by Dale Brown
“Scion One-Seven, Nahla Tower, are you experiencing difficulty?”
“Tower, One-Seven, negative,” the pilot replied.
“Copy. You are cleared to land. We are in FPCON Bravo. Acknowledge.”
“Scion One-Seven copies FPCON Bravo and cleared to land.”
Stupid, just plain stupid. The supervisor watched in amazement as the strange plane executed a standard left downwind pattern on the west side of the runway. It resembled an American stealth bomber, except its engines were atop the rear fuselage and it appeared much larger. He expected to see RPG or Stinger missiles flying through the sky any second. The aircraft rocked a few times in the gusty winds, but mostly maintained a very stable flight path despite its unbelievably slow flight speed—it was like watching a tiny Cessna in the pattern instead of a two-hundred-thousand-pound airplane.
Somehow, the plane managed to make it all the way around the rectangular traffic pattern without falling or being shot from the sky. The tower supervisor could not see any wing flaps deployed. It maintained that ridiculously slow airspeed all the way around the pattern until short final, when it slowed to precisely ninety knots, then dropped as lightly as a feather on the numbers. It easily turned off at the first taxiway; he had never seen a fixed-wing plane land in such a short distance.
“Tower, Scion One-Seven is clear of the active,” the pilot reported.
The supervisor had to shake himself from his shock. “Roger, One-Seven, stay on this frequency, report security vehicles in sight straight ahead, they will lead you to parking. Use caution for fire trucks and security vehicles on the taxiways. Welcome to Nahla.”
“Roger, Tower, One-Seven has the security vehicles in sight,” the pilot responded. Several armed Humvees with gunners in turrets manning .50 caliber machine guns or forty-millimeter rapid-fire grenade launchers had surrounded the aircraft, and a blue Suburban with flashing blue lights and a large yellow “Follow Me” sign pulled out ahead. “Have a nice day.”
The convoy escorted the plane to a large aircraft shelter north of the control tower. The Humvees deployed around the shelter as the Suburban pulled inside, and an aircraft marshaler brought the plane to a stop. A set of air stairs was towed out to the plane, but before it was put into position a hatch opened under the cockpit behind the nose gear, and personnel began climbing down a ladder.
At the same time, several men exited the Humvee and stood at the plane’s left wingtip, one of them visibly upset. “Man, they weren’t kidding—it’s hot out here!” Jon Masters exclaimed. He looked around at the aircraft shelter. “Hey, this hangar has air conditioning—let’s crank it up!”
“Let’s check in with the base commander first, Jon,” the second man out, Patrick McLanahan, suggested. He nodded to the Humvee below them. “I think that’s Colonel Jaffar and our contact right there.”
“Jaffar looks pissed. What did we do now?”
“Let’s go find out,” Patrick said. He stepped over to the Iraqi colonel, bowed slightly, and extended a hand. “Colonel Jaffar? I’m Patrick McLanahan.”
Jaffar was just a bit taller than Patrick, but he raised his chin, puffed out his chest, and flexed himself on his toes to make himself look taller and more important. When he was satisfied the newcomers took notice, he slowly raised his right hand to his right eyebrow in a salute. “General McLanahan. Welcome to Nahla Air Base,” he said in very good but heavily accented English. Patrick returned the salute, then reextended his hand. Jaffar slowly took it, smiled faintly, then tried to crush Patrick’s hand in his. When he realized it wouldn’t work, the smile disappeared.
“Colonel, may I present Dr. Jonathan Colin Masters. Dr. Masters, Colonel Yusuf Jaffar, Iraqi Air Forces, commander of Allied Air Base Nahla.” Jaffar nodded but did not shake hands with Jon. Patrick gave a slight exasperated shake of his head, then read the name tag of the young man standing beside and behind Jaffar. “Mr Thompson? I’m Patrick—”
“General Patrick McLanahan. I know who you are, sir—we all know who you are.” The tall, impossibly young-looking officer behind Jaffar stepped forward, grinning from ear to ear. “Nice to meet you, sir. Kris Thompson, president of Thompson International, security consultants.” He shook Patrick’s hand with both of his, pumping it excitedly and shaking his head in disbelief. “I can’t believe it…General Patrick McLanahan. I’m actually shaking hands with the Patrick McLanahan.”
“Thanks, Kris. This is Dr. Jon Masters. He’s—”
“Hiya, Doc,” Thompson said, not taking his eyes off or releasing the hand of Patrick McLanahan. “Welcome, sir. It’s a real honor and privilege to meet you and welcome you to Iraq. I will—”
“You will please stop your chattering, Thompson, and let us get to business,” Jaffar said impatiently. “Your reputation assuredly precedes you, General, but I must remind you that you are a civilian contractor and bound to obey my rules and regulations and those of the Republic of Iraq. I have been asked by your government to extend you all possible courtesies and assistance, and as a fellow officer, I am honor-bound to do so, but you must understand that Iraqi law—which is to say, in this place, my law—must be followed at all times. Is that clear, sir?”
“Yes, Colonel, it’s clear,” Patrick said.
“Then why did you disobey my regulations concerning arrivals and approaches to Nahla?”
“We thought it was necessary to assess the threat condition ourselves, Colonel,” Patrick replied. “Doing a max-performance arrival wouldn’t have told us anything. We decided to assume the risk and do a visual approach and pattern.”
“My staff and I assess the threat condition on this base every hour of every day, General,” Jaffar said angrily. “I issue orders that govern all personnel and operations at this base to ensure the safety and security of everyone. They are not to be disregarded for any reason. You cannot assume the risk at any time for any reason, sir: the responsibility is mine, at all times, and that is inviolate. Disregard my law again, and you shall be asked to perform your tasks at another base. Is that clear, sir?”
“Yes, Colonel, it’s clear.”
“Very well.” Jaffar put his hands behind his back, puffing out his chest again. “I think you are very fortunate you were not hit by enemy fire. My security forces and I swept the entire area in a ten kilometer radius outside the base for threats. I assure you, you were in little danger. But that does not mean you can—”
“Excuse me, but we did come under fire, Colonel,” Jon Masters cut in.
Jaffar’s eyes blazed at the interruption, then his mouth opened and closed in confusion, then turned rigid in indignation. “What did you say, young man?” he growled.
“We were hit by ground fire a total of one hundred and seventy-nine times while within ten miles of the base, Colonel,” Jon said. “And forty-one of the shots came from inside the base.”
“That is impossible! That is preposterous! How could you know this?”
“That’s our job here, Colonel: assess the threat condition at this and other allied air bases in northern Iraq,” Patrick said. “Our aircraft is instrumented and allows us to detect, track, identify, and pinpoint the origin of attacks. We can locate, identify, and track weapon fire down to nine-millimeter caliber.” He held out his hand, and Jon put a folder in it. “Here’s a map of the origin of all the shots we detected. As you can see, Colonel, one of the heaviest volleys of gunfire—a six-round burst of 12.7-millimeter cannon fire—came from this base. From the security-forces training range, to be exact.” He took a step toward Jaffar, his blue eyes boring into the Iraqi’s. “Tell me, Colonel: Who’s out on that range right now? What caliber of antiaircraft weapons do you have here at Nahla?” Jaffar’s mouth bobbled again in confusion. “Whoever did this, I expect them to be placed under arrest and charged with deliberately firing upon allied aircraft.”
“I…I will look into it…personally, sir,” Jaffar said, sweat popping out on his forehead. He made a slight bow, backing away. “I will look into this immedi
ately, sir.” He almost ran headlong into Thompson in his haste to get away.
“What a butthead,” Jon said. “I hope we don’t have to put up with his shit every day out here.”
“He’s actually one of the more competent commanders in northern Iraq, Doc,” Thompson said. “He expects a lot of ass kissing and genuflecting. But he’s not the one that gets things done—he just cracks heads whenever one of his underlings doesn’t do the job. So, is that true about you detecting and tracking attacks against your aircraft?”
“Absolutely,” Jon replied. “And we can do a lot more, too.”
“We’ll give you details once we get your security clearance, Kris,” Patrick said. “It’ll water your eyes, believe me.”
“Cool,” Thompson said. “The colonel may act like a preening peacock, but when he finds the jokers who shot at you, he’ll bring the hammer down on them for sure.”
“Unfortunately it wasn’t just some bozos out on the range—we detected several other locations both inside the base and just outside the perimeter,” Jon said. “The colonel may be the best around, but it’s not good enough. He’s got sappers inside the wire.”
“As I texted you when you told me you were coming, sir,” Thompson said, “I believe the FPCON here should be Delta—active and ongoing terrorist contact. It makes Jaffar look bad to Baghdad to be any higher than Bravo. But my guys and the Army security forces are behaving as if it’s Delta. So if you’ll follow me, sir, I’ll show you to your quarters and offices and show you around the base a bit.”
“If you don’t mind, Kris, we’d like to get our area of responsibility set up and our first series of flights scheduled,” Patrick said. “I’d like to fly the first mission tonight. The support staff will get our quarters set up.”
“Tonight? But you just got here, sir. You must be beat.”
“One hundred and seventy hits on our plane with one-fourth of them from inside this base—we need to get busy,” Patrick said.
“Then we need to go to operations and see Colonel Jack Wilhelm,” Thompson said. “Officially he’s the second in command under Jaffar, but everyone knows who’s really in charge, and it’s him. He’s usually in the Triple-C—Command and Control Center.”
They all piled into another up-armored white Suburban, with Thompson driving. “Nahla, which means ‘bumblebee’ in Arabic, used to be a U.S. Air Force supply base,” he said as he drove down the flight line. They saw rows and rows of cargo planes of every size, from C-5 Galaxys down to bizjets. “In Saddam’s time it was set up to quell the ethnic Kurdish population, and it became one of the biggest Iraqi military bases in the country. They say this was the base where the chemical weapons that Saddam used on the Kurds were stored, and so this is a major target for Kurdish insurgents that we deal with from time to time, along with AQI—al-Qaeda in Iraq—Shiite insurgents, and foreign jihadists.
“Early this year Nahla was formally transferred from U.S. control to the Iraqi military. The Iraqis still don’t have much of an air force, however, so they designated it an ‘allied’ air base. The United States, NATO, and the United Nations lease facilities and ramp space from the Iraqis.”
“We build it and then get charged to use it,” Jon commented. “Swell.”
“If we didn’t pay to use it, we’d still be considered an ‘occupying force’ in Iraq,” Thompson explained. “It’s the politics of withdrawal from Iraq.
“The main fighting unit here at Nahla is Second Brigade, nicknamed ‘Warhammer,’” Thompson went on. “Second Brigade is a Stryker Combat Brigade Team, part of I Corps, Second Division, out of Fort Lewis, Washington. They’re one of the last units to do a fifteen-month rotation—all of the other units do twelve months. They support the Iraqi army with reconnaissance, intelligence, and training. They’re scheduled to rotate out within three months when the Iraqis will take full control of security in northern Iraq.”
“Do we really have half of all American transports somewhere in the Middle East, Kris?” Patrick asked.
“I’d say easily half of the Air Force’s transports are either on the ground in the theater or flying in or out of it, and the real number is probably closer to three-quarters,” Thompson said. “And that doesn’t include the civil reserve charters and contractors.”
“But it’ll still take a year to draw down our forces?” Jon asked. “That doesn’t seem right. It didn’t take that long to get our stuff out of Iraq after the first Gulf War, did it?”
“Different plan, Doc,” Thompson said. “The plan is to take everything out of Iraq except for the stuff at the two air bases and the embassy complex in Baghdad. After the first Gulf War, we left a lot of stuff in Kuwait, Saudi Arabia, Bahrain, Qatar, and the United Arab Emirates, and we had security locked up tight so we could roll with ease. It took over a year to get all our stuff out of Saudi when the U.S. was asked to leave there, and we just drove it up the highway to Kuwait. Here, we’re shipping all our stuff either home or to new bare bases in Romania, Poland, the Czech Republic, and Djibouti.”
“Still, it can’t take that long to get out, can it?”
“We’ve been at it nonstop day and night for almost a year, and another year is being really optimistic,” Thompson admitted. “It depends mostly on the security situation. The coup in Iran shut down the Persian Gulf completely for a year, and the few rail lines and highways in and out of the country weren’t secure, so we had to wait for more favorable conditions. Stuff urgently needed elsewhere could be flown out, but taking up an entire C-5 Galaxy or C-17 Globemaster just to fly one or two M1A2 battle tanks out didn’t make sense. And we’re not about to leave over two thousand armored vehicles behind.” He looked at Patrick. “That’s why you’re here, isn’t it, sir? Improve the security situation?”
“We’ll give it a shot,” Patrick said. “Obviously the Iraqis can’t get a handle on the security situation, and it wouldn’t be politically correct for American troops—who aren’t wanted in the country anyway—to be providing security, so they offer contracts to private companies to do the work.”
“Well, you’re certainly not alone, sir,” Thompson said. “Contractors do just about everything out here these days. We still have a Marine air unit here at Nahla who fly in support of Iraqi missions, and every now and then a Special Forces unit or SEAL team will buzz in and out, but otherwise the troops here don’t do much of anything except pack up the gear and wait for their ride home. Most training and security, intelligence, food service, transportation, communications, construction, demolition, recreation—all run by us contractors.”
“After the American holocaust, it was easier and faster to hire and retrain veterans than train new recruits,” Patrick said. “If you want to do more with less, you have to outsource the support functions and let the active duty soldiers do the specialized missions.”
“I hadn’t heard of Scion Aviation until the Army announced you were coming here,” Thompson remarked. “Where are you guys based out of?”
“Las Vegas,” Patrick replied. “It’s basically a bunch of investors who acquired a few high-tech but surplus aircraft from various companies and offered their services to the Pentagon. I was offered a job after I retired.”
“Sounds like the same deal with my company,” Kris said. “We’re a bunch of former and retired military physical, communications, and data security technicians and engineers. We still wanted to serve after getting out, so we formed the company.”
“Like it so far?”
“Frankly, I started the business because I thought the money would be good—all those stories of companies like Blackwater Worldwide getting these fat contracts were really attractive,” Kris admitted. “But it’s a business. The contracts may look juicy, but we spend the money getting the best personnel and equipment we can find and offering an effective solution for the lowest price. I can tell you that I haven’t seen a penny out of the business except what it costs me to survive. If there’s a profit, it goes right back into the business, which
allows us to do more services, or do a service for a lower cost.”
“Just the opposite of the military,” Jon Masters said. “The military spends every penny of its budget so the budget doesn’t get cut the following year. Private companies save or invest every penny.”
“So you don’t have any trouble with these other companies, do you?” Patrick asked.
“I see some of these snake-eating ex–Special Forces guys wandering around the base,” Thompson said, “and they’re all decked out in top-of-the-line outdoor clothing, brand-new weapons, the latest gear, and tattoos up the wazoo. A lot of those guys just want to look cool, so they spend a lot of their own money on the latest and greatest. My company is mostly made up of computer geeks, ex–law enforcement officers, private investigators, and security guards. They pretty much ignore us. We get into scrapes every now and then when my guys deny them access, but we get it straightened out eventually.”
“Doesn’t sound like a good way to go to war, Kris.”
Thompson chuckled. “Hopefully, it’s not war,” he said. “War should be left to the professionals. I’d be just as happy supporting the professionals.”
The base was immense and very much resembled a small Army post back in the United States. “This place doesn’t look half bad,” Jon Masters commented. “I used to be sorry for you guys being sent all the way out here, but I’ve seen worse Army posts back in the States.”
“We never had a regular Burger King or McDonald’s, like some of the superbases,” Thompson said, “and if we did, the Iraqis probably would’ve shut it down anyway after they took over. Most of the troops here are still sleeping in CHUs because we never got around to building regular housing units. Of course there are no families here, so it’ll never compare to any regular overseas base like Germany or England. But the weather is a bit nicer and the locals are less hostile…at least a little less.”
