The United States doesn’t need eight one-star admirals at CINCUSNAVEUR. All it really needs is a Warrior CINC who is willing to lead from the front. But that wasn’t the way things worked these days, and you could see from Hans’s face that he didn’t like it at all.
That was all on the debit side. On the credit side, having this bloated bureaucracy also meant that the port-side paw seldom knew what the starboard paw was up to. And having a crew of non-Warriors aboard the command also meant that virtually all of ’em waged an eight-hour shift, left the instant the clock hand came up on 1700, and tubed to Waterloo station, where they’d catch the commuter trains to Woking, Farnham, Dorking, or Aldershot, or any of the other hundred suburban bedroom communities surrounding London where our military personnel lived. Once they got home, they’d work on their gardens, or play with their stock portfolios.
And so, Hans figured, if we simply waited until everyone went home, he could slip me through the back door, up the stairs (no video cameras in the stairwells), and into the admiral’s communications shack without attracting any undue attention. He’d stand guard outside while I got on the horn to General Crocker, and then walk me back down the stairs, out the emergency fire door, and onto North Audley Street with no one the wiser.
It seemed KISS enough to have a good chance of success. So, it was just a matter of waiting until things quieted down. I checked my watch. The big hand was on “10” and the little hand was almost on “4.” That meant I had just over an hour’s wait.
Hans retrieved his cigar and headed back to the office. He’d call the Goat when it was clear to move. I took a gulp of ale and ordered a plate of bangers and mash, watching from my secure corner position as the first element of the eventide regulars pushed into the place. I knew it wasn’t going to be a long wait, but given my mental state (I wanted to go to war NOW), any sort of wait was unacceptable.
2020. “Is there a Mister Herman Snerd in the house?” I scraped the last of the gravy from my third plate of bangers and mash and looked up as the bartender, who was waving a telephone handset, scanned the crowd.
“That’s me—” I pulled myself to my feet and threaded my way through the four-deep crowd to the bar, reached over, and took the handset. “Snerd here.”
“Sorry, Dickie,” Hans’s voice said over the din, “tonight’s the night everybody decided to work late. Can you hold off for another hour and a half?”
Mister Murphy must really like me. Why? Because he’s always fuckin’ hanging around. “Do I have a choice?”
“Not really.”
“Okay, Hansie.” I checked the big clock over the bar. “See you at twenty-two hundred again. Where?”
“Remember the alley just north of the main entrance?”
“Roger-roger.”
“I’ll be waiting there. But do me a favor: come up the block from Oxford Street, instead of walking from Grosvenor Square. The security folks just installed a new surveillance camera over the main door. Of course, it only picks up traffic coming from the square.” He paused. “That’s ’cause they’ve decided terrorists never walk against traffic,” he said contemptuously.
“Will do.” That was Hans—always thinking. And that was also the Navy’s security specialists—always assholes. I handed the phone back to the bartender, went back to my table, finished off the last Theakston, grabbed my jacket, and pushed my way through the crowd to the bar so I could pay my tab. The bar was too smoke filled, too hot, and too crowded for my taste. I decided to amble through Green Park, walk along the Mall, up Regent Street, and from there along Oxford Street to North Audley. It was a long walk to CINCUSNAVEUR by that route, but after three plates of bangers and mash I could certainly use the exercise.
Except as I was handing over my fifty-pound note, something on the television screen caught my eye. It was a map of Germany, with a big arrow pointing just west of Bonn. I couldn’t hear anything, but I watched as a new visual flashed onto the screen—pictures of a crash site in a thickly forested area, the footage taken from above. It was a big chopper that had gone down, too. You could see pieces of the huge rotor where it had sliced through the trees and shredded itself in the rocky soil. The big dark chopper body had smashed hard, landing on its side. The damn thing was still smoking: there was video of rescue workers who’d fought their way to the scene applying chemical from back tanks to the smoldering fuselage.
I caught the bartender’s attention: “Yo—could you turn that up, please?”
He reached onto the back-bar, grabbed a remote, and pressed the volume button, but with no result. He tried again, then shrugged vaguely in my direction. “Sorry, mate.”
That was when Fred’s picture popped up on the screen. It was an old picture, a decade at least, taken back when he was a colonel and running his beloved paratroop brigade. His square face displayed a cocky half-smile. He wore his beret folded neatly through the epaulette strap on his shoulder; his blouse was open at the collar, showing off the top of his hairy chest; his sleeves, as always, were rolled up high to intensify his biceps.
I remembered more or less when it had been taken. I was running Red Cell in those days. I’d arranged a three-day boondoggle to West Germany during one of our European FXs,77 and Fred and I had staged a joint exercise at a German military air base near Hamburg, with Fred’s paratroopers playing the counterterrorist role while my guys played the tangos.
And while we made mincemeat of ’em, which Fred’s troops didn’t like at all (evidence of which manifested itself during a series of rough after-hours beer hall brawls), Fred wasn’t offended in the least. He knew why I’d done what I’d done.
“Richard,” he’d said, “they are feeling pretty low right now, and resentful of what you did. But for me, I am happy. It is good that they should learn from their mistakes. That is how I believe we make here real progress. You cannot, should not, always learn only from positive experience; from winning. Sometimes, it is much better for the training that we learn from negative experience. Because, even if it is a hard lesson for the men, they are taught by their mistakes, and afterward we don’t repeat our errors again when we do this in the real world, against real terroristen.”
Now, standing there in the fucking crowded bar, with the acrid smell of cigarette smoke mingling with old ale suddenly making me puke-sick, I wanted to know what the fuck had happened to Fred—and who had done it. In my Warrior’s soul, I knew it hadn’t been an accident. That would have been too much of a coincidence. And we all know that in his line of work—and mine—coincidences seldom if ever happen.
And just then, suddenly, in that bright, white flash of understanding that hits you like a fucking underhanded sucker punch, I realized who had done it. And in that horrible split second, I cursed my decision to come here. I’d broken one of the most basic rules of counterterrorism: go for the direct threat first.
I’d come to London when I should have been hunting in Germany. And Fred had died because I’d made the wrong judgment. I have lost less than half a dozen men over my career. And each man killed on my watch has caused me indescribable pain. But I have used that pain and grief as a way of focusing my anger and honing my wrath. Kill my shipmate, and I will kill you.
Now, I’d erred in judgment—and Fred was dead. Well, I wasn’t about to make the same mistake twice.
I headed straight for the phone, dropped a 10P coin into the slot, and dialed Hansie’s number. I had to get to North Audley Street right now, and I didn’t give a damn how many grade-A ruby red government-inspected one-star can’t-cunt sphincters knew I was on the premises. There were more important things to worry about.
ABSCHNITT
DREI
16
THE STARCHED LIEUTENANT COMMANDER MANNING THE CINC’s radio shack scrambled from behind his desk, his London Times scattering as he struggled to his feet. I saw he’d been reading the court calendar—real Warrior stuff. He leapt to his left, stood in the doorway, and blocked my access. “I’m sorry . . . , sir,” he half-
whined, not quite knowing how to address me, but guessing from my beard and French braid that he could spell it with a c and a u with impunity, “but I can’t let you in without a written order from the CINC.”
I wasn’t in the mood to argue. I picked him up with one hand, lifted him six inches off the floor, moved him to the side, set him down without releasing my grip on his shirt, and opened the door.
“Young Mister Pritchard,” I said, reading the name tag above his right breast pocket, “I have to talk to the fucking Chairman on a secure fucking line. I have to do it now. And if you get in my way I will fucking kill you.”
He realized I was serious because he could see it in my face. And then, I saw his eyes shift toward the telephone. He was going to call in the goddamn Marines. And so, instead of letting him go, I coldcocked the poor bastard with two swift shots, caught him as he dropped, shrugged at Hansie, dragged the unconscious young officer by the underarms into the CINC’s inner sanctum, and closed the door behind me.
I picked up the receiver of the big secure telephone, one of three secure instruments on the console, and punched the Chairman’s private number into it. It rang twice, and then a neutral voice answered: “Nine-six-two-two.”
That would be Master Sergeant McWilliams, the soft-spoken intel squirrel who ran the Chairman’s comms shed. I told him who was calling and that it was critical that I speak to General Crocker ASAP.
“He’s in a meeting, Captain.”
“Interrupt him, Master Sergeant. This is Designation Gold stuff.”78
There was no hesitation. “I’ll get him for you, Captain. Please hold.”
It took about three minutes. During which time, Lieutenant Commander Pritchard came to, rolled over, puked, then collapsed in a heap. That was good news—I didn’t want to hit him again.
“Crocker.” I could tell the general was in command mode from the tone of his voice, and pissed off to boot.
So I didn’t waste time. I explained where I was, gave him a quick sit-rep about what Fred and I had discovered at BeckIndustrie headquarters in Düsseldorf. Then I told him about the chopper crash—and the fact that Fred was probably gone. I said I was about to head back to Germany and kill Lothar Beck.
I heard a sharp intake of breath. But the reason for it didn’t have anything to do with Fred, or Lothar Beck. “So you were in Düsseldorf.”
“Aye, aye, sir.”
“Fuck. Crap. Goddammit, Dick—”
The Chairman seldom uses that kind of language. Unlike me, he takes the “gentleman” part of officer & gentleman seriously. “What’s the problem, General?”
“The Germans filed a démarche with the embassy eight hours ago.79 They’ve declared you persona non grata. They’ve threatened to break off some very sensitive negotiations if we don’t rein you in.”
“The Germans?”
“Well, the Ministry of Defense asked, and the Foreign Ministry complied.”
I knew that Lothar Beck was behind it. “General—”
“Yes, Dick?”
I could hear the impatience in his voice. “Did the démarche come from someone named Richter? Markus Richter? I think he’s some kind of deputy underminister of defense.”
There was a long pause on the line. Then his voice came back at me, but sans the prosecutorial edge. “That’s who signed the original protest. Fill me in, Dick.”
I laid out what I knew about Lothar Beck, and the network of unholy government officials he’d put together. I told him about NSA’s intercepts of contacts between Beck and a variety of German ultranationalists—the same ultranationalists who were snooping and pooping in John Suter’s backyard.
“I was never told,” the Chairman growled. “Who the hell do they think they work for over there?” It was a good question, but not anything for me to answer.
Instead, I briefed him about the CIA’s theory that BeckIndustrie was selling dual-use equipment to nations that supported terrorism. I encapsulated the FBI memo that our ambassador had killed. I told him what my old friend Wink had discovered about Markus Richter’s long and secure visit to the Russian Foreign Ministry. Finally, I described the surveillance photograph of Lothar Beck, Franz Ulrich, and Prince Khaled. And I told him that Fred and I believed Lothar had at least one of our ADMs, and quite possibly more.
He was silent for some time after I finished my monologue. Then he said: “We may have to handle this quietly. But it has to be dealt with.”
“I agree, General.”
“I’m going to get on the horn to John Suter,” the Chairman said. “Let him work things from Stuttgart.”
That was good as far as it went, but so far as I was concerned, there were a lot of Kraut tango nets to wrap up, and that wasn’t the job of the U.S. military. The Germans would have to clean their own house, and that’s exactly what I told the Chairman.
“I still have a couple of friends in the German Army,” he said. “I can solve that problem—have it done quietly and efficiently, too.”
So the tango nets would be handled by the Krauts. That was good news. But it still left me in the cold. I had to get back to Deutschland, to deal with Lothar and Franz. They’d killed my shipmate—and they’d pay for it.
The Chairman thought about that. “I think I can stall things for a while. Especially if no one can find you.” There was another lull. “Does anybody know where you are?”
“Just one person—and he can be trusted,” I said, looking over at Hans. Then I looked down at the deck, where Lieutenant Commander Pritchard was just coming around again. Oops. That made two. Which is what I told the Chairman.
“You put that lieutenant commander on the phone right now,” General Crocker said.
By 0200, Hansie and I had copied the Option Delta disk, I’d recapped my thoughts on paper, and we’d sealed everything up nice and shipshape. Now, all I had to do was slip back to Germany without making any waves. My plan was simple: take the first available Chunnel train to Paris, then catch an express to Frankfurt. The nice thing about the EC is that once they check your passport, you can cross borders at your will. So persona grata or non grata, I’d be in Germany by midafternoon. Once I was there, I’d link up with my guys, and we’d be well on our way to putting Lothar Beck on the endangered species list. I wanted the humpbacked cockbreath sonofabitch extinct.
I called to make a reservation on the Chunnel express and was told that the trains weren’t running. There was a transit strike in France.
And how long would that transit strike last?
We do not know, came the answer. Please make alternative travel arrangements.
While I was being FVM’d,80 Hans was arranging to send my package of goodies straight to Quarters Six, the Chairman’s residence at Fort Meyer, so it wouldn’t have to go through the Pentagon’s labyrinthine internal courier system, or the State Department’s diplomatic pouch, both of which are notoriously nonsecure ways of sending sensitive material.81
How was he going to do that?
“FedEx,” Hans explained. “Keep it simple stupid.”
I marveled at his master chief’s ingenuity and repeated his admonition while I looked at a map of Europe, and doodled with a pencil, trying to work out an alternative route to Frankfurt.
Sometimes, dear friends, I do have fartbeans for brains. When I do, it takes a chief to set me straight. “Keep it simple stupid,” I said again.
“Huh?” Now Hansie was confused.
“Can you get your hands on a car, right now?”
“Sure—I’ve the keys to the CINC’s Jaguar. It’s parked over at the Marriott.” The London Marriott and its twenty-four-hour garage sits directly behind CINCUSNAVEUR.
“Then drive me up past Cambridge. I’ve gotta get to Lakenheath before zero five hundred.”
0455. It’s just over sixty miles from London to Cambridge on the M11. About ten miles south of town, we swung onto the A11, an old road that runs by the old SpecWar airfield at Mildenhall. We pulled off at Eriswell, and Hansie drifted onto th
e old high street that ran through the small village of Hundley, to the main gate at the old air field.
Things sure had changed. The razor wire was still in place. But the hangars, which had held F-111s and B-1 bombers, and the weapons stowage depots, which contained nuclear-tipped Tomahawk missiles and tactical nuclear bombs, were all gone—razed. In their stead were a pair of huge hangars built for 747s, DC-10s, or AirBus 300s.
And sitting on the tarmac, bathed in the warm orange sodium light, were three FedEx DC-10s, their running lights on and APUs82 attached to their noses. Farther away, a big brown 747 cargo jet told me that UPS also used this facility. Hans flashed his ID at the gate, the rent-a-cop slid the wire mesh open, we pulled inside and headed toward the low building marked OPERATIONS.
I jumped out of the car and jogged to the doorway, pulled it open, walked inside, and made my way to the ops desk. A chap in shirtsleeves put his cigarette down and looked up at me. “Can I help you?”
“I’m looking for two FedEx pilots—Rick and Bob.”
He checked a computer screen in front of him. “That would be FedEx N214 Heavy. Out the door to your right, straight on, and it’ll be the far-right-hand aircraft.”
“Thanks—” I wheeled and jogged for the door.
0505. I caught Rick on his walk-around. No F-111 shirt this morning. He was all business: blue uniform, white shirt, narrow black tie, lace-up shoes, and a real surprised expression on his face when he saw me jump out of Hansie’s Jaguar.
“Yo, Rick—”
He looked me up and down and gave Hans a onceover, too, pausing as his eyes acknowledged the ribbons and stripes.
Option Delta Page 25
