Rogue Forces

shook his head again, as if erasing the entire conversation from his head. “Are you still going to tell the vice president your theory?”

“Yes.”

“Only you can add two and two and come up with five. It’s your funeral. Okay, let’s get this over with.” Wilhelm nodded to Weatherly, who cut his talk short and motioned the vice president to a waiting seat.

Wilhelm stood uncomfortably at the dais as everyone settled in. “Mr. Vice President, distinguished visitors, thank you for this visit,” he began. “Your presence so quickly after the tragedy last night sends a clear and important signal to not just the regiment but to all of the players in this conflict. My staff and I stand ready to assist you in your investigation.

“I know there are a lot of VIPs—the Iraqi prime minister, the ambassador, the commander of coalition forces in Iraq—waiting to greet you who will be very angry to learn that you came here instead of going to base headquarters to meet them,” Wilhelm went on, “but General McLanahan and I thought you needed to hear from us first. Unfortunately, the base commander, Colonel Jaffar, will not be here.”

“Did he say why not, Colonel?” the vice president asked.

“He told me it would be a breach of protocol to talk with you before his superior officers did, sir,” Patrick replied. “He sends his regrets.”

“It was his men that were killed and his homeland that was attacked. Who cares who hears from us first?”

“Would you like me to get him back here, sir?”

“No, let’s press on,” Phoenix said. “I’m not really concerned about stepping on toes right now, except for the ones responsible for killing our soldiers, and then I’ll make sure that bastard is taken down.

“Okay, gents, I wanted to get this briefing from you because I know the Iraqis, Kurds, and Turks want to brief me soon, and I know they’re going to spin it their way; I wanted to get the first word from you. The word from the Turks is that they’re not doing anything except defending their homeland against the PKK and that the bombardment was a tragic but simple mistake. Let’s hear your take.”

“Roger that, sir.” The electronic display behind Wilhelm flared to life, showing a map of the border region between northern Iraq and southeast Turkey. “They’ve increased their Jandarma border forces over the past year or so, including special ops battalions, along with a few more aviation units, to help deal with the PKK cross-border incursions. They’ve sent a few regular army units to the southwest as well, perhaps one or two brigades.”

“Much bigger than normal deployments, I assume?” the vice president asked.

“Substantially bigger, sir, even considering the recent PKK terror attacks at Diyarbakir,” Wilhelm replied.

“And what do we have on this side?”

“Together with the Iraqis, sir—about a third of their force, and a fraction of the air forces,” Wilhelm replied. “The biggest threat is their tactical air forces in the region. Diyarbakir is home to Second Tactical Air Forces Command, responsible for the defense of the Syria, Iraq, and Iran border regions. They have two wings of F-16 fighter-bombers and one wing of F-4E Phantom fighter-bombers, plus one new wing of A-10 Thunderbolt Two close air support aircraft and one wing of F-15E Strike Eagle fighter-bombers, recently acquired from the United States as surplus equipment.”

“Surplus F-15s—that’s the craziest thing I’ve ever heard,” the vice president said, shaking his head. “Aren’t they still undefeated in combat?”

“I believe so, sir,” Wilhelm said. “But with the recent drawdown of U.S. Air Force fighters in favor of Navy and Marines carrier-based tactical fighters, a lot of good Americans weapons came on the export market.”

“I know, I know—I fought hard to stop the outflow of such high-tech stuff,” Phoenix said. “But President Gardner is a real military expert as well as a big supporter of the Navy, and Congress was solidly behind his transformation and modernization plans. The Air Force got hosed, and countries like Turkey are reaping the benefits. If we can’t convert F-22s for carrier ops, Turkey is likely to get Raptors, too. Okay, soapbox over. Please continue, Colonel. What other threats are you facing?”

“Their larger antiaircraft systems such as the Patriot missile, large-caliber radar-guided triple-A, and British Rapier surface-to-air missiles are arrayed against Iran and Syria,” Wilhelm went on. “We can expect them to move some systems farther west, but of course Iraq is not a threat from the air, so I think they’ll keep their SAMs deployed against Iran and Syria. Smaller guns and shoulder-fired Stinger missiles can be encountered anywhere and are widely deployed in armored battalions.

“The Turkish Jandarma paramilitary forces deploy several special operations battalions, mostly to hunt down and destroy PKK insurgent and terror units. They get a lot of good training, and we consider them to be equivalent to a Marine recon unit—light, fast, mobile, and deadly.”

“Their commander, General Besir Ozek, was badly hurt in the last big PKK attack in Diyarbakir,” Patrick added, “but he’s apparently up and around and directing his forces in hunt-and-kill operations throughout the border regions. He’s undoubtedly the one who executed the rocket attack on Zakhu.”

“I definitely need to have a talk with him,” the vice president said. “So, Colonel, what’s your explanation for all this activity?”

“It’s not my job to analyze, sir,” Wilhelm said, “but they’re gearing up for an offensive against the PKK. They’re backing up the Jandarma with regular military forces in a show of force. The PKK will scatter and keep their heads down; the Turks will hit a few bases, and then everything will go back to relative normalcy. The PKK’s been doing this for over thirty years—Turkey can’t stop them.”

“Sending in the regular military—that’s something they haven’t done before,” Phoenix observed. He glanced at Patrick. “General, you are suddenly quiet.” He looked back at Wilhelm. “There appears to be disagreement here. Colonel?”

“Sir, General McLanahan is of the opinion that this buildup of Turkish forces in this region is a prelude to a full-scale invasion of Iraq.”

“An invasion of Iraq?” Phoenix exclaimed. “I know they’ve done a lot of cross- border raids over the years, but why a full invasion, General?”

“Sir, it’s exactly because they have done a lot of raids, and they haven’t succeeded in stopping or even slowing the number of PKK attacks, that will prompt them to stage an all-out assault on the PKK in Iraq—not just the strongholds, training bases, and supply dumps along the border, but on the Kurdish leadership themselves. I think they’ll want to crush the PKK problem in one lightning thrust and kill as many as they can before American and international pressure forces them to withdraw.”

“Colonel?”

“The Turks simply don’t have the manpower, sir,” Wilhelm said. “We’re talking about an operation similar in scope to Desert Storm—two hundred and fifty thousand troops, minimum. The Turkish army is approximately four hundred thousand total, mostly conscripts. They would need to commit one-third of their regular armed forces plus another one-half of their reserves for this one operation. That would take months and billions of dollars. The Turkish army is simply not an expeditionary force—they’re built for anti-insurgent operations and self-defense, not for invading other countries.”

“General?”

“The Turks would be fighting from their own soil and fighting for self-preservation and national pride,” Patrick said. “If they committed half of their regular and reserve forces, they’d have close to half a million troops available, and they have a very large pool of trained veterans to use. I see no reason why they wouldn’t order a full mobilization of all forces for a chance to destroy the PKK once and for all.

“But the new game-changing factor in play here is the Turkish air force,” Patrick went on. “In years past, the Turkish military was mostly an internal counterinsurgency force with a secondary role as a NATO trip wire against the Soviet Union. Its navy is good but it’s tasked mostly for defending the Bosporus and Dardanelles and patrolling the Aegean Sea. The air force was relatively small because it relied on the U.S. Air Force for support.

“But in just the past two years that’s changed, and now Turkey has the largest air force in Europe except for Russia. They’ve been buying a lot more than surplus F-15s, sir—they bought all sorts of surplus noncarrier qualified attack aircraft, including the A-10 Thunderbolt tactical bombers, AC-130 Spectre gunships, and Apache gunship helicopters, along with weapons such as Patriot surface-to-air missiles, AMRAAM air-to-air missiles, and Maverick and Hellfire precision-guided air-to-ground missiles. They license-build F-16 fighters right in Turkey; they have as many F-16 squadrons available for action as we did in Desert Storm, and they’ll all be fighting right from home. And