Shadows of Steel

SHADOWS OF STEEL

By Dale Brown

Copyright (C) 1996 by Dale Brown

All rights reserved.

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

Thanks to my good friend Lieutenant General Don Aldridge, USAF (retired), former vice commander of the Strategic Air Command, for giving me the inspiration for this story and for again providing me with many valuable insights into the behind-the-scenes world of strategic air power.

Thanks to General J. Michael Loh, commander of USAF Air Combat Command, Langley AFB, Virginia, for his invaluable assistance in gathering information about the deployment of heavy bombers, and particularly his help with learning about the B-2A Spirit stealth bomber. Thanks also to Colonel Mike Gallagher, Captain Steve Solmonson, and Major Barbara Carr, Public Affairs Office, Headquarters, USAF Air Combat Command, Langley AFB, Virginia, for their assistance.

Thanks to Brigadier General Ron Marcotte, commander of the 509th Bomb Wing, Whiteman AFB, Missouri, the first home of the B-2A Spirit stealth bomber, and Colonel William Fraser, vice commander, for their help, their time, and especially their special insights into the new world of long-range bomber operations. Meeting officers like them and visiting a modern, hard-charging base like Whiteman were a very special privilege and treat for me.

I also want to thank Captain Bill Harrison, 509th BMW Public Affairs; Colonel Greg Power, 509th Operations Group commander; Lieutenant Colonel Fred Strain, 509th Operational Support Squadron commander; my old B-52 buddy Lieutenant Colonel Rick Sorenson, Operations Plans Team chief; fellow ex-FB-111 crewdog Lieutenant Colonel Tony Imondi, chief B-2A instructor pilot; Lieutenant Colonel Dick Newton, 393rd Bomb Squadron commander; Major Steve Tippetts, Captain Buzz Barrett, and my old fellow FB-111 crewdog Major Jim Whitney of the 393rd Bomb Squadron “Tigers”; and all the others I met and who offered ideas and answered questions during a spectacular visit to the 509th Bomb Wing and the incredible B-2A Spirit stealth bomber. It was good to see old friends so successful in the world’s most sophisticated combat warplane.

Thanks to Major Emerson Pittman, chief of public affairs, secretary of the Air Force Public Affairs—Western Region, for his help in gathering information for this story.

A major source of historical, political, and military information on various countries around the world on which I relied was Defense and Foreign Affairs Handbook (London: International Media Corp., Ltd., 1994). Thanks also to the many members all over the world of SOC,CULT.IRAN (SCI) newsgroup on the Internet for their invaluable help and ideas.

Thanks to Neil Nyren, publisher and editor-in-chief at G.P.

Putnam’s Sons, for his valuable help with the manuscript—within sixty seconds of my first meeting with him, this man helped me over a particularly rough spot in the manuscript! I’m lucky to have him with me.

This novel is dedicated to the memory of my good friend, mentor, and editor, George M. Coleman, executive editor at G.P. Putnam’s Sons. From the very beginning of my writing career, whenever I needed a guiding hand around all the land mines in the publishing world, he was always there. The greatest gift God could give us is to put the soul of George Coleman into another person and let his charm, excitement, and thirst for life bless us once again. I hope to meet that lucky person someday.

This novel is also dedicated to the men and women of the Aircrew Life-Support Section, 31st Fighter Wing, Aviano Air Base, Italy, for their hard work in training and equipping U.S. Air Force F-16 pilot Captain Scott O’Grady, which helped him to survive being shot down over Bosnia and to successfully escape the clutches of the Bosnian Serb army in June of 1995. Mission after mission, year after year, they pack the ‘chutes, charge the bottles, check the straps, and change the batteries as if they will be the ones who’ll strap on that jet. Thanks for bringing a crewdog home safely.

AUTHOR’S NOTES

Any similarities in this novel to any person, living or dead, are purely coincidental and entirely the product of the author’s imagination.

My faithful readers will note that this story takes place after Day of the Cheetah. I hope you welcome back our old friends as much as I enjoyed bringing them back for you.

Your comments are welcome! Please e-mail your thoughts to me at Reader MailMegafortress.com, or visit my Web site at http://www.Megafortress.com.

REAL-WORLD NEWS EXCERPTS

DEFENSE & FOREIGN AFFAIRS STRATEGIC POLICY, OCT 31, 1994 (reprinted with permission)

In mid-September, Tehran concluded that a clash over the islands in the Strait of Hormuz—Abu Musa and the Tumbs—was inevitable. This assessment was based on intelligence from Saudi Arabia and the GCC (Gulf Cooperation Council) and was reflected in the intensification of Iran’s military preparations and exercises in the Gulf. By late September (1994), Tehran was actively preparing for a possible military confrontation with the Persian Gulf states over the islands. Tehran believes that by demonstrating its strong and uncompromising position over the Gulf issues, it will be able to influence such countries as Egypt and Iraq to recognize Iran’s unique position in the hub of Islam.

IRAN SAYS WESTERN TROOP BUILDUP POSES THREAT TO SECURITY (OCT 20, 1994/0600 GMT) NICOSIA-REUTERS

Iran’s Intelligence (Internal Security) Minister Ali Fallahiyan said on Wednesday night the presence of Western forces in the Gulf was a threat to Iran’s security. He said Iran should be vigilant and prepared “for any eventuality,” the official Iranian news agency IRNA reported. It quoted Fallahiyan as saying that the “presence of alien forces and their movements in Iran’s immediate vicinity needed vigilance and full preparation for any eventuality.” He blasted United States policy in the Gulf region and urged oil-rich Gulf Arab states to end their alliance with Washington. The official news agency IRNA said the English-language Tehran Times and Iran News attacked the United States in editorials marking the November 4 seizure of the U.S. embassy in Tehran after the Islamic revolution in 1979. Addressing neighboring Gulf Arab states, it said: “Now you are the victims of U.S. exploitation and usurpation carried out in more subtle ways to deprive you of your wealth.” It urged them to oppose the presence of U.S. forces in the region. “Let the shout of ‘Death to America’ ring loud in the desert as a clear expression of your opposition to any pretext of a ‘Desert Storm,’ which we all know was just a game of cards the CIA played to justify their presence in the region.”

IRAN USES STYX TECHNOLOGY IN CRUISE-MISSILE DEVELOPMENT (Nov 17, 1994) 11/17/94 FLIGHT INTERNATIONAL Iran is developing a range of ballistic missiles, and a cruise missile derived from the Russian SSN-2 Styx anti-ship missile, according to German intelligence documents obtained by Flight International. Tehran has access to Styx technology via the Silkworm, the 80-km (45-mile)-range Chinese-built version of the Styx. Iran took delivery of its first Silkworms in 1986 and the missiles are deployed on the Strait of Hormuz at the entrance to the Gulf waters. Four Silkworm launch emplacements have been built on the mid-gulf island of Abu Musa, where administration is shared by Iran and the Arab emirate state of Sharjah. Documents say that Tehran is also involved in the development of a solid-fueled missile and in the development of enhanced-performance Scud ballistic-missile systems ….

ARBITRATION REJECTED IN UAE ISLANDS ROW (DEC 23/1221 GMT) 12/23/94 TEHRAN (DEC 22) BLOOMBERG Iran spurned a call from its Arab neighbors to accept international arbitration in its dispute with the United Arab Emirates over three islands in the Persian Gulf. The Iranian Foreign Ministry said bilateral talks with the UAE were the only way to resolve the row which has soured relations between non-Arab Iran and the six states of the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC). GCC leaders, ending a summit in Bahrain last night, called on the Iranian government to let the International Court of Justice decide who owns the islands of Abu Musa and the Greater and Lesser Tumbs. Iran, which controls the islands, said it will never give them up to the UAE. Raising the issue of territorial disputes posed a threat to the security of the Persian Gulf and served the interests of foreign powers in the region, the Foreign Ministry statement, carried on Tehran Radio, said.

AEROSPACE DAILY-01/19/95

Defense Intelligence Agency Director It. Gen. James R. Clapper, Jr …. said Iran is in the midst of rebuilding its military capability … Clapper said Iran has been spending between $1 billion and $2 billion a year on arms, and has focused on missiles and weapons of mass destruction and some “limited growth” in conventional capabilities. Some of the systems Iran is acquiring, such as Russian Kilo submarines and anti-ship cruise missiles, “could complicate operations in and around” the Persian Gulf, he added.

GULF STATES AGREE To BOLSTER CAPABILITIES (JAN 27/JDW) 01/27/95-JANE’s DEFENSE WEEKLY (JAN 21)

Leaders of the Gulf Cooperation Council have agreed at their annual meeting to bolster their defense structure, possibly by purchasing three to four airborne warning and control aircraft. The six-nation alliance, comprising Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, Kuwait, Oman, Qatar and Bahrain, said in Bahrain last month it would develop a “unified strategy” that could “act swiftly and decisively” to counter any threat to any member. That includes bolstering the GCC’s 6,000-man rapid-deployment force, known as Peninsula Shield and based at Hafr all-Batin in northern Saudi Arabia, to 25,000 men. The GCC’s move to bolster defenses came as Iran is reported to be building anti-ship missile sites and other fortifications on three disputed islands in the southern Gulf. Abu Musa, Greater Tumb and Lesser Tumb are being transformed into military arsenals, claims the UAE.

IRAN DEPLOYS HAWK MISSILES To GULF ISLANDS-SHALIKASHVILI 03/08/95

Iran has placed Hawk antiaircraft missiles on islands at the entrance to the Persian Gulf, Gen. John Shalikashvili, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, said Feb. 28. “We spotted them putting missiles onto launchers, which they haven’t done before,” he told a meeting of reporters, according to wire reports. U.S. reconnaissance has also spotted the Iranians moving artillery into forward positions on its islands in the Strait of Hormuz, he said. “All of that could lead me to lots of conclusions. One of them is that they want to have the capability to interdict the traffic in the Strait of Hormuz.” The U.S. is carefully monitoring the situation, he added. While Iraq is considered the biggest military threat in the Persian Gulf, Iran could become the region’s major power toward the end of the century, Shalikashvili said.

ARMS BUILDUP MAY THREATEN GULF OIL-PERRY (MAR 22/0951 GMT) 03/22/95-ABU DHAB-REUTERS Iran has moved 8,000 troops, chemical weapons and anti-ship missiles to islands at the mouth of the Gulf in a buildup that could threaten oil shipping, U.S. Defense Secretary William Perry said on Wednesday. Perry, on a week-long Gulf trip, hammered home a warning that he has made in moderate states in the region that Iran might one day try to control the flow of half the world’s oil using a recent buildup on islands in the Strait of Hormuz. “This involves almost 8,000 military personnel moved to those islands. It involves anti-ship missiles, air defense missiles, chemical weapons,” Perry told a news conference in Manama, capital of Bahrain. “It can only be regarded as a potential threat to shipping in the area,” he added, charging publicly for the first time that Iran had stationed chemical weapons on the islands, some of which are claimed by the United Arab Emirates (UAE). Perry did not name the islands but the Pentagon has previously identified one as Abu Musa.

NAVY FACES EXTENDED RANGE OF IRANIAN MiG-29S-NAVY NEWS & UNDERSEA TECHNOLOGY (NVTE)-08/21/95

A major new headache for Central Command and Navy battle groups in the Arabian Sea has emerged with Iran’s development of in-flight refueling probes for its MiG-29s, intelligence community sources confirm. ” … The Iranian air force possesses four tanker versions of the Boeing 707, roughly comparable to the U.S. Air Force KC-135, which was based on the never-built civilian Boeing 717.

-nautical- … The U.S. analysts look to the roughly 2,100-mile distance from Iran to Diego Garcia in the Indian Ocean. With in-flight refueling, Diego Garcia would come within the range of the Iranian MiG-29s …. Thus, the aircraft could be used to disrupt U.S. air supply lines in the event of future conflict in the Persian Gulf. Additionally, although the MiG-29 is heavily geared to air-to-air combat, one analyst said “there is some evidence” that the Iranians are working on adapting the aircraft to carry the air-to-surface version of the French Exocet anti-ship missile. In this case, he noted, the U.S. Maritime Prepositioning Squadron based at Diego Garcia would be at risk. … The possibility of such legal Iranian harassment of U.S. battle groups concerns several analysts, who observe that because of the Vincennes’s (CG 49) shoot-down of an Iranian airliner in 1988, U.S. forces would be reluctant to attack in the face of Iranian provocations. At press time, U.S. Central Command officials had not responded to Navy News’ requests for comment on the MiG-29 development.

B-2 BOMBER FIGHT BREWING ON CAPITOL HILL, PHILLIPS BUSINESS INFORMATION 01/19/95 By KERRY GILDEAS Rep. Ron Dellums (D-Calif), ranking member on the House National Security Committee who has staunchly opposed additional B-2s, attended a closed National Security Committee briefing on military intelligence operations yesterday, said he learned of no changes in the world threat situation that would demand additional weapons systems or increased defense spending. “I absolutely do not think there is anything we see presently in the world that would justify 20 more B-2s, ” Dellums remarked. “Where are you going to fly them? Where is the threat?”

OVER THE PERSIAN GULF NEAR ABU MUSA ISLAND, IRAN 12 FEBRUARY 1997, 0314 LOCAL TIME The attackers were first spotted on radar only twenty miles from Abu Musa Island; by the time the chief of the air defense radar unit issued the air defense alert notification, they were seventeen miles out. Because this was the morning of Revolution Day in Iran, only a skeleton crew was on duty at the Islamic Republic Pasdaran-Engelab Revolutionary Guards air squadron base, and the pre-Revolution Day celebrations had ended only a few hours earlier—response time, therefore, was very slow, and the attackers were within missile range long before the Islamic Republic Air Force F-5E Tiger II fighter crews could reach their planes. The order to commit the Pasdaran’s British-built Rapier antiaircraft missiles and ZSU-23/4 antiaircraft artillery units was issued far too late.

Four three-ship flights of British Aerospace Hawk light attack jets streaked in at treetop level, launched laser-guided Hellfire missiles on the six known Iranian air defense sites, then dropped laser-guided incendiary bombs and cluster munitions on the island’s small airfield. One unknown Rapier site launched a missile and destroyed one Hawk, but two trailing Hawks flying in the “cleanup” spot scoured the area with cluster bombs where they saw the Rapier lift off, receiving a very satisfying secondary explosion as one of the unlaunched missiles exploded in its launcher. The cluster bombs also hit the U.S.-built F-5E fighters on the ramp, destroying both and damaging two hangars where another F-5E was parked, the control tower, and some sections of taxiways. One adjacent empty hangar was left untouched.

The second punch arrived just a few moments later. Four flights of four SA-342 Gazelle and SA-332 Super Puma attack helicopters swooped over the island, firing laser-guided Hellfire missiles and AS-12 wire-guided missiles from as far away as two miles—well out of range of the few Pasdaran soldiers who were firing blindly into the sky with handguns and rifles at any aircraft noise they heard.

Each attack was quick—launch on the move, no hovering in one place. The next two flights did the same, swooping in and destroying targets; then the first two waves came in again to kill any targets they’d missed on their first pass, followed by the second two flights making a second pass.

The attacks were fast and chillingly accurate. In just a few minutes, the attackers had claimed the prizes for which they had come looking: six Iranian HY-2 Silkworm and four SS-22 Sunburn antiship cruise-missile launch sites, several Rapier antiaircraft missile batteries, and a handful of antiaircraft artillery sites, plus their associated munitions storage and command-control buildings. All were either destroyed or severely damaged. The Silkworm and Sunburn missiles had been devastating long-range weapons, capable of destroying the largest supertankers or cargo vessels passing through the Persian Gulf—their presence on Abu Musa Island, close to the heavily traveled international sea lanes, had been protested by many nations for several years.

Other missile attacks had claimed a large portion of the island’s small port facilities, including the heavy-lift cranes, long-boat docks, and distillation and petroleum-handling facilities.

But the big prize, the real target, had also been destroyed: two Rodong surface-to-surface missile emplacements. The Rodong was a long-range missile that had been jointly developed by North Korea, China, and Iran, and could carry a high-explosive, chemical, biological, or even nuclear warhead. From Abu Musa Island, the missile had had sufficient range to strike and attack targets in Kuwait, Bahrain, Qatar, the United Arab Emirates, Oman, and most of the oil fields in eastern Saudi Arabia—about two-thirds of the oil fields in the Persian Gulf region.

The Hawk, Gazelle, and Super Puma crews were incredibly accurate, almost present. A building that supplied power to the communications and military base facilities was destroyed by two missiles, but a virtually identical building just a few yards away that supplied power to the housing units was left untouched. A semi-underground Silkworm missile bunker with a fully operational Silkworm inside got a Hellfire through its front door, yet an adjacent empty bunker undergoing refurbishment but identical in every other respect was left undamaged. Although nearly half a billion dollars of weapons, equipment, buildings, and other infrastructure were damaged or destroyed, out of the more than two thousand men stationed on the island, only five unlucky Pasdaran soldiers, plus the F-5E pilots and their crew chiefs, lost their lives, and only a handful more were injured.

From the nearby air defense base at Bandar Abbas on the mainland, just 100 miles to the northeast, Islamic Republic Air Force MiG-29 fighters were scrambled almost immediately, but the attackers had hit their targets and were retreating south toward the Trudal Coast and the United Arab Emirates long before the Iranian fighters arrived. The MiGs tried to pursue, but Omani and UAE air defense fighters quickly surrounded and outnumbered them and chased them out of UAE airspace.

As the surviving Pasdara’n troops scrambled out of their barracks and began to deal with the devastation of their island fortress, five black-suited two-man commando teams silently picked up their gear, made their way to the shoreline of the one-square-mile island, clicked a tiny wrist-mounted code transceiver, then slipped into the warm waters of the eastern Persian Gulf after their leader cleared them to withdraw.

Before departing, one member of the lead commando team took a last scan around the area, not toward the military structures this time but northeast, toward the Strait of Hormuz. Peering through the suitcase-sized telescopic device he and his partner had been operating, he soon found what he had been searching for. “Man, there’s that mutha,” he said half-aloud to his partner. “That’s what we should’ve laid a beam on.” He centered a set of crosshairs on the target, reached down, and simulated squeezing a trigger. “Blub blub blub, one carrier turned into a sub.

Bye-bye, Ayatollah baby.”

“Get your ass in gear, Leopard,” his partner growled under his breath. In seconds they had packed up and were out of sight under the calm waves of the Persian Gulf.

The object of the young commando’s attention was cruising six miles northeast of the island. It was an aircraft carrier, the largest warship in the entire Persian Gulf—and it was flying an Iranian flag. It was the Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, flagship of the Islamic Republic of Iran’s new blue-water naval fleet. Once the Russian aircraft carrier Varyag, and now the joint property of Iran and the People’s Republic of China’s Liberation Army Navy, the carrier dwarfed all but the largest supertankers plying the Gulf. Not yet operational and used only for training, its officers and crew had only been able to look on helplessly as the missile batteries on Abu Musa Island exploded into the night.

Leopard and his partner, along with the rest of the commando teams, followed tiny wristwatch-sized locator beacons to small Swimmer Delivery Vehicles anchored to the muddy bottom, and four divers climbed aboard each SDV. There they changed air tanks for filled ones, and followed their watertight compasses south and west to the marshaling point, where all five SDVs rendezvoused.

They traveled southwest together, surfacing for a few seconds in random intervals to get a fix from their GPS satellite navigation receiver. An hour later, still submerged, air tanks just a few minutes from exhaustion, they motored up to the hull of a large vessel, and hammered a code onto it. A large section of the port center side of the hull opened, and one by one, the five SDVs motored inside, surfaced inside the chamber, then hooked onto cranes that hoisted them out of the water onto the deck, where the crewmen disembarked.

Each two-man team handed up their scuba gear and personal weapons to the deck crews, along with forty-pound, suitcase-sized devices.

These were their AN/PAQ-3 MULE (Modular Universal Laser Equipment) portable telescopic laser illuminators. Tuned to a predetermined frequency and set on a target up to a mile away using electronic low-light telescopes, each invisible laser beam had reflected off its target and then been received by an airborne sensor, thus “illuminating” the proper target and allowing the missiles to home in and destroy the target with pinpoint accuracy. Although each aircrewman had been well familiar with the area and could have found most of the targets without help, the commando teams had known precisely which buildings were important and which were not, and had made each shot fired by the attack aircraft count. Not one precious shot had been wasted—one missile, one kill.

A thin, non-military-looking gray-haired man in civilian clothes greeted the crewmen as they emerged from the SDV, shaking their hands and giving each of the exhausted, shivering men a cup of soup and a thick towel with which to warm up and dry off. Tired as they were, however, the commandos were still excited, chatting about the mission, congratulating one another. Finally, the last two men emerged from their SDVs, turned in their equipment, and met up with the civilian. One man was tall, white, and powerfully built, with cold, fiery blue eyes; the other was slightly shorter, black, and much leaner, his eyes dark and dancing. The tall man moved silently, with slow, easy grace, while the lean man was animated.

“Man, what a ride!” he exclaimed loudly. He quickly stepped down the line of commandos in the dock area, giving each of them a slap on the back or shoulder, then returned to do the same to his partner. The men quietly acknowledged his congratulations, but did not return the enthusiasm—in fact, they looked at him with wary, almost hostile expressions. The cold shoulders didn’t seem to dampen the young commander’s exuberance, though. “It was great, man, awesome!” he exclaimed. “How’d we do, Paul? We kick ass or what?”

Retired Air Force colonel Paul White, operations commander of the top-secret U.S. Intelligence Support Agency team code-named Madcap Magician, nodded reluctantly. Both he and the tall commando had noticed the looks from the men, but did not mention it. “You kicked ass, all right, Hal,” he replied.

And he was right, they had. In an unprecedented act of regional military cooperation, the Intelligence Support Agency, a cover-action organization of the CIA, had just teamed up with the seven Arab member nations of the Gulf Cooperation Council’s military arm, called Peninsula Shield, to attack a disputed Iranian military position in the Persian Gulf. It was the first time in White’s memory that the CIA had actively supported an Arab military mission, albeit secretly. Sure, these guys were happy—their mission had gone off without a hitch, a potential enemy had been crippled, and the good-will they had built by joining with their Arab friends might last for many years.

White’s team had been the spearhead of the attack. Most Arab countries had little or no air-combat experience, especially at night. White’s job had been to guide the Arab pilots and gunners to their targets accurately enough so that key targets could be destroyed quickly and efficiently, with minimum loss of life on either side. It had been important for Peninsula Shield to score a major victory in its first military mission, especially against one of the very nations that it and the Gulf Cooperation Council had been formed to defend against—the Islamic Republic of Iran.

Of course, White’s other mission had been to see to the safe return of his commandos and the security of his vessel.

“Ten divers out, ten divers back, and this rust bucket is still afloat,” Chris Wohl, the tall man, said in a low, slow Voice. “That’s a success.”

“Damn straight!” Hal Briggs crowed. “So let’s celebrate! Let’s-“

Just then, another of the commandos walked up to the three Americans. Briggs stopped abruptly, and his face went limp and dazed, as if he had just been shot full of painkillers. The commando was much shorter than Briggs, but was just as wiry and powerful—and she filled out a Mustang suit much better than he.

Her name was Riza Behrouzi, and she was the commander of the Peninsula Shield security team. A Peninsula Shield commando had gone along with every Madcap Magician commando to assist and to secure the area while the targets were lazed. “All Peninsula Shield operatives present and well,” Behrouzi reported. “On behalf of the nations of the Gulf Cooperative Council, I wish to thank you all for your help.”

White was about to accept her thanks, but Briggs interjected: “It was our pleasure, Major Behrouzi …”

“Riza, please,” Behrouzi said to Briggs. Wohl and White got the impression they had instantly been forgotten. “I know it is against your rules to give us your real names, but I have no such restrictions—about names, or about this.” She stepped closer to Briggs and gave him a full kiss on the lips. “Thank you.”

“it was nothing … Riza,” Briggs said, apparently having difficulty catching his breath.

“Okay, Leopard,” Wohl said irritably. “You want to celebrate, go ahead—after you clean and stow your gear, conduct the post-mission briefing, see to it that your men are fed, and prepare your reports for the National Security Agency and the Director of Central Intelligence. And I believe you have the morning watch, so you better get some sleep. And since you’re within eight hours of your watch, You’re off the sauce. Other than that, you can celebrate all you want.”

“Gee, Mondo, thanks,” Briggs said dejectedly. “You’re a real party animal.”

“I would be happy to assist you, Leopard,” Behrouzi said. “We shall conduct the briefing and see to our men together.”

“I like the sound of that,” Briggs said, instantly perking up. “I tell ya, Riza,” he said as they headed out, “I had that Iranian carrier in my sights for a sec out there. It might’ve taken the entire UAE air force full of Hellfires, but I would loved to see that big bad boy roll over and die.” He may have just returned from two hours of scuba diving and six hours of crawling on his belly, but he sounded as hyper is before the day started.

“Leave it to Briggs,” Wohl said. “Ten thousand miles from home, in the middle of the Persian Gulf, and he still manages to find the pretty girls.” Catching no response, he looked at White.

“Everything OK, sir?”

“Yeah, fine,” White replied noncommittally. “Ah … Briggs didn’t really laze that Iranian carrier, did he?”

“No. He’s cocky and a smart-ass, but he’s a good troop,” Wohl said. “He’s not stupid enough to ignore orders, no matter how easy the target of opportunity might be. The carrier’s safe. It launched a few choppers, but none of its fighters and no missiles.

Intel was right—the fighters and weapon systems aren’t operational on that thing yet. Still can’t believe Iran has got an aircraft carrier. We’re gonna hear from that thing one of these days, I know it.”

“The guys don’t exactly seem enthusiastic about Hal,” White observed. “In fact, they’re pretty much ignoring him”

“It’s tough for a team that’s been together for so long to accept a brand-new commanding officer right away,” Wohl said. “This is Briggs’s first mission with the team-“

“Second—you’re forgetting the Luger rescue mission in Lithuania …”

“On which Briggs just happened to be one of the passengers, along with McLanahan and Ormack,” Wohl said. “it turned out that Briggs was better prepared, very close to our standards. But he wasn’t one of us, and he sure as hell wasn’t our leader …”

“But he is now.”

Wohl stopped and glared at White, then shrugged. “Hey, I was never the real commander of the ops group of Madcap Magician,” he said. “You asked me to be reassigned to you because you needed a commanding officer, and I accepted because I was tired of pushing papers at Parris Island. It was only a temporary billet-“

“That lasted three years,” White said. “The men bonded to you right away. You brought them together like no one else could.”

“Because I knew all these guys—I trained them all, even Briggs,” Wohl said. “We’re all Marines first—except Briggs, of course—then ISA operatives …”

“So Briggs being ex-Army and ex-Air Force, he’s not going to fit in…?”

“Depends on him,” Wohl replied. “He’s got a much different style than me—emotional, energetic, touchy-feely. Briggs rewards guys for good performance and ‘counsels’ them when it’s poor—I expect good performance and loudly kick ass if I get anything but. And he’s an officer, too, a young field-grade officer at that—younger than some of the guys on the team—and after all the years I’ve spent bad-mouthing officers in general and field-grade officers in particular, he’s got a tough road ahead.

“He’s a good troop, but a good commanding officer …? Too early to tell. The guys aren’t sure how to respond to him yet, that’s all. Whether he succeeds is totally up to him. They’re the best—whether or not he can lead them is the question only he can answer.”

White nodded absently. Wohl studied him for a moment, then asked, “If everything’s so OK, Colonel, why the hangdog look?”

“Because I’ve had some reservations about this operation from the start,” White said. “We just kicked over a big hornet’s nest out there tonight, Chris—and we did it on Iran’s Revolution Day, their Fourth of July.”

“Shit, I didn’t know that,” Wohl said. “I thought it was in November sometime, when they took over the embassy in ‘79.”

“No, it’s today—and I should’ve known that. I never would’ve recommended executing this mission on that date,” White said.

“Obviously the GCC knew what day it was.”

“Which you know will make this attack sting even more in Tehran,” White said. “And it’ll be the U.S. that takes the brunt of Iran’s anger. We keep on saying this was a GCC action, but you know damn well that Peninsula Shield isn’t going to be leading the fight when the Iranians retaliate for this.”

“How do you know they’re going to retaliate?”

White looked at him grimly. “Because Iran has been preparing for exactly this attack for years, ever since the end of the Iran-Iraq War. We just justified all the billions of dollars they’ve been spending on modern weapons for the past six years. They aren’t going to rest until someone—until everyone—is punished for what happened today.”

TEHRAN, IRAN

THIRTY MINUTES AFTER THE ATTACK ON ABU MUSA ISLAND General Hesarak all-Kan Buzhazi was supreme commander of the Islamic Republic’s Armed Forces and commander of the Revolutionary Guards—and this was the first time in his career that he had ever been admitted to the residence of the leader of the Islamic Revolution, the Ayatollah Ali Hoseini Khamenei. And to tell the truth, he was scared. But as scared as he was to be in the presence of a man who, like Ruhollah Khomeini before him, could by a single word muster the lives and souls of a quarter of a billion Shiite Muslims to his side, it was even more exciting to consider the simultaneous disaster and opportunity that had befallen him that morning. This was one opportunity that could not be missed.

Buzhazi bowed deeply when shown into his presence, and kept his head bowed until the Faqih spoke. The door was closed behind them. “Your Eminence, thank you for this audience.”

“Some disturbing news has reached me this morning, General,” Khamenei said quietly. “Allah has told me of a great threat to the Republic. Tell me what has happened.”

Buzhazi raised his head and stood solemnly, his hands respectfully clasped in front of him as if standing at an altar or at prayers.

Khamenei was in his late sixties. While his predecessor, the Imam Khomeini, had been tall, gaunt, and ethereal, Khamenei was short, with a round face, a short, bushy dark beard, and large horn-rimmed glasses, which gave him a scholarly, professional, quick-witted appearance. This man before him was the nominal Faqih, the font of jurisprudence of the Islamic Republic and the ultimate lawmaker, whose word could overrule the Parliament and any cleric, any lawyer, any scholar in the Twelver House; he was also the named Marja Ala, the Supreme Leader and spiritual head of the Shiite Muslim sect and the keeper of the will of the twelfth Imam, who was hidden from the world and would soon return to call the faithful to Allah’s bosom for all time.

But for all that, he was a man, not a saint or a prophet. Buzhazi had known Ali Hoseini Khamenei when he had been nothing but an ambitious, back-stabbing know-nothing firebrand from a wealthy pro-Shah cargo shipping family from Bandar-Anzalt on Iran’s Caspian coast. Little more than a spoiled rich kid back then, Khamenei had wanted to impress his friends and rebel against his parents by joining up with the wild, shrill-voiced fundamentalist Shiite cleric named Ruhollah Khomeini. He had joined the Khomeini revolution because it was cool and tough to do so, not because he’d had any particular holy vision like Khomeini, but as time went on, he became deeply committed to Khomeini’s theocratic ideas. Khamenei held many high positions in government service—soldier, first commander of the Revolutionary Guards, even president of the republic. Now he was the Supreme Leader.

But he was still just a man. Buzhazi had seen this holy man angry, and sad, and drunk, and just plain stupid.

Buzhazi knew a lot more about Khamenei’s shadowy past. Khamenei was a well-trained soldier as well as an accomplished politician, and throughout his rise through the ranks of power, he’d left a lot of bodies in his wake. Iran was nearly being overrun by Iraq at the beginning of the nine-year War of Retribution; when the president, Abolhassan Bani-Sadr, accused the then-commander of the Pasdaran, Khamenei, of not doing his job and failing the country, suddenly the Ayatollah Khomeini dismissed Bani-Sadr. When a rival politician, Muhammad Ali Rajai, was elected President in 1981, he and his Prime Minister were mysteriously killed in a bomb blast in the Cabinet room-Khamenei somehow survived. Time after time, Ali Hoseini Khamenei was able to fight off challenges to his authority by strange combinations of shrewd political infighting and unexplained and well-timed disasters.

So now, he told himself to overcome his fears and apprehensions and remember exactly who he was dealing with here, relax. Take command of this situation, he ordered himself. Take charge now!

“The Republic has been betrayed, Eminence,” Buzhazi began. He knew that word betrayed would arouse Khamenei’s attention “My orders were countermanded, and because of this, our main island protectorate in the Persian Gulf, Abu Musa, has been attacked by Gulf Cooperative Council air forces.”

Khamenei seemed surprisingly relaxed as he heard the news—well, probably not surprising. It wasn’t from divine inspiration that he’d first heard about it, Buzhazi knew, but from his contacts in the VEVAK, the Iranian Ministry of Intelligence and Security.

Buzhazi had no control of that group—they reported directly to the Council of Guardians and to Khamenei. “What kind of damage was sustained? What casualties?” Khamenei asked.

“Few casualties, thanks to Allah, and only a handful of injuries,” Buzhazi said dismissively. “The attack was directed against the Silkworm and Sunburn anti-ship missile emplacements, and the major port facilities.

Unfortunately, the attack caused some damage.”

“My information says the damage was considerably more than that,” Khamenei said.

It had been less than an hour since the attack, Buzhazi reminded himself, and Khamenei already had a briefing from his intelligence people—very efficient work for a pious holy man. This man did not sit contemplating his navel in an ivory tower. He was fully engaged in the operation of the government. “Regrettably, that is true,” Buzhazi said. “But island defenses will be restored by the end of the day, and until then, we have naval and air forces on the scene to maintain security.”

“How fortunate,” Khamenei said, almost in a whisper, like the hiss of a snake’s tongue. “But your defensive strategies for Abu Musa seem to have been somewhat shortsighted”

“Eminence, with all greatest respect, that was not the case,” Buzhazi said. “The defensive systems I placed on the island were designed to protect the defensive anti-ship missile emplacements from high-and low-altitude air threats as well as massed maritime threats. The island was under surveillance by long-range radars from Bandar Abbas and by short-range radars from Abu Musa Island itself. In addition, we have seven thousand troops on that island to defend against amphibious assaults, all very much aware that our enemies were seeking to destroy those weapons and take those islands from us at any time. All island defenses were fully functional and on full alert.”

“And so why were these defenses so easily destroyed, General …?”

“Because President Nateq-Nouri countermanded my general orders to launch on alert,” Buzhazi said angrily, “and instead ordered that, unless the island was unmistakably under direct attack, that all launch orders be issued by the Defense Ministry in Tehran, not by the on-scene commanders.

It was madness! I argued against that policy and appealed to reverse the order..

“The Council of Guardians has not received any such notification or appeal,” Khamenei pointed out.

“I was going to present my arguments in person with your representative at the next meeting of the Supreme Defense Council,” Buzhazi lied, knowing full well that Nateq-Nouri had never countermanded any of Buzhazi’s orders. The policy of “launch on alert”—fire without warning on any vessel or aircraft that crossed Iran’s claimed borders or boundaries—had never been an official peacetime policy of the Iranian government except over Iran’s most highly classified research centers, bases, or over the capital or the holy cities. The simple fact was that Iran possessed few trained individuals and workable air defense systems for very low-altitude air threats; even if the forces on Abu Musa had had “launch on alert” orders, they probably wouldn’t have been able to stop the attackers.

“It appears to be a moot point now, does it not, General?”

Khamenei commented.

“My point, Eminence, is that I should be given the tools to do my job if I am to defend the Republic properly from attack by our enemies,” Buzhazi retorted. “Abu Musa Island and Greater and Lesser Tumbs belong to Iran, not to Sharjah or the so-called United Arab Emirates or the Gulf Cooperation Council or the United Nations or the World Court. I was given the task of defending the Republic, but my hands were tied by a President, his Cabinet, and a parliament afraid of stirring up resentment and hatred overseas, afraid of losing investors and popularity. What more do we surrender? Do we surrender Kermanshahan and Kurdistan to the murderous Kurds? Do we surrender the Shatt at Arab to the Butcher of Baghdad? Perhaps Turkmenistan would like the holy city of Mashhad?”

“Enough, General, enough,” Khamenei interrupted, with a weary tone in his voice. “Why do you not take this matter up with President Nateq-Nouri? The task of commander-in-chief was delegated to him by His Holiness the Imam Khomeini.”

“Eminence, the President’s inaction in defense matters is plainly obvious to everyone,” Buzhazi said. “He has reduced the budget of the Pasdaran to less than what we need for training and proficiency, and chosen to give it instead to the Basij militias as a form of public welfare and to buy votes for himself. We purchase advanced weapons, but no money is spent for spare parts or for building our own military infrastructure—again, the money goes to public-welfare programs to bribe factory owners and wealthy landowners who support him. Military base construction is at a standstill because he coddles the labor unions. The outcome was inevitable, despite all my warnings and precautions: Abu Musa Island’s defenses have been destroyed, and the base is in danger of being retaken by American and Zionist sympathizers.”

Khamenei could obviously recognize Buzhazi’s flowery exaggerations, but he paused in thought. The conflict between the military and the civilian government had been brewing for some time, he thought, and this early-morning meeting was perhaps the wake-up call to action he had been anticipating—perhaps dreading.

It was time for Iran’s clergy to take sides in this dispute: Support the government or support the military?

The Grand Ayatollah had known Ali Akbar Nateq-Nouri, the former speaker of the Majlis-i-Shura, Iran’s Islamic Consultative Assembly, and former President Hashemi Rafsanjani’s handpicked successor, since before the Revolution, and had watched General and so knew that the only thing between them was their uniforms.

Both men were intelligent, opportunistic, single-minded, power hungry, and ruthless. Both gave lip service to the role of Islam in the government, but neither truly believed that the clergy should have a strong voice in day-to-day affairs—an opinion that happened to be shared by many in Iran. “What is it you would have us do?”

“I have spoken of my plans many times, Your Holiness,” Buzhazi said. “First and foremost, Iran and its territories must be protected. This is our most important goal, and we must do all we can to ensure it is done.” He paused, then said, “We must prohibit all non-Arab warships from entering the Persian Gulf No aircraft carriers, no guided-missile cruisers, no submarines carrying Tomahawk missiles. These are all offensive vessels, designed to wage war on those who call the Persian Gulf home.

“The Khomeini carrier group must be made fully operational and deployed immediately to the Gulf of Oman to screen for foreign warships,” Buzhazi went on. “As we have seen, even with proper warning, it still takes far too long for land-based aircraft to respond to an attack on the islands—only the carrier can properly defend the islands against very low-altitude attackers.”

“The Chinese aircraft carrier? The rusting piece of flotsam in the harbor at Chah Bahar?” Khamenei said scornfully. “I thought we were using that to House the Chinese advisers, prisoners, Basij volunteers, and jihad members working on the base-construction project.”

“The Khomeini is operational, and it is ready to help defend our rights,” Buzhazi said. “We have a full complement of sailors, fliers, and weapons aboard, and the carrier’s escort vessels are also ready to set sail. I had ordered the carrier to Abu Musa Island to assist with island defenses, but as all of our military forces, they were unprepared for this treacherous attack.”

The Ayatollah Khamenei paused to consider that request. The Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini aircraft-carrier project had been a pie-in-the-sky project from the very beginning. The Russian aircraft carrier Varyag had been laid up at Nikolayev, Ukraine, since 1991, completely stripped of all essential combat systems; it had no radar, no communications, no aircraft, no weapons, only its nuclear power plant, a flight deck, and more than three thousand watertight compartments. The People’s Republic of China had purchased the 60,000-ton vessel and made it an operational warship, but the world’s political consternation at China owning and operating a nuclear-powered aircraft carrier in the fragile South China Sea and Sea of Japan region had been too great—if China had a carrier, Japan wanted five, and the United States wanted to base five more in the region—so those plans were shelved.

At the time, Iran had concluded a $2 billion arms deal with China, and relations between those two countries had been at an all-time high. The carrier had been moved to Iran’s new military and oil terminal on the Gulf of Oman called Chah Bahar, where it had once again been laid up in floating storage. No definite plans had emerged for the ship: some said it was to be cut up as scrap, then as a floating hotel, then as a floating prison.

General Buzhazi had other ideas. Over the next eighteen months, the Iranians had begun to install new, relatively modern weapon systems on board the ship, including Russian anti-ship missiles, Russian aircraft, and state-of-the-art sensors and equipment from all over the world—all the while insisting to the world that they were “experimenting” or “assisting” China with its plans to convert the carrier for other uses. Then Iranian MiG-29 and Sukhoi-33 fighter crews had begun practicing carrier landings.

Since early 1996, both Chinese and Iranian crews had been training aboard the Varilag in carrier deck and flight operations in the Persian Gulf. At the same time, Chinese and Iranian crews had begun firing anti-ship missiles from the carrier, including the huge SSN-19 Granit supersonic missile, which was designed to sink a carrier-class ship over 200 miles away. In effect, both countries shared the cost of a completely combat-ready aircraft carrier.

“This aircraft carrier, it is ready to fight?” Khamenei asked.

“It is, Eminence,” Buzhazi replied. “Twenty fighter aircraft, six helicopters, twelve long-range anti-ship missiles—it is one of the most formidable warships in the world. With our new Russian, Chinese, and Western surplus warships as escorts, the Khomeini can ensure that we will not lose our rights to the Persian Gulf.”

“It will cause much fear among those who travel the Gulf,” he pointed out.

“If it is Allah’s will,” Buzhazi responded. Normally he didn’t care to use the real religious fundamentalist expressions with others, but of course it was necessary and proper to do so with the mullahs. “We fear only Allah, Holiness. Let others fear the Islamic Republic for a change. Your Holiness, we have a right to defend what is ours, and the Khomeini is the best weapon with which to do so. It has been in shakedown status far too long—we are ready to put to sea. Give the command, and we shall need worry no longer about protecting our Gulf from attack.”

Buzhazi paused for a moment, then added, “Oil prices will of course be affected by this, Eminence.” That got Khamenei’s attention. His political fortunes were tied directly into the price of oil, and for the past several years both had been in a steady decline. “Even if we are not ultimately successful in closing off the Gulf from all foreign warships—if the Majlis and President Nateq-Nouri conspire against your wishes and the loyal people of the Islamic Republic—we will still benefit from the rise in oil prices. Iran can of course continue to ship oil to its Gulf of Oman terminus at Chah Bahar, but oil shipments from Gulf Cooperative Council states will be greatly curtailed.”

Khamenei paused once again, but he had decided. The insurance companies would double, perhaps triple the premiums on supertankers transiting the Gulf, and the shortage of oil would shoot prices to heaven. The rewards would be great. But the risks … The Faqih nodded. “It shall be ordered,” he said.

“But we must be in the right always, General. World public opinion may favor Iran because we have been attacked by the oil-hungry West and their Gulf lap-dogs, but we must not allow the world to ostracize us once again. We are for peace, Buzhazi, always peace.”

“Imotashakkeram,” Buzhazi said, bowing as he gave thanks. “Your Holiness, I believe so strongly in this, that if you give the command, I shall take full and complete responsibility for the consequences. You may say that I was the mad dog, that I gave the order, and you may disavow all knowledge of my actions, I know in my heart that it is right, and I stand with Allah because I know he will stand with me.”

“Will you stand with the thousands of our brothers who will be slaughtered by the forces of Satan when the world declares war on Iran for what it has done?”

“Eminence, war appears to be upon us already,” Buzhazi pointed out. “I believe we will avert further conflict by executing my plan. The world will fear Iran once again. It will be hesitant to start a conflict that might escalate into real death and destruction at our hands. Give the command, Holiness. I stand ready to defend Islam and protect the Republic. I have the strength to do it.”

Khamenei hesitated, then turned his back on Buzhazi—so the general could not see the look of concern on his face. But he said, “Inshallah, General. So by the will of Allah, let it be done.”

“ABC WORLD NEWS TONIGHT WITH PETER JENNINGS”

“Iran’s Leader of the Islamic Revolution, Ayatollah Ali Hoseini Khamenei, blasted the Gulf Cooperative Council, the union of six pro-West Persian Gulf nations, today for what he claims was an attack on a, quote, ‘defensive security and safety installation,’ unquote, on a small island in the Persian Gulf in the early-morning hours, and has called on a ‘holy jihad’ against the GCC.

“Khamenei claims the attack by what he terms ‘terrorists and saboteurs’ of the Gulf Cooperative Council’s action group called Peninsula Shield killed several dozen workers while they slept, and heavily damaged the island’s electricity, fresh water, and living quarters.

“The island, identified as Abu Musa, is one of three small islands that sit very close to the oil transshipment lanes through the Persian Gulf. The islands were claimed by Iran in 1971 but were under joint jurisdiction of both Iran and the United Arab Emirates, one of the member nations of the Gulf Cooperative Council, until 1992, when Iran claimed all of the islands for itself.

“Spokesmen for the Gulf Cooperative Council in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, declined to comment, except to say that the GCC has often been blamed for actions by anti-Iranian government forces, notably the Mojahadin-i-Khalq, in an effort to stir up resentment and fundamentalist fervor against Iran’s Arab neighbors in the Persian Gulf region.

“A U.S. State Department spokesman says he knows no details of the incident, but says that Iran has heavily fortified Abu Musa Island over the past few years with modern offensive anti-ship and antiaircraft weapons, and has resisted all efforts by the United Nations International Court to mediate the dispute. The State Department says no oil tankers or any American vessels or aircraft are in danger and says the Martindale administration is looking into the matter.

“Back in a moment.”

IN THE GULF OF OMAN 124 MILES NORTHWEST OF MUSCAT, OMAN, SOUTHEAST ARABIAN PENINSULA 15 APRIL 1997, 0109’HOURS LOCAL (14 APRIL, 1639 ET)

The U.S.-flagged rescue-and-salvage vessel Valley Mistress was riding high and fast in the water these days; very few patrol boats had bothered to stop her as she made her way from the Mediterranean through the Suez Canal, down the Red Sea, and across the Gulf of Aden, Arabian Sea, and the Gulf of Oman.

Salvage-and-construction vessels were usually hard to search, they rarely had anything fun for customs officials to look at—just a bunch of cranes, tanks, chains, dirt, and nitrogen- and booze-soaked roustabout crews—and U.S.-registered and flagged vessels rarely carried exciting contraband like drugs, weapons, or humans. In any case, with its U.S. Naval Ready Reserve Fleet designation, the Valley Mistress was rarely detained—it carried almost the same right-to-pass exemption as a warship.

The Mistress was riding high right now because its 55,000-pound CV-22 Pave Hammer tilt-rotor aircraft, normally secretly stowed on the telescoping helicopter hangar on the aft deck, was off on a mission with several of its commands teams, including Chris Wohl and Hal Briggs; its current cargo was much, much lighter. The Valley Mistress was indeed a real salvage vessel, and it did many contract jobs as such all over the world—but it was also a sophisticated spy ship that conducted surveillance and special operations missions for the U.S. government. All sorts of classified missions had been conducted from the Mistress’s decks, from shadowing a port, harbor, or vessel to reconnoitering a battlefield, rescue work, and all-out air and land combat. Any job that needed doing, anytime, anyplace, the crew of the Valley Mistress could do it.

Retired Air Force colonel Paul White stood on the aft deck of the Valley Mistress, arms crossed on his chest, watching the dark shapes working all around him. In addition to leading Madcap Magician, White was the senior officer in charge of the thirty-man “technical” crew of the Valley Mistress, which on this leg of their voyage—White’s technical crews changed often, depending on the current mission requirements—consisted of engineers, technicians, and sixteen U.S. Marines, none in uniform.

All of the concentrated planning and rehearsing had already taken place, so, like Alfred Hitchcock, who had already meticulously plotted out each one of his shots before setting foot on a new movie set, White’s job at this point was simply to observe his team in action, silently monitor their progress via the ship’s intercom through his headset, and stay out of their way. Paul White was a thirty-two-year veteran, but had never been in combat except for brief stints as a communications repairman in Vietnam.

His specialty was electronics; he was a “gadget guy,” designing and building sophisticated systems from spare parts—the parts could be leftover transistors, old radios, or old aircraft. White could take the oldest, most broken-down thing and make it better—and, more important, he could teach others to do it, too.

White’s intercom crackled to life: “Lightfoot, Plot.”

Without alerting his stance or changing his scan of deck activities, White keyed the talk switch on his headset cord: “Lightfoot, go.”

“T-minus-ten radar sweep, no air activity, no surface activity within five miles,” the radar operator aboard the Mistress reported.

“Copy,” White responded. “Report every two minutes, report any surface activity within ten miles, Lightfoot out.” White raised his head and watched as the retractable mast carrying the ship’s SPS-69 X-band surface search radar began to extend. The range of the SPS-69 was limited to about six miles on a normal mast, but could be extended to almost fifteen miles by hoisting the radar to 100 feet—which was done only at night or in an emergency, because it looked very suspicious to have a search radar up so high on a noncombat vessel. Even more suspicious-looking on a “rescue” craft was the radar that was normally restricted into a housing just forward of the helicopter hangar—an SPS-40E B-band two-dimensional air search radar, which could scan for aircraft from sea level up to a 33,000-foot altitude and out to a 100-mile range. The Valley Mistress would probably not enjoy the same relatively unfettered access to most nations’ territorial waters if those countries knew the ship had enough electronic search and communications equipment to control a surface or air battle at sea.

Over the din of deck activities, White heard another familiar sound, and he turned toward the starboard rail to see a young man wearing a headset leaning over the rail—way over the rail.

“Chumming for sharks,” as the crew called it, was pretty rare on the stabilized Valley Mistress in good weather, but this poor guy had had trouble ever since he’d joined the ship. White smiled and keyed his intercom button: “You okay, Jon?”

The man hurriedly wiped his mouth and face as if surprised someone noticed him, although there were men and women all around him, and he straightened and walked stiffly and unsteadily toward White.

Jonathan Colin Masters was thirty-eight years old, but he looked about fifteen. He had short brown hair that looked as if someone—most likely himself—had cut it with hedge clippers; normally a baseball cap worn backward hid his goofy-looking hair, but Masters had lost that hat days ago in one of his frequent visits to the rail. He had disarming green eyes and long, gangly legs and arms—but he also had one of the world’s most finely tuned brains on the end of his thin pencil neck.

Masters, a Dartmouth graduate at thirteen, an MIT doctor of science at twenty, was the president of Sky Masters, Inc. an Arkansas-based research company that designed, built, and deployed small specialty aircraft and spacecraft. SMI products took the latest aerospace technologies and miniaturized them: he could turn huge Delta space boosters into truck-mounted launch vehicles, or multi-ton communications satellites into bread-basket-sized devices. He was aboard the Valley Mistress to supervise the progress of his latest development. “Feeling okay, Jon?” White asked as the boyish-looking engineer stepped toward him. The question was serious: repeated seasickness was just as debilitating as any other serious illness or disease, bad enough to cause problems even for a healthy, normally hydrated person; Masters was as skinny as a beanpole and the temperature and humidity in this part of the world were often both in the mid- to high nineties. “Why don’t you stay inside where it Is air-conditioned?”

“I need windows, Paul,” Masters said weakly. “This damned ship of yours has no windows. I need a horizon to get my bearings.”

“You must have a few thousand hours’ flying time, Jon,” White said, adding a lighter tone now that he could see that the young man was feeling okay, “but you’ve had trouble every single day since we left Italy. Ever get airsick?”

“Never.”

“Are you using the scopolamine patches like the doc said?”

“I’ve worn enough of those damned patches to make me look like I’ve got a cauliflower growing behind my ears,” Masters said, “and that stuff makes me drowsy and it makes food taste like charcoal.

I’d rather eat, then barf, thank you very much.”

“Maybe if you’d stop eating the burgers and fries like a pig, You Wouldn’t upchuck so easy.” Masters ate junk food and drank soft drinks like a teenager but never gained the weight; it was always the supergeniuses, White thought, who were too busy to worry about unimportant matters such as health and nutrition. All that brain energy he generated must’ve kept him nice and slim.

“You want to know about the mission preparations or critique my eating habits, Colonel?” Masters asked impatiently. White gave up on the lecturing and motioned for the young scientist to show him the final preparations for the maiden launch of his newest invention.

Assembled on the aft helicopter deck was a sixty-five-foot-long track elevated about twenty degrees, and aimed off the fantail.

Sitting on the front end of the track was an aircraft that greatly resembled a B-2A Spirit stealth bomber, its wingspan a large forty-two feet. The High Endurance Autonomous Reconnaissance System (HEARSE), nicknamed Skywalker, was a long-range, high-altitude flying-wing drone, with long, thin swept-back wings and a bulbous center section that was the aircraft’s only fuselage. Like the B-2A stealth bomber, its engine section was on top of the fuselage, with a low, thin single air intake on the front and a very thin exhaust section in back; it used a single minijet engine, which was now running at idle power and had been for several minutes as White’s technicians did its final checkout.

Skywalker wasn’t wasting gas sitting out there idling—it could probably run for three days at idle power. Painted in black radar-absorbent material, the craft looked sinister and unearthly, like a giant air-breathing manta ray. Unlike remotely piloted vehicles steered from the ground, Skywalker was a semi-autonomous drone—it would carry out commands issued to it via satellite up-link by plotting its own best track and speed.

Skywalker carried 1,000 pounds of sophisticated communications and reconnaissance gear in its fuselage section. The primary reconnaissance sensor was a side-looking synthetic-aperture radar, which broadcast high-resolution digital radar images via microwave datalinks back to the Valley Mistress. The SAR radar, similar to the one in the B-2A stealth bomber but optimized for reconnaissance versus attack and terrain avoidance, was powerful enough to create photographic-like images in total darkness that were clear enough to identify objects as small as a dog, and to electronically measure objects down to a foot in size.

It used the same LPI (Low Probability of Intercept) technology as the B-2A as well: very short radar “looks,” the radar imagery digitized so that it could be manipulated, enhanced, and viewed off-line, with the radar turned off. “Everything looks like it’s going fine.”

“Skywalker’s engine has been running fine for exactly ten-point-three minutes, all up-link channels confirm connected and secure—she’s ready for a push anytime,” Masters said confidently, almost boastfully.

“Good,” White said. Some people might get irritated about Master’s cockiness, but White enjoyed it. Left free to let his imagination soar, Masters was a true idea machine, a man who could get the job done no matter what the circumstances. “I’ve got about T minus eight. I’m heading to the recon center—I’m sure you’ll want to stay out in the open air until your ship gets on station.” Secretly he prayed that Masters wouldn’t blow lunch in the confines of the reconnaissance control room—most of the air conditioning in that space was reserved for the electronics, and it was stuffy and smelly enough without the “chain reaction” scent of vomit.

Launch time had arrived. After clearing the area on radar, White ordered Skywalker on patrol. Masters throttled the turbofan engine up to full power; it would need full throttle only for a few minutes, then throttle back to a miserly twenty-liter-per-hour fuel-consumption rate, good for twelve hours of cruising. Then he released the hold-back bar, and the bird hurled itself down the launch rail. It sailed into the darkness at deck level for less than a hundred feet until it had built up climb speed, then, buoyed by its long, thin, supercritical wings, Skywalker climbed rapidly into the darkness. In less than five minutes it was at 10,000 feet. It made a few orbits over the Valley Mistress as Masters and his technicians checked out its systems, then headed north, toward the Iranian coast.

Jon Masters looked pretty together when he stepped into the reconnaissance control room a few minutes later—his wet hair and chest probably meant he had stuck his head in a freshwater shower to refresh himself “Looks like we got a tight bird, Doc,” White told him as he stepped inside. “Skywalker should be on station in about an hour.”

Masters found his chair but did not sit in it. He looked around apprehensively. “Can you open a window or door?” he asked in a quiet voice, like a boy shyly asking to use the bathroom. “Man, I need a horizon to align my gyros.”

“Sorry, no windows,” White said, “and leaving the hatch open spoils our electronic security.” White knew that ships, subs, aircraft, or even shore-based electronic surveillance systems could pick up electromagnetic emissions from long distances—passive electronic reconnaissance was one of White’s most popular missions—so the Mistress’s classified sections were shielded to foil eaves-droppers; that shielding was useless if ports or hatches were left open. He had some crew members turn on ventilation fans. It didn’t seem to help—even in the dimly lit little chamber, everyone could see that Jon Masters was turning an especially awful shade of green.

But Masters seemed to settle down quickly as the drone approached its patrol area and some interesting images began coming in. The first one was crisp and clean, with shades of purple and orange providing some contrast and depth. The sensor operators filled the two thirty-inch monitors with a large warship steaming northward; data blocks under the sensor image displayed the target’s speed, size, direction of travel, and other characteristics. “Beeaauuu-t-ful!” Jon Masters exclaimed.

Paul White agreed. It was the joint Chinese-Iranian aircraft carrier Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, fully loaded and with a full complement of escorts, leaving its port at Chah Bahar and heading into the Gulf of Oman. White had never thought he’d see anything like it in his life—Iran sailing an aircraft carrier in the Persian Gulf region. “I’ll get the report out on the satellite,” he said, almost breathlessly. “NSA will want to know details.”

Although it was not as big as the American supercarriers, it was still a very impressive-looking warship. It had so many anti-ship missile mounts on its decks that it looked like a battleship or guided-missile cruiser welded beside an aircraft carrier. It was a little intimidating to think that the, Khomeini could bring an awesome array of surface-warfare weapons to bear on a target, and then launch attack aircraft to finish the job. The Khomeini looked similar to American aircraft carriers from the rear, with its slanted landing section, lighted edges, and four arresting wires; the main difference was in the huge array of armament set up in the aft section—the cruise-missile canisters and defensive missile and gun emplacements on both sides. The “island” superstructure looked like any other, with huge arrays of antennas seemingly piled atop one another on the superstructure and on a separate antenna structure aft; there was one aircraft elevator in front and behind the superstructure. Again, anti-ship cruise-missile emplacements were everywhere. The really unusual feature of the Khomeini was the bow section—instead of continuing the large, long flat profile of a “flat-top,” the Khomeini’s bow rapidly sloped upward at the bow, forming an aircraft “ski jump.”

White returned as Skywalker was focused on the carrier’s forward flight deck. “NSA’s got the word,” he said. “No other instructions for us, so we continue to monitor the battle group.

We should hear something soon.”

“Man, look at the planes that thing is carrying,” Masters exclaimed. He started poking the screen, counting aircraft.

“They got at least ten fighters lined up on deck.”

“They what?” White asked. He counted along with Masters, then said, “That’s weird. They got their attack group up on deck,” “What’s weird about that?”

“The Khomeini is a former Russian carrier, and the Russians usually wouldn’t park any of their aircraft up on deck, like the Americans do,” White explained. “They’d keep all the fixed-wing aircraft below-decks and leave only a few fling-wings on the roof for rescue and shuttle service between other ships in the group. That’s why they carry only two dozen fixed-wing jets.

An American flat-top carries three times that many—but one-third of them can be stowed below-decks at one time.

“See this? The deck is so small, they line the helicopters up just forward of the forward elevator, and all the fixed-wings on the fantail behind the aft elevator,” White continued. “They need all that room because the Khomeini doesn’t, use catapults like other carriers. The Russians originally designed the ski jump for short-takeoff-and-landing jets, like the Yak-38 Forger and the Yak-41 Freestyle, which they canceled, but it works OK—in a manner of speaking—for conventional jets.” He pointed at the monitor toward the aft section of the Iranian carrier. “The fighters start way back here, about six hundred feet from the bow.

The fighters are secured with a holdback bar, the pilots turn on the afterburners, and they let them go. When they leave the ski jump, they get flung about a hundred feet in the sky—but they fall almost seventy feet toward the water as they build up enough speed to start flying”

“You’re kidding!” Masters exclaimed.

“No, I’m not,” White assured him. “The jets drop so low that they had to build this little platform here on the bow so that someone with a radio can tell the air boss and skipper whether or not the jet made it, because no one can see the fighter from the ‘crow’s nest’ for about fifteen to twenty seconds after takeoff, and if it crashed the ship would run right over it. The Sukhoi-33s apparently have a special ejection system wired into the radar altimeter that will automatically eject the pilot if there’s no weight on the landing gear and the jet sinks below twenty feet.

The auto-ejection system is manually activated, and apparently a lot of planes have been lost in training because newbie pilots forget to turn the system off just before landing. They make a successful carrier approach, swoop over the fantail, then fivoosh—they’re gone, punched out a split second before they catch the wire.” Masters laughed out loud like a little kid—for the moment, his seasickness was all but forgotten.

“The deck gets very dangerous in operations like this. There’s probably only thirty feet of clearance between a wingtip and a rotor tip when a jet’s heading for the ski jump,” White went on.

“Plus, nobody can land because aircraft are lined up on the fantail in the landing zone, which means if a jet has an emergency right after takeoff it’ll take them a long time to clear the deck to recover it “What’s on your mind, boss?” It was Paul White’s deputy commander, Air Force Lieutenant Colonel Carl Knowlton.

White shook his head. “Ah, nothin’. It’s just weird for all those planes to be on deck at night.” He studied the monitor a bit more. “And they’ve got the ski jump clear. If they were just emptying out the hangar deck to clean it or set up for a party or reception or basketball game or something, like they do on American carriers, you’d think they’d just tow airplanes out of the way across the entire deck.”

“You think they’re going flying tonight?”

“Who the hell knows?” White responded. “The Russians never flew carrier ops at night, and the Khomeini’s only been operational for about a year, so I’d think night flights would be the last thing on their minds. The Iranians would have to be real stupid in a narrow channel, not facing into the wind, with a foul deck for emergency landing. Of course, I’d never accuse the Iranian military brain-trust of a lot of smarts anyway.” He paused, lost in thought. “Could be trouble tonight. I’m real glad we got Skywalker up there right now.”

They zoomed out Skywalker’s sensor to take pictures of the entire carrier, then zoomed in to maximum magnification to take detail pictures of every section of the ship. Occasionally Skywalker’s threat warning system would beep, indicating that it was being scanned by a nearby radar, but there was never any indication that anyone had locked on to it, and no aircraft ever flew nearby to chase it away. There was an outside possibility that Skywalker’s satellite up-link back to the Valley Mistress had been detected and even intercepted, but no one in the Khomeini group ever attempted to jam or shut down the signal; White and Masters hoped that Iran didn’t yet possess the sophisticated computers needed to unscramble the up-link signals.

“Here’s the other stuff I wanted to look at,” White said excitedly as the Skywalker drone moved northward again, after orbiting over the Khomeini for nearly an hour. The drone had locked its sensor on a ship almost as large as the aircraft carrier, its center superstructure higher and clustered with twice the antenna arrays.

“The Chinese destroyer Zhanjiang, the pride of the Chinese navy,” White said. “Supposedly out here to House the Chinese officers and troops training on the Khomeini, but I think it’s out here to protect the carrier and to add a little extra firepower to Iran’s carrier escort fleet. It’s got a full complement of non-nuclear weapons—long-range anti-ship and antiaircraft missiles, cruise missiles, rocket-powered torpedoes, big dual-purpose guns, three sub-hunter helicopters, the works. This one ship has more firepower than the entire Iranian air force, before they started buying up surplus Russian planes.”

“So basically the Chinese are escorting an Iranian aircraft carrier battle group,” Masters observed. “If anyone takes a shot at them, China gets involved in the fight.”

“No one knows what China would do if the group was attacked—or, more likely, what the Chinese would do if the Iranians attacked someone,” White said. “But Iran and China are pretty closely allied, economically if not ideologically—China’s been pumping billions of dollars’ worth of military hardware into Iran every year at bargain-basement prices, in exchange for cheap oil. It’s a win-win deal for both of them, and I’d think they’d try very hard to maintain their relationship.”

“But what for?” Masters asked. “What does Iran need with an aircraft carrier and a guided-missile destroyer?”

“They’re the big boys on the block now, Jon,” White replied. “You got a carrier, or a nuke, and you’re the top dog. Iran maneuvers itself as the leader of the Muslim world by sailing five billion dollars’ worth of warships around the Gulf, daring anyone to take a shot at them.”

“Who’d be stupid enough to do that?

“I’m not saying that’s their strategy,” White said, “but it’s a pretty big threat, and they’ve got a lot of firepower to back it up.”

“Like big chips on their shoulders,” Masters summarized. “More like bricks. I guess they’re out of the terrorist game then, huh?”

“I wouldn’t say that at all,” White said. “They’ve mastered the art of terrorism over the years. It didn’t earn them any respect, except with other fanatical fringe groups. But now, with a powerful navy and air force, they’ve got respect—at least, everyone’s wary of them now. The U.S. definitely is.”

Skywalker continued its patrol after orbiting Zhanjiang for almost an hour—still no sign of detection, even after more than two hours over the Iranian battle group. The operation had been a complete success so far. They decided they’d recall Skywalker after the battle group had headed south around the Musandam Peninsula and entered the Gulf of Oman. They programmed the drone to fly about twenty miles west of the warships instead of directly over them. Using the drone’s sideways-looking radars, they kept track of the ships as they sailed southward into the sea lanes.

There was more to see as they scanned the rest of the Iranian battle group: “Holy cow, look at that,” Masters exclaimed as they studied the vessel. “Looks like a big sucker Paul White was examining several photographs; he started shaking his head and said, “It’s not on the list of known ships in the Khomeini battle group. Let’s see … destroyer from the looks of it … huge superstructure, but not as big as a cruiser … big missile tubes amidships … aha, boys, looks like Iran really did get the Chinese destroyer it was looking for. That looks like a Luda-class destroyer, with two three-round Sea Eagle missile canisters. Skywalker’s paid off right away, Doc. I don’t think anyone knew another destroyer had joined the Khomeini group. This is a pretty significant find.”

Masters still looked green around the gills, but he grinned like a schoolboy. “Of course it is, Colonel,” he said, beaming with his usual bravado. “I’m here to serve up the surprises for you.”

White had the communications section relay a message to the National Security Agency of the new Chinese destroyer’s presence.

“Only the best from Sky Masters.”

“Uh-oh,” Knowlton said, “Mr. Modest is cranking it up again …”

“No brag, just fact,” Masters said jubilantly. I “me Air Force or CIA should buy a hundred HEARSE drones. You can’t get better intel than this—quick, reliable, accurate, and, …”

Just then, one of the Sky Masters technicians radioed, “Skywalker is reporting an overtemp in the primary hydraulic pack. Could be a bleed air-duct failure—might’ve got hit by a bird. Shutting down primary hydraulics …”

Masters looked as if someone had just slapped him in the face, and White and Knowlton couldn’t help smiling over his sudden discomfort, even if it meant discontinuing their surveillance.

“Recall it!” Masters shouted. “Issue the recall command!”

“Recall order transmitted and acknowledged,” the technician responded immediately. “Skywalker changing heading …

Skywalker’s on course back to home plate. It’s reporting capable of normal recovery; it will be ready for recovery in one hour, forty-two minutes.”

Jon Masters shook his head. “If the Iranians are any good, Skywalker will never make it back,” he said. “Bleed airduct failure near the primary hydraulic pack means a fire; a fire means visibility. With the hydraulic failure, Skywalker will start trailing hydraulic fluid, maybe fuel, maybe smoke and fire, and dragging control surfaces and maybe its arresting system, and bye-bye, stealth.”

“Then don’t aim it right back for the ship, Jon,” White said. “Make it head to someplace over land, in Oman, or self-destruct it-“

“I am not self-destructing Skywalker while it’s still flyable!”

Masters shouted. “If it heads directly for us, it’ll highlight our position, highlight us. I’ll have to reprogram it manually.

This was not supposed to happen … it’s designed to head back to its launch base on as direct a route as possible.”

“Turn it away, Jon,” White warned him urgently. “The Iranians will pick up on that thing and trace it back to us.”

“Skywalker reporting fire-control radar … intermittent lock-on, KU- and X-band radars, probably Crotale antiaircraft missile fire control.”

Masters turned to White, all hint of seasickness gone from his face—he was deadly serious now. “We can surely kiss Skywalker good-bye, Colonel,” he said. “And it’s not taking any navigation commands.”

“What?”

“It’s in emergency-nav mode, Paul,” Masters said. “Conserving power, conserving hydraulics—it might even have its controls locked. It won’t evade, won’t do anything but fly in a straight line.”

“I think we’d better prepare for visitors,” White said grimly. He clicked on his shipwide intercom: “Bridge, this is Lightfoot.

We’ve been blown. I suggest you put the ship at action stations, institute Buddy Time procedures, head for the Omani coastline at flank speed, and be prepared for a boarding party alongside, a hostile aircraft overflight—or worse.”

“Bridge copies.” Immediately the alarm bell rang three times, and the captain announced, “All hands, action stations, all hands, action stations, this is not a drill.”

ABOARD THE ISLAMIC REPUBLIC OF IRAN AIRCRAFT CARRIER KHOMEINI “Bridge, radar-contact aircraft, bearing two-one-zero, range seven-point-eight kilometers, speed two-four-one, altitude two-point-one K, course two-zero-zero.”

Major Admiral Akbar Tufayli, Commanding Admiral of the Islamic Revolutionary Guards Seventh Task Force, turned his chair on the admiral’s bridge of the Khomeini toward the battle-staff area of the compartment. Within the admiral’s bridge, one deck down from the main bridge but still able to view all of the above-deck activities on the ship, Admiral Tufayli and his staff could monitor all the ship’s radio and intercom transmissions and, if he so chose, interject his own commands directly into the system, even to aircraft in flight or to nearby ships, bypassing all other commanders’ orders.

Tufayli had immense power for a relatively young man. He started as a common street fighter and gangster, staging wild, bloody executions of known spies and informants of the Shah before the revolution. He’d joined the elite Pasdaran in 1981 and risen swiftly through the ranks, commanding larger and larger special forces and shock forces. Now he was the fifth-highest-ranking officer of the Pasdaran, and had been honored over all other field generals when he’d been awarded command of the Pasdaran forces—nearly three thousand commandos, infantrymen, pilots, and other highly trained specialists—aboard Iran’s first aircraft carrier.

Tufayli’s battle staff was a mirror image of the ship’s captain’s own, and they were assembled in the admiral’s bridge now, monitoring all essential ship’s departments and reporting to Tufayli’s chief of staff, Brigadier General Muhammad Badi.

“General,” Tufayli’s called out, “is that an aircraft? How did it get so close to my battle group without detection?”

“Unknown, sir,” Badi responded. “Though it is possible … very small aircraft, weighing less than five thousand kilograms, flying less than two hundred fifty kilometers per hour, and greater than fifteen kilometers from the center of the group, would be squelched from the combat radar display as a non-hostile. Once our attack began, something that small might be ignored or omitted.”

“Damn your eyes, Badi, that so-called non-hostile is now an unidentified aircraft less than ten kilometers from my battle group!” Tufayli shouted. “I want it destroyed immediately—no, wait! Is it transmitting anything? Can we identify any signals it might be sending …?”

“Stand by, sir,” Badi said. A few moments later: “Sir, the object is transmitting non-directional microwave signals in random, frequency-agile burst patterns. We can detect the signals, but only for very short periods of time. We cannot record or decode the signals.”

Tufayli felt his anger rising up through his throat. Badi was very fond of jargon—it was one of his few faults.

“Nondirectional signals, burst patterns … are they satellite transmissions, Badi?”

“They do not appear to be jamming, up-link, or radar energy patterns, so the best estimate would be satellite signals,” Badi responded.

“Before that contact gets out of optimal Crotale or SAN-9 missile range, I want those microwave signals identified and analyzed,” Tufayli ordered. “Then I want a listing of all vessels between us and the contact’s course to the southwest. Maybe the contact is some sort of reconnaissance aircraft, returning to its home. I want that identified and reported to me immediately.”

“Yes, sir,” Badi acknowledged, and ordered the battle staff to work on this new problem. “Sir, unidentified aircraft is at eight kilometers, still on a constant heading south-southwest at two hundred kilometers per hour.” Badi was handed a report, message form. “No luck in identifying or decoding the signals it is transmitting.”

“Very well. Destroy it,” Tufayli casually ordered.

Fifteen seconds later, just before the first assault helicopter left the Khomeini’s deck forward of the island superstructure, the battle staff turned and watched as a bright streak of fire shot upward from the deck of the Chinese destroyer Zhanjiang, then gracefully arced toward the southwest and dived straight down.

The first French-made Crotale surface-to-air missile launch was followed by two more, but the other two were unnecessary. Three seconds later they could see a bright blob of light in the sky, and a sharp boom! rolled across the water.

“Unidentified aircraft destroyed, sir,” Badi reported.

“Very good,” Tufayli said. He was still amazed at the incredible power at his fingertips. Yes, the Khomeini—and its air group was an awesome weapon, but the destroyer Zhanjiang had as much long-range killing power as an entire Iranian artillery battalion.

Tufayli controlled the skies, seas, and soon the land for 100 kilometers from where he sat, and the feeling was almost beyond comprehension. “Have one of the escorts send a launch to search for wreckage.”

“Yes, sir.”

“Where is the report on the ships along that unidentified aircraft’s course?”

“Still cataloging all vessels along that projected course line, sir,” Badi responded. “The flight path takes it very close to the Omani and UAE coastlines, and there are several major oil platforms …”

“it won’t be an Arab base—no Gulf states possess such sophisticated systems,” Tufayli said irritably. “Any major Western vessels reported in this area recently?”

Badi searched the initial list quickly, then put his finger on one line: “Yes, sir, just one. An American rescue-and-salvage vessel, the Valley Mistress. Identified by Sudanese coast patrol transiting the Red Sea three days ago, enroute to Bahrain …”

“Identification?”

“Former Edenton-class salvage-and-rescue ship, three thousand tons, one hundred thirty men, long endurance, helicopter pad, and hangar facilities,” Badi responded, reading from a copy of a Sudanese coast guard patrol report that had been forwarded to the Iranian battle group commander.

“Privately owned but registered under the U.S. Navy Ready Reserve Fleet. Not inspected since leaving Port Said on its Suez Canal transit.”

Tufayli was positive the unidentified aircraft, which he suspected was a small reconnaissance aircraft, possibly a balloon or drone, had come from that ship—it had the right size to handle such complex operations. “Send an electronic reconnaissance helicopter out to take some photos and scan the ship for unusual electronic emissions,” Tufayli ordered. “In particular, try to get the ship to respond to a satellite communications transponder enquiry. I want a direct overflight—let us see what that so-called salvage ship does when threatened. Launch photo or decoy flares, drop a bomb, fire a marker rocket toward that ship—anything, but try to elicit a reaction.”

Badi issued the orders, and a Kamov-25 reconnaissance helicopter, fitted with sensitive electronic warfare sensors and transmitters, was airborne within five minutes and headed southwest toward the American salvage ship.

ABOARD THE S.S. VALLEY MISTRESS THAT SAME TIME “Lost contact with Skywalker,” the reconnaissance technician reported. “I had a brief lock-on by the Ku-band Crotale radar, then gone.”

Jon Masters was mad enough to chew on a bulkhead door. “They got Skywalker, dammit!”

“Well, we’re out of the recon business—and the Iranians will be gunning for us next,” Paul White said. On shipwide intercom, he radioed, “Attention all hands, this is Lightfoot. Our reconnaissance aircraft was shot down by hostile action. We can expect a visit from Iranian patrols any minute now. All stations, begin a code-red scrub, repeat, begin code-red scrub procedures immediately. Initiate Buddy Time profile procedures. Helm, steer a direct course for Omani territorial waters, best speed. All section team leaders, meet me on the bridge. Lightfoot out.”

“Hey, wait a minute, Colonel!” Masters said. The technicians in the reconnaissance section had immediately begun deactivating their equipment—not by using the checklist, but instead by yanking cables and pulling plugs. It didn’t matter if yanking a hot plug caused a computer subsystem to lock up or suffer damage, because they were going to fit hundreds of pounds of explosives to all of it, drop it over the side, then set off the explosives.

All paper records went into red plastic “burn bags” for shredding and burning; software disks went into “smash bags” for magnetic erasure and destruction. “You called for a code red without even consulting me’? It’s my gear, you know!”

“Jon, buddy, stop thinking with your nuts or your pocketbook for one damned second,” White said as he helped prepare the equipment for disposal. The control units were mounted in large suitcase like enclosures, all of which had spaces built into the frames for cooling and access—those same access spaces made it easy to slip half-pound bars of C-4 plastic explosives into the equipment cases.

Fitted with simple timers activated by seawater, the explosives would sink several feet before automatically detonating. The pieces would be very, very difficult to find.

Yes, they were now in international waters, and soon they would be in Omani territorial waters, but White had no doubt in his mind that Iran would try to recover any evidence that the Valley Mistress was a spy ship. They would violate a stack of international maritime laws to get what they wanted.

“It’ll take one of those Iranian fighters just five minutes to shoot an anti-ship missile into us and disable the ship,” White went on, helping carry the first of several dozen containers out to the rail. “Ten minutes after that we could have an Iranian helicopter assault team dropping on deck. Sixty minutes after that, we could have an Iranian frigate pull up alongside. Now if they find any of this gear on board, we’ll be hauled away as spies, and we’ll never see the United States again—if they let us live.”

Masters wasn’t listening. “But at least let me transmit some of the data, save some of the records,” Masters protested. “This is supposed to be an operational evaluation—I’m still trying to collect performance data.”

“It’s all going to be fish food in about ten minutes,” White said.

“Jon, we can’t have any signs of anything on this ship except stuff that shows we’re a legitimate rescue vessel. We’ve already got stuff that we can’t hide, like the air search radar system and the-“

“It’ll just take me a minute to do a system dump,” Masters said, pushing past a technician and furiously typing on a keypad. “I’ll burst it out on the satellite, and we’ll be done with it.”

“Jon, forget it.”

“Lightfoot, bridge,” the intercom cut in. “WLR reports inbound sea surveillance signal contact, possible heliborne search radar, approximate range forty miles, bearing zero-two-zero and closing, speed one hundred knots.” The WLR-I and WLR-II systems aboard the Valley Mistress were passive radar-detection systems—they did not require the use of radar to pick up an enemy presence.

“We’ve just about run out of time, folks,” White shouted in the reconnaissance center—he forgot about Masters, who was still typing away on his terminal. “We’ve got about ten minutes to get this stuff overboard before they get within visual range. After that, it all has to go out the SDV access hatch.” The same chamber in the bottom of the ship that allowed Swimmer Delivery Vehicles to dock with the ship without surfacing could be used to dump some of the classified equipment while the Iranians were topside—that could give White’s crew an extra few minutes.

In less than three minutes, the reconnaissance compartment was cleared out—all except Masters. White wasn’t going to wait any longer: “Jon, dammit, pack it up, now!”

“I’m ready, it’s going,” Masters said. “Couple more seconds, and I’ll be done.”

White was about to yank the plug himself, when he noticed a blinking UAV SYNC light on the computer control panel, with a SYNC ERROR light underneath. “Jon, what in hell is that?”

Jon saw the blinking light at the exact same moment and hit a key—the light went out. “I don’t know,” Masters replied. “The computer is trying to sync with Skywalker—”

“Except Skywalker was destroyed,” White said. But then what was the computer talking to? “Shit, Jon, shut that thing off! That Iranian helicopter might have an electronic warfare suite that can send satellite transponder interrogate codes. Your computer was sending sync codes to the Iranians, trying to lock on to it!”

“I didn’t know … I didn’t realize it was still active!”

Masters cried, yanking cables and practically overturning the terminal to shut it down. “Skywalker was off the air, shot down … I didn’t think to shut down the up-link channel!”

“The Iranians must be reading our satellite transponder data signals,” White said. “No way those signals can be mistaken for communication or navigation signals. And if they picked up Skywalker’s up-link signals and matched them with our transponder signals … shit, the Iranians will know we were talking to Skywalker. We just gave ourselves away to the bad guys.”

ABOARD THE IRANIAN AIRCRAFT CARRIER KHOMEINI “Message from Patrol Helicopter Three,” General Badi reported to Commanding Admiral Tufayli. “The crew reports non-directional microwave signals emanating from the salvage ship. They report the signals are identical to the signals transmitted by the unidentified aircraft.”

“Excellent! We have them!” Admiral Tufayli shouted. “And that unidentified aircraft definitely constituted a hostile aircraft overlying my fleet without proper identification or communications. That is an act of war, and I am permitted to defend my men and vessels by any means at my command. General Badi, what anti-ship strike aircraft do we have ready at this time?”

“One fighter is airborne over checkpoint four, carrying two AS-18 radar-guided missiles and two AA-10 air-to-air missiles,” the air operations officer reported. “It is scheduled to return to base in eleven minutes. Its replacement will be ready for launch in five minutes.”

The patrol point for that fighter was only five kilometers east of the American warship—perfect! “Divert the fighter over checkpoint four, issue vector instructions to that American spy ship,” Tufayli ordered. “As soon as the replacement fighter comes up on deck, launch it as a second strike and air cover; if the spy ship is still afloat, have the second fighter divert as well. We must attempt to keep that vessel out of Omani waters until we can reach it with a boarding party. Divert the destroyer Medina and Pasdaran Boghammar patrol boats to the spy ship’s location to capture and detain any survivors and to search the wreckage for evidence; have Patrol Helicopter Four and the Medina’s helicopter keep visual contact on the spy ship until the Medina arrives on station. We will teach the Americans a lesson for spying on my ships!

S.S. VALLEY MISTRESS Jon Masters had that equipment packed up, last terminal and all the rest of the rigged, and thrown overboard in record time, and he even helped move several of the cargo boxes into the reconnaissance room, as the crew furiously tried to make the room look more like a cargo container and less like a control room.

The underwater explosions reverberated through the ship as, one by one, the fifty-three containers associated with the Skywalker unmanned reconnaissance drone were blown into a hundred pieces and scattered across the bottom of the Gulf of Oman.

“Are we in Omani waters yet?” Masters shouted to White as he trotted back outside for another box.

“Get your life jacket on, Jon,” White said grimly. He had just returned from the helicopter deck, where he’d been monitoring the crew as they stowed the surface and air search radar arrays. The SPS-40 was already stowed in its container and was even partially disassembled and the pieces thrown overboard—it would look very, very bad to have the Iranians find a sophisticated air surveillance radar on a salvage ship—but the SPS-69, which had been hoisted 100 feet above the deckhouse, was slow in coming down. It would not be so bad for the Iranians to find an SPS-69 on the Valley Mistress, but it would look very suspicious indeed for it to be up on a 100-foot mast.

“It’s down in my cabin.”

“Then get it,” White shouted, grabbing Master’s arm and pulling him around so that he was facing down the catwalk toward the ladder leading to the crew cabins, “and don’t let me see you without it until we get back on dry land.”

Masters stared at White in absolute terror. “Hey, Colonel …”

“It doesn’t matter if we’re in Omani waters or international waters or U.S. waters,” White said, “because the Iranians are coming to get us. Now, get your damned life jacket, and make sure you’ve got your passport on you and no papers, disks, faxes, or computer records in your cabin. If you’re not sure, toss the computer overboard. Move.”

Masters had never seen White this grim, and it scared him even more. “Paul, I … I’m sorry about the terminal, about the satellite.”

“Forget it,” White said. “I think the Iranians were coming for us anyway. Now get going. Meet me right back up here on deck.”

Masters ran all the way back to his cabin.

“Lightfoot, bridge.”

White keyed his intercom button: “Go.”

“Air target one now approaching at one hundred knots,” the radar officer on the bridge reported.

Shit, White swore to himself, that meant trouble. The helicopter was moving into visual range—reporting to other Iranian inbounds, no doubt. “Any other targets?”

“Negative.”

“There will be,” White warned him. “Keep me posted. Out.”

“Paul?” It was Carl Knowlton, supervising the work on the SPS-69 radar.

“What’d you get, Carl?”

“No good on the radar mast—it’s jammed,” Dammit, dammit, dammit—”Well, I was hoping NSA would buy me a better system anyway,” White said. “That patrol helicopter is moving in fast. Blow the radar mast’ Sound the bell fifteen seconds prior. Break. All hands, this is Lightfoot, use caution, the SPS-69 mast is coming down hard. Take cover when you hear the alarm bell.”

Masters met up with White on the helicopter pad, where they could watch the SPS-69 but close enough to the hangar door so they could run inside if the mast and radar antenna fell toward them. The life preserver he wore was a thin-line Class V jacket, which looked more like a thick Windbreaker than a typical vest, but it still looked three sizes too big on Masters. “My cabin’s cleaned out,” he told White breathlessly. “I tossed everything overboard, even my pager.”

“Good. Thanks.” A few seconds later the alarm bell rang, followed shortly by two flashes of light and two loud bangs as the mast and the port-side guy wires were cut by small explosive charges and the SPS-69 radar antenna and forty feet of mast toppled over to starboard into the sea. Two more explosive charges cut the starboard guy wires a second later, and the antenna disappeared from view. “The damned Iranians owe me a new surface search radar,” White said under his breath. “Bridge, Lightfoot.”

“Go.”

“We’re receiving numerous radio calls from the Iranian Beet, ordering us to heave to for an inspection,” the bridge officer reported. “We’ve told them repeatedly that we are an American Naval Reserve Fleet rescue vessel and cannot be detained on the high seas while under way, but they are still ordering us to heave to. I’m quoting chapter and verse out of the law books, but they’re ignoring it.”

“Keep on reading ‘em the law,” White said. “Not that they’ll obey it, but keep on reading it to them anyway. Broadcast on international distress freqs, too—maybe a maritime lawyer will jump in.”

There was a slight pause, then: “Lightfoot, bridge, they are asking if they can lower an inspector on our hangar deck by helicopter.”

“Tell them we need to keep our decks clear.”

“They’re asking why we’re running from them and if we know anything about a spy aircraft that tried to attack them just now.”

“Tell them … shit, bridge, tell them anything, read them the Bible, read them the law, just keep on looking innocent. But we’re not stopping.”

“Lightfoot, the Iranians advise us that they’re lowering an Iranian customs officer to the helicopter deck to speak with the captain. They state that we were in Iranian waters and they have a right to have customs inspect our vessel. They say if we do not submit to an inspection, they will attempt to stop us by force.”

“Tell them we weren’t in Iranian waters, but we’ll be happy to submit to an inspection at our destination port, Muscat. We’re o an urgent call, and that’s where we’re headed. Lowering a man onto our deck at night is too hazardous, so we refuse.”

“Oh, shit—look,” Knowlton said, pointing to the north. Just as the radar mast hit the water, the Iranian patrol helicopter had appeared. No doubt it had seen the radar mast blown off the ship.

A side door was open, and a door gunner could be seen aiming a large gun at them. “That gunner’s got a forty-millimeter grenade launcher aimed at us,” Knowlton said. “Those suckers are serious.”

“Wave, everybody, wave,” White said. “We’re supposed to be a friendly, non-hostile salvage vessel.” He got back on shipwide intercom: “All hands, this is Lightfoot, visitors off the stern, Buddy Time procedures in effect now.

Break. Plot, you need to relay AWACS data to me now that our radars are down. That Iranian helicopter sneaked in on us and probably saw us blow the radar mast. Keep the reports coming.”

“Copy, Lightfoot, sorry,” the radar officer responded. “AWACS reports air target two, bearing two-eight-three, range twenty-five miles, altitude one thousand, six hundred, speed five hundred knots, probable a fighter from the carrier Khomeini.”

“Probable shit, that’s exactly who it is,” White shouted. “Helm, Lightfoot, match reciprocal bearings on air target two, keep it off the stern as best you can. Break. Comm, send out a coded flash message via the AWACS plane to Gulf Cooperative Council or U.S. forces and request some fighter support—we’ll be under attack in a couple minutes. Break. Stinger team, report to the helo deck on the double, but stay inside the hangar, out of sight—that Iranian helicopter is sitting right off our stern watching us. CM crews, stand by below-decks with floaters.

Break. All hands, this is Lightfoot, hostile fighter aircraft inbound from the east, report to your damage control stations, Stinger and countermeasures crews responding. Break. Plot, count me down on air target two.”

ABOARD THE KHOMEINI “Sir, Patrol Helicopter Three reports the crew on that salvage ship set off a small explosive charge to sever a tall mast on its superstructure.,” General Badi reported. “The mast was cut free of the ship and abandoned in the water. Some crew members are on the helicopter landing pad, waving at the helicopter. They appear to be friendly, but they are obviously crowding the deck to show their numbers and prevent anyone from boarding her. “That could have been the satellite antenna they used to control that spy plane,” Badi said.

“Obviously they did not want us to see it on their ship.”

“I understand that, Badi. Any response to our hails?” Admiral Tufayli asked.

“They insist they are responding to an urgent call and cannot be stopped,” Badi replied. “They will not allow anyone to be lowered on deck.”

“Order Patrol Three to flash ‘heave-to’ light signals to their bridge,” Tufayli ordered. “If they do not respond, fire a warning shot across their bow. If they do not respond to that, open fire on the ship until they stop.”

Badi looked at Tufayli in sheer horror: “Are you sure, Admiral?” he asked in a low voice. “Fire on an American salvage vessel?

This ship has a Naval Reserve designation, sir—it’s been verified. We’d be attacking an American naval vessel!”

“I want that ship stopped and its crew placed under arrest,” Tufayli said. “It is obvious they are fleeing us to Omani waters to prevent their being discovered as spies, and I will not allow that. Now see to it that vessel is stopped immediately!”

ABOARD THE VALLEY MISTRESS White, Knowlton, Masters, and the other men on deck watched as the Iranian helicopter maneuvered around to the Valley Mistress’s bow and began flashing bright red and white lights at the bridge.

“Heave-to signal,” Knowlton said. “As a general rule, in international waters we’d have to stop unless we really were enroute to an emergency.”

“Well, we aren’t stopping.”

“That means they’ll try to …” Just then, they saw a bright flash of light from the open crew door on the helicopter, and a huge geyser of water erupted just a few dozen yards off the bow. A rolling boom! caused everyone on the hangar deck to jump. “… fire warning shots next,” Knowlton said.

“Question is, would those crazy suckers put one of those grenades into us?” White asked. He answered his own question right away, and keyed his mike: “Comm, any reply from anyone for air cover?”

“Affirmative, Lightfoot,” came the reply. “U.S. Air Force is vectoring fighters on our position, ETA fifteen minutes.”

“Shit, some of those UAE or Omani fighters would be real welcome right now,” White said. “It’ll be way too late for U.S. fighters from Saudi. We’re in deep shit.”

Just then they felt a hard impact on the port-side of the Valley Mistress, and a cloud of fire erupted just below the bridge.

White and the others raced over to the left side of the ship and saw that an Iranian grenade launched from the helicopter door gunner had hit the foredeck just forward of the superstructure at the base of the forward crane. “Stinger crews on deck!” White ordered. “Target helicopter, off the port beam!” He shouted to the others on the helicopter pad, “Everyone but the Stinger crews, clear the chopper pad! Stand by damage and rescue stations!”

The Marine Corps Stinger teams were beside White on the helicopter deck in an instant, and in less than thirty seconds a Marine had a Stinger MANPADS (Man-Portable Air Defense System) missile launcher on his shoulder. Another Marine was beside him, guiding his movements; two more Marines were nearby, ready to load another missile canister and back up their teammates if necessary. “I have the target!” the gunner shouted. Just then, a second grenade blasted into the side of the Valley Mistress, just above the waterline.

They saw the Iranian helicopter gunner swing his grenade launcher toward the helicopter deck, and then the helicopter wheeled right, nose-on to the Stinger crew, presenting the smallest possible target. “Batteries released!” White shouted. “Nail the bastard!”

The Stinger missile crewman pulled a large lever down with his right thumb, which activated the battery and charged the ejection gas system. “My launcher is charged!” he shouted.

“Clear to encage!” the spotter shouted.

While keeping the target centered in his viewfinder, the launcher crewman squeezed a large button on the front of the launcher tube, which uncovered the seeker head of the missile. He immediately got a low growling sound in his headset—he was locked on.

“Target lock!” he shouted. “Clear!”

The spotter took one quick look behind them, checking the blast area, then patted the launch crewman on the rear. “Clear to fire!”

“I’m clear to fire!” The crewman raised the ‘Stinger launcher.

“One away!” he shouted, and squeezed the trigger. There was a loud pop! and a gush of white gas from the exhaust end of the Stinger tube. No one could see it in the darkness, but the Stinger missile flew for several yards through the air; then, just as it began to descend at the end of its ballistic travel, the rocket motor ignited and the missile plowed into the helicopter, directly into the engine compartment atop the fuselage. The launcher crew did not bother to watch the result of that hit—they hurriedly made ready for a second launch.

For what seemed like a full minute, nothing happened. Just as Masters thought the missile had missed or harmlessly plunged into the sea, he saw a bright flash of light and a puff of fire; then, as if the helicopter pilot had decided to land, the helicopter descended quickly to the ocean, nosing over slightly just before hitting the water. It was out of sight in an instant. “We got him!” Masters shouted. “Man, I never seen anything like that—it happened so quick, but it was like it was in slow motion.”

“The Iranian fighters will be next,” White shouted as he hurried back on the hangar deck. On intercom, he shouted, “Countermeasures, launch floater! Plot, where are those fighters?”

On the starboard side of the Valley Mistress near the stern, the countermeasures crews released a large raft-like unit, nicknamed a “floater,” that contained specially designed radar reflectors, signal generators, and infrared energy generators designed to mimic the radar and infrared cross-section of the ship. Once clear of the ship, the floater began shooting chaff rockets into the air. After reaching 300 feet, the rockets began ejecting bundles of hair-thin strips of metal that would expand and bloom into a sausage-shaped cloud. Hopefully that would present a more inviting target on radar than the Valley Mistress’s stern.

“Range nine miles. Target bearing one-five-zero.” The Valley Mistress turned northwest as the fighter swung slightly south—the fighter was maneuvering to try to get a larger profile picture of its quarry, and the helmsman of the Valley Mistress was trying to turn to keep the fighter behind the ship.

“Seven miles, bearing two-two-zero …” No sooner had the ship finished that first right turn than it suddenly heeled sharply to starboard as the helmsman threw the ship into a tight turn to port. The fighter had turned farther around, coming in from the southwest, so the helmsman now tried to point the bow of the Valley Mistress at the incoming fighter instead of the stern.

“Six miles, bearing..

Suddenly the sea behind the ship exploded into a huge geyser of water and foam, followed by a second explosion. The sound rolled across the deck a second later, hitting them like a double thunderclap. “That motherfucker fired at us!” Masters shouted.

“They’re shooting at us!” The Su-33 fighter had launched two radar-guided anti-ship missiles, which had locked on to the much larger radar target—the decoy floater. The missiles hit the water less than a thousand yards astern.

“Range five miles, target turning north escape vector bearing one-eight-zero … range three miles …”

“Stinger crews, batteries released!” White ordered. “Nail the bastard!”

Unlike with the attack on the helicopter, this time the Stinger launcher crewman couldn’t see the fighter itself through the view finder, so he had replaced the regular optical viewfinder on his Stinger launcher with a two-inch-square LCD screen, which showed an electronic image of the Stinger viewfinder and the Iranian fighter, along with target flight data and missile status.

Data received from the AWACS radar plane orbiting over Saudi Arabia was transmitted via wireless datalink to the Valley Mistress, then to a receiver carried by the Stinger launcher crew, and presented on the tiny screen so that the launcher crewman could aim his Stinger system in total darkness.

When the electronic image of the fighter was centered in the screen, the launcher crewman first hit a button on the right hand grip, which fired a radio interrogation signal at the fighter. A friendly plane would have responded to the radio signal—this one did not. “IFF negative! Clear me to shoot!”

“Clear to shoot!” White shouted. Again, the Stinger crew fired.

The missile disappeared from view into the darkness … but far out on the horizon, they saw a bright flash of light and a stream of fire—another hit.

But there was no celebrating their victory. Everyone knew there were at least nineteen more fast-movers and six more fling-wings out there based on the aircraft carrier Khomeini, plus hundreds more based in Iran just a few hundred miles away, that could quickly send the Valley Mistress to the bottom of the Persian Gulf. Their little counterattack merely bought them a few precious minutes, perhaps a little hesitation or over-caution in the minds of the Iranian attackers, perhaps a mile or two closer to the Omani coast, where the Iranians might not pursue. But the fight was still on ABOARD THE KHOMEINI “Contact lost with Patrol Three!” the radar operator shouted on the intercom. He began reading off last position, altitude, and airspeed, which would be relayed to rescue forces. “Lost contact with attack two as well!”

“What in hell happened?” Admiral Tufayli shouted. “Did the pilot crash? Get me a report!”

“Message from scout helicopter, just before contact was lost,” General Badi interjected. “The pilot reported that a missile was fired from the deck of the American salvage ship shortly after they fired their warning shots.”

“Missiles? That American ship fired missiles?” Tufayli shouted.

“I want that damned ship on the bottom of the Gulf of Oman now!”

“The American vessel appears to be still under way. It is crossing into Omani territorial waters, now five kilometers offshore and less than twenty kilometers northeast of Ras Haffah, heading southwest at twenty knots. The pilot of Attack Two said he had contact on the target, but apparently he struck a decoy.”

“Decoys … antiaircraft missiles … this is no damned salvage ship, and it’s no spy ship, either—it is an American warship, and they have declared war with Iran and with my battle group!”

Tufayli shouted.

“Sir, Strike Unit Nine is ready for launch,” General Badi said.

Tufayli looked outside his flight deck windows and saw the long double tongues of flame erupting from the holdback spot, as the Sukhoi-33 fighter-bomber activated its afterburners. A second later, the fighter began to roll down the long flight deck, uncomfortably slow at first but rapidly picking up speed. The afterburner flames described a bright yellow arc through the sky as the fighter leapt off the ski jump, sank toward the water, slowly leveled off, then accelerated with a smooth, shallow ascent into the sky. Passing 200 meters’ altitude, the afterburner flames disappeared. “What are your instructions, sir?”

“Destroy that ship!” Tufayli screamed. “Destroy it “But, sir, the vessel is in Omani waters now,” Badi said. “It is within sight of land, and there are many small villages near.

“I do not care how many people will see this—I want that American warship destroyed!” Tufayli cried. “Divert another fighter with anti-ship weapons to follow if the second pilot fails as well, then rearm another fighter for anti-ship operations, and do it now!” Badi could do or say nothing else.

ABOARD THE S.S. VALLEY MISTRESS The first two lifeboats were loaded up with technicians from Sky Masters, crowded shoulder to shoulder in three rows of ten men in each boat. They had just been lowered to the water and were beginning to motor toward the UAE shoreline when the intercom blared, “Incoming aircraft bearing zero-three-zero, speed six hundred knots, range thirty-six miles and closing!”

“Go! Fast as you can!” White shouted to the crew of the second lifeboat as they finally detached from the lowering cables and started the lifeboat’s engine. A third lifeboat was being loaded with the rest of the civilian contractors plus the non-essential seamen—only a handful of seamen, the ten officers, and the thirty members of Madcap Magician remained aboard the Valley Mistress.

“Lower lifeboat!” White shouted. “Head for shore and don’t stop!” He keyed his intercom mike: “CM, release floater! Stinger crews, stand by!”

When White returned to the helicopter landing pad, the members of the crew assigned to the countermeasures crew were assembled there, waiting for him. He was shocked to see Jon Masters standing With them. “Masters, what in hell are you doing here? I ordered you to go in the third lifeboat.”

“They needed some help with the signal generator on the floater,” Masters replied. “It’s fixed.”

“That was the last floater, right?” White asked. He got a nod in reply. “Take lifeboat four and head for shore. Jon, bridge, crew, engineering, you go with them.”

“Lifeboat four is the last one,” Masters said. “You won’t have a boat.”

“We’re not leaving without the rest of you,” Master Sergeant Steven Cromwell, the senior member of the twenty-four-man Marine platoon attached to Madcap Magician, said sternly. “Our job is to protect the ISA technical group. We don’t split up and we don’t leave anyone behind.”

“If you all get captured by the fucking Iranians, we’ll all be in deep shit, Sergeant.”

“You said it yourself, Colonel,” Cromwell said. “‘Deep Shit’ is our middle name. We’re not leaving. We’ll man an extra Stinger crew if you want one.”

“What I want is a Stinger crew in lifeboat four to trail the others and provide air cover in case an Iranian helicopter tries to pursue,” White said. “Grab four men and as many tubes as you can carry and head toward the others. You’ll have a datalink as long as the ship is still operational—if you lose the datalink, you’ll just have to guide by hearing. Get going, Steve.” He looked at Jon Masters, then at Cromwell, and said, “Take Dr. Masters with you.”

“I’ll stay here if it’s all the same.”

“It is not,” White said. “Sergeant, your responsibility now is the safety of the disembarked crew and the civilians. You are to deliver all the members of the ship’s crew and the civilian contractors, including Dr. Masters here, safely to the U.S. embassy in Dubai or Abu Dhabi, or any friendly agency or military unit, to ensure the safe delivery of these men back to the United States. You are to take any and all steps necessary to ensure their safety and the security of the ISA cell. Is that clear?”

Cromwell appeared as if he were going to make another argument for staying, but he knew White was right. Most of the ISA cell members were going to be on shore, and White had four Marines to help him here. “Yes, sir,” Cromwell responded. He turned to the Stinger crew members and said, “Sergeant Reynard, you’re in charge of this detachment.” The young Stinger crewman acknowledged the order, and Cromwell saluted White and departed with his men.

Masters still hesitated: “Hey, Paul “Get moving, Doc. I want you on that lifeboat.”

“Why don’t you come with us?” Masters asked. “Can’t leave the ship,” White replied. “But if the Iranians get … you know, if they attack..

“You’re assuming they’ll attack, and assuming they’ll hit us, and assuming they’ll put us out of commission,” White said. “I don’t make assumptions. We’ll get off the ship only when it’s necessary—otherwise we stay.”

“But you’re ISA, you’re Madcap Magician,” Masters said. “We need you to reassemble your team. Let the ship’s crew take care of the ship. If they get captured, they’ve got an airtight cover.”

“Listen, Doc, I’ve put too much time in this tub to leave it when it’s still slimy side down and running,” Paul White said. “It may not technically be my ship, but I made it what it is right now.

I’m not leaving the Mistress until it’s not safe to stay. Now get moving, Jon.” White turned away, and a Marine was pulling at Masters’s arm, practically dragging him to the last lifeboat.

“Nice working with you, Colonel,” Masters said, but White was talking on his headset and didn’t hear him. One minute later they were speeding away from the ship, trying to catch up with the other three lifeboats. The Marines on board had one Stinger missile assembled and ready for launch, with one Stinger missile “coffin,” containing two missile tubes, a spare launcher grip assembly, and three battery units, opened up and ready to load.

As they sped away from the ship, Jon Masters remembered the first day he set foot on the Valley Mistress, about three months earlier. He had thought it was the ugliest thing afloat. It had a cleft bow for hoisting things up from the bow cranes up on deck; two huge cranes, one twenty-ton aft and one ten-ton forward; plus lots of standpipes and hoses and other weird things jutting out from the deck and superstructure that just made it look cluttered and made it hard to move around without banging knees or elbows on things. Now it seemed like the most welcome sight on earth, and he wished he was back on deck, complaining about the lack of windows, the poor TV reception, the lack of fresh water, the boring menu, and the out-of-date videotape library.

The dim green light of the electronic viewfinder illuminated the Stinger launcher crewman’s right eye as he raised the weapon and pointed it to the north. “Datalink active,” he reported. “One fighter inbound from the north, range twenty klicks. I’ve got another slow-mover, possibly another patrol helicopter, orbiting about ten klicks north of the ship.”

“Maybe the fighter and the chopper will have a meeting of their minds,” one Marine quipped.

“Button it,” Cromwell ordered. “If it flies within four klicks of our position and doesn’t squawk friendly, kill it. And I want you bozos to set a new record for readying a second missile for launch. Maxwell, keep an eye out for lifeboat number-“

Suddenly a bright orange ball of fire erupted from the starboard side of the Valley Mistress, followed by another directly alongside. The sound of the explosion followed a few seconds later, and to Jon Masters it felt like a red-hot fist punching him in the face. “Oh, shit, they’re hit!”

“Target bearing zero-niner-zero, ten klicks!” the gunner yelled.

“Heim, starboard turn heading north!” Cromwell ordered. “I want that hostile kept on the starboard beam!” The helmsman swung the tiller over and pointed the lifeboat north. Everybody ducked and scrambled out of the way as the Stinger crew reoriented themselves and reacquired the Iranian fighter.

The Valley Mistress was partially illuminated from the fires on the port-side—it was already listing heavily. “Get off that thing, dammit, it’s sinking!” Masters shouted to anybody that might still be on board the stricken ship. The lifeboat swung farther east as the fighter flew closer. Just then, they saw a Stinger missile launched from the helo deck of the ship. The missile and the gunner on the lifeboat were lined up—the Stinger missile appeared to be tracking perfectly—but then they saw several blobs of bright white floating in the sky, followed by a bright but brief explosion. “Flare decoys,” Masters said. “The fighter got away.”

“No way!” the Stinger gunner on the lifeboat shouted. “Range three miles! Weapon charged … negative IFF response! Two miles … lost contact! Lost the datalink!”

“Unengage!” Cromwell shouted. It would be almost impossible for the gunner to find the fighter in the dark, but Cromwell wasn’t about to let it get away. The missile’s seeker head was their last chance. “Find that fighter!”

The gunner squeezed the uncage button, still swinging right to follow what he thought was its flight path. He got a lock-on signal right away. “Locked on! Clear me to fire!”

Cromwell thought for a moment: if the Stinger missed, they’d have highlighted themselves to the fighter. The helicopter might come after them then … but the others might be safe, might have time to make it. “Clear to fire!” Cromwell shouted.

“Missile away!” the gunner shouted as he superelevated the launcher and squeezed the trigger. The missile popped out of the launcher, its main rocket motor ignition seemingly close enough to touch. The Stinger missile heeled sharply north, the motor burned out … and seconds later, they saw another bright glob of light and a streak of fire drawn across the night sky. “Got the motherfucker!” the gunner shouted. They saw the streak of fire continue north—it was on fire, but apparently still flying.

“A half a kill is better than nothing,” Cromwell said as the crew fitted another missile onto the firing grip assembly. In twenty seconds they were ready to fire a second round.

The helmsman turned the lifeboat back on a westerly heading, toward shore but away from the brightly burning ship. It was hard to pick out details, but the shape was different; it was listing heavily to port, almost capsized, Jon Masters guessed. He had never seen a ship sink for real before—even from this distance, it was horrifying. They could hear hisses and pops and tearing, grinding metal sounds roll across the water; then, several minutes later, nothing. The ship was out of sight a few minutes later, lost forever.

THE WHITE House, WASHINGTON, D.C.

SEVERAL HOURS LATER “Do not talk to us of treachery and sedition, Madam Vice President,” Dr. Ali Akbar Velayati, the Iranian Foreign Minister, said over the phone. His English was good, with a touch of a British accent. “First the United States assists the Gulf Cooperation Council with a wanton attack on Iranian soil—then you violate our sovereignty, our peace, and our right to free access to international waters and sovereign airspace by flying spy planes over our vessels. Not only that, madam, but our vessels and aircraft came under attack by your spy vessel! This is an act of war, and you have started it!

“The United States had no spy vessels or aircraft anywhere near your ships, Dr. Velayati,” Ellen Christine Whiting said. “The United States will not tolerate air or naval attacks on unarmed civilian vessels in international or allied waters …”

But Velayati was already speaking before the Vice President could finish: “It is vital for the peace and safety of the entire region for all to stop these threats and accusations, pledge assistance to help in rescue-and-recovery efforts, and pledge cooperation in restoring peace to the region,” Velayati said. “The Islamic Republic is conducting rescue-and-reconstruction work on our damaged property on Abu Musa Island-the death and destruction, I must remind you, which was caused by you and your Zionist stooges!”

“I can assure you, Minister, that the United States government was not involved in the attacks against Abu Musa Island,” Whiting said, “and neither were the Israelis. The Gulf Cooperation Council was responding to the threat of anti-ship, antiaircraft, and long-range missiles placed on your illegal military installations. I can assure you, Minister, that the United States will not tolerate any-“

“I have told you, madam, that Iran is not responsible! Not responsible!” Velayati exploded. “Do not provoke my government, madam! America wants war with Iran! We are not begging for war like America! We want peace! But we will act to protect our people and our homes! We want all warships to depart the Persian Gulf at once. All foreign warships must leave.”

Whiting’s eyes widened in surprise. “Excuse me, Minister?”

“Madam, the Islamic Republic demands that all foreign warships leave the Persian Gulf,” Velayati said. “The presence of offensive warships in the Gulf is a threat to Iran’s peace and sovereignty, and may be considered a hostile action toward Iran.”

“Minister Velayati, the Persian Gulf is not the private lake of the Islamic Republic of Iran,” Whiting said. “Any vessel, including war ships, can freely navigate those waters at any time.”

“Then you risk war. You want war with Iran “We don’t want war with anyone, Dr. Velayati,” Whiting said, “but you threatened international shipping and the right to freely navigate the Persian Gulf by placing anti-ship missiles on Abu Musa Island.”

“Are we not allowed to protect our property?” Velayati asked.

“Are we not allowed to defend our rights and our freedom?”

“Of course you are, sir,” Whiting replied, “but those weapons Iran placed on Abu Musa Island were offensive in nature, not defensive.”

“And so you say, Madam Vice President, that the presence of the U.S.S. Abraham Lincoln and its escort guided-missile cruisers and battleships in the Persian Gulf with their bombers and cruise missiles and nuclear warheads are merely defensive in nature and not offensive?” Velayati asked. “I think not. Yet you insist on the right to sail your warships within just a few kilometers of Islamic Republic territory and fly your spy planes over our vessels. You set a dubious double standard in our own front yard, Madam Vice President.

These are our waters, our lands. We have a right to defend them from hostile foreign invaders. Your support of the dastardly Gulf Cooperative Council attack on our islands proves your hostile intent.

“Madam Vice President, the Islamic Republic of Iran will look upon the presence of non-Arab warships in the Persian Gulf to be a hostile act, an act of war against Iran,” Velayati went on. “We are calling for all non-Arab nations to remove their warships from the Persian Gulf immediately.”

“Leaving only Iran’s warships in the Gulf, Minister?” Whiting interjected.

“Iran hereby pledges that we will also withdraw our warships from the Gulf, leaving only those forces precisely equal to those of all Gulf Cooperative Council warships,” Velayati replied. “We shall remove the aircraft carrier Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini and our submarines to our base at Chah Bahar and keep them outside the Persian Gulf as well, using them only to patrol the sea lanes and approaches to the Strait of Hormuz and Persian Gulf for signs of anyone violating the agreement.”

“It is an interesting idea, Minister Velayati,” Whiting said.

Across from her, the President shrugged; the President’s r grimaced. “We must present your idea to the President and the Congress; we should like to see a formal draft of such a treaty.

Until then, Minister, the right of any nation to freely navigate international waters should not be infringed.”

“The Persian Gulf is vital to Iran’s economy as well as the economies of the GCC and the industry of our customers, madam,” Velayati went on, continuing his single-minded preaching.

“Because it is so vital, we propose that the Persian Gulf be completely demilitarized. Foreign warships, foreign warplanes, foreign troops should all leave. Iran pledges to do all that is possible to see to it that peace reigns in the Gulf. Can you pledge your support for this ideal, Madam Vice President? Will you take this message to the President?”

“Minister Velayati, I will discuss everything with the President, of course,” Whiting said, “but we need to discuss the attack on the civilian Naval Reserve Fleet vessel, the issue of thirteen persons still missing from that attack, our rights to conduct salvage-and-rescue operations in the area, and Iran’s intentions should the United States or any other nation choose to send any vessel, including armed vessels, through the Strait of Hormuz and Persian Gulf.”

“Madame Vice President, Iran feels that the presence of any offensive warships in the Persian Gulf will only increase tensions further,” Velayati said. “Iran strongly objects especially to the United States or any other nation sending any warships capable of land attack operations into the Gulf. You desire negotiations, yes, but Iran feels that such negotiations with Hornet bombers and Tomahawk cruise missiles aimed at our cities and military bases is not true negotiating—it is bargaining at gunpoint, and we shall not stand for such. If you truly desire peace, madam, if America truly does not want this conflict to escalate further, you will agree to remove your warships from the Gulf immediately. We shall do the same. Iran will not look favorably upon any nation that decides to send a warship capable of land attack into the Persian Gulf.”

“Minister Velayati, your terms are much too broad for diplomatic discussion,” Vice President Whiting said in complete disbelief.

“You simply cannot unilaterally decide to close the Persian Gulf to any vessels you choose, any more than the United States can close off the Gulf of Mexico or the Gulf of Alaska …”

“We will not accept any interference from America!” Velayati emphasized. “If America attempts to sail an offensive land-attack warship into the Persian Gulf, Iran will consider it a hostile act. We do not wish war, but we are prepared to defend our rights and our freedoms! America wants another Desert Storm with Iran!

No more Desert Storms! No more warships in the Persian Gulf! No more war!” And the line went dead.

Whiting dropped the phone back in its cradle, then sat back in the couch in the Oval Office, where she had taken the call. “I’m too young and innocent for this, Mr. President,” she quipped. That was an exaggeration, of course.

As the former Governor of Delaware and a former United Nations Deputy Ambassador, Whiting was well equipped to take on anyone in an argument …”

“Hell, Ellen, Velayati was educated at Oxford—he’s supposed to respect women,” President Kevin Martindale said, trying to help his Vice President unclench her jaw. “I thought he was a pussycat.” Whiting was not going to relax that easily—her lips were tight, her eyes narrow and hard as she made her way back to her seat around the coffee table in the Oval Office.

“Okay, ladies and gents, what in hell is going wrong around here?”

the President asked. Recently elected and only forty-nine years old, divorced, with two grown children, he was in tremendously good health and vitality although the stress of forming a new government was bound to take its toll on his boyish good looks.

Today he was dressed in gray slacks, business shoes, and a conservative white shirt under a thick cardigan sweater. His thick salt-and-pepper gray hair was neatly in place except for the famous “photographer’s dream,” a thick lock of bright silver hair that curled defiantly down across his forehead over his left eye when he got angry. The end of the lock was pointed, like the Grim Reaper’s scythe. If a second one appeared over the right eye, heads would roll.

With the President and the Vice President was Secretary of State Jeffrey Hartman; Secretary of Defense Arthur Chastain; Philip Freeman, the President’s National Security Advisor; and Charles Ricardo, the White House Communications Director. “This is a new one on me,” the President went on. “Iran wants to close off the Persian Gulf to all land-attack warships. The request is so far out in left field that it’s laughable, but I got a feeling no one’s going to be laughing. First off, I want to hear about that incident with the spy ship. Phil, Arthur, Jeffrey, Charles, let’s hear it. Ellen, jump in anywhere. Let’s go.”

“A covert-action vessel belonging to a technical group of the Intelligence Support Agency, code-named Madcap Magician, was attacked and destroyed by Iranian air bombardment,” Philip Freeman began. Freeman was the former Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff in the previous administration; his popularity and leadership had made him a possible presidential candidate after his retirement, but he had accepted the position of National Security Advisor in the new Martindale administration instead. It had turned out to be a good choice; he was very well respected, not only in the White House but in Congress and throughout the nation as well, on a par with Martindale himself.

“Casualties?”

“No definite word yet, sir,” Freeman responded. “The ship carried a crew of one hundred thirty-three. One hundred twenty persons were rescued from the United Arab Emirates; they escaped in four lifeboats before and during the attack. The rest are presumed missing or captured by the Iranian navy. The ship was lost, sunk by aerial missile bombardment.”

“Was it on a spy mission?”

“Very definitely,” Freeman said. “Operating under Executive Order 96-119, covert surveillance of the Strait of Hormuz and the Iranian heavy warship surveillance and intelligence. The vessel was the base for an unmanned stealth drone the National Security Agency began using to photograph the Iranian warships in the Gulf of Oman.”

“Shit,” the President muttered. “Sounds like we lost a real valuable asset.”

“The vessel had been used as a seagoing platform for tilt-rotor aircraft and Swimmer Delivery Vehicles,” Freeman said. “In service for about seven years, just before Desert Storm. The unit had also assisted on the GCC attack on Abu Musa Island recently—they inserted special-ops troops with laser designators to help the Arab crews hit their targets. Yes, we’ll miss that platform.”

“We never should have sent it in the first place,” Secretary of State Hartman said. Hartman was the administration’s senior member, a former Wall Street investment House CEO and twelve-term Congressman from New York who brought an insider’s knowledge both of Congress and the world of international finance to a rather young White House. Hartman had also brought an extensive web of personal contacts with him—decision makers who preferred the old-boy network over diplomatic or political bureaucracy. “The GCC had no business attacking that island, and we had no business assisting them.”

“Intelligence reports said that the Iranians were gearing up to launch an attack on the Abraham Lincoln carrier group when it entered the Persian Gulf,” Freeman responded. “The Iranians stole those islands from the United Arab Emirates and started basing antiship, antiaircraft, and long-range ballistic missiles there.”

“‘Intelligence reports’ have been saying that same thing for years now,” Hartman said. “And Iran didn’t ‘steal’ those islands—they once owned them. The ownership is in dispute, that’s all, and negotiations with the United Arab Emirates were ongoing.”

“Iran’s not negotiating any longer,” Freeman said. “It looks like the Iranians are going to block the Strait of Hormuz with their aircraft carrier battle group.”

“They’re going to park their what?” Vice President Whiting asked in complete surprise.

“You heard correctly, Ms. Vice President,” Freeman said. “The Khomeini, Iran’s new aircraft carrier, has put to sea. A fourteen-ship battle group, including two of their three Kilo-class submarines.”

“Iran has an aircraft carrier? Since when?” Whiting exclaimed.

“Since 1995 at least,” Freeman responded, and related the details of its transformation from the ex-Russian carrier Varyag.

“This is unbelievable!” Whiting said. “And now they’re going to park that thing in the middle of the Strait of Hormuz to block anyone else from entering the Persian Gulf?”

“General, better give us a quick rundown on that battle group;” the President said.

“Yes, sir,” Freeman said. He referred to his notes only briefly; he had received many detailed briefings on the Iranian military’s recent developments and knew the information, updated daily, almost by heart: “The Khomeini aircraft carrier battle group is the largest and most powerful seagoing battle group in southwest Asia, with the exception of our own—and in normal day-to-day postures, we’re certainly outnumbered, if not outgunned. Most of the ships are ex-U.S. or ex-British frigates and destroyers, but new hardware was acquired over the past three years during the Russians’ big arms fire sales, and with arms deals with China.

“Leading the group is the Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini. Although the Iranians call it a ‘defensive aviation cruiser,’ it’s a pure aircraft carrier, designed for high-performance fixed-wing aircraft, not just vertical-takeoff jets or helicopters. It carries an air group of twenty-four fixed-wing and fifteen rotary-wing aircraft, including two squadrons of twelve Sukhoi-33 Flanker-D fighter-bombers; it can carry probably another six to ten planes above-deck, including carrier-modified Sukhoi-25 bombers and MiG-29 fighters. The ship and the planes are top-of-the-line Russian hardware and weapons—the Iranians spent four billion dollars in the past five years outfitting this ship.

“The Khomeini carries lots of anti-ship and antiaircraft weapons as well,” Freeman continued. “The Varyag was originally designed to carry nuclear anti-surface cruise missiles; we don’t think the Khomeini has any nukes, but it certainly has cruise missiles, probably ex-Russian SSN-12 Sandbox, good against ships or shore targets. The Sukhoi-33 fighter-bomber carries the Kh-41 Mosicit short-range and AS-18 Kazoo long-range ground-and maritime-attack missiles, along with air-to-air missiles. The Varyag was primarily designed as an anti-submarine warfare vessel, and so the Khomeini still has a pretty good ASW capability.”

“It’s a violation of the Missile Technology Control Regime agreement to sell sophisticated missile stuff to Iran,” Hartman pointed out. “Russia and China both signed that agreement.”

“But Iran didn’t officially get them from Russia—they got the missiles from Ukraine, Serbia, and the Czech Republic, as well as North Korea. None of these countries signed the MTCR agreement—none of these countries except North Korea even existed in 1989, and North Korea thumbs its nose at the rest of the world all the time,” Freeman said. “The bottom line is this: Iran can get its hands on any military hardware it wants, and there’s little we can do about it. If we sanctioned every country that sold Iran modern military hardware, we’d alienate three-quarters of our trading partners.

“The Iranian carrier group also includes the Chinese destroyer Zhanjiang, a very capable guided-missile destroyer,” Freeman went on. “This is supposedly being used to House Chinese officers who are also training on the Khomeini, but the destroyer was involved in shooting down the spy plane, so it’s obviously responding to orders from the Iranian commanders. The Iranians did buy one conventional Russian cruiser, which they call the Sadaf, both it and the Zhanjiang carry a big payload of surface, air, and anti-submarine weapons, but its primary purpose is carrier air defense. The group has two ex-U.S. Knox-class frigates to help out with antisubmarine defense, left over from our arms deals with the Shah, armed with Soviet- and Chinese-made missiles and electronics plus four ex-British frigates and four ex-Chinese Houku-class fast guided-missile patrol boats for outer-area screening; these boats carry Chinese-made antiship cruise missiles. The group includes a whole bunch of support vessels.”

“Thanks to our ‘friends’ in Pakistan and Bangladesh, the Iranians have lots of U.S.-made ships and equipment,” the Vice President said acidly.

“I wouldn’t be surprised to see Iran start flying F-16 fighters soon,” Secretary of Defense Chastain interjected.

“That’s not a joke, sir,” Freeman observed. “We believe Pakistan, Bangladesh, Indonesia, Malaysia, as well as China are supplying Iran with advanced Western hardware. It comes down to simple economics: few countries can afford to turn down the money Iran is paying for arms and advanced technology.”

“Are they a threat to the Lincoln carrier group?” the President asked.

“By itself, they can’t stand up against a carrier battle group like the Lincoln, sir,” Chastain chimed in. Chastain, a four-term U.S. Senator and nationally recognized military affairs expert, was well suited for his post in the Pentagon; unlike many political appointees, he knew the U.S. military as well as he knew Congress, and he had made himself familiar over the years with modern warfare and strategic thinking. “However, they would most likely operate well within range of land-based air forces and it could call upon another one hundred small attack craft to harass our group. I feel certain we could destroy most of iran’s air force and navy in a matter of days. Shadowing the Lincoln would just highlight how small the Khomeini is next to our ships—you can set the Khomeini on Lincoln’s deck with plenty of room to spare.” Chastain’s smile flickered, then faded as he asked: “What about that third Kilo sub, General? Is it in dry dock as last reported?”

“We haven’t located the Iranian Kilo submarine—we thought it was in dry dock at the new sub base at Chah Bahar, but it disappeared,” Freeman acknowledged. He turned to the President: “The Kilo-class subs are diesel subs, no anechoic—anti-sound—coating on their hull, but still much quieter than nuclear-powered subs because they run on batteries while submerged. They can’t stay under as long, but when they’re under they’re hard to find and track, especially in the Persian Gulf and Strait of Hormuz.”

“They could cause a hell of a lot of destruction with two subs and an aircraft carrier, no matter how much firepower we bring against them,” the Vice President added. The Oval Office fell silent once again; even Chastain, an ardent Navy supporter, couldn’t argue with that. “I think it’s unlikely we’ll get into a carrier war with Hartman added, “but it’s a major concern. An American carrier hasn’t been sunk in combat since the battle of Midway—it would be a tremendous boost to Iranian morale if they did it, even if they eventually lost the war.

“We’re going to see that scenario doesn’t happen,” the President said resolutely. “I don’t like the idea of Iran threatening us or barring us from navigating the open seas, but the Lincoln group could be a major target. I’m not prepared to send them in harm’s way until we’re ready to go all out and defend them with everything we’ve got.

“Arthur, keep the Lincoln group in the Arabian Sea for now until we find out more.” The Secretary of Defense reluctantly nodded in agreement. To the National Security Advisor, the President asked, “Phil, any speculation on what Iran might do if they start a shooting war?”

“The new Iranian military doctrine is simple: ensure Muslim world security and demonstrate its leadership by strict control of the skies and seas over and near its borders,” Freeman said.

“Well-armed internal security forces like the Pasdaran hunt down insurgents and rebels and control the border; this leaves the regular military forces free to roam all of southwest Asia. The regular military’s primary emphasis is on three areas: the Persian Gulf, the Strait of Hormuz, and the Gulf of Oman; by far, the most important of these areas is the Strait of Hormuz—it’s the choke point in the sea lanes to and from the Persian Gulf.

“The conventional theory says that if Iran is provoked, they’ll cut off the Strait of Hormuz by application of massive shore-based anti-ship missile attacks, backed up by air-to-surface missile attacks using large numbers of supersonic aircraft, including heavy bombers, and by small, fast attack boats carrying anti-ship missiles or guns,” Freeman went on. “The missile sites would be defended with heavy concentrations of ground, sea, and airborne air defense forces that they’ve built up in tremendous numbers over the past few years. Without the application of concentrated suppression attacks, the Strait of Hormuz would become an impenetrable gauntlet. If successful, Iran could cut off nearly half of the region’s oil exports.”

“Ha4(the Persian Gulf oil?”

“Exactly,” Freeman acknowledged. “And the threat doesn’t stop there. With a few massive air raids, Iran can cut the Gulf pipelines flowing out of Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, Bahrain, Oman, and the UAE—there goes another twenty-five percent of the region’s oil. With their new long-range Backfire supersonic bombers, they might be able to cut the transArabian pipelines running west to the Red Sea—there goes another ten to fifteen percent. The rest—flowing from Iran itself—would presumably be cut by us. If successful, Iran could cut the entire world’s oil supply by thirty percent, all by itself, in a very, very short, lightning-fast blitzkrieg.”

“No oil from the Middle East,” Hartman murmured aloud. “One-third of the world’s oil supply … almost half of America’s oil supply.

It would be a catastrophe, Mr. President,” “And we couldn’t stop it from happening,” Chastain said. “I can say, as we stand right now, that it would take far longer than six months to amass a force equivalent to the one mobilized in Desert Shield, and it would be far more dangerous to U.S. forces. Even if the Iranians made the same mistake as Iraq did and let us accumulate our forces in Saudi, it would take us almost a year to build up a seven-hundred-fifty-thousand-man fighting force.”

“A year!” Vice President Whiting exclaimed. “You’re exaggerating!”

“I wish I was only trying to be conservative, Ellen,” Chastain said, “but I believe that’s an accurate assessment. At the end of the Cold War, we switched from a deployed counteroffensive force to a defensive expeditionary force—except that the money wasn’t spent on boring, low-tech things such as more cargo planes, container ships, and railroad cars. In addition, we’ve got fewer active-duty forces, and we pulled them out of overseas bases back to the U.S. We’ve got fewer soldiers, they’re farther from the Middle East, and we’ve got fewer transports to take them where they need to go. Bottom line, Mr. President: we plan on a year and hope for a miracle.” Everyone in the Cabinet Room was stunned into silence.

They all remembered the buildup prior to the Gulf War of 1991; although the first American defensive forces had arrived in Saudi Arabia less than a day after the invasion of Kuwait, it had seemed it would take forever to build up to what could be called an offensive force. Even when Desert Shield had turned into Desert Storm, no one had been sure if they had enough men and equipment to do the job. It had been sheer luck—and they all knew it, although few dared admit it—that Saddam Hussein had decided not to press his attack on Saudi Arabia, Israel, and Turkey during the Coalition’s long mobilization, and that Coalition forces had had powerful, oil-rich friends with large military facilities. “What do we have over there right now, Arthur?” Martindale asked.

“We’ve got a token force over in the Persian Gulf region right now,” Chastain replied. He quickly scanned his briefing notes, his shoulders visibly slumping as he read: “One carrier group currently within striking distance of Iran; one F-16 attack wing and one F-15 fighter wing in Saudi, just forty planes and one thousand men; three Patriot anti-missile and antiaircraft companies, split up between Kuwait, Saudi, and Turkey, plus one training company in Bahrain and one training company in Israel; one bomber wing in Diego Garcia. A total of about fifteen thousand troops—a trip-wire force, nothing more.

“Everyone else is stateside, and I mean stateside—we have one fourth of the troops deployed in Asia and Europe now that we did in 1990,” Chastain continued. “The air units could set up rapidly in Saudi, Israel, or Turkey—if the Iranians haven’t destroyed the big Saudi bases, or if Turkey doesn’t prohibit combat forces from staging there, like they tried to do in 1991—but we can’t count on any ground forces for several months because we don’t have the same size forces forward-deployed in Europe or Asia. Most of our infantry and heavy-armor units would deploy from North America—that would take them an extra four to six months to get to the Middle East. Our sea and air supply bridges will need some time, perhaps six full months, to come up to full capacity. And, of course, there’s no easy land bridge to Iran—we can’t deploy to an allied country and roll across a flat desert at high speed to get to Iran, like we could against Iraq …”

“If I may interject here, Mr. President,” Jeffrey Hartman said, “but as distasteful as this may sound, it appears as if we have an even trade—we shot up their island, they shot up our spy ship. I don’t believe we are on the verge of war here. Iran is flexing its muscles, to be sure, but the entire world knows that the Khomeini battle group is a paper tiger.

“Mr. President, General Freeman, I know losing even one man is hard, but I don’t believe that this is a prelude to war, nor should we make it so. After all, we started this mess by bolstering the Peninsula Shield attack mission. The loss of those ISA agents was tragic, but we took a gamble and we lost. We should just back off and let everyone cool down. We stirred up one big hornet’s nest, Philip.”

“Maybe someone should have taken care of the nest before it got so big that it threatened all the neighbors,” Freeman retorted. “The only mistake we made was letting the GCC fight our battle for them.”

“So we should’ve sent in a bombing raid on Abu Musa Island?”

Hartman asked. “We should’ve bombed that Iranian island? We’d be the bullies then, General.”

“Instead, we’ve lost a major intelligence-collecting vessel,” Freeman pointed out, “and Iran will just park their carrier task force in the Strait of Hormuz and rebuild the missile systems on that island. Do we dare sail a carrier into the Gulf, Jeffrey?

What will we have to concede to Iran so we get a guarantee that they won’t attack the carrier group?”

“They are not going to attack our carriers, Philip,” Hartman said, shaking his head. “This whole thing is a non-issue, General. We back off, let them rant and rave, and things will be back to normal. We’ve sailed a dozen carrier battle groups past those Iranian military bases in the Persian Gulf and the Strait of Hormuz over the past few years, and the Iranians have ignored us.”

Freeman didn’t continue the argument, and that surprised President Martindale, who studied his National Security Advisor for a moment in silence. In the previous administration, Philip Freeman had been the long-suffering Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, a lone voice urging a definitive, hard-hitting military policy in a White House that had seemed very reluctant to use military force. Before that, he’d been one of the main engineers of the Pentagon’s “Bottom-Up Review,” or BUR, a comprehensive review of U.S. military doctrine that was supposed to decide the future of the military forces for the next twenty-five years.

Freeman was a true visionary—even Martindale, leader of the political opposition at the time, had recognized it. Freeman knew that America was done fighting grand intercontinental World War III-scale wars. No longer were nuclear weapons and massive armored columns streaking across the European countryside—or even the Arabian deserts—guaranteed to win wars; in fact, Freeman had written, the nukes and the big, slow, resource-draining weapons systems were sapping the life out of the U.S. military. Speed was life. Wherever and whenever America was threatened, America had to respond rapidly, with the application of accurate, deadly—but not necessarily massive—firepower. Hit and Rit. Shoot and scoot. It wasn’t necessary to flatten the entire battlefield to cripple an enemy’s ability to make war—every little cut, every little break weakened him. Philip Freeman had showed why America didn’t need thirty bases in Germany or ten bases in England or eight bases in Japan or fifteen carrier battle groups. Global reach and global power could allow America, with proper funding and support from Congress, to fight two MRCs—major regional conflicts, Desert Storm-sized wars—and win, even with fewer forces.

But Freeman had seen his hard work and dedication to duty go to waste, as the best military machine in the world crumbled around him due to a lack of funding and, more important, a lack of strong leadership. The White House and Congress had taken the BUR cuts and effectively doubled them, reasoning that if America could win two Desert Storms with 20 percent fewer forces, it could win one Desert Storm and hold another enemy at bay with 40 percent fewer forces. Congress seemed totally out of control: bases that the Joint Chiefs thought were useless but were located in areas popular with lawmakers were given added funding, while vital logistical and construction bases in major cities with a large civilian payroll were closed.

Foreign-policy disasters had frustrated Freeman as did domestic affairs. He had been deeply hurt after the deaths and public disfigurement of eighteen U.S. soldiers in Somalia, especially since the Somali warlord responsible for the humiliation was not only still breathing, but being flown around by United Nations officials. He had been angry and frustrated over the deaths of U.S. and allied peacekeepers in Bosnia; he had been professionally frustrated when Congress wouldn’t budget enough money even for the greatly scaled-down BUR military, He’d seen the U.S. military being sucked into a Vietnam-like quagmire in Bosnia, and seen belligerent Iran, North Korea, and China growing in military strength while the United States was constantly scaling back. War fighting was out, and peacekeeping was in—and to a soldier’s soldier like Freeman, it was like stepping into a boxing ring wearing handcuffs.

It had been obvious to presidential candidate Kevin Martindale that these perceptions were tearing Philip Freeman apart. In official press conferences, even a casual observer could tell that Freeman appeared hamstrung by inaction; after his retirement, he’d become almost a recluse. When he emerged from his Billings, Montana, ranch to address a graduation or conference—he’d rarely done press interviews after his Pentagon days—many ‘in the nation, including Martindale, eagerly wanted to hear what he had to say.

And it was that way right now. Philip Freeman’s abrupt silence meant that he had a plan, and Martindale couldn’t wait to hear it—but first there was much to do. “I don’t hear a firm consensus here, folks, so why don’t we put this on the back burner for a short while. I want everybody to gather some more data. We have to know for sure what we’re dealing with. Anything more for me?” They tossed around more ideas and issues, then the meeting broke up. “A word with you for a see, Phil,” the President said. When everyone else except Vice President Ellen Whiting had departed, the President motioned them both to a chair at the coffee table, and they sat informally.

“Talk to me, Phil,” the President ordered. “What’s on your mind?”

“The Iranians could do it, sir,” Freeman said. “Do what?”

“Close off the Persian Gulf. They’ve got the advantage of substantial land-based air assets, a pretty good air defense network to protect against cruise-missile attack, and a million-man standing army battle-hardened and ready to fight—plus they’ve got a beefed-up navy, including an aircraft carrier battle group that has the potential to mount a pretty good attack on the Lincoln carrier group. The intangibles are a pretty sophisticated chemical and biological warfare capability and possibly an advanced nuclear weapons program, far more better network of regional and world allies, including China, North Korea, nd possibly many Muslim nations such as Syria, Libya, Pakistan, even Turkey—all of whom could make lots of trouble for us elsewhere in the world, possibly opening up a ‘second front,’ if you will.”

“So this could turn into another Desert Storm-type conflict very easily?”

“Yes, but our response would be far more difficult,” Freeman said.

“And not only for the reasons I’ve cited before. Imagine no sea access to the Persian Gulf—all military supplies flown in or sent via road or rail from the Red Sea. Saudi bases and oil fields under attack by Iranian bombers. There would be no direct land invasion of Iran—all amphibious or airborne assaults, similar to D-Day operation—and Iran is three times larger and hillier than Iraq, so the war would probably be longer and much more difficult.”

“We’re looking at an air war, then,” the President said. “A total air war.”

“Possibly a total bomber war right from the start,” Freeman agreed, “until we got control of the skies, got the carrier battle groups close enough to safely start bombing missions, and secured forward bases in Saudi and Turkey.

If Saudi Arabia or Turkey are denied us, the closest bomber staging base might be Diego Garcia, several hundred miles away—and the Iranians can even hold Diego Garcia at risk with their long-range bombers.”

“Jesus,” the President muttered, shaking his head. He held up his hands, as if imploring God for an answer. “Why is this happening?” he asked. “Why does Iran want to do this?”

“I’m praying they don’t want to do this, sir,” Freeman replied.

“I believe General Buzhazi, the commander of all Iranian military forces and commander of their Revolutionary Guards, is calling the shots now. He was embarrassed by the GCC’s attack on Abu Musa and probably frustrated by Nateq-Nouri’s moderate anti-military stance, so he’s got the ear of the reactionary clerics. But the mullahs don’t have the power they did in the eighties. If Nateq-Nouri can retain control of the government, this thing can blow over, just like Jeffrey said. But if Buzhazi takes charge—a coup, martial law—we’re in for a tough time.”

“There are a lot of pretty big ‘ifs’ in there, General,” Whiting interjected. “Any rash action on our part to counter the Iranian threat could make a lot of these ‘ifs’ come true, like a self-fulfilling prophecy. Let’s be careful what we’re forecasting.”

The President nodded his understanding, then paused to consider Freeman’s and Whiting’s words. “So what are your recommendations?”

“Arthur can make specific military recommendations from the Joint Chiefs, sir,” Freeman said, “but I see two things we need to do immediately: move readiness of the bomber fleet up a notch or two, and get some more eyes and maybe some hitting power in the area.

I recommend the following: stand up Strategic Command and give them some assets to put on alert in case we need to respond immediately.”

“That’s precisely what I’m afraid will escalate this thing, General!” Whiting interjected.

“Wait a minute, Ellen,” the President said, “I’ll buy that recommendation, as long as it’s done quietly and carefully.”

Strategic Command was responsible for planning and fighting a nuclear conflict. Normally, it had no weapons, only computers and analysts—it took an Executive Order to give it the bombers, subs, and missiles from other military commands. Except for simulations, Strategic Command had never “gained” any weapon systems in its six-year history. That was about to change Talk it over with Defense. Not too much, and all done very quietly—a few bombers, a few subs, perhaps a few Peacekeeper missiles. Bring them up slowly, separately, so it doesn’t look like a mobilization, preferably tied into scheduled exercises.”

“Agreed,” Freeman said.

“As for your other recommendation … you have something specific in mind,” the President surmised. “Spill it.”

“It has to do with certain operations in your old administration, sir,” Freeman said warily. The President shifted uncomfortably but nodded, allowing Freeman to go on. “Time after time—over Russia, in the Philippines and the South China Sea, over Belarus and Lithuania, Central America, even over the United States—something happened. An invasion force was neutralized, a heavily protected base or enemy stronghold was mysteriously smashed. I know our regular military guys didn’t do it; our allies say they didn’t do it. I have an idea who did, but I tried to talk to some of the key players several weeks ago, and they weren’t talking. You have some very loyal friends out there, sir.”

“I heard you had been asking questions,” Martindale said. He turned away, then stood up and began to pace the Oval Office. He stopped and stared at one of the rounded walls, his hands behind his back. “Bill Stuart … Danahall … O’Day … Wilbur Curtis … oh, God, Marshall Brent, my old teacher …” He fell silent, then turned toward his advisers. “Hell, I feel guilty because I haven’t thought about them more, haven’t had time to pick their brains and have them give me their wisdom and imagination”

“Mr. President, you used these people because they were the best, because they knew how much your administration wanted peace but wanted to stop aggression. You wanted to control the escalation of the conflict, because any other response could have led to World War Three.”

“World War Three … shit, Brad Elliott … HAWC … Old Dog …” The President turned, a wry smile creeping across his face.

He rubbed the back of his neck, then appeared embarrassed to be doing so. “Just thinking about that old warhorse and what he might be up to makes the hairs on the back of my neck stand up.

You have any idea how much sleep that bastard cost me, worrying about what might happen if one of his cockamamie ideas blew up in our faces? Christ, I’m sure he took ten years off my backside.

You thought of this several weeks ago, before the crisis?”

“A fight with Iran has been looming for many years, since Desert Storm and Iran’s military buildup after the war, sir,” Freeman said. He saw the President nod in silent agreement. “We had to be ready if Iran, or North Korea, or China struck.”

“You two have lost me,” Ellen Christine Whiting interjected. “I know General Curtis, and General Elliott when he was with Border Security, and I’m familiar with most everyone you’ve mentioned in the old administration, and Marshall Brent, of course—he was the greatest, the reincarnation of Abraham Lincoln himself—but I’ve never heard of HAWC or this Old Dog. And what’s all this got to do with Iran?”

“Ellen, back in the midst of the Cold War and the turmoil in the Soviet Union and China, we didn’t want to do anything to upset the superpowers, our allies, or the American people,” the President explained. “We had a military research unit called HAWC-hell, I don’t even remember what it stood for, probably some string of military-sounding words just so the acronym came out cool and tough—commanded by Brad Elliott, way before his stint with the Border Security Force. He had a small to medium budget, buried so deeply in the Air Force budget that I think everyone mistook it for a warehouse or a military band or something. It was always getting slashed, and that bastard would march up to the Pentagon and scream and holler and jump on desks until we gave him a few bucks more just to shut him up.

“Anyway, Elliott and his staff could take a piece-of-shit plane like a B-52 bomber and make it dance,” the President went on, so excited with his reminiscing that he found himself talking with his hands, something he rarely did. “Elliott was building stealth bombers years before the B-2A; he was playing with TV-guided bombs and small satellites and brilliant search-and-destroy cruise missiles years before Desert Storm, even before most experts in the Pentagon ever heard of them. He was so good … the stuff he turned out was so reliable, so effective, that we … used them a few times.

“You what?” the Vice President asked incredulously. “Used them … as in, sent them off to war?”

“Sent them off before the war,” the President said, still smiling.

“Remember that Soviet laser site in Siberia, the one that was shooting down satellites and even taking shots at our intelligence aircraft? Remember how it just up and blew itself apart one night?”

“We all assumed it was the Navy SEALs or Delta Force.”

“Delta Force didn’t even exist back then,” Freeman corrected her.

“The defenses were so thick around that site, we couldn’t get a plane or a sub in close enough to infiltrate a SEAL or Green Beret team. We thought we’d need an ICBM to take it out.” He turned to the President. “That was Elliott? Flying one of his experimental planes?”

“A fucking B-52 bomber, a job older than most of the crew members who flew it. They called it the Old Dog. Called Brad Elliott that, too,” the President said proudly. “Elliott called it a ‘flying battleship,’ had it loaded up with smart bombs, decoy drones, even air-to-air missiles, if you can believe it.”

“I can’t believe this,” Whiting exclaimed. “Congress knew absolutely nothing about it?”

“No one knew, except for the White House inner circle,” the President said. “Heck, even I got briefed after the fact! But Elliott did it, Ellen. He was so successful, we used him again and again. A Chinese radar site and a big battleship needed taking out in the Philippines? Nobody else around within a thousand miles, no carriers, no subs—but Elliott’s toys would take them out. Elliott’s toys destroyed an entire Belarussian armored battalion, a hundred tanks and armored vehicles, in one night—hell, in one pass—without anyone in Europe knowing about it.”

The Vice President was still shaking her head. “What happened to him?”

“He was fired, forced to retire,” Martindale replied. “He started to make mistakes, got a little overconfident. He was a throwback, too. He’d go out looking for fights—he’d want to fly his hybrid spaceships in each and every little conflict that cropped up in the whole friggin’ world. Fortunately for us, he would never quit—unfortunately for him, he never learned when to quit.”

“Sounds like my kind of guy,” Freeman said with a smile.

“No, Phil, not anymore. If you’re thinking about using him in some way for this Iran thing, forget it. He was a loose cannon.

We stayed awake nights thinking of how we were going to explain things to Congress, to the American people, to our allies, if Elliott screwed the pooch.”

“I wasn’t thinking about Elliott,” Freeman said. “I was thinking about McLanahan.”

“Who?” asked Whiting.

“Patrick McLanahan,” said Martindale. “One of Elliott’s deputies.

Damned talented youngster. But I thought he was gone, too,” “I found him,” Freeman said with a mischievous smile. “I found most of the surviving members of Elliott’s gang … and I pre-screened most of them under NSA Article Three.”

“Article what?” Ellen Whiting asked. She hurriedly read through a draft Executive Order that Freeman handed to her. “And You’re proposing that we create a military force that acts under sole authority of the White House? The Pentagon will never support it.

The Cabinet will never buy it. Congress will never fund it. The American people will scream bloody murder.

“We’ve already got the force in place, Ellen,” Freeman said.

“It’s called the Air Force Intelligence Agency, based out of San Antonio, Texas. They’ve been in business for four years now, assisting the Air Force and other agencies in combat, scientific, and human intelligence operations. The agency is a combination of assets from other forces, including Air Combat Command. These were the guys that helped pick out targets in Baghdad for the stealth fighters; they Operated in Iraq and even in Haiti, picking targets for the Air Force. They’re experienced with working with the National Security Agency, CIA, and foreign intelligence services. So what we do is team them up with the Intelligence Support Agency to find Iran’s mobile missiles and mess up their command-and-control system. If we destroy their communications and command-control network, maybe we can head off a war before it starts.” The Vice President remained openly skeptical; the exasperated shake of her head told her opinion of the legal authority to conduct military operations without notifying Congress, not to mention the commonsense logic of doing such operations without getting the entire Cabinet on board. “Ma’am, I’m not suggesting we start a war—I’m suggesting that we get some high-tech eyes out there to keep an eye on the region and get some precision, survivable firepower in the area in case something does happen,” Freeman went on. “We all know that Iran would very well start a war if we do a Desert Shield-type escalation or overtly threaten them with any show of force—that’s why I’m suggesting we do this operation as quietly and as stealthily as possible.”

“But we have political and diplomatic realities to face, General.”

The President held up a hand to the Vice President. “Hold on, Ellen. Let’s let the general dig himself out of this. What are you proposing, Philip?” the President asked. “I’m proposing an escalation of technologies, if you will all employed by the Air Force Intelligence Agency, and all centered around keeping an eye on Iran as it conducts this saber-rattling routine,” Freeman said. “I want the same B-2A HAWC flew over the Philippines in the China conflict, the one that carried the exotic weapons that no one ever heard of.

We’ll need specialized crews for this plane. They happen to be civilians, but I think they’ll come back and fly for us.”

“Why that particular plane, Phil?” the Vice President asked. “Why a civilian to fly it?”

“The Air Force doesn’t have the new weapons yet—no one has them, except the crews that used to work at HAWC in Nevada,” Freeman replied. “Even the B-2As still use dumb bombs. Only a handful of fliers know how to use the real twenty-first-century Buck Rogers hardware and I found them.”

“So you’re proposing sending this B-2A loaded up with smart bombs and flown by CIA spies over Iran to blow up a command center—without declaring war or notifying Congress?” Whiting asked incredulously. Both Freeman and Whiting noticed that the President was perfectly content to let her play “devil’s advocate” and come up with as many negatives as possible, so she charged ahead: “I can’t think of a faster, easier way to start a world war, bring down international condemnation on this office, and be branded as lunatic terrorists ourselves!”

“If the force is never, never applied within the United States, the American people won’t care what we did as long as it got results.”

“You sound like Bud McFarlane or Oliver North all of a sudden, General,” the Vice President said acidly. “Are you forgetting the Iran-contra debacle? We may have a Republican Congress now, but that doesn’t mean they or the American people will like or appreciate what you’re trying to do.”

Whiting turned to the President and went on: “Let’s assume for a moment that there is legal precedent for forming such a group, Mr. President, that this Air Force Intelligence Agency can legally do these missions. The question you need to ask yourself is, will you take the bombardment of criticism we’re undoubtedly going to receive? You cannot hope that General Freeman or anyone else is going to deflect or absorb the negative press for us. Could this be considered an abuse of power? Could this be considered an impeachable offense?

Will this affect our chances of a second term—or could this even affect our ability to effectively govern through our first term in office?”

The President returned to his desk and slouched, as he was fond of doing in private when he had an important matter to consider. He saw lines lighting up on his phone—his staff was holding all calls for now, but he knew the ones lighting up the phone were the most important ones. Time was running out.

Iran was gearing up its war machine. He could feel it. Just like Saddam Hussein in the 1980s, like Milosevic and the Bosnian Serbs in the 1990s—the signs were all there of an impending calamity, of a dangerous and bloody war. All of these dictators had one thing in common: they wanted to use a strong military force to demonstrate to their friends and foes alike that they were powerful leaders. The instant that a conflict or threat developed, such leaders were too quick to send their bloated military forces off to war. Martindale had always faulted others for not seeing the signs and reacting in time—he was determined not to let that happen again.

History would not treat him kindly if some disaster occurred before the bad guys started hostilities. If the B-2A crashed over Iran while doing a secret reconnaissance, or if one of those anti-radar missiles hit a school or hospital and killed innocent civilians, Martindale would be labeled a warmonger. When he had been Vice President, he’d gladly accepted that title—now he wasn’t so sure such a name would be good for his political career.

But if the presence of the B-2A kept a conflict from escalating, if it was at the right place at the right time, it would be a major military and foreign-policy victory for him “Do it, Philip,” the President said. “Quietly. Form a team, map out a plan, bring them together, then report back to me. I’ll brief the Cabinet myself after I’ve heard your plan. This plan might die at birth, but get things moving. Baby steps, General. Quietly and gently. Full security.”

“Yes, sir,” Freeman responded.

He saw Whiting close her eyes, and said to her, “I’ve answered your question, Ellen—yes, I’ll take the heat. If it’s legal, I’ll do it. I need to do something—I can’t wait for the Middle East to blow up in our faces before we act. I want something in my hip pocket ready to go, to try to stop the hemorrhaging before it’s necessary to go to our allies and to Congress to authorize an act of war.” He hit the button to the outer office, instructing his personal secretary to give him a list of the most important callers. “That’ll be all, ladies and gents.

But he was wrong, the President knew as he had his secretary dial the first number on his growing priority phone list. This was not all—this was only the beginning.

AIR FORCE ONE, SOMEWHERE OVER TEXAS LATER THAT DAY As was his custom when traveling on Air Force One, the President wandered back to where several members of the White House Press Corps were busy preparing news items, and he spent a few moments with each person over coffee and bran muffins that had been freshly prepared in one of Air Force One’s two kitchens. The President had ditched his usual dark blue business jacket and red silk tie and was wearing a blue cotton Air Force One windbreaker, with two buttons open on his white business shirt underneath.

“How’s it going back here this afternoon, folks?” the President greeted them. They all came to their feet as he entered, preceded by a Secret Service agent, and he heard an unintelligible chorus of words and lots of smiling, so he assumed they had all said, “Fine, Mr. President,” or something to that effect. Traveling with the President of the United States aboard Air Force One had to be the ultimate assignment for a reporter, and he rarely heard a complaint.

“Please, take your seats, thank you. Got enough coffee back here?” Nods and smiles all around. “Got enough work to do? I could use a hand with this National Education Association speech.”

He got a faint ripple of laughter. “Anybody got anything for me?”

“We noticed Miss Scheherazade didn’t join you on this trip, Mr. President,” one lady reporter asked. “Everything OK between you two?”

“Well, according to the briefing I got this morning, I hear some of you in the press have been saying that Monica was mad at me because I didn’t attend the premiere of her new film,” President Martindale said with a boyish smile. “I feel like a hunk of raw meat in the tabloids sometimes. The truth is that Miss Scheherazade is filming this week in Monaco … oops, I wasn’t supposed to reveal that. Sorry, Monica.” His mischievous grin told the reporters that he enjoyed playing these media-public relations games. “Anything else?”

“I know the country doesn’t seem to care too much about anything else but your love life, Mr. President,” a veteran news anchor-person chimed in, his cameraman dutifully behind him taking pictures, “but there are reports from Reuters that Iran attacked a vessel and possibly an aircraft last night in the Gulf of Oman, near the Persian Gulf. Any information on that?”

“No,” the President replied. “It apparently wasn’t an American or allied ship, because I’ve received no complaints or protests about it. Anything else?”

“Are you concerned that Iran is apparently operating this aircraft carrier so close to the Persian Gulf, and they apparently have it fully armed with very sophisticated aircraft and missiles?”

“Lots of nations have ships with extremely sophisticated weapons operating in or near the Persian Gulf, the United States included,” the President replied. “The United States and its allies can defend themselves if necessary, but there doesn’t seem to be a reason to be concerned. In fact, I’ve received a very interesting proposal from the Iranian Foreign Ministry to which we’re giving a lot of thought—a plan to remove all offensive, land-attack warships from the Persian Gulf entirely. I don’t have any details about the idea, but it sounds intriguing, doesn’t it?”

“It seems a bit incongruous for Iran to sail its carrier through the oil-shipment lanes, and then to propose that everyone do away with such vessels “Well, that might suggest that the carrier is nothing but a symbol of their resolve, of their desire to be a major player in the region,” the President offered.

“So you feel the Iranian carrier battle group is no threat?”

“Any nuclear-powered vessel with the firepower that ship apparently has is potentially a threat,” the President said, “but we’re prepared to deal with any threat. However, the prospects for peace look very promising. If President Nateq-Nouri has a proposal, I’m anxious to look at it. I like the idea of demilitarizing the Persian Gulf.”

“Even though you didn’t go to the premiere, do you plan to see Monica’s new movie, Mr. President?”

President Martindale breathed a silent sigh of relief. Good, he thought, they were moving back to the subject of his personal life again. As difficult as it was to have his private life under the media microscope every hour of every day, the topic of fran’s growing threat in the Middle East was even worse. The veteran anchorperson noticed his relief and nodded knowingly—smug bastard. When it was time for their short one-on-ones, the subject of Iran was sure to come up again. “Actually, I did see Limbo,” the President replied with a smile. “I had my own … private screening.”

There was a conspirational “Ahhhhh!” through the press corps.

“And what did you think of the nude scene?” he was asked for the two hundredth time since the movie opened last weekend. “Do you approve of the love of your life doing nude scenes with Brad Pitt?”

The President let loose one of his boyish, innocent-looking grins again, and replied, “I’ll bet Mr. Pitt was asking himself the very same thing about me.”

CHAPTER TWO BARKSDALE AIR FORCE BASE, BOSSIER CITY, LOUISIANA WEDNESDAY, 16 APRIL 1997, 1412 CT

One of the most beautiful places on earth had to be Louisiana in the springtime, thought Air Force Lieutenant General Terrill “Earth-mover” Samson. Little humidity, perfect temperature, cool, clean air—perfect. Too perfect for him to be cooped up in the office all day.

The big three-star general was having a great day. It had started with his weekly two-mile morning jog with about one hundred senior officers and NCOS, which he hoped would serve as a motivational fitness incentive for all base personnel. That was followed by a breakfast meeting with local businesspersons to suggest ways in which the Air Force could help improve and revitalize the community and cut down on crime; a rather productive morning in the office answering mail and reviewing paperwork; and an informal Q-and-A lunch with the students at the current session of Eighth Air Force’s Non-Commissioned Officer Leadership School. Now, Samson, forty-six years young with the heart of a twenty-year-old and with a cleared-off desk and calendar, was going to goof off this afternoon and do something he rarely had time to do these days—go flying.

Actually, this wasn’t going to be a purely fun flight—there was little money in anyone’s budget these days for taking a $2 million dollar jet just to punch holes in the sky. Samson had called up the Second Bomb Wing, found a young B-52H Stratofortress instructor copilot sitting around with nothing on the schedule, and asked him to give him a proficiency check. Every flying-qualified officer had to log so many hours, so many takeoffs and landings, so many instrument approaches, etc., every quarter, and Samson was woefully behind—this was a good day to get caught up. Scheduling had found them a plane, Samson had found his flight suit and boots in his office closet, and the checkride was on.

Normally rank has its privileges, and check rides for three-star generals are “pencil-whipped” to a great extent—do a couple of landings, maybe shoot a couple of no-brainer ILS approaches, and get signed off in just a few minutes—but the young IP Samson had tapped wasn’t going to “pencil-whip” the commander of the Eighth Air Force, and Samson wouldn’t stand for it even if the IP tried.

As with any check ride, the IP started Samson off with a fifty-question emergency-procedures written test, including space to write down all sixty-seven lines of “bold print” emergency procedures for the T-38 Talon jet trainer, the steps that were required to be committed to memory word for word. No one was allowed to step inside any Air Force aircraft without demonstrating thorough knowledge of all aircraft systems. With three amused young officers looking on, the big three-star general bellied up to the flight planning table at base operations and got to work.

Samson had more combat flying time than total time for all three of these young bucks put together, and had forgotten more than they would ever know about flying, but now he had to dig deep and pass a damned written “multiple-guess” test. But without hesitating, Samson got down to it—no compromises, no whining, no shortcuts.

That was the way it had always been for him. Having risen through the ranks from airman basic to three-star general over his thirty-year career, Samson’s entire life had been a series of challenges and successes.

In 1968, Terrill Samson, just seventeen years old, had been a high school dropout looking to beat the draft and avoid going to Vietnam and dying in the fields like many of his Detroit gang-banging friends. His parole officer had told him to enlist or face a certain draft notice the minute he turned eighteen; he’d enlisted in the Air Force simply because the Navy’s recruiting office was in a rival gang’s neighborhood. His mother Melba cried as she signed the enlistment papers for her youngest son, and Terrill was made to promise that he would write. He would never even consider disappointing his mother.

Samson had spent most of the early 1970s carrying buckets of hot tar across griddle-hot construction sites, repairing roads and runways all over southeast Asia in the closing years of the Vietnam War. He’d sent all but five dollars of his monthly military paycheck home to his mother, who would write and ask him if he was safe and if he was making anything of himself. He’d become obsessed with finding opportunities to complete school, volunteer for a job, upgrade his skills, or learn a new specialty, just so he could send his mother a new certificate or document chronicling his accomplishments and proving he wasn’t wasting his time.

Since Terrill had no money to do much socializing, he’d spent a lot of time in the barracks, which made him susceptible to a lot of “line-of-sight career development.” His squadron first sergeant had ordered him to get his high school diploma so he could raise his squadron’s education average; Samson had dutifully complied. Another first sergeant had ordered him to reenlist so his own recruitment figures would look good. Samson had complied again. The tall, good-looking, hardworking, successful black soldier had soon become the Air Force’s “poster boy” as the ideal enlisted man; he’d been promoted to staff sergeant in record time, then received an offer to attend Officer Candidate School at Kelly Field in San Antonio, Texas. Anywhere was better than southeast Asia, he and his mother figured, so he’d accepted.

By the end of the Vietnam War, Samson had a bachelor’s degree, an earned commission, and an undergraduate pilot training school slot.

Four years later, as a young captain and B-52 bomber aircraft commander, he had a regular commission and an instructor training slot; twelve years later, he’d earned his first star as the commander of a BIB Lancer bomber wing.

Now Terrill “Earthmover” Samson, often mentioned in the same breath as Colin Powell and Philip Freeman, commanded Eighth Air Force, in charge of training and equipping all of the Air Force’s heavy and medium bomber units. He was widely regarded as one of the most successful and intelligent officers, of any race or background, ever to wear a uniform.

He proved that fact again by scoring a respectable 90 on the EP test and a 100 on the bold print test, then submitted himself to a complete review of the missed questions by the instructor pilot, undergoing free-fire questioning until his IP was satisfied that Samson really knew the answers. Again, no compromises. Samson ran through a quick review of formation flying procedures with another T-38 crew that would be flying with them that afternoon, and after a formation briefing, a review of the “Notices to Airmen” and the weather, Samson filed a flight plan to the practice area, suited up, and got ready to go.

Snug in the rubber G suit secured around his waist and legs, with his backpack parachute slung over one shoulder, and his helmet and a small canvas bag holding approach plates, charts, and the T-38 checklist on his other, he headed out from base ops toward the flight line, waving off the supervisor of flying, who offered to give him a ride out to the jet—it was too beautiful a day to waste in a smelly old runway car. He chatted with his instructor and the other T-38 crew members on the way out to the ramp, talked about what was happening around the world and around town and around the squadron—it wasn’t often that regular crewdogs got to shoot the shit with a three-star general. No pressure of rank here, no official business, no politicking, no “face time” with the boss—just a bunch of Air Force fliers getting ready to do what they loved doing.