Force of Eagles

by Richard Herman

  “It flies,” Doucette said, the combat juices rising, the boredom he’d been feeling at the bar the night before vanishing.

  Contreraz’s attention shifted away from the girl when he heard the hard tone in his pilot’s voice. “Sorry, love,” he told her, “got to go. Torch is about ready to engage.” He was too late. Doucette had already agreed to do a low level, high-speed flyby at the end of the show when they launched for Lakenheath.

  “Torch, don’t do this,” Contreraz told him. The two were a strange combination. On the ground Contreraz was the wild man and Doucette was all sobriety and responsibility. In the air the roles reversed. The WSO was the hard-nosed professional and Doucette became an animal. Only his flying skill and Contreraz’s constant restraint kept him out of serious trouble and still flying.

  “One pass, haul ass.” Doucette’s motto on a mission. Knocking out enemy targets with his bombs was what he was about, and even a practice run turned him on. But the real thing was where it really was. Still, until a hostile target and a real enemy were in his sights—and it wouldn’t be long—he’d settle for the Frenchman who had insulted his jet.

  The WSO groaned, doubting the French knew how low and fast Doucette could take the F-111. “Don’t jump us when we do it, okay? Single ship only.”

  “Mais oui.” The pilot smiled, fully intending to intercept them with his Mirage when they flew down the runway.

  Doucette reverted to his normal routine and spent the afternoon entertaining children while Contreraz and the girl slipped away for a long lunch. When the WSO returned, Doucette had zipped his G-suit on and was pacing. “Time to go. Flight plan’s filed and our clearance is on request.”

  “I don’t want to do this,” Contreraz grumbled as he strapped in. He could see a sleek delta-winged Mirage 2000 taking off. Fifteen minutes later they were airborne.

  Doucette lifted the jet off and raised the gear and flaps, cleaning it up and turning the ugly duckling into a graceful swan. He claimed that the old saying about aircraft applied to the F-111—if it looks good, it is good. And in flight, the F-11 l looked good. The pilot headed to the east, sightseeing while Contreraz studied his map and punched a short route into the computer for the run that would guide them around any obstacle, towns or villages. When they were ready Doucette dropped down to the deck, swept the wings back with the variable sweep handle to twenty-six degrees, set the Terrain Following Radar to four hundred feet, engaged the autopilot and headed for the field. “Relax,” the pilot said, “he won’t find us down here in the weeds.”

  “Wish I was sure of that,” Contreraz said.

  Fifteen miles out from the airfield Doucette called the tower for permission to fly down the runway. He pushed the throttles up when the tower cleared them in and rooted the indicated airspeed meter on .95 mach-610 knots and swept the wings back to fifty-four degrees. Both men kept twisting in their seats, looking for the Mirage. “He’ll be there,” Doucette said. “Wants to impress the home-town crowd.” He milked the F-111 down to 200 feet as they crossed the perimeter fence around the air base. “Got him,” Doucette shouted. “Left eight o’clock high. Coming to our six.”

  At mid-field the pilot reefed the plane into a sixty-five degree climb, his eyes locked on the Mirage that was converting to their six o’clock position. Doucette shoved the throttles full forward into the fifth and final stage of afterburner. The 25,000 pounds of thrust being generated by each Pratt and Whitney TF30-P-100 turbofan engine pushed them through the sound barrier. Now he switched hands on the stick, his right hand reaching forward for the fuel dump switch on the center panel between them. He flipped the red guard covering the switch to open…

  “No,” Contreraz shouted. Too late. Doucette hit the switch and JP-4 pumped out the fuel-dump mast located under the tail of the F-111 between the burner cans of the two jet engines. The plumb of the afterburners lit the raw fuel streaming out of the dump mast and a torch, four hundred feet long, flashed out from under their tail toward the Mirage. From his side of the cockpit Contreraz could see the Mirage fly through the long plume reaching out behind them as the French pilot pulled off and away.

  “Shit oh dear! He was too close. I think you french-fried him.”

  “One does hope.”

  *

  The Mountains of Kurdistan, Iraq

  Bill Carroll had been watching the mountain trail since early morning, not sure which side of the border he was on, Iraq or Iran. The trail he was watching showed signs of heavy use, by the Kurdish tribesmen who moved at will across the border, he hoped. The fierce tribesmen had been fighting Iraq for generations, trying to carve out an independent homeland. The Kurds might be able to help him—if he could just make contact with their leaders.

  Occasionally the three-and-a-half-million Kurds living in Iran would press for more independence and the Iranian government would execute a few of its own Kurds and take reprisals. When relations between the two countries were strained, Iran would encourage the Iraqi Kurds by increasing the flow of arms and supplies across the border. The Kurds were a people caught between two unfriendly governments.

  After arriving in Rezaiyeh Carroll had tried to make contact with the Kurdish Democratic Party but the town-dwelling Kurds he had approached were too wary of strangers. Afraid to delay longer, he had caught a bus and headed south into the vague area called Kurdistan. He needed to find a Kurdish village where a single stranger would not be feared. Forty miles south of Rezaiyeh he had gotten off the bus and hitched a ride on a truck headed southwest toward the Iraqi border. The truck driver had warned him about a large army garrison at the village of Khaneh four miles from the border. He had jumped off the truck before they ran into a roadblock and headed into the mountains.

  Movement down the trail now caught his attention and he pulled back into the bushes. He could make out four soldiers moving single-file toward him. They moved quietly, maintaining fifty-foot intervals, scanning the brush and trail for any signs of a booby trap. Just below him the squad leader spoke in Arabic, telling them to find biding places along the trail.

  Carroll studied their uniforms and weapons—Iraqi soldiers. The leader had picked the same place to hide along the trail for the same reasons he had: good concealment and a clear view of the trail. Carroll settled down to wait out the soldiers…

  It was dusk when Carroll heard the slow hoofbeats and squeaking harness of a pack train, but he did not move, afraid the soldiers might see him. The way they had disappeared into the brush and remained concealed warned Carroll that they were professionals. The few minutes that passed before the pack train came into view stretched into hours.

  Through the brush and rocks Carroll could make out a young man on foot leading four heavily laden donkeys. He sucked in his breath and held it when the man stopped his donkeys short of the waiting ambush. He looked around, satisfied with the spot, and propped his assault rifle against a tree. He produced a small submachine gun, an Uzi, from under his baggy coat and hung it from a branch. Carefully he then unpacked the animals, talking to them in a low voice, checking for sores as he stroked them.

  The man’s moustache, wide sash around his waist and baggy trousers drawn at the ankle, identified him as a Kurd, and Carroll could make out a dagger and pistol stuck in his sash. Like most Kurds he was a walking armory. When the donkeys had been watered and fed, the Kurd settled to his knees, and in the failing light tended to his evening prayers, the low rhythmic chant of the Shahada reaching the soldiers. “Allah-u Akbar, Allah-u Akbar,” God is most great, God is most great. Carroll could see the words capture the praying man, embracing, reassuring him.

  A shadow moved behind the Kurd. Carroll tensed, waited, his eyes searching for the other three soldiers. The Iraqi soldier now stood behind the Kurd, and drove the muzzle of his rifle into the base of the Kurd’s skull, knocking him spread-eagled to the ground. He grabbed the Kurd’s wrist and jerked the prostrate man’s arm up and forward. Carroll could hear a laugh from one of the hidden soldiers below hi
m when the attacker kicked the Kurd in the armpit. Another kick turned the Kurd over, followed by the Iraqi stomping on the man’s chest.

  Now the other three men emerged from hiding. “Miteif,” one called to another, “there’s nothing left.”

  “He is not dead,” another said.

  The men gathered around the prostrate body. One bent down and bound the Kurd’s wrists and ankles with white nylon-reinforced plastic shackles. Two others dragged him to a tree and propped him against it while another built a small fire. Then the four men settled around the fire and prepared their dinner, content with their work.

  Carroll moved out of his hiding place and worked his way toward the fire, a cold anger inside him. He crouched in the shadows, twenty yards from the fire. He did not have to wait long. Soon one of the men stood and walked into the darkness, answering a call of nature. Carroll moved silently toward the man, his knife in his left hand. He could just make out the vague image of the soldier urinating against a rock. He worked closer and stood beside a tree, blending into the dark.

  The man turned and stumbled toward the fire, zipping his pants up, walking straight toward Carroll, not seeing him. Carroll’s left hand shot straight forward out of the shadows, jabbing the knife into the Iraqi’s throat while his right hand grabbed the soldier’s hair. Carroll pulled the knife across his throat, cutting the right carotid artery, dropped the man to the ground by his hair, allowing him to bleed to death.

  He moved toward the tree where the Kurd had hung the Uzi. The odds were now acceptable.

  The donkeys brayed and pounded the ground when they caught the scent of blood. The three men were looking at the donkeys when Carroll lifted the small Uzi off the branch and crouched behind the tree. Miteif pulled two steel rods out of his pack, banged them together and turned his attention to the fire. “This will pass the time tonight,” he said, shoving the ends of the rods into the hot coals of the fire.

  “What will you burn off first,” one of the Iraqis said, “his moustache?”

  “Why not? The Kurds are proud of their ability to sprout hair under their noses. Then his manhood?”

  “Do Kurds have any?”

  The men were laughing when Carroll shot them, then quickly checked each body. Miteif groaned and looked at Carroll when he bent over him. Without hesitating he held the Uzi’s muzzle against Miteifs head and pulled the trigger and two bullets ripped into the back of his skull.

  Carroll now hurried over to the Kurd. Remarkably, the man was still alive and conscious. The Iraqis had pulled the white plastic straps tight around his wrists, cutting deep into the skin and cutting off the flow of blood and both hands were swollen. Carefully, Carroll sliced through the straps.

  “You’re in bad shape, friend. I’ve got to get you home.”

  Carroll had, he decided, made the contact he needed if he was going to get the Kurds to help him with the POWs at Kermanshah.

  Chapter 12: D Minus 23

  Nellis AFB, Nevada

  The major in charge of the Red Flag exercise starting that morning was at work before 0600 in building 201 putting finishing touches on the scenario. The sign on his desk identified him as The Warlord.

  He looked up at the sound of heels coming down the hall. His administration clerk, a young buck sergeant, positioned himself so he could see whoever walked pass the open office door so early in the morning. Both men then watched Dewa Rahimi walk by carrying a box of…donuts? She was wearing a western shirt, jeans and cowboy boots. Her dark hair was held back by a red bandana. The sergeant stuck his head around the door and his eyes followed her down the hall. “Have mercy,” he intoned…

  Stansell smiled at Rahimi when she came into the Intelligence section. He had been at work for over an hour reviewing message traffic. “Gone western?”

  “Why not? This is Vegas. Besides, I love horses, ride a lot.”

  “We had horses when I was a kid growing up in Colorado,” he told her. “My two younger sisters, everyone in the family rode.”

  “Maybe we can go riding sometime?” It was an opening she had been looking for. When they were in Washington, she had only seen the colonel as a professional colleague. But now she found that she looked forward to seeing him.

  “Some interesting message traffic came in over the wires last night,” he told her. “Rangers out of Fort Benning have been picked for the mission. Four platoons from two companies of the Third Batallion, 75th Infantry. I was expecting Delta Force…”

  “So was I,” she said, trying to hide sudden doubts. Mado had implied that Task Force Alpha was going to be a composite of Delta Force and Combat Talon MC-130Es from the 1st Special Operations Wing. They were the elite units, ruthlessly trained for tough missions. Stansell’s job was to many the two units for a raid on the prison. Something was wrong.

  “I don’t know much about the Rangers,” she told him, deciding not to surface her doubts. She recalled the meeting with Cunningham and how she felt when it looked like Stansell might be replaced as mission commander. She had thought she saw a possibility for compromise. No one liked the bearer of bad news, especially when based mostly on suspicions.

  “We’ll find out.” Stansell too was obviously concerned. “There’s another message about movement reported near Kermanshah.”

  She picked up the stack of messages and sat down at her desk. The important one was on top and Stansell had highlighted the second paragraph in yellow. She turned her computer on and called up one of the Defense Intelligence Agency’s data banks she could access. Her computer was linked by a telephone circuit to one of the DIA’s computers buried in the Pentagon’s basement. The two computers talked to each other in code, encoding and decoding any signal that went over the telephone circuit. Recently the security of the computer system had been questioned by the chairman of the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence, and the National Security Agency’s watchdog group had been turned loose and were tapping the DIA’s communications net.

  On this Monday morning the watchdog COMSEC monitors picked up Rahimi’s traffic and the intercepted signals were fed into one of the giant Cray computers the NSA used for breaking codes. After two minutes, the computer selected a subroutine and answered a series of questions. The computer anticipated breaking the code in fourteen months. The system was secure.

  Rahimi’s worry intensified as she jotted coordinates and numbers down off the computer. “Damn,” she said, and walked up to the big map of western Iran she had tacked to the wall. “An armored regiment is moving into garrison near Shahabad.” She drew a circle around a town forty-two miles southeast of Kermanshah. ‘They’re centered on the highway airstrip south of town.”

  “Why there? Any clear connection with the POWs at Kermanshah?”

  “It’s right on the old silk route between Tehran and Baghdad. The mountains channel any invasion force coming out of Iraq toward Kermamshah and Tehran down that valley. It’s a good blocking position. And a threat against a rescue attempt.”

  “Do you have an OB?”

  “So far only the reported ten tanks—Soviet T-72s—in the message. There’s bound to be more—antiaircraft artillery, surface-to-air missiles, armored troop carriers…”

  Locke and Bryant came in then, and Locke immediately spotted the wall map. “Why the circle at Shahabad?”

  Rahimi was explaining when Chief Pullman arrived. “Colonel, the commander is up the wall about the C-130s coming in today. Claims he doesn’t have room to park eight of ’em on the ramp. Wants to see you ASAP.”

  Stansell shook his head. “I was expecting twelve. Dewa, work with Jack and Thunder and try to get a handle on what this does to us. The chief and I will try to calm the heavies.”

  Locke pulled a chair up in front of the map and listened to the last of Rahimi’s information, and Bryant then motioned her to follow him outside when she had finished. “Let him mull it over for a while. I saw him do this at Ras Assanya. He’ll come up with something, it’s his strong suit.” They walked back into the
office.

  “Got me an idea,” Jack said.

  Dewa looked at Bryant.

  “What do you calculate for total time on the ground at Kermanshah?”

  “With transportation in place to move the POWs, less than ninety minutes from the first bomb. Longer, maybe three hours if we fly in our own transport from shuttle,” she said.

  Locke studied the map. “If we surprise them, that armored regiment can’t react and move the forty-two miles to Kermanshah in ninety minutes. Don’t know about the three hours. We can slow ’em down by taking out this bridge.” He pointed to a highway bridge half way between Shahabad and Kermanshah.

  Dewa couldn’t hide the worry she felt, at the same time realizing how attached she felt to these men. Men she hardly knew.

  *

  Pullman drove Stansell to the headquarters building of the Tactical Fighter Weapons Center. “Which commander were you talking about?” he asked.

  “Major General John O’Brian, head honcho of the Tactical Fighter Weapons Center,” Pullman told him.

  The two were escorted directly into the general’s office. The wing commander of the 57th Fighter Weapons Wing and his Deputy for Operations were with O’Brian. “Well, Colonel Stansell,” the general said, “seems you’re staking quite a claim to my base. Eight C-130s and their support take up a hell of a lot of space. My working troops here tell me we’re full up with our own jets and the ones here for Red Flag. Now tell me what the hell is going on or kindly get off my base.”

  Stansell hesitated. Why hadn’t Mado told O’Brian? “Sir, I’d be glad to explain, in private. We’re working on a need-to-know basis here”

  “They’ve seen the message from Mado asking us to support Task Force Alpha,” the general said, gesturing at the two seated men. “Sorry, sir, this is close-hold information—”