He’d been drawn to the greatest challenge of rebuilding and leading a team that had been demoralized by the death of their commanding officer. And of course there’d been the appeal of being with Rodgers himself. Since they were kids, they’d shared a passion for building model airplanes and reminiscing about old girlfriends. Rodgers had gone so far as to find one of August’s childhood sweethearts as an inducement for him to return to the U.S.
It had worked. When August had gotten together with Barb Mathias, the elementary school princess who’d been his first serious crush, he’d known he wasn’t returning to NATO. He’d bought a Ford for driving and a Rambler for fixing up on weekends, moved into the Quantico barracks, and become a bonafide man-at-arms for the first time since Vietnam. The Striker team was young but enthusiastic, and the high-tech gear was awe-inspiring.
August shut the door behind him. He walked to the gunmetal desk and hit the autodial on his secure telephone. Bob Herbert picked up.
“Afternoon, Colonel,” Herbert said.
“Good afternoon, Bob.”
“Turn on your computer,” Herbert said. “There’s a signed directive. Countersign and E-mail it back.”
August’s belly burned with anticipation as he booted up the HP Pavilion and input his identification code. He still wasn’t speculating, but he was eager and damned curious. In just a few seconds Paul Hood’s order appeared on the screen. August read it. Striker Deployment Order No. 9 simply ordered him and his full Striker team to chopper from Quantico to Andrews Air Force Base and board the waiting C-141B. August picked up the electronic pen on the desk and signed the screen. He saved the document and returned it to Herbert.
“Thanks,” Herbert said. “Lieutenant Essex of General Rodgers’s staff will meet you at the field at fifteen hundred hours. He’ll have the mission overview. We’ll download the details once you’re airborne. However, I can tell you this much, Colonel, and it isn’t pretty. Mike and the Regional Op-Center have been captured by what appear to be Kurdish terrorists.”
The burning sensation rose in August’s throat.
“Either you retrieve the facility,” Herbert continued, “or according to the playbook, we close up shop. It may be necessary for us to do that before you get there, but obviously we’re going to try and avoid that. Understood?”
Close up shop, August thought. Destroy the ROC regardless of where it is or who’s inside. “Yes,” the colonel said. “I understand.”
“I don’t go way back with General Rodgers like you do,” Herbert went on, “but I enjoy and respect the hell out of him. He’s the only guy I know who can quote Arnold Toynbee in one breath and lines from Burt Lancaster movies in the next. I want him back. I want them all back.”
“So do I,” August replied. “And we’re ready to go get them.”
“Good man,” Herbert said. “And good luck.”
“Thank You,” August said.
The colonel hung up the phone. After a moment, he drew breath slowly through his nose. He let himself fill with air from the belly up, like a bottle. The “big belly” was a trick a sympathetic prison guard had taught August when he was a POW in Vietnam. August had been sent into North Vietnam to find a Scorpion team which the CIA had recruited from among persecuted North Vietnamese Catholics in 1964. The thirteen commandos had been presumed dead. Years later, word reached Saigon that they were still alive. August and five others were sent out to find them. They discovered the ten surviving Scorpions in a prison camp near Haiphong… and joined them. The Viet Cong guard, Kiet, had to do what he was doing in order to feed his wife and daughter. But he was a humanist and a Taoist who secretly taught his creed of “effortless survival” to the captives. It was as much Kiet’s quietistic outlook as August’s own determination which had enabled him to survive.
August exhaled, stood quietly for a moment, then left the office. His step was quicker than before, his eyes more intense.
As August tried to assimilate the shock of what had happened, he didn’t think of Mike Rodgers or the ROC. He thought only about getting his team airborne. That was another trick he’d learned as a POW. It was easier to deal with a crisis if you bit it off in digestible chunks. Suspended by your wrists nose-deep in a rank, fly-covered cesspool, or baking in a coffin-sized cage under the noon sun, you didn’t wonder when you were going to get out. That kind of thinking would drive you mad. You tried to last as long as it took for a cloud to travel from one treetop to another, or until a five-inch-long spider crossed an open patch of earth, or until you counted off one hundred slow Buddah Belly breaths.
He was ready, he told himself. And so was his team. At least they’d better be. Because in about half a minute he was going to start kicking Striker ass as it had never been kicked before.
TWENTY-TWO
Monday, 3:13 p.m.,
over Chesapeake Bay
The State Department 727 took off from Andrews at 3:03, and was quickly swallowed by the low hanging clouds over Washington. The customized jet would remain in the clouds for as long as possible. That was standard State Department procedure to keep them from being visually sighted and targeted by ocean-based terrorists. It made for a safer ride, albeit a bumpy one.
Paul Hood knew very few of the other forty-odd passengers. There were a number of brawny, silent DSAs—Diplomatic Security Agents—a handful of tired-looking reporters, and a lot of career diplomats with leather briefcases and black suits. There had been a good deal of pre-takeoff networking going on, and ABC State Department correspondent Hully Burroughs had already organized the traditional plane pool. Everyone who had wanted to play kicked in a dollar and picked a number. An official timekeeper had been named and when it was time to land, would count off the seconds from the time the pilot told everyone to buckle in until the instant the wheels touched the ground. Whichever passenger guessed the correct number of seconds between the two events won the pot.
Hood had avoided it all. He’d taken the window seat and put young Warner Bicking on the aisle. Hood had found that chronic talkers tended to talk less if they had to lean over. Especially if they’d already had a few drinks.
Hood’s pager beeped at 3:07. It was Martha calling, probably to continue the conversation they’d begun in the car. She hadn’t been happy about the fact that the President had sent him to Damascus instead of her. After all, she’d argued, she’d had more diplomatic experience than anyone at Op-Center and she knew some of the players. She’d wanted to get on the plane or meet him in London, requests which Hood had denied. For one thing, he’d explained, this was the President’s idea, not his. For another, if she were gone, then Bob Herbert would be left in charge of Op-Center. Hood didn’t want him doing anything but working on saving the ROC and its crew. Martha had gotten off the phone angry.
Hood was not permitted to use his cell phone until tea minutes into the flight, so he waited until the flight attendant gave the okay for electronic equipment to be used. Before calling back, Hood booted his laptop. Since the phone lines were not secure, Martha would have to refer him to coded information on the diskettes if there were any new developments.
When Martha picked up the phone, Hood knew that she was no longer quite so angry. He could tell at once from Martha’s hollow monotone that something had happened.
“Paul,” she said, “there’s been a change in the weather where you’re headed.”
“What kind of change?” he asked.
“It’s gone up to seventy-four degrees,” she said. “Winds are from the northwest. Nice red sunset.”
“Seventy-four degrees, northwest winds, red sunset,” he repeated.
“Correct.”
“Hold on,” Hood said.
He reached into his small carrying case and removed the red-tabbed diskette from its pocket. That already told him that things weren’t good. The situation somewhere was code red. After booting the diskette, Hood carefully typed in the code 74NW on the computer. The machine hummed for several seconds, then asked for Hood’s authorization code. He punched in PASHA, which stood for Paul, Alexander, Sharon, Harleigh, and Ann—his mother’s name—and then he waited again.
The screen went from blue to red. He clicked the mouse on the white letters OP in the upper left corner.
“Warner,” Hood said as the file opened, “I think you’d better have a look at this as well.”
Bicking leaned over as Hood began scrolling through the file:
Op-Center Projection 74NW/Red
1. Subject: First-Stage Syrian Response to Turkish Mobilization.
2. Provocation Scenario: Syrian and Turkish Kurds jointly strike inside Turkey.
3. Response Scenario: Turkey moves five-six hundred thousand troops to Syrian border to prevent further incursions. (Access 75NW/Red for larger Turkish response.)