Flash Point

by James W. Huston

  “Inside the mountain?”

  “Yes. We estimate he is one hundred feet under the surface of the mountain.”

  “A hundred feet?”

  “Yes. Approximately. It could be less or more I suppose, but he is deep inside the mountain.”

  Kinkaid was stumped. How do you attack someone a hundred feet under the ground? “That’s deeper than our Strategic Command Headquarters in the mountains of Wyoming.”

  “That I wouldn’t know.”

  “We can’t drop a nuclear weapon on one man.”

  “Obviously.”

  “So how does one attack him?”

  “That is what we have been unable to figure out.”

  “I’ll leave it to the experts. If I give them his location, I have done my job.”

  “That is exactly what I said to my people.” Efraim was about to hang up. “Remember what I said, about who knows this information.”

  Kinkaid bristled. “I heard you. But you have already killed one of ours.”

  “What do you mean?” Efraim asked, concerned.

  “Your Air Force went into Lebanon to get the Sheikh, to drop laser bombs on a motorcycle shop.”

  “There were many targets in the area—”

  “One of which was the motorcycle shop at Dar al Ahmar.”

  “Perhaps.”

  “When you dropped your bombs to get the Sheikh, one of my men was there to kidnap him. He would have succeeded. Your bombs killed him instead of the Sheikh.”

  Efraim didn’t know what to say. He had never heard anything about Americans being killed in the raid. “I had no idea. Why didn’t you tell me you had someone there, Joseph? We could have worked together.”

  “Yes. Perhaps I should have.”

  “It is good that we have talked today. We must talk more. Avoid these things in the future. We must work together to stop this killer. That must be our focus. I’m sorry for your man in Lebanon. If only we had known.” He paused. “But at least one of your planes escorted the strike that killed your man.”

  Kinkaid was stunned. He didn’t know what to say. “It’s true?”

  “Joseph.”

  Kinkaid closed his eyes. “I don’t want to know.”

  “They found him?” Woods asked enthusiastically.

  Bark nodded his head with a gleam in his eye. “CIA.”

  Woods laughed. “The CIA? They couldn’t find their ass with both hands.”

  “Maybe somebody told them.”

  Woods wanted to know. “So, where is he?”

  “That fortress in Iran.”

  Wink’s face sobered. “That Alamut place?”

  “Yes,” Bark replied. “Northwestern Iran.”

  “How far is it?” Woods asked. “Where’s Pritch?”

  “CVIC, I suppose.”

  Woods looked at Bark. “Are they sure?”

  “They’re sure.” Bark handed him the message they had just received. No one else in the squadron had seen it. “They canceled the ground strike into Syria.”

  “Must be pretty sure,” Woods acknowledged. “How we going to get him?”

  “Long way. We’re the only ones who can get there and put ordnance on target and get back.”

  Woods glanced at Wink and saw the look he was hoping for. “We’ll go,” Woods said too quickly.

  Bark replied, “You’ve been flying a lot.”

  “We can hit it, Skipper. You know that. We will not fail.”

  “May not matter.”

  “Why?”

  He handed him the message. “Guy’s buried underground. A hundred feet. We could drop bombs on top of him all day long, and it wouldn’t touch him. I’m sure we’re not going to send TACAIR into Iran to make a big bang and accomplish nothing.”

  “Solution to that’s easy,” Wink said.

  They all looked at him.

  “Unscheduled sunrise.”

  “Like we’re going to nuke him,” Woods said.

  “It’d take care of the problem,” Wink said, shrugging.

  “We’ll figure something out,” Woods said. “We’ll start the planning, figure out the tanking, how far it is . . .”

  “Don’t assume you’re going—”

  Woods and Wink headed out the ready room door immediately and down the starboard passageway toward the CVIC. They stepped over the knee knockers deftly and maintained as quick a pace as they could sustain without running into the sailors coming down the passageway in the other direction. They reached CVIC and went immediately into the large central room. There were several Intelligence Officers and aircrew in the room looking at charts and computer screens. Woods scanned the room quickly for Pritch. She was in the corner, studying a chart on the wall.

  “Pritch!” Woods said as they walked over to her. “You hear they found the Sheikh?”

  “What?” Pritch said, confused.

  Woods handed her the message.

  She read it. “Where’d you get this?”

  “Just came in. Five minutes ago.”

  She memorized the latitude and longitude listed on the message, handed it back to Woods, and looked at the wall chart. “This is the same fortress we were thinking about before,” she said. “Is this the same lat/long?”

  Wink shrugged. “Don’t know.”

  She put her finger on a mountain ridge in northwestern Iran. “Right here.”

  Woods moved closer to the chart and looked over her shoulder. Wink stood on the other side of her. They wanted to know the same thing. Exactly how far it was from their likely launch position. Woods took out his black, government-issue ballpoint pen. He placed it on a longitude line and counted the latitude lines that were each one nautical mile apart all the way along the pen. He picked a spot in the Mediterranean off the coast of Syria, and began moving his pen toward Alamut, counting the pen-lengths to the target. Wink counted on his own. Woods stopped with his pen overlapping the target point. He glanced at Wink.

  “Four hundred fifty miles,” Wink said, thinking already of flight profiles, fuel requirements, and ordnance load-out.

  Woods replied, still staring at the chart for approach points and the likelihood of a direct, straight-in flight like the one his pen had just completed. “One way.” He measured the distance again.

  Wink did likewise.

  “You know what this means,” Pritch interrupted.

  “What?”

  “I don’t see anyway we can do this.”

  “Why not?” Wink asked.

  “Look at the last paragraph of this message,” she said, handing it to Wink. “They expect him to be seventy-five to a hundred feet underground. We’ll never get him.”

  Wink concentrated. “Got to be some way . . .”

  “We’ll never send troops on the ground there to get him. Never happen,” Woods said.

  “I don’t know that. It might very well happen,” Wink replied.

  “So we’re out of it?” Pritch said, sounding disappointed.

  “Not if we catch him on the surface. Make him come out some how.”

  “How we going to do that?” Woods asked. “Stick a garden hose down his hole and flush him out? Play ‘whack the gopher’?”

  “I don’t hear anything smart coming from you.”

  “I’ll think of something,” Woods promised.

  33

  Those in CVIC turned their attention to the television, which was tuned to CNN. They watched the Syrian Ambassador to the United Nations read his prepared statement.

  “Yesterday, as night fell on the peace-loving people of Syria, the United States launched an unprovoked attack into the sovereign territories of Syria and Lebanon. These attacks killed innocent civilian women and children. Syria defended itself with surface to air missiles and AAA, shooting down three American warplanes.”

  “Bullshit!” Wink said. “They cannot utter one friggin’ sentence, without some bullshit lie falling out of their mouths—”

  The Ambassador continued. “These attacks cannot go on. The Unite
d States may not conduct war on a country with which it is not at war without retaliation. Syria will respond, and will respond in kind. We will not tolerate American aggression. We will not tolerate our people being killed in cold blood. We expect apologies from United States, reparations, and promises not to intrude into our airspace or our territory.

  “The Americans are becoming bullies of the Middle East, where they do not even belong. They have not been invited by anyone, they have not taken reasonable steps, and now they have killed innocent people. Now of course we know the true facts.”

  He stared into the camera. “Even before these latest attacks the Americans had shown their contempt for Syrian and international law by attacking Lebanese and Syrian positions, by shooting down Syrian pilots, and bombing a Lebanese town in cooperation with the Israeli Air Force. This was because an American Navy officer was with an Israeli Intelligence Officer when she was attacked and killed.

  “The Americans know this. Now the world does. The American Naval officer was acting in cooperation with an Israeli intelligence agent. He was in Israel to plan attacks on Lebanon and Syria by the United States Navy, the attacks we are now seeing. They were conspiring to do the very thing that they later did—the U.S. Navy joining with the Israeli Air Force and secretly flying into Lebanon and attacking innocent civilians. Perhaps America has been cooperating with Israel and flying its airplanes on these strikes for a long time. Perhaps we were the stupid ones and simply did not know it. We will have to review the reports of our pilots and those who operated in Lebanon and Syria to see if they have spotted American forces before. We, of course, know that the Israelis operate American equipment. They fly American jets, and drop American bombs, and shoot American missiles. All given to them by the Americans. It is said that the Israelis buy their equipment, but the Americans give the Israelis three billion dollars in foreign aid every year, just enough money to buy all the military equipment that they need. From America of course.

  “So America sells its own equipment, or gives it, to Israel, then conspires with Israeli intelligence to ensure that American Naval forces fly off their aircraft carriers and into Lebanon and Syria to attack our people. But when called to task, when called to account, they lie, say they weren’t there, and then use it as an excuse to do more of the same.”

  A few of the journalists were becoming impatient and wanted to ask questions. But the Ambassador was not slowing down even for a second. He had things to get off his chest and he was determined to do so. Unlike most diplomats who made speeches at times such as this, this Ambassador seemed truly to believe what he was saying.

  “So the Americans claim that there is a new terrorist organization operating out of Syria, Sheikh al-Jabar. They of course have no evidence that he has ever even been to Syria. They claim he is operating out of Lebanon. Once again, they have no such evidence. They then, without provocation, use these excuses to attack the self-defense capability of Syria and Lebanon.

  “Perhaps we now understand. This is the big chance that America has yearned for for so long to come into the Middle East in force. CNN shows us that the Marines are coming. It looks like the Sheikh is right. The Americans are the next Crusaders.

  “I want to make the Syrian position extremely clear: If one American sets foot on Syrian soil, or Lebanese soil, we will respond with force. If the Americans think they have a fight now, they haven’t seen anything yet.”

  The journalists were lining up for questions. The Ambassador’s dark countenance served him well in discouraging people from asking the obvious questions.

  “That is all. I will not take any questions. Go ask the Americans all the questions. Ask them why they are attacking innocent people and when it is going to stop.” He turned quickly and walked away from the shouting journalists.

  “There it is,” Pritch said.

  “They can ask me those questions,” Woods said, dead serious. “We will never stop until the Sheikh is dead. Simple as that. At least I won’t.”

  If the Washington had a Main Street, it was the main deck. Post office, barbershop, ship’s store, cafeteria-like ship’s mess, chiefs’ mess, berthing compartments, XO’s office, ship’s admin offices, legal office, supply office—where you could get paid—just about everything you could want.

  Woods walked forward to the chiefs’ mess. He looked around at the sea of khaki. All men in their thirties or forties. The red ordnance shirt stood out among the khaki ones. “Gunner!” he called. He had thought he might find the Gunner here. As a former chief, he still identified more closely with the chiefs he had left behind than the officers he had joined in the wardroom.

  The Gunner looked up from his table, surprised to see Woods. “Yes, sir,” he replied. He stood up slowly, reluctantly, from the table and crossed over to the door. Woods could go into the chiefs’ mess if he chose to, but he knew better than to go in unless invited. “Figured you’d be here.”

  “Yes, sir,” the Gunner said in his unique, disinterested way. He was clearly unhappy about being interrupted.

  “I need to talk to you.”

  “Yes, sir,” the Gunner said. He put his hands on his hips and waited for Woods to talk. The chiefs around the mess watched the conversation with mild interest. They knew Woods was one of the good officers. He didn’t lord it over his chiefs, which was the main test of a good officer from their perspective. Let your chiefs do their job and yours will be easier.

  “Let’s go to your shop,” Woods said, almost in the tone of an order.

  The Gunner heard the tone and realized something was up. He gave a quick head movement to his friends to let them know he was leaving, turned out the hatch, and headed aft on the starboard side of the carrier. They went up two levels to the 02. The ordnance door was painted black and yellow in squadron colors and had a drawing—painted ordnance red—of a falling bomb on the door. A laser-guided bomb, for those who cared to examine the painting—and a good rendition, for those who really looked, with the fins, laser guidance system, and a good trajectory.

  They stepped inside the shop and closed the steel door with a slam. Two ordnancemen, Petty Officers in their red long-sleeved cotton shirts, their cranial helmets up on top of their heads, ear protectors off their ears, stood quietly in the shop looking tired and worn. Their shirts had the cast of three days of dirt and grime. They had been up all night preparing the Tomcats for the night strikes about to start. So far, they were very pleased with performance of the F-14’s of VF-103. All the bombs had come off the racks when they were supposed to, and had been placed on target with no casualties. They were keeping a running tally of how many pounds of bombs were being dropped.

  Gunner sat down at his desk. As the Warrant Officer of the Ordnance Division, he was in charge of all the weapons for the Jolly Rogers: the 20-millimeter cartridges that went into the Gatling gun in the nose of the Tomcat; the Sidewinder, Sparrow, and Phoenix missiles that went on the aircraft for air to air combat; and all the bombs that were loaded on the belly. He pushed his dark brown hair from the side where it grew across his shiny head to the other side where it lay. It looked ridiculous, but no one would ever even think of telling him that. He was far too serious to ever be ready to hear that his comb-over hair look was silly. He regarded Woods with skepticism.

  Woods sat in the metal and vinyl chair and glanced around the shop. Woods was envious. The idea of having a tight group of men and women working for you in a small shop with a narrow focus, where you could measure success on an hourly basis, where you knew exactly where you stood all the time, was attractive to him. It was an oasis from the world of ambiguity.

  Woods watched the ordnancemen eat candy bars as they studied the air-plan ordnance loads for the night launches. The Air Wing commander had decided to fly all the strikes at night so that some fool with an AK-47 didn’t connect with a wild shot on one of the Air Wing’s jets.

  The calendar on the wall above the steel desk was the latest Sports Illustrated swimsuit calendar. The more lurid calen
dars had been taken down long before under protest because of the addition of women to the ordnance shop. It had changed everything but women were now so commonplace that no one commented. If people felt unhappy about their presence, they kept that opinion to themselves. They all knew what they were supposed to think, and that’s what they said whenever asked.

  “We’re not getting these guys,” Woods finally said.

  “The Sheikh’s guys?”

  “Right.”

  “Bombs aren’t doing the job?”

  “Not even close.”

  “That figures though, don’t it? You can’t blow up a whole mountain. You got to have a target that you can hit. They can probably blow up the building, his fort or whatever, but not the whole damn mountain. I guess he’s buried. I just wish we knew where his headquarters were.”

  “We do.”

  The Petty Officers glanced at him, eavesdropping. Interested.

  “Got the message this morning. They know where he’s hiding.”

  “That shit-head. I’d like to just pinch his little neck with a big set of tweezers.” He touched his hair to see if it was falling. “So where is he?”

  “In their fortress in Iran.”

  “Okay.”

  “You’ve seen the BDA photos, right? Two-thousand-pounders are hitting exactly where we’re aiming. All we’re doing is turning big rocks into little rocks. We’re bombing the hell out of the sides of couple of mountains, but I don’t think we’re getting through. Maybe ten or twenty feet deep, but not deep enough.”

  The Gunner shrugged. “Don’t know what they expected. Those things can’t penetrate granite, or even dirt. At least not very far.”

  “Exactly. But it’s worse.”

  “What’s worse?”

  “The place where he is hiding is the fortress in northwestern Iran. Called Alamut. They think he’s buried in that mountain seventy-five to a hundred feet.”

  The Gunner turned down the corners of his mouth in disapproval. “Can’t get down there with what we got. Never happen.”

  “Exactly. That’s why I came to you.”

  “I just said we can’t—”