them along with us to Vegas. That should water their eyes.”
“You got that right, Senator.”
“Good. Now, what about that hard-body boyfriend of yours, Hunter Noble? He’s the key to this Las Vegas trip as long as McLanahan is up in that space station. What did you dig up on him?”
“You had him pegged from day one, Senator,” Colleen said. “Our Captain Noble seems to be stuck in junior high school. For starters: he got a woman six years older than him pregnant in high school — the school nurse, I think.”
“Happens every year where I’m from, sugar. The only virgin in my hometown was an ugly twelve-year- old.”
“He was expelled, but it didn’t matter because he already had enough credits to graduate two years early from high school and start engineering school,” Colleen went on. “Seems his way of celebrating graduation is getting some woman pregnant, because he did it again in both college and grad school. He married the third one, but the marriage was annulled when yet another affair was uncovered.”
“McLanahan he definitely
“He’s an outstanding pilot and engineer, but apparently has a real problem with authority,” Morna went on. “He gets high marks on his effectiveness reports for job performance but terrible marks for leadership skills and military bearing.”
“That’s no help — now he sounds like McLanahan again,” Barbeau said dejectedly. “What about the juicy stuff?”
“Plenty of that,” Morna said. “Lives in bachelor officers’ quarters at Nellis Air Force Base — barely six hundred square feet of living space — and has been written up many times by base security for loud parties and visitors coming and going at all times of the day and night. He’s a regular in the Officers’ Club at Nellis and piles up a pretty hefty bar tab. Rides a Harley Night Rod motorcycle and has received numerous speeding and exhibitionist driving citations. License just recently returned after a three-month suspension for unsafe driving — apparently decided to race an Air Force T-6A training aircraft down the runway.”
“That’s good, but I need the
“I saved the best for last, Senator. The list of female visitors admitted for on-base visits is as long as my arm. A few are wives of married men, a couple known bisexual women, a few prostitutes — and one was the wife of an Air Force general officer. However, visits on-base seemed to have subsided a bit in the last year…mostly because he has signature credit authority with three very large casinos in Vegas for a total of one hundred thousand dollars.”
“Senator, the man hasn’t paid for a hotel room in Vegas in over two years — he’s on a first-name basis with managers, doormen, and concierges all over town, and uses comped rooms and meals almost every week,” Colleen said. “He likes blackjack and poker and is invited backstage a lot to hang out with showgirls, boxers, and headliners. Usually has at least one and many times two or three ladies in tow.”
“Bottom line, Senator: He works hard and plays hard,” Colleen summarized. “He maintains a low profile but has made some fairly high-profile transgressions that have apparently been swept under the rug because of the work he does for the government. He’s contacted regularly by defense contractors who want to hire him, some offering incredible salaries, so that probably makes him cocky and contributes to his attitude that he doesn’t have to play the Air Force’s games.”
“Sounds like a guy living on the edge — and that’s exactly where I like ’em,” Barbeau said. “I think it’s time to go pay Captain Noble a little visit — in his native habitat.”
CHAPTER TEN
The deed is everything, the glory nothing.
The city of Mashhad—“City of Martyrs” in English — in northeastern Iran was the second-largest city in Iran and, as the location of the shrine of the eighth imam, Reza, it was the second-largest Shiite holy city in the world and second only to Qom in importance. Over twenty million pilgrims visited the Imam Reza shrine every year, making it as noteworthy and spiritual as the Haji, the pilgrimage to Mecca. Located in a valley between the Kuh-e- Ma’juni and Azhdar-Kuh mountain ranges, the area had brutally cold winters but was pleasant most of the rest of the year.
Located in the hinterlands of Iran, Mashhad held relatively little military or strategic importance until the rise of the Taliban regime in Afghanistan in the 1980s. Fearing that the Taliban would try to export its brand of Islam westward, Mashhad was turned into a counterinsurgency stronghold, with the Iranian Revolutionary Guards Corps operating several strike teams, intelligence units, counterinsurgency fighter-bomber and helicopter assault and attack units from Imam Reza International Airport.
When Hesarak Buzhazi’s military coup hit, Mashhad’s importance quickly grew even stronger. The remnants of the Revolutionary Guards Corps was chased all the way from Tehran to Mashhad. However, Buzhazi barely had the resources to maintain his tenuous hold on the capital, so he had no choice but to let the survivors flee without mounting a determined effort to root out the commanders. With the surviving Revolutionary Guards Corps commanders freely moving about the city, and with a very large influx of Shiite pilgrims that continued almost unabated even during the growing violence, the Pasdaran had lots of recruits to choose from in Mashhad. From mosques, the marketplaces and malls, and from every street corner, the call to
Spurred on by the powerful spiritual aura of the city and the entrenched power of the Revolutionary Guards Corps, acting Iranian president, chief of the Council of Guardians, and senior member of the Assembly of Experts Ayatollah Hassan Mohtaz was emboldened to return from exile in Turkmenistan, where he had been living under the protection of the Russian government. At first there was talk of all of the eastern provinces of Iran splitting from the rest of the country, with Mashhad as the new capital, but the instability of the coup and the failure of Buzhazi and the Qagevs to form a government postponed such discussions. Perhaps all Mohtaz had to do was encourage the faithful to
Three full divisions of the Revolutionary Guards Corps, over one hundred thousand strong, were based in and around Mashhad, nearly the entire surviving complement of frontline elite troops. Most of the Pasdaran forces, two divisions, were infantry, including two mechanized infantry brigades. There was one aviation brigade with counterinsurgency aircraft, attack and assault helicopters, transports, and air defense battalions; one armored brigade with light tanks, artillery, and mortar battalions; and one special operations and intelligence brigade that conducted demolition, assassination, espionage, surveillance, interrogation, and specialized communications missions such as propaganda broadcasts. In addition, another thirty thousand al-Quds paramilitary forces were deployed within the city itself, acting as spies and informers for the Pasdaran and theocratic government-in- exile.
The Revolutionary Guards Corps’ headquarters and strategic center of gravity was Imam Reza International Airport, situated just five miles south of the Imam Reza shrine. However, all of the tactical military units at the airport were relocated to make room for a new arrival: an S-300OMU1
The S-300 strategic air defense system was considered one of the finest in the world, equal to the American PAC-3 Patriot missile system. An S-300 battery consisted of a long-range three-dimensional scanning acquisition radar, a target engagement and missile guidance radar, and twelve trailers each loaded with four missiles, along
