Overture to Disaster (Post Cold War Political Thriller Trilogy Book 3)

by Chester D. Campbell

  The KGB men fired silenced pistols, instantly dropping the Sergeant and the two soldiers. Shumakov looked up in surprise at the sound of the General's voice. What he saw stunned him like a chilling blast of Siberian air. The KGB major had drawn a silenced pistol. He fired it at point blank range before the Captain could utter a sound. He hardly had time to notice that the gun was an old Tokarev, which had long since been replaced by the 9mm Makarov that hung from his belt. The Tokarev fired 7.62mm cartridges similar to many of the rounds stacked in boxes across the way. The Captain slumped to the dirt floor and lay motionless, bright red blood oozing from the neat round hole that appeared in his forehead.

  "Viktor," the General ordered, "get the sentry."

  The man nearest the front door jerked it open and called to the guard, "The Captain wants you inside."

  The soldier spun in alarm and rushed through the doorway. As he did, another silenced round spit from a Tokarev. His rifle fell to the floor as he toppled against the counter.

  "Quickly," snapped the General, "load these cases into the truck and let's get out of here."

  While others began to lift the heavy boxes containing the chemical agents and toxins—they left behind one mortar shell and one canister to provide evidence that the weapons were still there—the major placed three small incendiary devices connected to tiny radio-controlled detonators at strategic spots among the stacks of ammunition. The explosion they set off would start a chain reaction of detonating shells that should reduce the building to a scrap heap. In the unlikely event any of the bodies remained recognizable, it would be assumed they had been felled by the exploding ammunition.

  The driver out front reported all was clear. They loaded the weapons into the back of the truck and shut off the signal generator that had jammed the radio inside the building. The telephone wire had been snipped some distance down the road. The two vehicles moved quickly back toward the guard post. General Malmudov returned the sentry's salute, and they headed out the road.

  As soon as the Chaika dropped over the first hill, the General pressed a button on the small radio transmitter in his lap. The roaring blast they heard a moment later signalled mission accomplished.

  Malmudov smiled. The operation had been a total success. The weapons they had acquired, in complete secrecy, possessed enormous potential. People in the West worried constantly about nuclear arms. But they were mostly destructive of "things." Structures could easily be rebuilt. Nuclear radiation's effects took years to play out.

  Nerve gas, on the other hand, was a silent, almost instant killer. A direct hit was unnecessary. They only needed to be delivered close. Spread by a modest breeze in the vicinity of a high concentration of people, these weapons could produce more than a hundred thousand casualties. Anyone unafraid to use them, and innovative enough to assure that retaliation would be unlikely, could wield tremendous power.

  Washington , D.C.

  2

  General Philip Ross Patton was not a charismatic leader like H. Norman Schwarzkopf, the popular commander of Desert Storm. He was a tough, critical, often-abrasive man. His maxim, with a little more finality than the sneaker motto, was "Just get it done!" Not noted for his reticence, he normally came to a meeting brimming with caustic comments and questions. But though not loved, he was effective, and he didn't hesitate to let anyone within earshot know about it. He had raised horn-blowing to an art form.

  Even the President, who had met with him on only a few occasions, noticed that General Patton was uncharacteristically quiet, almost brooding, that morning during the critical National Security Council meeting at the White House. It was the start of the final countdown to Operation Easy Street. The Secretary of Defense, a balding former congressman who had cut his legislative teeth on knotty issues of national security, wondered if the General was having second thoughts about the mission. But when it came his turn, the Air Force Chief of Staff gave his unequivocal support to the plan. Knowing that despite his celebrated brusqueness, Patton had a typical commander's compassion for the people who faced the bullets, everyone from the President on down dismissed his curious mood as the result of an overabundance of concern for the men who would be putting their lives on the line.

  They were wrong.

  After the meeting, the General's driver headed down Pennsylvania Avenue toward the Hart Senate Office Building, newest and most grandiose of the congressional Taj Mahals that faced the legislative wings of the Capitol. Patton had been invited to lunch on The Hill with his chief ally in the battle to save the beleaguered B-2 stealth bomber.

  A modestly tall man with a pleasant though chiseled face, distinguished by the wisps of graying hair that framed it, Patton was the son of a celebrated colonel who had been killed when his B-26 was shot down in Korea. He had easily won an appointment to the first class of cadets at the Air Force Academy. Since then he had chased his personal dream with the tenacity of a greyhound half a stride back of the mechanical bunny. At fifty-seven, he could see the finish line just ahead and he was determined to reach it no matter what.

  Wing Patton—a nickname bequeathed by a couple of Air Force Academy classmates to distinguish him from the other General Patton, the Army's George S. of World War II fame—was recognized as a brilliant strategist and a skilled tactician, but he had not gained his present status by inspiring personal loyalty among his colleagues. Those who had stood in his way could show the heel marks he had inflicted as he ran roughshod over them. As it turned out, the shrewdest move he ever made was when, as a young B-52 pilot, he had married the daughter of Army General Fredrick Parker Strong. Now a former Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff and former Secretary of State, Strong was eighty and still a formidable figure on the Washington scene. It was widely and correctly rumored that the old man had promised Wing the chairmanship of the Joint Chiefs if he kept his nose clean.

  At the Hart Building, General Patton strode toward the corner office of Senator Ev Weesner of Illinois, ranking minority member on the Armed Services Committee. The doors of each office suite carried the name and state of its occupant. About halfway down the long corridor, he spotted a name that sent his blood pressure rocketing. Senator Tyler Thrailkill of Pennsylvania, the man whose call last night had triggered his current apprehension.

  A slippery, scheming political operator, Thrailkill had literally inherited his seat. His father had arranged the appointment with the governor before stepping down after twenty-four years in the Senate. Thrailkill was the B-2's most vocal and strident opponent. Wing could still hear the goading voice ringing in his ear the previous night.

  Patton had sat in his study, deep into a book on General H. H. "Hap" Arnold, wartime chief of the Army Air Forces, when the phone rang. The shrill sound in the dark, silent house startled him. It was after eleven o'clock. It was not the distinctive tone of the red phone, the direct line to the Pentagon, so he knew it was the commercial line. Who would be calling at this hour? He thought of the baby. Had something happened to him? Victoria was in Richmond doting over their three-week-old grandson. The tyke's father was a CPA, of all things. A number cruncher. Hopefully the boy would grow up to carry on the family military tradition.

  "Patton," he barked into the phone.

  "Good evening, General Patton," said the syrupy voice of Senator Thrailkill. "I hope I'm not disturbing anything."

  "I had just gotten to sleep," the General lied, hoping it might strike a remorseful chord.

  It didn't.

  "I thought you should know that one of my contacts has turned up something quite interesting, General."

  "It should be terribly interesting to warrant rousting me out of bed, Senator."

  "Well, it isn't exactly a bedtime story."

  "Then what is it?" With most senators, he would use the respectful term "sir." Not with Thrailkill. He detested everything about the man, from the way he dressed to the way he talked to the way he combed his hair. Thrailkill was one of those people who used your name in every breath in an attempt to
impress you. To Patton it sounded like a crutch to prop up a faulty memory.

  "It seems, Philip, that there is a large block of stock in Western Aircraft Corporation," said the senator, dragging his words out for dramatic effect, "registered in the name of the WP Retirement Trust."

  Patton hated him for so casually using his first name, as if they were friends. But he was much more disturbed by the message. Western Aircraft was the prime contractor for the Air Force's XTF–Experimental Tactical Fighter. The company stood to make billions if the design won final approval and was put into production. Wing had purchased the stock through the trust at a sizeable discount. It was a blatant conflict of interest, of course, but the type of insider deal he had learned from his father-in-law's cronies. "Don't just depend on your Air Force pension," General Strong had warned.

  Wing fought to keep his voice calm, attempting to sound disinterested. "Is that supposed to mean something to me?"

  "'WP' could very well stand for Wing Patton, don't you think?"

  "No, I don't," Patton snapped. "Why should you?"

  "Simple, Philip. I understand the trustee is Walker Holland, your attorney."

  The air conditioner was working well, but the General found that he was beginning to sweat. This simply could not be happening. "It sounds like someone has been leading you astray, Senator. I know nothing about this."

  "Well, General Patton, I should know a good deal more about it after talking to my source tomorrow. Just thought you'd like to sleep on it. I'm a reasonable man. All you need do is remove that exhorbitantly expensive stealth bomber from your funding request, and your little secret will remain our little secret." He paused for a moment. "Pity, a thing like this could wreck a man's career."

  As soon as he hung up, Patton called Walker Holland, who, it appeared, actually had already gone to bed. The lawyer's wife answered. By the time her husband came on the line, Wing's blood was pumping in overdrive.

  "I just had a call from Senator Thrailkill," he said, breathing heavily. "The bastard knows about the WP Retirement Trust. You said it couldn't be traced to me."

  "Correction, General. I said it would be almost impossible to trace it to you."

  "Then how the hell did he—"

  "Slow down. Think a moment. Did he say they had traced it to you, or was he just on a fishing expedition?"

  Wing thought back to what Thrailkill had said. "Well, he didn't actually say they had traced it. Just that the WP looked like it could stand for Wing Patton. And that the trustee was my attorney."

  "He's speculating. I had a call this evening from an investigative reporter. He was no doubt Thrailkill's source. The reporter asked if the WP in the name of that trust meant Wing Patton. I told him I had a rule of neither confirming nor denying anything about any client. I also pointed out that I was forbidden to reveal anything about that particular trust by a privacy provision in the trust agreement."

  "Then it's true? There's no way they can trace it to me?"

  "If the trust were involved in litigation, a judge could order me to reveal the beneficiary. Other than that, you're pretty safe. The trust income is paid into a numbered account at a bank on the Isle of Man. The bank invests the money in mutual funds in Austria."

  "So what if Thrailkill calls again?" Wing asked.

  "Deny everything."

  Despite the lawyer's assurance, Patton did not sleep well. Which was as Thrailkill had intended.

  At Senator Weesner's office, the General was greeted by a fresh-faced young woman who looked all of twenty or twenty-one. Like most members of Congress, Weesner staffed his office largely with bright young people just out of college or on hiatus from the books.

  "The Senator is still tied up with a delegation from Chicago, General," the attractive blonde informed him with a friendly smile. "He said he would be with you as quickly as possible. Could I get you some coffee?"

  "No, thanks," Patton replied and took a seat in one of the plush leather chairs. He picked up a magazine but did not even notice the name on the cover. His thoughts had already drifted to the subject of the NSC meeting he had just finished, to the operation that would get under way this afternoon. Easy Street . He wondered who the hell had the gall to pick that name? Sending a Special Operations helicopter deep inside Iran to fly out a defecting official of the revolutionary Islamic government was not his idea of anything easy. It was not a recommendation he had made lightly, of course, nor one the Commander in Chief had approved without great soul-searching. Hovering in the background was the specter of President Carter's disastrous hostage rescue effort back in 1980. But the technology today was worlds ahead of that fateful era. The spec ops people had certified the mission's feasibility. What had undoubtedly tipped the balance in the Oval Office was the swelling media chorus. In the wake of his success in the Persian Gulf War, the President was under intense pressure to get the American hostages out of Lebanon.

  The possibilities for a diplomatic solution appeared to have been exhausted. Efforts by the United Nations Secretary-General and the Israelis had brought nothing from the Hezballah captors but tantalizing photos, videotapes and rumors. Had someone in the White House possessed a good reliable crystal ball, the subsequent tragedy could have been avoided. But dependable crystal balls had always been in short supply inside the Beltway. With the world in a state of unpredictable disarray, no one foresaw the course of events that would lead to the hostages' eventual release before Christmas.

  Word had come through a CIA contact that Mostafa Nazari, Iran's chief liaison with the Lebanese terrorists, wanted to defect to the U.S. He knew exactly where the hostages were being held. He had been the conduit for their captors' payoffs. In seeking to defect, he was acting out of the purest of motives, self-preservation. His brother had made the fatal error of speaking out against some of the excesses of the fundamentalists. A hardline mullah had ordered him put to death. When Nazari protested, he received a blunt warning that he could be silenced just as easily. It was obvious the time had come to bring down the curtain and quietly exit the stage.

  A presidential finding had authorized a clandestine mission to extricate Nazari and his family. The Iranian could furnish all the information needed to effect a hostage rescue, provided his defection could be kept secret for a reasonable length of time. That appeared quite possible through the plan that was devised. It had received the grudging approval of the Senate and House intelligence oversight chairmen.

  Mostafa Nazari was married to a Kurdish woman. He had arranged a long-delayed vacation trip to her remote hometown in the Zagros Mountains for late September. The location was made to order. American Special Forces personnel had provided the townspeople with life-saving aid in the wake of a deadly earthquake back in the sixties, during an era that found the U.S. Army operating there as guests of the late Shah. As a consequence, the mountain villagers had ignored the current government's "Great Satan" campaign against the U.S. and continued to remember the American soldiers with the fondness of a small town for its volunteer firefighters.

  A landing site had been selected near the town. In the past few days, a truck containing jet fuel had been stolen and hidden there. Refueling would be necessary for the MH-53J Pave Low III helicopter to retrace the route back to its entry point into Iran. The six-man crew, augmented by a Delta Force team led by a major who had been there as an Army corporal in 1963, would bring out Nazari, his wife and three children.

  Though the risks were indisputable, Wing Patton knew the operation had been carefully planned and rehearsed. The crew was the best and most experienced he had available. The Pave Low helicopter was strictly state of the art for this type of mission. Its AN/APQ-158 terrain-following and terrain-avoidance radar, plus the nose-mounted FLIR (forward-looking infrared) system, gave it the ability to fly right on the deck in total darkness. Using Navstar Global Positioning System satellites, the crew could plot the aircraft's position at any time within ten meters.

  Patton was comfortable with his end of Easy S
treet. The element of the unknown came from the Iranian end. How secure was Mostafa Nazari's network? No one knew. But the National Security Agency had its electronic ears tuned to the area and would alert the White House Situation Room to any indication that Iran had penetrated the operation. A secure signal via a FLTSATCOM (U.S. Navy Fleet Satellite Communications System) satellite would alert the Pave Low commander to any change in plans.

  Wing Patton's musings on Operation Easy Street were interrupted by the sounds of back-slapping and glad-handing as the delegation of eight well-dressed Chicago politicians, equally divided between blacks and whites, emerged from the senator's office. Like a horde of locusts, they were off to another congressional appointment in search of federal goodies. As he smilingly waved the last straggler out, Weesner turned to the General and beckoned him in.

  Patton took a seat in front of the large mahogany desk and waited in silence. Military protocal required the ranking officer to speak first, and a senator with his hands on the Pentagon purse strings easily outranked a four-star general. Patton noted that the gray-maned, heavy-browed senator, whose beak of a nose and hunched posture made him resemble some exotic bird of prey, was no longer smiling. After shuffling some papers on his desk, Ev Weesner looked up.

  "Next week's hearing will make us or break us, Philip," he said in a grave voice. In truth, his voice would have sounded grave singing "Happy Birthday" to Kermit the Frog. "As my rural constituents would say, we're in a heap of trouble."

  "Yes, sir. I know."

  "With the Soviets' empire crumbling all around them, my coalition is taking some heavy hits." His stable of Republican and Democratic hawks had helped build his reputation as one of the most skillful in the upper chamber at pulling military chestnuts out of the fire. But the pace of change was working against him. There was already talk of some yet-undefined commodity called the "peace dividend."