Sudden Threat

by A. J Tata

  “Bravo six, this is Red six, over.”

  Zachary responded to Taylor’s call.

  “I’ve got two civilians in my AO. They’re Americans. Might be two of the hostages we heard about. One’s wounded pretty badly in the leg. What should I do with them?” Taylor asked.

  So far, he had successfully put the issue of his brother on the back burner. He had been cognizant of it, but had forced himself to deal with the matters at hand. Taylor’s call had served to rotate the turnstile, as if his mind could only handle the array of events one at a time. First, the war, then his brother, next the war, then his brother. He envisioned an usher taking tickets as the thoughts strolled through the stile. Brother, war, brother, war, and so on.

  Kneeling in the stinking mud and water, he called back to Taylor.

  “I’ll call a medevac for them. Have two troops move them to checkpoint three-one for pick up.”

  It was the only right thing to do. He imagined that there were two brothers back in the United States somewhere who were glad he had called the medevac for the two men.

  “You okay, sir?” Slick asked, sensing his com-mander disconnect from the increasingly pressing events.

  Zachary turned and looked at the young soldier, patted him on the back, and said, “Let’s kill some bad guys.”

  The tanks passed to his front, only six hundred meters away. It was nerve-racking, watching them from such a short distance. Would one of his soldiers screw the plan and fire too soon, or too late? It was a distinct possibility, given the haphazard pace of events.

  “They look just like M1s, sir,” Slick said.

  “More like the German Leopard 2, Slick. Almost an exact copy,” Zachary said, releasing some nervous tension. He rested his M4 on his dry knee as he lay back against a muddy dike.

  He saw the first missile strike the second tank, causing a brief fireball that lit the immediate sur-roundings. Successive missiles scored hits as well, stopping the column so that roughly thirty tanks, two companies, were beyond the rice paddies.

  That’s too many, Zachary thought to himself. But he waited. Maybe they could still do it.

  Takishi slewed the turret to the right, wishing they would quickly get off the dike that was the road separating two large paddy fields. This place will be good for factories one day, he thought, as his tank finally passed beyond the rice paddies.

  He slewed the turret back to the left, enjoying the ride. Okay, where are these guys? He had reports from his logistical units in Cabanatuan that they were under heavy fire from what seemed like a battalion of light infantry. Are you kidding me? A battalion?

  “Muriami, let’s go find these people and get to Manila,” Takishi said as Muriami raced the jet engine, slamming Takishi’s ribs into the steel seat back.

  The other tank commanders followed suit, glad they were able to move faster, no longer impeded by the sudden drop on either side.

  When he noticed some hot black spots burning in his thermal sight, he slewed the turret even with the road to gain perspective, then back again at the rising ground.

  There they are!

  “Gunner, high explosive, enemy personnel in the woods,” Takishi said, mimicking the precision of a skilled soldier.

  The loader slammed one round into the massive breech while the gunner took control and lased to the target. His signal came back quickly, indicating he was a mere four hundred meters away.

  “Acquired,” the young sergeant announced with cold acumen. He could have been on a Sunday drive for all he cared.

  Takishi said, “Fire when ready,” only to override the gunner when he saw the missiles screaming toward his column of tanks.

  The gunner’s shot flew errant, cutting a white hole into the black night, landing almost a mile away without doing any damage.

  Zachary watched in disbelief as the first tank continued to roam free on the hardpan. Taylor’s men had fired two volleys of Javelin missiles and three sets of AT4s. He thought he counted fifteen enemy vehicles burning. They burned a brilliant orange hue that quickly mixed with the black smoke of melting rubber.

  But that’s only half. Zachary was growing increasingly concerned. He did not want Kurtz to shoot his wad on the thirty or so tanks lined up to his front if Taylor needed the help.

  The Japanese tanks that could turn off the road raced for the wooded knoll, offering only frontal shots, the worst kind, for Taylor’s gunners and randomly spitting machine-gun fire into the edge of the forest. It was almost too late for Zachary to have Kurtz’s men do anything about the advance.

  Zachary checked and achieved a small measure of reassurance when he saw five tanks burning bumper to bumper at the junction in the road where the rice paddies gave way to hardstand.

  No way they’re getting around that.

  “Bravo six, this is Red six, we’re taking heavy fire, over!” came Taylor’s nervous voice, almost seeming to squeak in a high pitch. He thought he could hear the bullets whipping past Taylor over the microphone.

  “Roger—”

  “Break, break,” Barker said, loudly, short-circuiting the commander. “This is Blue six. I’m on your flank now. Engaging. Out.”

  Zachary watched as six missiles arched through the sky, and found targets, stopping the tanks in their tracks.

  That leaves nine.

  Another volley, this time AT4s disabled two more tanks.

  Seven.

  Zachary watched as some of the tanks stacked on the road tried to turn off and support the attack. They were unsuccessful, mostly dipping over the edge of the concrete road, then rolling into the deep mud, and sticking, unable to move forward or back. One tank turned its tread until it chewed the concrete, made partial purchase in the mud, then flipped, pinning down and ultimately drowning the tank commander, who had opened his hatch to guide the effort.

  Some of the other tanks, though, turned their turrets and began to support the attack with small-arms fire and main gun blasts. Finally, his tactical patience had reached its limit.

  “White, this is Bravo. Do it.”

  “Roger,” Kurtz responded.

  Kurtz’s men rose from the swampy bog like Francis Marion’s American Revolution cavalry, water and mud and rice stems streaming and hanging off their bodies. They fired volley after volley of antitank weapons, nearly depleting the company’s entire stock, including the plus up from the ammunition pile at Subic.

  The return fire was unexpectedly heavy, splashing into the mud, spraying water in all directions.

  There they were again. Those damned heli-copters, firing 30mm chain guns at his men.

  Zachary radioed Major Kooseman and asked again about the attack helicopters, “We need support now, sir,” he told him.

  “Helos are five minutes out,” Kooseman told him.

  Five minutes? This thing’ll be history in five minutes.

  Zachary watched as another volley from Barker’s platoon cut the attacking force down to three tanks.

  “Bravo, this is Red, we’re out of tank-killing systems, over,” Taylor said, sounding disgusted.

  “This is Blue. Likewise,” Barker said, piggy-backing on Taylor’s bad news.

  Zachary dropped his hand into his lap after saying, “Roger, continue to fight, attack helicopters on the way.”

  He felt the first draft of the cool wind lift a matted hair off his forehead as he heard a helicopter in the background. Could it be? No, it was not. Only the medevac for the two civilians.

  A raindrop touched his nose. At first, he thought an enemy round had kicked water into his face, but distinguished the coolness of the liquid and looked skyward. Lifting his goggles from his face, he saw heavy clouds racing across the creeping grayness of the morning like a Yankee clipper cutting through stormy seas. Then he looked at the stack of enemy tanks, some burning, some firing, some cocked crazily over the lip of the road. What a perfect target.

  Defenseless tanks were lined up single file on the road with only a few enemy helicopters swarming for prot
ection. The beauty of it was that the Japanese self-propelled artillery was stacked on the road as well. For the moment, they were safe from any indirect fire, but still in great danger from the enemy helicopters bobbing up and down behind the tree line near Fort Magsaysay.

  The rain came with an unexpected suddenness. Cool and heavy, the drops felt larger than normal. The wind blew sideways, making the rain feel like tiny darts against Zachary’s face. It felt both hot and cold at the same time. Zachary prayed for the aberration to go away, hoping it was a simple thunderstorm. The wind gusted, spitting cold water in his face out of defiance, reporting that things were only going to get worse.

  The intensity of the rain increased, pelting down in sheets.

  CHAPTER 88

  Greene County, Virginia

  Other than being totally humiliated and having her car destroyed, Meredith’s worst injury was the gash on her head from Stone’s fireplace. She had crawled from the wreckage, running and not looking back, fearing that either Stone was chasing her or that her car was about to catch fire and explode.

  The car, while totaled, did not burn, and thankfully she had been wearing her seat belt. She had spent one night in the Georgetown hospital, then rented a car so she could go to the one safe place she believed was still available to her.

  She spoke to her assistant, Mark, over the phone from the Garrett house in Stanardsville. She told him that she would be reporting back to work in a few days, that she had an accident and needed to recover.

  “Yeah, the SecDef personally came down here looking for you,” Mark said.

  I bet he did.

  “Really, did he say anything?”

  “Not really. Just said he was doing ‘battlefield circulation,’ otherwise known as management by walking around. He asked where you were, then split. He looked kinda nervous.”

  “Thanks, Mark. I’ll see you in a few days,” Meredith said, ready to hang up.

  “Karen, can I use that computer I asked you about last night?”

  “Sure thing. Do all my business on it. Have my own server too. Went back to UVA and got a certification in computer science. I’ll do the occasional house call for the folks around here to fix their stuff.” They walked into the study, which was lined with pine paneling and had two bookshelves at the back. A smallish desk was covered with mail and books and a black-and-walnut UVA college chair with an orange and blue seat cushion was pulled away from the desk. A bench was underneath the window that opened onto the north part of the farm and offered a generous view of the mountains.

  “Huh,” Meredith said. “You any good with security stuff?”

  “How ya mean?” she asked, raising an eyebrow.

  “I’ve got a thumb drive, and I can see the folders, but can’t open them.”

  “Password-protected. You didn’t try to open them did you? Get locked out.”

  “No, I figured that much out after I clicked on one and got the password dialogue box. I never tried a password.”

  “Good thing,” Karen said. “Matt and I have played around with some algorithms for code breaking.” She looked up at Meredith after she sat at the computer and said, “Given his line of work.”

  Meredith dug through her purse and said, “Well?”

  “Problem?” Karen asked.

  “Can’t find my lipstick, but here’s that thumb drive.” It was the one conscious thought she had as she crawled from the wreckage. Get the thumb drive.

  Karen took the device and plugged it into the USB port and quickly pulled open the dialogue box with the files. Then she opened another program from her windows display and played around with it a minute. A black screen came up and scrolled through hundreds of lines of code and stopped. Karen minimized that screen and said, “Interesting.”

  “What?” Meredith asked, hopeful.

  “Did he have a problem memorizing passwords or something?”

  “All the time,” Meredith said, more hopeful.

  “Well, he used Firefox, and all you have to do is click on the Firefox icon here in his thumb drive and you get all the passwords,” Karen explained. She performed the function and a series of boxes with asterisks in them popped up.

  “They’re still protected,” Meredith said.

  “Watch this.” Karen clicked on java script. Suddenly the asterisks disappeared, and the passwords appeared.

  KeithRichards2002.

  “He a Stones’ fan?”

  “You might say that.” Meredith grimaced.

  “Okay, I’m going to leave it with you. I never did this. And if I ever get a call about it, this computer will be in the fireplace before I hang up the phone.”

  “No worries. I promise. You’re awesome, Karen. Thanks so much.”

  Karen left, and Meredith sat down to begin plowing through the files. The password worked for each folder, and what she found was, to put it mildly, shocking.

  In the first file, the Pred-China folder, she read document after document that recorded financial transactions of U.S. technology sales to China totaling some $100 million. Meredith figured that at $5 million each, the Chinese had received about twenty Predators. The money, it seemed, was then funneled in two directions.

  First, there was a clear chain of transactions to a man named Takishi, she presumed this was the man she had seen leaving Stone’s office and with whom Stone had exchanged a Rolling Stones’ code.

  What could Takishi be doing with $75 million?

  Well, she thought, he could be building weapons plants on the island of Mindanao. Was this any different than selling TOW missiles to Iran, then funding the insurgency in Nicaragua? Instead of Iran-Contra, do we have China-Abu Sayyaf, she wondered? That would be a twist, fund the bad guys to start a war … for what?

  Next, she opened a file labeled “AIG.” American International Group was the world’s largest insurance company. In this file she found stock-trading records for early September 2001, prior to September 11. They were a combination of short sales of AIG and United Airlines stock as well as option puts. In essence, whoever the account numbers belonged to had bet in early September that AIG and United stocks were going to go down big.

  Bottom line: Someone knew about the coming attacks.

  Was that where it ended? she wondered. Did they know about the attacks or did they help plan the attacks? Meredith had read all of the reports of the high-ranking CIA officials who were under investigation for placing short trades on airline and insurance stocks a few days prior to 9-11. For whatever reason, the story never got much play in the press.

  But the evidence was staring her in the face. The Rolling Stones, or at least Keith Richards, aka Bart Rathburn, either knew of the short trades or had placed the short trades … or both. Rathburn, after all, was a finance major and had worked at a hedge fund before finding his way to academia and the Pentagon. Had the other $25 million gone to short trades? Or had it gone to helping the hijackers?

  She remembered reading somewhere that 9-11 cost Al Qaeda somewhere around a half million dollars. That was peanuts to these guys.

  Or had their cooperation, if there was coop-eration, been more subtle, such as pushing aside a report on the flight training of insurgents, for example?

  She shuddered. The bottom line, she assessed, was that the Rolling Stones knew about the 9-11 attacks before they occurred.

  So, let’s see who they are. She opened Mick Jagger’s file and saw a complete dossier on Secretary of Defense Robert Stone. She scanned through the document and closed it.

  Next she opened Charlie Watts’ file and saw a Harvard Business School picture of Takishi, smiling and handsome. As she read the file, Takishi was an HBS classmate of Bart Rathburn.

  She had assumed that Rathburn was Keith Richards since there was no file on Richards and because Stone had once mistakenly called him Keith. So when she opened the Ronnie Wood file, she was not so much surprised when she didn’t see Rathburn’s face.

  Instead, she was shocked at the image staring back at her.
>
  Dick Diamond?

  CHAPTER 89

  Island of Mindanao, Philippines

  Chuck Ramsey could hear the helicopters circling in the distance near Cateel Bay. He saw one of the U.S. Air Force Pave Lows zipping low along the beach, then banking high into the air above the thatch huts, blowing the roof off one of them. The valiant effort of Zachary’s Black Hawk had ended when the UH-60 had to make a precautionary landing on the northern tip of Mindanao because of lack of fuel. These U.S. Pave Lows were sent via the Joint Special Operations Task Force.

  There was little he could do to effect linkup with this soaring, hovering angel above them, though, with no radio.

  The helicopters were a welcome sign, as he had lost six more men besides Eddie in the last series of ambushes. The Abu Sayyaf was still out there chasing him. For the past week, they had walked, then fought, walked, then fought, like two boxers in the twelfth round, slinging wild punches, then moving away, circling, holding a lone fist outward to keep one another at bay, circling some more, then fighting. It was ceaseless.

  Ramsey licked his dry lips and steadied his dizzy gaze as he peered through the gray-morning skies, searching for the Pave Low. A rainstorm looked to be moving to his north. He was weak from lack of water and food. The bodies of his Special Forces team littered the trail, a trail of tears, which they had cut through this unspoiled rain forest on the Mindanao eastern shore. First, there had been Peterson, then Jones, then Eddie, then one here, two there, and suddenly it was just Ramsey, Lonnie White, Randy Tuttle, Ken Benson, and Abe.

  Abe had survived it all and carried a rucksack and M4 rifle from one of the fallen soldiers. He had painted his face with camouflage stick. During the last small engagement, similar to the others where they had doubled back on their own trail like some Louis L’Amour scouts often do, Abe had surged forward, bayonet fixed on his rifle, rising out of the tall grass and charging the stunned and equally tired rebels. They had fled down the mountainside as Abe had impaled a fourteen-year-old boy toting a rifle on the end of his bayonet.