Lt. Commander Mollie Sanders

by Miller, Mitchell R.

  Mollie pulled the door shut, keeping the handle down so that it didn’t latch. An instant later they heard a tremendous blast, followed by another.

  Mollie signaled for the stack to enter the room – she reopened the door and the stack charged into the room.

  Mollie glanced at Surfer and saw blood gushing from his arm – a bullet from the fusillade had grazed it. At the same moment a Scout medic sidled up to Surfer to apply a tourniquet. Surfer nodded at her to get going.

  She advanced into the room like a cat, her pistol held in a firm two-handed grip. All around her Scouts used plastic ties to bind the hands of terrorists. Friendlies, released from being hostages, were scattered around the room.

  Suddenly Mollie spotted one terrorist holding a pistol to the neck of a woman soldier. In his other hand he held a detonator!

  Mollie glanced around, saw Four Scouts covering him with their M4 carbines. The terrorist’s eyes darted back and forth among the soldiers facing him. Slowly Mollie slunk around the walls of the room until she stood behind him.

  Then she saw it – the detonator cord went nowhere. At that second the terrorist spotted her. He waved his pistol at her and back at the woman soldier.

  Mollie slowly moved away in what she knew he would interpret as not risking getting too close to him. What she really wanted was just the right angle.

  There! Her sights aligned with the tango’s wrist, and behind it, a clear path into his brain without hitting the hostage. A small window, but it was there.

  Now to distract him – she needed only an instant. She said to him in English, her voice smooth even if he couldn’t understand the words, “Put your weapon down and live. Or do you want to die in this frozen wasteland?”

  She paused for only a moment as the terrorist again waved his gun at her to move back. Instead she said: “I’m going to count down from 10 ... 9 ... 8 ... 7 ... 6”

  The terrorist screamed at Mollie.

  “.. 5” Bang!

  Mollie’s bullet tore through his wrist, cutting apart the synapses before they could fire, then into the back of his head. Brains and blood exploded away from the path of the bullet.

  The terrorist’s body fell.

  Mollie holstered her pistol as Nasak rushed up to her. “Shit! You’re crazy! That shot!”

  Surfer strode up, his bandaged arm in a sling. “I told you, Lieutenant,” he said. “The Angel of Death.”

  Then Surfer turned to her. “Time to be flying back home.”

  Mollie’s eyes flicked to Surfer’s arm, then to his face. “Commander Witlow, you’re not fit to fly.”

  “Now Miss Scarlet,” he said in Banger’s Ashley Wilkes voice. “This is your chance to ascertain if your BlackBerry really can fly a plane.”

  CHAPTER X – NEW ASSIGNMENTS

  Coast Guard Temporary Work Space

  April 21

  1745 hours

  Mollie and Surfer entered the work space. Perez and Jaiswal rushed forward to greet them and shake hands.

  “Not the end. Only the beginning,” Mollie said.

  “You’ve made it to fight another day,” Perez said. “And maybe …” She looked at Surfer, then back at Mollie. “… some well-earned R and R.”

  **

  Flight Deck of Nimitz

  April 22

  0927 hours

  The COD aircraft touched down. Kevin and Gearhead emerged from inside the turboprop plane. The CAG stood ready to greet them at the end of the flight deck.

  As Kevin and Gearhead walked towards the CAG, Gearhead turned to Kevin.

  “I’ll have to find someone else to fly with …” She smiled. “ … seeing as how you’re out of commission.”

  “Now can we date?” Kevin heard himself say. Why had he said that?

  “Date? You mean go out together?”

  Kevin looked around at the water surrounding the aircraft carrier.

  “Not a lot of places to go.” He looked at Gearhead’s face, she seemed ready to refuse. Then she said, “I’ll take your offer under advisement.”

  And before Kevin could reply, the CAG was upon them.

  **

  STORC

  July 15

  Mollie frowned at her computer as she read the latest email message from Surfer. They’d had only one short week of “dating” before Mollie had been given new orders to return to STORC.

  Surfer had seemed disappointed, but Mollie thought it possible he was secretly pleased to have her re-assigned. The competition between them had interjected itself into every “date.”

  Although the leak hadn’t been found at Dagger, Mollie was still convinced there had been one. And the various tangos that Mollie and Surfer had helped capture disappeared into the maw of classified information.

  She’d been here the last couple of months working on projects and exchanging email messages with Surfer. But today’s message did not please her, not at all.

  As she tapped her fingers on her desk, deciding how to respond, the phone rang. She picked up the receiver and was told that her CO wanted to see her right now.

  She knew it was generally not a good thing when your CO unexpectedly calls you into his office in the middle of the day. She looked down at her uniform. Brass polished, shoes highly shined, belt buckle aligned, naval flight officer’s wings in the proper position over her very limited fruit salad, khakis pressed to sharp creases. Everything shipshape.

  She turned off her computer, always mindful of the old adage “Loose lips sink ships,” and strode over to the office of her CO.

  Mollie knocked, heard “Come,” and opened the door. She marched up to within 15 inches of the desk, came to attention, and barked, “Lieutenant Sanders reporting as ordered, sir!”

  “Christ, Sanders! You’ve been out of the Academy for how long? Will you knock off that middie crap! Siddown!”

  Commander Martin Oberlin was a chubby-faced, not to say pudgy, balding officer. He looked rather harassed, Mollie thought. Not at all surprising, given that he had to ride herd on probably 500 or so people, military and civilian, in the Navy’s Special Tactics and Operations Research Center – STORC. Based on her own department, she knew that running the whole operation was akin to running an insane asylum where the inmates had full access to anything they wanted to play with and all the keys.

  “Sanders,” he said, “I haven’t called you here to discuss your current project.” He paused, lifting up a large seashell weighing down a pile of papers and pulling a few sheets from the top of the pile.

  “Somebody in the Pentagon thinks we might have something to contribute to the IED problem. Everybody else has had a shot at it,” he added. “Why not us?”

  Mollie’s stomach did a flipflop at the commander’s words. With IEDs, one moment you were fine, riding along in your Humvee thinking about the chow back at the FOB, and the next moment you were blown up into little pieces, dead. Or worse. Since the Iraqi insurgents had realized that there was virtually no possibility of getting into a firefight with a U.S. unit and surviving, they had gone into the IED business in a big way with its spinoffs: VIBEDs -- Vehicle-Borne Explosive Devices; SVIBEDs -- Suicide VIBEDs; and plain old suicide bombers.

  Now the problem of IEDs was winding down in Iraq and heating up in Afghanistan. The IEDs in Iraq had been sophisticated; the IEDs in Afghanistan less so, but just as deadly.

  Mollie had dual-majored in high-energy physics and computer science at the Academy and then gone on to get an MSEE at MIT. But building a laser or designing a software system was not like trying to find an IED buried in the rough roads of Afghanistan.

  “Just what exactly am I supposed to do, sir?” she asked.

  The commander twisted the seashell in his hand. "Damned if I know. Get over to Building 33 at 0800 tomorrow."

  "Sir. I have no ground combat experience. And the systems design for the WSOC is really coming to a critical point -- sir."

  The Weapons Systems Officer's Console for the new Advanced Nuclear Submarine was her baby, an
d would be a real feather in her cap. The brass had finally figured out that, if the Navy were going to stay in the funding game, it had to get with the counter-insurgency program.

  One answer was the Advanced Nuclear Submarine -- a smaller, lighter, less crew-intensive boat. To cut down on crew manning, jobs had to be combined with others. The Weapons Systems Officer would do the job of five -- if she could get the weapons systems officer’s console working.

  "It may surprise you to learn, Sanders, that I actually know about your lack of experience."

  Oh, shit, Mollie thought.

  "What they're looking for is an electronics geek,” Oberlin continued. “Of which, for better or worse, you are one of the best I have. You will report to Building 33 at 0800 tomorrow, and you will give it the old Academy try. Do you read me?"

  "Five by five, sir,” Mollie snapped.

  Oberlin nodded. "That's all."

  Mollie rose, came to attention again, and said, "Aye-aye, sir."

  When Oberlin dismissed her with a wave of his hand, she did an about face and marched out to ... exactly what, she wasn't sure.

  Instead of heading back to her cubicle, she walked over to the BOQ.

  What the hell was someone thinking – and Mollie was pretty sure she knew who that “someone” was – to get her assigned to this project?

  In her BOQ Mollie took a deep breath, then executed a series of t’ai chi maneuvers to clear her mind.

  Next she sat down at her personal laptop and began researching open source material on IEDs. She became so engrossed that, when she looked at her watch, she realized she’d missed dinner hours at the Officers Mess. She could go over to the Officers Club, or she could make do with a couple of the Zone bars she always kept on hand.

  Her left hand reached for a Zone bar as her right hand clicked on another entry. American military personnel were coming home in body bags because of these IEDs. Certainly Mollie could miss a meal tonight. She needed to be as prepared as possible for tomorrow.

  For one second Surfer’s message re-entered her mind. She banished it to low priority.

  **

  July 16

  0800 hours

  Mollie knocked on the locked door of Building 33, a building to which she had never previously been admitted. Although all the work at STORC was secret, some work – namely that done in Building 33 – was more secret.

  A man about her own mid-30s age and her own rank opened the door to her knock. “Sanders, sir, reporting as ordered,” she said.

  The man’s eyes flicked up and down. He said, “I wasn’t expecting a woman.”

  “What were you expecting?” Mollie said.

  “A top electronics engineer.”

  Mollie couldn’t help the grin on her face. “That’s me.”

  The man looked at her another moment, then held out his hand. “Henry Burke.”

  Mollie shook Burke’s hand and followed him down the hall and into a large work room.

  Burke did a run-through of the assignment with which his unit was tasked. Mollie took notes of what he said.

  “I need to make a quick on-site visit,” she told Burke.

  He shook his head. “No can do.”

  Mollie shot him her best “team player” look. “I haven’t had any combat experience. I need to have my boots on the ground, talk to some of the personnel who’ve had to deal with the current IED situation.”

  “Chain of command to get your permission will take too long. Pentagon wants some kind of report in two weeks’ time.”

  Mollie nodded. “That’s precisely why I have to go. Look, top-level administration officials and presidential candidates fly in and out. Why can’t I?”

  “Because no one is going to give approval for the expenditure to fly a lowly naval lieutenant commander into and out of Afghanistan.”

  “If I hitch a ride?”

  Burke’s eyes rested on her. “You know someone high up, Commander?”

  Mollie hesitated for only a moment, then nodded.

  Burke shrugged. “If you can pull it off, go for it.”

  **

  July 16

  1430 hours

  Mollie was airborne in a military hop plane delivering medical supplies to American forces in Afghanistan. She hadn’t told Burke who had okayed this and he hadn’t asked.

  It had cost her something to make that call. But luckily Surfer hadn’t yet arrived at his new duty assignment.

  During the flight she slept some and then doodled design flow charts on an iPad she had with her.

  When the plane landed, an Army captain – one rank lower than her Navy lieutenant commander rank – met her.

  “Captain Craig Lyons,” he said. “I’ve been assigned to escort you on your inspection tour.”

  He handed her a flak vest and a helmet, which Mollie immediately put on. Coming here was a reasonable calculated risk, but no need to be careless.

  Mollie smiled as she walked alongside the captain to his armor-plated Humvee. “Not exactly an inspection tour. I want to talk to personnel who’ve dealt with IEDs.”

  “No problem. I’ll take you to the FOB and have some personnel report to me there.”

  Mollie shook her head. “IEDs are not inside an FOB. I want to see the kind of roads where the IEDs are planted. What are the terrain specifics needed for early detection?”

  The captain stopped walking. “You sure about this, Commander?”

  Mollie nodded.

  The captain turned away and gestured for her to get into an MRAP-ATV. This was the first time she’d seen this new vehicle, designed to enhance survival against underbelly strikes, the predominant attack modality in Afghanistan.

  As their driver pulled out of the airport, Mollie spotted two civilian security contractors in a following Humvee.

  “Why the protection?” Mollie asked Lyons.

  “Protection?” Lyon said. “A whole squad would be protection – and still not enough to protect against an IED.”

  Lyons leaned over the front seat to speak to his driver, giving instructions on what route to take.

  The driver hesitated, then said, “Yes, sir.”

  Mollie stared out the window at the terrain they passed. A sign in English and presumably Arabic announced a military checkpoint in a half click. A few feet later the road slanted upwards.

  Mollie suddenly tapped the driver on the shoulder. “Could you pull off the road here, Private?”

  Mollie watched the driver use the rearview mirror to check with the captain, who nodded back to the driver.

  The driver signaled to the following Humvee, which pulled off the road behind them.

  As soon as the driver had stopped the MRAP, Mollie jumped out. She stood still and slowly turned in a 360-degree circumference. Then she turned to the captain.

  “IEDs are not an electronics problem. They’re an engineering problem.”

  “Engineering problem?” the captain said.

  “Yes, look,” Mollie said. She pointed at the road as it led ahead over a culvert cut into the ground for a run off.

  “To be an electronics problem I’d need to figure out a device that could ‘read’ an inert explosive device at 300 feet before someone drove over that culvert, which is the logical place on this road to place the IED.”

  The captain nodded at her to go on. “If I go around the culvert on a ‘temporary road’ that I bring with me – I’ve circumvented any IED. And by carrying a portable ‘temporary road’ with me, I haven’t provided any opportunity for insurgents to plant an IED under a stationary temporary road.”

  The captain stared at her. Finally he said, “And how would a portable temporary road work?”

  “That’s the engineering part. But I think it might work like a prayer rug – only bigger. For example, whenever a patrol approached a possible IED site, the lead patrol vehicle would turn off the road and crank out a ‘temporary road’ that would wind down from a receptacle anchored on the front of the lead car and would extend back as the ve
hicle moved forward. The other patrol cars would follow on the ‘temporary road.’ Once the patrol has safely circumvented the possible IED, the ‘temporary road’ would be rolled up again into its receptacle on the lead patrol car as the other vehicles get back on the regular road.”

  Behind Mollie she heard the two security contractors laughing. She said to the captain, “People laughed at the Wright brothers. If you can build it, you can figure out the specs.”

  The driver looked at the captain. “Permission to speak, sir,” the driver said. The captain nodded.

  “Sort of like a Lego building set when you run out of blocks for a road. You lay a few blocks down, move your Lego vehicle, then move the blocks to the next forward position, and move the vehicle down the new stretch of road.”

  Mollie smiled at him. “Exactly, Private.”

  “But I don’t understand …,” the captain began.

  Mollie never learned what the captain didn’t understand. At that moment shots were fired at the MRAP. As Mollie and the others raced towards the Humvee parked behind the MRAP, the driver was shot, his body propelled under the MRAP.

  Mollie, the captain, and the two security contractors barricaded themselves behind the Humvee. The security contractors returned fire with their M16s.

  Mollie could see the gas leak on the MRAP. If that MRAP were shot in that spot, it would explode, taking the driver with it.

  “Give me your gun!” Mollie demanded from the captain.

  “No way.”

  “I’m on the Navy’s pistol team.”

  “You can have my second gun.” The captain removed his ankle pistol and handed it to Mollie.

  She checked the ammo clip, then clicked off the safety.

  “On my count of three, cover me,” she said.

  She didn’t give the captain time to protest. She counted three and dashed around the Humvee towards the MRAP, her pistol in one hand.

  She reached the driver, leaned down and grabbed his shoulder, pulling him out from under the MRAP. Then, using her body to shield the driver, she started dragging him back towards the Humvee.

  At that moment an insurgent rounded the MRAP. Mollie got off a quick shot that hit between his eyes. His screams of death reverberated back towards his fellow insurgents.