After having landed her B-96 in Kabul and having rolled it to the main tarmac area, Ingrid shut down its engines and regretfully left the pilot seat before shaking hands with the crewmembers of the heavy bomber.
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‘’Good job, people! Time for me to switch to my new job as theater commander.
I wish you good luck for your following combat missions.’
‘’You just proved that you are still a first-class combat pilot, General.’ replied Fenwick while shaking her hand. ‘’It was an honor to fly a mission with you.’
‘’Thanks, Major! Well, time for me to look like a ground-pounding grunt.’
The aircrew chuckled at that as Ingrid went to her three pieces of luggage, stored in the tiny rest compartment situated behind the cockpit. There, she put on her armored vest and helmet and strapped her GLOCK 9mm pistol in its combat holster to her right hip, then slung her folding-stock assault rifle across her back before deploying the belly access ladder of the cockpit. She passed in turn her three pieces of luggage to the two ground technicians waiting under the nose of the aircraft before climbing down herself.
She felt some emotion when she jumped down on the tarmac of the Kabul International Airport: she was now going to direct yet another war in her long military career. That meant having to cause more deaths among the enemies of the United States but also to save American lives at the same time. Returning the salutes from the two technicians, she then grabbed her luggage and walked to a waiting pickup truck, in which she put her kit before going to sit in the front cab and smiling to the young female Air Force airman driving the truck.
‘’To the section of the air terminal used by our theater headquarters, please.’
‘’Right away, General!’
Once at the air terminal building, Ingrid enrolled the help of her driver in order to carry one of her three pieces of luggage, then walked into the terminal, being saluted in passing by two armed American paratroopers guarding the access door. Seeing a paratroop officer who had stopped to salute her at attention, she returned his salute before asking him a question.
‘’Could you please show me the direction for the offices of our theater command staff, Captain?’
‘’Sure, General! Please follow me!’
Ingrid thus followed the young officer along the halls and corridors of the building, using an elevator cabin to reach its upper floor. She then found herself inside the section housing the offices of her new command. The personnel she crossed path with all stopped at attention and saluted her but, with her two hands holding her kit bag and her rifle case, she could only nod her head politely to them while the captain led her towards
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the operations center. When she entered the large room used as an operations center for her new command, Ingrid disliked it at once for a number of reasons. First, it had large windows facing the outer side of the airport: that made it vulnerable to sniper and rocket fire coming from outside the airport’s perimeter. Second, those windows would also allow a spy equipped with electronic listening equipment to be able to intercept the signals and electronic impulses from the dozens of laptop computers used in the operations center, most of which worked with highly classified data. That was a clear breach of the strict protocols concerning the handling of classified data and documents.
Ingrid smiled to the young woman carrying her suitcase while putting down her two pieces of luggage near the entrance door of the room.
‘’You may leave my suitcase here, Airman Forsythe, and may return to your duties. The same for you, Captain.’
Both saluted her before leaving, making Ingrid free to walk to the large map table throning in the center of the room. There, she looked inquisitively at the highest ranking officer standing next to the table, an army lieutenant colonel, while returning his salute.
‘’Where is Lieutenant General Brubaker, Colonel?’
‘’I believe that he is packing up his things in his quarters, General.’
‘’And where are his quarters, Colonel?’
‘’In the King’s Hotel, next to the airport, General.’
‘’You mean that he resides out of the airport, away from his own operations center? That made him vulnerable to ambushes while he went to and from here. What was he thinking? Have him called and tell him to come back here at once, without his precious luggage.’
‘’Yes, General!’ replied the embarrassed lieutenant colonel before walking quickly to a telephone sitting on a table next to one wall. Next, Ingrid looked at the second most senior officer present, a major from the 101st Airborne Division.
‘’Major, is a plane ready to carry General Brubaker out of Afghanistan, as requested by Washington?’
‘’Uh, yes, General! However, it was scheduled to depart only tomorrow morning, I believe.’
‘’Tomorrow morning? No! Have it ready to depart as soon as General Brubaker shows up here, Major, with or without his bags.’
‘’Yes, General!’
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‘’Just out of curiosity, to what branch of service does General Brubaker belongs, Major?’
‘’He is an Armor Branch officer, General.’
‘’Thanks! You may now pass my order to that waiting transport aircraft.’
As the major walked away, Ingrid couldn’t help shake her head in wonderment.
‘Placing an Armor Branch officer in charge of what is basically a war fought with light infantry units. What the hell was General Sherman thinking when he named this Brubaker to this theater command?’
The answer came quickly enough to her mind: this was probably the latest example of the ‘old boys network’ at play, with Brubaker being more than likely an old friend of Sherman, himself an Armor Branch officer. She then studied the symbols marked in erasable ink on the plastic film covering the map of Afghanistan lying on top of the map table. Looking at an Intelligence Branch sergeant, she pointed Peshawar and Islamabad to him.
‘’Sergeant, mark the Peshawar air base and the Pakistani Air Force headquarters and ISI headquarters in Islamabad as destroyed half a hour ago. The B-96 heavy bomber which landed me here took care of those objectives. Also, the B-96 bombers from our 130th Bomber Squadron, which are forward-based in Germany for this operation, should be about to hit more targets inside Pakistan, with their top priority targets being the sites containing nuclear-tipped ground-to-ground missiles and their command bunkers.’
‘’Understood, General!’
Her declaration made more than a few heads snap in her direction, reflecting a mix of surprise and awe as the officers and NCOs around the map table realized that she had either conducted herself or led that bombing mission on Peshawar and Islamabad. More analysis of the symbols on the map made Ingrid understand better what had been going on in Afghanistan for the last two months. Many elite infantry sub-units, like Navy S.E.A.L. commando teams, Army Green Berets and Rangers teams, had been utterly wasted by placing them in reserve positions, instead of using them for the deep stealthy reconnaissance and strike roles they had been trained for. Brubaker had basically been reacting to the enemy rather than acting and taking the initiative over the Taliban and Al-Qaeda. That in Ingrid’s books was pure anathema and it was going to change...quickly!
Ingrid then took a good hour to learn the local situation in Afghanistan in detail through the reading of operational message traffic and by asking for impromptu briefings from
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the staff officers of the operations center. By the time she concluded her review of operational information, Lieutenant General Brubaker still hadn’t shown up. Her patience about exhausted, she looked at the officer who had called Brubaker at her request.
‘’Colonel, call back General Brubaker’s hotel and tell him that he has thirty minutes to show up here. If he isn’t here in thirty minutes, I will charge him with insubordination. Make sure that he understands that I am not joking around about this.’
‘’Uh, yes, General!’
As the lieutenant colonel called the King’s Hotel again, Ingrid sat down at a desk and started writing a series of short but concise messages to the main units fighting as part of her theater of operations, issuing to them new directives and giving them new goals and objectives, frequently consulting the big tactical map of the operations center to choose target zones. She was still doing so when Lieutenant General Brubaker finally showed up at the operations center, looking in a bad mood. He still had to salute Ingrid at attention, though.
‘’Lieutenant General Brubaker, reporting as ordered, General.’
‘’You took your sweet time to do so, General Brubaker.’ replied in a cold voice Ingrid while returning his salute. She then pointed at the door of her new office, which was adjacent to the operations room. ‘’Get in there: we need to talk in private.’
A number of officers and NCOs present discretely shook one hand as Ingrid slammed the door of the office behind herself and Brubaker.
‘’Somebody is going to get a bucket of shit on the head.’ predicted a young operations clerk to another, speaking in a near-whisper, with the other clerk nodding her head in response.
Once alone with Brubaker, Ingrid kept standing in the middle of the office, two steps in front of Brubaker, who was slightly taller than her but was fairly thin for a man.
There was no politeness when she started to berate him in a voice strong enough to be heard as a muffle in the operations center.
‘’Lieutenant General Brubaker, I came very close to sending military policemen to go arrest you for insubordination at your hotel residence. When I ask someone to come right away, I don’t mean one and a half hour later. What I saw here up to now amply showed to me why the President had good reasons to doubt your competence as
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commander of this theater operations and why he deemed it necessary to recall me to active military duty in order for me to come relieve you of command and replace you.
You have many of the best troops and units the United States has, yet have been basically standing still and letting a bunch of radical thugs make you react to them, rather than having them react to you.’
‘’But, I...’
‘’SHUT UP AND LISTEN, BRUBAKER! You have been utterly wasting some of the best trained commando soldiers in the World by putting them in ‘reserve’, instead of letting them do the job they have been trained to do: deep reconnaissance and lightning strikes. You have a floating navy arsenal armed with long-range precision missiles on station in the Sea of Oman but haven’t once called for fire support from our ships, except for asking for a few naval airstrikes from our carriers. The same ground sub-units manning the two main border crossings between Afghanistan and Pakistan, in Spin Boldak and at the Khyber Pass, have been holding those positions now for two months without being relieved once to allow them to take a well-deserved break to their rear areas. I also learned that you didn’t visit our frontline troops once, NOT ONCE, while gluing yourself to this headquarters in Kabul. And you call that competent combat leadership, Brubaker?’
‘’But, General, my concern is about avoiding heavy casualties among my troops and I positioned my units accordingly.’
‘’Bullshit! By sticking your units to static positions and predictable patterns, you were allowing the enemy to plan their attacks and to strike your soldiers at the time and place of their choosing, instead of keeping the enemy on the run and off balance. Well, the times for pussyfooting around are over, Brubaker. You are relieved of command for incompetence, on orders from the President. You will leave Kabul no later than noon today and will fly back to the States via Germany. And don’t expect a ticker tape parade for you in Washington. Now, go get your precious luggage and get out of Kabul before noon.’
Now quite pale, Brubaker could only salute her before walking out of the office at a hurried pace. Looking around her new command office for a moment and seeing that it connected to a small but fully equipped bathroom, Ingrid stepped out briefly and signaled to a sergeant and two clerks to come in, which they did at a near run. Once they were inside, Ingrid pointed to them a large wooden bookshelf sitting against one of the walls of the office.
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‘’Sergeant, I want that bookshelf moved so to create a private space in that corner to the left of the entrance door, then you will bring in a cot bed and a bed kit and will install them in that new corner, which will become my sleeping space. I will be living from this headquarters, when I will not be visiting our frontline troops and positions around the country. If you can also find and bring in a chest of drawers, that would be helpful. Finally, I want the windows of the operations center which are facing the outside of the airport to be boarded up with thick plywood. Right now, this operations center is too vulnerable to my taste to sniper fire and to spying. I may move it to a new, more secure location entirely inside this building once I will have a chance to choose a better-suited room for it. You have all that, Sergeant?’
‘’Yes, General!’
‘’Then you are dismissed!’
The sergeant and two clerks saluted her at rigid attention, then left the office to execute her orders. Ingrid, thinking about her next move, then saw a brass plaque on the work desk of the office, which bore the rank, name and list of decorations of Lieutenant General Brubaker. Walking to the desk, Ingrid grabbed the brass plaque, then threw it in the waste basket next to the desk.
10:12 (Afghanistan Time)
Barrack used by Black Squadron of S.E.A.L. Team Two Forward Operating Base RHINO, 190 kilometers southwest of Kandahar Registan Desert, Afghanistan
Navy Commander Neil Harmond’s was grinning widely by the time he finished reading the short but succint decrypted message just received from the Theater High Command headquarters in Kabul. He then turned to his senior NCO, Master Chief Petty Officer Stan Krazinsky, who was marking some tactical information on their operational map.
‘’Hey, Master Chief, good news from Kabul: General Brubaker is out! He was relieved of duty this morning by none other than General of the Army Ingrid Dows, who has been reactivated into active service. General Dows is now in command in Kabul.
And she just sent us new orders to my liking.’
‘’General Dows, God’s General? But that’s great news, sir! You can’t get better than her.’
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‘’With near continuous experience of combat and wars since 1939? You bet she’s the best, Master Chief. Those Taliban and Al-Qaeda bastards are going to shit in their pants when they will learn that she is in charge here in Afghanistan.’
12:49 (Pakistan Time) / 12:19 (Afghanistan Time) Secret Al-Qaeda safe house, Rawalpindi
Southwest of Islamabad, Pakistan
Osama Bin Laden felt a mix of discouragement, anger and hatred as he switched off the television set on which he had just listened to the latest news on Pakistani television. The Shaytan19 itself was now in command of the despised Americans who had forced him and many of his surviving followers to find refuge in Pakistan. Worse, it had come in female form and had the effrontery of being nicknamed by the Americans as ‘God’s General’. For Bin Laden, that was nothing short of utter blasphemy. Still, that didn’t change the fact that his main supporter, the Pakistani ISI military intelligence service, had just been dealt a near mortal blow, along with much of the rest of the Pakistani armed forces, which had just seen its most important bases crushed under a deluge of bombs and missiles. Anger and hatred finally got over his discouragement, with a firm wish forming in his mind: that this Ingrid Dows had to die, at all cost!
19 Shaytan : ‘Devil’ in Arab.
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CHAPTER 21 – ULTIMATUM
11:01 (Pakistan Time)
Saturday, September 8, 2001 ‘C’
