Bloodbath

by David Alexander

  "Can't do it. No nukes. At least none we're forced to admit having used. It has to stay covert. And I'm assuming that the small nuclear blasts we can hide won't do the trick."

  "Correct, sir. But I wasn't suggesting we exercise our white-world nuclear option, Mr. President."

  "Then what did you mean, Bucky?"

  "A force on the ground, sir. A trained force of special operators. A sizable force, perhaps multinational in scope. A regional force under the control of a US commanding officer stationed in the area. If you will, Mr. President, you may think of it as a special forces or covert version of the Desert Storm coalition of 1991."

  The president leaned forward, clearly interested. The CJCS had just set the gears in his politically attuned mind turning. Here was a concept that might resonate with Congress and the voters alike.

  "Go on, general," the president advised Starkweather. "You got me interested."

  "Well, sir. What we have in mind is based on the urgent need to put a big cancellation mark on Iran's still nascent but developing capability to set up those super guns and fire advanced hybrid artillery shells in a new bid for regional dominance. The shells are part conventional projectile, part guided missile, and they have so-called clip-on capability -- "

  "--what the hell's that again, Buck?"

  "That, Mr. President, means they can be easily refitted with unconventional warheads, such as nuclear, biological or chemical armament. Conventional warhead modules are basically removed by technicians and the unconventional modules installed. The system is fully modular. The advanced projectiles can be very rapidly converted."

  "Shee-yitt."

  "That's absolutely right, Mr. President," the CJCS went on. "And plenty of it, unless we do something. We know Iran has a few of the super guns already set up in fixed and mobile launch sites. We don't think they have the exotic, or unconventional warhead clip-ons yet, or only enough to run tests on. We want to stop them cold before that happens. And that means destroying their capability on the ground.

  "What about our Soviet friends?"

  "We think the Russians will see that backing off on this one will be the better part of valor. We've left them pretty much with a free hand in the Caucasus, which was their main objective in starting the war anyway. The Mideast is basically a sideshow to the homeboys at Two Dzerzhinsky Square. We think they'll back off."

  "Okay. Go on."

  "Mr. President, for the rest, I believe the Army's liaison from the Pentagon, General Clifford, should continue. It's the green suiters who'll be leading the charge."

  Clifford took the floor.

  "The multinational brigades will be led by Detachment Omega, the Army's first-responder special forces unit. We are, at this stage, calling the initiative Operation Sand Viper. Here is what we have in mind..."

  The president was listening. He liked the name Sand Viper. It had media appeal. He could probably even sell it to the house majority on the other side of the aisle. On the legal pad in front of him, he doodled a picture of a snake biting a mustachioed man on the backside while, with the trace of a smile, he listened to the rest of what the Pentagon liaison had to say.

  "Oh, and one more thing I should mention, Mr. President," Clifford went on with studied casualness, unclipping a laser pen from his tunic pocket.

  "Yes, general. What's that?"

  "We think it's possible the Iranians may have something even bigger than those three hundred thirty-millimeter tubes stashed away -- " he pointed with the laser beam to a spot on a map that an aide had just set up on an easel, " -- Right here."

  The president suddenly stopped doodling. He wasn't smiling anymore either.

  ▪▪▪▪▪▪

  A few thousand miles and several time zones away, the US president's Soviet counterpart sat pondering matters of similar importance. The Soviet premier's poputchik was behaving just as planned. The swaggering puppet was eager to absorb as much Russian weaponry and manpower as he could.

  All in all, it was a display on an even grander scale than the Russian incursion into Egypt under Nasser in the late fifties that lasted until the late sixties and the ascendency of Sadat. Starchinov's predecessors in the Kremlin hierarchy had then sought to arm Egypt as a counterbalance to the West's sphere of influence in Iraq.

  In those days, at the start of the Cold War, it was Baghdad that was the most pro-western of the Arab states, and Egypt that was seen to be slipping from the American-led alliance. In time, of course, the opposite situation had prevailed. For decades Egypt, absent Israel, had been the most powerful Western surrogate in the region, whereas Iraq had become a pariah state. So it went, in a dialectic swing that Karl Marx had seen and described long ago.

  Now it was Iran's turn to swallow the Soviet bait. So far, Starchinov's poputchik was hungry for as much of it as he could have. The premier's last reports told of secret junkets on the Ilyushin mini-jet the Kremlin had supplied, one that had been bugged with sensitive yet undetectable listening devices that beamed virtually everything said by the Iranian autocrat to his trusted aides to a Soviet orbital listening post.

  However, the Kremlin leader also knew that the West had detected these new inroads into Iran and would take steps to counter them. It was, of course, inevitable that they would, and in the political sphere there was little if anything they could do about it.

  The military sphere posed a separate set of challenges where an entirely different array of rules applied. Just as the Western alliances had waged a covert war against Nasser in the old days, so they were already showing signs of doing this today against his own strategic maneuverings.

  Starchinov would have to counter these countermoves. At the least he would need to stage holding actions until the deep installations that Soviet technicians and construction crews were already busily digging in the Iranian deserts to house the new super guns that the poputchik of Iran was acquiring.

  After these preparations were completed, it would be too late for the US and her allies to do anything about it. They would never use thermonuclear weapons on first-strike terms, which was the only effective means to destroy the underground bases. Nor could they use small, subkiloton "tinynukes" on such an objective either. They were extremely limited, little better than conventionals.

  The geostrategic implications were strikingly clear to Starchinov. It was a game of dominos. His poputchik would strike the West's poputchik states, which included those, like Syria or Jordan, that claimed nonalignment. Once they were destroyed or had capitulated, it would be the Persian giant's turn to feel the lash. Apart from control of vital oil reserves, the threat posed by the Islamist and ethnic rebels in Iran would be quelled. Russia would emerge stronger than before, a true superpower once again.

  Then it could press outward, along its northeastern flanks. Once the borders to the south were sealed, those on the Baltic would fall between the crosshairs. And after these were brought back into the Soviet orbit as satellites...

  An aide interrupted the premier's apocalyptic musings. Important visitors from the intelligence services and GRU had just arrived. They were to advise Starchinov of breaking developments in the Mideast.

  Starchinov gave instructions to permit them entry, then positioned himself at his desk, looking downward. When they entered he would make them wait for long minutes while he appeared to busy himself with paperwork. It was a technique that had worked well for Stalin, and one that the current Soviet leader had perfected to a theatrical art.

  ▪▪▪▪▪▪

  Northeastern Jordan was a cold stone's throw from nowhere. The hyperbole was a bodyguard for truth in this case. Strictest secrecy prevailed in the establishment and logistical considerations for the Sand Viper headquarters.

  A joint staff comprised of a Western contingent of American, British and French officers on the one hand, and a Mideast contingent of Syrian, Israeli and Hashemite Jordanian officers on the other, could only be brought together under the tightest security conditions imaginable.

&n
bsp; The groundwork for Sand Viper had been laid during and in the aftermath of the funeral of King Hussein of Jordan. As crowds in Amman lamented the death of the king, the Western nations and other Arab states had stood alert to challenges, especially from the direction of Baghdad and Tehran, to the young King Abdullah's reign.

  At the same time, Abdullah, who was a career military officer, was seen to be receptive to the West and secret protocols were established for military intervention if necessary. Abdullah well knew that his chief adversary at the time was Saddam Hussein who had reigned with a dictator's iron fist over a country many times his country's size and not very distant.

  And so secret bases were established in the desert against the day when Iraq might grow strong again and prepare to once more attack its neighbors. They had played their roles in the War in Iraq and would now serve similar purposes in conflict with Iran. Intelligence assessments of Tehran's growing might and the superior weaponry they were receiving from Soviet sources were made available to Abdullah. The young king recognized the significance immediately. Orders were given to make the bases available for immediate occupation.

  Colonel Stone Breaux, leader of Detachment Omega, under the command of General "Patient K." Kullimore, arrived soon after the base was prepared. Along with him came a contingent of staff personnel. Breaux, who would command special operations field initiatives, would set up shop and participate in planning sessions.

  Soon the rest of SFOD-O would follow the advance cadre. To the American special operations team would fall the task of training and organizing the coalition of commando warriors who would wage a series of crippling ground strikes against the forces being built up by Iran's military. Operation Sand Viper slowly uncoiled, but would soon bare its fangs.

  Chapter Fifteen

  Somewhere below them, as they flew above Wadi Ar'ar, some of the aircrew caught a glimpse of the lines of overhead communications cables, petroleum conduits and four-lane blacktop that ran northwest-southeast along the eastern Saudi Arabian border between Jordan and the Persian Gulf.

  This was the Tapline Road, built by the major international oil companies in the 1950s to service their oil pipeline stretching from the Gulf to the Med and intersecting Jordan, Syria and Lebanon, where it terminated a few miles south of Beirut.

  A few miles east of the Tapline, sand berms cut across the ochre desert, roughly and intermittently paralleling the highway for several miles. The berms, the rusting and sand-scoured wreckage of military vehicles destroyed some decades before, and the numerous unmarked graves that none aboard the helos could see from even this low altitude, were all signposts marking the sortie's crossborder entrance into Iran.

  There were military outposts, border and road checkpoints, sun-baked villages and encampments of Bedouin nomads to be found here too. There were also the invisible Doppler waves of ground tracking radars and the radars of SAM sites, including Roland and SA-10 (S-300) SAM batteries, to contend with.

  The sector of the Iranian desert was remote from the more populated quarter closer to Tehran, but the overflight still presented a great danger of discovery to the airborne mission.

  Those that had planned the mission -- those at Drop Forge, the forward operation center in Jordan, as well as those in a vaulted room within the labyrinth of the National Military Command Center at the Pentagon -- were aware of the threats and had tried to level the playing field somewhat.

  For weeks prior to the mission, the borderlands separating Iran politically but not geographically from Iraq, Kuwait and the Arabian Peninsula became the focus of planned incursions by ground and airborne forces.

  Planes and helicopters would dart across the border, electronically tickle Iranian tripwire forces, and then dart back, having orders not to engage unless fired upon.

  Ground radar and SAM sites underneath the no-fly-zone's umbrella were also baited in this way. Ferret aircraft, including the RC-135(X) Cobra Eye, subjected cross-border radar stations and military listening posts to a barrage of electronic warfare attacks.

  The stage-managed confusion was the prelude to tonight's two-pronged mission. The Iranian military, who were as sophisticated as any other Middle Eastern nation's, and more so than some, knew that something was in the offing, but they didn't know what, how or when it would hit.

  As long as they were kept off-balance, the mission had a good chance of success. The confusion, exploited to the maximum, was crowned by cruise missile strikes against targets outside Tehran, the flashes of which were visible on the horizon as the sortie out of Saudi stole across the enemy's homeland.

  The aircrew flew its inbound course in three dimensions. It not only navigated by terrain features, but dodged and jinked and slipped between the unseen feelers of microwaves, exploiting the open seams where radar coverage failed to tightly overlap.

  Like microscopic parasites weaving between the scales of a sleeping shark, the three helicopter gun ships flew their treacherous inbound course, first making use of the Wadi Ar'Ar to keep their hulls beneath the level of the ground, and then changing altitude and direction across the open desert beyond the wadi.

  The Marine Corps' AH-1Z Vipers were loaded for bear. The weapons complement included HARM anti-radar missiles, Sidewinder heat-seeking missiles (deployable in dual air-to-air and air-to-ground modes), dispenser-launched Zuni rockets with Advanced Precision Kill Weapon System (APKWS) upgrade target acquisition capabilities and a few thousand rounds of 20-millimeter ammo for the nose cannons that were slaved to the head movements of their pilots, deadly swiveling drones that could spit out automatic fire at hundreds of rounds a minute.

  The AH-1Zs were the door-kicking force for Boogie and Balls, the force elements of the double-barreled attack. Like the nose of the camel in the old Bedouin fable, the helos would open the way for the considerably larger portions of the ungainly beast that was waiting to climb inside the tent and take it over, at least for awhile.

  Following the waypoints on their flight plan, the helos continued on their convoluted journey into Iran, and approximately twenty minutes into their flight, encountered the first of their two objectives.

  The SAM site lay about fifty miles from the Iraqi border and about six miles from the desert airstrip that was the helo sortie's secondary objective of the night. The SAM site was a high-to-medium envelope threat, comprised as it was of SA-10 launchers and their search-track radars that were capable of engaging aircraft out to sixty thousand feet, as well as older SA-9 platforms.

  The SAM site -- actually there were two of them, counting the Roland battery and revetmented "Shilka" ZSU 1-23-4 triple-A guns at the airstrip -- posed a serious threat to the hump of the camel and had to be taken out first thing. One AH-1Z gun ship was deemed enough to do the job, with the second helo tasked with securing the airstrip and the third along for backup. And so it came to pass as the Vipers neared the first mission objective.

  At this stage in the mission, the attack choppers had been flying nap of the earth or NOE as opposed to the low-level and contour flight paths inbound to their targets. NOE was the safest way to fly, but it was also the slowest, so it was reserved for the most critical and dangerous stretches of the trip and for the final few seconds before reaching the engagement zone.

  Now, only a short distance off the desert, the lead chopper executed the pop-up maneuver called unmasking and sprang from under ten feet to an altitude of about thirty feet above ground. Below, the heavy vehicles that made up the launchers, radars, power supplies and transportation for the missile battery were visible to the aircrew in the greens and blacks of night vision head-up displays.

  A human figure sprang into action, firing a Kalashnikov variant as he ran toward one of the trucks, crying out a warning, but it was too late for him or anyone else on the ground. In an instant, HARM anti-radar missiles shoot off the launch rails at either side of the AH-1Z, slamming into the radar trucks and blowing them sky high in a thunderclap of flame.

  Zuni strikes followed the HARM rounds
off the launchers, taking out communications trucks and support vehicles, and blowing apart other Iranian soldiers regardless of whether they were trying to hide or trying to fight.

  As the AH-1Z circled the target, the pilot brought its nose cannon into play, slaving it back and forth to spray red tracer fire into whatever happened to be left semi-intact in the zone of death and fire below, including soldiers trying to surrender with their hands raised in the air, these latter being blown limb from limb by the firepower directed against them.

  Modern war and modern society has desensitized Americans to the full implications of what their weapons did to the things they struck. To the young combatants onboard the chopper, the Iranians had about as much reality as Nintendo simulations.

  The other two choppers had by this time passed on toward the main objective, reaching it only a few minutes later. The small desert airstrip lay vulnerable beneath the moonless, star-flecked sky. The runway was large enough to land a C-5B Galaxy -- a plane dubbed "Fat Albert" by its crews -- loaded about one-third to capacity.

  The C-5 -- the hump of the camel -- would be barreling in behind the gun ships, but it would be full to capacity with men and materiél, including fuel bladders to re-tank the helos. Much of the weight would be reduced by LOREX-dropping the mechanized armor and heavy guns it carried, and then the transport would circle and land to debark the troops onboard.

  First the airstrip had to be secured, and the second and third gun ships were soon engaged in doing precisely this. The work went quicker because there were fewer targets to contend with here, and the battle -- if you could call a turkey-shoot a battle -- was over almost as fast as it had begun. Their grim work now accomplished, the Vipers hovered at a safe distance, giving the inbound Fat Albert a wide berth.