Stephen Coonts - Jake Grafton 5 - Red Horseman

by Red Horseman (lit)

  "If he has trained Russian technicians, I think he can shoot the missiles on launchers any time. At best, within hours. But he probably only has two or three missiles on their Russian Army launchers. The launchers were just too bulky and heavy to transport. He took as many missiles as he could, probably intending to put them on launchers he zdready has. And he took warheads, which are small and could be loaded quickly onto his planes. I suspect that he's playing for time in order to load the missiles he stole on old Scud launchers and adapt the warheads for use on his inissiles." Colonel Rheinhart agreed. "If he has the people and the proper tools, he can begin placing nuclear warheads on theScuds in a few days, arm perhaps thirty Scuds in ten days or so. Five or six ready-to-shoot weapons are not enough for a war." The Italian and Frenchman nodded at this assessment.

  Jake Grafton wasn't so sure. A lunatic might start a war even if he had only one bullet.

  As Jake Grafton stared at Saddam's image on the monitor, he reviewed what he knew about the Iraqi dictator.

  Born poor, poor as only an Arab can be, in a squalid village a hundred miles north of Baghdad, he went to live with an uncle in the capital at the age of ten, about 1947. His uncle was the author of a screed entitled Three Things That God Should Not Have Created: Persians, Jews, and Flies. This tract became young Saddam's Mein Kampf. Within months, according to his official biography, he killed his first man.

  When he was twenty, the young thug joined the Iraqi Baath party, where he became a triggerman disposing of the party's enemies, of whom there were many.

  One of the people he murdered was his brother-in-law.

  Two years later, in 1959, he bungled an assassination attempt aimed at the current Iraqi dictator, General Abdul Kassem, and was shot by Kassem's guards. Somehow he escaped and fled to Egypt.

  In 1963 the Baath party successfully murdered Kassem and took power.

  Saddam returned to Iraq and ended up in prison nine months later when the Baathists were overthrown by an arm junta.

  When the Baathists seized power again in 1968, Saddam was there in the councils of power. In a stunning parallel to the career of Josef Stalin, he took control of the secret police and systematically set out to murder everyone he could not control, thereby becoming the real ruler of Iraq.

  Before long he took personal control of the nation's foreign policy. The nominal president of the country soldiered on under Saddam's orders until 1979, when he retired, thereby becoming the first ruler of Iraq not to die in office within the memory of living men. Saddam anointed himself dictator and gave himself a new title, The Awesome. Perhaps it loses something in translation.

  Yet Saddam never forgot how he got to the top, never lost touch with his roots. New title and all, he still liked to use a pistol to personally execute cabinet officers, generals, and relatives who had the temerity to argue with him or whom he suspected of harboring a nascent seed of disloyalty.

  From any possible viewpoint, Jake Grafton thought, Saddam appeared as the master thug, a self-centered man without conscience or remorse capable of any crime. In other words, a perfect dictator.

  Oh, he had screved"up badly a time or " two-the eight-year war with Iran cost Iraq a hundred thousand lives and $70 billion it didn't have, and the little fracas over Kuwait didn't turn out quite the way Saddam thought it would.

  But the man wasn't a quitter. After those debacles he had ruthlessly shot, gassed and starved his domestic enemies into oblivion. Iraq was still his: he was hanging tough, arming himself with nuclear weapons.

  Then he would find who still wanted to play the game and who was willing to kneel at his throne.

  Saddam's tragedy was that he ruled such a small corner of the world. If only he could have had a stage the size of Germany or Russia!

  A naive person might wonder why the civilized nations of the earth continued to deal with miserable vermin like Saddam, but Jake Grafton didn't.

  Realpolitik kept him alive. He was part and parcel of the forces in dynamic tension that kept the Middle East from exploding into refigious and race war. And Iraq had oil.

  Jake wondered if now, finally, the fearful Politicians of the "civilized nations" had had enough. He was still pondering that question when he was caHave " ed into a room with General Frank Loy, the UN commander.

  General Loy was talking on the satellite link. He handed the telephonelike handset to Jake., "Rear Admiral Grafton, sir, "Hayden Land. Glad you arrived." "I just watched Saddam on the tube." "Yeah. They're in a dither here. They're pissed that you gave the story to the Post and I had to admit I authorized it. So they're peeved at me. If I weren't black they would have fired me." He indulged himself in an expletive.

  "Anyway, Saddam isn't cooperating. He denied he has nukes, so now the fact that there is no independent confirmation has them in a sweat." "So no air strike?" "No air strike," Land said wearily.

  "Saddam has put his forces on alert," Jake said. "It'll take four or five days to bring them up to full alert, so whatever we're going to do we must do quickly. Every hour that goes by is going to cost us lives." "I know that," Land said.

  "The German expert thinks that Saddam could have the stolen missiles ready to launch in hours, if they aren't ready to go now." Land didn't respond. In a moment he said, "These people here are trying to figure out a way to blame this mess on George Bush. He had his chance to stomp this cockroach and didn't, so now they have to dirty their shoes with it." "Yessir. Should Yocke do another story?" "Your staff reporter? No. Not right now. They would lock me out of the White House if that happened.

  Soooo... I want you to plan an assault on that airfield. Figure out what it will take, when you can do it, what it will cost." Jake knew that when Hayden Land talked cost, he wasn't talking dollars: he was talking lives. "Then call me back. If you and Loy think an assault is feasible, my idea is for you to take some network camera teams along. If we treated the world to a live broadcast showing the Russian missiles and warheads that Saddam says he doesn't have, these people here will be off the hook. Then you can fly the weapons out.

  "We try to fly the weapons out, General, this is going to be a big operation and damned risky." "I know that. But these people inside the Beltway don't have the balls to take any flak from the Sierra Club about nuclear pollution. They'd rather take U.s. casualties than Iraqi casualties. It's not that they're callous, it's just the fact that they got in with a plurality of the votes.

  We're dealing with a president that sixty percent of the American people didn't want. He knows it, his staff knows it-and they won't risk alienating the support they do have. That's political reality. So plan for an airlift." "Don't we have a carrier battle group in the Gulf of Oman? If she ran west through the Strait of Hormuz into the Persian Gulf that would help." "We'll send her in. Now let me talk to Loy again." Jake passed the handset to General Loy and walked out of the room.

  "They're in Samarra," The air intelligence staff officer said it positively.

  Jake Grafton needed to be sold. "A fifty-fifty chance, sixty-forty, what?" "No, sir. They're there. We saw the planes come in from Russia and nothing big enough to transport a missile has left. We've got round-the-clock real-time satellite surveillance. They're there." "The n-dssiles?" "The missiles are there, yessir." "And the warheads?" "I don't know," the staff officer said, and shook his head. "They're so small..." "Have they been moving Scuds around?" "No. We would have seen that. They've tried to keep them under cover since the war. We know where some of them are, but certainly not all." "Let me see if I have this right: the Russian missiles are in Samarra, but we only know where some of the Scuds are. If the Iraqis are mating nuclear warheads to the Scuds, they must have taken the warheads to the missiles, because they haven't brought the missiles to Samarra." "Yessir." "Then we're fucked. "Yes, sir. That's a very apt description. I couldn't say it any better myself." "Find the Scuds." "Sir, we've been trying to do that for eighteen months." "Have the Iraqis taken warheads to the sites of the Scuds we know about?" "I don't know, sir. We've
been trying-was "You're not trying hard enough," Jake Grafton said coldly. "Track every vehicle leaving the Samarra base and see where it goes. If the vehicle visits the site of a known Scud, you've just found one." Jake lowered his voice.

  "They tell me you people are the very best. Your equipment is the best.

  Find those warheads. I don't care what you have to do, but find them.

  Now!" A modern joint military operation is extraordinarily complex and requires extensive planning. The myriad of details cannot be worked out in hours, not even by competent, experienced professionals. Days, even weeks, go into the planning of a successful joint operation.

  Jake Grafton was demanding this one be put together and be ready to launch in eighteen hours, by 20:00 local time tomorrow. He would have gone sooner, even in daylight, if the planning could have been completed, but even he had to admit there was no way. As it was there would be no time for a run-through with the commanders involved, no time to sort things out before the starting gun fired, so there were going to be snafus-people getting in one another's way, people who didn't go at all, busted equipment, too many people at one place, too few at others, things that had to happen but didn't... He expected all that. But it could get worse-there could be good guys shooting at good guys. He and the troops would have to live with it.

  Or die with it. Being Jake Grafton, he didn't think much about the dying part, except to ensure that the medical support would be there, all that could be fitted in.

  Fortunately General Loy named a competent professional to plan and command the operation, Major General Daniel Serkin, a whipcord-tough soldier with only one pace-fast.

  Jake Grafton stood and watched, walked the floor and listened to the planners, perused op orders, conferred repeatedly with General Serkin.

  And worried that while the allies fretted over call signs and radio frequencies Saddam would start spraying nuclear warheads at his enemies.

  At dawn he called General Land and gave him a preliminary overview. The operation would start with a navy SEAL team delayed parachute drop from thirty thousand feet. Chutes would open under two thousand feet. The team would secure the airport perimeter, wipe out antiaircraft resistance and machine gun emplacements. A battalion from the 101/ Airborne Division (air Assault) would then arrive in helicopters escorted by electronic warfare aircraft-Wild Weasels-and fighters, with helicopter gunships providing close air support. The idea was to quickly overpower any resistance, make the airfield safe for transports.

  These would come in with their own aerial escort, which would orbit overhead and prevent Iraqi forces from counterattacking. With all the Russian weapons aboard, the transports would leave and the American and allied troops would pull out under air cover. If everything went according to plan, the raid would be over before the Iraqis could bring overwhelming military power to bear.

  Fortunately Saddam Hussein seemed to be expecting an air strike. The radars in the Baghdad and Samarra area were almost constantly on the air and mobile antiaircraft guns were moving into the area. But not troops.

  Toad Tarkington suggested a name for this operation, Operation Appointment. Jake told him the name lacked pizzazz, but he too had read John O'Hara so he recommended the name to General Land, who accepted it without comment.

  "So it all depends on how deep the Iraqi forces are at the airfield?" Land said finally, when Jake was finished.

  "Yessir. Intelligence says we'll be facing a battalion of Republican Guard." "Armor?" "Yessir. We have a choice-try to wipe Out the tanks with Apaches prior to the SEAL drop, or drop the SEALS and try to achieve surprise, then bring in the Apaches." "Has General Serkin made a decision?" "Not yet." "Found the Scuds?" "Not yet, Sir." "What if you don't find them?" "We'll go anyway." "And the antiaircraft defenses?" comWe'll use missiles, chaff, and jamming, then A-6's and A-10's." "Call me back later." Jake went to find a place to sleep. One office had a couch. He was pulling off his shoes when Toad Tarkington tracked him down. "Here's a message from Ambassador Lancaster in Moscow, for your eyes only." Jake tore open the envelope. Herb Tenney was dead. In his sleep. re aspirin, but Half the pills Jake put in Herb's mouth we some of them were part of the binary cocktail. Perhaps I ferb already had the other half in his system. Damn! Or someone just poisoned him.

  Jake replaced the message in the envelope and passed it back to Toad.

  "Herb Tenney died in his sleep." Toad snorted. "His tough luck." Jake balled his fist and started to pound his thigh, then opened his hand and ran it through his hair. "I am really sick of this mess." "I know," Toad said. "I know." "Turn the lights out and close the door. Let me sleep for three hours." "Yessir." "And question General Yakolev. Find out if they shot down that Russian helicopter pilot, Vasily Lutkin." "CAG, you aren't responsible for that. Yakolev is. You can't-was "Just do it, Toad." "Aye aye, sir." He lay in the darkness trying to relax. Too many details ran through his mind, too many questions were still unanswered.

  Saddam Hussein was down to his last trick, but it was a dilly this time.

  He had tried to take the Iranian oil fields and lost, tried to take Kuwait and found out that a secondor third-rate military power could not win on a modern conventional battlefield. So now he was playing the nuclear card. And it would be a winner unless allied forces arrived in time.

  In time.

  What was happening in Washington?

  When Toad woke Jake up, he had a message. "The president said G.

  You're to call General Land." For some reason he didn't quite understand, Jake felt refreshed and relaxed after his nap. He followed Toad to the corn center and sat drinking coffee while the technicians placed the call to Washington.

  Hayden Land's voice had a note of optimism this morning, actually midnight or after in Washington. "The White House crowd finally faced up to the fact they have no choice." No choice! The words echoed in Jake's mind.

  It's almost as if the grand smashup is preordained, he thought.

  "Where are the Scud missiles?" "They aren't moving on the roads, sir," the air intelligence officer told Jake Grafton. "And we can't find any vehicles leaving the Samarra base that go to any of the Scud sites we know about.

  None. We've used computers to analyze satellite imagery and side-looking radar to track their vehicles. We've come up dry." "Maybe most of the warheads are still at the Samarra base." "Reluctantly, I come to that conclusion too, Admiral." It is never safe to assume that your opponent is doing what you want him to do. Jake Grafton was well aware of that pitfall, and yet. -- "Perhaps," he murmured, "Saddam is having his trouble adapting the warheads to the missiles." "It's possible," Colonel Rheinhart agreed. "The Iraqis reduced the payload capability of their missiles several years ago in order to carry more fuel." "So where is Saddam?" Jake asked the intelligence staff.

  "He rode out the Gulf War in '91 in a camping trailer that moved randomly around Baghdad.

  We told the press we knew where all the command and control facilities were, which was a serious stretcher. Then we blew up a few of them with smart bombs and he concluded we were telling the truth." con"And now?" "Well, we've refined our satellite capability since the Gulf War. We have side-looking radar in the air that tracks moving vehicles so that we can find Scud sites. Now we do have all the command and control facilities spotted and we can follow Saddam for days at a time.

  Unfortunately, right now we seem to have lost track of him." "Could he be at the Samarra base?" Jake asked.

  "Sir, he could be anywhere." General Loy, Major General Serkin, and Jake Grafton reviewed the final plan together.

  They set H-Hour for 24:00 this night. Serkin said he didn't think they could go sooner, and with yet another glance at his watch Jake acquiesced.

  Then he went to find Toad. "Did you get anything out of Yakolev?" "He refused to say a word. When he heard the question he looked at me like I was crazy." Jake Grafton sighed. "I'm jumping tonight with the SEAL'S," he said after a bit. "I want you to bring the nuclear weapons experts in on choppers.


  Get chopper transport for Jack Yocke and a network camera team and as many other print and television reporters as you can cram in.

  Have Captain McElroy and the marines bring our two Russian friends and Spiro Dalworth. Bring Colonel Rheinhart, Jocko West and the other international observers.

  You're in charge of that operation." "No, sir. I'm going with you." Jake Grafton did a double take. "Toad, I want you to get the press and the international people there.

  This is the key to the whole deal." "Rita can handle it, CAG. I'm going with you." "Maybe I didn't make myself clear, Commander. You- "CAG, you can court-martial me if you like. But I'm going with you to watch your back. You are the key to this operation and if you get zapped, the rest of us are in big fucking trouble. I'd never forgive myself if that happened and Rita wouldn't forgive me either. Now that's that." "Have you ever made a delayed parachute drop?" "I've done as many as you have, sir." "Okay, smart-ass. We'll hold hands all the way down." Jack Yocke had a request of his own when Toad told him he was going in on a chopper with Rita. "I'd like to go with you and the admiral." "Yeah, I bet you would," Toad said. "Forget it, pencil pilot. We'll give you a window seat on the executive helicopter if you promise not to pee your pants." "No, I want to jump with you guys. It'll be a great story." "You don't seem to understand, Jack. We'll be the first guys in. This is a twenty-eight-thousand-foot free fall at night into a concentration of enemy troops who are probably on full alert. There'll be bullets flying around, helicopter gunships blasting tanks, the whole greasy enchilada. Get serious! Your mother wouldn't even let you play with a cap pistol when you were a kid." "Let me ask the admiral." Grafton listened to Yocke state his case, gave Toad an evil glance, and said, "Sure you can come. Why not? The more the merrier." They started sweating during the suiting up at 20:00, after dinner in the main cafeteria. Camo clothing, insulated one piece jumpsuit, jump boots, helmet, silenced submachine gun, ammo, knife, radio, canteen, flak vest-"The bullets will bounce off like you're fucking Superman"-parachute harness, parachutes, oxygen mask, oxygen supply system, gloves, jump goggles, night vision goggles for on the ground.