Since she was not expecting any visitor tonight and in view of the number of enemies she had made during the past few decades, Ingrid took the time to grab her GLOCK 19 pistol before going to answer the door. One discrete look through the front window of her lounge, which was next to the main entrance, showed her an official government car, with one armed and uniformed man standing next to it in her driveway.
Hiding her pistol in her back, she then unlocked and opened her main door and found herself facing an Air Force major in uniform. The man saluted her at attention while handing her a sealed envelope.
‘’General Dows? I came to give you this letter from the President and to bring you back with me to Washington, where the President wants to speak with you. You are being recalled to active military service.’
Saluting back the major, Ingrid took the offered envelope and then motionned for the man to step inside.
‘’Please come in, Major, and make yourself comfortable while I read this letter.’
‘’Thank you, General!’
Once he was in and she had closed back the door behind him, Ingrid led him into her lounge and offered him a sofa.
‘’You must have travelled for a few hours already and it is late. Would you like a coffee, or a cup of tea?’
‘’Thank you, General, but no: I was ordered to return with you to Washington as quickly as possible.’
Ingrid gave him an inquisitve look while starting to open the sealed envelope.
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‘’What unit do you belong to, Major?’
‘’I am part of the military liaison staff at the White House, General. The President mostly uses me as his personal messenger when discretion is required.’
‘’I see!’ said Ingrid while extracting and unfolding a single sheet of paper. It was stamped as ‘SECRET’ and bore the signature and seal of the President of the United States. Her expression became most sober as she read the classified letter: she was being recalled to active military duty, in her old rank of General of the Army, and was told to report directly to the President and to be ready to deploy overseas. She could already guess what was awaiting her once in Washington and, in a way, was not very surprised by this.
‘’Major, I am presently employed by the Hiller Aircraft Corporation and am in charge of a very important part of its infrastructure here, in Port Angeles. I will need to inform Mister Hiller of the fact that I am going to be unable to work for his firm for at least a few weeks. I promise not to give him any details about this letter and will just tell him that I am being recalled to active military duty. Not doing at least that would be grossly abusive of his trust in me.’
The major thought about that for a couple of seconds before nodding his head.
‘’Very well, General: call Mister Hiller now but tell him the strict minimum, please.
Know that we are now at war with Pakistan...and possibly with other Islamic states around the Middle East.’
‘’I already figured so, Major. To reassure you about my call, I will put it on speaker, so that you can listen on to the call.’
‘’That is most appreciated, General.’
Ingrid then didn’t waste time to go to the telephone sitting on top of her low coffee table and to call Jeff Hiller in California. The one to first answer her was Hiller’s wife.
‘’Hello?’
‘’Lynda, this is Ingrid Dows. I would need to speak urgently to Jeff, please.’
‘’Uh, one moment, please.’
Some fifteen seconds later, the voice of Jeff Hiller came on the line.
‘’Jeff here! What can I do for you at this hour, Ingrid?’
‘’Jeff, I am limited in what I can tell you right now but suffice it to say that this is to warn you that I am being recalled into active military service and that you will lose my services for an unknown length of time, possibly weeks and months. I am sorry that I can’t tell you more at this time about this.’
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Jeff Hiller, who was no fool, probably understood at once the reasons for this to happen.
Still, he stayed silent for a few seconds before speaking.
‘’Then, I can only wish you good luck in whatever task you will be doing, Ingrid.
Be careful and come back in one piece, please.’
‘’Thank you, Jeff! I will be careful, as always.’
Those last words made Hiller chuckle in derision.
‘’You, careful? You keep jumping from the frying pan into the fire, Ingrid. Still, be careful: I will need you for our next main aircraft project.’
‘’I will be back for that, Jeff, I promise. I am now going to hang up. Goodby!’
Ingrid then cut the line and looked at the major.
‘’The President’s letter tells me to be ready for a deployment overseas, Major.
Do you mind to wait half a hour or so, time for me to pack my old uniforms and some personal effects, including personal weapons?’
‘’Go right ahead, General. I will wait right here while you pack.’
‘’Thank you!’
As promised, Ingrid was back in her lounge after some 35 minutes, wearing her old Space Corps uniform with the five-star rank insignias of General of the Army. She was also wearing an impressive pistol at her belt and carried one suitcase, one military kit bag and one long rifle case.
‘’I am ready to go, Major. How will we be traveling to Washington tonight?’
‘’I came into a military liaison jet which is now waiting on the tarmac at the local airport, General.’
‘’Then, let’s go!’
With the major helping her by carrying her suitcase, Ingrid closed all the lights in her house and secured all the windows and her rear patio door before leaving her house and locking the main door. As she walked to the waiting military staff car, she thought to herself that she was probably on her way to go fight in her eleventh war since 1939.
06:08 (Washington Time)
Thursday, September 6, 2001 ‘C’
Family Dining Room, first floor, The White House Washington, D.C.
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When Ingrid was led into the Family Dining Room, on the first floor of the White House, she found President George W. Bush and his wife Laura sitting at their dining table and eating breakfast. On seeing her, the president got up from his chair at once and went to her with his right hand extended.
‘’General Dows, I am happy to see you come so quickly.’
Ingrid saluted him at attention before shaking his hand.
‘’I simply did as ordered, Mister President. I suppose that you wouldn’t have recalled me into active military service unless you had important reasons to do so.
‘’I certainly didn’t do that lightly, General. Have you eaten yet this morning?’
‘’Uh, no, Mister President. I did however catch some sleep aboard the aircraft you sent to Port Angeles.’
‘’Then, have a seat and I will have a substantial breakfast served to you while we speak.’
‘’Thank you, Mister President.’
Ingrid walked with Bush to the dining table and took the chair offered to her by a steward after exchanging kisses on the cheek with the President’s wife.
‘’I am sorry that it takes a national emergency in order for me to be able to see you, madam.’
‘’Please! You don’t need to be sorry about that, Ingrid. And please call me simply Laura.’
Sitting down, Ingrid let the steward pour a cup of coffee for her before speaking to the President.
‘’So, Mister President, what are you expecting from me?’
‘’I am expecting you to help straighten up a mess developping in and around Afghanistan. What have you heard most recently on the news about Afghanistan?’
‘’The latest I heard was that the Pakistani military conducted a coup and deposed Prime Minister Sharif and his cabinet and took power, then declared war on us and vowed to expell us from Afghanistan. That was about it in yesterday’s evening news. Is there more I need to know, Mister President?’
‘’A lot more, unfortunately. First, the Pakistani Air Force tried to bomb our troops holding the border crossings at the Khyber Pass in the Northeast and in Spin Boldak, in the Southeast. Thankfully, our fighter patrols were able to react in time and shot down a total of seven planes, preventing the bombing of our troops. Our embassy in Islamabad was attacked by rioters, with the Pakistani police showing little effort to stop them but our
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embassy marine guards succeeded in defending our embassy. I then ordered Ambassador Collins to evacuate the embassy and leave the country, which he thankfully was able to do successfully. I have also ordered all American citizens to leave Pakistan, due to the strong public anti-American sentiment in the country. That includes all media personnel and I hope that no overzealous journalist will try their luck at staying in order to report the news there. I have no wish to have to ask our special forces teams to risk a rescue operation inside Pakistan right now.’
‘’Unfortunately, I am certain that a few idiots will think that the word ‘Press’ on their vests will render them invulnerable, Mister President. Anything else I should know, Mister President?’
‘’Yes! Saudi Arabia is now calling our anti-terror operation in Afghanistan an
‘invasion’ and has just expelled our ambassador. In return, I have ordered all diplomatic ties with Saudi Arabia to be cut, as their actions show it to be sympathetic to those Al-Qaida terrorists. I am now afraid that Saudi Arabia will call for an Arab oil boycott against us, something that could really hurt our economy.’
‘’You know what, Mister President? Let’s cut our economic ties with that damn OPEC organization and let our own oil industry work independently from OPEC quotas and fixed prices. We produce enough oil and gas by ourselves in the United States to sustain our economy, especially if we can rely on the help of both Canada and Mexico to supply oil to us at prices not dictated by the OPEC. I am sure that we could thus form a sort of North America oil producing association which would be able to ignore those OPEC hypocrites.’
Bush had an air of revelation on hearing Ingrid’s words.
‘’Damn! This could actually work, Ingrid. I will have to talk with Secretary of Energy Spencer Abraham about this. Well, time to talk about you now. I recalled you to active military duty, with your old rank of General of the Army, because I am finding out that I have two duds in charge of our Afghanistan operation. The first one is Lieutenant General Brubaker, our present theatre commander in Afghanistan. I am no expert strategist but it is evident to me that the man can only react to the enemy, instead of acting and using his initiative. The only thing he has done to date in response to the Pakistani attacks against our troops was to reinforce our troops at the border. He hasn’t asked for any extra troops or aircraft from us and is still sitting tight in his safe office at Kabul Airport. The other dud is General Sherman, who is supposed to be our top strategic commander. He was the one who nominated Brubaker to the post of theater
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commander and has not planned yet to send new reinforcements to Afghanistan, telling me just yesterday that what we have already in Afghanistan is more than enough to deal with Pakistan. What do you think about that, Ingrid?’
‘’Pardon my choice of words, Mister President, but I think that Sherman is full of shit on that. He may be a good military administrator but he is no master strategist.
Worse, he tends to underestimate our present enemies because they are not so-called top tier military forces. I suspect that racial bias has a part to do in this, Mister President.
So, you want me to replace General Sherman as our National Combined Combat Commander, Mister President?’
‘’Not exactly!’ answered Bush, surprising Ingrid. ‘’What I want you to do is to go to Afghanistan as quickly as you can, take Brubaker’s place as our theater commander there and then take care of our problems in and around Afghanistan. In return, I will tell Sherman that he is to support anything you will do and to fulfill without discussion any requests you send him. In effect, you will have the equivalent of his authority as NC3, with my full backing. You will have direct command of all our forces in that theatre and of those stationned in Europe, Turkey and at sea in support of Operation AFGHAN
EXORCISM. I am also giving you full plenipotentiary powers to deal directly with the Pakistanis and with other relevant governments at the political and diplomatic levels.
You thus have my benediction to short-circuit the State Department while in theater: we wasted enough time talking and it is now time for action. If you need more to do the job correctly, then call me and I will tell Sherman to oblige you. I know that this kind of goes against the normal chain of command but, while I have lost confidence in both Brubaker and Sherman, officially firing Sherman at this time could prove embarrassing, especially in the Congress, where Sherman has many political supporters. As for Brubaker, his reputation is already stained, so firing him should not create much backlash. So, when could you leave for Afghanistan, Ingrid?’
‘’I will certainly leave sometimes today, at the latest, Mister President. However, I would need a few things before I go.’
‘’Ask and you will get, General!’ replied at once the President.
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CHAPTER 20 – THEATER COMMANDER
15:39 (Washington Time)
Thursday, September 6, 2001 ‘C’
Main tarmac of Andrews Air Force Base
Maryland, U.S.A.
President Bush, along with his wife Laura, had insisted on accompanying Ingrid to Andrews Air Force Base, situated southeast of Washington, to wish her goodbye before she would fly off to Afghanistan. One of the President’s Secret Service bodyguard helped carry her long gun case as she walked with the presidential couple towards the Convair B-96 TYPHOON hypersonic bomber waiting for Ingrid on the main tarmac of the base. Parked next to the bomber were two C-152G cargo aircraft, loaded with spare parts, a ground maintenance crew and extra ordnance for the B-96. Once close to the belly retractable ladder giving access to the cockpit section of the bomber, Ingrid stopped and turned to face President Bush and salute him.
‘’Well, time for me to leave and raise Hell in the name of the United States in yet another corner of this planet, Mister President.’
‘’I am sure that you will mark your brand again, this time in and around Afghanistan, Ingrid. Good luck on your mission. Hopefully for you, you will be able to return to your civilian life soon enough.’
‘’I hope so, Mister President: I still have quite a few projects in my head that I really want to turn into reality in the not so distant future.’
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They exchanged a last handshake, with Laura hugging and kissing Ingrid, before the latter passed on in succession her three pieces of luggage to one of the crewmembers of the bomber waiting for her at the top of the access ladder. Ingrid then climbed the ladder and disappeared inside the bomber, with the ladder then retracting and its cover hatch closing. A ground technician then politely asked the presidential couple to take some distance from the bomber before it would start its four combination turbofan-ramjet engines. Sitting back in the safety of the armored presidential limousine, which then rolled to a further distance from the B-96, President Bush watched on with his wife the bomber light up its powerful engines one by one. Two minutes later, the big, sleek bomber started to roll along a taxiway, to finally turn and stop at one of the main runway of the base. It stayed there for another minute, performing its last preflight checks, before gunning down its engines to full power and raising its noise to painful levels. The B-96 then quickly accelerated down the runway, rotating up its nose and taking off after less than 1,500 meters. President Bush watched, fascinated, as the hypersonic bomber flew away towards the East and Europe.
‘’Here she goes again to war. The nation will never be able to fully repay her for all that she did for our country: she already has received about every possible honor and decoration the United States could confer on her, including two Medals of Honor.’
‘’I think that the best reward we could give her after this will be to allow her to return to her civilian life of designing new aircraft, George: planes and flying have always been her life and will continue to be so.’
‘’I think that you are right about that, Laura. Well, let’s wish her success in Afghanistan. The task over there will be far from easy.’
06:03 (Afghanistan Time) / 21:03 (Washington Time) Friday, September 7 (Afghanistan) / Thursday, September 6 (Washington) Cockpit of the Convair B-96 TYPHOON, overflying Northern Afghanistan Ingrid, occupying the spare jump seat situated behind the pilot’s seat, was surprised to see the pilot, Major Roger Fenwick, undo his seat harness and get up from his seat, then step in the back area of the cockpit.
‘’What are you doing, Major? We are due to start our bombing run soon.’
The pilot replied to her with a benevolent smile on his face while pointing the empty pilot seat to her.
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‘’General, you directed the design project for the B-96 and you have flown it more than once before retiring from the military. As our best and most experienced combat pilot in the history of the U.S. Air Force, it would be only just that you are at the commands for the first ever combat mission of the B-96. I know that more combat missions will follow in the days to come, so I will have plenty of chances to fly my plane into combat. Please, it would honor us all if you would take the commands now, General.’
Sincerely moved by the honor thus presented to her, Ingrid got up from her jump seat and shook hands with Fenwick while making a joke.
‘’Flattery will get you nowhere, Major.’
‘’I know, General.’ replied the pilot with an exagerated sigh, making the copilot, navigator-bombardier and electronic warfare officers briefly laugh. She took and put on the special flying helmet offered by Fenwick before sitting in the pilot’s seat, then plugged in the data link and radio connections of her helmet, plus her oxygen mask’s tube. Fixing for a few seconds a dot marked in front of her on the top of her forward view heads-up-display, she aligned the external view sensors of the plane with her helmet’s positional sensors. With her helmet visor display system now synchronized with the bomber’s sensors displays, she strapped herself in the pilot’s seat and looked down at the wide multicolor display screen showing her position and heading over Afghanistan: she was now overflying the city of Mazar-i-Sharif at a speed of Mach0.95
and at an altitude of 20,000 meters, having already decelerated from its supersonic cruising speed of Mach 3.1 at which the bomber had flown most of its trip from the United States. In her opinion, no other bomber in the World could even approach the performances and capabilities of the Convair B-96, an aircraft capable of speeds of up to Mach 5.5, or close to 6,000 kilometers per hour. The Pakistanis were however going to be the first to taste its sting.
‘’Missiles programmed and targets set?’
‘’All twelve of our AGM-5 SKYMOLE air-to-ground missiles are programmed and ready to launch, General. Our three five-ton TORNADO gliding F.A.E. bombs are also programmed and will be within range of their objective in nine minutes.’ answered the navigator-bombardier, Captain Angela Robinson.
‘’Excellent! Captain Masaki, what does the Pakistani radar coverage picture looks like?’
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‘’There is a single search radar emitting from Peshawar Air Force Base, plus a smaller ranged air control radar used for air traffic control. None of the two have enough range to detect us yet. There is also a more powerful air search radar based in Islamabad but that one two doesn’t have the range to be able to detect us, unless we enter Pakistani airspace, General. These guys clearly don’t have the kind of long-range, phased array radars the Russians had.’
‘’That is fine with me, Captain Masaki. Captain Robinson, you may start launching our AGM-5CP SKYMOLE missiles in sequence when ready.’
‘’Aye, General! Launching our first SKYMOLE now!’
One of the belly weapons bays of the B-96, which carried all its ordnance internally in order to allow high speeds, opened up for half a second, long enough to let drop a SKYMOLE missile. The booster rocket motor of the air-to-surface missile then ignited after its folding wings and control surfaces had unfolded and deployed. The booster motor accelerated the three-ton missile, then flamed out, to be immediately followed by the ignition of its ramjet engine, which accelerated the missile to a speed of Mach 4, or 4,300 kilometers per hour. Guided by its GPS and inertial navigation package, the missile, with its 500-kilo concrete-piercing penetrator warhead filled with a powerful explosive mixture of HMX-RDX, headed towards the Pakistani air base in Peshawar, Northwest Pakistan, which was home to the two Pakistani attack squadrons tasked with carrying out strike missions with nuclear bombs. Eight more AGM-5CP missiles followed at intervals of three seconds and also headed towards the Peshawar Air Force Base at a speed that made them impossible to intercept by any of the air defense missiles used by the Pakistanis.
06:11 (Afghanistan Time) / 06:41 (Pakistan Time) Radar room, control tower of Peshawar Air Force Base Pakistan
One of the two radar
operators on watch duty this
morning in the radar room of the
base’s control tower had barely
started to sip his first cup of coffee
of the day when an impossibly fast dot appeared on his radar screen, coming from the
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West. The time that he took to go over his surprise and shock and another dot, equally fast, was now visible on his screen.
‘’ALARM! FAST MISSILES ON APPROACH FROM THE WEST!’
His shift supervisor, an Air Force captain, hurried to him on hearing that and looked over the shoulder of his operator at the radar screen. His eyes widened with dread when he saw that there were now five dots visible on the screen, all impossibly fast and heading directly towards his base. Making a couple of quick steps, he opened a red panel on the control desk and pushed the large, red button under the cover, starting the sinister owl of the base’s air raid alert siren. Next, he grabbed the red telephone situated next to the red panel and called the base’s underground command bunker, in which his commander would be on watch duty.
‘’Colonel? This is Captain Musher, in the radar room. We have at least five missiles heading towards our base at Mach 4, coming from Afghanistan... Yes, I said Mach 4: they must be American air-to-ground missiles... I evaluate that the first of those missiles should strike our base at any moment now, in view of their speed... Understood, Colonel.’
Musher then hung up and looked at his radar operator.
‘’Where is the nearest missile now, Ahmed?’
‘’IT IS ARRIVING NOW, SIR!’ answered the operator, his voice panicky. Before he could say more, the ground shook under the control tower, followed by the noise of a powerful underground blast. Despite not having been the target of that missile, some of the concrete debris and earth projected upwards by the missile that had just destroyed the base’s underground command bunker then hit the nearby control tower, ripping off its top and drilling holes in its sides. Captain Musher and his four men on duty in the radar room had to duck under their consoles and desks to avoid the chunks of concrete which flew through the radar room, followed by a thick cloud of dust that made them choke. They didn’t have time to cough much, as the second missile to strike was destined for the control tower, which was obliterated along with the radar tower by the explosion of its penetrating warhead. The next missiles to strike each hit one of the aircraft bunkers protecting the ready alert Chinese-made Nanchang A-5 fighter-bombers of Number 26 Squadron, easily piercing their concrete tops before exploding inside the bunkers and destroying the aircraft inside. Two of the missiles hit the main runway of the base, creating huge craters at the intersections with two taxiways and basically making that runway unusable. The two last missiles then hit the two ordnance bunkers
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containing the nuclear gravity bombs stored on the base, destroying the eleven fissile nuclear bombs inside. Panicked Pakistani Air Force personnel were now running in all directions, overwhelmed by the brutality and speed of that attack from the air. The base emergency services and fire trucks of the base were barely starting to react properly to the missile strikes when the second hammer blow from Ingrid’s B-96 arrived. Two five-ton gliding fuel-air-explosives bombs filled with ethylene oxide, one aimed at the main tarmac aircraft parking area and its line of large maintenance hangars and the other at the base’s fuel depot, with its large cisterns full of kerozene, arrived at their respective targets, guided by their GPS-inertial navigation package. Any person unfortunate enough to have been able to witness their arrival would have seen a sort of large winged bomb diving at a steep angle on its objective. Then, at an altitude of 500 meters, cruciform airbrakes opened up like the petals of a flower, drastically braking the bomb as it kept diving down. At an altitude of 150 meters, the bomb burst open like an overinflated balloon, spreading ethylene oxide droplets into a large aerosol cloud which then expanded while mixing with the oxygen in the air. When the bomb’s body hit the ground, it did not explode but simply crushed on impact. However, attached to its tail was a long and thin wire at the end of which was an incadescent initiator reminiscent of a car lighter. When that initiator reached the now expanded cloud of fuel-air vapor, it ignited it in a titanic fireball which produced a crushing blast wave. The ignition of the 4,200 kilos of ethylene oxide, now mixed with the surrounding air, produced a blast equivalent to that of 14,000 kilos of TNT high-explosives detonating over a large area.
The dozens of aircraft parked on the main tarmac or inside the maintenance hangars were blown away as if they were made of paper, while the hangars were blown open by the powerful blast wave. Everybody within 200 meters from the point where the bomb hit was instantly killed by the blast overpressure, which ripped lungs and burst open internal organs, while the soft fleshy parts were ripped away and burned. Those beyond that radius were either left with burst lungs or were gravely wounded after being projected into the air like broken puppets. The TORNADO bomb that hit the fuel depot blew the big fuel cisterns away, freeing the thousands of tons of kerozene, diesel fuel and gasoline they contained. All that fuel then ignited, flashing into huge fireballs before continuing to burn fiercely for hours. The first alert about the base being hit went out by a simple telephone located in the officers’ mess more than 26 minutes after the first missile had hit. However, the panicked junior officer trying to alert the Pakistani Air Force Headquarters, located to the east of Peshawar, in Islamabad, was unable to
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obtain a connection, for the good reason that the large building housing the higher headquarters had just been blown away by a TORNADO bomb that had followed two SKYMOLE missiles aimed at the underground command bunker complex of the headquarters. Another location in Islamabad, the headquarters of the Pakistani ISI military intelligence services, was similarly destroyed by the ultimate salvo from the B-96.
Still at the commands of the B-96, Ingrid observed on her radar the arrival of her missiles and bombs on her objectives but didn’t scream in triumph then, realizing too well the kind of death and destruction she had just caused. She had learned from long experience that war was truly Hell and was no glorious thing. However, when a bully attacked you, you had to hit back as hard as you could, in order to either deter more attacks or to stop that bully cold. Pakistan had made the grave mistake of trying to play the bully against American units operating in Afghanistan and was now paying the price for it. She however felt satisfaction at the thought that the Pakistani ISI, which had instigated so much trouble and intrigue in Afghanistan and had supported both the Taliban and Al-Qaeda, had been made to pay a first price for its dirty deeds.
‘’Alright, folks: time to go land in Kabul. Major Fenwick, once I will have disembarked, you will refuel and rearm your aircraft for our second strike mission against Pakistan and will fly out as soon as you are ready to go. Our heavy bomber squadron forward-based in Germany should now be about to hit their own designated targets across Pakistan. By the time this day is over, the Pakistani armed forces will have been thrown back to the Stone Age and we will then be able to concentrate again on finding and hitting those Al-Qaeda and Taliban bastards.’
‘’I am sure that you will give those bastards Hell, General.’
‘’And I will be most happy to give them their just rewards, Major.’
07:02 (Afghanistan Time)
Kabul International Airport
