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

by Chester D. Campbell

  "My people have faith in you, Senator Weesner."

  That brought a thin smile to the leathery face. "I appreciate the thought. But I don't believe I'm the man to get the job done this time."

  Patton frowned. "Surely you're not giving up? The B-2 is the cornerstone of our strategic future."

  "No, I'm not giving up. And, yes, I agree with your assessment wholeheartedly. That's why we are going to have to depend on you to carry the day."

  "Me?"

  "Correct. Every man in the Congress respects what you did as commander of SAC. For years, you assured us there would be no surprise attack on the United States. And look at how your forces performed in Desert Storm. Your B-52's showed that strategic bombers have their tactical advantages as well. Let's face it, General. You're our boy. In this battle, your prestige is the biggest thing we have going for us."

  Wing smiled and nodded his head. Those were heady sentiments. He couldn't have said it better himself. "I'm flattered that you feel that way, Senator."

  "It isn't just me. I've canvassed all my key people and they agree." Weesner gave one of his famous smirks that endeared him to the TV interviewers. "Without you, the B-2 is dead, Philip. Don't do anything to stub your toe before that hearing."

  Kuwait

  3

  Colonel Warren Rodman sat across the table from his copilot and a short, muscular Army major and sipped slowly at the steaming cup of coffee provided by their Kuwaiti hosts. He had a bad feeling about this mission. Not for any logical reason. He had personally chosen the other five crew members. They were the best men at their jobs. He had been thoroughly briefed on every phase of the operation, except for the identity of the passengers who would be picked up. They were the responsibility of Major Mike Hardin, the Army Delta Force team leader.

  At first he had been concerned about the refueling plan. He had never heard of a spec ops mission that required refueling at the target. But it had been explained that this was only necessary to bring them back out via the same route they took in, which had been chosen for maximum secrecy. It would not compromise their safety. Should it be necessary to abort the mission, they had enough fuel to fly a direct route back to the Persian Gulf.

  So what was the problem? It was a vague uneasiness, a sense that something was not quite right with the equation, some ingredient missing from the recipe. He had felt it when he awoke that morning, and he hadn't been able to shake it.

  Captain Peter Schuler, his copilot, mistook his concerned look for a reaction to the coffee. He held up his cup. "It's better than that stuff they gave us at King Khalid Military City."

  They had just left the Saudi Arabian base a couple of hours ago. Roddy grinned. He didn't want his quirky mood infecting anyone else. "Right, Dutch," he said. "But it isn't like the coffee my mother taught me to make."

  When he was growing up, Roddy's mother always kept a simmering pot on the kitchen counter. He figured some of the brew must have seeped into his genes during her pregnancy. Fortunately, Tech Sergeant Barry Nickens, his flight engineer, was the Juan Valdez of the 39th Special Operations Wing and would be in charge of the coffee department during the mission.

  The room they sat in occupied one corner of a hangar away from the main part of the airfield, which was slowly being put back together after the devastation of the Iraqi invasion. The big chopper with its odd-looking bulges and six-bladed rotor was parked inside the hangar away from prying eyes. Nickens and the other enlisted crew members were checking and double-checking everything about it as they awaited takeoff time. The MH-53J was a long way from home. Assigned to the 21st Special Operations Squadron at the Royal Air Force Base in Woodbridge, England, it had been flown to Saudi Arabia where it was housed until Colonel Rodman and his crew arrived at noon today. The aircraft had been a familiar sight there earlier in the year.

  As his glib copilot launched a one-way conversation about the Gulf War with the tight-lipped Delta Force officer, Rodman sat back and sipped his coffee . Roddy had short, light brown hair and a full face with an easy smile. His new responsibilities hadn't provided much time for tennis, leaving him a man of average height and borderline overweight. He was happily married to an ex-beauty queen named Karen Hall. They were always the life of the party at the officers' club. After twenty years of marriage, they still found sex as exciting as the night they had first explored each other's bodies in a lake beside a deserted farmhouse back in Middle Tennessee, where Karen's father was a Methodist minister. Roddy had fathered two daughters, a pair of bright young beauties named Renee and Lila, now college students in Florida. And most importantly, he was doing what he loved best, flying. In point of fact, when it came to the MH-53J Pave Low III, nobody could do it better. Two months earlier, he had been assigned as operations officer of the 39th SOW at Rhein-Main Air Base in Germany.

  Sitting contemplatively in his dark green flying suit, Rodman studied Major Hardin, a small, compact man whose close-cropped black hair was hidden by a camouflage cap pulled down to his thick black eyebrows. A man who spoke fluent Farsi and had known Iran before Khomeini, the Major sat slumped in his chair.

  "Did you hear of something called Task Force Normandy?" Dutch Schuler asked him.

  Hardin gave a slight shake of his head. "I don't recall."

  "It was the operation that kicked off the air campaign. I flew with the Colonel in the lead Pave Low that night. We guided the Army Apaches in to knock out old Saddam's early-warning radars. That's why the bastard didn't know what had hit him when the blitz began."

  The Major nodded silently. Roddy suspected the random shapes and shades of color in his field uniform hid a lean, lithe body honed by constant exercise and training into a lethal weapon. He made an interesting contrast to Schuler.

  Dutch, whose slow drawl established his roots in the Deep South, was also an excellent physical specimen. The young captain maintained the muscles in his arms and legs at peak efficiency. But the type of hand-to-hand combat he was trained for involved a tightly-strung racket and a spinning ball. At thirty, he was pure terror on the tennis court. The first time they had played, Roddy realized he faced a guy who might have been a pro. After that humiliation, he learned Schuler had been ranked the No. 1 singles player in the NCAA his senior year in college. Dutch became his tennis mentor and eventually turned Rodman into a pretty fair player himself.

  Roddy looked across at Major Hardin. "That Task Force Normandy business was a little unusual. It was one of the few times the news people were given any info on a special operations mission. They didn't identify the aircrews."

  Hardin shrugged. "I'd heard of you well before Desert Storm, Colonel."

  Roddy looked up in surprise. "Where the hell did you hear anything about me?"

  "A lot of Army guys think Air Force people are a bunch of pampered prima donnas. Guys in my line of work take a different view. We have to depend on you to get us where we're going. And more important, to rescue our asses when we get in a jam. Word gets around on who the really competent fly-boys are."

  Roddy rumpled his brow. "And the really bad ones?"

  "That, too. But you're at the top of the A list. The word is if there's a way to get in or out, you'll find it."

  As a matter of fact, Colonel Rodman had showed up in virtually every hot spot around the globe since Vietnam. He had been a team player since his days at the Air Force Academy, where he had been a star wide receiver for the Falcons. On the flight line as well as the gridiron, he was always ready to answer the call, which in recent years sometimes came by telephone in the middle of the night. He wasn't so caught up in the mystique of the "wild blue yonder" that he accepted every utterance without question, but he had readily agreed to tackle Operation Easy Street. It had been laid on by the Pentagon on direct orders of the President. He and his flight crew had just returned from a trip back to the States for a crash training program with Major Hardin and his Delta Force team.

  Dutch Schuler suddenly frowned and lowered his voice to a near whisper. "Here
comes Pancho Villa."

  Roddy looked around to see a stocky, dark-skinned officer headed their way, a well-stuffed briefcase clutched in one hand. They had met him on their first day at the training site.

  Prior to being assigned to the Air Staff, Major Juan Antonio Bolivar had earned a reputation as a highly capable intelligence officer adept at briefing and debriefing aircrews and providing situation analyses for commanders and their staffs. He had never been involved in a clandestine operation, however. A small-town boy from West Texas, this was his first major assignment since arriving at the Pentagon. He was more than a little awed by it.

  General Patton had personally instructed him on the mission. He carried the higher than top secret Air Tasking Order containing the essential details of the Operation Easy Street mission, the most up-to-date charts of the area, detailed satellite photos only days old of the landing zone, and a description of the chemlite pattern that would signal "all clear" for touchdown. He had the latest weather information on Western Iran. He had the satellite identification and information on the secure national command authority channel the pilots would monitor for any emergency messages during the flight.

  "How about a cup of coffee, Major?" Roddy asked.

  Bolivar gave him a tight-lipped smile. "No coffee. Thanks, Colonel." Tension showed in the way his eyes narrowed behind the gold-rimmed glasses.

  He wasn't even going on the mission, Roddy thought, yet he looked like someone expecting to be bushwhacked. It didn't do anything to allay the Colonel's nebulous apprehension.

  "I received a message when we were about an hour out," Bolivar said in a hushed voice, although they were alone in the small room. "The President has given us the final green light. We can go over the ATO now, but I still need to call General Patton. I have to make sure there aren't any last-minute revisions."

  The Major spread out his charts and they went over the route that would take them along the western slope of the Zagros Mountains to a small village near Kangavar, off the Hamadan-Bakhtaran Road, a highway that meandered westward toward the Iraqi border. They would fly just over the treetops and just below the ridge line of the mountains to prevent radar detection. The Pave Low would maintain complete radio silence but monitor the assigned channel for incoming messages. The last item covered was identification procedures for the LZ.

  "They will have the area marked with four chemlites in a square pattern," Bolivar explained, illustrating with small circles drawn on a sheet of paper. "As soon as they hear your engines, they will activate an infrared strobe near the center. That's your signal that it's safe to land. You should come down near the strobe, which will mark a flat area with no obstacles."

  The chemical markers had been smuggled in by the CIA. Flares would play havoc with the crew's night vision devices. Chemlites, by contrast, would show up clearly to the aircrew but would not be visible on the ground without infrared viewing equipment. With refueling and loading of the passengers, the chopper would be on the ground less than ten minutes. On leaving Iran, they would have an HC-130 Combat Shadow tanker available for refueling, then fly to a point in the Gulf of Oman, where they would rendezvous with an aircraft carrier. After crew rest, the flight would continue on to the island of Diego Garcia in the Indian Ocean. From there an Air Force executive transport would spirit the passengers Stateside.

  "We'll have four GPS satellites available at all times?" Schuler asked.

  "That's correct," Bolivar assured him. "You should be able to hit all your checkpoints right on the nose. Any problems, gentlemen?"

  Roddy wanted to say, Yeah, why is this thing bugging me so? But as the aircraft commander, it was his job to appear calm and cool and inspire confidence in the crew. "Not as long as everything works as planned," he said, "and the Iranians don't have a clue that we're in their backyard. What about the decoy flight?"

  Bolivar checked his watch. "They should be taking off from the carrier about now. Their mission is to test air defenses around the Straits of Hormuz. It should have the Iranians concentrating on that end of the country until you've penetrated well inside."

  Roddy folded his arms and looked around at his copilot. "Any questions, Dutch?"

  Schuler shrugged. "I guess not. I can think of better places I'd rather go, but...hell, this is just another mission. Right, Colonel?"

  Let's hope so. Roddy grinned and gave him a thumbs up.

  Washington , DC

  5

  Wing Patton was a doodler. Note pads on his office desk were covered mostly with stars and boxes. Sometimes he would fill in the designs with shading, made easier by use of a lead pencil rather than a pen. It was a hangover from his Academy days, when the engineering curriculum required a mastering of mechanical drawing with a sharp-pointed pencil. His jacket pocket always held a pen for signing and a pencil for writing and drawing. The one drawback to his doodling was a tendency to cover up notes he intended to save, particularly in a meeting where things were not going the way he intended, or during a phone conversation that proved agitating.

  The White House Situation Room was calm. Everything appeared to be right on schedule as the clock set to Iranian time slowly crept toward the takeoff hour. While awaiting the call from his personal emissary, Patton chatted casually with the President's National Security Adviser, Army Brig. Gen. Henry Thatcher.

  "When is your major supposed to call?" Thatcher asked. He was a gruff-voiced former infantry commander who had distinguished himself in Vietnam and other combat zones before being tapped for service in the White House. He was short and sandy haired, his face creased from childhood acne into what appeared to be a permanent half-smile. If it wasn't for that, some of his acquaintances suggested, he might never smile at all.

  "Major Bolivar should be on the line anytime now," said Patton. "His instructions were to check in just before takeoff."

  "Bolivar?"

  "Juan Bolivar, from our intelligence staff."

  "Must be Hispanic."

  Wing nodded. "From Texas. Sharp young officer."

  "Does he have Special Operations experience?"

  "That isn't required for a mission briefing," said Patton. "He worked with the crew in training. I think this operation really opened his eyes."

  "I can sympathize with that." Thatcher grunted.

  "Come on, Henry," Patton goaded him. "You signed off on this one like the rest of us."

  "I just hope to hell it doesn't fly back in our faces. I still think we should have put more pressure on Gorbachev to intervene with the Iranians."

  "I doubt he has much influence left. Anyway, so far everything has meshed like a set of finely-machined gears," Patton said.

  And no sooner had he said it than the first tooth sheared off one of the critical gears.

  "Call for you, General Patton," said Thatcher's assistant, Dr. Victor Reiner, an undernourished young man with a thin mustache, a professorial demeanor and a dark blue suit that looked like it had been slept in. He held up a telephone.

  "Patton," the General barked into the instrument, expecting to hear Juan Bolivar on the other end of the line.

  Instead, a familiar voice said, "Bob Sturdivant here." Lt. Gen. Robert Sturdivant was the Deputy Chief of Staff who handled the first three legs of the C3I concept, command, control, communications and intelligence.

  "What's up, Bob?"

  "AFSPACECOM reports they're having a problem with a transponder on one of the channels in your FLTSATCOM bird. I think it might be prudent to shift your alternate frequency to a different satellite. Your mission isn't off the ground yet is it?"

  "Not yet," Wing Patton replied. As long as there was another satellite available, he saw no difficulty. "We've got time to make the switch. Give me the data."

  He pulled a note pad and pencil from his jacket and jotted down the information, which he would relay to Major Bolivar. He hung up the phone and was about to slip the pad back into his pocket when Reiner waived again.

  "Another one for you, General. Line four."
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  "Patton," he said again.

  This time he was in for a disagreeable shock.

  "I trust you had a restful night, General?" Senator Thrailkill's voice set his nerves on edge, like scraping fingernails on sandpaper.

  Wing glanced furtively at those around him and fought to keep his temper under control. "I'm in the middle of a very important operation, Senator. I told my office not to forward any calls except in an emergency."

  "Yes, that's what your secretary said. I assured her this was an emergency."

  "So what's the emergency?" He tried to concentrate on the reassuring words of his attorney, but the senator's voice already had his blood pressure on the upswing.

  "I met this morning with the source I mentioned last night, Philip."

  "You mean the newspaper reporter?"

  "Aha! I see you have been doing a little investigating of your own."

  "My attorney, Walker Holland, told me he had a call from the newsman."

  "Yes, General, Mr. Holland refused to deny that WP meant Wing Patton. To me, that's as good as an admission that you have committed the unpardonable sin."

  General Patton turned his head away from the others and made a supreme effort to keep his voice low. "Wrong, Senator. Holland did not deny anything. He merely stated his policy of neither confirming nor denying questions about clients. I categorically deny your insinuation that I have done anything improper or illegal."

  Unconsciously, the General had begun the furious scribbling of stars and boxes on his note pad. He used a soft No. 2 now instead of the old hard lead drafting pencils. It made much blacker lines. He breathed deeply, his face set in an exasperated scowl.