by Dale Brown
“They’re going in, sir,” the Stryker gunner said. He and Oakland watched as a squad of eight Iraqi soldiers approached the building. Two soldiers used grenade launchers to blow the door open, showering themselves with wood and stone fragments because they had moved in far too close.
“Oh, c’mon, guys, where’s your entry team?” Oakland said aloud. “You should know that the guys who blew the door aren’t going to be able to do a smooth entry. One squad blows the door while another squad who’s shielded from the light and concussion do the entry. My seven-year-old knows this.” But soon he could see a sergeant reorganizing his entry team and getting the breaching team out of the way, so after a brief stutter step the operation appeared to be progressing.
Back at the Tank, Patrick and Jon were watching the action via feeds from the Strykers and unmanned aircraft…except Patrick was not looking at the raid on the suspected tunnel entrance, but farther north along the Iraq-Turkey border. The view from the MQ-9 Reaper’s imaging infrared scanner showed rolling hills punctuated by tall rocky crags and deep forested valleys.
“Sorry, sir, but you’re not going to get too much contrast or detail at this looking angle,” Margaret Harrison, the regiment’s Reaper liaison officer, said to him over the intercom. “Reapers are meant to look down at a fairly steep angle, not across to the horizon.”
“Copy,” Patrick responded. “Just a few more seconds.” He touched another key on his keyboard and spoke: “Mr. Bexar?”
“Bexar here,” the privately contracted intelligence officer replied.
“This is McLanahan.”
“How are you, General? Are you authorized to be on the net now?”
“Mr. Thompson said it was okay. I have a question.”
“I don’t personally know your security clearance, General,” Bexar said. “I assume you have a ‘top secret’ or else you couldn’t have sat in on the briefing, but until I verify, I’ll have to refrain from answering any questions that might compromise operational security.”
“Understood. You briefed that the Turks have five thousand troops in the area immediately adjacent to the regiment’s area of responsibility?”
“Yes, sir. The equivalent of two mechanized infantry brigades, one each in Sirnak and Hakkari provinces, plus three Jandarma battalions.”
“That’s a lot, isn’t it?”
“Considering recent events, I don’t think so,” Bexar said. “They’ve roughly tried to mirror American and Iraqi force levels over the past couple years. The Jandarma have maintained many more forces in southeast Turkey in the past depending on PKK activity levels. The problem is, we don’t always get regular updates on Jandarma unit movements.”
“Why is that?”
“The Turkish Ministry of the Interior is pretty tight-lipped—they’re not obligated by NATO treaty to share information like the Ministry of Defense is.”
“But the mechanized infantry movement in the area is a relatively new development?”
“Yes.”
“Interesting. But my question is, Mr. Bexar: Where are they?”
“Where are who?”
“Where are all these Turkish forces? A mechanized infantry brigade is pretty hard to hide.”
“Well, I suppose…” The question had obviously taken the intelligence man by surprise. “They…could be anywhere, General. My guess is they’re in garrisons in the provincial capitals. As for the Jandarma, they can evade our surveillance easily in this terrain.”
“Kelly Two-Two has been looking at the frontier for the past few minutes and I haven’t seen any indications of any vehicles whatsoever,” Patrick said. “And according to my charts, Two-Two is looking right at the town of Uludere, correct?”
“Stand by.” A moment later, after checking the telemetry readouts from the Reaper’s imaging infrared sensor: “Yes, General, you’re right.”
“We’re looking at the town, but I don’t see any lights or even any evidence of life out there. Am I missing something?”
There was a slight pause; then: “General, why are you asking about Turkey? The Turks aren’t involved in this operation.”
Yeah, Patrick thought, why am I looking at Turkey? “Just curious, I guess,” he finally responded. “I’ll let you get back to work. Sorry for the—”
“Harrison, what is Two-Two looking at?” Wilhelm asked over the intercom. “It’s looking fifteen miles in the wrong damned direction. Check your ground surveillance plan.”
Patrick knew he had to step in himself—it wasn’t Harrison’s idea to look across the border into Turkey. “I just wanted to have a look across the border, Colonel.”
“Who is this?”
“McLanahan.”
“What are you doing on my net, General?” Wilhelm thundered. “I said you could observe and listen in, not talk, and I sure as hell didn’t authorize you to direct my sensor operators!”
“I’m sorry, Colonel, but I had a funny feeling about something, and I had to check it out.”
“Better to ask forgiveness than ask permission, eh, General?” Wilhelm sneered. “I heard that about you. I don’t care about your ‘funny feelings,’ McLanahan. Harrison, move that Reaper to cover…”
“Aren’t you even going to ask what I wanted to look at, Colonel?”
“I’m not, because nothing in Turkey interests me at the moment. In case you forgot, General, I have a reconnaissance platoon on the ground in action in Iraq, not Turkey. But as long as you bring it up, what in hell were you—”
“Rocket launch!” somebody cut in. On the monitor showing images broadcast from Kelly Two-Two, dozens of bright streaks of fire arced across the night sky—from across the border in Turkey!
“What the hell is that?” Wilhelm snapped. “Where is that coming from?”
“That’s a multiple rocket barrage from Turkey!” Patrick shouted. “Pull your men out of there, Colonel!”
“Shut the hell up, McLanahan!” Wilhelm shouted. But he rose out of his seat in horror, studied the image for a few heartbeats, then hit the button for the regimental network and cried, “All Warhammer players, all Warhammer players, this is Warhammer, you have incoming artillery from the north, reverse direction, get away from Parrot now!”
“Say again?” one of the recon sections responded. “Say again, Warhammer!”
“I say again, all Warhammer players, this is Warhammer, you have twenty seconds to reverse direction of movement away from Objective Parrot, and then five seconds to take cover!” Wilhelm shouted. “Artillery inbound from the north! Move! Move!” On the Tank’s intercom he shouted, “Someone get the fucking Turkish army on the line and tell them to cease fire, we’ve got troops on the ground! Get medevac choppers in the air and get reinforcements out there immediately!”
“Send the B-1 across the border to those launch points, Colonel!” Patrick said. “If there are any more launchers, it’ll be able to—”
“I said shut up and get off my net, McLanahan!” Wilhelm snapped.
The Stryker reconnaissance patrols moved quickly, but not as fast as the incoming rockets. It took only ten seconds for the two dozen rockets to fly thirty miles and shower the Zahuk tunnel complex area with thousands of high-explosive antipersonnel and antitruck mines. Some mines exploded a few yards overhead, spraying the area below them with white-hot tungsten pellets; other mines detonated on contact with the ground, buildings, or vehicles with a high-explosive fragmentary warhead; and still others sat on the ground, where they would explode when disturbed or automatically after a certain period of time.
The second barrage occurred just a few moments later, aimed a few hundred yards west, east, and south of the first target area, designed to catch any who might have escaped the first bombardment. This was the attack that caught most of the retreating members of the American recon platoon. The mines tore through the light top armor on the Strykers from above, ripping them apart and leaving them open for the other high-explosive munitions to follow. Many of the dismounts who escaped the
carnage inside their vehicles were lost to submunitions exploding overhead or underfoot as they tried to run for their lives.
In thirty seconds it was over. The stunned staff members watched it all in absolute horror, broadcast live via the Reaper and Predator drones high above.
THE WHITE HOUSE, WASHINGTON, D.C.
A SHORT TIME LATER
President Joseph Gardner was logging off his computer in the private study adjacent to the Oval Office and had just reached for his jacket to call it a night and head up to the residence when the phone rang. It was his national security adviser, longtime friend, and former assistant secretary of the Navy, Conrad Carlyle. He hit the speakerphone button: “I was just about to call it a day, Conrad. Can it wait?”
“I wish I could, sir,” Carlyle said from a secure cell phone, probably in his car. His friend rarely called him “sir” when they spoke one-on-one unless it was an emergency, and this immediately got the president’s attention. “I’m en route to the White House, sir. Reports of a cross-border attack into Iraq by Turkey.”
Gardner’s heart rate went down a few percentage points. Neither Turkey nor least of all Iraq was a strategic threat to him right now—even goings-on in Iraq rarely caused long sleepless nights anymore. “Any of our guys involved?”
“A bunch.”
Heart rate back up again. What in hell happened? “Oh, shit.” He could almost taste that glass of rum over ice that he had his mind set on back up in the residence. “Are they set up in the Situation Room for me yet?”
“No, sir.”
“How much info do you have?”
“Very little.”
Time for one glass before the action really started ramping up. “I’ll be in the Oval Office. Come get me.”
“Yes, sir.”
Gardner put a few ice cubes in an old Navy coffee mug, splashed some Ron Caneca rum into it, and took it out to the Oval Office. There was a crisis brewing somewhere, and it was important for onlookers around the world to stare through the windows and see the president of the United States hard at work—but that didn’t mean he had to deprive himself.
He turned the TV in the Oval Office to CNN, but there was nothing yet about any incident in Turkey. He could get the feeds from the Situation Room in his study, but he didn’t want to leave the Oval Office until the emergency was broadcast on worldwide TV and he was seen already watching it.
It was all about image, and Joe Gardner was a master at presenting a certain, specific, carefully crafted image. He always wore a collared shirt and tie except right before bed, and if he wasn’t wearing a jacket, his sleeves were rolled up and his tie was slightly loosened to make it look like he was hard at work. He used speakerphones often, but when others could see him he always used a telephone handset so everyone could see him busily talking. He never used the delicate china cups either, preferring heavy, thick Navy coffee mugs for all his beverages, because he thought they made him look manlier.
Besides, like Jackie Gleason on TV with his teacup filled with booze, everyone would assume he was drinking coffee.
The White House chief of staff, Walter Kordus, knocked on the Oval Office door, waited the requisite few seconds in case there was any sign of protest, then let himself in. “I got the call from Conrad, Joe,” Kordus said. He was dressed in jeans, sweatshirt, and Topsiders. Another longtime Gardner friend and ally, he was always available in a heartbeat and was probably lurking around the West Wing somewhere instead of being home with his wife and sizable stable of children. He looked at the flat-screen TV hidden in a cabinet. “Anything yet?”
“No.” Gardner raised his mug. “Have a drink. I’m almost one ahead of you.” The chief of staff dutifully fixed himself a mug of rum, but as usual he did not drink any of it.
It wasn’t until Carlyle blew through the Oval Office doors with a briefing folder in his hands that there was something on CNN, and it was only a mention on the scroll at the bottom of the screen of a “shooting incident” in northern Iraq. “It’s looking like a friendly-fire incident, sir,” Carlyle said. “An Army platoon was backing up an Iraqi infantry company on a sweep of a suspected al-Qaeda in Iraq tunnel entrance when the area was hit by Turkish medium-range unguided rockets.”
“Crap,” the president muttered. “Get Stacy Anne out here.”
“She’s on her way, and so is Miller,” Carlyle said. Stacy Anne Barbeau, a former U.S. senator from Louisiana who was as ambitious as she was flamboyant, had recently been confirmed as the new secretary of state; Miller Turner, yet another longtime Gardner friend and confidant, was the secretary of defense.
“Casualties?”
“Eleven dead, sixteen wounded, ten critically.”
“Je-sus.”
Over the next ten minutes, the president’s advisers or deputies filtered in to the Oval Office one by one. The last to arrive was Barbeau, looking as if she was ready for a night on the town. “My staff is in contact with the Turkish embassy and with the Turkish foreign ministry,” she said, heading right over to the coffee tray. “I’m expecting a call from each of them shortly.”
“Casualty count is up to thirteen and is expected to go higher, sir,” Turner said as he listened to a call from the Army corps commander. “They can’t say that the platoon itself was targeted, but it appears that the Iraqis and Turks were going after the same target.”
“Then if our guys were backing up the Iraqis, how did they get hit?”
“The contractors making the initial assessment say that the second round of rockets was meant to catch any survivors escaping from the target area.”
“Contractors?”
“As you know, sir,” National Security Adviser Carlyle said, “we’ve been able to greatly draw down our uniformed military forces in Iraq, Afghanistan, and many other forward areas around the world by replacing them with civilian contractors. Almost all military functions not involving direct action—security, reconnaissance, maintenance, communications, the list goes on—are done by contractors these days.”
The president nodded, already moving on to other details. “I need the names of the casualties so I can call the families.”
“Yes, sir.”
“Any of these contractors get hurt?”
“No, sir.”
“Figures,” the president said idly.
The phone on the president’s desk rang, and chief of staff Walter Kordus picked it up, listened, then held the receiver out to Barbeau. “Turkish prime minister Akas herself, Stacy, patched in from State.”
“That’s a good sign,” Barbeau said. She activated the translator on the president’s computer. “Good morning, Madam Prime Minister,” she said. “This is Secretary of State Barbeau.”
At the same moment another phone rang. “Turkish president Hirsiz on the line for you, sir.”
“He better have some explanations,” Gardner said, taking the receiver. “Mr. President, this is Joseph Gardner.”
“President Gardner, good evening,” Kurzat Hirsiz said in very good English, his voice fairly quivering with anxiety, “I am sorry to disturb you, but I just heard about the terrible tragedy that occurred on the Iraq border, and on behalf of all the people of Turkey, I wanted to immediately call and express my sadness, regret, and sorrow to the families of the men that died as a result of this horrible accident.”
“Thank you, Mr. President,” Gardner said. “Now what the hell happened?”
“An inexcusable error on the part of our interior security forces,” Hirsiz said. “They received information that Kurdish PKK insurgents and terrorists were massing at a tunnel complex in Iraq and were planning another attack on a Turkish airport or military airfield, larger and more devastating than the recent attack in Diyarbakir. The information came from very reliable sources.
“They said that the numbers of PKK fighters were in the hundreds in the tunnel complex, which is very extensive and crisscrosses the Iraq border over a wide area. It was determined that we did not have enough time to gather a force
sufficient to destroy such a large force in so dangerous an area, so it was decided to attack using a rocket barrage. I gave the order to attack personally, and so it is my error and my responsibility.”
“For God’s sake, Mr. President, why didn’t you tell us first?” Gardner asked. “We’re allies and friends, remember? You know we have forces in that area operating day and night to secure the border area and hunt down insurgents, including the PKK. One quick phone call alerting us and we could’ve pulled our forces out without alerting the terrorists.”
“Yes, yes, I know that, Mr. President,” Hirsiz said. “But our informant told us that the terrorists would be on the move shortly, and we had to act quickly. There was no time—”
“No time? Thirteen dead Americans who were in a support role only, Mr. President! And we don’t even have the Iraqi casualty count yet! You should have made the time!”
“Yes, yes, I agree, Mr. President, and it was a horrible omission that I deeply regret and for which I personally apologize,” Hirsiz said, this time with an obvious edge in his voice. There was a slight pause; then: “But may I remind you, sir, that we were not informed about the Iraqi operation, either from you or the Iraqi government. Such a notification would have also prevented this accident.”
“Don’t start passing around the blame now, Mr. President,” Gardner snapped. “Thirteen Americans are dead because of your artillery barrage, which was targeted inside Iraq, not on Turkish soil! That is inexcusable!”
“I agree, I agree, sir,” Hirsiz said stonily. “I do not dispute that, and I do not seek to lay blame where it does not belong. But the tunnel complex was under the Iraq-Turkish border, the terrorists were massing in Iraq, and we know the insurgents live, plot, and gather weapons and supplies in Iraq and Iran. It was a legitimate target, no matter which side of the border. We know the Kurds in Iraq harbor and support the PKK, and the Iraqi government does little to stop them. We must act because the Iraqis will not.”
“President Hirsiz, I’m not going to get into an argument with you on what the Iraqi government does or does not do with the PKK,” Gardner said irritably. “I want a full and complete explanation of what happened, and I demand a pledge from you to do everything in your power to see to it that it doesn’t happen again. We’re allies, sir. Disasters like this can and must be avoided, and it appears that if you had done your duty as an ally and friendly neighbor of Iraq and communicated better with us, this could have…”