Eyes of the Hammer

by Bob Mayer

  Hanks decided to let Strom know where he stood on the concept. "It's a good idea. It helps them out by reducing the power of the drug cartel. It helps us out by allowing us to strike right at the source."

  Strom's mind was working in overdrive. "With all due respect, sir, I think there might be a problem. How do we know what the Colombians will target for us?"

  "Because, like I said, we'll check the information they give us with imagery, which we'll provide to the people doing the mission. Also, the president directed the secretary of defense to have his people verify the target before destroying it."

  "Verify? That means they're going to have to put people on the ground. I thought the original concept was to do this covertly." Strom considered the situation. "That means they won't be able to just run in and bomb like we did in Libya. And once DOD puts people on the ground they run the risk of compromise. There are a lot of angles to this that need to be considered before rushing into it."

  Hanks shook his head. "Secretary of Defense Terrance raised those objections this morning and the president has already considered them. This is past the debating stage and has reached the action level. That's the main reason I'm telling you all this. You're going to be my case officer for this operation. The Department of Defense will have overall control, but we're going to be relaying the intelligence from Bogota and providing any other kind of intelligence support the DOD people ask for."

  "Sir, when did you say we'd get the first location?"

  "Within two days Jameson should be getting some information. I've already personally alerted him to be prepared. He'll set up the meet with the contact. From here on out you handle Jameson."

  Hanks waited a minute while Strom made a few notes in his file folder. He was interested to see what Strom's reactions were to the whole thing. "Well, Strom, what do you think? If we can hit some of the processing labs in Colombia, what effect will that have?"

  Hanks watched as Strom composed his answer. As always the man had his facts. "Sir, eighty percent of the cocaine that comes into this country goes through those labs. However, there are a lot of variables here. It depends on how many and how large the labs are that we hit. The last intelligence estimate I saw from the DEA was that four to six major labs operating down there process approximately eighty-five percent of the cocaine coming out of Colombia that goes to the United States. The other fifteen percent comes out of the numerous smaller labs operated by free-lancers. Each of the three main drug families operates one or two major processing labs. Hitting a major lab, especially if they catch it with a good stockpile, will severely hurt that faction of the drug cartel. Taking down a couple will reduce the flow of cocaine by a considerable degree, at least temporarily."

  Strom's mind was already two steps ahead. "We have to consider the aftereffect. What are the other dealers going to think after one or two labs get blown away? I'm sure the Colombian government will deny everything. If they've kept this tight enough in their government they just might get away with the denial."

  Hanks interjected. "Their ambassador said this came direct from President Alegre to him personally. No one else is in on it."

  "If that's the case," responded Strom, "then the drug dealers will probably believe them. The cartel has bribed so many people in the government and military that they'll know their own government didn't do it. What then? They'll eventually figure out we're doing it. But initially they'll probably think it was one of their own. They have some pretty fierce intrafighting going on all the time between rival groups."

  Strom started warming to the idea as he realized it was a good chance to make a name for himself. "We could probably take down a few of the factories before they even begin to suspect it was us. Even destroying just one or two of the major labs would significantly reduce the flow of cocaine for a short while.

  "Blast Furnace was a failure because our people had to work with the local Colombian authorities. The drug dealers knew where the helicopters were going to hit almost before our pilots did. Also, the only labs targeted were those operated by small-time people, putting out maybe a few kilos a week. Even then, there were so many leaks, when the helicopters with the Colombian troops went in all they found were abandoned labs. If we can operate unilaterally, without having to notify the Colombians of when and where we're going to hit, we could really do some damage. Especially if they target labs operated by the members of the cartel."

  Strom frowned as he considered that aspect. "We'll hold the advantage of timing, but they'll still know the where. If there's a leak, the labs could be moved."

  "Yes, but according to the ambassador only the president and the contact will know the locations."

  Strom shook his head. "The question I have is how is that contact going to get the locations? It's not good to trust intelligence when we don't know its source."

  Hanks agreed. "Nothing's a hundred percent certain. All we can do is verify, both with the imagery and on the ground. If the information is wrong, the military does nothing. If it's right, they slam them. That's one of the reasons I'm putting you on this. It's part of your responsibility to try to make sure the intel is as accurate as possible.

  "I agree with the president's reasoning on this. It's a great opportunity to take some positive action. We've been on the defensive against drugs all along. Finally we get a chance to go after these guys."

  Strom was considering other potential pitfalls. "What if the press gets a hold of this? 'U.S. Forces Attack Colombian Targets.' What do you think the effect will be, sir?"

  Hanks shrugged. "The press better not get a hold of it. But if they do I think the effect will be positive. No one thinks drugs are good. After what happened in Springfield last week, I don't think we need to worry about how the press will react to our striking back at the people behind the massacre, especially if we've been invited to do so by the president of Colombia himself. Look at all the positive press we received when we went into Panama a year and a half ago.

  "State has been trying to get the Colombian government to do something for years. Now it looks like some of their pressure has worked. The president feels that if we don't take Alegre up on this offer, we'll probably never get another chance."

  Hanks glanced at his watch. He had another meeting coming up shortly. "Defense is currently trying to figure out how they're going to verify and destroy these labs. I imagine Terrance has dumped this on General Macksey's lap. The Department of Defense is also going to have overall control of the actual operation. I want you to be prepared to relay the intelligence you get to whatever organization they set up. I also want you to assign a liaison officer from the Latin American section to work full-time with the military task force on this."

  Hanks stood up, indicating the meeting was over. He'd handed off the ball and now Strom had to run with it. "By the way, do your people have anything further on the Springfield massacre?"

  "Nothing significant, sir. I think all the suspects are back home in Colombia. The FBI is stymied."

  Hanks slapped Strom on the back. "All right then. Let's go out and get some results with this."

  CHAPTER SIX

  PLATTSBURGH AIR FORCE BASE

  NEW YORK

  9:00 A.M.

  "Damn, I just about peed in my pants when that state trooper whipped out his .357 magnum and started waving it."

  Riley glanced up as the briefing room echoed with laughter at Miller's comment. "Hell, how do you think he felt, opening up the back of the van and there he's eyeball to eyeball with ten guys armed with automatic weapons and machine guns?"

  Powers looked at Riley sourly. "Laugh all you want, guys. You're just damn lucky that one of those National Guardsmen was a Pittsburgh city cop and knew that state trooper. Otherwise, you might have spent the night in the local lockup until they got it straightened out."

  Partusi shook his head. "I thought the air force police were supposed to notify the local cops and state police of the exercise."

  Powers snorted. "They said th
ey did. You know how that goes. Somebody always doesn't get the word."

  Riley stood up from where he had been reviewing his notes. "All right, let's get our act together. We have to brief their colonel in a minute or so. I want you all to remember not to throw stones or drop dimes. Let's keep this thing professional."

  Powers looked at the team leader. "I tell you what, Chief. I'm still kind of pissed off about the way they stopped my truck going off post. Those asshole toy cops had live rounds in their guns. Somebody could have gotten hurt. And that somebody could have been me."

  Riley sympathized with his senior noncommissioned officer. Powers looked like a not-so-gentle teddy bear sitting on top of a table in the back of the briefing room. "I know that, Top. I've already talked to Colonel Pike about it. But they didn't expect us to hit them in two places. Those guys who stopped you didn't know what was going on. We'll let the air police talk first and see what they have to say."

  Powers shook his head, still irritated with the whole thing. He was glad Riley was doing the briefing on this one. Not only could the team leader speak quite well, but his name and appearance always surprised people when they first met him, and Powers liked watching the reaction. Riley himself was used to the surprise. His last name conjured up visions of a freckle-faced Irishman. At the very least, it was difficult to connect that name with the short, wiry Puerto Rican wearing the silver bar with two black dots indicating U.S. Army chief warrant officer.

  Another strength of Riley's was that he exuded competence during briefings. It was hard to attribute to any one aspect of his appearance; it was the complete picture—the finely honed face, the piercing black eyes, the slim body that suggested a lot of power per pound. Most importantly, just the way he held himself.

  Riley's demeanor was carefully cultivated. Standing only five foot seven inches and weighing a lean 145 pounds, Riley had learned long ago the importance of first impressions. The product of a brief marriage between a long-forgotten Irish father and a Puerto Rican mother, Riley had learned his lessons at an early age on the streets of the South Bronx. He'd discovered that if he looked tough, then most often he didn't have to actually prove it was true. But Riley also knew how to follow through when it was necessary.

  Riley looked up as the door to the room swung open and Partusi called out "Attention!"

  The air base commander, Colonel Albright, walked in, followed by his staff and the major in charge of the air police on post. Trailing the party limped Colonel Pike. The old-looking army officer was in charge of the Department of Defense's nuclear facility testing team in addition to the many other jobs he did as army assistant to the DCSOP- SO. Pike presently had four Special Forces teams working for him on the project, one from each of the active army Special Forces groups. The teams traveled to every Department of Defense installation that held nuclear weapons and tested how well the weapons were safeguarded. Pike made it a point to attend every team's outbriefing at the installations they had tested. Riley had never met a senior officer he respected more than Pike.

  Pike was a legend in the Special Forces community. At the beginning of his army career, he'd been an enlisted man and served two tours with Special Forces in Vietnam. Because of the high quality of his performance of duty, he'd been recommended for officer candidate school (OCS) during his second tour. Passing the four-month "shake and bake" OCS course at Fort Benning, he'd been commissioned in the infantry and found himself back in Vietnam for a third tour, this time as a platoon leader with the 173rd Airborne.

  As soon as possible, Pike had worked a transfer back to Special Forces. As commander of a recon team doing cross border operations into Laos, Pike had picked up his limp. During a difficult extraction he had been pulled out on the end of a rope hung below a Huey helicopter, a common practice when the terrain lacked suitable landing zones. During that particular mission, the inexperienced pilot had misjudged how far the Special Forces man was hanging underneath the aircraft and had run Pike into a stand of trees. Slamming into limbs and trunks, Pike had suffered several cracked bones, and his back had never been the same. Over the years the injury had become progressively worse. It hadn't, however, stopped him from becoming more involved in the cutting edge of Special Operations.

  After Vietnam, Pike had continued on in his beloved Special Forces, eventually rising to command a battalion in the 10th Special Forces Group at Bad Tolz, Germany.

  After that tour, he'd been with Charlie Beckwith during the birth pains of Delta Force. Riley had heard rumors that Pike had entered Tehran prior to the aborted raid to free the hostages, to relay intelligence out before the strike, and to be on the ground to help guide the force when it came. Pike's connections with some of the original members of Delta ran deep, and despite the years that had gone by since he'd last served with Delta, Pike still enjoyed a good working relationship with the men at Fort Bragg.

  Pike's degenerating health, combined with an unwillingness to keep his mouth shut when he felt something needed to be said, had led to his failure to be selected for a Special Forces group command. Lacking that career ticket punch, he'd been passed over for promotion to brigadier general. Being the army gofer for the DCSOP-SO was Pike's last hurrah before being shuffled off to mandatory retirement. Riley felt it was a crappy way to treat a man who had given so much to the army and who was one of the most experienced and caring leaders he had ever worked under.

  Pike gave a covert wink to Riley as the wrinkled old colonel lowered himself stiffly into a chair. Riley answered with a brief nod and a smile.

  Riley turned his attention to the air force base commander, who was looking over the nine dirty Special Forces soldiers standing at attention in front of their chairs. "Haven't you gentlemen had a chance to get cleaned up and changed?" asked Colonel Albright.

  Riley answered for his team. "No, sir. We needed the last couple of hours to get our notes together for this briefing. We'll take care of all that when we're done here."

  The colonel nodded. "All right. Who's this Mister Riley Colonel Pike has been telling me about?"

  Riley stepped forward. "I am, sir." Albright managed to hide his surprise at Riley's appearance.

  The colonel moved to his seat and opened the proceedings. "Let's get on with it then. Major Baley, you first. Everyone else please take your seats."

  Riley sat down as the cleanly dressed air force police major walked up to the podium.

  The major cleared his throat. "Good morning, sir. I'll be briefing you on the results of the security test of our nuclear safeguards that was conducted last night. I'll start off with a brief description of the scenario that was set up. I'll then describe what happened and finish by giving you our recommendations for improving security. I'll be followed by Warrant Officer Riley from the 7th Special Forces Group, who will brief you on events from their perspective.

  "The exercise was set up to be as realistic as possible. To help accomplish this we borrowed eighty sets of MILES equipment from the army at Fort Drum. MILES stands for multiple integrated laser engagement system. Basically what it is, sir, is a laser emitter that is attached to all the weapon systems. When each system is fired using blank rounds, a laser beam is sent out wherever the weapon is aimed. All our personnel and vehicles involved in the exercise had harnesses on that could pick up these laser beams. A hit on a person is indicated by a loud beeper going off on the harness. A hit on a vehicle sufficient to disable it is represented by a flashing yellow light going off on top of the vehicle and a loud tone being sounded on the intercom system inside. We had all our personnel at the weapons storage facility and ready line equipped with this gear.

  "Our first indication of trouble came at 0126 ..."

  Riley tuned out the major and mentally reviewed his own presentation. The man was doing his best to make his organization look good, which was to be expected. Riley tuned back in as the major wrapped up his presentation.

  "Sir, overall I feel our men did a good job. We do have some areas we need to work on. First, we
are going to revise our reaction SOP to cover the possibility of multiple attacks. However, I must point out, sir, in all fairness to the lieutenant in charge of the reaction platoon, that it is extremely unlikely that a terrorist organization would be able to mount two attacks on the scale we experienced last night.

  "Additionally, the attackers used army ID cards and a military vehicle to gain admission onto post. Again, this would be very difficult for a terrorist organization to accomplish.

  "As a further recommendation, we are going to increase the number of surveillance checks we do on both the post perimeter road and the storage facility perimeter road. Sir, pending your questions that concludes my briefing."

  Colonel Albright looked at his air police commander in surprise. "That's all you have, Major?"

  Major Baley shifted his feet nervously. "Yes, sir."

  "All right, Major. You can sit down. Mister Riley, let's hear what you have to say."

  Riley walked over to the podium. Typical briefing for the air force, he thought to himself. Try to make things look as good as possible. It didn't look as though the post commander had bought off on it, though. But the colonel would have to decide for himself.

  Riley sorted out his notes while Partusi pulled out a schematic of the air base mounted on cardboard and placed it on an easel. Partusi extended a collapsible pointer and stood at parade rest next to the easel, prepared to point during Riley's presentation.

  "Sir, I will first brief you on our perspective of the operation as it was conducted. Then I will highlight some areas, with our recommendations, that we believe your people ought to focus on to help improve weapons security.

  "To conduct this mission we recruited eighteen members of the local army National Guard to act as guerrillas for us. We recognize we used a larger force than expected but our instructions from the Department of Defense were to create a worst-case scenario. Due to your post's proximity to the Canadian border, we feel it is quite possible that a terrorist organization may be able to infiltrate by vehicle across the border and attack here, so the number of personnel that participated last night is not improbable.