sympathetic faces. They might scatter and confuse the crowd if her bodyguards could get their hands on those rifles, and they could probably lose themselves in the bazaar easily…
…but then Azar noticed other men in the crowd…and they didn’t look like Turkmeni vendors or shoppers. They looked military but wore civilian clothes, they were less Central Asian — looking, their gazes were sure and steady, and their hands were free, hovering near open coats. They were Iranians, Azar thought, surely Pasdaran — she was positive of it. She turned to Saidi and motioned toward the men she spotted, and Saidi saw him right away too.
“Major, no,” she said softly. “Pasdaran.”
Najar’s eyes darted around the crowd and soon spotted the very same subjects. He looked accusingly at Fattah, then let his body relax and opened his palms. “I wonder what the Turkmeni government would think about Iran bringing in Revolutionary Guard assassins into their country,” Najar said.
“They probably wouldn’t like it very much,” Fattah admitted, “but by the time they found out about him they’d be long gone, and you’d still be dead. Now come along quietly, please.”
CHAPTER 6
“Here’s the latest update, ladies and gentlemen,” Brigadier-General David Luger said in the Dreamland battle staff room. He was standing before Patrick McLanahan; Brigadier-General Rebecca Furness, commander of the Air Battle Force based at Battle Mountain Air Reserve Base, and Brigadier-General Hal Briggs, commander of the Air Battle Force’s ground forces; and Captain Hunter Noble and First Lieutenant Dorothea Benneton, representing the XR-A9 Black Stallion spaceplane crews.
“Armstrong Space Station will take another day and a half to get settled into its new orbit to start detailed reconnaissance and surveillance of Iran,” Luger went on. “We’re getting a few oblique images but nothing tactically useful yet. We’ve increased NIRTSat overflights and we’ve narrowed the search for Iran’s mobile medium- and long-range missiles to a dozen different sites.”
“One dozen? Doesn’t sound too narrow to me, Dave,” Hal commented.
“Once the station gets in place, it’ll be able to discriminate between real missiles and decoys and even look inside bunkers and storage buildings,” Dave said. “We’ve got the best eyes out there on it now.”
“Anything on Buzhazi’s whereabouts?” Patrick asked.
“Negative,” Dave replied. “He’s hiding deep. No recent attacks except for very low-level insurgent activities. He might be gearing up for some big operation — the attacks lately have been small raids, collecting nothing more than uniforms and small-arms ammunition, but this could be a prelude to something much bigger.”
“The White House won’t even consider our plan to attack the Iranian missile sites until we’ve narrowed the field down,” Patrick said, “so we’re on hold until then.” He turned to the Air Battle Force commander. “Rebecca, status of your forces?”
“Same — three EB-52 Megafortresses, all manned; four EB-1C Vampires, two unmanned; and one AL-52 Dragon anti-missile aircraft,” Furness replied. One of the first female combat pilots in the U.S. Air Force, Furness was also the first woman in charge of a tactical bombing wing. Her Air Force Reserve B-1B Lancer bomber wing was selected by Patrick McLanahan to be converted to strategic flying battleships, capable of carrying an extensive array of weaponry. Most of her aircraft had been destroyed by the Russians at Yakutsk — her little force of bombers represented virtually all of America’s air-breathing long-range strike aircraft. “I think we have access to one or two B-2A bombers and six KC-10 tankers as well.”
Rebecca’s EB-1C Vampire bombers, EB-52 Megafortress battleships, and AL-52 Dragon anti-missile aircraft were the most sophisticated attack planes in the world. The EB-1C Vampire was a modified version of the Air Force’s B-1B Lancer, with the addition of stealth technology, advanced computers, avionics, aircraft systems, and flight controls. But the real power of the Vampire bomber was its weapons. Every air-launched weapon in the American military arsenal could be utilized on the Vampire, and most weapons others in the American military had never heard of.
The EB-52 Megafortress was a highly modified version of the venerable B-52 Stratofortress bomber, so much so that it could hardly be called a B-52 any more at all. Instead of five or six crewmembers, it had just two pilots — all other functions and crew positions were automated. The skin and structure of the original B-52 had been changed, using composite fibersteel, radar-absorbing materials, and unconventional mission-adaptive flight controls, to turn it into a real stealth bomber. The avionics and systems on board had all been changed to make the aircraft more precise, more connected, lighter, faster, and more efficient. Only a handful of EB-52s and its other even more highly modified brothers and sisters still existed after the American Holocaust, but the remaining few planes were the cutting-edge of long-range air attack.
“Updates on Iran’s defenses?”
“The Revolutionary Guards and Iranian air defense forces are on full alert,” Rebecca replied, “and we’re seeing every kind of Russian, French, Chinese, and even some American air defense weapons from the seventies to the present operating out there. Tehran, the Turkish border, and the Persian Gulf, Gulf of Oman, and Arabian Sea coastlines are the heaviest defended, with multiple layers of very sophisticated surface-to-air missiles sites — many of them mobile and harder to pinpoint. They’ve obviously learned some lessons from their last encounter with you guys. Very few fighter patrols. We’re looking at possible missile launch sites but so far all of them have similar numbers of defensive batteries installed around them. So far we can’t tell which are decoys, so it’s hard to tell which are real.
“We’ve had to modify our original plan to reflect the denser and more sophisticated order of battle,” she went on. “We’ll need to use a lot of resources to punch through both their outer as well as terminal defenses. Once our bombers get through the outer defenses they can roam over the countryside fairly freely until they get within fifty miles of the target area, and then they run the gauntlet again. Each plane may have just a couple big precision- guided munitions left to attack by the time they make it through.” She looked at Hal. “Our attacks need to be finely coordinated both for ingress and egress, and even if everything works perfectly our guys will be in for a very rough ride at best.”
“But it’s still doable?”
Rebecca hesitated just long enough for many of their throats to go dry, then replied, “Yes, we can do it. We’ll need as much intel as we can scrape together, better than average aircraft and weapon reliability, perfect timing, perfect aiming, and a lot of luck…but yes, sir, we can do it.”
“Thanks, Rebecca.” Patrick knew that Rebecca Furness’s assessment was as brutally honest as possible — she wouldn’t hesitate to tell them if she didn’t think her bombers could make it. “Boomer?”
“We’ve got two Black Stallion spaceplanes ready to go,” Hunter Noble replied. “Both can be configured for attack, satellite launch, or passengers. The third spaceplane hasn’t gone into orbit or carried any cargo but we can use it if necessary — we’ll be testing as we go. Nano?”
“I wanted to bring up the new gear General Briggs mentioned we might be bringing along, Nano” Benneton said, smiling enticingly at Hal just as she had been since returning from Las Vegas. “I took a look at some of that new gear we acquired. The problem is not with weight, but volume. The unit itself folds up fairly small, but we need to remove two crew seats to accommodate it. That means we can carry one unit, two or three mission backpacks, two spare power cells, and three passengers in the module. It’s impressive technology, but my question for you is: is it worth losing two Tin Man commandos?”
“Can we fit two units in the passenger module, Lieutenant?” Dave Luger asked.
“Yes, sir, but with spare power cells only, not with any of those mission backpacks,” Nano replied. “Again, it’s volume, not weight. Obviously those units can carry a big load, and they were designed to be carried into battle aboard large cargo-sized aircraft or those cool Humvees we got, so there was never any attempt to miniaturize the mission backpacks. Once they’re redesigned, they’ll be much more useful.”
“We’ll adjust the mix depending on the mission and the tactical situation,” Patrick said, “but for now I want to be able to bring one unit with as many mission backpacks as possible together with two Tin Men.”
