Force of Eagles

by Richard Herman

  “Are you going to staff this one to death, Hoskins?”

  The very newly appointed brigadier didn’t kid himself—he was in trouble. Cunningham wanted action. “Sir, I don’t know enough at this point—”

  “At this point, Hoskins, I don’t know if you’re naturally stupid or have worked to get that way. The trouble is that one of the terrorists was shot. Colonel Stansell got away and hasn’t talked to the police.”

  “No problem sitting on it then,” Hoskins said, trying to recover.

  “Dammit, general, you’re my chief investigative officer and you’re telling me not to report the involvement of an Air Force officer in a shooting to the civilian authorities?”

  “Excuse me, sir,” Hoskins said, determined to go down fighting, “you haven’t told me what Colonel Stansell’s special mission is. If it’s too important for me to know about it, I can only assume you want it protected at all costs.”

  Cunningham sat back in his chair and reevaluated the man in front of him.

  I just might survive this, Hoskins thought. “I was not suggesting we cover up Colonel Stansell’s involvement,” he continued, pressing his advantage, “but control it. I’ll use my contacts to explain what went down and that we are protecting him because of the terrorist threat. I’ll use up a lot of my markers with the law in Virginia, but I believe I can keep Colonel Stansell out of it that way.”

  “Do it.”

  Hoskins threw a salute at the general and disappeared out the door.

  “He should be all right,” Cunningham said. “Only been on the job a week.” He paused, carefully picking his words, deciding how much he was going to have to tell Stansell.

  But Stansell was ahead of him. He handed Cunningham the completed ops plan. “General Mado is out of town today. Sir, why didn’t you tell me that Task Force Alpha was a cover for the real mission? Didn’t you trust me? I wanted that mission, sure, but more than anything else I want those people out. General, I’ll do anything to make that happen.” A fire of disappointment was building in him but what he told Cunningham was still the truth. He badly wanted, though, at least to be part of the rescue, to finish what he had started when he had led a squadron of F- 1 5s into Ras Assanya to fly Combat Air Patrol for the 45th, Muddy Waters’ wing. Waters had taught him what it meant to lead in combat, and now he felt he had to finish it—to bring the last of the wing out. Well, if it wasn’t going to be him he would still do everything he could to help.

  Cunningham noted the passion in Stansell’s voice, rare around the Pentagon, where the officers were mostly chasing promotions and covering themselves with the protective coloration of the Air Force’s bureaucracy. The fire in Stansell had nothing to do with personal advancement—he was committed to a mission.

  Cunningham put down his cigar in the large ashtray on his right, leaned across the desk, clasping his hands, his carefully cultivated facade of command shredding in front of the colonel. Even his voice changed. “Rupe, I feel like you, those are my people and I’m the one that put them in harm’s way. Yes, as of now you’re a cover for the main effort. But there are serious flaws in that mission. It amounts to a major invasion and requires the cooperation of Kuwait and Iraq. Under the circumstances, not the best of plans, and to tell you the truth, I can’t buy into it.

  “So…I want you to make Task Force Alpha more than a cover operation. Make it a creditable alternative for the President to consider seriously.” Stansell started to protest that he couldn’t do that with what he was being given, but Cunningham held up his hand. “You’ve got to do it with what you’ve got because right now you do not look like a rescue force. That’s your cover. Why do you think I sent you Rangers? Or a C-130 crewed by women? They know about our restrictions on using women in combat…This is ironic, but I believe glasnost is a factor. It has made it easier for the Russians to spy on us, and my guess is that they’ll be watching Delta Force. Let’s use that.”

  “General, are you saying the Soviets will tell the Iranians?”

  “I am. A warning from them that might cause the rescue attempt to fail would help solidify their position with the Iranians. They’d figure it that way. Rupe, I want you to go back to Nellis and get your team ready. Bury them in the desert, no security leaks. Act exactly like a warlord out there and you’ll be seen as part of Red Flag. If anyone is still looking at you, the fact that we haven’t replaced you after the attempted kidnap can mean only one thing—what you’re doing has nothing to do with the POWs or the Persian Gulf.

  “Make it happen while I play bureaucratic games over this. Also make sure I know everything you’re telling Mado.” Cunningham punched his aide’s button on his intercom. “Dick, have Andrews lay on a C-20 for Colonel Stansell. I want him back at Nellis today.” He sat back in his chair. “Rupe, don’t tell Mado what I said about being a creditable alternative to Delta Force. He’s the best planner I’ve got for special operations, but—” He cut it off. Stansell didn’t need to know about the bureaucratic maneuverings Mado was involved in, how he was working to advance his career by using his connections with Leachmeyer and the Joint Special Operations Agency…“Now get going.”

  Cunningham’s aide Dick Stevens was waiting in the outer office while a secretary placed a call to Andrews AFB to arrange for the flight to Nellis. Stevens smiled and shook his head at the look on Stansell’s face. He had seen it before. Stansell had learned one of the best-kept secrets in the Air Force—the rough, profane, nail-eating Cunningham was a carefully forged mask.

  Chapter 14: D Minus 21

  Northeastern Iraq

  “Come,” Zakia said, pointing out the door of her small infirmary. Carroll followed her into the bright morning sunlight, blinking his eyes. Two battered Land Rovers stood in front of a nearby mud hut and a small group of armed men were clustered around the door. Zakia shouldered her way through the men but two of them grabbed Carroll and searched him. They found the garrote wire in his thigh pocket but missed the small knife under the bandage taped to his calf. While they examined the wire he pulled his pants cuff up and ripped off the bandage, handing them the knife.

  Zakia had been watching them search Carroll, and now grabbed him by the arm and shoved him into the hut. It probably saved his life.

  A wizened man of indeterminate age sat by the only table in the room and motioned to the chair opposite him. “Mustapha tells me you saved him from the Iraqis,” Mulla Haqui began in English. “I am grateful but I find it hard to believe what Zakia tells me—that you seek help from the Pesh Merga.”

  Carroll chose his words carefully, using phrases in Kirmanji when he could. He decided to tell the truth. “I am trying to reach Kermanshah in Iran and establish contact with the American prisoners of war being held there. I want to rescue some of them if possible but I need help. I was hoping you could put me in contact with your people in Kermanshah. I know many Kurds live there and have been treated badly by the Ayatollahs…”

  “My concern is with the Iraqis, not the Ayatollahs in Iran,” Haqui told him. “The Americans have done little to help our struggle. The Israelis have been much more helpful. For saving Mustapha’s life I will help you reach Turkey. Nothing else.”

  Carroll stared at the floor. “I thank you. But I must go back to Iran.” He raised his head and looked directly at the leader of the Pesh Merga. The old man could have been easily lampooned by a political cartoonist with his carefully wrapped turban and huge mustache. But in person he had an aura of implacable will. Haqui had led the Iraqi Kurds in their struggle for an independent homeland for more than a generation, and recognized something of himself now in Carroll—a strong, uncompromising dedication. It was the stuff that won revolutions, and too valuable to waste.

  “Prove yourself to the Pesh Merga and I will help you.” He nodded at Zakia, who motioned him out the door.

  Haqui’s bodyguards were silent as he left the hut. One of them handed Zakia the knife and wire. “Now how in the hell can I prove myself to Haqui,” he mumbled under
his breath.

  “By hurting the Iraqis,” Zakia said. “Talk to Mustapha.”

  *

  RAF Lakenheath, England

  The lieutenant backed the alert truck into the reserved spot in front of wing headquarters and let out the two men. The young officer stayed in the truck, telling Doucette that he was close enough to Colonel Billy Joe Barker and would have the motor cranked if the alert horn went off and they had to scramble for the waiting jets on the alert pad.

  “What the hell does Barker want?” Captain Ramon Contreraz muttered as he followed his pilot, Torch Doucette, down the hall toward the Deputy for Operations offices. The captain had figured the week they were spending on alert because of the “incident” at the French air show was only a warm-up for what the DO was really going to do to them. “I didn’t think he’d be dumping on us this soon,” he told Doucette.

  Doucette tried to reassure his WSO. “He can’t do too much more to us.” Barker had thrown them onto alert as punishment after having confronted them Monday morning with the bad local publicity about their hotshoting against the French Mirage in their F-111. But now he was worried as he lumbered into Barker’s outer office. Lieutenant Colonel Mark Von Drexler, the Assistant Deputy for Operations, had gone into Barker’s inner office ahead of them.

  “How do I get out of this chickenshit outfit?” Contreraz moaned. Von Drexler was the wing’s golden boy, the officer singled out for early promotion, the fast-burner. And he looked it. Handsome and articulate, some had figured he should have gone into the movies. Doucette wished he had, seeing as how he couldn’t fly the F-111 worth squat-all.

  “Aah, he only looks good in the showers,” Doucette said.

  “I beg your pardon?” the prim Englishwoman who served as Barker’s secretary asked.

  “It’s about—”

  “Yes, I get the point.” She buzzed Barker and told him the air-crew was there.

  Doucette and Contreraz stood in front of Barker’s desk. They did not expect to be offered seats. “The wing has been tasked to send three of our jets to Red Flag for a special exercise,” Barker said. “Volunteers only. I can understand why they want F models with Pave Tack and came to the 48th. The message also asks for crews who were on the Libyan raid in April of ’86. Obviously they want someone with combat experience. It bothers me that you two are the only Libyan raiders left in the 48th, the rest have rotated back to the States—”

  “We’ll take it,” Doucette said.•

  “To avoid a repeat of what happened in France, Colonel Von Drexler is going to lead the contingent. He’ll take two of our aircraft to Nellis. You two will leave today for McClellan AFB and pick up an aircraft that has just come out of maintenance. The 431st Test and Eval Squadron out there says it’s tweaked and ready to go. Be at Nellis Monday morning. That’s all.”

  The two saluted and left. “See, I told you not to worry,” Doucette told a skeptical Contreraz.

  *

  The Pentagon

  Damn, he’s good, Cunningham thought as he listened to the commander of Delta Force, Colonel Sam Johnson, outline the planned rescue for the group gathered around the table. Where in the hell did Leachmeyer find him? I’d trade Mado for him in a heartbeat, the man’s a natural leader. Well, he did have Stansell…

  The group gathered around the table deep in the bowels of the Pentagon were there at the direction of the President and comprised one of the most important working committees ever assembled in the name of Intelligence. And they had one objective—to insure that the best intelligence the U.S. had was at the disposal of the rescue force going after the POWs. Cunningham listened as the chief of the National Reconnaissance Office announced he had repositioned a Keyhole satellite to pass over the compound at Kermanshah every eight hours. The Deputy Director of the CIA assured them that the barracks behind the prison were only occupied by a few families seeking shelter from the coming winter and were not a consideration. The select group then spent more than thirty minutes discussing the armored regiment moving into position at Shahabad, forty-two miles southwest of the prison compound.

  And Cunningham saw the plan start to come apart. The Army was going to insert a blocking force at the highway bridge halfway to Kermanshah to destroy the bridge and delay any relief column that tried to move down the road. Near the end of the meeting Cunningham asked the deputy director of the CIA if they could get operatives into the area to support the rescue team or at least to determine how fast the armored regiment could react to the American raid. The man seemed flustered until Camm came to his rescue. “General Cunningham, the president has been very specific in our marching orders. We are to provide you with everything we’ve got that can help. But we cannot get operationally involved without the knowledge of the congressional select committees on intelligence. And the President doesn’t want to take that step at this point.” Camm’s boss shot him a grateful look. Camm had decided that he would only relay sanitized intelligence from Deep Furrow to the military and to hold back from involving the CIA, until Susan Fisher came up with a plan for the CIA to rescue the POWs.

  Cunningham was disgusted. Any help from the CIA for the ground support the Air Force’s plan called for was down the drain. The general chalked it all up to bureaucratic politics.

  As the group broke up, Cunningham cornered Camm and the Deputy Director for the CIA. “I think you should explore ways to get a player in place at Kermanshah to help Delta Force. If nothing else he can relay last minute intelligence and arrange an overland escape route if things go to hell in a handbasket.”

  “General,” Camm answered, “we’re doing exactly what the President has directed—”

  “But you can offer him valid alternatives to consider.”

  Stony silence from the two men. The disgust that had been eating at Cunningham broke through. It was time, he decided, to send them a message. “If I find out that you two gentlemen haven’t done everything you can to help, I’ll personally fly the B-52 that’ll bomb your goddamn temple at Langley back to the Stone Age. Count on it, assholes.” He left then without waiting for an outraged reaction.

  A phone call had alerted Cunningham’s aide that the general was upset, and Stevens was waiting in his office. “Dick,” Cunningham said, not sounding the least angry, “please ask Colonel Ben Yuriden to see me soonest.”

  Yuriden was the Israeli air attaché.

  *

  Nellis AFB, Nevada

  Stansell was waiting with Pullman for the C-130 carrying the first of the Rangers to taxi into the blocks. The battalion’s commander, a burly army officer, led his staff off the Hercules, marched up to Stansell and snapped a salute. “Lieutenant Colonel Leland Gregory.” Stansell studied the man in front of him as he returned the salute. Neatly tailored fatigues hid most of his expanding waistline, his round face seemed to glow. His big hand engulfed Stansell’s when they shook—the reason for Gregory’s moniker, “Ham.”

  Gregory then introduced his headquarters staff—two company commanders and his Command Sergeant Major, Victor Kamigami. Stansell was stunned by the size of Kamigami, a huge Japanese-Hawaiian whose proportions approached those of a sumo wrestler.

  Pullman shepherded the group to their headquarters in the three trailers he had commandeered, and Gregory and his group were quickly settled in and at work. “We’ve got two companies one hour behind us,” Gregory said. “Where do we bivouac?” Pullman explained how they were going to establish their training camp at Texas Lake and that the tents and equipment had been brought in the day before.

  “Sir, I’ll take care of that,” Kamigami said. His voice was startlingly soft, incongruous with his size. Pullman arranged for a helicopter to fly Kamigami and the two company commanders to the dry lake to set up the camp, and at the last minute decided to go with them.

  Stansell stopped by the trailers an hour later. “Colonel, we appreciate the trailers,” Gregory said. “The VOQ is full and we’re booked in at a motel downtown. We should have some rental cars for tran
sportation here late today. Looking good.”

  But it was all too routine for Stansell. “Colonel Gregory, I think we need to talk—inside.” He pointed to building 201. “Bring your key men.” Gregory motioned for his S-2, the staffs intelligence officer, and S-3, his operations officer, to follow them into the Intelligence vault, where Dewa spent her days. Bryant closed the door as they found seats.

  “Our code name here is Task Force Alpha,” Stansell began. “I assume you know why you’re here and are all volunteers.”

  Gregory nodded. “General Leachmeyer said Task Force Alpha is a training program for large-scale integrated rescue missions. We don’t need to ask for volunteers. This is what we’re all about.”

  Stansell swallowed back a rising sense of frustration. “There’s more to it than routine training. We could”—will be, he wanted to say—“be called on for the real thing.”

  The Army officers exchanged glances. The S-3, the tall major in charge of operations, shook his head. “Don’t bet on it, Colonel. Delta Force at Fort Bragg specializes in this type of operation. We always suck hind tit to them. And to the First Battalion, and to the Second…”

  Stansell ignored it. “We’re on a tight schedule here. Colonel Gregory, you’re the ground commander. Your objectives are to assault a prison, free the prisoners held there, secure an airfield and get your Rangers and the prisoners to the airfield.”

  “Right,” Gregory boomed, gung ho to be a field commander.

  Stansell’s annoyance wouldn’t go away. He warned himself that he was getting hyper and had better wait and see how the Rangers performed before making a judgment. For the next two hours he watched as the men went over the mission, and Gregory said he would organize a composite rescue team to storm the prison and free the prisoners.

  “We’ve got a dozen men who’ve been through the Special Ops School at Fort Bragg,” his operations officer said. “They can blow those doors open in a minute. We organize Lieutenant Jamison’s platoon into a composite rescue team—call it Romeo Team, ‘Romeo’ for ‘rescue.’”