Quest for Honor (4 page)

Of all the gomers Mark had run into over here, the worst ones were the Iranians. Maybe your average Iranian grunt was no better or worse than anyone else, but their Special Forces guys, the Takavaran, were real bad actors. Before coming to Roosevelt he’d spent a week with a French Foreign Legion outfit for a hair-raising mission along the Iranian border. He’d been able to get up close and personal with some Takavar operators, and it was satisfying to send those arrogant bastards to Allah or whatever awaited them. Mark had to respect their abilities as soldiers, but where was the honor of being a soldier if your mission was to reinstate a regime that brutalized its own people, the way the Taliban did?

The Afghan people, for the most part, didn’t much care for these foreigners, but there had been foreigners marching through this godforsaken country for more than two thousand years. The Afghans had an understandable dislike for the invaders, even those who were Muslims, but they were fatalistic about it. What could be done? It was only in the last couple years that Mark had seen a change. It was slow, it was here and there, but it was real, and growing. They were starting to see that the Americans weren’t here to conquer them, but to help them, and the Tals and their Islamist allies had other goals in mind.

Mark gave the order to call the chopper for evac, and as the sun rose on this Sunday morning, some of the men broke march discipline a little and started talking about what the cooks might have for breakfast, how long they had till they were rotated home, whether the Packers could win it again this year, assuming the lockout didn’t wipe out the NFL season. None of them talked of the firefight; that would come later, over Rip-Its and NA beers back at the firebase, when it started to sink in and most men felt the need to talk about it, almost like being in the locker room after a football game. Right now the small talk was soothing for Mark, who tried to put out of his mind the fact that he had just participated in the killing of ten men, some of them as young as his own son, men who hadn’t been given much of a chance to fight back.

By the time they got back to the firebase, the morning’s divine services would be over. Mark would be grabbing some breakfast, do a debrief with Frank and then chopper back to Roosevelt. Even though it was Sunday, he would have to tackle at least some of the paperwork waiting for him, but maybe he’d have time to look up the base chaplain. Jeff Eisele was a good guy, on his third tour downrange, and they’d already had some good talks since Mark had taken command of the battalion. They were due for another one, and this Sunday evening would be a good time to have it.

CHAPTER FOUR

Iran

“
S
ehe…doh…yek…”
Flames roared
from the engine of the missile and the noise drowned out the last words of the countdown. With a guttural rumble, the missile broke free from its mobile launcher and rose into the azure sky. All eyes were on the Shahab 3, in its olive drab, unmarked elegance, gaining altitude rapidly and tilting gracefully to the southwest.

“Where will it land, General Fazeed?”

The Pasdaran general turned to the man who had asked the question. He looked like the other mullahs in the viewing area, except for the Ray-Ban aviator sunglasses. He also appeared to be younger. His beard was jet black, but of course it could be dyed. Fazeed didn’t think so. This man carried himself like a younger man, and he was clearly in charge. The four other men were older but deferred to him. “The target is in the Arabian Sea, about two hundred kilometers off the coast. The port of Bandar is the closest city.”

“How far from here?”

“Nearly one thousand kilometers.”

The man’s left eyebrow raised above the Ray-Bans. “And what is the range of the missile, General?”

“This model is the Shahab 3B, imam. The range is nearly two thousand kilometers.”

“It could reach Israel?”

Fazeed hesitated, then glanced at a man in a tailored Italian suit. The man, a senior official in the Ministry of Defense, nodded slightly. “Yes, imam,” the general said to the man in the Ray-Bans.

“Tell me about the warhead.”

Another nod from the man from the ministry. What was his name? Jafari. This imam must truly be important, the general thought. Very well. “It can carry a single warhead of nearly a thousand kilograms, or it can be configured for five cluster warheads. Each can be targeted separately within a few hundred kilometers of the main destination of the missile.”

“We would only need two,” one of the other mullahs said to the man in the Ray-Bans. “Tel Aviv, Haifa. We would have to spare Jerusalem.”

“No, my friend. The first strike would have to target the Zionists’ missile sites. Would that not be so, General?”

“That…would be logical, imam,” Fazeed said. He knew much about the pre-selected targets for the Shahab regiment, but he would not give this man any of that information without a direct order from his superiors, the man from the Defense Ministry be damned. How did he know this man in the sunglasses was not a Zionist spy? Everyone knew Tehran was crawling with operatives from Mossad and the various Western intelligence services. He had been ordered to allow these mullahs to observe the launch, but nothing more.

The imam gazed back into the sky at the contrail of the missile. “It is very fast,” he said.

“Over five thousand kilometers per hour,” the general said. He was not revealing anything classified. The Americans and the Israelis already knew everything there was to know about the Shahab, which was an improved version of the Nodong-1, built by the North Koreans. The Americans had no doubt observed the launch with one of their many satellites and were tracking it all the way to its destination.

“So the Zionists would have very little warning,” the imam said.

“From launch to impact, at maximum range, perhaps twenty minutes,” Fazeed said. He assumed the man could do the simple arithmetic in his head. It was a moot point anyway. There would almost certainly be much more time available to the enemy. The underground bunkers would conceal much of the preparations necessary to launch the missile regiment, but there would still be signs, and the Americans knew all of them. They had spent half a century watching the Russians, after all. Nothing the Iranians could do would fool them, and there would be no way to conceal the launchers when they rolled out, pulled by heavy-duty semi-trucks. So, if it actually came down to it, they would play a game with the Israelis and the Americans. What did they call it? He believed it was “chicken”
.

The problem with that game, the general knew, was that someone was likely to be killed. Did these fools have any concept of the magnitude of what they were obviously contemplating? The general had made it a point to familiarize himself with the studies that projected the devastation of a nuclear exchange. If he was going to command the missile regiments that would rain destruction upon the enemies of his country, he wanted to know—felt it was his duty to know—what the scope of that destruction would be. Plus, what would happen to his own country as a result of the inevitable retaliatory strike. It would not be pretty, that much would be certain.

General Fazeed considered himself to be a patriot. His father had served under the Shah, following the honorable path of military service, and nearly paid for that with his life following the revolution. But he managed to persuade the new rulers that he could be trusted, that they needed him and many of his fellows to defend the nation against the many outside forces that wished to destroy the new regime. And so the son followed in his father’s footsteps, but not in the regular armed forces, but in the Pasdaran, the Revolutionary Guards, the elite services tasked originally with the protection of Iran’s Islamic authorities. Known in the West as the Iran Revolutionary Guard Corps, or IRGC, it had grown into a mighty force of over 125,000 men, with ground, aerospace and naval forces, not to mention Quds Force, the shadowy and much-feared Special Forces. Fazeed worked hard and rose in the ranks, ultimately to this posting, which held power far in excess of any his father, blessed be his memory, had ever held. But with such power came responsibility, and the general took that very seriously. He had built these missile regiments to defend his nation, but he worried constantly that the political leadership would throw everything away by launching a first strike against Israel.

Some of the mullahs in Tehran could be trusted. They were pragmatists, above all. Yes, they wanted to establish the great caliphate of Islam, but not at the cost of their own nation. What had his father told him once about the Russians? They wanted to rule the world, but not a radioactive world. Their pragmatism kept them from striking directly at the Americans. They pushed, here and there—Berlin, Cuba, Vietnam. Sometimes the Americans pushed back, and ultimately the Russians were done in by their own inefficiency. Even as their regime crumbled, though, the pragmatists never allowed the fanatics to get too close to the button. The men who safeguarded the arsenal survived to start the long process of rebuilding their nation.

But Iran in 2011 was much different than Soviet Russia had ever been. The general’s concerns now were with those influential mullahs who were fanatics, and especially the clown who held the presidency of his nation. Now, he wondered just what side this group of mullahs in front of him was on. He had not been told their names, and although he thought he recognized one or two of the older ones, the man in the Ray-Bans was a mystery to him.

It was time to wrap this up. “Do you have any more questions, gentlemen?”

One of the older mullahs, the one who had talked earlier about targets in Israel, spoke up. “When will the missiles be fitted with the nuclear warheads?” This drew a glance from the man in the Ray-Bans, who then turned back to the general with an indulgent smile.

“Please forgive my enthusiastic colleague, General. I am sure that information is highly classified.”

“Indeed it is, imam,” the general said, looking at the man from the Defense Ministry. “But I can assure you that we stand ready to defend our nation against any aggression. Any attack upon our people would be met with swift and devastating retaliation.”

The mullahs nodded. Fazeed gave them a confident smile. It was all he could do to keep from laughing at them, but his iron discipline held his real thoughts in check. What they’d said to him was illuminating: they were not within the inner circle around the
Rahbare Mo’azzame Enghelab,
the Supreme Leader of Iran, Ali Khamenei. Only a handful of people in the entire Islamic Republic knew the real truth about the Iranian nuclear weapons program. The president, Ahmadinejad, claimed to know everything, but the general knew this was not true. When he was elevated to command of the missile regiment two years ago, Fazeed was given what he felt was a full briefing on the status of his country’s military forces, and he had paid close attention ever since, especially to the progress of the nuclear program.

He had been surprised to learn that the program was much more advanced than what he had heard. Enough disinformation was spread by the government’s counterintelligence services to preserve the fiction that was widely believed in the West, that they were several years away, and the president, to his credit, did his part, constantly repeating the mantra that Iran’s nuclear program was designed for peaceful purposes. Fazeed had long ago stopped being amazed at how the gullible Western media believed what lies they were told. Their politicians huffed and imposed sanctions, which the regime diligently worked around. The people grumbled, but for the most part did as they were told.

Fazeed and his colleagues didn’t allow themselves to be fooled, though. The Western military and intelligence services, especially the Israelis and the Americans, certainly were not fooled. There was the constant threat that the Israelis, or perhaps both in concert, would attack in an attempt to delay the program. The general’s duty was to organize a missile regiment that would provide a deterrent force against such attack, preparing for the day when the conventional warheads then available could be replaced with nuclear payloads, giving Iran a much more powerful means to deter aggression…or to enhance its own.

That day was close now, very close. It had always been only a matter of time, and of course the big question was whether the Israelis would give them that time. Fazeed doubted that they would. Were he a betting man, he would’ve given even money that an Israeli attack would happen within the next twelve to eighteen months. Such a scenario had been war-gamed several times, and the most favorable outcome his colleagues had come up with was discouraging: they could at best count on shooting down perhaps half of the attacking Israeli planes. Enough would get through to cause serious damage to his country’s nuclear facilities, delaying the program at least five years. If the Zionists attacked with their Jericho missiles, Iran’s only option would be to launch a retaliatory strike—if there was anything left to retaliate with.

There was a way around that problem. Everybody knew the Israelis would never attack without American support. But if such support were withdrawn, that would be a different matter altogether. Various projects were underway to achieve that end, but the general had always doubted whether any of them would be successful. Using disinformation and subterfuge to turn American politicians and public opinion away from Israel was one way. It had been done before, not too long ago, but Fazeed knew this time was different. Israel was not South Vietnam, and frankly he doubted whether the mullahs framing this policy were as clever as the North Vietnamese and their Soviet KGB advisers had been, although it did appear they’d achieved some success in making the Western media sympathetic to Islam and thus hostile to Israel. Despite that, he was certain that his country’s intelligence services would never be able to recruit the sorts of helpful stooges on American college campuses and in the ranks of Hollywood elite who had been so instrumental in propelling the North Vietnamese to victory.

Then he was told about one project that most definitely held great promise, not to mention great danger. For six months now, he had devoted increasing amounts of his time toward that end. He tried not to think about the danger. He was a military man, after all, whose profession by definition was dangerous. Yet, sometimes late at night, as he lay in bed with his wife gently snoring beside him, the thoughts crept back to him, and on those nights he had difficulty getting to sleep.

The reception for the mullahs was held in the officers’ dining room. The general had invited his staff to attend, and he saw them mingling diplomatically with the guests. A table had been filled with delicacies and tea was served in small cups. The military men seemed rather taken aback by how much the mullahs ate, especially the one who had requested
kahle pache,
a traditional Persian breakfast soup of sheep’s head, brain and hooves. Fazeed had consumed it on occasion as a child but now preferred more modern fare, although of course he never ate bacon.

The man from the Defense Ministry appeared by his side. “This has gone very well, General. My compliments to you and your staff.”

“You are welcome, sir. The test was indeed flawless.” He had received a report from the ship in the target area: the Shahab-3’s dummy warhead had impacted right on target. The general decided to venture a question. It was a bit risky, and he had learned from his father that a general always had to consider political implications when dealing with Tehran, but he felt himself to be on fairly solid ground, considering how the test had gone. “Mr. Jafari, I noticed when the guests arrived, there were no introductions. Some of these gentlemen I recognize, but some I do not. The man in the sunglasses, for example.”

Jafari looked away, toward the mullah in the Ray-Bans, who was picking a piece of bread from a basket as he held a teacup in the other hand. “With respect, General, our guest has requested that his identity remain confidential. For the time being.”

“I see.” The general decided to take another step. He could almost hear his father recommending caution. “I heard one of the mullahs call him ‘al-Qa’im’. Does that mean what I think it means?”

Jafari was silent for a moment, and Fazeed knew he had cut very close to what he suspected was the truth. “You may draw your own conclusions, General,” the Defense Ministry man said. “That does not mean they would be correct.”

“I see,” the general said.

After a moment, Jafari looked at his watch. “I’ll be escorting our guests back to Tehran shortly,” he said. “Might I have a word with you in private? I have an update on a subject of…mutual interest.”