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the laser or not, at this point no one knows. You did a good job, Danny. Go get some sleep.”
Dog clicked the remote control in his hand, cutting the connection.
“Better get me General Magnus,” Dog told the specialist at the com board.
Over Turkey, en route to Incirlik
0400
JED BARCLAY THUMBED THROUGH THE PAGES OF SATELLITE
photos on his right knee, looking for the latest batch from the sector north of Baghdad. Finding what he was looking for, he pulled the sheets to the top, then compared them to radio intercepts culled by Raven the previous day and balanced on his left leg. Under his chin were troop reports provided by CentCom, but what he really wanted now was the preconflict CIA assessment listing likely commanders and their call signs; that was somewhere in the briefcase near his feet, unreachable without sending a flurry of papers through the cabin of the C-20H Gulfstream.
“Son, you look like you’re cramming for an exam,”
said General Clearwater, looming over him from the aisle.
“No, sir, just trying to work out some things.”
“And?”
“Well, sir—” A sheaf of papers fell from his left knee onto the seat next to him, starting a chain reaction of cas-cading paper as they knocked several files and an awkward pile of maps onto the floor. Jed looked up from the mess helplessly; the general stared at him as if he didn’t notice.
“Well, first of all,” Jed began again, “the barrage tactics had to have been carried out with the help of a network of spotters. The radars only come on after the aircraft pass two points in northern Iraq. I would guess that there’s at RAZOR’S EDGE
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least one source in Incirlik, even though the NSA hasn’t filtered the intercept yet. The barrage spread of SAMs includes a Chinese missile based on the S-3, at least if the telemetry is to be believed. But given all that, the damage to the first plane and the Megafortress—at least those two, maybe the others—had to have been caused by a laser. And on the Megafortress, assuming the preliminary information from the AWACS is correct, it seems clear that the laser was operating independently. I’d like to speak to the Dreamland people once we’re down, but from everything I have here, there’s definitely a laser.”
“Where is it?”
“I don’t know. Razor works with a dedicated radar, similar to a traditional SAM site. But that’s not the only way to do it. From what I understand—and it’s not my area of expertise—the laser could fire through a gridded arc after an aircraft is detected by a long-range radar or some other system.”
“Run that horse at me again,” said Clearwater.
“Think of it this way,” said Jed. “You have a one-out-of-five chance to win a poker hand. You play a hundred rounds, you’d expect to win twenty times. Well, if the laser could cycle quickly enough—in other words, reload—it could fire one hundred shots into an area where it expected the plane to be. One shot out of X would hit.”
“I’ve known lucky poker players in my time,” said the general. “Played like they stepped in shit.”
“Yes, sir. The point is, you could fire through a grid where you thought the plane was and expect to get a hit a certain number of times. Of course, we have no idea how many times they’re firing. We don’t record the misses, just the hits. They may be really lousy shots.”
“We’ll keep your point in mind while we peek at the cards,” said Clearwater, clicking his false teeth.
“Sir?”
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“How’s your Arabic?”
“Uh, well, my top tier languages are German and Russian and of course—”
“Do you speak Arabic or not, son?”
“Well, I do, I mean at my last proficiency exam, I had a 4.2 out of five but there are different dialects. See, spoken standard Arabic, that’s one thing—”
“Good enough,” said the general. “Your friends at Dreamland have found us someone they think may be a radar operator. He’s inbound at Incirlik right now. CIA’s going to handle the debrief with some of our people, but I’d like you to take a shot at it as well. CIA officers with language skills are all south of the border at the moment.”
“We, uh, we’re—”
“They’ll hold the horse until we get there.”
“Uh, I was, uh, thinking I might, uh, sleep, sir. I haven’t slept in—”
“You have twenty minutes before we land. Hop to it, son.”
“Yes, sir.”
On the road near Saqqez, northwestern Iran 0500
IN THEORY, BRIGADIER GENERAL MANSOUR SATTARI COMmanded the Iranian Air Force and its nearly five hundred aircraft. In theory, the click of his fingers could summon four fully equipped squadrons of MiG-29U Fulcrums and six slightly less capable F-5E Tiger IIs, two dozen MiG-27 fighter-bombers, a handful of F-14As and Phantom F-4D and F-4Es, a host of support aircraft, and nearly forty helicopters.
In reality, Sattari’s command came down to a single Fokker F.28 Friendship VIP transport, which was actually RAZOR’S EDGE
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listed under a French registry. True, he could count on the loyalty of several squadron commanders if called upon to fight—but only if he could reach the men personally.
Brigadier General Mansour Sattari, a veteran of the re-volt against the Shah, a decorated fighter pilot who had personally led attacks against Baghdad during the Martyrs’ War, had come to symbolize the demise of the once great Iranian Air Force, and Iran itself. A few short weeks before, his mentor and friend General Herarsak al-Kan Buzhazi, the supreme commander of the Iranian armed forces, had been outmaneuvered in a power struggle with the imams; he had been assassinated just minutes after meeting with the Ayatollah and learning the full depth of his humiliation. Even worse than Buzhazi’s ignoble death were the Chinese troops that had entered the country at the Ayatollah’s invitation; those troops now effectively controlled the country.
And so as he bent toward Mecca to say his morning prayers, he did so with honest humility, knowing first-hand how the God of all could show his overwhelming power even to the most just of men. Sattari did not pre-sume to know why Allah did what He did, nor would he dare question the path the world took. He knew only that he must act according to his conscience and not his fear.
His actions must ultimately be judged not by those on earth or even those who claimed to know God’s will, but by God Himself.
Sattari was also a realist. And as he rose at the end of his prayers, still in a contemplative mood, he looked briefly in the direction of Iraq, the lifelong and enduring enemy of the Iranian people. For it was there that hope lay for his people. If the infidel Chinese were to be removed, if the cowards who hid behind their black robes in Tehran were to be taken from the stage, the Iraqi devils must play their role.
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Thus far they had done so even better than Sattari had hoped. Seeking a solution to the Kurdish problem once and for all—a problem largely encouraged by Buzhazi before his demise—Saddam Hussein had em-barked on a typically reckless plan of simultaneously tweaking the Americans and attacking the Kurdish Pesh-marga, or “freedom fighters,” in their homeland. Kicking out UN inspectors, aggressively launching surface-to-air missiles—the Iraqi actions were so well-timed that Sattari had considered holding back his own plan to use the stolen laser. Unfortunately, the Iraqi tactics had proved inadequate to provoke a large American response; it was only when Sattari began shooting down the American and British aircraft that the westerners had become sufficiently enraged to launch an all-out attack. Sattari had to carefully coordinate his attacks with the Iraqi radar and SAM launches to make it seem as if they were responsible. This had limited his target possibilities and made his timetable beholden to the Iraqis as much as the Americans. Still, the first phase of his plan had met its objectives. American troops were streaming into the region; more significantly, American diplomats were sounding the Iranian government out about a tentative rapprochement.