Strike Force

CHAPTER 8

“Zolqadr? Are you there?” the voice of Ayatollah Hassan Mohtaz thundered over the wireless phone. “Answer me, damn you! What’s happening out there?”

General Ali Zolqadr, commander of the Iranian Revolutionary Guards Corps, was standing open-mouthed on the roof of the Pasdaran-i-Engelab headquarters on the western side of Doshan Tappeh Air Base. He lowered his pair of field glasses as if looking at the horrific scene with his own eyes would somehow change the situation. Just seconds ago he was gleefully watching his plan to crush Buzhazi and his insurgency unfold exactly as planned — he was so confident in victory that he decided to call Mohtaz and tell him the good news himself. Then, just as abruptly, everything completely collapsed. He had just watched the utter elimination of an entire battalion of elite Shock Troops and a company of attack helicopters!

“Uh…I…Your Excellency, I will have to call you back,” Zolqadr stammered. “I…I…must…”

“You will explain what is happening out there now!” Mohtaz ordered. “I am watching the television news, and they are reporting several helicopters down and large multiple explosions on the base! What’s going on?”

“I…Your Excellency, just now, several attack and interceptor fighters attacked my troops as they were about to begin mopping-up operations,” Zolqadr explained.

“Fighters? Whose fighters?”

“They were our fighters, sir!” Zolqadr exclaimed. “I don’t know where they came from!”

“Who gave the orders to launch fighters? Yassini? Where is Yassini?”

“He’s in my jail, sir,” Zolqadr said. He turned his binoculars toward the security and interrogation building…and saw it on fire. “There is…I see smoke coming from the security building…”

“Never mind that! Did you get Buzhazi? Did your men attack? Damn you, answer me! What’s happening?”

“My men…yes, they did attack, but…but the jet attack fighters, they came out of nowhere…we had no warning…they’re all…all…”

“Your entire force…dead?” Mohtaz asked incredulously. “I thought you sent an entire battalion, almost half of the entire force based at Doshan Tappeh! You’re telling me they were all killed?”

“Excellency, I need to get a report from my staff,” Zolqadr said. He finally noticed his chief of staff standing before him with a piece of paper in his hands. “Wait, I have a report now. Stand by, please.” He accepted the field report, his mouth and throat running dry as he read in complete astonishment and fear. “We…we are evacuating the base, sir,” he muttered.

“What did you say, Zolqadr?” Mohtaj screamed over the radio.

“The insurgents are overrunning the base, collecting weapons and supplies and releasing prisoners,” Zolqadr said in a shaking voice. “Thousands of regular army troops and civilians are with them. Security forces are engaging, but they are outnumbered, and some are joining them. I don’t have all the details yet. I’m at least a kilometer from the fighting and…”

“Destroy Buzhazi at all costs,” Mohtaz said angrily. “Don’t let him escape.”

“I’ll assemble an entire brigade if I have to, Excellency, but I’ll…”

“No, Zolqadr,” Mohtaz said. “After Buzhazi is done slaughtering the Pasdaran, he will come after the government ministers and the clerics. You must stop him before he can assault the executive branch, the Majlis, the Assembly of Experts, or the Council of Guardians. And if the military is conspiring with Buzhazi to bring down the government, they must be destroyed as well.”

“I’ll get a status report on my forces and send them immediately to do everything in my power to…”

“You’re not hearing what I’m saying, Zolqadr,” Mohtaz said. “I want you to destroy Buzhazi before he gets away from Doshan Tappeh and escapes again.”

“But Excellency, we don’t have the forces here to oppose him,” Zolqadr said. “It’ll take us several hours, perhaps days, to assemble a force large enough to crush him. And if the regular army supports his insurgency as the report claims, he may be unstoppable. I will…”

“I’ll tell you what you will do, General,” Mohtaj said. “Destroy Buzhazi, now. Launch an attack immediately and blanket the entire base.”

“But sir, I just told you, it will take hours to assemble…”

“I don’t mean with ground forces, Zolqadr. Use the same forces you used against the insurgents in Arān.”

“Arān? But we didn’t…” And then Zolqadr finally realized what Mohtaj was telling him to do. “You mean…?”

“It is the only way, Zolqadr,” Mohtaj said. “I don’t want this insurgency to go on one more hour. Destroy them all.”

“But Excellency, the civilians…we’ll be launching against our own people!”

“If they didn’t expect to encounter resistance from the Pasdaran before participating in this uprising, they don’t deserve to live — in fact, we’re doing our country a favor by not allowing such stupid persons to breed any longer,” Mohtaj said. “Give the order, General. Destroy them, before they get away. Do it, now.”

“But sir, what if the Israelis and the Westerners detect our missile launches with their spy satellites?” Zolqadr asked. “What if they launch a pre-emptive strike against us?”

There was silence on the line for a few moments; then: “You make a good point, General,” Mohtaj said. Zolqadr silently breathed a sigh of relief — Mohtaj would have no choice but to rescind his crazy order now. Everyone knew that the Americans used sophisticated heat-seeking satellites that could detect even a small missile launch anywhere on planet Earth, as they did with the missile attack on Arān. If they detected another, even larger missile barrage, they would likely order a counterattack. Mohtaj certainly couldn’t risk a…

“You are correct, General — an attack against the insurgents at Doshan Tappeh would certainly alert the Americans, who would in turn alert the Israelis and other pro-Western Arab nations,” Mohtaj said calmly. “Therefore, you will plan a pre-emptive missile attack against Western command-and-control facilities in Iraq, the Gulf, and Israel, to be carried out simultaneously with the attack on Doshan Tappeh. You will order the attacks immediately.”

“What?” Zolqadr exclaimed. “You want me to attack Israel and all of the other nations in the Persian Gulf region?”

“Are you questioning my orders, General?”

“I’m…I’m seeking clarification, that’s all,” Zolqadr stammered. “A massive ballistic missile attack against the West? We aren’t ready for the assault that is sure to follow…”

“Neither are the Americans,” Mohtaj said confidently. “Days from now they may put together some sort of retaliatory air attack, but by then the damage against them will be done, our armed forces and reserves will be mobilizing, and we will enter into negotiations with them for a cease-fire. Our objectives will have been achieved while the West is hurt.

“The Americans are weak and they don’t want war. This is the perfect opportunity to strike. They will never expect us to attack if they haven’t detected a general mobilization. Besides, we can argue that Buzhazi’s attack on Doshan Tappeh and the American captured in Turkmenistan prompted us to act. We will tell the world it’s their fault!”

There was a slight pause; then: “I recall the briefing we were given by our friends on the Americans’ bomber buildup on the island of Diego Garcia,” Mohtaj went on. “Our friends seem to think that the Americans will try to launch another stealth bomber attack against us. This time, they won’t get the opportunity. I want you to initiate an attack against the American bomber base on Diego Garcia as well, using the longer-range ballistic missiles in Kermān.”

“Diego Garcia!” Zolqadr exclaimed. “That is one of America’s most vital air bases in the whole world! That…that will be akin to attacking American soil, like the Russians did! I…Excellency, I think you should reconsider…”

“I will reconsider nothing, General!” Mohtaj thundered. “My battle staff is preparing the coded execution orders as we speak. You will transmit those orders to the appropriate missile brigades without delay, and you will ensure that the orders are carried out to the letter, or I will personally sink a knife into your weak cowardly heart and find another officer who is not stupid enough to question orders. Do I make myself clear, Zolqadr? Attack immediately!”

The northern reaches of the Zagros Mountain range in west-central Iran is a rugged, windswept region, pleasant most of the year but dreadfully cold and snowy in winter. The Qezel-Owzan River originates in the steep mountains near the provincial capital of Hamadan and cuts steep cliffs, caves, and rock spires as it flows north toward the Caspian Sea. Some of the tallest peaks in this area rise to over ten thousand feet above sea level.

During the Iran-Iraq War, hundreds of thousands of Kurds fled Saddam Hussein’s Iraq into western Iran, and the Revolutionary Guards were sent in to try to keep them out. The lucky ones escaped into the Zagros Mountains — the others were slaughtered and left in the ravines and streams to rot. The families that survived the winters in the mountains remained, grew, and eventually prospered, out of reach of Pasdaran persecution. It was not a comfortable or idyllic environment, but living mostly unmolested in the harsh mountains was better than being slaughtered like dogs by Saddam’s Republican Guards or Iran’s Revolutionary Guards. As John Milton wrote, “Better to reign in Hell than serve in Heav’n.”

Despite being known for its bountiful raisin harvests and the spectacular Ali-Sadr Caves north of Hamadan, the inhospitable terrain, heavy Pasdaran presence, and the suspicious, mostly secretive Kurdish population keeps visitors and tourists to a minimum — exactly what the Kurds, and eventually the Pasdaran, desired.

The Ali-Sadr Caves, one of western Iran’s few popular natural attractions, were first discovered in the sixth century and used as a source of drinking water, but when the water ran low the caves were abandoned. But they were rediscovered in the mid-1960s quite by accident by a young boy looking for a lost goat. Although the caves and the surrounding area were developed by the Shah Pahlavi into a well-known tourist destination, it was not until after the Iran-Iraq War that more exploration in the area was undertaken. It was quickly determined that the Ali-Sadr Caves were not the only long, soaring caverns in the area. While the Ali-Sadr Caves were being developed and built by the government, secretly the Pasdaran began rebuilding many of the other caves to their own specifications.

The result was the Gav-Sandoq Khameini, or Khameini Strongbox, named after the Supreme Leader who commissioned the construction of the military complex in the early twenty-first century. The Strongbox ran for almost four miles through the east and northeast side of the Zagros Mountains near the town of Gol Tappeh, about ten miles southwest of the Ali-Sadr Caves, with six entrances and dozens of tunnels connecting forty-three caverns strewn throughout the mountain. While most of the caverns were just house-sized, several were building-sized, and a few of them were massive warehouse-sized halls that took thousands of lights, massive generators, and a ventilation system large enough to air-condition a fifty-story skyscraper to keep it habitable.

Originally built as a weapons of mass destruction shelter and military weapon and equipment stockpile to protect and then retaliate against another invasion by Iraq, the Strongbox was situated perfectly to strike at Iraq by Iran’s medium-range ballistic missile fleet. Most of the three hundred missiles stored in the Strongbox were the Shahab-2 (“Meteor” in English) series of road-mobile ballistic missiles, which were locally modified versions of the Russian SCUD-C missile, with a range of about three hundred miles.

The missile’s accuracy was not very good — perhaps a quarter-mile circular error — but with a fifteen-hundred-pound nuclear, chemical, or biological warhead, accuracy wasn’t that important. The missiles could be brought out of the Strongbox, driven just a few miles away to pre-surveyed launch points, fueled, erected, aligned, programmed, and launched in just a matter of hours. They had plenty of range to hit Baghdad and most large cities in Iraq east of the Euphrates River. Launched from the Strongbox, the rockets could devastate Iraqi targets with ease, almost without warning.

But as Iran’s missile fleet got more sophisticated and the targets changed from Iraq to Israel and Western military forces stationed in the Middle East and Central Asia, the mix of missiles garrisoned at the Strongbox changed. The new weapon of choice was the Shahab-3. Built in North Korea with Iranian financial assistance, and known to the world as the Nodong-1 medium-range ballistic missile, approximately a dozen Shahab-3 missiles were shipped to Iran beginning in 1996, and three successful test launches were conducted.

Because of pressure by China and the United States on North Korea to stop shipping missiles to “rogue states,” Iran announced in 2000 that it would start to build the missile itself at its new Shahid Hemat Industrial Facility south of Tehran. The first missile was test-fired in 2001, and the weapon system declared operational in 2002. By 2006 thirty indigenously built missiles had been completed and secretly deployed to the Strongbox, where they could be fired quickly and accurately and could easily reach targets in Israel and Western military bases in Iraq, Turkey, Kuwait, Bahrain, and Qatar. Like the Shahab-2, it was road-mobile and could be deployed and set up to launch within hours.

The duty officer in charge of the Seventh Rocket Brigade of the Iranian Revolutionary Guards Corps received the radio message from headquarters. Because the call came in on the direct emergency-only channel, he immediately hit the alarm button, which sent an “Action Stations” alert throughout the entire complex. Each of the three missile regiments inside the Strongbox — two Shahab-2 regiments and one Shahab-3 regiment, plus security and support companies — immediately began preparing their units to deploy to pre-assigned launch points, all within thirty miles.

The coded message copied by the communications officer and verified by the duty officer gave the actual order — and it was a “prepare to attack” order. The duty officer immediately radioed the brigade commander, Major-General Muhammad Sardaq. The commander was already hurrying to the command post by the time the message was decoded and verified. “We have received an actual ‘prepare to attack’ order, sir,” the duty officer reported.

“An ‘actual’ message, you say?” Sardaq queried. The brigade ran numerous exercises every week, so “exercise” messages were common, not “actuals. Verify it again.” The general watched as the two officers decoded the message — again it authenticated as an “actual” message. He swore to himself, then picked up the direct secure telephone line to Pasdaran headquarters at Doshan Tappeh Air Base in Tehran.

“That’s not the procedure, sir…”

“I’m not going against procedure, Major,” Sardaq told the duty officer. “Continue the checklist and have the brigade prepare to attack. Never mind what I’m doing.”

As he waited for someone at headquarters to answer the phone, the general watched carefully as the command post team began tracking the progress of each regiment as it prepared to deploy the missiles. After sending their own coded message acknowledging receipt of their orders, headquarters would then send another short coded message with either the pre-planned strike package for each unit, or a very lengthy message with target coordinates and a force launch timing matrix. The longer message had to be verified, decoded, verified again, and compared to a catalog of possible targets chosen in advance by the National Security Directorate, then broadcast as a coded document to the regiment. After receipt, the launch crews would have to verify, decode, and check the target coordinates again, then enter the coordinates and the launch timing matrix into their launch computers. The launch timing matrix was critical to ensure that each of the brigade’s missiles didn’t interfere with one another at launch, inflight, or at impact.

The commander and duty officer gasped in astonishment as they read the decoded attack orders. The first verified target set was a short “canned” message for the Shahab-3 regiment, ordering strikes against military air bases in Israel, Kuwait, Bahrain, Turkey, and Qatar, designed to destroy known command-and-control facilities and alert strike aircraft bases with high-explosive warheads before they could send an alert or launch their aircraft and counterattack. These missiles would launch second. The target set for the first Shahab-2 regiment and two squadrons of the second Shahab-2 regiment was also a short message, ordering strikes against Western command-and-control, air defense, air bases, armored, infantry, and supply bases inside Iraq, scheduled to launch first so they might have a chance to destroy some of the American Patriot anti-ballistic missile sites set up in Iraq.

“Finally we’re striking out against the Israelis and Americans!” the duty officer exclaimed happily. “They’ve been threatening us for long enough — I’m glad we’re getting our punches in first!”

“Shut up, you idiot,” the general said. “This will work only if the damned politicians somehow convince the Americans not to bomb us into oblivion after our missiles fall. What do you think the chances of that are?”

The last message gave the third squadron of the second Shahab-2 regiment a lengthy target list…with a notice saying that none of the target coordinates would be found in the National Security Directorate’s catalog. That was unusual — in fact, it was a major breach of command and control policy. The order was properly authenticated, but it was still against safe operational policy.

It took several minutes for the connection to go through, and another few minutes for someone in authority to get on the line, but finally Sardaq was connected to the senior controller, a colonel Sardaq did not recognize, at Revolutionary Guards Corps headquarters. “What is the meaning of this call, General?” the senior controller thundered as soon as he got on the line. “You’re not supposed to call unless it’s an emergency and you are unable to comply with your orders. Are you calling to tell me you cannot follow our orders?”

“I’m calling because you issued me an inappropriate order, Colonel, and I’m calling to verify it,” Sardaq said.

“Is the order not valid? Did it not properly authenticate?”

“It did, but the target coordinates are not found in the target catalog,” Sardaq said. “Long-form target sets are supposed to be checked against the target catalog for verification.”

“The targets are not in the catalog, General. I explained that in the message. The attack order still stands. You have a valid execution code — launch the attack.”

The duty officer ran over to Sardaq with the decoded message in his trembling hand and stared at his commanding general with wide, unbelieving eyes. “The target coordinates for Third Squadron — they’re on Doshan Tappeh Air Base!” he cried. “They want us to attack our own headquarters!”

“What in hell is going on, Colonel?” Sardaq shouted. “You gave us the wrong coordinates!”

“The coordinates are correct, General,” the senior controller said. “Haven’t you been reading the FLASH message traffic? Doshan Tappeh is being overrun by insurgents and the regular army…”

“The last message I read said that the Revolutionary Guards are about to launch a raid on insurgents in Tehran near the air base.”

“Well, get your head out of your ass and keep reading, General,” the controller said.

“Watch your language, Colonel! Maintain discipline!” But he snapped his fingers at the duty officer, urgently motioning for him to retrieve the stack of obviously unread message traffic reports on his desk.

“Fuck you and discipline, General!” the controller shouted. “They’ve bombed one of our infantry battalions, killed thousands, and shot down almost a dozen attack helicopters…”

“Who? Who is doing all this?”

“It’s Buzhazi, General…he’s here, and he’s got the army, the air force, and large numbers of civilians with him and his insurgents,” the controller responded. “Over fifty thousand insurgents, regular army, and civilians are on the base right now, grabbing everything they can carry and smashing anything they can’t. We’re evacuating the headquarters…”

“Evacuating…!”

“My last task before trying to get out of here is to send you the attack message, and here I still am, with an angry mob less than five hundred meters away ready to twist my head off, arguing with you! It might be too late to get out of here already.”

The duty officer quickly read through the dispatches, and the shock and fear in his eyes told Sardaq that what the frantic, terrified Pasdaran command center senior controller was telling him was the truth. “The army? The army is helping the insurgents?”

“Don’t waste time asking stupid questions, General,” the senior controller said, the fear rattling his voice now. “The base will fall into rebel hands soon, and then the capital and the government will fall along with it unless they are stopped. The order to attack comes from the Pasdaran commanding general himself, and he received the orders from the chief of the national security directorate. If you don’t believe me, take it up with them. I’m getting out of here. You have your orders. Kill the bastards before they take over the whole damned country.” And the connection went dead.

Sardaq was completely dumbfounded as he dropped the phone to the desk. “I don’t believe it,” he finally muttered after a long, stunned silence. “Insurgents are overrunning Doshan Tappeh…and the fucking army is helping them!” He turned to the duty officer. “I want the battle staff in here in five minutes with a complete briefing on the status of our attack preparations.” Before the duty officer could pick up the phone to issue the orders, General Sardaq grabbed him by his tunic. “And I want you to warn the regimental commanders that if I learn even one member of their organization is dragging his feet, I’ll personally shoot him in the head. Now move!”

“Contact, sir!” one of the new sensor operators aboard Armstrong Space Station crowed. The technician was dressed in a simple blue jump suit and wore Velcro sneakers and Velcro patches on his knees and forearms to help keep himself attached to various places in the main operations section of the station. Three other sensor and computer operators, all newly arrived at Silver Tower to operate its reactivated sensors, were similarly dressed and similarly attached to various parts of the module, studying multi-function touch-screen displays of satellite imagery all around Iran. “Target area two has activity!”

“About damned time,” Colonel Kai Raydon snorted. “Okay, gang, let’s get ready to rumble.” He switched his console’s display to that operator’s screen. It showed a real-time NIRTSat ultra-wideband radar image of what appeared to be tractor-trailer rigs suddenly appearing out of nowhere in the middle of the mountains of western Iran. The radar image was precisely tuned by computer to squelch out terrain and forest returns and only show moving metallic returns. “Yep, we’ve got the cockroaches coming out of the woodwork for sure.” He flipped on the secure satellite communications channel. “Genesis, this is Odin, you got a copy on our Polaroid?”

“Roger, Odin,” Patrick McLanahan responded from the White House Situation Room. The high-definition television monitors in the White House conference room had been set up to display images from not only Silver Tower’s sensors but from hundreds of other aircraft, satellite, and surface ship sensors as well, or a mosaic of all sensor data put together.

“Right where you said they’d be, General,” Raydon remarked. He watched as the station’s computers, networked in with the computers on the ground at the High Technology Aerospace Weapons Center’s operations center, started calculating the proper orbital mechanics to intercept the mobile missile launchers. “Odin to Stud One-Three, how are you doing down there?”

“Happy to be back and ready to go, Odin,” Captain Hunter “Boomer” Noble responded. He was on the ground at the High Technology Aerospace Weapons Center in Nevada, pulling “cockpit alert” in the second of two remaining XR-A9 Black Stallion spacecraft. Noble had been back in the United States for less than a day before being tasked for another mission, but he didn’t hesitate to accept the assignment. “Thanks again for not grounding me, Genesis.”

“No problem, One-Three,” Patrick replied. “Glad you feel up to it.”

“We need all the swinging dicks we can to fly, kid,” Raydon said. “Are you getting the pictures and the orbital insertion data?”

“Roger,” Hunter replied. A fiber-optic data cable connected to the spaceplane was busy feeding orbital information, weapon ballistics data, and precise position updates to the Black Stallion’s flight and payload computers. As he read, the computer beeped at him, warning him that the “BEFORE POWER ON” checklist was underway. He acknowledged the built-in countdown hold. “Looks like I’m counting down, guys,” he said. “I’ll talk to you once I’m airborne.”

“Contact, sir!” another sensor operator shouted. “Target area five!”

“Looks like we’ve got another fish on, Genesis,” Raydon said. He switched to the new target. This one was the most unlikely area they had under surveillance, but if they did detect activity it would be one of the most important ones to address. “Got bad news for you, Genesis: your old friend the Shahab-5 launch site is active.” He studied the latest images from the launch site. “I don’t see any rockets on the launch pad — you took care of the last one very nicely — but the latest ultra-wideband radar scans we took from the Tower tell us they have three occupied silos out there. It’s fair to say they’re all Shahab-5s, and some might have nuclear warheads.”

“Any chance they could be decoys, Odin?” Patrick asked.

“You’re the ex intel guru, sir,” Raydon said, peering at the radar images even more closely. “The ultra-wideband radar system installed on Armstrong Space Station has the capability of seeing underground, but atmospheric, angle of sight, and target composition conditions have to be perfect, and with our eighties-era computers we can’t always get a good detailed image even if we are lucky enough to get the perfect shot. The underground missile silos at Kermān are obviously Russian-designed hardened suckers. I just can’t call it for sure, Genesis. The Iranians claim the Shahab-5s are just satellite boosters, and the silos are just secure storage facilities. I don’t buy that for a second.”

“Neither do I, Kai,” Patrick said. “But we don’t have many assets out in-theater, and I need an assessment of the threat.”

“Sir, if Iran has issued this alert because of what’s happening in Tehran right now,” Raydon said, “there’s no reason I can think of for them to be warming up a space launch vehicle. I think they’re going to launch their big boys. And we know what the target will be.”

“Diego Garcia,” Patrick said.

“It’s the only logical target, sir,” Raydon said. “They can hit Israel, Egypt, Turkey, and all our bases in the Middle East with their Shahab-3s. Most of the bombers that hit Iran back in ’97 came from Diego — the Iranians know that, or if they don’t they’re not as smart as we give them credit for. And if our ‘good friends’ the Russians are sharing intel with them, which we definitely think they are, the Iranians would know that we’ve got stealth bombers out there. They’re going after Diego, sir — I’m positive. Almost.”

“Almost?”

“As positive as I’m ever going to be, General,” Raydon said. “If I thought the Iranians had the know-how, or got it from the Russians, the only other logical target for the Shahab-5 would be Silver Tower.”

“And unfortunately we don’t have the Thor defense systems up and running yet,” Ann Page chimed in from her console in the station’s anti-missile laser’s control module, “so we can’t protect ourselves from up here.”

There was a pause on the channel; then: “Boomer, I’m going to re-task your flight. Stand by.”

A few moments later: “Updates downloading, sir,” Noble reported. “Genesis, are you sure you wouldn’t want to send Stud One-One on this one and let me take the Strongbox?”

“I’ve sent you into enough hot target areas, One-Three,” Patrick replied. “You’re going to take out the Shahab-5s. I’ll give One-One the Strongbox.” Both XR-A9 spaceplanes were loaded with air-to-ground weapons — a BDU-58 Meteor re-entry carrier, carrying three 1,500-pound U.S. Air Force AGM-170D “SPAW” missiles, or Supersonic Precision Attack Weapon. The SPAW was a two-stage solid-motor and scramjet — powered missile with a range of over one hundred miles and a top sustained cruise speed of over five times the speed of sound. It used GPS and inertial en route navigation which gave it near-precision accuracy, but then its course to impact could be fine-tuned by datalinks from satellites, target designators on the ground, or by other aircraft. These D-model missiles were specially modified by the High Technology Aerospace Weapons Center with thermium nitrate high explosive warheads that gave them an effective explosive yield of ten thousand pounds of TNT.

“It’s likely to be pretty hot out there near that launch area,” Boomer said. “Maybe I ought to take it instead of the ‘new guy.’” The “new guy” was Lieutenant Colonel Jack Olray, who was new to Dreamland and the XR-A9 project with just two orbital Black Stallion flights to his credit, but was a combat veteran and experienced test pilot.

“The ‘new guy’ will do just fine, One-Three,” Patrick said.

“We can handle it, One-Three,” radioed Benneton from the second Black Stallion, then added, “Thanks for your vote of confidence.” Boomer knew enough not to try to return her snide remark over the command channel — it would only encourage her to keep on giving him grief.

Besides, his countdown seemed to be progressing faster and faster, and soon they’d be underway. His crew mission commander, U.S. Navy Lieutenant Lisette “Frenchy” Moulain, another newcomer to the unit, was impatiently prompting him to acknowledge each countdown hold within seconds of it popping up on their screens. With Frenchy’s almost constant urging, it seemed only seconds later when they closed up the cockpit and were moving out. Boomer noticed Olray and Benneton closing their cockpit canopies as they taxied clear of the hangar — they would be airborne shortly afterward.

Boomer and Frenchy made their first refueling over northern Arizona, then requested and were cleared for a supersonic cruise-climb while over southern New Mexico. They cruised at eighty-five thousand feet and Mach three for just an hour, then descended just east of Puerto Rico for their second refueling. Now safely over the Atlantic Ocean northeast of Venezuela, they accelerated to Mach ten, turned slightly northeast, then began their eight-minute orbital insertion burn. By the time they had crossed the Atlantic Ocean and reached the coast of Africa near Sierra Leone, they were at seventy-seven miles altitude and traveling at twenty-five times the speed of sound.

“Everything OK back there, Frenchy?” Boomer asked after they were established in orbit.

“Of course. If it wasn’t, I’d tell you. Why did you ask?”

“That’s my way of calling for a station check,” Boomer explained.

“Then why didn’t you say that?” Boomer scowled at the rear cockpit monitor but said nothing. “I’m in the green, oxygen and pressurization good, and the payload shows safe with full connectivity and continuity. The ‘Before Release’ checklist is underway. Eighty-three seconds until the first countdown hold.”

“Thank you,” Boomer said. Sheesh, he thought, why does Dreamland attract women like these? Aren’t there any…?

Suddenly there was a steady “DEEDLE DEEDLE DEEDLE!” warning tone, and the message “EARLY WARNING RADAR DETECTED” flashed on the screen. “One-Three, I’m picking up a very strong long-range early-warning radar at your twelve o’clock position,” Raydon radioed. “It’s unidentified — it’s not Iran’s air defense radar.”

“We’ll keep an eye on it for you and analyze it as soon as possible,” Patrick said. “We show you about three minutes to release.”

“That checks,” Boomer said. He checked his position: near the southwest corner of Sudan and Egypt in east Africa, within sight of the Red Sea. There wasn’t much he could do about this new threat except perhaps turn right and get away from land, but it was equally possible that this radar was on a warship. Well, early-warning radars were meant to be large and powerful. He forced himself to relax.

“Stud One-One is safely in orbit and on track,” Raydon reported. “Three minutes to release point, reporting everything in the green.” Boomer knew that Olray’s mission took him on a much more highly inclined track, zooming over the Baltic states and Belarus before launching their Meteor payload. The track was designed to keep them as far away from Russian airspace as possible. Fortunately the desired orbit was perfectly aligned with the optimal track for the Meteor re-entry vehicle, so it wouldn’t waste too much energy having to maneuver to get into position before releasing the JSOW missiles.

“Last countdown hold,” Moulain announced. “MC’s release consent switch to ‘CONSENT.’”

“Roger.” Boomer reached for a red switch guard, broke the thin safety wire, lifted the guard, and hit the switch. “AC’s consent switch to ‘CONSENT.’” It was one of the high-tech Air Force’s nods to the old two-person crew concept of having two mechanical safety-wired switches physically separated from one another that had to be actuated manually before any weapons could be released.

“Roger. Crew consent entered, everything’s in the green, countdown is…”

“It’s the laser fire control radar!” Patrick radioed. “The Russians installed a Kavaznya laser in southern Iran?”

“We’ve had the area under satellite surveillance for days, Genesis,” Raydon said, “and we haven’t seen a thing. There’s been normal truck traffic going in and out of the missile site at Kermān. They couldn’t possibly have gotten a laser set up out there in such a short time!”

The radar threat warning receiver sounded again, this time with the warning, “HEIGHT-FINDER ACTIVE. They’ve got a pretty good lock on One-Three,” Raydon said. “He’s forty seconds to the launch point. What do you want to do, Genesis? If he releases the Meteor, I think that’s when they’ll fire the laser. Do you want him to withhold?”

“It’s a bluff, Genesis,” Boomer said. “Like Odin said, they couldn’t have gotten a big laser out here quick enough. They want us to withhold.”

“Zevitin warned us that Russia would act if we attacked Iran,” Patrick said. “This could have been what he was talking about.”

“I’m ready to withdraw consent, Cap…” Moulain said.

“Keep your hands away from that switch unless I tell you otherwise, Lieutenant!” Boomer shouted over the intercom. “It’s a bluff, Genesis,” Boomer repeated over the command channel. “Let’s do this thing.”

There was a long pause on the channel, going almost all the way to the end of the countdown; then, Patrick radioed: “Continue, One-Three.”

“Good choice, sir,” Boomer muttered. “Final release check, MC.”

Moulain verbally ran through the eight steps of the checklist, then verified that the computer had already configured the system for release. “Checklist complete. Stand by on the bay doors…doors coming open…payload away…doors coming…” At that instant the threat warning receiver blared again, this time with a fast-paced “DEEDLEDEEDLEDEEDLE!” tone, and the monitor warning read “MISSILE WARNING” and “LASER ILLUM,” meaning they were being hit by a laser. “They got us!” Moulain cried out. “They’re firing the laser!”

“Relax, Frenchy, relax,” Boomer said. He was fixated on just one readout — the exterior skin temperature. “It must be a targeting or rangefinder laser — hull temperature hasn’t moved.” He checked the rear cockpit monitor and saw Moulain frantically scanning her own readouts, looking for confirmation. “Just keep your protective visor down. We’ll be over their horizon in a minute or two.”

The Meteor re-entry vehicle fired its small retro-rocket to slow itself down, then assumed a nose-high attitude as it started to descend through the atmosphere. As it slowed to below Mach ten, the mission-adaptive systems on board activated, and the craft began to do a series of S-turns to slow itself down even more. As the atmosphere got denser the mission-adaptive flight controls became more and more active, and the Meteor was able to fully maneuver.

“Meteor passing through one hundred thousand feet, range two hundred,” Moulain reported. “Still in the green. Threat warning receiver has identified the target illuminator as an SA-12 ‘High Screen’ sector scanner…passing through seventy-five thousand, range one-fifty…coming within SA-12 lethal range…now.” The SA-12 “Giant” surface-to-air missile system was one of the most advanced anti-aircraft systems in the world. Purchased from Russia and widely publicized, the SA-12 was designed to protect Iran’s most valuable nuclear weapons production facilities from stealth bomber and cruise missile launches as well as from attack aircraft.

Another threat warning tone sounded, this time with the text warning “MISSILE LAUNCH. SA-12 in the air,” she reported. “SPAW missiles powering up, and data transfer in progress…thirty seconds to separation…second SA-12 is up…another SA-12 in the air…SPAW missile data transfer complete, missiles ready to go…now we have an SA-10 target acquisition radar up…coming up on separation point…now.”

The Meteor vehicle split apart and ejected its three weapons. The AGM-170D SPAW missiles stabilized themselves in the slipstream, took their initial GPS satellite position and velocity updates, did a fast self-check, then fired its first-stage solid-motor rocket engine. In less than twenty seconds the SPAW missiles had accelerated to Mach three and streaked across the sky toward their assigned targets. A few seconds later, the first two SA-12 missiles plowed into the empty Meteor vehicle, blowing it to bits.

When the SPAW missiles’ motor casings were empty, small air intakes on the SPAW missiles’ bodies extended. The interior shape of the motor casing compressed the incoming supersonic air. Fuel and a spark were introduced, and the missiles’ scramjet engine flared to life. Seconds later the missiles passed Mach five. The SA-10 anti-aircraft missiles had a max speed of Mach six, but their solid-fuel rocket motors had already burned out so they were simply coasting toward a spot in space where their targeting computers predicted their quarry would be. The more they turned to chase down the SPAW missiles the slower they flew, until seconds before intercept they could no longer maintain altitude and simply fell to Earth.

The SA-12 battery had fired two more missiles at the incoming AGM-170D attack missiles, and the SA-10 battery fired two more as well. The SA-12s destroyed the first incoming SPAW missile. But by this time the SPAWs were just seconds from impact, and their speed had increased in the descent to well over Mach six, and the SA-10s missed the other two incoming attackers. Patrick’s “Need-It-Right-This-Second” micro-satellites orbiting over the target area provided the final precision steering signals to the SPAW missiles, and both of the surviving missiles made direct hits on their assigned Shahab-5 launch silos. The resulting thermium-nitrate explosions, and the massive secondary explosions caused by thousands of gallons of rocket fuel and oxidizer blowing up in their silos, were bright enough to be seen for a hundred miles away.

“Direct hits, guys and gals!” Patrick announced. “Excellent job!”

“But we still have one silo remaining,” Kai Raydon said. “They’ll launch the third one, sir, I know it — now that we’ve attacked their other babies, they know we’re gunning for them.”

“We’ll deal with them then,” Patrick said. “Right now we’ve got Stud One-One ready to release.”

“Meteor on course and on glidepath,” Benneton said, announcing her payload readouts aloud. “Carrier temps normal. Thirty seconds to weapon release.”

Olray and Benneton’s targets were different than Noble’s and Moulain’s: they only carried three AGM-170D SPAW missiles, like Stud One-Three, but they knew there were going to be many more Shahab-2 and -3s in the field than there were Shahab-5 silos, and only three SPAWs wouldn’t take them all out. Someone else was going to do that job. They also knew, like Zarand, that the Strongbox would be defended by Iran’s most sophisticated high-altitude, anti-missile-capable air defense weapons.

But instead of evading the SA-10 and SA-12 surface-to-air missile sites, Stud One-One’s job was to attack and destroy them.

Each SA-10 and SA-12 brigade consisted of six transporter-erector-launchers (TELs) surrounding the pre-surveyed launch points in the area of the Strongbox. Each TEL had four vertically launched missiles, connected to the command post by microwave datalinks backed up by armored fiber-optic cables. The surveillance, target tracking, and missile guidance radars were also similarly linked to the command post vehicles, and each brigade’s command posts were linked to each other so they could share radar data. As with the Shahab-5 launch silos near Zarand, there were two SA-10 brigades and one SA-12 brigade in the Strongbox area, with a total of seventy-two anti-aircraft missiles ready to fire, plus another ninety-six reloads that could be made ready to launch in under thirty minutes.

There was no way one Black Stallion attacker could destroy all one hundred and sixty-eight missiles — that would take an entire squadron of heavy bombers loaded with precision-guided munitions, which didn’t exist any more in the United States Air Force. But there were only three command posts coordinating the surface-to-air missile defenses of the Strongbox…and that was precisely how many AGM-170D SPAW missiles Olray and Benneton had just launched.

“Good missile separation from the Meteor,” Benneton reported. “SA-10 and SA-12 long-range surveillance…switching to target tracking mode…now I’ve got a new tracking radar warning! Do you see this, Genesis?”

“Roger, One-One,” Patrick responded. “It’s been identified as an extremely high-powered Golf-band frequency-agile phased array radar last seen on a Russian anti-ballistic missile ground-based laser.”

“Anti-missile laser!”

“Stud One-Three got the same indications down south, but nothing else happened — the SA-10s and -12s came up and engaged normally,” Patrick reported. “The laser system I’m familiar with used a small electronic diode laser to refine tracking and do atmospheric attenuation readings, and One-Three got hit with it too, but nothing else happened.”

“What does all that mean, Genesis?” Benneton asked worriedly.

“We think it’s just a target tracking radar or a decoy emitter, One-One.”

“Let’s hope so.”

“There’s not a whole lot we can do anyway except perhaps try to accelerate and boost into a higher orbit,” Olray said. “We’re pressing on.”

“SPAWs on course, good acceleration, still reporting good connectivity,” Benneton said. At that moment the warning tone sounded and a “LASER ILLUM” alert came on their multi-function screens. “There’s the laser warning, Genesis.”

“Roger, we see it. Continue.”

“Okay.” She rechecked the flight profile of the SPAW missiles, but couldn’t help glancing nervously at the “LASER ILLUM” alert. “What kind of laser did you say this was, Genesis?”

“Try to ignore it, MC,” Olray said. “We’ll be over their horizon in four minutes.”

“It’ll last just a minute — they might be trying to lock onto the SPAWs,” Patrick said. “Continue.”

“Roger. Good track…looks like Odin is taking precision course guidance.”

“That’s affirm, One-One,” Raydon said. “Last NIRTSat picture was just four minutes ago. We got ’em zeroed in. Satellite datalink is solid and the SPAWs are ridin’ the rail.”

“Maybe we ought to blast off on outta here, AC, now that Silver Tower has the wheel,” Benneton said. “That laser warning is making me nervous.”

“One-Three didn’t get anything,” Olray reminded her. “Less than three minutes and then we’ll be out of sight. Just try to…”

Except for the screams, that was the last either of them uttered. At that instant the cockpit filled with a brilliant blue-orange light that quickly grew brighter and brighter and hotter and hotter, and seconds later the XR-A9 Black Stallion exploded in a massive fireball, drawing a bright line of fire across the sky clearly visible to anyone on the ground even in daylight.

The streak of fire was not only visible to persons on the ground, but visible to some in the sky as well. “Look at that!” exclaimed U.S. Air Force Reserve Captain Mark Hours. “Somebody’s on fire. That doesn’t look good.”

“Way too high to affect us…I hope,” the EB-52 Megafortress’s aircraft commander, U.S. Air Force Reserve Major Wyatt Cross, said. He pointed to his supercockpit display aboard the highly modified B-52 battleship. “But we got some good news: the SA-10s and -12s are down. You copy that, guys?”

“We copy,” Brigadier-General Hal Briggs responded. “Definitely good news.” He and one of his Air Battle Force Ground Operations teammates were inside an MQ-35 Condor air-launched special operations transport aircraft nestled in the EB-52’s bomb bay. The Condor was a small stealthy aircraft powered by a turbojet engine designed to glide commandos behind enemy lines and then fly them out again a short distance after their mission was complete. Normally the Condor could carry four fully armed commandos, but the equipment Briggs and his partner, U.S. Army First Lieutenant Charlie Brakeman, carried took up a lot of space. While Briggs rode in the Condor aircraft with his standard black battle dress uniform, Brakeman wore Tin Man battle armor. “Let us go and let’s get to it.”

“Coordinating with the rest of the package now. Stand by.”

Hours was already checking his wide-screen supercockpit display. Two other aircraft were visible on the moving-map presentation of the battle plan. He used his eye-pointing system to select the status of the nearest of the two. “Lead is showing thirty seconds to release, guys. Stand by.”

Brakeman put on his helmet, locked it in place, powered up his battle armor, pulled his chest and lap belts tight, and gave Briggs a thumbs-up. Briggs put on a standard flight helmet, clipped his oxygen mask in place, pulled his straps tight, and returned the thumbs-up. “We’re ready when you are.”

“Here we go, guys,” Cross announced. “Good luck.” Briggs heard a loud rumbling and saw the bomb bay doors retracting inside the walls of the bomb bay. “Doors coming open…ready…ready…release…doors coming closed.”

The Condor aircraft dropped free of the EB-52—because it was daylight, and they rarely flew daytime missions, they actually got to watch the amazing EB-52 roar overhead as they fell free. It was the part Briggs hated most because that sudden weightlessness and the seemingly uncontrollable swaying and pitching as the aircraft stabilized itself in the Megafortress’s violent slipstream was hard on his stomach, but as soon as the Condor’s little wings popped out and the mission-adaptive actuators throughout the craft steadied it, he felt better.

“Doing OK, Brake?” Briggs asked.

“No problem, sir,” Brakeman replied. “You okay, sir?”

“I always get a little queasy at first. I’m okay.”

“Welcome to the theater, Condor,” Brigadier-General David Luger radioed from the High Technology Aerospace Weapons Center Battle Management Center at Elliott Air Force Base in Nevada. “This is Genesis Two. We’ve got you about eleven minutes to touchdown. Everyone doing OK?”

“Condor One good to go,” Briggs said. “Condors, sound off.”

“Condor Two, good to go,” Brakeman responded.

“Condor Three, in the green,” responded the first commando from the lead EB-52 battleship, Army National Guard Captain Charlie Turlock. Her partner, U.S. Army Specialist Maria Ricardo, answered a few moments later. “Sorry, Condor Four had to lose some of her breakfast,” Turlock said. “We’re both in the green — Four is just a little more green.”

“Welcome to the club, Four,” Briggs said.

“Here’s the situation, guys: the Iranian Revolutionary Guards have ordered deployment, and we suspect a launch, of their ballistic missiles following the insurgent and regular army attacks on their headquarters base in Tehran,” Dave said. “Stud One-Three attacked and destroyed two of three Shahab-5 medium-range missiles in the south. We don’t know what’s going to happen with the third known -5 missile, but we think they’re going to launch it as soon as they can.

“In the north, the situation is more dynamic,” Dave went on. “The bad news first: we lost Stud One-One. We think a Russian ground-based laser got it.”

“Oh, shit,” Briggs murmured. He knew that “Nano” Benneton was aboard that flight and knew she would have died quickly and painlessly. “That has to be one big-ass laser to shoot down a small spaceplane in Earth orbit.”

“Does the name ‘Kavaznya’ ring a bell, One?” Dave asked.

“You’re shitting me?” Hal exclaimed. Hal knew the name well: he was the security officer in charge of the original EB-52 Megafortress project some twenty years earlier that was tasked to destroy the Russians’ first ground-based anti-satellite and anti-missile laser at Kavaznya in eastern Siberia.

“I shit you not, One,” Dave said. “The radar and tracking laser characteristics are the same. We haven’t pinpointed the laser’s location yet.”

“I’ve got dibs on it,” Hal said.

“You got it, One. Stud One-One did launch its weapons before it was hit, and all three SPAW missiles scored direct hits on the SA-10 and SA-12 command vehicles around the Strongbox. We know they have tactical battlefield optronic and infrared sensors, but we don’t think they’ll see you land. So far the landing zone is clear, but they know we’re coming, so be ready for anything.”

“They won’t be ready for us,” Charlie Turlock said.

“We’ve updated your tactical charts on the current Shahab-2 and -3 TEL locations, and we’ll keep you updated every time we get a new NIRTSat pass,” Dave said. “They have significant numbers of security deployed out there. When their SAM command vehicles went up it appears most of their security guards ran off — whether they were redeployed back to the Strongbox, back to the ballistic missile units, or just ran off, we don’t know, but we should assume that security around the Shahabs will be tighter than first briefed. That’s the latest. Any questions?”

“Any chance anyone on Stud One-One ejected?” Hal asked.

“Sorry, One,” Dave said. “No ejection seats.”

“Damn,” Hal muttered. “Find that laser, Genesis Two. I want it.”

“We’ll let you know, One. Six minutes to landing. Landing zone still looks clear, threat warning receivers are clear. Good luck, Condors.”

The landing site was a small concrete landing strip, built during the Strongbox’s construction but largely unused and unmanned since, about five miles from the southwesterly side of the cave complex. Hal was ready to take command of the Condor aircraft, but he knew it flew mostly by autopilot, even for takeoffs and landings. The aircraft flew a wide arc southwest of the Strongbox complex and between two known Shahab launch sites. The Condor’s small turbojet engine was on but still at idle since their gliding descent was steep enough that they had plenty of speed. Hal knew the other Condor was coming in from a different direction but landing in the same direction on the runway. The electronic tactical display on the Condor’s instrument panel showed both aircrafts’ positions — and they were close, landing just a few seconds apart.

As usual, the landing was hard. Hal used the rudder pedals to keep the aircraft straight down the runway, easing off to the left side of the landing strip to give as much room as possible for Turlock’s Condor. The mission-adaptive technology on the little aircraft immediately turned the entire fuselage and flight control surfaces into speed brakes, and the aircraft slowed quickly, making both crewmembers strain against their harnesses.

As soon as they stopped, Hal unstrapped and opened the hatch. “Establish security, now,” he ordered, and he jumped out, followed closely by Brakeman. Hal handed Brakeman his electromagnetic rail gun, then began unpacking the rest of their gear from the back of the Condor.

Just then Brakeman heard on his battle armor’s satellite transceiver: “Condor, Condor, vehicle heading your way, north side of the field!”

Brakeman immediately plugged the rail gun into the Tin Man armor power supply, activated it, and immediately used the battle armor’s on-board radar and infrared sensors to sweep the area for threats. He saw the second Condor already rolling out from its landing…

…and at mid-field, still on the shoulder of the runway but just now coming onto the pavement, was a Russian-made ZSU-23/4 self-propelled anti-aircraft gun! “Contact!” he radioed. “Zeus-23-four!” He immediately leveled his rail gun, locked on, and fired, just as the quad 23-millimeter machine guns on the Iranian anti-aircraft vehicle opened fire on the second Condor. The gunfire stopped after less than a second, but Brakeman could hear crashing noises as the second Condor veered off the right side of the runway. Seconds later the ZSU-23/4 exploded in a massive ball of fire, with thousands of rounds of ammunition cooking off inside adding to the devastation.

Brakeman ran over to the second Condor and found Turlock and Ricardo climbing out. Hal Briggs joined them moments later. “You guys okay?” he asked.

“We’re okay, but the cabin filled with smoke,” Turlock said. “I pulled the fire handles, but the smoke is still coming out. Help us get our stuff out before this thing blows up.” In seconds all four of them had emptied the second Condor and retreated back to the first aircraft.

“We’re going to have company soon, so let’s move out as quickly as possible,” Hal said. “We’ll forget about securing the Condors — this place will be crawling with security, and one man won’t be able to hold them off. All four of us will go hunt down the Shahabs.” He turned to the large boxy object from his aircraft. “CID Two, deploy.” Immediately the device began to unfold itself…until it had grown into a nine-foot-tall robot, with armored skin surrounding hydraulic “muscles. CID Two, pilot up,” Hal spoke, and the robot assumed a leaning-forward stance, its arms straight back, its right leg extended backward forming a walkway. A small hatch had opened on the robot’s back. Hal climbed up the leg and slid himself into the tight metallic-like fabric inside, slid his arms into the robot’s “sleeves,” and secured his head inside the visor and sealed breathing mask assembly.

“CID Two, activate,” he spoke into the dark, suffocating mask. Seconds later he felt as if he was standing in his BDUs at the end of the runway. He looked at his hands and feet and saw the robot’s mechanical fingers and feet moving, but it was his fingers and feet! “Man oh man, I love this thing!” he said.

Charlie Turlock had already boarded and activated her Cybernetic Infantry Device, and now she carried one of the weapons backpacks over to Hal and attached it onto his back. Hal didn’t feel the weight one bit, but his electronic display showed him his weapon status: twenty-five rounds each of forty-millimeter armor-piercing and high-explosive grenades.

In the meantime, Brakeman had donned his battle armor’s powered exoskeleton, which was a latticework of armored microhydraulic actuators that attached to his battle armor and gave him added strength, mobility, and speed. He looped two spare battery belts over Hal’s shoulders, strapped ammo bags and spare battery packs to his back, and checked his electromagnetic rail gun. Hal picked up two more weapon backpacks — again, he didn’t feel as if he was carrying a thing. “Ready to move out?”

“Ready,” Charlie said. She too was carrying two weapons backpacks in her hands and spare battery packs on her shoulders. Ricardo had already donned her exoskeleton, loaded herself up with spare battery packs and ammo, and her rail gun was at the ready.

“Good luck, guys,” Hal said. He extended an armored fist, and the others touched their fists to his. “I’ll see you all at rally point Bravo.” He gave an eye-point command. The barrel of his grenade launcher extended and leveled to firing position, and he chambered a high-explosive round. “Let’s go kick some Iranian ass and get the hell out of here.”

Their attack plan was simple: each commando had a circuit of about twenty to twenty-five miles in which to search for and attack targets. The last known location of Shahab transporter-erector-launchers was on their electronic charts, and the team followed the land navigation prompts in their visors to each launcher. Only about half of the estimated fifty to sixty missile launchers were displayed — they hoped they would come across the rest of them as they proceeded. Since one Tin Man commando didn’t have a pre-planned circuit, Ricardo and Brakeman traveled together.

Using millimeter-wave radar images, visual enhancement, and datalinked images downloaded via satellite and transmitted between the other commandos, each unit was able to “see” all of the targets around them well before they approached them, and as soon as they detected new threats the rest of the team — as well as the men and women aboard Armstrong Space Station, the Megafortresses orbiting nearby, their headquarters back at Battle Mountain, and the persons watching the mission in the White House Situation Room — knew about them too. The commandos ignored dismounted security patrols and most light patrol vehicles because their weapons couldn’t pentrate their armor — they just simply ran past them directly at the Shahab launchers.

Maria Ricardo found the first targets, a group of four Shahab-2 launchers arrayed about two hundred yards apart in a small gully, with their missiles already raised into launch position. “Jackpot,” she crowed. “Four Shahabs ready to fire.” She knew that about a dozen soldiers and at least one light vehicle was chasing her, but she didn’t care. Ricardo simply lowered her electromagnetic rail gun to her hip, locked the millimeter-wave aiming emitter in with her helmet’s aiming cue, and fired one round at each TEL. She didn’t wait to see if her shots had any effect because she knew there were a lot to attack in a short space of time, but she didn’t need to wait — shortly after leaping off, she heard four satisfyingly loud explosions behind her as each TEL detonated, ripped apart by the two-pound hypervelocity tungsten slugs she pumped into them.

“Got some too,” Charlie reported. “Two Shahab-3 TELs. Look like they’re fueled but not yet elevated.” She fired one armor-piercing grenade at each launcher, then a high-explosive round at the maintenance and fueling vehicles still nearby. She could feel machine-gun bullets pinging off the CID’s armored shell, but she ignored them. “Moving on. One, how’s it going?”

“I feel like some fucking mythical avenging angel, that’s how it’s going, Three,” Hal Briggs responded. He had come across another group of three Shahab-2s, also in firing position. He fired armor-piercing grenades at two of the launchers, causing their missiles to topple over and explode on the ground. “I’ll show ’em how it’s done now!” he cried out through the flaming wreckage around him. Hal ran over to the third TEL, put his spare backpacks down beside them, then stooped down, grasped the TEL, and lifted. The entire launcher and missile flopped over on its side, crumpled as if it was made out of cardboard, ruptured, and caught on fire. Hal picked up his spare backpacks and ran off before they exploded. “Come and get me, you bastards!” he shouted over the radio. He stopped, turned toward the Iranian Revolutionary Guards soldiers pursuing him, and raised the backpacks triumphantly. “Come and get me, assholes, because I’m coming to get you!”

“Condor, exfil point Bravo loks like it’s compromised,” Kai Raydon radioed from Armstrong Space Station. “We’re sending Dasher to point Foxtrot. Dasher” was the MV-32 PAVE DASHER tilt-jet transport aircraft that would come in to pick up the four Condor commandos. The jet variant of the MV-22 Osprey tilt-rotor transport, the MV-32 was larger, faster, more heavily armed, and could carry more troops or equipment. It had been deployed secretly to Iraq to assist the Air Battle Force ground ops team, but now that the Condor aircraft were going to be abandoned the MV-32 was now tasked with picking up the commandos after their mission.

The four commandos all reported successful raids and clean kills so far…but about three-quarters of the way through their circuits, they saw Shahab missiles rising through the sky. “Faster, guys,” Hal ordered. “We’re letting some get away!”

“You can’t get them all, One,” Patrick radioed from the White House Situation Room. “Do the best you can. I want all of you back in one piece. Remember you’ve got an extra three miles to go to reach Foxtrot. Watch your ammo and batteries.”

A tone sounded and a blinking icon appeared on the mission commander’s supercockpit display. “Missiles airborne,” Air Force Reserve Brigadier-General Daren Mace announced. Mace was the operations officer and second in command of the Air Battle Force at Battle Mountain Air Reserve Base. The twenty-four-year veteran Air Force navigator-bombardier leaned forward in his ejection seat excitedly. “Looks like Four-Zero picked up some missile launches.” He quickly designated the missiles, identified as Shahab-3 ballistic missiles, on the screen. “There’s your steering, Margaret. Go get ’em!”

“Got it, General,” Air Force Reserve Captain Margaret “Mugs” Lewis responded. She was more than twenty years younger than her mission commander, flying her first operational mission with the Air Battle Force, but she was a veteran B-1B Lancer aircraft commander and knew how to make the big supersonic bomber dance. But every minute aboard this variant of her beloved B-1 known as the EB-1C Vampire was a delight for her.

The sleek, supersonic Vampire bomber’s three bomb bays were completely loaded for this cover mission. The forward and middle bomb bays were combined into one and contained a rotary launcher with eight ABM-3 Lancelot air-launched anti-ballistic missiles. Resembling the Patriot anti-aircraft missile, the Lancelot was designed to destroy ballistic missiles in the boost, mid-course, or terminal phase. It had a range of almost one hundred miles, a top speed of Mach six, and a precision terminal seeker radar as well as guidance from the Vampire bomber’s powerful attack radar.

The Vampire’s aft bomb bay was loaded with four AGM-177 Wolverine cruise missiles. The 2,000-pound weapons had a small turbojet engine, a maximum speed of just 300 knots, and a maximum range of only 50 miles. But the cruise missile was special because of its three weapons bays, each containing a different type of submunition — anti-armor, anti-personnel, and area-denial cluster bombs — and its millimeter-wave and imaging infrared seekers that could locate, identify, track, attack, assess, and even re-attack its own targets. Finally, the little Wolverine cruise missile could attack one last target before its fuel ran out by kamikaziing into it and detonating its 50-pound warhead.

The laser-projection heads-up display in front of Lewis depicted a sequence of squares angling off to the right, and so she steered the EB-1C Vampire until the aircraft icon was right inside the squares. The squares represented a “highway in the sky” route computed by the attack computers to get the bomber into perfect attack position, and a graphical bar chart told her what power to set to reach the optimal launch point on time, so she pushed the throttles up until the bars matched. “Excellent, Captain,” Daren said. “About ten seconds for a LADAR launch fix.”

At the proper time the Vampire’s LADAR, or laser radar, automatically activated. The LADAR used high-speed electronically scanned laser beams to “draw” a picture of everything in the sky, on the ground, or even in space for two hundred miles quickly and with very high precision, presenting it on their supercockpit displays in incredible detail. “LADAR down,” Daren said. “Lancelot missiles counting down…ten seconds…doors coming open…missile one away…missile two away…doors closed. Okay, we’re shifting targets to the launchers.”

The heads-up display shifted, and Lewis turned the bomber to follow. She could have easily let the computer fly the attack runs, but this was actual combat, not a test flight, and she was really enjoying herself. “Coming on release point…fifteen seconds…ten seconds, doors coming open…missile one away…missile two away, doors coming closed. Okay, Mugs, left turn back to the patrol orbit and I’ll take a look at the Wolverine’s target area. We’ll check our fuel state once we’re out of Iran.”

The Lancelot missiles, similar to Patriot PAC-3 ground-launched anti-aircraft missiles, steered themselves to an intercept “basket” using course and altitude information uploaded from the Vampire bomber moments before launch. The missile received course updates during its flight from brief bursts of the Vampire’s LADAR and from datalinks received from satellites and other attackers tracking the Shahab-3 missiles. Two seconds before reaching the intercept “basket,” a Ka-band pulse-Doppler radar in the nose of the Lancelot missile activated, immediately detected the Shahab-3s, and steered itself to a precision kill.

The Wolverine cruise missiles similarly steered themselves to their patrol area by navigation information from the Vampire bomber. Once in its patrol orbit, the missile activated its millimeter-wave radars and imaging infrared sensors and started transmitting detailed images of the target area. The millimeter-wave radars detected, evaluated, then precisely measured any hard metallic objects in the target area and compared the objects to a catalog of objects in its internal memory.

When it found an object it thought was a Shahab rocket launcher, it reported it to the Vampire crew. “We got a couple launchers,” Daren announced. He switched his supercockpit display to the imaging infrared picture. Sure enough, it was a transporter-erector-launcher, with the rocket erector cradle just being lowered and a reload vehicle maneuvering beside it, ready to load another rocket. On the other side of the launcher was a fuel truck, ready to refuel it. “Committing the Wolverine to attack.”

Daren entered commands into the missile control computers, and the Wolverine missile departed its patrol orbit and headed toward the launcher. It took about six minutes for the missile to reach the spot. As it overflew the launch site, it ejected several small canisters from one of its bomb bays, stabilized by a parachute. Each canister had an infrared sensor that detected and locked onto the heat from the launcher and service vehicles. At a pre-determined altitude above the ground the canisters detonated, releasing white-hot slugs of molten copper flying at the speed of sound that easily pierced the engine compartments of each vehicle, causing explosions and fires that quickly destroyed them. The Wolverine missile then turned and headed back to its patrol orbit to wait for more attack instructions.

Back in their patrol orbit over Iraq east of Kirkuk, Mace and Lewis checked their systems and fuel status. “AC’s in the green,” Margaret said. She was still hand-flying the aircraft, and Daren had to admit she was good — she was able to check her switches, her oxygen, and all of her instruments and still keep the Vampire flying rock-steady.

“Everything’s in the green over here,” Daren said. “One of the Wolverines was shot down, but the other one is still in its patrol orbit and has about half of its submunitions. We still have two Wolverines and six Lancelots. You did good, Mugs. You handle the jet well.”

“It’s easier in real life than the missions we have in the simulator,” Lewis commented, taking a swig of orange juice. “It’s like a big video game, except I’m controlling a four-hundred-thousand-plus-pound supersonic jet worth billions of dollars instead of a little game controller. Sometimes I forget we’re in a combat zone.”

“Oh, it’s real enough — never forget where you are or what you’re doing,” Daren cautioned her. “The minute you get complacent, something will jump up and bite your ass.” An alert beeped in his helmet, and he immediately switched his multi-function display to a wider view of northern Iran and then zoomed in on Tehran again.

“More Shahab-3s heading west?”

“We got missiles inflight, but they’re heading east-northeast toward Tehran. The bastards are shooting at their own people! Looks like Nancy will be getting some shots in today too.”

“Missile contact, Hamadan, heading northeast…second missile in flight, same heading!” Air Force Reserve First Lieutenant Greg “Huck” Dannon shouted excitedly. Dannon was an experienced B-52 copilot, but like many of the crews at Battle Mountain, this was his first operational mission. He got his nickname because he looked like all the drawings of Huckleberry Finn anyone had ever seen, and appeared just as young. “I…we should…I mean…”

“Relax, Huck, relax,” the AL-52 Dragon’s aircraft commander, Air Force Brigadier-General Nancy Cheshire, said, straightening up in her seat as if just awakening from a nap. The veteran pilot was some sort of bionic crewdog: even though crewmembers were allowed to wear headsets while in high-altitude cruise, she always wore her flight helmet, gloves, and cold-weather jacket; always kept her oxygen mask on except when drinking water (and only water) and always kept her clear visor down; never ate any meals on board, and never had to; and never took a nap on board an aircraft, and never had to. “Let the systems do the work — you need to keep calm and monitor everything carefully.”

Cheshire was the commander of all of the Air Battle Force’s modified B-52 bomber fleet at Battle Mountain Air Reserve Base, a grand total of six planes — all of which were involved in operations near Iran — plus a steadily growing fleet of eight QA-45C “Hunter” unmanned stealth bombers undergoing final flight tests at Dreamland before becoming fully operational. Cheshire, a soft-spoken and very laid-back test pilot turned wing commander, was the first female test pilot at Dreamland before being chosen to command the Air Battle Force’s B-52 bombers at Battle Mountain.

Although she was checked out in every aircraft under her command at Battle Mountain, plus every aircraft that had been flown at Dreamland for the past ten years, her favorite aircraft was by far the AL-52 Dragon. This Dragon — the only one that survived the American Holocaust and the Air Battle Force’s counterattack over Russia — was the latest variant of the B-52 bomber tested at Dreamland and deployed at Battle Mountain. Originally a test bed aircraft only, the Dragon carried only one weapon, but it was one of the most powerful weapons ever fired from an aircraft: a three-megawatt plasma-pumped electronic laser. Steered by an adaptive-optics mirror system in the nose, the laser beam fired from the Dragon had a maximum range of about three hundred miles and could attack and destroy or disable targets in space, in the sky, and even on the ground.

“Make sure the computer has designated the targets…there, that’s what that symbol means, remember?” Nancy prompted her mission commander. “Do a quick scan for any other threats — don’t assume the computer will always pick the right targets. A fighter a hundred miles away always has priority…”

“A fighter? Where?”

“Just an example, Huck,” Nancy said patiently. Man, this guy was skittish — he either needed a few more combat sorties under his belt, or a roll in the hay. “The targeting computer is programmed to go after ballistic missiles first, but if a fighter is nearby, even if it’s a long way away, it’s a bigger threat in my book. You also want to make sure it hasn’t designated any friendly aircraft or missiles. The system is good, but it’s not foolproof. Understand?”

“Yes, ma’am.”

“A simple ‘yes’ is good, Huck,” Nancy said. She was only in her early forties, but these young kids in the force today made her feel much older sometimes. “Okay, it looks like the coast is clear, and the Dragon has the two top priority targets. This indication”—she pointed to the upper left corner of Dannon’s supercockpit display—“tells you that the targeting laser has already locked onto both missiles and has measured them and the surrounding atmosphere for attenuation compensation. Dragon does that automatically but not continuously unless you tell it to. Will it fire the main laser automatically?”

“No…I mean, yes, because we’ve given consent and…no, wait…”

“You had it right the first time, Huck: no, it will normally not fire the main laser automatically,” Nancy said, starting to lose a little patience. She always insisted on flying with the most inexperienced crewmembers, but sometimes their inexperience and nervousness-induced dumbness aggravated her. “Man-in-the-loop, remember? You have to have consent, pre-attack checklist complete by both crewmembers, targeting lock either manual or auto, and give the order to fire. The only exception is with failure of both supercockpit displays or with other kinds of serious malfunctions, when the Dragon shifts to self-defense mode. The system will…”

“Uh, ma’am, shouldn’t…shouldn’t we attack now?”

“What’s the missile flight time remaining until impact, Huck?”

Dannon checked his display. “Uh…one minute forty-one seconds.”

“Correct. And what’s our range to target?”

“One hundred ninety-three nautical miles.”

“Good. And what’s the speed of light?”

“One hundred eighty-six thousand miles per second.”

“Correct. And how long is a typical laser engagement?”

“Six seconds on an intercontinental ballistic-missile-sized target — a little less with a tactical ballistic missile — plus turret rotation and mirror focusing time. About ten seconds total.”

“Good. So how long will it take for our laser beam to hit and destroy the Shahab-2, assuming it was an ICBM-class target?”

Dannon paused, but only for a moment: Nancy was fascinated with the guy’s phenomenal ability to do complex calculations in his head. “Ten-point-zero-zero-one-zero-five seconds.”

“So what’s your hurry, Huck?” Nancy asked. “You gotta relax, MC.” She patted him playfully on the shoulder, feeling the tension in his muscles. He was hopeless. “Okay, Huck, kill the suckers.”

Dannon took a deep breath and touched the green “ATTACK” soft key on his supercockpit display. “Attack commencing, stop attack,” the computer spoke, and the soft key turned into a red “STOP ATTACK” button. Seconds later they could feel a slight rumbling beneath their feet as the mirror turret in the nose of the AL-52 unstowed, disrupting the airflow around the aircraft. There was no other indication that the attack was underway — no cool science-fictiony laser sounds, no beam of light slicing through the sky, just a small blinking “L” indicator on their supercockpit displays. Seconds later the “L” stopped blinking as the computer refocused on the second missile, and then the “L” began to blink once again. Finally they heard the turbulence rumbling under their feet as the turret stowed itself.

“Missiles destroyed,” Nancy said, so calmly and self-assuredly that Dannon looked at her to see if she wasn’t hypoxic or semiconscious. “Good work, Huck.” She widened the range on their supercockpit displays to check for any additional launches. None were detected, so she sat back in her seat. “Man, I love this job.”

It was the most exhilarating twenty minutes of his life, Hal Briggs thought as he continued his run through his assigned circuit. Just one more Shahab-2 launch site, about three miles ahead, and he could head to the exfiltration point. He had destroyed about sixteen launchers and scores of other vehicles with the incredible Cybernetic Infantry Device’s weapon backpacks, and a few simply by the sheer strength and speed of the CID unit itself — and he was sure he had killed several Revolutionary Guards troops he had encountered at the launch sites or along the way by merely frightening them to death.

“Condor One, Odin,” Colonel Kai Raydon aboard Armstrong Space Station called via the secure satellite link.

“Go ahead, Odin,” Hal replied.

“You look like you’re having more fun than a human should be allowed to have, son.”

“I shoulda got me one of these things years ago!” Hal exclaimed happily.

“Well, I got a present for you, One, so don’t waste all your ammo or power — I think we found the laser.”

“Great! Load me up and I’m on it.” Seconds later Hal studied the route to the new target. It was at a military airfield about twenty miles east of the Strongbox, twenty miles northeast of Hamadan, just west of the town of Kabudar Ahang. It was a very large complex, with two three-mile-long parallel runways and one two-mile-long runway roughly perpendicular to the first. Satellite images showed a “Christmas tree” alert parking area on the north side with hangars for eight fighters; a large weapon storage area on the northeast side; and the main part of the base on the east side, with barracks and housing for several thousand personnel and ramp space for about a hundred aircraft.

“Check out the big revetment on the southwest side, One,” Raydon said. On the southwest side of the base midway along the southernmost parallel runway was a large aircraft parking area surrounded by twenty-foot-high earth and sand walls. “They made a mistake and operated the radar just as one of our recon satellites crossed overhead and got a direct bearing on it — the radar is sitting in the parking lot near that building southwest of the revetments. We got some excellent pics of the vehicles in the revetment, and I think it’s the laser. Looks like they made the sucker road-mobile. Genesis, are you looking at these pics?”

“Affirmative,” Patrick McLanahan responded from the White House Situation Room. “I’m downloading the pics to a higher-res monitor so I can zoom in and study it closer. But you could be on to something, Odin. If they made the Kavaznya laser mobile, they could set it up anywhere on earth and threaten any aircraft and any satellite with it, and it’d be impossible to locate. But I’m also concerned about them ‘mistakenly’ turning on the radar — that could be a trick to lure us into a trap.”

“We’ll be in position in about ninety minutes to get a moderate oblique ISAR shot of it,” Raydon said. “In three hours I can get a perfect overhead shot. The NIRTSats are good, but we need better resolution to be sure.”

“We’re not going to wait three hours, guys — I can be there in forty minutes or less,” Hal said. “Condor Two, if you’re up for it, I want you to finish up my circuit. Just one target left.”

“Roger, One,” Brakeman acknowledged. “I’m switching my circuit to Condor One’s…got it, I’m on the way.”

“One, this is Three, wait up,” Charlie Turlock radioed. “I’ll cover you. I’ve got one more launch site to go and then I’ll rendezvous with you. Two and Four can finish their circuits, get picked up at Foxtrot, and then meet us at point Mike for exfil.”

“Three, I’ll be heading toward the airfield, but I’m not going to wait up,” Briggs said. “I’ve got one partial and one full backpack and battery pack. Looks like the whole south side of the airfield is wide open space. I’m going in.”

“It smells like a trap to me, guys,” Patrick McLanahan said. “I see all kinds of buildings, gullies, and revetments south of the perimeter fence — they can hide an entire armored battalion in there. Remember the Russians have been helping the Iranians the whole time — we might as well be fighting the Holocaust all over again in Iran.”

“Condor One, this is Stud One-Three,” Hunter Noble radioed. “I’m beginning deorbit procedures and I’ll be on the ground in fifteen minutes. I’ll be rearmed and airborne again in less than an hour, and thirty minutes after that I’ll place a spread of SPAWs on that spot. You don’t need to risk it — I’ll take it out for you.”

“Negative, One-One,” Hal said. “I can be there and out by the time you launch. I’ve been kicking Iranian ass all morning — I’ll take out this laser site for breakfast and join you back at the Lake for a steak dinner celebration tonight.”

“Condor One, don’t be a hero,” Boomer radioed. “I can take it. Assemble your troops and get the hell out of there.”

“Hey, stud, mind your manners,” Hal said. As soon as he saw Brakeman on his electronic tactical display heading for the last Shahab launch site, he started running toward the Hamadan military airfield. “I’m taking out that laser emplacement. If I miss or didn’t get it all, you can clean it up for me — but I’m not gonna miss. Worry about that last Shahab-5 site you missed instead. Deal? Condor One out.”

It took less than thirty minutes for Hal Briggs to reach Hamadan Air Base. The entire south side of the base was alfalfa fields and olive and date orchards, with a few rocky hills scattered about — Hal could see the base’s perimeter fence from five miles away. The scanners aboard the Cybernetic Infantry Device robot detected all of the outbuildings, irrigation pipes and pumphouses, guard shacks, the perimeter fence, the mobile radar vehicle, and the large building next to the revetment where the mobile laser was placed. Hal was able to compare the latest NIRTSat imagery with his telescopic view of the actual area and was able to correlate everything. “I’ve got a good eyeball on the objective area,” Hal radioed. “I can’t see the laser yet, but I see the radar and the few troops they have guarding the place. Piece of cake, guys. Are you guys getting all this?”

“We’re getting it, One,” Patrick responded. The sensor data from Hal Briggs’s CID unit was being uplinked to the Air Battle Force’s network and to Silver Tower, so it could be shared by virtually the entire American military. “I can see a few patrols nearby, and those buildings look like they can hold several platoons and armored vehicles. The other Condor units have completed their circuits and are awaiting pickup at Foxtrot. Hold off for twenty minutes and they can join you to assault the area together.”

“In twenty minutes I can polish off these turkeys and be at point Mike by the time you guys arrive,” Hal said. “I’m going in. Meet me at Mike. Condor One, moving out.” He took one last scan of the area, made sure his grenade launchers were chambered and ready to fire, and dashed off.

Hal hit thirty miles an hour across the fields and orchards, and within a minute he was within sight of the perimeter fence. His sensors picked up movement to his right — a Russian-made BMD light infantry support vehicle, firing its puny 7.62-millimeter coaxial machine guns at him. Hal fired one high-explosive round and silenced it quickly and cleanly…

…and he immediately detected and struck two more BMD vehicles to his left, with one 70-millimeter tank round missing him by several yards and an AT-3 anti-tank missile whizzing just a few yards away from his head. He picked up speed, reaching almost fifty miles an hour now. The BMDs and their weapons seemed as if they were standing still. He hit another BMD even before the aged Soviet-era light tank could get a shot off at him.

“That was three Russian armored vehicles on you, One!” Patrick radioed. “I think it’s a trap! Back on out of there and wait for the others.”

“Helicopters!” Raydon shouted over the command channel. “Two…three…four helicopters lifting off from the base, heading your way, One!”

“Bug out, Hal!” Patrick shouted over the satellite link. “It’s a trap! Get out of there!” Hal could start to pick up the masses of armored vehicles and aircraft converging on him, but he was determined not to let the laser site stay intact. Just two more miles, less than three minutes at his current speed, and he could wipe out every standing building, vehicle, or human within range of him…

A hail of high-velocity, heavy-mass shells hit him from the right side, unexpectedly toppling him over. It was the first time in his short stint as pilot of a CID that he had ever been down on the ground. He wasn’t hurt, and his systems seemed fully functional, but he was down — that was something he was not accustomed to. He immediately got to his feet, spotted the weapon system that had hit him — an ancient ZSU-23/4 quad 23-millimeter mobile anti-aircraft gun system, elevated down low to engage him — and he fired two high-explosive rounds into it, blowing it clean off its tracks.

“Hal, get out of there, now!” Patrick shouted. “We can take the site from the air! Get out!”

Hal took one more scan and thought he detected the laser itself inside the revetment. It resembled a Shahab-3 mobile missile launcher but was at least twice as large, with four service vehicles nearby with umbilical cables attached to it. “I’ve got the laser in sight, Genesis!” Hal called out. “Range less than one mile! I’m going in!”

“Hal, I said pull out!” Patrick shouted. “Your ammo is low! Withdraw now and switch backpacks! Do it, now!”

Hal fired two fragmentation and then two high-explosive grenades at the laser unit…which depleted the grenade stores on the backpack. He commanded the spent backpack to drop away. As he ran at almost top speed, he swung his last remaining grenade-launcher backpack off his arm and onto his back…but running so quickly, he couldn’t make it latch into place. He jumped the base perimeter fence in one effortless leap and landed in a low crouching position, less than three hundred yards from the laser site. He readjusted the backpack, felt it latch into place, and received a good “READY” indication in his electronic visor. He quickly aimed at the laser truck…

…and at that instant he was hit by an SA-19 “Grison” missile from a Russian 2S6M Tunguska self-propelled air defense vehicle. The SA-19 was a radar-guided anti-aircraft missile with a secondary anti-tank role. It had a two-stage solid-motor missile with a maximum velocity of a half-mile per second and a ten-pound high-explosive/fragmentary warhead with a contact and laser-triggered proximity fuze. Hal was blown clear off his feet and twenty feet in the air by the tremendous force of the hit.

“Hal!” Patrick shouted. “Do you read me? Hal!”

“I’m…I’m okay,” Hal said. He saw and heard several warning messages and tones, but his dazed mind couldn’t sort them all out. He climbed unsteadily to his feet. He could feel cannon shells peppering his body, but they weren’t doing a fraction of the damage as the…

…and at that instant he was hit by a second SA-19 missile, fired from less than a half-mile away. He was blown head over heels in a cloud of fire and smoke. He was still alive, but his electronic visor was dark, and he could barely hear, let alone decipher, all the warning tones beeping and buzzing in his helmet. He struggled to his hands and knees, trying to command the CID system to clear the faults and let him see again. More cannon fire raked his back, and he felt the concussion as the grenade launcher backpack blew apart.

“Hal, hang on!” Patrick shouted. “PAVE DASHER is on the way, ETE five minutes. Hang on!”

“No…no, don’t come near here,” Hal breathed. He couldn’t make any of his limbs move. For the first time since training and employing the Cybernetic Infantry Device, he felt like he actually was all along — a human being riding inside a hydraulically operated machine, instead of a running, killing, destroying, avenging superman. “I got hit by some big-ass gun and missile thing, a Tunguska I think. It’ll chew up the PAVE DASHER into little bits for sure. Don’t let it come near here, Muck.”

“No! We’re bringing in the Vampires! They’ll take out all the air defenses with the Wolverines and the PAVE DASHER will be able to cruise in and pick you up. Hang in there, Hal. They’re just a few minutes out.”

“Hey, Muck,” Hal said weakly. “We’ve had one hell of a ride, haven’t we?” He could hear Patrick yelling something over the satellite link, but that too was fading, getting darker and weaker by the moment. “We kicked some ass together, didn’t we, boss? I remember…I remember when we first met, Muck. You were the clueless captain, no idea what was happening or what you got volunteered for. I took pity on you, man.”

“Hal! Can you hear me?” he could barely hear Patrick yelling. “The Wolverines are sixty seconds out, and the Dasher is three minutes out! Hang in there, buddy! We’re coming to get you!”

“Now look at you, you sorry mick genius. You’re the boss, Muck, the fucking guru, feared and hated even more than old man Elliott himself.” Hal noticed that his electronic visor was working again, and he also found he could raise himself up by his arms. He looked toward the revetment…and saw that the object they thought was the laser that had destroyed Nano Benneton and the XR-A9 Black Stallion was actually just a trailer loaded with steel pipe and tubes. They had moved the laser long ago, probably right after they had commenced their attacks on the Strongbox’s deployed Shahab missiles, and put this clever decoy in its place.

Hal’s arms lost all their strength, and he rolled over on his back in the hard sandy soil. The 2S6M Tunguska anti-aircraft vehicle was about fifty yards away, its twin 30-millimeter cannons and two loaded SA-19 missile launchers aimed right at him. Hal used the remaining few watts of power left in the CID robot to raise one hand and flash the Tunguska his right middle finger…seconds before the cannons opened fire and forever turned out his lights.

The Wolverine cruise missile made short work of the Tunguska and all other Iranian defenders within five miles of the spot seconds later, and minutes afterward the MV-32 PAVE DASHER tilt-jet aircraft swooped in. Charlie Turlock herself ran out of the jet’s rear cargo ramp, quickly found the shredded remains, and carried him aboard. With two Wolverine cruise missiles providing cover from anymore defenders from the base, the MV-32 lifted off and headed west toward the Iraqi border.