Force of Eagles

by Richard Herman

  “And they were going to drop the Rangers in Turkey on a night exercise…” Even Mado was warming to it. “And that type of mission doesn’t quite cross the line into combat. Okay, I’ll buy it.”

  “I plan on sending the F- 15s and the F-111s in as we rehearsed,” Stansell told him. “We do a systems check just before we depart the tanker and make the final decision then about who goes—”

  “I want to change the F-111 lineup,” Von Drexler interrupted. “Doucette and Contreraz hold at the tanker.”

  Stansell could not believe what he was hearing. “Why?”

  “Like I said, Doucette is irresponsible. The flight to Stonewood proved it. He was out of crew duty time and should have been in crew rest. Then he flew back here. I don’t trust people who play fast and loose with regulations.” The way he looked at Stansell insinuated that he was also accusing Stansell along with Doucette.

  “Colonel Drexler,” Stansell said, “I made those decisions, not Doucette. It worked out, and Doucette is now in crew rest and will be ready for the mission. I take calculated risks when I have the people who can hack it…”

  “Doucette flies backup,” Mado ruled, making a chopping motion with his hand, ending further argument.

  “General, there’s some good news,” Thunder said, breaking the tension. “The AWACS controlling the air defense exercise is reporting the Iranian’s early-warning radar site at Maragheh is off the air. That opens up one hell of a corridor for us.”

  Mado didn’t respond at first. Then: “That’s only good if it stays down.” He stood there, staring at the status boards on the walls of the command post. Finally: “Colonel Gregory, brief your men on their true objective just before they board the C-130s. Colonel Stansell, monitor the weather and tell me immediately if any problems develop. H-hour will be when I launch Kowalski. Command Post manned, AWACS on station, Kowalski’s C-130 and Romeo Team ready to launch at 1700 hours local this evening. Rest of Alpha ready to go at 0100 local. Any questions?” There were none. Mado motioned for Von Drexler to follow him, and they left the command post.

  “I can’t figure that man out,” Jack said, more to himself than Stansell. “You win one with Kowalski and lose one with Doucette. It’s like he’s trying to keep everyone happy…playing it both ways.”

  Stansell didn’t answer him. He’d seen other commanders, especially cautious yet ambitious ones, do the same thing. Press ahead with the mission but try to keep all options. He wondered what Mado would do when they were on the ground at Kermanshah and he had to make a fast decision, never mind the consequences…

  Chapter 36: H-Hour

  Incirlik, Turkey

  For a moment Stansell could hardly breathe. He had experienced it all before—the words, the tension, the very atmosphere…He was not in Incirlik’s command post but in the one at Ras Assanya waiting for a hostile fleet to sortie across the Persian Gulf. He turned, half expecting to see Muddy Waters sitting beside him, waiting to die…“Damn,” he breathed, relieved to see Thunder Bryant instead.

  “Like old times,” Bryant said, acknowledging the same feeling. “Colonel, I never said thanks for what you did that Friday night. I was really strung out over my divorce and close to doing something stupid. You kept me on track.” Stansell only nodded. “There’s something else, sir.” Bryant hesitated. “You shouldn’t be going on the mission.” There, it was out.

  Stansell looked at him. “Why? Because I’m an escaped POW, not an evader, and if the Iranians capture me again it’s up-against-the-wall time? Come on, it’s late in the game for that kind of stuff. And please don’t mention it to anyone, especially Mado. He’ll cancel me out in a flash…Look, Bryant, Waters gave me the job of getting the 45th out of Ras Assanya. I’ve got to finish it. I watched them shoot four wounded men in the command post when I surrendered the base. I don’t know who said that revenge is a dish best served cold, but I damn well want to serve it. Okay?”

  Thunder nodded. “Okay, let’s do it good, Colonel.”

  The weatherman, a skinny, weasely-looking first lieutenant, was updating the weather map on the front wall. The northerly winds they needed at altitude over Iran were almost there. “How strong, Lieutenant?” Stansell asked.

  His answer was reassuring. “Forty to forty-five knots and building.”

  “Ceilings and visibility in the Zagros Mountains?”

  “Our last satellite coverage indicated low clouds in the valleys. I’m forecasting five hundred to a thousand foot ceilings, two to three miles forward visibility. Should start to lift after midnight. Iran doesn’t report weather, and our next satellite coverage won’t be until tomorrow morning.”

  That wasn’t what Stansell wanted to hear. “It’s important, Lieutenant. Keep on top of it.”

  Mado walked into the command post and studied the weather map. “Not good. Unless we see an improvement, no go.”

  “General, the lieutenant is calling for the ceilings to lift. He won’t have anything to go on until the morning when new coverage comes in. If we’re going to insert Romeo Team you’re going to have to make the decision now. We’ve got to catch the airliner and the winds.”

  “I don’t make decisions based on forecasts by lieutenants—”

  “Sir, let’s find out what the lieutenant’s track record is. Why don’t we talk to the pilots who’ve been flying on the air defense exercise here?”

  Mado didn’t respond, but Thunder was already on the telephone talking to the ops center controlling the air defense exercise. He hung up and looked at Mado. “They say the lieutenant is shit hot.”

  A hard silence came down over the three men. Stansell kept thinking about the lesson Waters had taught him about listening to his young officers and trusting them to do their job. Now he had to convince Mado. “Sir, can we talk, in private?”

  *

  Kermanshah, Iran

  Mary heard the guards’ footsteps coming down the corridor. “Stop shaking,” she told herself. “Don’t let Mokhtari use anticipation…” The noise of Landis’ cell door opening did not break the tension. Was she next? She heard the dull thud of a body being dropped on the floor and the squeak of the door closing.

  She curled up on her bunk, her ear pressed against the wall, listening. She tapped out a message and waited for a reply. It never came.

  *

  Incirlik Air Base, Turkey

  “I’m the Joint Task Force Commander, Colonel. Go-No-Go is up to me.” Mado was pacing, making a path over the floor of the small briefing room in the rear of the command post.

  Stansell had never seen the general like this. Normally he at least seemed cool. “Sir, I know that. But as your mission commander it’s my job to run the show for you, to put together the nuts and bolts, spare you the details. Right now some of those details have changed and that means we need to fall back and reevaluate. The reason to go low-level through the mountains is to avoid radar detection, but the radar site at Maragheh is off the air and that does open a corridor for us…we don’t need to go low-level to avoid it. We can fly above the cloud deck if we have to and still use whatever terrain-masking the mountains offer—”

  “Colonel, I don’t screw around with a plan that’s been carefully worked out in advance and approved by my commander.”

  Stansell translated it a different way—Mado had never been in combat, he had never experienced the turmoil and chaos that ruined the best of plans, that made constant change S.O.P. Mado had become too much of a staff officer, a bureaucrat playing political games in the halls and offices of the Pentagon. Well, now it was the game he would have to play or Task Force Alpha would stay on the ramp at Incirlik.

  “Sir, you know there will be a congressional investigation regardless of what we do.” Stansell made his voice a matter of fact. “How will it look, sir, to a bunch of congressional Monday-morning quarterbacks when they see we didn’t react to the radar gap in the Iranian air defense net?” He had the general’s attention. “The harder we press, the better it will look to
them. When we tried to rescue the hostages from the American Embassy in Tehran in 1980 the mission fell apart when they landed in Iran on that desert airstrip. Yet most of them came out looking like heroes for at least trying. Carter took the heat…”

  “Yes, but the situation is different now.”

  Mado was weakening?

  “What politician will understand that? Hell, Eisenhower knew the name of the game in 1944 when he made the decision to launch the invasion of Normandy based on a predicted break in the weather. He knew that failure would hurt him, but sitting on his duff and not trying would kill him. And the invasion. He gutted it out and was proved right. He got to be President of the United States…”

  The look on Mado’s face told Stansell that he had hit the right keys. He pressed his advantage. “Think how it’s going to look when we pull this off and you get up in front of a congressional committee and say a whiz kid of a first lieutenant predicted the weather would improve and I believed him. Ironic, isn’t it, General? Because the radar site is down, the weather here isn’t a critical factor. But they won’t know that, won’t understand it.”

  Mado turned and walked out onto the main floor of the command post. It was his moment, and he played it for all it was worth. “We are going to bring the POWs home,” he announced. “Status of the AWACS?”

  “On station, still reporting Maragheh off the air,” came the reply.

  “Good. When is the Iranian airliner scheduled to land at Rezaiyeh?” This was the airliner that Kowalski would have to intercept and piggyback on to drop the Rangers.

  “In an hour, sir.”

  “Weather?”

  “No change.”

  “Gentlemen, it’s a Go. Launch the C-130.” The general was standing, almost at attention. Stansell noticed his hands were shaking slightly. Well, why shouldn’t they be?

  *

  The Rangers were already rigged and inspected and formed up in two lines waiting to climb on board the waiting C-130 in front of the hangar. Each of them was loaded with over a hundred pounds of equipment. Gregory drove up in a pickup with Thunder and jumped out, pointing at Trimler. Thunder motioned for Captain Kowalski and her crew to join him on the flight deck.

  “Bob,” Gregory said, returning Trimler’s salute. “It’s a Go. But I want to talk to the men first.” He smiled at the young captain. “Don’t worry, it’ll be short.” The lieutenant colonel walked up the ramp of the C-130 until he could see all the men. “If you haven’t figured it out by now,” he said, pitching his voice low, “you’re soft in the head. We’re the ones going after the POWs being held in Iran. Us—the Third of the Seventy-fifth. It’s not going to be a walk through or a piece of cake or exactly like we’ve trained. Combat never is. Most likely it’ll turn into a piece of shit and that’s when you’ll prove what you are. But I promise you one thing, I’ll be there to get you out. We go in like Rangers and we come out like Rangers. Good luck, good hunting.” He jumped off the ramp and the Rangers started to shuffle on board.

  Thunder was on the flight deck talking to the aircrew. “No changes, do it like we trained. Your call sign is Scamp One-One. The AWACS controlling you is Delray Five-One. Frequencies as briefed.” He looked at the four women on the flight deck. “Engine start in fifteen minutes, takeoff on the hour.”

  “Thunder,” Kowalski said, “send Hank up.” Staff Sergeant Hank Petrovich was the crew’s loadmaster. “Let me tell him.”

  Thunder climbed down the ladder onto the cargo deck and told Petrovich to see his aircraft commander. His gaze swept over the two lines of Rangers sitting in the jump seats along the side of the fuselage, eleven to a side. The jumpmaster was standing with Trimler on the ramp, talking to the Romeo Team’s first lieutenant, George Jamison. A huge lumbering figure walked up the ramp fully rigged with a rucksack slung in front, banging off his knees. It was Kamigami. He nodded his head in the direction of the officers and took the end seat on the right, closest to the flight deck.

  Thunder felt better just seeing him.

  *

  Stansell was sitting next to Mado in the command post, both enduring the wait. The small loudspeaker mounted in the console in front of them crackled to life. “Ground. Scamp One-One, engine start.” It was Kowalski.

  “Roger, Scamp One-One,” Ground Control answered. “Cleared for engine start. Taxi when ready.”

  “Roger, Ground.”

  “Good,” Stansell observed, “it sounds routine.” Mado’s building nervousness played at the edges of his mouth.

  “Tower, Scamp One-One. Holding short of the runway.”

  “Roger, Scamp One-One. Taxi into position and hold.”

  Mado shook his head. “What’s taking so long?”

  “They’re right on time,” Stansell told him.

  From the tower: “Scamp One-One. Cleared for takeoff.”

  “Rolling.” Again, Kowalski sounded as if it was business as normal.

  “Start the clock,” Stansell said. “On the hour at sixteen hundred Zulu.”

  H-hour.

  Chapter 37: H Plus 1

  The Pentagon

  “Your attention please,” the loudspeaker in the National Military Command Center silenced the multiple private conversations that were going on. “Operation WARLORD commenced at sixteen hundred hours Zulu.”

  Cunningham watched the mission clock rapidly scroll through numbers until it caught up. The master clock read 1701 Zulu, Greenwich Mean Time, and the mission clock beneath it read 01:01—H-hour plus one hour and one minute. So, he calculated, command and control system was sixty-one minutes behind real time. And that was without any problems or heavy message traffic. Once Task Force Alpha started using its satellite communications system he’d be in direct contact with Mado and things should speed up. We’ve still got to rely on the men in the arena to do their job, he thought…but have I chosen the right men? Are they up to it? Well, too late for second thoughts now.

  The general looked around the room. Heads were bent over the thick mission briefing books Mado had prepared. All were turned to the page for H-hour listing the objectives, actions, and players, reviewing what should be happening. Instant Monday-morning quarterbacks, he thought. He twisted further around and checked the glassed-in Command Authority room. The National Security Advisor was alone, sitting in the President’s chair, telephone in hand. Probably calling the White House on the secure line with the news.

  Well, the President was right, nothing he could do for now. He motioned to his aide. “Dick, I want General Sims to monitor the operation for me.” He barreled out of the room, heading for his office. This is going to be a long one, he thought. Mado, we’re finally going to find out if you’ve got what it takes.

  Strangely, he never considered Colonel Rupert Stansell.

  *

  Southeastern Turkey

  “Delray Five-One, Scamp One-One. How copy this frequency?” Kowalski’s copilot, First Lieutenant Brenda Iverson, was handling the radios.

  “Five-by,” Delray, the orbiting AWACS replied. “We should have a target for you in twenty minutes.” The radio calls sounded like a routine air defense mission.

  “Sue,” Kowalski hit her intercom button, “how long to the departure point?” Sue Zack, the navigator, told her seventeen minutes. “It had better be twenty minutes. They ran around in circles too long trying to make a decision and almost blew it.” The “they” she was talking about was General Mado. The captain didn’t think very much of the general.

  The target the AWACS was directing them on was the Iranian airliner they were to intercept as it took off out of Rezaiyeh. The plan called for them to hold just inside Turkish airspace thirty-five nautical miles from Rezaiyeh. The AWACS had been monitoring Rezaiyeh for ten days and had picked up the airport’s rhythm of operation. When the airborne controller in the E-3C, the highly modified and specially-built version of the Boeing 707 that had been designed for Airborne Warning And Control, determined the timing was right, he would guide the C-130 into Iran to
intercept the Iranian airliner as it climbed out of Rezaiyeh. Since neither had trained together, it was going to be tricky.

  “Scamp, your target is moving into position now,” the AWACS radioed. “Can you depart holding in eight minutes?” An interpreter aboard the AWACS was monitoring radio transmissions from the airport at Rezaiyeh and had heard the Iranian airliner call for its clearance to Bandar Abbas.

  Kowalski over the intercom: “Sue, how far out?”

  “Sixty miles. Twelve—twelve and a half minutes.”

  Kowalski’s voice was calm when she answered the AWACS. She could have been an airline pilot acknowledging a routine air traffic call between Kansas City and St. Louis. But she preferred to be where she was. “No problem, Delray. May be a little late. Starting an early descent now.” She pushed the yoke forward and nudged the throttles up, accelerating as she started a high speed descent into the tri-border area. “How long, Sue?”

  “Ten and a half minutes,” the navigator replied, “over two minutes late. Those assholes launched us too late.”‘

  “We’re not out of it yet.” Kowalski said. “How much time can we make up on the leg into Rezaiyeh?”

  Sue spun the wheel on her navigation computer, a circular slide rule, “Balls to the wall—little over a minute. Still fifty seconds late. We’re going to miss the airliner.”

  But the pilot had other ideas. She pushed the C-130 for all it was worth, hoping she wouldn’t tear the wings off as their true airspeed touched three hundred and forty knots. Kowalski had to time the rate of descent with the distance left to go. She planned to overfly their departure point while still descending and be leveled off just above the mountain tops when they crossed into Iran. She backed the throttles off a bit when the old cargo plane started to shake and buffet. Their Lockheed Hercules had first seen service in 1966 in Vietnam and was older than many of the Rangers it was carrying. During the years it had done great service for the Air Force, hauling cargo and doing endless practice airdrops. Now it was the real thing and Kowalski was demanding that the cargo plane hold itself together once more. “Come on Herky Bird…”