Brad grabbed the satellite photo he had been looking at and pulled a pen out of the knapsack on the floor. He traced a broad circle around one of the buildings. A perfect rectangular shaped shadow covered more than half of the adjacent rooftop. The facility with the Land Rovers parked in front was casting a much smaller silhouette on the building next to it.
“This building here, across the street, is a good two stories taller than this one.” Brad said tapping the pen to the center of the structure.
“We’ll put the rifle up there.” He said.
Kingsley watched as his friend’s emotions began to be replaced by his extensive combat experience.
“Then we can send in a decoy, perhaps this car, followed by a flanking assault through the side of the building, here.” Brad drew another circle.
“We’ve identified this building as the former Quneitra hospital. It’s small, no more than fifty rooms but if I had hostages, that’s where I’d take them.” Kingsley said.
“Oh…I almost forgot.” Tom said as he reached behind Brad’s chair.
Kingsley’s hand returned holding a sealed, plastic one gallon jug of warm water. He reached back behind him for a second time. He threw two MRE, (Meals Ready to Eat), bags on his lap.
“There you go buddy, six thousand calories ought to start you off on the road to recovery.” Kingsley said as he put the shifter into gear and steered them back onto the road.
Brad rolled down the window and laid his head against the headrest. The temperature outside was unseasonably cool. He opened the first of the brown plastic bags and removed a thin gray aluminum pouch. The words ‘Ham Slice’ had been printed on the outside. He tore the pouch from the side and extracted a three quarter inch thick slab of pink ham covered in a thin gelatinous membrane of fat. The smell permeated the car. Brad scarfed the meat and opened up a packet of M&M’s. He dumped the bag into his mouth and moved onto the rest of the food.
Brad and Kingsley rolled out the miles in silence. The particular stretch of road they were on reminded Kingsley of driving out west in the states. The landscape that surrounded them was beige and crisp with a smattering of green trees too scarce to call a wood line. The occasional camel caravan was all the entertainment they got.
After half an hour, Kingsley noticed an object off in the distance. He pulled the car over to the shoulder and veered into the high, burnt grass and wild wheat tares that sprouted along the highway to Quneitra.
Brad was alerted to Kingsley’s sudden movements, as he stopped the car next to a bulbous cluster of overgrown lilac bushes and opened his door. Kingsley hopped out and removed the rifle from the trunk. He set the steel feet of the bi-pod legs down on the rusted hood of the sedan and hunched down behind the weapon. The Green Beret found the road with the optic that was mounted on the upper receiver and slowly moved the rifle following the road through the lens. His eye roved until it landed on the object he had seen from the car.
Tom Kingsley was looking at the turret of a T55 tank. The tank commander stood out of the hatch, periodically pivoting at the waist to glance behind himself at the column of tanks that trailed him. Behind the formation of heavily armored track vehicles was a large chalk of support vehicles. Behind that was what appeared to be an entire division of infantry soldiers, all sitting peacefully, in the back of large transport vehicles.
“What have we got?” Brad asked after some time.
Kingsley had begun counting the tanks, there were fourteen; a brigade. His mouth was agape as he watched from behind the rifle.
“We’ve got some company.” He said calmly, betraying his facial expression.
“How many?” Brad asked.
Kingsley shook his head. “A tank brigade, slew of support vehicles and I would imagine about three to four thousand troops bringing up the rear.”
The tank commander was scanning the horizon but didn’t behave as though he’d seen the automobile.
“We have to go.” Kingsley said as he got up and snatched the Cheytac off the hood of the car. Brad reached inside and secured a few of the remaining items from the MRE’s and walked to the trunk where Kingsley was pulling the bags out.
Kingsley strapped a camouflaged assault pack to his waist and let the bag dangle over his buttocks. He removed a large back pack of the same color from the trunk and threw it onto his shoulders. There was a set of duplicate gear for Brad. The DIA agent stuffed the remaining food supplies from his MRE’s into a front flap on his assault pack, before wrapping the thick load bearing belt around his waist and snapping the hard plastic buckle.
Kingsley went back to the cab of the car and retrieved the only other piece of gear besides the Cheytac. It was an old, drab colored forward observer’s bag that the soldier had loaded with hygiene supplies and the intelligence that his team had gathered days earlier. He picked it up and pulled the keys out of the ignition. He quickly glanced back to the road. The convoy was rolling slowly but steadily toward them.
“We’re going to have to get to the base of those mountains.” He said as Brad shut the empty trunk and cinched up the straps to his back pack.
“With any luck, they won’t see the car and we can wait there until they pass. If not, we’ll have to trek the rest of the way to Quneitra.” Kingsley said.
Brad nodded and the two headed toward a small mountain half a mile away.
Kingsley continued to glance back at the road to chart the approaching military column’s progress. He didn’t understand why they were moving so slow. On an open road, such as the one they were on, there couldn’t be much that they wanted to see.
After a few minutes, they were within throwing distance of the mountain. Behind them they could hear the roar of the outdated T-55’s.
The T-55 was a Soviet tank that was manufactured up until the early nineteen eighties. Its primary gun was slightly undersized, at one hundred and five millimeters and the armor was far from modern standards. But a tank was a tank.
The two men lay down on their bellies in the heavy brush and faced the road as the convoy began to pass by. Kingsley opened the case to the Cheytac and extracted the long rifle. He extended the bi pod legs and forced them down into the dirt. Placing the rifle’s stock tight against his cheek, he dug the tips of his boots into the earth and set his right eye just behind the scope’s lens.
He studied the column for a minute, noting the demeanor of the soldiers as they slugged along the highway in the backs of grayish green trucks. Some laughed and told jokes, while others seemed to look into the recent past remembering some quaint detail of the life they’d just left. It was easy to tell who the officers were, they stood a little taller than the rest, sure of themselves, keeping a safe distance between themselves and the common masses of the enlisted.
Kingsley hoped that no one would be too interested in the Mercedes. It was clearly visible next to the lilacs, just two hundred yards from the road.
His wish was smashed to pieces when one of the men in the turret of a tank near the center of the column noticed the vehicle off of the shoulder. The man’s head turned as he passed by it, his eyes focusing on the weathered automobile. Kingsley watched as the man picked up the handset to a radio and held it to his lips. The commander in the lead tank picked up his own handset and radioed something back. Finally, the commander threw up a gloved hand and shouted something. Like a long brown ribbon, the column contracted and rolled to a stop with a slow and awkward ripple.
“Let’s move.” Kingsley whispered.
Brad pivoted his body around on the ground so that he didn’t have to expose himself to the column by standing up. Once he was one hundred and eighty degrees from the road he removed his back pack and laid it on the ground next to him. He unclasped the top flap and flipped it open. He grabbed the plastic drawstring clasp, squeezed and pulled down. He removed a small wet weather bag and pressed its contents between his fingertips, moving around the bag completely. It was soft; a change of clothes. Next he fished through the main pack, pushing two more MRE
bags out of the way.
“Weapons are in the assault pack.” Kingsley said, pressing the quick release clasps that secured the assault pack on Brads lower back.
Kingsley handed Brad a Heckler and Koch subcompact MP5. The gun was light with smooth grips and a slender stub for a barrel. A long curved magazine that jutted out from the body of the weapon, held thirty nine millimeter rounds.
“Only the best.” Kingsley said, as he slid the Cheytac back into its carrying case and retrieved his own H&K from his assault pack. The two men started to low crawl toward the mountain, using their arms and stomachs to drag their bodies forward. They kept their heads plastered to the ground, dragging their cheeks across a dry mixture of sand and dirt.
A few minutes into their improvised travels, Kingsley turned back to look at the road. A group of more than a half dozen soldiers stood around the car next to the lilacs. One of the Syrians had his hand on the thin steel hood, feeling the heat that radiated off of the engine block.
The man looked toward the mountain. There were no houses along the stretch of highway until Quneitra, fifteen miles to the North. If the man was smart enough to put it together, he would figure that someone had seen them coming and abandoned their vehicle. That should raise his curiosity just enough to send a couple of men up the mountain.
Tom turned back around and continued crawling. Brad was a good three or four yards in front of him; the bottom of his boots shifting back and forth as he snaked his way forward.
Kingsley froze. His ears perked by a disruption in the sounds that permeated from the idling T55’s and support trucks. He unsnapped the rifle case and laid the .408 on his chest. Looking sideways through the scope, he caught his breath in his throat. The Syrian commander was sending an armored vehicle into the brush.
Kingsley spun around, lifting himself off of the ground a few inches and shooting forward on his toes. He grabbed the back of Brad’s boot and squeezed. Brad turned around and saw the look on Tom’s face. Instinctively he looked up but he lacked the advantage that Kingsley had from where he was on the ground. Kingsley was on a slight incline and had a better line of sight to the road.
The rumble of the wheeled vehicle was distinct against the muffled drone of the idling tank column. Large radio antennas stood high in the air bending and swaying wildly as the vehicle traveled the uneven terrain of the desert basin.
Kingsley knew the commander wasn’t going to let up until he got to the bottom of the warm driverless auto.
“I’m going to get to that ridge line up ahead and bury myself in the first crevice I find. If you get to the mountain quickly, you can skirt its flank until you can find a decent pass through.” Kingsley said, while he pulled a wet weather bag out of his own back pack and put the packs straps on his shoulders.
“Let’s just get to that mountain.” Brad said, not willing to consider Tom’s suggestion. He turned back around and started digging into the earth again with his toes and elbows. Deep down though, the DIA agent knew there was not another way. He stopped after only a few feet.
“There’s a Sat phone in the assault pack. The battery doesn’t last long, so don’t use it until you have your brother. Colonel Schaffer will extract you when you’ve got the hostages.” Kingsley finished.
“Tom…” Brad attempted.
“Listen friend, I don’t have a death wish. I just want to give you enough of a head start to get out of the coming storm.” He said, nodding to the troops and assault transport that were zigzagging through the field toward them. The vehicle would be on them in less than a minute.
“We don’t have time to talk about this, go.” Kingsley said firmly.
The two men started scrambling toward the mountain quickly, their legs flopping back and forth on the ground as they high crawled toward the peak.
The vehicle’s engine wound up and down as it hit ruts in the terrain and caused the driver to play with the accelerator.
“How ’bout you stop by here after you drop off the kids and see if I’m still on this rock?” Kingsley said as he slid himself behind a small boulder at the base of the looming mountain. Kingsley wasn’t going to engage the soldiers in a firefight. At the moment, they were guilty of nothing more than investigating an abandoned vehicle. He merely intended to hold their heads down long enough for Brad to put some distance between himself and the convoy.
“Check.” Brad said, before he peeled off and headed east.
Kingsley opened the wet weather bag and pulled out two hand fragmentation grenades and a square block of plastic explosives. He set the C-4 down in front of the boulder and inserted a blasting cap in the center of it. He grabbed the two grenades and dropped one of them into his open cargo pocket. He pulled the cotter pin on the other grenade and held the spoon in place with his thumb. He waited until the vehicle was just forty to fifty yards away from the mountain’s base before he released his grip on the grenade’s spoon and threw it high into the air.
25
Washington D.C.
The White House
President Vanderbilt knelt at an end table next to a sofa in the Presidential bedroom. His hands clutched a piece of paper; a situation report from the Pentagon. It detailed the ambush of General Kirkland and his soldiers in Palestine.
Solid tears formed in the corners of his eyes until they streamed down his white, craggy cheeks. Not one of the trails was for the soldiers that had just died. It was what the news signaled that brought emotion to the President. The end of his career was descending on him like a plague.
He sat down on the edge of his bed and cupped his face with his palms. His mind reeled, tossing ideas back and forth before surrendering and sinking deeper into despair. He wanted desperately to spin the news into something positive. Or, at least come out looking like the good guy who’d been dealt impossible circumstances that had made the only reasonable move.
Twenty years of angling and befriending people he wouldn’t have had coffee with otherwise and it was all awash. The President thought of Kenneth Paine. It was the first time in his career that the man had steered him wrong. He had tried to contact Kenneth as soon as he’d heard the news; but his friend could not be reached. Didn’t matter, he thought to himself. He found that he wanted to ring his neck more than he wanted to talk to him anyways.
The first lady entered the room from the bathroom; she had just taken a shower. A cloud of steam followed her, bringing with it a slight chill. She looked at her husband and unraveled the heavy towel that covered her head.
“What’s wrong?” She asked.
Kelly Vanderbilt was a strong woman. She had less of a knack for schmoozing people than she did shooting it straight. She didn’t much like being a politician’s wife, though she loved the perks.
Kelly had never seen Graham as being fit to run the country and had been quite surprised when he’d won his party’s nomination at the New Hampshire primaries. She was downright stunned when he had been elected to the most powerful seat in the World, eleven months later. Now, every day, she worried that he was going to mess it up and leave their family in the mud. The hardest part about being the first lady was that she was close enough to the man to know when something was happening but not privileged enough to be answered when she asked about it.
Her husband lifted his neck, by the looks of it, you would think it weighed more than a hundred pounds.
“Nothing.” He lied.
He didn’t have any intention of letting her know what was going on. He would simply let her find out the hard way. This was the part of the Presidency that Graham truly loved. He was obligated to keep secrets from his wife and he was all too happy to do so. Few people knew that their marriage was a farce. They hadn’t been in love for decades, if ever.
Kelly had cheated, with one of Graham’s colleagues, early in their marriage. No matter how many times he wanted to and there were more than a few; he never let himself forgive her. Behind closed doors they might as well have been strangers but in public, they were the perf
ect couple. Of course no one except Graham, Kelly and the colleague knew of the incident. The other man had met an untimely death in a strange motorboat accident shortly before the Iowa caucuses.
He folded the letter and stuffed it into his suit pant pocket. He got up to leave and then turned to face Kelly.
“When this is over, I want a divorce.” Graham said.
She could scarcely believe it. Even after twenty five long, embittering years, his words pierced her in a way she hadn’t expected. She held herself composed as he lingered by the door but as soon as he was gone, she collapsed onto the bed in a devastated heap. He had only spoken ten words to her in the last twenty four hours, yet managed to pulverize the brick facade she had built around her heart in three seconds.
Graham walked through Cross Hall, sorrowfully drinking in the magnificent architectural and artistic contributions of past Presidents. His heart sank as he got to the end of the hall leading to the Grand Staircase and realized that there was nothing in the room that had come from his administration. It was typical for a sitting President and First Lady to leave their mark on the famous residence by adding to a room or upgrading an aging structure. Elaborate carpets, paintings, furniture, fine china and entire rebuilding and refurbishing projects had taken place over the more than two hundred years since the home’s original completion. Vanderbilt’s administration was not without decorating legacies throughout the mansion. But here, he seemed to miss something. Cross Hall was void of his influence. It would have been silly to most but to Graham Vanderbilt, a man of intense vanity, it was very serious. He made a mental note to contact the liaison whom was in charge of such arrangements and have them make some quick changes to expand his fingerprint on the facility.
The President was almost at the top of the Grand Staircase when he was greeted by the head of the Department of Justice, Attorney General Leonard Campbell. Vanderbilt had appointed Campbell to the post at the beginning of his term.
As with the rest of the President’s cabinet members, Leonard thought Graham was an imbecile; but he hid his judgment well. The AG had a rolled up copy of the Wall Street Journal tucked snugly under one of his armpits, while in the hand of the same arm he sported a copy of the Pentagon report. Vanderbilt knew that if Leonard had it, then his entire staff had it. He correctly guessed that Leonard wanted to address the legalities of the shipment.
SANCTION: A Thriller Page 22
