Stephen Coonts - The Disciple

“Relax, relax,” Grafton said. “I’m a civilian.” He held out his hand for a shake.

When they had shaken hands, Pepper led the way toward the only desk in the room. He had been sacked out on a couch that had seen better days. “I got a message today from Washington,” he said. “Seems the director of the CIA wants to personally talk to you, if you show up. The message was classified, so I sent it back to the command post for safekeeping.”

“I’ll call him when I can,” Grafton said. “In the meantime, how about a ride to Tehran in your Hind?”

“Terrible night for flying a chopper-lots of wind-and Tehran is a damn long way. Have to refuel at a clandestine fuel depot on the Khar River. Dangerous as hell to use it.”

“Right.”

“I hear they are about to have a war over there,” Pepper added cautiously, and glanced at his watch.

“Bad news travels fast,” Jake Grafton said and threw his bag on the couch. “If they’re gonna have a war, be a shame to miss it. So, when can we go and how long will it take to get there?”

U.S. Army Staff Sergeant Jack Colby and his three Special Forces colleagues were sitting in a hide two miles from the entrance to Tunnel Hotel, one of the twenty-five Iranian missile launch sites identified by the Americans. Just now Colby was examining the troops around the tunnel area with an infrared telescope mounted on a tripod. He and his three colleagues had parachuted in two nights ago and worked all night on their hide, which was under a cliff and concealed in front by brush. They were ninety miles and a chain of mountains from the Iraq border.

The soldiers used the satellite network to talk hourly with the CENT-COM controller for Special Forces on the ground in Iran. The controller relayed the message from headquarters, which was that the general and staff believed that tonight was the night, but Jack Colby was already convinced.

Yesterday, during the daylight hours, three army patrols had searched the area with the aid of dogs, no doubt looking for any Special Forces team that might be in the area.

Fortunately the chemicals the team sprinkled around the hide masked their scent from the dogs. Two searchers had actually stood ten feet from the entrance to the hide and pissed on the rocks, but the American team remained undetected.

One team, at another tunnel, had been flushed yesterday and got into a shooting scrape. A helicopter had plucked them out after they had run for twelve miles and twice ambushed their pursuers. This news Colby learned from the CENTCOM controller.

Colby turned the telescope over to one of his mates while he crawled outside for a look around. The wind had definitely eased up, but the air still contained a lot of dust, which made the image in the telescope fuzzy and indistinct.

Maybe the Iranians will postpone their launch , Colby thought. Man, why can’t we have a war in a nice place, with good weather ?

When he crawled back into the hide, the man at the binoculars said, “Better take a look, Jack. They’re rolling out a missile.”

Colby glued his eye to the telescope. Adjusted the focus knob a tad… and there it was, big as life: a truck pulling a trailer with a big missile on it. As Colby watched, the truck crept perhaps a hundred yards away from the tunnel entrance and turned ninety degrees, so that the tip of the missile faced southeast and the exhaust was directed well away from the entrance. When the truck came to a halt, half a dozen men who had been following along on foot began lowering mechanical feet on the sides of the bed, to stabilize it.

While this was going on, another truck pulling a missile crept from the tunnel.

It quickly became apparent that only two missiles were going to be launched. “How many missiles do you think are in that tunnel?” one of the soldiers asked Colby.

“I don’t know. Pick a number.”

“Well, at two at a time, these guys are going to be at it a while.”

“Call CENTCOM,” Colby said. “The bastards are really going to do it.”

At the CENTCOM Operations Center in Kuwait, General Martin Lincoln was monitoring reports from his Special Forces teams in Iran and from air force units operating MQ-1 Predator and MQ-9 Reaper drones over Iran. These unmanned aircraft carried sophisticated sensors, including high-tech video and infrared cameras, the data from which was data-linked via satellite back to the control sites, which saw the data in real time. He was also getting data-linked information from AWACS aircraft aloft over Iraq, the Persian Gulf and the Gulf of Oman, and summaries of satellite surveillance, although that data was sometimes hours old.

Unfortunately, the storm in central Iran had played havoc with the drones. The wind had kept all of the ScanEagles, the smallest, unarmed drones, on the ground. Only now were the Predators and Reapers airborne and getting back into position. Still, airborne dirt would degrade their capabilities. General Lincoln also suspected that, at dawn, with clearing weather, the Iranian air force would launch fighters to hunt for and shoot down the larger drones. Ground control interception (GCI) frequencies were being monitored, so he would know if and when the fighters launched.

Finally, he was keeping track of four flights of four F-15E Strike Eagles that had just launched from Balad. These planes were carrying GPS and laser-guided bombs, and they were going to attack northern Iranian missile sites. Their tactical electronic warfare system had been expanded to include the ALQ-199 black boxes, the mystery boxes that Jake Grafton hoped would fool the Iranian antiaircraft missile systems. The men in the planes would soon find out how successful Grafton’s deception operation had been, although they knew nothing about it. General Lincoln, however, did know, and he had his fingers crossed.

Inevitably, the Iranians would get some nukes in the air, and then Lincoln’s forces had to intercept them. The cruise missiles armed with conventional explosives were essentially decoys, since they weren’t very accurate, didn’t pack much of a punch and couldn’t do strategically significant damage even if they hit the military bases where they were aimed. Their purpose, as Grafton had pointed out, was to overload the American defensive system and mask the nukes. The key to a successful defense was to get ordnance on those missile sites as soon as possible after Iran had fired the first shot-and, if possible, to prevent the Iranians from launching a second wave.

Just now Lincoln sat wondering how many nukes would be in the first wave. All of them? One or two? Another unknown in the equation…

Now, as Lincoln received reports from Special Forces teams on the ground and the drone control room in Iraq that missiles were being rolled out and positioned for firing, he used the encrypted voice link to the National Command Center to call the president.

“They are rolling them out,” General Lincoln said. “I expect first launch within minutes.”

The activity at the entrance to the executive bunker in Tehran was frantic. Cars continued to arrive in front of the mosque in the Mosalla Prayer Grounds and disgorge their passengers, who each grabbed a suitcase or bag or child and rushed off toward the entrance, where a knot of soldiers apparently consulted a list and waved them through.

“Looks like folks fighting for lifeboats on the Titanic ,” G. W. said.

I looked at my watch. It was pushing two thirty in the morning. Dawn would come about five, and the sun a short time later. I wondered when the bunker was going to be locked down.

“Do you know anything about the executive survival plan?” I asked Davar, who was glued to a set of binoculars. Probably watching for her father and brother, Khurram, to arrive, I figured, although I didn’t ask.