by Robert Gandt
None answered.
He turned to face Abu. “You,” he said. “Come with me.”
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Kifri, Iraq
The prisoner heard the clink of the key in the cell door. He didn’t look up. He continued scribbling in his notebook, ignoring the clang of the iron door as it swung against the wall.
Someone entered the room. The prisoner heard the scrape of boots on the rough concrete, coming toward the table where he sat writing in his notebook. He ignored the visitor.
“Gather your things,” said a voice that sounded like gravel. “You’re leaving.”
The prisoner didn’t respond. He took his time, finishing the passage in the notebook. He closed the notebook, then lay the ballpoint atop it.
Finally he gazed up at the visitor. The man wore the mottled green fatigues and broad leather belt of a former Iraqi army officer. A holstered semi-automatic dangled from the belt. The officer looked vaguely familiar. What was his name? The prisoner couldn’t remember. Maybe he never knew. He no longer concerned himself with such things.
“Where am I going?”
“Don’t ask,” said the officer. “Be ready in half an hour.”
The prisoner continued staring at the officer. It was coming to him now. He remembered the face, but the name still eluded him. He’d been present back in the old days, at one of the interrogations, one of the bad ones. The officer had stood there, hands clasped behind him, observing with a pitiless, blank-faced expression while the interrogators extracted the answers they wanted.
He was wearing that same expression now. For another long moment, the prisoner locked gazes with the officer. Abruptly the officer turned on his heel, making another grating noise on the concrete. He clanged the door shut behind him.
A rush of trepidation swept over the prisoner like a winter chill. Leaving? Why?
He remembered leaving Abu Graib Prison and being taken to this place, somewhere in the northeast of Iraq. How long ago had that been? A year? Two? Perhaps more. He had lost his ability to measure time.
All he knew was that he didn’t want to leave. It wasn’t a rational thought, but he’d abandoned rational thinking years ago. This cell was his only security. Not at all rational, but he didn’t care. It was his reality.
For several minutes he sat there, not moving. He peered around at his surroundings—gray walls with splotched plaster, a single high, barred window, narrow cot along one wall. In a corner stood a greasy wooden table with a basin for bathing. Another table served as his writing desk.
For a quarter of his life he had lived in such a place. First Abu Graib, then Kifri. He no longer thought of it as a cell. It was a burrow, a nest, a hiding place. He was a subterranean animal, hidden like a mole from the eyes of the world.
Be ready, the officer had said. Gather your things. Was that a joke? Everything he owned he could carry under one arm. His possessions amounted to an extra pair of coarsely woven brown trousers, a couple of chambray shirts, a few toiletry items. And there were the ballpoint pen and the spiral notebooks.
Why am I leaving?
He could only guess. Long ago, before the government of Iraq fell to the Americans, they had moved him from Baghdad to this place. They wanted to keep his existence a secret, he presumed.
Now they were moving him again. Why?
So they can execute me.
That had to be it. It was the fate that he had expected since the first few weeks of captivity, after they’d gotten what they wanted from him. During the worst of the interrogations, he had begged them to execute him. They didn’t oblige him.
Now it didn’t matter. After this many years in captivity, nothing mattered.
Chapter 3 — Incident Over Iran
Tabruz, Iran, 31,000 feet
1145, Thursday, 11 March
What the hell are we doing here?
It was the question that always came to Brick Maxwell’s mind at times like this. Five miles below lay the vast brownness of Iraq—or maybe Iran, it was hard to tell from up here—spreading beneath him like a great empty moonscape. Except that it wasn’t empty. Somewhere in the mottled terrain were angry men with an abiding hatred of all things American. They were armed with exotic weaponry, some of it capable of bringing down sophisticated jet fighters.
Which was what they had attempted to do to a flight of four British Tornadoes a couple of hours earlier during a reconnaissance sweep up the Shatt al Arab waterway, along the border between Iraq and Iran. Someone—Iranians, ex-Iraqis, or some new team in the league—had targeted them with acquisition radar.
It lasted only a few seconds. Before the Brits could respond, the radars went dark. From the brief emission signature recorded by the Rivet Joint RC-135 controlling the fighters, the best guess was an SA-2 missile site.
Whose missiles? wondered Maxwell.
The cast of players in the region of the Tigris and Euphrates valleys had become confused. The Iraqis were no longer a threat to allied aircraft. The shaky Iranian government had so many internal problems that it paid only scant attention to the allied fighters that patrolled their border. The central government was giving way to factions, and the entire region—Iran and Iraq—were in danger of becoming Balkanized.
But somebody down there definitely had an attitude. The Russian-built SA-2 missile—NATO codename Guideline—was the same basic missile that brought down Francis Gary Powers’s U-2 over Russia in 1960. Its analog signal processor was ancient technology by the standards of modern digital warfare, but the Russians had made sure it was the best analog system available. Despite its age, the continually updated SA-2 was still a lethal high altitude killer.
“Snow King, Runner One,” called Maxwell, “say the picture.”
“Picture still clear, Runner.” “Snow King” was the call sign for the weapons controller on the AWACS, a four-engine Boeing E-3C Sentry, on station over the Persian Gulf. He was reporting that the radar picture was showing no threats. Maxwell recognized the voice—a young Air Force first lieutenant named Surofchek.
Maxwell acknowledged. The AWACS was now their only source of data from the ground below. The Rivet Joint, whose sensors and antennae were best suited for distinguishing surface activity, had used up its loiter time and gone home. The KH-13 reconnaissance satellite that linked imaging data, via the AWACS, to patrolling fighters, was on the back side of its orbit. The next one wouldn’t pass overhead for another ninety minutes.
A mile to the left, Maxwell could see his wingman, Lt. B.J. Johnson, in a combat spread formation. Somewhere off to his right was a section of two more Super Hornets—Cdr. Bullet Alexander and his wingman, Lt. Pearly Gates.
In addition to their two external fuel tanks, Maxwell and Alexander were each carrying a Mk 83 thousand-pound laser-guided bomb, an AGM-88C HARM anti-radiation missile, plus their air-to-air loads of two AIM-9 Sidewinders and two AIM-120 AMRAAM missiles. The two wingmen, Johnson and Gates, carried the same weaponry except for the HARMs. Each jet contained a full bay of twenty-millimeter cannon ammo.
On his center multi-function display Maxwell could see every member of his flight. Each jet had FFDL—fighter-to-fighter data link, or “fiddle.” Even when out of visual range they could maintain awareness of each other’s position. Fiddle was the modern fighter pilot’s secret weapon.
They were nearly at the northern end of the sweep. Peering at the image of Alexander’s Hornet in the display, Maxwell had to laugh. He knew that at this moment Alexander was praying that someone—anyone—down there would light up a targeting radar long enough long enough to qualify as a bona fide hostile.
It was unusual that a squadron skipper and his XO would be on the same flight. XO’s didn’t fly as wingmen—at least in normal circumstances. When Alexander learned that Maxwell was taking out an armed reconnaissance flight to look for SAMs he couldn’t stay out of the action. Maxwell understood Alexander’s frustration. Even though he was a commander and the executive officer of the Roadrunners, Alexander’s career tim
ing had caused him to miss every critical combat activity. He wanted to make up for lost time. Bullet wanted to—
Tweet. . .tweet. . .tweet.
Maxwell’s RWR—Radar Warning Receiver—was chirping an intermittent signal. Not a strong, steady warning, just a low energy alert.
“Runner One, Runner two,” called Alexander. “Are you getting hits?”
Maxwell punched up the page in his display, checking the targeting radar library. There. He saw it, flashing at irregular intervals.
“Affirmative. Looks like a Fan Song acquisition signal.” Fan Song was the codename for the SA-2 system’s acquisition and missile control radar. Once it acquired a target, it then transmitted the guidance data to the SA-2’s tracking radar.
Everyone knew the Rules of Engagement. Anything short of a steady warning from an air defense site was not grounds for an attack. This was a spurious signal, as if someone at the missile site was playing with them, flipping the radar on and off.
Just to piss off Bullet Alexander.
< >
It was working.
They’re yanking my chain, Alexander fumed. The little peckerheads are just begging to have a HARM fired into their hooch.
He guessed that the fire control site was somewhere around Tabruz, just inside Iran. It was close—about fifty miles—to the Iranian air base at Dezful. Careful, he told himself. It could also be a sucker play.
There was one way to find out.
“Runner One, Runner Three,” Alexander called. “How about we make a pass over Tabruz with the FLIR, just to see what they’ve got cooking.” The FLIR—Forward Looking Infra Red—could pick up the telltale heat signs from vehicle exhausts and generator plants around a launch site.
Several seconds passed, and he knew Maxwell was studying the situation in his display. Alexander and Gates were nearly on top of Tabruz, while Maxwell was forty miles to the west.
“Go for it, Runner Three,” said Maxwell. “Hard deck is twenty-thousand.”
“Runner Three, roger the hard deck.”
Twenty thousand feet was the minimum altitude mandated in the Rules of Engagement for overflying a potentially hostile site. It kept the jets above most of the small-caliber AA fire and high enough to counter a SAM launch.
Or so they hoped.
Actually, thought Alexander, a little hostile intent from the switch-flippers down there would make his day. They just needed to show enough bad attitude to qualify as bona fide targets.
Alexander made a quick check outside, seeing the gray silhouette of Pearly Gates’s jet, still a mile off his right wing. Exactly where he was supposed to be.
He guessed that Pearly was unhappy bout being bumped back to dash four in this flight. Alexander had pulled rank and inserted himself into the flight, removing the junior pilot, Hozer Miller, and bumping Pearly back to the dash-four spot. Instead of being a section leader, Pearly was now Alexander’s wingman.
Tough shit, thought Alexander. Who said life was fair for junior officers? He’d make it up to Pearly with a few beers at the Gulf Lounge in Bahrain.
He eased the nose of the Super Hornet over, letting the airspeed build as he descended to the level off altitude of twenty thousand. Coming up under the nose was the brown patchwork of Tabruz, an ancient village in the foothills of Iran’s Zagros mountain range.
He wanted to get a look at this place, scope it with the FLIR. If his guess was correct, he’d surely pick up a—
“Check twelve o’clock, XO,” called Pearly. “We’d better start jinking.” “Jinking” was evasive maneuvering to throw off anti-aircraft gunners.
Alexander snapped his attention out of the cockpit. Shit. Directly ahead of his jet—four puffs, black and roiling like ugly mushrooms. AA fire.
He yanked the nose up and to the left. Get your head out of the cockpit, Alexander. He’d been focused inside and damn near flew into a flak trap. Now he owed Pearly more than a couple of beers.
Still jinking, he hauled the nose of the Super Hornet back to the right. A quick glance to the right confirmed that Pearly was doing his own very enthusiastic jinking.
“Runner Four spiked at twelve,” yelled Pearly, signaling that he had just been acquired by a hostile radar. Alexander saw Pearly’s jet rolling left, slicing beneath him. A stream of chaff was spewing behind the diving Super Hornet.
Alexander followed his wingman, breaking hard to the left. With his left thumb he toggled his own chaff dump.
What the hell is it? he wondered. A SAM? Or AAA fire control radar?
He was checking his display again when he heard Pearly’s call. “Burner Two hot! Hot on Runner Four.”
Burner Two was code for an SA-2 surface-to-air missile. Hot meant it was airborne and targeting Pearly’s jet.
Still rolling hard to the left, trying to keep Pearly’s jet in sight, he peered toward Tabruz. Something down there caught his eye—like a roman candle with a long orange plume.
Another missile—it had to be a second SA-2—just leaving the launcher. The first one was already out there tracking Pearly.
His own Radar Warning Receiver was singing now. He glanced down by his right knee, to his RWR display. He saw a flashing numeral “2”.
Now he was targeted. Two more missiles were coming from a second site.
Four goddamn SAMs in the air.
“Runners egress!” called Alexander. “It’s a trap. Take heading Two-zero-zero.”
He had a good view of the first SAM now. It looked like a telephone pole arcing into the sky, trailing a long thin plume of fire. It was flying a classic pursuit curve toward Pearly Gates’s Super Hornet.
Alexander jammed the yellow-and-black striped button labeled “Emergency Jettison.” He felt a rapid series of thumps as nine thousand pounds of fuel and weapons departed the jet, making the Super Hornet instantly lighter, more maneuverable.
He yanked the nose back to the left, following Pearly in his own missile defense. He issued instructions to himself, willing himself to stay calm. Get to the beam. Put out chaff. Make the missile turn. Bleed its energy.
The first missile was still on an intercept course with Pearly. Not far behind, Alexander knew, was the second pair—the ones with his name on them.
He could see Pearly’s jet maneuvering below and to his left. Pearly still had his external stores. “Runner Four, emergency jettison,” Alexander called. A second later he saw Pearly’s external tanks and weapons separate and whirl away in the fighter’s slipstream.
For a fleeting moment it occurred to Alexander that the jettisoned HARM might be recovered intact by the Iranians. Just as quickly, he pushed it from his mind. Let the gomers have it. It was more urgent that they get away from these SAMs flying up their butts.
“Runner Four,” he called, “continue left, limiter pull, egress heading 180.” A limiter pull—cranking the Hornet into the tightest turn that the computerized flight control system would allow—was their only hope of beating the SA-2s.
Alexander rolled out above and to the right of Pearly’s jet. The turn had put them tail-on to the oncoming SAMs.
Now what? Break turn into the missiles, try to out turn them? Or continue and try to out run them. He estimated they had to be near the edge of the SA-2s’ range limit.
Run. At least until the missiles got very damned close. Maybe the SAMs would be out of effective range before they caught up with the Hornets.
“Runners, gate,” he ordered, and pushed his throttles to maximum afterburner. As he felt the thrust of the two afterburners kick in, he peered again over his shoulder.
The missiles were still there. Closing fast.
< >
Maxwell saw them too. Near the top of his own HARM display was the big, bright “2”—the symbol for an active SA-2 missile.
He did a quick assessment. By the Rules of Engagement, he required clearance to fire his HARM anti-radar missile. The weapons controller on the AWACS would have to ask the ACE—Airborne Command Element—who had stand-alone authority
to issue a clearance.
But he knew this ACE—an Air Force major named Hatch. Hatch was a cautious type who would get on the line to his boss, the Joint Task Force Commander, a three star based in Riyadh, and they would discuss the situation. By the time they issued clearance to fire HARMs, Bullet and Pearly would be puffs of smoke.
To hell with the clearance.
He flipped the Master Arm switch on. In his HARM display he assigned the seeker to the numeral 2 — the SA-2 site that was tracking them. He waited two seconds until a steady box formed around it. He mashed the pickle button with his thumb.
The HARM roared off its station beneath the Hornet, trailing fire like a Roman candle.
“Magnum, magnum,” he called, using the brevity code for the HARM launch. At the same time he saw the time-to-go digital countdown begin in the HUD: Twenty-five seconds. . . twenty-four. . .
He still couldn’t see Bullet or Pearly’s jets, but in the distance he could make out the ominous black smoke trails of the SA-2s. He could also see the fiery tail of his own HARM missile, just passing the apogee of its flight path, arcing downward toward Tabruz.
There was nothing more he could do. He called the AWACS controller. “Runner flight engaged by Burner Two, vicinity Tabruz. Three and Four defending, One and Two beaming south, Magnums in the air.”
That’ll wake them up, he thought. Somebody had just fired HARM missiles at an unidentified target in a supposedly non-hostile country. And, oh, yeah, sorry about that. I didn’t bother with a clearance.
Several seconds passed, then he heard the controller’s strained voice. “We copy that, Runner. Green south. Air picture clear.”
Good, thought Maxwell. The egress to the south was clear. The discussion about the HARM shot would come later.
Bullet Alexander’s came over the radio. “Skipper, say the HARM time to go.”
Maxwell glanced at the countdown on his HUD. “Ten seconds.”
“Too long,” said Alexander. “The first SAM is—”