“Can you trust them Ma'am?”
“Of course not Sir Eric, But we have set things up so that it is very much in their interests to co-operate with us. You see, there are more insurgencies developing around here than the obvious ones. We have had word, for example, that General Vo Nguyen Giap had founded a Vietnamese People's Liberation Army aimed at driving the Japanese out of Vietnam and Laos. We understand that they have much support and have already achieved some significant results. A few days ago a senior Japanese provincial administrator, Colonel Toshimitsu Takatsu, was assassinated. We believe that the VPLA may well have had a hand in that.”
“I must admit Ma'am, we were puzzled by that attack. By all accounts Colonel Toshimitsu Takatsu was an enlightened and civilized man, a good and just administrator who had a genuine feel for the region and sympathy for the people. He seemed to be the least likely of targets.” Even as he spoke, Sir Martyn got a sensation he hadn't felt since he was five years old and had publicly miss-spelled “cat” . The Ambassador and Sir Eric were exchanging glances and he could almost read the Ambassador's unspoken thought He's your boy, Sir Eric. Don't blame me. But when she spoke, the voice was as soft and polite as always.
“Sir Martyn, please remember this is an insurgency. One where the objective is to bring about a widespread and effective uprising of the people against the government. To do this the government must be hated and despised and the people must regard it as an oppressive enemy. You have one administrator who is a greedy, vicious, corrupt sadist who is antagonizing the people and driving them into our hands. You have another who is a humane and just man who does the best he can for the people he rules and has earned their respect. Which one do you kill? “
Sir Martyn nodded. Put that way, it made sense although lie didn't like it. He got the distinct feeling he was entering a world he would rather not know existed.
“However, this is not the least of our problems. You are aware of the growing wealth in the Middle East and Arab world in general?”
Again, Sir Martyn nodded. Iran had been an oil producer for many years and Iraq had been so for almost as long. Now they were being joined by Saudi Arabia and the Gulf States. They had banded together in a cartel called the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries or OPEC. They were getting very rich selling oil to both Europe and to Chipan. That hadn't worried the Americans who ran their economy on their own supplies backed up by Siberian oil, but, it gave the OPEC countries a serious hold on Europe.
The problem was that the German occupation of Moslem areas in Southern Russia had radicalized much of the population there. That philosophy was seeping into the Arab world as a whole and had combined with the Wahhabite regime in Saudi to form a grouping that was militant, anti-western and wealthy. A bad combination. Then there was the Shi'ite groups centered around Iran, Perhaps it was fortunate that the two sects hated each other as much as they did.
“Much of that wealth is going to funding another insurgency, this time in your northern provinces. The demand for Pakistan is rearing its head again and there are strong signs that Masanobu Tsuji is behind that as well. There is, after all, much of common interest between the Middle Eastern states and Chipan. But there is something more, something we have not worked out yet. The Moslem insurgents in your Northern provinces, in our southern provinces and elsewhere are very poorly trained in insurgency techniques but extremely well trained in military tactics. That is a puzzle we need an answer to. Now gentlemen, before I take you to our briefing facilities for a more detailed discussion, one last word in private.
“Sir Martyn, I told you how insurgents always target the best and brightest administrators? And that you have an insurgency problem developing? Here, I do speak as a member of my government. Your services to your country and to your partners in the Triple Alliance have been valuable beyond calculation. That makes you a primary target for an assassin. Look to your life, Sir Martyn, we cannot afford to lose you.”
Nellis AFB, Nevada. Primary Operating Base of 414th “Red Sun“ Combat Training Squadron
In the eyes of many, Captain John Paul Martin was, despite his lowly rank, currently the most important officer in the USAF. Not because he was a Mustang who'd worked his passage up from the ranks and collected two kills with the tail guns of a B-36 on the way. It was because for the last five years he'd been the range officer of the United States Air Force Air Warfare Center more commonly known as Red Sun.
Martin couldn't help reflecting that he had the best duty assignment the Air Force could offer and anywhere after here would be downhill. It was his responsibility to maintain the elaborate instrumentation that covered the 7.9 million acre Nellis Range Complex - 2.9 million acres of which were severely classified. Civilians flying over the outer 5 million acres might, provided they were humble and penitent, get away with a vitriolic tongue lashing and loss of their pilot's license. Those who infringed on the inner 2.9 million acre part would, if they survived, face a diet of prison food for a long time.
The secrecy of the range had lead to speculation about what happened there. The woo-woo community had been rife with stories about space aliens and crashed spacecraft. Others claimed that secret aircraft of remarkable performance and astounding technology were being developed. The woo-woos were a problem so the Air Force had come up with an inspired solution; they'd set up a decoy area on the edge of the range and leaked that this was where the interesting things really happened. There'd been a competition over what to call it, Martin had won that with the entry “Area 51”. It was a simple code, A=l, B=2 etc. Thus “Area 51” decoded to give “Area EA”- Enthusiast's Airshow.
Add a few discarded prototypes and mock-ups, deploy a few savage guard dogs and it kept the woo-woos happy for hours. Yet, the stories were closer to the truth than most people thought. Two remarkable new aircraft were being tested now, a long-range supersonic penetration fighter, the North American F-108 Rapier and the Lockheed F-112 Blackbird, a hypersonic home-defense interceptor. They wouldn't be ready for this year's Red Sun but the F-108 was due to make it for the 1960 exercises. Maximum speed: 1980 mph at 76,550 feet. Service ceiling 80,100 feet, things had come a long way since the early days.
Martin remembered he'd still been enlisted and a tail gunner back at the first exercise. Red Sun had been born as a result of what had been a virtual civil war inside the USAF. The tactical fighter groups had come back from Russia to find that Strategic Air Command with its nuclear-armed bombers was being treated as if they'd won the war single-handed. An attitude that SAC had done little to discourage. The fighter and attack groups found themselves overshadowed by the B-36s and the exploits of the Navy over France. First bitter at being “the forgotten Air Force” they'd become increasingly aggrieved and indignant. The fighter community had taken to claiming that they could have stopped The Big One - and it didn't take long before the more hot-headed were offering to shoot a B-36 down to prove the point.
Something had to be done and that something was Red Sun. The fighter groups had been instructed to send their best and brightest to Nellis AFB for a two-week exercise that would pit them against the B-36s of SAC. What had happened was completely unexpected. It had been assumed that the USAF fighter pilots would do at least as well as the Luftwaffe had managed a year earlier. After all, the American fighter pilots knew the bombers would be coming in high and the tactics they would use. Without that knowledge, the Germans had downed seven bombers and damaged another dozen.