Strike Force

by Dale Brown

  “Never mind that! Did you get Buzhazi? Did your men attack? Damn you, answer me! What’s happening?”

  “My men…yes, they did attack, but…but the jet attack fighters, they came out of nowhere…we had no warning…they’re all…all…”

  “Your entire force…dead?” Mohtaz asked incredulously. “I thought you sent an entire battalion, almost half of the entire force based at Doshan Tappeh! You’re telling me they were all killed?”

  “Excellency, I need to get a report from my staff,” Zolqadr said. He finally noticed his chief of staff standing before him with a piece of paper in his hands. “Wait, I have a report now. Stand by, please.” He accepted the field report, his mouth and throat running dry as he read in complete astonishment and fear. “We…we are evacuating the base, sir,” he muttered.

  “What did you say, Zolqadr?” Mohtaj screamed over the radio.

  “The insurgents are overrunning the base, collecting weapons and supplies and releasing prisoners,” Zolqadr said in a shaking voice. “Thousands of regular army troops and civilians are with them. Security forces are engaging, but they are outnumbered, and some are joining them. I don’t have all the details yet. I’m at least a kilometer from the fighting and…”

  “Destroy Buzhazi at all costs,” Mohtaz said angrily. “Don’t let him escape.”

  “I’ll assemble an entire brigade if I have to, Excellency, but I’ll…”

  “No, Zolqadr,” Mohtaz said. “After Buzhazi is done slaughtering the Pasdaran, he will come after the government ministers and the clerics. You must stop him before he can assault the executive branch, the Majlis, the Assembly of Experts, or the Council of Guardians. And if the military is conspiring with Buzhazi to bring down the government, they must be destroyed as well.”

  “I’ll get a status report on my forces and send them immediately to do everything in my power to…”

  “You’re not hearing what I’m saying, Zolqadr,” Mohtaz said. “I want you to destroy Buzhazi before he gets away from Doshan Tappeh and escapes again.”

  “But Excellency, we don’t have the forces here to oppose him,” Zolqadr said. “It’ll take us several hours, perhaps days, to assemble a force large enough to crush him. And if the regular army supports his insurgency as the report claims, he may be unstoppable. I will…”

  “I’ll tell you what you will do, General,” Mohtaj said. “Destroy Buzhazi, now. Launch an attack immediately and blanket the entire base.”

  “But sir, I just told you, it will take hours to assemble…”

  “I don’t mean with ground forces, Zolqadr. Use the same forces you used against the insurgents in Arān.”

  “Arān? But we didn’t…” And then Zolqadr finally realized what Mohtaj was telling him to do. “You mean…?”

  “It is the only way, Zolqadr,” Mohtaj said. “I don’t want this insurgency to go on one more hour. Destroy them all.”

  “But Excellency, the civilians…we’ll be launching against our own people!”

  “If they didn’t expect to encounter resistance from the Pasdaran before participating in this uprising, they don’t deserve to live—in fact, we’re doing our country a favor by not allowing such stupid persons to breed any longer,” Mohtaj said. “Give the order, General. Destroy them, before they get away. Do it, now.”

  “But sir, what if the Israelis and the Westerners detect our missile launches with their spy satellites?” Zolqadr asked. “What if they launch a pre-emptive strike against us?”

  There was silence on the line for a few moments; then: “You make a good point, General,” Mohtaj said. Zolqadr silently breathed a sigh of relief—Mohtaj would have no choice but to rescind his crazy order now. Everyone knew that the Americans used sophisticated heat-seeking satellites that could detect even a small missile launch anywhere on planet Earth, as they did with the missile attack on Arān. If they detected another, even larger missile barrage, they would likely order a counterattack. Mohtaj certainly couldn’t risk a…

  “You are correct, General—an attack against the insurgents at Doshan Tappeh would certainly alert the Americans, who would in turn alert the Israelis and other pro-Western Arab nations,” Mohtaj said calmly. “Therefore, you will plan a pre-emptive missile attack against Western command-and-control facilities in Iraq, the Gulf, and Israel, to be carried out simultaneously with the attack on Doshan Tappeh. You will order the attacks immediately.”

  “What?” Zolqadr exclaimed. “You want me to attack Israel and all of the other nations in the Persian Gulf region?”

  “Are you questioning my orders, General?”

  “I’m…I’m seeking clarification, that’s all,” Zolqadr stammered. “A massive ballistic missile attack against the West? We aren’t ready for the assault that is sure to follow…”

  “Neither are the Americans,” Mohtaj said confidently. “Days from now they may put together some sort of retaliatory air attack, but by then the damage against them will be done, our armed forces and reserves will be mobilizing, and we will enter into negotiations with them for a cease-fire. Our objectives will have been achieved while the West is hurt.

  “The Americans are weak and they don’t want war. This is the perfect opportunity to strike. They will never expect us to attack if they haven’t detected a general mobilization. Besides, we can argue that Buzhazi’s attack on Doshan Tappeh and the American captured in Turkmenistan prompted us to act. We will tell the world it’s their fault!”

  There was a slight pause; then: “I recall the briefing we were given by our friends on the Americans’ bomber buildup on the island of Diego Garcia,” Mohtaj went on. “Our friends seem to think that the Americans will try to launch another stealth bomber attack against us. This time, they won’t get the opportunity. I want you to initiate an attack against the American bomber base on Diego Garcia as well, using the longer-range ballistic missiles in Kermān.”

  “Diego Garcia!” Zolqadr exclaimed. “That is one of America’s most vital air bases in the whole world! That…that will be akin to attacking American soil, like the Russians did! I…Excellency, I think you should reconsider…”

  “I will reconsider nothing, General!” Mohtaj thundered. “My battle staff is preparing the coded execution orders as we speak. You will transmit those orders to the appropriate missile brigades without delay, and you will ensure that the orders are carried out to the letter, or I will personally sink a knife into your weak cowardly heart and find another officer who is not stupid enough to question orders. Do I make myself clear, Zolqadr? Attack immediately!”

  NORTH OF THE CITY OF HAMADAN,

  180 MILES SOUTHWEST OF TEHRAN, IRAN

  THAT SAME TIME

  The northern reaches of the Zagros Mountain range in west-central Iran is a rugged, windswept region, pleasant most of the year but dreadfully cold and snowy in winter. The Qezel-Owzan River originates in the steep mountains near the provincial capital of Hamadan and cuts steep cliffs, caves, and rock spires as it flows north toward the Caspian Sea. Some of the tallest peaks in this area rise to over ten thousand feet above sea level.

  During the Iran-Iraq War, hundreds of thousands of Kurds fled Saddam Hussein’s Iraq into western Iran, and the Revolutionary Guards were sent in to try to keep them out. The lucky ones escaped into the Zagros Mountains—the others were slaughtered and left in the ravines and streams to rot. The families that survived the winters in the mountains remained, grew, and eventually prospered, out of reach of Pasdaran persecution. It was not a comfortable or idyllic environment, but living mostly unmolested in the harsh mountains was better than being slaughtered like dogs by Saddam’s Republican Guards or Iran’s Revolutionary Guards. As John Milton wrote, “Better to reign in Hell than serve in Heav’n.”

  Despite being known for its bountiful raisin harvests and the spectacular Ali-Sadr Caves north of Hamadan, the inhospitable terrain, heavy Pasdaran presence, and the suspicious, mostly secretive Kurdish population keeps visitors and tourists to a minimum—exact
ly what the Kurds, and eventually the Pasdaran, desired.

  The Ali-Sadr Caves, one of western Iran’s few popular natural attractions, were first discovered in the sixth century and used as a source of drinking water, but when the water ran low the caves were abandoned. But they were rediscovered in the mid-1960s quite by accident by a young boy looking for a lost goat. Although the caves and the surrounding area were developed by the Shah Pahlavi into a well-known tourist destination, it was not until after the Iran-Iraq War that more exploration in the area was undertaken. It was quickly determined that the Ali-Sadr Caves were not the only long, soaring caverns in the area. While the Ali-Sadr Caves were being developed and built by the government, secretly the Pasdaran began rebuilding many of the other caves to their own specifications.

  The result was the Gav-Sandoq Khameini, or Khameini Strongbox, named after the Supreme Leader who commissioned the construction of the military complex in the early twenty-first century. The Strongbox ran for almost four miles through the east and northeast side of the Zagros Mountains near the town of Gol Tappeh, about ten miles southwest of the Ali-Sadr Caves, with six entrances and dozens of tunnels connecting forty-three caverns strewn throughout the mountain. While most of the caverns were just house-sized, several were building-sized, and a few of them were massive warehouse-sized halls that took thousands of lights, massive generators, and a ventilation system large enough to air-condition a fifty-story skyscraper to keep it habitable.

  Originally built as a weapons of mass destruction shelter and military weapon and equipment stockpile to protect and then retaliate against another invasion by Iraq, the Strongbox was situated perfectly to strike at Iraq by Iran’s medium-range ballistic missile fleet. Most of the three hundred missiles stored in the Strongbox were the Shahab-2 (“Meteor” in English) series of road-mobile ballistic missiles, which were locally modified versions of the Russian SCUD-C missile, with a range of about three hundred miles.

  The missile’s accuracy was not very good—perhaps a quarter-mile circular error—but with a fifteen-hundred-pound nuclear, chemical, or biological warhead, accuracy wasn’t that important. The missiles could be brought out of the Strongbox, driven just a few miles away to pre-surveyed launch points, fueled, erected, aligned, programmed, and launched in just a matter of hours. They had plenty of range to hit Baghdad and most large cities in Iraq east of the Euphrates River. Launched from the Strongbox, the rockets could devastate Iraqi targets with ease, almost without warning.

  But as Iran’s missile fleet got more sophisticated and the targets changed from Iraq to Israel and Western military forces stationed in the Middle East and Central Asia, the mix of missiles garrisoned at the Strongbox changed. The new weapon of choice was the Shahab-3. Built in North Korea with Iranian financial assistance, and known to the world as the Nodong-1 medium-range ballistic missile, approximately a dozen Shahab-3 missiles were shipped to Iran beginning in 1996, and three successful test launches were conducted.

  Because of pressure by China and the United States on North Korea to stop shipping missiles to “rogue states,” Iran announced in 2000 that it would start to build the missile itself at its new Shahid Hemat Industrial Facility south of Tehran. The first missile was test-fired in 2001, and the weapon system declared operational in 2002. By 2006 thirty indigenously built missiles had been completed and secretly deployed to the Strongbox, where they could be fired quickly and accurately and could easily reach targets in Israel and Western military bases in Iraq, Turkey, Kuwait, Bahrain, and Qatar. Like the Shahab-2, it was road-mobile and could be deployed and set up to launch within hours.

  The duty officer in charge of the Seventh Rocket Brigade of the Iranian Revolutionary Guards Corps received the radio message from headquarters. Because the call came in on the direct emergency-only channel, he immediately hit the alarm button, which sent an “Action Stations” alert throughout the entire complex. Each of the three missile regiments inside the Strongbox—two Shahab-2 regiments and one Shahab-3 regiment, plus security and support companies—immediately began preparing their units to deploy to pre-assigned launch points, all within thirty miles.

  The coded message copied by the communications officer and verified by the duty officer gave the actual order—and it was a “prepare to attack” order. The duty officer immediately radioed the brigade commander, Major-General Muhammad Sardaq. The commander was already hurrying to the command post by the time the message was decoded and verified. “We have received an actual ‘prepare to attack’ order, sir,” the duty officer reported.

  “An ‘actual’ message, you say?” Sardaq queried. The brigade ran numerous exercises every week, so “exercise” messages were common, not “actuals. Verify it again.” The general watched as the two officers decoded the message—again it authenticated as an “actual” message. He swore to himself, then picked up the direct secure telephone line to Pasdaran headquarters at Doshan Tappeh Air Base in Tehran.

  “That’s not the procedure, sir…”

  “I’m not going against procedure, Major,” Sardaq told the duty officer. “Continue the checklist and have the brigade prepare to attack. Never mind what I’m doing.”

  As he waited for someone at headquarters to answer the phone, the general watched carefully as the command post team began tracking the progress of each regiment as it prepared to deploy the missiles. After sending their own coded message acknowledging receipt of their orders, headquarters would then send another short coded message with either the pre-planned strike package for each unit, or a very lengthy message with target coordinates and a force launch timing matrix. The longer message had to be verified, decoded, verified again, and compared to a catalog of possible targets chosen in advance by the National Security Directorate, then broadcast as a coded document to the regiment. After receipt, the launch crews would have to verify, decode, and check the target coordinates again, then enter the coordinates and the launch timing matrix into their launch computers. The launch timing matrix was critical to ensure that each of the brigade’s missiles didn’t interfere with one another at launch, inflight, or at impact.

  The commander and duty officer gasped in astonishment as they read the decoded attack orders. The first verified target set was a short “canned” message for the Shahab-3 regiment, ordering strikes against military air bases in Israel, Kuwait, Bahrain, Turkey, and Qatar, designed to destroy known command-and-control facilities and alert strike aircraft bases with high-explosive warheads before they could send an alert or launch their aircraft and counterattack. These missiles would launch second. The target set for the first Shahab-2 regiment and two squadrons of the second Shahab-2 regiment was also a short message, ordering strikes against Western command-and-control, air defense, air bases, armored, infantry, and supply bases inside Iraq, scheduled to launch first so they might have a chance to destroy some of the American Patriot anti-ballistic missile sites set up in Iraq.

  “Finally we’re striking out against the Israelis and Americans!” the duty officer exclaimed happily. “They’ve been threatening us for long enough—I’m glad we’re getting our punches in first!”

  “Shut up, you idiot,” the general said. “This will work only if the damned politicians somehow convince the Americans not to bomb us into oblivion after our missiles fall. What do you think the chances of that are?”

  The last message gave the third squadron of the second Shahab-2 regiment a lengthy target list…with a notice saying that none of the target coordinates would be found in the National Security Directorate’s catalog. That was unusual—in fact, it was a major breach of command and control policy. The order was properly authenticated, but it was still against safe operational policy.

  It took several minutes for the connection to go through, and another few minutes for someone in authority to get on the line, but finally Sardaq was connected to the senior controller, a colonel Sardaq did not recognize, at Revolutionary Guards Corps headquarters. “What is the meaning of this call, General?�
� the senior controller thundered as soon as he got on the line. “You’re not supposed to call unless it’s an emergency and you are unable to comply with your orders. Are you calling to tell me you cannot follow our orders?”

  “I’m calling because you issued me an inappropriate order, Colonel, and I’m calling to verify it,” Sardaq said.

  “Is the order not valid? Did it not properly authenticate?”

  “It did, but the target coordinates are not found in the target catalog,” Sardaq said. “Long-form target sets are supposed to be checked against the target catalog for verification.”

  “The targets are not in the catalog, General. I explained that in the message. The attack order still stands. You have a valid execution code—launch the attack.”

  The duty officer ran over to Sardaq with the decoded message in his trembling hand and stared at his commanding general with wide, unbelieving eyes. “The target coordinates for Third Squadron—they’re on Doshan Tappeh Air Base!” he cried. “They want us to attack our own headquarters!”

  “What in hell is going on, Colonel?” Sardaq shouted. “You gave us the wrong coordinates!”

  “The coordinates are correct, General,” the senior controller said. “Haven’t you been reading the FLASH message traffic? Doshan Tappeh is being overrun by insurgents and the regular army…”

  “The last message I read said that the Revolutionary Guards are about to launch a raid on insurgents in Tehran near the air base.”

  “Well, get your head out of your ass and keep reading, General,” the controller said.

  “Watch your language, Colonel! Maintain discipline!” But he snapped his fingers at the duty officer, urgently motioning for him to retrieve the stack of obviously unread message traffic reports on his desk.

  “Fuck you and discipline, General!” the controller shouted. “They’ve bombed one of our infantry battalions, killed thousands, and shot down almost a dozen attack helicopters…”

  “Who? Who is doing all this?”