surrounding clumps of smaller forts—missile sites—that defend potential targets; yet more sites defend the sector headquarters; at the center of all sits the air defense command, controlling all, ready to call up fighter aircraft the way Saladin once called up his cavalry.
The early-warning radars are the eyes of the system. They are everywhere—perimeter, SAM sites, defense areas, every attack corridor. The SAMs—surface-to-air missiles—are the archers; at each SAM center is a powerful, long-range missile site that must in its turn be protected by smaller SAMs and conventional anti-aircraft (AAA). The AAA remains deadly against low-flying attackers; it is not tricked by chaff and flares—the electronic dust thrown into radar’s eye. Each SAM site also has fire-control radars, a field of microwave dishes, land lines, cables, and communications devices: it is no small thing.
Communication is essential, because the radar horizon on our small planet is a measly twenty-two miles. Even from a mountain or a giant tower, a radar sees only thirty or forty miles—in the age of supersonic aircraft and big-stick (long-range) missiles, like being legally blind. Therefore, it is only at a headquarters controlling hundreds of EW radars that an incoming attack can be understood and that understanding passed to the SAM sites, usually by regions or sectors. At the center of all the sectors is the Air Defense Headquarters, resolving conflicts between sectors and controlling the fighter force.
This, then, is the siege warfare of the late twentieth century, when the besieger moves at hundreds of miles an hour, attempting to destroy EW radars and SAM sites to open safe routes to targets while fighting off the missiles and AAA and aircraft that the fortress deploys. It is fast and complex and seemingly clean, but, as in the days when warriors smashed steel visors with hammers, men die.
On both sides.
12 July 1990. 0315 Zulu. Ottawa, Canada.
Most of the Royal Canadian Mounted Police building was quiet, but on the third floor a block of offices was alive with the sounds of day—voices, telephones, computer keys, music that boomed until a hoarse voice shouted to turn it down. A gray-haired man carried a computer printout along an uncarpeted corridor, turned a corner, started past a row of doors and pulled up just after passing an open one. Thinking better of something, he leaned in.
“You interested in four Russians?”
“You got four for sale, eh?”
“Ha-ha, I’m laughing right out loud. I got a report from Vancouver about four Russians they’re just processing through—tourist visas, very little luggage, at least one checks out as former Spetsnaz.”
“Where they coming from?”
The man checked a sheet. “Vladivostok. Direct flight.”
“They holding them?”
“‘Detained in the normal course of immigration procedure.’”
“Lemme see.” The man at the desk took the printout. “Four hard cases,” he said. “You read this, eh? All four Spetsnaz, would be my guess. Ages are right, descriptions. So what we may have is four nouveau-mafia types who think muscling in on Canadian rackets might be a nice way to go. The kind that give me the pip—right shits, thinking we’re easy pieces.” He held out the sheets. “Nice catch, Tony. Tell Vancouver to let them through but put a tail on them. Descriptions and photos throughout, middle priority, ‘surveillance for information only.’ Open a file, put it in your manor—stay on top of it, eh? Update every seventy-two hours. This one smells.”
“Maybe it’s four former Spetsnaz who like hockey.”
“Wouldn’t that be nice. And Tony, put together a grab team. Just in case we want to talk to them.”
Tony looked a little piqued. “Some of us have lives, sir. And Senators tickets.”
“Do it anyway. It’s not like the Senators will win, eh? All our best guys are playing in the States.”
23 July 1990. 2113 Zulu. The Persian Gulf.
Alan Craik lived in two worlds now. Squadron intelligence officers worked in the Carrier Intelligence Center (CVIC), planning routine missions, massaging raw intelligence. But aircrewmen flew with their squadron. And he was both. He had to balance the two, pretend that each of these prickly groups had his first priority.
But this night was different. He had finished his work as intelligence officer—forty hours of preparation and briefing—and he could take up his work as aircrewman without apology. If he was allowed.
He had been working to prepare the operation called KNIGHTHOOD. It was the reason for the doubling of the carrier presence in the Gulf, the reason for his father’s boat’s shadowing his own. Its generalities had been planned in Washington; its specifics were completed by men like Alan on the carriers; its execution would be done by men like his father.
An Iranian radar post was to be destroyed. KNIGHTHOOD would open a hole in the Iranian IADS by exploiting low-level coastal radar gaps, which would be used by two strike groups. Iranian casualties were meant to be light—casualties were bad press, even with a secret operation—but their military would learn how porous their fortress was. Perhaps a higher level would then understand how expensive terrorism could become.
Alan’s work in CVIC gave him solid knowledge of what his own squadron would do, and he had begged his skipper and the ops officer to let him go. Christine was to be a mission tanker, fairly safe (he assured them) off the coast. He was a pretty good TACCO now, he had dared to say—ask Rafe, ask Senior Chief Craw. But they had put him off—because, he believed, he was Mick Craik’s son and they didn’t know how his father would take it.
He wanted to go more than he had ever wanted anything—more than he had wanted Kim, more than he had wanted that high school letter. He wanted the reality of it, and he knew that this want was different from the other wants, which seemed of another kind, even of another world. He wanted it, he thought, to be a man.
And, apparently, he wasn’t to have it.
He knew every plane going out that night, every piece of the complex series of raids designed to peel the onion of the Iranian IADS and leave them to face the morning with a huge breech in their defenses. And he wasn’t to be among them.
He sat with a cup of coffee before him, hurt as he thought he had never been hurt before. Around him, the level of voices was higher, somehow tighter, the ones who were going sounding too loud and too happy. A few who couldn’t wait were already fiddling with their gear.
Maybe, he thought, it’s better in the long run not to get what you want. Maybe disappointment makes you a man. Maybe the moon is made of green cheese.
“Been looking all over for you.” The voice was right above his head. A hand fell on his shoulder. His skipper’s.
Alan looked up. His heart lurched. The hand squeezed. The skipper was looking away from him, off to a group of pilots; he shouted, “Gilder, I gotta talk to you, pronto!” He turned back, looked down. Their eyes locked. “You’re going. Get into your flight gear.” The hand lifted and fell—a pat on the shoulder. And then the skipper was gone.
He was going.
Alan was only human. He longed to go back to CVIC and drop just a hint, to see the envy
