Primary Threat

by Jack Mars

  The camera flashed here and there. On the uniforms, Luke saw shoulder patches he recognized instantly—the word AIRBORNE in yellow letters on black, with yellow dagger and lightning flashes on a blue shield below it. It was the insignia of 1st Special Forces Command, and Luke knew its meaning without even thinking. The dagger represented the unconventional nature of Special Forces, and the lightning flashes represented the ability to strike by air, water, or land.

  The camera panned away and the image became blurred.

  It couldn’t be real. There had been no US Army personnel at that site, or involved in the operation.

  Suddenly, gunfire erupted and the men on the ground screamed.

  The scene went black.

  “God,” Luke said. He almost didn’t realize he was speaking out loud. “They weren’t dressed in Special Forces gear when they murdered those men. I saw them. They were dressed all in black. How is this even possible?”

  The scene changed again.

  Luke recognized this next scene all too well. The scene was shot on the control deck of the oil rig. A group of big Navy SEALs came rushing in. There was a bang and a crashing sound as the windows caved in.

  There were shouts back and forth, and a man screamed something in a foreign language, which Luke now gathered was Serbian. It was hard to tell what anyone was saying. But CNN, or someone, had done a helpful job of captioning the footage.

  “Keep those hands up!”

  “Don’t move!”

  And then a Serbian voice: “Please! Please don’t shoot me!”

  “Don’t you move!”

  “Please! Please! Please! We are scientists! We are unarmed!”

  Then the ugly blat of automatic weapons.

  The footage skipped, and Luke appeared. He was clearly visible, almost looking directly at the camera. He faced the terrorist who had been standing near the laptop—the last man standing. The camera angle was from behind the man, over his shoulder.

  Luke stood there, with three Navy SEALs behind him, and behind them, the shattered windows with the storm raging outside.

  The man’s hands were raised in the air.

  Luke marveled at what he was witnessing. At the time this was going on, the camera footage was being fed into the laptop and sent directly to a satellite. Did the man know he was being filmed? Did he know ahead of time that these were going to be his last moments? Did he volunteer for this duty?

  Then Luke’s voice: “Speak English?”

  “Little.”

  The man’s hand dropped, going for the grenade. But it was impossible to see that from the camera angle. You couldn’t tell that the man had grenades pinned to his chest. All you could see was his right hand drop, almost like he was putting his hand across his heart. In fact, if Luke hadn’t been there, that’s what he would guess the man was doing.

  The footage skipped.

  A shot rang out.

  Suddenly, the man’s head became pixilated as it cracked apart. Then the man disappeared.

  For an instant, no more than a second or two, Luke’s face was very clear. He turned and looked at something off screen. He smiled, and his shoulders slumped in what looked like mock disappointment.

  That smile, after an apparently unarmed man had just been killed…

  Oh boy.

  Now there was the sound of several men laughing. Luke stepped around a wide table, the smile still on his face. He turned his back to the camera, but somehow, his voice was clear and as plain as day:

  “I guess that’s the end of the interview.”

  Luke stood among the small crowd in the SRT lobby, staring up at the screen.

  “Well, now you’re famous,” someone said.

  Becca saw this.

  That thought occurred to him instantly, and very much without warning. This was what she was so upset about. She knew Luke had flown across the continent in the middle of the night. She knew he had risked his life without telling her. And she knew that he had been involved in something that a person on the outside might think of as a summary execution, a war crime, an atrocity.

  The film had been cleverly edited. It omitted some very important parts. And the scene where the civilians were killed was an outright lie.

  Of course, the truth about the mission would come out eventually, but who was going to believe it?

  There were no Army Special Forces personnel on that mission.

  Sure, we believe you.

  American soldiers did not kill any American civilians.

  Yeah, okay.

  The men who took over the oil rig were heavily armed members of a paramilitary force known for committing war crimes. They were not a group of environmentalists.

  Luke took a deep breath.

  People were going to believe what they wanted to believe. That was the simple fact. Al Jazeera and Russia Now (and who knew who else) were out ahead, broadcasting uncensored footage of this in dozens of countries. People predisposed to believe the worst about America were going to believe the worst.

  And what was Becca going to believe? What was she going to think about her husband, a man who could watch another man get killed, then apparently smile and tell someone a joke? Would she believe that Luke was part of a death squad who had killed unarmed and tied-up American civilians?

  He stood there in a sort of shock. People were beginning to break up, getting back to whatever work they should be doing.

  Luke had no work to do. His only job was to go home. But he had no idea if his wife would let him in.

  Suddenly a hand was on his shoulder. He turned and Don Morris stood there. His face had no expression, as though he was trying to not to show his emotions. But his eyes looked sad.

  “Come in my office for a moment,” he said. “We should probably talk.”

  * * *

  Luke followed Don down the hall to his office. He stood by the door as Don inserted himself behind the wide expanse of desk. Don made a cradle of his hands and put them on top of his head. He gestured at the chair across from him.

  Luke didn’t take the bait. He didn’t feel like sitting. He didn’t feel like having a surrogate dad right now—especially when that dad was the one who had sent him on this ill-fated mission in the first place.

  Luke loved Don. He appreciated everything Don had done for him. That much was true. But he was beginning to wonder about some of the decisions Don made.

  This most recent decision had put Don’s own people in a vulnerable position, up against an enemy whose intentions had been completely misunderstood. Now Luke was left to defend his actions, not just to Don, but to Becca, to the FBI, and possibly to the entire world.

  “Don, none of that video is true. I haven’t had a chance to write my report yet, but when I do…”

  Don shook his head. “It’s propaganda. I know that. You know that. We both know there were no Special Forces on the raid, and that will be confirmed by the Pentagon. Obviously, they dressed in American uniforms to make it look like Americans massacred their own. There will be glaring errors in the details. It’ll all come out.”

  “It’s not going to matter,” Luke said.

  Don shrugged. “No, it won’t.”

  “The guys on the beach were armed to the teeth. They had the drop on us. They were about to slaughter us when Murphy showed up.”

  “I’m sure there’s going to be evidence to confirm that as well,” Don said.

  Luke shook his head. He had a strong feeling inside him, one of futility, and anger, almost rage. He almost felt like he might cry. The video made him out to be an off-hand, cold-blooded killer. It wasn’t fair.

  “The whole thing was FUBAR on steroids. It was from another galaxy. We were in water that was near freezing, under the ice, in a storm. We had so much gear on it was impossible to get out of it. It was a surprise attack completely without the element of surprise. There was at least one underwater robot filming us as we arrived. All the SEAL training, all the big brains at JSOC doing the planning, and we very nearl
y got ourselves killed. Then one guy doing improv in a tin can Navy patrol boat—a guy who panicked by the way, and couldn’t bring himself to suit up and get under the ice—routs their entire defense?”

  Don gestured at the chair again. Luke declined it again. He almost felt that if he sat in that chair, he would cry. He felt like a small child. He felt like he needed a hug from someone.

  “I agree with everything you’re saying,” Don said. “From the sounds of it, it was a poorly and hastily planned operation. Which, frankly, is probably why the President wanted civilian oversight. Murphy is SRT, so if the SRT hadn’t been there, things would have been a lot worse. And the mission, in one sense, was a success. We killed the enemy and took back the oil rig.”

  Luke didn’t even touch that assessment. There were dozens of dead oil workers, three dead SEALs, illegal drilling in the Arctic Wildlife Refuge had been exposed, and American soldiers looked to many people in the world like psychotic killers. Everything about this situation was a disaster, including Luke’s role in it.

  “The guy was reaching for a grenade on his chest.”

  Don nodded. “Okay.”

  “It looks like we shot him for laughs, but it isn’t true. And I didn’t shoot him. It was Murphy, and it’s a good thing that he did. The guy would have blown the whole control room to hell, with us in it.”

  “It’s all right,” Don said. “I’m sure there will be an inquiry, people will give testimony, and all the facts will come out.”

  “It’s not all right,” Luke said. “I was home, dozing on the couch with my son, when I got called in for this. Now I look like a maniac.”

  Don shook his head. “No one can identify you in that video. We know it was you because we know you were there.”

  “My wife knew right away. I didn’t tell her I was there. She just knew.”

  Don sighed. He took a long pause.

  “That’s tough.”

  Luke nodded. “Tell me about it.”

  “You should go home,” Don said. “Take a few days off. Write your report, but otherwise, just relax.”

  “I can’t go home,” Luke said. “Becca doesn’t want me there.”

  “Can you go to the cabin?”

  “Yeah,” Luke said. “I suppose. But I’m so tired I can’t bring myself to drive out there right now. I’ll fall asleep at the wheel.”

  Don smiled. “We’ll get you a car service. And if you want, I’ll talk to Rebecca. This job is all hands on deck. It’s just the nature of the beast. You’re going to need buy-in from her, or you’re never going to make it.”

  “I feel that,” Luke said. “I feel like I’m not going to make it.”

  “You’re just tired,” Don said. “Go to the cabin. Relax. Sleep in tomorrow. Things will start to look better when you get a little rest, and a little perspective.”

  It was a nice thought, one that Luke wasn’t overly optimistic about.

  “I hope so,” he said. “But I doubt it.”

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  11:50 a.m. Eastern Daylight Time

  The Oval Office

  The White House

  Washington, DC

  “What in the name of God’s green Earth is going on?”

  If Clement Dixon had been feeling his age yesterday, today was even worse. He might as well be a thousand years old. He had barely slept a wink. And while he was busy tossing and turning, events were busy racing out ahead of him. Caught flat-footed—it was an old saying that seemed to aptly sum up his situation.

  He was still trying to get used to the Oval Office. He felt like the ghosts of Lincoln and Roosevelt assessed him every time he walked in here… and found him lacking.

  He was trying to get used to the constant security.

  He was trying to get used to the constant questions, the constant press of people, and the information coming from all sides. It was impossible to make sense of it all.

  Oh, he’d been the Speaker of the House for many years. And he was accustomed to dealing with people, lots and lots of people. He was accustomed to being the focal point of attention, and he was accustomed to being in charge.

  But here’s what nobody told you about being President. You weren’t actually in charge. The whole thing was a madhouse, completely outside of anyone’s control, and you were surrounded by hard chargers jockeying for position. People were pursuing their own agendas, for their own reasons. What happened to the country was someone else’s problem. Clement Dixon’s problem. There were a thousand tiny sparks surrounding him, and any one of them could suddenly turn into a wildfire.

  He, Thomas Hayes, and a few others were in the high-backed chairs in the sitting area at the center of the Oval Office. A lush round carpet adorned with the Seal of the President was at their feet. Three tall windows, with drapes pulled back, looked out on the Rose Garden. Outside, it was a sunny September day. Indian summer—Clement Dixon’s favorite time of year.

  Not that he was enjoying it.

  Outside of the circle, the office was packed with people. Secret Service men stood guard at the doors. Military men from the Pentagon stood at something like attention. Aides and assistants milled around, scribbling notes or tapping their fingers on small electronic toys called BlackBerries.

  Dixon had never used a BlackBerry before. He had never even held one. In Congress, the aides called them “Crack-berries,” after crack cocaine, apparently because once you started using them, they were so addictive that you could not stop.

  Dixon didn’t have that problem. He was from another era. The idea of becoming addicted to staring into a tiny screen was about as distant from him as the idea of hunting giant sperm whales, in a large wooden rowboat, with a spear.

  A large TV had been brought in on a rolling cart. Everyone in the room had just watched a video that was now playing on television throughout the world. A sanitized version was already being aired on American TV news.

  The sanitized version was not the version that Clement Dixon had just watched. No, he had watched the graphic version that people in the Middle East, Russia, Asia, Africa and South America were watching. He had watched the version that was popping up on internet sites everywhere. The unedited, unsanitized version. It made for unpleasant viewing.

  People who were supposedly unarmed environmental activists, from Serbia of all places, had been mowed down by machine gun fire on a frozen piece of artificial land during an ice storm. Helpless American oil workers appeared to have been murdered in cold blood by American soldiers. An unarmed man with his hands in the air appeared to have been shot and killed by American commandos, and then one of the commandos, apparently the one in charge, started to laugh and joke about it.

  The cherry on top of this stinking, rotten fish cake was that it was now clear to everyone on the planet that the Americans were drilling for oil in their own Arctic Wildlife Refuge, which was supposedly off-limits to drilling for oil.

  And hints were starting to arise that the small company doing the drilling had on its payroll, or as major investors, several prominent members of American society. This included at least one member of the United States Senate, the esteemed member from Kansas, Senator Edward Graves.

  “We have a bit of a public relations debacle,” said the White House press secretary, a middle-aged, glass-jawed lightweight named Allen Forbes.

  Clement Dixon looked at him.

  Remind me to fire you when I have some time.

  “I guess I’m already aware of that, Allen. What I’d like to know is how this video came to be, how much of it is true, how far it’s gotten, and what we can do about it. I’d also like to know the identity of the grinning lunatic in the last frame there.”

  “Wasn’t there supposed to be some kind of civilian oversight of this operation?” Vice President Thomas Hayes said to the room.

  Dixon nodded. “Good point. Where was the civilian oversight we requested?”

  “We didn’t request it,” Hayes said. “We demanded it.”

  Dixon l
ooked at Thomas Hayes now. Thomas looked well-rested. He looked excited and in his element. He was clean-shaven and well-dressed in a beautifully tailored pinstripe suit. He looked like he might have gotten a massage before coming in this morning. He probably had. Also, his nose could put someone’s eye out.

  Dixon liked Thomas, he really did. They were on the same page about a lot of things. That’s why he had chosen him as Vice President over the hordes of glomming nincompoops who wanted the job. But Thomas’s eagerness to become President himself was so palpable that it had taken on a reality all its own. It was a physical presence in the room, with the texture of an undercooked steak. It was raw, bloody, and it didn’t smell quite right.

  Meanwhile, the corpse in the driver’s seat wasn’t even cold yet.

  Dixon raised a hand. “Okay, Thomas. They know what I mean.”

  General Richard Stark was here from the Joint Chiefs of Staff. His body, a lean strand of beef jerky, was positioned in the chair across from Dixon. There wasn’t a single wrinkle in his green uniform. His eyes were like hawk’s eyes. The crow’s feet around his eyes were as narrow and as deep as slot canyons.

  Clement Dixon did not like Richard Stark. He had been circling that realization for a few weeks, and now he landed smack dead in the center of it. But maybe Stark had some answers. Hell, maybe he even knew a way out of this mess. Even a broken clock was right two times a day.

  “General, what’s your assessment of the situation? What, if anything, in that video is actually true?”

  The general didn’t hesitate. He didn’t glance at a sheet of paper, or look to an aide staring at information on a tiny computer screen.

  “Mr. President, the entire video is basically a lie, made for propaganda purposes. I’ve spoken with front line troops who were on the ground during this operation. I’ve spoken with commanders in the field, and I’ve spoken with Don Morris, head of the FBI Special Response Team, which provided civilian oversight.”