When he felt able to move, he crawled to the top of the dune and looked in horrible fascination at the wreckage that only moments before had been two powerful transport helicopters loaded with combat-ready Marines. It was hard to tell one of the birds from the other now because they had come down in a heap, cutting each other into chunks and merging into a single pile of smoldering wreckage. Twisting columns of red and yellow and orange flames spun into the dark sky.
Swanson dropped his gear and ran to the wreckage, stepping through the hot, sharp metal and pockets of burning debris to check for signs of life and finding only bodies and parts of bodies. There were no moans, no cries for help. Had the Marines been seated and strapped in, some might have survived, but he found nothing but carnage. The machines had slaughtered each other as well as every human being aboard except him.
Almost thirty men had been killed, and the scene sickened him. “Fuck me,” Swanson said. He turned away, took a few steps, and threw up.
It was a fiery end for the ambitious plan that the briefers had predicted would be a cakewalk. Motherfucking Mr. Murphy and his bad-luck law had shown up early on this one, and Kyle, breathing deeply, forced himself back into the cold reality of the moment. Get your shit together!
He could see if there was a workable radio and call the Fleet, where everyone would be listening to the net. But Washington probably was also plugged into the radio chatter, and the White House would simply hand the assassination job to someone else. If Swanson called for help, General Middleton would surely die.
Think, damn it, think! If he didn’t call, everyone would think that he was dead, too. But that would allow him to work alone, and although Buchanan would probably still assign another assassin, Kyle stood a good chance of reaching the general first because he was already on the ground.
Hell, he should be dead anyway, so why not continue the mission by himself, in total secrecy? The odds were astronomical, but Kyle would not allow himself to think of it as a suicide trip. That’s it, then. Just get on with it! Go! New confidence surged through him like electricity.
He looked toward the village, which was about fifteen hundred meters away. That distance had not been changed by the crash. The helicopters had come down right where they were supposed to, just in a terribly wrong way. With the crash, the jig was up as far as surprise went, and everybody in the village might be temporarily stunned by what happened, but they would be coming his way in a hurry. Time was not his friend.
He went back into the wreckage and gathered canteens of water, more ammo, plenty of blocks of C-4 explosive, a couple of Claymore mines, a portable satellite telephone that still had power, and a survival radio from one of the pilots. He snapped them both off. Even when not in active use they would still send electronic signals, and when the little green power lights vanished, Swanson could no longer be tracked. On the screens, he was dead. He found an M-16 rifle, locked and loaded.
A glance at his watch showed him that three minutes had flown by, and he still had two more important chores.
Kyle stepped over bodies and debris until he was beside the little Kawasaki motorcycle. He gave it a quick check and it seemed undamaged, having been held tight on the deck throughout the disaster. Unlike the Marines, it had been professionally secured, and Kyle unsheathed his big knife, cut away the loading bands, and pushed it out. He loaded everything he had on it and rested it on the kickstand.
Now came the hard part, leaving a clue for Shari, something only she would recognize. She was in the informational loop about the mission, and would assume that he had died in the crash. He wanted to let her know he had survived, but also to provide some misdirection for anyone else.
He scanned the dead Marines and found one in the jumble of corpses, someone whose face could not be recognized but was about Kyle’s size. The rubber-rimmed dog tag identified the man as Lance Corporal Harold McDowell, and his neck had been snapped when he was thrown against the bulkhead. A Marine Corps tattoo was inked on his right forearm. The kid had been proud to be a warrior and would not object to doing one more job.
Kyle exchanged the neck dog tag with his own. “It’s this way, McDowell,” Swanson whispered while he untied the kid’s left boot, then his own, speaking to the pale face. “I need your help here. The bad guys are going to be looking for survivors. If they figure out some crazy sniper is missing, they’ll really start hunting. If a radioman is missing, no offense, they won’t give a rat’s ass and think you will holler for help and get picked up sooner or later. You would pose no threat to them.”
Kyle unbuckled the big radio from the dead man’s shoulders. He would dispose of it later, but he needed to take it along to complete the disguise and misdirection play. The pursuers would logically believe that a missing radioman would have kept his radio. “And for the good guys, well, Harold, some of them ain’t so good. For this plan to have any chance of working, we need those assholes to also think I’m dead. That’s where you come in, Harold. What did they call you: Hal? Mac? So convince them that you are me, okay, Lance Corporal McDowell?” Swanson stood and threw the youngster a quick salute. “Semper fi.”
He hustled over to the bike, hooked the radio pack over the handlebars, straddled the motorcycle, and, with a prayer, pushed the starter button. The little engine coughed once, then kicked to life, ready to run. His wristwatch showed that he had used up his time cushion, about six minutes since the helos went down.
He adjusted his night-vision goggles and drove away from the wreckage, the muffled exhaust helping avoid making any more noise than necessary. In the unlikely case that someone from the village figured out there was a survivor, Swanson steered the motorcycle to the east, leaving clear tracks that would indicate he was running to the Israeli border.
A minute later, he was on the paved road that ran through the village behind him, and far enough away from the wreckage to pile on a little more speed with the 1,200-cc engine. Dawn was coming, and he had to be invisible by then.
When radio contact was broken between the operations center aboard the USS Wasp and the TRAP team helos, several minutes elapsed while the sailors at the consoles tried to reestablish a voice link. A download from a stationary satellite watching the area showed a flash in the darkness and the lingering bloom of immense heat at the landing zone.
Colonel Ralph Sims, commander of the 33rd Marine Expeditionary Unit, chewed a fingernail. “Get the Harriers in there to take a look,” he ordered, and the pair of fighter jets broke out of their orbit over Israel, heeled over from 40,000 feet, dropped to the ground, and sped into Syrian airspace riding their afterburners. Nearing the scene, they saw the fire, cut their speed, coasted over the wreckage, banked into a sharp turn, and ran past it again.
Aboard the Wasp, the speakers crackled in the quiet commo room. “Henhouse, this is Rooster One. They’re down and burning,” a pilot reported.
“Survivors?” Sims asked. The radioman relayed the question.
“Negative. No sign of life or movement at the scene, but there are bad guys coming out from the target zone. Request permission to engage.”
Sims wanted to say, “Hell, yes,” but could not. An attack run by the Harriers would probably result in casualties among Syrian civilians, which would make a bad situation a lot worse. It was time to call it a day. “Negative,” he barked, and turned to the commander of the ship’s Marine Air Wing. “Get those planes back home.”
The Tactical Air Center sent the order. “Egress! Egress! Egress!”
The pilot hesitated. “Henhouse, Rooster One. What about a bombing run on the wreckage? I can torch the scene.”
“Negative,” came the immediate reply from Colonel Sims. He needed higher authority for that, and didn’t have time to get it. He would message Washington for permission to send in a Cruise missile for that demolition job. “Repeat. Negative. Return to base.”
“Rooster One. Roger that. I copy egress, return to base.” The Rooster Flight headed home.
He heard his wingma
n come on the air. “Rooster Two to Rooster One, push to Rooster freak.” Both pilots switched to another frequency so they could talk without being overheard.
“Go ahead, Two, this is Rooster One.”
“Boss, did I copy that last right? We really leaving these guys behind?”
“You heard the same thing I did.”
“I know, but what about ‘Marines don’t leave their own’?”
The flight leader’s temper was simmering. He felt the same way, but because he was in command, he could not agree with his friend over an open radio channel. “One to Two. You saw it as good as I did. They’re all dead!”
“Well, if they weren’t then, they are now. Or worse.”
“That’s enough, Rooster Two. Follow your orders. Rooster One out.”
The Harriers hugged the ground as they dashed back to Israeli airspace, where they would climb high for the rest of the return flight to the Wasp. The pilots remained silent, lost in thought about a rescue raid that had flipped into total disaster. Rooster One knew that by flying away, they were erasing any chance American survivors might escape captivity, torture, or death. “Please, God, don’t let me see one of those kids show up on Al Jazeera,” he said in a soft prayer, words that would never leave his cockpit.
Aboard the Wasp, Colonel Ralph Sims sent the message about the cruise missile to Washington, then walked rigidly out of the command center, seeking fresh air and a moment of privacy. He lit a cigarette and thought about his Marines lying entombed in the helicopters in Syria. There would be a lot of investigations, and people, including him, would probably lose their jobs. At the moment, he didn’t really care, for he had a bigger worry, one that was much more personal. What the hell am I supposed to tell their families?
The sky was losing its blackness, and the first rays of the new day crawled across the Middle East.
CHAPTER 20
ROOSTER ONE. ROGER THAT. I copy egress, return to base.”
The Harrier flight leader sounded calm and professional as he was heard in real time over a satellite linkup straight into the Situation Room of the White House. Members of the National Security Council had been there for an hour, monitoring the Middleton rescue raid. Now they were immobilized in shock.
Lieutenant Commander Shari Towne brought both hands to her mouth, fighting not to cry out in anguish at what she heard. Both helicopters down. No signs of life. Unknown people moving in fast. KYLE! NO!
National Security Advisor Gerald Buchanan was at the head of the long table in his big chair, tapping a yellow pencil against a legal pad as he listened to the disembodied voice. This was something he had not counted on, and he was busy weighing the up sides and the down sides. He looked around at the military people and detected an advantage. Make it their fault.
The chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, General Turner, was chewing a knuckle, and lines of thought creased his forehead. He was, after all, a Marine, although he represented all of the military services. He had previously been the Marine Corps commandant, so those were his men who had lost their lives. He was emotionally involved.
A definite advantage! Grab it! Buchanan, however, spoke quietly. “Your Marines failed, General, so we now have a situation.”
Turner had to agree. He had watched the crash via the satellite feed and had heard what the pilots had to say. “Yes, sir. It does appear the mission was unsuccessful.”
Buchanan did not follow up his first jab. He stared at the satellite picture of a glowing hot spot in the Syrian desert. He could remain the consummate professional. “A tragedy, but we must move ahead. I need to hear options. Right now.”
An admiral joined the conversation. “It’s too late for an emergency rescue extraction. A team of Special Forces would not be enough at this point, with the Syrian military obviously going on alert. I would expect the Syrians to be controlling the scene within hours. We would have to insert nothing less than an airborne battalion, and that probably would not be enough. They would soon be surrounded and chopped up without massive air cover, and that would really up the stakes.” He paused. Looked directly at General Turner, then Buchanan. “No further troop deployment is advisable.”
“You can’t just leave them there!” Shari Towne exclaimed, and all eyes in the room were drawn to her. She was the lowest-ranking officer present, in charge of nothing.
“Stay out of this, Lieutenant Commander,” the admiral, her immediate boss, growled impatiently.
Shari caught the warning and flipped the pages of a red three-ring binder. “Yes, sir.” She stopped at a page. “I was referring to the protocol in the operations manual.”
Nice recovery, girl, the admiral thought. He knew of her personal relationship with Kyle Swanson and that Swanson was on the mission, but he wanted her to shut up before she went too far. The admiral liked them both and believed that their personal life was no business of anyone else at the table.
“What would that be, Lieutenant Commander” asked Buchanan. Had he caught some distress in her voice? More than normal? Why?
“Standard operating procedures instruct the incineration of wreckage, just as the pilot suggested.”
“And how would that be accomplished?”
The air force general at the long table answered. “We can get some fast movers in there, either from the carrier in the Med or up out of Iraq, sterilize the area with napalm before the Syrians can plant ground-to-air missile batteries around it. We would have to move pronto.”
The admiral interrupted. “No use putting more of our people in jeopardy. We can spin up a Tomahawk on a ship in the Med and get it in there even faster, and the missile would have a bigger clout. That’s what the Marine mission commander recommends. He’s waiting for a decision.”
Buchanan kept tapping his pencil like a little metronome of menace, seconds ticking away in a crisis. “Why do we need to do that? What is the benefit?” he asked.
“There is a lot of sophisticated equipment and material aboard those helicopters, sir. Everything from secret commo gear to night-vision goggles. Crypto. Maps. Weapons. Even avionics. Maybe some classified papers. We have no way of knowing if it all was destroyed,” Hank Turner replied. “The Syrians will strip them bare, and we cannot take the chance of all that material falling into their hands.”
“So you people are telling me that now that rescuing General Middleton is beyond your reach, that disaster may be compounded by still yet a bigger disaster? Jesus Christ.”
Everyone noted that Buchanan had stopped tapping the pencil and had used the phrase “your reach,” not “our reach.”
“That sort of criticism is beside the point, Mr. Buchanan,” Turner responded, his voice terse, growing angry with the man he considered nothing more than a political predator. “Right now, we have to decide between a missile and a bombing run, and there’s not a minute to lose.”
Buchanan abruptly stood and buttoned his coat. “Very well. Then my decision is the third option, something that none of you suggested, I might add. We do nothing. We will not, repeat not, strike the wreckage with either the bombers or a missile.” He looked directly at Shari. “What was the protocol term that you used, Lieutenant Commander Towne? Incinerate? No, absolutely not. Sending a rescue attempt into Syria was one thing, but conducting an air strike on a sovereign nation that has not attacked us could be considered an act of war. God knows whether it could be contained.”
He gave a little bow to the woman from the State Department. “We have to go the diplomatic route now, ladies and gentlemen, and hope that State can pull the Pentagon’s nuts out of the fire.”
Shari’s last wall of reserve was cracking. She had to get back to her office before she broke into tears, and it would take every ounce of strength to make that short walk. But the professional side of her mind kept turning over her intuition. Something was not right. Buchanan had driven the point home hard that the military efforts had failed, but he had hardly mentioned the deaths of American Marines. There was no anger or sorro
w. Why? She put the thought aside as the admiral stepped beside her and whispered, “Get out of here, Shari. Take the rest of the day off. We’ll let you know if we hear anything about Kyle.”
Buchanan walked back to his office mentally chalking up a most beneficial outcome. He had put those military morons in their places again, particularly the crew-cut, spit-and-polish General Turner. The raid had not gone as planned, but the unexpected crash of the helicopters had resulted in a total, dreadful, and irreversible failure that would be shown in the starkest light all over every news program in the world within a few hours. The world’s most professional and powerful military establishment had failed. Shades of the mess in the desert of Iran back in 1979.
This could definitely help the privatization act. With his office door closed, Gerald Buchanan rocked back in his chair and propped his feet on his desk. There was a broad smile on his face as he picked up his secure telephone to brief Gordon and Ruth Hazel that he had sidetracked the bombing run or any further rescue attempt. Those bodies would be coming home in flag-draped coffins. It would make great television.
CHAPTER 21
VICTOR LOGAN PRESSED HIS face hard against the cheek pad of a Russian-made Dragunov SVD sniper rifle to steady the four-power telescopic sight on the place where the helicopters had crashed. His partner, Jimbo Collins, scanned the rest of the area with night-vision goggles, looking for infrared heat emitters. Since kidnapping General Middleton, they had been waiting for the rescue attempt that was sure to come, ready to ambush the Marines, only to have it all go to hell right in front of them.
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