State Of Siege (1999)

by Tom - Op Center 06 Clancy

  The door opened, and Hood turned. A guard leaned into the room while another guard covered the corridor.

  "Come with me!" the young man barked. "Quickly and quietly," he added as he waved them on.

  Hood stepped aside as the parents filed by. Sharon stepped with him. He took her hand in his left hand and just now remembered the phone in his right. He put it to his mouth.

  "Mike?" he said. "Are you still there?"

  "I'm here, Paul," Rodgers said. "We heard."

  "We're being moved," Hood said. "I'll call back."

  "We'll be here," Rodgers assured him.

  Hood closed the phone and slipped it back into his pocket. As the last parent left the room, Hood gave his wife's hand a gentle tug. She went along, and he followed her out.

  The parents were hurried past the Security Council chamber, back toward the escalators. There were a few sobs and shouted pleas for their children's return, but the guards kept the group moving.

  Hood was still holding Sharon's hand. She was squeezing his fingers tightly, probably without being aware of how hard she was gripping them.

  As they filed onto the escalators, Hood could see more guards coming up with six-foot-high, transparent blast shields, audio equipment, and what looked like fiber-optic gear. They were obviously going to try to get a look at how the hostages were being held and also listen for snippets of conversation that might tell them who the terrorists were. But Hood knew that this wasn't going to get their kids back. The United Nations didn't have the tactical know-how or the personnel to do that. They were an organization of consensus, not action.

  "Tell me you have a plan," Sharon said softly as they rode the escalators down. She was weeping openly. So were several other parents.

  "We're going to think of something," Hood replied.

  "I need more than that," Sharon said. "Harleigh's my girl, and I'm leaving her alone and scared up there. I have to know I'm doing the right thing."

  "You are," Hood said. "We'll get her out of there, I promise."

  As soon as the group reached the main lobby, they were taken downstairs. A temporary command center was being set up in the lobby outside the gift shops and restaurant. That made sense. If the terrorists had accomplices, it would be difficult for them to monitor activities down here. The press would also have trouble getting down here, which was probably good. Given the international scope of what was happening, press coverage was inevitable. Since the UN would want to keep the number of people down here to a minimum, they would probably select a small pool of journalists.

  The parents were taken to the public cafeteria, where they were seated at tables far from the lobby. They were offered sandwiches, bottled water, and coffee. One of the fathers lit a cigarette. He was not asked to put it out. Moments later, senior security personnel arrived to debrief the parents about things they might have seen or heard while they were in the press room. A psychologist and doctor also came down to help them get through the crisis.

  Hood did not need their assistance.

  Catching the eye of the security head, Hood said that he was going out to the rest room. Rising, he managed to smile for Sharon and then walked around the tables into the lobby. He went to the rest room, entered the rearmost stall, and got Mike Rodgers back on the phone. He stood there, leaning against the tile wall. His shirt was cold with perspiration.

  "Mike?" he said.

  "Here."

  "The UN people are moving in with AV gear," Hood said. "We've been relocated downstairs for debriefing and psych support."

  "Classic response," Rodgers said. "They're setting up for a siege."

  "That isn't going to be an option," Hood said. "The terrorists don't want to negotiate, they don't want anyone freed from prison. They want money. Doesn't the UN have a special response unit?"

  "Yes," Rodgers said. "The UNS-Ops is a nine-person division of the security force. Established in 1977, trained by the NYPD in SWAT tactics and hostage situations, and never field-tested."

  "Jesus."

  "Yeah," Rodgers said. "Why would anyone go after the United Nations? They're harmless. We've got Darrell on another line. He says that NYPD policy is to contain and negotiate, to keep things from exploding. And if things do blow, to keep them localized. It sounds like the security team's setting up to do that where you are."

  Hood felt like he'd been kicked in the gut. This was his daughter's death they were talking about "localizing"!

  "Darrell's also in touch with a contact in the secretary-general's office," Rodgers went on. "Chatterjee is getting together with representatives of the affected nations."

  "To do what?" Hood asked.

  "At the moment, nothing. There doesn't appear to be any inclination to accommodate the terrorists's demands. They're still trying to figure out who these people are. They have the paper with the Swede's script, but it was obviously dictated and written by the delegate. No help in tracing the terrorists."

  "So they just intend to sit this out."

  "For now," Rodgers said. "That's what the UN does."

  Hood's sadness shaded to anger. He felt like going into the Security Council chamber himself and shooting the terrorists one after another. Instead, he turned and punched the bottom of his fist into the wall.

  "Paul," Rodgers said.

  Hood had never felt so helpless in his life.

  "Paul, I have Striker on yellow alert."

  Hood leaned the top of his head against the wall. "If you send them in here, the world--not just the federal government--the world is going to chew you up and crap you out."

  "I have one word for you," Rodgers said. "Entebbe. Publicly, the world condemned Israeli commandos for going into Uganda and rescuing those Air France hostages from Palistinian terrorists. But privately, every right-thinking individual slept a little prouder that night. Paul, I don't give a damn what China or Albania or the secretary-general or even the president of the United States thinks of me. I want to get those kids out."

  Hood didn't know what to say. The jump from yellow to red alert wasn't even his decision to make, yet Rodgers wanted his approval. Something about that touched him deeply.

  "I'm with you, Mike," Hood said. "I'm with you, and God bless."

  "Go back to Sharon and sit tight," Rodgers said. "I promise, we'll get Harleigh out of there."

  Hood thanked him, shut the phone, and slipped it into his pocket. Mike's gesture triggered tears he'd been fighting since this whole thing started. He stood there sobbing with his cheek pressed against the cold tile. After a minute, the bathroom door opened. Hood sniffed back his tears, stood, and unspooled some bathroom tissue. He wiped his eyes.

  It was odd. Hood had told Sharon what she'd wanted to hear, that they'd save Harleigh, even though he didn't entirely believe it. Yet when Mike said the same thing, Hood believed him. He wondered if all faith was so easily manipulated. A need to believe given a firm push.

  He blew his nose and flushed the tissue down the toilet. There was one difference, he thought as he left the stall. Faith was faith, but Mike Rodgers was Mike Rodgers. And one of them had never let him down.

  FOURTEEN

  Quantico, Virginia Saturday, 9:57 P.M.

  The Marine Corps base at Quantico is a sprawling, rustic facility that is the home to diverse military units. These range from the MarCorSysCom--Marine Corps Systems Command--to the secretive Commandant's Warfighting Laboratory, a military think tank. Quantico is regarded as the intellectual crossroads of the Marine Corps, where teams of neologistic "warfighters" are able to devise and study tactics and then put them into operation in realistic combat simulations. Quantico also boasts some of the finest small-caliber weapons and grenade ranges, ground maneuver sites, light armor assault facilities, and physical challenge courses in the United States military.

  Many of the base's key functions actually take place at Camp Upshur, a training encampment located twenty-five miles northwest of the base inside Training Area 17. There, Delta Company, 4th Light Armored R
econnaissance Battalion, 4th Marine Division, Op-Center's Striker division, and the Marine Reserve Support Units refine the techniques they learned when they were recruits. Comprised of twenty-one buildings that range from classrooms to Quonset hut-style squad bays, Camp Upshur can billet up to 500 troops.

  Colonel Brett August liked Quantico, and he really liked Upshur. He spent his time equally between drilling his Striker squad and giving classroom lectures in military history, strategy, and theory. He also liked to put his people through rigorous sports competitions. To him, those were as much a psychological as a physiological workout. It was interesting. He had set it up so that the winners pulled extra duty. Garbage, kitchen, and latrine. Yet no one had ever tried to lose a basketball or football game, or even a weekend piggyback fight in the pool with their kids. Not once. In fact, August had never seen soldiers so happy to be doing drudge work. Liz Gordon was planning to write a paper on the phenomenon, which she'd dubbed "The Masochism of Victory."

  Right now, though, it was August who was suffering. Upon returning from action in Spain, promotions and long-in-the-works transfers had cost him some key Strikers. In the few days following the depletion, he'd been working hard with four new warfighters. They'd been concentrating on night targeting with 105mm Howitzers when the call came from General Rodgers to put the team on yellow alert. August had wanted to give the new members more time to integrate with the old, but it didn't matter. August was satisfied that the new people were ready to see action if it became necessary. Marine Second Lieutenants John Friendly and Judy Quinn were as tough as August had ever seen, and Delta's Privates First Class Tim Lucas and Moe Longwood were their new communications expert and hand-to-hand combat specialist. There was natural competitiveness between the two branches, but that was good. Under fire, the barriers vanished, and they were all on the same team. Skill-wise, the new people would fit in nicely with seasoned Strikers Sargeant Chick Grey, Corporal Pat Prementine--the boy-genius of infantry tactics--Private First Class Sondra DeVonne, burly Private Walter Pupshaw, Private Jason Scott, and Private Terrence Newmeyer.

  A yellow alert meant gearing up and waiting in the ready room to see if the team was going to take the next step. The ready room consisted of a gunmetal desk by the door, which was manned round the clock by a desk sergeant; hard wooden chairs arranged classroom style--the brass didn't want anyone getting too comfortable and going to sleep; an old blackboard; and a computer terminal on a table in front of the blackboard. In the event that they were needed, a Bell LongRanger fifteen-seat Model 205A-1 was being fired up on a nearby landing strip for the half-hour ride to Andrews Air Force Base. From there, the team would be flown by C-130 to the Marine Air Terminal at New York's La Guardia Airport. Rodgers had said that Striker's potential target was the United Nations building. The C-130 didn't need a lot of runway, and La Guardia, though not a regular stop for military traffic, was the field closest to the United Nations.

  The one thing the tall, lean, thin-faced colonel hated above all was waiting. A holdover from Vietnam, it gave him a sense of being out of control. When August was a prisoner of war, he had to wait for the next middle-of-the-night interrogation, the next beating, the next death of someone he served with. He had to wait for news, passed along in careful whispers, by new arrivals in the camp. But the worst wait of all came when August tried to escape. He had to turn back when his partner was wounded and needed medical care. He never got another chance to break out. His captors saw to that. He had to wait for the long-winded, heel-dragging, face-saving diplomats in Paris to negotiate his release. None of that taught him patience. It taught him that waiting was for people who had no other options. He'd once told Liz Gordon that waiting was the real definition of masochism.

  The United Nations was on the water's edge, so Colonel August had the Strikers bring their wet gear. And since they were going to Manhattan, they were dressed like civilians. While the ten team members checked their suits and equipment, August used the ready room computer to visit the United Nations home page. He had never been to the building and wanted to get an idea of the layout. As he navigated to the web site, the on-line news of the day talked about the breaking story in New York, the hostage situation at the United Nations. August was surprised--not just that a nonpartisan facility would be attacked by terrorists but that U.S. troops would be on call to assist. He couldn't think of a single scenario in which American armed forces would be invited to help out in a situation like that.

  As he studied the web site options, Sondra DeVonne and Chick Grey came up behind him. There were icons for Peace and Security, Humanitarian Affairs, Human Rights, and other feel-good topics. He went to the icon for Databases to try and find a map of the damn place. Not only had he never been there, he had no desire to go. For all their tub-thumping about peace and rights, they'd left him and his comrades from Air Force Intelligence in a Vietnamese prison for over two years.

  There were other reference materials in the databases. Video records of Security Council and General Assembly meetings. Social indicators. International treaties. Land mines. Peacekeeping Training Course database. There was even a site for a glossary of United Nations Document Symbols, which was itself an acronym: UNI-QUE for UN Info Quest.

  "I hope Bob Herbert is having better luck," August said. "There isn't a single map of the compound."

  "Maybe publishing it is considered a security risk," DeVonne suggested. Since joining Striker, the pretty African-American had been training for Geo-Intel--geographic intelligence--which, in addition to planning reconnaissance, was being used more and more to target smart missiles. "I mean," she said, "if you posted a detailed blueprint, you could plan and even run a missile attack without ever leaving your post."

  "You know, that's the problem with security today," Grey said. "You can set up all the fancy antiterrorist protection you want, they can still get through the old-fashioned way. A jerk with a meal knife or a hat pin can still grab a flight attendant and take over an airplane."

  "That doesn't mean you have to make it easy," DeVonne said.

  "No," Grey agreed. "But don't kid yourself that any of it's really going to work. Terrorists will still get anywhere they want to go, just as a determined assassin can still get to a world leader."

  The phone beeped, and the desk sergeant answered the call. It was for August. The colonel hurried over. If and when they left this room, the squad would instantly switch to the secure, mobile TAC-SAT phone. While they were here, they still used the secure base lines.

  "Colonel August here," he said.

  "Brett, it's Mike." In public, the officers observed formal protocol. In private conversation, they were two men who had known each other since childhood. "You've got a go."

  "A go is understood," August replied. He glanced over at his team. They were already beginning to gather their gear.

  "I'll give you the mission profile when you arrive," Rodgers said.

  "See you in thirty minutes," August replied, then hung up.

  Less than three minutes later, the Striker squad was buckling themselves into the helicopter seats for the ride to Andrews. As the noisy chopper rose into the night and arced to the northeast, Colonel August was puzzled by something Rodgers had said. Typically, mission parameters were downloaded to the aircraft via secure ground-to-air modem. It saved time and allowed the process to continue even after the team was airborne.

  Rodgers had said he was going to give them the mission parameters when they arrived. If that meant what he thought it meant, then this was going to be a more interesting and unusual evening than he had expected.

  FIFTEEN

  New York, New York Saturday, 10:08 P.M.

  When the violinists had first arrived in the Security Council chambers, they assembled behind the horseshoe-shaped table on the main floor. Their musical director, Ms. Dorn, had just arrived. The twenty-six-year-old had given a recital in Washington the night before and had flown in that day. While Ms. Dorn reviewed the score, Harleigh Hood stood by th
e curtains in front of one of the windows. She peeked outside at the darkening river and smiled at the jiggling lights reflected on the surface. The bright, colorful spots reminded her of musical notes, and she found herself wondering why sheet music was never printed in color--a different color for each octave.

  Harleigh had just released the edge of the curtain when they heard pops in the hallway. Moments later, the double doors on the north side of the chamber slammed open, and the masked men ran in.

  Neither the delegates nor their guests moved, and the young musicians remained where they were, in two tight rows. Only Ms. Dorn moved, protectively positioning herself between the children and the intruders. The masked men were too busy to notice her. They were running down the sides of the chamber, surrounding the delegates. None of the intruders said anything until one of the men grabbed a delegate and pulled him off to the side. The intruder spoke to the man quietly, as though he were afraid of being overheard. The delegate, who had been introduced to the violinists earlier in a receiving line--he was from Sweden, though she forgot his name--then told the group that no one would be harmed as long as they stayed quiet and did exactly as they were told. Harleigh didn't find him convincing. His collar was already sweaty, and the whole time his eyes were moving all over the place like he was looking for a place to run.

  The intruder resumed talking to the delegate. They sat down at the horseshoe-shaped table. The delegate was handed paper and a pencil.

  Two of the intruders checked the windows, opened the doors to see what was behind them, then took up other positions. When one of them had been standing beside her window, practically at her shoulder, Harleigh had had to fight the urge to say something. She'd wanted to ask this person what he was doing. Her father had always told her that a reasonable question, reasonably asked, rarely provoked an angry response.