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Saudi Arabia, Sunday evening
Rapp stood on the edge of a natural rock escarpment staring out at the wrinkled rolling terrain, toward Baghdad. He was dressed in tan desert fatigues. This place was called Oasis One by the Pentagon. Very few people knew it existed. It was located directly on top of the Saudi-Iraqi border, a mere two hundred miles from Baghdad. The rock formation that made up the natural perimeter of the forward base jutted from the red sea of sand like a volcanic island in the middle of an expansive ocean. Rapp was the only civilian who'd ever been to the base. The military personnel who occupied the rock island didn't even refer to it as a base. The men in black berets called it a forward staging area, or raiding area. This was Special Forces country, and true to their colorful personalities, they did not refer to the base by its official and top-secret name: Oasis One. The snake eaters called it the Snake Pit. There was even a hand-painted sign hanging over one of the caves that said. Welcome to the Snake Pit. Drinking is Encouraged.
Special Forces types were different. They actually seemed normal to Rapp, but in relation to the rest of the military they were a breed apart. They prided themselves on making their own rules, and when they'd arrived at the old marauders' outpost they made it a point to set up a bar. All U. S. military personnel in Saudi Arabia were strictly forbidden from consuming alcohol. This did not deter the Green Berets, Delta Force Commandos, Navy SEALs and helicopter pilots who occupied the outpost.
They had arrived at the Prince Sultan Air Base the previous evening after traveling nonstop from North Carolina with several in flight refuelings. Three huge military cargo C-141 Starlifters had made the trip. In addition to the team that was tasked to go into Baghdad, Colonel Gray had brought along an additional 100 Delta Force Commandos. Part of that force would be assigned the vital role of backup in case the primary team got bogged down and needed to be pulled out, and for the remainder of the force, Colonel Gray had something special planned.
Due to the sec
recy surrounding the mission they flew in under the cover of darkness and landed at the eighty-square-mile Prince Sultan Air Base, located sixty miles south of Riyadh. The American portion of the base sits inside the Saudi Air Base and is a highly secure facility, in great part due to the tragic 1996 bombing in Dhahran, which killed 19 U. S. servicemen. Special Forces personnel are constantly coming and going from the base, but rarely does such a large force arrive unless an exercise is scheduled. For this reason the force left the base within hours of arriving. It was still dark when the helicopter pilots of the army's 160th Special Operations Aviation Regiment and the air force's 1st Special Operations Wing began ferrying the commandos off the Prince Sultan Air Base and up to the northern frontier. The bulk of the force was delivered to Oasis One and other units were distributed along the frontier at predetermined locations that U. S. Green Berets had already prepped.
The U. S. military had learned many lessons during the Gulf War, chief among them, that it was vital to have equipment positioned before a conflict starts. This was a lesson they had also learned painfully during both World War I and World War II, when German Wolf Packs sent millions of tons of vital equipment to the bottom of the North Atlantic. After World War II the military minds of the day got it right and a large portion of U. S. armor and artillery stayed in Europe.
When Saddam Hussein invaded Kuwait in late July of 1990, the U. S. was completely caught off guard and had to move fast for fear that Saddam might seize the moment and take Saudi Arabia. Initially, the only thing President Bush could do was send elements of the 82nd Airborne Division. Several thousand lightly armed men against 150,000 of Saddam's Republican Guard. The brass at the Pentagon knew that the elite troops of the 82nd Airborne Division would hold out against Saddam's large force of heavy armor for a day or two at best.
Logistically, the problem for the U. S. was not moving troops to the battlefield. Wide body airplanes such as 747's and C-141's could ferry ten thousand-plus troops a day into the region. The problem lay in transporting the U. S. Army's armor divisions and their supreme M1A1 Abrams main battle tank. Each of these behemoths weighs 54 tons and cannot be flown to their theater of operation; they must be shipped by vessel, and then transported by train or flatbed truck to the front. And the Abrams is only a small but crucial part of an armor divisions equipment. Armored personnel carriers, tracked reconnaissance vehicles, towed artillery, tracked artillery, rocket launchers, self-propelled antiaircraft guns, combat engineering vehicles, and spare parts and ordnance for every vehicle meant having to move millions of tons of equipment and supplies halfway around the world. This takes months and makes for many sleepless nights while planners wait to build a force strong enough to resist attack.
After the Gulf War the U. S. military did the smart thing, and with the approval of several Arab Gulf States they created depots for their heavy equipment and left it in the theater. The Special Forces took this basic idea and carried it a step further. Not only did they keep equipment such as helicopters and desert fast attack vehicles in the region, they used it as a live-fire training ground for their operators. Unknown to the public and most of the military was the fact that since the end of the Gulf War, U. S. Special Forces personnel had continued to operate in southern and western Iraq. They had created a series of outposts along the northern frontier between Saudi Arabia and Iraq that allowed them to operate without interference from their host country. Saudi Arabia knew something was up, but chose to turn a blind eye. Saddam, too proud to admit that a handful of American soldiers were harassing his supposed elite troops, didn't dare say anything to an international community that had little sympathy.
The bases were originally established as quick response combat search-and-rescue outposts, or CSAR, as they were referred to in military jargon. The farther to the north these bases were located the quicker the CSAR crews could get to a downed air crew. During the Gulf War many of these operations were carried out from the base at at Ar Ar, forty miles from the border. General Campbell, the commander of the Joint Special Operations Command, pushed to have these bases moved farther to the north. In the case of Oasis One, they were literally on the borer.
In recent years the Iraqis had begun firing more frequently on coalition flights that were enforcing the southern no-fly zone. Unlike his predecessor, General Flood believed in the capabilities of Special Forces. The previous chairman of the Joint Chiefs was loath to use the highly trained warriors. Fortunately, Flood thought it made as much sense as owning a Corvette and never taking it out of the garage. As Iraq became increasingly aggressive against coalition flights. General Flood took the leash off the Special Force's units arrayed across the northern frontier. They began launching raids across the border, harassing Iraqi army units, ambushing them and then disappearing into the desert. Green Beret, Delta Force and Navy SEAL snipers began eliminating Iraqi officers at distances approaching a mile. This harassing of the enemy had greatly affected the morale of the Iraqi units and a lessening of their desire to patrol so close to the border. The end result was some much appreciated breathing room for the Special Forces units arrayed across the northern frontier.
Rapp peered out from his perch. Long shadows fell from the escarpment as the sun prepared to slip over the western horizon. He could feel the heat escaping from the arid desert. The temperature would drop thirty degrees in the next two hours. Rapp looked at the patches of darkness below, stretching out to the east toward Baghdad and possible death. There was no fear, just anticipation and maybe a few regrets. He wished things had worked out between him and Anna, but they hadn't. They never would. They were from two different worlds, neither willing to give theirs up completely, and for that they would always be apart. The conviction was back. The fight in Milan had at least given him that. He had made a difference, and was about to make a huge difference. There were hundreds of innocent people sitting in the Al Hussein Hospital who were depending on him. They would never know him, they would never even know he had saved their lives, but he had to try.
A light breeze twisted the sand at the bottom of the escarpment into a funnel and carried it away. Rapp wondered if somewhere in his past there wasn't a relative who had come from this part of the world. Maybe it was just the similarities between the ocean and the desert. They were both awesome in power, they held a subtle, expansive beauty that could trick the human eye into seeing things that were not there, and they could be incredibly inhospitable if you didn't pay attention. The sound of a footfall from behind pulled him from his trance, and he turned to see Colonel Gray approaching through the narrow crevice.
"Beautiful up here, isn't it?" asked the wiry leader of Delta Force.
"Very"
"A perfect natural fort." Gray placed a hand on the rock and looked down the hundred-foot sheer drop to the desert floor.
"What did you have to give the Bedouins to get it from them?"
"Nothing. They used to launch raids from this place across the border into Iraq. They'd steal anything they could get their hands on. Saddam got fed up and in eighty-nine he cleared the rats' nest out and poisoned the well. The Bedouins left and have never come back."
Rapp nodded. Water dictated all travel in the desert. "Have you put any more thought into tonight?"
"Yeah. I think you're right. The men have the infiltration and extraction down. No sense running another exercise and risking an accident. We'll give everybody a chance to get some rest and save up for tomorrow night."
"You've talked to Washington."Rapp kept his eyes on the desert.
"Yep."
"And it's on?"
Gray cocked his head and grinned, "You know how they like to change their minds. For now it's on."
"Good. We can't afford to have this compromised. The longer we wait around the better chance there is that someone will talk." "Not my men," said a defensive Gray.
"It's not your men I'm worried about. It's the blowhards back in D. C." Rapp added quietly, "We need complete surprise to pull this off. I told the President your men could handle it. Another day or week of training will only give us a marginal benefit, but if the word leaks out somehow, we're fucked." Rapp looked off into the distance toward Baghdad. "If they know we're coming, no amount of training is going to save us.
CHAPTER THIRTY-NINE.
South Lawn, The White House, Sunday afternoon
The day was still as Marine One descended ominously from the gray sky. The wheels landed perfectly on the three disks that had been put down to keep the heavy helicopter from sinking into the lush grass. The fire engine was in place just in case something went wrong and the Secret Service was out in full force to dissuade anyone from trying anything stupid. The meet-and-greet at the rope line had been canceled. When the President left and returned to the White House on Marine One, his staff often arranged for friends, family, and donors, of course, to watch. Depending on how busy the President was he would sometimes stop and shake hands. The meet-and-greet had been scheduled for 7:00 P. M. Due to a certain congressman's interview on Meet the Press, the President was returning early from Camp David, and he was in no mood to shake anyone's hand.
