Patrick McLanahan Collection #1

by Dale Brown

  “What’s your report, General?” Patrick recognized the groggy, gruff voice as Major General Charles Zoltrane, the deputy commander of Eighth Air Force. Well, he thought ruefully, the brass was awake now. He was probably speaking from a secure phone in his quarters, and he definitely did not sound happy about being awakened at this hour.

  “One of my unmanned Vampire bombers was shot down by a Russian SA-12 surface-to-air missile battery just outside Mary, sir,” Patrick replied. Patrick had known Zoltrane for many years, and they were of equal rank. But when Zoltrane used “General” instead of “Patrick,” McLanahan knew to keep this conversation formal and carefully observe their chain of command.

  “Shit,” Zoltrane murmured. “How in hell did you manage that, General?”

  “We were investigating some unidentified ground returns just twenty miles outside Mary, well within the prohibited area, when it popped on and nailed us. We detected two SA-12 batteries and their command-and-control units.”

  “Transmit the site’s coordinates and electromagnetic signals to headquarters, and let’s have a look.” But Zoltrane detected the hesitation in Patrick’s response and said, “What else do you have to report, McLanahan?”

  “The SA-12 batteries have been neutralized, sir,” Patrick said. “The command-and-control unit, surveillance radar, and a total of ten transporter-erector-launchers have been destroyed.”

  “Destroyed? Destroyed with what?”

  “StealthHawk UCAVs, sir, launched from our Vampire just before it was shot down.”

  “StealthHawks? You had Stealthhawks on board your reconnaissance aircraft? How many?”

  “Two.”

  “Where are they now?”

  “They were both completely destroyed when they kamikazied into SA-12 transporter-erector-launchers.”

  “Who gave the order to attack those SA-12 batteries, General?”

  “I did, sir, as soon as my Vampire bomber was attacked and destroyed by hostile ground fire from within the prohibited area around Mary.”

  “You received no guidance from General Samson or from CENT-COM?” Zoltrane asked. Lieutenant General Terrill Samson was the commander of Eighth Air Force and the immediate task-force commander. Although anyone up the chain of command could have issued attack orders to Patrick—even the president of the United States himself—most if not all commands would have gone through General Samson at Eighth Air Force except in the direst of emergencies.

  “No, sir.”

  “I see.” There was silence for several long moments, during which Patrick could tell that Zoltrane was still on the line. Then, abruptly, he said, “Stand by,” and the connection was broken. That was not a good sign, Patrick thought.

  Daren Mace returned a few minutes later. “Bobcat Zero-four is inbound inside the ingress corridor over western Pakistan and should be on station in less than an hour,” he reported. “He does not have any StealthHawks on board. Bobcat Zero-two will be ready to launch from Diego Garcia in about thirty minutes, and he’s loaded with two UCAVs. We can only load fifty percent of our Vampires with UCAVs for now, but we expect to get a few more ready to upload within twenty-four hours. Within forty-eight hours, all Vampires will have UCAVs on board.”

  “Very good,” Patrick said. “Get Zero-two airborne as soon as possible, with StealthHawks and full defensive armament. All Vampires that launch from now on will have StealthHawks on board unless further advised. The Russians might have many more SA-12s waiting for us out there.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  Patrick glanced up and saw Brigadier General David Luger, his second in command, trotting down the stairs toward the command console, apparently in a very big hurry, looking worriedly at Patrick. “Put Zero-four on patrol, and have him identify each and every laser-radar return within fifty miles of Mary,” he went on. “If the Russians have a portable latrine out there, I want to know about it.”

  “You got it, sir,” Daren said enthusiastically. He started to put on his headset to talk with the flight-control crew in the BATMAN and his ground crews on Diego Garcia, but David Luger came over to him, bent down, and whispered something to him. Daren Mace looked quizzically at Luger and shook his head, but Luger grasped Mace by his right upper arm, and Mace stood up and retreated up the stairs toward the flight-control crews.

  Patrick watched this interchange with a slight feeling of dread that he tried not to make evident in his voice as he asked, “What’s going on, Dave?”

  “I received a call from Eighth Air Force headquarters, Patrick,” Luger replied. Patrick noticed that David was in a flight suit but was un-shaven and had barely taken the time to lace up his flying boots. At that moment a tech from the communications center trotted down the steps carrying a message. He handed it to Luger, who read it quickly. Patrick saw his face turn ashen. “Oh, shit…”

  “What in hell’s going on, Texas?” Patrick asked.

  “You…you’ve been relieved of duty, Patrick,” Luger responded, his voice shaking with disbelief and shock. He handed the message to Patrick. “I’ve been ordered to take command of the Air Battle Force and to confine you to quarters until you can be reassigned. All of our planes are being recalled. You…Christ, Patrick, you’ve been demoted to brigadier general.”

  Patrick read the message, shrugged, and simply nodded. “Guess they didn’t appreciate me blowing up a Russian SAM site without letting them know first,” he said simply.

  “Patrick…Muck, this is not right,” David stammered. “Eighth Air Force can’t take away your command just like that—we don’t belong to them. And only the president, the SECDEF, or the chief of staff can take away your stars.”

  “This message is not from Eighth Air Force,” Patrick said, holding up the note and tapping the relevant line. “It came from the Pentagon, transmitted in response to a request from General Samson,” Patrick said. He crumpled the paper in his hands. “You have command of the Air Battle Force, Dave. I’ve been ordered to go home.” He looked at his friend, clasped him on the shoulder, then took off his headset and dropped it on the command console. “I’ll be with my son in quarters. If they want me, they can reach me there. I’ll have my earset on—don’t ring my home phone. It might wake Bradley.”

  David Luger was just too stunned to move. “Muck…”

  “Don’t let them take away your ability to fight, Dave,” Patrick said, looking at his longtime friend and partner with a defeated expression Luger had never seen before. “The staff weenies at Barksdale don’t have a clue. Don’t let them take away your strength.” And with that, Patrick McLanahan marched up the steps and out of the Battle Management Center.

  In the blink of an eye, a general reduced to nothing.

  Ministry of Defense of the Republic of Turkmenistan,

  Ashkhabad, Turkmenistan

  That same time

  Yes, sir, I know what my orders were,” Colonel General Boris Kasimov, commander of Turkmenistan Defensive Alliance forces, forcibly responded on the secure telephone line. “The order was ‘all weapons tight.’ But we were under attack, damn it. The Americans had an armed B-1 bomber up there over Mary, and it rolled in on my brigade and attacked without any warning.”

  “Take it easy, Boris, take it easy,” General Anatoliy Gryzlov, president of the Russian Federation, asked in a soft, understanding tone. Short, slender, with thin brown hair and bright blue eyes, the former cosmonaut, test pilot, and, until recently, chief of staff of the Russian military, usually appeared as if he would very much like to beat up everyone to whom he spoke. But when he was speaking to his generals, Gryzlov’s entire demeanor was different; he treated them all, from the most senior commanders to the lowliest conscripts, with fatherly attention.

  “Sir, I take full responsibility for this incident. I—”

  “Boris, hold it,” Gryzlov implored. “It’s me, Anatoliy, your classmate at the academy, your squadron leader, your poker buddy. We’ve served too long together, fought too many battles, for you to talk to me like an a
ltar boy caught yanking his wanker in the confessional. Just speak to me, all right? What happened?”

  Gryzlov could hear Kasimov take a deep, relieved breath and a hard swallow. “General, we came under attack, and the air-defense brigade reacted, plain and simple,” he said wearily. “All of a sudden that damned American bomber appeared out of nowhere and headed right for the number-one battery, and it had its bomb doors open. The crews saw it on the optronic sights, and everyone panicked. They lit it up and fired on it without requesting permission.”

  “For Christ’s sake, Boris, I know your crews have more discipline than that,” Gryzlov said. “That’s the reason we picked that brigade to deploy on this mission—they knew how to preserve operational security. My orders were specific: Weapons stayed tight unless I personally, verbally gave the order to attack. And that was only going to happen after we started moving the armored divisions eastward—not for another six months at least. I was hoping by then that the world would have forgotten about that stinking rathole called Turkmenistan and leave us alone to do our business, just like Chechnya. This incident puts the conflict right back on the world media’s hot sheet.”

  “General, blame it on the Americans,” Kasimov said angrily. “They weren’t permitted to bring armed attack aircraft into Turkmenistan, just unarmed reconnaissance planes and other aircraft armed with defensive systems only.”

  “I know that, Boris,” Gryzlov said. “What I’m asking you is, what were your orders to the brigade? Exactly.” There was a long pause. “Boris, let’s not play games here. Talk to me.”

  “I told my brigade commanders that the order from you was ‘weapons tight,’ but I made it clear to them that I did not want to lose the brigade to attackers, especially Americans or Turkmenis,” Kasimov said finally. “I told the colonel that they were not to initiate an attack, but they were not to lose the brigade under any circumstances.” He quickly added, “Surely, General, you did not expect me to just allow that S-300 brigade to be attacked from the air without fighting back? I know that your orders didn’t mean we should just let the entire brigade be wiped out….”

  “Boris…”

  “The Americans had a B-1 bomber that launched two unmanned attack aircraft,” Kasimov said, his voice pleading now. “Each one of those things employed at least two guided missiles and two cluster munitions before flying themselves into another target. They took out nearly the entire antiaircraft brigade! At least we got the fucking bomber—and if you ask me, we should follow it up by attacking their forward base in Diego Garcia. We can’t let the Americans get away with this!”

  Gryzlov winced when Kasimov reminded him of that fact. The Antey S-300V-series surface-to-air missile system—what the West called the SA-12 “Gladiator”—was the best long-range, high-altitude antiaircraft weapon system in the Russian Federation, and probably the best in the world; it was also the world’s first workable mobile antiballistic-missile system. Despite its effectiveness, however, Russia’s outmoded and inadequate industrial and technical development centers and its rapidly shrinking defense budget couldn’t produce enough spare parts and reloads for its own training and operational needs, let alone fully support its export customers. Just a single pair of missiles expended in a rare live-fire training exercise took weeks, sometimes months to replace—losing two entire missile batteries, not to mention the command-and-surveillance radar vehicles, would be devastating.

  And the men that were lost…five officers and thirteen technicians killed, including the brigade commander and his deputy; three officers and thirty techs injured, some critically. It was a devastating loss. It didn’t matter that the United States was technically in violation of the UN Security Council’s peacekeeping agreement: Russia had suffered a tremendous loss, in a country where it had almost total control.

  The plan to move the S-300 brigade secretly into central Turkmenistan was Gryzlov’s, but it could be accomplished only with perfect and careful security. All of the components of the S-300 could easily be disguised while on the march, and it could stay well disguised and hidden even when fully set up and operational—it could go from completely closed up and camouflaged to ready to fire in just five minutes. The key was simple: Keep the radars off the air and the datalink transmissions between radar and fire-control centers limited to fiber-optic landline cables. The orders were not followed—or were never properly issued—and the brigade was discovered. No one in Moscow thought the Americans would immediately open fire on the brigade with precision-guided and cluster munitions, but they did, and the cost in human life and loss of equipment was high indeed.

  And someone was going to have to pay it.

  “Damn it, Boris, I’m sorry it happened,” Gryzlov said. “I wish your boys had kept their fingers off the COMMIT buttons.”

  “I apologize for that, General,” Kasimov said. “I take full responsibility. But the fact remains: The Americans killed almost two dozen men and injured many more. The Americans provoked a response by their actions, and they employed offensive weapons in violation of the peacekeeping agreement.”

  “I know, and I will hold them fully responsible for the deaths they caused,” Gryzlov said. “I’m sorry, Boris, but I have to bring you back to Moscow. You did not pull the trigger, but you are responsible for what happened out there and for the actions of your men.”

  “Yes, sir. I understand.”

  “Don’t worry, Boris, I’m not going to make you the whipping boy—you know more about Central Asia than almost any other general officer, and you’ve done a commendable job commanding our forces in Turkmenistan all these years. You’ll still be involved in everything that goes on in Central Asia. Turn your staff operations over to General Bilatov, hop a flight back, and report to General Stepashin. After you two have a chance to talk, we’ll meet and discuss our next moves, once the furor over this incident dies down.”

  “Yes, sir,” Kasimov replied. “I’ll depart within the hour.”

  “Good. That will be all. I’ll see you in a day or two.”

  Colonel General Kasimov felt somewhat relieved as he called for his staff transport jet, a Yakovlev-40, to be made ready for departure and his staff car brought around to take him home so he could pack. He was going to be roasted over the coals by Nikolai Stepashin, the new chief of staff and the commander of the Ministry of State Security, perhaps even demoted. But Gryzlov needed experienced, well-educated officers for his Central Asian campaign, and Kasimov felt confident that his talents were not going to be wasted commanding some frozen remote radar site in Siberia for the next ten years just because one of his lieutenants had an itchy trigger finger.

  Kasimov briefed his deputy commander while he loaded files into his briefcase, then shook hands with his office staff members and strode out to his waiting car. The plane would not be ready for at least another hour, so he had time to relax and have a few drinks in his quarters, an unassuming concrete-block building on the northeast side of Ashkhabad International Airport. He told his aide and driver to stay in the car—he could pack easier and faster himself, and he wanted to be alone. He would be done as soon as the plane was fueled and ready for takeoff.

  He was sure as hell not going to miss this shitty little house, he thought as he fixed a stiff drink, retrieved his A-3 kit bag from under his bed, zipped it open, and started throwing clothing into it. Duty in Turkmenistan was great until this whole incident had blown up in their faces—the Taliban invasion of eastern Turkmenistan, the threat to Russian interests, the mobilization of troops, the American involvement, the battle for the cities of Mary and Chärjew, and the Americans’ preemptive strike inside Russia to cut off their counterattack. Since then all officers who had formerly lived in nice apartments in the capital had to move to these little houses at the airport, where it was a bit more secure. Inadequate heat and light, terrible water, leaking plumbing, drafty doors and windows, cold in the winter and hot in the summer—he now lived only slightly better than his troops in their tents or out in the fiel
d camping beside their armored vehicles.

  Satisfied that the rest of his packing could be finished in a few minutes, Kasimov kicked off his boots, stretched out on his bed, and took a deep sip of his vodka on ice. Still at least a half hour to wait. He thought he should call his wife but decided instead to call her from base operations right before departure. He took another sip, then closed his eyes for a short catnap.

  Kasimov never heard the gunman enter through the back door, step silently into the bedroom, place a pistol muzzle under the general’s chin, and fire a single sound-suppressed round into his brain. In seconds the gunman retrieved the spent shell casing and replaced it with one from a small plastic bag, left some hair and fabric samples near the body so they could be easily found by forensic investigators, and departed.

  The Kremlin, Moscow, Russian Federation

  A few minutes later

  Russian president Anatoliy Gryzlov replaced the telephone receiver on its cradle. “Something terrible has happened—General Kasimov has been murdered in his quarters,” he said tonelessly, matter-of-factly.

  Minister of State Security and Chief of the General Staff Nikolai Stepashin nodded. “A horrible tragedy. I shall commence an immediate investigation. No doubt anti-Russian Turkmen assassins or Muslim terrorists were involved. They will be hunted down and summarily executed.” He could have been reading from a long-ago-prepared script—which, in fact, he was.

  “Now that we have the unpleasantries out of the way,” Gryzlov said, “these are my orders: I want Turkmenistan in complete Russian control in thirty days. I want every Taliban fighter and sympathizer dead and buried, and I want every American aircraft blown out of the sky. That idiot Kasimov tipped our hand and gave away the element of surprise, but it doesn’t matter. I don’t care what it takes, I don’t care what forces you need to mobilize—just do it. I want every oil and natural-gas field in that entire fucking country with a Russian infantry battalion on it.”