Foreign Enemies and Traitors

by Matthew Bracken

  ****

  Lieutenant General Lucian Armstead was walking from his car up the sidewalk to NORTHCOM headquarters, on his way back to work after lunch. When he reached the canvas-covered awning in front of the main doors, a short, burly command sergeant major in a dark blue ASU Class A uniform was coming the other way after exiting the building. The senior enlisted man raised his hand to render a salute, and the general prepared to reciprocate, in passing. Unexpectedly, the CSM turned almost directly in front of the general, blocking his path and holding his salute. The general was more than a head taller than the unknown senior enlisted man.

  “General Armstead, good day, sir. I’ve just come from Corinth, Mississippi, where Lieutenant General Mirabeau has his forward HQ today. The general sends his regards. He’s not sure if you’re aware of the refugee situation down around Corinth, with thousands of refugees coming out of Tennessee. General Mirabeau has instructed me to put this package directly into your hands, and stay with you until you read his letter. It’s personal and urgent, from him to you.” The CSM dropped his salute and extended the manila folder with his left hand, and General Armstead accepted it. Then the sergeant major stepped backward and remained at a position of attention. Behind the general his own command sergeant major, who had already been tipped off by his visiting friend, was holding the general’s aide and CSO at bay with a few whispered half-truths.

  Lieutenant General Lucian Armstead knew that fresh trouble was brewing in West Tennessee. Flash message traffic was flying concerning a friendly-fire shootout between the Nigerian Peacekeeping Force and the Kazak Battalion. He had read the messages, but West Tennessee was not under his direct authority or control. The situation there was under the purview of the so-called department of rural pacification, and through them, the foreign “peacekeeping” units.

  The chain of command in these “special administrative zones” went from the White House and the State Department, through the Department of Homeland Security to the nonexistent “department of rural pacification” and onward to the foreign military units. He was current on his reading of the message traffic, but new refugees, he had not heard about that. Besides the ongoing preparations for the Northwest campaign, the big story today was the continuing fallout from the blue-on-blue firefight between the Kazaks and the Nigerians. This amazing cluster foxtrot had resulted in numerous casualties among the peacekeepers on both sides. It was during times like this that General Armstead was glad to let the civilians in the rural pacification program take responsibility for the situation in West Tennessee.

  The flap of the ten-by-twelve manila envelope that had been handed to him was sealed with a string wrapped between two small cardboard discs. He unwound the string, opened the envelope, and pulled out a handwritten letter clipped to a standard tan file folder. The letterhead was Mirabeau’s invention, completely unofficial, undoubtedly created on a computer as a humorous gibe, although it looked genuine. It read “Commanding General, U.S. Army South.” There was no such command in the United States Army. Armstead chuckled. Marcus Aurelius Mirabeau was making a teasing reference to his own command of NORTHCOM, U.S. Army North. He read the note, and his smile disappeared.

  Lucian: This happened in your AO on Saturday, in Radford County TN near Mannville. Done by Kazak Batt. Est’d 400+ dead. Have met eyewitnesses—story checks true. If Duty, Honor, Country still means anything to us, this cannot stand. I cannot and will not abide this. We need to meet ASAP. Send meeting time and location via return courier. Suggest Fort Rucker visit tomorrow in order. If no timely response, I will act with forces under my command to resolve situation SW TN. Lucian, please get on the right side of this. Join me, please. Tempus Fugit. God is watching us.

  —Mirabeau

  General Lucian Armstead had no trouble reading the jotted note despite the erratic handwriting. Four hundred dead? There must be a mistake somewhere. Marcus Aurelius Mirabeau was always showboating. He reread the letter. The white sheet of paper was attached to a tan folder with a large silver paperclip. He slid the clip off with his thumbnail, opened the file, saw the first eight-by-ten color photograph in the thick stack, and his world tipped off its axis forever.

  ****

  He staggered inside the NORTHCOM headquarters building as though through a haze, and made it to his corner office on the second floor. In the outer office, he told his secretary to hold all calls and cancel all appointments. He didn’t hear them asking if he felt all right. His breath was short and labored, his heart was hammering. He closed the door and went to his desk, collapsed into his chair and looked at the photographs again. Taped to a piece of cardboard along with the photographs was a CD in a paper envelope. “Eyewitness report” was handwritten on the sleeve. He slid the disc into his computer.

  With no preamble or explanation, the video player came up on his screen. A girl, shown from the waist up, was sitting on a chair facing the camera. She had blond hair with bangs down to her amber-colored eyes, and a gaunt face with high cheekbones and a narrow chin. Behind her was a plain wall of light wood paneling, covered with maps. Military maps.

  She began. “My name is Jenny McClure, I’m seventeen years old. Today is Tuesday, January 15th. I lived in Germantown, Tennessee, until my parents were killed after the first earthquake. After that, I was staying with my aunt and uncle near Mannville, Tennessee; that’s about seventy-five miles east of Memphis. What I’m telling now is what happened in Mannville on Saturday, January the 12th. I was there in Mannville, at the regular Saturday swap meet, when about two hundred Kazak soldiers came and surrounded us. They were on horses and in trucks.”

  And so she told the entire story, from her perspective. She described the people being burned with the non-lethal crowd-control heat machine, and then being marched onto school buses. She told how the young girls had been forced to climb onto a troop truck, to be taken to a country mansion where the Kazaks were having a drunken party and preparing to rape them. She described being dragged to an upstairs bedroom by an American traitor, who was working with the Kazaks as a translator, and how she had escaped in the snowstorm. She described her confused journey through the snow, until she was climbing up a ravine and discovered the hundreds of frozen bodies. Jenny stared numbly at the camera, sniffing occasionally, tears running in tracks down her face, but she continued. She told of hearing a baby’s cry in the storm, and how she discovered the infant that she named Hope, wrapped in blankets under her dead mother.

  Her story took fifteen minutes to tell, and when it was over, General Lucian Armstead was crying too. He took the photographs and spread them across his desk, in two neat rows of ten, and stared at them as a group, the massed bodies merging from photograph to photograph.

  ****

  The call came on the government-only DSN line. Bob Bullard’s secretary put it through to his office after calling him on the intercom. “He says he’s Sidney from D.C. Do you want to take his call?”

  “Sure, put him through.”

  “Director Bullard? Sid Krantz.”

  “Yeah, Sid, what’s up?”

  “I’ve just spoken to the boss. I’d be less than truthful if I didn’t tell you that he’s disappointed with what he’s seeing in Tennessee, and particularly in southwestern Tennessee. The, um, evacuation and pacification don’t seem to be tracking on our time table.”

  “Well, I don’t know where you’re getting your information, but we’ve made big improvements since the last time we talked. We’re making a lot of progress. We’re getting the whole area firmly under government control.”

  Krantz replied, “Firmly under control? Well, that’s not how we’re seeing it up here. We’re getting reports about bombs going off, gun battles, and allied peacekeepers being killed by the dozen. Insurgents have even stolen tanks—is that true, or not true?”

  “That’s true, but—”

  “Bob, that does not sound like ‘under control’ to me! We’re getting reports that more than twenty Kazak and Nigerian peacekeepers have been kill
ed by insurgents in the past few days, and some North American Legion soldiers too. You call that making progress?”

  “Look, Sid, I’m telling you, those events were outliers. Total flukes. They’re not representative of what’s really going on. The area is definitely getting under control. We’ve just had to knock some heads, and you know that’s not always pretty. Sometimes there’s blowback, but we’re on pace to be able to bring reconstruction crews into the last problem counties by March at the latest.”

  “March is too late. I’m sorry, but from our point of view the situation down there is getting worse, not better. The boss and I have decided we need to take a closer look to evaluate the progress. I’m coming down to review the state of affairs in person.”

  “Don’t put yourself to any trouble, Sid. There’s really no reason. I’m sure I can answer any questions you might have.”

  “Well, the boss thinks there’s reason, and that’s all that either you or I really need to know, isn’t it? I’ll be flying directly into Fort Campbell toorrow.”

  Bullard paused and then replied, “Suit yourself. Have your staff call my staff and make the arrangements.”

  “But I do have a few more questions before I come down.”

  “Shoot.”

  “How many FEMA relocation camps do we have in western and middle Tennessee? What’s their current census, and what’s their maximum capacity?”

  “FEMA camps? You’ll have to give me a few minutes to find out. That’s not exactly my bailiwick. Can’t you just call FEMA for that?”

  “Ballpark is good enough.”

  “Ballpark? Ballpark, I’d say a dozen or fifteen primary camps, with a census of maybe a hundred thousand, maybe more. It fluctuates. I don’t know if they’re at max capacity. That’s not my department, not directly. You should call FEMA if you want better numbers.”

  “That’s close enough. One more thing—I need you to do something before I fly down tomorrow. I need you to round up some rats.”

  “Did you say…rats?”

  “That’s what I said. Rats. At least a dozen live rats, in cages. The more the better. I’ll explain it when I get down there.”

  “Yeah, you’ll have to explain it to me. I’m not in the rat-collecting business.”

  “Well, we’ll see about that. Anyway, I’ll be flying down tomorrow.”

  “What time?”

  “I’ve got a C-12 penciled in for the afternoon. I’ll remain overnight and return Thursday, unless we wrap up early, in which case I’ll fly back tomorrow night.”

  “Send my office a message with the particulars. I’ll have a driver meet your plane and bring you to my house. I don’t think it would be a good idea for you to come by our headquarters during working hours.”

  “I was thinking the same thing. I’d rather have our discussion in private.”

  “That’s fine. Make it after 1700. A driver will meet your plane.”

  ****

  Friends of friends allowed the two men to set up a temporary workstation in Fort Campbell’s branch telephone exchange, without getting formal written approval through channels or notifying their bosses. Their friends didn’t need to hear more than that it was part of a temporary security exercise. The two men were wearing windbreakers with the name and logo of a national telephone company, and carried toolboxes. They were still setting up, using the out-of-band management line that was normally used by phone technicians to manage and troubleshoot the system. The OOB line was connected via a modem to the branch exchange primary console.

  Tapping the phone lines in building 1405 had become a top priority since last night’s meeting at Charlie Donelson’s house, and the branch exchange was the best location to accomplish this task. Once Bullard’s office line was located, it was bridged to another line on the same local branch exchange. This working phone was located in the unused office, where the two conspirators were setting up shop. One of the two men was connecting a laptop for recording the calls when they heard the phone ring. Both men were wearing ear buds, listening for calls on a number of phone lines.

  The older of the two bogus phone technicians was Ira Gersham, also known as Dewey O. Lieberman.

  The other man said, “Were you ready for that? Did you record it?”

  Ira said, “Yeah, I got it.”

  “I didn’t catch the beginning. Who was that, Bullard?”

  “Yeah, Bob Bullard himself.”

  “I thought his lines would be encrypted.”

  “He thought so too,” said Ira. “Actually, they are encrypted, but I’ve got the super-user system password. That puts us inside their encryption, at least on their DSN land lines. Lucky for us, these guys are just dummies. They don’t know any better, or they’d use another layer of encrypttion at each end, one I can’t get inside.”

  “How the hell did you get the password?”

  “Let’s just say it’s not what you know, it’s who you know.” Ira winked at his colleague. “But you don’t need to know. Just know that I know. That’s all you need to know.”

  “What was that bit at the end, about rounding up rats? Was that code or something?”

  “I don’t know. Maybe. I’ll have to play it back, but I’m pretty sure the guy said rats. ‘Round up rats, in cages’.”

  “I wonder who Sidney Krantz is.”

  Ira said, “I don’t know, but if he’s coming down from D.C. to meet Bullard, we need to find out fast. He should be searchable, if Krantz is his real name and not a legend.”

  “A legend?”

  “A spook name. A cover name.”

  “Oh.”

  “FEMA camps and rats—that’s just too weird. And did you catch his reference to ‘the boss’? I’m taking this one to the colonel. He needs to hear this. So you’re okay here? You know what to do?”

  “Yeah, Ira, you explained it pretty good.”

  “I’ll come back in a couple of hours. If you hear anything you think we need to know before that, call this number and let it ring four times. Nobody will pick up the call, but somebody will come to retrieve the tape ASAP.”

  “All right. Sounds good.”

  “Okay, I’ll see you in a few.”

  ****

  Colonel Tom Spencer and Boone Vikersun sat in the colonel’s Jeep Cherokee, going over their plan. They were parked behind NORTHCOM’s headquarters, with a view of the back of the three-story cement building. They had been telephoned by a confederate when General Armstead had returned from lunch. Now a sheet of white paper with a black “X” across it had been placed against a certain window in the middle of the second floor, confirming that the general was in his office. Old and trusted friends were willing to perform such small tasks, without asking why.

  Boone was clean-shaven, and his hair was freshly cut to Army standards. Master Sergeant Vikersun and Colonel Spencer were both in officers’ Army Service Uniforms, with blue coats and trousers. Colonel Spencer was wearing his own uniform. The rank insignias on Boone’s shoulders indicated that he was a major.

  The colonel said, “You clean up pretty well, ‘Major Garrett’.”

  “You can thank Bibi Donelson for that. Charlie’s wife can do just about anything. She worked for years as a hairdresser at the Post Exchange. Plus, she’s a great cook.”

  “That’s true, but I don’t think that’s why he brought her back from the Philippines. And it sure doesn’t hurt to have a hookup in the Bamboo Mafia. How else could we get you a uniform on just a few hours’ notice, if we didn’t have a connection at the dry cleaners?”

  Boone said, “I just hope the real major doesn’t show up looking for his uniform.”

  “He won’t. He’s deployed until March.”

  “I’m lucky they found me a uniform this big. Bibi actually had to take up the legs and arms.”

  “She should get hazardous duty pay, just for giving you a shave and a haircut. Did she do it outside at least? I’d hate to think of what crawled away from that pile of hair. Hopefully, she was wearing rub
ber gloves.”

  Boone grinned. “With all due respect, go screw yourself, sir.”

  “I’ll take that under advisement, Major.”

  “So, do I fit the part? I don’t know what a special courier is supposed to look like.”

  “You look perfect, like you just walked out of the Pentagon.”

  “I look like a doorman, or a bellhop. A blue uniform, with gold braid! I’ll never live this down.”

  “It’s the new Army, Boone.”

  “What was wrong with our green Class A’s? At least people knew we were soldiers. If I wanted to wear a blue uniform, I would have joined the Air Force or the Navy.” He nervously felt the knot of his tie, straightening it by feel. The pressed Army Service Uniform was an unfamiliar form of camouflage for a Special Forces sniper more comfortable hiding in the forest. “Why did they change over to blue anyway?”

  “That’s way above my pay grade,” said Colonel Spencer. “Nobody asked me, that’s for sure. The main thing is you look right for who you’re supposed to be.”

  “What if they ask for my ID?”

  “They won’t. I’ll flash my old Courier Authorization Card, and put it away quick. They won’t check the date. You’ll see, this will be easy. The bigger the bluff, the easier it is to pull off. Come on, it’s time to put on your chain.”

  “Do couriers really wear these things locked to their wrist?” Boone Vikersun was accustomed to carrying a rifle, not a briefcase. One end of the foot-long silver chain disappeared into the case, the other was attached to a ratcheting handcuff. He snapped the cuff onto his left wrist and slipped the key into his right pants pocket.

  “Yeah, they do, sometimes. But mainly it’s a great visual prop. It’s the only thing anybody will notice, because of that chain.” Colonel Spencer looked at his watch. “Come on, Boone, it’s time. He’s been in his office for fifteen minutes. The back exit will be taped open for us. Once we’re inside, it’s straight up the stairwell to the second floor. Then it’s only one hallway down to his office. Ready? Let’s do it.”