Part 18 (1/2)
At first light the next morning, David McCarter drove into the valley toward the French laager with only the gas detector riding on the seat next to him. Checking to see if there had actually been a nerve-gas attack as the Farm thought was a one-man job, and no one was better suited to do it than him. Both Manning and Hawkins had argued about his going, saying that since he was the Phoenix Force leader, he couldn't be spared if the gas was still present.
But, as far as McCarter was concerned, the job was his precisely because he was the leader. His SAS-trained concept of leaders.h.i.+p was that the head man got paid the big bucks to lead, not to send men into danger in his place. Plus Kurtzman had a.s.sured him that since the nerve gas involved was likely to have been manufactured to the Russian formula, it would have dissipated in an hour or so and would be completely gone by now.
He stopped the truck a quarter of a mile away from the PROFOR laager and took another reading with the detector. The air was still clean. Picking up his field gla.s.ses, he scanned the silent camp. The French armored vehicles had been parked in a circle with their machine gun and autocannon turrets facing outward.
It had been a good move and would have worked against almost anything they could have expected to come up against in Bosnia. But guns and armored vehicles were no protection against deadly nerve gas. Putting the Toyota in gear, he drove the rest of the way in, keeping one eye on the detector all the way.
The first bodies he came to were right outside the ring of vehicles and would have been the sentries. The bodies bore no visible signs of the cause of death. There were no bullet holes and no blood. Their sprawled postures told of their having died in mid-stride as it were.
The only sign that they had died unnaturally was that most of the faces were in a grimace of death that told of their nervous systems having been attacked. The gas. .h.i.t so fast that the poor b.a.s.t.a.r.ds probably hadn't even known what was killing them.
Inside the laager, one of the officers in the command vehicle, a captain by the stripes on his rank straps, had died with a radio microphone in his hand. Another officer lay where he had fallen halfway out the back door. Some of the troops were in their sleeping bags under their vehicles, sleeping the long sleep. McCarter hadn't been a stranger to war for more years than he liked to count. He was well acquainted with violent death and had seen every way that a human could possibly die. But there was always something obscene about the victims of gas attacks, either military or civilian.
These men had been soldiers, and putting their lives on the line in combat was part of their job description. But they hadn't been killed in combat like soldiers. They had been slaughtered like so many sheep without even having had a chance to defend themselves.
After making a count of the bodies, McCarter turned the Toyota around and was driving back to rejoin his teammates when he pa.s.sed a single body beyond the ring of sentries. This man was wearing desert camouflage instead of the olive drab battle dress of the French. Stopping the truck, he got out and rolled the corpse over with his boot. The soldier wasn't French unless he was of Algerian extraction, and the uniform was a dead giveaway. The Iranians at the fortress had worn this kind of desert camouflage.
Close to the Iranian's corpse was what looked like a half-exploded round of some kind. Moving in closer to look at it, McCarter thought he caught a faint bitter smell and jerked back. He felt silly because if there was gas present, he would already be dead. But he went back to the track to get the chemical detector to check this round anyway.
When the detector showed that the air didn't con- tain any lingering traces of nerve gas, he looked closer at what he had found. The thin-walled round appeared to be a chemical rocket warhead, but the nose fuse was still intact and hadn't exploded. Seeing the safety pin of the grenade by the corpse's hand, he realized what had happened.
This had been a suicide attack. This Iranian had sneaked up close to the French laager and had detonated some kind of explosive device to rupture the gas warhead.
Suicide bombers weren't as common in Islamic national armies as they were in terrorist bands, but they weren't unknown, either. The lure of immediate entrance into Paradise was strong and enticed many men to martyr themselves.
Leaving the evidence where it lay for the UN to find, he got back into .the truck and drove to where he had left Bolan with the rest of the team.
”They've raised the ante,” he informed Bolan as he stepped down. ”The French were ga.s.sed.”
Hearing the expected, Bolan reached for the radio to make his report to Katz.
Stony Man Farm ”McCARTER FOUND the bodies.” Yakov Katzenelenbogen's face on the Farm's video screen showed his concern. ”It was a French patrol, platoon size, thirty-eight men, and they're all dead. There was another body close by that David thinks was an Iranian who had a chemical-rocket warhead with him, so it looks like it was a suicide attack. The Iranian got in close to the laager site and detonated the warhead.” ”Poor b.a.s.t.a.r.ds,” Kurtzman muttered.
”Have the French headquarters been notified?” Barbara Price asked.
”They had choppers in the air at first light looking for the unit because they lost communication with them last night. They were approaching the site right as our team was pulling out of the area. I told them to move out so they wouldn't get hung up with the um,”
”Good call,” Brognola said.
”What are your instructions at this point?” Katz asked formally. He was the Farm's tactical adviser, but the ultimate decisions were on Brognola's shoulders. Particularly a decision of such magnitude.
This was the first time that war gases had been used in Europe since the end of World War I, and it was an important escalation of the long Bosnian cri-sis. The decisions that would be made could have a dramatic effect on the future of Europe, and he didn't want to be the one who had to make the call.
'Tll be d.a.m.ned if I know,” Brognola answered. ”Until I can get a conference with the President and see what he wants to do, have the guys continue tracking the b.a.s.t.a.r.ds and hope that they can make contact before any more of the rockets are used.”
”Striker and the team are closing in on them,”
Hunt Wethers commented. ”I have them no more than an hour or so behind the targets at this time.”
Since Wethers had set up the tracking program that was tagging the Iranians' lxucks, he was keeping watch over the progress of the long-distance chase.
”Can we vector in a NATO guns.h.i.+p to destroy those trucks now?” Katz asked. ”This is a serious enough incident that it should be enough to cut through the usual bulls.h.i.+t to get some prompt ac-tion.”
Brognola thought for a moment. ”This has upped the threat,” he agreed. ”There's no doubt about that, and I'll argue for an immediate air strike, but I can't even begin to guess what he'll say.”
”Urge him to take quick action, Hal,” Katz said. ”Since we've seen that they are more than willing to use the gas, the team is in danger, as well.”
”I'11 try my best,” Brognola replied, knowing full well that he had little chance of success. Anything that was linked to the UN in any way defied quick action. ”But I don't want to pull the guys off them yet. I want them to keep trying to get within striking range. And tell them that if they can attack, I want them to do it immediately. They're the last, best chance we have of putting a quick end to this.”
”Will do,” Katz said. ”But you have to give them warning if you can get an air strike authorized. A bomb blast hitting those rockets would be even more dangerous than launching them, and I don't want our people to be caught in the open.”
”I understand.” Brognola read between the lines of what Katz had explained. An air strike would release the deadly gas, and nerve gas didn't care whom it killed.
He turned to the bank of printers against the wall and reached for the satellite photos of the French laager that were coming out of the photo printer. ”The President will want to see these.”
Aviano Air Base, Italy WHILE KATZENELENBOGEN waited to hear back from Stony Man Farm, he mulled over the report McCarter had made about the gas attack. One thing stuck in his mind that he didn't understand. Why had the Iranians made a suicide attack instead of launching the rocket the usual way?
It was true that the trade-off had been good-one Iranian KIA for thirty-eight French. That was a good combat equation, but this hadn't been real combat. Considering that the Iranians had taken a beating in the bombing at the camp, they had to be short on men. Even if those two pickups were packed to the sides of the bed, they couldn't have many more than two dozen men all told.
Maybe there was a simpler explanation. Maybe a suicide bomber had been sent in to take the French out because the Iranians didn't have a launcher with them to fire the rocket from.
Katz was well aware that a rocket launcher wasn't a big deal-a chunk of sewage pipe would work if it was big enough. He even knew that the Viet Cong had often launched Russian 120mm rockets by resting them on crossed sticks stuck in the ground. Using the proper launcher, however, did give a better guarantee of hitting what you were aiming at. But that was only important when you were dealing with conventional HE rocket warheads. With an HE round, if you couldn't hit it, you couldn't blow it up.
With chemical rockets, however, accuracy wasn't really important. What was important was making sure that you were upwind from the target. Dropping the rocket almost anywhere upwind from the intended target would do the trick when the gas was released. And if he a.s.sumed that the Iranians didn't have a launcher, he could narrow down the number of possible targets. If that was in fact the case, the best target would be anyplace where people were gathered in large numbers.
His mind flashed to something Brognola had said about the importance of getting Richard Lacy back in American hands in time for an important meeting. Had it been something about an election? Or was it so he could take part in the renewed peace talks?
Grabbing the phone, he hit the key to activate the video hookup and called the Farm. ”I need you to help me with something,” he told Aaron Kurtzman. ”What's that?”
”Tell me again what was so important about our getting Richard Lacy back on time.”
”Katz, that's old news. You're supposed to be chasing after a s.h.i.+pment of nerve-gas rockets, remember.”
”To be a little more precise,” Katz replied, ”I'm supposed to be chasing nerve-gas rockets so they won't be used. And part of solving that puzzle is figuring out who they are going to be used against. I think that your man Lacy might be a key to solving that puzzle.”
”I'11 bite how?”
”I think that the Iranians may not have a launcher for those rockets. That would go a long ways to explain why they used a suicide attacker to take out the French when they're low on men. My thought is that if they have to use up a man every time they pop one of those rockets, they'll want to make sure that they get their money's worth. They're going to want to hit a large target.”
Kurtzman was silent for a moment. ”The elections. They're having another round of regional elections in the Serb and Croatian sections of Bosnia. The Bosnian Muslims have gotten their stuff together as far as choosing their own leaders, but the Serbs and Croats are still working on it. The elections are scheduled to start-” he glanced at the calendar ”-in the cities on the day after tomorrow.”
”Which cities?”
”Let me find out and get back to you,” Kurtzman said. ”I know that not all of the cities were chosen as election sites. There was some concern about fraud, and the UN wants to oversee the vote this time, so the elections have been consolidated. People from the outlying districts and smaller towns will have to travel to cast their ballots, and that's why it's a two-day vote.”