Brown, Dale - Independent 01 (29 page)

           
The radio
was filled with static. He was at extreme radio range, and the HIMLORD drones
obviously carried small broad-band jammers as well.

           
The Group
One leader ripped off his oxygen mask in frustration. They had spent nearly an
hour, dozens of missiles and thousands of liters of precious fuel chasing
nearly worthless drones. What was the real target...?

           
A few
minutes later, with the American HIMLORD drones far behind them and still
heading for the western shores of the
Persian Gulf
,
Group One’s leader finally regained contact with the aircraft carrier
Brezhnev.

           
“Control,
this is Group One. We are one hundred kilometers out. Request approach
clearance.”

           
“Group
One
, approach clearance
only
granted. Repeat, approach clearance only is granted. Aircraft launching at this
time.”

           
A few
moments later he heard the reason. “Green Four, this is Control.
Hostile airborne contact bearing zero-four-five range, range one
hundred kilometers at your
twelve o’clock
.”

           
“Copy, Control,”
the Green Four leader acknowledged.
“Picking up J-band
height-finders near reference F-one-oh-two Delta and
Lima
.”

           
F-102—that was Bandar-Abbas and Bandar-e Lengeh, the two Iranian
military bases at the
Strait of Hormuz
.
Green Four was a flight of five Yakovlev-38 vertical
takeoff and landing fighters from the
Brezhnev,
all at least twenty-five years old. No match for any weapons on shore with
J-band height-finders armed with high-performance surface-to-air missiles. The
Su-27s would have a tough time against them, let alone the aged Yak-38s.

           
But hostile
missile sites at Bandar-Abbas? The Iranian sites had been destroyed long ago,
way back at the start of hostilities. The whole area had been contained. Who...
?

 
          
ARMSTRONG SPACE STATION

           
“They’re
turning back toward the carrier, Skipper.”

           
General
Saint-Michael swiveled his seat around and quickly scanned the master SBR
display. He nodded at Chief Jefferson.

           
“Good job,
Jake. Do you have enough fuel to recover those HIMLORDS?”

           
“I don’t
think so, but then again, I’ve never flown a drone before. I think we’ll be
dropping through the horizon before I can recover them anyway. After that
they’ll be on automatic pilot until they flame out.”

           
“Try to get
them as close to that Bahraini data-relay ship as you can. They should be able
to recover them.”

           
Jefferson
carefully transmitted new flight commands to the six remaining HIMLORDS in
flight. “Those things are amazing. I’d swear I could turn a ninety-degree comer
with one if I wanted, even with this bastardized remote-control relay setup. I
would’ve loved to see the faces on those Su-27 pilots when I had those HIMLORDS
climbing at ten ‘g’s right after missile launch.”

           
Saint-Michael
looked around the command module, shaking his head. The short time in gravity
had brought every piece of dirt, every liquid ball, every lost pencil and scrap
of paper out of known hiding places and into everything. Yemana and Page had
come out of the lifeboat and were running hand-held vacuum cleaners over
everything, their POS masks resting beneath their chins, ready at a moment’s
notice to be put back on.

           
Three injuries, one serious.
A crippled station, leaking
fuel, extensive damage. Even though
Silver
Tower
had just participated in a
major diversion a thousand miles away, the station was not fully capable. Not
by a long shot. In fact, it was barely holding onto strategic function.

           
“That’s
about as cocky as we can afford to get, Chief,” Saint-Michael said. “We managed
to sucker half the
Brezhnev's
air-to-air assets away from Bandar-Abbas—now I hope the air force and navy can
do the rest.”

           
The assault
had begun just as the
Brezhnev's
Su-27 Flanker Group Two had catapulted off the deck to help in the abortive
pursuit of the High Maneuverability Long Range Reconnaissance Drone (Himlord)
aircraft. Ten of the
Nimitz's
Sikorsky SH-60T SeaHawk transport helicopters had been loaded with ten U.S.
Marines in full combat gear, and two CH-53E heavy-lift choppers had been loaded
with two British Rapier-tracked surface-to-air batteries apiece.
The choppers hedge-hopped over the rugged southern
Iran
coastline as far as possible from the Soviet cruisers in the
Strait of Hormuz
, and dropped
onto the wrecked airstrip at Bandar-Abbas.
With a force of elite navy
SEALS blazing a path, the Marines took Bandar-Abbas in a fierce but short
battle. By the time Group Two had reached the confused and disorganized Fighter
Group One, the Marines had secured Bandar-Abbas airfield and, with a few
Iranian regulars coming down from the rugged coastal mountains, had managed to
secure the skies over the
Strait of Hormuz
.

           
Right
behind the Marines, under air cover of the
Nimitz
,
ten C-130 Hercules transports had reinforced the Marine unit at Bandar-Abbas
with three hundred U.S. Army Rapid Deployment Force troops from Diego Garcia in
the
Indian Ocean
. Another sixty Marines had retaken
Bandar-e Lengeh, the major Iranian naval missile base overseeing the strait,
and fifty RDF troops had soon reinforced that stronghold and established
another antiair battery there.

           
On balance, a pretty good day.

 
          
MOSCOW
,
USSR

 
          
Minister of Defense Czilikov
refused—or was unable—to look directly at his assembled battle staff as First
Deputy Minister of Defense Khromeyev rose to give the daily briefing on
Operation Feather, this time before the entire Stavka. Czilikov could
feel
the eyes of the Soviet general
secretary bearing down on him as, area by
area,
the
situation in
Iran
and the
Persian Gulf
was described.

           
“The region
has been roughly divided in half, along the fifty-four- degree east longitude
line,” Khromeyev reported in a flat voice. “The Americans control the
Strait
of Hormuz
, the
Gulf
of
Oman
,
and all Iranian territory east of
Yazd
in central
Iran
.”
The general secretary’s eyes now darted toward Czilikov as he heard the news
about the strait, the essential choke-point for the whole region. “Our forces
control the
Persian Gulf
north of
Bahrain
,
as well as every major Iranian city except for Bandar-Abbas along the strait.
Our flag flies from the
Mediterranean Sea
to
China
—”

           
“Never mind
the grandiose symbolism, Marshal Khromeyev,” the general secretary said. “Such
flowery speech doesn’t hide our badly worsening position.” He swiveled toward
Czilikov.

           
“I don’t
want your dog-and-pony show, Marshal Czilikov. I want
details
. The
Brezhnev
is
no longer east of
Qatar
—it
is almost as far north as
Kuwait
.
Yet we no longer control the
Strait of Hormuz
.
Why?”

           
“The
Americans have mined the deep-water channel between
Iran
and
Qatar
in
the gulf, General Secretary—”

 
         
“Then destroy those mines. Retake the
channel. We have the firepower, don’t we?”

           
“We don’t
have the resources,
sir,
” Admiral Chercherovin put in.
“The Americans control the skies during daytime. A squadron of B-52 bombers
from Diego Garcia can sow mines for ten thousand square kilometers in one pass.
We can sweep perhaps half that area at night, but the bombers return with more
mines—”

           
“You are
saying we do not control the airspace over the
Persian Gulf
?”

           
“Not...
entirely, sir. We can protect the
Brezhnev
and her escorts with our forward units at Al-Basrah and
Abadan
,
but the fighters from the
Brezhnev
have only a seven-hundred-kilometer combat radius. That places them near
Bandar-Abbas, where the Americans and Iranians have deployed surface-to-air
missile sites, fighters and bombers to defend the strait. Shipbome fighters,
which must expend almost half their fuel just to get to a fight, are no match
for ground-based fighters     ”

           
The general
secretary ran a hand across the top of his bald head in exasperation. “You are
talking
riddles,
Admiral. The
Brezhnev
was in a position to defend our
forces at Bandar-Abbas. How could we have lost our advantage?”

           
“The
Brezhnev'
s resources were stretched to
the limit, sir,” Czilikov said, figuring he’d better say something fast. “The
Brezhnev
carried forty-five tactical
fighter aircraft. Ten were used as escorts for the raids on Mehrabad and ten
were airborne in support of the attacks on
Abadan
.
Ten were launched to pursue what we thought were American F-15s attacking from
Saudi
Arabia
. When the American drones evaded the
first patrol, all the
Brezhnev's
fighters except five reserve alert aircraft were sent after the drones. This
left nothing to assist the shock troops at Bandar-Abbas except our old Yak-38
VTOL fighter- bombers, and they were no match for the British Rapier and
American Patriot surface-to-air missile sites the Marines brought with them.
Five hundred American Marines and two hundred Iranian soldiers landed ashore in
three hours. There really was nothing we could do—”

           
“But what
about our ground-based long-range bombers?” the general secretary pressed him.
“Certainly we could have attacked those positions with something besides
fighters from the
Brezhnev?
Those
Yak-38s should have been escorting the bombers, not attacking.”

           
“A bomber
attack was considered and rejected. If a bomber attack had been attempted
immediately when the American Marines attacked Bandar-Abbas, a smaller-scale
bomber force might have succeeded. But the area was secured by the Marines in
only three hours. It would take one full Tupolev-26 squadron, perhaps two, or a
full Tupolev- 146 bomber squadron to uproot the American Marines now. Also, the
Americans are moving at least one full squadron of F-15 fighters to
Bandar-Abbas—they control the skies of the southern gulf.”

           
“Then
attack.
Use an entire squadron. Whatever
is necessary to retake Bandar-Abbas—”

           
“With twenty supersonic bombers?”
Czilikov interrupted. “Not
only would our losses be heavy, but the Americans might think the launch
represented a possible threat to the
Nimitz
carrier battle group or to the American airbase in
Saudi
Arabia
. They might counter with considerable
force,
even threaten to use nuclear weapons against
our forces—”

           
“I don’t
believe that,” the general secretary said. “They’re not crazy. They couldn’t
hope to control such a drastic escalation....”

           
“If they
lost the
Nimitz
carrier group, sir,
their only tactical response to avoid losing their foothold in the region would
be an all-out attack. From our point of view, it’s a huge risk to take. We have
no conclusive evidence that the Americans would
not
attack with nuclear weapons. Remember Kennedy at the
Bay
of Pigs
? And ever since, they’ve refused to say what they
wouldn’t
do.”

           
“Rationalizations for doing nothing, Czilikov.
The Politburo
is already demanding an explanation, and we’ve got to give them one. The
Americans are threatening to mobilize for a general war. We’ve lost the element
of surprise. There is even a rumor that the Americans have captured a member of
the KGB who participated in the initial attack on our own vessels in the
Persian
Gulf
—”

           
“That is
impossible,” Marshal Lichizev, the commander of the KGB, said. “All of our
operatives are accounted for. It’s an obvious bluff.”

           
“No matter.
Denials do no good.” The general secretary
looked at each of the Stavka members seated in front of him. “Feather had to be
a swift, decisive, massive blow to occupy and dominate the region. It had to be
a coordinated, precision strike at the major strategic choke- points. Instead,
we’re caught on unsteady, indefensible ground. Rather than a swift victory, I’m
left with a damn stalemate.
Worse
than
a stalemate: our clumsy lies are exposed, naked before the entire world. The
great bear with its nose caught in the mousetrap....