uncharacteristic of the good major and signaled duress.

“That’s it?” Rawlings bellowed.

“You’ll be briefed later, gentlemen. Ten minutes.” Banks spun and marched off, leaving Rawlings and Gonzales bewildered.

The British military truck pulled up to the hardened aircraft shelter and braked. The camouflaged concrete half cylinder had steel blast doors big enough for a fighter-bomber at one end and backed into a mound of grass-covered dirt at the other. The structure was the typical NATO model designed to withstand direct hits from thousand-pound bombs.

Rawlings, now in his battle dress utilities, jumped to the ground and surveyed the hangar apron. The usual contingent of US Air Force personnel busily repairing aircraft were missing, replaced by still more British guards. A finger, owned by a sergeant, pointed him in the required direction. Rawlings and Gonzales grabbed their gear and waddled inside, duffels on each shoulder. Banks followed at a safe distance, sporting his own personal guards, armed, of course.

“Captain Rawlings,” shouted a tall, black man, sitting on his duffel bag by the side entrance. He rose and jogged over in loping strides. First Sergeant Anthony Pickford was the senior enlisted man in the team. His smooth ebony skin reflected the dim light thrown out by the fluorescents, the hangar resembling a poorly lit cave. Inside, the steel-reinforced enclosure contained only one Pave Low helo, a big, ugly charcoal thing pushed to the rear. The other Team members formed around their officers and the first sergeant, their faces capturing a wide range of feelings.

“We heard the States were attacked by the Russians,” one chimed in excitedly.

“Nukes,” added another.

“No shit?” The chatter rose till Rawlings couldn’t think. His mouth dropped. Gonzales winced, making eye contact with one of the staff sergeants. Banks stayed back and feigned ignorance, wagering that an explosion was a distinct possibility.

Rawlings’s world came crashing down around his ankles. He turned on Banks. “What the fuck is going on?” The SAS men with Banks fingered their weapons. Rawlings’s A-Team moved to flank their captors, no set plan in mind—an instinctive but stupid move, given the circumstances.

“There’s nothing I can say, Captain. We don’t know the details ourselves. A decision on your status is pending in London. You’ll have to sit tight, just like your aviators.” Banks surveyed the stunned group with studied concentration, cataloguing their reaction.

Rawlings stared unblinkingly at the retreating major, feeling completely helpless, emotion choking back any words.

“Good day.” He stepped away.

CHAPTER 30

General John McClain, the brash Commander-in-Chief, Strategic Command was at the end of his rope. Lying passively on his aluminum-frame cot, his penetrating gray eyes stared blankly at the olive-green canvas hanging loosely above. His thoughts were directed toward the fate of his brave bomber crews sent plunging into Russian airspace twenty-four hours earlier. Only a handful had reported in from locations scattered around the globe, some intact, some piles of useless junk. He gritted his smoke-yellowed teeth in frustration at his damned helplessness. His staff was scratching feverishly for any assets left in the depleted inventory that could reach the former Soviet Union. Even mothballed B-52Gs were being targeted for secret refurbishment at undisclosed sites in the Southwest. But they wouldn’t be ready for weeks, if then. He personally thought it a patently stupid idea, but it had the blessing of the reconstituted Joint Chiefs of Staff.

Meaningful search and rescue (SAR) missions for missing B-52H and B-1B crews were unthinkable. Widespread fallout, impossible distances, and thousands of Russian air-defense troops roaming the countryside made the effort a pipe dream. It burned his insides raw to realize he had no choice but to write those heroic young men off. He still hadn’t been able to piece together a worthwhile bomb-damage assessment of the strike results. It was still too early for the rolls of film from the high-speed cameras mounted in the bellies of the surviving bombers or the super-secret reconnaissance aircraft close on their heels. Even the normal flood of satellite data had slowed to a trickle. The ASAT threat had forced him to move his prized KH-11 and Lacrosse birds to high-altitude havens, degrading their sensitivity. The few pieces he did have were tantalizing. The fragments painted a picture of success. But without consistent, high-confidence intelligence, he was groping in the dark. His carefully stashed reserve forces had to be committed soon, or they’d most certainly be lost. It was only a question of time until the Russians found them.

To make matters worse, the new president was sticking his nose into McClain’s turf. He didn’t dispute the man’s constitutional legitimacy, only the questionable presumption that he possessed the requisite knowledge to juggle strategic war-fighting issues in the middle of an all-out war. McClain had willingly dedicated his entire adult life to just this purpose—to successfully prosecute a nuclear war—yet precious time was running through his fingers. The STRATCOM infrastructure was melting away under an unrelenting onslaught. Another two days, and it would be virtually impossible to launch any coordinated counterattacks. Repeated Russian ad-hoc strikes were taking a mounting toll, methodically shooting holes in McClain’s dwindling land-based forces. He sensed his men momentarily had the upper hand, despite a reserve force that favored the Russians. The ferocity of the US counterstroke had caught them unprepared, and US interceptors had shot the pants off of the lumbering Bear and supersonic Blackjack bombers. Only a handful had reached their intended targets in the United States.

The key for McClain was to act immediately to press this advantage while their enemy scrambled to regroup, in order to preserve the momentum gained by the sacrifice of countless lives. The ideal weapons for that particular mission were the navy’s Trident submarines safely burrowed in the seas, out of reach of the hapless Russian Navy. The Trident’s hundreds of hard-target-killing warheads could easily finish the job, but they were now denied to him by NCA fiat. A few of the devastating missiles had been fired early on, but the majority of the submarine skippers had been ordered to avoid detection at all costs. The president considered the Tridents his trump card, but McClain smelled Bob Thomas on that one.

McClain’s simple quarters, a ten-by-twenty-foot air-conditioned tent, was part of the extensive STRATCOM mobile-headquarters complex that stretched intermittently over ten miles, hidden in the Ozarks in Southern Missouri. He and his assembled battle staff had been evacuated from STRATCOM headquarters at Offut AFB minutes before the antiquated underground command center was pulverized by the direct impact of a six-hundred-kiloton Russian nuclear bomb delivered by an ancient SS-19. His team was just now getting organized. CINCSTRAT’s mobile command center was identical in appearance to the NCAs, but had twice the communications gear and enough computing power to run any of the national weapons labs. A spiderweb of fiber-optic cables wound through the forest, creating an entity whose sole purpose was planning the destruction of the neo-Soviet empire.