by Peter Telep
* * *
Johnny had spotted the last two riflemen jumping into the ditch, and he steered himself there to finish them. A single gunshot had him leaning into his trigger, but when he neared the ditch, he found Willie completely covered in mud and aiming an old Makarov at him.
He lowered his rifle and sighed. “You weren’t answering your radio.”
Willie reached for the radio pack on his vest. “Aw, hell, I knew it was quiet. It got shot up. It’s dead.”
Johnny frowned. Willie would not have called for help anyway. “You all right?”
“Took one in the foot. Exit wound in the heel.”
Johnny’s eyes widened. “They got you in the heel just like Achilles. That was the only way they could shut you down.”
“What’re you talking about? I’m still in the fight.”
“Right on.” Johnny proffered his hand and hauled Willie out of the ditch. As they turned to go, Johnny looked back and wished he had not. A crowd was gathering outside the compound, rallied by more gunmen. With a chill winding up his spine, Johnny shoved Willie’s arm across his shoulders, and they sloshed off toward the river.
* * *
By the time Johnny and Willie reached Corey’s boat, the gunners were laying down suppressive fire on more insurgents flooding down from the compound. Meanwhile, Josh’s boat was being towed off the bank by another. All four SURCs exfiltrated to the left. Johnny asked Corey if they had taken a head count, and they had, so he slumped down next to Willie, leaning back on the gunwale and breathing the deepest sigh of his life. He glanced over at his friend. Their gazes met for a moment, but they turned away, staring half-dazed at the bodies of Staff Sergeant Paul Oliver and Sergeant Tom Marshall lying on the deck beside them.
Later on they would learn that of the twenty-eight men assigned to the raid, only fifteen had returned. Small Craft Company had nine wounded but all would make it. Al-Zahawi’s financing of the insurgency would grind to an immediate halt. CIA paramilitary operations officers in country were transferring him to one of their “black sites” in a process known as “extraordinary rendition.” They would reduce al-Zahawi into a babbling idiot who would tell them everything they needed to know. Johnny hoped he knew a lot, because extraordinary men had paid for that intel with their lives.
* * *
By morning, Johnny and the rest of the platoon returned to Camp Baharia, located about two miles southeast of Fallujah. The base was named after the Arabic word for Marine, mushaat al-baharia, which roughly translated as “walkers of the Navy.” Baharia was once a Ba’ath Party retreat called “Dreamland” and was a favorite haunt of Saddam Hussein’s two sons, who watched boat races from the nearby artificial lake ringed by palm trees. Willie received treatment at the hospital tent and learned that the bullet had not struck any bones. Meanwhile, the survivors of 3rd Platoon and Small Craft Company were debriefed, after which Johnny convinced the company commander to allow Josh and Corey to remain at the camp before returning to their unit the following day.
That evening, they all gathered in Johnny’s cement bungalow. Alcohol was banned on the base, but Johnny and Willie always kept a little whiskey in their living areas, some Jordanian Industrial or even a little Johnny Walker Blue Label sent from home for a special occasion. The ice came in 3’ by 1’ rectangular blocks, and they would chisel it apart with their knives for whiskey on the rocks. With a friend standing guard at the door, they raised their glasses, first in a toast to those they had lost, wishing them fair winds and following seas, and then to each other: “Never above you, never below you, always beside you.”
Chapter One
Present day…
“I didn’t believe it at first, but then the pieces came together. It was huge. It was crazy. We weren’t sure who we could trust, but that never stopped us.”
—Corey McKay (FBI interview, 23 December)
The journalist from WIRED magazine sashayed into the warehouse like a Victoria’s Secret supermodel trapped in a red business suit and wireframe glasses. Her name was Susannah, and Dresden could not remember or pronounce her multisyllabic surname, not that it mattered. He had assistants to manage those details. The lithe and lovely Susannah thought an expose on one of America’s largest private equity firms and its co-founders would earn her literary accolades, and she had spent the better part of a month hounding Dresden’s staff for the opportunity. He had read her curriculum vitae touting her degree from Colombia, and he had scanned her freelance articles in Forbes detailing human rights violations perpetrated by ISIL. The Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant, more commonly known as ISIS in the media, distracted journalists like her—even as other terrorist organizations lurked in the shadows. While Dresden had agreed to the interview, he had done so only after scrolling through her Facebook account, whose privacy settings still allowed him to admire her profile picture.
He insisted they meet at one of his companies, UXD International, a munitions recycling operation seventy-four miles west of Houston. The 100,000 square foot facility lay on the outskirts of rural Columbus, on a desert plain situated far from any densely populated areas, given the nature of their work.
Since the global war on terror had begun, Nicholas Dresden and his senior managing director/co-founder, Edward Senecal, had transformed their once tiny firm into a powerful conglomerate with high return portfolios. The firm’s growth was the result of purchasing specific defense companies including manufacturers of firearms and ammo; service providers of aviation and signals intelligence; and two very large defense contracting companies. UXD in particular designed, constructed, and operated demilitarization facilities for destroying and recycling conventional and chemical weapons around the world. Recycling of old and unwanted munitions resulted in the production of TNT and a variety of other products exported overseas for commercial mining use, including slurry explosives well-suited for underwater blasting applications.
Dresden had brought the journalist here so she could witness for herself UXD’s many successes—and because he was well aware of her agenda. She planned to confront him about how, during the past decade, political change in the White House and the drawdown and/or withdrawal of forces overseas created substantial losses in revenue and a steep decline in share value. Many of his companies were hemorrhaging; consequently, her article would depict him as a fifty-nine-year-old dinosaur staring up at an asteroid-filled sky.
Now, as she gaped at the colossal warehouse and the munitions stacked from floor to ceiling, Dresden flashed his perfectly capped teeth, ran fingers through his shock of gray hair, then led her to the edge of the balcony where the hustle and bustle of the shipping dock unfolded like a stage play before their eyes. Forklift operators loaded towering pallets of recycled explosives onto eighteen-wheelers; shipping clerks took inventory of incoming and outgoing merchandise; and another team of clerks manned stations on an assembly line that sealed boxes and marked them for shipment.
“This place is amazing,” she began.
“We’re very proud of it.”
She swiped a finger across her smartphone. “So do you mind if I record?”
“Go ahead.”
“How did all of this get started? I mean the firm, everything.”
He snickered. “That’s already well-documented. You didn’t Google me before you came here? Didn’t read our Wiki page? I’m shocked.”
Her gaze lit on him. “I don’t care about what’s already been said. I care about what you have to say now... with your inflection, your bias, your insights.”
Dresden thought a moment. He found her reply flattering and felt compelled to impress her, which, of course, was all part of her plan. “Here’s something I’ve never told anyone, something you won’t find online. It all started with bananas.”
“Excuse me?”
“That’s right, bananas.”
She stared over the rim of her glasses. “Is this some inappropriate joke?”
“Not at all. Hear me out. Eddie and I were in
our twenties and aggressive bastards back then. We were at a dinner party and somebody commented on the rising heart attack rate among the African population. A doctor in the group asked about the year’s banana crop.”
“What do bananas have to do with accelerated death rates?”
“We learned that the failed banana crop reduced the natural source of potassium in the African diet. The results were reflected in increased cardiac events, especially in undiagnosed coronary victims. You combine that loss of potassium with a poor health care system, and the result was a soaring fatal heart attack rate.”
“Wow, I wouldn’t have made that connection.”
“Wait, it gets better. Somebody in the group suggested it’d be a great time to sell the Africans bananas. That’s when Eddie began looking into a banana farm in Costa Rica. We formed D&S Equities and sold stock to everyone at the dinner party as a way to raise capital. We put it all together in one night with a handshake—nothing more. Within a week we had it all on paper, and Eddie went down to Costa Rica, bought out the banana farm, and we started shipping bananas to Africa. I was told we saved many lives.”
“Sounds pretty crazy. And risky.”
Dresden hoisted his brows. “Far better is it to dare mighty things, to win glorious triumphs, even though checkered by failure... than to rank with those poor spirits who neither enjoy nor suffer much, because they live in a gray twilight that knows not victory nor defeat.”
“That’s very eloquent. Who said that?”
“Theodore Roosevelt, and as you can tell, I love to recite it to all my employees. But the truth is, Eddie and I were just a couple of fast-talking frat boys from Princeton, and we didn’t have any of our own money in the pot. Fortunately, the risk paid off. We used our profits to buy a startup pharmaceutical company in Canada that makes statin and warfarin type drugs. Eddie’s Canadian, and Health Canada is a hell of lot easier to work with than the FDA.”
“So you sold bananas to Africa to maintain healthy hearts, and now you sell cardiac drugs in case the bananas aren’t enough.”
Dresden nodded. “That exact business model is working right here. The DoD pays us to make their munitions and pays us again to destroy or recycle them.”
“Sounds like a win-win. So how did you go from bananas to bombs?”
Her turn of phrase amused him, but instead of lifting his grin, he lowered his voice. “If you want to know, you’ll have to turn off the recorder, and you won’t be able to print any of this. Still interested?”
She consulted her smartphone. “You’re off the record.”
“Do you know anything about the Iran-Contra Affair back in the eighties?”
She winced and slowly shook her head.
“I keep forgetting you’re just a kid.”
“Last time I looked, I was a woman—with all the parts.”
Now he winced. “I’ll have to agree. Anyway, back then, Reagan decided to get involved in the Nicaragua civil war. Something called the Boland Amendment stopped the federal government from providing military support to overthrow the Nicaraguan government. Despite that, Vice Admiral Poindexter, and his deputy, Lt. Colonel Oliver North, diverted millions of dollars to the rebels. That money came from a deal where we sold anti-tank and anti-aircraft missiles to Iran. Around this time, the CIA approached Eddie and I, and using Iran-Contra funds, D&S Equities created Smith Armory. As a private entity we brokered ongoing arms deals to Nicaragua and Iran.”
“Why did they pick you guys?”
“There was a splinter group in congress. They were concerned about the erosion of presidential power. They realized that using private companies to wage wars created another barrier to congressional oversight and heightened secrecy for both the planning and the execution of declared or undeclared wars. We were their guinea pigs. They wanted an unknown company to work through, and by taking the risk, they rewarded us with covert preferential business opportunities, like inside intel on mismanaged companies ripe for takeover. Our firm grew rapidly from there.”
Her gaze narrowed on him. “Do you ever feel guilty?”
“About what?”
“Your companies profit from war. Without conflict and bloodshed, you’re out of business. Does that bother you?”
Dresden stiffened. “No.”
Susannah consulted her phone and read from a note: “I was looking at some reports on world international terrorism activities released by the State Department. It seems the administration’s unwillingness to engage in a ground war doesn’t bode well for D&S Equities.”
Dresden snorted. “It doesn’t bode well for America. Islamic Extremists have found safe havens in Syria and Iraq, and we’re doing nothing to stop them from training and equipping their fighters. This country is vulnerable, despite all of the vacuous assurances from administrators who spend more time covering their asses than protecting this great nation. The Boston Marathon bombing and the Charlie Hebdo attack in France could happen again... doubtless they will happen again... no matter what they tell you, my dear.”
Down below, the company’s Executive Director of Shipping, Tom Barryman, gave Dresden a thumb’s up, the signal that he was ready to give them the tour. Barryman had been with the company from the beginning, a second career after retiring from the Dallas Police Department. He was about Dresden’s age but waddled like an aging mallard while Dresden sported a triathlete’s physique from his incessant training.
Dresden gestured to the floor below. “Tommy wants you to see our static detonation chamber. It’s a machine that helps us destroy the bombs.”
Susannah removed her glasses to expose her stunning blue eyes flecked with green. “I have to be honest, Mr. Dresden, my editors want me to ask you some hard-hitting questions about your other companies and the tremendous losses you’ve incurred—”
“—which you just did. I’m glad we got that out of the way.”
She sighed. “I understand why you’ve brought me here, but before we go any further, I want to be upfront because I respect you. What you’re doing here is remarkable, but my editors want a story that focuses on the drawdown and downsizing of the military and its associated contractors and companies.”
“Of course. But it doesn’t have to be that way, does it? You could focus on how my business and our partners plan to evolve.”
She glanced down at her phone. “Dare mighty things, huh?”
“Absolutely. And, of course, you’ll find me much more agreeable. Shall we?”
Dresden escorted her down the stairs and across the shipping department, where Barryman handed them hardhats and safety glasses and led them to the far end of the facility, a five minute walk at a brisk pace. They passed through two security checkpoints with X-ray machines and entered another room, where the static detonation chamber rose from the center like an enormous blue refrigerator box surrounded by a spaghetti-work of scaffolding and staircases. Barryman took them behind the chamber to show them an adjoining room where a multi-jointed mechanical arm automatically loaded missiles into crates that were towed along on a conveyor, through a double airlock, and into the chamber itself. At the moment, the system was down for routine maintenance but would be up and running in thirty minutes.
“That’s the feed system up there,” said Barryman. “Our original feed only had a diameter of 150 millimeters and a length of 400. Weight was limited to three kilograms for each feed, but we just installed this new system, and we can accommodate most anything out there, missiles wider and taller than us.”
“So the bombs go inside and what happens?” asked Susannah.
“The chamber is superheated to 1,022 degrees Fahrenheit, so the explosives deflagrate and detonate. The gasses are destroyed by explosive effects and pyrolysis in the main chamber. Anything left is further treated to remove any pollutants. The scrap is retained until we’re sure everything’s safe and been completely destroyed.”
“It’s a very complicated and very expensive garbage disposal for things that go bang,” Dresden s
aid with a wink.
Susannah gestured that she wanted to take a picture, and Dresden urged her to do so.
“If you want to come back in half an hour, I can show you how it works,” said Barryman.
“Thank you, Tommy. We’ll let you know,” said Dresden.
“Okay. I need to run. Two big shipments heading out tonight. I’ll catch up with you later. Great to see you.”
“You, too,” Dresden replied. He regarded Susannah. “So now that I’ve convinced you that we’re not just profiteers, we can get the hell out of here and have dinner.”
She glanced down at the wedding ring on his hand. “Will your wife be joining us?”
“She’s back in New York working with one of her charities. If you feel—”
“No, not at all. You’re old enough to be my father. I was just curious. I thought it might be interesting to get some of her insights.”
“The real dirt on the firm, huh?”
“Exactly.”
“Well, if you’re nice, I’ll tell you a few more stories.”
“I did read about your trip to Afghanistan last year. Why did you want to embed with Special Forces troops? Didn’t you think it was too dangerous?”
“That’s a very long story.”
“Was it something on your bucket list?”
“You might say that.”
* * *
They had reservations at Del Frisco’s in Houston, and the drive over would take about ninety minutes in traffic. As Dresden sat with Susannah in the back of his limousine, he offered her a cocktail, and then they continued their conversation. She pried again about his trip to Afghanistan and why a man pushing sixty would put himself in harm’s way. He allowed her to speculate about wanting to see firsthand how the products and services supplied by his various companies aided troops in the field, or how he had gone to the mountains as part of some rich man’s macho fantasy weekend. When she was finished with her shots in the dark, he told her about how his father had fought in North Vietnam, Laos, and Cambodia with the Navy SEALs, and how his maternal grandfather was a member of a Naval Combat Demolition Unit during WWII and battled the Germans on Omaha Beach.
