The Fourth War (28 page)

“Yes, Royal Highness. You have rats in your own home. You carry a deadly cancer, and it must be removed.”

The king lifted his eyes. “These are my own people. Villages in the desert—”

“They are Wahabbie indoctrination facilities and paramilitary training centers. They are the core of the poison that you spread through the world. They are a dead goat that feeds maggots and they must be destroyed. You've been promising to take care of them for going on five years. Now it's time to act. This is your last chance.”

The king looked again at the paper. “Jask and Bandar Angorhran are inside Iran!”

“Yes they are, Your Highness. Treacherous times such as these force one to consider one's friends.

The king stuttered, then fell silent again, looking up with dry eyes.

“Work with us, Your Highness, or face the consequences,” the soldier said. “You have twenty-four hours.” He forced a faint smile.

The U.S. soldier looked away and nodded to his men and the Deltas turned to leave.

Before leaving the room the last guard stopped at the door and looked back, his white teeth shining brightly against the black camouflage paint on his face. “It's been a pleasure to meet you,” he said with a smile. “Maybe one night, you know, we might pop in again.” He flashed a quick V with his fingers, then disappeared through the door.

The soldiers were over the wall and into the desert again. Two kilometers out in the desert, the American chopper picked them up.

Back in the palace, the king sat on the edge of his bed. He stared at the paper, which he couldn't read in the dark. Seconds later, one of his personal guards burst into the room, an emergency flashlight in hand. The guard moved toward him and the king shook his head. Staring, he considered the paper in his hand.

He had his instructions. And he had no choice.

He would join the Americans or he would be destroyed. His son, his power and wealth, his position in the kingdom, it all hung by a thread. In a matter of seconds, his life had been turned upside down. And now the decision was before him. Which side was he on?

Dhahran Air Base
Saudi Arabia

Dhahran is the most modern and well-kept airfield in Saudi Arabia, a nation with many extraordinarily expensive, perfectly maintained, and well-designed aviation posts, for the Saudis spared no expense when it came to air power. They weren't particularly fond of their army—ground battle is too dirty and causes too much sweat—and they knew the Americans would do it for them if they ever got in a crunch; but air battles, and an air force that exuded great power, and power projection were what a military was for. So the Saudis spent most of their national-defense budget (which was not insignificant) on fighters and missiles and their support staff, until they reached a point where, with the exception of Israel, the Royal Saudi Air Force was the most potent and modern in the Middle East.

One of the proudest possessions of the Saudi air force was the latest generation F-15s, the best air-to-air fighter in the world. And they also flew F-16s for the air-to-ground role.

At 1833 local time, just as the sun was beginning to sink toward the barren horizon, the evening sky crackled with the constant sound of jet engines. A total of eighteen fighters took off, all of them with Saudi markings on their tails. The F-15s were laden with conformal fuel tanks (CFTs), to extend their range, the Falcons with underwing tanks full of JP-8. All of the fighters were heavy with full loads of missiles and bombs.

The fighters split into five formations, a mixture of Eagles to provide air cover (the least likely pilots to see real action this night) and F-16 Falcons with a load of bombs under each wing. The formations all flew east toward Iraq and Iran. Without refueling tankers to give them gas in the air (a luxury only the Americans could afford) they had to make the very best use of their fuel, so they climbed aggressively to almost forty-one thousand feet and set their power for max-endurance fuel flow. Below them, shadows extended to the east from the low dunes and rolling hills that made up the southern tip of Qatar. Then the sun set behind them and night darkened the land as the fighters flew over the black and eel-infested waters of the Persian Gulf. Midway through the Gulf, one formation split south, taking up a heading for the tip of Oman. The others split into slightly different directions, the space growing gradually between them as they crossed the Gulf.

Forty minutes after takeoff, the first of the Saudi fighters began to drop over their targets. The F-16s came in low, from over the water, screaming at more than 550 knots toward the coast of Iran. The first target, Jask, was the premier Iranian military-training facility, a location known to train terrorists from throughout the Middle East. Eighteen miles out from the target, while still over the water, the four Falcons popped suddenly to almost twenty thousand feet. Six five-hundred-pound bombs dropped from each of the fighters. The bombs arced upward, powered by their momentum and speed, then began a graceful parabolic descent. They weren't the newest satellite-guided bombs, but the older, less reliable, and less accurate dumb bombs. Still, the target was large enough, and the effect much the same.

The bombs fell silently through the night as the fighters turned away. They were already low on fuel, and they needed to climb once again to max-endurance altitude. Behind them, the bombs began to impact the target. Jask began to smoke, and then flame, as the fires leaped and spread, yellow tongues of flame reaching up into the night.

To the north and south, and along the coast line of Oman, the four other Saudi fighters hit their targets just a few minutes later. Eighteen fighters, five formations, a total of seventy-two incendiary bombs.

As the fighters flew to home base, they passed over another formation of fifteen jets, additional Saudi fighters on their way to their targets too. Behind them, another fifteen jets were in flight.

The first formation landed in the darkness and taxied to the hot pits, where airmen hooked up refueling hoses without the pilots shutting the engines down. While the aircraft were refueling, munitions crews loaded up another rack of bombs. An intel officer ran to each aircraft and plugged into the external mike. As the aircraft were refueled, the intelligence officers gave the pilots their next targets and updated the combat situation throughout the Middle East.

A little more than thirty minutes after landing, the first formation was back in the air. Combat operations continued through the night and the next day as well. Then the Saudi air force settled down for the long haul, reducing the sortie count to sixty a day. It was a war, not a skirmish, and they needed to pace themselves.

As the first fighters took off before the sun had fully set, at a military facility outside of Riyadh Saudi special forces soldiers loaded into the backs of armored personnel carriers and headed into the great barren deserts to the south and east of the city. Their targets where the nest of Islamic and Wahabbie training facilities that dotted the hill country along the Saudi Arabian desert, the portable tent cities run by the Saudi fundamentalist who, with the financial support of the kingdom, had dedicated their lives to the Wahabbie extremism that sprouted so much hate of the West.

Similar scenes were repeated all across the globe—from the side streets in Paris to the outdoor bazaars in Morocco, from the Muslim neighborhoods in London to military and government offices in Pakistan, Oman, and Kuwait. Joint military forces moved through abandoned warehouses and secret bunkers. Soldiers burst into private homes and through the back doors of crowded mosques, rounding up the leaders of various terrorist groups from across the world.

With no real information to move on, only guesses and speculation driven by their worst fears, the U.S. administration made the decision to prepare for overt military operations. They wanted forces in place, ready to go, when (there was no
if
) they located the nuclear warheads.

So the
Ikystans
of the world were suddenly crawling with troops.

In a midnight ceremony inside the Pakistani royal presidential compound, Sardar Akhtar Mengal, the Baluch National Party leader, was quickly sworn in as the new president of Pakistan. Surrounded by black-uniformed special security soldiers, he immediately started signing emergency orders. The border of Pakistan was sealed on both the east and the west, as U.S. soldiers teamed with Pakistani government troops loyal to the assassinated president moved to clamp down on dissident movements across the border. When government troops, some 280,000 strong (including those members of the Balochistan National Movement which, though no friend of the new president, formally denounced the coup), flooded into the streets of Islamabad and Karachi, the tide of battle quickly turned. When the Pakistani government didn't seem likely to fall, most every national leader made their decision and rushed to the new president's side, anxious to ride across the finish line on the winning horse. As the flow of Islamic rebels across the Afghanistan border was stanched, and without the reinforcements they had hoped would come from Iran, the morale of the coup-backed soldiers withered as quickly as a rotten fruit in the sun. After two days of street battles and assassinations, the coup leaders and their followers were forced to withdraw to their safe havens along the Afghanistan border, where they quickly disappeared, melting into the local populace while leaving only pockets of resistance to fight the government troops.

To the west, under direct pressure from the United States, NATO moved their forces to shut down the Turkish and Armenian borders. Though they didn't understand exactly why, the Soviets followed suite, deploying their paramilitary troops to monitor the borders of Turkmenistan and Azerbaijan. Twenty hours later, Afghani soldiers could be seen on nearly every street in Kandahar, many of them American-trained and well-armed. Two navy carrier groups then moved north in the Persian Gulf and military forces were redeployed from South Korea and Japan to the theatre. Many of the U.S. forces in Iraq, barely able to support the mission they already had, were dispersed to locations along the border with Kuwait and Iran. A constant stream of transports and fighters landed at the airports in Kirkuk and Baghdad, bringing fresh reinforcements and tactical air assets to the region.

The American public watched in frightened awe, too stunned to react with anything but silent resignation. Though they didn't know the specifics, it was clear something dangerous and unpredictable was going on, but they had been warned for so long now that most Americans accepted the various possibilities with only silent resolve. Another crisis in the Gulf, additional forces moving into the region, their president taut and snapping, the congress out of sight—no one knew what was happening, but everyone had a guess. They had seen it before and had grown weary of it now. So long as it stayed
over there,
no one planned on missing work.

So, behind the curtain of secrecy, the wild search was on.

As combat forces deployed to beef up the region, CIA paramilitary units and military special ops worked themselves to death, tearing and prodding and searching any location, any place they suspected the warheads might have been concealed. The paramilitary forces working in Iraq were nearly doubled overnight. The same paramilitary buildup took place in Afghanistan and Pakistan. A significant number of military operators moved through the West Bank and the Gaza Strip, aided by Israeli commandos and special tactics teams. Special operators moved openly into Iran, along the northern and western borders, defying the Iranians to stop them in their search. In Syria and Jordan, the rules there were the same.
Try to stop us if you dare. But be ready for war.

On a quiet Sunday evening, two days after the report from Shin Bet, the President of the United States signed an executive order authorizing “extreme measures” to locate and destroy the nuclear warheads.

NSA Headquarters
Manassas, Virginia

Carrying the presidential authorization in her hand, the national security advisor entered the NSA headquarters building, surrounded by three bodyguards and two of her staff.

There were three primary targets she was interested in. Rawah was to the west, 275 miles from Tehran, out in the rolling foothills that defined the border of Iraq. The other two military facilities were in the very heart of Syria and Lebanon. Al-Kazimya was just north of the presidential palace, twelve miles north of downtown Damascus. Makkfar al Buasayyah was in western Lebanon, amid the houses and small shops that made up the suburbs that nestled up against the river on the east Euphrates shore.

“Let's look at Rawah first,” the NSA commanded as she settled into the satellite-control room.

The group of intelligence officers huddled around the NSA, anxious and nervous that she be satisfied. The satellite controller tapped at her console. Above the center of the earth, many thousands of miles out, the newest reconnaissance satellite in the U.S. inventory changed the focus of its sensors just a few degrees south.

The KH-21 satellite focused its sensors on the outskirts of Rawah, taking a series of visual, radar, and infrared images of the military compound.

The pictures showed a long cement runway that was lined by two dozen hardened cement bunkers. Inside the bunkers were four MiG-27s, the only real fighters the Royal Iranian Air Force had left. On the south end of the field, past the headquarters buildings, hospital, and officers housing, was the weapon storage facility, a small row of air-conditioned, semi-buried cement bunkers. Surrounding the bunkers was a no-man's-land—fifty meters of land mines, strands of twelve-foot electrified wire, and a double razor-wire fence with guard stations on each corner.

The weapon facility appeared to be quiet, with no unusual activity of any kind. A small motorcade of military vehicles made their way through the only gate and snaked along the winding road toward the main bunker. The number and formation of guards hadn't changed recently.

If the Iranians were hiding the nuclear warheads at this facility, they were not letting on. The security around the compound hadn't increased at all.

“Go to the next target,” the supervisor commanded after getting a nod from the NSA.

The controller worked the satellite, moving her fingers expertly.

Fifty minutes later, the national security advisor had seen enough. Having spent the morning looking at the targets, she didn't know any more now than she did before. She huffed in frustration, scribbled a few notes, nodded to her aides, then left the building quickly to meet with the president.

Riding in her car, she had a dark sense of foreboding as the questions rang in her mind.

Were they on the right trail? Were they running out of time?

Cram 55
Eighty Miles West of the Es Suweida Weapon Storage
Compound
Damascus, Syria

Cram 55, one of the newest aircraft in the special forces inventory, a tilt-rotor aircraft that flew like an airplane but landed and hovered like a chopper, was one of the thousands of assets the United States and her allies had committed to finding the nuclear warheads.

The night was dark. The four marine Osprey tilt-rotor aircraft were in fingertip formation, cruising low as they wound their way through the Lebanon Valley at four hundred miles per hour. As the target came into range, the formation tightened up and pulled toward the flight leader. Inside the guts of the four aircraft, the Ranger teams hunkered against their seats. Each of the soldiers were loaded for war, with combat packs at their feet and weapons resting across their thighs.

The night winds howled, creating severe turbulence that bounced the fat-winged aircraft as they lifted into weightlessness then dropped again suddenly. The anticipation of combat and mountain turbulence proved a messy combination, and inside the lead aircraft the cabin smelled of sweat, spit, and puke. Most of the soldiers had chucked up their dinner, a few had chucked up lunch and their breakfast as well.

“Two minutes!” the pilot in command announced to his flight engineer. The engineer stood, bracing himself against the aircraft's interior walls, and illuminated a small red light on the cabin bulkhead wall. The men wiped off their chins, slapped each other on the backs and checked their gear for the eighth or ninth time. The rear door began to crack, letting in fresh desert air.