Across the Potomac, in an office in the E Ring of the Pentagon, Ensign Terri
Calvert, USN ended the call on her cellphone and looked across at her
commanding officer. “Now I know how Benedict Arnold must have felt.”
“Apparently all this is Captain Garrett’s idea, Ensign,” Rear Admiral Nick Dunnigan, NAVSPECFORCE’s liaison officer to the Joint Chiefs, replied from behind his desk. “Let’s just hope she knows what she’s doing. Do you have the documentation?”
“Yes, sir.” She held up a file folder. “Phony signatures and all. They’ll look good but they’ll be deniable when the time comes.”
“How about your story? Got it down pat?”
“Yes sir, a team from Navy CID mock-grilled me all morning. And Defense
Intelligence has provided me with falsified identification.”
Dunnigan nodded. “Very well, Ensign. Thank you for your assistance in this matter. It will be
noted. Now, you’d better get into your civvies. You’ve got an appointment to keep.”
An open line light was blinking on his desk phone. Lifting the handset to his
ear, he accessed the connection. “You may inform Admiral MacIntyre the bomb has been dropped.”
Thomas Peak, the San Bernardino National Forest
2303 Hours; Zone Time, September 24, 2008
One of the peculiarities of twenty-first century California is that wilderness coexists so closely with modern urbanity.
To the northeast, Palm Springs and its satellite communities glitter, turning the floor of the Coachella Valley into a tapestry of diamonds. To the northwest, the glow of the Los Angeles basin drowns out the stars as, to a lesser extent, the lights of San Diego do to the south. But on Thomas Mountain itself, the cougar and the black bear still reign and the only sound is the hissing sigh of wind in the pinon pines.
Then came the intrusion, an edgy, trilling growl that grew swiftly in intensity. Four shadows snaked up one of the seaward canyons of the coastal range, skimming the treetops, hugging the contours of the jagged terrain, flying with the same effortless surety of the night-hunting bats and owls with which they shared the mountain darkness.
The formation broke as it vaulted the mountain ridgeline. The leader continued
its climb into the star-strewn sky, while its three flight mates dove,
slaloming down the far side of the range toward the desert floor far below.
The Marine Corps Air-Ground Combat Center
Twentynine Palms, California
2315 Hours; Zone Time, September 24, 2008
Lieutenant Colonel Robert Cassin USMC paced behind the row of computer workstations, his eyes warily scanning the glowing topaz screens that dominated the forward wall of the darkened simulation control center.
As an OPFOR commander at the Air-Ground Combat Center, he was fully cognizant this was only an exercise. He and his team of veteran battle management controllers recognized that their job was to teach and to assist their “students” in gaining experience under fire. Winning was not an absolute necessity to accomplish this mission.
Yet Cassin and his controllers were both human and Marine enough to relish the victory whenever a “Blue Force” incursion into their territory was defeated.
When the small cadre of military intellectuals nicknamed the “Jedi Knights” rebuilt the wreckage of the United States Armed Forces in the aftermath of the Vietnam conflict, they integrated a potent and devastating weapon into the revised structure of the American Military.
Training. Vigorous, intensive, and most importantly, highly realistic training, performed under as close to actual battlefield conditions as was possible to simulate.
It was recognized that the soldier was never more vulnerable than during his first ten days on the battle line. Likewise, the military aviator was never more at risk than during his first ten combat missions. If this “bloody ten” could be experienced in an environment where a “death” could be an event assessed and learned from, then one could produce an army of exceptionally capable and survivable warriors.
Using a sophisticated blend of cybernetic simulation and Hollywood special effects, a series of training ranges were outfitted to simulate the modern battlefield environment and OPFOR (Opposition Force) units were organized. Trained and equipped to emulate potential enemy military formations, the OPFOR mission was to challenge the United States Armed Forces to mock battle, the conflicts to be judged by exacting and impartial computer referees.
The prize awarded in the contest were the priceless skills needed to stay alive.
The National Training center at Fort Irwin, California, the Joint Readiness Training Center at Fort Polk Louisiana, the “Red Flag” Air Warfare Center at Nellis Air Force Base and the Naval Strike and Air Warfare Center at Fallon, Nevada, all were dedicated to OPFOR training.
The Marine Air-Ground Combat Center at Twenty-Nine Palms, California was another such facility. Occupying more than 900 square miles of sun-blasted sand and red-rock mountain range in the heart of the Mojave Desert, a steady stream of Marine Expeditionary Units and combat squadrons cycled through the A-GCC, honing their skills and experimenting with new equipment and doctrine.
Tonight, however, a hundred square miles of the Center had been apportioned for another decidedly unusual tasking. Tonight, the OPFOR team didn’t know who, or what, they would be opposing.
The basic scenario was a simple one. Cassin and his staff had been ordered to “develop a medium intensity Third World air defense network capable of disrupting
and/or providing a one-hundred-second advanced warning of an air strike of
undetermined size, nature and capability.”
The range controllers and field teams from A-GCC had done so, establishing a hypothetical but effective anti-aircraft zone within the exercises area using a mixed bag of export weaponry and sensors common in the average Third World military.
From a desert mountain peak, an air-search radar tuned to match the frequency and performance characteristics of an older model French Thomson CFM system swept the skies, while low-light television cameras on several other points of high ground simulated sky-watch sentries equipped with NiteBrite binoculars.
Half a dozen point defense emplacements armed with Russian SA-18 man-portable surface-to-air missiles and German Reinmetal 20mm anti-aircraft guns also guarded the center of the exercise range. The actual weapons were not deployed, only fiberglass and inflatable plastic mock-ups. Pyrotechnic devices and strobe lights would simulate missile launches and gunfire and implanted radar and thermal beacons would register the appropriate image on airborne sensors.
As the attacker’s aircraft came within range of the defense emplacements, the God computers overseeing events on the range would calculate the detection and hit probability. Should a hit be scored with a SAM or with gunfire, the kill would register on the screens of the range control center, and an electronic impulse would trigger a strobe light pod and an alarm tone aboard the targeted aircraft, announcing its destruction.
In addition, a pair of California Air National Guard F-16E jet interceptors circled above the range at thirty-five thousand feet, playing the role of a Third World Combat Air Patrol.
Located at the center of this half-dome of defenses was the “the villa.” A dozen rusty Conex containers had been stacked into a rectangular house-sized pile. More cargo containers had been spaced around the central stack to form a perimeter wall and a couple of junked military trucks had been parked in the created courtyard.
The villa was what the exercise was all about – the villa and whatever might be coming after it. It could be anything, Joint Strike Fighters or F/A-22’s, Tactical Tomahawk cruise missiles, even experimental UCAV strike drones. But Cassin and his people had faced all of those threats previously, and they always been told what to expect. It was one of the inherent advantages always given to the OPFOR in a training exercise.
But not tonight.
Then there was the mysterious onlooker in the range control war room, a neutral-featured middle-aged man in casual civilian clothes. He lacked even the usual photo ID security badge issued to the run of the mill op center visitor.
Cassin’s immediate superior had escorted this individual to the room and left him there
along with a curt set of instructions. “This man is not here. He has never been here. Totally ignore him unless he says
something to you. But if he does say something, listen!”
So far, the interloper had kept his peace. He sat silently in the rear of the darkened room, fingering a sports watch.
Cassin glanced back at the man, trying to judge his impassive face. Then the Marine returned his attention to the master display. A video image had been windowed into the lower corner of the central wall screen, a view of the villa registering in the flat, gray tones of a low-light television camera.
