"Look," Ramsey explained, "you're second lieutenants. You can't go to the battalion commander and fucking demand that your CO be relieved just because he's a brokedick."
"Then what do we do?" asked 2d Lt. Ray Ames, the 2d Platoon commander. "The company is going to shit faster by the minute. We used to be the best in the battalion; now everyone just laughs at us."
"You do your fucking job," said Ramsey. "You take care of your platoon. That's how you keep the company going. You go to the colonel and say you want the captain fired because he's a pencilneck, you'll be lucky if he just throws your mutinous little asses out of his office. You're going to be putting your own dicks on the chopping block." He glared at them; they were staring at the ground. "Who told you fuckers you could pick your boss anyway? If the colonel wants Doylan relieved, he'll do it. Look," he said, in a softer tone, "Captain Pleister spoiled you guys. You don't find many like him. He was a real stud warrior. You've got to face it—there are only a few of them around."
"But Jesus," moaned Hanna. "This guy is such a dildo. Look at this fucking bivouac. It looks like a fucking Boy Scout jamboree out here. You know he made us take tents just so he could use his. And then he even made the gunny use string so all the rows of would be even."
"Look," said Ramsey, "after your first tour as a lieutenant, you spend four to six years out of the game. When these captains come back to a battalion, they're rusty as hell and all freaked out—after six years behind a desk they've got to impress the colonel quick so they can get promoted to major and not get thrown out of the Corps on their asses. Give Doylan a little time. Maybe he'll straighten out."
"It still sucks," Hanna said bitterly.
"Semper Fi," said Ramsey.
"I'm not going to Afghanistan with this pussy," Ames said flatly.
"Chill," said Ramsey. "He may get himself fired before then."
"What if he doesn't?" Hanna demanded.
"Then we'll see," said Ramsey. "You try and pull anything now, you'll definitely get fired."
"I'm just telling you, XO," said Ames. "I'm not going to combat with this asshole."
"Now listen," said Ramsey. "If you guys really want to fuck up this unit, then keep walking around pissing and moaning. Then we'll really be in trouble. Besides, we run the company anyway— we'll keep things on the right track. Okay?"
"Okay, XO," Hartman said. The others nodded in agreement.
"You coming to our party this weekend?" Hanna asked.
Ramsey was relieved that he'd been able to head them off. They were still green—full of the way things were supposed to be, instead of the way they really were. Shit, second lieutenants were supposed to wear their hearts on their sleeves. They kept the Corps honest. And first lieutenants were supposed to keep them from stepping on their dicks. "I don't know," he said. "Are you having it at that whorehouse you live in on the beach?"
"Why do you ask?" Hanna said with a grin, knowing what was coming.
"Because the last time I was over there you scared the living piss out of me before I even got in the fucking door."
"Oh, that," said Hanna. "Cmon."
"Yeah, c'mon. I'm a little funny. It's not every day I get greeted on the porch by a naked guy pointing a shotgun between my eyes."
"I was just out of the shower," Hanna shrugged. "We'd been having a little trouble with the neighbors, and I thought you were an intruder."
"Besides, XO," Ames grinned wickedly, "there was no harm done. You chilled right out after you had a few beers . . . and cleaned the shit out of your skivvies!" The others exploded into hysterical laughter, giving high fives and rolling on the ground.
"You guys wear my ass out," said Ramsey. He couldn't keep himself from smiling. "When I was a second lieutenant I was crazy, but you fuckers make me feel like the chaperone at the high school dance. I feel like your goddamned uncle."
"You are our uncle," said Ames, deadpan.
"Fuck you," Ramsey retorted.
Just then Ramsey noticed three sets of headlights coming toward them from the nearby tank trail. The vehicles pulled into the entrance of the bivouac area, but the company's Humvee utility vehicle in the middle of the trail kept them from going any farther. Ramsey shaded his eyes from the headlights. "Who could that be at this time of night?"
"Pickups," said Hanna. "Forest rangers?"
"You guys been fucking with the woodpeckers?" Ramsey demanded. The red cockaded woodpecker, an endangered species, nested on Camp Lejeune and received far more consideration than any Marine on base.
The lieutenants all shook their heads in the negative.
"Well, let's go see what it is," said Ramsey. They rose and walked toward the trucks.
In the pickup, Ali turned to the Sergeant Major. "We must draw in anyone walking about. I want them close enough to make sure of."
"Yes, Colonel," Musa sighed, in the way of senior enlisted men when officers instruct them in the obvious.
"Here," Ali said, oblivious to his tone, "this is the turn. Make a left, and we should see their vehicles immediately on the right." Musa braked and cut the wheel, skidding a little as they made the transition from asphalt road to the loose sand of the tank trail.
Ali looked behind to make sure the other two trucks were with them. "There, pull in behind their vehicle." He cocked the Uzi, made sure the magazine was seated properly, and gave the suppressor a twist. He extended the folding stock and slid the weapon across the seat, gently placing it in Musa's lap. "The safety is on," he said.
"There is a group off to the left," Musa said.
"Do not come out until their attention is focused on me," said Ali, checking his pistol. His AKM was lying on the floor next to his feet. "Use the open door to mask your movements, and keep the weapon behind your thigh."
"Yes, Colonel."
Ali brought the walkie-talkie microphone up to his mouth. "Team 2, do you read me? Over." The static broke twice, the assault team signaling yes. "Are you ready? Over." The static broke twice. "Understood. Stand by."
Two men got out of the lead truck, the first from the passenger's side and the other from the driver's. The first was dressed in Marine camouflage utilities. The second stood out of sight behind the open door. Still shading his eyes from the headlights, Ramsey couldn't see the Marine's rank, so he decided to be polite and let the man know his. "I'm Lieutenant Ramsey. What can we do for you?"
As if in response, Ali snapped his fingers. Musa rested the silenced Uzi on the doorframe and fired short bursts into each of the officers. He was so quick, and they so stunned, that they dropped where they were standing. Musa quickly changed magazines and ran toward the CP tent. Ali shouted "Go, Go, Go!" into the walkie-talkie microphone. To make sure the message had gotten through to everyone, he put a whistle to his mouth and blew two long blasts.
The assault team of eleven Iranian Revolutionary Guards burst from the edge of the clearing and ran to the rows of tents. Two Guards stood astride each row, with three slightly behind to cover them and prevent anyone from escaping—one man in the middle and one on each flank.
It is a Marine Corps tradition that an unarmed nighttime security watch be mounted in garrison and bivouac. Because of the danger of fire in crowded barracks, this duty has always been known as a firewatch. The Echo Company firewatch had halted his tour of the bivouac to chat with three Marines sitting in front of a small fire built between the rows of shelters. As they saw the lieutenants shot and the attackers emerge from the trees, the four Americans jumped to their feet and ran toward the edge of the clearing and the trees bordering the road. All they could do was run; most Marine units did not carry live ammunition for protection while training at Camp Lejeune.
The Iranians had placed a two-man stop group in the trees at the far edge of the clearing, just off to one side. The group was out of the attackers' line of fire but positioned to cut down anyone trying to escape the clearing and reach the road. The two Guards sighted carefully and fired their Kalashnikovs into the running Marines. The cover
men of the assault team also opened up. The lines of tracer bullets from the two groups reached out, wavering slightly as the shooters came on target, and quickly converged on the group of Marines. The runners dropped reaching for the treeline, still fifteen feet away. There were other Marine units in the area, but the sound of gunfire at night is common at Camp Lejeune. Several ricochets flew into the air, but no one noticed that the tracer bullets were Russian green instead of American red. Ali stood in the trail, watching the action and monitoring the walkie-talkie, keeping an eye on the CP tent in case Musa needed any help—which he doubted.
The tents started to shake as Marines woke up and struggled to get out and see what was going on. The AKM gunners walked down the rows, firing short automatic bursts into each tent. When a Guard needed to change magazines, he signaled his backup man to keep up the fire. It was over quickly. At the end of one row, a Marine tried to get out of his tent and escape, but a backup man shot him before he could stand up and start running. When the attackers finished, they changed magazines and listened for any movement. When they heard rustling in a tent, one would walk over and fire a short burst into it.
By this time the four Iranians riding in the back of the lead pickup made their way to the Marine humvee to move it off the trail. The driver and company Corpsman had been sleeping inside. The Iranians found them playing dead and pulled them out of the humvee to be shot, to avoid damaging the vehicle. After a moment of study, a Guard managed to start the engine and drive the humvee into the clearing. The other three walked back to the pickups to guide them in, since Ali had insisted the headlights remain off.
The Iranians in the third pickup were guarding the entrance to the bivouac site. The three security men relieved them at the entrance so the truck driver could move the vehicle into the clearing to join the others.
From the CP tent the Sergeant Major walked over to the pickups, straining under a load of backpack radios. He wore a Marine camouflage hat on his head, a souvenir. Smiling, he dumped the radios on a tailgate and went back for more booty. The drivers covered the area with their weapons while the assault team formed into pairs and moved down the rows again. One held a flashlight and AKM while the other slit open the side of a tent and removed the occupants' weapons. The dead Marines' webbing was dropped into plastic garbage bags.
Musa stripped the CP tent of everything useful, picking up all the radio batteries he could find. He left the blank ammunition but took the pop-up flares and smoke grenades.
Ali stationed himself near the pickups, examining the weapons as they were loaded and making sure they were evenly distributed among the vehicles. He called one of the team leaders over. "Make sure they get all the cleaning equipment and spare barrels for the machineguns," he said. "And especially the accessories for the mortars. Leave nothing behind." The team leader dashed off to tell the others.
When all the weapons and gear were loaded, Musa walked over to Ali. "Shall we drop the Kalashnikovs?" he asked. "There is very little ammunition left."
"No. We will leave them nothing but their dead."
Now each of the Iranians had an M-16A4 rifle, and they loaded magazines from the two ammo cans of 5.56mm ball ammunition saved from the attack on the range.
The Guards stripped off the green coveralls, exposing sweat-soaked civilian clothes. They threw their bloody gloves into a plastic garbage bag. They climbed into the trucks as Ali counted heads, making sure everyone was present. The bulk of the weapons left little room for passengers in the beds of the pickups; the Guards were wedged in uncomfortably. They sat on the discarded coveralls to cushion the hard metal, wrapping themselves in blankets to keep warm. Ali was the last to board. He stripped off his camouflage uniform and made a final flashlight check of the ground in case anything important had been dropped. Then he climbed into the front seat of the lead pickup, accepting the congratulations of Mehdi, who was driving. Musa took the front seat in the last truck.
With the headlights still off, they drove down the tank trail, stopping to pick up the two-man security team. From the tank trail they turned onto the main asphalt road. Only then did they switch on the headlights. Ali looked at his watch. It was ten minutes past 2:00 in the morning. Including the strike on the range, the action had taken just under two hours.
The pickups did not head toward the only gate and its MP guard; the Iranians drove deeper into the training area. Carefully following his map and GPS, Ali ordered Mehdi to turn onto a sandy tank trail. After pausing to shift into four-wheel drive, they moved steadily. When they hit intersections with other trails, they followed the luminous plaques nailed to the trees. The trails were loose sand, and the trucks heavily loaded. When they bounced over humps, Ali could hear the rattling of weapons and muted cursing from the back. Several times the drivers narrowly avoided getting stuck in the sand, provoking more obscene comments from the passengers.
Finally the trucks emerged onto the impact area of the unoccupied firing range. Mehdi was momentarily startled when the headlights played over the targets on the range; it looked like real soldiers were waiting for them. After a slight hesitation they raced up the range access road, past the firing berms and control tower. Ali directed Mehdi to a right turn onto the asphalt road that would lead them off the range. Mehdi, still spooked from the targets, was going too fast and nearly collided with a bewildered herd of white-tailed deer frozen by the headlights. He slammed on the brakes, and the truck almost spun off the road. Ali braced himself against the dashboard and closed his eyes, waiting for the other trucks to smash into them. The heavy brakes of the pickups stopped them just in time.
Ali turned to Mehdi, whose knuckles were white on the steering wheel. He began speaking quietly and deliberately, his voice reaching its upper register toward the end. "We have not gone through all this, just to have it end because of stupid driving. Do you understand?" Mehdi nodded quickly.
"Then continue," Ali said, this time in a normal tone of voice. "And keep your wits about you."
The gate was fifty meters down the road. Ali got out to open it. Two hundred meters past the gate the trucks left Camp Lejeune and pulled out onto North Carolina Route 6.
CHAPTER 21
It was slowly beginning to get light. Rich Welsh stood beside an old pine, watching the world take shape. The temperature was in the thirties, but he was warm in his parka. Welsh had spent most of the night in an FBI van reading Conrad, but he felt claustrophobic and decided he'd be much more comfortable out in the open air. He reached inside his pack and poured a cup of coffee from the thermos. Now that it was dawn, he thought he ought to walk over to the communications van and see what the FBI had decided to do.
There were four vans and three cars in a small clearing out of sight and hearing from the house. After the FBI did some sneaking and peeking in the woods, they brought the vehicles up a neighborhood back road. There were teams a quarter mile up and down that road to cut off any escape. There was also a hidden roadblock on the entry road to bag anyone driving up that way before they could make it to the house. Virtually every agent in the FBI's Raleigh and Wilmington field offices were somewhere in the vicinity, along with the dozen MacNeil had brought down from Washington.
MacNeil was just outside the communications van, talking with a group of agents, including one in a green assault jumpsuit. Welsh recognized him as the Special Agent in Charge of the FBI Hostage Rescue Team. The team members had arrived in Jacksonville at 3:00 that morning by helicopter from the FBI Academy at Quantico, Virginia.
The Hostage Rescue Team, or HRT, was established in the early 1980's when Judge William Webster, the FBI Director at the time, traveled to Fort Bragg to receive an informational briefing from Delta Force on its capabilities. Checking out a display of operator's equipment, he happened to ask where their handcuffs were. He was crisply informed, to his horror, that Delta intended to shoot every terrorist they encountered in the head, then get back in their helicopters and fly off into the sunset. In return, Delta was horrified to learn
that if they responded to an incident in the United States they would be expected to give up their weapons for forensic analysis, their secret operators would be required to testify before a grand jury, and they would quite possibly be sued for using excessive force by the heirs of the bad guys. So it was mutually decided that the Tier One units of Joint Special Operations Command: Delta Force and SEAL Team 6, would handle counterterrorist operations overseas while the FBI would be responsible for the United States.
The first Special Agent in Charge of the Hostage Rescue Team, Danny Coulson, was a highly experienced street agent who in turn recruited highly experienced street agents for HRT, most of them Vietnam combat veterans. His ethos was that they would be prepared to shoot the bad guys if they absolutely had to, but the preferred outcome was to talk them into surrendering. This was proved out in the Team's little-publicized early operations against highly armed white supremacist groups. Little publicized because no one on either side got killed.
In later years HRT recruited younger agents with backgrounds as military officers, but not necessarily from elite special operations units. This tended to give HRT a more paramilitary mindset. The disadvantage to this was proved during a number of disastrous incidents such as Waco and Ruby Ridge. Trying to find the right balance between too timid and risk-averse and too aggressive had proven difficult in later years.
Welsh walked up to the group. The wind was with him, and the aroma of coffee preceded him. The FBI men began sniffing the air like bird dogs.
"Is that coffee?" one asked.
Welsh passed the large thermos cup around." Aaaah," another agent sighed, taking in a large draft.
Welsh grinned. "This is the same guy who was pissing and moaning when I made him stop to get my thermos filled."
"We're tough and hard," the HRT commander said, winking at Welsh. "We don't need luxuries like hot coffee."
"Speak for yourself," said MacNeil, taking his turn at the cup.
"What's happening?" asked Welsh.
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