Flash Point

by James W. Huston

  “How’d you get stuck with this job?” Bond asked.

  “Yeah, stuck. I begged for this. Our big chance to go after this Sheikh guy.” Woods introduced his squadron mates.

  “Hi,” Tear said.

  “How’s it going?” Big asked. “How’d you meet Woods? You guys in the brig together?”

  Bond laughed. He was tall and good-looking with a perfect smile. His dark black skin looked like obsidian. “Seems like it. We were at Meridian together.” Meridian was the Navy jet training base in Mississippi.

  Big replied, “At least you didn’t get stuck with him in the same squadron. I don’t know how I’m ever going to get rid of him.”

  Tear looked at Woods. “It’ll be nice to turn this Sheikh into dust, but you already had the chance, didn’t you?”

  Woods frowned. “Huh?”

  “That foray into Lebanon that everybody in the world is talking about. Wasn’t that you?”

  “Where’d you hear that?” Woods asked, chilled.

  “Hell, it’s all over the fleet. I think one or two of our guys are in e-mail contact with your girlfriend.”

  “Hey, bite me,” Woods replied.

  “So,” Tear pushed. “How was it? You going to get your picture on the wall at Topgun for four kills?”

  “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

  “Yeah, okay. Cool. One day?”

  “If there were anything to tell you about, I would be happy to tell you about it. One day.”

  “I hear you. Let’s hurry through this food shit so this killex can get started.” Killex, short for “killing exercise,” Navy lingo for an event. A screwed-up event is a flailex. A bombing exercise is a bombex. Waiting too long is a sitex.

  They finished putting food on their plates and worked their way through the salad and sandwich bars. They nodded at other officers they knew, some well, some just as acquaintances. Navy Air was a big family, but a family nonetheless.

  As they walked with their trays, Big said quietly, “Shit, Trey. Everybody knows.”

  “Don’t say a word, Big. If we let on, even hint at it, we’re dead,” Woods admonished.

  “They know!” Big said.

  “Cool it. Don’t panic. They can smell panic.”

  They took their food to a table closer to the front, where Tear had been sitting with four officers from his squadron. They set their trays down and sat facing the front of the wardroom. Tear addressed his buddies. “Guys, this is Sean Woods—we were at Meridian together—and some other guys from his squadron, Big McMack, Sedge, Wink.” The pilots greeted each other and Tear introduced the officers from the Eisenhower. “This is Dale Hoffer, known here as Dull, Stilt Wilkins, and Ted Lautter.”

  They all shook hands, each checking out the other for patches, rank, and pecking order.

  They discussed who was where in the fleet and who was going to what job ashore in the next year as they downed their food. Woods watched a Captain he didn’t know approach the podium. “Who’s the 0-6?” he asked.

  “Our CAG. Bill Redmond, or Red Man as he is known.”

  “I’ve heard of him. He’s legendary. F-18 guy. Didn’t he bag a MiG-29 over Yugoslavia?”

  “That’s the one.”

  “Good guy?”

  Tear shrugged. “Typical Captain. More interested in making Admiral than making us safe, or even getting to know us. Kind of an asshole. Rep in his squadron was that he was a screamer.”

  “Hold on,” Woods interrupted. “Here we go.”

  The overhead lights dimmed as Captain Redmond looked out over the audience and waited for complete silence. Between the two Air Wing Commanders, he had been picked to lead the strike planning effort because of the primary criteria in the Navy for deciding who is best qualified. His lineal number. His name was higher on the captain’s list than the Air Wing Commander from the Washington. So he was in charge, and the brief took place on his carrier. No one thought anything of it. That was always the way it was done. Admiral Sweat, who was truly in charge, wanted to go to the Eisenhower anyway. The Captain of the ship was his former Chief of Staff.

  Red Man reviewed his notes and began his presentation. Very tall, he was thin, almost bony, with square shoulders, a large head, and graying blond hair. “Good morning,” Redmond said. “For those of you who don’t know me my name is Bill Redmond. I’m the Commander of Air Wing Seven. I want to welcome those of you who came over from the Washington strike team and from Air Wing Seventeen. I’m not sure we had to do it this way, but I’m glad we did. We need to make sure we’re all operating off the same sheet of music so we can support each other and not run into each other at the wrong time. There’s already enough room to screw this up and I don’t want that to happen because we don’t understand each other.”

  He touched the space bar on a computer on the lectern and a large chart of the Mediterranean came up on the screen behind him. “Let me get right to the point. We will be planning a series of strikes that I hope we can launch within the next twenty-four hours. As I said, I hope we can. As you know, the United States has declared war for the first time since December 8, 1941. Some people think that this act is out of proportion, like hitting a fly with a sledgehammer.” There was some snickering from the audience. “Why that is bad if your objective is a dead fly escapes me. I, for one, believe that some flies deserve to be hit with sledgehammers. So let’s not worry about that. Our job is to be the sledgehammer, and make sure it hits the right spot.

  “As you can see, I have a chart of the Med here. Our current location is at 33° 51’ N, 86° 45’ E. Right about”—he turned to look at the screen and touched a spot with the pointer—“here.” He placed the pointer on the table next to him. “The real issue though, is where are we going to strike?

  “What is our target? We’re not attacking Syria, or Lebanon, or Jordan, or Iran, or Iraq, as countries, but our targets may be in any one of those countries. It makes our mission doubly sensitive with far-reaching political implications. Especially if our target decides to hide out in a city. We can’t control all the political impact, but we can do some things. We must do everything that we can to minimize damage to any person or property other than that belonging to Sheikh al-Jabal.”

  “Here we go,” Woods whispered to Tear. “Right after they tell us what a tough, butch sledgehammer we are, they start telling us not to hit anything too hard. Typical.”

  The Air Wing Commander touched the space bar on his computer again and a chart of the Middle East came up. “Most of you are familiar with the countries in the Middle East. Many of you have been ashore in Israel, but I doubt if many of you have been ashore in Syria or Lebanon. I know I haven’t. We will be having extensive briefs on each country from our intelligence people this afternoon. We will be discussing their orders of battle, their political responses to our declaration of war, and the best guess of their responses if we in fact strike a target on their territory. But at the end of the day, it will be a crapshoot. We’ll be told either to go, or not. And if we are told to go, we will go, regardless of whether it will make someone mad or not. They should have thought about how good an idea it was to allow the Sheikh to operate out of their territory before now. In any case, before we get into the countries, I’ve asked Commander Glenn Healy to give you an overall intel update.” He looked to his side and Commander Healy took the cue and came forward.

  He was the Air Wing Seven Intelligence Officer. “Good morning.” His audience replied in kind.

  “I wish I could stand up here and give you the latitude and longitude for every place where Sheikh al-Jabal is likely to be. We could just strike them all simultaneously and be assured of success. But this is a war unlike any war before it. We are after one man and his organization. That, by definition, is not a geographic war. It means that we’re not after SAM sites, ships, ports, cities, military bases, or roads—the usual targets of wars. In some ways, that makes it almost impossible. In other ways, it makes it somewhat easier. We do not have to de
stroy an entire country to accomplish our objective. We must simply find our target and destroy it. Or him, I should say.

  “I want to show you the most recent intelligence that we have, and one additional point of interest. According to the CIA, as of one hour ago, these are the three targets that they believe to be the most likely.” He hit the space bar on the same computer Red Man had used and a closeup map of eastern Syria and northern Lebanon came up.

  Woods and Tear sat up, suddenly aware that there might actually be content to this brief. “Shit hot,” Tear said as he watched the screen in the front of the wardroom intently.

  “Two of them are on this map, the third is east of here, in Iran,” Healy continued.

  Woods and Tear glanced at each other. Iran? Too far. No fun.

  “The way that these sites have been determined is admitted by the CIA to be extremely speculative at this time. In fact, they didn’t want to give me this information at all until I insisted. They said it was preliminary, uncertain, and as likely to be wrong as right at this stage. It is based on a historical analysis of the group of Assassins back over several hundred years and the fortress from which they were known to operate. The CIA apparently has some hot young analyst who thinks he understands how these Assassins operate. He believes they are duplicating the historical model—to perpetuate the mystique—and may be operating not only out of the same areas but the exact same fortresses. I don’t know whether that’s true or not, but until we get more imagery or other confirmation, we can use these at least as a starting point.

  “Let me show you the first one. It’s in northwestern Iran, and is called Alamut. I don’t know whether we in fact will go into Iran. I have my doubts, but until we know for sure, we have to at least list it as a target. It may be a target for a B-2—it’s a long way from the Mediterranean for us . . .”

  “Why should Iran get a free pass?” Tear asked Woods in an angry whisper. “Seems to me like they may deserve it more than anybody else on that map. They’ve been jabbing us in the eye since I was born. . . . Pisses me off . . .”

  “This is an old picture, but you can see the castle of Alamut, which was built in the eleventh century and is still there. We’re obtaining imagery on this castle today and should receive the photo within the hour.

  “The other two sites are more intriguing, although less historic. One is in Lebanon, southeast of the Bekáa Valley.” He brought up another slide in his PowerPoint presentation, which showed the location on the chart very specifically. It was surrounded by rings of various sizes. They represented the effective ranges of the SAM sites in the area, most of them overlapping. “As you can see, if this were to be a target, it is under the SAM umbrella that protects the Bekáa Valley. That could be a very nasty place to go, if those who control the SAMs decide to shoot them at U.S. planes and I think we should assume that they will. This one is called Teru’im. What I find particularly intriguing is that it is near Dar al Ahmar, which both the United States and Israel identified as where the Sheikh was supposed to have been on the day that the Israeli attack took place. That attack, as everyone knows, is the one by Israel—and someone from the F-14 squadron from the Washington actually participated in!” Healy smiled at Woods and Big, who wore their Jolly Rogers patches on their shoulders. Every eye in the wardroom was on them. Woods couldn’t believe he had been confronted in such a public way. Fear and a conspicuous bafflement froze him. All he could think of was the photograph in Big’s pocket. The Commander probably had a copy too. “Isn’t that right Lieutenant?” he asked Woods.

  Woods finally realized that the Intelligence Officer was smiling and got himself under control. His reply was loud enough for everyone in the wardroom to hear. “It was a great flight. There we were inverted, supersonic—”

  When he went into “there we were,” everyone in the wardroom knew Woods was signaling the beginning of a “war story” generally divorced from the truth. They laughed, stopped listening—as he had hoped—and turned their attention back to Commander Healy. He brought up the next slide, which was a copy of the photograph that Big had folded up in his flight suit. Big gasped and shifted in his seat to cover the sound. The photograph showed the curving side of a missile. “As you can see, this is a copy of a photograph provided to the world press this morning by Syria. It shows the United States missile that was used to shoot down one of the Syrian MiGs. This was offered by Syria as proof that our friends from VF-103 were in fact leading the strike into Lebanon and shot down one of their planes with an AIM-7M Sparrow missile. They got it right. This is a casing from a Sparrow missile.” He waited as the officers leaned forward to get a better look at the casing. It was white, and was from a missile about six inches in diameter. Woods could clearly make out some English letters on the casing and a part of a number. The Intelligence Officer surveyed the wardroom. “Do we have any of the Ordnance Gunners here?” He waited. “I was hopeful someone could tell me which one of VF-103’s missiles this is. I’m sure we have enough of a serial number here to trace it back. Right, Lieutenant?” He smiled at Woods again.

  Woods found that he could barely breathe. “Yes, sir. No problem. I’ll get our Gunner right on it so we can find out which one of our missiles landed in Lebanon.”

  Commander Healy went on. “I think the Syrians have forgotten that the AIM-7 missiles we use are identical to the Israelis’. What do they expect to find on the ground? A missile casing with Hebrew on it?” He turned again to the screen. “Let me show you the next potential target. It’s in the southern part of Syria, east of Lebanon, and is also in the mountains. We don’t have a picture of this site because there aren’t any. According to the CIA, the likely position of that fortress is here.” He brought up the next slide, a close-up of southeastern Syria. It was covered with SAM site range circles. He studied it with the rest of the wardroom for a moment. “If we do go after this target, and Syria fires on us, it would be as bad as the Lebanon site southeast of the Bekáa Valley. We’ll have to work hard at SAM suppression.

  “Keep in mind, if we go into Syria, they may very well consider it an act of war. They may respond militarily, not just with their diplomats yelling at us. Those are the considerations that I’m sure are being evaluated in Washington, but I want you to be aware of them as well. What could that mean? Well, what would our first move usually be? To go after the SAM sites, right? SEAD, your favorite mission—Suppression of Enemy Air Defenses. Well, who’s the enemy? The Sheikh? What air defenses does he have? What if he’s in Syria, and the air defenses belong to Syria? We’re not at war with Syria. Do we hit the SAMs of a country with which we are not at war? Do we let the SAM sites sit there and lock us up, and just hope they don’t actually shoot at us?”

  Red Man couldn’t resist. “The President warned Syria to stay out of the way.”

  “True enough, sir, but we have to consider the possibilities—”

  “Just tell them not to lift a finger to defend this guy.”

  “That’s exactly what they have been told, sir. But what will they do?”

  “Don’t know.”

  “Me neither. So we need to be aware of the SAM sites even though we’ll probably not be able to hit them—unless, of course, they shoot at us. Just a heads-up, sir.”

  There was a murmur of discontent from the aviators in the wardroom. Red Man stood up next to Healy. “I understand your concerns,” he said, facing the two Air Wings. “They’re the same as mine. It puts us at risk. However, as is often the case, political concerns outweigh safety. I know what you’re thinking—someone else’s politics, and our safety. But that’s how it is. Get used to it. Our objective is to conduct precise, effective strikes and get this thing over with. That’s why we’re here. I want to have potential routes planned into and out of each country in such a way that we can keep our exposure to a minimum. Don’t get me wrong. I’m going to ask for permission to strike the air defenses first, I just don’t expect to get that permission.

  “Thank you, Commander. Later t
his morning Commander Healy will be going over the Order of Battle for Syria, Jordan, Iraq, Iran, Israel, everybody. You need to have in mind what all their capabilities are in case any of that comes into play. As I said in my message yesterday, I want to do some group planning. We’ll go to CVIC, and break into the three groups that I have already outlined. I am confident that you brought your charts with you and have already begun thinking along these lines. The PFPS and TAMPS,” the two flight planning programs commonly used on the carriers, “are up and we’ve had extra computers loaded and moved into CVIC so several of you can work at the same time. I want numerous potential routes for each potential target before we leave here at four o’clock today. Everyone understand?” He waited. “Very well. Any questions?”

  A Lieutenant Commander toward the front raised his hand. “CAG, do you have any idea when we might launch?”

  “Could be within eight hours, could be a week. Depends on how good and how quick our intel is on locating this guy. Once we know, or even suspect, we will launch. And it will almost certainly be at night.” He looked around. “Any other questions?”

  No one said a word. They wanted to do something: plan, figure routes, calculate fuel consumption for various weapons load-outs, anything—anything except sit around and wonder where the Sheikh was. If they didn’t find him, this was going to get embarrassing quickly.

  “Very well. Let’s get to work.”

  “Sir, what about the Air Force?” Tear asked.

  Red Man replied immediately. “Good call. They’re trying to make this into an Air Force event. As always, if there is something going on, they offer to preposition their forces and fly the rest of them around the world, refueling them twenty-four hours a day. But so far, this is going to be a Navy war. The President is doing what I think is the smart thing, saying that the war is narrow and short, against one man, and will be over as soon as that man is finished or surrenders. We don’t need the entire United States Air Force to go after one man. In fact, it looks like overkill and says we may have some alternative objectives in mind. If we leave it as a carrier battle, with the strikes going from here, it will appear like a very minor skirmish against a terrorist. That gives the President great comfort, although it may give the rest of the world only minor comfort. In any case, so far at least, this is a Navy war.”