by David Wood
Besides, with the flag in his possession, maybe the man would have a change of heart.
ONE
Bosnia and Herzegovina—1999
The man was so tall that he had to bend himself almost in half to pass through the flap of the olive-drab tent. Nearly naked, his only concession to modesty was a breechclout that looked like it might be buckskin, but was in fact made from pieces of chamois cloth crudely stitched together. More of the soft leather fabric had been fashioned into moccasin-like overshoes which almost completely covered his size-fifteen Nikes. His attire, or rather the lack thereof, would have been shocking enough to anyone who might have happened to come across him—such an encounter would have been extremely unlikely in the forest outside Sarajevo—but his near nudity was only the tip of the iceberg. His black hair, which was not quite long enough to pull back in a ponytail, had been coiffed high atop his head, cemented in place with styling gel, so that it resembled a rooster’s crest, adding a full six inches to his already considerable height—he was almost six-and-a-half feet tall. His face and chest were painted a bright red, save for a three-inch thick horizontal stripe of black that ran across his eyes like a bandit mask. In his hands he held a four-foot long club, fashioned from a mostly straight piece of deadwood recovered from the forest floor. He looked like nothing less than a gigantic Native American warrior, which not coincidentally, happened to be exactly what he was.
His name was Uriah Bonebrake, though almost everyone who knew him simply called him “Bones.” He was a full-blooded Cherokee Indian, but his claim to warrior status derived, not from his ethnic heritage, but rather from more than a decade of service in the United States Navy, most of that time spent in an elite SEAL team. His present appearance—not to mention his current location—had more to do with the latter.
He jabbed his club menacingly toward a pair of men who wore more traditional military attire—green, brown, and black woodland pattern camouflage fatigues and matching boonie hats—and big smirks on their faces. “Not a word,” he growled. “Not even a freaking syllable.”
One of them, a lean, wiry Caucasian named Pete Chapman—though everyone called him Professor—raised his hands in a placating gesture, but the other, a tall, powerfully built African-American named Willis Sanders, refused to be cowed by the threat. “What are you so pissed-off about? It was your idea.”
“No, my idea was for you to dress up like a Zulu warrior.”
“Right,” Willis retorted, smoothly. “Nothing racist about that.”
“Are you kidding?”
“Man, we flipped for it, you lost. Deal with it.”
“How’s this for a flip, Shaka?” Bones extended his right arm and gave his teammate a one-fingered salute.
Willis grinned, but before he could respond in kind, another man in camouflage emerged from the trees to join them. His name was Dane Maddock, the SEAL platoon’s commanding officer. “Better get up to the road,” he said. “Showtime, gentleman. We just got word that—”
He stopped in mid-sentence and reached up to tilt back the brim of his hat for a better look at Bones, revealing a two-week growth of beard that was a shade or two redder than the sandy-blond, slightly longer than regulation hair hidden beneath his boonie cap, and eyes that were the color of a stormy sea.
“Huh,” he said, his tone matter of fact. “I guess I don’t have to ask where you stashed your socks.”
“Says the white guy!” Willis chortled.
Bones threw his club down and grabbed his loin cloth. “Oh, that’s it, Maddock. Let’s do this. Right here, right now. Let’s see who really stuffs his tighty-whiteys.”
“Sorry, but I’ll have to take a rain check. The Rat just left. He’ll be coming through here in about twenty minutes.” Maddock paused a beat, and then added, “You can flash him if you want. After all, we are going for maximum distraction.”
“Kind of like getting him to play Where’s Waldo,” supplied Willis.
“I got your maximum distraction right here,” Bones said.
“Just make it happen,” Maddock said. “If we can take the Rat without firing a shot, I’ll pin a medal on your... Ummm...” He dissembled a few seconds longer, then nodded to the woods behind them. “What are you waiting for? An invitation?”
“Well, ‘please’ would be a nice start,” Bones shot back.
“I hear that word from your mom all the time,” Willis said.
“Screw you, Willis.”
Maddock turned away without another word. He didn’t mind keeping things light, especially when so much of this latest assignment seemed to involve long periods of mind-numbing boredom while they waited for solid intel on one of their High Value Targets, but when the go order was received, the time for grab-ass games was over.
Bones’ crazy pow-wow get-up was, oddly enough, not an example of such tomfoolery. Rather, it was the key element of an elaborate interdiction plan designed to roll up one Ratko Mladic, codenamed the “Rat” by the Joint Special Operations Command.
Mladic was a former commander of the 9th Corps of the Yugoslav People’s Army and in that capacity, had been the architect of the four-year-long siege of Sarajevo, and the subsequent massacre of more than 8,000 young men and boys in the UN-designated “safe area” of Srebrenica in 1995. Under the leadership of Mladic and others like him, Serbian forces, had conducted a sustained effort to wipe out their hated ancestral enemies, using mass murder and systematic rape to erase the Bosnian people from existence. The conflict had introduced a new phrase into the common vernacular: ethnic cleansing, and the rest of the world had finally taken notice. NATO troops were enforcing the peace, UN investigators were chronicling the atrocities, and he Rat was number one with a bullet on the hitlist for the CIA-led Balkan Task Force which had been given the mission of hunting down all the “butchers of Bosnia” and bringing them before the Hague to stand trial for crimes against humanity.
The Agency had been tracking Mladic’s movements, mostly with aircraft—RC-135 “Rivet Joint” and U2 spy planes, and MQ-1 Predator unmanned aerial vehicles—occasionally supplemented by human intelligence assets on the ground. Despite changing his location every few days, intel analysts poring over the data usually knew Mladic’s approximate location to within a twenty-mile radius. In some rare instances, such as today, they not only knew where he was, but where he was headed next, which was why Maddock’s platoon—currently attached to the BTF—was waiting on the side of a remote mountain road, ready to ambush the Rat’s motorcade.
Because NATO and the Bosnian government wanted to see Mladic put on trial for his crimes, Maddock’s orders were to take him alive if at all possible, which meant that, instead of just triggering a couple claymores and blasting the hell out of whatever was left, his SEALs would not only need to stop the motorcade, but extricate Mladic from his vehicle without a significant exchange of gunfire.
The idea for the operation was a variant on an idea dreamed up by the Army’s Delta Force a couple years earlier. Facing a similar set of circumstances, they had planned to bring the target vehicle to a stop by deploying a mat studded with razor-sharp titanium spikes capable of puncturing the car’s tires, after which a shaped charge would be used to blow the doors off, stunning the occupants in the process. But because the HVT inside would be accompanied by bodyguards—seasoned veterans of the long conflict—they would immediately adopt a defensive posture, which was why, before the vehicle reached the ambush, they would pass by a man walking down the road in a gorilla costume. The idea was that seeing a gorilla walking down the road in the middle of Bosnia might just be weird enough to confuse the bodyguards for a few seconds, creating the perfect conditions to strike. The plan—props and all—had been given the go-ahead, but the target had failed to show up.
Bones had been the one to suggest a variation of the plan—albeit with an assegai-wielding African warrior instead of a gorilla—and on Willis’ immediate objection, had agreed to—and lost—the coin-flip, which was why he would be the one stro
lling down the roadside, shaking his club—and hopefully, nothing more—at the passing cars.
Maddock quickened his pace as he neared the edge of the road, ducking down behind a thicket of brush where his comms operator, Matt James, was hunkered down with a standard-issue black plastic radio handset pressed to each ear. Each radio was keyed to a different secure frequency—one for internal communications within the SEAL platoon, the other connected to the Tactical Operations Center at the safe house in Sarajevo, where their CIA handler was waiting. James also had a SEAL sat-phone set up to provide almost instantaneous contact with JSOC back in the States. Before they could execute their plan, he would need to check in with all three.
“Give me the platoon freq,” Maddock said. James passed over the handset that had been at his left ear. Maddock keyed the mic. “All Hunter elements, this is Hunter Zero-Six. Sitrep, by the numbers. Over.”
One by one, his squad leaders reported in their readiness. While this was going on, Bones, Willis, and Professor joined him and James behind the copse.
James gaped, goggle-eyed, at Bones. “Holy cow,” he whispered.
Bones folded his arms across his chest, flexing his impressive biceps as he did. “Don’t pretend this isn’t the most awesome thing you’ve seen on this crap deployment.”
Maddock ignored their banter and when the radio check was done, switched to the second handset. “Midnight, this is Hunter Zero-Six. We’re cocked, locked, and ready to rock, over.”
“Midnight,” short for “Captain Midnight” was a career CIA officer named Bruce Huntley. Maddock didn’t much care for Huntley, or for Agency spooks at all. Spies like him stretched the reasonable limits of the Machiavellian credo “the end justifies the means” recruiting gangsters, drug traffickers and general all-around dirtbags to carry out their various schemes. But like the proverbial broken clock that was right twice a day, once in a while, that amoral unscrupulousness really did serve the greater good.
The response was immediate. “Hot damn. You guys be sure to get some Polaroids, will ya? I bet the Rat craps his pants when he sees Crazy Horse walking down the road.”
Maddock was glad that only he could hear the radio message. “Roger, out.” Maddock passed the handset to James, and was just reaching for the sat-phone when the commo operator called out. “Target just passed OP Alamo!”
Observation Post-Alamo was exactly one mile from their current position. While conditions on the mountain road were not conducive to highway speed, Maddock guessed they were no more than ninety seconds from contact.
He shot a glance at Bones. “Go.”
Bones gave his club a vigorous shake, then jogged out into the open. Maddock grabbed the sat-phone and initiated a call to his SEAL Team commander in the Joint Operations Center in Fort Bragg, North Carolina. After contact was made, but before he could utter a word, a frantic shout issued from the handset. “Hunter, this is Goliath Zero-One. Operation is on hold, repeat. You are on hold. Confirm, over.”
Maddock was momentarily dumbfounded. Hold? When he finally found his voice, he replied. “Say again, over.”
There was a lag of a second or two as the transmission bounced to the other side of the planet, but the swiftness of the reply was still surprising.
“You heard me, Dane.” Radio brevity protocols were not absolutely necessary when using the SEAL sat-phone, but Maddock was nevertheless a little surprised to hear his given name, especially from Goliath—a.k.a Commander Hartford “Maxie” Maxwell. Maxie only ever called him by his first name when he needed Maddock’s undivided attention.
“Sir, we are sixty seconds from go. We can’t just hit the ‘pause’ button. If we don’t do this, the window closes.”
“Then let it close. This isn’t my decision, Dane. Pull the plug.”
Maddock bit back a rare obscenity. This wasn’t the first time they had gotten all dressed up only to have the party cancelled at the last minute, but this was literally the last minute. He swore again, then through gritted teeth, said, “Understood.”
He threw the sat-phone down and grabbed the platoon radio. “All Hunter elements—Abort, abort, abort. Do not engage. I say again, do not engage. Over.”
He handed the radio back to James before the storm of outrage began, but that didn’t mute the response from Willis. “Abort? What kind of crap is that? We’ve freakin’ got him in our hands.”
“Target just passed OP-Bataan,” called out James, as he dutifully monitored the commo traffic. “Half a mile out.”
“We could just go for it,” Professor suggested. “You can say the signal was garbled. Easier to ask forgiveness than permission.”
“That’s what I’m saying,” agreed Willis.
But Maddock just shook his head. “Orders are orders,” he said, “You don’t have to like them, you just have to follow them.” It was a variation on a familiar, if distasteful, saying in the Teams, but the words were especially bitter now. “Following orders” meant a mass-murderer would escape justice yet again, and God alone knew when they’d get another chance like this.
In the near distance, the whine of an approaching automobile engine was audible, and as the seconds ticked by, it grew to a near roar.
Professor cleared his throat. “You think maybe we should tell—”
Before he could finish the question, a new sound rose above the engine noise—the piercing cry of a Cherokee warrior preparing to go into battle. Through the screen of branches, Maddock could see Bones at the edge of the road, waving his club and whooping like a madman. The approaching vehicle, a dark gray sedan, slowed for a moment, swerving to the opposite side of the road. Then, as if sensing the trap that would never be sprung, the engine revved and the sedan rocketed past.
“Never mind,” Professor muttered.
“He’s gonna be pissed,” Willis added, shaking his head.
“He’s not the only one,” growled Maddock.
Huntley was seated on the sofa with his feet propped on the coffee table, watching CNN on the television set in the front room when the SEALs arrived back at the safe house. A man of average height and build, with a face that could only be described as average—not handsome, but not ugly—he typically had two operating modes, varying between sarcastic surfer-dude, and hyper-manic cheerleading patriot. He was presently in the former state, and didn’t look the least bit surprised by the fact that the Rat was not with them.
“Pulled the rug out from under you, didn’t they?” He made a tsking sound. “That’s why I let all my calls go straight to the machine, especially when I’m running an op.”
“You knew,” Maddock said. It wasn’t a question. “You knew when I called in, and you didn’t say a word.”
“Let’s just say I had a feeling something like this would happen. Every time we get this close—” He held up his hand, thumb and forefinger mere millimeters apart. “Somebody in D.C. gets cold feet. One of these days, we’ll beat them to the punch, and then they’ll turn around and pat themselves on the back for being so decisive.”
Maddock just shook his head. “Why do we even bother?”
“Because we have to, man. The flag-waving, hot-dog eaters of the great U.S. of A. expect us to. We’re the good guys, they’re the bad guys, and the good guys always win. Unfortunately, that’s not how things work in the real world.”
“Why not?”
It was a rhetorical question, but Huntley, mistaking Maddock’s tone, answered anyway. “It’s all political crap. The Serbian government has been helping these guys. Hiding ‘em out. Running interference. ‘Ve know nuffink.’” This last part was almost unintelligible.
“Everyone knows it,” he went on, “but nobody wants to say anything about it because it will embarrass them, and they’ll throw a tizzy and threaten to pull out of the Dayton Accords. Doesn’t help that they’re cozy with Russia, and we’re supposedly playing nice with Ivan these days. At least that’s what the President and her husband seem to think. If you believe that, I’ve got some waterfront pro
perty in Arizona you might want to look at.”
“So we really are just spinning our wheels.”
“Come on, you’re a smart kid. It’s all about timing. Today wasn’t our day, but maybe tomorrow the Russkies will do something to royally piss us off... Or maybe we’ll screw the pooch and need a big win to put us back on top... Something to remind the world that we’re the good guys and they’re the bad guys. That’s when we’ll make our move. It’s all about the optics.”
Maddock had no response to that, but he was oddly grateful for the other man’s brutal honesty. It brought some much-needed clarity.
What if we aren’t the good guys?
For as long as he could remember, things had always been just that simple. Maybe he was as naïve as one of Huntley’s “flag-waving, hot-dog eaters.” Right and wrong, good and evil, light side or dark side... Most of the time, it was easy to tell the difference.
So why did we just let a mass murderer slip through our fingers? Optics?
He wondered if Maxie would be as forthcoming as Huntley.
He left the CIA man in the front room and headed to the TOC—a secure room inside the safe house containing, among other things, an encrypted phone line back to the JOC.
He stared at it for a good five minutes before finally picking up and making the call. He was a little surprised when Maxie himself answered. “I figured you would have already packed it in for the night,” he said, consciously stalling.
“It’s not even lunchtime here,” Maxie replied. “Besides, I was waiting for you to call.”
Maddock was close to the SEAL Team commander, close enough to dispense with military protocols, but he was venturing into uncharted territory. “You give the orders, and we follow them. You don’t owe me an explanation.” He let the words hang in the air like a slow-pitched softball.