Exit Plan

by Larry Bond

  Lapointe kept his eyes on the landscape. “Sir, I’m sorry about the lieutenant. We all feel like he does, but he’s the guy in charge, so Higgs’s loss hit him harder.”

  Jerry wasn’t buying it. “I’ve lost people, too. It always sucks, but you don’t fall apart. And you’re SEALs. This may be a little harsh, but aren’t you prepared to lose a man when you go on a mission?”

  “Not like that, sir. From a freak accident? And when I said lose, I didn’t mean die. SEALs never leave anyone behind, alive or dead. In Afghanistan, we’ve lost more people recovering a brother SEAL’s remains than we have from our direct action missions, and nobody thinks it’s a waste.”

  He saw Jerry start to speak, but interrupted. “I’m not kidding, sir. We’ve never left anyone behind before. At all. Ever. This would be the first time.”

  Jerry shrugged helplessly. “I’ve thought about almost nothing else since we came ashore. I sent him back to open the breaker. I’m not as familiar with the ASDS as Higgs and Carlson. Was there something else I could have done? Was there some sign that Higgs and I both missed? You can damn well believe an investigating board will be asking those same questions when we get back.

  “But Higgs wasn’t severely wounded, he was gone. Doc checked him before we left; he was dead. I’ve been trying to imagine how we could have gotten him out and ashore if he’d only been injured.”

  “We would have found a way,” Lapointe answered flatly.

  Mitchell nodded as Lapointe continued. “We would have tried our damnedest. Higgs might have died anyway, but the point is we would have tried.

  “Maybe it’s the lack of trying that the boss is mad about,” the petty officer reasoned. “You didn’t even try.”

  “We couldn’t help him. He was dead, and trying to recover his remains would have risked more lives, and the mission. The batteries had already started exploding. I made the call to preserve as many lives as possible.” Jerry was thinking like an XO now, his thoughts clearing.

  “My brain agrees with you, sir, but other parts still need convincing. We just haven’t had a chance to think about it much. There’s something else, too.”

  “What? There’s more?” Jerry tried not to sound too dismayed.

  “The lieutenant is mission-oriented. Shoot, we all are. But he really takes a job on board, and we’re on ‘Plan C’ at this point. It doesn’t matter what the reason is. A mission failure is a personal failure for him. And he’s never failed.”

  “He’s worried about us making it back.” It was a question, but Jerry made it a flat statement.

  “He won’t say so, but hell, yes, XO. We planned the bejesus out of this job, but if the pickup tomorrow doesn’t go down, we start winging it. There is no ‘Plan D.

  Lapointe paused, and Jerry sensed that he was waiting for something from him. “So what do you want me to do?”

  “We need Matt’s, I mean, Mr. Ramey’s head in the game until it’s over. He’s been shaken, and badly, and right now he isn’t firing on all cylinders. He’s starting to make mistakes.”

  Jerry’s perplexed expression amused Lapointe. “You haven’t been trained as a SEAL, so you don’t know what to look for. The mistakes are little ones, but they’re mistakes all the same. That has got to change. And the only way I can see that happening is you’ve got to stop being nice. You can’t be oozing with sympathy, no matter how much he may be hurting inside.”

  “Are you serious?” Jerry exclaimed.

  “Deadly serious, XO. Sympathy is between shit and syphilis in the dictionary, and it’s about as useful. A SEAL doesn’t respond to sympathy. When one of us is down the rest of us don’t tell him everything will be all right, or that he did his best; we kick ‘em in the balls and yell at him to get his ass in gear. Right now Mr. Ramey feels like a loser, and that kind of mentality is fatal. It’s beaten into us from the very first day at BUDS that it pays to be a winner.”

  “Yeah, Vernon mentioned that,” admitted Jerry.

  “Well, he wasn’t lying. I need—no, correction—we need Mr. Ramey to recalibrate his attitude and start wanting to win again. If the only way that happens is for you to be a flaming asshole, then, oh well. You’re a big boy, you’ll get over it.”

  Jerry stepped away from Lapointe as he considered the SEAL’s assessment of the platoon leader’s damaged psyche. It seemed to make sense, when viewed through the contorted lens of a SEAL mind-set. But Jerry knew he wasn’t a “screamer,” he just wasn’t wired that way, and on those rare occasions when he did try, the results were pretty pathetic.

  “I hear you, Petty Officer Lapointe,” Jerry said as he turned to face him. “But I have to warn you, I make a lousy flaming asshole. However, I can be a demanding SOB if the situation warrants it.”

  Lapointe grinned. “If all you do, sir, is nag his ass, and don’t cut him any slack, I think I can live with that.”

  When the two returned to the cave, they found Lieutenant Ramey waiting outside. Ostensibly, he was on lookout, but he motioned to Lapointe and the petty officer went inside,

  “XO, sir. I was way out of line.” Ramey’s voice held little emotion, but Jerry could tell by the tightness in his jaw that he was fighting to keep it in check. “There was no excuse for what I said. Please accept my apology.” He was almost at attention, maybe unnecessary for the circumstance but necessary for control.

  “It’s accepted, Lieutenant.” Jerry could have said more, but his recent crash course on SEAL psychology told him to keep it short. “Are you able to lead the team?”

  “Absolutely,” Ramey answered, but the lieutenant’s voice was strained.

  Jerry wasn’t convinced, but really had no alternative but to accept Ramey’s answer. He searched for something else to say or ask, but again decided that less was more. “Let’s get inside, then.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  Phillips came out to take lookout duty. Inside, the cave seemed bright, and warm, and then Jerry saw that the SEALs had set up a small stove. They were heating water and MREs, and Fazel was cooking. Phillips had finished first, but the others were still eating.

  Doc gave a small smile. “It’s only lukewarm, but it’s tasty. It’s my own creation—SEAL stew.”

  “Do I want to know what’s in it?” Jerry asked, as he tried to peer into the MRE pouch.

  “I can tell you, but it will be different next time. Depends on what’s handy. There’s no recipe, just a set of guiding principles.” Nodding toward the two Iranians, Fazel added, “It is halal. No pork.”

  Yousef and Shirin were both eating steadily, if not enthusiastically. “Why is it called seal stew?” she asked. “I don’t think this is what seal tastes like.”

  “No, ma’am,” he said, pointing to the others in the team. “We are called ‘SEALs.’ It stands for ‘Sea, Air, Land,’ the different places we can move and fight.”

  “But you are commandos, aren’t you?”

  “Yes, but that’s like saying your husband is a soldier. There’s more than one kind. We’re U.S. Navy. The best kind.” He grinned.

  Fazel handed Jerry a small bowl of the stuff. It smelled okay, but he was glad the light was dim. He’d heard stories of surviving on snakes and tree moss, but the SEALs hadn’t had time to forage, and besides, he could see other open MREs next to the corpsman.

  Lapointe nodded at the medic’s explanation. “We specialize,” he said, smiling.

  “Is one of your specialties taking people off beaches?” she asked.

  “Well, actually, yes,” Lapointe answered. “We practice for this, among many other things. We’ve trained in snow, jungle, urban environments . . .”

  “I have a flash drive,” Shirin said abruptly. “It has over twenty-two gigabytes of files relating to our nuclear weapons program.”

  Jerry and the SEALs, surprised, all looked at Shirin, then at Ramey. The lieutenant was looking at Jerry.

  “What kind of files?” Jerry asked.

  “Schedules, purchase orders, test results, progress r
eports, e-mails, photographs, biographies—enough information to give a complete description of the entire program, and its potential. Because of security restrictions, I’ve only been able to send out a few files at a time. But this time I copied as much as I could find. Eventually the security checks will notice all the activity on the log at my computer, but I didn’t plan to go back.”

  “Why are you telling us this?”

  “In case things ... go badly. You should know about it. But the data is encrypted. Yousef and I know how to open the files.”

  Lapointe said, “Sir, I recommend making copies of that data, encrypted or not.” He pulled a laptop from his backpack. “The boss has one as well. We’ll make two sets.”

  Jerry held out his hand. “May we copy the files?”

  Shirin nodded, and her head disappeared under the blanket. After a few moments of rustling, her head reappeared, and then her hand, holding the device. She handed it to Lapointe, who plugged it into a USB port on his machine and began typing.

  As Lapointe worked, Ramey asked him, “Can we uplink this stuff back to the sub, or somewhere else?”

  “This is a lot of ones and zeroes, Boss. With the FPS-117’s bandwidth, it would take tens of hours. Our batteries wouldn’t come even close to lasting that long.”

  “There is a summary file,” Shirin volunteered. “It lists the types of information on the drive, and I could decrypt one small file. It will help prove who we are and what we have.”

  “You don’t have to do that,” Jerry said. “We’re not leaving you behind.”

  “Your government may have its doubts. I am not a professional spy, but they must rule out the possibility that we are lying. This does not offend me. It is prudent for them to make sure we are not double agents.”

  “I don’t think I’d be that calm about it,” Ramey commented.

  “Done,” Lapointe announced. “Everything has been copied onto my laptop.”

  “Then let me see the list of files, please.” Shirin got up, still wrapped in the blanket, and walked over to where Lapointe was working. He turned the computer so she could see the screen as she knelt on the cave floor.

  She studied the list for a moment, asked him to scroll down, then pointed out one. “Open this, please.” When Lapointe double-clicked on it, a dialog box appeared, asking for a password. Shielding the keyboard, she carefully typed in a long sequence, and the file opened.

  “It’s a standard PDF file,” Lapointe reported. Shirin repeated the process with a second file. “This is a presentation about centrifuge problems at Natanz. I was there when this happened,” she explained.

  Fazel leaned over and read the Farsi script aloud. “Natanz Centrifuge Cascade Failure Reconstruction. It’s dated February of this year.”

  “Hoooly shit.” Lapointe’s exclamation matched Jerry’s feelings. This was the real thing.

  “The file sizes are good,” Lapointe reported. “It will take about fifteen minutes to upload both, plus a few minutes to tell them what we’re sending.”

  “Okay,” said Ramey, “we will transmit this tomorrow night, just before we go to the pickup point. That minimizes the time for them to react if they detect the signal.”

  “I thought you said the signal was undetectable,” Shirin asked.

  “We’re sending electrons into the ether. The chance may be very small, but I don’t take chances if I don’t have to.”

  She didn’t look pleased. “That is tomorrow night. There is some . . . urgency in this data reaching your government.”

  Jerry asked, “Is some of this material time sensitive?”

  “No, but Yousef and I have other information, very important information. And we need your government to believe in who we are and what we know.”

  Jerry considered for a moment, but realized he was hesitating. He knew which path he had to take. “Send it now,” he ordered Ramey. “We shouldn’t sit on this for a day.”

  “XO, I don’t think this is a good idea,” Ramey was visibly unhappy with Jerry pulling rank and making a decision that he wasn’t trained to make.

  “I understand your objection, Matt. But if I read this right, the information has strategic implications that go beyond our own situation.” Turning to Lapointe, he asked, “Petty Officer Lapointe, what are the risks of sending such a long transmission?”

  Lapointe looked first at his platoon leader, and then back at Jerry. “Technically, the risk is low. The Iranians likely don’t know we’re here and the radio is very secure—particularly for short transmissions. If the information is as important as you think, XO, the risk is acceptable.”

  “Very well,” replied Jerry, as he stared straight into Ramey’s eyes. “I do believe it is that important, and we need to send it up the chain . . . now.”

  Ramey was hard to read. His jaw was clenched tight again, but he didn’t argue further. “Aye, aye, XO,” he answered. “Pointy, do it when you’re ready, and don’t spend any time downloading the scores from the Red Sox’s game.”

  “Aye, aye, Boss, and after that I’ll copy the whole thing onto your laptop as well.”

  After Lapointe transmitted the files and finished transferring them to Ramey’s laptop, the SEALs checked and cleaned their gear. Ramey set up a watch schedule for the night with two SEALs on watch at any one time. Ramey and Fazel took the first watch while everyone else tried to get some sleep. Each of the SEALs had a thermal blanket like Fazel’s, they handed Yousef one and he snuggled up to Shirin; throwing part of his blanket over her as well. Lapointe and Phillips shared a blanket and bedded down near the cave entrance, just in case. By circumstance or design, Jerry found himself alone on the far side of the cave.

  Feeling slightly left out, Jerry spent several minutes smoothing his place on the cave floor, removed some pebbles, and tried to remember the last time he’d camped out. He was still wondering if he’d ever get to sleep when fatigue claimed him.

  ~ * ~

  8

  A FINE MESS

  3 April 2013

  1300 Local Time/1800 Zulu

  White House Situation Room

  “I thought this was supposed to be a low risk, routine operation, Mr. Secretary,” exclaimed Myles angrily as he stormed into the situation room; a cloud of civilian and military advisors filed in behind him.

  “Mr. President, our risk assessment was based on Iranian military capability, not on the possibility of a freak accident,” replied Secretary of Defense Springfield. “Who could have possibly foreseen this extraordinary piece of bad luck?”

  Joanna quickly took a seat behind Kirkpatrick, checked her notes, and scanned the synopsis she had prepared, along with Guthrie’s proposed plan of action. Satisfied that she was as ready as she could be given the circumstances, she turned her attention to the president.

  President Myles took a deep breath and let out an audible sigh. “I know, James. There was no way we could have anticipated this unbelievable complication. But as unfortunate as it is, it is now part of a much larger crisis after the IAEA report this morning and the Iranian general’s press conference.”

  Earlier that morning, the International Atomic Energy Agency had released its long-awaited report on the latest inspection of Iranian nuclear facilities. The report was late, and it was a bombshell.

  It stated that samples taken from discarded centrifuges at the Pilot Fuel Enrichment Plant showed uranium hexafluoride residue with Uranium-235 enrichment levels of 85%, well beyond that needed for any civilian purpose. In its final paragraph, the Board of Governors had concluded that this was not a case of cross contamination from another source. The uranium was of Iranian origin, and there was only one purpose for U-235 concentrations of such magnitude—the development of nuclear weapons.

  Less than an hour after the IAEA’s report was released, IRGC Brigadier General Adel Moradi, head of security for the Iranian nuclear program, held a press conference broadcast by Iran’s FARS News, Al Jazeera, and other news affiliates throughout the Persian Gulf, Europe,
and Asia. Moradi first read from a prepared statement, denouncing the IAEA’s findings as sheer propaganda; claiming the report constituted nothing less than slander against the Islamic Republic by its most hated enemies—the Zionists and the Great Satan.

  He went on to say that this deception was purposely designed to create a more toxic environment, one that would make it impossible for Iran to have a fair hearing at the court of world opinion, and would embolden those on the UN Security Council to demand additional punishments—punishments that were as unjustified as they were evil. He then added that the IAEA report was undoubtedly a fabrication, that the samples, if indeed they were taken from Iran, were planted on the used centrifuges. It was widely known that their peaceful nuclear program had suffered numerous technical setbacks over the years—from malicious causes as well as inexperience.