Airborne: A Guided Tour of an Airborne Task Force

by Tom Clancy

  Now al-Mahdi nodded to his guards, signaling he was ready to depart. Dusk had settled over the field and the circle of dust-blown men had nearly lost its cohesion, dissolving like a group of celestial objects that had been pushed out of orbit. Most of the elder devotees had succumbed to fatigue, while their youthful initiates dizzily spun out the remaining moments to nightfall. Al-Mahdi wondered if any of them had found the detachment from worldly concerns—the communion with Allah—that the ceremony was meant to bring about. As a youth he had occasionally joined in, but he had never been able to abandon himself to the delirious movement, and such bliss had always remained elusive. For him, the path to God was best attained through action.

  Sharia al-Gamaʼa, Central Khartoum, Sudan, February 14th, 2007

  The rusty tour bus coughed and wheezed down the avenue like an asthmatic dinosaur, moving past strings of cheap restaurants, banks, travel offices, and dreary government buildings whose sagging arcades hearkened back to the captive prosperity of British colonial rule. Ragged beggars, mostly displaced Nuer tribesmen from the south, crowded the bus route, dozens of them shambling through the souq shaabi, or “people market,” where the group of thirty American and European passengers had boarded. Others were drowsing in the solid, shadeless noonday heat.

  This particular bus was scheduled to make four stops: the old Khartoum zoo, the National Museum, Morgan Family Park, and, for those willing to wait on endless lines for a stamp or sporadic fax service, the post office. Every one of the so-called tourist attractions was as cheerless as the populace. At the zoo a smattering of mangy lions, sad-eyed hippopotami, and blighted crocodiles baked in cramped, unattended cages. Half the rides in the amusement park were out of commission, and the rest just seemed to creak along like tired old men who could hardly wait to be free of their long and burdensome existences. With its ancient artifacts and reconstructed Egyptian temples, the museum alone could have been considered a true attraction for foreign visitors. Today, though, was Monday, and according to the brochures it was only open from Tuesday to Sunday.

  Perhaps a quarter mile from the start of its route, the bus lumbered into a small, cobbled square that marked the intersection of Sharia al-Gama’a and Sharia al-Muk. Just ahead was the sprawling People’s Palace, behind whose sunbaked walls hundreds of administrative officials added their weight to the massive government bureaucracy. The bus driver slowed, squinting out of the dust-caked windshield. A small knot of local men in sandals and loose-fitting white jalabiyyas had gathered in the middle of the square, directly in the path of the bus. Frowning, the driver slapped the horn with his meaty palm to get them to scatter. Instead, perhaps five of the younger men began walking towards the bus, shouting insults at its passengers in Arabic.

  The driver leaned his head out the window. “Out of the way!” he yelled. Almost before the words left his mouth, he saw that several of the men were carrying metal pipes. Nor was that all the driver noticed. As the noisy group moved forward, he spotted a makeshift roadblock less than ten feet/three meters behind where they’d been standing when the bus had first rolled into the square. Although it was little more than a pile of wood and twisted scrap metal, the barricade extended from one side of the street to the other, and would be impossible to bypass. His eyes widened with alarm. Over the last few weeks there had been increasing tension between the native inhabitants of Khartoum and Western travelers. Ostensibly, the cause had been an incident or two that had involved street gangs hurling threats at tourists, and in one case picking a fight that resulted in minor injury to the visiting son of an American agriculturalist. But these outbursts had seemed to have no connection with each other, other than the basic anti-Western sentiments shared by many locals, and after the obligatory diplomatic protests, things had quieted down.

  For his own part, the driver harbored no particular ill feelings toward the Westerners, since he earned his living off them. But he was not going to risk life and limb by staying in the bus with the mob closing in. Jerking the gear shift into park, he sprang off his frayed bucket seat and pushed out his door, shouting praises to Allah at the top of his lungs, leaving his passengers to fend for themselves. Within moments the angry, cursing men were streaming around the bus, battering it with their clubs. Metal buckled under their furious pounding. Windows shattered. One of the men pulled a small automatic handgun from under his gown and shot out all the tires. Inside the bus, passengers were screaming in panic and confusion, some badly cut from the explosive sprays of glass while others crouched in their seats with their hands folded protectively over their heads. One old man clutched his chest in pain, groaned and then spilled limply to the floor mat. A young woman pulled a dazed, crying little girl in a blood-soaked dress to her breast. All were certain the howling mob would tear them apart if they tried to escape.

  Now the bus began to rock and sway, the axles creaking as the robed mob gathered on the driver’s side and began shoving themselves against it in unison, leveraging it with their hands and shoulders. The left wheels lifted off the ground, bumped back down, lifted again and dropped again. Then, with the bus tilting farther to the right with each concerted push from the mob, it finally overturned amid the tortured grating of metal and helpless shrieks of the people trapped inside. One member of the mob had pulled a video camera from under his gown, steadied it on his shoulder, and caught the entire scene on tape. Twenty minutes later the recording would reach the barracks of his militia leader. An hour after that a copy would be given to Hassan al-Mahdi, who viewed it on a large-screen television in his sumptuous palace quarters, thinking it would play very well indeed, once it fell into the hands of the American media.

  U.S. Embassy, Khartoum, Sudan, February 16th, 2007

  The newscasters were calling it the Valentine’s Day massacre: a mob attack on a tour bus that had left twenty of the Western sightseers aboard dead, and the remainder seriously injured. More than half of the fatalities had been Americans. Four were young children. In his residential quarters in the U.S. embassy compound, Neville Diamond, American ambassador to the Sudanese Republic, reached for his remote and clicked off the television set, cursing the “talking head” anchorman as he blinked into the void of its darkened screen. Enough was enough, he thought. CNN had been running the video footage of the tragedy day and night since an “unnamed source” had delivered it to the network’s Middle Eastern office. Running it until the sounds and images had become indelibly imprinted in the minds of viewers around the globe. The bus toppling over. Passengers screaming, their terrified faces visible through the smashed windows. And then the spurt of flame from the gas tank just before the booming explosion ... Reporters were having a field day with the story, and somebody at CNN had even come up with a goddamn theme song to play whenever they repeated it.

  Enough. Within hours of the incident—it seemed a pale, almost obscenely inadequate word to Diamond when you were talking about innocent people who’d been reduced to charred, mangled corpses. An incident? But that was what diplomats were supposed to call such things, wasn’t it? The British, French, and Germans had closed down their embassies and evacuated their staffs, simply packed up their troubles in the old kit bag and left the country. Only the U.S. had kept its diplomatic facilities open. It wasn’t a matter of holding the line because of principle or politics, although both had been factors in the decision. To pull out would be an acknowledgment of the complete disintegration of international relations with the largest country on the African continent, one that took up 2% of the world’s total land surface and shared key strategic borders with nine other nations, Libya and Egypt among them. Human lives were the most important concern, however. There were perhaps two hundred non-American Western nationals currently within the borders of the Sudan. Businesspeople and their families, relief workers, students, travelers, even a handful of Greek and English expatriates whose families had arrived during the last years of the imperialist era. These foreign citizens would need a safe haven, and a portal out of the country sh
ould the political climate worsen. Without a friendly embassy as a fallback, they would be sitting ducks.

  Diamond sighed wearily, checked his watch, and ran his palm back over his head to smooth a stray hair into place. Fifteen minutes until his meeting with the Sudanese Minister of State to discuss the possibilities for improving relations with the Western powers. He was not at all optimistic about its outcome.

  ILC Headquarters, Khartoum, Sudan, February 16th, 2007

  “What do you mean the embassy is staying open?” al-Mahdi snarled, rising from his chair and slamming his fist down on the council table. Seated across from him, Minister of State Abdel-Ghani tried not to flinch.

  “Just that, Highness. The American ambassador stated this to me unequivocally, citing his government’s benevolent intentions to help prevent us from becoming isolated in the world community. Due to the actions of a few renegade street thugs, as he put it.”

  Al-Mahdi’s black eyes gleamed like chips of mica. “Diamond is a man of sophistication and experience. Surely he cannot be naive enough to believe the so-called thugs were acting without our council’s sanction.”

  “He plays the typical American game, and it is pitifully transparent,” his senior advisor said from beside him. Ahmad Saabdulah was a wiry, compact man with thick black hair and hawkish features. “Everything is couched in moralistic rhetoric. They sit in our homeland and tell us what must be done for our own good, as if their national interests were of no consequence.”

  “Perhaps we should clear the esteemed American consul of the impression that he continues to be welcome here,” al-Mahdi said. “In the most forceful way possible.”

  There were seven ministers in the ILC. All were presently seated at the large circular conference table, watching al-Mahdi with intent faces. “I say we take the embassy,” he continued, his gaze briefly leveling on each minister as it passed around the table. “Much as our Iranian brothers did nearly three decades ago. Only we will not leave the operation to an unruly militia, but employ regular army troops to secure the compound.”

  “You speak of an overt act of war,” Abdel-Ghani said. Uncertainty flickered in his eyes.

  “These are the inmates of the fire and they shall abide in it,” al-Mahdi replied, quoting from the Koran. “Allah shall guide us to victory.” The ministers kept looking at him. “Are you all asleep, or does your silence mean we are in agreement?” he asked in a biting tone. “If we are, then let me see your hands.” Saabdulah’s arm came up first, rapidly followed by five more. Abdel-Ghani hesitated a moment, but then caught a sharp, meaningful look from his ruler and raised his hand. The vote, as always, was unanimous in al-Mahdi’s favor.

  U.S. Embassy Compound, Khartoum, Sudan, 2300 Hours, February 16, 2007

  Ed Sanderson was what you’d call a meat-and-potatoes kind of guy To hell with his cholesterol count, just give him a juicy steak six nights a week, and a cheeseburger with fries on the seventh, and he’d be smiling. Oh, yes, easy on the seasonings too, please. A pinch of pepper, a sprinkle of salt, a dash of A-1 sauce would do him just fine. It was, Sanderson had always thought, an unfortunate irony that his culinary preferences and professional interests were so greatly at odds. As a renowned Middle Eastern expert, and the resident CIA station chief in Khartoum, he found himself sitting over a plate of fuul, a regional staple prepared from mashed beans and spices, far more often than a delectably fat-dripping hamburger. Likewise, he had a hard time getting hold of a good cup of his favorite Western-style coffee, Maxwell House or Chock Full O’ Nuts, with just a splash of milk and spoonful of sugar. In Khartoum your choices were limited to jebbana, a pitch-black brew heavily spiced with ginger and cinnamon, or the even tarrier, spicier Turkish blend called gahwa turki.

  Now, sipping his jebbana from the unwieldy china bowl in which it had been served, Sanderson made a harder than usual effort to hide his distaste, concerned that his late-night visitor, the South African attaché, would mistakenly construe his sour expression as directed at him rather than the beverage. With the risk he’d taken tonight, Nathan Butto had once again proven himself to be a close friend and diplomatic ally. He was the last person on earth Sanderson wanted to offend.

  “Nathan, what you’ve told me is incredible,” he said, and looked across his desk at the attaché. “Please understand, I personally have utmost faith in your information. But you must be aware that when I relay it to Langley and the State Department they’ll insist on being given the source.”

  “Tell him what exactly I told you,” Butto said. “It came to me directly from a high-level minister in the Sudanese government. One who sits close to al-Mahdi’s right hand.”

  “That as specific as you can be?”

  Butto nodded. “My informant has already placed himself in great jeopardy. We both know that men have been tortured to death merely for expressing their disagreement with al-Mahdi’s opinion. He would be flayed alive in public if his identity were revealed.”

  “For al-Mahdi to think he can overrun the embassy and get away with it, commit an act of flagrant aggression against the United States ... it’s astonishing.”

  “So you’ve already indicated, although I believe the word you used a minute ago was ‘incredible.’ ” Butto gave him a grim smile. “But in his mind he is both messiah and warlord.”

  “And in mine he’s a delusionary sonovabitch,” Sanderson said. He raised his coffee to his lips, held it there a moment without taking another drink, and set it back down. “I’d better wake up Diamond, let him know the goddam jihad’s set to start in less than forty-eight hours,” he said, reaching for the phone on his desk.

  “Indeed,” Butto said. “You say that with surprising accuracy.” Sanderson gave a grim smile in reply.

  The White House, Washington, D.C., 0100 Hours, February 17th, 2007

  The President was used to working until all hours, having long ago given up trying to remedy his insomnia, deciding to instead put his restless nights to good use. On the other hand, the constellation of military advisors and cabinet officials in the briefing room with him—particularly the Secretaries of State and Defense—looked frazzled and overtired. Only the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs seemed to have all his burners lit, which said something for military discipline, now didn’t it?

  “I still advise we get further confirmation of this leak before taking action of our own,” the Secretary of State was saying. “If we dispatch forces prematurely, and the Sudanese don’t move on the embassy, it’ll be more than a serious embarrassment to us. Every sheikhdom and caliphate in the region will be up in arms at our aggression against a sovereign Muslim state.”

  The President shook his head vehemently. “I’m not waiting until the embassy’s been overrun and I have a hostage crisis on my hands. There are over three hundred U.S. personnel in the compound with their wives and kids included. Plus maybe a couple hundred citizens of Western nations who’ve gone there to seek refuge from armed gangs that have been running wild in the streets. These people have to be extracted.”

  “I agree with you on principle,” the Secretary of Defense said, as the President had expected. Pick an issue and his view tended to be diametrically opposed to that of the Secretary of State. The two men were thick as thieves, however, their friendship seeming to thrive on argument. “My concern is the strategic difficulty of launching a rescue. It’s a sure thing we’re not going to get any help from other nations in the region.”

  “Not even the Egyptians?” the President asked. “Their troops have been involved in border skirmishes with the Sudan for almost two decades.”

  The Secretary of State shrugged. “True, but when push comes to shove, it’s sure to be the same old story. The Egyptian president’s got his own problems with terrorists and radical factions within his government. He won’t want to rile them over an issue that’s essentially got nothing to do with him.”

  “Mr. President, I think we ought to look at shaking the mothballs off Operation Fort Apache.” This from General Rich
ard Hancock, the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, who sat there rubbing his chin, a meditative expression on his face.

  The President glanced at Hancock, gesturing with his hand for him to continue. “Fort Apache was cooked up in the nineties, but could have been tailor-made for the situation we’ve been discussing. It’s based on the idea that an airborne infantry battalion can be dropped into an urban area on or near a threatened or overrun embassy compound without external support from other nations.”

  “Sounds to me like Charlie Beckwith’s old nightmare scenario,” the Secretary of State said.

  “The extraction would be dicey, to say the least. We’d need to fly the choppers nonstop from the Red Sea to Khartoum and have them touch ground on a hot LZ ,” the Defense Secretary said.

  “That’s where the Osprey comes in. The MV-22Bs can do the job without any refueling, and three times faster than the old CH-46s or CH-53s. It’s agile, and, for all intents and purposes, self-deployable.”

  “Which makes it ideal for plucking our evacs out of a brushfire,” the Secretary of Defense said.

  “Exactly.” General Hancock sipped from the water glass at his elbow and then glanced at the Secretary of State. “You mentioned Colonel Beck-with a second ago. If he and the Delta Force had been given a piece of equipment like the Osprey at his disposal for Eagle Claw, the 1980 Iranian hostage rescue attempt might not have ended in a wash. Same goes for the Son Tay POW extraction ten years earlier.”

  “Okay, let’s hear the rest,” the President said.