Dunning’s eyebrows scrunched into a V shape and he briefly bit his lower lip, causing his gray mustache to fall over and hide his mouth. He shook his head. “No, you four will have to stay here with the equipment,” he mused. “The remaining five UFAVs have to be crated and the cockpits packed. Not to mention you’ll have to oversee dismantling of the antennas and data-link-control packages between here, the ship’s radio shack, and the masts. No, no, no. Can’t have all of us flying off today,” he said, his voice picking up in tempo. “I will go first. You’re right. I’m the one that must argue our case before the Department of Defense. I know the plan was for us to stay on board until the ships returned to Little Creek Naval Base in Norfolk, but we must be proactive. Lieutenant Kitchner, for once you have made an accurate assessment of what we must do. You four will ride the ship back, see to the transportation of everything, and by then I will be in Washington and have successfully presented our case.” Without waiting for a reply, Dunning pushed his way between Kitchner and Valverde and hurried toward the master console.
“Well done, shipmate,” Shoemaker said.
Pauline sighed. “Look at the good side of it, our brown-hair, blue-eyed, super-jock. We’ve at least gotten rid of Dunning.”
“Does this mean we won’t be flying any more missions?” Ensign Jurgen Ichmens asked.
“Ensign, write this down,” Pauline said. “It is always better to be asking questions than answering them. Now quit asking questions. Alan, we better get the boss into the rack before he falls down.”
“Sounds good,” Nash said. “A quick stop by the head on the way to the stateroom.”
He looked at Valverde. “Inner ring, top floor, third door, second office? What was that?”
Alan Valverde shrugged his shoulders. “Don’t know. But it sounded good.”
Pauline slapped him on his back. “That it did, my fine spook friend,” she said.
“What was it like?” Alan asked as they started toward the hatch leading off the hangar deck.
Kitchner and Ichmens moved closer to hear the answer.
Shoemaker stopped, shut his eyes, and took a deep breath before opening them. “I had to fight to convince myself I was back here in the hangar deck inside a mock-up of a fighter aircraft cockpit and not actually inside the aircraft.” No one said anything. “I . . .” He stopped, his throat constricting slightly. He shook his head and continued toward officers’ country. He didn’t want them to see the moisture in his eyes. He couldn’t explain it, but it wasn’t something he wanted to do again.
DICK BLEW OUT A SMOKE RING. “I THINK WHAT JEFFERSON expected, according to what I have read and heard, is for some African-Americans to come to Liberia, buy holiday homes, develop the country, and maybe—just maybe—a few would take it seriously enough to exercise their Liberian citizenship. Even in the passports sold to African-Americans, there were limiting clauses that took away their right to vote or hold office in Liberia unless they actually lived as full-fledged residents of the country.”
Leo nodded. “Yeah, I can agree with you. I thought about getting one of those passports. Probably would have if there hadn’t been a problem with security clearance. But ergo, lots of money. Great public relations coup. And no disruption of the normal progression of Liberian politics.”
Dick chuckled. “He just never expected to run into someone like retired Army Ranger Lieutenant General Daniel Thomaston. One of the runner-ups for Time’s Man of the Year last year.”
Leo grinned. “Not many have ever run into someone like Thomaston. He sold everything he owned in America two years ago and moved lock, stock, and barrel to Liberia.”
“I read where his wife dying had a lot to do with that.”
“May be one of the reasons he decided to lead nearly a thousand families to Liberia.”
“One thousand families that may be dead or dying. We won’t know until we hear from them. Most of those families followed him into the wilds of central Liberia to build their own city.”
“No, I believe a few hundred families is nearer the true number of those that came with him to Liberia, and of those, only about a hundred followed him to establish Kingsville.”
The third wave of amphibious landing craft reached the beach. Like angry ants scurrying out of a disturbed nest, Marines fled the cramped confines, spreading across the white sands, crawling across the top of the dunes where the second wave held the ground. Dick and Leo watched as the newest wave of Marines reached the defensive line of the second, passed them, and continued inland.
Dick pointed at the message. “Take it with you, Leo, and find Colonel Battersby and make sure he knows about the impending OPORDER.”
Leo saluted and left the bridge wing. Dick lifted the binoculars to continue monitoring the exercise on the beach. Most commanders of an amphibious task force would be inside the ship, down in its bowels, hunkered over a holograph display of the action. He preferred to see the real thing. There were enough smart operational types on his staff to handle the complexities of an amphibious operation without him—an old aviator—leaning over their shoulders giving advice and disrupting a smooth exercise with a lot of flag-level testosterone.
The three landing craft at the far end of the beach pulled away. They would be bringing those Marines identified by the referees as dead, dying, or too wounded to keep fighting. Those inside the three landing craft would also be the angriest of the bunch. Marines could really get pissed off when they discovered they were dead, dying, or wounded. Even in real life.
“LADIES AND GENTLEMEN, THE ADMIRAL,” CAPTAIN UPMANN said, holding the door to the Operations briefing room open.
Everyone stood as Rear Admiral Dick Holman entered. “Sit down, relax,” he said as he walked to the head of the table and took his own seat.
Dick Holman stirred his coffee slowly, thinking about the contents of the tasking message. “Don’t stop because of me, Mary. Carry on with your briefing.”
“Would the admiral like me to start over, sir?”
He shook his head. Christ, no. He hated briefings in the first place, and any briefing longer than thirty minutes was a waste of time as far as Dick Holman was concerned. “That won’t be necessary, Mary. Just pick up where my entry interrupted.”
She nodded. “Yes, sir, Admiral. I was providing a brief history of Liberia.”
“Brief!” exclaimed Commander Churchill Walden, causing most of the officers in the small operations briefing room to laugh. “More like an epic, Admiral.”
Mary ignored the supply officer and continued. “The first colonization of Liberia by freed American slaves and freemen was supported by the U.S. government at the time along with various antislavery groups. . . .”
Dick looked at the screen mounted against the far bulkhead. The intelligence officer, Captain Mary Davidson, stood to one side. A red dot danced across the words on the screen as she moved her laser pointer across the bullets on the briefing slide. Khaki uniforms did little for women, thought Dick, but maybe it was just the way the Navy work uniform looked on Mary. The tight khaki pants did little to complement the huge hips, though they did highlight the narrow waist of the Assistant Chief of Staff for Intelligence. It wasn’t her body that got Mary where she was today. No argument about that. She was one of his intellectual warriors. A graduate of a small private college—Villa Julie near Baltimore—the Navy officer had gone on to obtain a master’s degree in computer science from Johns Hopkins. Her choice of a Navy career was something that sometimes even amazed herself, considering that by now she could have been a CEO of some major corporation if she had chosen a civilian career. As far as he was concerned, she was easily a contender for admiral. A rank still a couple of years off before she would be eligible. She had only put the eagles of a captain on her lapel six months ago, and was still going through that transition period of learning to call her fellow captains by their first names.
How does she do it? he wondered. Some were natural briefers, and she was one of them. No uhs, pa
uses, or rambling for explanations. He had seen her throw together a flag-level briefing in minutes without any preparation. On the negative side, she was known for inflicting death by Power Point on those in her audience. Nothing was too down in the weeds for Mary Davidson.
If he still believed she was a contender for admiral in her small community, then next year would be the real challenge. In the ever-shrinking Navy intelligence community, her next set of orders would determine the strength of that opportunity. She needed a joint billet. A billet such as on the Joint Staff or at one of the warfighting CINCs like Commander in Chief Pacific or Commander in Chief Central Command to improve her chances for admiral. Even Commander in Chief European Command could be a stepping-stone, though he couldn’t recall any intelligence officer who had made flag after serving a tour as a director at EUCOM. How much weight, he wondered, could he carry in getting her one of those jobs? Or would her community decide she had reached her pinnacle and send her to a dead-end job like that parochial Federal Information Systems Agency? Now, there was a money sump if he had ever seen one. Could save the nation and the Department of Defense millions by dissolving it . . .
He stopped his train of thought. FISA was his pet Washington peeve, and it never failed to get his blood boiling every time he thought of it. Dick turned his attention to Mary, although he had reviewed the slides before the brief and knew the material she was passing on to his staff. He caught Colonel Battersby looking at him. The Marine Corps Commander of the Amphibious Landing Force—CALF—nodded. Dick returned the silent salute and moved his attention to Captain Davidson.
“. . . from being a colony of the United States to a republic in 1820. You!” she shouted in a mocking voice, pointing her finger at the Assistant Chief of Staff for Supply. “Keep those eyes open!”
Commander Churchill Walden—Ready Freddie to his friends—grinned, winked at Mary Davidson, and grabbed his throat. “Doc! Doc! Where are you? I can’t see. I’ve been wounded by a hostile Power Point attack.” Churchill was Holman’s mustang. Navy referred to them as Limited Duty Officers—LDOs. Behind their backs, LDO was said to stand for Loud, Dumb, and Obnoxious. Churchill was not dumb, seldom obnoxious, and always loud.
A former master chief disbursing officer, the tenacious sailor had been selected for warrant officer, and then within two years promoted past the junior rank of ensign directly to lieutenant junior grade. Ten years later, this old-timer at forty-eight was a full commander. A rank most officers obtained by the time they reached forty. Although it was early afternoon, already Walden’s salt-weathered face was showing the gray tips of heavy face hair.
“I just wanted to be sure you were still awake,” Davidson said. “I know it’s afternoon and men your age need their sleep.”
“Well, my fine intelligence captain, I’ll have you know that I sneaked my geriatric nap just prior to lunch.”
The banter broke just what Dick knew was becoming a monotonous briefing. He also knew they needed to act serious about this. In the past year and a half, Amphibious Group Two had had over six of these 911 calls to evacuate American citizens. Each time the crisis had been resolved before they were halfway there, or they’d arrived to discover the situation had calmed. This was probably another one, though it was the first in Africa since European Command took control of most of the Atlantic away from Joint Forces Command in Norfolk.
Holman had asked Mary to provide some background on this small African country that was integrally linked to the United States. A country that in the last five years had become America’s African version of Israel.
“Thanks, Mary,” Dick said, interrupting conversation that had started to break out around the table. “Guess I was wrong to ask for a short review of the history of Liberia. I think everyone here knows the background. Liberia has been around almost as long as America. Originally a republic; more or less abandoned by its mother country in the nineteenth century. Left to stumble along on its own merits through the twentieth century, only to rise like a phoenix to become a model of African democracy. Let’s skip to the current events.” Dick glanced at Walden. “That suit you, Churchill?” He looked across the table at the PhibGroup Two Surgeon. “Doc, think he’ll survive?”
“Only, if we’re unlucky,” Captain Paul Montage replied mockingly.
Everyone laughed at the elderly fleet surgeon who had retired as a doctor and two years ago accepted a permanent appointment as a captain in the Medical Corps of the Navy.
“That’s not what you said at our last meeting of AARP,” Churchill replied.
“That’s only because your snores drowned out the proposals of the others.”
“What others?”
“Doc, Commander Walden,” Mary interrupted. “There are only you two in the ship’s American Association of Retired People’s chapter, so if you would reconvene later, I’ll try to finish up this briefing.”
“Mary, go ahead,” Dick added good-naturedly. “Churchill, stay awake and keep the comments down.”
“Of course, Admiral,” Commander Churchill Walton replied, nodding respectfully.
The intelligence officer moved the presentation forward several slides. The photograph of the middle-aged African wearing his familiar dark Western suit appeared. “I think we all recognize this gentleman,” Mary said. “President Harold Jefferson of Liberia.” She paused. “Or he was President Harold Jefferson.” She reached down, picked a Navy message off the table, and held it up. “Approximately twelve hours ago, African rebels, led by Islamic extremists, attacked and overran the Presidential Palace in Monrovia, killing President Jefferson. Since the terrorist action, additional rebels have been arriving, spreading through the capital arresting members of the Liberian Congress. They overran the American Embassy about four hours ago, but not before the Chief of Station released a situation report telling the State Department that Americans rounded up were being executed.”
The humor of several seconds ago vanished as the severity of the crisis unfolded. They listed silently as Mary Davidson reported some of the atrocities that were occurring. This did not sound like the other crises that Amphibious Group Two had been called on to respond to. Nothing could ever equal the horror of September 11, 2001, but as the War on Terrorism continued, more and more barbaric acts surfaced as radical Islamic elements sought to destroy the modern Western world.
She laid the Navy message on the table, pointed the controls at the projector, and advanced the presentation to the next slide. A series of bullets appeared. Captain Mary Davidson glanced at the text and faced the group of officers seated at the table.
For the next ten minutes, she reviewed the flow of information that had arrived off the global information grid to the intelligence spaces of USS Boxer, LHD-4. The number of Americans killed could only be estimated. Most of the information being received came from the few ham operators that were still up and transmitting on their radios. Even those were going out one at a time, and none had been heard for the past four hours.
“Admiral,” Mary said, holding another message in her hand. “This arrived just before the briefing started, sir, and I haven’t had a chance to discuss it with . . .”
Dick put his coffee cup down. “Go ahead, Mary.”
“A ham operator with Lieutenant General Daniel Thomaston told the American Embassy in Monrovia before the embassy was overrun that the Liberian-American city of Kingsville was still safe and had not seen any action. American refugees from elsewhere in Liberia have started arriving in Kingsville. It seems to be the central congregating point for American refugees. Another thing the embassy passed on was that they had lost contact with the American expatriate enclaves in the northern suburbs of Monrovia. They expect the worst for those in and around the capital.”
“That’s something,” Leo added. “As long as we have contact with General Thomaston, we can keep track of how they are doing.”
“It’s not too good. The signal has not been regained from Kingsville. We suspect this is due to sunspots. We s
hould regain contact as we close the coast. In the meantime, the good news is that Kingsville is safe and the surviving Americans are heading there. The bad news is Thomaston expects the rebels to advance on Kingsville. We will be unable to follow those events closely because our communications are suffering severely. Our weather-guessers report the sunspot storms, not expected to reach maximum intensity until later this month, have instead already commenced.”
“Satellites?” Holman asked.
Davidson shook her head. “Sorry, Admiral, they are all committed to the war in Indonesia. In addition, I haven’t seen any press stories to indicate the news agencies have anyone in Liberia in position to report events. This is one time in this information age we may be going into a crisis with little or no knowledge.”
CHAPTER 3
LIEUTENANT GENERAL DANIEL THOMASTON, U.S. ARMY RETIRED, stood with his legs spread on the wraparound porch of the town’s community center, his hands grasped behind his back. He looked over the American town that he had helped build. It wasn’t big, but it was their little piece of home on the continent where his and the others’ ancestors had originated. Daniel walked to the edge of the porch and braced a foot on the banister. From there, he could see the entire town. The jungle to the south marked the end of this slice of civilization. He glanced behind him. The screened door gave him a direct view through the center of the community center out the rear door. About a hundred yards of grassy terrain separated this building from the edge of the ancient Liberian rain forest that rose like a gigantic dark wall. He crossed his arms across the top of his raised knee. Everything they had worked for and built could be swept away by the rebels heading this way.
He brushed an insect off his right arm. He personally had selected the site for this town. It was a good location. One where sweeping waves of towering bushes and grasses ran up against jungle and rain forest bordering to the south and west. The main road, running through the center of the town, was paved. Unfortunately, a half mile out it turned to dirt. They had bulldozed the road, scraping away lush topsoil to expose sandy loam beneath that turned into sinking, sucking mud during their first rainy season. Since then, gravel and drainage plans had improved the utility of the road, but when the early summer rains arrived, the small American enclave became an isolated outpost.
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