Air Battle Force

“The drone was shot down by Turkmen air defenses,” Venti said. “Apparently it was not completely destroyed.”

“McLanahan wants to insert a special-ops team to retrieve any surviving critical components, and blow up the rest,” Goff added. “I authorized the mission. It’ll get under way in the next few days.”

“Keep me advised, Robert,” the president said.

“This is insane,” Secretary of State Kercheval said angrily. “None of this was approved by us at all. Something needs to be done about this McLanahan. What do you intend to do with him, Robert?”

“I intend to give him a commendation, Edward,” Goff said. Kercheval’s eyes bugged out in disbelief, so Goff hurried on. “That crew risked their lives to retrieve an important piece of military hardware and keep it from falling into the wrong hands. They sustained battle damage but still managed to bring their crippled aircraft back with no casualties. The citation to accompany the award writes itself.”

“You will not reward that maniac with a medal for violating international law!” Kercheval retorted.

The president raised both hands. “Enough, enough,” he said. “The decision to give out commendations will be made at a later time. As far as the incident involving unapproved overflight of certain nations — I intend to admit everything.”

“My God, Mr. President,” Kercheval said. “You… you can’t do that…!”

“I can and I will,” Thorn said. “I will say that in an effort to prevent Taliban raiders from attacking and destroying United Nations peacekeeping units in northern Afghanistan, the United States launched unmanned aerial patrol-and-attack aircraft from the Arabian Sea. When one of the drones sustained damage, to avoid endangering innocent lives on the ground and to avoid losing a valuable piece of military hardware, the on-scene commander elected to violate sovereign airspace in order to retrieve the drone. He flew his unarmed control aircraft across Pakistan, Iran, Afghanistan, and Turkmenistan in an effort to retrieve it.” He turned to Goff. “The control aircraft was unarmed, wasn’t it, Robert?”

“Yes, sir. Defensive electronic transmitters only.”

“No lasers, subatomic weapons, plasma bombs, any of that other cosmic stuff McLanahan plays with on a regular basis?”

“I believe it uses lasers to blind incoming antiaircraft missiles,” Venti said, “but no offensive weapons of any kind.”

“What kind of aircraft was it?” Kercheval asked.

“A modified B-1 Lancer bomber called a Vampire.”

“Oh, God,” Kercheval muttered. “The same aircraft we lost in Russia?” He closed his eyes in horror when Goff nodded in the affirmative, then turned to Thorn and said, “Surely you can’t admit that —”

“Yes, I will,” Thorn said evenly. “I’ll prepare a statement for the ambassadors or foreign ministries that want an explanation, and we’ll prepare talking points for the staff when the press starts to ask about the incident — but only after McLanahan’s retrieval mission is completed.” Kercheval shook his head in confusion but decided there was nothing he could say to change the president’s mind. “Let’s move on.” Thorn again turned to his director of Central Intelligence. “Douglas, you wrote in a message this past week about some factors that might warrant increased involvement in Central Asia, especially Turkmenistan. Give us a rundown.”

“Yes, sir,” Morgan responded, withdrawing a thin briefing file from an attache case. “Turkmenistan can potentially be a big powder keg. Turkmenistan is very much like Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, Iraq, and Libya were shortly after the discovery of oil — Turkmenistan’s true wealth and strategic importance are only now beginning to be realized, and it could potentially become a battleground because of its location in the crossroads of several different religious, political, and ethnic factions. Turkmenistan’s mineral wealth is probably on a par with that of any Persian Gulf nation, and it could possibly be the richest oil-producing nation on earth in a few years.”

“Say again, Douglas?” Vice President Busick interjected. “More oil than Saudi? I didn’t think that was possible.”

“That’s the consensus from our analysts,” Morgan confirmed. “It is believed that Turkmenistan’s oil and gas wealth equals Saudi Arabia’s, but Saudi’s currently producing wells will be depleted in less than ten years — Turkmenistan’s haven’t even begun to be exploited. They could be producing petro products fifty years after Saudi Arabia runs out of oil. At least four-fifths of that nation’s oil and gas reserves are unexplored, let alone untapped.”

“The Russians must realize what they lost when the Soviet Union broke apart and Turkmenistan became independent.”

“I’d agree,” Morgan said. “The Russians still have a few fighter bases in Turkmenistan, and the Turkmen still use Russian officers on contract for their own military. But living and working in Turkmenistan was considered a hardship tour for the Russians — never more than ten percent of the population was Russian, and we know that the climate in Turkmenistan is so inhospitable that even the Russians had a hard time extracting oil and natural gas from there — and the Russians have developed oil fields in nasty places like Siberia.”

“But oil has a funny way of bringing out the worst in governments,” the president mused. “Go on, Douglas.”

“From 1985 to 2002, Saparmurad Niyazov was in charge of the country, initially as the Soviet first secretary and then as its president,” Morgan went on. “He played all sides and swung with the winds more than a weather vane in a tornado. He was a staunch Russian supporter when the Russians controlled the government; when the Soviet Union broke apart and nationalist forces started to gain in strength, Niyazov became a nationalist — replacing Russian with Turkmen as the official language, setting up Muslim religious schools, and so on. When the Taliban took over Afghanistan and threatened to take over some fundamentalist provinces in the east, Niyazov brought some pro-Taliban mullahs into his government. He ruled with an iron fist. Every member of the Turkmen parliament had to be approved by the president; the president appointed his own censors and editors in every media outlet in the country — the list goes on and on. It was Niyazov who inked the big TransCal oil deal, the first large-scale production deal in Turkmenistan and potentially one of the wealthiest oil deals in history.

“Niyazov finally retired in 2001 and held elections, but there was only one candidate: Kurban Gurizev, the leader of their parliament and deputy chairman of the Democratic Party, what used to be the Communist Party. Like Niyazov, he ruled with absolute authority. He continued to outlaw opposition parties, had to approve all candidates for public office, and created a virtual police state. He is strongly antiforeigner, anti-Muslim, and staunchly pro- Russian.”

“The military must hate Gurizev,” Goff observed.

“The Turkmen military is practically nonexistent,” Morgan said. “Maybe forty thousand troops in all, including paramilitary and reserves; four-fifths conscripts, lots of ex-Soviet equipment in very poor condition. Most of the officer corps is Russian — the officers who wanted to stay simply kept their posts and are being paid by the Turkmen government. Naturally, they have the best equipment.”

“I wonder who they take their orders from once the shit starts hitting the fan?” Busick asked.

“My bet would be with Russia,” Morgan said. “Kurban Gurizev was born and educated in Russia, not Turkmenistan — we think Kurban is not his real first name, but an adopted Turkmen name, part of Niyazov’s nationalist movement. He speaks no Turkmen. He had been known to butt heads with Niyazov on occasion in matters dealing with oil and gas development. Gurizev thought it best to maintain close ties between Russia’s oil infrastructure and Turkmenistan; Niyazov signed agreements with several different developers at the same time. Turkmenistan has deals with several Western companies to transport oil and gas across Afghanistan to Pakistan, with Azerbaijan to transport oil to the Black Sea, with Russia to transport oil to Russia, and even with Iran to transport oil to the Arabian Sea. On the face of it, it’s pretty smart. They get money from several sources and can supply oil to markets around the world regardless of geopolitical concerns. Although there are several development projects ongoing in Turkmenistan, in various states of progress, right now the country exports oil only to Russia, at cut-rate prices.”

“I think it would be a good idea to start monitoring events in Turkmenistan — perhaps put some intelligence assets on the ground,” Kercheval said. “My concern is the ongoing oil projects by Western, primarily American, companies — we don’t want them in the way if the Russians decide to move back in or, worse, if they storm on in, like they tried to do in the Balkans.” He turned to Franklin Sellers, the secretary of the treasury who served also as