by Dale Brown
Zarazi was suspicious, too — a quality that had kept him alive for most of his thirty-eight years, twenty-two of them as a Taliban freedom fighter. Zarazi was born in northwest Afghanistan near Sheberghan. Originally members of the Mujahidin guerrilla fighters that battled the Russians, Zarazi’s tribe refused to join the so-called Northern Alliance, composed mostly of ethnic Uzbeks, Tajiks, and Pakistanis, and instead took large numbers of Russian weapons and vehicles and moved back to the tribe’s historic provinces in the northwest. Zarazi became a provincial commander of the Hezbollah, or “Army of God,” a radical and fundamentalist sect of the Taliban regime, and continued to harass the Northern Alliance forces at every opportunity.
This substantial and apparently important detachment, moving thirty kilometers west of Andkhvoy toward the northeastern edge of the Bedentlik wastelands on the Turkmenistan-Afghanistan border, presented the perfect opportunity to make a major strike against the Northern Alliance and its Western puppet masters. Still, it was strange they had no heavy armor or helicopter support anywhere nearby. The closest helicopter base camp was twenty minutes away; the closest large military base was over an hour away by helicopter. And with some bad weather closing in — a sandstorm, most likely — help would take even longer to arrive.
The intelligence data was remarkably detailed and timely as well — maybe too detailed and timely. Although the Northern Alliance forces, aided by the United States, had effectively wiped out the Taliban militias in this area, Zarazi thought it strange that the United Nations would dare send such an important detail so far away from their strongholds without support. The Taliban still had a large and for the most part well-equipped and viable guerrilla force, especially near the Uzbekistan and Tajikistan frontiers, where friendly forces were more plentiful and the terrain more hospitable. The Turkmenistan-Afghan frontier was nothing but desert for a thousand kilometers — obviously the United Nations forces never thought they would encounter any resistance out here in the wastelands.
The infidels’ overconfidence would be their downfall.
The scout vehicles deployed in front of the column were Russian BTR-40 and larger BTR-60 wheeled reconnaissance vehicles, fast and nimble and very well armed. They turned and scattered as soon as the first BMP exploded. Zarazi’s men started lobbing smoke grenades from all over the area — it took dozens of the things to create enough of a screen in the ever-increasing, swirling winds, but within moments visibility had been cut to just a few yards. The gunports were already open, the soldiers inside looking for targets.
That was exactly what Zarazi was waiting for. His men dashed out from their hiding places under cover of the smoke, jumped aboard the BTRs, and stuffed tear-gas grenades into the open gunports. Within moments the drivers were forced to stop their vehicles to evacuate the soldiers inside before they were asphyxiated by the noxious gas. Soon all of the vehicles in the convoy were stopped, billowing with tear gas. The hatches and doors opened, and terrified and nearly suffocating United Nations soldiers and workers dashed out, their eyes swollen and burning. The battle took less than five minutes. Zarazi’s men had destroyed one BMP and one BTR and captured one BMP, four BTR scouts, and four five-ton trucks loaded with supplies. No casualties. Perfect.
“We hit the mother lode, Captain,” Zarazi’s lieutenant, Jalaluddin Turabi, said a few moments later as the crews and workers were being herded together. “Looks like they were going to set up a semipermanent outpost. They have two weeks’ worth of food for about fifty men, plus boxes labeled ‘Communications Equipment.’ I see power generators, fuel tanks, cold-weather tents and clothing, and fencing material. This stuff will sell for millions on the black market!”
“Stop gawking and start unloading those supply trucks, Jala,” Zarazi snapped. “If this detail has air support nearby, they’ll be on us any minute. We need to be out of here as soon as possible.”
The United Nations soldiers were lined up kneeling in the snow, hands on their heads. Captain Zarazi paced back and forth in front of them, studying each man and woman carefully. Many nations were represented, mostly from the Northern Hemisphere: Canada, Northern Ireland, Norway, South Korea. Zarazi allowed his men to strip off the peacekeepers’ gloves, scarves, and parkas — many of his men had perished in the Turkestan and Selseleh’ye Mountains due to exposure, and keeping warm was more important than eating to most of them.
“I am Captain Wakil Mohammad Zarazi, servant of God and commander of the Balkh Armed Resistance Regiment,” Zarazi said in Pashtun. He noticed the uncomprehending stares, then said in halting English, “Who is interpreter?” There was no reply. Zarazi continued to examine the captives, finally coming across one soldier in the robin’s-egg blue helmet, but with a beard, who appeared to be Afghan. Zarazi dragged him to his feet. “Do you understand me?” The man nodded. “Who is the commanding officer?” He did not respond. Zarazi pulled a long knife from his belt, turned the interpreter, and raised the blade to his throat.
“Stop,” a voice said. Zarazi looked around as one of the officers kneeling right beside the interpreter got to his feet, his bare hands still on top of his helmet. “I am Major Dermot O’Rourke, Republic of Ireland, commander of this detachment. We are on a peaceful mission on behalf of the United Nations Afghan Relief and Rehabilitation Council.”
After the interpreter translated, Zarazi said, “You are spies for the Northern Alliance and their wild dogs from the United States of America, invading territory claimed by his holiness Mullah Mohammad Omar and his sword of vengeance, General Takhir Yoldashev.”
“We are not spies,” O’Rourke said. “We are here to set up a cellular phone and radio-relay site, that’s all.”
“You are spies, and you will all be executed according to the laws of Islam and under the orders of General Yoldashev,” Zarazi said. “You—”
Just then Zarazi’s lieutenant came running up to him. “Wakil, there’s trouble,” Turabi said. He ran past Zarazi and over to O’Rourke, yanked his beret from his head and stripped off his jacket, searching him. Moments later he pulled a small black box on a wire out of the back of the man’s battle-dress uniform jacket.
“What is it, Jala?” Zarazi asked.
“Our communications officer picked up some kind of high-frequency transponder that was just activated,” Turabi said. “It looks like a sort of radio beacon. He must’ve set it off when the convoy was attacked.”
“A trouble signal?” Zarazi asked. “We’ve detected no other forces in this area. And a helicopter patrol would take hours to come from Andkhvoy or Mazar-e-Sharif. What good would it do…?”
“An air attack — with a jet already in the area, covering the convoy,” Turabi said. “That’s why our intelligence was so detailed and why this convoy was so poorly protected — it’s being covered from the air. It might even be one of those American Predators, the unmanned little aircraft that can fire Maverick missiles. They could be starting their attack right now.”
Zarazi looked at the officer in puzzlement — and then his eyes grew wide and his mouth dropped open. “Get the men ready to get out of this area and take cover.” He stepped over to O’Rourke. “Who is watching us? What is happening?”
“I’d advise you to surrender, Captain,” O’Rourke said. “Just lay down your weapons, put your hands in the air, and kneel down. They won’t attack if you surrender.”
“Who are ‘they’? What are they?”
“There’s no time for questions, Captain. Surrender right now.”
“Bastard! Unholy bastard!” Zarazi pulled his sidearm and shot O’Rourke in the forehead, killing him instantly.
Several of his men had started unloading crates and removing tarps from pallets in the back of the supply trucks. “Run for your lives! Get away from those trucks! Run!”
Four hundred miles away, orbiting at twenty-eight thousand feet fifty miles south of the Pakistani coastline over the Arabian Sea, an EB-1C Vampire orbited lazily, watching and listening. The EB-1C was a U.S. Air Force B-1
B Lancer long-range bomber, built in the mid-eighties, but it had been upgraded and modified so much since then that its builders would probably never recognize it now. But as incredible as the Vampire was, the aircraft it controlled were even more amazing — in fact, they represented Patrick McLanahan’s future of aerial combat.
“Oh, my God, they killed Major O’Rourke,” U.S. Air Force Major General Patrick McLanahan said in disbelief. He studied the high-resolution digital video display on a large, multifunction “supercockpit” monitor before him. “That bastard! He was unarmed! He surrendered….” He closed his eyes for a moment, hoping the image he saw would go away. When it didn’t, his hate bubbled up past the boiling point. “I count about a hundred men, about two dozen Toyota pickups off away from the road. Stand by to attack.”
His aircraft commander, U.S. Air National Guard Brigadier General Rebecca Furness, squirmed restlessly in her seat. “Let’s get busy and nail those suckers, sir,” she spat.
The images Patrick and Rebecca were watching were coming from a StealthHawk Unmanned Combat Air Vehicle, or UCAV. It had been launched several hours earlier from the EB-1C Vampire’s forward bomb bay and had been scanning the area around the United Nations truck convoy with its infrared sensors and high-resolution digital cameras. The StealthHawk resembled a big, wide, fat surfboard, its lifting-body fuselage slightly triangular in profile. There was a large air inlet, mounted atop the fuselage to lower its radar cross-section, for the aircraft’s single turbofan engine. It had no wings — the StealthHawk had a special flight-control system called a “mission-adaptive lifting-body skin” that actually used computers and tiny microhydraulic actuators to change the outer skin on the fuselage to increase or decrease lift as necessary. The EB-1C could carry three StealthHawks in its bomb bays, one in the forward bomb bay and two in the center. Each StealthHawk could carry a payload of five hundred pounds, along with enough fuel for several hours of flight.
Patrick touched a control button and spoke, “StealthHawk, commit attack,” and the fight was under way. Orbiting at ten thousand feet over the truck convoy was a second StealthHawk, launched from the EB-1C’s center bomb bay. Instead of sensors this one carried weapons — six AGM-211 “mini-Mavericks,” hundred-pound, short-range, precision-guided attack missiles.
“Commit StealthHawk attack, stop attack,” the computer responded. When Patrick did not countermand the order, the computer added, “StealthHawk engaging.”
“Excellent,” Patrick said. “StealthHawk reporting code one so far.”
“Then that would be a first for one of Masters’s gadgets,” Furness said dryly. Rebecca Furness was the wing commander of the one and only EB-1 Vampire squadron in the world, the 111th Bombardment Wing of the Nevada Air National Guard based at Battle Mountain Air National Guard Base. Although the Vampire bomber had been used in several conflicts and skirmishes around the world in recent years, from Korea to Russia to Libya, it was still considered experimental, and therefore the aircraft’s designer, Dr. Jon Masters, worked closely with Furness’s unit to make improvements and fixes to the state-of-the-art weapon system to get it ready for initial operational capability.
But Jon Masters, a Ph.D. since the age of thirteen and a world-class aeronautical and space engineer, was also a world-class pain in the ass — not exactly a people-friendly person. Rebecca’s job was hard enough — standing up a new unit with an experimental high-tech bomber at a newly constructed air base in the middle of nowhere in north-central Nevada — without the nerdy and conceited Dr. Masters disrupting her life.
Although Patrick received the sensor data from the StealthHawk on the supercockpit display in the Vampire bomber, the StealthHawk had already identified most of the vehicles in the target area and had presented its target priority list to Patrick continuously during its surveillance. “The StealthHawk detected a twenty-three-millimeter antiaircraft gun on one of the Toyota pickups,” Patrick said. “That’s the first target.”
Even Rebecca had to be impressed with the StealthHawk system’s target-detection and classification capabilities — she was accustomed to dropping bombs on a group of vehicles or an entire area, not selecting just one vehicle out of many similar vehicles for attack.
“I count ten vehicles total in the target area — no, make that twelve. Two have already bugged out.”
“What’s it waiting for? Get it in there, and let’s make some scrap metal.”
“It’s already on the job,” Patrick said. At that moment the StealthHawk released a single mini-Mav missile from its internal bomb bay. The missile fell away from the StealthHawk, gliding toward its target while it adjusted its track with lead-computing cues and wind-drift-correction information datalinked from the Vampire’s attack computer. When about a mile from its quarry, the missile’s small rocket motor fired, and the missile covered the last seven thousand feet of its attack run in less than two seconds. The mini-Mav’s warhead was twenty-eight pounds of thermium-nitrate-energized high explosive, which had the power of ten times its weight in TNT. The truck and its six occupants disappeared in a cloud of dust, smoke, and yellow-red explosions.
The StealthHawk’s laser radar remained locked on to the target for postattack analysis, but from the large secondary explosions and size of the smoke and fire clouds surrounding the target, it became clear only seconds later that the truck was toast. “Target appears to be destroyed,” Patrick said.
“Damn, I’ll say,” Rebecca breathed as she watched the last moments of the StealthHawk’s bomb-damage assessment on Patrick’s multifunction display. She had a lot of experience with the thermium-nitrate explosives and knew that that same mini-Mav missile could take out a main battle tank—“overkill” was a gross understatement when describing a thermium-nitrate warhead hitting a little Toyota pickup. “Pretty awesome weapon.”
“StealthHawk engaging the second pickup,” Patrick said. “Missile two away….”
The StealthHawk leveled off two thousand feet above the ground and headed for its second target, a column of two Toyota pickups filled with guerrilla soldiers. This time the occupants saw it coming. “Split up! Split up!” Zarazi screamed. He raised his AK-74 rifle and opened fire, and the other five men in the back of the pickup opened fire as well.
It was like looking down the barrel of a gun just before the trigger was pulled — and then realizing the barrel was pulled away right at the very last second. Moments after Zarazi’s truck veered away, the first truck disappeared under a tremendous explosion. Zarazi and the guerrillas in the second pickup saw the other pickup emerge from the cloud of flame and smoke looking as if the truck had been blasted apart by a giant shotgun, set afire, and then tossed across the ground. “Allah, have mercy,” Zarazi muttered. “Allah, get us out of this, and I promise I will avenge myself on the infidels that send these demon robot planes to kill your faithful servants — I swear it!”
* * *
“Oh, baby!” Patrick exclaimed. The mini-Mav’s infrared sensor clearly showed the second pickup truck and its terrified occupants as the missile homed in. At least six automatic rifles were firing at both the mini-Mav and the second StealthHawk, but it was too late. He switched to the first StealthHawk’s imaging-infrared camera as the mini-Mav missile hit, and its picture disappeared. Tires, engine, fuel tank, ammunition, and bodies exploded in perfect unison, and the truck cartwheeled in a cloud of fire across the wasteland. “Got the sucker!”
“Got one more truck trying to get away!” Furness exclaimed. “He knows we’re on his tail, and he’s hauling ass.”
“Don’t worry, the StealthHawk has lots of ammo and fuel,” Patrick said. “That third truck is toast.” Patrick entered commands to launch a third mini-Maverick…
But instead of the missile’s releasing and gliding to its target, the StealthHawk UCAV itself started to descend. “Check altitude… altitude two thousand… check altitude, altitude two thousand… Shit, I think I lost contact with the UCAV.”
“Well, at least we get a ringside
seat for the impact,” Rebecca said. But the unmanned air vehicle didn’t make impact — instead it leveled out at two hundred feet aboveground, clearly in view of the Taliban fighters below, and began flying westward. “Okay, General, where in hell is it going?” Rebecca asked.
“Damned if I know,” Patrick replied. “But it’ll run out of fuel in forty minutes.”
“Another one bites the dust.”
“But it might not bite the dust. It might make a nice soft landing in the desert,” Patrick said worriedly. “And if it does…”
“Then those Taliban goons or anyone else who gets their hands on it will have themselves the latest in American UCAV technology,” Rebecca said. “In forty minutes it’ll be halfway to the Persian Gulf. Can’t you self-destruct it?”
“I have no control over it at all,” Patrick said. He thought for a moment; then: “Follow it.”
“What?”
“Maybe if we can get closer to it, it’ll respond to our direct datalink signals.” He spoke commands into the computer, and the heading bug on Rebecca’s multifunction display swung westward. “There’s your heading bug. Center up.”
“No way, General,” Rebecca said. “That’ll take us over… hell, General, that heading takes us over Iran!”
“We’ll stay in the mountains — fly some terrain-avoidance altitudes,” Patrick said. “We’ve got to cut off that UCAV before we lose it.”
“We’re not authorized to fly over Pakistan, and we’re sure as hell not going to overfly Iran,” Furness repeated. Because the United States had had to take the “war on terror” into its former ally, Pakistan, to hunt down the last remaining Taliban and Al Qaeda terrorist cells, a rift had developed between the two nations. Pakistan now prohibited overflights by any military aircraft, and it regarded any military combat aircraft flying over Afghanistan as hostile.
Despite this ban, President Thomas Thorn had authorized McLanahan to launch a StealthHawk unmanned aircraft to patrol Afghanistan, even though it obviously had to overfly Pakistan to reach its patrol area. One or two unmanned aircraft flying over a remote part of Pakistan were not a threat — at least that would be the Americans’ argument, if the stealthy UCAVs were ever discovered.
