“Perhaps we overestimated the dedication of our people and confederates in these small nations. We still maintain control of only one of them, Bahrain. I don’t like to say it, Mr. President, but we are quickly approaching our final option.”
The phrase made Hussein look up sharply at his top aide. He stopped pacing and sat in the leather swivel rocker behind the large desk. “Yes, the final option. It would have been so much better to persuade one or two of the smaller emirates and kingdoms to move into line on our side of the marker. Now we will have to strike quickly and decisively before the big powers can react.
“We have had success in the hated no-fly zone. After three days, we have shot down six enemy planes. They will pay dearly for coming over our territory. As we predicted, they have not launched any kind of a missile or bombing attack on our cities in retaliation. Yes, they are weak, divided, indecisive. Now may be the time for our strike.”
“At that time, will we use the red-tipped artillery shells and red-nosed missiles?” asked Colonel Hamdoon.
“Absolutely. We built them. We will use them.”
“That will bring a great outcry.”
“What will be, will be.”
The telephone on his desk chimed softly. Hussein picked it up. He said “Yes,” and listened. Slowly he put down the phone, anger building in his face, his forehead flushed, his eyes wide, and fury rumbled in his throat.
“We will do it now! We have just lost Bahrain. The United States sent in Marines and collapsed our control there in less than eighteen hours. Our man there bargained his way to safe passage to fly the royal jet to Libya. I’m sure his Swiss bank account is fat.”
Saddam paced again. “Yes, it has to be soon. Tomorrow morning at dawn. No, not enough time to get ready. Begin massing the troops and tanks and motorized men for the attack. Knock heads out there, Colonel, and have the men and the support units ready as quickly as possible. No more than forty-eight hours.”
Colonel Hamdoon came to attention, saluted smartly. “It will be done, my President.” He did an about-face and hurried to the only door in the room that led to the series of stairs that went up through a separate shaft in various stages and emerged at ground level fifty yards away. There was no way a bomb could penetrate the bunker by working down the stairs. There was no elevator.
Saddam weighed the odds. He had 390,000 men under arms in his active-duty roster. He had 650,000 lightly trained men in his army reserve. He had the use of 2,700 tanks that could slice through poorly defended territory at thirty miles an hour. There were 4,000 other armored vehicles to carry troops, help protect the tanks, and hold territory already captured.
Artillery would surprise the Great Devil America. He had over 2,500 artillery pieces that he would use to reduce any hard site of opposition. They would be the first to be heard from, softening up any defenses that might be in the way.
His ace in the hole that the West was not sure about were his 350 combat aircraft. Many were older fighters, some Fishbed MiG-21bis, but he also had two wings of the newer MiG- 23UB Flogger-C jets. They had Mach 1 plus speed and air-to-air missiles as well as air-to-ground, a 23mm cannon with 200 rounds, rocket launchers, and bombs carried on six external hardpoints.
He was pleased with his aircraft. His pilots had not had enough training, but that was always so. They would do well when called upon. His close-support aircraft included 300 helicopters, many fitted with machine guns and cannon. It would be an interesting time.
Now he looked forward to getting the attack under way.
There had long been a master plan for the first strike. The target had been and always would be Syria.
It would be a good fight. Syria claimed to have over 400,000 men under arms, but Hussein had always doubted that. They had over fifteen million people as against Iraq’s twenty-two million. The element of surprise would be on his side. He expected great things quickly and perhaps could strike all the way into Damascus, only 120 miles from the Iraqi border.
With his thirty-miles-an-hour attack, he might even get there the first day. His hopes soared. He had a long drink of ice water from a small refrigerator in the corner of the room, and he smiled.
He had asked for reports. He would get them as men and machines began moving toward the border with Syria when it was dark. Syrian lookouts might even notice the movement of troops with daylight tomorrow, but by morning of the next day, everything would be in place.
Praise be to Allah.
Praise be to Saddam Hussein.
The tall, dark man smiled at his own audacity.
In one of the small buildings on the forty-acre site above the underground bunker, Colonel Jarash Hamdoon put his carefully honed plans into action. He called three men on an action tree; these three men called six more, then those called six, and soon the selected men in the armed forces were alerted to the plans for the next forty-eight hours. It was a double-redundant system, so each man was notified twice, eliminating any chance for one branch of the tree not to receive the message.
Activity began at once. Men in barracks and camps were alerted for a three-hour move out. Army trucks and civilian buses were readied for the troops. Just after the three-hour deadline, troops began moving to the west toward Syria. By nightfall, there were more than a hundred thousand infantry soldiers and their support units on their way to spots near the Syrian border.
Everything it takes to support a modern army was soon on the move westward. Trucks, kitchens, hospitals, mail rooms, fuel, food by the trainloads, ammunition, telephones, radios, personnel records, tanks, fuel tankers, weapons carriers, small mobile homes to be used by top-ranking officers, artillery pieces, their caissons, ammunition trucks, a million and one things a strike force of over 120,000 fighting men would need when they drove hard and fast into Syria.
Colonel Jarash Hamdoon called for his car and drove quickly into Baghdad, where he cleared out his office, loaded everything into a small mobile home he had confiscated only last month, and made sure he was ready to move. He kept the telephone and three soldiers to handle the rest of the calls he needed to make. The airfields were alerted, with orders to be prepared to give close ground support and to hunt down Syrian tanks and artillery when the attack came.
This was an attack plan they had practiced for over a year in the desert between them and Syria. Each time they had announced it a day in advance, naming it Desert Preparedness Maneuvers. Syria had brought up some troops each time, and this time might again, but they would not react in force, all of the planners had assured him of that. It cost too much money to throw a hundred thousand men into a defensive line just to find out it was a training maneuver.
The same ruse would work this time.
Colonel Hamdoon had not used the motor home before. It had been taken from some tourists who were in trouble for bringing marijuana into Iraq. He sat on the bed and smiled. Yes, he would have an ideal headquarters. He ran an extension phone out the window and into the motor home and installed it on the small eating table. It would be his desk.
He checked the propane refrigerator. Yes. Four kinds of fruit juices, ice cream, and even ice cubes. Nothing was too good for Allah’s fighting warriors at the front.
The colonel sat down suddenly. Soon his men would be fighting and many of them dying on the field of battle. War. It had been described as man’s greatest adventure. Where else could a man find such challenges, so much emotion and purpose and the thrill of a good fight? Nothing could match the rush of battle, of pitting your men and machines against those of the enemy, no matter who he was. To fight, to live or die by your wits, by your own skill, by pure chance, or even perhaps by design.
Colonel Hamdoon had no death wish. He would be well in back of any battle. Enemy airpower and land mines would present his biggest danger.
He went over his master checklist. Each of his men right down to a company commander had a schedule tailored to his unit and his duties. The colonel would get no sleep tonight, a little tomorrow afternoon as
his motor home moved toward the front. The army had 280 miles to cover to get into position. Some would be ten miles closer than that. Some right near the border. No unit would be closer than twenty miles when darkness closed in on the desert the next afternoon. After dark, the units would move in military precision, each to its own assigned location, ready to do its singular duty come the dawn.
He breathed deeply for a moment as a wave of emotion broke over him. “To let slip the dogs of war.” He thought of another quote: “Battle’s magnificently stern array.”
His phone rang.
Now it would start. The decisions, the problems, the worry. Now he would start earning his colonel’s pay. He picked up the phone and began solving problems.
Even as he did, thousands of men were reporting back to their units from leaves and passes, and preparing to go to war. Not even the midlevel officers knew that this was the real thing and not just an exercise. They would be told later that this was no drill.
The phone rang again, and he picked it up.
USS Enterprise CVN 65
Murdock and DeWitt found Al Adams sitting up in his bed in sick bay. The doctor told them that he was still medicated and might not make a lot of sense yet when he talked. He would recognize them, though.
“Hey there, Adams, looks like you got it made down here with nothing to do but look at the nurses.”
Adams turned and looked at Murdock, but it took a time for his eyes to focus. At last he nodded. “Hi, Skipper. I fucked up.”
“Not so, Adams,” DeWitt said. “Hell, could have happened to any of us. We didn’t know what kind of mines they had planted along there.”
“I fucked up, JG. I’ll never be a damn SEAL again. Fucked myself right out of the Navy, too, I bet.”
“Hey, we don’t even know how well that wing is going to work,” DeWitt said. “Might be better than new, with chips and microcircuits. Hell, Adams, you could be the first bionic SEAL.”
A touch of a grin flickered across his face; then he shook his head. “No way, JG. Both know it. Won’t go to air ops or engineering. I’m a SEAL or I’m a damned civilian. No other way.”
“Just hold it there, Adams,” Murdock said. “You’re a SEAL as long as I say you are. Right now, your SEAL job is to do exactly what these medics tell you to do and get yourself fit for duty. I won’t tolerate any other attitude. You read me, sailor?”
Adams blinked, his eyes went wide, and he almost grinned. “Yes, sir, Commander, sir. Hoooorah.”
Murdock smiled. “Yes, SEAL, that’s more like it. Anything you want they won’t give you?”
“Yeah, Skip. I’d like some M&M’s peanut candy. One of them big bags.”
“You got it, SEAL,” DeWitt said. “You rest easy, and some of the guys will be down to see you.”
“Aye, aye, JG. Thanks for coming by.”
Murdock looked at Adams’s left arm. It was in a complicated brace made of aluminum rods and held rigidly in place. The sewn-together tubes and nerves and muscles and tendons had to have time to heal back together. It would be a long process.
The two officers left the room and found the doctor who attached the arm.
“Can’t tell yet how it will do. Most of the patch jobs should take and work fine. It’s the number of those that don’t that concern us. First, the arm has to have a good blood supply and return. That’s the biggest. Without that, there’s no way the arm attachment will work. Then comes the nerves and the ligaments and muscles. It’s always a chancy thing. Once we know the blood flow works, and the arm will stay alive, then we have a chance to work on the other problems as they arise.”
“When will you know about the blood, Doctor?” Murdock asked.
“If it doesn’t work right in three days, the arm will start to die from lack of blood. In three days we should know that score.”
They thanked the doctor and found out where Holt was. He was ready to be kicked out of his bed. He chuckled when he saw the two coming.
“Hey, no damn funeral arrangements yet for me, Skipper. I’m getting my walking papers out of here. I can see better than when I signed on in this man’s Navy.”
“For sure?” DeWitt asked.
“Fucking A right, JG. I’m fit for damned duty. What we got on the fire?”
“Glad to have you back, Holt. Now I won’t have to break in another radioman.” Murdock left DeWitt talking with Holt and located the eye man who had worked on Holt.
“What can I say, Commander,” the Doctor said. He was a full commander and the top ophthalmologist on the carrier. “There is no lasting damage to the eyes. If I had to guess, I’d say the blindness was about half shock from the sudden light and the rest from psychological damage of seeing his buddy’s blown-off arm almost in his lap. The physical damage is slight, if any, and he’s fit for duty. Just keep him away from land mines for a while.”
Murdock thanked the doctor, picked up DeWitt, and they walked the deck.
“Not a chance Adams can stay in SEALs,” DeWitt said. “That arm will never be strong enough again to do the rope climb or go up a rope ladder into a chopper. He’ll be lucky if he can tie his shoelaces.”
“Probably, but let’s keep his hopes up until he’s farther along in his recovery. Can’t hurt a thing. You’ll be one man short in your squad again.”
“Getting to be a habit, Skip.”
“True, been wanting to talk to you about taking better care of your men.”
They both laughed and kept walking. It was good to be out in the fresh air again and to watch the training exercises as the F-18s and the Tomcats surged off the deck from the catapults. It was the fastest drag race in the books. They went from a dead stop to 150 miles an hour or so in five seconds.
“How is Senior Chief Dobler working out?” DeWitt asked.
“So far, he’s been a help. Another couple of missions, and he’s going to be wound in tightly with the men. That’s the important element. If they won’t work for him, then we would have to get a new man. I think he’s melding into the platoon well. Any problems with him from your end?”
“No. I’d say he’s working well and has been a help in handling the men. He should be taking some of the administration load off your shoulders. That’s good. Then we can have more barbecues and have more chess games.”
When they returned to the SEALs assembly room. Dobler had the men cleaning and oiling their assigned weapons.
Don Stroh was there, pacing up and down. When he saw the two officers come in, he headed for them.
“Need to talk,” he said. They went to their usual conference area at the far end of the compartment where three chairs had been left.
“What’n hell now?” Murdock asked.
“Nothing, that’s the problem,” Stroh said. “Here the whole place is going to hell in a shitbasket, and the boss hasn’t a thing for you guys to do.”
“We can’t help out on the no-fly zone,” DeWitt said.
“No way we can do anything about Saddam’s rejection of the U.N. embargoes,” Murdock said. “What do you suggest that we should be doing? Want us to declare war on the old boy ourselves and do a suicide run against him?”
“You’re a pair of jokers. I could get more sympathy from the back blast of a jet up on deck. We’re a whore’s breath from an open war with Saddam, and we just sit here doing nothing? Like he says no more no-fly zone. So what do we do, send three hundred planes in there and swamp anybody he puts up? No, we actually cut back on our overfly. Now, why the hell did we do that?”
“You’re a lot closer to them than anybody on board,” Murdock said. “Call them up and ask them.”
Stroh shook his head and managed a small chuckle. “You really want to get rid of me, don’t you? I do that, and I’d be pushing paper at some weird desk in Langley like the Antarctica Overview desk.”
“So relax, Stroh,” Murdock said. “Work out in the gym; must be a pool table on board somewhere. Have a game of nine ball.”
“Hey, Stroh is getting up th
ere, you know the older man’s disease,” DeWitt said. “He should be on Proscar, I’m sure. Maybe some BPH pills like Hytrin would bring down his nocturia a little.”
“Huh, JG? What the hell you talking about?”
“Your prostate and your urinary life. Older guys like you get the runs at night.”
“Ridiculous. I just wish the office would tell me something. We just sit and wait.”
“Oh, hell yes,” DeWitt said. “We haven’t fired a shot in over thirty-six hours. Must be something wrong somewhere. Got to keep them SEALs swimming, or they forget how.”
Murdock laughed. “Yeah, Stroh. What you need is something to relax you. Take your mind off the bad stuff. You said you play chess. Ever taken on the JG here? He’s the platoon champ. He swears he can beat anybody in the platoon in under ten minutes.”
“Ten minutes? Hell, I can stall that long. Where’s your set, JG? You’re on.”
The two played twelve games of chess in a row. Lieutenant (j.g.) DeWitt won the first four in under ten minutes. The next two took him almost fifteen minutes, and the man from the CIA at last won the tenth game. Then the JG got serious and beat Stroh the last two games in under eight minutes.
“Give,” Stroh said. He stood up and stretched. “Murdock’s right; I’m not mad at Langley anymore. Now I’m pissed at DeWitt.”
20
Iraqi Army GHQ
Near Baghdad
Colonel Jarash Hamdoon worked the rest of the afternoon and until nearly midnight in his motor home office just outside of his regular office. He had his lieutenant and sergeant working telephones as well, and at midnight called in the lieutenant to take over while he had three hours of sleep.
Lieutenant Salman was just over twenty-five, eager, a hard worker, and he knew precisely how the colonel would handle things.
“Answer any questions they ask except the one about this being a drill. Tell them as on any such maneuver, they will have to wait until the final time in the field to find out. It is the same as with any mobilization like this.”
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