Patrick McLanahan Collection #1

by Dale Brown

  “That’s not the procedure, sir…”

  “I’m not going against procedure, Major,” Sardaq told the duty officer. “Continue the checklist and have the brigade prepare to attack. Never mind what I’m doing.”

  As he waited for someone at headquarters to answer the phone, the general watched carefully as the command post team began tracking the progress of each regiment as it prepared to deploy the missiles. After sending their own coded message acknowledging receipt of their orders, headquarters would then send another short coded message with either the pre-planned strike package for each unit, or a very lengthy message with target coordinates and a force launch timing matrix. The longer message had to be verified, decoded, verified again, and compared to a catalog of possible targets chosen in advance by the National Security Directorate, then broadcast as a coded document to the regiment. After receipt, the launch crews would have to verify, decode, and check the target coordinates again, then enter the coordinates and the launch timing matrix into their launch computers. The launch timing matrix was critical to ensure that each of the brigade’s missiles didn’t interfere with one another at launch, inflight, or at impact.

  The commander and duty officer gasped in astonishment as they read the decoded attack orders. The first verified target set was a short “canned” message for the Shahab-3 regiment, ordering strikes against military air bases in Israel, Kuwait, Bahrain, Turkey, and Qatar, designed to destroy known command-and-control facilities and alert strike aircraft bases with high-explosive warheads before they could send an alert or launch their aircraft and counterattack. These missiles would launch second. The target set for the first Shahab-2 regiment and two squadrons of the second Shahab-2 regiment was also a short message, ordering strikes against Western command-and-control, air defense, air bases, armored, infantry, and supply bases inside Iraq, scheduled to launch first so they might have a chance to destroy some of the American Patriot anti-ballistic missile sites set up in Iraq.

  “Finally we’re striking out against the Israelis and Americans!” the duty officer exclaimed happily. “They’ve been threatening us for long enough—I’m glad we’re getting our punches in first!”

  “Shut up, you idiot,” the general said. “This will work only if the damned politicians somehow convince the Americans not to bomb us into oblivion after our missiles fall. What do you think the chances of that are?”

  The last message gave the third squadron of the second Shahab-2 regiment a lengthy target list…with a notice saying that none of the target coordinates would be found in the National Security Directorate’s catalog. That was unusual—in fact, it was a major breach of command and control policy. The order was properly authenticated, but it was still against safe operational policy.

  It took several minutes for the connection to go through, and another few minutes for someone in authority to get on the line, but finally Sardaq was connected to the senior controller, a colonel Sardaq did not recognize, at Revolutionary Guards Corps headquarters. “What is the meaning of this call, General?” the senior controller thundered as soon as he got on the line. “You’re not supposed to call unless it’s an emergency and you are unable to comply with your orders. Are you calling to tell me you cannot follow our orders?”

  “I’m calling because you issued me an inappropriate order, Colonel, and I’m calling to verify it,” Sardaq said.

  “Is the order not valid? Did it not properly authenticate?”

  “It did, but the target coordinates are not found in the target catalog,” Sardaq said. “Long-form target sets are supposed to be checked against the target catalog for verification.”

  “The targets are not in the catalog, General. I explained that in the message. The attack order still stands. You have a valid execution code—launch the attack.”

  The duty officer ran over to Sardaq with the decoded message in his trembling hand and stared at his commanding general with wide, unbelieving eyes. “The target coordinates for Third Squadron—they’re on Doshan Tappeh Air Base!” he cried. “They want us to attack our own headquarters!”

  “What in hell is going on, Colonel?” Sardaq shouted. “You gave us the wrong coordinates!”

  “The coordinates are correct, General,” the senior controller said. “Haven’t you been reading the FLASH message traffic? Doshan Tappeh is being overrun by insurgents and the regular army…”

  “The last message I read said that the Revolutionary Guards are about to launch a raid on insurgents in Tehran near the air base.”

  “Well, get your head out of your ass and keep reading, General,” the controller said.

  “Watch your language, Colonel! Maintain discipline!” But he snapped his fingers at the duty officer, urgently motioning for him to retrieve the stack of obviously unread message traffic reports on his desk.

  “Fuck you and discipline, General!” the controller shouted. “They’ve bombed one of our infantry battalions, killed thousands, and shot down almost a dozen attack helicopters…”

  “Who? Who is doing all this?”

  “It’s Buzhazi, General…he’s here, and he’s got the army, the air force, and large numbers of civilians with him and his insurgents,” the controller responded. “Over fifty thousand insurgents, regular army, and civilians are on the base right now, grabbing everything they can carry and smashing anything they can’t. We’re evacuating the headquarters…”

  “Evacuating…!”

  “My last task before trying to get out of here is to send you the attack message, and here I still am, with an angry mob less than five hundred meters away ready to twist my head off, arguing with you! It might be too late to get out of here already.”

  The duty officer quickly read through the dispatches, and the shock and fear in his eyes told Sardaq that what the frantic, terrified Pasdaran command center senior controller was telling him was the truth. “The army? The army is helping the insurgents?”

  “Don’t waste time asking stupid questions, General,” the senior controller said, the fear rattling his voice now. “The base will fall into rebel hands soon, and then the capital and the government will fall along with it unless they are stopped. The order to attack comes from the Pasdaran commanding general himself, and he received the orders from the chief of the national security directorate. If you don’t believe me, take it up with them. I’m getting out of here. You have your orders. Kill the bastards before they take over the whole damned country.” And the connection went dead.

  Sardaq was completely dumbfounded as he dropped the phone to the desk. “I don’t believe it,” he finally muttered after a long, stunned silence. “Insurgents are overrunning Doshan Tappeh…and the fucking army is helping them!” He turned to the duty officer. “I want the battle staff in here in five minutes with a complete briefing on the status of our attack preparations.” Before the duty officer could pick up the phone to issue the orders, General Sardaq grabbed him by his tunic. “And I want you to warn the regimental commanders that if I learn even one member of their organization is dragging his feet, I’ll personally shoot him in the head. Now move!”

  ARMSTRONG SPACE STATION

  A SHORT TIME LATER

  “Contact, sir!” one of the new sensor operators aboard Armstrong Space Station crowed. The technician was dressed in a simple blue jump suit and wore Velcro sneakers and Velcro patches on his knees and forearms to help keep himself attached to various places in the main operations section of the station. Three other sensor and computer operators, all newly arrived at Silver Tower to operate its reactivated sensors, were similarly dressed and similarly attached to various parts of the module, studying multi-function touch-screen displays of satellite imagery all around Iran. “Target area two has activity!”

  “About damned time,” Colonel Kai Raydon snorted. “Okay, gang, let’s get ready to rumble.” He switched his console’s display to that operator’s screen. It showed a real-time NIRTSat ultra-wideband radar image of what appeared to be tractor-trai
ler rigs suddenly appearing out of nowhere in the middle of the mountains of western Iran. The radar image was precisely tuned by computer to squelch out terrain and forest returns and only show moving metallic returns. “Yep, we’ve got the cockroaches coming out of the woodwork for sure.” He flipped on the secure satellite communications channel. “Genesis, this is Odin, you got a copy on our Polaroid?”

  “Roger, Odin,” Patrick McLanahan responded from the White House Situation Room. The high-definition television monitors in the White House conference room had been set up to display images from not only Silver Tower’s sensors but from hundreds of other aircraft, satellite, and surface ship sensors as well, or a mosaic of all sensor data put together.

  “Right where you said they’d be, General,” Raydon remarked. He watched as the station’s computers, networked in with the computers on the ground at the High Technology Aerospace Weapons Center’s operations center, started calculating the proper orbital mechanics to intercept the mobile missile launchers. “Odin to Stud One-Three, how are you doing down there?”

  “Happy to be back and ready to go, Odin,” Captain Hunter “Boomer” Noble responded. He was on the ground at the High Technology Aerospace Weapons Center in Nevada, pulling “cockpit alert” in the second of two remaining XR-A9 Black Stallion spacecraft. Noble had been back in the United States for less than a day before being tasked for another mission, but he didn’t hesitate to accept the assignment. “Thanks again for not grounding me, Genesis.”

  “No problem, One-Three,” Patrick replied. “Glad you feel up to it.”

  “We need all the swinging dicks we can to fly, kid,” Raydon said. “Are you getting the pictures and the orbital insertion data?”

  “Roger,” Hunter replied. A fiber-optic data cable connected to the spaceplane was busy feeding orbital information, weapon ballistics data, and precise position updates to the Black Stallion’s flight and payload computers. As he read, the computer beeped at him, warning him that the “BEFORE POWER ON” checklist was underway. He acknowledged the built-in countdown hold. “Looks like I’m counting down, guys,” he said. “I’ll talk to you once I’m airborne.”

  “Contact, sir!” another sensor operator shouted. “Target area five!”

  “Looks like we’ve got another fish on, Genesis,” Raydon said. He switched to the new target. This one was the most unlikely area they had under surveillance, but if they did detect activity it would be one of the most important ones to address. “Got bad news for you, Genesis: your old friend the Shahab-5 launch site is active.” He studied the latest images from the launch site. “I don’t see any rockets on the launch pad—you took care of the last one very nicely—but the latest ultra-wideband radar scans we took from the Tower tell us they have three occupied silos out there. It’s fair to say they’re all Shahab-5s, and some might have nuclear warheads.”

  “Any chance they could be decoys, Odin?” Patrick asked.

  “You’re the ex intel guru, sir,” Raydon said, peering at the radar images even more closely. “The ultra-wideband radar system installed on Armstrong Space Station has the capability of seeing underground, but atmospheric, angle of sight, and target composition conditions have to be perfect, and with our eighties-era computers we can’t always get a good detailed image even if we are lucky enough to get the perfect shot. The underground missile silos at Kermān are obviously Russian-designed hardened suckers. I just can’t call it for sure, Genesis. The Iranians claim the Shahab-5s are just satellite boosters, and the silos are just secure storage facilities. I don’t buy that for a second.”

  “Neither do I, Kai,” Patrick said. “But we don’t have many assets out in-theater, and I need an assessment of the threat.”

  “Sir, if Iran has issued this alert because of what’s happening in Tehran right now,” Raydon said, “there’s no reason I can think of for them to be warming up a space launch vehicle. I think they’re going to launch their big boys. And we know what the target will be.”

  “Diego Garcia,” Patrick said.

  “It’s the only logical target, sir,” Raydon said. “They can hit Israel, Egypt, Turkey, and all our bases in the Middle East with their Shahab-3s. Most of the bombers that hit Iran back in ’97 came from Diego—the Iranians know that, or if they don’t they’re not as smart as we give them credit for. And if our ‘good friends’ the Russians are sharing intel with them, which we definitely think they are, the Iranians would know that we’ve got stealth bombers out there. They’re going after Diego, sir—I’m positive. Almost.”

  “Almost?”

  “As positive as I’m ever going to be, General,” Raydon said. “If I thought the Iranians had the know-how, or got it from the Russians, the only other logical target for the Shahab-5 would be Silver Tower.”

  “And unfortunately we don’t have the Thor defense systems up and running yet,” Ann Page chimed in from her console in the station’s anti-missile laser’s control module, “so we can’t protect ourselves from up here.”

  There was a pause on the channel; then: “Boomer, I’m going to re-task your flight. Stand by.”

  A few moments later: “Updates downloading, sir,” Noble reported. “Genesis, are you sure you wouldn’t want to send Stud One-One on this one and let me take the Strongbox?”

  “I’ve sent you into enough hot target areas, One-Three,” Patrick replied. “You’re going to take out the Shahab-5s. I’ll give One-One the Strongbox.” Both XR-A9 spaceplanes were loaded with air-to-ground weapons—a BDU-58 Meteor re-entry carrier, carrying three 1,500-pound U.S. Air Force AGM-170D “SPAW” missiles, or Supersonic Precision Attack Weapon. The SPAW was a two-stage solid-motor and scramjet–powered missile with a range of over one hundred miles and a top sustained cruise speed of over five times the speed of sound. It used GPS and inertial en route navigation which gave it near-precision accuracy, but then its course to impact could be fine-tuned by datalinks from satellites, target designators on the ground, or by other aircraft. These D-model missiles were specially modified by the High Technology Aerospace Weapons Center with thermium nitrate high explosive warheads that gave them an effective explosive yield of ten thousand pounds of TNT.

  “It’s likely to be pretty hot out there near that launch area,” Boomer said. “Maybe I ought to take it instead of the ‘new guy.’” The “new guy” was Lieutenant Colonel Jack Olray, who was new to Dreamland and the XR-A9 project with just two orbital Black Stallion flights to his credit, but was a combat veteran and experienced test pilot.

  “The ‘new guy’ will do just fine, One-Three,” Patrick said.

  “We can handle it, One-Three,” radioed Benneton from the second Black Stallion, then added, “Thanks for your vote of confidence.” Boomer knew enough not to try to return her snide remark over the command channel—it would only encourage her to keep on giving him grief.

  Besides, his countdown seemed to be progressing faster and faster, and soon they’d be underway. His crew mission commander, U.S. Navy Lieutenant Lisette “Frenchy” Moulain, another newcomer to the unit, was impatiently prompting him to acknowledge each countdown hold within seconds of it popping up on their screens. With Frenchy’s almost constant urging, it seemed only seconds later when they closed up the cockpit and were moving out. Boomer noticed Olray and Benneton closing their cockpit canopies as they taxied clear of the hangar—they would be airborne shortly afterward.

  Boomer and Frenchy made their first refueling over northern Arizona, then requested and were cleared for a supersonic cruise-climb while over southern New Mexico. They cruised at eighty-five thousand feet and Mach three for just an hour, then descended just east of Puerto Rico for their second refueling. Now safely over the Atlantic Ocean northeast of Venezuela, they accelerated to Mach ten, turned slightly northeast, then began their eight-minute orbital insertion burn. By the time they had crossed the Atlantic Ocean and reached the coast of Africa near Sierra Leone, they were at seventy-seven miles altitude and traveling at twenty-five times the
speed of sound.

  “Everything OK back there, Frenchy?” Boomer asked after they were established in orbit.

  “Of course. If it wasn’t, I’d tell you. Why did you ask?”

  “That’s my way of calling for a station check,” Boomer explained.

  “Then why didn’t you say that?” Boomer scowled at the rear cockpit monitor but said nothing. “I’m in the green, oxygen and pressurization good, and the payload shows safe with full connectivity and continuity. The ‘Before Release’ checklist is underway. Eighty-three seconds until the first countdown hold.”

  “Thank you,” Boomer said. Sheesh, he thought, why does Dreamland attract women like these? Aren’t there any…?

  Suddenly there was a steady “DEEDLE DEEDLE DEEDLE!” warning tone, and the message “EARLY WARNING RADAR DETECTED” flashed on the screen. “One-Three, I’m picking up a very strong long-range early-warning radar at your twelve o’clock position,” Raydon radioed. “It’s unidentified—it’s not Iran’s air defense radar.”

  “We’ll keep an eye on it for you and analyze it as soon as possible,” Patrick said. “We show you about three minutes to release.”

  “That checks,” Boomer said. He checked his position: near the southwest corner of Sudan and Egypt in east Africa, within sight of the Red Sea. There wasn’t much he could do about this new threat except perhaps turn right and get away from land, but it was equally possible that this radar was on a warship. Well, early-warning radars were meant to be large and powerful. He forced himself to relax.

  “Stud One-One is safely in orbit and on track,” Raydon reported. “Three minutes to release point, reporting everything in the green.” Boomer knew that Olray’s mission took him on a much more highly inclined track, zooming over the Baltic states and Belarus before launching their Meteor payload. The track was designed to keep them as far away from Russian airspace as possible. Fortunately the desired orbit was perfectly aligned with the optimal track for the Meteor re-entry vehicle, so it wouldn’t waste too much energy having to maneuver to get into position before releasing the JSOW missiles.