Brown, Dale - Independent 01 (41 page)

           
“I’m not
impressed by you or your damned country....”

           
Shurab
waved gaily at Plutarsky, turned and left. Plutarsky held the pistol in his
direction until he was well out of sight, then holstered it and trotted back to
the oil derrick, feeling he had lost for winning.

           
“I heard
some shouts back there,” Ledbetter told Plutarsky when they met a few minutes
later. The lieutenant was absently staring up at the revolving antenna
belonging to the main search radar. “Problems?”

           
“Nothing I
can’t handle, sir.” Plutarsky followed his young commander’s gaze up to the top
of the derrick then to the L-band radar bunker nearby, but all he noted was a
slight squeak in the massive bearings supporting the search antenna every time
the green mesh dish swung toward the north. “I’ll get someone on those
bearings, too______ “

           
But
Ledbetter wasn’t listening. Suddenly, without a word, he took off at a fast
trot back toward the underground command trailer.

           
“Sir
... ?”
Plutarsky had to run to catch up to the lieutenant’s
longlegged lope. “Something wrong, sir?”

           
“Didn’t you
hear it, Sergeant?”

           
“Hear what?
The bearings... ?”

           
“The L-band
pulse-acquisition radar,” Ledbetter said. “They turned the L-band radar on.”

           
“I didn’t
hear anything,” Plutarsky said. Ledbetter was speeding up, and Plutarsky had to
hustle to keep pace with him. “How can you hear a radar?”

 
         
“The L-band radar in the bunker is
slaved to the search radar,” Ledbetter told him. “Everytime the bearings in the
search radar squeaked at the
ten o’clock
position I could hear the L-band radar move. I-Hawk’s been activated.”

           
“Well,
shouldn’t we have gotten a—?”

           
Just then
Ledbetter’s walkie-talkie beeped. Ledbetter already had it in his hand and
didn’t wait for the message.

           
“Ledbetter here.
Sound air-attack warning. I’m on my way.”
Both he and Plutarsky were back to the underground trailer by the time the
first air raid warning horns began blaring.

           
“I’ll make
the rounds of the launchers,” Plutarsky called out as Ledbetter hurried for the
dirt stairs leading own to the trailer.

           
“Better
clear the Patriot launchers first,” was the last thing he heard Ledbetter say
as he disappeared underground.

           
The trailer
smelled musty. Three radar operators sat on the right side of the trailer at
bare control consoles, and a long row of power transformers, electronics racks
and circuit breakers lined the left side. The only light in the trailer came
from the radar screens and the control panels. Just as Ledbetter entered he
heard one of the operators on the combined UHF-VHF radio calling: “Unidentified
aircraft one hundred miles north of Robat, heading one-six-zero, altitude
two-zero thousand, authenticate Delta Sierra. Over.” The operator had a finger
on a switch that would broadcast a computer-synthesized warning message in
Russian and in Arabic, but Ledbetter put a hand on his shoulder.

           
“No need to
give them more than one chance to identify themselves, Sergeant. If they don’t
have an IFF transponder or didn’t call ahead of time it’s a bad guy.”

           
“Yes, sir.”

           
“Tracking six,
repeat six inbounds,” the search-radar operator said. “They look like they’re
almost line abreast. Slightly staggered altitudes ... now showing eight
aircraft, sir, eight inbounds.”

           
“Range?”

           
“Approaching max Patriot range in about one minute.”

           
“Patriot
has the inbounds, sir,” one of the other radar controllers reported.

           
“I-Hawk has
the bogeys,” the third put in.

           
“All
batteries clear to launch at optimum range,” Ledbetter said. “1 need a report
on—”

           
“Inbounds turning, sir,” from the search-radar operator.
“All inbounds turning right toward. . . . Now I have several high-speed
in-bounds, altitude three-zero thousand and climbing, speed... speed well over
the Mach and accelerating. Heading toward us...

           
Ledbetter
went over to the search-radar scope. The picture showed the whole scene in
sharp relief. The classic Kingfish Soviet cruise- missile launch and flight
profile was being represented just like a training simulation: the big heavy
launch platforms, probably Tu-95 Bear or Tu-16 Badger strategic bombers; the
launch just before the bombers reached the engagement circle for the long-range
Patriot missiles and the escape turn; the missiles in their high-speed climb to
supersonic cruise altitude. In less than a minute they’d be bearing down on
their target: the Americans’ SAM emplacements.

           
“Radio
warning message in the blind on all tactical and emergency frequencies and on
FLTSATCOM,” Ledbetter ordered. “Three-thirty- fifth CAB under attack; attack
profile shows Soviet missile attack. Send it.”

           
“Yes, sir.”
There was a one-minute pause, with the
search-radar operators calling off the range to the nearest missile.

           
“Message
acknowledged on FLTSATCOM. I’m receiving warning messages from the other
sites.”

           
“Missiles
now climbing above five-zero thousand feet, speed approximately Mach two, range
fifteen miles.... Altitude decreasing now. ... Missiles dropping rapidly....
Range ten miles ... nine ... eight...seven....”

           
Sergeant
Plutarsky had just received a ready-for-action report from the second Patriot
missile launcher bunker he visited when the first of the high-altitude Patriot
missiles cooked off, the sudden glare and awful ear-shattering sound of the
Thiokol solid-fuel motor almost knocking Plutarsky off his feet. Two more missiles
launched in rapid succession, along with missiles at other bunkers. Most of the
missiles were headed almost straight up. The air was quickly filled with hot,
acid-tasting smoke.

           
Plutarsky had
just stopped to wipe sweat from his face and decide where to go when an
explosion erupted ahead of him. This time he was not merely knocked off his
feet—he was picked up by a red-hot hand and thrown ten yards backward. The air
seemed to be sucked right out of his lungs and replaced by superheated gas that
choked him as if he were drowning in lava.

           
Somehow he
found himself alive and whole when he dared to open his eyes. There were fires
all around him. The ground for dozens of yards around looked as though it had
all been run through a huge grater. There was nothing taller than a clump of
dirt standing anywhere. He tried to stand but found his right ankle twisted or
broken.

           
There was
one barely recognizable object nearby, and he crawled on his hands and knees,
down where the air was a bit cooler, toward it. He didn’t have to crawl far to
realize what it was. The explosion had been so great that it had excavated the
command trailer completely out of the ground and then crumpled it like a sheet
of paper. The ten-foot-tall trailer had been squashed down to no more than a
few feet high.

           
Plutarsky
couldn’t believe the carnage around him.
Only a few seconds
before it had been a peaceful, quiet, rainy morning in
Iran
.
Now, after one explosion, it was a burning nightmare. Had he been unconscious?
He rested for a minute on his hands and knees until he heard footsteps nearby.

           
He raised
his head and saw five men running toward the town of
Robat
,
their arms full of M-16 rifles, ammo boxes, cases of rations and desert combat
jackets. Plutarsky got to his feet and pulled his Beretta.

           
“Halt.
Stop.” His voice barely sounded over the background noises of out-of-control
fires and men calling and yelling, but all five of the running men stopped and
turned toward him. They were Iranian revolutionary guards.

           
“Where the
hell do you think you’re going with—?”

           
Plutarsky
stopped, felt a piece of metal touch his left temple and turned to find First
Captain Shurab holding the muzzle of an M-16 rifle in his face.

           
“Hello,
Sergeant Polack.”

           
There was a
brief show of fear in Plutarsky’s eyes, which pleased Shurab; then the fear was
replaced with anger.

           
“Going
somewhere?” Plutarsky said.

           
“It is
insult for elite Muslim heroes to work like dogs for Polack inferiors. I am
taking weapons and supplies to mountains. I will fight Soviets without American
missiles.” He started to back away from Plutarsky.

           
“You’d
better pull the trigger, raghead,” Plutarsky said, now looking directly into
Shurab’s eyes, “’cause otherwise I'm going to track you down, skin your
deserter hide and feed your carcass to the dogs.”

           
Shurab
stopped and shrugged. “All right, Sergeant.”

 
         
Plutarsky saw a flash of white light,
felt a red-hot tongue of flame strike his face. Then nothing.

 
          
Marshal Govorov had predicted the
fall of Bandar-Abbas would take two days. It took six. But the fall of the
principal Iranian military stronghold guarding the
Strait of Hormuz
was now a certainty.

           
Only ten of
the forty AS-6 Kingfish cruise missiles that had been launched against the
twelve outer American rapid deployment
force
SAM
emplacements north of Bandar-Abbas reached their targets, but the ten that had
hit had devastated the area defenses. The whole
Meydan
Valley
lay open as two of the three
CAB missile sites protecting the valley were destroyed, and Soviet Backfire
bombers rushed through the new opening. Carrying AS-6 cruise missiles
themselves, as well as gravity bombs, the faster ground-hugging turbojet
bombers quickly destroyed the fourteen I-Hawk missile batteries surrounding
Bandar-Abbas. In two days Bandar-Abbas and the
Strait of Hormuz
lay completely unprotected.

           
Transport
aircraft filled with elite Soviet army shock troops then flew unmolested down
the
Meydan
Valley
and landed on the outskirts of Bandar-Abbas. After four days of fierce combat,
with a full division of Soviet troops massing around them, the rapid deployment
force troops evacuated Bandar-Abbas. With no land-based support left to them,
the few American naval vessels in the southern Persian Gulf and in the Strait
of Hormuz retreated to the protection of the
Nimitz
battle group, which in turn, because of a lack of shore
support and increased AS-6 cruise-missile attacks, pulled back to the Gulf of
Oman, nearly two hundred miles southeast of Bandar-Abbas. The
Nimitz
still controlled the
Strait
of Hormuz
through the
Gulf
of
Oman
, but it was a shaky grip.

           
With
unprecedented speed the drive to occupy
Iran
moved to completion. Armed opposition was sporadic: as in
Afghanistan
,
opposition forces were run mostly by rival families or religious sects that
fought with each other more than they fought the Soviet invaders. A few
chemical weapon attacks against the natives in the mountains and central
highlands were reported, but for the most part the Iranian people in the urban
areas simply decided to follow the new government rather than risk being wiped
out by the Soviets. To the Iranian people there was little difference between
the rival factions: both retained their fundamental Islamic foundations; one
was supported by the
Soviet Union
, the other by the
United
States
. For now the Soviets had the upper
hand, so the people lined up with the winning side.

           
The result
was that a new government quickly installed itself in
Tehran
.
To no one’s surprise the new nation of Allah-al-Kastan, the Islamic Nation of
God, was immediately recognized by the
Soviet Union
, but
to everyone’s surprise
Syria
and
Iraq
formally recognized the new government and suggested entering into negotiations
to unify their countries under the laws of Islam. The long Iran-Iraq war came
to an end, and representatives of the two governments signed a peace treaty
soon afterward. Many other nations, not wanting a continuation of hostilities,
also recognized the new government. ...

           
The Soviet
invasion and takeover of
Iran
was complete, but the conflict was not over. The world watched as slowly,
inexorably, the huge
Arkhangel
carrier battle group departed
Cam Rahn Bay
,
Vietnam
,
bound for the
Persian Gulf
. The
Brezhnev
carrier group dominated the
Persian Gulf
,
but it could not safely dock at any port in the gulf for fear of guerrilla or
commando attack, nor, thanks to the
Nimitz,
could any replacement ships pass through the American blockade of the
Strait
of Hormuz
and the
Gulf
of
Oman
.