by Bob Mayer
Since it seemed that his part of the briefing was over, Vaughn went and took the seat that Orson had vacated. He glanced around the room. They were all considering the suggestion.
Sinclair was the first to voice an objection. “If this island is run by the Abu Sayef, then it’s going to be hard not to get discovered and give the enemy a warning, never mind losing the recon team.”
Orson held up a hand. “We’re getting ahead of ourselves here. Let’s back up and stick with the original briefing plan. We’ve determined we can’t pinpoint our target—Abayon—so we’ll have to come back to that.” He turned to Hayes. “It’s your island. I tasked you with infiltration and exfiltration planning.”
Hayes stood. He ran a hand along his upper lip, wiping off a thin sheen of sweat, then went to the maps. “Either into the water or the jungle is the best way. You want to avoid the villages, naturally. Any strangers will immediately be reported to the Abu Sayef. And none of you are going to pass for locals.”
“We land in water,” Vaughn noted, “it’s a bit of a walk to the mountain.”
Hayes nodded. ‘True, but the closer you come to the mountain, the more eyes will be watching. One thing the Abu Sayef are constantly warned about during their training is to watch the sky, that the government troops would come in helicopters or by parachute from an airplane. You can be sure that there are antiaircraft missiles hidden somewhere on that mountain.”
Vaughn remembered the RPG that had killed his brother-in-law. Things would have been much worse if the terrorists had used surface-to-air missiles. For this mission, he had entertained thoughts of landing right on top of the mountain and working their way down to find the entrance. Military dogma dictated taking the high ground.
“You said a plane,” Vaughn noted. “I think we can get in at night using HAHO with offset.” He was referring to a high altitude, high opening parachute operation. It was a procedure where the plane flew very high, at an altitude of over 20,000 feet with the jumpers on oxygen, exiting at that height. The aircraft would not only be high, but offset laterally from the drop zone. After exiting the aircraft, the jumpers would immediately deploy their parachutes and then “fly” them to the drop zone. Offsets of ten to fifteen miles were common using such a technique, but the aircraft never got close enough either in altitude or lateral distance to raise suspicions.
Orson nodded. “HAHO definitely for the recon team. The question is, who here is qualified to do that kind of jump?”
Vaughn raised his hand. Then Tai. That was it.
“We have our recon team,” Orson announced.
“When do we go?” Vaughn asked.
“As soon as we can get a plane to drop you,” Orson said. He tapped the map. “You pick your drop zone. You HAHO onto the island. Check it out. Radio back to us how the rest of the team will get in. And you find Abayon. Let us know how we can get to him, and we’ll do the mission prep for the actual kill. You let us know what we’ll need to bring.”
How about a tactical nuke? Vaughn thought. He didn’t think much of the plan. It put him and Tai into enemy territory in an exposed position. “And if we’re compromised?” he asked.
Orson’s dead gray eyes fixed Vaughn with their gaze. “Then you’re dead. Do not allow yourself to be taken alive, because we’re not coming to get you, if that’s what you’re asking.”
Vaughn took the thermal imagery and went over to the map of the island. “I say we land here,” he said, tapping the very top of Hono Mountain, where there appeared to be a small clearing. “That all right with you?” he asked, looking at Tai.
She nodded. “Fine.”
Orson almost seemed disappointed. “All right. I’ll arrange the aircraft. You go in tonight. Get your gear ready today. The rest of you, back to work.”
Fort Shatter, Hawaii
The request to send in a reconnaissance team had generated a great deal of debate among the staff officers who were working the simulation. Most were against it and argued instead that more assets be allocated. The operations officer even sent a request to the National Command Authority for more troops and some Air Force assets with greater firepower. General Slocum, part of the old school that believed in using a sledgehammer when a hammer might do, signed off on the request, adding in an appendix the alternate plan for a recon element to be sent in early to try to pinpoint Abayon’s position and the attendant risks of doing so.
It only went as far as Foster’s computer, which was acting as National Command Authority. He denied the request for more assets, on the grounds that the operation was to be conducted clandestinely. Then he gave the go-ahead for the reconnaissance element to be sent in. The operations officer then turned around and, after having Slocum sign it, sent the tasking for a C-130 transport to conduct the HAHO drop that night, thinking it was all part of the simulation. In fact, Foster sent this tasking with the official signature block and proper code words to the designated Air Force squadron in Okinawa.
It was a shell game, one that only Foster knew the extent of and controlled. He had his own ideas about why he was being used to do this. He assumed that he was the “cut out,” the link between those doing the mission and those ordering it.
Foster wasn’t naive, though. He also knew that things were done in certain ways to allow for deniability. No one would be able to prove who gave the orders. While he yearned to work for the National Security Agency, he also knew that he’d be traveling much farther into the world of covert operations than working military simulations here in Hawaii. Not that the thought bothered him. If one wanted to play in the big game, they had to be willing to take big risks. And there was also the issue of the threat the NSA representative had held over his head. He was still shaken by the revelation that the secret he had assumed was buried in the past was not only known by others, but well-documented.
When he was in college, during his senior year, the football team had been invited to a bowl game in San Diego. Two nights before the big game, Foster had gone with a group of teammates across the border into Tijuana. They’d consumed vast quantities of questionable alcohol and finally ended at the desired location: a whorehouse. The group had split up into various rooms as directed by the madam, and to his surprise, dismay, and—to be honest—titillation, he had walked into a room occupied by a young girl. A very young girl. One who not yet made it to double digits in age.
In the years since then, he’d always regretted not turning right around and walking out. But he’d been drunk, he’d been horny, and he’d been in Mexico.
And now he wondered if he’d been set up. He doubted it, given the years that had passed since with nothing happening, but when the mysterious David showed him those photos, he’d wondered.
Foster shook off his concerns as he worked both sides of the supposed simulation. He had to accept that he was on the inside now. He was what he had always aspired to be—a player—and he was getting ready to move to the big leagues. He looked out the window of his office at the Sim-Center, at all the men and women in military uniform “playing” their parts, and shook his head. They were fools, ignorant of the way the world really worked.
There was another aspect of this that told him he was already at another level. The intelligence he was forwarding to the team in isolation was not only top of the line from the NSA, CIA, and other alphabet soup organizations in the United States government, but some of it was coming from agencies that worked for foreign governments. He assumed that the NSA had tapped into these sources somehow and was co-opting them.
Foster ran through the message traffic being generated on Okinawa. Most of it was mundane, the normal stuff that was to be expected from a team in isolation, and it mirrored what his computer was generating for the staff in the simulation. There were some minor differences, however. For example, the team was asking for two Squad Automatic Weapons, while the simulation had not anticipated such a request. Foster pulled that message out of the flow and sent it on to the appropriate facility on Okinawa, giving it
the proper authorization from Westcom headquarters. He did the same with the request for sniper rifles and the equipment for the HAHO jump. It was a ballet of data, he thought, and he was into it, playing both sides with the expertise he had built up over the years. Those being tasked did as ordered, as far as supporting the mission, while those giving the orders as part of the simulation didn’t know that some of the orders were actually being implemented.
Foster paused as he noted a message directed to an address he didn’t recognize. He checked his database and found out it was being sent to ARPERCEN: Army Personnel Center, headquartered in Fairfax, Virginia. The message seemed innocuous enough: a request from Captain Lee Tai to be considered for an ROTC teaching slot in her next assignment. Not exactiy an earth-shattering message, and one that could easily have been lost in the volume of traffic.
But it was wrong because it had nothing to do with the mission. The written instructions he’d received on the laptop had been explicit: any unusual message traffic was to be diverted to a certain address to be reviewed. He was sure there was nothing wrong with Captain Tai’s request, but after his most recent encounter, he was now a big believer in following Royce’s rules. Foster stopped the message and did as instructed.
As General Slocum took the podium at the front of the Sim-Center, Foster paused in his work and turned on the intercom so he could hear what the general had to say.
“People, listen up,” the general began. “Apparendy, the big wigs in Washington think they know how to run this operation better than we do. They’ve denied our request for more air power, but they have given the go-ahead for the reconnaissance element to go in tonight. Regardless of how you feel about that, I want you to support this with your best effort.” Slocum paused and looked about the room. “Is that clear?”
The reply was a thunderous, “Yes, sir.”
In the control room, Foster shook his head. It was as if they were still in college, playing on the team. He had left the team behind a long time ago.
Okinawa
“What is this Yamashita’s gold thing you mentioned?” Vaughn asked Tai. The two of them were in the corridor outside the main isolation room, packing their rucksacks for the upcoming mission. Vaughn could tell that Tai had been on airborne missions before, because she was going through the same process he was: packing and repacking, each time leaving something out to lighten and tighten the load. You took a whole different view about what you packed when you had to carry it on your back.
For example, they were carrying a week’s worth of food—just in case—even though they planned to be on the ground for only a few days. But they were cutting down the meal packages, taking out unnecessary and “heavy” items such as extra plastic spoons. To an outsider it would seem ridiculous, but it was almost a ritual of mission preparation in Special Operations. Of course, a week’s worth of food for a mission was only seven meals. On the other hand, they both were going heavy on items such as ammunition.
Tai looked up from her gear, which was laid out on a poncho liner. “General Tomoyuki Yamashita was the commander of Japanese forces in the Philippines during the Second World War. It’s been well-documented that the Japanese conducted a systematic pillage of the countries they conquered during the war. They took all the riches they could get their hands on, particularly gold—the accumulated wealth of twelve Asian countries. Not only gold, but other treasures, such as pieces of art.
“There were special teams accompanying Japanese forces in the early days of the war, when the Rising Sun spread around the western Pacific Rim. They were tasked with emptying banks, treasuries, art galleries, museums, palaces—even pawnshops and private homes—of anything of value. It was a special branch of the Kempetai—the Japanese military intelligence service.”
Vaughn didn’t find that very surprising. He’d been in Baghdad during the fall and seen what had happened there. Plundering was an age-old companion of military conquest. Sometimes it was done officially, and often unofficially. He knew the Nazis had done it in Europe and Russia during the Second World War, so it didn’t take a great leap of logic to figure the Japanese had done it too.
“There’s a lot that’s not known about the entire thing,” Tai continued, “but there are some facts. The overall plundering project was called kin no yuri, which means Golden Lily, named after a poem written by the Emperor Hirohito.” She snorted. “That’s one war criminal who got to skate. He professed ignorance of Golden Lily after the war and said it didn’t exist. Yet his brother, Prince Chichibu, was in charge of the project. You don’t think they chatted about it over a meal?
“Of course, Hirohito also expressed ignorance about the rape of Nanking. Seems everyone always gets memory failure or they weren’t really in charge when bad things that occurred under their watch are brought up.”
“I don’t get it,” Vaughn said as he refolded his GoreTex waterproof jacket and stuffed it once more in an outside pocket on his rucksack, trying to have it take up fewer square inches of room. “Why do you think this treasure ended up in the Philippines and not Japan? Seems like the emperor would have wanted those riches close at hand.”
“Because the U.S. Navy instituted a submarine blockade of Japan very early in the war,” Tai explained. “Many ships heading back to the homeland were sunk, and Chichibu didn’t want to take the risk of losing the treasure. It was easier—and more secure— to send the ships carrying the loot to the Philippines. The Americans were leery of sinking ships in that area because some of them carried American POWs. In fact, a couple of POW ships were accidentally sunk late in the war, with great loss of friendly life.”
Vaughn considered this as Tai began loading magazines with nine-millimeter rounds for her MP-5 submachine gun. He noted her precision as she made sure each round was properly seated.
“Why do you think Orson didn’t want to talk about it?” Vaughn asked.
Tai paused, bullet in one hand, magazine in the other, and looked at him. “As he said, the target—our target—is Abayon.”
“But if Abayon has some of this Golden Lily treasure—”
“Listen,” Tai said, cutting him off. “There’s no doubt Yamashita received a lot of the Golden Lily shipments in the Philippines. Hirohito’s cousin, Prince Takeda Tsuneyoshi, was stationed in the Philippines to oversee the secreting away of the treasure. Some say there were over 175 sites prepared all over the islands. No matter how good they were at secrecy, word of this leaked. Some have been found. But the rumor is a couple of the truly key ones, containing hundreds of millions—if not billions—of dollars worth of gold and art are still hidden.
“When Yamashita surrendered on September second, 1945, he was charged with war crimes, but there was no mention of plundered treasure—not a single mention of it in the trial transcripts. Yamashita was convicted and sentenced to death. He was hanged. Pretty damn quickly too. War was different back then. None of this bleeding heart stuff you see these days.” She said this with a tone of contempt that even Vaughn found striking.
“But. . .” She drew the word out. “Have you ever heard of Operation Paper Clip?”
Vaughn shook his head. He had stopped packing and, while focused on what Tai was saying, felt as if he were at the edge of a vast, dark chasm, the ground on which he stood not exactly secure.
“Operation Paper Clip has also been well-documented, yet no one ever talks about it,” Tai said. “And when they do, they focus on Europe and the German rocket scientists. Paper Clip was instituted in the last years of the war, when the tide had turned and we were pretty confident we were going to win. Some smart person figured out that there was going to be a wealth of technical information to be gained from those we defeated. After all, the Germans had built V-2 rockets capable of hitting London.
“Operation Paper Clip, a rather innocuous name for a rather devious endeavor, was started in 1944 as those at the strategic level started looking beyond the end of the war. The Japanese and Germans might have plundered the lands they conquer
ed of their physical riches, but in the States there were those who realized that there were other, more valuable riches which needed to be harvested.” Tai tapped the side of her head. “Brain power.”
Vaughn nodded. “Yeah. I read about that. A lot of the scientists who worked on the early space program were ex-Nazis.”
“Ex-Nazis who we could use,” Tai said. “They hanged Yamashita in the Philippines for war crimes, yet they welcomed into the United States Nazi scientists who had done terrible things, because they had knowledge we wanted. Like the Kempetai, we sent intelligence officers from the JIOA—Joint Intelligence Objectives Agency—with our frontline troops as they swept into Germany. There are actually recorded instances where the JIOA officers almost got into fire-fights with officers from the war crimes units as both groups went after the same people, but for very different reasons. And when official decisions had to be made over jurisdiction, the JIOA almost always took precedence. And this was despite the fact that President Truman signed an executive order banning the immigration of war criminals from the Axis powers into the United States.”
“How do you know all this stuff?” Vaughn asked.
“My specialty is intelligence.”
“Yeah,” Vaughn said, “but all this history. World War II. I mean, that’s old stuff.”
“Old stuff that still has repercussions today,” Tai said. She put another bullet into the magazine in her hand, held it up to check that it was full, then slid it into a pocket on her vest. “Abayon came out of the Second World War. Everything and everyone has a history. The best way to understand things now is to examine where they came from. Most Americans have little sense of history, and because of that, they have little sense of why things are the way they are.”
Vaughn considered the thought. His brother-in-law had died on a mission to free hostages. The justification for the mission had been enough for Vaughn’s team in isolation. But they had never examined why the Abu Sayef had taken those hostages. It was an axiom of guerrilla warfare that few openly discussed anymore, but one man’s terrorist was another man’s freedom fighter.
