by David Poyer
“Your mom’s a good person, Punkin. We just couldn’t get along.”
“Want to know a secret? That’s why I picked this school. To be near you.”
“Are you serious?” he said. “That’s great. That’s really great.”
“I thought we could do something together. Go sailing or something … I’ve never been on a boat.”
“I know a guy in Annapolis who runs charters. Pick a weekend.”
“Oh, look! There’re my friends. Over here!”
She immediately began telling them about the boat trip, inviting them along. This was disappointing. He’d conjured a picture of the two of them sharing memories and dreams out on the bay. But he put it aside. Just being in her life again was great.
Just then something like a trapped roach buzzed against his flank. He flinched before he remembered. He’d set the pager on vibrate. The White House number, but he didn’t recognize the extension. He excused himself and found a pay phone.
“Sit Room,” a voice said. Female. Businesslike.
“Lenson from counterdrug, returning a page.”
“Lenson? Jennifer Roald. I understand you’re the go-to guy on Tomahawk targeting.”
Captain Jennifer Roald was the director of the Situation Room. Dan said, “I’ve done some in the past, ma’am. It’s not my current assignment.”
“Firing? Or targeting?”
“Well … both. I was on the development team, and—”
“Can you come in? We need some in-house advice.”
He hung up and stood there for a moment. What the hell was going on?
“I’m sorry, I’ve got to go back to the office,” he told Nan, back at their table. He gave her friends a smile, patted her back, and said good-bye.
Walking back to the car he cupped his hand to his face, breathing in the scent of her hair. It smelled like the freshness from an opened window, when a room has been closed too long.
5
Full night. Outside the Sit Room windows, past the nodding petunias in their kitschy boxes, a salmon glare backlit the limos on West Executive. Columns of text scrolled down screens. The clatter of keys rose to a cicada drone as the duty officers processed another wave of messages. The phones were ringing. Illuminated numerals glowed the time in Tokyo, Baghdad, London. Dan hadn’t expected rosewood cabinetry in a watch center. He hoped his car would be okay. Sometimes they got broken into out on the Ellipse, tires slashed.
There didn’t seem to be any official nomenclature for having all hands on deck, like “general quarters” or “red alert.” But the analysts were at their desks, the call-ins were working in the executive secretariat area, the deputy and director were in their cubicles, and the coffee machine was doing a steady business. The mess had sent in trays of brownies and sandwiches. Now and then one of the watch staff would take a paper plate and eat quickly at the comm desk, or leave for a smoke under the awning outside. Five, six quick puffs, then he’d slide back into his seat, like a gamer addicted to the flickering screen.
* * *
Captain Jennifer Roald turned out to be small-boned, older than Dan, with a piquant face and a chin pointed as a McIntosh apple. She’d explained the situation while standing before a display. “The North Koreans have announced they’re abrogating the nonproliferation treaty. There’s a meeting at midnight in the videoteleconferencing room to prepare talking points for a 0300 call to South Korea.”
“De Bari will call from there?”
“No. That will be Mrs. Clayton to Mr. Kim, to set up for the president’s call. Which right now we think will be around 0900. We place the calls from here, then connect to the Oval Office.”
“Okay. What do you want me to do?”
“I want you to work problem number two. The joint task force in northern Eritrea. Providing security for civilian relief organizations after the earthquake and famine. Several of their helicopters have been shot down.”
“SA-7s?” The Russian version of the Stinger antiaircraft missile.
“Apparently not, but they’ve developed antihelo squads. A tactic of massed RPG fire to bring them down at low altitude.”
All he knew about Eritrea was what he’d gleaned from CNN and the Post. But this hadn’t been in any of the papers or on TV. “That’s not good,” he said, reflecting on how heavily U.S. forces relied on choppers for logistics, fire support, transport.
“The militias withdrew into the mountains under coalition pressure. The SecDef authorized the on-scene commander, an Army one-star, to send Special Forces teams and local allies in after them. Now that force has been ambushed at Kerkerbit, near the border. They’re getting Sudanese military aid and pushing south. This could be an attempt to destabilize the Eritrean government. Make it another terrorist enclave, like Afghanistan or Sudan.”
Above their heads Wolf Blitzer came on the screen, face grim. Behind him spread the South Lawn, the lit facade of the White House. Dan could just make out the West Wing over Blitzer’s shoulder. Was the reporter out there now?
“Government radio says the relief column has been ambushed. Heavy casualties are reported to American and allied troops. A portion of the city appears to be on fire.”
They watched shaky handheld footage of sooty smoke rising over littered, dusty streets. A crackle of automatic fire, punctuated by thuds Dan judged as light artillery. Or … tanks? The Sudanese had T-76s. Women in rags wailing, shaking fists at the sky as an SH-60, the model the Army called the Black Hawk, whacked overhead.
“Rumors are a senior deputy of elusive al Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden, suspected of several attacks on U.S. forces in the Middle East, was engaged in the planning of the elaborate trap.”
“‘Trap,’” Roald repeated drily. “Damn it—they’re going to want to put out a react. A statement. Along with Korea … and no matter whether we’ve actually had the time to think it through. Anyway. They tell me you know strike plans.”
“I’ve done my share.”
“CENTCOM’s been proposing for some time that instead of fighting the rebels in Eritrea, we hit their base camps and weapons dumps inside Sudan. Now they want to do it to relieve the pressure on Kerkerbit. Mrs. C wants us to evaluate their plan.”
Dan tried to focus. Lethality analyses. Vulnerable dimensions metrics. Roald was still talking. “Is what they’re proposing reasonable? Short term. Long term. We don’t have time for a paper. Just talking points. Any hard spots you see.”
He hesitated. It took a master conductor to orchestrate subordinate commanders to achieve surprise, shock, and overwhelming force while keeping one’s own troops out of the enemy’s lethal envelopes as long as possible. The finished plan could run twenty single-spaced pages. Hours of analysis lay beneath every digit. If one got changed in the wrong way as it ascended the chain of command, people could die who didn’t deserve to. Innocent civilians. Friendly troops. Pilots. He’d seen what could happen if too many fingers got stuck into that pie.
But he wasn’t being asked for an opinion on just the strike plan, but on the whole idea of going over the border into Sudan. Maybe even whether they ought to be in Eritrea at all.
“Got a problem?”
“I don’t think we should be screwing with what the force commander wants to do. The last thing they need is us second-guessing them.”
Roald put her hand on his shoulder. Bent his head close, so the watchstanders couldn’t hear. “I know you’re a new gain, but you’d better reorient your thinking. Crossing that border will extend that war. If the situation goes to shit, there’ll be diplomatic and political fallout. As well as maybe a lot more troops dead. Understand?”
“I hear you, but—”
“Our job’s to advise the president. That means: not blindly accepting what the Chiefs hand us. Second-guessing the generals is our job. And think ahead: effects on allies and neutrals and, yeah, on the domestic constituencies—though that’s more De Bari’s political people that’ll be bending his ear on that. Clayton’s on the line to Nelson
Mandela’s office now.”
“Uh … why Nelson Mandela?”
“It’s a joint U.S.–South African task force.”
While Dan contemplated this, Roald’s short nails hit the keyboard. A message flashed on the screen, displacing the mountains, trails, villages of a distant country. “Okay … that’s the preliminary execute order to evacuate Seoul. Pacific Command wants us to posture to Defcon Three to warn the Chinese off. I can’t give Eritrea another minute. Tell me if this strike plan is smart, and if it isn’t, what you recommend. Stoneman here’ll help you. J.T.’s from State. He put in three years in Eritrea before he came to us.”
* * *
For the next five hours, CNN carried speculation by “military experts” on the deepening emergency in Korea. Hundreds of messages streamed in from Pacific Command, Central Command, Strategic Command, and the joint task force commander in Eritrea and the strike assets in the Red Sea. The assistant national security adviser, Brent Gelzinis, argued with Roald in the teleconferencing room.
Hunched at a terminal, Dan and the State analyst made sure the attack aircraft and Tomahawks would arrive on time, and that as few as possible friendly forces, economic assets, and local noncombatants would be endangered. They worked on paper maps a courier brought over from the National Imagery and Mapping Agency. Western Eritrea and eastern Sudan were not yet e-mapped. Here and there, through Stoneman’s vivid vignettes, Dan got a heartrending glimpse of the ancient Baraka Province, and what was happening as the drought worsened, as crop failure, famine, and now war began to erase its long-suffering but incredibly brave half-Christian, half-Muslim Tigrai and Agau peoples.
He had no doubt that in the bowels of the Pentagon and in Riyadh and at the various combatant and supporting CINCs, others were doing much the same thing. But Roald was right. If the buck stopped with the president, he had to know what was going on. He needed someone who could answer hard questions and, perhaps, now and again, recommend decisions without waiting for responses from commands in different time zones, at the far end of comm pipelines that were shaky, to say the least.
They finished just in time for the midnight meeting.
* * *
Roald had said Gelzinis was working Korea, but apparently he had the ball for Eritrea as well. Looking like a tired family lawyer, the assistant adviser convened a tense meeting in the conference room. The execute messages had gone out. Halfway around the world, destroyers and the carrier in the Red Sea were moving toward their launch positions. Mrs. Clayton listened, as tastefully dressed as she’d been that first morning, when she’d cut off Dan’s self-introduction.
Dan knew the next briefer. A CIA Mideast specialist named Provanzano. They’d met at a desert base called ‘Ar’ar, before the deep-penetration mission called Signal Mirror. Provanzano recognized him too, and winked as slides came up on a large-screen display that had lurked behind the paneling.
Operational intelligence sources reported that significant figures in the obscure organization that had targeted USS Cole and USS Horn might be involved in the fighting around Kerkerbit. General Wood recommended extending the strike into a second day, hitting four more training camps.
The senior directors tossed questions. Then Mrs. Clayton took the floor back. On the whole, she said, she agreed with where CENTCOM was going. The president was wary of committing forces, but this seemed like an opportunity to win time for the new Eritrean regime. The same strategy the South Africans had used against SWAPO in Angola, and Nixon had used in Cambodia. “Not that I’m Henry Kissinger,” she said, to chuckles. She told Gelzinis to make sure the Chiefs got that word. She’d call the secretary of defense after she briefed the president. Provanzano would backchannel advance warning, so the planners could keep ahead of the decision makers.
One of the directors asked if he should start calling his Saudi and Egyptian counterparts. Clayton said no, that could leak to the press.
When Provanzano left, Dan followed him out into the watch area. “Commander Lenson,” the CIA guy said, shaking his hand, though Dan hadn’t offered it. “Glad to see you made it out of Baghdad. No hard feelings? That I was right?”
“I wish you hadn’t been. What are you doing here?”
Provanzano jerked his chin toward the lead-lined door. “Nobody here pays much attention to Eritrea. But Afwerki’s the closest thing to an ally we’ve got on the Horn. If he goes down it’s solid hostiles on the west bank from Egypt south.”
“What do you think about going across the border?”
“Time somebody punched the Sudanese in the nose.” He grinned at Dan. “The Great Game, buddy. You’re playing it now too.”
“Mr. Lenson.” A brittle voice from the conference room. “Do you happen to have a moment for us?”
He and Stoneman presented to a smaller group: Mrs. C, Gelzinis, and Dan’s immediate boss, General Sebold. Clayton asked tough questions. Dan felt nervous but managed to answer everything she asked. Actually he felt they did okay, considering they’d started only a few hours ago. “All right,” she said at last. “Then, we go. I’ll let you know as soon as the president approves launch.”
Just then a phone rang. She flinched and looked away, seemed to go somewhere else. Then groped under the desk and brought the handset to her ear.
Listened, gaze remote. Then snapped to a hovering Gelzinis, “Clear it out.”
“Let’s go, folks,” the assistant said, herding them with outstretched arms toward the door. As it swung closed Dan heard her tone go angry.
She came out ten minutes later with lips set. The assistant stood with head bent as she spoke rapidly, laying her finger in her palm.
Without looking at the analysts and watch personnel, the enlisted people who’d been called in to help with the cable traffic, she whirled and left. Leaving Gelzinis contemplating the ceiling. He coughed into his fist before looking down. Dan thought again how much, with his glasses and slicked-back hair, he resembled McNamara. The apologetic yet still smug smile was the same too.
“The strike package is canceled,” Gelzinis said. “Orders are going out now from the national military command center at the Pentagon. I know you’ve all worked hard on this tonight. But there you have it. Thanks for your help.”
* * *
“Lenson?” One of the watch team, leaning away from the endless stream of priority messages and cables rolling in from every command and embassy on the planet. “Weren’t you working Eritrea?” He pointed to a secure phone, lit and blinking.
Dan was sitting at the desk he’d spent the night at, feeling as if he’d just vomited. The strike plan had been sound. As far as he could see, there was nothing else to do, if they didn’t want more trouble from the bandits and militias that had already massacred hundreds. Yes, there was a crisis in Korea too, but none of the forces tabbed for Eritrea were on call for a Korean response. “I was, till they scrubbed it,” he said.
“Can you take this? It’s from Camp Cougar. Isn’t that in Eritrea?”
“Who is it?”
“Guy named Wood.”
The joint force commander in Eritrea was named Wood. But why would he be calling here? Bypassing the National Military Command Center and his unified combatant command? Dan glanced toward Roald’s office. He could see her through the window; she was talking earnestly to someone out of his line of sight, drawing shapes with her hands for emphasis. He remembered how much he’d always hated being put off when he’d called headquarters, being fobbed from hand to hand.
Someone called across the room as he picked up. “Remember, don’t use your rank. And there’s no need to identify yourself beyond the Sit Room.”
The set synced, and an angry voice crackled out. “This is Lem Wood, in Keren. Who’m I talking to?”
“This is the Situation Room.” He choked off the reflexive “sir” at the end of his sentence.
“Sorry for the call, but I can’t get any consistent response from higher here and I can’t wait, my people are under fire. I’m standin
g by for support here—”
Dan said, “Your strike’s been canceled. You’ll get the word any minute now via your chain of command.”
The eight-thousand-mile-away voice went baffled. “Calling off my strike package?”
“That’s right.”
“But … the CINC signed off. NMCC signed off. What the fuck’s going on up there?”
Dan felt his feet go numb, as if the impetus of his heart no longer pushed blood that far. “That’s the decision, General. Sorry.”
“You people don’t understand. We need support here. I’ve got—”
“The issue was discussed at the highest level,” Dan interrupted. He was fighting to keep his voice level. Because everything he’d ever seen told him the furious, bewildered man on the other end of the line was probably right. So that now he said through a constricted throat, “There are other considerations involved.” Though he didn’t know what, so it felt like a lie before it was past his teeth.
“What’s higher than protecting our troops? We let these people keep pushing us back, this whole piece of the planet’s going to slide right back down the shithole.”
“This is no place for a debate,” Dan told him. “Your orders are on their way. The strike’s off.”
“Leaving people to get massacred? This is … goddamn it, I’ve got five KIAs now, fifty-plus wounded. Goddamn it. God damn it! I want to talk to the president. That … conscientious-objector son of a—”
This was getting out of hand. He still hadn’t found words when a calm, emotionless voice cut in. Roald’s gaze met his through the glass wall.
“General Wood?”
“Yes?”
“This is not an appropriate call,” the Sit Room director told him in even, clear notes. “Under the Goldwater-Nichols Act of 1986, the secretary of defense has full authority, direction, and control over all military forces. Military action must be directed by the national command authority. If your combatant commander disagrees, there are ways for him to make his disagreement known. And if you dissent from his action, you can tender your resignation as a serving officer. You know all this, General. Therefore I suggest you hang up and obey your orders.”