Authors: David Poyer
Kohler pointed in his direction, and he stood. “This is Gunnery Sergeant Gault. Gunny Gault will be the team leader.” He pointed at another man. “Sergeant Jacob Zeitner, assistant team leaderâ¦Sergeant Tony Vertierra, RTOâ¦Lance Corporal Fred Nichols, sniper and breach-course qualifiedâ¦Corporal Denny Blaisell, scout.”
Gault thought of telling him Nichols didn't go by Fredâhe hated his first nameâbut didn't. He just sat down again. The others did too, with a shuffle of feet, some dry-sounding coughs.
Kohler rolled his head to one side, as if to loosen up. “We'll do patrol order, map study, and rehearsals over the next two days. The mission attachment's on his way. A navy Tomahawk targeter.”
“Navy, sir? You mean SEAL?”
“I'm afraid not. We'll just have to do what we can to get him up to speed. We'll do basic quick reaction drills and a shooting package, but don't expect too much. He's essential at the objective, though, so your job's to get him there.
“This is about as short fuze as you can get. We have today, tonight, tomorrow, to train and plan. Then you're climbing on the helo and executing.”
Gault finished writing
two days prep phase
in his book and closed it. He was evaluating what he'd heard, what he
saw on the map. The zigzag line, presumably a helo insert track, leading into Iraq.
The mission itself sounded infantry-proof. Go in. Link up. Find this thing, observe, identify, report, and return. He'd been in Indian Country before. It could be dangerous, but only if they screwed up. Recon teams seldom did the Rambo-type, direct-action missions: snatching bodies, blowing up bridges. Going deep into hostile territory without support or heavy weapons, they avoided contact with enemy forces. Stealth and silence saved you violence. To be detected, to have to fight, meant they'd failed. They'd just have to plan as thoroughly as they could, practice as much as they had time for, then go out and do it. This was war. Some things didn't take a lot of thought.
But deep down he was worried. Usually you got a geographic objective, a specific place or at least an area to scout. The intel officer had given them no guidance on location. He didn't like the idea of only two days to prepare. He also didn't like going in with a mixed team. He knew Zeitner and Vertierra, Nichols less well, but he didn't know this Blaisell at all, except that he'd been with the LAVs during the battle around OP-4. A recon team trained together, deployed together, knew each other's strengths and weaknesses. You could accept risk, because you knew you could trust the guys around you. He wouldn't have that on this mission. Nor was he happy about having non-marine attachments. They could be a royal pain in the ass. Worse, they could be mission killers. Weak people who held the team back. Careless people who gave away their position. Untrained people who just plain fucked up.
He was thinking about all this. But he didn't say anything. Not yet.
The door banged open and a stocky lieutenant colonel came in. The captain shouted, “Attention on deck,” and the men leaped to their feet. Gault recognized Paulik then. He'd seen him around the head shed in Quantico, as
a major. Paulik told them to stand at ease. He asked Kohler, “Done the basic mission brief?”
“Yes, sir.”
“Tell them about our source?”
“No, sir.”
To the room he said, “Welcome to âArâar. My name's Paulik. I'm the ops chief for Special Reconnaissance Group.
“Our source says this thing's in Baghdad. But we shook the imagery shop and nothing fell out. So we suspect it might be
beneath
Baghdad. Baghdad's an old city. We're not sure exactly what's down there. They say you can go from one side of Rome to the other underground, in the sewers and tunnels. Maybe we can do that here. Maybe not. Anyway, that's why we're reconstituting the UAT. Specifically for the urban combat, underground navigation expertise.
“We have an agent in place. He's a member of the Shiite resistance run by the Syrian intelligence service. That is, an Iraqi who's a Syrian intelligence asset. The Syrians are Ba'athists, but they hate the Iraqis even though they're Ba'athists too. What can I say, this is the Middle East. He's agreed to meet up with the team, if you can make it in without detection, and guide you to the objective.
“All right, are we all tracking, before we get deeper into the brief?”
Gault stood up again. “Two questions, sir. First offâthis asset, the guy who's supposed to take us in. Any chance he could be leading us into a setup? And does he really know where this thing is?”
“I'm not sure I can give you an answer that'll satisfy you, Gunny. He's not ours and we don't have a straight pipeline to him,” Paulik said. “So basically it'll be up to you to evaluate him on the ground, decide what level of credibility you want to give him.”
“I've had some experience with the Syrians, sir. They like to play both sides.”
“I hear you, but we don't have a choice. What's your second question?”
“Baghdad's five hundred miles inside Iraq, sir. If they detect usâwill there be an emergency extract package? Or will we have to E and E on our own?”
“You tell me. We'll back you up. You team oriented, Gunnery Sergeant?”
“Yes, sir, I am.”
“They handed us the ball. Deep reconnaissance is our reason for being. Collecting and confirming the intel data. Being the commander's eyes and ears. This is a deep reconnaissance mission. End of discussion?”
“End of discussion, sir,” he agreed. He sat down again, squatting on the hard concrete, and opened up his notebook.
They reconvened in the same room after dusk; though since there were no windows and the lights stayed on round the clock, night meant nothing to Gault, who was used to sleeping through the hours of light. When he could sleep at allâ¦this close to the runway, the concrete-block walls hardly muffled the howl and roar of aircraft taking off. So that now and then they had to stop and just look at one another while the ceiling vibrated and no word could be heard over the engines of American vengeance.
When he came in, he saw someone had liberated a folding table and a handful of chairs. As Gault came to attention Lieutenant Colonel Paulik pointed to one. He took it silently, squared his notebook in front of him, and looked toward where an overhead projector faced one of the unadorned walls.
The navy was there too, the tall officer who'd arrived that afternoon, and three people he'd never seen before, a women and two men. One of the men was in civvies. The other man and the woman were in battle dress cammies. The guy's service component tag said US Air Force, the woman's US Army.
Paulik cleared his throat. He introduced the female officer as Major Maureen Maddox, from Fort Detrick. The men were Major Anthony Bice and Mr. Charles
Provanzano. “Major Bice is a Middle East specialist from the Defense Intelligence Agency. Mr. Provanzano's aâ¦civilian advisor to CINCCENT. They're here to help us plan the mission.”
Gault said, “Do they know the team leader plans recon missions, sir?”
“We know that, Gunny. But they have background I think you'll want to hear.” He waited and, since Gault didn't say anything else, looked at Bice. “Why don't you kick off, Major?”
Bice stood. Gault noted his knife-edged, starched desert battle dress, the brand-new leather boots that would destroy his feet in two days in the field.
“I'm Tony Bice, out of Riyadh. I've been asked to come out here and background you on what little we have on this thing. This'll be top secret.” He slipped transparencies from an envelope and clicked the projector on. The first slide said simply, “985.”
“For security reasons, the Iraqis give numbers to their weapons development projects. We believe “985” is their Manhattan Project. That is, a highly classified program aimed at production of nuclear weapons.
“Saddam started his effort to develop what he calls
âAslihatel dammar ashammel'
âroughly, weapons of mass deathâin the nineteen seventies. The Russians refused to help him, but he had more luck with the French. They built the Osirak reactors, later called Tammuz I and II. His plan was to breed plutonium in them. But the Israelis bombed them in 1981. That set the clock back to zero.
“When the war with Iran started, Iraqi atomic research stopped. But in 1987 Saddam gave it priority again.
“You may know there are two ways to get to the bomb: breeding plutonium in a reactor, or enriching uranium to a high concentration of fissionable isotope. This time they decided to produce their own weapons-grade uranium. They bought raw ore using various cover stories. This slide shows where it came fromâBrazil, Portugal,
and Nigerâand how much was in each shipment. The total's at least six hundred tons. There's also some domestic mining going on up north, at Sarsenk, close to the Turkish border.
“Turning uranium ore to raw metal's not that big a deal. But enriching uranium by gas diffusion took us and the Russians and the Chinese enormous amounts of equipment and power and very distinctive chemicals. We watched Iraq, but we didn't see the filtration buildings, didn't see the chemical imports, so we didn't think they were that advanced.
“Then last July the Swiss raided a factory in Berne. They found out that seven gas centrifuges went to Baghdad in 1988. With centrifuges, they don't need huge buildings. They can churn out bomb-grade uranium in a bunker, in a gym, in the basement of a bottling plant.
“Now we have unconfirmed reports from inside Iraq that they assembled a uranium-based fission device last year. Originally they were going to test it in Mauritania. Saddam and the dictator there have a brotherly understanding. But now the test's off. Why? Our design guys from Sandia tell us the same components could be reassembled into a deliverable.”
Bice took the last transparency off and shut down the projector. “So that's our call on 985, what I understand you're calling Flying Stones. It'll be low yield. Five, ten kilotons. But it'll be dirty. Lots of fission products. Over a city the size of Tel Aviv, it'll be enough.”
“The Israelis would retaliate in kind,” Paulik said.
“Right, they'll nuke Baghdad till you won't need streetlights,” Bice told him. “But meanwhile, we can kiss off the Coalition. That's been Saddam's tune since August: the Arab allies are collaborating with America and Israel to wipe out the faithful.”
“It resonates in the souk,” Provanzano said.
“No shit. And even if they cap him, consider the payoff. Saddam Hussein, martyr, saint, and hero to the Arab
world for the next thousand years. A bigger tombstone than you or I'll ever get.”
Bice waited for more questions, then nodded. “That's DIA's call. An uprated Scud in an underground silo, with a quickie A-bomb or at least a heavy charge of very dirty isotopes on top. Probably located somewhere with transportation assets and heavy overhead crane access.”
“Thank you, sir,” said Gault. Paulik gave him a swift glance but did not object.
Provanzano stretched, then got up. He was in jeans and an open-collared shirt and cowboy boots. He walked back and forth a couple of times before he said, “It's not a nuke. Sorry, Tony.”
“You guys are barking up the wrong tree again,” Bice said. “Saddam caught you napping when he invaded. We had watch notices out a week before he went over the line.”
“Watch notices aren't warning. I admit, there was an intelligence failure all down the line. But it wasn't just us.”
“You gentlemen want to settle this somewhere else?” Paulik asked them. “Because we don't have a lot of time.”
Provanzano grimaced. “All right. But I don't have any pretty slides.”
He hooked his thumbs into his belt and walked the room again. “Tony's account leaves out a company that was originally called Arab Projects and Development. Saddam formed it in the seventies to recruit technical expertise in chemical and biological warfare. To be his hole card, if the nuclear program went sour.
“In 1979 the APD became the Ibn Al Haitham Institute, headquartered in Baghdad. The institute went shopping in the US, Britain, Belgium, Italy, and the Netherlands, mainly for chemical weapons production at first. Most companies reported the approaches and threw them out. They got a better reception when they went to Germany. Messerschmitt-Bolkow-Blohm, Karl Kolb,
Sigma Chemie, and Preussag provided the equipment. Other German companies built the plants.
“Iraqi gas production is the responsibility of a company called SEPP, the State Enterprise for Pesticide Production. They have plants at SÄmarrÄ,' Akashat, and Al Fallujah. They make mustard gas, cyanide, sarin, and tabun. Saddam used cyanide and sarin against Iran three years ago, the offensive on the Fao Peninsula. He dropped mustard on seventy Kurd villages in the north. We also have reports of something called âblue acid.' It's supposed to penetrate masks and protective clothing. Our chemmies think it might be in the fluoroisobutene family.
“So that's one possibility for Project 985. A poison gas, either one of the classics or something new. You know what? I'd personally be glad if that's what it is. It'd be nasty. Nerve gas is not a nice way to die. But I don't really think that's it. And our second possibility's worse.”
“Biologicals,” said the army major, Maddox. She was sitting back with her arms folded, watching him.
Provanzano nodded, rubbing his chin as the thunder overhead swelled to a peak through which no one could speak. When it dwindled, he said, “Yeah. BW, biological warfare; what they used to call germ warfare. We're all behind the power curve on this one. They're a lot easier to cook up than nerve gas. You can produce them in the same lab you build a vaccine in. All you need's the bugs, the scientists, and something for them both to eat.
“When we pulled the lid off this can we found a whole lot of worms looking back up at us. Saddam's people got West Nile virus, dengue fever, and bubonic plague from the Centers for Disease Control in Atlanta. Legally. By mail. They ordered tetanus, anthrax, and botulism from a private company in Rockville, Maryland. They've also been buying a lot of monkeys. That's a bad sign, going through that many fucking monkeys. That means you have your bug production cooking; now you're working on your delivery systems. That's how you test spray and
blast dispersal, stake down a bunch of chimps and set it off over their heads.”
Provanzano looked down the table at Maddox. “I was going to tell them about anthrax, but now I remember where I heard your name, Doctor. Maybe you'll give them the bad news.”
Maddox glanced at him, then got to her feet. She was a brunette, medium height. She looked stocky, but to Gault all women tended to in battle dress. Her voice was businesslike.
“I'm Dr. Maureen Maddox, from the US Army Medical Research Institute of Infectious Diseases. I'm in-theater with the Deployable Diagnostic Laboratory, which we've set up at the Ninety-third Evac Hospital in RafhÄ' to give us early warning of any disease threat to the deployed force, natural or otherwise. I specialize in what are called zoonotic diseasesâthat is, those with animal vectors and reservoirs that also cause disease in humans.
“
Bacillus anthracis
is a large, gram-positive, nonmotile bacterial rod that's the closest thing we know of to a perfect biological weapon. Most bacteria die in open air and sunlight. Anthrax goes inert instead, turns into a sporeâuntil it enters a welcoming environment. It'll infect through the mouth, through open wounds, but its most effective infection route is the aerosol or airborne routeâby breathing it in.
“The bug has three virulence factors: edema factor, a lethal toxin, and something we call âprotective antigen,' or PA. PA binds to lethal factor and edema factor to make two highly lethal toxins. The bacteria take about three days to incubate in the body. The first symptoms are like mild flu. Low-grade fever, malaise, chest pain, maybe a cough. Most people would not go to a doctor. After a day or so the symptoms fade. The patient feels better. Meanwhile the bacteria are taking over the lymphatic system and percolating into the bloodstream.
“Suddenly it starts releasing the toxins I told you about. They destroy the lungs and other organs. Every breath becomes more agonizing. Death comes by choking, convulsions, and asphyxiation as the lungs fill with fluid.” She hesitated, then added, “I've seen one man die from it. He got it in Minnesota, eating contaminated goat meat. We tried to save him. But after the symptoms show, it's too late.”
“What about mortality numbers?” said Provanzano.
“For inhalational infections? The death rate of the deadliest strains is over eighty percent.”
Gault spoke, and their heads turned. “We got a lot of shots when we arrived in-theater. Would they protect us?”
“Yes,” said Paulik; simultaneously Maddox said, “Maybe,” and Provanzano said, “Probably not.”
“Probably not?” said the naval officer, Lenson, speaking for the first time.
Maddox drew invisible figures with the eraser of her pencil. “That inoculation might protect you. It might not. You see, I happen to know the woman in charge of the Iraqi BW program. It would depend on the strain she's weaponized.
“The vaccine we're giving our troops is the same one veterinarians get back in the States. It protects against the most common natural strain found in North America, and we think it should protect against any strain where the PA antigen is what allows the toxins to enter the cells. But if a strain's been bred for increased virulence, or engineered in some way we haven't considered, it may not do the job.”
Wanting to get this straight, Gault said, “It may not do the jobâmeaning what? We'd get sick, but not as sick? Or that we'd die?”
“You can't predict that on an individual basis,” Maddox said quietly. “There are too many variables. Immune system response. Size of initial dose. Genetic similarity of the pathogen to the vaccine strain. It might protect you. You might get sick but recover. You might get sick and
die.” She paused as jets thundered, seemed about to add something, but at last didn't, and sat down.
Gault sat back, frowning. Paulik said, “Thanks, Doctor. Charlie, have you got anything else for us?”
“Actually I'm about done,” Provanzano said. “I do have something on the delivery system, though. I agree with you, Tony, that whatever 985 is, it's strapped to an extended-range derivative of the Soviet Scud-B called Al Abbas. Our figures on that missile are a range of nine hundred kilometers, a payload capacity of about three hundred kilograms, and a Circular Error Probable at maximum range of somewhere between a thousand meters and a mile. With that CEP you go for an area target. Tel Aviv is just about nine hundred klicks from Baghdad. If it's anthrax, deployed in an air burst, our wind-drift and lethality models come up with various figures, depending on humidity, wind direction, and atmospheric conditions. If all those are ideal, we could be looking at as many as a hundred thousand casualties.”
He let them think about that for a few seconds. “So that's our call for Flying Stones. Iraq can't produce a uranium bomb, even a simple gun design, that weighs less than the three hundred kilos I mentioned. Nerve gas? Isotopes? Could be, but I just don't think those'd be the mass killer Saddam wants. We've gone all through this with the psychological people, profiling him, analyzing language, and so forth. I met him in Baghdad, by the way. When he was on our side. He's a chiller, all right.