“Y’all have a good one,” the cop said on the way out. He entered his Chevy patrol car and headed back to the highway, then decided to give the cement truck a look. Might as well run the tag, he thought. Maybe it was hot. Then he smelled it, too, and to the cop it wasn’t the diesel ... ammonia...? It was a smell he’d always associated with ice cream, having once worked a summer in a plant which made it... and also with the smell of propellant in his National Guard cavalry unit. His curiosity aroused, he drove back to the cafe. “Excuse me, gentlemen, is that your truck parked over on the edge?”
“Yeah, why?” Brown asked. “We do something wrong?”
It was his hands that betrayed him. The cop saw them twitch. Something was definitely not right. “Would you gentlemen come with me, please?”
“Wait a minute, what’s the beef here?”
“No beef. I just want to know what that smell is. Fair enough?”
“We’re going to have it looked at.”
“You’re going to have it looked at right now, gentlemen.” He gestured. “If you would, please?”
The cop followed them out, got back into his car, and drove behind them as they walked to the truck. They were talking back and forth. Something just wasn’t right. His fellow highway cops were not terribly busy at the moment, and on instinct he called another car for backup, and told his headquarters to run the truck tag. That done, he got out and looked up at the truck again.
“You want to turn it over?”
“Okay, sure.” Brown got in and cranked the engine, which was noisy enough.
“What is going on here?” the cop asked Holbrook. “Could I see some identification, please?”
“Hey, I don’t understand what the beef is.”
“No beef, sir, but I do want to see your ID.”
Pete Holbrook pulled out his wallet as another police car arrived. Brown saw it, too, looked down to see Holbrook’s wallet in his hand, and the cop’s hand on the butt of his pistol. It was just the way cops stood, but Brown didn’t think of that. Neither Mountain Man had a gun handy. They had them in their room, but hadn’t thought to carry them to breakfast. The policeman took Pete’s driver’s license, then walked back to his car, lifting the microphone—
“The tag is clean, not in the computer as hot,” the lady at the station informed him.
“Thank you.” He tossed the mike back inside and walked back to Peter Holbrook, twirling the license in his hand—
Brown saw a cop with his friend, another cop, they’d just talked on the radio—
The highway patrolman looked up in surprise as the truck jerked forward. He yelled and pointed for the man to stop. The second car moved to block him, and then the cement truck did stop. That did it. Something was just not right.
“Out!” he shouted, his pistol in his hands now. The second officer took control of Holbrook, not having a clue what this was all about. Brown stepped down, and felt his collar grabbed and himself thrust against the body of the truck. “What is the matter with you?” the cop demanded. It would take hours to find out, and then a very interesting time at the truck stop.
THERE WAS NOTHING for him to do but scream, and that, uncharacteristically, he did. The video was undeniable. There was an instant respectability to global TV, and he couldn’t stop it from going out. The affluent in his country had their own satellite dishes, and so did many others, including little neighborhood groups. What would he do now? Order them turned off?
“Why aren’t they attacking?” Daryaei demanded.
“The Army commander and all corps commanders are off the air. We have some contact with two of our divisions only. One brigade reported it is heading north with enemy forces in pursuit.”
“And?”
“And our forces have been defeated,” Intelligence said.
“But how?”
“Does that matter?”
THEY CAME ON north. Buffalo came on south. UIR III Corps didn’t know what lay ahead. The discovery took place in midafternoon. Masterman’s 1st Squadron had so far eliminated a hundred or so fuel and other trucks, more than the other two battalions. The only question now was how much resistance the enemy would display. From air coverage, he knew exactly where the advancing force was, in what strength and concentration, and in what direction. It was much easier than the last time he’d seen action.
A-Troop was screening in advance, with B and C three klicks back, and the tank company in reserve. As fearful a pounding as their UIR forces were taking, he decided not to use his own artillery yet. No sense warning them that tanks were close by. With contact less than ten minutes away, he shifted A-Troop to the right. Unlike the first—and only previous—battle in his career, Duke Masterman wouldn’t really see this one. Instead, he listened to it on the radio.
A-Troop engaged at extreme range with both gun tubes and TOW missiles, and crumpled the first ragged line of vehicles. The troop commander estimated at least battalion strength as he engaged them from their left-front, approaching obliquely in the planned opening maneuver. This UIR division was Iraqi in origin and recoiled the other way, without realizing that it was being herded right into two more cavalry troops.
“This is GUIDON-SIX. Punch left, say again punch left,” Masterman ordered from his command track. B and C turned to the east, sprinted about three kilometers, then wheeled back. At about the same time, Masterman let his artillery fire into the enemy’s second echelon. There was no surprise to lose now, and it was time to hurt the enemy in every possible way. In another few minutes, it was clear that he was engaging at least a brigade with the 1st Squadron of the Buffalo, but the numbers didn’t matter any more now than they had during the night.
For one last time, there was a mechanistic horror. The gun flashes were less brilliant in the light of day, and tanks drove through the dust of their own shots as they advanced. As planned, the enemy force recoiled again from the devastating effects of B- and C-Troop, turning back, hoping to find a gap between the first attacking force and the second. What they found were fourteen M1A2s of the squadron’s tank company, spaced two hundred meters apart like a breakwater. As before, first the tanks were destroyed, then the mechanized infantry carriers, as GUIDON rolled into the enemy formation. Then it stopped. Vehicles not yet engaged stopped moving. Crews hopped out and ran away from them. It was the same, Masterman heard, all the way west on the line. Surprised, running, their exit blocked, the soldiers lucky enough to see what was rolling toward them in time decided that resistance was surely fatal, and the Third (and last) Battle of KKMC stopped thirty minutes after it had begun.
It wasn’t quite that easy for the invaders. Advancing Saudi forces, finally in heavy contact, fought a deliberate battle, grinding their way through another brigade, this one Iranian and therefore getting more attention than an Arab unit might have, but by sunset, all six of the UIR divisions that had entered their country were destroyed. Sub-units with some lingering fight in them were ordered to surrender by senior officers, before enemies on three sides could enforce a more final decision.
The biggest administrative headache, as before, was the prisoners, all the worse with the additional confusion of nightfall. That problem would last for at least a day, commanders reported. Fortunately, in most cases the UIR soldiers had water and rations of their own. They were moved away from their equipment and placed under guard, but this far from home, there was little danger of their striking across the desert on foot.
CLARK AND CHAVEZ left the Russian embassy an hour after nightfall. In the back of their car was a large suitcase whose contents would not appear overly dangerous to anyone, and was in fact largely in keeping with their journalistic cover. The mission, they decided, was slightly crazy, but while that troubled the senior member of the team somewhat, it had Ding rather juiced. The premise of it seemed incredible, however, and that had to be verified. The drive to the alley behind the coffee shop was uneventful. The security perimeter around Daryaei’s home stopped short of their destination. The coffee s
hop was closed, what with the blackout conditions imposed on a city half at war and half at peace—streetlights were off, and windows draped, but cars were allowed to drive about with lights, and domestic electricity was evidently on. That worked to their benefit. The door lock was easily defeated in the unlit alley. Chavez eased the door open and looked inside. Clark followed, lugging the case, and both men went inside, closing the door behind them. They were already on the second floor when they heard noises. A family lived here. It turned out to be a husband and wife in their fifties, proprietors of the eating place, watching television. Had the mission been properly planned, he knew, they would have established that sooner. Oh, well.
“Hello,” Clark said quietly. “Please do not make any noise.”
“What—”
“We will not hurt you,” John said as Ding looked around for—yes, electric cords would do just fine. “Please lie down on the floor.”
“Who—”
“We will let you go when we leave,” Clark went on in literate Farsi. “But if you resist, we must hurt you.”
They were too terrified to resist the two men who had appeared like thieves in their home. Clark used the light cords to tie their arms, then their ankles. Chavez laid them on their sides, first getting the woman some water before he gagged her.
“Make sure they can breathe,” Clark said, in English this time. He checked all the knots, pleased that he remembered his basic seamanship skills from thirty years before. Satisfied, they went upstairs.
The truly crazy part was the communications lash-up. Chavez opened the case and started taking things out. The roof of the building was flat, and had a clear line of sight to another such building three blocks away. For that reason, they had to keep low. First of all, Ding set up the mini-dish. The tripod for it was heavy, with spiked feet to secure it to the roof. Next he had to turn it, to get the buzzing chirp of the carrier signal from the proper satellite. That done, he twisted the clamp to lock the dish in place. Then came the camera. This, too, had a tripod. Chavez set that up, screwed the camera in place, and aimed it, switching it on and pointing it at the center of the three buildings that held their interest. Then the cable from the camera went into the transmitter/power-supply box, which they left in the opened suitcase.
“It’s running, John.”
The odd part was that they had an up-link, but not a down-link. They could download signals from the satellite, but there wasn’t a separate audio channel for them to use. For that they needed additional equipment, which they didn’t have.
“THERE IT IS,” Robby Jackson reported from the National Military Command Center.
“That’s the one,” Mary Pat Foley confirmed, looking at the same picture. She dialed a phone number to the American embassy in Moscow, from there to the Russian Foreign Ministry, from there to the Russian embassy in Tehran, and from there by the digital phone in John’s hand. “Do you hear me, Ivan?” she asked in Russian. “It’s Foleyeva.” It took a very long second for the reply to come through.
“AH, MARIA, HOW good to hear your voice.” Thank God for the phone company, John thought to himself, letting out a long breath. Even the one here.
“I have your picture here on my desk,” she said next.
“I was so much younger then.”
“HE’S IN PLACE and everything’s cool,” the DDO said.
“Okay.” Jackson lifted another phone. “It’s a go. I repeat, it’s a go. Acknowledge.”
“Operation BOOTH is go,” Diggs confirmed from Riyadh.
THE IRANIAN AIR defense system was about as tense as it could be. Though no attack at all had been launched into their territory, the radar operators were keeping a close eye on things. They watched several aircraft patrolling the Saudi and Qatari coasts, mainly running parallel, not even pushing toward the center of the waterway.
BANDIT-TWO-FIVE-ONE and BANDIT-TWO-FIVE-TWO completed refueling from their tankers within seconds of each other. It wasn’t often that Stealth fighters operated in unison. They were, in fact, designed to operate entirely alone. But not this time. Both separated from the KC-10s and turned north for a flight of about one hour, albeit with a thousand feet of vertical separation. The tanker crews remained on station, and used the time to refuel the standing fighter patrol on the Saudi coast, exactly routine for night operations. Fifty miles away, an AWACS tracked everything—or almost. The E-3B couldn’t detect an F- 117, either.
“WE KEEP MEETING like this,” the President said to the makeup woman, with forced good humor.
“You look very tired,” Mary Abbot told him.
“I am pretty tired,” Ryan admitted.
“Your hands are shaking.”
“Lack of sleep.” This was a lie.
CALLIE WESTON WAS typing alterations to the speech directly into the electronic memory of the TelePrompTer. Even the TV technicians were not allowed to see the content of this one, and in a way she was surprised that she herself was. She finished, scanning the whole thing for typos, which, she’d learned over the years, could be very disconcerting to Presidents on live TV.
SOME OF THEM were smoking, Clark saw, the guards outside. Poor discipline, but maybe it did serve to keep people awake.
“John, you ever think that this job is maybe just a little too exciting?”
“Gotta take a leak?” It was the usual reaction, even for them.
“Yeah.”
“Me, too.” It was something that never made the James Bond movies. “Hmph. I didn’t know that.” Clark pressed the earpiece in, hearing a normal voice, as opposed to one of a known announcer, say that the President would be on in two minutes. Maybe some network director, he thought. With that, the last two items came out of the suitcase.
“MY FELLOW AMERICANS, I am here to give you an updated report on the situation in the Middle East,” the President said without preamble.
“Approximately four hours ago, organized resistance ceased among the forces of the United Islamic Republic which invaded the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia. Saudi, Kuwaiti, and American forces, working together, have destroyed six divisions in a battle which raged through a night and a day.
“I can now tell you that our country dispatched the 10th and 11th Cavalry regiments, plus the First Brigade of the North Carolina National Guard, and the 366th Wing from Mountain Home Air Force Base in Idaho. A massive battle was fought south of King Khalid Military City. You have already seen some of the details on TV. The final UIR units attempted to flee the battlefield to the north, but they were cut off, and after a brief engagement, they began to surrender. Ground combat in the area has, for the moment, concluded.
“I say ‘for the moment,’ because this war is unlike any most of us have known in the past fifty years. An attack was made directly upon our citizens, on our soil. It was an attack deliberately made upon civilians. It was an attack made using a weapon of mass destruction. The violations of international law are too numerous to list,” the President went on, “but it would be wrong to say that this attack was made by the people of the United Islamic Republic upon America.
“Peoples do not make war. The decision to start a war is most often made by one man. They used to be kings, or princes, or barbarian chiefs, but throughout history it’s usually one man who decides, and never is the decision to start a war of aggression the result of a democratic process.
“We Americans have no quarrel with the people of the former Iran and Iraq. Their religion may be different from ours, but we are a country which protects freedom of religion. Their languages may be different, but America has welcomed people of many languages. If America has proven anything to the world, it is that all men are the same, and given the same freedom and the same opportunity, they will all prosper to the limit only of their own abilities.
“In the last twenty-four hours, we killed at least ten thousand soldiers of the UIR. Probably many more. We do not know now and probably never will know the total number of enemy deaths, and we need to remind ourselves that they did not
choose their fates. Those fates were chosen for them by others, and ultimately by one person.” Ryan clasped his hands together theatrically. It seemed a very awkward gesture to all who watched.
“THERE IT GOES,” Chavez said, his face to the camera’s small eyepiece screen, which was now showing the download from the orbiting satellite. “Start the music.”
Clark thumbed the laser transmitter, careful to see that it was on the invisible infra-red setting. A check through his eyepiece put the dot on the building’s cornice—or parapet, he couldn’t remember the difference. Whatever, there was a guard standing there, his foot on the structure.
DIGGS IN RIYADH: “Final check.”
“BANDIT-TWO-FIVE-ONE,” he heard in reply
“TWO-FIVE-TWO.”
“THROUGHOUT HISTORY, KINGS and princes have made war at their whim, sending people off to die. To the kings, they were just peasants, and the wars were just grabs for power and riches, a kind of entertainment, and if people died, nobody much cared, and when it was all over, for the most part the kings were still kings, whether they won or lost, because they were above it all. All the way into this century, it was assumed that a chief of state had a right to make war. At Nuremberg, after the Second World War, we changed that rule by trying and executing some of those responsible. But getting to that point, arresting the criminals, as it were, cost the lives of twenty million Russians, six million Jews, so many lives lost that historians don’t even know....” Ryan looked up to see Andrea Price wave to him. She didn’t smile. It was not a smiling matter. But she gave the signal anyway.
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