by Dale Brown
“I’ll get on it, Colonel.”
“Make it happen,” Wilhelm snapped. “The Turks are bound to be jumpy as hell after what just happened to them. Okay, what about Warhammer?”
“Warhammer’s mission is to back up the Iraqi army,” Bruno went on. “In the air, Third Special Ops Squadron will launch two MQ-9 Reapers, each carrying an imaging infrared sensor ball, laser designator, two 160-gallon external fuel tanks, and six AGM-114 Hellfire laser-guided missiles. On the ground, Warhammer will send Second Platoon, Bravo Company, to recon behind the Iraqis. They will be positioned south, east, and west of Maqbara Company and observe. The Strykers’ main task is to fill in the picture of the battle space and assist if necessary. Division is sending their Global Hawk to keep an eye on the entire battle space.”
“The operative word here is observe, kiddies,” Wilhelm cut in. “Weapons will be tight on this op, understand? If you come under fire, take cover, identify, report, and await orders. I don’t want to be accused of shooting friendlies, even if the IA gets turned around and takes a shot at us. Continue.”
“Back at Nahla, Warhammer has two Apache helicopters from Fourth Aviation Regiment armed and fueled and ready to fly, loaded with rockets and Hellfires,” Bruno said. “We also have the Seventh Air Expeditionary Squadron, one B-1B Lancer bomber in patrol orbit Foxtrot. Colonel Cazzotto is acting as air combat controller.”
“A real cluster fuck all right,” Wilhelm growled. “That’s all we need is for the Air Farce to scream in and start dropping JDAMs on the IAs—they’re liable to trample our Strykers as they turn tail and run.” Patrick looked for a reaction from Gia, but she kept her head down and continued to take notes. “Okay: security. What’s the FPCON on the base, Thompson?”
“Currently Bravo, Colonel,” Kris replied, a telephone to his ear, “but an hour before we open the gates and deploy, we automatically go to Delta.”
“Not good enough. Go to Delta right now.”
“Colonel Jaffar wants to be notified before any change in THREATCON level.”
Wilhelm glared over at Thompson’s station and his mouth tightened when he saw he was not there. He turned to his deputy. “Send Jaffar a message telling him that I’m recommending bumping up the THREATCON now,” he said, “then do it, Thompson. Don’t wait for his approval.” Weatherly got right to it. They saw Wilhelm look around the Tank. “Where the hell are you, Thompson?”
“Up in the observation deck making sure the general is situated.”
“Get your ass down here where you belong, put us at THREATCON Delta, then assign someone to babysit the contractors. I need you at your damned post.”
“Yes, Colonel.”
“General, where is your plane and your guys?” Wilhelm asked, glaring up at the observation deck. “They better be put away.”
“The plane and all my technicians are in the hangar,” Patrick responded. He was happy to see Gia had looked up at him, too. “The plane is on external power and with full connectivity.”
“Whatever the hell that means,” Wilhelm shot back, glaring up at McLanahan. “I just want to make sure you and your stuff are not in my way when we break out.”
“We’re all in the hangar as requested, Colonel.”
“I don’t request anything around here, General: I order it, and it gets done,” Wilhelm said. “They stay put until oh-three-hundred unless I say otherwise.”
“Got it.”
“Intel. Who is the biggest worry out there—other than our hajji allies, Bexar?”
“The biggest threat in our sector continues to be the group that calls itself the Islamic State of Iraq, based in Mosul, led by Abu al-Abadi, a Jordanian,” the regiment’s privately contracted intelligence officer, Frank Bexar, responded. “The Iraqis think the tunnel network near Zahuk is his stronghold, which is why they are sending such a large force. However, we have no actionable intelligence ourselves that al-Abadi is there.”
“The hajjis must have some pretty solid intel, Bexar,” Wilhelm growled. “Why don’t you?”
“The Iraqis say he’s there and they want him, dead or alive, sir,” Bexar responded. “But Zahuk and the countryside are controlled by the Kurds, and al-Qaeda is strongest in the cities, like Mosul. It’s not credible to me that al-Abadi would be allowed to have a ‘stronghold’ in that area.”
“Well, apparently he does, Bexar,” Wilhelm snapped. “You need to firm up your contacts and interface with the hajjis so we’re not sucking hind tit all the time intelwise. Anything else?”
“Yes, sir,” Bexar replied nervously. “The other biggest threat to coalition troops is the ongoing conflict between Turkey and Kurdish guerrillas operating in our AOR. They continue to cross the border to attack targets in Turkey then retreat back into Iraq. Although the Kurdish rebels are not a direct threat to us, Turkey’s occasional cross-border retaliatory attacks against PKK rebel hideouts in Iraq have sometimes put our forces in danger.
“The Turks have told us that they have approximately five thousand troops deployed along the Turkey-Iraq border adjacent to our AOR. This agrees with our own observations. The Jandarma has conducted a few retaliatory raids in the past eighteen hours, but nothing too massive—a few of their commando strike units slipping their leashes, out looking for vengeance. Their latest intel shows a rebel leader they call Baz, or the Hawk—an Iraqi Kurd, possibly a woman—engineering daring raids on Turkish military targets, possibly including the downing of that Turkish tanker in Diyarbakir.”
“A woman, huh? I knew the women around here were ugly, but tough, too?” Wilhelm remarked with a laugh. “Are we getting current info from the Turks about their troop movements and antiterrorist operations?”
“The Turkish defense and interior ministries are pretty good about giving us the straight dope on their activities,” Bexar said. “We’ve even linked up via telephone on some of their air raids to deconflict the airspace.”
“At least you got your shit together with the Turks, Bexar,” Wilhelm said. The intelligence contractor swallowed hard and wrapped up his briefing as fast as he could.
After the last briefer finished, Wilhelm stood up, pulled off his headset, and turned to face his battle staff. “Okay, kiddies, listen up,” he began brusquely. The staff members made shows of pulling off their headsets to listen. “This is the IA’s show, not ours, so I don’t want any heroics and I sure as shit don’t want any slipups. This is a big op for the Iraqis but a routine one for us, so do it nice and smooth and by the book. Keep your eyes and ears open and your mouths shut. Restrict voice reports for operations to urgent ones only. When I ask to see something you’d better have it up on my screen a nanosecond later or I’ll come by and feed you your breakfast through your nostrils. Stay on your toes and let’s give the IA a good show. Get to it.”
“A regular Omar Bradley,” Jon Masters quipped. “A real soldier’s soldier.”
“He’s very highly regarded at division and Corps and will probably be pinning a star on soon,” Patrick said. “He’s tough but it looks like he runs a tight ship and gets the job done.”
“I just hope he lets us do ours.”
“We’ll do it with him or despite him,” Patrick said. “Okay, Dr. Jonathan Colin Masters, build me a picture of this gaggle and knock my socks off.”
The young engineer raised his hands like a neurosurgeon examining a brain he was about to operate on, accepted an imaginary scalpel, then began typing on his computer’s keyboard. “Prepare to be amazed, my friend. Prepare to be amazed.”
NEAR RECONNAISSANCE OBJECTIVE PARROT, OUTSIDE ZAHUK, IRAQ
A FEW HOURS LATER
“I was expecting Grand Central Station or Tora Bora, not a Hobbit house,” groused Army First Lieutenant Ted Oakland, leader of a platoon of four Stryker Infantry Combat Vehicles. He was studying the objective area about a mile ahead of him through his night thermal imaging system, which was a repeater of the gunner’s sights. The southern entrance to the so-called al-Qaeda tunnel stronghold was a tiny mud hut that the twen
ty-ton Stryker could plow through with ease. It didn’t quite jibe with the intel they had received from locals and their Iraqi counterparts, who variously described it as a “fortress” and “citidel.”
Oakland switched from the thermal image to an overhead shot provided by a battalion MQ-9 Reaper armed unmanned aerial vehicle flying eight thousand feet overhead. The image clearly showed the deployment of Iraqi troops around the hut. There was a cluster of huts in the area, along with outbuildings and small corrals for livestock. At least eight platoons of Iraqi regulars were slowly moving in on the area.
“Pretty quiet out there, sir,” the gunner remarked.
“For a major bad guy stronghold, I’d agree,” Oakland said. “But the way the Iraqis are clodhopping their way out there, it’s a wonder the whole province hasn’t run off.”
Actually, the presence of the Stryker reconnaissance platoon had probably alerted the bad guys even better than the Iraqis. The platoon consisted of four Stryker infantry carrier vehicles. The twenty-ton vehicles had eight wheels and a 350-horsepower turbo diesel engine. They were lightly armed with .50 caliber machine guns or forty-millimeter rapid-fire grenade launchers operated by remote control from inside the vehicles. Because they were designed for mobility and not hitting power, the Strykers were lightly armored and could barely withstand ordinary squad-level machine gun fire; however, these vehicles wore slat armor—cagelike tubes of steel around the outside meant to dissipate most of the explosive energy of a rocket-propelled grenade, which made them look top-heavy.
Despite their ungainly appearance and low-tech wheeled footprint, the Strykers brought a real twenty-first-century capability to a battlefield: networkability. The Strykers could set up a node of a wide-area wireless computer network for miles around, so everyone from an individual vehicle to the president of the United States could track their position and status, see everything the crew could see, and pass information on targets to everyone else on the net. They brought an unprecedented level of situational awareness to every mission.
Along with the commander, driver, and gunner, the Strykers carried six dismounts—a section leader or assistant leader, two security troops, and three reconnaissance infantrymen. Oakland had the dismounts out to check the area ahead on foot. While the security teams set up a perimeter around each vehicle and watched the area through night-vision goggles, the section leader and recon soldiers carefully walked ahead of their intended route of travel, checking for booby traps, hiding spots, or any signs of the enemy.
Although they were marching behind the Iraqis and weren’t expected to come into contact, Oakland kept the dismounts out there because the Iraqi soldiers often did things that made absolutely no sense. They would find “lost” Iraqi soldiers—men heading the wrong way, mostly away from the direction of the enemy—or soldiers taking a break, eating, praying, or relieving themselves far from their units. Oakland often surmised that his platoon’s main mission behind the main force was to keep the Iraqis headed in the right direction.
But tonight the Iraqis looked like they were pressing forward well. Oakland was sure this was because it was a relatively large-scale operation, because the Maqbara Company was leading the way, and because Major Othman was in the field instead of hiding under an abayah whenever an operation got under way.
“About fifteen mike to contact,” Oakland said into the secure platoon net. “Stay sharp.” Still no sign that they had been discovered. This, Oakland thought, will either go off relatively well—or they were blundering off into an ambush. The next few minutes would tell…
COMMAND AND CONTROL CENTER, ALLIED AIR BASE NAHLA, IRAQ
THAT SAME TIME
“I’m impressed, Jon, really impressed,” Patrick McLanahan said. “The gear is working as advertised.”
“You expected anything less?” Jon Masters retorted smugly. He shrugged, then added, “Actually, I’m surprised myself. Networking the regimental stuff was a bigger hurdle than networking our own sensors, and that went pretty smoothly.”
“That could be a bad thing: it shouldn’t be so easy to link the regiment’s network,” Patrick observed.
“Ours isn’t nearly as easy to hack as the regiment’s,” Jon said confidently. “It’ll take an army of Sandra Bullocks to crack our encryption.” He pointed to one blank window on his laptop monitor. “Division’s Global Hawk is the only player not hooked up yet.”
“I may have been responsible for that,” Patrick admitted. “I told Dave that we’d be ready to start surveillance tonight, and he probably passed that along to President Martindale, who probably passed it along to Corps headquarters. Division might have retasked the Global Hawk.”
“That’s not your fault—that’s Wilhelm’s,” Jon said. “If he let us fly, we’d be on it like stink on shit. Well, they have lots of eyes up there without it.”
Patrick nodded, but he still looked uneasy. “I’m concerned about the northern portion of those tunnels,” he said. “If any AQI escapes we should get an eye on them so we can steer the Turks over to nab them, or use a Reaper to pick ’em off.” He brought a window from Jon’s laptop over to his display, studied it for a moment, entered some commands into his keyboard, and spoke. “Miss Harrison?”
“Harrison. Who is this?”
“General McLanahan.”
He could see the unmanned aerial vehicle contractor look around herself in confusion. “Where are you, General?”
“Up in the observation deck.”
She looked up and saw him through the large slanted window-panes. “Oh, hello, sir. I didn’t know you were on this net.”
“Officially I’m not, but Kris said it was okay. I have a request.”
“Yes, sir?”
“You have Kelly Two-Two on station in the southern part of the op, and Kelly Two-Six ready to go as a backup. Could you move Two-Two up north to cover the northern tunnel entrance and move Two-Six to cover the south?”
“Why, sir?”
“The Global Hawk isn’t on station, so we don’t have any coverage in the north.”
“I’d have to fly the Reaper to within maximum missile range of the Turkish border, and that requires permission from Corps and probably from the State Department. We could download weapons from Two-Six and send it up.”
“This thing will most likely be over by then, Lieutenant.”
“True, sir.”
“If we can get some eyes up there, I’d feel a little more relieved,” Patrick said. “How about we send Two-Two right up to the distance limit until I coordinate with Corps?”
“I’ll have to deconflict Two-Six so it can launch,” Harrison said. “Stand by.” Patrick flipped over to the approach radar picture of Nahla Air Base and found it relatively free of traffic, undoubtedly because the airspace had been closed down as a result of the operation to the north. A moment later: “Airspace says we can launch when ready, sir. Let me get permission from the battle major.”
“It was my idea, Lieutenant, so I’d be happy to give him a call and explain what I had in mind.”
“You’re not supposed to be on this net, sir,” Harrison said, glancing up at Patrick and giggling. “Besides, if you don’t mind, I’d like to take credit for your idea.”
“I’ll take the blame if there’s any snafu, Lieutenant.”
“No problem, sir. Stand by.” She clicked off the connection, but Patrick was able to eavesdrop on her conversation with Major Bruno and the conversation between Bruno and Lieutenant Colonel Weatherly about the launch. They all agreed it was a good idea to move the Reaper as long as it didn’t violate any international agreements, and soon Kelly Two-Six was airborne and Two-Two was moving north to take up a patrol orbit near the Turkish border.
“Whoever’s idea it was to move the Reaper up north…hoo-ah,” Wilhelm said over the Tank network.
“Harrison’s idea, sir,” Weatherly said.
“I wasted a perfectly good ‘hoo-ah’ on a contractor?” Wilhelm said, feigning disgust at himself. “Oh, wel
l, I know we gotta toss the mercs a bone every once in a while. Good heads-up, Harrison.”
“Thank you, Colonel.”
“Is that his way of giving out praise?” Jon asked. “What a sweet guy.”
The picture of the operation looked considerably better once the Reaper had taken up a patrol orbit near the Turkish border, although it was still too far south to completely fill in the picture. “It was a good idea, sir,” Harrison said to Patrick, “but the ROE restrictions still can’t give us a look at where the tunnel supposedly exits. I’ll check on the Global Hawk.”
“We’d have that entire area covered seven ways to Sunday with the Loser,” Jon said. “Wait’ll these guys see us in action.”
“I really wish you’d change that name, Jon.”
“I will—but first I want to rub the Air Force’s face in it for a while,” Jon said happily. “I can’t wait.”
RECONNAISSANCE OBJECTIVE PARROT
A SHORT TIME LATER
“There they go, sir,” the gunner aboard Lieutenant Oakland’s Stryker said, studying the image of the tunnel entrance through his imaging infrared sights. Several bright flashes of light erupted on the screen, and seconds later the sounds of the explosion rippled over them. “Looks like the lead platoons are on the move.”
Oakland checked his watch. “Right on time, too. I’m impressed. We’d be hard-pressed to get an op this size going dead on time.” He flipped a switch on his monitor, checking the areas around each of his Strykers deployed around the area, then keyed his mike. “Weapons tight and stay sharp, guys,” he radioed to his platoon. “The IA is on the move.” Each section leader clicked an affirmative in response.
When all of them had checked in, Oakland sent an instant message to the Tank in Nahla, reporting friendly force movement. He briefly switched over to Maqbara Company’s command radio network and was met with an insane and completely incomprehensible cacophony of excited, shouted Arabic. He quickly switched it off. “Good radio discipline, guys,” he said under his breath.