The Iran War

by Jack Strain

  Rocking her seven-month-old little boy, Jamar, tightly in her arms, Jada knew that she had to do something mighty fast because her boy needed food and the doc said his tummy couldn’t handle solid foods yet…he was colicky as it was. She moved off the bed, careful to keep the blanket nice and tight. It was only October but already temperatures at night were in the low thirties. Shivering herself, Jada wished she hadn’t lost a sock under the covers, but she wanted to look out the window and see if anything was going on.

  Lakeisha said they be bringing in food in da middle of da night so folks don’t mess wid them. Maybe I should make my way over tonight and gets a jump on the rush in the morning. Can’t sleep no ways.

  She placed the baby on top of her bed and quickly put on some heavy clothes and after a few frustrating minutes trying to find her hat and gloves, she picked up Jamar and walked down to her momma’s room, knocked and opened the door.

  An irritated voice shrilly rang out, “What you doin now child? Go back to bed.”

  Shaking her head, Jada didn’t wait for permission and just walked to the bed and handed off Jamar next to his grandmother and said, “Look Momma, Jamar needs formula or milk or sumthin. I’m gonna walk down to the Aldi and see if they’s getting deliveries at night and maybe get him somethin to help get the boy down fo da night.”

  Suddenly the sleepiness drained away and Tanya Walker sat up straight and called out, “Like hell u is. You think dat jus cause the electric done gone out dat them no good hoodlums ain’t gonna mess with you. Child gets back to bed and take yo child wid you.”

  Jada loved her mother and knew that she was only doing what her mother would have done for her and that meant going out in the dead of night and trying to find food for her child. She quickly backed out of the room and headed down the hall and yelled out, “Momma don’t worry, I’ll be right back.”

  They lived on the fourth floor and even though she knew everyone in the building, walking down dark stairs was always scary. She had a small pencil thin flashlight that she kept on her key ring, but the bulb was dim, and she could barely see. She heard voices as she passed down a flight of stairs, carefully holding on to the railing and taking one sure step at a time. It felt like she could feel every bend and give in the steps and heard every creek and sound that an old apartment makes in the dead of night. It took her ten minutes, but she made it down.

  The Aldi’s was only a few blocks away, but Jada suddenly felt a rush of nerves. The lights were out everywhere, no generators were going like in some white neighborhood. For a city girl, the night held its own dangers, but it was always backlit, reassuring, but not tonight. She lived on Wilcox and to the left led her towards Garfield Park…even though she was a local girl and knew some of the boys who ran with the gangs it was no place for anyone to be if they were alone. To the right was Genevie Melody Public School, another place where local thugs hung out.

  Finally, she made a left short of the park and headed down an ally she had walked her entire life. There was enough of a moon overhead that she could make out familiar features, several fences, back porches, an empty above ground pool that was all bent to hell, and just as she was starting to feel better a loud series of all too familiar sounds of gunfire erupted up the street.

  Jada ducked behind some trash cans that were left out and her nose winced as the smell hit her, but then another smell reached her…smoke.

  Something’s burning…something close. Gots to keep moving, baby Jamar needs food now.

  Taking a deep breath, Jada stood up and began briskly walking towards the Aldi when she reached the rear of the parking lot, she saw smoke coming out the backside of the building, and about thirty people grabbing shopping carts and racing inside. One big tractor trailer with its big doors wide open and movement from inside. She heard people yelling and fighting. She moved closer and saw about a dozen people inside fighting over big, oversized cardboard boxes even though they no idea what was inside, but desperate people acted first, thought later.

  Dear Jesus, please look over me and Lord forgive me for what I am about to do.

  Jada could see that some enterprising folks lit up the aisles by stuffing some carts with boxes and built small fires to give just enough illumination that people could find stuff on the shelves but at the price of a smoke-filled building. Jada Walker pulled up her scarf so that it covered her mouth and nose, grabbed herself a cart and like other East Garfield residents she ran inside and decided to whatever she needed to do and try to find enough food for her son and mother so that they could survive for the next few days.

  For this desperate little corner of Chicago, jihad and a President’s revenge all seemed so far removed from their daily reality. War had come to Chicago and poor Americans from neighborhoods like East Garfield to Gary Indiana, Detroit, and other cities without power would suffer worse than anyone else.

  Chapter Thirty

  October 19th

  Skies above Qatar

  The U.S.-supplied and Saudi-operated AWACS Sentry command and control plane was flying above the Saudi crossroads town of Haradh about one hundred miles from the Gulf. The advanced airborne radar plane was capable of tracking upwards of three hundred airborne targets, and its powerful sensors were instrumental to maintaining complete air supremacy against the Iranian Air Force - or at least what was left of the mostly destroyed collection of aging planes.

  It was late in the afternoon, nearly five o’clock, and Royal Saudi Air Force Technical Officer Azziz felt his eyes starting to glaze over a bit, a sure sign that he needed to take a break within the next thirty minutes or he would be useless. Then suddenly he noticed a flight moving out of its assigned heading. He immediately radioed, “Granite flight 101, this is Sentry 315. You are heading outside your planned patrol area. Recommend course adjustment, change heading to 310.”

  Granite flight 101 was composed of two Royal Air Force Panavia Tornado IDS fighter-bombers from No. 7 Squadron flying out of King Abdulaziz Air Base. The older though still quite capable twin-engine sweptwing ground attack planes specialized in low-level bombing missions and were originally designed by a consortium of Italian, German, and UK aerospace firms to interdict Soviet tank armies crashing over the East German border in the 1980’s. They were older birds but more than capable of handling their current mission profile of attacking suspected Iranian mobile missile sites.

  “Negative Sentry 315, this is Flight Leader Captain Ahmed Hakami, my wingman is experiencing a left engine malfunction. We are five kilometers east of Salwa, request heading to Al Udeid Air Base for emergency landing.”

  “Say again Granite 101 . . . are you no longer mission-capable?”

  “Captain Rashid’s plane requires immediate access for possible emergency landing. Al Udeid is the nearest base. I have a visual and the engine is completely out, and Captain Rashid reports difficulty with flight controls.”

  The Sentry 315 controller looked at his console screen and could see random erratic flight movements and decided even though the Qatar airfield was cluttered with U.S. Air Force planes he would have to initiate emergency landing protocols and began directing inbound traffic to divert until this Tornado made it safely to the ground.

  “Granite Flight 101, you are authorized to maintain your heading and continue to Al Udeid Air Field and commence emergency landing procedures. All planes on the tarmac will be grounded. Al Udeid controllers are telling me to use secondary landing taxiway, emergency responders are being mobilized. May Allah bring you home safe. Sentry 315 out.”

  Sixty miles away, Flight Leader Ahmed Hakami closed his eyes and silently thought, yes, my brother, may Allah truly bring me home.

  Hakami and Rashid were cousins and both in their late twenties. The two young men dreamed of being jet pilots from the time they were boys, and both sets of parents could not have been prouder of their sons. Each was raised in A religious household and considered themselves good and observant Muslims and avoided the more extremist teachings of some of the more not
able Wahhabis Imams that many of their friends and schoolmates had followed for years.

  They supported the monarchy and even accepted the need to allow Americans and other Westerners into their desert homeland to bring their technology and advanced weapons to help protect their country from its enemies as long as their culture and politics were kept at arm’s length. But this war being waged against Islam and worse, launching these vile attacks from the sacred soil of the Muslim faith against its believers, became too much for the cousins. They, like many of their fellow pilots could not help but be sickened by the non-stop stream of videos depicting the burned out remains of Muslim men, women, and children from Sudan to Pakistan.

  They struggled to maintain their duty but then the most recent video from the leader of Allah’s Avengers hit the internet late yesterday, and the stirring words of Bahadur Rahimi felt as if he was speaking directly to them. Both cousins were moved to tears by the power of his conviction and willingness to fight for all Muslim brothers and sisters.

  The video was of excellent quality, and the mastermind of the Jerusalem attacks was not cowed by the Americans. Instead, he looked fierce and ready for battle. Standing tall and wearing his now-familiar black keffiyeh wrapped around his head and with his flowing black beard and piercing dark eyes that seemed to penetrate through the screen, he said,

  “You see my Brothers and Sisters, what did I tell you? These Crusaders don’t care about Sunnis or Shiites, they only care that we are Muslim and worship the one true God, Allah, and follow the words of the Prophet Muhammed. It is this and this alone how they justify the slaughter of our women and children, the burning of our cities, the destruction of our resources, the turning of Muslim brother against each other.

  “They only know one thing: To kill Muslims. The Crusaders have been doing this for a thousand years, but my brothers and sisters no longer do we sit back and take it. Now we fight. Some of our brothers and sisters - some are already heading the call to jihad. In London and Munich and Amsterdam, brave martyrs have already struck back and made these unbelievers pay in blood for their great sins. In America, Allah has helped guide our Iranian brothers and turned off the lights in a dozen cities, and already these godless dogs are looting their own cities.

  “But my brothers and sisters this is not enough.

  “I say to you: KILL THEM WHERE THEY SLEEP. WHERE THEY SHOP. WHERE THEY WORK. WHERE THEIR CHILDREN GO TO SCHOOL. MAKE THEM PAY IN BLOOD, MY BROTHERS AND SISTERS!

  “And to my fellow Muslims who even right now after all the death visited upon our brothers and sisters still are supporting the Infidels, it is not too late to regain your faith, to return to Allah’s open, loving arms, to become Muslim men and women once again, to take up the sword and turn it on the Crusaders. Make them pay my brothers, make them pay.

  ALLAH AKBAR! ALLAH AKBAR! ALLAH AKBAR!”

  ◆◆◆

  The two Panavia Tornadoes leveled out at five thousand feet over the small desert village of Al Kharrara, twenty miles southwest of the Al Udeid Air Base. The cousins pulled their fighter-bombers parallel and looked at one another for one final moment. The two men held up their Korans to one another, nodded, and seconds later pushed their flight control sticks down, increased speed, and peeled away from one another and hugged the ground.

  Al Udeid Air Base was a massive joint U.S. and Qatar base operating nearly two hundred planes and along with the adjacent American Army base at Camp al Sayliyah formed the core logistics hub for the U.S. Central Command in the Gulf region. The American 379th Expeditionary Wing composed of a mix of bombers, fighter-bombers, and transport planes operated out the Qatari airfield for years. The newly arrived 1st Fighter Wing flying the most advanced fighter in the world, F22 Raptor, was sharing the already taxed base facilities and many of these advanced planes were parked out in the open instead of within hardened shelters.

  Runways two and three, the two inner main runways, held six large-body jetliners from different carriers that were rushed into service to support the rapid mobilization of American airpower. All six planes were waiting for permission to take off and return the States from tower control but had to wait for the emergency landing to pass.

  A flight of two Boeing 747’s and a double-decker widebody Airbus A380 landed within the past fifteen minutes carrying nearly nine hundred soldiers from the Army’s “Black Jack” Brigade of the 1st Cavalry Division and were taxiing down runway number one to release their precious human cargo at the south end of the airbase. Runway four had been cleared, and emergency vehicles were waiting for the damaged Royal Saudi Tornado to land.

  Senior Airman Tanya Wilkins was nearing the end of a grueling twelve-hour shift working the tower. Her eyes were sore, her back stiff, but everybody was pulling double duty these days, so she sucked it up and made sure to lead her section by example. She was eight years in and on her third Middle East tour, the newbies looked up to her and knew no one came down harder if they screwed up.

  Senior Airman Wilkins took the lead bringing the wounded Tornado to ground as fast as possible to open these packed runways. Ten more flights were due in the next hour. She had been in contact with Granite Flight 101 since the AWACS passed the flight to her five minutes ago. She had been tracking them along the air corridor she established when suddenly both birds dropped off her screen.

  What the hell?

  Speaking in a firm and controlled voice, Wilkens said, “Granite Flight 101 do you read? Repeat: do you read me?”

  Nothing.

  “Granite Flight 101, this is Flight Control al Udeid Air Base. What is your status Granite Flight?”

  Where in the hell are these gomers?

  Standing up from her console, Wilkens stretched her back and grabbed a pair of powerful binoculars to look out the tower window. Scanning left to right, she didn’t see any smoke in the distance but that didn’t mean anything. She reached to grab the phone when a powerful explosion shattered the control tower windows sending deadly shards of glass slicing into more than a dozen exposed Air Force personnel.

  A second powerful explosion shook the tower, and Senior Airman Wilkins tried to scream, but all that came out were thick streams of blood. In shock, she tried to stand but slipped when her wet, bloody hands failed to grasp her desk. She struck the ground hard and started to bleed out from a dozen major open wounds. The last thing she felt was a set of hands trying to stop the bleeding, but it was already too late.

  Outside, Captain Khalid Rashid’s Tornado flew at two hundred feet along the southern approaches, popped up to five hundred feet and loosed two, 2,000-pound laser-guided Paveway III bombs that struck along runways two and three creating thirty-foot-deep craters in the reinforced concrete and blew up three airliners and damaged another. Quickly dropping back down to two hundred feet, he pulled his stick hard left to prepare for his next target.

  Meanwhile, Captain Hakami flew his Tornado at 500 feet at 700 mph, and his fire control radar was alive with targets. Quickly scanning the airbase, he spied the three jumbo jets taxiing down runway four and immediately released three British-manufactured Brimstone short-range missiles. The fire and forget missiles used advanced millimeter wave radar to lock into the target and allow the plane to engage other targets.

  The Brimstone missiles fired at a range of ten miles and easily locked onto the lumbering American jets and covered the distance in twenty seconds. All three Brimstone missiles punched through the thin aluminum hulls of the Boeing and Airbus planes and caused catastrophic damage. Two planes erupted into massive fireballs instantly killing an untold number of soldiers and nearby grounds crew while the third missile punched through and exited the other side of the plane. Dozens were killed but no fireball. Debris from the plane and human remains were thrown hundreds of feet from the explosions leaving a deadly trail of carnage and devastation.

  Next, Hakami aimed for the large plane collection point on the north end of the airfield that held more than eighty planes from fighters to transports and quickly fired
off his last nine missiles in a salvo attack. Each missile was programmed to seek out individual moving targets, so hitting large stationary targets was too easy. Fifteen seconds later, the former Saudi Air Force officer now turned terrorist or martyr depending on your point of view was rewarded with nine explosions killing dozens on the ground, but more importantly, flying debris struck nearby planes, damaging or destroying a dozen more.

  As both Tornadoes wheeled their planes left and right of the air base to prepare for their second attack runs, air raid sirens were blaring loudly throughout the base, and many hundreds of officers and enlisted personnel raced to their battle stations. Already, there were massive numbers of casualties, brave and determined firefighters and medical personnel sought to stem the flames and save whoever could be saved and ignored the dangers of more attacks.

  Patriot surface-to-air missile batteries ringed the base and scanned the skies for enemy aircraft but the Saudi Air Force planes were emitting friendly IFF (identification friend or foe) codes, so the tracking radar did not classify them as threats until the manual override controls were initiated by various operators who now scanned the skies searching for the rogue planes. Fighter jets were scrambled and raced to the damaged base but they were too late to stop the next attack.

  Rashid still had two Paveway III bombs left and was bringing his Tornado fighter-bomber in for another pass. This time he was aiming to strike the massive ordnance bunkers to the west of the airfield that were stocked with everything from air-to-air missiles to thousands of dumb iron bombs. He was flying the same attack profile keeping his plane at two hundred feet until he popped up to toss his bomb at a weapons bunker, released the first one, and it was running true to target.

  At that exact moment, a Patriot battery stationed at the northwest corner of the air base picked him up on its AN/APQ-65 radar and immediately loosed two missiles, but it was a short-ranged Stinger missile fired by an alert soldier that caught Rashid seconds before he released his last bomb. The Stinger acquired the heat from his Tornado’s twin engines, homed in quickly, and its warhead peppered shrapnel into the tail and left wing causing Rashid’s plane to immediately cartwheel into the Qatari desert at the edge of the weapons bunkers. His first bomb missed its target but did strike two Air Force trucks already loaded with bombs causing a powerful explosion that blew out windows and left a smoking crater forty feet deep.