by Jeff Edwards
Gunny’s people, Response Element Two, had been assigned to the Charlie and Delta sites, at the eastern end of the Op-Area. Element One and Element Two had both been directed to work from north-to-south, disarming the northern sites first, and then moving down to handle the southern sites. The longer the disarming efforts dragged on, the more risk there was of being spotted by hostile forces.
In theory, by getting the most distant sites out of the way first, the teams would put themselves closer to evac if anything went wrong in the second half of the mission. It wasn’t much of a theory in Gunny’s book, since the risk of getting caught wouldn’t be any greater in the second half of the operation than it was in the first half. But that was the sort of half-bright thinking that the rear echelon types were famous for.
Nobody was calling this a suicide mission, but that’s what it was starting to smell like. His team of Explosive Ordnance Disposal techs had been assigned to locate and disarm multiple pre-positioned explosives packages of unknown size, strength, and configuration. They had no idea of what these packages might look like, no idea of how sensitive they might be to intrusion or tampering, and only rough estimates of their locations. To put the icing on the cake, they’d be working in near-arctic conditions, under a sky dominated by hostile air cover.
If that wasn’t brilliant tactical planning, Gunny didn’t know what was. He grunted. Some genius back at G3 needed to have his ass kicked for dreaming up a goat rodeo like this. If they got out of this alive, Gunny might just have to go look up the idiot in question, and kick down the door to his fucking office.
The idea made the Marine grin—a cold and feral expression, with no trace of humor in it. He was nearly ready for the purge now. Nearly annoyed enough, and worried enough, and frustrated enough for the final piece of his emotional preparation.
The purge had been Colonel Ziegler’s term, back when Gunny Armstrong had been a punk Pfc. with the 11th MEU in Iraq.
“You don’t start a patrol when you’ve got to take a dump,” Colonel Z had said. “You hit the head before you hit the trail. You get all the shit out of your body, so it doesn’t slow you down.”
“Well you’ve got to do the same thing for your brain,” the colonel had said. “You can’t go into combat with a bunch of unnecessary shit clogging up your brain. You’ve got to offload it. You’ve got to purge it. You’ve got to call up all of your doubts and angers ahead of time. Think about it. Stew over it. Get mad about it. And then get rid of it. Let it go, just like taking a dump. So when the time comes to be a Marine, you’ve got nothing else on your mind but being a Marine.”
As far as Gunny Armstrong was concerned, it had been good advice. It had gotten him through three tours in the sandbox. He figured it would probably see him through this mess as well.
He was mad now, and scared, and all the things a Marine cannot afford to be when he’s in the field. He could feel the knot of emotions building inside him, rising through his bones like the shriek of the chopper’s turbines. He wondered for a second if he should sneak something in there about his ex-wife, just to really push things over the top.
But he didn’t need it. He felt the internal safety valve in his chest lift, venting his rage and his fear, and he made no move to stop it. He slammed a fist into his sternum, to make sure that the imaginary tank of feelings emptied itself entirely. “Ooh-rah!” he said to himself. “Ooh-fucking-rah!”
The ritual did its job. He felt the calm descend over him. He was ready. He was focused. The only thoughts in his mind were of the mission, and his Marines. Everything else was insignificant bullshit.
The copilot’s voice crackled in the left ear of his headset. “Two minutes, Gunny.”
Gunny Armstrong felt for the talk button and keyed his mike. “Two minutes, aye. Thanks for the ride, Lieutenant.”
He looked out the window at jagged terrain of the ice pack. It was time to go kick some ass. Time to go be Marines.
CHAPTER 50
USS TOWERS (DDG-103)
WESTERN PACIFIC OCEAN
THURSDAY; 07 MARCH
0821 hours (8:21 AM)
TIME ZONE +11 ‘LIMA’
Captain Bowie leaned back in his chair, and set his coffee cup on the wardroom table. “Let me get this straight,” he said. “Your Mouse unit decided on its own to abandon the search, and return to the position where we launched it?”
Ann Roark nodded. She didn’t like the way this conversation was starting out.
“That’s right,” she said. “According to Mouse’s internal error logs, he operated without problems for the first five and a half hours of the run. Then an event that occurred during the run triggered a spontaneous mission abort.”
“Do you have any idea what that event was? What triggered this spontaneous mission abort?”
Ann took a breath and nodded. “I know what caused it. But it’s a little bit complicated.”
The Navy man lifted his coffee cup and took a swallow. “I’ve got a few minutes. See if you can spell it out for me.”
Ann sighed loudly, and then instantly regretted it. She was a civilian, and technically free to say whatever she wanted, but she knew that senior military people didn’t react well to signs of reticence or dissatisfaction.
Her father had been a major in the Army, until a roadside bomb outside of Ramadi had turned his up-armored HMMV into a few thousand pounds of Swiss cheese. Major Dad had been big on discipline and outward displays of respect. He’d been quick to decode Ann’s body language for any hint of dissent or defiance. He’d interpreted every huff, every roll of the eyes, and every hunched shoulder as a sign of rebellion: a challenge to his authority.
There wasn’t a lot of reason to believe that this Navy captain would be any different. With that single pronounced sigh, she had telegraphed her frustration in a language that the military mind could only interpret in one way. She might as well have told him to fuck off. God, she hated dealing with these people. They made her crazy.
Ann nearly sighed again, but she caught herself, realizing that it would only rebroadcast her frustration. She shifted mental gears, and tried to think of a way to phrase the problem with Mouse.
“Search mode is not much different than transit mode,” she said finally. “As it moves through the water, the robot is using its onboard sensors to scan for the submarine, but it’s essentially following a programmed series of navigational waypoints. We set the waypoints ahead of time, when we plan the search pattern. I upload the coordinates of each waypoint to the robot prior to launch, and Mouse travels from one waypoint to the next, like following a trail of breadcrumbs.”
The captain nodded for her to continue.
“As long as Mouse was searching for the submarine,” Ann said, “he was essentially operating in directed transit mode.”
“I’ve got that,” Captain Bowie said. “So what happened?”
Ann paused. He really wasn’t going to like this part. “Mouse found the submarine,” she said. “About five and a half hours into the search.”
She spoke quickly now, trying to get across the rest of her message before Bowie’s brain had a chance to process the first part.
“That’s what triggered the problem,” she said. “When he found the sub, Mouse shifted from directed transit mode to autonomous mission mode, so he could carry out the next phase of the operation and plant the beacon on the hull of the submarine. And during the mode shift, something glitched in his operating program. I haven’t had a chance to look at it in detail yet, but I think it was that same program error we were getting a couple of weeks ago, when we were running tests … before we rescued that submersible.”
“You wrote a software patch for that, didn’t you?” Bowie asked.
“Yeah,” Ann said. “A workaround. It didn’t fix the bug in the program code. It just bypassed the problem, and allowed Mouse to keep working if the error showed up.”
“So what went wrong?” Captain Bowie asked. “Was this some unforeseen permutation of the e
rror? Something your software patch couldn’t handle?”
Ann hesitated before answering. It would be easy to lie here, attribute the problem to untraceable software glitches. Mouse was a prototype, and they knew he had bugs. If she blamed the problem on unreliable software, she’d probably never get caught.
She decided to stick with the truth. It might bring her some grief, but she wouldn’t have any trouble looking at herself in the mirror.
“I screwed up,” she said. “There was nothing wrong with the patch. I just forgot to re-upload it.”
“I thought it was already installed,” Bowie said. “You uploaded it weeks ago, when you were getting the Mouse unit ready to search for the Nereus.”
“It was installed,” Ann said. “But the program parameters needed for this mission were different from the ones we used for the submersible. I decided that our best chance of success would be to get a clean load. Dump the old operating program, and reload from scratch. That gave me a clean slate to work with when I was modifying the operating program for this mission.”
Bowie looked at her without speaking.
Ann plunged on. “I had about a hundred things to do to prepare Mouse to go after this submarine. I had to modify a lot of code to give him the functions he needs to get the job done. And I didn’t remember to reinstall the patch. I just … forgot.”
“You forgot?”
“Yes,” Ann said. “I forgot. I don’t know how. I thought I had everything covered, but I was trying to cram two days worth of programming into a few hours. And I missed something. I forgot the patch. I … forgot.”
“So your Mouse unit found the damned submarine, and—instead of planting the beacon and alerting us to the sub’s position—your robot ran back to its launch position and drove around in circles?”
Ann nodded. “Yes.”
It was the first time she’d heard one of the Navy people use the dreaded R-word to describe Mouse. But given the nature of the conversation, there wasn’t much pleasure in the tiny victory.
Bowie glanced at the wardroom clock. “We could have engaged the submarine seven hours ago. We could have brought this whole tragic mess to an end.”
“I know that,” Ann said. “I’m sorry. It wasn’t intentional. It was an oversight. An accident.”
Bowie drummed his fingertips lightly on the table top. “Are you sure about that?”
His tone of voice took Ann by surprise.
“What do you mean?”
“Are you certain it was an accident?” Bowie asked. “You’ve made it plain since the minute you came aboard. You don’t like me; you don’t like this ship; and you don’t like the Navy.”
Ann started to respond, but he kept talking.
“I don’t know what you’ve got against us, and I frankly don’t care. Your opinions are your business. You don’t have to like us. You don’t even have to pretend to like us. It doesn’t matter to me, as long as you don’t actively antagonize my crew, or let your personal views interfere with the job. But now it looks like they are interfering with the job, Ms. Roark. They’re interfering with the mission of my ship. We had an opportunity to finish this, but I think you might be more interested in jerking our chain than in getting the job done.”
He set his coffee cup down a little too hard. “Between the United States, Russia, and Japan, there are literally hundreds of millions of human beings living under the threat of nuclear extinction because of that submarine. We could have stopped it. We could have ended it seven hours ago. When you’re going over your list of reasons to hate the Navy, add that to your list of things to think about.”
“Wait just a freaking second,” Ann snapped. “You think I did this on purpose?”
Bowie lowered his voice. “I don’t know. Did you?”
“It was an accident,” Ann said. “A stupid freaking accident. I forgot. I made a mistake.”
“The mistake was mine,” Bowie said. “I underestimated your contempt for my crew, and the mission of this ship. I misjudged your desire to see us fail.”
He pushed his chair back from the table, and walked to the door. He reached for the doorknob.
“You’re so full of shit,” Ann said. “Do you know that?”
Bowie spoke over his shoulder. His words were quietly icy. “We’re finished with your services,” he said. “I’m calling for a helicopter to pick you and Mr. Miggs up as soon as possible. I don’t want you on my ship any more.”
Ann felt a lump rising in her throat. This man—this idiot—wouldn’t even listen to her.
“You’re so full of shit,” she said again. Her voice was shaky now. “What happened to that song and dance you were giving me when we were trying to rescue the Nereus? Do you remember? All that crap about how I didn’t sign on for any of this, and you know that Mouse is only a prototype and he isn’t ready for the job, but he’s your best hope. Does any of that ring a bell? You said no one would blame us if the mission went wrong. Remember that?”
She felt a hot tear roll down her cheek. “Well guess what, Mr. Captain, sir? Mouse is still a freaking prototype, and he’s still not ready for this job. But I’m not trying to blame this on the robot. I could have done that, and you wouldn’t have known any better. Instead, I told you the truth. I screwed up. In case you haven’t noticed, you’re not the one who failed here. I am. And I’m not trying to cover it up. I told you the truth because I want the chance to fix it. I want to make it right. I just need another chance.” The last word came out as a sob.
Captain Bowie stood without speaking for several seconds. Then he released the doorknob and turned around. “I did say those things,” he said. “And I told you no one would blame you if the mission went south.”
He walked back toward the table. “Maybe I am full of shit,” he said. “At least on the current point of discussion.”
“You are,” Ann sniffed.
Bowie smiled ruefully. “I’m willing to stipulate that, for the moment. But I’ll have to ask you not to voice that particular sentiment in front of my crew.”
He sat back down in his chair. “Where do we go from here?”
Ann wiped her eyes with the back of her hand. “We try again,” she said. “I upload the patch to Mouse’s program code, and—as soon as the sun goes down—we put him back in the water and start over.”
“Do you really think that’s going to work?” Bowie asked.
“Mouse found your damned submarine before,” Ann said. “He can find it again.”
CHAPTER 51
3RD EXPLOSIVE ORDNANCE DISPOSAL COMPANY
ICE PACK - SOUTHERN SEA OF OKHOTSK
THURSDAY; 07 MARCH
1113 hours (11:13 AM)
TIME ZONE +11 ‘LIMA’
Gunnery Sergeant Armstrong crouched behind an ice hommock about forty yards from the device, and watched through binoculars as Staff Sergeant Myers and Corporal Hicks backed away from the explosive charge buried at the 8 o’clock position. Gunny wasn’t looking at Myers or Hicks, who were both easily visible without the binoculars. He was examining the ice around their feet, looking for any sign of booby traps that might have been missed during the initial recon.
Myers and Hicks moved slowly and cautiously, taking care not to disturb the twisted pair of wires that connected the shaped-charge to the initiator, about fifty feet away. Myers was scanning the snowy terrain with a Föerster Mark-26, moving in as straight a line as the rugged surface of the ice pack would permit. Hicks was his observer and assistant, providing a second set of eyes and hands as they were needed.
The Mk-26 was a fluxgate magnetic gradiometer; it could locate hidden metal objects by detecting the fluctuations they caused in the earth’s magnetic field. Myers and Hicks were nearly finished with the magnetic sweep. They’d already done the visual sweep, the infrared sweep, and sampled the air down-wind of the device using a hand-held Fido detector to sniff for vapors and residue: the telltale molecular traces given off by explosive chemicals.
This was the last step
of the secondary reconnaissance. Gunny Armstrong had performed the initial recon himself, with Sergeant Travers covering observe and assist. He was confident that he had the configuration of the device thoroughly sussed out.
Myers was performing the entire recon again, to be certain that Gunny hadn’t missed anything on the first pass. Gunny didn’t expect him to find anything new, but the procedures laid out by the 60 Series EOD manuals were clear: two separate reconnaissance sweeps, conducted by two pairs of qualified Explosive Ordnance Disposal technicians. There were exceptions to the rule, in time-urgent operations, or when there weren’t enough techs available. But Gunny’s team had the personnel and the time. They were going to do it by the book.
The device itself was relatively straightforward. Six shaped-charges were spaced evenly around the perimeter of a large circle, maybe a hundred feet in diameter, all wired to an initiator package in the middle of the circle.
Gunny and Myers had both scanned the initiator using an RTR-4 real-time x-ray unit. The package appeared to consist of two modules of electronic circuits, housed in an insulated enclosure about the size of a shoebox. There were no indications of explosive charges in or near the enclosure.
A Kevlar-jacketed cable led from the package into a hole drilled in the ice. Short of trying to dig it out, which Gunny’s team was not going to attempt, there was no way to know how long the Kevlar cable was, or what might be wired to its other end. The cable probably penetrated all the way through the ice, and into the unfrozen water below. Gunny assumed that the remote triggering device, whatever that might be, was hanging at the submerged end of the cable. There wasn’t really any way to test that assumption, but it seemed logical, and no one else on the team could suggest an alternative.
Of more immediate importance, Gunny hadn’t found any booby traps anywhere around the charges or the initiator package. No motion sensors, no proximity detectors, and no anti-tamper devices. Whoever had planted these explosives had apparently depended on secrecy and the remote location for protection. It would have worked too, Gunny figured, if some intelligence bubba hadn’t gotten his hands on the rough coordinates of the devices. Somebody with inside knowledge had talked.