“What do you think, Claire?” Ben asked.
“I think that if these terrorists do manage to take over the country, the FFA and all of those who went along with them will be in deep shit,” she said firmly. “This El Farrar and his followers aren’t in this out of any altruistic motives to help the poor downtrodden people of the United States.”
Ben nodded his agreement. “You’re right, there, Claire,” he said. “Our Intel says he’s one of the rich Middle Eastern families who feel they were disenfranchised when the U.N. took over the oil fields. His family evidently went from being one of the richest in the area to just regular citizens.”
She raised her eyebrows. “But I understood the oil families were reimbursed by the U.N. for the loss of their oil revenues,” she said.
Ben smiled grimly. “Oh, they were, but the levels of reimbursement, while extremely generous by any normal standards, were still far below what they’d been used to.”
“Yeah,” Buddy said, a smirk on his face, “I guess going from being billionaires to merely millionaires was quite a step down for them.”
“Does your Intel have any idea of just how many troops this Desert Fox may be able to bring into this war?” General Goddard asked Ben. “Our sources are rather vague on that.”
“Our best estimate is he has access to well over a hundred thousand, and more will probably jump on the bandwagon and join up if he has some initial success here.”
Claire stared at Ben, a worried look on her face. “But surely he won’t be able to transport that many troops here. How would he do it without our knowing and being able to intercept them?”
“I’m afraid he has several options,” Buddy said. “He can move them in relatively small numbers to Vancouver Island or Nova Scotia and boat them over, or he can load them on huge transport ships and keep them outside the three-mile limit until his terrorists can take over one of the coastal ports, and then bring them in late at night.”
“But wouldn’t we know about that and be able to attack the transports?” she asked.
Goddard shook his head. “Not if they stayed outside the three-mile limit. If we attacked them there, the U.N. would step in and cut our balls off.”
“Max is right,” Ben said. “Your only chance to avoid a full-scale war is to crush this terrorist invasion quickly and completely before he has time to make any inroads.”
“If you do that,” Buddy said, “his support back home will evaporate and the other troops will never be sent, and any other Middle Eastern nations who might be thinking of joining in will have second thoughts.”
Claire’s lips compressed in a tight line. “Then I guess we’d better kick his ass right now,” she said.
Ben smiled. This was the ball-busting Claire he was used to dealing with.
“I couldn’t agree more,” he said.
“As regards that,” Goddard said, “just how do you plan to deploy your Scouts?”
Ben leaned back in his chair and nodded at Buddy, giving him the go-ahead to explain.
“We’re gonna send them out in five-man groups,” he said, leaning forward with his forearms on his thighs. “We’ll spread them out all across the country in front of the places where the terrorists have already hit and, hopefully, in their direct line of march.”
Claire frowned. “Five-man groups?” she asked. “But our information says the terrorists have at least fifteen to twenty men in their squads, not to mention the FFA fanatics who might have joined them. Won’t they be seriously outnumbered?”
Ben grinned. “Not by a long shot, Claire. Every man in a Scout unit is an expert in guerrilla fighting, as well as demolitions, infiltration, and setting up ambushes. Each squad will be in constant communication with home base and able to call in air support at a moment’s notice, and each squad will have the latest in firearms, and each squad will have a Thumper along.”
“A Thumper?” Claire asked.
“An M-79 grenade launcher,” Buddy explained. “So, even though there are lots more invaders than defenders, I think the terrorists are gonna have their hands full dealing with our Scouts.”
“How do you plan to deploy them?” Goddard asked. “By helicopter?”
Ben shook his head. “Not usually. That’s too noisy, as your Rangers found out last week. It gives the locals too much notice the troops have arrived. I plan to send them in by HALO drop in the middle of the night. That way, they can be on location and dug in before the invaders even know they’ve arrived.”
“HALO drop?” Claire asked.
“High-altitude, low-opening parachute drops,” Ben replied. “The terrorists won’t even be able to hear the airplanes as they go overhead to drop the Scouts.”
“And when the Scouts attack, it will be a complete surprise to the terrorists,” Buddy said.
“What about supplying them with ammunition, et cetera?” Goddard asked.
Ben grinned slyly. “Oh, my men are also experts at living off the land. What they can’t steal, they’ll take from the enemy and use against him later.”
“General,” Claire said, turning to Goddard. “I want you to coordinate your Ranger deployments with Ben and make sure we box these bastards in and take them out as soon as possible.”
“Madam President,” Ben said, “one more thing.”
“Yes?”
“My Scouts are not going to be taking any prisoners, unless they’re needed for intel. Their mission is to destroy the enemy, and they won’t have time to baby-sit prisoners.”
“You mean even if the enemy gives themselves up?” she asked, her eyes narrow.
“Let me know now if that bothers you, Claire,” Ben said, “ ’Cause my men ask no quarter and give none.”
She thought about it for a moment, then asked, “Even the citizens who might be fighting with the Arabs?”
“They’ve got to learn a hard lesson,” Ben said. “Don’t mess with the buzz saw when it’s busy cutting wood.”
Claire leaned her head back and laughed out loud. “Good,” she said. “It’ll serve the bastards right for becoming traitors.”
“Then we’re a go?” Ben asked.
“Absolutely,” Claire answered.
Twenty
After the meeting in Claire’s office was over, Ben and Buddy huddled with General Maxwell Goddard in his office with a team of his intel specialists.
They poured over maps of the United States that had red pins stuck in them indicating areas already hit by the terrorists, and blue pins in them showing the suspected tracking south of each of the known terrorist units.
“How up-to-date is this intel?” Ben asked a junior officer.
“It’s supposed to be accurate up to an hour ago, sir,” he answered. He glanced at his superior officer, as if waiting for him to speak, and when he didn’t, he added, “But we thought we had accurate intel when we sent our Rangers in a couple of days ago and they got their butts kicked.”
Ben and Buddy glanced at Goddard with upraised eyebrows, even though their own intel back in the SUSA had told them as much.
Goddard cleared his throat and put his index finger in his collar and stretched it, as if it were getting tighter by the minute.
“Yeah, that’s right, Ben. It seems we badly underestimated just how fast these small groups of men can move when they want to.”
“You say a number of your Ranger units were ambushed?” Buddy asked, stroking his chin with a thoughtful expression on his face.
Goddard nodded. “Yeah. Why?”
“Is there any chance you’ve got a leak, or maybe even a traitor in your outfit who might’ve warned some of those units to be on the lookout for the Rangers?”
Goddard, after thinking on it for a moment, shook his head. “Of course it’s possible,” he conceded, “but I don’t think it’s likely. For one, all of my men in a position to know the distribution of the Rangers have been with me for a long time, and for another, I don’t see how they could get in touch with the invaders to give them the warn
ings you’re talking about.”
Ben shook his head. “General, as for the second, they could do it just like I plan to keep in touch with my Scouts . . . through a coded cell phone to the leader, who could then warn the individual units.”
He glanced at Buddy and then back at the general. “As for loyalty, that could easily be circumvented in a number of ways.”
“What are you talking about?” Goddard asked.
“Well,” Ben said, looking upward as he thought, “a close family member of one of your staff officers could have been kidnapped by one of those FFA guys, and as bits and pieces of their body were delivered, it might convince the officer to give them the information they wanted . . . or perhaps a bit of blackmail for a past indiscretion, or even the most prosaic of all ... money.”
Now it was General Goddard’s turn to scratch his chin. “I never even considered....”
“That’s because you’re used to regular warfare, General,” Buddy said. “When you’re dealing with guerrillas, especially when they have a built-in group like the FFA helping them, anything is possible.”
Goddard cut his eyes toward Ben and Buddy. “What do you suggest?”
“There are two ways to go, one quick and one slow,” Ben said.
“Go on,” Goddard asked.
“The slow way is to give each of your officers slightly different intel and to see which way the enemy responds, which could point to the one giving them the info,” Ben said.
“What’s the fast way?”
“Tell each of your officers there is a mole in headquarters and they’re gonna have to undergo drug-induced questioning the next morning,” Ben said.
The general’s face fell. “I don’t know if I could . . .”
Buddy held up a hand. “Don’t worry, General, you won’t have to. We’ll have each of your officers under surveillance from the time they leave work until they show up here tomorrow.”
“What good will that do?” the general asked.
“I have a feeling the guilty one, or ones, will not want to undergo drug interrogation,” Ben said, “so they’ll either bolt, or if they have a good reason for their treachery, they may even give themselves up.”
“Either way,” Buddy added, “you probably won’t have to do any questioning.”
“What if no one runs or gives themselves up?” asked Goddard with a worried expression.
“Then we either have no mole, or he’s got bigger balls than I do,” Ben said.
Finally, the general agreed to the plan, and all of the senior officers, the only ones who would be in a position to give out the information that was leaked, were called into Goddard’s office.
“Gentlemen,” he said, “we have discovered there is a mole in our senior staff.”
After the excited buzzing from the assembled men died down, he held up his hand. “There is only one sure way to deal with this problem in order to keep any more of our troops from being lost due to compromised battle plans. Tomorrow, at 0700, General Raines here and his men, who are experts at psychological warfare, will take each of the senior staff and do interrogations under chemical guidance.”
“What do you mean, chemical guidance?” a man with a name tag on his chest that identified him as Major Benson asked.
“We’ll start with sodium Pentothal,” Ben said, “and proceed with stronger and stronger drugs until we get a confession.”
“Max . . . General Goddard,” Benson said, “I really must protest this assault on our loyalty.”
“Protest all you want, George,” Goddard said, his face firm. “We lost over a hundred of our best-trained Rangers the other night because someone in this room is a traitor, and I don’t intend to rest until we find out who was responsible.”
When Benson opened his mouth again, Goddard held up his hand. “We know that under certain circumstances,” Goddard said, glancing at Ben, “there might be good reasons for the traitor to have done what he did. If that is the case, and he admits to his wrongdoing prior to the interrogation tomorrow morning, we might be inclined to grant him some leniency. But if we have to find out through drugs, he will be summarily court-martialed and shot before the day is over.”
A couple of the other men registered some mild disapproval, until Ben stepped forward.
“If any of you men who think we are acting unwisely have any better ideas to ferret out the mole, speak up,” he asked, looking around at the group.
When he got no answer, he added, “So, I feel the loss of some of your dignity is worth the saving of hundreds of Rangers’ lives, don’t you?” he challenged.
Most of the men nodded slowly, while others just dropped their eyes.
“So, we go with the interrogation in the morning. I’ll see you then,” Ben said, a hint of warning in his voice.
After the men filed out, Goddard shook his head. “Damn, I hated to do that,” he said.
“Was it harder than writing all those letters to the families of the men the traitor killed?” Ben asked gently, knowing that of all of his duties that one was the most painful for him.
Goddard stared back at him. “No, when you put it that way, I guess it wasn’t.”
Twenty-one
Because they were unknown to the senior officers of General Goddard’s staff, Ben assigned members of his team to shadow the officers when they left the base after the announcement of the upcoming drug interrogations scheduled for the next morning.
Jersey was assigned to follow Lieutenant Colonel Ralph Madison, the assistant to Goddard’s Chief of Intel, while Coop, Beth, Anna, Harley, and Reno shadowed the other members of the senior staff.
Goddard went along with the exercise, but he didn’t have high hopes of its success.
Colonel Madison left the base at five-thirty in the afternoon and headed south toward his home in the Oak Hills subdivision. Jersey had a copy of his personnel file, and knew where he lived and that he had a forty-four-year-old wife and two children, a fifteen-year-old son and a thirteen-year-old daughter, both of whom lived at home with their parents.
Jersey, driving a nondescript staff car, had no trouble keeping the colonel in sight, though traffic was light because of the strict rationing of gasoline in the United States since the last war.
He drove at a normal rate of speed, and made no unscheduled stops along the way. Jersey was disappointed. The man was acting perfectly normal, and she’d been hoping for some action to come her way.
When he pulled into the driveway of a ranch-style house on a residential street, she parked several houses down around a corner in front of an empty lot so her car would be out of sight of the house, just in case anyone was watching.
Madison hadn’t acted suspiciously on the trip home, though she thought he drove rather slowly for someone heading home to his family. Perhaps he wasn’t in any hurry to get there for some unknown reason, she thought.
Jersey hunkered down in the car so she wouldn’t be visible from the street and cause the local residents any worries, and waited for darkness to fall.
While waiting, she glanced around, wondering if the residents of such a white-bread sort of neighborhood had any idea of the momentous struggle going on for control of their country. Probably not, she figured, or they’d be up in arms at the idea of some Arabs from halfway around the world possibly being the next leaders of their destiny.
As soon as it was full dark, she got out of the car, checked her Beretta to make sure it was loaded and a shell was chambered so all she’d have to do to fire was to pull the trigger. She stuck the pistol in the waistband of her black jeans and let the tail of her shirt fall to cover the butt so it wouldn’t be too obvious to anyone she might meet on the street.
She walked casually down the sidewalk, letting her eyes roam from side to side to make sure no one was paying her any mind, until she came abreast of Madison’s house.
It was set back about twenty yards from the street, with a series of low bushes fronting the house and extending around the side of the yard
.
She slowed and stretched and yawned, using the movement to cover her checking to see if she was observed. When she saw no one, she crouched and ran silently up to the corner of the house, and squeezed in among the bushes next to a side window.
Moving very slowly, she cautiously raised her head until her eyes were just above the windowsill. Blinds were drawn, but there was a gap of about an inch she could see through.
Jersey’s breath caught in her chest at what she saw in the living room of the house.
Madison, his wife, and two children were sitting in a row on the couch, with three men standing before them across a coffee table. The teenage girl had tears in her eyes, and the boy was staring sullenly at the men, a look of hatred and fear on his face.
Madison seemed to be arguing with one of the men, speaking earnestly, waving his hands as if he were desperately trying to convince the man of something.
As Jersey studied the men, she noticed the butt of an automatic pistol sticking out of the belt of one of them, while the other two wore shoulder holsters with pistols in them. She felt sure she’d found the mole.
Jersey eased back out of the bushes and made her way around the house, looking in each of the windows, trying to get a mental picture of the way the house was laid out. She needed to decide whether to intervene on her own or to call for backup.
She thought about it for a moment, wondering if backup could be arranged silently enough not to alert the men in the house. Better not to risk it, she thought, or the entire family might be killed.
As she squatted out of sight near an oleander bush, a small sedan pulled down the street and stopped three houses down from the Madisons’. It had a Domino’s Pizza sign attached to the roof, and a young man got out, carrying a large square box.
Before he could get to the front door, of the house three houses down, Jersey sprinted down the sidewalk and called softly to him, “Hey, you.”
He stopped and turned around, a quizzical expression on his face.
“Come here a minute,” Jersey said, keeping her voice soft so as not to alarm the young man.
“Whatta you want?” he asked suspiciously.
Destiny in the Ashes Page 13
