Stephen Coonts - The Disciple

So I am not to be immediately shot , Sultani thought. I have earned a reprieve. No doubt a brief one.

“I am a loyal Iranian soldier,” he said.

“Which is precisely why I am speaking to you,” Ahmadinejad said, using all his charisma and charm. “In a war there are always casualties. Those we must accept as we do our best to prevail upon Iran’s-and God’s-enemies. With nuclear weapons we can and must strike them a blow from which the Zionists and the Great Satan will never recover. We must light the fire of holy war in the heart of every believer. If we can achieve that -and the Supreme Leader and I believe it is within our grasp-we will set the people of the world on the path that leads to Allah’s kingdom on earth. That was the task the Prophet set before us. That is the highest and best use of our lives.”

“I understand,” Sultani said.

“Good. We need your help. The forces of Satan are well armed and aggressive. They will do their best to serve the Devil by defeating us.” He paused, then placed his face inches from Sultani, uncomfortably close. “We have successfully fooled them so far. It has been a great deception, and our triumph will soon be plain. But that was merely one battle. Allah requires us to try to win the war for the souls of all mankind. That is our duty. And Allah will reward each and every one of us who does his duty.”

Ahmadinejad drew back, scrutinized Sultani’s face. Seemingly satisfied, he turned and left the room. Hazra al-Rashid followed him, leaving Sultani alone with his thoughts and his conscience.

The Pentagon briefer, an air force major who wore an impeccably tailored uniform, pointed at the screen with a small penlight that emitted a red light. “Ladies and gentlemen, we are here today to do a preplanning brief. We will try to outline the military problem as we, the staff of the Joint Chiefs, believe it to be.”

No one had any comments, so the major continued smoothly, “We have identified twenty-five missile sites using satellite imagery. They are all located near a small population center, all have a military presence-ranging from a little to a lot-and all are underground, in what appear to be drift tunnels bored into cliffs.” Using the penlight, he pointed them out. “They are spread out over an eleven-hundred-mile arc that runs along the western and southern sides of Iran. These locations were obviously chosen for geological reasons, but siting them too deep into Iran would have given the enemy too much warning when the missiles were launched. Conversely, placing the sites too near the frontier would have made them easier to attack with air strikes or commandos.”

On the image projected on the screen, each site was depicted with a letter of the alphabet, starting with A.

“If you look closely,” the major continued, “you will see a ballistic missile sitting on its tractor-trailer launcher outside Tunnel Hotel.” The red light rested momentarily on the missile. “Each tunnel contains missiles, anywhere from one to fifty or more, and we believe all are on launchers. When the order comes to shoot them, the transporters are simply run out of the tunnel into the desert, a hydraulic ramp on each lifts the missile into a launching position, and when the systems are running and checked out, it is fired. It’s the old Soviet system, simple, reliable and-for a strategic offensive weapon-reasonably fast. Ballistic missiles will be launched from a vertical position, the cruise missiles from approximately thirty degrees of elevation. We estimate that a missile could be pulled from the tunnel and launched within twenty minutes.”

Jake Grafton looked around at the other thirty or so people listening to the brief. In the front row, beside General Heth, sat the president and Sal Molina. Arranged down the row and onto the next one were flag officers, including the entire Joint Chiefs and the heads of some major commands, including the U.S. Central Command, into whose jurisdiction Iran fell.

The briefer motored on, discussing missile guidance systems. The old Soviet missiles used gyro-based guidance systems, and the limiting factor on the speed with which the missile could be launched was the time required for the gyro to spin up to operating speed and be properly aligned. Gyros were wildly inaccurate-some of the Scud missiles fired from Iraq during the 1991 Gulf War had missed Israel. Iranian missiles were thought to have updated guidance systems, perhaps an inertial nav system or even GPS, the global positioning system, either of which would dramatically improve their accuracy.

“The military problem is quite simple,” the briefer said. “For political reasons we must wait until at least one missile is in the air, and then react as best we can. Since we don’t know the Iranian launch schedule, one assumes that they will get more than one missile in the air before we manage to destroy the ones still on the ground.”

“There will be a lot more than one missile in the air,” General Heth said heavily. He spoke directly to the briefer. “Tell these folks how we think they are going to do it.”

“The limitation on the Iranians’ ability to launch a cloud of missiles has always been the number of trained technicians they have,” the briefer explained. “We believe it takes about eight men to fire one missile. If each site has five eight-man crews, that is a thousand trained technicians. That many, we believe, is about the practical limit. Analysis of the living quarters around these sites supports that.

“Our best guess is that they will roll out five missiles, each with its own crew, and fire all five. Then the technicians will go back into the tunnel and bring out five more. That implies a maximum launch rate of about two hundred fifty missiles per hour.”

There was more, a lot more, in the general overview, which didn’t go into details. Fifteen minutes into the briefing, the president asked to see a certain map again, one that had been displayed early in the brief. In a moment it filled the giant screen behind the briefer.

On this map were displayed the targets the CIA believed the Iranians wished to hit, almost fifty targets. The twenty-five suspected launch sites were depicted. Connecting the launch sites and possible targets were hundreds of black lines, lines generated by a computer based on probabilities, such as range of missile, terrain, flight time, defensive reaction time and a half-dozen other factors. No one suggested the map was accurate: It was merely a prediction.

“The whole purpose of their attack,” said William Wilkins, the CIA director, “ if they attack, is to fire up Muslims worldwide and put Iran in the driver’s seat for World War III. They have to sell their story worldwide, and they don’t want doubts.”

“This may sound ridiculous,” the president replied, “but we don’t want to wind up on the short end of the political stick either. If only a few cruise missiles squirt out of Iran and we whack them hard, believe me, the Iranians and Al Jazeera will say we attacked first, and the Iranians launched a few in self-defense.”

General Heth weighed in. “Mr. President, if everything goes perfectly, and in war it never does, there is no way we can smack all those missile sites before the second salvo. We took a hard look at the Special Forces option, which was inserting Green Berets near enough to the launch sites that they could launch antitank weapons at the tunnel entrances and effectively shut them down. Unfortunately, every one of those sites is guarded. We think there are perhaps five sites where we can insert teams that have a reasonable chance of surviving until missile launch. Five! Believe me, a cloud of missiles is going to come out of Iran.” General Heth gestured at the map on the wall.