Strike Force

by Dale Brown

  Patrick knew right away that the President was done thinking about this topic—he was intentionally vague about when he wanted anything, and he wasn’t talking about a “plan of action” as he normally did—he was asking for “thoughts” and “recommendations,” which were something entirely different. This development was definitely going on the back burner unless he did something. He quickly interjected, “Sir, in the meantime, may I recommend…”

  “Patrick, talk it over with General Sparks at his earliest opportunity,” the President said distractedly. “He’ll assemble all the recommendations from the Joint Chiefs together with State and other sources and present all possible options to me, including yours. I’ve gotta move on to other issues. Thanks, everyone.” That was the unmistakable signal that the meeting was at an end.

  As they filed out of the Oval Office, National Security Adviser Sparks pushed past McLanahan. “Excuse me, sir,” Patrick said, “but I’d like a minute to brief you on…”

  “Have it on my computer in an hour, McLanahan,” Sparks interjected impatiently, “and I don’t mean the spaceplanes—I want a plan of action from you using the Air Battle Force unmanned and manned bombers and ground forces at Battle Mountain. If it’s not on there in an hour, it won’t factor in.”

  “It’ll be there, sir,” Patrick said. “About the nomination to HAWC…”

  “Jesus, McLanahan, don’t I have enough to chew on right now?” Sparks thundered. Over his shoulder, he spat, “Send me a full written proposal, a command itinerary report, an outline of all the projects ongoing at HAWC, a staffing and budget proposal, and your full medical report and summary from the attending physicians on my computer regarding their opinions for your suitability for a command nomination. When things calm down I’ll look at it…but I don’t anticipate that happening any time soon.”

  RUHOLLAH KHOMEINI LIBRARY, QOM, IRAN

  EARLY THE NEXT MORNING IRAN TIME

  Brigadier General Mansour Sattari joined Major General Buzhazi in the minaret tower attached to the mosque of the Khomeini Library. It was just an hour or so before dawn, and the first glow of sunrise was already starting to illuminate the sky. “Are you ever going to let proper lookouts back up here, sir?” he asked him. “We’re not that far away that a good sniper couldn’t get a shot off at you in daylight.”

  “I’ve never been in one of these crier’s towers before,” Buzhazi said. He was busy scanning the terrain all around them with a pair of binoculars. Two soldiers accompanied him, one with a sniper rifle. “Have you?”

  “No. I’ve been told I have the voice of a muezzin, but I was never that religious.”

  “Your voice was made for barking orders, not calling the faithful to prayer.”

  “I agree, sir.” Sattari motioned out to the outer walls of the Khomeini Library compound. “There’s no doubt that the Khomeini Library was designed as a fortress,” he observed. “Three-meter tall, meter-thick walls; narrow roads with clear fields of fire and no hiding places; entryways too narrow for most armored vehicles to pass; gates made of thick rolled steel obviously designed for functionality and not just for decoration; and another one-hundred-meter-wide clear zone inside the wall to the main building.”

  “It’s not going to be enough, Mansour,” General Buzhazi said. “I reviewed the plans for this place as a young Pasdaran officer. It was designed to withstand riots of faithful mourners, not an armed invasion. You probably don’t remember the riots in this country after Khomeini’s death, do you?”

  “I certainly do, sir,” Sattari said, his face turning hard and pallid. “I was already lying low—I had been in the United States in pilot training, but when I returned I denied ever having gone there because foreign-trained officers were being executed by the Pasdaran. I pretended to be an enlisted man for a year! I was in charge of a security detail guarding embassies in the capital, but spent all my time trying to convince the Islamists that I was one of them.” He adopted a faraway expression, then added, “I killed a man to prove to the mob that I was on their side. I think he was Dutch, or Belgian, a reporter—I don’t know, the Europeans all look the same, and the mob thought all white-skinned blue-eyed men were Americans. I was so ashamed of what I did that I almost turned the gun on myself.”

  Buzhazi was silent for a long moment, then said woodenly, “I gave orders to my Pasdaran units that probably resulted in thousands of such street executions, Mansour. The more so-called ‘insurgents’ and ‘infidels’ we killed, the more the clerics congratulated us.” He shook his head. “So went the ‘religion of peace.’ I’m sorry for giving those orders. I thought that’s what I was expected to do to support my government.”

  “You were following orders.”

  “The authorities are supposed to protect the weak. I was a soldier, a commander. I knew what my responsibility was—to protect the people, protect the weak, and defend the constitution, not give in to the bloody mobs.” He paused, then lowered the binoculars, thinking back to that time twenty-five years ago. “That was a crazy time, Mansour. One million rioters in the streets of Tehran. One million. A thousand people a day, mostly children, died just from being suffocated by the crowds. The rioters were like wild animals—completely out of control. The Pasdaran tapped into that fervor and convinced millions of them to sacrifice their lives on the battlefield against the Iraqis.”

  “You changed all that by transforming the Basij into a real fighting force.”

  “But that’s never going to erase the blood from my hands, Mansour—never.” Buzhazi motioned to the east. “There’s a lot of open territory around those farms along the Qareh River.”

  “Yes, sir, but our scouts say there is a lot of irrigation equipment—pipes, pump houses, farm implements, that sort of thing—through those fields that might provide a few barriers to smaller armored vehicles until they are cleared away. That will slow them down.”

  “For a short time,” Buzhazi said. He walked around the catwalk and peered north. “The Saveh Mountains are damned close, Mansour—we’ll only have a few seconds of warning when the attack planes crest those ridgelines.”

  “I still don’t think they’d bomb the compound, sir,” Sattari insisted. “An infantry assault—definitely. A helicopter assault—yes, to cover the ground troops, perhaps to breach the walls, but not to shoot up the library grounds. That will give us an advantage—they’ll be reluctant to lay down a lot of heavy cover fire.”

  “The Pasdaran likes helicopters,” Buzhazi mused in a quiet voice. “The common person can’t relate to a jet screaming overhead at a thousand kilometers an hour no matter how sophisticated it is—but even a small helicopter is a weapon of terror and confusion to everyone.” Just then, Buzhazi’s radio crackled to life, and he listened. “Our scouts in Qom report several armored vehicles destroyed by our booby-traps on the Ali Khani and Masumah bridges in central Qom. The Ali Khani Bridge is heavily damaged and passable by units on foot only; the Masumah Bridge is intact and passable.”

  “I’m surprised they decided to use the bridges in the first place—they could have just rolled right across the Musa Sadr,” Sattari said. The city of Qom was bisected by a river that was so dry that large parts of it had been paved over and turned into open space for bazaars, playgrounds, parking lots, and campgrounds for pilgrims visiting the holy sites. “That’ll slow them down a bit while they look for more booby traps, but they won’t be so sloppy around the other bridges.”

  “Every little wound, no matter how small, weakens the most fearsome enemy,” Buzhazi said. “Get the lookouts up here and have them feed us constant updates—we have less than an hour before they’ll be in attack range. Let’s get to the map room, build a picture of the Pasdaran’s deployments, and…”

  “Warning! Helicopters inbound from the north!” Buzhazi’s radio blared.

  “Hopefully just scouts, using low-light TV or infrared to take a look as the main force moves in,” Buzhazi said. He and Sattari quickly scanned the skies. “Two Mi-35 attack helico
pters,” he announced. “Staying pretty high. Get out the Strelas and let’s see if we can…” At that moment he saw two bright flashes of light from one of the helicopters. “Get out! Get out!” he screamed, then jumped through the doorway leading to the spiral staircase that threaded down the inside of the minaret. He never let his boots touch the steps, but half-slid, half-tumbled down the stairs as fast as he could. He was being pushed along by someone cascading down the steps even faster than he…

  …and seconds later, the darkness was split open by a thunderous explosion, a wave of searing heat, and the force of a thousand pieces of stone being propelled in all directions. Whoever was above Buzhazi was now on top of him, and they cartwheeled down the stairs together until they reached a landing about seven meters from the top.

  The minaret was wobbling and shuddering, threatening to shatter apart at any moment, so as soon as he could, Buzhazi grabbed whoever had fallen on top of him and began hauling him down the steps. The tower somehow held as they emerged into the sanctuary adjacent to the mosque.

  “Allah akbar! Allah akbar!” Mansour Sattari cried as Buzhazi half-carried, half-dragged him outside and away from the teetering minaret. “They fired a damned missile on us!”

  “I’m a damned fool—I believed the Pasdaran still only used handheld weapons on their helicopters,” Buzhazi said. “They’ve obviously upgraded to guided air-to-surface missiles.”

  “And I thought they wouldn’t dare attack the mosque,” Sattari said, trying to clear the unbelievably loud ringing in his ears. “I guess we were both wrong.”

  Buzhazi raised his walkie-talkie, fighting to get his breathing under control before keying the “TALK” button: “Strela teams one through twenty, prepare to engage, north quadrants, but stay out of sight until they’re within range,” Buzhazi ordered. “Repeat, no one fires until we’re sure the Mi-35s are within range. Report when secure and ready. All other Strela teams, hold your positions.”

  Just then a strange voice came through the walkie-talkie: “‘Teams one through twenty?’ How interesting, General.”

  Shit, he thought, their frequency was not just being monitored—they were talking on it now as well! “All teams go to Yellow,” Buzhazi ordered.

  But he knew that wasn’t going to work—after all, they were fighting fellow Iranians, not foreigners. A few moments after he switched to the secondary frequency, he heard: “Sorry, General, but we know that channel, and we know the third one you have available as well, so you might as well stay on Yellow so you don’t confuse your fellow traitors. So, did you like the fireworks show up in the minaret? You move pretty fast for an old man.”

  “I have plenty of surprises in store for you.”

  “I’m sure you do, General,” the caller responded. “May I suggest you stop with the claims you have twenty or more Strela launchers—we inventoried all of the missiles you or the other deserters, traitors, and criminals could have possibly stolen, and subtracting those you have already fired, we think you have perhaps a half-dozen remaining. A good diversionary tactic, though. My congratulations on your quick thinking.”

  “This sounds like Ali Zolqadr,” Buzhazi radioed back, trying any way he could think of to regain any sort of advantage in the eyes of those who were listening in. “I thought you were running the Pasdaran interrogation centers, torturing and killing honest soldiers just to prove your loyalty to the mullahs.”

  “Another good piece of disinformation on an open channel, General,” the man said. This time, however, it wasn’t a complete lie: Ali Zolqadr had been Muhammad Badi’s “wet worker,” supervising the capture—or assassination—of anyone wanted by the state, no matter what nationality or where in the world they might be. He was obviously so good at his job that he had been promoted to deputy commander of the Pasdaran and was now, with Badi’s death, in charge of destroying the insurgency. “Let’s get down to business, General. As you saw, I have full authority from the Supreme Defense Council to take any and all steps necessary to crush this pitiful insurgency.”

  “Like firing a missile at a mosque? Aren’t you afraid of burning for eternity in the fires of Hell?”

  “This from the man who invaded one of Qom’s holiest sites and are holding a number of clerics hostage,” Zolqadr said. “Your fate is sealed, General, and anything I might do pales in comparison to your crimes. Any destruction of the holy sites or deaths of anyone inside the Khomeini Library will of course be blamed on you.

  “I simply want you to realize that I have the capability, authority, and temerity to simply level that building if I so desired. I want to avoid any more bloodshed and desecration. The deaths of your followers would be entirely on your head, and I don’t think you want to spoil their memories by sentencing them to eternal condemnation in the eyes of their fellow citizens. Your leadership skills are legendary, but I don’t think you wished to use your extraordinary skills to lead these men to public and humiliating executions.

  “Therefore, my demand is simple: surrender immediately and only you and General Sattari will be held criminally responsible for this uprising. The others will be tried in military courts under jurisdiction of the Ministry of Defense, not the Pasdaran. Only those who have been identified as actually raising a weapon against a fellow Iranian will face capital punishment—all others will face confinement only. All will be dealt with as Iranian soldiers, not as common criminals, with all rights and privileges.”

  “Zolqadr, all of my men have been told in no uncertain terms they have the option at any time to turn over their weapon and leave,” Buzhazi radioed back. “The men that marched into this house of lies and corruption did so willingly, knowing that the Pasdaran, the Ministry of Defense, the Supreme Defense Council, and the Council of Guardians would consider them not just criminals but unclean infidels unworthy of Islamic justice under the Koran. They had every opportunity to leave, remove their uniforms, and disappear into the population. Some did just that. The rest stayed, and we will fight.”

  “Brave words, General,” Zolqadr said. “Their deaths will be on your head. You have one more chance, General, and then anyone in that place not wearing a Pasdaran uniform will die. I will give you and your men thirty minutes to throw open those gates and come out with your hands on your head, or my men will roll in, slaughter everyone inside, and burn your bodies in a hole in the desert like garbage. To all of General Buzhazi’s men listening to this message, I promise you if you surrender now you will not be harmed. Ignore Buzhazi’s megalomania and come out peacefully. This war is at an end.”

  Buzhazi mashed the mike button: “All units, this is General Buzhazi. Any man who wants to surrender, report to the main astan-e in the Khomeini mosque without your weapons. I order that any man who wishes to surrender to the Pasdaran not be harmed. May Allah preserve you—because I guarantee the Pasdaran won’t. You have fifteen minutes to report to the sanctuary. All others, prepare to repel invaders.”

  Buzhazi looped the walkie-talkie over his shoulder, and he and Sattari trotted from the mosque across the courtyard to the library. Buzhazi was thankful he didn’t see any men heading the other way toward the mosque. Inside the library, he made his way to the roof, the best place to observe the Pasdaran’s deployment. His staff officers were down behind the front wall of the roof, drawing diagrams of the approaching armored vehicles. He noticed none of his senior staff had departed, although the roof had fewer guards on them than before—and he noticed none of the officers or senior enlisted men had weapons in hand. The thought had crossed his mind that they might save their own skins by killing or arresting him—he was glad that option had apparently not been exercised. “I hope I’m worthy of the loyalty you show me this morning, gentlemen,” he said. “Status report.”

  “We count three battalions approaching our position,” the operations officer responded, “one from the northwest, one from the west, and one from the southwest. We can’t see them yet, but we expect a fourth battalion to position itself east to cut off any escape, and
the helicopter attack units to come in from the north with a clear field of fire to the south.”

  Buzhazi crawled over to the edge of the wall and peeped over the top, with just his binoculars and the top of his helmet protruding above. “Platoons appear to be motor-rifle units in BTR-60s led by one Zulfiqar main battle tank,” he observed. “One or two mortar platoons breaking off from the echelon to set up. I see the battalion headquarters vehicles—looks like they have BMPs, riding right up front, the cocky bastards. They are still marching in echelon at reduced speed, range approximately four kilometers.”

  “I think the mines on the bridges got their attention,” Sattari said, laughing. The laughter was a welcome break to the decidedly funereal mood that had descended on the roof.

  “Nine BTRs and one Zulfiqar tank per company, still in echelon formation, command vehicles still in the fore. What are they waiting for?”

  “Same formation to the southwest, sir,” Sattari reported. “Command vehicles out front, no flank guards, and just a few scouts. They’ll have us surrounded and within a kilometer of the wall in less than thirty minutes.”

  “A hundred BTRs, nine tanks, a mortar platoon, and a thousand troops—we have to assume the fourth battalion is waiting to the east,” Buzhazi said.

  “It’s only a six to one advantage,” Sattari said. “Normally the Pasdaran doesn’t engage in any battle unless they’re ahead ten to one.” He looked at his commanding general. “I was expecting more. I’m disappointed.” He returned to his scanning, adding under his breath, “We’re still going to get slaughtered, but they could have expended a little more effort to do it.”

  “This is a massive operation for the Pasdaran—they’re accustomed to sabotage, kidnapping, sneak-and-peek, and kicking down doors of frightened civilians in the dead of night,” Buzhazi observed.

  “The radio chatter between those battalion headquarters vehicles must be fierce,” Sattari said. “They’re spread out too far to see each other or use light signals. If we could only destroy those command vehicles, we might have a chance to stall this offensive.”