by Nick Cook
He hoped the Navy was having it as easy.
He clipped the Selectable Strike Beacon, the SSB - a small device hardly bigger than his car stereo system - to the wing of the Falcon, switched it on and stole back through the night to the scene of their watch.
The AC-130 was close now. He imagined the crew’s excitement the moment the signal from the beacon lit up the display on the instrument panel in the flight deck. The co-ordinates would be fed into the targeting computer, the guns double-checked, before they split the peace of the night above Panama City.
He did a head-count. His sixteen men were accounted for. Time to be leaving.
His deputy nudged him and pointed. Across the airfield there was movement. He raised the imager to his face and saw the column of troops moving forward across the concrete.
‘PDF,’ his deputy whispered, and smiled, his white teeth stark against the night. They would walk right into it.
The column was almost upon the cluster of private aircraft now primed with their SSBs. Above them, the drone of the AC-130 rose to a crescendo.
The cranked edge to the helmets of the men in the lead contingent made him look again. The troops were amongst the aircraft now, prowling beneath them, weaving through undercarriages, checking for... what? They couldn’t be PDF, because they, too, appeared to be searching... for guards. He took another look at that helmet and felt his blood run cold, because he knew then that this was a US Army detachment in the wrong place at the wrong time.
He opened his mouth to shout the warning a second before the first aircraft blew up.
The 105mm shells rained down from the AC-130, patrolling unseen in a tight circle two thousand feet above them. The colonel ran across the grass and grabbed the radio operator. He pointed to the carnage, then to the sky, shouting his order above the din of explosions. The operator understood, frantically working every frequency to raise the crew of the Spectre, but without success.
The colonel ran towards the group of Rangers across the airfield. He found a soldier, stump bleeding from an amputated leg, dragging himself across the concrete to cover. Above the boy’s screaming, the detonations, and the pom-pom beat of the Spectre’s 40mm gun, he heard his name repeated over and over again, as if someone was working a loudhailer...
‘Colonel Ulm, sir... Colonel.’
Ulm’s eyes snapped open. They looked straight into the face of the pretty female co-pilot who had come back from the flight deck of the C-21. He saw, too, the shock on her face. The same look on the face of his wife whenever she woke him from the dream.
Ulm was drenched in sweat. His face was grey, drawn; and he was shaking.
The captain managed to control her voice. ‘Colonel, we’ll be touching down at National in ten minutes. You ought to prepare yourself for the landing.’
He grunted his thanks and watched her move past him to Shabanov.
Ulm looked out of the window and saw the Washington monument pierce the horizon. Los Torrijos had not been his fault and the Air Force knew it. Someone - a punk colonel in the air-tasking office at Southern Command Headquarters in Panama City, he had found out later - had fucked up. But people with influence in Washington had made it clear that it wasn’t going to be anyone from Southern Command HQ or the Rangers that paid. The Air Force defended him, but afterwards considered it best he be removed from the limelight. And so it was that he and the 1725th Combat Control Detachment, his Pathfinders, were sent into exile at Kirtland Air Force Base, New Mexico.
Were they giving him a second chance? Was his advice sought over recent developments in the Middle East? After the dream, his mind was too fuzzy around the edges to provide any answers.
The co-pilot slipped back to the flight deck, giving him a strange look as she passed his seat.
Whatever the truth of the matter, there were those who said the Pathfinders had had their chance and blown it.
Confirmation of his worth came on the day USSOCOM told him he had been selected to enter into a secret bilateral exchange programme with Spetsnaz. He was warned against showing the Russians too much. The Romeo Protocol, USSOCOM pointed out, was hatched by politicians who did not understand about the ways of the military.
As the Learjet swept into National airport, Ulm cast a glance back to Shabanov. The Russian’s eyes darted eagerly over the sights of the capital. No longer in uniform, Shabanov passed for any other US serviceman heading into DC on legitimate business.
Two bumps through the airframe signalled they were down.
Ulm almost asked the driver if there had been some mistake. After dropping Shabanov at the Soviet Embassy, he had expected the car to swing south for the Pentagon. But instead, they had kept going deeper into the tree-lined suburbs of Washington’s north-west district, eventually stopping outside a mundane office building a short distance from the National Zoo.
The driver walked round and opened Ulm’s door. Ulm was led across the sidewalk to the building. The entrance hall was cool, its floors and walls lined with dark polished stone tiles. A middle-aged woman, sitting behind a desk against the far wall, looked up as soon as his footsteps rang out across the atrium. Ulm kept walking. It was only when he reached the desk that he realized his escort had gone. He turned to see the limousine pulling into the early morning traffic beyond the double plate glass doors.
Ulm had expected a military facility, but there was not a shred of evidence that a single cent of the DOD’s budget had gone near this place. The woman looked at him expectantly. He gave his name.
She smiled again, then filled out a form and handed him a pass, which he clipped to his jacket. Then she lifted the telephone and announced his arrival as if he had been expected for a week. She pointed to the elevator and told him he would be met on the fourth floor. As he turned, Ulm glanced up at the board behind the desk listing the companies in the building. For the fourth floor, there was just one entry: Comco Software Inc.
The lift did not stop at any of the intervening levels. When the doors parted, Ulm was met by a sallow-faced, studious-looking man in his mid-forties.
‘Colonel Ulm? Welcome to TERCOM. I’m Jacobson.’ He offered a delicate hand, which Ulm shook suspiciously. ‘You probably have a thousand and one questions, but if you’ll be patient a while longer, I promise that you will get your answers. If you’d like to follow me, Colonel.’
Ulm stepped into the corridor and was struck immediately by the absence of natural light. There was an unpleasant artificial odour, and a hum of air-conditioning about the place, too, which exacerbated his growing feeling of isolation.
Jacobson led him into a dim room with a large oak table in its midst. He was offered a seat and accepted a cup of coffee. There were two windows set in the wood-panelled walls, but the blinds were down allowing no early morning light to creep into the room.
Jacobson took a seat opposite Ulm, clasping his styrofoam coffee cup between both hands.
‘It will probably help you to think of me - and this place - as your direct link to every asset this country possesses for the neutralization of the terrorist threat,’ Jacobson said. ‘By comparison, your General McDonald at USSOCOM is limited in the resources at his disposal. Believe me, Colonel, that there is absolutely nothing I cannot call upon in the pursuit of that goal. You see, we - that is, my colleagues and I - have a mandate from the highest possible authority. General McDonald has therefore temporarily assigned you to us.’
‘That’s very impressive, Mr Jacobson,’ Ulm said drily. ‘But maybe you could start by telling me what I’m doing here.’
‘Simple, Colonel. We want you to go after the people who carried out Beirut. We want you to find Ambassador Franklin and bring him and his staff home - alive. And we want the people who perpetrated this deed punished. Is that a mission you feel you are prepared, or able, to undertake, Colonel?’
Ulm battled not to let his feelings show. ‘The 1725th is ready for anything,’ he said. ‘But- ’ Ulm looked at Jacobson again and was reminded of one of the Pentagon pros
ecuting attorneys at his trial. A jumped-up little bureaucrat with a big opinion of himself who was real good at talking and full of ideas about the way things should be done, but pig-ignorant of the realities. Ulm thought he’d like to see Jacobson handling a PDF sniper with a star-scope on a pitch-black night or trying to defuse an Iraqi chemical mine with the fur flying around him. Jacobsons used people as stepping stones through shit to further their ambition.
‘Yes, Colonel?’
‘Why us? Why not Delta or the SEALs? From what I’ve seen of this case, it’s more their style.’
Jacobson chuckled. ‘But there is no provision under the Romeo Protocol for Delta or the SEALs to work with the Soviet Union. You see, you’ll be going in with Spetsnaz on this mission.’
Ulm felt his blood run cold. ‘You’re pulling my chain.’
‘No, I’m not, Colonel. This will be a joint US-Soviet operation.’
‘But everybody knows the Romeo Protocol is a sham,’ Ulm said. ‘God knows, I’ve been playing my part, but it was always intimated that we would not have to go into action with them. At least, that’s the way SOCOM explained it.’
‘With respect, SOCOM has no idea how deep the shit is around us,’ Jacobson said. His expression had changed. He looked like death.
‘What do you mean?’
‘In simple terms, the Soviets have access to information that is denied to us at this time. They are willing to share it, but the price of admission is a joint operation.’
‘It won’t work,’ Ulm said adamantly.
‘You said you were ready for anything.’
‘On our own, yes. But the only contact between Spetsnaz and the Pathfinders has been at commander level. As it happens, Colonel Roman Shabanov is with us at the moment.’
‘We know,’ Jacobson said, before pausing to take a sip of his coffee. ‘Have you been watching the news lately, Colonel?’
‘Of course.’
‘Then you will have seen the items about the disappearance of that boat.’
‘Sure, but that’s public consumption shit, right?’
‘Wrong. That, I’m sorry to say, is how it is.’
It took a few moments for the impact of Jacobson’s statement to sink in. ‘Jesus, Jacobson, what kind of outfit are you running here?’
‘I don’t like it any better than you,’ Jacobson said. His voice never wavered from a dull, impassive monotone. ‘But for the past two decades my contemporaries at Langley relied heavily, far too heavily, on sophisticated surveillance methods in the Middle East. Sure, we have space-based radar, infra-red satellites, plus every conceivable ELINT and COMINT platform above the Eastern Med and the Gulf sucking intelligence out of the rawest data you can imagine. Between ourselves and the NSA, we can position a communications or signals intelligence ship off, say, the coast of Libya and listen to Gaddafi talking into a mobile phone from his toilet.’
Ulm sat back in his chair. He felt numb. He let Jacobson’s words wash over him.
‘I would not have known how to begin looking, however, for a bunch of two-bit terrorists roaming around the Southern Lebanon.’
‘Why not?’
‘Because we’ve lost the ability to do the one thing we used to do well - Humint. Human Intelligence, Colonel. Having a guy on the ground who does nothing but good old-fashioned cloak and dagger work.
‘When peace broke out between East and West, the budget resources allocated to the CIA, DIA, and NSA were pared back to record lows. We were trying to re-establish a new network in the Middle East when the finances were pulled from under our feet. Then the Gulf crisis came along. The dollars started flowing back again, but it takes years to get people back in place and we’re not there yet.’
Ulm recalled the collapse of their network in Iran, Lebanon, and Syria following the kidnapping of the CIA’s Beirut station chief, William Buckley, in 1984. Within a few months, every single operative had been wiped out.
‘And in the mean time,’ Jacobson said, ‘the Israelis had stopped helping us because we’d been leaning on Tel Aviv too hard over nuclear proliferation.’
‘What about the Brits?’
‘MI6? You know what the Brits are like. They’re good at asking, but they sure as hell don’t like sharing it. Basically, though you won’t get anyone to admit it, we’re blind from the Eastern Mediterranean to the Asian subcontinent.’
‘Which leaves the Soviets,’ Ulm said.
The rattle of the air-conditioning system seemed to fill the room.
‘Precisely, Colonel. I should add that we are under some pressure here to make this thing with the Soviets work. Politically speaking, that is.’
Ulm got the hint. It was obvious from its elaborate front that TERCOM received its funding from the Administration’s ‘black’ accounting jar, the source from which most classified programmes obtained their money. As a result, TERCOM was at its master’s beck and call.
‘All right, suppose we can make it work,’ Ulm said. ‘When would I be briefed about the target?’
‘That is being arranged, Colonel.’ Jacobson looked at his watch. ‘We have a preliminary briefing scheduled in an hour’s time. Until then, why don’t I show you around?’
The tour took something less than an hour in the end. Ulm saw everything from the front company that had been created to protect TERCOM from prying eyes - a fully-funded and functional computer software house - to the dark workings of the organization’s communications room. Throughout the walk-round he was conscious of Jacobson’s mounting agitation. The agent punctuated his talk with frequent references to his wristwatch.
The phone buzzed in the midst of a demonstration of TERCOM’s VLF communications suite. Jacobson picked it up and listened intently for a few seconds. He left Ulm alone for less than five minutes, returning to announce that their briefer had arrived.
Ulm followed him along the corridor, conditioning his mind already to expect a whole lot of things he wasn’t going to enjoy hearing about what lay ahead.
It was this discipline that undoubtedly saved him from an exclamation of surprise when he re-entered the conference room, for on the other side of the table it was Colonel Roman Shabanov who rose to greet him.
‘You two, of course, know each other,’ Jacobson said, a smile thinning his lips. He closed the door behind him with a soft click.
As Shabanov rose from his chair, Ulm couldn’t begin to think what the Russian - a mere colonel -was doing with information of the calibre required by TERCOM for a joint operation. Had he been in possession of the salient facts all along, or had he merely collected the information from the embassy as messenger boy for the Kremlin?
Either way, the Russian had been a sleeper, waiting for orders. It was a timely reminder that Spetsnaz was indivisible from the GRU, Soviet Military Intelligence. And however Westernized Shabanov seemed, Spetsnaz always drew its recruits from hard-core communist organizations like the Komsomol and DOSAAF before the fall of the Communists.
Jacobson gestured for Shabanov to take his chair again. With Ulm seated on his left, he took his seat opposite the Russian.
‘The floor’s yours, Colonel,’ he said. ‘Make history.’
Shabanov remained unmoved. He raised his eyes from the table and stared straight at Ulm. ‘I have known about the organization which carried out the hijacking for some time. Let me tell you it has not been easy, Elliot.’
Ulm held the Russian’s stare. ‘We all have our orders.’ Privately, however, he could not shake off an irrational sense of betrayal.
‘General Aushev has empowered me to deliver the identity of the terrorists as proof that the Romeo Protocol can succeed. Our motives are not altruistic. The general wishes me to be honest with you. For us, co-operation in the counter-terror field has a very practical purpose. Terrorism inside my country is on the increase. In the past three months, thirteen internal flights have been hijacked. Yet, a few months previously, Russians did not know the meaning of the word. You and your allies have had time to formulate y
our counter-insurgency doctrine and practices. As I said to you yesterday, Elliot, Spetsnaz can do many things, but we are still learning. There is much you can teach us.’
‘And vice versa,’ Ulm said. He thought of mother and child, three neat holes drilling each head.
‘Doubtless, you heard about our top military adviser in the Yemen, General Churmurov, killed by a terrorist car-bomb in Sana’a, Yemen, last February. In the following month, an 11-96 on an Aeroflot internal flight blew up at altitude between Moscow and Tashkent. There were no survivors. The war had shifted gear, Elliot, and we didn’t even know who had declared it upon us. There has been so much unrest in my country over the last two years it was difficult to isolate these two acts as the work of one group. Except in one respect. In both these instances, no one claimed responsibility. That struck us as strange.’
Ulm looked at Jacobson as Shabanov continued.
‘By early summer, when our scientists were able to match the explosive used in the airliner to the bomb in the general’s car, they knew, without doubt, that they were looking for one organization. In their minds, all other pockets of unrest became of secondary importance, for they realized they were dealing with a terror outfit of unprecedented power and ambition; one with the ability to operate both inside and outside the Soviet Union, but whose focus was turned on the destruction - or at the very least, destabilization - of the Soviet apparatus. But who were they? The KGB was without any leads. And so it was that they handed over the entire investigation to the GRU.’
‘Jesus,’ Jacobson said. ‘I bet you were surprised.’
‘I was not personally involved at this point, but certainly, General Aushev was taken aback. There is little affection between the GRU and the KGB.’
Jacobson removed his glasses and began cleaning them with his tie. ‘I’ll say,’ he muttered.
‘As soon as he assumed responsibility for the investigation, the general sent word out through our embassies that this matter had become a priority. All GRU operatives were made aware of its criticality, its vital importance. Old contacts with guerrilla organizations, such as those in the Lebanon, Libya, and Syria, were renewed. We made it clear that we were looking for any information leading to this organization that was acting against Soviet interests; and that we were prepared to pay. For weeks there was only silence. Then one day last month, we achieved breakthrough.’