PointOfHonor

by Susan Glinert Stevens

  He told himself his best weapon was between his ears. Charging like Rambo headlong into a fusillade of automatic weapon fire only worked in Hollywood; most other places it just got you killed fast.

  He felt the soldier before he saw him. Perhaps it was the crunch of gravel or a shadow oddly out of place or breathing out of place with the desert wind. Harper froze and reached down with his left hand to the boot dagger. He eased the snap off, feeling rather than hearing it. His fingers tightened around the hilt as he drew the black forged blade straight up.

  He released his grip on the Browning and set it down against the wadi’s bank. He reversed his grip on the knife and waited. No breath—no movement. He became part of the dirt and sand. He envisioned himself as nothing more than a brown patch on an endless desert. He believed he was invisible before his enemy. Time wound down to a tedious pace as he tensed.

  He imagined a cat laying flat in the weeds—its tail flickering back and forth, the front paws straight ahead and the head motionless, just before the cat leaps and kills. The hindquarters rise up and down. There is a rhythm to the attack—a dance before the kill. He felt the certain knowledge and belief that nothing can stop the inevitable conclusion. Patience and focus parlayed down to the last long seconds of a soldier’s life.

  The Iraqi slid down the side of the embankment. His own noise expected and ignored. There was a blur of motion as Harper drove forward, slamming the heel of his palm into the Iraqi’s nose and obliterating his features. He spun the Iraqi around by the shoulders and locked his neck in a sleeper hold where pressure is brought to bear on the carotid artery. With his left hand, he plunged the knife under his right wrist and deep into the man’s neck.

  They were still descending into the wadi when the kill ended. Harper pulled the dagger and wiped it clean on the soldier’s battle blouse. He replaced the dagger in his boot sheath; he grabbed the Browning and the soldier’s radio before shambling away from the dead man. It was time to fight back. Three seconds had ticked by.

  Harper moved quickly to a hole. He needed a few moments to compose his next move. A tremor rippled through his hands. His pulse pounded in his ears. The memories of other days, other places, and other times beckoned from his subconscious. He dare not fail. His Lynn, Catherine, and Grace had been threatened. He dare not give in to his memories and the faces of those he had killed. This had become alast man standing affair.He would be that man .

  “Anderson,” he whispered. “Can you see this joker?”

  Click click.

  “Okay, you give me a click when you do see him.”

  The radio check came a few minutes later. Harper turned down the gain and said slowly in Arabic, “This is the American commander. Let me talk to your superior officer.”

  “Major, I need about ten more minutes,” came Hayes in his helmet earjack.

  Harper clicked his throat mike once.

  The voice from the loud hailer came over the earplug from the two-way radio. It was one of the new Motorola models with a five-mile range, ten channels, and thirty-eight privacy codes. Not bad equipment and easily obtainable on the world market. They sold them in outdoor catalogs for a little over two hundred dollars.

  “Major Harper?”

  Harper was not in the mood for polite discussion. “Whoever you are, my sniper has the base of your skull in his crosshairs right now,” he lied. “Oh, you’ll never see him. He’s a Force Recon Marine and he could be anywhere from one hundred to one thousand meters away.” He clicked off and moved away from his hole.

  “Major,” came Hayes’s voice through his helmet earphones. “Whatever you just said must have made them a might nervous. They’ve stopped expanding their perimeter.”

  Harper clicked his throat mike again and bellied himself down behind a huge boulder.

  “The only reason you’re still alive is because I want to know who sold me out,” continued Harper.

  The Motorola earplug crackled into life. “Major Harper. I don’t think your sniper is anywhere near me. What I do know is one of my men is missing, and I’ll find his body and then I’ll find you.”

  Harper scrambled away from the boulder and slid into a crevasse. He clicked the Motorola on. “I wonder what your master is going to do to you when he finds out his very expensive database is missing. Or that you shot the only person who knows where the backup tapes are—you do know what backup tapes are, don’t you?”

  Another crunch of gravel—Harper turned on his side jerking the Browning up in a two-handed grip. His sight picture came to center just below the forehead of a soldier five feet away. He squeezed the trigger twice. A 9mm round produces very little recoil and the Browning is heavy enough to absorb most of it. He rolled away before the second brass cartridge hit the dirt.

  The soldier collapsed like a broken doll over the top of the boulder, his dead eyes registering surprise and his body marking Harper’s location like a red flare. Harper guessed he had fifteen seconds before they realized another man was down.

  Harper tucked the Browning into his tunic and unslung the Mossberg. He pushed the safety off, revealing the red dot just at the base of the receiver. He whispered into his throat mike, “Sergeant, I’m running out of time.”

  “Yes, sir. Kincaid must have moved the detonator. I can’t find it.”

  Harper breathed out slowly. The back of his head seemed to tighten some more. This was not getting any easier. Considering all the rock and sand, Kincaid could have hidden the clacker anywhere. He came to a spot where his back was covered by a solid piece of ground. He knelt down on one knee and sighted the Mossberg down the natural alley of the wadi he was sitting in. The ground here resembled a lunar landscape rather than a majestic Arabian Desert.

  The Motorola came to life again. “A desperate man will say anything to save his life. Listen Major—we found your HMMWVs.”

  The earth erupted with a terrible sound less than a hundred meters from where Harper was hunkered down. The blast lifted both vehicles into the air. Twisted, spinning wrecks tumbled back towards the ground and the tortured sound of their best chance for survival crashed back to the desert floor. The orange fireball turned black, then gray before the hushed crackle of flame and fire filtered on the desert breeze.

  “Perhaps, Major, I will travel to Chicago myself, and kill your children. You are not good enough to get all of us.”

  Harper waited. Sweat dribbled down his back and sides. His battle tunic was slick and stuck to his sides. Cramps plagued his upper thighs and lower legs. His mouth felt cottony and drops of sweat slid off the end of his nose and splattered onto the shotgun’s barrel. He remembered training drills when he thought his lungs would explode, and his vision narrowed due to the physical intensity. He had passed through certain physical limits where only sheer willpower kept him going.Never give up—never quit fighting—always keep thinking.

  An excited shout in Arabic—they had found one of the two men he had killed. A warrior must have the discipline to wait for the moment in every battle—a moment when the battle turns toward victory or slides to defeat. Harper sensed the moment approaching.

  He propped the end of the Mossberg on his knee and pulled the Motorola from his tunic. He pressed the transmit button and said very softly, “No one threatens my family and lives. Make your peace with your maker; I’m coming to get you.” He turned the Motorola off and slid the earplug out of his ear.

  Harper reached inside his tunic and found the red signal beacon. Jonas had told him the cavalry would come running if he pressed this one. His plans were collapsing and his men were scattered. Hayes could not find the detonators and Anderson was sitting in a hole where he could not move. He had an Iraqi commander who seemed to know more about the mission than he did. If ever there was a time for the good guys to come charging over the nearest hill, it was now.

  He glanced at the signal beacon and pressed it. There was a part of him that believed it would send a signal, and another part of him that doubted it would be the right one.
He plucked the beacon from his tunic and dropped it on the ground. It was time to see what would happen. Harper was on the move again.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE

  Al Jabar Air Base, Kuwait

  Monday, November 17, 1997

  5:00 P.M. (+3.00 GMT)

  Jonas Benjamin dozed on a cot. The pace of the past few days came to a sudden halt once Harper and his team stepped off into the desert. Now Jonas waited in a small room squirreled away inside a hanger. The jet noise and airport tempo left him as sleep overtook him. All he could do was wait, and the best thing to do while he waited was to rest.

  Once Harper called, he would need to get the team up and running in a hurry. He had checked on the aircraft five hours ago. They were still parked next to hanger. A crew was on standby in the duty room. Everything seemed okay. He looked around for the commanding officers and found them missing, but assumed they were probably bunked out somewhere else. He dismissed the anomaly and went back to monitor the satellite frequency for the beacons.

  There was nothing in his email account, or any encrypted faxes waiting his attention. The lack of signal traffic did not alert or alarm Jonas. After all, this was the hardest part of any operation—the waiting. The sitting next to a radio or satellite receiver for theCome get mesignal or the more urgentCome get me and bring some help! On several other missions, it had gone this way. The flurry of activity and acquisition of supplies prior to a quick departure was the prelude to a long and silent wait.

  Those things had happened. He failed to realize that this mission was not run through Langley’s normal Spec Ops command structure. He did not appreciate the significant change that this operation was run through the National Security Council and out of the White House’s West Wing. Louis Edwards was out of the command loop, which meant Jonas was not even considered part of the mission.

  Command and military asset arrangements were managed directly through the NSC. Orders were issued from the West Wing office in the name of the President down through the National Command Authority’s chain of command. Orders went to the SECDEF without question and were fed directly into the Joint Chiefs of Staff. The Pentagon’s bureaucracy ignored the explanation and methodically issued instructions throughout the world. It was little more than a mindless machine without a soul.

  Orders were translated from paper statements to digital signals. The signals were then scrambled by sophisticated multi-thousand bit, single-use encryption ciphers. Those signals were bounced off military communication satellites in geosynchronous earth orbit and captured by the appropriate military signal transponders. The process was reversed, and the general staff officers of whatever command had been reached reissued those orders to effect the disposition and deployment of actual men and machines. With the maturing microprocessor and communication bandwidth measured in gigabits, these actions happened with incredible speed.

  By the time Harper’sCome get me and bring some help signal arrived, the loop between the NSC and theGeorge Washington taskforce supplying the men and machines had closed. The orders never passed by Admiral Trevor Barnes. They were examined, verified, and executed by staff officers several ranks his junior. The helicopter gunships, the fighters for overflight protection, and the men to enforce an extraction had been removed from Al Jabar Airbase. The mission never existed.

  Jonas sat up in his cot staring dumbly at the satellite receiver alarm. He shook his head to clear his thinking before his fogged mind recognized the alarm’s urgency. He sat forward and hit the mouse next to his laptop’s screen. The signal system ran through Langley’s satellite and computer system and could not be shut down due to some order from the White House West Wing.

  A map displaying the border areas between Saudi Arabia and Southern Iraq and bracketing the area with Jordan on the right and Kuwait on the left appeared on his screen. He punched the F5 key to center the blinking dot on the screen and zoom the map software to show everything within a twenty-kilometer radius. The screen blinked before repainting the map display.

  He moved the mouse pointer to the printer icon and clicked. A few seconds later, the attached thermal printer hummed and a curled piece of paper showing the map location rolled off the printer. Jonas ripped the page off the end of the printer and clamped it on a clipboard. He grabbed his hat and slapped the side of his hip. The Beretta 92FS was still there. He smiled, thinking about how much the Beretta bugged Harper. His only observation was, “It’s not a Glock.”

  Harper was a Glock man, and Glock owners were fanatics who claimed their polymer-framed weapons were the best. He glanced back at the blinking screen. “See you soon.” He would soon find out how very wrong he was.

  Jonas ran through the hanger to the helipad and skidded to an uncertain stop. The AH-64Apache Gunships were missing. He tried to suck down some air and found it too thick. Where was everybody?

  He spun around looking for the Staff Sergeant assigned to the insertion team. No table, no radio, no coffee cups—nothing. Jonas stood flat-footed trying to come up with some explanation for their absence and knowing they were gone because they had been ordered to leave. He brought the map page up to his face and looked at the coordinates. Harper was in trouble; Jonas wondered if Harper knew how much.

  Jonas looked around the empty hanger and the area outside the hanger. They had left without saying anything. It was probably not personal. They simple got some orders and obeyed their orders. Jonas cursed loudly, and then said abruptly, “Think!”

  He pulled his satellite phone from the belt clip. He punched the ABC switch and started paging through the numbers logged in the memory. He stopped when the display showed: LOUIS EDWARDS. Jonas pulled the antenna out and stabbed the SEND button. He cursed again fuming as he stalked back to his room.

  He settled down before the laptop’s screen and punched the F5 key again. The screen zoomed to a two-kilometer radius. Jonas wondered why the dot had not moved. Were they hurt? Captured? He scowled as the carrier signal buzzed in his ear, then the ringing sound as he tried to find someone half way across the world.

  “Hello,” came the cautious voice in his ear.

  “Switch to scrambler!” snapped Jonas. He waited for the two-tone beep indicating the signal encryption scrambler had engaged.

  “I take it Harper has signaled.”

  “Yes.”

  “And I take it there are no helicopters to pick him up,” continued Edwards.

  Jonas pulled the phone from his ear and whispered, “How do you always know?”

  He put the phone back to his lips and said, “Yeah.”

  “The White House canceled the mission. They told me tonight, or rather—my is it that late—last night. I meant to call you, but as you can see things have gotten away from me.”

  “Yeah, well I got theCome get me and bring help signal. According to the computer, he’s not moving. He might be hurt or captured or—well, I don’t want to think about it.”

  He could almost see Louis nodding thoughtfully. A tired sigh hissed over the ether between Al Jabar and Washington. “We’ve been cut loose, Jonas. They don’t want anyone coming back from this one.”

  “So that means going to Admiral Barnes is a waste of time.”

  “I hardly think getting him reprimanded would help our cause. No, I am sure our friends in the White House have shutdown all help. It’s only because your signals go through Langley that you even got it.”

  Jonas paced across the room and looked at the sunlight. It would be dark in a few hours. “I need something now, Louis. I got a couple hundred klicks to fly.”

  “Yes, I know my boy.” The fatigue cracked his voice. There was another pause, “Jonas, you remember the fellow the SAS boys helped out during the war?”

  “The one whose wife and kid they got out during the occupation?”

  “Yes. I mean you’re right there. I think it’s time to call in a chit.”

  “How’s he going to get military clearance?”

  Jonas could hear the click of a keyboard
in the background. Was Louis at Langley ,or home, or somewhere else? Something else was happening? Missions did not get canceled in a vacuum.

  “Ah, here’s his phone number. Where are you right now?”

  “Hanger fifty-seven.”

  “One thing. I need to know something. You were at the briefing with the NSA and General Carnady—right?”

  “Yeah, I was Langley’s briefing officer. You were digging up Harper at the time.” What did the briefing have to do with anything? There were men in the field calling for help—now! Louis knew Carnady had been there, so what was he really asking?

  Louis chuckled at the thought. It seemed so long ago, and it was only Saturday afternoon when he faced down Harper at a Karate School in Roselle. “Jonas, was there someone that might not want this mission to succeed?”

  “There were a lot of people there,” replied Jonas.

  “No, not the first meeting—the second meeting,” corrected Louis.

  The second meeting had been strange. “There were not many folks I’d care to be in a foxhole with,” he said.

  “I think one of them sold us out,” explained Louis matter-of-factly.

  “You mean canceled the mission?”

  “No, I mean sold us out like Aldrich Ames sold us out,” said Louis calmly.

  “You think they were waiting for Harper.”

  “It’s possible.”

  Jonas stared at the blinking dot on the screen. “I’ve got to go get him, Louis. What are you trying to say?”

  “I’m saying I don’t want to lose you and Harper. I’m suggesting that if they were waiting for Harper they might be waiting for you as well,” continued Louis. “Jonas, if we use the Kuwaiti, we won’t have any backing from theGeorge Washington . If things go down badly, how much help do you think a bunch of gung-ho Arabs who want to kill other Arabs will be?” Arabs shooting Arabs was not a new idea.

  Jonas ran the possibilities through his mind. He punched the F6 key until the map showed a hundred-kilometer radius. “Louis, we’ll be less than a hundred klicks from the Saudi border. We could get out that way.”