GOLAN: This is the Future of War (Future War)

by FX Holden

  “No, sir. Still primarily the Felons, Flankers and Okhotniks of their 7th Air Group, 7000th Air Base running patrols inside Syrian air space, along the coast over their airfield at Latakia and the Russian navy base at Tartus.”

  “Something’s got you antsy, Admiral, get to it.”

  “Sir. We just got a report the USS Canberra, patrolling here…” he indicated for a new map to be thrown up, showing the Red Sea between Saudi Arabia and Egypt, “… picked up a contact from an unidentified submarine.”

  McDonald was looking through a briefing folder he’d brought with him. “Well, that’s its mission, isn’t it? It’s been sent to monitor exercises between the Egyptian navy and an Iranian sub.”

  “Yes, the Fateh. This was not the Fateh, Secretary. We believe it was their newest and largest submarine, the IRIN Besat.”

  McDonald frowned. “And so? It’s a different submarine, but why is that so interesting?”

  Clarke’s team of specialist intelligence officers excelled at their jobs. Even as the Secretary was talking, one of them pulled up a slide detailing everything they knew about the Besat and threw it up on a split screen.

  “IRIN Besat. Launched 2028, 1,220 tons displacement. It’s similar in design to the 500-ton Fateh class, but the Iranians upgraded its missile capability. It has four vertical launchers for longer-range Yakhont anti-ship cruise missiles.”

  “As long as it stays in the Red Sea, I don’t see the problem.”

  “A Yakhont-ER missile fired by the Besat from the top of the Red Sea would have the range to hit Tel Aviv.”

  “Their Iron Dome air defense system would take it out.”

  “Iron Dome is designed to intercept ballistic missiles or short-range rockets. The Yakhont-ER isn’t ballistic, it’s terrain-following. Designed to hug the ground and fly under Israeli radar and hit its target at twice the speed of sound.”

  “I’m not taking our forces to DEFCON 2 just because Iran has sailed a submarine into the Red Sea which could fire four missiles at Tel Aviv.”

  “I’m not asking you to, sir.” He nodded to the back of the room.

  A series of grainy photographs came into focus, showing what looked like the deck of a large tractor trailer parked by a dock. The shots were taken from ground level, alongside the dock, and showed what looked like a large missile being lifted off the tractor trailer by crane.

  “We got these photographs from a human source two weeks ago. Our people escalated these to our attention when the Canberra’s report on the Besat hit their desks. They show a single sub-launched cruise missile being offloaded from a transporter at Bandar Abbas port, with the Besat at its berth in the background.” Clarke had his team zoom the photographs to show the missile in close up. “That is not a Yakhont-ER missile.”

  “What is it, then?”

  “We are pretty certain it is a Russian Kalibr-M two-stage missile. The second stage is supersonic, flies at Mach 3. It can hit any target in Israel and it can be armed with a nuclear warhead. With the Besat so far up the Red Sea, that announcement about the Fateh exercising with the Egyptians was probably intended to draw us off. They wanted us chasing the Fateh, they even showed us the Fateh. But the real question is what they are doing with the Besat, with at least one Russian Kalibr-M onboard.” Clarke looked grave. “A nuclear-armed Kalibr-M missile fired from the top of the Red Sea gives Iran the ability to strike any target in Israel, almost without warning.”

  “Tel Aviv?”

  “Flying time, ten minutes.”

  McDonald was suddenly very, very quiet.

  Six months earlier, the Director of National Intelligence, Carmine Lewis, had delivered a very troubling briefing to himself and the other members of the National Security Council. Ten years of covert efforts in the cyber domain, targeted assassinations of Iranian nuclear scientists and several desperate air strikes by Israel had, the US thought, stalled the Iranian effort to build its own nuclear bomb. Then, in 2028, a team of North Korean strategic rocket force personnel and scientists was seen disembarking from a North Korean merchant vessel in the remote southern Iranian port of Chabahar, together with crated ‘seismological monitoring equipment’. Over the next year, more reports arrived of North Korean personnel being sighted at the Iranian underground nuclear facility buried under a mountain range at Fordo. In early 2030 the evidence gathered had become overwhelming.

  North Korea had supplied six nuclear warheads to Iran, and that country was in the process of testing their ability to be fitted to its indigenous arsenal of ballistic and cruise missiles. The US had made both subtle and none too subtle threats to North Korea, demanding it withdraw the warheads from Iran, but the North Korean regime denied it was engaged in anything but peaceful seismological research there.

  US intelligence had cried wolf before, and an underground ‘test’ of a nuclear weapon had been declared imminent on several occasions, which was to be expected if Iran was to announce to the world that it had joined the nuclear club. But as time went by and no announcement was forthcoming, doubts began to form about the reliability of the intelligence. Israel’s Mossad confirmed the presence of the North Korean nuclear specialists, but said it had so far not been able to confirm US reports that nuclear weapons had been transferred to Iran.

  “The warhead on that missile? Can we…”

  “We can confirm the dimensions are identical to the Kalibr-M tactical nuclear warhead, capable of a 5- to 150-kiloton yield.”

  “But we don’t know for sure it’s carrying a nuke?”

  “Dammit, man,” came a voice from down the table. “If it walks like a duck and quacks like a duck…” All eyes turned to the speaker, Marine Corps Commandant, General Charles Garrett. “Forget Tel Aviv. That Iranian sub could hit our fleet at Bahrain from anywhere in the Red Sea or eastern Med with a tactical nuke and take out a whole carrier strike group. Doesn’t that make it a damn duck?”

  If the outburst was intended to cow the former US Senator, McDonald, it had the opposite effect. He set his jaw. “If Iran has put a nuke on that sub, that’s enough to take us to DEFCON 2. But I’m not taking us to DEFCON 2 unless someone here can confirm beyond doubt that it has.” He glared around the table, landing a particularly hard look on Garrett. “No one?” His question was met with silence. McDonald stood and gathered his briefing folder. “Is the USS Canberra still in contact?”

  “They trailed it for two hours, but lost contact six hours ago, Mr. Secretary. It appeared to be headed for the Gulf of Aqaba. It’s an air breather, has to come up somewhere soon to recharge its batteries.”

  “Then get the Canberra to the Gulf of Aqaba and wait for it. I want them on that sub like fleas on a hound.”

  It was exactly the sort of operational micromanagement that rankled with the men around the table. But Clarke bit back his frustration. “We have that in hand, sir.”

  McDonald tapped his fingers on the table. “Have these photographs been shared with the Israelis?”

  Clarke looked at his Ops Director, who shook his head. “We only just put them together with the earlier report, sir.”

  “Well, make sure they aren’t. We don’t want the Israelis pissing about the Red Sea in corvettes trying to sink that Iranian sub. That would be just the excuse Iran needs to kick this thing off and make it look like they are the wounded party.”

  “We’ll lock the information down.”

  “Good. What is the Russian Black Sea fleet doing?”

  Clarke nodded to his Ops Director again and the map refreshed, showing a series of red dots approaching the Bosphorus Strait in Turkey between the Black Sea and the Mediterranean. “The Iranians and Russians have finished their exercises and Russia announced the combined fleet is going to make a friendship call at Tartus in Syria in a week. The Turks aren’t happy letting them through the Bosphorus after two years of Russian interference in the war with Syria, but they just signed a ceasefire agreement that included freedom of navigation so there’s nothing they can do about it.”

/>   McDonald paused, squinting at the screen. “That’s become a sizable force.”

  Clarke consulted a page in front of him. He knew McDonald liked details. “One Slava-class missile cruiser, two Grigorovich-class frigates, two corvettes, two Russian Kilo-class subs, with two Iranian Safineh-class frigates riding shotgun.” He put a finger on the page. “It was just joined by a helicopter landing ship, the Pyotr Morgunov, which can carry up to 300 troops, 40 infantry fighting vehicles and four attack helicopters. It’s not just a sizable force, sir, it’s just about everything the Russians and Iranians can float. If that Iranian sub is nuclear armed, and it gets in among them, we’ve got no chance of getting to it. And as you know, all I’ve got on that side of the Suez between that fleet and Israel are the four ships and their wingmen from Destroyer Squadron 60.”

  “And a British submarine on attachment, correct?”

  “A nuclear-powered Astute-class attack sub, yes, sir.”

  “How long before the USS Nimitz strike group could be ready to leave Bahrain?”

  “Seventy-two hours, but with only one carrier strike group in Bahrain now, I want them in the Gulf in case we need to support operations inside Iran.”

  “Makes sense. If you can’t draw on the Nimitz, what are your air options?”

  Clarke checked his notes again. “The 432nd Air Expeditionary Wing has arrived at RAF Akrotiri on Crete. That’s 25 F-35As. Royal Australian Air Force Akrotiri, that’s another 10, they lost two in the fighting over Turkey in the summer. RAF can give us 14 Tempests and six Typhoons, they also lost two aircraft, but are reinforcing to … 22. The Panthers of 63rd Fighter Squadron could also be tasked from Incirlik in Turkey, but they’re needed up there to patrol the Syrian border and keep Ivan from getting any new ideas about Turkey.”

  The Marine General, Garrett, raised his hand. “I’ve got a squadron of F-47Bs buzzing around in the desert over Jordan on some DARPA project. I can order them attached to the 432nd. That will give Air Force additional stealth recon and strike capability over Syria or Israel, or you could pull them back to Bahrain if they’re needed for Iran.”

  McDonald nodded, satisfied. Three months earlier, Coalition forces had been forced to defend the NATO base at Incirlik from a Russian-backed Syrian ground and air attack without US fighter support because a hesitant US President hadn’t wanted to engage in open warfare with Russia. Russia had shown it had no such qualms, taking on Coalition fighters using its new generation Su-57 stealth fighters and setting up the first air war of stealth vs. stealth in modern history. The RAAF and RAF F-35s and Tempests had claimed three Felons for every one of their own they lost, but the deciding factor had not been their own onboard firepower or the larger radar cross-section of the Russian aircraft – it was the force multipliers they brought to the fight: fast data links to other aircraft, and radar and ground units in the theatre to help them find and engage the Russians. Plus the ‘loyal wingman’ drones flown by the RAAF which could be sent out hundreds of miles ahead of the stealth fighters to search for and provoke an attack by hidden Russian stealth fighters. A lot of the ‘BATS’ drones had been lost, but the Russian fighters had wasted a lot of missiles dealing with them, depleting their firepower and helping the Coalition pilots to get a fix on their positions. The battle for Incirlik had removed any reluctance President Henderson had about authorizing either air or ground forces to be used to defend NATO assets in Turkey.

  Now, it seemed, he faced the next challenge of his resolve.

  McDonald zipped up his briefing folder and addressed the room. “The Admiral and I are going back to the White House. I’ll ask Carmine Lewis to get the wheels in motion to confirm the intel on that nuke.” He gave Admiral Clarke a thin smile. “You may yet get your DEFCON 2, Admiral.”

  Mansur Azaria zipped the folder he was holding, put his pen in his pocket and turned to look at his sister. He had just finished putting a new shipment of stock into the large shed out the back of their house where his sister also had her workshop, and had come inside to find her taking her green and khaki military uniform, black t-shirts, socks, underwear and boots out of a duffel bag on her bed. Beside it was a portable military field radio.

  “What are you doing?”

  Amal Azaria pulled her old Jericho 941 pistol out of the bag, stopped and gave her brother a smile. “Just checking everything is here.”

  “You can’t be called up. You have a child. You’re exempt.” Amal was bringing up her five-year-old child, Raza, alone. The father was a Russian émigré who hadn’t been able to make Israel work, and had returned to Russia before Raza’s second birthday.

  “I’ll tell that to the Syrian tanks when they come rolling across the ceasefire line, shall I?” She held her hands in the air. “Don’t shoot! I’m exempt!”

  Mansur sat on the bed and regarded the pistol balefully as Amal worked the action and checked it wasn’t loaded. She would never have left it loaded, but she was a very, very careful woman and she always checked. He watched as she counted the magazines lying in the bottom of the duffel bag. She applied the same thoroughness to everything in her life, whether it was weapons design, or her service as a radio operator reservist in the IDF Golani Gadsar battalion. “You’re overreacting,” Mansur told her. “It’s just another military exercise. Syria wouldn’t dare try to take the Golan again.”

  She clucked her tongue and started putting her gear back in her go-bag. “Wouldn’t dare? They just kicked the Turks out of northern Syria. They bombed Istanbul…”

  “The Russians bombed Istanbul,” he corrected her. “After the Turks attacked a Russian air base in Syria.”

  “Tomato tomato,” she said. “Russia, Syria, Iran, it’s all the same to me. They tried to take the Golan back in 1967, they tried in 1973 and they’re going to try again. One of my colleagues has Syrian cousins just over the border in Jasim. She said they called her to tell her they’re all being evacuated. That can mean only one thing.”

  Mansur frowned. Jasim was twenty miles across the border, as the crow flew. Forty miles and an hour away if you were in a tracked vehicle. It was surrounded by farmland. The main military base in southern Syria was at Daraa, thirty miles further south. “So, they are big military exercises. But that’s all.”

  “One of the girls in my unit said they got reports of tanks moving into Quneitra, with Russian crews. Yesterday, Mansur.”

  “You are 36 years old and a mother. It’s not your unit anymore,” he said stubbornly, glaring at her. She gave him a smile, patted his knee and lifted her duffel bag onto her shoulder, carrying it out into the hallway and dumping it by their front door.

  She had jet black hair with a single silver streak running through it which she tucked behind her ear. Her mother’s hair had been fully grey at forty and it was the first sign Amal was going the same way. She also had her mother’s dark eyebrows and long nose. People joked they both looked like the former Prime Minister Golda Meir, at different ages in her life. Amal certainly had the stateswoman’s infamous stubborn streak. In the hallway she stood on her toes and reached up to the top of the cupboard in which they kept their brooms, hats and coats. She felt around with her fingers until she found what she was looking for and pulled down her X95 Bullpup assault rifle. She blew the dust off it and started wiping it down with her sleeve.

  “We’ll pack up. You can take Raza and go to the coast until this blows over,” Mansur said, following her out.

  “And who will protect the people here?”

  “Let God protect the people.”

  “God has better things to worry about than little Buq’ata.” She leaned the rifle against the wall and opened the cupboard, rummaging around on the top shelf looking for the magazines she kept there.

  He walked up to her and put a hand on her shoulder. “I already lost you once. Let someone else fight this war, sister.”

  Amal turned and took him into her arms. She understood his pain. During her last tour as a reservist, she had been serving with the Caracal ba
ttalion in Southern Command. Her platoon had been called out to a terrorist attack on a tourist hotel at Eilat. She never got there. The terrorists had planted an explosive device on the road leading into the hotel and as their truck approached it had exploded. Flying metal had cut the femoral artery in her left leg and she nearly bled out on the side of the road. Her heart had stopped twice in the ambulance on the way to hospital. It was a day of blood and confusion and her brother, bartending at night, looking after Raza for her during the day, had seen the attack on TV and heard about Israeli soldiers among the casualties. Eilat was in the Southern District, where his sister was serving, so he had called her cell phone, and got no answer. Then he called the headquarters of the Caracals to be told she was missing. That night, a message came that she was dead. He was stricken. He gathered her baby son into his bed and lay there all night, weeping. It wasn’t until lunchtime the next day a second call had come through to say she was alive and in a stable condition in hospital.

  She didn’t really want to be left alone in Buq’ata, and was secretly glad he was stubborn too. “If you won’t go, then stay here with me. Make your beautiful furniture and I will finish my new project and when it is finished I will make my world-famous-in-Buq’ata cheesecake with blueberry crust to celebrate, and we will have a house full of guests and at that feast I will find you a wife,” she said, kissing his forehead fondly. “But if war comes, you will take Raza to the coast with you. And I will be ready.”

  “Ready, Ehud?” Captain Binyamin Ben-Zvi asked his systems engineer and second in command.

  Ehud Mofaz checked the bank of screens in front of him. “Green on all boards. We’re ready.”

  “Bring her up to a hundred feet. Nice and slow.”

  Ehud spoke into his throat mike. “Gal: engines ahead slow, set depth 100, angle zero five.”

  Binyamin was nervous. He was about to make contact with the IDF Navy base at Eilat for the first time in a week and doing so meant taking his Dolphin III submarine, the Gal, close to the surface of one of the busiest seas in the world, the central Mediterranean, a hundred miles east of Crete. The Gal had been at sea for nearly three weeks, sailing almost entirely submerged at a near-silent 20 knots. They had sailed from Eilat in late April, but instead of taking the Suez Canal and making their voyage known to the world, Binyamin had been ordered to take his boat out of the Red Sea, down the east coast of Africa, around the Cape and through the Atlantic, past Gibraltar and into the Mediterranean, a distance of about 4,500 miles. They had refueled from an Israeli freighter off the coast of Morocco and sent a short burst transmission to Eilat updating the fleet on their progress, but apart from that, Binyamin and Ehud had not set eyes on another ship since they sailed.