by David Poyer
Sometimes she wondered if she still belonged in the field. At some point, she was going to fail the physical. Her hips hurt, and looking in the mirror was more depressing every year. Maybe she should think about going back to school.
Or maybe, she told herself sternly, think about taking your dragon-slaying to a higher level. All over the world, an aging, baby-boomer, bureaucratic machine was being shoved into combat against an asymmetric, cunning, more agile enemy than the Soviets had ever been. The NCIS needed cultural awareness, languages, mind-set change. They needed her.
But would Washington realize that? Or see her as just another raghead?
The chopper flared. The flight deck grew until it passed from sight in the side window, and she reached up and gripped the handhold, bracing for an overshoot or an accident, gaze flicking to the red-and-white-striped EXIT decals she’d have to swim for underwater, upside down. Her fingers tightened. Sweat broke under her earmuffs.
No. She belonged here. If for no other reason than to prove not all Muslims were terrorists. In the United States, influential voices were claiming otherwise. Saying war was inevitable. That Islam itself was the enemy and killing Muslims the only answer. They wanted bombing, invasions, a new Crusade.
Which was exactly what the tall, cunning Saudi hoped for. If he could persuade Islam the West was its foe, that Americans were enemies and crusaders, he’d already won. And more would die than had perished in the towers.
Far more.
6
Tampa, Florida
THE end of September, and the air was like a slap with a hot, wet towel under a glaring sun that broke waves of heat up off the parking lot. Dan coughed into his fist, throat spasming as Monty Henrickson looked for something he’d dropped that had rolled under the rented compact. The airlines were flying again, but with excruciating slowness; searches and patdowns at every boarding, even the domestic ones. Silent, skittish passengers; a sense of pervasive fear. The Pakistani at the Hertz counter smiled too hard, acted too eager to serve. Another delay at the base gate, their identifications and orders scrutinized, mirrors wanded under the car. A second ID check at an inner perimeter of razor wire and sandbagged fire points. More concrete barriers, sandbagged emplacements. Air Police in sky-blue turtlenecks, shorty M4s assault-slung over Kevlar.
Dan snapped his briefcase shut, the old one with the JPM-3 logo he’d pulled out of the closet in Arlington with his reference materials. Coughing into a tissue, he looked up at three windowless stories of faceless brick.
He remembered showdowning the GS-14 in charge of a facility much like this over whether Tomahawk could even be used for a conventional land-attack mission. In those days it had been a nuclear bird, a slow but certain retaliation long after the unthinkable had already happened. Either that, or a ship-to-ship counterpunch to the Soviet navy’s heavyweight Styxes. The aviators had seen it as a threat; the Air Force had tried their best to kill it. Only Nick Niles’s ruthless bulldozing, and maybe in some small way Dan’s own contribution, had pulled it out of development limbo and made it a functioning weapon. Now, you wouldn’t think of carrying out a strike package without clearing the way with TLAMs.
He massaged his throat, missing the woman he’d lost back then. Not that he had any regrets. He loved Blair. As he’d loved Susan too.
One had left. Another had died. But he’d never stopped loving them. And he figured now he never would.
“Still works,” said Henrickson, looking up from his handheld. “Not even cracked. Hit pretty hard, too.”
“That’s great, Monty.”
“Micklin Gradzny. That’s who I talked to. Who we check in with.”
“Let’s do it,” Dan said. The door hissed open; a tough-looking sergeant in Army greens bore-sighted them. Dan and the shrimpy little guy who outthought and outworked just about everyone else he knew, who’d been his right hand before, fished out their IDs and orders again.
While they were exchanging those for a CENTCOM access arranged during the flight down, Gradzny came out. He was a civilian, in short sleeves and a tie.
The Central Command compound was much newer than the headquarters complexes in Norfolk and Washington. CENTCOM—US Central Command, based here in Tampa since the mideighties—was in charge of US forces in the Mideast and Central Asia. Dan had been attached to the command before, going into Iraq as an on-the-ground targeter under Schwartzkopf during Desert Storm. The current incumbent was another Army four-star, Steven Prospero Leache. Leache had been troubled over the last year by allegations of sexual harassment, but had kept his job so far. Any pushback in Afghanistan would belong to him.
Dan didn’t know where Leache himself was, but doubted it was Florida. He’d probably be in Oman, the new overseas headquarters, or on the road drumming up host-nation support. The face Dan was dreading was Lemuel Bedford Forrest Wood, Leache’s J-3, director of ops and plans. The officer responsible for planning the upcoming war.
The last time Dan had seen Wood, the latter’d been a lowly one-star, commanding a joint task force in Eritrea, and Dan had been walking behind the president, carrying a briefcase of nuclear flip charts and a secure radio. Dan rubbed his mouth; neither of their previous interactions had been positive.
But TAG worked for SURFLANT, which worked for LANTFLT, a component commander under JFCOM, which served as a force provider for the other CINCs, or theater commanders, around the world. A lot of acronyms, and who knew where Dan’s orders had originated, but there wasn’t any way to say no.
Not that he wanted to. From what Monty had gleaned, the crisis action team here—operational planners, intelligence targeters, strike experts from all four services—were cutting and pasting a short list of standing contingency plans to match the taskings coming down from the national command authority. It sounded like exactly where Dan wanted to be. If he had to put up with resistance, it wouldn’t be the first time.
Gradzny took them down a rubber-tiled corridor Dan didn’t remember—the building had been rebuilt since the last time he’d been here—and out into a briefing room glassed in above a much larger theater area. They were the first ones there; Gradzny put them in seats against the wall. Dan got his hard-copy slides and notes out and went over his brief again.
The room filled up over the next twenty minutes. One-stars and O-6s, Air Force, Army, Navy, Marines; not just from CENTCOM; he saw breast badges from JFCOM, DIA, JCS. Two midgrade officers introduced themselves, once they put his name tag together with the light blue ribbon danced with stars. He tried to be gracious, or at least not to growl at them. But true to what they’d said at the hospital, it took a while to shake off the effects of smoke inhalation. He was still coughing up stuff, and his voice didn’t sound like his own even to himself. But maybe it was good to have the name recognition. Even if he didn’t have a career anymore, he could still turn it to advantage sometimes. Speak up and be listened to.
“Attention on deck,” someone said. Everyone stood, looking toward the door.
Wood was gray-haired, rail-thin, spectacled, in battle dress with his trademark ivory-handled Beretta 9mm in a thigh rig. He looked much as he had in a blowing sandstorm in Eritrea. Dan remembered the clatter and whine of gunships; the griping of dusty, tired troops; the hard, tanned faces of the legionaries of the Border. Wood’s grimace of distaste as he’d offered his commander in chief a bottle of water.
Just as Dan thought this, an Army captain carrying a case of shrink-wrapped bottles handed him one. “Everybody got water?” Wood said, looking around. “Let’s get started.” He took a seat at the head of the table and put his hands flat on it.
A navy captain kicked off. “This is a first briefing to get started on Crescent Wind, the strike package for Operation Infinite Justice, the punchback for the attacks of 9/11. You all have the commander’s intent in front of you in the briefing package.
“Unfortunately, we don’t have an op plan in the can for Afghanistan. We do have an intel package pulled together. Colonel Bullard, from J
CS J-3, will present the overview.”
The Air Force colonel put up PowerPoint slides that looked as if they’d hastily been generated from news photos. Blurry, and the color was off, but the images were familiar. The Towers. The Pentagon. A field of debris in Pennsylvania. And a familiar turbaned visage, smiling through his beard. The room was silent. Then a new logo, followed by a photograph of an immense explosion somewhere in a desert. This had obviously been cannibalized from an earlier brief, since it still read NORTHERN WATCH.
“Operation Infinite Justice will be the response to the attacks on New York and Washington. Bin Laden has claimed credit and the president intends to take him at his word. This time, there will be no photo-opportunity attacks. We suspect he currently resides in Afghanistan. This safe haven must be destroyed as the first step in the War on Terror.”
Bullard explained that OGA—Other Government Agencies, milspeak for the CIA or its associates—was already in that country to link up with the enemies of the Taliban, the Northern Alliance. At the same time, pressure was being brought to bear on the Kabul regime by both the United States and the Saudis to close Al Qaeda’s training facilities and extradite the leaders. “We’re giving them a last chance to cooperate, but so far, Mullah Omar’s sticking by his friends. State is finalizing agreements with other nations in the Gulf and Central Asia to let special forces operate from bases closer to Afghanistan than our current locations in Bahrain, Diego Garcia, Oman, Kuwait, and Turkey.
“If Omar doesn’t give bin Laden up, the next stage will be a bombing campaign against Taliban and ALQ facilities in Afghanistan. JCS is still considering follow-on options. One is to commit twenty thousand troops, with additional supporting forces. The other option being considered is special-operations-heavy.”
Wood’s light blue eyes were fixed on the briefer. Now he said, “Special ops is dependent on heavy intelligence support.”
“Correct, General. We could put in small teams, supported from the air, but the effort would be high risk and low probability of success unless we could guarantee high-quality intel on a near real-time basis—such that we could actually target the individuals and groups we needed to hit. That’s our biggest problem, all around—lack of actionable intelligence. After the Russians pulled out, we forgot Afghanistan. We’re paying for that now.”
Wood nodded, and the colonel put up a new slide. “Whether for the conventional or specfor-heavy option, the first mission-essential task will be to degrade air defenses and communications so we can command the battle space. The Taliban have significant assets, primarily MiGs and SAM-7s, based here, here, and here … Kabul, Jalalabad, Kandahar. Other primary targets will be training sites and command, control, and communications sites. Operation Crescent Wind will be a replay of Desert Fox, the attacks on Iraq with cruise missiles and smart bombs to knock down air defenses so we can see our way forward.”
The last slide was blank except for a date. “That’s what we’re here to plan. The bombing will begin no later than October sixth.”
A low whistle from Henrickson. Dan blinked. Another round-the-clock exercise. No; this time, not an exercise. He coughed phlegm into his handkerchief. It was still coming out black. Soot from burnt fuel and burnt bodies.
Strike back? Sounded good to him.
Wood sat back, gazing at the overhead. “Well, I’ll make a couple of remarks.
“General Leach is working with State to consolidate an international diplomatic and military alliance. We have the UN resolution. And the NATO Article 5 resolution. We’re moving, and the pace will accelerate. Plan on this basis: CSAR and logistics out of Uzbekistan. Tajikistan’s closer, but the Soviets lost a lot of planes going over the mountains. We have a liaison team there setting things up.
“To the south, we can run B-52s and B-1s out of Saudi, CSAR out of Oman, with forward refueling over Pakistan. That’s a long way, I know. We’re still looking at that problem. Kitty Hawk’s in Japan. We took her air wing off, and we’ll get her under way with helicopters and Special Forces. Get her on station off the Pak coast.”
Wood’s eye lit on Dan. “That’ll take about two weeks,” Dan said. “From Japan.”
“Commander … Lenson.”
“Yes, sir.”
“That’s right, at full speed, eleven days. So we’ll have some more options in a week or two.”
An Air Force general started asking questions. He wanted DIA to confirm the target data he was being given. How they knew a SAM-7 was on Hill 3337, how they knew four Hinds were based at Bagram, whether the MiGs were still operational. He seemed equally doubtful about refueling.
Wood said the bombers would have to operate out of Diego Garcia. He turned back to Dan. “You’re working Tomahawk, Lenson?”
“Just got here, sir, but it looks that way.”
“Can the Navy take out these EW radars? SAM sites?”
“We can do a laydown, but there are friction points.”
Wood nodded and Dan got up and clicked his laser pointer on. He had only a few slides, most of which he’d picked up in a one-day firehose at Fleet Combat Training Center, Dam Neck. FCTC trained the operators and had the latest information on the TLAM Planning System upgrades. The first slide showed flight parameters for the improved missile. The next showed flight radii from the Arabian Sea, the closest body of salt water.
“We have fifty missiles moving toward launch points aboard John Paul Jones, Philippine Sea, Key West, and HMS Triumph. Most are Block III birds with the GPS capability. Reliability, eighty-five percent; CEP, twenty feet. Unfortunately, we can only cover the southern-tier targets.”
“What’s the range?”
“About 870 miles.”
Wood studied the slide. “That doesn’t look like 870 miles. How far out are you shooting from?”
“That’s because it’s not a straight line. The flight path zags between GPS points to avoid terrain features and AA. Then, at the target, we switch to a high-accuracy terminal guidance system.
“But the problem’s only partially range. We originally designed TLAM to fly at sea level, and even in the overland mission, it flies nap of the earth. The engine, control surfaces, and radar altimeter algorithms are all optimized for low attitude flight.” Dan put up a slide he’d done himself the night before. “Let’s say it’s going up a series of mountain ranges. Like we see as we go north, into Arghandab. Thirteen, fourteen thousand feet high. We can probably make it over those. But TERCOM will have you dipping down after each peak. With the relief we’re seeing farther north on the computerized topography, we won’t make it up out of the valleys. The bird will impact on the next rise in terrain.”
“Is that in software?” someone asked.
Dan looked at him for a second, remembering the smoky stink of burning RJ-4 fuel, the thunder of a chute in a Canadian blizzard. When he’d almost frozen to death, following up why the birds kept crashing. His mind following that back into the guts and innards of the hydraulics, the tail surfaces … “Yeah, but also in the rear elevator dynamic throw response. I have a message in to General Dynamics to see if they can patch some of the code, gain us more maneuverability. I’m just saying, right now we’re limited in our penetration of extremely high-attitude, high-relief mountain areas. This makes the Kush a pretty effective barrier.”
Wood didn’t look pleased. “We’ll need ordnance on these C4I targets. I was depending on the Navy. Like we depended on you, Mr. Lenson, when my guys got ambushed at Kerkerbit. When you called off my strike package.”
Dan took a deep breath. It had been too much to expect that Wood would forget that. “Not my call, General. I was just the guy sitting in the chair at the Sit Room. For the record, I still think we should have supported you.”
Wood looked away. “Okay, go on.”
“We can commit for Kandahar, Dolangi Airfield, and points twenty miles north of a line from Band-E Kojok to Kabul. To some extent we can angle in from the southwest and fly up the valleys. That uses more fuel, but we just can�
��t hop over these washboard ridges the way manned aircraft can. It’ll be touch and go. We’ll be able to cover most of the south, though.”
One of the officers said, “We have some indicators bin Laden’s in Kandahar. That’s the Talibs’ spiritual capital.”
“Give me actionable targeting, and we’ll nail him,” Dan said. “Even if it’s a bunker. I can put in a detonation delay.”
“You’ve already said manned aircraft have the advantage—”
“That’s enough,” Wood said quietly, but they all went silent. “We can blame intel for not seeing this coming. Or the Navy for weapons that don’t work in the mountains. Or we can give a cunning enemy credit. He picked the one place on this planet we’d have the most difficulty getting forces to, and the hardest place to sustain them once they arrived. The Afghans didn’t beat the British. Or the Soviets. The terrain did.
“But we will prevail and we will achieve vengeance. I’ll expect more answers, and probably a hell of a lot more questions, twenty-four hours into this.
“Thank you, gentlemen.” Wood shoved back his chair, and everyone rose, at taut attention, the Army guys most of all, until the door closed behind him.
7
Coronado, California
ARCHED space echoed with the muted stutter of suppressed gunfire. The huge new range was custom designed. A vast, smooth concrete floor you could set up with barriers, mazes, all the IPSC stuff the competition guys liked. Teddy stood back, weapon slung, observing. Every SEAL was a safety officer during live-fire practice. Today it was room clearing, taking down a mix of bad guys and innocents. Something they all knew cold, but only unending drill kept the reactions sharp. A tenth of a second could make the difference between taking down a bad guy and getting taken down yourself. Especially if the bad guys had any training, Russian-style Spetsnaz or some homegrown version. So they drilled for hours on end, until no one had to think. They were in work clothes: some in jeans, civilian gear, the rest in BDUs or the black tacticals for night missions. Every day someone new walked in, called back from leave or training or less essential duty somewhere else. They were even pulling some of the already-deployed platoons in off the amphibious ready groups, the ones that wouldn’t, presumably, be sent into action.
