wish to … how do you say, ‘be where the action is,’ no?”
In reply, Briggs gave her a kiss. “You’re on, Major Riza Behrouzi. Lead the way.”
Just twenty minutes later, Behrouzi and four men—Hal Briggs and three United Arab Emirates troopers, members of the Emir of Dubai’s Royal Guard Brigade commandos, were crammed in the tiny aft cargo bay of the OVIODNOS (Night Observation System) Bronco attack plane, speeding down the runway of Mina Sultan Naval Base, on their way to Chah Bahar Naval Base in Iran.
They didn’t have a flight plan, clearance, permission, or a real concrete plan of action, but they did have a warplane. The OVIODNOS twin turboprop attack-and-observation plane had a full attack payload configuration: fully fueled centerline and wing fuel tanks, 1,500 rounds of 20-millimeter ammunition for the six-barrel steerable Gatling gun, two pods of four AGM-1 14 Hellfire laser-guided missiles on the fuselage sponsons, and one AGM-122A Sidearm anti-radar missile mounted on the outboard side of each of the wing fuel-tank pylons.
This Bronco also had chaff and flare ejectors installed in the tail booms to assist in decoying enemy antiaircraft radars and heat-seeking missiles. It seemed as if it took every available foot of Dubai’s 9,000-foot runway to get the heavily laden Bronco into the warm, humid air.
Shortly after leveling off at cruise altitude, Briggs was on the plane’s radio on the UHF emergency frequency: “Genesis, Genesis, this is Redman, if you copy, come up on Storybook, repeat, Genesis, this is Redman, come up on Storybook.” Briggs then flipped over to a special UHF frequency that they had used back when Briggs had been the commander of security operations at the High Technology Aerospace Weapons Center. One of the ranges they’d used for weapons tests had been called “Storybook,” and each range had had its own discrete frequency. Redman was Briggs’s security detail’s call sign.
“Who are you calling, Leopard?” Behrouzi asked.
“A friend that I think is flying tonight,” Briggs said. He keyed the mike: “Genesis, this is Redman on Storybook. How copy?”
“Loud and clear, Redman,” came the reply. “Fancy meeting you here. Seen any red-tail hawks lately?”
“Only in Amarillo,” Briggs replied. “Nice to hear from you again, Old Dog.”
ABOARD THE B-2A SPIRIT STEALTH BOMBER, AV-01 I “This is an open frequency, remember,” Patrick McLanahan said from the flight deck.
“What in hell do you think you’re doing, McLanahan?”
Jamieson asked. “Are you nuts? You’ll blow us for sure!”
“This is the team, the guy we’re supposed to be supporting,” McLanahan said. “He knows security better than either of us, and if he took the chance to call, it must be serious.”
“Shit, this is going to get us killed—we’re still too damn close to the bad guys here,” Jamieson groused. But now he was intrigued as well: “So what’s with this ‘red-tail hawk’ and “Amarillo’ business?”
“A private code,” McLanahan said. “A job we did not long ago.”
He keyed the mike: “What’s happening?”
“Got any screamers left?”
Jamieson looked as if he had seen a ghost as he stared in complete surprise at McLanahan. “He knows … how in hell does he know about our JSOWS?”
“He was there when we first tested and built the things at Dreamland, AC,” McLanahan explained with a smile. “I don’t know if he was briefed on our mission, but he sure as hell seems to have figured it out.” On the radio, McLanahan replied, “Affirmative, Redman. Where do you need them”
“Follow the lights,” came the response.
“What in hell does that mean?” Jamieson asked.
“It means he’s going in somewhere, probably into Iran,” McLanahan said. “Give me a one-eighty—I’ll see if I can pick him up on radar.”
“A one-eighty? You mean, fly back to where we just creamed an Iranian aircraft carrier?” Jamieson retorted. “Are you insane?”
“C’mon, Colonel, where’s your spirit of adventure?” McLanahan asked. “We’ve got the gas, and we’re outside fran’s radar coverage.”
“Hey, my butt thinks my legs have been cut off,” Jamieson said.
“We’ve still got twelve more hours’ flying time to go.” But he quickly relented, took control of the Spirit, and turned westbound toward the Strait of Hormuz again.
“What’s your altitude, Redman?”
“Shoshone,” came the reply.
“You two are just too fuckin’ cute,” Jamieson said. “Another code word from your days in Dreamland?”
“Exactly,” McLanahan said. “Shoshone Peak, in restricted aeca 4202A, sixty-five hundred feet above sea level. SAR coming on.”
McLanahan configured the B-2A’s radar, then shot a one-second sweep of the sky. The choice was fairly easy—there was only one aircraft near that altitude. “Level off at Brawley for confirmation.”
“Roger,” came the reply. A few moments later, McLanahan took another SAR shot and zeroed in on the same return—sure enough, it had leveled off at 9,500 feet above sea level—the same height as Brawley Peak in southwestern Nevada near Hawthorne.
“Radar contact, Redman,” McLanahan said. “Continue on course. We can keep an eye on you for a while, and if we see red lights, we’ll try to turn them green for you.
ABOARD THE OVIODNOS BRONCO ATTACK PLANE “Thanks, Genesis. See you when I see you. Out.”
“Can they help us, Leopard?” Behrouzi asked.
“I think so,” Briggs said with a smile big enough to be seen in the dim light of the Bronco’s cargo bay. “Whatever happened over Bandar Abbas and over the Khomeini carrier group tonight, I got a feeling these guys are gonna make it happen over Chah Bahar.”
BALUCHISTAN VA SISTAN PROVINCIAL NAVAL BASE, CHAH BAHAR, IRAN 23 APRIL 1997, 0408 HOURS LOCAL TIME
A flash of intense light like a billion-watt lightbulb instantly destroyed his night vision; followed by an earth- shattering explosion, louder than any sound felt like ten earthquakes rolled into one. The normally giant child’s hand had tossed them against the toy box, then the deck rolled hard to port, and the port rail was awash. Men were screaming, their faces yellowed by the fires, their voices as loud, maybe even louder—if that was possible—than the sounds of explosions and tearing metal.
For the second time since being transferred to the prison facility, Carl Knowlton was replaying the death of the S.S. Valley Mistress in his tortured mind’s eye. It had been the most horrifying experience of his life. He had seen the aftermath of the Iraqi Scud missile hit on the barracks at Khobar during the Gulf War, where 117 American soldiers had been killed or wounded; he remembered the thousands of square miles of burning oil fields of Kuwait, when he thought that he was seeing a bit of hell right here on earth. But the air attack against the Valley Mistress had been the worst by far. The ship had felt so small, so helpless, as the sea rushed in to claim it. As the sea had poured into the crippled ship, the old bitch had literally screamed—its oil-fired engines first grinding to a painful halt, then tearing themselves apart, then exploding from the stress and rapid cooling. The scream had been like a loud siren, like a wild animal caught in a trap This time, though, Knowlton had not been awakened by his nightmare, but by the sounds of real sirens—air raid sirens. He rolled painfully to his feet, his pants creaking from caked-on sweat, oil, and salt. The oil-fire burns on his arms, shoulders, and neck were wrapped in someone’s T-shirt, the pus and sweat making the cloth stick painfully to the burns.
“You all right, sir?” a young Marine lance corporal, J. D. McKay, asked. “You cried out.”
“Sorry, Corporal,” Knowlton said. “Real bad dream.”
“The guards might come back if they heard you—we gotta be careful,” McKay said. McKay had a right to lecture a superior officer: the Iranian Pasdaran soldiers had obviously recognized who McKay was right after his capture, because they had separated him and beaten him senseless, bludgeoning his face, breaking in teeth, ripping out hair, and breaking fingers. He definitely did not want to attract any more attention to himself.
“Right. Sorry.” Embarrassed, Knowlton stepped over to the one window in the room he and the Marine soldier occupied. The window was too high; Knowlton couldn’t see anything, and he was too weak to pull himself up onto the sill.
“Hop up, sir,” McKay said. Knowlton turned. McKay was crawling on his hands and knees toward the sound of the siren coming through the window.
