No plantations or oil wells marred the emptiness of the stony, uneven landscape immediately to Taleh’s front. There were only the rusting hulks of obsolete tanks and armored personnel carriers. Thousands of track marks were visible crisscrossing the barren plain, silhouetted by the slanting rays of the late afternoon sun. Heat waves shimmered among the abandoned fighting vehicles, distorting distances and shapes.
The long, low, deadly silhouettes of modern T-80 tanks and BMPs crammed with Iranian infantry maneuvered in and around the hulks. Dust kicked up by their speeding treads merged into a single, ragged brown cloud. The tanks and infantry fighting vehicles were firing on the move, all the while smoothly deploying into platoon-sized wedge formations.
As each T-80 fired, 125mm shells screamed through the air. Even at more than two thousand meters almost all of them burst somewhere around the target hulks. Taleh smiled, pleased by the accuracy the 32nd Brigade’s tank gunners were demonstrating.
One round triggered a bright, orange-red ball of flame.
Taleh turned in surprise toward the bearded, hawk-nosed brigadier who commanded the 32nd. There shouldn’t have been any reaction from those burned-out vehicles.
“We place tanks of diesel fuel and a few rounds of outdated ammunition inside the hulks before each exercise. My crews are trained to shoot until they see a fireball or explosion,” the other man explained. “I have found that it increases the realism of the battle drill.”
“An excellent idea, Sayyed.” Taleh nodded approvingly. Like the other armies in the region, too many of Iran’s battalions and brigades were hollow units accumulations of first-rate hardware and second-rate, poorly trained men. Leaders who understood the danger of that and who could forge their commands into capable units were rare and valuable soldiers. Clearly, he had chosen the right man to command this formation.
He glanced at Kazemi and indicated the burning wreck now visible through a gap in the smoke. “Make a note of this, Farhad. We will recommend the technique to all units.”
Taleh swung back to watch the rest of the armored assault as it swept across the barren, explosion-torn landscape before him.
An hour later, with the exercise complete, the small convoy of three jeeps rolled through the gates of the Ahvaz Garrison, heading for a long, low building that contained the brigade headquarters. Barracks, maintenance sheds, and storehouses lined the paved road on either side. Most were dark in the fading light.
Taleh glimpsed bright arc lights shining inside one of the sheds. Technicians were hard at work inside, scrambling over and under an armored behemoth like ants ministering to their queen. He leaned forward and tapped the bearded brigadier on the shoulder. “Stop here, Sayyed. I want to see this.”
He never kept to a rigid itinerary, especially on inspection tours. Part of that was for security reasons. He still had enemies, now perhaps more than ever before. Randomly changing his schedule kept them guessing, especially those with lethal plans. But mostly, it was because he wanted to make sure his officers learned to expect the unexpected in peace as much as in war. Above all, he thought, they must come to understand that uncertainty is the central feature of any battlefield.
At the brigadier’s direction, the jeeps pulled up and parked beside the floodlit maintenance shed.
Without waiting for his subordinates, Taleh jumped out and strode into the building. His bodyguards hurried to take up their positions around him, shoeing away startled technicians and mechanics like so many frightened geese. He paid only cursory attention to the sweaty, oil-smeared men as they formed ranks under the brigadier’s glare. His gaze was focused on the mammoth T-80 they had been working on.
Taleh hauled himself onto the tank’s chassis and clambered onto the turret. He slid through the open hatch with the ease of long experience and settled himself inside the T80’s cramped interior. He ran his eyes and fingers lightly over the dizzying array of dials, switches, scopes, cabling, and machinery all still labeled in Russia’s Cyrillic script.
On the whole, he was pleased by what he saw. His agents had purchased several hundred T-80s Russia’s most advanced battle tank at ridiculously low prices from the cash-hungry bureaucrats in Moscow, who found it cheaper to sell a tank than to scrap it. Melting down a forty-ton chunk of armored steel was not a simple operation.
But this vehicle was far more than a simple chunk of metal.
He laid a hand on the massive breech of the T-80’s 125mm main gun and nodded to himself. Powerful gas turbine engines, sophisticated fire control and gun stabilization systems, and reactive armor designed to foil enemy armor-piercing rounds and missiles gave this tank and the others like it speed, deadly force, and survivability that matched some versions of the American M1 Abrams. And once they were installed, the German-manufactured thermal sights his purchasing agents had acquired would make Iran’s T-80s even more advanced than their Russian counterparts.
Truly, they should prove formidable weapons in the hands of trained crews.
Taleh frowned. There was the rub. Training. Training and maintenance.
Inspired by the will of God, Iran’s Regular Army had no shortage of fighting spirit. What it had lacked was a sizable cadre of trained professionals who could integrate new weapons into competently prepared plans and keep the combat units properly supplied and all this newly acquired hardware up and running.
Shoddy staff and maintenance work had always plagued the Iranian armed forces problems exacerbated by the militant creed imposed by the Ayatollah Khomeini and his radical successors. When anyone who deviated from the revolutionary ideology they preached ran the risk of arrest and even execution, it had proved almost impossible to form a professional officer corps.
Taleh was determined to change that. Iran could not afford to have an army of inexperienced zealots. His Western training had shown him the importance of proper planning and logistical support. The time to worry about details was before the battle started. Once the shells began to fly, it was too late far too late. As his American Ranger instructors had said again and again, combat was the ultimate stress test. War found every weakness in men and in their machines.
He scowled, mentally chiding himself for the sudden burst of defeatism. He had made progress. Iran’s military was no longer a clumsy giant. The religious monitors were gone, and the cowards and incompetents were going. The aggressive young officers who shared his vision were forging the rest into a true army an efficient, professional force wholly subordinated to his will.
Another skilled observer loitered near the maintenance sheds a thinbearded, hook-nosed man dressed in ragged, dust-colored clothes and battered sandals. Hamir Pahesh watched the activity with an air of boredom, but with more interest and knowledge than might be expected of the average truck driver.
Pahesh’s face had been weathered by the harsh Afghan climate and scarred by guerrilla war. Although only in his forties, he looked ten years older. Time had not been kind to him.
For most of his life he had been a farmer and part-time mechanic, scratching out a bare living in an arid, impoverished land. But then the Russians had come, razing his village simply because it might supply the mujahideen. Most of his family had been killed in the attack the rest had died in the terrible winter that followed.
He’d fought the Russians, first as a member of a small band, then as part of a larger mujahideen group that had hit the invaders again and again. They’d had help, from the Pakistanis and the Chinese and the Americans. That was where Pahesh had first worked with the CIA.
He’d heard the stories about the American spy agency, of course. Propaganda from the Russians and their Afghan government puppets had labeled the CIA a sinister cabal dedicated to murder and chaos. That was nonsense, of course. The men he met in Pakistan gave him food, medicine, and weapons to kill Russians.
In the end he and his comrades had won. They had driven the Russians back across the border. But the civil war had continued, with Afghan killing Afghan now that they lacked a common enemy. His tortured, fragmented homeland had drifted from battle to battle as old tribal hatreds flared anew.
Pahesh felt adrift as well, his hate spent, but nothing to replace it.
He’d gone to Iran, seeking work and some new purpose. Instead he had been crammed into a refugee camp with thousands of his countrymen. Most Afghans were members of the Sunni branch of Islam. Most Iranians were Shiite. And evidently, the Iranians were willing to take Muslim brotherhood only so far. Pahesh had skills, though, as a mechanic and driver, and he’d been able to get a job driving a battered old truck.
Even out of the camp, he still felt unwelcome. Able to live only in ramshackle housing, paid a pittance for backbreaking labor, the ex-mujahideen felt the Iranian snubs every hour of the day.
