Force of Eagles (26 page)

“We’ve got the football game tomorrow,” Pullman said.

“Need more than that.”

“Barbara Lyon,” Dewa said. “Our apartment owner likes playing the officer’s lady. I’ll talk to her and see if she’ll plan a dinner party for Saturday night.”

“Still leaves Sunday. We need time to get this change sorted out.”

“If I know Barbara,” Dewa said, “Sunday will take care of itself.” Which takes care of two problems, she thought. We need to keep Mado preoccupied, and
I
need to get hot lips away from you, Colonel.

Dewa Rahimi had decided to start her own operation for this lonely man she had decided was worth fighting for.

Chapter 24: D Minus 11

Texas Lake, Nevada

General Mado looked irritated as he watched the teams lining up for the kickoff on the makeshift field Pullman had chalked out on the hard desert pan of Texas Lake. “The Rangers outweigh us and we sure don’t need anyone hurt right now. And who in
hell
decided to let women play?”

“That’s Captain Kowalski, a C-130 pilot,” Stansell told him un-easily. “It’s flag football, sir. No tackling, and they can’t leave their feet to block. May get a few bruises but no one is going to get hurt.”

Mado looked skeptical.

The whistle sounded and the Army kicked off. Lieutenant Don Larson, Duck Mallard’s co-pilot, caught the ball just short of the ten-yard line and started up-field. He fell in behind Torch Doucette, who cleared a path of would-be tacklers trying to snatch one of the two-foot streamers snapped to each side of Larson’s belt, thereby signifying a tackle. They made it to their own forty-five.

“The black kid can run,” Gregory told Kamigami on the sidelines. “Let’s see how they pass.”

Lydia Kowalski came out of the huddle first and took her position at right end. “I heard you think I go cheap,” she said to the Ranger opposite her.

Andy Baulck came out of his stance on the snap, blocking her back. Kowalski managed to sidestep him and ran her pattern down field, Baulck chasing her. Larson had moved through the line on a hand-off from the Air Force’s quarterback Hal Beasely and was headed for the goal line. After a speedy corporal had grabbed Larson’s flag and the referee blew his whistle ending the play, Baulck still threw a block at Kowalski’s back, sending her sprawling.

“Clip,” Kamigami said from the sidelines.

On the next play Kowalski seemed to ignore Baulck as she took her stance. A large woman, well-built, on the snap from center she threw her weight forward, blocked hard and straightened Baulck up. She then stepped into him, and kneed him in the groin, smiling innocently as she did so. Something more unpleasant might have been joined except that Kamigami hurried into the game and pointed at Baulck, who got the message.

With Kamigami anchoring his side of the line now, the Air Force drive stalled. He punched holes almost at will through the Air Force’s line and let tacklers pour through, nailing the Beezer before he could pass to Larson. The first quarter ended scoreless as Doucette was carried off the field after trying to block Kamigami. Stansell had made Thunder Bryant the coach for the Air Force, since he had been a starting guard at UCLA before dropping football and turning to academics. “You coach and I’ll play opposite Kamigami,” Bryant said, handing his clipboard to Duck Mallard.

Now the Army was marching on the Air Force’s goal line. At the snap Bryant and Kamigami blocked each other. Even without helmets and pads, everyone on the field heard it—two bulls colliding on a dry desert lake bed. On the next play Petrovich, Kowalski’s loadmaster who had fought with the Rangers, got between them and was carried off the field unconscious.

At half-time the game was still scoreless but the Army was wearing Air Force down. Mallard told Kowalski she was out of the game and received no argument. Bryant lay on the ground, trying not to moan out load. At the kickoff it was Army’s game, but Bryant and Kamigami still kept at it.

Baulck, also out of the game, carried two beers over to the Air Force side of the field and sat down beside Kowalski, offering her one as he did. She took it and popped the cap. “Hey,” he said, “I’m sorry for what I said and…did out there.” She looked at him, taking a sip. “I got a big mouth…well, hell, I’d fly on your plane anywhere.”

“Thanks, I appreciate that.” She pulled at the beer and gestured at the field. “Do we have to do that again?”

“No way,” Baulck laughed, and went after two more beers.

The game ended Army thirteen, Air Force zero. Kamigami and Bryant walked over to the beer, Kaznigami handing Bryant one. “Captain, I’m hurting,” he said, loud enough for everyone around to hear. It was one of the few times the battalion saw their Command Sergeant Major allow a smile. Bryant, however, wasn’t fooled…just grateful to have gotten out of it alive.

*

Las Vegas, Nevada

General Mado was in an expansive mood. The meal had been fine, and if the coq au vin was any indication, Barbara Lyon was a considerable cook. Mado sipped at his wine, admiring the women. Dewa Rahimi seemed to shimmer in her simple black dress, and Barbara…he’d never met anyone like her.

The general’s restless mind also poked and stirred through impressions from earlier in the day. What he had seen before the football game indicated that Stansell was making Task Force Alpha a
reality
. The beer bust after the game was proof that morale was now high and Alpha was a close-knit team. Leachmeyer wouldn’t much like hearing any of that. And then a thought snapped into place, developed and complete, like so much of what he did: He could use Rahimi to scatter a hint of suspicion. Hadn’t he told Stansell to get rid of her? And she
was
a civilian of Iranian descent—a built-in potential compromise of Task Force Alpha…

But play this one carefully, he warned himself. Cunningham was definitely watching him. Well, if anyone asked why Stansell had kept her on, he would just point out the obvious—they were attracted to each other. Even Barbara had mentioned it to him. Barbara, definite possibilities there—but not for the little colonel.

“Wine in the spa?” Barbara was asking.

His pleasure was interrupted by Gillian Locke coming through the gate, bundled against the cool night air, her pregnancy barely showing. “Jack just called,” she said. “He’s still at the office and was wondering if Dewa was available. He said something about needing her magic fingers on the computer.”

“Duty calls,” Dewa sighed but welcomed the chance to leave Barbara and Mado alone. “Colonel, I hate to ask, but my car is acting up…” There was nothing wrong with her car.

“Sure,” Stansell said, “I’ll drive.”

“And I’ll get another bottle of wine,” Barbara said, leaving with Stansell and Dewa. The wait before she came back seemed endless for Mado. Finally she came through the gate, locking it behind her. Mado had trouble controlling his breathing when she reappeared in a robe and promptly shed it.

“The only way to use a spa,” she announced, and stepped into the hot water. “Strip, general, and join me. I love massages,” she said, as he joined her. “Most of all, I love to give them…”

*

Nellis AFB, Nevada

Dewa gasped when she saw her office. Jack had tacked a new map to the wall and the floor was littered with books and crumpled paper. Cabinet drawers were pulled out and her Top Secret safe was wide open, obviously riffled through at will. She took her responsibility for safeguarding classified information very seriously. Trimler was asleep on the couch, and Jack looked haggard and needed a shave. The two had been cooped up in the office since Friday night.

“I think we got it,” Jack mumbled, heading for the coffee pot. “Bob”—he gestured at the sleeping Trimler—“says his people need to be inserted before the attack. We plan to parachute them in early—”

“Mado considered that when he originally laid the plan out,” Stansell interrupted. “He tossed it because a paradrop is too easily observed and would warn the Iranians and blow the whole operation. We need another way to get them in.”

“Not if we do it right. Bob tells me the Rangers train using MT-1X parachutes. That’s the rectangular mattresslike chute that’s really a non-rigid airfoil. Colonel, the chute has a forward speed of twenty-five miles an hour and if we drop them high enough with a good tail wind, they can stay airborne for an hour and cover some territory. If we drop ’em at night, nobody will see them and people make piss-poor radar returns.”

“Okay, so we drop them far away from the prison. But how do we get them inside Iranian airspace at altitude and undetected in the first place?”

“We piggyback on an airliner.”

“You’ve lost me.”

“Easier to show you. Dewa, we’ve got all the Iranian airways plotted on that chart. Can you tap some data-base that give us their domestic flight schedules? We need a flight that takes off out of Rezaiyeh at night—” he tapped the airport that Carroll had landed at seventeen days before—“and heads south or southeast.”

Dewa went to work and twenty minutes later had the information they wanted. “There’s an F-27 that takes off for Bandar Abbas in the late evening out of Rezaiyeh every Monday, Wednesday and Saturday.”

“Okay. We intercept that F-27 when it climbs out of Rezaiyeh and piggyback on him. When we’re about here”—Jack pointed to a spot on the airway between Rezaiyeh and Bandar Abbas—“our team bails out. A C-130 will have no trouble matching the speed and altitude of an F-27 and then we drop off when the F-27 descends to land and low level it out of Iran. No way the Iranian radar net will be able to break us out from the airliner.”

He measured distances off the map. “Except the closest that airway comes to Kermanshah is seventy-six nautical miles to the northeast.” He woke Trimler. “Bob, take a look at this.”

The sleepy captain studied the map for a moment. “All you need is a fifty-knot wind out of the northeast.” He went back to sleep.

“Jack, the prevailing winds at altitude over Iran this time of year are mostly out of the west,” Stansell said. “Dewa, can you access the computer at the National Center for Atmospheric Research?”

“Where’s it located and what kind of computer?”

“On a mesa overlooking Boulder. They’ve got a Cray.”

She shot him a look. “The general I work for at the Special Activities Center is going to have fits when he gets the bill for this. I mean, someone has to pay for all this computer time, and I’m using the Center’s user code. Do you have any idea what it costs to use a Cray for one second? Never mind, don’t ask.

“Okay, I’m in,” she said, “I’m talking to an IBM that talks to the Cray. What do you need?”

“The NCAR models weather patterns, and their predictions are remarkably accurate, especially within twenty-four hours. See what winds they’re predicting over Iran at the five hundred millibar level, that’s roughly eighteen thousand feet, for, say, ten days from now.”

Dewa’s fingers played over the keyboard. Then they waited. Less than a minute later a map flashed on her screen. Stansell and Locke looked over her shoulders. A high-pressure area was predicted to move over the eastern Mediterranean and the jet stream would bend south over Iran. A steep pressure gradient was predicted to build with it and cause a strong flow of winds out of the north for about seventy-two hours.

“Close enough” Jack said. “Print that puppy out. Northerly winds put us in the ball park.”

“Okay, now how do we get our plane hooked up with the Iran airliner?” Stansell said.

“Hold on,” Dewa said. “I saw some message traffic the other day about a joint Turkish-American air-defense exercise starting next week using AWACS and EC- 130s.” Her fingers flew over the keyboard. “I’m going to talk to someone in the Watch Center in the Pentagon.” Five minutes later she had an answer. “Cunningham moved a scheduled exercise up two weeks and it kicks off Monday. They’ll be operating in the tri-border area of Turkey,
Iran
and Iraq.”

“That cagey son of a bitch,” Stansell said.

“You figure he did that deliberately?” Dewa asked, and saw the answer vivid and clear on Stansell’s face.

Chapter 25: D Minus 10

Kermanshah, Iran

Mary Hauser was standing in front of Mokhtari’s desk, focusing on him. He was not looking at her but toward the corner of the room, behind her. Her eyes followed his gaze and she could feel the bile in her stomach rise. The man was sitting in the corner, clothes in a pile at his feet, staring at the floor. He did not look up when he heard her gasp.

The commandant asked his first question, the start of the routine she knew too well—questions, beatings, strippings…“What equipment did you use at Ras Assanya to kill our pilots?”

For a moment her spirit blazed and she almost said, The equipment that killed your pilots were the checklists they used to preflight their own aircraft. That gave them the confidence to think they were ready for a fight…She knew the consequences of saying that was sitting there in the corner…“I used an AN slash TIPS dash fifty-nine system—”

Mokhtari held up his hand, fumbled with a cassette recorder on his desk trying to get it to work. As a guard came over and tried to make the recorder work, Mary used the time to think. She had to follow Doc Landis’ advice—try to make them want to keep her alive…Again her stubborn spirit flared—I will not sacrifice myself and all I believe in to this creature…

The commandant gave a jerk of his head and Mary started to talk. “Is it on? The dash fifty-nine system…Are you sure it’s working?” She gasped for air. “It’s a D-band radar we use for air surveillance. It uses a phased-array antenna, not the normal parabolic style. I found that confusing because the old-style antenna on the AN slash FPS dash eight radar system gave a much more reliable return…” She couldn’t stop herself, she was going to feed them misinformation she hoped they couldn’t verify. Now she started to give out a story about how she had pointed this out to her superiors and had been chastised for not being able to use the equipment they had trained her to use. As a punishment she had been sent to Ras Assanya—