"Senator Thrailkill. The bastard was trying to get me riled up over the B-2."
"Looks like he succeeded."
Just then Dr. Reiner called out, "Major Bolivar on line two, General."
Wing jerked up the phone, punched the blinking button and listened to the voice on the secure circuit. "General Patton, this is Major Bolivar. I've completed the briefing and the crew is ready to board the aircraft. Is everything still a go, sir?"
Patton saw General Thatcher and Vic Reiner watching and listening intently, along with the CIA liaison from Langley, an Undersecretary of State and a deputy to the Secretary of Defense. The anger Senator Thrailkill stirred in him had his mind reeling, but he pulled himself together enough to say, "Major, tell the crew everybody in the White House Situation Room wishes them good luck and good hunting. The President is counting on them to get the job done. How does it look from that end?"
"Colonel Rodman is about as confident a pilot as I've ever run into, sir. He's ready to go."
Wing forced a smile, put his thumb and forefinger together and gave the okay sign to his colleagues in the Situation Room. They, too, smiled and returned to their own thoughts. Acutely aware of his own jumbled emotions, Patton was thankful that he had Roddy Rodman in the cockpit for this mission. "Give him my personal regards, Major," he said. "As soon as they're airborne, you head on over to Dhahran. I'll contact you there if we need anything further."
"Yes, sir."
"Oh, one other thing." He was beginning to get his thoughts back in order. "Remind Colonel Rodman that his first duty is to get those people out. If there's any trouble on the ground, the troops will try to hold off any interference with his takeoff. He's to get the hell out of there pronto. If necessary, the troops will make their way out to another area, where we can lay on a recovery mission."
6
Shortly before five p.m., when the MH-53J was scheduled to reach the commit point, the White House Situation Room was patched into the satellite. If the chopper did not receive a positive commit thirty minutes prior to its ETA on target, Colonel Rodman would automatically abort the mission. General Philip Patton sat at the desk and spoke into a hand mike. "Red Fox Three-Six, this is Watchman. You have Moonbeam. Repeat, you have Moonbeam. Acknowledge."
As everyone waited in hushed silence, a distinctive "click-click" sound came through the speakers on the wall. Thousands of miles away over the Iranian mountains, Colonel Rodman had keyed his microphone twice, creating the double-click that signaled "message received."
Patton looked across at General Thatcher. "That does it, Henry. We're committed. That's one relief. Now I need to take care of another." All the iced tea at lunch on The Hill and cups of coffee since arriving at the White House were taking a toll on his bladder.
Patton was hardly out of the room when General Sturdivant called. He left a message with Dr. Reiner for relay to the Chief of Staff. "Tell Wing the satellite with his primary presidential command channel just went haywire. It will take awhile to get it back on line. But the alternate is working fine."
If he had gotten Patton on the phone instead of Reiner, Sturdivant would have reminded him of his earlier warning about the advisability of shifting the alternate to another satellite. Now he was damned happy that he had.
On Wing's return from the men's room, Dr. Reiner passed along the message. "General Sturdivant called. He said there's a problem with the primary channel but the alternate is working fine."
Patton nodded with a nonchalant shrug. It was no major concern. With everything going smoothly, he went back to reading some reports.
What happened at 5:08 p.m. Washington time, however, exactly one hour and thirty-eight minutes into the flight, was a totally different matter. It was a mission planners' nightmare. A call to General Patton from a senior staffer at the National Security Agency advised that NSA's electronic snoopers had picked up clear indications of a compromise. The intercepted radio message reported that a unit of Iranian soldiers had been dispatched to a small mountain village near Kangavar to thwart the landing of an American helicopter. According to NSA, the Iranians had no idea which direction the aircraft would fly in from, making air intercept unlikely. But they knew to look for a clandestinely lit landing zone on the edge of the small town.
Everyone in the room gathered around Patton, faces grave, as he explained the situation. "Somehow they've managed to breach our security," he concluded.
"Too damn many people in that town knew what was going on," said the CIA liaison, a veteran spook with bristly, iron-gray hair. "Some bastard talked where he should have kept his mouth shut."
General Thatcher glanced up at the clock. "The chopper is only twenty minutes from target. I think we have to assume the Iranians have zeroed in on the LZ."
He had bought in on the plan, as Wing Patton had reminded him earlier, but it had always struck him as having a bit of a surreal quality about it, like a watch dial appearing to melt over the edge of a table in a Dali painting. In real life, solid objects didn't bend that way. But people could bend in unexpected directions.
"Better get the President," General Patton said grimly. The odds had looked good to start with, but now all bets were off. "I recommend we abort."
With its auxiliary fuel tanks, the Pave Low could make it out of Iran by flying a direct route to Kuwait. It would take them near more populated areas, but flying just over the treetops made the chopper a difficult target to locate. The lower altitude in that part of Iran would also improve their airspeed. The MH-53J's turbine engines ran more efficiently at higher altitudes, but the big rotor powered by those engines did not. The higher the helicopter went, the slower it flew due to compressibility.
Two minutes later President Thornton Giles strode into the tension-filled room, accompanied by an ever-present pair of Secret Service agents, one a young black man whose probing eyes made it clear he trusted no one. The President's tall frame towered over his National Security Adviser. He looked down, his sensitive face drawn by a troubled frown. "What's the problem, Henry?"
"NSA reports the Iranians are onto us. They've sent a contingent of troops to ambush our chopper."
"Damn!" was the Chief Executive's one-word reply. He had counted heavily on this operation. He was aware of all the risks, but after the military's almost flawless performance in the Gulf War, he had considered the possibilities for failure as minimal. Easy Street would add another proud notch to the stock of America's musket.
"Sir, I recommend we give the order to abort," said Patton.
The President looked thoughtful, his heavy brows knitted. He wasn't inclined to give up so easily. After all, with Desert Storm he had fought both a recalcitrant Congress and an Iraqi dictator and won. "Isn't that chopper equipped with machineguns, General?"
"Yes, sir," Patton acknowledged. "She has three 7.62mm miniguns, six-barrel gatling guns that can pour out an unbelievable stream of fire."
"What are the chances they could shoot their way in and still pick up those passengers?"
"If we had some idea of the size of the threat, it might be possible. But without any hard intelligence, it would be risky as hell. We don't know for sure now that the passengers will even be there. We also have to consider that the Iranians could have access to Stinger-type missiles. The Pave Low has sophisticated countermeasures, but they aren't foolproof. Sir, I was a hundred percent for this operation when we knew exactly what we faced, and had surprise on our side. That's no longer the case."
The President's face and shoulders sagged with the strain of the burden that accompanied the ability to make God-like life and death decisions. The press chose to call him the world's most powerful leader. At times like this he felt virtually helpless. Easy Street had looked so promising. The first real breakthrough in a nightmare that had haunted every President since Jimmy Carter. He could order the mission to continue, of course, but that might well result in the deaths of a dozen American servicemen, a weighty encumbrance to inflict on an already overburdened conscience.