The Disciple

CHAPTER EIGHT

The ScanEagle drones arrived over the southern part of the Iranian city of Tabriz in midafternoon. There were two of them; one went into an orbit at nine thousand feet above the ground, the other ten thousand. They were very small, weighing just forty pounds each, with a wingspan of about ten feet, and if they were detected by Iranian radar, there was no Iranian response. The Iranian radars were indeed sweeping-black boxes in the drones detected every pulse-yet the skinpaint returns were very small, easy to overlook on the Iranians’ air traffic control scopes, if they were displayed at all. Usually returns this small were classified as static and automatically eliminated from the presentation.

Both ScanEagles contained a variety of sensors, the size, type and sensitivity limited only by their small carrying capacity. Today one broadcast an encrypted television camera signal to a satellite in geosynchronous orbit; the other sent an infrared picture.

The area of interest was a large, low, flat-roofed building, a factory, in the southern suburbs of the city. The cameras watched as the workers left for the evening and the parking lot emptied. The watchmen on their hourly hikes around the building were picked up by the sensors, and their routes and times carefully noted and compared to past observations.

The people doing the comparing were sitting in a command and control center at Balad Air Force Base in Iraq. The data the ScanEagles were broadcasting was painstakingly compared to the database, which had been compiled in evening and nightly observations by drones every evening for the last two weeks.

Two colonels conferred, then went to the general, who was standing behind the monitors looking at the raw video.

“Everything is the same as it was,” one of the colonels said. “Nothing out of the ordinary.”

“Have we heard from our guy on the ground?”

“Yes, sir. He said the right code words.”

“Then it’s a go,” the general said.

“Yes, sir.”

“Launch ’em.”

“Yes, sir.”

The general walked over to an encrypted satellite telephone and placed a call to the duty officer in the War Room of the Pentagon.

It was nearly midnight in Tabriz when three Russian-made Mi-24 Hind heli cop ters swept across the rooftops of the city and landed in the parking lot of the factory. Six soldiers in Iranian uniforms, armed with AK-47s, jumped from each helo. As the members of one squad took up defensive positions around the building, an officer led the other two to the main entrance.

The guard there looked at them in bewilderment.

He was summarily disarmed, handcuffed and led away. The officer opened the door, and the troops trotted through it.

On the other side of the world it was midday Sunday. In the War Room of the Pentagon, the president’s right-hand man, Sal Molina, shifted uncomfortably in a padded chair. He was surrounded by six generals, four army and two marine, and one civilian, Jake Grafton, who wore a sports coat and white shirt but not a tie.

“Who is leading this expedition?” Molina asked.

“Captain Runyon Paczkowski, U.S. Army,” he was told.

Molina just shook his head. “An O-3. Really!”

“Yes. Really,” said the army four-star who served as the deputy chief of staff.

Molina eyed the bemedaled general and said, “Oh.”

Grafton sagged an inch or so down into his seat. He knew Molina well enough to recognize the warning. He watched the ScanEagle feeds being presented on big screens in front of the pit, behind the podium and desk where two duty officers were seated before a bank of phones and computer screens. The natural light picture was nothing but a collection of spots from lights on the ground. The infrared picture, however, was quite good.

Due to the magnification of the lens, it was as if the viewers were hanging about five hundred feet over the factory. Jake could see the bright spots of helo exhaust, the warm people moving around and the cold, black streets leading to the factory. Empty streets… He consciously crossed his fingers, hoping the streets stayed empty.

“I’d like to know,” the army four-star said, “why we didn’t just bomb this damn factory and be done with it. Why are we putting boots on the ground, risking our men?”

“We’ve been through all that,” Molina said with finality.

The senior marine four-star weighed in. “We bought all those damn B-1s for the Air Force, two billion dollars each, and they can’t even use one to bomb a factory in Iran making EDs to kill our kids?”

“This isn’t Korea or Vietnam,” Molina said testily. “We’re trying to save GIs’ lives without goading Iran into a declaration of war.”

“Well, by God,” the army general declared, “you’d better take a good look around, Molina. Iran is fighting a war with us. They know it and the troops know it. ‘Death to America!’ How many times does that asshole Ahmadinejad have to shout it before you start listening?”

“I didn’t come over here to listen to your insubordination, General,” Molina shot back. Silence greeted that sally.

Jake watched as two soldiers carried what appeared to be boxes from a helo into the factory. Those boxes, he knew, contained demolition charges to ignite the explosives in the factory. Since they lacked certain knowledge of the munitions available inside, the troops had brought their own.

Sal Molina was still stewing. Sometimes people in uniform affected him that way. “I seem to recall that just last week the army asked the administration for more tanks in the next fiscal year,” Molina said. “Tanks don’t kill terrorists. Neither do F-35s or F-22s or attack submarines. I know you Pentagon boys like your toys, but you keep asking for crap to fight World War II all over again. This is another century, gentlemen; WW II and the Trojan War are ancient history. Get over it.”

“We need-”

Molina wasn’t in the mood. He gestured at the screens in the front of the room. “Drones! We have to contract for drone services because the army and marines don’t have the organization or supply system to operate them. The air force doesn’t really want them, insists they be flown by rated pilots, not enlisted men-but there ain’t no glory for drone pilots, no medals, no parades.”

Sal Molina smacked his hand down on the arm of his chair. “The brass ru

He sprang from his chair and snarled at Grafton. “Call me and tell me how Captain Paczkowski’s little adventure turns out.” Then he stalked from the room.

Captain Runyon Paczkowski was in the middle of his adventure, and he didn’t think of it as small. In fact, it was the biggest adventure of his life. He was leading a military raid into a foreign country, and his men were wearing that country’s uniforms. All their lives were very much on the line; if they were caught, they would be shot as spies.

It was damned heady stuff for a twenty-eight-year-old graduate of Texas A &M, and he felt his responsibility keenly. He also felt the weight of his superiors’ expectations; they believed that he could successfully blow up this Iranian bomb factory and bring his men back. They wouldn’t have given him the job if they didn’t think he could do it-and by God, he could!

In one ear he was listening to the tactical net, the net his noncoms were on. In the other ear he listened to the frequency that allowed the Tactical Operations Center in Balad to talk to him. The TOC, which was also monitoring the feeds from the ScanEagles overhead, would give him the first warning if real Iranian troops put in an appearance.