Plan of Attack

1

Where is he, Chief?” Colonel Trevor Griffin, operations officer and acting commander of the 996th Information Warfare Wing of the Air Force Air Intelligence Agency, asked as he hurried through the doors. His excitement was obvious as he waited at the verge of impatience exchanging security badges with the guard, facing a sensor for a biometric face-identification scan, and entering a security code into a keypad to open the outer door. Griffin was a sort of caricature, like a kid wearing his dad’s military uniform — short in stature, bean-faced, with slightly protruding ears and narrow, dancing blue eyes. But the broad shoulders, thick neck, and massive forearms under his overcoat only hinted at the soldier hidden behind those giddy eyes.

“In the boss’s office, sir,” the command’s Chief Master Sergeant Harold Bayless responded as he met the colonel on the other side of the security barrier. “I came in early to get caught up on some paperwork, and he was already here. I buzzed you and the boss as soon as I found out.”

“Let me know when the boss gets in,” Griffin said as he removed his Air Force blue overcoat and handed it to the chief master sergeant. “Make sure he has an office, a car, and billeting set up.”

“Yes, sir,” Bayless said. Physically, the two men could not have been more different: Bayless was husky and tall, with lots of thick, dark hair and humorless, penetrating dark eyes. Despite their height difference, Bayless had trouble keeping up with the quick full bird — Bayless finally had to let Griffin hurry off ahead of him, and he retreated to his own office to make all the appropriate notifications on behalf of this most unexpected distinguished visitor.

Despite his fast pace, Griffin wasn’t even breathing hard as he hurried past the stunned noncommissioned officer in charge and into his office. There, sitting on the sofa in the little casual seating area, was their unexpected visitor. “General McLanahan!” Griffin exclaimed. He stood at attention and saluted. “I’m sorry, sir, but I didn’t know you’d be here so soon. I’m Trevor Griffin. Good to meet you, sir.”

Patrick McLanahan got to his feet, stood at attention, and returned the colonel’s salute. Griffin came over to him and extended his hand, and Patrick shook it. “Good to meet you, too, Colonel Griffin,” Patrick McLanahan responded.

“For Christ’s sake, General, please, sit down,” Griffin said, a little confused at McLanahan’s formal bearing. “It’s a pleasure to have you here, sir. Can I get you anything? Coffee?”

“Coffee is good, thank you. Black,” Patrick said.

“Me, too — commando style.” Griffin buzzed his clerk, and moments later the man came in with two mugs of coffee. Griffin introduced his NCOIC, then dismissed him. “I apologize, sir, but I didn’t expect you for quite some time — in fact, I was only just recently notified that you’d be joining us,” Griffin said. He stood aside so Patrick could take the commander’s seat, but Patrick reseated himself on the sofa, so Griffin, a little confused, took his armchair at the head of the table. “We’re thrilled to have you take command of the unit.”

“Thank you.”

Griffin waited until Patrick took a sip of coffee, then said with a smile, “I’m Trevor — or ‘Tagger’ to my friends, sir.”

“Sure,” Patrick said. “I’m Patrick.” Griffin nodded happily and took a sip of coffee, still acting as excited as a kid about to go through the turnstiles at Disneyland. “I guess it’s been a while since I’ve reported in to a new unit. I’m a little nervous.”

“And I’m not used to two-star generals showing up without a lot of fanfare.”

“I’m no longer a two-star, Tagger.”

“It was either a mistake, or a temporary budgetary/billeting/ allotment thing, or somebody’s sending you a pretty strong message, Patrick,” Griffin said, “because the Air Force doesn’t take away a general’s stars, like you’re some young captain that just got a DUI. If they did, guys like MacArthur and LeMay would’ve been buck sergeants in no time. General officers either get promoted or they retire, either voluntarily or involuntarily — they don’t get demoted.” He couldn’t help but stare, bug-eyed, at the ribbons on Patrick’s chest, especially the Air Force Cross — the highest award given to an Air Force officer besides the Medal of Honor — and the Silver Star. “But whoever’s testing you or pushing on you,” he went on, dragging his attention back to his new commanding officer, “it’s their loss and my gain. But we didn’t expect you for another month at least.”

“I decided to show up early and meet everyone,” Patrick said. “My son is with his aunt in Sacramento.”

“And your wife?”

“I’m a widower, Trevor.”

Griffin’s face fell. “Oh, shit…I’m sorry, sir,” he said sincerely. He averted his eyes apologetically, embarrassed that he hadn’t known this extremely important piece of information. “I received your personnel file, but I only glossed over it — as I said, I didn’t expect you for a few weeks.”

This uncomfortable pause gave Patrick a chance to look Trevor Griffin over. His compact frame only served to accentuate his powerful physique — he looked as if he had been power-lifting most of his life, and perhaps still did. Griffin’s short-sleeved casual uniform had few accoutrements — command jump wings under a senior weapons director’s badge — but Patrick saw his Class A uniform hanging on a coatrack behind the door, and it appeared as if Griffin had every ribbon and award an Air Force officer could have — and then some: Patrick noticed a Combat Infantry Badge and even a yellow-and-black RANGER tab.

“That’s okay, Trevor,” Patrick said. “I guess I’ve thrown a monkey wrench into your office by coming here early like this. I’m sorry.”

“We both have to stop saying ‘sorry’ to each other.”

Patrick smiled and nodded. Wishing to quickly change the subject, he nodded toward Griffin’s uniform blouse hanging behind the door. “I know of only one other Air Force officer that wears a Ranger tab.”

“I think there is only one other: Hal Briggs. I convinced him to go to Ranger school as a brand-new second lieutenant fresh out of Security Police school — he had so much energy I thought he’d drive us all crazy. I lost track of him over the years.”

“He’s a full bird colonel at my previous base in Battle Mountain, Nevada.”

“What’s he doing at Battle Mountain?”

“Hal commands a unit of high-tech, highly mobile ground forces that direct unmanned close-air-support and reconnaissance aircraft.”

“It must be under some very tight wraps for us here at AIA not to hear about it,” Griffin said. His eyes sparkled in excitement even more. “Sounds very cool, Patrick. I want to learn more about it.”

“Sure. You’d fit right in, I think — you look like you’re either an Olympic gymnast or you’re from the special-ops community.”

“I was in special ops before the Air Force really had them,” Griffin said. “I was an Army Ranger and fought in Grenada, then decided I wanted to join the Air Force and be an officer — I thought I was done crawling and bleeding in the mud. I was in Security Police for a while — that’s where I met Hal Briggs — but I couldn’t leave the special-ops career field and became a combat air controller.

“I directed a combat-controller wing in Desert Storm — my guys set up a half-dozen forward-resupply points and landing strips inside Iraq, including three that we set up in the western side of the country weeks before the air war started. I had one squad that actually put a laser beam on Saddam Hussein’s getaway vehicle — he was hightailing it to Jordan — but we couldn’t get a shooter in to launch on him fast enough.

“After Desert Storm I attended Air War College, was assigned to U.S. Special Operations Command headquarters at MacDill, then married a great woman that had two small kids; I adopted hers, and we had one of our own. It was then, after realizing I was almost forty with three young kids, that I decided to settle down. I joined the intelligence career track, and except for service schools and one year at the Pentagon, I’ve been either at Kelly Field or here at Lackland. I like to think I contribute the ground-pounder’s perspective to the high-tech Air Force.”

“The Air Battle Force is designed to have shooters deploy with ground forces at all times,” Patrick said. “We use unmanned long-range bombers to launch unmanned armed attack vehicles that can be directed via datalink by the ground forces.”

“We definitely need to talk and compare notes, sir,” Griffin said enthusiastically. “If you can forgive all my ignorance-based faux pas until I’m up to speed, I assure you again that I’m thrilled that you’re coming here and working with our wing.”

“Thanks.”

Griffin looked at McLanahan carefully for a moment, then said, “If you’d allow me to make an observation, sir?”

“Go for it.”

Griffin’s smile dimmed a bit. “I’d say you’re here early to check out this agency…to decide whether you want to stay in the Air Force or not.”

Patrick looked at Griffin sternly, as if he were ready to challenge him on his observation — but moments later he glanced away, then nodded. “I hoped it wouldn’t be that obvious,” he said.

“Like I said, very few general officers get demoted,” Griffin said. “Maybe they want to see what you’re made of, what your real goals are. The rumors are still hot and heavy that you’re being considered for the post of national security adviser if the president wins reelection — or maybe even to help Thorn win reelection. If you got kicked out of the Air Force, or were even forced to resign, it might look bad for the president to consider bringing you on. Maybe they want to see whether you’d stick it out or not, show some loyalty.”

“Trevor, I assure you, I’m not going to be national security adviser,” Patrick said.

“Hey, I didn’t make up the rumors — I’m just helping propagate them,” Griffin said, his energetic and engaging smile returning. “Do you have any intel background?”

“No,” Patrick replied. “Bombers, engineering, research and development. The units I flew with had their own organic intel capabilities — we rarely called on outside intel sources.”

Griffin grinned again, getting more and more intrigued by the minute. “The Air Battle Force operated with its own intel sources? Sounds cooler all the time, Patrick.” Griffin looked at Patrick carefully. “Hold on…that attack on the Russians in Turkmenistan a few weeks ago. The Russians claim an American B-1 bomber attacked an unarmed observer team being sent into Mary.”

“It wasn’t an ‘unarmed observer team’—it was a mobile SA-12 site, a full brigade, sitting twenty miles inside the cease-fire zone.”

“I knew it,” Griffin said. “We caught a glimpse of it here, requested some ground support — send some special-ops guys to go in and take a look — but that was vetoed by General Houser. Your own intel sources identified it as an SA-12?”

“We were lucky and caught one squeak from its search radar,” Patrick explained. “We couldn’t get it to turn the radar back on — until we made like we were going to attack it.”

“Well, we certainly didn’t think of using our air-intel assets as decoys to incite the Russians to attack us,” Griffin admitted, “but if it worked, I won’t knock it. The SA-12 attacked?”

“Shot down an unmanned B-1 bomber.”

“An unmanned B-1 bomber? We have them?” Patrick nodded. “Cool!” breathed Griffin. “Now I understand why you’d use your own plane as a decoy. I assume your unmanned bomber launched a few of those armed drones and made mincemeat of that SA-12 site just before it got shot down, huh?”

“Exactly.”

“Shit-hot!” Griffin exclaimed. “Everyone was starting to believe what the world press and the Russians were saying — that one of our guys attacked without provocation — and then when we heard that an Air Force general got canned for the attack, we thought maybe it was the truth. I knew the Russians were lying through their teeth. No surprise there, huh?” The pride was evident in Griffin’s face — he was beside himself with awe that Patrick McLanahan was sitting in front of him. “But I thought we were only supposed to be surveilling Turkmenistan, not patrolling with attack drones.”

“My rules of engagement were unclear on that point,” Patrick said uneasily, “so I erred on the side of caution and loaded my bombers up with SEAD weapons.”

“Good thing you did,” Griffin said. “So let me guess — your orders to Lackland were being cut the next day.”

“It didn’t take even that long,” Patrick admitted. “I was relieved of command before the last bomb fragments hit the ground.”

“All for doing what you were supposed to be doing — making sure the Russians weren’t trying to move against Turkmenistan’s new military forces before they could organize,” Griffin said disgustedly. “Now look at what’s happening out there: Russia is claiming that Turkmeni guerrillas are attacking their observer forces, and they’re flying so-called defensive-counterinsurgency missions against Turkmeni military forces. They’ve violated the United Nations cease-fire dozens of times in just the past few weeks, but no one is saying squat about it. Things are too hot for us to send recon aircraft like Rivet Joint and Joint STARS in to monitor their movements, so the Russians now have free rein.”

“I would like to keep a careful eye on the Russians and continue to report their movements to the Pentagon,” Patrick said.

“You’ve come to the right place, Patrick,” Griffin said proudly. “That’s what we do best. I believe we have the best and possibly the only remaining true brain trust in the intelligence field: Our guys stay here longer than in any other career field, and we maintain the only seriously long-term database of enemy threats in the world. Let’s talk about this unit, and maybe I’ll help talk you into staying — or it may convince you to take whatever might be waiting for you on the other side.”

“Fair enough.”

“The unit you’ll take command of, the Nine-sixty-sixth Information Warfare Wing, is one of several wings and centers managed by the commander of the Air Intelligence Agency, who as you know is Major General Gary Houser.” He noticed Patrick’s suddenly stony face. “You know him?”

“He was my first B-52G aircraft commander, almost twenty years ago.”

Griffin chuckled at that. “That’s funny. To listen to him, you’d think he was always an intel weenie — in fact, he trash-talks fliers, especially bomber guys, all the time. I knew he was a pilot, of course, but I didn’t know he flew B-52s. He sees the BUFF as another Cold War relic sucking money away from information warfare.” He looked carefully at Patrick again, then added, “So…maybe you’re here to check out General Houser and not just the Nine-sixty-sixth — decide whether you’re cut out to work for your old aircraft commander again?”

“Let’s not try to psychoanalyze this thing too much, okay, Tagger?”

“Yes, sir,” Griffin said, his eyes falling apologetically again. Patrick couldn’t help but like the colonel: he wasn’t afraid to express his feelings and thoughts, which made him a trustworthy person. Patrick felt very comfortable around him.

“Anyway, the Nine-sixty-sixth is probably the last vestige of the old Mighty Eighth — which, now that I think about it, might be another reason why you’re here: This is a good place to hide someone nowadays,” Griffin went on. “Like most of the Air Intelligence Agency, we’re a combination of many Air Force agencies. We were known as the Strike Information Center not long ago, and the Air Force Strategic Planning Agency before that, and we absorbed the Sixty-sixth Combat Support Group last year. When General Houser changed everything over to an ‘information warfare’ theme, the combined group became the Nine-sixty-sixth Information Warfare Wing. Our primary mission is to gather information vital to planning and directing strike missions by Eighth Air Force aircraft. Any country, any objective, any target, any weapon, any threat condition — the Nine-sixty-sixth’s job is to find a way to attack it.

“We can tap in to any intelligence or imagery source in the world, but primarily we use overhead imagery produced by Air Force assets, combined with domestic satellite assets and augmented by HUMINT field reports,” Griffin went on. “We still do a fair amount of covert ops ourselves, but General Houser thinks that’s unnecessarily dangerous and doesn’t yield proportionally higher-quality data.”

“What do you think about that?” Patrick asked.

“Well, as a former ground-pounder, I believe you always need boots on the ground to do the job right — but I’ll also admit that I’m pretty old-school,” Griffin replied. “Give me a few good trained operatives, a parachute, and a pair of binoculars and drop me anywhere on the planet, and I’ll bring back information that no satellite can get you — and if you need the target blown up, I can pull that off, too. Ask your typical satellite to do that.” He looked at Patrick, then smiled. “And if you give me Hal Briggs and a few of his shooters that you spoke about a minute ago, I can probably blow up a lot more — like what went down in Libya recently? Or inside Turkmenistan…?”

Griffin punched in further instructions, and the satellite imagery shifted to a more desolate landscape. “I might as well tell you now, Patrick — the Nine-sixty-sixth had an ongoing covert reconnaissance operation against the Russians in Turkmenistan. Your…incident…near Mary forced us to pull out.”

“I don’t suppose anyone will ever blame the Russian army for causing the problems over there in Turkmenistan, will they?” Patrick asked sarcastically.

“Sorry, sir, I didn’t mean it was your fault…” Griffin said. “Anyway, we were running covert ops out of a small air base in Bukhara, Uzbekistan. We made contact with some members of the Turkmen army, made some payoffs, traded weapons and ammo for information, that sort of thing. We left several of our Turkmeni contacts behind, and we’d sure like to pull them out.

“The border crossing and highway into Mary is sealed up tight now, and the Russians have a pretty solid air-defense setup out there now — too hot even for normal Air Force special-ops planes or helos, let alone the normal modes of transportation the Nine-sixty-sixth uses. What might the Air Battle Force have that we could use?”

“Dave Luger can insert a Battle Force team in about thirty-six hours and get one, maybe two of your guys out,” Patrick said.

“Thirty-six-hours? That’s impossible.”

“But neither the Pentagon nor Central Intelligence would ever approve it. It would have to be someone pretty damned important.”

“Ever heard of General Jalaluddin Turabi?”

“Turabi?” Patrick exclaimed. “Chief of the Turkmen army? He’s your contact?”

“You tangled with him?”

“He saved our team in the first battle against the Russians in Turkmenistan. He’s a hero.”

“He’s a better spy and guerrilla than he ever was a general,” Griffin said. “He’s been out collecting information and harassing the Russians, and at the same time recruiting soldiers for his army, using Air Intelligence Agency dollars. But when you hit the Russian SA-12 site, he scattered. We gave him up for dead. He resurfaced recently, one or two steps ahead of the Russians. We’d sure love to yank him out.”

“Then let’s do it.”

“It won’t do us any good to go into Bukhara, Patrick. We still need to go another two hundred and fifty miles to—”

“I’m not talking about Bukhara, Tagger — I’m talking about Mary.”

“Mary?” Griffin exclaimed. “How can you do that? We can’t overfly Turkmenistan….”

“We’re prohibited from overflying Turkmenistan with combat aircraft,” Patrick corrected him. “Transport aircraft are still allowed by peacekeeping and observer forces.”

“The Russians will spot a transport plane anywhere within two hundred miles of Mary.”

“Not our transport plane, they won’t.”

Griffin opened his mouth as if he were going to say something, then stopped and smiled. “Okay, Patrick. What is it? What do you guys have that I don’t know about?”

“A little toy we’ve been working on for a few years — an old idea we’ve just modernized. We—” Patrick stopped himself. He still couldn’t stop thinking about the Air Battle Force as “his.” “I mean, the Air Battle Force can get you in anywhere you want to go.”

“I’ll start working on getting authorizations right away.”

“Dave Luger at Battle Mountain is in charge of surveillance and observer air operations over Turkmenistan — he’ll give you permission,” Patrick said.

“I’d have to join the team, of course,” Griffin added with a sly smile.

Patrick smiled and nodded. Yep, he thought, he definitely liked this guy. “That you’ll have to take up with General Houser,” Patrick said. “But I’m sure Dave Luger can put in a by-name request for you to be part of the team. You’ll have to undergo a few days of training with the Air Battle Force ground-operations team and their equipment. But I don’t think you’ll have any problem keeping up with the team — in fact, you might be teaching them a thing or two. And you’ll be working with Hal Briggs again.”

“Outstanding. I like going to school, especially for new stuff.” Griffin was so excited that he was literally stepping from foot to foot — the man could hardly wait to get started.

“Anyway, let me continue with my orientation before the boss shows up,” Griffin went on. “Our work product is called the Strike Assessment Catalog, or what we call ‘The List.’ ” Griffin went to his desk, punched in a few commands on a computer keyboard, and a blank line on a large plasma wall display appeared. “The List used to be just that — a list, a paper catalog — but of course we’ve computerized it. Pick a target. Any target.”

Patrick thought for a moment. “Pro Player Stadium — I hate the Miami Dolphins.”

Griffin shook his head and smiled. “Good thing you didn’t say the Dallas Cowboys or Houston Texans, or you’d have a fight on your hands. Unfortunately, we haven’t done any U.S. targets — and you’re the first guy to ever ask to see the lineup for a U.S. target. How about we take a look at the latest on what the Russians are doing in Turkmenistan?”

Griffin punched instructions into the computer, and soon some satellite photos appeared.

“The western outskirts of the city of Mary,” Patrick said. “I recognize that area well.”

“We have pretty decent coverage of this area right now, maybe one photo every couple hours, so we have a good database going,” Griffin said. He entered more instructions into the computer, and several blinking yellow circles appeared. “We can overlay synthetic-aperture radar images in with the visuals, and we see several newcomers to the area. We can digitally enhance and enlarge the picture”—the photo distorted for a moment, then sharpened to show an individual vehicle—“and here we have what looks like a Russian BTR scout vehicle, with a couple dismounts standing nearby. The other targets we identified are also scouts.”

“Driving right to the outskirts of Mary,” Patrick remarked. “They’re not even bothering to hide anymore.”

“We can have the computer select the best weapon to take them out, or we can select the weapon system and the computer will recommend the best plan of attack,” Griffin went on. “But the real value in our system is not picking targets but in identifying and risk-assessing the threats. Here, I’ll ask to overlay the most recent threat depictions for the area.” A few moments later, several large red circles appeared, along with lists of weapons on the side of the image. “The number-one threat in this particular area is from mobile antiaircraft systems — in this case it’s from known twenty-three-millimeter optronically guided weapons on the scouts themselves. But this outer dashed circle represents the threat from SA-14 man-portable antiaircraft missiles that are known to be carried aboard Russian scout platoons.”

“So a planner or even a politician can ask for information on a particular target,” Patrick said. “You start feeding all this information to the brass, and they decide if the cost, risk, and complexity are worth the desired result.”

“Exactly,” Griffin said. It was unusual, Griffin thought, to hear an Air Force general thinking of political realities when planning strike missions. This could be why, he thought, the guy was still being considered to be President Thorn’s first national security adviser. “Ninety-nine percent of the time, we don’t even get past the threat analysis — some assistant deputy secretary of one of the services wants to know how we can blow up a breeder reactor in China, and we just pull up the threat analysis. He’s all hot to trot when it comes to contemplating an attack, but they go away very quickly when they learn how many assets it takes to do it. Diplomatic initiatives start to look a whole lot more appealing.”

“Tell me more about the Air Intelligence Agency and Gary Houser,” Patrick said.

“Getting right down to the meat of the matter, eh?” Griffin asked, his ever-present smile and twinkling blue eyes reappearing. “Okay, here goes:

“Quite simply, the Air Intelligence Agency is one of the most far-reaching and, in my opinion, powerful commands in the entire American military. General Houser has his fingertips on every piece of intelligence data generated in the free world. He personally directs the activities of a score of satellites, dozens of aircraft, and thousands of analysts and operatives around the world. He is also the American military’s one and only ‘quintuple hat,’ at least as a deputy: As commander of AIA, he’s also a deputy commander of intelligence for Air Combat Command, Eighth Air Force, and U.S. Strategic Command, as well as a deputy director of the National Security Agency and Defense Intelligence Agency. He is definitely Mr. Intel in the Pentagon.

“Over the years various intelligence and electronic-warfare units were shut down or consolidated, mostly because of budget cuts but also to minimize redundancy and enhance security, and Air Intelligence Agency — when it was known as the Air Force Electronic Security Agency — gained most of them. AIA controls almost all of the Air Force’s intelligence-gathering operations, but it also controls areas such as MIJL — meaconing, interception, jamming, and intrusion of enemy electronic signals — electronic counterintelligence, decoy deployment, and spycraft. Now, instead of just intercepting enemy transmissions, AIA has the capability to manipulate transmissions — change them, scramble them, or move them, in order to confuse the enemy. When computers came to the forefront, AIA began doing to computer data what we did with the electromagnetic spectrum — intercept and analyze, then manipulate and distort, while protecting and securing our own data. Other units and services started doing the same thing, but AIA had been doing it for a decade before anyone else.

“At first AIA’s work product was so timely and valuable that it began serving customers in other numbered air forces, not just the Mighty Eighth. Then it eventually replaced Air Combat Command’s intelligence stuff, and finally its information was being shared with planners in other commands. AIA has become so powerful and far-reaching that its mission has even supplanted Eighth Air Force’s mission, and it gets a lot of funding that normally goes to many other branches, command, and agencies.

“My predictions are that General Houser will easily win his third star, become commander of Eighth Air Force, and begin the transformation to an intelligence-gathering combat command. General Houser insists that Eighth Air Force will eventually become the information-warfare command and that bombers will be all but obsolete.”

“Not in my lifetime, I hope,” Patrick said.

“It’s already happening, Patrick,” Griffin said. “It won’t be long before the number of LDHDs — low-density, high-demand aircraft like spy planes, radar planes, jammers, dedicated anti-air-defense attack weapons, and data-manipulation platforms — will exceed the number of strike aircraft in the inventory.

“But I think General Houser is shooting higher: If General Samson gets selected as the Air Force chief of staff, he’ll see to it that Gary Houser gets his fourth star and becomes the first commander of the new U.S. Information Warfare Command, a major unified command on a par or maybe even surpassing the theater commands in importance, tasking, and funding. It will probably combine all the intelligence-gathering assets of Strategic Command, the Air Force, the Navy, and perhaps even the National Security Agency and Strategic Reconnaissance Office into one supercommand.

“That could change the entire face of warfare as we know it. General Houser says that it takes the Air Force twenty-four hours to blow up an intercontinental-ballistic-missile launch site or a bomber base in Russia — but soon his information warriors can put that same site out of commission in twenty-four minutes by jamming, spoofing, interfering, reprogramming it, giving it a computer virus, or shutting down its power by computer command.”

“I don’t know how it’s done,” Patrick said, “but if you guys have progressed to the point where you can hack into a computer that controls a power grid or networks air-defense sites together and shuts them down with the push of a button, it would be an incredibly powerful weapon. Maybe it will replace bombers someday — but I wouldn’t recommend replacing the bomber fleet with computers or aircrews with hackers.”

“This is the new Eighth Air Force, Patrick,” Griffin said. “The bombers in Eighth Air Force are still dedicated to the nuclear mission, but I think they’ll soon shift to Twelfth Air Force along with all the other nonnuclear attack units.

“Even Strategic Command is supporting planning and targeting for nonnuclear conflicts, using all their staff and computers that were originally dedicated to planning World War III against Russia and China to plan missions in every area in the world where any level of conflict could break out. Nuclear warfighting is all but dead. You have to speak in terms of ‘network-centric warfare’ and ‘low-density conflict.’ Your Air Battle Force sounds like the kind of thing Houser wants to transform Eighth Air Force into, but he wants the shooters to support intel, not the other way around.”

“Then I’d better get up to speed as soon as possible,” Patrick said.

“That sounds pretty positive to me, General,” Griffin said. “I take it you’ll stay on with us for a while?”

“Tagger, to be honest, there wasn’t really that much chance I’d just get up and leave,” Patrick admitted. “I’m not the kind of guy who gets out because I don’t like the working conditions. I’m an Air Force officer, and I go where I’m assigned. If they asked me to get out, I’d be out of here — but they didn’t. Now they have to contend with me.”

“Contend with us,” Trevor Griffin said. He extended his hand, and Patrick shook it enthusiastically. “Welcome to the Nine-sixty-sixth, sir. I think we’ll set this command on its ear — and have some fun doing it.” Patrick was about to say something, but Griffin interrupted him with an upraised hand. “And I truly believe they’ll eventually give you your stars back.”

“I wouldn’t count on it,” they heard a voice behind them say.

They turned and found two men standing in the doorway — the command’s chief master sergeant, Harold Bayless, and the commander of the Air Intelligence Agency, Major General Gary Houser. Griffin glanced accusingly at Bayless, and the chief returned his look with a smug smile — they both knew that Griffin had asked the chief to notify him when the commander arrived in the headquarters, but instead Bayless had facilitated this little surprise arrival and eavesdropping opportunity.

“Room, ten-hut,” Patrick said, and both he and Griffin stood quickly and snapped to attention.

Gary Houser stepped over to Trevor and Patrick, keeping his head up to emphasize his height advantage over the two. Gary Houser was at least seven inches taller than Patrick, with a beefy frame, big hands, a square face, dark eyes, and closely cut hair to deemphasize his baldness. After he moved close to both officers in the room, he tried to look into their eyes to read their expressions, but of course he towered over both of them, especially Griffin. Both Griffin and McLanahan stayed at attention, eyes caged.

“So,” Houser asked in a low voice, “which one of you clowns do I have to contend with?” Neither one replied. Houser gave Griffin a warning glare, put his hands behind his back, and went closer to Patrick. “Patrick McLanahan. Long time no see. My long-lost crew navigator who supposedly goes TDY to Fairchild but who mysteriously disappears off the face of the earth and ends up getting involved with cockamamie ideas such as the Border Security Force and…what was that other group? The Night Riders? Night Invaders?”

“Night Stalkers, sir,” Patrick replied.

“Right…the Night Stalkers. Big, bad, vigilante assassination squad. Are you a big, bad assassin now, Patrick?”

“No, sir,” Patrick replied, still standing at attention.

“You a close and personal friend of that big shot Kevin Martindale?”

“No, sir.”

“Are you going to be national security adviser, secretary of defense, or maybe even the fucking president now?”

“No, sir.”

“So you just screwed the pooch too many times at this new super-duper bomber attack base up in Nevada, and you got your ass kicked all the way down to me by SECDEF, is that it?”

“No, sir.”

“Then why are you here, Patrick McLanahan?”

“Reporting as ordered, sir.”

“Why did you lose a star, ex — Major General Patrick McLanahan? Why am I getting a disgraced and demoted general officer who has no intelligence experience, no prospects for promotion, and no future in the United States Air Force?”

Looking straight ahead, standing stiffly at attention, Patrick replied, “Because you’re one lucky son of a bitch, sir.”

Houser’s faced puffed, his eyes bugged out, and for a moment it appeared as if he’d explode with rage. Then he laughed out loud, guffawing directly — and purposely — into Patrick’s face. “Good one, nav!” he barked. “Sounds like you finally got yourself a sense of humor. About fucking time.” He glanced at Griffin and shook his head. “Look at you two, standing at attention like academy plebes! Stand at ease, stand at ease. I don’t want you jokers to pass out on me from the strain.” Griffin relaxed enough to go to parade rest.

Houser stuck out his hand, and Patrick shook it. “How the hell are you, Patrick? Good to see you.” To Griffin he said, “This guy was on my BUFF crew for three damned years. He went from a know-nothing, pud-pounding kid to the best bombardier in SAC, and that’s no shit. We won the Fairchild and LeMay trophies two years in a row and won a shitload of other awards, too. During a competition run, he dropped a shack bomb with a completely failed bomb-nav system and helped the crew shoot down an F-15 fighter. No lie.” He slapped Patrick on the shoulder and added, “All under my outstanding leadership and tutelage, of course.” Both Griffin and McLanahan were careful not to forget to smile and nod in agreement. “You done with him, Tagger?”

“Yes, sir.”

“Good. Follow me, Patrick.” Griffin called the room to attention as Houser strode out.

Patrick turned and extended his hand. “Good to meet you, Tagger. We’ll talk after I meet my troops.”

“Good to meet you, too, Patrick,” Griffin replied as he shook McLanahan’s hand. He gave Patrick a warning glance, and Patrick nodded that he received it.

Patrick had to take giant steps to keep up with the Air Intelligence Agency commander as he made his way downstairs to his office on the first floor. Houser neither acknowledged nor greeted anyone, and most everyone they passed in the corridors, Patrick noticed, chose not to make eye contact with the general. They reached a set of oak double doors flanked by an Air Intelligence Agency flag and a two-star general’s flag, guarded by a lone Security Force armed guard in blue Class A’s with white web belt, pistol holster, shoulder braids, ascot, and spats. The guard snapped to attention and pressed a button to unlock the door.

Houser quickly walked through the outer office, without bothering to order those in the room as they were, and stepped through another set of double doors into his aide’s office. “Coffee, Major,” he said to the officer at the desk.

“On the way, sir,” the aide responded immediately.

Inside his office Houser jabbed a finger at the sofa, and he took the large leather wing chair at the head of the coffee table. He withdrew a cigar from a humidor on the table. “You don’t smoke, as I recall,” he said by way of explaining why he wasn’t going to offer one to Patrick. Patrick didn’t bother to correct him. “So how the hell have you been, Pat?” he asked as he stoked the cigar to life.

“Not bad, sir.”

“Can the ‘sir’ shit, okay, nav?”

“Okay…Gary,” Patrick said. Houser took a deep pull on the cigar, and the silent message conveyed by his rattlesnake-like warning gaze through the cloud of smoke, despite the amused smile, was unmistakable: It’s “General” to you, mister, now and forever.

After the aide brought coffee in for both general officers, Houser sat back in his big chair, took a sip, and puffed away on his cigar. “So, nav, you’ve had one train wreck of a career since you left Ford Air Force Base — when you got shanghaied by Brad Elliott,” Houser began. “Man, you had it made in the shade before you took up with that nut-case. Despite your less-than-firewalled effectiveness reports, me and the wing king had been discussing when to send you to Air Command and Staff College in residence and what your next assignment was going to be — the Pentagon or SAC Headquarters. You were on the fast track to a senior staff job or even a command of your own.

“But then you got recruited by Brad Elliott to join him at Dreamland,” Houser went on. “You bombed the hell out of the Kavaznya laser site in eastern Siberia, taking out a half-dozen Soviet fighters and a dozen SAM sites plus their big-ass antisatellite laser. Then you—”

“That’s classified, General,” Patrick said sternly, “and I know you aren’t cleared for that information.”

“Shit, Patrick, I and ten other guys here at AIA know everything you’ve done over the past fifteen years — I found out about it a month after I first arrived here,” Houser said. “That mission was the beginning of the end of the Soviet Union — and the beginning of this agency. Intelligence became the name of the game starting the day after you dropped that bomb on that laser. Everyone was shocked that we underestimated the laser’s capability, and everyone wanted to be the one to discover the next Kavaznya site.”

“With all due respect, General, I advise you to drop that topic,” Patrick said seriously. “You may think you know everything and that you have the right clearances, but you don’t.”

“Come off it, Pat,” Houser said with a chuckle. “You Dreamland guys — rather, you ex—Dreamland guys — think you’re so special. Remember who I work for: Terrill Samson used to run Dreamland. The place was blown wide open after the Kenneth Francis James spy incident. ‘Dog’ Bastian barely had it under control: General Samson had to clean house to make the place right.” Patrick laughed inwardly: He knew that Colonel Tecumseh “Dog” Bastian had been firmly in control of the High Technology Aerospace Weapons Center — in fact, he created the kind of unit that the Air Battle Force had been patterned upon.

It was Terrill Samson, the black man who rose through the ranks after enlisting in the Air Force to avoid being drafted into the infantry during the Vietnam War and who made it all the way to three-star general, who’d never had control. Samson wanted nothing more than to get promoted, to be the newest and greatest black man to be reach the highest echelons of power and leadership in the American military.

But in his quest to become a symbol, he found that the harder he tried to control the men and women at Dreamland, the more he lost control. Samson got his wish: He got himself promoted to lieutenant general and commander of Eighth Air Force, in line to become commander of Air Combat Command, maybe even chief of staff of the Air Force. He left Dreamland without giving it any purpose or direction. The world’s most high-tech laboratory-turned-combat-unit had become little more than a high-tech aircraft boneyard during his leadership, but it had served its purpose — it was the footstool Terrill Samson needed to step up to the next level.

“I’m just giving you my recommendation here, Gary,” Patrick said. “Don’t talk about Dreamland. Let’s change the subject.”

That was three times in a row McLanahan tried to tell a superior officer what to do, Houser steamed, and that was three times too many. “Pat, I know all about the activities there, why you got canned, why you were called back, what you did,” Houser said. “I know Dreamland’s budgets, its projects, personnel, and progress. Same with Battle Mountain, the Air Battle Force, and the One-eleventh Wing—”

“Those units are different, General,” Patrick said. “They’re part of the Air Reserve Forces Command, and their budgets and missions are mostly classified ‘confidential.’ HAWC is still classified ‘Top Secret — ESI’ Level Three, which means nothing gets discussed outside the facility, not even in passing. Let’s drop it before I’m forced to make a report.” He had already decided to make a report — he was just trying to limit the length and detail at this point.

“Nav, don’t lecture me about security procedures, all right?” Houser retorted. “I’m commander of AIA. I live and breathe secrecy and security. You’re the one that needs to be reminded of his duties and responsibilities here, I think.”

Patrick’s mouth literally dropped open from astonishment. “Sir?”

“The way I see it, McLanahan, you’ve been marching roughshod through the Air Force, pulling shit that should have landed you in prison for a hundred years, and somehow you’ve not only gotten away with it but you’ve been rewarded and promoted for it. Only one man, Terrill Samson, had the guts to say, ‘Enough is enough,’ and he pulled the plug on you and your wild-ass excursions into personal aggrandizement. Your buddy President Martindale overruled him and gave you your stars back. I can’t figure out why. But what I do know is this: You screwed up again, your buddy Martindale couldn’t save you, Thorn and Goff wouldn’t help you, and so you got dumped on my doorstep.”

Houser took another deep drag on his cigar. “Maybe the Chief wanted to stick you with me to keep you out of sight, or force you to resign. I don’t know, and I don’t give a shit. But you’re here, and now you’re my problem.

“So here are the rules, and they’re simple: You do as you’re told, you keep your nose to the grindstone, and I’ll help you dig your way out of this shithole mess you’ve gotten yourself into,” Houser said. “You can finish out your twenty right here in San Antonio, maybe get your second star back — maybe — and when you retire, the private consulting firms and security agencies will be throwing plenty of six-and seven-figure offers your way. If the rumors of you going to Washington are true, you can do that, too. You probably won’t be national security adviser, but you can snag some high-ranking post in the White House National Security Council staff—”

“I’m not looking for a government or a private consulting job.”

“I don’t care what you are or are not looking for, General,” Houser said. “I’m just telling you that I don’t like my agency being used as a detention facility for out-of-control disciplinary hard-cases. You were a loner with a give-a-shit attitude when I first pulled a crew with you back at Ford, and you’re the exact same guy now. You may have been able to get away with being like that because of a combination of luck and skill as a bombardier, but that won’t cut it here.

“If you try to pull just one-tenth of the shit you pulled on General Samson, my friend, I guarantee I’ll make your life a living hell,” Houser went on, jabbing his cigar at Patrick. “You’re with the Nine-sixty-sixth now, which doesn’t deploy and gets pretty good face time with the brass and politicos in Washington, Offutt, and Barksdale. That’s a plum job for you. Keep your nose clean, and you can stay there, studying satellite photos and HUMINT contact narratives, then briefing the four-stars on enemy activity, and you might just improve your reputation after a couple years.

“Here it is in black and white, Pat: You were sent here to cool your heels, and I don’t like it,” Houser went on bitterly. “I don’t like you being dumped in my lap, and I don’t like golden boys who think they know it all and can tell their superior officers off. I want you out of my face and out of the limelight. I want you as quiet as I can make you without cutting out your fucking tongue myself with a pair of rusty scissors. Maybe we’ll both get lucky and Thorn will give you a job in his new administration, and then you’ll be out of here soonest. Otherwise you have two years and nine months before you can retire: I would advise you to keep your yap shut and put in your time in the Nine-sixty-sixth, and then you can go out on the lecture circuit at ten thousand a pop or be a talking head on Fox News Channel at five hundred dollars a day.

“The Nine-sixty-sixth commander is a two-star billet, so maybe you’ll get your second star back and regain a little bit of the decorum and pride you’ve squandered over the past few years,” Houser said. “If you play ball, I’ll help you ease on out of here so you can take care of your son, get your cushy government position, or maybe go back to Sky Masters Inc. and rip off the government with those hyperinflated defense contracts your friend Jon Masters is so fond of negotiating. I don’t give a shit what you do after you get out. But while you’re in my unit, under my command, you will shut your mouth and do what you’re told. Am I making myself perfectly clear, Pat?”

Patrick looked at Houser for a long moment, never breaking eye contact, long enough for Houser to feel the anger start to rise in his temples. But finally Patrick responded. “Yes, sir. Perfectly clear.”

Houser couldn’t find any hint of rebellion or defiance in that simple answer, which made him all the more angry. “Good to see you again, Pat,” he snapped. He jabbed the cigar toward his office door. “Now get the hell out.”

Thirty minutes to go, sir,” Hal Briggs said gently. “Time to get moving.”

Trevor Griffin was instantly awake and alert, but he didn’t know where he was. The place was dark, smelled like old oil and even older body odor, and was as noisy as hell — he felt as if he were trapped in a garbage truck roaring down a freeway at ninety miles an hour. Then he remembered where he was, and what he was about to do.

And he thought that this wasn’t a bad place after all, compared to what he was about to step into. Not bad at all. Pretty darn nice, in fact.

Griffin unfastened his safety harness and swung out of the bunk he’d been napping in for the past few hours. He was on the upper deck of a QB-52 Megafortress bomber, a highly modified B-52H Stratofortress bomber. The QB-52 Megafortress was a “flying battleship,” capable of delivering up to sixty thousand pounds of the world’s most advanced weapons, from ultraprecise cruise missiles to antisatellite weapons. Except for a pod on each wing that carried radar-and heat-seeking air-to-air defensive missiles, however, the QB-52 carried no ordnance on this mission.

In fact, as Griffin looked forward toward the cockpit, he reminded himself that this B-52 didn’t carry something else either that he used to think was important: a crew. This B-52 bomber was unmanned—it had flown halfway around the world without anyone’s even setting foot in the cockpit. They received constant messages and updates from the folks back at Battle Mountain Air Reserve Base in northern Nevada, but the plane flew and even aerial-refueled all by itself.

The other unusual thing about this flight was that this B-52 carried something it rarely ever took along on its missions: passengers. Trevor Griffin was one of them.

But not for long.

Hal Briggs, who occupied the bolt-in bunk on the left side of the aircraft, was already climbing down the ladder to the lower deck. Griffin followed, moving carefully, still getting accustomed to the strange suit he was wearing. The Air Battle Force guys unflatteringly called it BERP — Ballistic Electro-Reactive Process — but Trevor called it simply “un-fucking-believable.” It was a full-body coverall design, made of material that felt like stiff fabric, such as the kind that knife-proof bank deposit bags were made of. But once connected to a power unit worn like a thin backpack, the material electronically, instantly became as hard as an inch of titanium when struck. Griffin had watched a demonstration during his daylong training course and couldn’t believe what he saw: The wearer was protected from thirty-millimeter Gatling-gun fire, explosions, fire, and even a fall from a twenty-five-story parachute-training drop tower.

That wasn’t all. The boots had a jet-propulsion system built into them that compressed and stored a large air charge that allowed wearers to jump several dozen meters in height and distance — they no longer had to run or even drive into combat. The battle armor had two electrodes on the shoulders that could send a lightning bolt of electricity in any direction out to a range of about thirty feet, powerful enough to render a man unconscious. In addition, Briggs wore an exotic-looking exoskeleton device that enhanced their bodies’ strength by automatically stiffening sections of the BERP electronic body armor, then using microhydraulic actuators to amplify muscular strength. Griffin saw BERP-outfitted commandos tossing engine blocks around the training course like pebbles, hefting and firing thirty-millimeter cannons as if they were handguns, and demolishing small buildings like bulldozers.

His new helmet was something out of a science-fiction movie, too: It had sensors that gave him “eyes” in the back of his head, superhearing, night vision, and allowed him to talk to practically anyone on planet Earth with a radio. Even the color of the gear was high-tech: It was some sort of computerized multicolored pixelated design that allowed the wearer to blend into any background, from broad daylight in the desert to night against snow.

Trevor climbed down the ladder and met up with Briggs. On a signal from Hal, Griffin donned helmet and gloves and powered on his battle armor, as he was taught to do back at Battle Mountain days ago. Hal glanced at his old commanding officer with a hint of humor in his eyes occasionally as he checked Griffin’s battle-armor systems. “How do you feel, sir?” he asked.

“Like I gotta pee,” Griffin responded. “I’m finding it hard to consciously pee in this thing.” Like some sort of Frank Herbert sci-fi invention, the BERP gear collected urine and sweat from its wearer and circulated it through small tubules in the suit, which provided incredibly effective temperature control. The suit also had small filters built into the fluid-circulation system that removed bacteria and other contaminants from the collected fluid and allowed the wearer to drink the fluid from a tube — it tasted terrible, but it would save you in an emergency.

“That’s standard for everyone wearing battle armor for the first time,” Hal said. “But the more you pee in it, the better you’ll feel — and I guarantee if you’re thirsty enough, you’ll want it. Any questions for me, sir?”

“How many times have you used this aircraft before?”

“On an actual mission?” Briggs asked. Griffin nodded. “Never.”

“Never?” Trevor remarked. “How about test flights?”

“This particular aircraft? Never. How many total test flights…?”

“Don’t tell me, let me guess: never, right?”

“We have very good computers that model and simulate the flights for every possible loading and flight condition,” Hal said. “It’s been tested a hundred times — just not with any live human beings on board. I think we made one test flight with instrumented dummies a while back.”

“And?”

Hal smiled, shrugged, and said, “You know, sir, instrumented test dummies make terrible pilots.”

“Great.”

“And the best part, sir — you volunteered for this,” Hal said. “We’re happy to have you along.” He turned away and spoke, “Bobcat Control, Tin Man One. How do you copy?”

“One, this is Control, we read you five-by,” Brigadier General David Luger responded from his Battle Management Center, or BATMAN, at Battle Mountain Air Reserve Base. With him was Colonel Daren Mace, the operations officer for the 111th Wing; Colonel Nancy Cheshire, commander of the Fifty-second Bomb Squadron, the unit in charge of all the Megafortresses, who was “piloting” this unmanned Megafortress; Marine Corps Sergeant Major Chris Wohl, noncommissioned officer in charge of the Air Battle Force’s ground forces; and Colonel Kelvin Carter, the Fifty-second Bomb Squadron’s operations officer and the man in charge of the special mission that was about to begin in a few minutes. They were supported by intelligence, weapons, surveillance, and maintenance technicians seated with them in the Aircraft Control Group of the BATMAN.

“We’re ready to board Condor.”

“We’re ready here.”

“Let’s mount up.” Hal hit a switch and watched a cabin-pressurization gauge, which showed the cabin altitude slowly increase until it equaled thirty-two thousand feet, the same as the aircraft altitude. Their oxygen system was already built into their BERP suits, so they didn’t need oxygen masks. Griffin tried and failed to control his belches and other bodily outgassing as the lower outside pressure allowed trapped gases in his body to escape. When the pressure was equalized, Briggs undogged the aft bulkhead door and stepped aft. Griffin followed. A short walk later, they were in the QB-52’s bomb bay. Briggs flipped on the lights — and there it was.

They called it the MQ-35 “Condor,” but it had no official designation because it was as experimental as anything ever before fielded by any Air Force unit. The Condor was designed as a stealthy long-range special-operations forces insertion transport aircraft, using a long-range bomber to get it close to its target, then using its onboard propulsion system to fly the team out at the end of the mission. It resembled a giant stealthy air-launched cruise missile, with a smoothly blended triangular lifting-body fuselage, a long flat nose, and a gently sloping aft section culminating in a small-diameter engine-exhaust nozzle. Thirty-six feet long, nine feet high and wide, it took up almost the entire bomb bay, leaving a very narrow catwalk around it. Briggs opened the entry door on the side of the craft, and Griffin clambered inside and began strapping in. Hal performed a brief walk-around inspection using a flashlight, climbed into the front seat, closed and latched the entry door, and strapped himself in.

The interior was tight and cramped. The team members sat in heavy-gauge steel seats, not quite side by side and not in tandem, but slightly staggered so they had a bit more shoulder space. The only windows were the forward cockpit windows. There were two more seats behind Griffin, plus a small cargo area behind the rear seats for their weapons and gear. They all were quiet as they tightened shoulder and lap restraints and readied themselves for their mission. Hal flipped some switches and powered up the tiny ship’s internal power and instrumentation. “Control, Condor, power on, ready for systems check.”

“Systems check in progress, Condor,” Kelvin Carter responded from Battle Mountain. Hal Briggs could manually operate and control Condor, but, like the QB-52 Megafortresses, it was designed to be controlled, monitored, and flown via satellite from Battle Mountain. A few moments later: “Condor, systems check is complete, aircraft is ready for flight. I’ve been informed that we’re sending updated intel info to you now. We might have to make a change in the landing zone. Stand by.”

“Select the tactical area chart, sir,” Hal told Griffin.

Inside his helmet Griffin glanced at the electronic display, which was a very wide field-of-view visor, similar to the view from a quality full-face motorcycle helmet. At the extreme upper left side of the display was a small yellow bar. When Griffin looked at it, a menu similar to a Windows or Macintosh computer popped up. He scanned down the menu until he came to the “Charts” selection, then glanced at the star icon to the left. Another menu popped up, displaying a set of charts. Griffin selected the proper one. The entire chart appeared to be floating in front of him. By glancing at navigation icons on his display, he was able to display changes to the chart from the last briefed information.

“Looks like Russian troops have moved even farther east than we anticipated, sir,” Hal said after studying the symbology on the new chart. “I’d say they’ve completely taken Tedzhen. A few patrols have moved almost all the way to the Sakar Reservoir. Colonel?”

“Our contact point is on the north side of the reservoir,” Griffin said. “Our landing zone is between them and the Russians’ new position. It’s close, but I don’t think it’s been compromised — yet.”

“Top? What do you think?”

“The data is over thirty minutes old, sir — they may have compromised your landing zone already,” Chris Wohl responded by the secure satellite link. “But there’s only one way to find out.”

“I agree,” Hal said. “Colonel? Your thoughts?”

“This is your show, Hal,” Griffin said. “But going in at night, in this contraption — I’d say we go for it. No way in hell they’d ever expect us.”

“That’s the spirit, sir,” Hal said happily. “Control, recommendations?”

“This is Intel, Condor,” the intelligence officer responded. “We have a few other alternate infiltration spots, but it’ll extend your ground-travel time past your reserve power limit.” The BERP electronic battle armor ran off very high-tech fuel cells that supplied an enormous amount of power but for relatively short periods of time, depending on usage. In a simple “sneak and peek” operation, their power might last hours — but if they had to fight their way out of a battle, the power could last only minutes.

“The last two fuel cells are emergency-only, Control. We never plan to use them,” Briggs said. Each team member carried extra fuel cells — they were even more important than ammunition on this mission. “If we can’t do this mission without using the emergency fuel cells, we don’t go. We’ll do the approach to the planned landing zone, and if it’s hot, we’ll bug out.”

“Sounds good to me, Condor,” David Luger said. “We’re good to go.”

“Roger that,” Carter acknowledged. “Five minutes to release, Condor.”

It was the longest five-minute wait in Trevor Griffin’s life. All the techniques he had learned over the years to calm himself — controlled breathing, consciously unclenching muscles, Transcendental Meditation — refused to work this time. But soon he wished he’d had to wait a little while longer. It seemed only a few seconds when Carter gave a one-minute warning.

The bomb doors below them slid open. The rumbling sound reverberating in their helmets quadrupled in intensity, and the little craft shook violently in the disrupted airflow, as if it were a young stallion trying to break the wrangler’s grasp on the rope to free himself.

But the worst part was when they dropped free of the Megafortress’s bomb bay and fell out into space. Griffin felt as if his stomach had flown up into his throat. Blood rushed to his head, causing his vision to “red out,” and he thought for sure he was going to lose his lunch. The Condor’s sudden deceleration caused his body to mash up against his shoulder harness, which dug mercilessly into his body, so hard he could feel it pinch even through the thick BERP body armor. The Condor’s nose pitched over, and for a very long, uncomfortable moment, he thought he was heading straight down, ready to slam into the earth facefirst.

“Good separation, Condor,” Carter’s voice said. “How are you feeling, Colonel?” Undoubtedly the BERP rig had some sort of telemetry device that was sending body-function readouts back to Battle Mountain. “You can breathe anytime now, sir.” Griffin found he was holding his breath, and he let it out with a gush and found that the pressure on his chest had already greatly subsided.

“I’m okay,” Griffin said, willing his breathing to quickly return to normal.

“That first step is definitely an eye-opener,” Briggs exclaimed. Griffin silently cursed his desk-bound stomach and vowed to stay in better shape.

If he made it through this mission in one piece.

“MA flight controls responding normally,” Carter reported. “Coming up to best glide speed…now.” The Condor’s nose pitched up greatly, assuming a much more normal, albeit slightly unsettling, nose-down attitude. Underneath Condor’s skin were thousands of tiny computer-controlled hydraulic actuators that twisted and manipulated most of the outer fuselage — in effect, the entire body was a wing, with an almost infinitely controllable amount of lift or drag. The craft could glide as slowly as a feather one moment, sink as fast as a fifteen-thousand-pound rock the next moment, and then float like a cloud the next, all without deploying one aileron or flap. “Looking good, Condor. Sit back and relax, folks. We’re on glide path to target.”

Although it was at the crossroads of travel and commerce in Central

Asia, and had been for centuries, Mary was definitely a very lonely and desolate place now.

Mary once was the second-largest city in Turkmenistan and the nexus of the railways, highways, and petroleum pipelines that transported Turkmenistan’s immense oil and natural-gas wealth to other parts of Central Asia and as far east as the Indian subcontinent. It was also now the easternmost stronghold of the Army of the Russian Federation, which was trying to wrest control of Turkmenistan away from its interim Muslim government and replace it with a pro-Russian government again. Most of the Muslim population had fled north toward Chärjew, ready to cross the border into Uzbekistan if necessary; a few hardier souls had decided to make the perilous journey across the burning sands of the Kara-Kum Desert toward Kerki, ready to escape to Uzbekistan or Afghanistan if the Russians dared pursue them this far.

Mary was Podpolkovnik Artyom Vorobev’s first field command. He was in charge of the 117th Rifles, a motorized rifle regiment with about three thousand troops carried aboard a conglomeration of vehicles, everything from cargo trucks to BTR-60 armored personnel carriers and BRDM scouts. Vorobev, however, was lucky enough to have a battalion of T-72 light tanks augmenting his force, which he deployed right up front on the Ashkhabad-Mary highway. He also had almost a full air-defense battalion, including four ZSU-23 mobile antiaircraft artillery vehicles and three 9K35 Strela-10 mobile surface-to-air missile units, along with a command-post vehicle, radar vehicle, and reloads.

He used to have an S-300 brigade up front, but of course the damned Americans and their unmanned stealth bombers had taken care of that unit. The furor regarding his decision to deploy the S-300 air-defense brigade so far ahead of his regiment had thankfully quieted down in the wake of the United Nations’ decision to exclude all foreign military combat aircraft from Turkmenistan. He was still in command, and he was determined not to screw up again.

The Strela-10 heat-seeking antiaircraft missile system was much more capable than the ancient ZSU-23 against high-performance aircraft, such as the American bomber that was shot down a few weeks earlier. But as commander of the point scout unit, Vorobev’s objective wasn’t to take on a massed air or ground assault but simply to make contact with any enemy forces out there, report their strength and position, disengage, and maintain contact until heavier reinforcements arrived. The main force was many kilometers away, but it was two full reinforced brigades spread out along the fifty kilometers between Mary and Tedzen, supported by several aviation, air-defense, engineer, and special-operations companies.

Vorobev’s command vehicle was located near the rear of his regiment, about ten kilometers southwest of the main airport at Mary and four kilometers behind the lead scout formation to the east. He was proud of this force, and he told his battalion and company commanders that every day. Vorobev had been deployed all over the Russian Federation in various units throughout his eighteen-year-long army career, but mostly as a staff officer, never as a field commander. He had worked hard and used his contacts to go to the best schools and training centers so he could fill out his résumé with plenty of academic experience, but despite top marks and glowing endorsements from many high-ranking generals and even a few vice marshals in Moscow, he had always lacked the one thing he needed to compete for flag rank: actual experience commanding a combat unit in the field.

When he got his orders to go to Turkmenistan, he thought his career was over — an assignment to Central Asia was worse than one to Siberia. But it turned out that one of his many patrons did him a favor: He would be taking command of a full regiment, which looked good on any subcolonel’s record, but his first command was in a relatively quiet and safe location — Ashkhabad, Turkmenistan. Nothing ever happened there.

That is, until about two months after he took command of his unit. Then, as his grandfather always used to say, “On idyot pyerdyachim parom,” or “He was going to the top propelled by fart steam.” The Taliban had invaded Turkmenistan, one of the other Russian army regiments in his division assigned to defend the city of Mary had been crushed, and now he was suddenly thrust to the forefront with strict orders from Moscow not to underestimate the Taliban-led forces and let the same happen to him. Vorobev’s regiment was now expected to blunt any advances by any hostile forces, whether they be Turkmenis, Taliban — or American B-1 bombers. Mary was the “line of death” here in the wastelands of Turkmenistan. If he held fast, Vorobev would get his long-awaited promotion, perhaps back to a staff job as polkovnik or maybe even a general major. If he failed, the best he could hope for was an honorable retirement with his podpolkovnik stars still on his shoulders.

If he survived.

It was nearing 9:00 P.M., which was patrol shift-change time for most of the regiment. Because so many of his men would be out and about at this hour, Vorobev made it a habit to stop by at least one security-sector company to watch the changeover before heading to his tent to start reviewing reports, making notes, and issuing orders to his battalion commanders. His driver was waiting for him as he put on his helmet and pulled the chin strap tight. One of his young lieutenants, a mortar-company commander named Novikov, and a battalion commander named Kuzmin were accompanying him on this evening inspection. These ninety-minute-long tours gave his junior officers a chance to have a look at the rest of the regiment, ask questions, and get some face time with the boss.

It was a rather pleasant night so far, but Vorobev knew that the weather in southern Turkmenistan in late spring was unpredictable and sometimes harsh. “Let’s go, serzhant,” he said. He returned the salutes from his two junior officers, then shook hands. He chatted with them idly as they headed to the first security checkpoint, about twenty minutes away.

Looks like we came a long way for nothing,” Hal Briggs said. The inside of the little Condor was eerily quiet, with just the faintest whisper of airflow audible through their helmets. But it wasn’t the ride that was bothering everyone.

It was the landing area. It appeared as if several Russian patrols were moving directly toward the landing site itself.

“We’ve been working with Turabi and these Turkmen guerrillas ever since the peacekeeping force was established,” Griffin went on. “They risked their lives to pass on valuable intelligence information to us.”

“Well, it appears the Russians are about to nab them,” Briggs said, studying the latest satellite-imagery download. “One Russian patrol looks like they’ve got them right now, and two others seem to be on their way.”

“The landing site is compromised,” the intel officer back at Battle Mountain radioed. “I recommend you abort. From your altitude you can make it back to Bukhara with plenty of fuel left.”

“Colonel Griffin? Speak to me. I’m considering getting the heck out of here.”

“We can’t let those Turkmen forces get captured if we want any chance of keeping Turkmenistan out of Russian hands, Hal.”

Hal paused. Then, “Top? Comments?”

Chris Wohl had encountered Jalaluddin Turabi before on two occasions — the last time, Turabi’s former Taliban fighters helped the Battle Force commandos escape a Russian attack in Turkmenistan. “It’s hard to tell, sir,” Wohl responded, “but I don’t see much more than a squad out there near the landing zone, and maybe a platoon within ten miles. You can take those guys easily. All you have to do is make sure you’re in the air before more troops show up.”

Briggs thought about it for a few moments. “Roger that. Control, Condor is proceeding as planned.”

“Are you sure, Hal?” Dave Luger asked. “It’s looking pretty hairy.”

“Not as hairy as it is for Turabi,” Hal said. “Put us down, sir.”

There was a pause, this time from Battle Mountain — Carter was obviously inquiring as to the wisdom of this decision. But soon he said, “Here we go, Condor. Everyone, prelanding checklists. Hold on tight.”

They were just a few miles from the planned landing zone, still gliding to the southwest at seventeen thousand feet. Just as Griffin thought there was no way they could make that landing zone from this altitude, the nose came up and his body was shoved forward on his shoulder straps as the Condor decelerated. His stomach again churned up into his throat as they careened earthward. Then, through the sudden wind-blast noise and intense buffeting, he thought he heard and felt the landing gear pop out, and moments later they hit the ground.

The noise level suddenly increased a hundredfold as the mission-adaptive fuselage went into maximum-drag configuration, and Griffin’s body dug into the shoulder harnesses again for what seemed like five minutes but was only a few seconds. The moment the pressure released, Hal Briggs had his restraints off and his door unlatched, and Griffin had to hurry to keep up with him. As they briefed, Griffin kept watch using the battle armor’s sensors while Hal pushed the Condor off the highway and spread a camouflaged antiradiation net over it — it would be easily discovered in daytime, but at night it looked like a pile of sand, and the net would keep it from being spotted by infrared sensors.

Griffin had his weapon ready — a big, heavy rifle that no commando would ever carry but was the perfect weapon for the Tin Men and their powered exoskeletons. The rifle was an electromagnetic rail gun that propelled a large titanium sabot projectile several thousand feet per second with amazing accuracy. Coupled with the battle armor’s sensors and steered with the exoskeleton, the weapon was devastating to any war machine, from a tank to a bomber, out to a range of over three miles.

“You okay, sir?” Hal asked.

“Yes. All clear,” Griffin said.

“Then let’s go find your boy, Colonel,” Briggs said. He checked his electronic charts, stepped in the proper direction, then fired the thrusters in his boots — and, in a whoosh! of compressed air, he was gone.

Here we go, Griffin said silently. He pointed himself in the right direction, braced himself, and gave the electronic command — what he called during training “clicking the ruby slippers together.” He felt the push of the thrusters, but for all he knew he was still standing upright — there was no sense of flying or falling at all. The battle armor’s stabilization system made the jump so smooth that he had to check his sensors to be sure that he was moving at all. But moments later he felt the thrusters fire again to slow his fall, and he knew enough to bend his knees slightly in order to help take the landing impact.

Hal was about five yards away. “Good jump, sir. Follow me.” And he was gone again.

Very cool, Griffin thought as he waited for the thrusters to recharge before he made his next jump. Very, very cool…

The security patrol had a group of three men on their knees in the sand, hands atop their heads, when the second patrol team, driving a wheeled BTR armored personnel carrier, arrived. An officer got out of the BTR and approached the group. “What do you have here tonight, Sergeant?” he asked.

“They were out here in shallow spider holes, sir,” the sergeant replied. “They seemed to be taking a lot of notes. And look at this.” The officer looked at the object in his flashlight. “It’s a pair of high-powered binoculars, sir. But there’s something else….”

“A camera — it’s a digital camera, designed to take digital pictures through the binoculars,” the officer said, examining the binoculars carefully. “And this port on the side…looks like it hooks into a transmitter, perhaps a satellite transmitter, da? Get someone out here with a metal detector — I bet we’ll locate the transmitter nearby.” He motioned to the captives. “You find out which is the leader yet?”

“They don’t appear to understand Russian, sir,” the sergeant said. “But I think that one is the leader.” He pointed to a very tall Turkmeni soldier with an empty shoulder holster. “He was the only one with a sidearm. It was Russian, in very good condition, and it looks like he knew how to wear it.”

The officer approached the man and shone his flashlight on him. Moments later, after grasping the man’s face, he broke out into a wide grin. “Well, well. Sergeant, don’t you see who we have here? This is General Jalaluddin Turabi himself, the new commander of the so-called Turkmen armed forces.” He bent down. “Am I not correct, General? And this is your aide, Abdul Dendara, no? Speak up so all your men can hear you.” The man remained silent, shaking his head that he did not understand. “Still playing dumb, General?” The officer withdrew a pistol, aimed it at the head of the younger man beside him, and fired. The headless body of the young recruit toppled over almost into Turabi’s lap. “How is your Russian now, General? Coming back to you?”

“Yob tvoyu mat’ khuyesas!” Turabi swore in Russian.

“There, you see, Sergeant? General Turabi knows Russian very well. We must take him with us back to the capital, and be very careful not to hurt him — at least for now. As for the other — execute him. We don’t have enough supplies to feed the entire damned Turkmen army.”

“Bastards! You can’t just slaughter us like this! We are prisoners of war!” Turabi shouted. As Turabi was dragged away, the patrol sergeant barked an order. One of his troops clicked the safety off his weapon….

But at that second they heard a loud banngg! The lights from the patrol vehicles that were illuminating the area snapped off, steam and diesel fuel gushing from a completely ruptured engine and fuel tank. The soldiers, Russians and Turkmen alike, dropped to the desert floor.

The security officer saw several bright flashes nearby that he assumed were gunshots, all coming from near his men. “Sergeant!” he shouted. “Where are the attackers?” No response. “Sergeant! Answer me!”

“I’m afraid he can’t answer you right now, sir,” came a strange, synthetic, computer-like voice. Suddenly the Russian felt himself hauled up by his jacket. He found himself dangling in the air — being held aloft by an alien-looking figure straight out of a science-fiction magazine.

“Vyyabat!” he shouted. “Who the hell are you?”

“Turn off his lights, and let’s get out of here, sir,” Hal Briggs said.

“Americans? You are Americans?” the officer shouted. “What are you doing here? I will—” But Griffin silenced him with a quick bolt of energy from his shoulder electrodes, then dropped the unconscious officer to the sand.

Trevor Griffin went over to Jalaluddin Turabi and helped him to his feet. “Are you all right?” he asked in Russian via the battle armor’s electronic interpreter.

“You…you are the American robot warriors,” Turabi gasped. “Why have you come here?”

“I’m from the Air Intelligence Agency, General Turabi,” Griffin said. Turabi still looked puzzled. “From Texas, General, remember? You’ve been sending us pictures of the Russians for weeks now. We’re here to get you and your man to safety. Let’s go. We’ve got to get out of here.”

They returned to where the Condor aircraft was hidden, took the camouflage netting off, and pulled it out onto the highway. Turabi and his sergeant, Abdul Dendara, climbed in the back and strapped in, followed by Griffin and then Briggs. He had the power on immediately. “Bobcat Control, Condor, we’re up.”

“Good to hear it, guys,” Dave Luger said.

“We’re running a systems check now, Condor. Stand by for engine start.” A few moments later: “Systems check okay. Hydraulic fluid is a little low — we may have a leak somewhere. Engine-start sequence in progress.” On the back of the Condor, a small retractable air inlet deployed, and moments later they heard the high-pitched whine of a turbojet engine. “Engine start complete, running another systems check…Hydraulic pressure is low, almost to the red line. Let’s see if we can get airborne before we lose the whole system. Hal, use the tiller and keep her straight on the highway. Ready?”

“Let’s do it.”

But it wasn’t going to happen. As soon as the Condor started moving forward, the nose slipped sideways, and they could feel a severe shuddering under their feet. “Control, I can’t steer it,” Hal said, “and I feel a really bad vibration in the nose.”

“Hydraulic pressure is down to zero,” Kelvin Carter reported. “The nosewheel will just free-caster without hydraulic power. Hal, you’ll have to lock the nosewheel in place with the locking switch on the tiller. You won’t have any steering, so you’ll have to manually line the Condor up on the highway. Use differential braking until you get enough airspeed to steer it aerodynamically. Careful on the brakes — you’ll flip yourself over if you have takeoff power in and you hit the brakes too hard.”

“I’ll get out and line it up,” Griffin said, and before Hal could protest, he had undogged his hatch and was scrambling out. It was no problem for him to lift up the nose of the aircraft and reposition it on the highway centerline.

But just as he did, a warning beeped in his helmet. “I’m picking up an aircraft coming our way.” He raised his rail gun and followed the prompts in his helmet until he could see the threat symbol in his electronic visor. “Got him! Got him!” he said excitedly. “Low, six miles, speed one-ten. Probably a damned helicopter gunship or attack plane.”

“Easy, sir. Wait for him to come into range,” Hal said. With the powered exoskeleton, Griffin tracked the incoming aircraft easily. “Should be any second now. Don’t lead him — the projectile will move a hell of a lot faster than—”

Suddenly Griffin heard in his helmet, “Warning, laser detected. Warning, laser detected.”

“Laser!” he shouted. “He’s laying a laser designator on us!” He didn’t wait any longer — he fired the rail gun at the incoming aircraft, even without a lock-on, hoping that the shot would make the pilot veer away or the gunner to break his lock-on or concentration.

It did neither. As Griffin watched, his electronic visor showed another target — this one moving much faster than the helicopter.

He didn’t hesitate. He jumped atop the Condor aircraft and watched as the laser-guided missile streaked in. Like a hockey goalie, he crouched down, keeping the missile centered in his sights while balancing. He raised the rail gun and tried to line up on the incoming missile.

But before he could get a shot off, it hit. The missile deflected off the barrel of the rail gun, off Griffin’s right arm, veered away from Condor, hit the ground, and exploded. The rail gun shattered in his hands, and he was blown backward off of the Condor and several yards through the air onto the hard-baked desert floor.

He was still alive. He heard warning buzzers, his electronic visor was cracked, and his body felt as if he were being turned on a rotisserie over a blazing bonfire — but he was still alive.

“Colonel Griffin!” he heard Hal Briggs shout. Briggs was kneeling beside him, putting out an electrical fire from his backpack and belt and removing his helmet. “Holy shit…”

“Where…where’s that gunship, Hal…?” Griffin breathed. “Get him, damn it!”

Hal turned and raised his rail gun — but before he could line up on the aircraft, another explosion erupted a short distance away. The Russian gunship had shot a second laser-guided missile into the Condor, blowing it to pieces. “Oh, my God!” Griffin shouted. “Turabi and his sergeant…”

“They’re clear,” Hal said. “They’re trying to find a place to hide.” Just as he was about to fire on the aircraft, he received warning in his helmet. “Oh, shit, another aircraft inbound.”

He turned to take a shot at the second aircraft, then slung his rail gun over his shoulder, picked up Griffin, and leaped away — just as another laser-guided missile exploded in the exact spot where they’d been a fraction of a second earlier. Hal landed from his jump and had barely enough time to cover Griffin with his body when the second aircraft, a Russian Mi-24 Hind-D attack helicopter, peppered him with thirty-millimeter cannon fire. The shock of the heavy-caliber shells hitting Briggs was so fierce that, even protected by Briggs’s armored body, Griffin felt his breath being knocked out of his lungs by the impact. As soon as the cannon fire stopped, Briggs scooped up Griffin and made another thruster jump in a different direction, away from Turabi and Dendara.

But the explosion, the gunship attack, and that last leap substantially depleted his power — warning tones were popping up the moment he landed from his jump. Griffin obviously saw them, too, because he held out his spare power pack. “Turn around — I’ll swap power packs.”

“Not this one, you won’t,” Hal said, examining the pack — it had shattered along with the rest of Trevor’s backpack. He quickly ejected his nearly spent power pack and replaced it with his emergency one, then made another leap when he noticed the first gunship lining up for a cannon or missile attack.

But it was soon obvious that the Russian helicopter pilots had set up their attack-orbit plan well. Hal couldn’t jump in any direction without a gunship able to bear down on him quickly with only minor corrections. As soon as he landed from his last jump, cannon shells were raining down on him, while the other gunship was circling to begin his attack.

Hal found that he was a few yards away from a shallow wash, and while he waited for his thrusters to recharge, he carried Griffin to it. “You gotta stay here, sir,” Hal said. “If we’re going to stop these bastards, I need to get some room to fight. Burrow down as deep as you can and hide under the sand — your suit will help screen your heat signature from their IR sensors.”

“Hal…” But he was gone seconds later.

As soon as Briggs landed, he hefted his rail gun, took aim on the closest gunship, and fired. Nothing happened — he saw the bluish yellow streak of vapor hit the helicopter, but it kept on barreling toward him. Hal leveled the gun again and prepared to fire another round.

But he realized moments later that the big helicopter was no longer flying toward him but crashing toward him. The main rotor had sheared off milliseconds after the large titanium projectile shattered one engine and the transmission, and seconds after being hit the gunship was nothing more than a man-made meteorite. The crew compartment and cockpit were filled with burning fuel and transmission fluid, and almost instantly ordnance started to cook off out on the pylons and stub wings from the intense fuselage fire. Hal jet-jumped away from the impact point seconds before the copter crashed into the desert right in front of him.

“Got the bastard, sir,” Hal radioed, before realizing that Griffin’s equipment was destroyed and he couldn’t hear. He activated his sensors to locate Griffin.

And realized with horror that the second Russian gunship had zeroed in on Trevor Griffin and was about to attack! He raised his rail gun just as the gunner started walking thirty-millimeter rounds onto Griffin’s hiding spot.

But at that very moment, two missiles streaked out of the night sky and rammed into the Hind’s engine exhausts. The gunship immediately exploded, and the flaming fireball buried itself in the desert a few hundred yards away from the Air Force colonel.

Just as he was wondering who’d shot those missiles, Hal heard, “Sorry we’re so late, Tin Man.” It was Kelvin Carter. “Got here as quick as I could.” Soon the unmistakable roar of their QB-52 Megafortress could be heard, less than five hundred feet overhead.

“You were right on time,” Hal said. “Three more seconds and the colonel would’ve been turned into Swiss cheese.”

“Roger that,” Carter said. “Glad we could help. We’re going to pay a visit on a couple other Russki aircraft heading your way. The closest ground troops are about eight miles southwest. We don’t have any air-to-ground weapons on board the Megafortress, but we can create some confusion for you. Watch the skies.”

“Thanks, Bobcat.” Briggs jet-jumped over to Griffin. “You okay, sir?”

“I’m here to tell you, Hal,” Griffin said weakly, “that it is possible to see your life flash in front of your eyes twice in one night. I sure as hell did.”

“You saved our bacon, Colonel,” Hal said, helping Griffin strip off the useless battle armor. “You’ve earned the right to join our exclusive club if you so choose.”

“I’ve got a desk back in San Antonio waiting for me, along with a wife and kids — I think that’s where I’ll stay for a while,” Griffin responded honestly. “That is, if we can get out of here without Condor.”

At that moment Hal turned. He’d received another warning tone in his helmet. “A vehicle heading toward us — I thought Carter said it was clear?” Hal raised his rail gun, preparing to engage.

Then he saw Jalaluddin Turabi frantically waving from his perch atop the Russian armored personnel carrier. He and Dendara had returned to the place where they’d been captured and absconded with the APC and weapons.

“It’s a piece of crap! Don’t these Russians believe in cleaning their vehicles?” Turabi asked. “But it should get us to Repetek, where my men will be waiting. Shall we go?”

Confirmed, sir,” the unit intelligence officer said, handing his commanding officer a report. “The damned Air Force again.”

“I thought so,” the commander said angrily. He read the report, shaking his head, then crumpled up the paper and banged a fist on his desk. “A commando operation supported by a damned B-52 bomber—and they don’t say one friggin’ word about it to us or to anyone at Langley. Where was Turabi taken?”

“Chärjew, then by air to the USS Lincoln in the Arabian Sea,” the intelligence officer replied. “Bob, we’ve got to pull all our assets in right now. The Russians are going to sweep east, take Mary, then sweep north and bomb the living daylights out of us at any time. We’ve got to exfil our guys and get out of here.”

“I know, damn it, I know. A year of work down the tubes — not just in Turkmenistan but all the way to Iran and all over Central Asia. The Air Force really screwed us last night.”

The commander looked up from his desk at the hanger where his office was located. He had a U.S. Air Force MH-53M Pave Low IV special-ops helicopter and crew standing by ready to go, along with its crew of six and a team of twelve commandos — and there was no doubt that he could get volunteers to fill up the chopper if he asked. He had a large contingent of operatives and valuable informants on the streets of Ashkhabad, the capital of Turkmenistan, and also down inside Iran, throughout Afghanistan and Pakistan, and as far away as Krasnovodsk, the big Russian port on the Caspian Sea — all turning up information on enemy activity in Central Asia. He had guys deep inside Al Qaeda, the Russian military, Afghani drug cartels, and terrorist groups for thousands of miles around.

All compromised because of some half-assed Air Force operation near Mary.

It was too risky to stay in Uzbekistan now. The Russians were going to be like a large hive of angry bees — stirred up, swarming, and mad as hell, ready to lash out at anything that wasn’t 100 percent verified Russian. The whole Central Asia operation was in danger. A lot of Russians had been killed by the Americans as they fought their way out of Turkmenistan — no doubt the Russians wanted payback.

“We got no choice,” he said finally. “Send messages via secure microburst transmissions and radio interference, telling our guys to hightail it out into the back country and start monitoring the pickup points.” The CIA operatives used their own secret microburst transceivers — coded messages sent and received by devices that compressed messages into microsecond-long bursts, thereby reducing the chances of their being detected or used to backtrace their location. The CIA headquarters also sent messages by broadcasting interference signals overlaid on regular radio and TV broadcasts — sometimes as simple as bursts of static, other times images that could be seen only with special lenses or by slowing down videotapes of certain shows — to relay messages to their informants or agents in deep cover.

Over time all the field operatives and informants who wished to leave would get the message, and they would execute their escape plan. The actual procedure differed widely for individual agents, but the objective was for each agent to report to one of several exfiltration points near where he or she lived or worked and wait for a sign or message that the agent was going to get picked up. It could take days, sometimes weeks — patience and trust were the key words here. Sometimes agents would be on the run, hiding out in the wilderness. If they were lucky, they could maintain their covers while checking the spots daily for a sign that their rescuers were nearby.

“Roger that,” the intel officer said. “Everyone’s been in fairly close contact. We should have no trouble rounding them all up.”

“That’s because the Air Force stirred up the Russians before, too,” the commander said bitterly. “I am going to make sure that Langley chews some butt at the Pentagon this time. Someone’s got to lose his stars over this. They just can’t—”

The unit commander was nearly knocked off his chair by the first massive explosion, but by the time he leaped to his feet and began running for the exit, the second bomb crashed through the ceiling of the hangar and exploded. He never heard or felt anything after that….

The CIA air base in Uzbekistan was certainly no secret to anyone — especially not the Russians. Since Russia was a full partner in the defense of Uzbekistan, and Russia was mostly responsible for Uzbekistan’s border security and defense, the Russians had plenty of information on anyone moving across the frontier — including the CIA agents and their most trusted informants.

But instead of simply raiding the CIA field headquarters, Russia had other plans for them.

A lone Tupolev-22M Backfire bomber swept in over the desert plains of eastern Uzbekistan. It had been cleared into Kazakhstan by Russian air-traffic controllers based at Alma-Ata and monitored by other Russian air-traffic controllers in Bishkek, the capital of Kyrgyzstan, who watched the speedy bomber as it descended rapidly from high altitude down to just a few hundred meters from the surface. There were actually three Backfires that had launched from their secret Siberian base, but after their last aerial refueling, the crews chose the best-operating aircraft to complete the mission.

Skirting the Bishkek radars, the Backfire bomber proceeded at low altitude across the vast southern Kazakh plains, staying below the coverage of air-defense radars in Tashkent, Uzbekistan. Minutes later the bomber started a slight wings-level climb. At an altitude of one thousand meters, it began its attack.

The Tu-22M carried three large air-launched missiles called the Kh-31, one in the bomb bay and one on external hardpoints on the non-moving portion of each wing. Each six-hundred-kilogram missile had a ninety-kilogram high-explosive fragmentary warhead designed to blast apart lightweight structures like radar arrays and antennas with ease. After release, the missile shot ahead of the bomber using its small first-stage solid-rocket motor, then climbed rapidly through fifteen thousand meters’ altitude using its big second-stage motor. When the second-stage motor burned out, the motor casing became a ramjet combustion chamber, which automatically fired and quickly accelerated the missile through Mach 3. The Kh-31 initially used its inertial navigation system to steer toward its target, but it received position and velocity updates through its GLONASS satellite-navigation system, which greatly improved its accuracy to near-precision quality. It needed less than four minutes to fly the two hundred kilometers to its target. Once within thirty seconds of its target, it switched to a passive radar detector and homed directly in on a specific radar frequency.

One Kh-31 missile lost contact with its carrier aircraft and hit harmlessly somewhere in the central Uzbek deserts — but the other missiles continued their flight with devastating accuracy, destroying the air-defense radar sites at Tashkent and at Samarkand, a large city in southeastern Uzbekistan. With the Uzbek radars shut down, the Tu-22M proceeded south into Uzbekistan and set up an orbit, blanketing the area with electronic jamming signals and also monitoring the activities about to begin.

The second part of the operation had actually taken place nearly a half hour earlier. Orbiting over southern Siberia at fifteen thousand meters, a Tupolev-95MS “Bear” bomber, a long-range turboprop aircraft first designed in the 1940s, had released two eleven-meter-long missiles from wing pylons about twenty seconds apart. Code-named the Kh-90 “Karonka,” or “Crown,” it was one of the world’s most advanced land-attack missiles. The missiles’ first stage was a solid rocket motor, which accelerated the missile to almost Mach 2. As in the Kh-31s launched by the Backfire bomber, when the first-stage motor burned out, the rocket chamber became a ramjet engine. Air was compressed and accelerated inside the ramjet, and liquid rocket fuel was injected and burned. As the missile gained speed, air and fuel were squeezed and accelerated even more, until the missile soon was cruising at over eight times the speed of sound.

The missiles streaked across Siberia and Kazakhstan, climbing to twenty-five thousand meters’ altitude, then started a steep dive toward their target. Steered by signals from the Russian GLONASS, their accuracy was superb. At an altitude of ten thousand meters, each missile ejected two independently targeted 150-kilogram high-explosive warheads.

The CIA operations base next to the abandoned airfield outside Bukhara, Uzbekistan, consisted of only four buildings inside a ten-acre fenced compound — two aircraft hangars, each of which doubled as a storage facility, ammo dump, and training center; a natural-gas-fired power generator and well pumphouse; and a headquarters building, which doubled as a barracks. The warheads hit each structure dead on. The explosions were so powerful that the fuel and munitions inside the hangars did not even have a chance to explode.

They simply disappeared in a cloud of superheated gas.