“Don’t we have a carrier battle group in the Gulf of Oman? If she ran west through the Strait of Hormuz into the Persian Gulf that would help.”
“We’ll send her in. Now let me talk to Loy again.”
Jake passed the handset to General Loy and walked out of the room.
“They’re in Samarra.” The air intelligence staff officer said it positively.
Jake Grafton needed to be sold. “A fifty-fifty chance, sixty-forty, what?”
“No, sir. They’re there. We saw the planes come in from Russia and nothing big enough to transport a missile has left. We’ve got round-the-clock real-time satellite surveillance. They’re there.”
“The missiles?”
“The missiles are there, yessir.”
“And the warheads?”
“I don’t know,” the staff officer said, and shook his head. “They’re so small…”
“Have they been moving Scuds around?”
“No. We would have seen that. They’ve tried to keep them under cover since the war. We know where some of them are, but certainly not all.”
“Let me see if I have this right: the Russian missiles are in Samarra, but we only know where some of the Scuds are. If the Iraqis are mating nuclear warheads to the Scuds, they must have taken the warheads to the missiles, because they haven’t brought the missiles to Samarra.”
“Yessir.”
“Then we’re fucked.”
“Yes, sir. That’s a very apt description. I couldn’t say it any better myself.”
“Find the Scuds.”
“Sir, we’ve been trying to do that for eighteen months.”
“Have the Iraqis taken warheads to the sites of the Scuds we know about?”
“I don’t know, sir. We’ve been trying—”
“You’re not trying hard enough,” Jake Grafton said coldly. “Track every vehicle leaving the Samarra base and see where it goes. If the vehicle visits the site of a known Scud, you’ve just found one.” Jake lowered his voice. “They tell me you people are the very best. Your equipment is the best. Find those warheads. I don’t care what you have to do, but find them. Now!”
A modern joint military operation is extraordinarily complex and requires extensive planning. The myriad of details cannot be worked out in hours, not even by competent, experienced professionals. Days, even weeks, go into the planning of a successful joint operation.
Jake Grafton was demanding this one be put together and be ready to launch in eighteen hours, by 20:00 local time tomorrow. He would have gone sooner, even in daylight, if the planning could have been completed, but even he had to admit there was no way. As it was there would be no time for a run-through with the commanders involved, no time to sort things out before the starting gun fired, so there were going to be snafus — people getting in one another’s way, people who didn’t go at all, busted equipment, too many people at one place, too few at others, things that had to happen but didn’t… He expected all that. But it could get worse — there could be good guys shooting at good guys. He and the troops would have to live with it. Or die with it. Being Jake Grafton, he didn’t think much about the dying part, except to ensure that the medical support would be there, all that could be fitted in.
Fortunately General Loy named a competent professional to plan and command the operation, Major General Daniel Serkin, a whipcord-tough soldier with only one pace — fast.
Jake Grafton stood and watched, walked the floor and listened to the planners, perused op orders, conferred repeatedly with General Serkin. And worried that while the allies fretted over call signs and radio frequencies Saddam would start spraying nuclear warheads at his enemies.
At dawn he called General Land and gave him a preliminary overview. The operation would start with a navy SEAL team delayed parachute drop from thirty thousand feet. Chutes would open under two thousand feet. The team would secure the airport perimeter, wipe out antiaircraft resistance and machine gun emplacements. A battalion from the 101st Airborne Division (Air Assault) would then arrive in helicopters escorted by electronic warfare aircraft — Wild Weasels — and fighters, with helicopter gunships providing close air support. The idea was to quickly overpower any resistance, make the airfield safe for transports. These would come in with their own aerial escort, which would orbit overhead and prevent Iraqi forces from counterattacking. With all the Russian weapons aboard, the transports would leave and the American and allied troops would pull out under air cover. If everything went according to plan, the raid would be over before the Iraqis could bring overwhelming military power to bear.
Fortunately Saddam Hussein seemed to be expecting an air strike. The radars in the Baghdad and Samarra area were almost constantly on the air and mobile antiaircraft guns were moving into the area. But not troops.
Toad Tarkington suggested a name for this operation, Operation Appointment. Jake told him the name lacked pizzazz, but he too had read John O’Hara so he recommended the name to General Land, who accepted it without comment.
“So it all depends on how deep the Iraqi forces are at the airfield?” Land said finally, when Jake was finished.
“Yessir. Intelligence says we’ll be facing a battalion of Republican Guard.”
“Armor?”
“Yessir. We have a choice — try to wipe out the tanks with Apaches prior to the SEAL drop, or drop the SEALs and try to achieve surprise, then bring in the Apaches.”
“Has General Serkin made a decision?”
“Not yet.”
“Found the Scuds?”
“Not yet, sir.”
“What if you don’t find them?”
“We’ll go anyway.”
“And the antiaircraft defenses?”
“We’ll use missiles, chaff, and jamming, then A-6s and A-10s.”
“Call me back later.”
Jake went to find a place to sleep. One office had a couch. He was pulling off his shoes when Toad Tarkington tracked him down. “Here’s a message from Ambassador Lancaster in Moscow, for your eyes only.”
Jake tore open the envelope. Herb Tenney was dead. In his sleep.
Half the pills Jake put in Herb’s mouth were aspirin, but some of them were part of the binary cocktail. Perhaps Herb already had the other half in his system. Damn! Or someone just poisoned him.
Jake replaced the message in the envelope and passed it back to Toad. “Herb Tenney died in his sleep.”
Toad snorted. “His tough luck.”
Jake balled his fist and started to pound his thigh, then opened his hand and ran it through his hair. “I am really sick of this mess.”
“I know,” Toad said. “I know.”
“Turn the lights out and close the door. Let me sleep for three hours.”
“Yessir.”
“And question General Yakolev. Find out if they shot down that Russian helicopter pilot, Vasily Lutkin.”
“CAG, you aren’t responsible for that. Yakolev is. You can’t—”
“Just do it, Toad.”
“Aye aye, sir.”
He lay in the darkness trying to relax. Too many details ran through his mind, too many questions were still unanswered.
Saddam Hussein was down to his last trick, but it was a dilly this time. He had tried to take the Iranian oil fields and lost, tried to take Kuwait and found out that a second- or third-rate military power could not win on a modern conventional battlefield. So now he was playing the nuclear card. And it would be a winner unless allied forces arrived in time.