“Maybe,” Mary Pat observed.
“If it is, it’s big,” Chavez went on for them. “Maybe that’s why the Russians called in to us.”
“So big … so big that even if we figure it out, it won’t matter when we do.”
“That’s pretty big, Mary Pat,” Clark said quietly. “What could it be … ?”
“Something permanent, something we can’t change after it’s done,” Domingo offered. His time at George Mason University hadn’t been wasted.
Mrs. Foley wished her husband were in on this, but Ed was meeting with Murray right now.
SATURDAYS IN THE spring are often days of dull but hopeful routine, but in just over two hundred homes little was done. Gardens were not planted. Cars were not washed. Garage sales were not attended. Paint cans went unopened. That wasn’t counting government employees or news personnel working the big story of the week. Mainly the people suffering from the flu were men. Thirty of them were in hotel rooms. Several even tried to work, attending their trade shows in the new cities. Wiping their faces, blowing their noses, and wishing the aspirin or Tylenol would kick in. Of the last group, most went back to the hotel rooms to relax–no sense in getting the customers sick, was there? In not a single case did anyone seek medical attention. There was the usual winter/spring flu bug circulating around, and everybody got it sooner or later. They weren’t that sick, after all, were they?
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NEWS COVERAGE OF the incident at Giant Steps was entirely predictable, starting with camera shots taken from about fifty yards away, and the same words repeated by all of the correspondents, followed by the same words delivered by “experts” in terrorism and/or other fields. One of the networks took the viewer all the way back to Abraham Lincoln for no other reason than that it was otherwise a very slow news day. All of the coverage pointed to the Middle East, though the investigating agencies had declined any comment at all on the event so far, except to cite an FBI agent’s heroic interference and the spirited battle put up by the Secret Service bodyguards of little Katie Ryan. Words like “heroic,” “dedicated,” and “determined” were bandied about with great frequency, leading to the “dramatic conclusion.”
Something very simple had gone wrong, Badrayn was certain, though he wouldn’t know for sure until his colleague got back to Tehran from London, via Brussels and Vienna, on several different sets of travel documents.
“The President and his family are at the Presidential Retreat at Camp David,” the reporter concluded, “to recover from the shock of this dreadful event just north of peaceful Annapolis, Maryland. This is …”
“Retreat?” Daryaei asked.
“It means many things in English, first among them is to run away,” Badrayn answered, mainly because he was sure that’s what his employer would like to hear.
“If he thinks he can run away from me, he is mistaken,” the cleric observed in dark amusement, the spirit of the moment getting the better of his discretion.
Badrayn didn’t react to the revelation. It was easy at the instant of his realization, since he was looking at the TV and not at his host, but things then became more clear. There was not all that much risk at all, was there? Mah-moud Ilaji had a way to kill this man, perhaps whenever he wished to do so, and it was all being orchestrated. Could he really do it? But, of course, he already had.
I VIS MADE LIFE hard on the OpFor. Not all that hard! Colonel Hamm and the Blackhorse had won this one, but
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what only a year before would have been a wipeout of cosmic proportions–Fort Irwin was in California, and some linguistic peculiarities were inevitable–had been a narrow victory. War was about information. It was always the lesson of the National Training Center: Find the enemy. Don’t let the enemy find you. Reconnaissance. Reconnaissance. Reconnaissance. The IVIS system, operated by halfway competent people, shot the information out to everyone so fast that the soldiers were leaning in the right direction even before the orders came down. That had nearly negated a maneuver on the OpFor’s part, which would have been worthy of Erwin Rommel on his best day, and as he watched the fast-play of the exercise on the big screen in the Star Wars Room, Hamm saw just how close it had been. If one of those Blue Force tank companies had moved just five minutes faster, he would have lost this one, too. The NTC would surely lose its effectiveness if the Good Guys won regularly.
“That was a beautiful move, Hamm,” the colonel of the Carolina Guard admitted, reaching in his pocket for a cigar and handing it over. “But we’ll whip your ass tomorrow.”
Ordinarily, he would have smiled and said, Sure you will. But the cracker son of a bitch just might pull it off, and that would take a lot of the fun out of Hamm’s life. The colonel of the 11th Armored Cavalry Regiment would now have to come up with ways of spoofing IVIS. It was something he’d thought about, and had been the subject of a few discussions over beers with his operations officer, but so far they had only agreed that it was no small feat, probably involving dummy vehicles … like Rommel had used. He’d have to get funding for those. He walked outside to smoke his cigar. It had been honorably won. He found the Guard colonel there, too.
“For Guardsmen, you’re pretty damned good,” Hamm had to admit. He’d never said such a thing to a Guard formation before. He rarely said it to anyone at all. Except for one deployment error, the Blue Force plan had been a thing of beauty.
“Thank you for saying that, Colonel. IVIS came as a rude surprise, didn’t it?”
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“You might say that.”
“My people love it. A lot come in on their own time to play on the simulators. Hell, I’m surprised you took us on this one.”
“Your reserve was too close in,” Hamm told him. “You thought you knew what to exploit. Instead, I caught you out of position to meet my counterattack.” It wasn’t a revelation. The senior observer/controller had made that lesson clear to the momentarily contrite tank commander.
“I’ll try to remember that. Catch the news?”
“Yeah, that sucks,” Hamm thought aloud.
“Little kids. I wonder if they award medals to the Secret Service?”
“They have something, I imagine. I can think of worse things to die for.” And that’s what it was all about. Those five agents had died doing their jobs, running to the sound of the guns. They must have made some mistakes, but sometimes you didn’t have a choice in the matter. All soldiers knew that.
“God rest their brave souls.” The man sounded like Robert Edward Lee. It triggered something in Hamm.
“What’s the story on you guys? You, Colonel Edding-ton, you’re not supposed–what the hell do you do in real life?” The guy was over fifty, very marginal for an officer in command of a brigade, even in the Guard.
“I’m professor of military history at the University of North Carolina. What’s the story? This brigade was supposed to be the round-out for 24th Mech back in 1991, and we came here for workups and got our ass handed to us. Never got to deploy. I was a battalion XO then, Hamm. We wanted to go. Our regimental standards go back to the Revolution. It hurt our pride. We’ve been waiting to come back here near on ten years, boy, and this IVIS box gives us a fair chance.” He was a tall, thin man, and when he turned, he was looking down at the regular officer. “We are going to make use of that chance, son. I know the theory. I been readin’ and studyin’ on it for over thirty years, and my men ain’t’a’gonna roll over and die for you, you he’ah?” When aroused, Nicholas Eddington tended to adopt an accent.
” ‘Specially not for Yankees?”
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“Damn right!” Then it was time for a laugh. Nick Ed-dington was a teacher, with a flair for the impromptu dramatic. The voice softened. “I know, if we didn’t have IVIS, you’d murder us–”
“Ain’t technology wonderful?”
“It almost makes us your equal, and your men are the best. Everybody knows that,” Eddington conceded. It was a worthy peace gesture.
“With the hours we keep, kinda hard to get a beer at the club when you need one. Can I offer you one at my home, sir?”
“Lead on, Colonel Hamm.”
“What’s your area of specialty?” BLACKHORSE Six asked on the way to his car.
“My dissertation was on the operational art of Nathan Bedford Forrest.”
“Oh? I’ve always admired Buford, myself.”
“He only had a couple of days, but they were all good days. He might have won the war for Lincoln at Gettysburg.”