Air Battle Force

into Farab and Imeni Stalina… some reportedly even crossing the border into Uzbekistan!”

He listened further, his eyes flickering in dejection. He removed the headphones and handed them to Zarazi. “It’s Colonel Turabi, sir. He is requesting that all available fighting forces be moved up immediately — to Khodzhayli. He is at the airport now and has it under his control. He expects to have the airport at Charjew under his control by the time our forces reach Khodzhayli. City officials, TransCal executives, and Colonel Borokov, the Russian in charge of the garrison, have already been in contact with him, asking for terms.”

Zarazi rushed out of the communications tent to issue orders to his troops, leaving Orazov behind. The other men in the tent looked at the Turkmen turncoat, and he could see the accusations in their eyes: You are the coward here, Orazov, not Turabi. Jalaluddin Turabi had just proved he was worthy of respect and admiration. All they were showing Orazov now was contempt.

There was only one way to win General Wakil Zarazi’s trust back, Orazov decided — get rid of Jalaluddin Turabi.

THE KREMLIN, MOSCOW, RUSSIAN FEDERATION

That morning

“It is confirmed, sir,” Army General Nikolai Stepashin, commander of the Ministry of State Security of the Russian Federation and the Commonwealth of Independent States, reported as he strode into the president’s office. The president of the Russian Federation was on the speakerphone and scowled as the intelligence chief spoke. “The city of Charjew is in the hands of the Taliban insurgents as we speak.”

“Finally you confirm what I have been telling you for days now, Mr. President!” cried the voice on the other end of the phone, belonging to the president of the Republic of Turkmenistan, Kurban Gurizev. “And I’m telling you now, they are marching on the city of Mary. They’ll be there in less than three days. I need help to crush these Taliban bastards, Mr. President, and I need it now!”

Russian Federation president Valentin Gennadievich Sen’kov made a disgusted snorting sound, aimed directly at his minister of foreign affairs, Ivan Ivanovich Filippov. “ ‘No threat’—is that what you told us, Ivan?” Sen’kov sneered. “Those Taliban are just a bunch of rabble-rousers? Scroungers? Desert rats? Isn’t that what you told us only two days ago?”

“Mr. President, the Ministry of Defense and the Ministry of State Security agreed with my assessment — that this Taliban incursion was nothing more than a small, isolated band chased out of Afghanistan by American and United Nations forces,” Filippov said. “They should have been crushed days ago by the Turkmen army—”

“The Turkmen army is joining them!” Sen’kov exploded. “Shit, I wish the Red Army had such good recruiting numbers! They’ve taken three Turkmen military bases — one of which was commanded by Russian officers—as easily as if they were getting a fifty-ruble blow job on Ostankino Prospekt. Their army almost exceeds the size of the entire Turkmen army! What in hell is going on out there?”

“The field commander, a man named Turabi, is apparently the key,” Stepashin said. “He’s young, fearless, and very popular with the locals. The leader of the Taliban group, a weirdo named Zarazi, is the idealistic firebrand — Turabi is the real brains behind their operation.”

“I don’t give a shit!” Gurizev said over the speakerphone. “Mr. President, these Taliban are threatening to turn this country into another Chechnya, another Afghanistan! Do you want the rest of the world to see a handful of half-starved Taliban greasers occupy another former Russian republic? We’ll be the laughingstock of the entire world!”

“Sir, it’s nothing to be concerned about,” Minister of Foreign Affairs Filippov said calmly, ignoring Gurizev. “These Taliban don’t want to take the country. All they want is money or stuff they can sell for money. As soon as they get a bankroll, something big enough that’ll buy them a clan leadership position back home, they’ll be gone.”

“Is that what you thought of Afghanistan, too, Minister Filippov?” Gurizev asked.

“Sir, there’s absolutely no comparison here,” Filippov said. “These insurgents are raiders, not invaders. It’ll be over in forty-eight hours, sir, I guarantee it. If they don’t burn themselves out by marching across the Kara Kum Desert, they’ll take some more protection money from the Americans and leave.”

“What do the Americans have to do with this?”

“In order to keep the oil flowing, the Americans have been willing to pay the Taliban to keep the pipelines open — and pay them handsomely,” Filippov said. “The Taliban don’t want territory — they want money, funds they can take back to their tribes to fund whatever criminal operation they’re involved in.”

“I tell you, Mr. President, the Taliban want to take the country, just like they took Afghanistan,” Gurizev said on the speakerphone. “If they were only doing it for the money, they’d have stopped in Kizyl-arvat. I tell you, they want to take the city of Mary, then march on Ashkhabad itself.”

“Stop whining, Gurizev,” Sen’kov said. “That will not be allowed to happen.” He looked warily at his military chief of staff. “What do you think, General?” he asked.

“I agree with President Gurizev, sir. We should move immediately to reinforce our military units in Mary,” General Anatoliy Gryzlov said. He did not have the same close personal relationship with Sen’kov that Zhurbenko had. Gryzlov was a career military officer and showed an open dislike for politics, especially Valentin Sen’kov’s cutthroat style of politics. “President Gurizev is right — we cannot afford to underestimate these Taliban. Any more forward movement by them toward the capital will be seen as weakness on our part. And if they even threaten Mary, let alone take the city, we might as well evacuate the entire country — it’ll be a worse disaster than Afghanistan.”

“You’re exaggerating, General.”

“Sir, let’s not take the chance,” Gryzlov said. “We can quietly move tactical air assets to our training base at Mary and not attract any attention from the Americans or anyone else.”

“Air assets? The same ‘air assets’ you used on Vedeno?”

“My operation was approved by the Defense Ministry and this office—”

“Your plan said nothing about firebombing an entire village with supersonic bombers!” Minister of Defense Bukayev said. “Shit, next time you’ll ask to use a rifle and drop a nuclear weapon instead!”

“If that’s what it takes!” General Gryzlov retorted. “Sir, this new threat in Turkmenistan is a direct threat to the Turkmen and an indirect but very real threat to Russia. We have a mutual security agreement with Turkmenistan, the first ever signed with a former republic. We need to honor that. We need to move forcefully and decisively, right now.”

“We are not going to firebomb some ragheads scratching across the desert.”

“What better time and place to do it, sir?” Gryzlov asked. “High visibility, low chance of collateral damage, a purely defensive move in support of a neighbor and ally — we’re even helping the Americans!”

“Don’t try your hand at politics here, General — you’re no good at it,” Sen’kov interrupted. “I suggest you send out probes to keep watch and maybe harass the Taliban as they move. Eventually they’ll get tired of being plinked off one by one and decide to leave.”

“I don’t want to get our forces bogged down in guerrilla warfare with a bunch of fucking desert reptiles, sir,” Gryzlov said. “We lost the advantage in Afghanistan not because we used airpower but because we didn’t use enough airpower. If we go in, we must go in not just with adequate force but with overwhelming force.”

“We don’t need an invasion force to take out a handful of ragheads in the open desert.”

“We can’t take the chance, sir,” Gryzlov emphasized. “Let’s move into Turkmenistan in force. Let’s not make the mistakes we did in Chechnya or Afghanistan. I can send three wings of heavy bombers over those rebels in twelve hours and wipe out their armor, artillery, and air defenses in one night. I can have thirty thousand troops on the ground in Turkmenistan in two weeks, which should be more than enough to destroy what’s left of the Taliban. In two months I can have another fifty thousand troops in place. We can protect every drop of oil we pump out of that place.”

“And have the entire world watching on CNN while we bomb the hell out of a bunch of desert ragheads?” Sen’kov retorted. “Out of the question. You can send in commando teams to keep an eye on those pigfuckers, but I don’t want to slaughter them unless I absolutely have to.”

“Sir, they’ve already killed Turkmeni and even Russian troops,” Gryzlov said. “We’re fully justified in sending in troops to destroy them. We should—”