by Tom Clancy
"So we now know exactly where the band is?" Hood asked
"Yes," Stoll replied. "But not what they're doing."
"No audio yet," Hood said.
"Zippo," said Stoll. "What's significant, though, is that the band leader's not in any rush to get on-line again."
"How can you tell?"
"According to the tests we ran back here before they left, you can get from zero to sixty, so to speak, in about four minutes and change. You follow?"
"Yes," Hood replied. The batteries which had been removed inside the ROC could be replaced in a little over four minutes.
"At the gate El Supremo's plugging things in," Stoll went on, "the bandwagon won't be up to full power, nor the wheels turning, for another fifteen minutes or so. That's twenty-five minutes in all."
"Which means the outer band's still in charge of the equipment," Hood said.
"Very likely," Stoll said.
So Rodgers was stalling and the Kurds were in control. Hood also knew that if Bob Herbert and Matt Stoll were drawing these conclusions from the ROC readings, so was the CIA and the Department of Defense. If they decided that the ROC was fully operational and in enemy hands, it was doomed.
"Matt," Hood said, "is there any way we can shut the band down if it comes online?"
"Sure," Stoll said.
"How would you do it?"
"We'd send a command to the uplink," Stoll said. "Tell it that as soon as a signal from the band hits the receive reflector, it should ignore all other signals from that source. That'd take about five seconds."
"Give the bandleader fifteen seconds," Hood said. "If he's going to try to get a message to us, he'd do it right away. Then shut it down. He'll understand what we're doing and why."
"Okay," Stoll said. "We'll still keep an eye on them, though."
"Right." The ES4 would be able to follow their electromagnetic trail until the NRO satellite was turned on them in just a few minutes. If Hood could keep the President from issuing a destruct order, they'd have a chance of getting the team out. "Matt, I want you to write this up and get it to Martha. Tell her to send it over to the White House with my recommendation that we watch and wait. Meanwhile, you get things ready to close the door if our band opens it."
"It's as good as done," Stoll said.
Hood hung up and briefed Bicking. They both agreed that if the ROC could be shut down, the President would give Striker time to get it back. Despite pressure from National Security Chief Steve Burkow, who believed in security at any price, the President would not be anxious to take out his own team. Not if the hardware in the ROC could be neutralized.
Hood and Bicking began to study the Syrian position papers which had been loaded into their computer. But Hood had trouble focusing, and announced that he was going off to the galley. Bicking said he'd start highlighting Administration positions while Hood was gone.
The Op-Center Director got a Diet Pepsi from one of the two male flight attendants, and sipped it while he stood looking back at the cabin. The thickly cushioned seats were arranged in two rows of two with a wide aisle. Passengers were huddled over computers.
Typically, an hour or so of work got done before drinks and restlessness and reporters desperate to file stories turned the trip into a social gathering. There were two small tables in the back for conferences and working meals. They were empty right now, but wouldn't be around five when snack sandwiches were served. Beyond them was the door which led to the modest office and sleeping quarters used by the Secretary of State when he was aboard.
Hood wondered how the most powerful nation in the history of civilization, with awesome technological resources and a great army, could be sandbagged by three men with guns. It was inconceivable. But even as he wondered about it, Hood knew that it wasn't the Kurds who were holding the U.S. hostage. It was ourselves, our own self-restraint. It would be a simple matter to target pockets of Kurds and blast them one by one until our people were released. Or to capture and murder the families of their leaders. But civilized, twentieth-century Americans would not do to anyone else what they did to us. We played by the rules. That was one of the qualities which kept any superpower from becoming an abomination like the Third Reich or the Soviet Union.
That was also what gave other people the courage to lash out at us, Hood thought as he finished the soda and crushed the can. He went back to his seat determined to make all of this work through the system. He believed passionately that the American way was the best way in the world, and he took comfort knowing that history-buff Mike Rodgers believed that too.
"The Kurds and the Islamic fundamentalists don't have a corner on political zeal," Hood said as he looked at the computer screen. "Let's figure out how to do the rest of this."
"Yes, sir," Bicking replied as he began twirling his hair again.
TWENTY-THREE
Monday, 10:34 p.m.,
Oguzeli, Turkey
Ibrahim sat in the driver's seat watching the power gauge as each battery was replaced. As the digital numbers increased incrementally, he tried various buttons to see how the lights, air-conditioning, and other devices worked. There were many panels and buttons he didn't understand.
Mahmoud stood beside him, leaning against the dashboard and smoking a cigarette. The Kurd's arms were crossed and his tired eyes never left the Americans in the rear of the van. Hasan was back there with them, holding a flashlight and watching what they were doing.
The other prisoners were all awake. They were sitting silently where the Kurds had left them. Katzen, Coffey, Mary Rose, and Colonel Seden were tied to the base of the passenger's side seat. Private Pupshaw was still draped over the chair at the computer station. Neither food nor water had been offered, nor had it been requested. No one had asked to go to the bathroom.
Ibrahim looked out the window. As soon as power had begun returning to the controls, he'd opened the window to let out Mahmoud's cigarette smoke. The Bedouin-grown tobacco he favored was sickly-sweet, like insect repellent. Ibrahim didn't understand how his brother could enjoy it.
But then, he didn't understand how his brother could enjoy a lot of things. Confrontations, for example. Mahmoud had genuinely liked the showdown with the American. They had both lost a little stature during that, and Ibrahim could tell that his brother was looking forward to the next one.
For his part, Ibrahim knew that this work was necessary, yet he did not enjoy it. He caught his reflection in the sideview mirror. He studied it with a curious blend of satisfaction and hatred. They had done a good job today, but what right did he have to be alive? Walid had fought so long and so diligently. Tonight he should have been thanking Allah in prayer, not in person.
As he stood looking at himself, Ibrahim noticed for the first time the side mirror itself. It was dish-like, curved to provide a wide view of the road. But the setting was also curved, far more than style would seem to dictate. Curious, he took his knife and worked it behind the mirror.
The American leader, the one called Kuhnigit, stopped what he was doing and said something to Ibrahim. Hasan said something back. The American spoke again. Ibrahim glanced back. Kuhnigit did not look as confident as he had before, and Ibrahim wondered if he was on to something. Hasan pointed back to the opening in the floor and said something in English. The American bent down and went back to work. Ibrahim kept working on the mirror.
The glass came free at the sides, but remained attached in the center. Only it wasn't glass, it was something much lighter. Almost like silvery cellophane. Ibrahim leaned out the window and had a look at it. There was something behind it — a horn of some kind. It looked like a transmitter.
No, he thought, not a transmitter. A radio dish like the big ones they used in the Air Force.
Ibrahim replaced the mirror and looked back. The American had stopped replacing the batteries and was glaring at him. Hasan was saying, "Work—work!"
The American stood unsteadily on his bound feet for just a moment, then leaned against one of the dark c
omputer stations. Hasan walked over, grabbed him by the shoulder, and pulled him back to the pit.
Ibrahim climbed from the seat. He tapped his knife in his open palm. "There's something wrong here," he said to Mahmoud.
Mahmoud sucked on his cigarette, then ground it out on the floor. "What could be wrong, other than the worm's pace of the American?"
"I don't know," said Ibrahim. "If I were to let my imagination go, I would say that the frame of that mirror appears to be a very small radio transmitter." He swept the knife point across the van. "And there are all of these computers and monitors. Suppose they are not used for finding buried cities. Suppose these people are not scientists and guards. Suppose all of this is a disguise."
Mahmoud stood up suddenly. The exhaustion seemed to leave him. "Go on, my brother."
Ibrahim pointed the knife at Rodgers. "That man didn't act like a scientist. He knew just how far to go when you threatened the girl."
"As if he'd done this before, you mean," Mahmoud said. "Aywa—yes. I had that same feeling but I did not know why."
"Everyone has even been very quiet," Ibrahim said. "No one has pleaded or asked for a drink." He pointed from Pupshaw to DeVonne. "Those two took their bondage without complaint."
"As though they had been trained," Mahmoud said. "And would security guards have secreted themselves as these two did?"
"Not security guards," said Ibrahim, "but commandos." Mahmoud looked around the dark van as though he were seeing it for the first time. "But if not for research, then what is this place?"
"A reconnaissance station of some kind," Ibrahim said tentatively. Then, more confidently, he said, "Yes. I believe it could be."
Mahmoud grasped his brother's arms. "Praised by the Prophet, we can use such a thing—"
"No!" said Ibrahim. "No—"
"But it can help to get us out of Turkey," Mahmoud said. "Perhaps we can listen to military communications."
"Or they to us," Ibrahim replied. "And not from the ground but from up there." He pointed at the sideview mirror with the knife. "It is quite possible that they are already watching us, waiting to see where we move."
Mahmoud looked from his brother to Rodgers, who was bent over the pit in the floor and had resumed working on the batteries. "Abadan!" the Syrian cried. "Never! One way or another I will blind them." He snatched Ibrahim's knife from him. Turning to Mary Rose, he bent and cut away the rope which held her to the chair. Her hands and feet were still tied together and he threw her forward, onto her face. Then he handed Ibrahim the knife and knelt beside the young woman. He grabbed her hair so tightly that she screamed. He pulled his.38 from its belt holster and pressed the barrel of the gun against the base of her neck.
Rodgers stopped working again. He didn't get up.
"Hasan!" Mahmoud shouted.. "Tell the American that I know what this vehicle is. Tell him I wish to know how it works." Mahmoud sneered, "And tell him that this time he has until I count to three."
TWENTY-FOUR
Monday, 3:35 p.m.,
over Maryland
Lieutenant Robert Essex was waiting for Colonel August when the Striker chopper set down at Andrews Air Force Base. The lieutenant handed him a diskette with a pressure-sensitive piece of silver tape on top. Only August's thumbprint on the diskette, scanned by his computer, would allow him to access the data.
While August accepted the diskette, Sergeant Chick Grey hustled the sixteen-soldier Striker team onto the C-141B. A converted C-141A Lockheed StarLifter, the C141B had a fuselage which was 168 feet and four inches long — twenty-three feet, four inches longer than its predecessor. The retooling of the aircraft added flight-refueling equipment which increased the troop carrier's normal operating range of 4,080 miles.
The aircraft's crew of five helped the Strikers stow their gear. Less than eight minutes after the soldiers had arrived, the four powerful Pratt & Whitney turbofans carried the jet into the skies.
Colonel August knew that Lieutenant Colonel Squires used to chat with the crew about everything from favorite novels to flavored coffee. August understood how that could relax the team and make them feel closer and more responsive to the commander. However, that was not his style. And that was not the style he taught as a guest officer at the John F. Kennedy Special Warfare Center. As far as he was concerned, one of the tenets of leadership was to make it impossible for the team to know you too well. If they didn't know which buttons to push, how to please you, then they had to keep trying. As his old Cong jailor used to tell him, "We keep together by keeping apart."
The poorly insulated cabin was loud and the bench was hard. That too was how August preferred things. A cold, bumpy plane ride. A landing craft in choppy waters. A long and exhausting march in the rain. These things were the tannin which toughened the soldier's hide.
Led by Private First Class David George, the Strikers began going through the inventory of what had been placed onboard the plane. Op-Center maintained an equipment depot at Andrews which was stocked with gear for any climate and equipment for any mission. Included in the cargo for this trip were the standard "takedown" fatigues with desert coloration, as well as desert-camouflage face scarves and flop hats. Equipment included bullet-proof Kevlar vests, rappelling belts, ventilated assault boots for hot climates, goggles with shatter-proof lenses, and gadget bags which were worn around the waist. There were compartments for additional ammo magazines, a flashlight, concussion grenades, flat-sided M560 series fragmentation grenades, a first-aid kit, rappelling rings, and Vaseline to apply to areas rubbed raw by walking, climbing, crawling, and tight straps. Weapons provided for the team were Beretta 9mm pistols with extended magazines and Heckler & Koch MP5 SD3 9mm submachine guns. The MP5s boasted a collapsing stock and an integral silencer. Since he'd first used them, August had found the weapon's sound suppresser to be both clever and effective. The first stage absorbed the gases while the second sucked up the muzzle blast and flame. The bolt noise was concealed by rubber buffers. Fifteen feet away, the gun was deadly silent.
Bob Herbert was obviously anticipating some close-in encounters.
The team had also been equipped with six motorcycles which had heavily muffled engines, as well as a quartet of FAVs. The Fast Attack Vehicles each carried three passengers and were designed to travel across the desert at speeds in excess of eighty miles an hour. The driver and one passenger sat up front, with an additional gunner in the elevated back seat. The FAVs were armed with.50-caliber machine guns and 40mm grenade launchers.
Colonel August already had a good idea where they were going when he pushed his thumb on the diskette. The tape recorded the thumbprint, the "A" slot of the computer read the print, and the diskette was booted up.
There was an overview of what had happened to the ROC, along with the photographs Herbert had shown to Hood. The evidence collected by Herbert pointed to Syrian Kurds as the perpetrators, possibly in league with Turkish Kurds. Apparent confirmation came less than an hour ago, when Herbert learned from a deep undercover operative working with the Syrian Kurds that there had been highly secret meetings between the two groups several times over the past few months. A dam assault had been discussed at one of those meetings.
As August had suspected, their own destination was either Ankara or Israel. If they went to Ankara, they'd be landing at the NATO base north of the capital. If Striker went to Israel, they'd be landing at the secret Tel Nef Air Base near Tel Aviv. August had been there just a year before and remembered it well. It was as low-tech and as safe a base as he had ever visited. The perimeter was surrounded by high barbed-wire fences. Outside the fence, every two hundred feet, was a brick outpost with a sentry and a German shepherd. Fifteen feet beyond them, also surrounding the perimeter, was five feet of fine, white sand. Buried within it were land mines. In over a quarter of a century, very few people had attempted to break into the base. None had been successful.
From Ankara, the team would fly east to a staging area within Turkey. From Tel Nef, the Striker team w
ould be flown or would drive to the border of Turkey or Syria. If, as Herbert believed, the ROC was in the hands of Syrian Kurds, chances were very good that they would be headed to the Bekaa Valley in western Syria. That was a stronghold foi terrorist operations and a place where the ROC would be of great use. If the Syrian Kurds were in league with Turkish Kurds, they could be planning to stay in Turkey and make for the eastern Kurdish strongholds around Mt. Ararat. However, that could be risky. Ankara was still waging unofficial war on the Kurds holed up in the southeastern provinces of Diyarbakir, Mardin, and Siirt and in the eastern province of Bingol.
Because of the Syrian government's own support of other terrorist groups in the Bekaa, particularly the Hezbollah, that was a more likely destination. Herbert was convinced that the Syrians would never allow Striker into that region.
"Whatever your destination," Herbert wrote, "we do not yet have Congressional Oversight Intelligence Committee approval for the incursion. Martha Mackall expects to get it, though perhaps not in time to suit our schedule. If the terrorists are still in Turkey, we expect to get you permission to enter the country and set up a control and reporting center until we get COIC approval. If the terrorists enter Syria, Striker will not have the authority to enter the country."
The corner of August's mouth turned up slightly. He reread the passage "Striker will not have the authority" What Herbert had written didn't mean that Striker shouldn't enter the country. When he first came to Op-Center, Mike Rodgers had encouraged August to spend several nights reviewing the language in other Op-Center/Striker communiques. Often, as August well knew, one's orders were to be found in what wasn't said rather than what was.
What August had discovered was that when Bob Herbert or Mike Rodgers did not want Striker to move ahead they always wrote, "You do not have the authority"
Clearly — or rather, obliquely — this was a case in which Herbert wanted Striker to act.
