Flash Point

by James W. Huston

  40

  Big stood in the back of the Saipan’s CVIC, staring at the men before him. Bark had asked Big to become personally involved in the final stages of the mission planning for the combat SAR that was to get Woods and Wink out of Iran and he had just gotten off the helicopter that had brought him over here from the Washington.

  The SAR team had taken over the CVIC of the Saipan. They had their own computers set up in the corner of CVIC in a square, like a small room. The pilots and mission planners were busy clicking through various computerized charts, SAM site disks, and satellite imagery that could be seen on the monitors.

  The Pave Low aircrew were identifiable by their USAF wings on black patches on their flight suits. No names, just Air Force wings. There were Velcro spots on the flight suits from other patches they had apparently left at home.

  The men in the black jumpsuits wore nothing to identify them. No rank, no unit patches, nothing. Nonetheless, Big had no doubt who they were—Special Forces commandos who would be going in on the Pave Low helicopters to get Woods and Wink.

  Big didn’t know what he was supposed to do. He had been asked to come meet with the Pave Low pilots, but they didn’t seem to be in a briefing mood.

  The pilot in command of the lead Pave Low, the mission commander, saw him and got up from his computer. Approaching Big, he said, “You must be Lieutenant McMack.”

  “Yes,” Big said. “What’s your name?”

  “Doesn’t matter.” The Air Force MH-53J pilot took a round container of Skoal from his flight suit pocket. He tapped it lightly, took off the round top, grabbing a pinch of it and sticking it between his lower lip and gum. It gave him a slightly swollen look and muffled his speech. Slipping the Skoal back into his flight suit, he spit into a small V-8 juice can that he picked up. “You were there last night,” he said.

  “I was the wingman.”

  “Tell me about it.”

  “What would you like to know?”

  Three other Air Force officers joined them, and they all took chairs in front of a large chart of the area hanging on the wall.

  “How’d you get shot down? Who got you?” the Captain queried.

  “A ZSU. I think there were two of them. They were waiting for us.”

  The Captain spit into the can again and examined Big. “I heard you got lit up by an SA-6.”

  “We did.”

  “How do you know it wasn’t him that got your wingman?”

  “I saw the tracers go into his airplane, and I got hit. You can look at the bullet holes in my wing.”

  “Where were the ZSUs?”

  Big stood up and moved to the chart, studying it carefully. “Here—this was our target,” he said, his finger on the site. “It was Point Whiskey on our chart. We came in from this direction,” he indicated, “got lit up by the SA-6 through here, and decided to do a pop-up drop instead of coming in higher. We didn’t want to get hit by the SA-6.”

  “Me neither,” said one of the pilots.

  “All we ever got was a search indication from the SA-6. He never locked onto us.”

  “Did they ever launch a missile at you?” This from the Captain with the Skoal.

  “Not that I saw.”

  “How do you know there was an SA-6 there?”

  “We saw his radar.”

  The Captain pondered. “There’s a theory that some ZSUs have an SA-6 radar transmitter that it uses to light up planes to drive them down. Doesn’t have any SAMs at all, only the radar. They carry it around just so pilots will see the SAM radar and head lower to get away from it, right into the ZSU-23’s envelope. They’re waiting for you. Then when you’re in range, they light you up with their real radar and knock the shit out of you.”

  Big raised his eyebrows. “Who the hell would think of that? That’s not very friendly.”

  “Not at all. Downright mean,” the Captain said. “But if it’s true, it makes this easier. We sure don’t want to go into an SA-6 site.”

  They were all quiet, staring at the chart. The Captain broke the silence. “You see anything that makes you think there was an SA-6 there other than the radar warning?”

  “No.”

  “See the imagery from today?” the Captain asked.

  “No.”

  One of the other officers got up and retrieved several printed photos from a desk near one of the Air Force computers, handing them to the Captain, who asked, “Get these loaded into the computer yet?”

  The pilot nodded. “All set.”

  The Captain gave the photos to Big, who examined them carefully. “Yep, this is the place. Right there is the fortress—Alamut. You can see it. You can even see where our two bombs went in. . . . All for naught. Whoever was supposed to be there to laser designate for us wasn’t. Assholes. Anyway, we were on our own. Probably missed him by a mile.”

  “Where were the ZSUs?”

  “The one that got us was right here, at the base of this small mountain.”

  “Where was the other one?”

  “I never got a good fix on him. I think he was off to the east, over here.”

  “And where did your wingman go down?”

  “Last I saw their chutes, they would have come down about . . . here. Yeah, there’s the smoking hole . . .”

  “Right by the ZSU.”

  “Basically. Yeah.”

  The Captain studied the photos. “I don’t see any SA-6 site, or any other SAM. If our intel is right, which I don’t like to count on, then our only problem will be these ZSUs and maybe some men on the ground.”

  “That’s about how I see it. Who says the ZSU has an SA-6 transmitter?”

  “National assets.”

  “Oh.”

  “We also have had it confirmed by the same people who failed to show up to laser designate for you. We’re told he was there. They don’t know what happened to him, but they assume the worst.”

  “They got him?”

  “Don’t know. Sounds like it. We’re told there hasn’t been a SAM anywhere near there in a week.”

  “I don’t know,” Big said, sitting down again. “I don’t trust them. There wasn’t supposed to be a ZSU there either.” Big looked at the three men in the dark jumpsuits. In a low voice, he asked the Captain, “Who are those guys?”

  “Doesn’t matter—what freq did you talk to your wingman on?”

  “SAR common—282.8.”

  The Captain nodded.

  “Think you can get them out?” Big asked.

  “If they’re still there, we’ll get them.”

  The sun had set. It would be totally dark in another hour. The camouflage was fuzzy brown now and hard to see through. Woods was about to go stir crazy. He was tired of sitting silently and urinating in a jar. He was sickened by the pungent copper smell of the filthy Israeli who was doing his best to save their lives. He ran his hands over the M-16 that had been sitting on his lap for what seemed like forever. If you added up all the time in his life he had held an M-16 it wouldn’t be one tenth of the time he had held one today. And the only thing it had done for him today was remind him that at any minute, with virtually no warning, he could be the victim of a close-range fully automatic shootout. It had been a constant reminder so that any thought he might have had of rest or sleep was simply ridiculous.

  He couldn’t be quiet any longer. He whispered so lightly he almost couldn’t hear himself, “What’s your name?”

  The Israeli shook his head. It wasn’t time yet.

  Woods wasn’t to be deterred. “What’s your name?” he asked slightly louder.

  “Shut up!” the man whispered back. “Stay quiet!”

  Wink glanced at his watch. It was 2000. “No, it’s time we made a plan,” he said quietly.

  The Israeli sat up and looked at his luminous watch. “Keep it down. They are still around here.”

  “What’s your name?” Woods asked again.

  “Zev. That’s all you need to know.”

  “Sniper?”

&
nbsp; “What? Why you say that?”

  “The case,” Woods said, pointing to an area behind where Wink was sitting hunched over, his legs uncomfortably beneath him, his swollen knee becoming more painful.

  “Yes.”

  “For the Sheikh?”

  He nodded. “One shot only. Can’t miss. I get him, they get me. That’s how it would have happened.”

  “So now what?”

  “Doesn’t matter.”

  “Why doesn’t it matter? Aren’t you still going to try to get the Sheikh?”

  Zev’s eyes got big. “You don’t know?”

  “Know what?”

  “What happened.”

  “What are you talking about?”

  “You have made my job unnecessary.”

  Woods looked at Wink, who was unwilling to accept what Zev was clearly saying. “How?”

  “Your bombs were well placed.”

  “We got him?” Wink asked.

  “I heard it.”

  “Heard what?”

  “The bombs go into the Sheikh’s quarters.”

  “Heard?”

  “Yes. The Sheikh is dead.”

  “How did you hear?”

  He looked at the box surrounded by foam. “We have a transmitter in the Sheikh’s living quarters. Very sophisticated long range, with an antenna on the outside of the mountain.”

  “What? How?”

  “Doesn’t matter.”

  “Are you sure?”

  “Quite.”

  Woods closed his eyes and put his head back. They had done it. They had gotten the Sheikh. He looked at Wink who was smiling to himself. “We got him,” he said to Wink. Wink put out his hand and Woods slapped it gently. Woods took a huge, deep breath. He thought about what Zev had said. “How did you get a transmitter into Alamut?”

  “It was very difficult . . .” he said pensively. “When do you think your people will be here?”

  “Dark, I would guess. Don’t really know. Why don’t you come out with us?”

  Zev pondered the offer. “I think this place is not very safe anymore. The Assassins who are left are now without a leader. They will respond by doing what he would have wanted them to do, and that is looking for you. It would be best to leave. I have a way to get out, but it would take some time. I will come. If there is room.”

  Batman. The perfect name for an airfield in eastern Turkey. The Turks had initially refused to allow the Air Force Special Forces to stage out of their bases for the rescue. The Syrians had raised such a firestorm of protest everyone was lying low, not endorsing, or participating, or allowing the Americans to use their territory to conduct attacks. It had stymied the Air Force’s initial participation, but they had gone back to Turkey with the request. A simple one—let us conduct the rescue from Turkey. Through Turkey. The thing that had made the difference was that it was a rescue. They had agreed. The C-130s could launch out of their bases, and the Pave Lows could fly through their airspace on their way to Iran. Turkey had no love for the Sheikh and what he was doing. They saw him as creating terrible instability and jeopardizing peace in the Middle East. There was always someone to jeopardize peace.

  Turkey’s decision had given the entire operation a boost. The idea of flying through Syria and refueling over the Syrian desert somewhere had not offered the Air Force great comfort. They would have done it, but it would have been more colorful.

  The four dark gray Air Force C-130s shuddered next to the runway at Batman. They had made two flights earlier in the day, all routine, all intended to make sure that if anyone was watching, they would never know what exactly these airplanes were doing there other than flying randomly into the Turkish mountains and coming back.

  The C-130s were the same dark color as the Pave Low helicopters: flat, blotchy dark gray with nearly indiscernible markings. They waited next to the runway as the sun set behind them. The first MC-130P Combat Shadow taxied onto the runway and ran up its four massive turboprop engines, the airplane straining against its brakes, longing to fly. The MC-130P rolled down the runway, starting slowly and picking up speed smoothly. As it reached rotation speed the pilot pulled back smartly on the yoke and the Shadow climbed steadily into the sky. As the first lifted off, the second MC-130P taxied onto the runway, and followed the first into the sky. The two tankers were the first airplanes airborne on the night’s mission. The Air Force Special Forces MC-130P Combat Shadows were designed for one thing—to refuel Special Operations aircraft on high-risk missions in difficult situations, the ones that flew too low to the ground. It was all they did, and they did it well. It wasn’t just anyone who could fly a C-130 at five hundred feet above the ground and refuel an invisible helicopter at night.

  The next airplane to take the runway, an AC-130U, had unusual bulges and shapes, clearly not to make it fly better or have more lift. Someone who didn’t know the Spooky might have thought it was an electronic countermeasures airplane to jam enemy radars. But those who knew it and its predecessor the Spectre knew the bulges meant business. Gunfire. Three barrels projected out of the left side of the airplane. The largest barrel, farthest aft, was the 105-millimeter howitzer. Just forward of that was the 40-millimeter cannon, and farther forward still was the 25-millimeter Gatling gun. The Spooky had the most highly concentrated firepower in the world. More per square foot than any other fighting vehicle or ship. It could put as much firepower on a point on the ground as an entire battalion of infantrymen.

  The targeting and firing solutions could be calculated immediately by computer and the guns trained by the Fire Control Officer sitting at a console in the BMC—the Battle Management Center. The Spooky could find its target through infrared sensors or ALLTV—All Light Level TeleVision, a television system that worked in all light, or radar—the same radar that was on the F-15E. The guns could shoot through clouds. They also had the capability of jamming anybody on the ground who tried to target them. The pilot simply flew in a left-hand circle around the ground target while the guns pounded away. It was a frightening sight.

  The first Spooky rolled down the runway and was airborne in less time than the two tankers. It maneuvered quickly once airborne, more agile than the heavy MC-130Ps.

  In the settling darkness, the second Spooky, its lights on, followed the first. It appeared to be taking off on a routine training mission. No one at Batman knew where it was going or why. It climbed up into the cloudless deep purple sky and headed toward the other three small dots in the sky. The four airplanes rendezvoused sixty miles south of Batman and headed east into the Turkish mountains.

  Aboard the Saipan the lead Pave Low pilot, the mission commander, stepped up the ramp in the back of the helicopter and headed toward the cockpit. The Saipan had moved north of its original position off the coast of Syria. It was just south of Turkey off the northwestern corner of Syria.

  The Captain had downloaded the latest satellite imagery, updated locations in the mission planning computer, and put the information on a 3.5-inch disk. Just behind the pilot’s seat, he placed the airplane’s computer—the DMU—into its cradle and the diskette into its drive. He and his copilot began their preflight checklist.

  The power was connected and the pilot called for an intercom check from the rest of the crew. Everyone was ready. The six enormous blades started to turn slowly, then with greater speed. The second Pave Low matched the first as they both worked steadily through their start-up checklists. Several people watched from Vulture’s Row. They had observed thousands of helicopter takeoffs and landings on the Saipan, but they had never seen the Air Force Special Forces anywhere near them. They had never had men on their ship wearing flight suits with no markings, gently rejecting inquiries about who they were or what they were doing there. They had never had men with small automatic weapons and no insignia smile nicely at them and say nothing.

  But the word had spread quickly through the ship at the scuttlebutts. Everyone in the fleet knew an F-14 had been shot down, and that it was the Air Force that ha
d the mission of deep combat SAR. Word was that the F-14 was down inside Iran. The idea horrified most of the sailors. Being shot down was bad enough, but being shot down in Iran . . . they didn’t want to think about it.

  When the lead Pave Low pilot was ready he eased the plane off the flight deck slowly. The long blades bent upward as they took on the weight of the helicopter and beat the air to lift it. Once aloft, the helicopter dipped over the side of the flight deck and down toward the water, the second Pave Low right behind him. Forty feet off the water, they turned and headed northeast toward Turkey. They had no intention of being high enough for any radar to pick them up more than a couple of miles away.

  Inside the Pave Low, the flight to the coast of Turkey was quiet. The back of the helicopter was crowded with Air Force commandos sitting quietly, holding their weapons, passengers just for a while. They could only wait. The pilot had the multifunction displays—MFDs—adjusted to see the IR imagery in front of him, and the computerized map display in the middle. It was a full-color TV-like screen that displayed a detailed map of Turkey, with a computer-generated helicopter on it showing exactly where they were to one-hundredth of a mile.

  The copilot pointed to the coast ahead of them. They were on course and on schedule. To the minute. The two Pave Lows descended as they crossed the beach at an obscure, unremarkable, and uninhabited point on the Turkish coast. With their lights out it was impossible to identify them in the gathering darkness unless someone was using a nightscope or infrared, highly unlikely at such a remote and unpredictable spot. One of the reasons the Special Forces went at night was because it often meant that the one with the best sensors won.

  The Pave Lows turned east and headed into the heart of the Turkish mountains toward Iran.

  41

  The helicopters thundered across the harsh Turkish terrain, the sky now completely black. Moonrise wasn’t for another two hours. They had achieved the condition for Special Operations that they always wanted: EENT, End of Evening Nautical Twilight. It took 99 percent of the world off their threat scope. It meant the average soldier, farmer, or adolescent with a slingshot could never just aim at them. They would never see them. The only ones who would see them after EENT were those with technology: radar, IR, low-light TV, or night-vision devices.