by Larry Bond
“Hell, yes!” Burke exclaimed. He sounded almost surprised by the certainty in his own tone. Then he thumped his fist on the seat back for emphasis. “You get us that heavy-duty hardware, Karl, and we’ll set this whole goddamned state on fire before we’re done! The blacks and Jews won’t know what’s hit them!”
Keller nodded sharply, seconding his leader’s sudden resolution. “That’s right!” He slapped McGowan on the back. “Ain’t that right, Tony?”
The driver flinched and mumbled a tentative assent.
Halovic ignored him. McGowan was nothing—a drone. Burke and Keller were the key men in their twisted group, the brains and the muscle of their so-called Aryan Sword.
He hid a satisfied smile as Burke started bargaining in earnest, making the complicated arrangements needed to covertly acquire a wide range of weapons and explosives. Clearly, the older man now believed they would help make him a leader in the new crusade to “purify” America.
Well, Halovic thought grimly, let him dream. If Burke and the other extremist leaders truly believed in the coming Armageddon, they might even work up the courage to act on their own when the time came. And if not, the armaments they were about to receive would still make them useful stalking-horses for General Taleh’s special action teams.
Either way these foolish Americans would be made to serve a greater purpose.
CHAPTER 8
LOCK-ON
SEPTEMBER 11
32nd Armored Brigade exercise area, near Ahvaz, Iran
(D MINUS 95)
Three Russian-made GAZ jeeps were parked on the crest of a low, boulder-strewn rise north and east of the industrial city of Ahvaz. Iranian Special Forces troops in full combat gear stood guard at key points on the hill, forming a protective perimeter around the high-ranking Army officers clustered near the three vehicles.
Standing at the center of the small group, General Amir Taleh swept his binoculars slowly back and forth, carefully scrutinizing the area selected as a training range for the newly reequipped 32nd Armored Brigade. He nodded to himself in satisfaction. It was good ground.
Regular patches of green dotted the distant northern and western horizons—some of the date and sugar plantations that made Ahvaz Plain an important agricultural region. Oil wells were visible to the south, marking the edge of one of the vast gas and petroleum fields that had made the province both one of Iran’s richest regions and a prime objective for neighboring Iraq during their bloody, endless war. Brown, rugged slopes rose to the east—the foothills of the Zagros Mountains.
No plantations or oil wells marred the emptiness of the stony, uneven landscape immediately to Taleh’s front. There were only the rusting hulks of obsolete tanks and armored personnel carriers. Thousands of track marks were visible crisscrossing the barren plain, silhouetted by the slanting rays of the late afternoon sun. Heat waves shimmered among the abandoned fighting vehicles, distorting distances and shapes.
The long, low, deadly silhouettes of modern T-80 tanks and BMPs crammed with Iranian infantry maneuvered in and around the hulks. Dust kicked up by their speeding treads merged into a single, ragged brown cloud. The tanks and infantry fighting vehicles were firing on the move, all the while smoothly deploying into platoon-sized wedge formations.
As each T-80 fired, 125mm shells screamed through the air. Even at more than two thousand meters almost all of them burst somewhere around the target hulks. Taleh smiled, pleased by the accuracy the 32nd Brigade’s tank gunners were demonstrating.
One round triggered a bright, orange-red ball of flame.
Taleh turned in surprise toward the bearded, hawk-nosed brigadier who commanded the 32nd. There shouldn’t have been any reaction from those burned-out vehicles.
“We place tanks of diesel fuel and a few rounds of outdated ammunition inside the hulks before each exercise. My crews are trained to shoot until they see a fireball or explosion,” the other man explained. “I have found that it increases the realism of the battle drill.”
“An excellent idea, Sayyed.” Taleh nodded approvingly. Like the other armies in the region, too many of Iran’s battalions and brigades were hollow units—accumulations of first-rate hardware and second-rate, poorly trained men. Leaders who understood the danger of that and who could forge their commands into capable units were rare and valuable soldiers. Clearly, he had chosen the right man to command this formation.
He glanced at Kazemi and indicated the burning wreck now visible through a gap in the smoke. “Make a note of this, Farhad. We will recommend the technique to all units.”
Taleh swung back to watch the rest of the armored assault as it swept across the barren, explosion-torn landscape before him.
An hour later, with the exercise complete, the small convoy of three jeeps rolled through the gates of the Ahvaz Garrison, heading for a long, low building that contained the brigade headquarters. Barracks, maintenance sheds, and storehouses lined the paved road on either side. Most were dark in the fading light.
Taleh glimpsed bright arc lights shining inside one of the sheds. Technicians were hard at work inside, scrambling over and under an armored behemoth like ants ministering to their queen. He leaned forward and tapped the bearded brigadier on the shoulder. “Stop here, Sayyed. I want to see this.”
He never kept to a rigid itinerary, especially on inspection tours. Part of that was for security reasons. He still had enemies, now perhaps more than ever before. Randomly changing his schedule kept them guessing, especially those with lethal plans. But mostly, it was because he wanted to make sure his officers learned to expect the unexpected—in peace as much as in war. Above all, he thought, they must come to understand that uncertainty is the central feature of any battlefield.
At the brigadier’s direction, the jeeps pulled up and parked beside the floodlit maintenance shed.
Without waiting for his subordinates, Taleh jumped out and strode into the building. His bodyguards hurried to take up their positions around him, shooing away startled technicians and mechanics like so many frightened geese. He paid only cursory attention to the sweaty, oil-smeared men as they formed ranks under the brigadier’s glare. His gaze was focused on the mammoth T-80 they had been working on.
Taleh hauled himself onto the tank’s chassis and clambered onto the turret. He slid through the open hatch with the ease of long experience and settled himself inside the T-80’s cramped interior. He ran his eyes and fingers lightly over the dizzying array of dials, switches, scopes, cabling, and machinery—all still labeled in Russia’s Cyrillic script.
On the whole, he was pleased by what he saw. His agents had purchased several hundred T-80s—Russia’s most advanced battle tank—at ridiculously low prices from the cash-hungry bureaucrats in Moscow, who found it cheaper to sell a tank than to scrap it. Melting down a forty-ton chunk of armored steel was not a simple operation.
But this vehicle was far more than a simple chunk of metal.
He laid a hand on the massive breech of the T-80’s 125mm main gun and nodded to himself. Powerful gas turbine engines, sophisticated fire control and gun stabilization systems, and reactive armor designed to foil enemy armor-piercing rounds and missiles gave this tank and the others like it speed, deadly force, and survivability that matched some versions of the American M1 Abrams. And once they were installed, the German-manufactured thermal sights his purchasing agents had acquired would make Iran’s T-80s even more advanced than their Russian counterparts.
Truly, they should prove formidable weapons in the hands of trained crews.
Taleh frowned. There was the rub. Training. Training and maintenance.
Inspired by the will of God, Iran’s Regular Army had no shortage of fighting spirit. What it had lacked was a sizable cadre of trained professionals who could integrate new weapons into competently prepared plans and keep the combat units properly supplied and all this newly acquired hardware up and running.
Shoddy staff and maintenance work had always plagued the Iranian armed fo
rces—problems exacerbated by the militant creed imposed by the Ayatollah Khomeini and his radical successors. When anyone who deviated from the revolutionary ideology they preached ran the risk of arrest and even execution, it had proved almost impossible to form a professional officer corps.
Taleh was determined to change that. Iran could not afford to have an army of inexperienced zealots. His Western training had shown him the importance of proper planning and logistical support. The time to worry about details was before the battle started. Once the shells began to fly, it was too late—far too late. As his American Ranger instructors had said again and again, combat was the ultimate stress test. War found every weakness in men and in their machines.
He scowled, mentally chiding himself for the sudden burst of defeatism. He had made progress. Iran’s military was no longer a clumsy giant. The religious monitors were gone, and the cowards and incompetents were going. The aggressive young officers who shared his vision were forging the rest into a true army—an efficient, professional force wholly subordinated to his will.
Another skilled observer loitered near the maintenance sheds—a thin-bearded, hook-nosed man dressed in ragged, dust-colored clothes and battered sandals. Hamir Pahesh watched the activity with an air of boredom, but with more interest and knowledge than might be expected of the average truck driver.
Pahesh’s face had been weathered by the harsh Afghan climate and scarred by guerrilla war. Although only in his forties, he looked ten years older. Time had not been kind to him.
For most of his life he had been a farmer and part-time mechanic, scratching out a bare living in an arid, impoverished land. But then the Russians had come, razing his village simply because it might supply the mujahideen. Most of his family had been killed in the attack—the rest had died in the terrible winter that followed.
He’d fought the Russians, first as a member of a small band, then as part of a larger mujahideen group that had hit the invaders again and again. They’d had help, from the Pakistanis and the Chinese and the Americans. That was where Pahesh had first worked with the CIA.
He’d heard the stories about the American spy agency, of course. Propaganda from the Russians and their Afghan government puppets had labeled the CIA a sinister cabal dedicated to murder and chaos. That was nonsense, of course. The men he met in Pakistan gave him food, medicine, and weapons to kill Russians.
In the end he and his comrades had won. They had driven the Russians back across the border. But the civil war had continued, with Afghan killing Afghan now that they lacked a common enemy. His tortured, fragmented homeland had drifted from battle to battle as old tribal hatreds flared anew.
Pahesh felt adrift as well, his hate spent, but nothing to replace it.
He’d gone to Iran, seeking work and some new purpose. Instead he had been crammed into a refugee camp with thousands of his countrymen. Most Afghans were members of the Sunni branch of Islam. Most Iranians were Shiite. And evidently, the Iranians were willing to take Muslim brotherhood only so far. Pahesh had skills, though, as a mechanic and driver, and he’d been able to get a job driving a battered old truck.
Even out of the camp, he still felt unwelcome. Able to live only in ramshackle housing, paid a pittance for backbreaking labor, the ex-mujahideen felt the Iranian snubs every hour of the day.
Only with others from home could he find any peace. He’d run into one of his old guerrilla comrades, who had passed him on to an old American friend, now working in Iran. It didn’t take a deep thinker to realize what he was doing there, or what he wanted Pahesh to do.
And Pahesh had been willing, more than willing, after seeing Persian hospitality. Since that day, many years ago, Pahesh had driven the length and breadth of Iran. He tried to get work near or on military bases wherever possible. There was much to see and more to overhear. He could speak Farsi as well as his own Pushtu, but he made sure the Iranians didn’t know that.
Over the years, the Afghan had seen many things that interested the CIA. In return for the information, the Americans gave him money, as well as the high-tech equipment needed to do his work for them. The money kept Pahesh’s truck in good condition and many of his refugee countrymen fed and warm.
Now his experienced eye roamed over the compound. He could see five tanks in the maintenance bays and at least a score more parked in back, waiting for their turn. He’d identified the T-80s the instant he’d spotted them. He also heard a lot of Russian being spoken. The Iranian military buildup was accelerating.
An Iranian sergeant walked around the corner. “There you are,” he remarked. “Get moving, you’re blocking the loading dock,” the soldier ordered harshly.
Pahesh pretended ignorance and incomprehension, and with a disgusted look, the noncom spat out a few words slowly. “Go. Drive truck. Understand?”
Nodding, keeping his eyes down, the Afghan walked the short distance back to his truck, got in, and pulled out. The engine growled comfortingly as he drove out of the base and away from its guns and fences.
He’d pick a safe place to work tonight. Although slow and somewhat cumbersome, the covert communications system he normally used was secure and fairly reliable. After coding and microfilming, his latest report would go through the regular mails to a friend in Pakistan, piggybacked on a personal letter. His friend would in turn pass it to a CIA controller working out of the embassy in Karachi. Depending on the vagaries of the Iranian postal service, his information should reach America in a few days.
SEPTEMBER 12
Lonestar Business Park, Dallas, Texas
(D MINUS 94)
Salah Madani stared out the dark, tinted windows of his rented office. He had a perfect view of the busy airport just across the road. Jets in different corporate and airline colors lumbered by, some heading for runways, others for the terminals and air freight buildings. Voices crackled through a bank of radio receivers tuned to the frequencies used by air traffic controllers, ground crews, and the airport’s security personnel.
More than 50 million passengers and hundreds of thousands of tons of cargo flew in and out of the Dallas/Fort Worth airport each year. Dozens of hotels, warehouses, and office complexes bordered its outer perimeter—all built to profit from their proximity to the world’s second busiest airport.
But Madani and the men in his action cell were not interested in profit. The office suite they had leased the week before offered a secure location from which to monitor airport operations and security. Operating in shifts, they maintained an around-the-clock surveillance, accumulating data on approach and departure flight paths, police activity, and ground traffic.
The risk of discovery was minimal. As the region’s economy rose and fell and businesses prospered or went bankrupt, tenants moved in and out with astonishing frequency. So the local landlords were used to a high turnover. More important, they valued clients who paid well and in advance.
The Egyptian watched an airport police patrol car cruise slowly down the wire fence that marked the airport’s perimeter. He noted the time and typed another entry into the laptop computer on the desk beside him.
He pursed his lips, considering what he and his comrades had learned so far. For anyone used to operating in security-conscious Europe or the Middle East, the Americans seemed almost unbelievably lax. They relied almost entirely on a few television cameras and an occasional sweep by the airport police. That was all. Amazing. How could they be so overconfident? So stupid?
Madani shook his head. Their reasons were unimportant. What mattered was that the Americans were vulnerable. Tehran would be pleased.
SEPTEMBER 14
New York City
(D MINUS 92)
Alija Karovic took the steps up out of the subway station two at a time, joining a steady stream of passengers eager to escape from the crowded, noisy platforms to Manhattan’s crowded, noisy streets. Short, with dark brown hair and dark brown eyes, the Bosnian Muslim attracted no attention from the throngs hurrying to work. He wasn’t
surprised. Even when he spoke, the faint Eastern European accent coloring his English excited little curiosity. Decades after Ellis Island had closed its doors, New York was still a polyglot mix of races and nationalities, of immigrants from every corner of the globe.
At the top of the stairs, Karovic checked his watch. He was a few minutes early. He turned right and started walking, dodging preoccupied pedestrians coming the other way and panhandlers trying to cadge enough spare change to buy liquor or illicit drugs. Since infiltrating the United States, he’d spent nearly two months in this city and its surrounding suburbs, but New York’s jammed streets and sidewalks still seemed strange to him. They stood in stark contrast to the desolate, war-ravaged boulevards of his homeland. In Sarajevo the sight of so many potential victims outside and unprotected would have sent Serb snipers and gunners into a killing frenzy.
A familiar car drew up beside him and pulled over to the curb. The driver reached over and popped open the passenger door.
Karovic slid inside and shut the door without speaking.
“Well?” the driver asked flatly, keeping one eye on the rearview mirror as he inched out into the stop-and-go traffic of the morning rush hour.
Karovic shrugged. “It will be simple. The system is practically undefended.”
“Explain.”
“There are no metal detectors. There are no bomb sniffers.”
“What about the police?” the driver asked. “They have guards on the trains and platforms, do they not?”
Karovic nodded. “Yes. But they are no problem.” He spread his hands. “The transit police are far too busy watching for petty criminals or crazy people. They will pose no significant threat to us.”
The driver smiled. “This is excellent news, Alija.”
“Yes.” The Bosnian nodded somberly, staring out the car window at the Americans scurrying across the streets in every direction, seemingly heedless of the oncoming traffic or each other. They were like locusts, he thought angrily. Soulless and almost mindless—concerned only with self-gratification and endless acquisition. The time had come to sweep these creatures of the devil into the everlasting fire. He glanced at the driver. “I will transmit a full report later tonight.”