“Green One, Green One, many fast-movers, many fast-movers coming in from the southwest, going supersonic, very low altitude!” The Russians had waited until their Mi-24 Hinds moved out of the way and the left flank moved up, and then they swooped in with a force of fighter-bombers.
“Pop smoke! Pop smoke!” He was about to order the driver to move positions, but he remembered that the drivers were dead, the engine and front of their command-post vehicle blasted apart. There was no longer any choice — they were sitting ducks here. He pounded on the Plexiglas board with a fist. “Evacuate the command cab! Get moving!” The techs behind the glass needed no encouragement. They had the board opened and were racing out of the cab as soon as the metal stairs were lowered into place. Turabi remembered to grab the backpack radio and map case just before he leaped out of the vehicle.
The screening smoke was gagging and oily-tasting, so thick that at first Turabi didn’t know which way to run — but soon the explosions started again, and he ran straight ahead until an explosion tossed him off his feet as if the hard-baked desert floor were a carpet that had just been pulled out from under him. He felt white-hot pieces of flying metal rip into his uniform and bounce off his helmet, and the soles of his boots seemed hot enough to melt. The last explosion felt like being hit with a hundred-kilo bag of sand, and he could do nothing else but close his eyes and scream.
Once the ringing in his ears stopped, he willed his legs to start working again and managed to crawl over to his command-post vehicle. It had taken an indirect hit that had turned the ten-ton vehicle over on its side and blown out all its tires. The drivers’ cab was indeed burned out by what appeared to be a rocket or small missile. The bomb crater was fairly deep and was no longer smoldering, so Turabi crawled down inside it. The height was perfect — all but the very top of his head was underground. He thought it a little strange to be headquartered in his enemy’s bomb crater, but there was no time to worry about that now. He set up the portable radio, extending the antenna as far over the crater rim as he could, and spread out his chart, holding it open with bomb fragments.
The network was eerily quiet. This did not feel good at all. “Bravo One, Green One.”
“Green One, this is Bravo One.” Again it was a different voice on the radio, much younger and panicky- sounding — the company commander and perhaps a platoon commander or two had probably been killed by now. “Are you all right, sir?”
Suddenly the net was coming alive again — it was as if all the units were waiting for someone to take charge. He couldn’t blame his men too much. A month ago his most senior and battle-hardened commanders were little more than half-starved bandits driving Toyota pickups across the desert. They had to learn how to be tank commanders by watching, listening, following orders, and having the courage to take the fight right to the enemy. “The CP took a hit, and the crew scattered,” Turabi said, after he cleared the chatter off the command net again. “What’s your situation?”
“We are engaging the Turkmen right flank,” the company commander reported. “The
So they were still in the fight — good. It showed that competent warriors could still be effective even without a command post bugging them every five minutes. Turabi tried Bravo Six, the rear company, again — still no response.
Turabi awoke lying on the hard desert floor. At first he couldn’t open his eyes, and when he finally could, they stung from the billows of smoke wafting into his face. Someone was pouring water on top of his bare head. Every part of his body ached, and his face felt burned and raw. The smoke was gone, but his throat and lungs still felt coarse, and he could neither cough the congestion away nor take a deep enough breath to try harder.
His hands touched something brittle, yet it gave easily to pressure. Turabi knew that the tank was to his right, so he felt to his left to go around it. There was more brittle material that way. He felt farther left — and found a human arm. His fingers moved on their own now. He soon felt a torso, and then a chest. The corpse was not wearing a uniform — it was wearing robes. It was one of his men, a Taliban. He soon realized that the first thing he’d felt was the head, blasted open and burned.
Turabi quickly rolled to his other side, but moments later he encountered another body, this one even more heavily mangled and burned than the first. He realized with shock that he had been deliberately placed in the midst of a line of Taliban corpses.
“Try to stay still, sir,” he heard a familiar voice say. He turned and saw his first sergeant and aide, Abdul Dendara, sitting nearby. His face was almost completely black from smoke and burns, and his clothing was in tatters.
“What happened?” Turabi asked. “Have we been overrun?”
“Overrun?” Dendara looked puzzled for a long moment, and then his eyes brightened. “You don’t know, sir?” he asked incredulously. “Of course not — you’ve been unconscious, maybe even in a coma, for most of the day. Your forces were victorious, sir!”
“You had the Turkmen on the run. It’s a good thing your helicopters came in when they did, because you were no more than even most of the battle, but you deployed your forces brilliantly and had the upper hand. The Turkmen ran like scared mice, with the Russians leading the retreat. The city of Mary is yours, sir. Congratulations.”
Six
Four of the sixteen large, full-color screens at the back of the Battle Management Center at Battle Mountain Air Reserve Base filled with the image of the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Air Force General Richard Venti, speaking through the secure videoteleconference system in his office. Venti’s uniform blouse and tie were gone, and a large glass of something with ice sat on the desk; Patrick couldn’t see if it was just water or some after-hours beverage. Venti was absently juggling a fat Montblanc pen in his fingers, a habit he picked up from the endless mission briefings and debriefings he’d sat through during his Cold War fighter-pilot days pulling alert in Europe. “Go ahead, folks,” he said. “I see you fine now. Secretary Goff asked me to handle your request. He’s standing by on a secure line if we need him.”
Patrick McLanahan sat forward at the command console. With him were David Luger, Rebecca Furness, Daren Mace, and John Long. “Sir, I’ve received a request from Deputy Secretary of State Hershel to provide security support for her upcoming trip to Bahrain and Turkmenistan.”
“We’ve received the request as well,” Venti said. “I got approval from SECDEF. Any problems on your end?”
“Just one, sir: I don’t think it’s enough,” Patrick McLanahan replied.
“Explain.”
“Sir, as part of the operational review of the situation in Turkmenistan, we launched a constellation of reconnaissance and eavesdropping satellites to monitor the situation there,” Patrick said. “We recently monitored a major battle between the Taliban insurgents and Turkmen regulars against the city of Mary, and we believe that the insurgents will have the city in their control within a matter of hours — and that means Russia will be directly threatened.”
“I received your report from Air Force, Patrick,” Venti said, “but, as I said in my reply, I don’t see the hazard here other than what Deputy Secretary Hershel has already accepted. The Turkmen capital doesn’t appear to be in danger currently. This would be a good time to initiate a diplomatic mission. If the fighting starts to spread west,
