The Saudi-Iranian War

by Ted Halstead

  All Steve heard was a terse series of “Yes” and “No” until Mark put down the phone with a visible look of disgust.

  Steve said nothing, but was obviously curious.

  Mark sighed. “The CIA. They’ve found nothing, and wanted to know if we’ve found anything. I told them no.”

  Steve nodded. “I was about to suggest that we look south. We’ve looked east and west and the CIA has looked north, so whether it makes sense or not, that’s what’s left. I also suggest we skip the area between the Iraqi highway where they were last seen and the Saudi border. By now, if that’s the way they went they’re either at the border or have already crossed it. Besides, there’s nothing between that highway and the border but desert, so what would they be doing there?”

  Mark looked thoughtful for a moment, and finally nodded. “Agreed. You take the sector near the Saudi-Kuwaiti border, and I’ll look at the Saudi border further west.”

  Ten minutes later, Steve tapped his monitor. “Take a look at this.”

  Mark leaned over and immediately said, “Fuel tankers and supply trucks.”

  Steve nodded. "A lot of them. The Triton‘s pass shows no people, and no vehicle movement.”

  Mark frowned. “So they abandoned them? Why?”

  Steve tapped another key, and brought up an Iraqi highway map with the tankers and trucks appearing as a dot at the border.

  Steve could hear Mark’s intake of breath. “The highway ends at the border.

  Only the tracked vehicles could continue. The tanks and armored personnel carriers.”

  Steve nodded. “That’s how it looks to me.”

  Mark picked up his phone. “Look for them, starting due south. I have to make some calls.”

  Steve reviewed images for another fifteen minutes, while his boss made phone calls. All Steve had to do was glance at Mark to get a hopeful, “Something?”

  Steve shrugged and said, “Maybe. But I’m not sure what I’m looking at.

  It’s dark there now, so the Triton has switched to thermal imaging. There’s not enough of a return here to be the Iranian armored force, or even a substantial part of it. It’s all I can find, though, and it’s definitely moving. It’s also moving faster than anything like livestock. Any ideas?”

  Mark looked intently at the series of images, and finally shrugged. “Beats me. None of this makes any sense. I’m going to ask for the Triton to take a more detailed look at that specific area. Maybe then we can figure out what’s going on.”

  National Reconnaissance Office, Chantilly, Virginia

  Mark Rhode threw down the crust of the pizza slice that was the last of the only food he and Steve Foster had eaten over the previous ten hours. “So,” he said, “dawn in ten minutes.”

  Steve nodded. “And from what we’ve been told, the Triton should be getting us the more focused look we asked for any minute at whatever’s moving down there.”

  Right on cue, both their monitors lit up with a “feed active” message. Soon a series of high-resolution images appeared, becoming clearer as the rising sun provided more illumination of the landscape.

  For a long twenty minutes, all they saw was Saudi desert that looked exactly like the Iraqi desert they had already looked at for hours.

  Suddenly Steve pointed at his monitor. “See that, on the horizon?”

  It was a formless cloud of dust. The Triton was headed right for it.

  Five minutes later, the Triton‘s cameras were pointed straight at the billowing dust cloud rising several meters from the desert surface.

  Steve shook his head. “Why can’t we see anything but dust? I mean, I see shapes and shadows, but I can’t pick out a single tank or APC. Am I going blind?”

  Mark frowned. “If you are, I am too. Something’s producing all that dust, and Iranian armor is the obvious candidate. But I don’t see how they could hide from cameras of the quality mounted on the Triton. Anyway, I’m calling it. Until someone comes up with a better explanation for a dust cloud headed south from the Iraqi border, it looks to me like an Iranian armored force is on its way to Riyadh."

  Just as Mark reached for his phone, it rang. Again all Steve heard was a series of “Yes” and “No” responses, but this time followed by a "Is that confirmed?", followed by silence.

  “OK, we’re not crazy. They’ve been looking at the same images at the CIA, and have reached the same conclusion we did. It makes just as much sense to them as it does to us.”

  Steve raised his eyebrows. “You mean none.”

  Mark nodded. “Exactly.”

  Steve asked, "What were you asking about confirmation for?"

  Mark hesitated, and then shrugged. "It will be on the news soon enough. A nuclear bomb took out a desalination plant on Saudi Arabia's Gulf coast.

  Nobody has yet claimed responsibility."

  Steve frowned. "Couldn't this have something to do with the Iranians moving armor south into Saudi Arabia, if that's what's happening?"

  Mark shrugged, and replied, "Maybe. But if it was the Iranians, why not just use the bomb to attack Riyadh? I think there's still a lot here we don't understand."

  Steve nodded, and said nothing. On that point, they were in complete agreement.

  300 Kilometers North of Riyadh

  Prince Khaled bin Fahd was furious, and he knew he had to get his temper in check. First, the Crown Prince had tried to forbid him from flying this mission, even after the Americans had sent their alert and after the armored patrol from King Khalid Military City had failed to report in. Only after he had threatened to resign as Commander of the Air Force would the Crown Prince relent, but then only after making Khaled promise that he would do nothing but observe and report.

  Khaled had no intention of keeping that promise.

  The Houthis had crossed into Saudi territory many times, but there was little near the Yemeni border but desert. Still, they were doing everything possible to punish the Houthis for their arrogance. Khaled was not one of the spineless who cried over dead Yemeni women and children. Children grew up quickly to take the place of their dead fathers. Women gave birth to more fighters.

  As long as the Houthis aimed missiles at his capital and invaded his country, as far as Khaled was concerned they all deserved death.

  But none of that compared to the Iranians daring to launch an armored assault at the heart of the Kingdom. How could even the Iranians do something so outrageous, and so suicidal?

  Khaled took a deep breath, drawing in the fragrance of the rich leather covering the seat of his Eurofighter Typhoon. Of course, the other Typhoons in the RSAF were not so equipped. Khaled had the seat on this particular Typhoon, on which he had trained in the UK, covered with the same leather used on the seats of a top-end Rolls Royce. To their credit, the British hadn’t even blinked when he made the request.

  This was one of the many things he liked about the British. They knew how things were supposed to be done in a monarchy.

  Khaled had been forced to leave Yemen alone in order to avoid disrupting already planned operations. This meant that the three other planes flying with him today did not have men from his squadron, and were flying F-15s rather than Typhoons. Here too, Khaled had been forced to bow to the Crown Prince, since he would have preferred to fly this mission alone.

  Still, there was nothing on his radar return, and his threat warnings were all completely silent. Wait, on the horizon, was that the dust cloud the Americans were talking about?

  Suddenly, his cockpit was filled with warning lights and alarms, including ones telling him that the enemy below had not only locked on to his aircraft, but had fired missiles at all four planes in their patrol. The other three fighters did exactly what their American training told them to do. Don’t wait for orders — evade, deploy countermeasures, and then if successful in avoiding damage either reform and attack or retreat depending on orders.

  Well, the truth was that’s what Khaled’s British training said he should do, too.

  Khaled was damned i
f he was going to let a foreign invader attack him without an immediate response. Where before there had been nothing on his radar, he now had a faint return that was just barely good enough for his Brimstone 2 missile to get a lock. Exultantly, Khaled pressed his finger on the trigger, sending the missile on its way.

  The Brimstone 2 was one of the most successful independently developed items of military technology developed by the British in years. Its range had been tripled to sixty kilometers from the Brimstone 1, and it was rated as three times more likely than an AGM-65G Maverick missile to destroy a modern tank.

  Outside Europe, Saudi Arabia was the Brimstone 2’s only buyer.

  In part this was because not many countries outside Europe flew the Typhoon, and even the British had just finished fitting their Typhoons for the Brimstone 2, followed by the Saudis with the help of British contractors in a project that was still underway. The other part was that though the American military was interested in buying the Brimstone 2, its defense lobby had fought hard against importing such a widely used munition.

  Khaled had plenty of experience evading surface to air missiles in Yemen, including the SA-75s the Houthis had modified into surface to surface missiles when they weren’t firing them at RSAF planes. Many of those missiles had been fired far closer to his Typhoon, and he was still here to tell the tale.

  Khaled knew he could do it again. Though he was surprised to see that the invaders had what his instruments said was an S-300, he knew what missiles it could fire, and he knew he had time.

  He yanked his joystick to begin evasive maneuvers, but his Typhoon had run out of time much more quickly than Khaled had thought. The Russian-made missile hit the Typhoon with enough force that ejection would probably have been impossible. Hitting the wing that held the other Brimstone 2 and detonating it meant that Khaled literally didn’t know what hit him.

  Khaled’s death was not in vain, though. The Brimstone 2 was a true “fire-and-forget” missile, and it used its 94 GHz millimeters wave active radar homing capability to avenge the pilot who had launched it. Effective against tanks, it made short work of the S-300, which took a nearby armored personnel carrier with it when it exploded.

  In a way Khaled was not to blame for his failure to survive the mission.

  Two of the three F-15s did not survive either. None of the Saudi pilots knew that they were up against a variant of the Kh-47M2 Kinzhal hypersonic missile recently adapted for surface to air launch. Instead of the SA-75’s top speed of Mach 3.5, the Kinzhal’s speed was… Mach 10.

  The only surviving F-15 pilot had escaped by pointing his plane’s nose straight down and pulling up at the last possible second. The Kinzhal’s speed had worked against it and the missile had slammed into the ground, close enough to the F-15 for the shrapnel from its explosion to damage it severely.

  Not badly enough, though, that the pilot couldn’t nurse it back to base in Riyadh to give his report on the very real threat advancing on the capital.

  Chapter Nineteen

  150 Kilometers South of the Iraq-Saudi Border

  Colonel Hamid Mazdaki frowned and shook his head at the report from the S-300 radar operator. Well, there was their answer. That cursed M1A2 tank had obviously managed to get off a report, because now they had company.

  The only good news was that they didn’t yet know just how large the force was, or they would have sent more than a four-plane patrol.

  Hamid wasn’t concerned that the four planes inbound could do any real damage to his force. Instead, it was that they would definitely establish it as a real threat as soon as they were shot down. He had been told that the S-300’s missiles outranged anything the Saudis had, and so expected no casualties from this engagement.

  That expectation lasted less than five minutes, when a tremendous explosion on his force’s far-right flank made him and everyone else in his tank instinctively duck.

  A dark circle on his command console that had been lit told Hamid what he had already feared from the size of the explosion — one of his two S-300s had been destroyed. Willing himself to calm, Hamid picked up his handset and keyed the commander of the surviving S-300. Since the S-300s had been added to his force just before they crossed the Saudi border, he did not know either batteries’ commander.

  “Report,” Hamid ordered.

  “Yes, sir. Commander Khalilli here. Three enemy contacts confirmed destroyed. The fourth appears to be damaged, and is returning to base at low speed.” The commander paused. “The other S-300 has been destroyed by an enemy air-to-ground missile. A nearby armored personnel carrier was also destroyed.”

  Hamid grit his teeth. Better and better. Now there would be an eye witness account of his force’s advance. The weather forecast had been for strong winds to whip up enough desert sand to obscure his force’s location. Instead, there was nothing but a mild breeze, so thanks to the dust cloud they created as they moved his force’s camouflage didn’t conceal their approximate size and position.

  Or apparently prevent lock-on to an S-300.

  “Commander, explain how the enemy was able to destroy one of the S-300s,” Hamid ordered.

  “Yes, sir. We have to remove the camouflage netting to fire. It was less than a minute from removal to firing, but it seems that was long enough for one enemy plane to get a lock,” the commander explained.

  “I was told your missiles outrange anything the enemy planes carry.

  Explain how an enemy plane was able to successfully fire even a single missile,” Hamid ordered, trying to rein in his growing impatience.

  “Sir, I have two answers to that. The first is that enemy plane was the only Typhoon, and the others were F-15s. The Typhoon had a Brimstone 2 missile, with double the range of any ground attack missile we thought the Saudis had. So, we waited too long to fire.”

  There was a deadly silence. “Waited, Commander?” Hamid asked quietly.

  “Yes, sir. The commander of the other S-300 was my superior. He ordered us to wait to fire until the enemy was well within our engagement envelope, to conceal our true capabilities. I believed that was a mistake, but was overruled.”

  Hamid considered this. Of course, he could be talking to the commander who made that mistake, and was now trying to shift the blame to someone no longer alive to defend himself.

  But, he didn’t think so. Like all senior officers, Hamid had plenty of experience listening to excuses, and he could hear real resentment at being overruled in the commander’s voice.

  “Very well, Commander. How do we keep this from happening again?”

  Hamid asked.

  “Sir, we will obviously engage any enemy aircraft as soon as they are within range. We will also give launch priority to any attacking Typhoon.

  Now, there is another matter I need to address.”

  “Yes?”, Hamid said, making a conscious effort to control his impatience.

  “A drone flying at high altitude has been observing us for some time. My superior decided not to report it to you because he did not wish to reveal our true capabilities by shooting it down. He also told me he considered it a waste of our limited stock of missiles to use one to destroy a drone that is unarmed.”

  Hamid shook his head. “And how, Commander, could he possibly know that the drone is unarmed?”

  “Sir, I agreed with him on that point. Its flight profile, both speed and altitude, match the American drone called Triton. So does the size of its radar return. Also, if it were an attack drone, they would have logically used it against us before sending in manned aircraft. Where I disagreed was with the decision not to shoot it down.”

  Hamid nodded to himself. Maybe this man wasn’t a total idiot. “Explain, Commander.”

  “Well, sir, thanks to the current low winds we’re leaving a dust cloud behind us as we move that gives away our position to the drone, even through the best camouflage. I’m sure you don’t want that. I must point out, however, that the drone has moved well away from us since we downed the enemy aircraft. Th
ough we could still successfully engage it, doing so would reveal nearly our entire potential firing range.”

  Hamid grunted. So, shooting down this drone now would have a cost.

  “Commander, can it still see us from its current position?” Hamid asked.

  “Oh, yes. From its current altitude of fifty-five thousand feet it can see about two thousand square miles.”

  Hamid shook his head. “Presumably the Americans can send another if we shoot this one down.”

  “Yes, sir,” the Commander said. “However, from what we know these drones are based in Italy, and so it would take some time to get here.”

  Hamid made his decision. “Very well, continue to track the drone, but leave it alone for now. The forecast is still for winds to pick up soon, and if they do I’m hoping the drone will lose us. I’m sure the Saudis will try another air attack soon, and this time I don’t want any survivors.”

  “Yes, sir. And there is some good news,” the Commander said.

  “Yes, Commander? I would certainly welcome some.”

  “We keep the replacement missile trailers well separated from the launchers, so the total number of missiles we will be able to launch will not be badly affected, particularly since four of the ones the destroyed S-300 had with it were successfully launched. Our rate of fire will be reduced, but if we prioritize the Typhoons I believe we can still protect this force from enemy air attack,” the commander said confidently.

  “Excellent, Commander. Keep me informed,” Hamid said, signing off.

  As he stuck his head outside his rapidly moving tank, Hamid could see the oily smoke rising behind them from the destroyed S-300.

  Well, he mused, at least there was no reason to doubt the surviving S-300 commander’s motivation.

  Bahrain International Airport, Muharraq, Bahrain

  Abdul Rasool looked at the massive bulk of the Chinook cargo helicopter, and was impressed that they had been able to fit it in the hangar. When he saw the size of the air-launched nuclear weapon being loaded into its cargo bay, he understood why it had to be the Chinook.