'Thank you for dealing with the rest of their guns. It was quite frightening,' Abdullah said, looking through his binoculars. The advancing UIR T-80s were just over three thousand meters away, having not yet spotted his hull- down MlA2s.
'How long have you been in contact?'
'It started just after sunset yesterday. We are all that is left of the 4th Brigade.' And that didn't help Berman's confidence at all. Above their heads, the tank's turret made a slight adjustment to the left. There was a short phrase over the major's radio, and he replied with a single word—shouted, however. A second after that, the tank to the left of them jerked backward a foot or so, and a blast of fire erupted from the main gun. It made the artillery round seem like a firecracker in comparison. Against all logic, Berman raised his head. In the distance he saw a column of smoke, and tumbling atop it was a tank turret.
'Jesus!'
'You have a radio I can use?'
'SKY-ONE, THIS is Tiger Lead,' an AWACS officer heard on a side channel. 'I am on the ground with a Saudi tank group north of KKMC.' He gave the position next. 'We are in heavy contact here. Got any help you can send us? Over.'
'Tiger, can you authenticate?'
'No, God damn it, my fuckin' codes went down with my -15. This is Colonel Steve Berman out of Mountain Home, and I am one very pissed-off aviator right now, Sky. Forty minutes ago, we beat the snot out of some Iraqi artillery, and now we got tanks coming out the ass. You gonna believe me or not, over.'
'Sounds American to me,' a more senior officer thought.
'And if you look close, their tanks are round on top and pointing south and ours are flat on the top and pointing north, over.' That bit of information was followed by the crash of an explosion. 'This ground-pounder shit ain't no fun at all,' he told them.
'Me too,' the first controller decided. 'Tiger, stand by. Devil-Lead, this is Sky-One, we have some business for you…'
It wasn't supposed to be this way at all, but it was happening even so. There were supposed to be frag—for fragmentary—orders detailing «packages» of tactical aircraft to hunting patches, but there weren't enough aircraft for that, and no time to select their patches, either. Sky-One had a flight of four F-16s waiting for some air-to-mud action, and this seemed as good a time as any.
THE ADVANCING TANKS stopped to trade fire at first, but that was a losing game against the fire-control systems on the American-made Abrams tanks, and these Saudi crews had gotten a postgraduate course in gunnery earlier in the day. The enemy backed off and maneuvered left and right, blowing smoke from their rear decks to obscure the battlefield. More vehicles were left behind, contributing their own black columns to the morning sky as their ammunition racks cooled off. The initial part of the engagement had lasted five minutes and had cost the UIR twenty vehicles that Berman could see, with no losses for the friend-lies. Maybe this wasn't so bad after all.
The Vipers came in from the west, hardly visible about four miles downrange, dropping their Mark-82 dumb bombs in the middle of the enemy formation.
'Brilliant!' the English-educated Major Abdullah said.
They couldn't tell how many vehicles had died as a result, but now his men knew they were not alone in their engagement. That made a difference.
IF ANYTHING, THE streets of Tehran had become grimmer still. What struck Clark and Chavez (Klerk and Chekov, currently) was the absence of conversation. People moved along without speaking to one another. There was also a sudden shortage of men, as reserves were being called up to trek into their armories, draw weapons, and prepare to move into the war which their new country had halfheartedly announced after President Ryan's preemption.
The Russians had given them the location of Daryaei's home, and their job really was only to look at it— which was easily said, but rather a different task on the streets of the capital city of the country with which you were at war. Especially if you had been in that city shortly before, and seen by members of its security force. The complications were piling up.
The man lived modestly, they saw from two and a half blocks away. It was a three-story building on a middle-class street that displayed no trappings of power at all, except for the obvious presence of guards on the front steps, and a few cars spotted at the corners. Looking closer from two hundred meters away, they could also see that people avoided walking on that side of the street. Popular man, the Ayatollah.
'So, who else lives there?' Klerk asked the Russian rezident. He was covered as the embassy's second secretary, and performed many diplomatic functions to maintain his legend.
'Mainly his bodyguards, we believe.' They were sitting in a cafe, drinking coffee and studiously not looking directly at the building of their interest. 'To either side, we think the buildings have been vacated. He has his security concerns, this man of God. The people here are increasingly uneasy under his rule—even the enthusiasm of the Iraqi conquest fades now. You can see the mood as well as I, Klerk. These people have been under control for almost a generation. They grow tired of it. And it was clever of your President to announce hostilities before our friend did. The shock value was very effective, I think. I like your President,' he added. 'So does Sergey Nikolay'ch.'
'This building is close enough, Ivan Sergeyevich,' Chavez said quietly, calling the kaffeeklatsch back to order. 'Two hundred meters, direct line of sight.'
'What about collateral damage?' Clark wondered. It required some circumlocutions to make that come out in Russian.
'You Americans are so sentimental about such things,' the rezident observed. It amused him.
'Comrade Klerk has always had a soft heart,' Chekov confirmed.
AT HOLLOMAN AIR Force Base in New Mexico, a total of eight pilots arrived at the base hospital to have their blood checked. The Ebola testing kits were finally coming out in numbers. The first major military deliveries went to the Air Force, which could deploy more power more quickly than the other branches of the service. There had been a few cases in nearby Albuquerque, all being treated at the University of New Mexico Medical Center and two on this very base, a sergeant and his wife, the former dead and the latter dying—the news of it was all over the base, further enraging warriors who already possessed a surfeit of passion. The aviators all checked out clean, and the relief they felt was not ordinary. Now, they knew, they could go out and do something. The ground crews came in next. These also tested negative. All went off to the flight line. Half of the pilots strapped into F-117 Nighthawks. The other half, with the ground crews, boarded KC-10 tanker/transport aircraft for the long flight to Saudi.
Word was coming in over the Air Force's own communications network. The 366th and the F-16s from the Israeli base were doing pretty well, but everyone wanted a piece of this one, and the men and women from Holloman would lead the second wave into the battle zone.
'IS HE QUITE mad?' the diplomat asked an Iranian colleague. It was the RVS officers who had the dangerous— or at least most sensitive—part of the intelligence mission.
'You may not speak of our leader in that way,' the foreign ministry official replied as they walked down the street.
'Very well, does your learned holy man fully understand what happens when one employs weapons of mass destruction?' the intelligence officer asked delicately. Of course he did not, they both knew. No nation-state had done such a thing in over fifty years.
'He may have miscalculated,' the Iranian allowed.
'Indeed.' The Russian let it go at that for the moment. He'd been working this mid-level diplomat for over a year. 'The world now knows that you have this capability. So clever of him to have flown on the very aircraft that made it possible. He is quite mad. You know that. Your country will be a pariah—'
'Not if we can—'
'No, not if you can. But what if you cannot?' the Russian asked. 'Then the entire world will turn against you.'
'THIS IS TRUE?' the cleric asked.
'It is quite true,' the man from Moscow assured him. 'President Ryan is a man of honor. He was our enemy for most of his life, and a dangerous enemy, but now, with peace between us, he turns into a friend. He is well respected by both the Israelis and the Saudis. The Prince Ali bin Sheik and he are very close. That is well known.' This meeting was in Ashkhabad, capital of Turkmenistan, disagreeably close to the Iranian border, especially with
