The Disciple

“Terrible night for flying a chopper-lots of wind-and Tehran is a damn long way. Have to refuel at a clandestine fuel depot on the Khar River. Dangerous as hell to use it.”

“Right.”

“I hear they are about to have a war over there,” Pepper added cautiously, and glanced at his watch.

“Bad news travels fast,” Jake Grafton said and threw his bag on the couch. “If they’re go

CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX

U.S. Army Staff Sergeant Jack Colby and his three Special Forces colleagues were sitting in a hide two miles from the entrance to Tu

The soldiers used the satellite network to talk hourly with the CENT-COM controller for Special Forces on the ground in Iran. The controller relayed the message from headquarters, which was that the general and staff believed that tonight was the night, but Jack Colby was already convinced.

Yesterday, during the daylight hours, three army patrols had searched the area with the aid of dogs, no doubt looking for any Special Forces team that might be in the area.

Fortunately the chemicals the team sprinkled around the hide masked their scent from the dogs. Two searchers had actually stood ten feet from the entrance to the hide and pissed on the rocks, but the American team remained undetected.

One team, at another tu

Colby turned the telescope over to one of his mates while he crawled outside for a look around. The wind had definitely eased up, but the air still contained a lot of dust, which made the image in the telescope fuzzy and indistinct.

Maybe the Iranians will postpone their launch, Colby thought. Man, why can’t we have a war in a nice place, with good weather?

When he crawled back into the hide, the man at the binoculars said, “Better take a look, Jack. They’re rolling out a missile.”

Colby glued his eye to the telescope. Adjusted the focus knob a tad… and there it was, big as life: a truck pulling a trailer with a big missile on it. As Colby watched, the truck crept perhaps a hundred yards away from the tu

While this was going on, another truck pulling a missile crept from the tu

It quickly became apparent that only two missiles were going to be launched. “How many missiles do you think are in that tu

“I don’t know. Pick a number.”

“Well, at two at a time, these guys are going to be at it a while.”

“Call CENTCOM,” Colby said. “The bastards are really going to do it.”

At the CENTCOM Operations Center in Kuwait, General Martin Lincoln was monitoring reports from his Special Forces teams in Iran and from air force units operating MQ-1 Predator and MQ-9 Reaper drones over Iran. These unma

Unfortunately, the storm in central Iran had played havoc with the drones. The wind had kept all of the ScanEagles, the smallest, unarmed drones, on the ground. Only now were the Predators and Reapers airborne and getting back into position. Still, airborne dirt would degrade their capabilities. General Lincoln also suspected that, at dawn, with clearing weather, the Iranian air force would launch fighters to hunt for and shoot down the larger drones. Ground control interception (GCI) frequencies were being monitored, so he would know if and when the fighters launched.

Finally, he was keeping track of four flights of four F-15E Strike Eagles that had just launched from Balad. These planes were carrying GPS and laser-guided bombs, and they were going to attack northern Iranian missile sites. Their tactical electronic warfare system had been expanded to include the ALQ-199 black boxes, the mystery boxes that Jake Grafton hoped would fool the Iranian antiaircraft missile systems. The men in the planes would soon find out how successful Grafton’s deception operation had been, although they knew nothing about it. General Lincoln, however, did know, and he had his fingers crossed.

Inevitably, the Iranians would get some nukes in the air, and then Lincoln’s forces had to intercept them. The cruise missiles armed with conventional explosives were essentially decoys, since they weren’t very accurate, didn’t pack much of a punch and couldn’t do strategically significant damage even if they hit the military bases where they were aimed. Their purpose, as Grafton had pointed out, was to overload the American defensive system and mask the nukes. The key to a successful defense was to get ordnance on those missile sites as soon as possible after Iran had fired the first shot-and, if possible, to prevent the Iranians from launching a second wave.

Just now Lincoln sat wondering how many nukes would be in the first wave. All of them? One or two? Another unknown in the equation…

Now, as Lincoln received reports from Special Forces teams on the ground and the drone control room in Iraq that missiles were being rolled out and positioned for firing, he used the encrypted voice link to the National Command Center to call the president.

“They are rolling them out,” General Lincoln said. “I expect first launch within minutes.”

The activity at the entrance to the executive bunker in Tehran was frantic. Cars continued to arrive in front of the mosque in the Mosalla Prayer Grounds and disgorge their passengers, who each grabbed a suitcase or bag or child and rushed off toward the entrance, where a knot of soldiers apparently consulted a list and waved them through.

“Looks like folks fighting for lifeboats on the Titanic,” G. W. said.

I looked at my watch. It was pushing two thirty in the morning. Dawn would come about five, and the sun a short time later. I wondered when the bunker was going to be locked down.

“Do you know anything about the executive survival plan?” I asked Davar, who was glued to a set of binoculars. Probably watching for her father and brother, Khurram, to arrive, I figured, although I didn’t ask.

“No,” she said curtly.

“Like how many kids are going in there?” I instantly regretted that remark, but once it was out there was nothing I could do about it.

“I don’t know.” Her voice was flat, unemotional, which irritated me a little, which, I suppose, is why I changed my mind.

“Seen your father?”

She didn’t take her eyes from the binoculars. “Some people arrived. He might have been one of them. I could not be sure.”

“Khurram?”