Heroes Proved

by Oliver North

  James was stunned. He pondered this new information and said, “As my father knows, I went to her office—accompanied by the Royal Canadian Mounted Police. She was already dead before we got there. My DNA couldn’t be there, we were wearing gloves. How could . . .”

  He jumped up and went to retrieve the gym bag he dumped at the door when he entered the room an hour earlier. He pulled out the jeans he was wearing in Dr. Long’s office, reached into the back pocket, and pulled out . . . a single latex glove.

  James quickly pawed through the other pockets, then the bag. He finally stood erect and said, almost to himself, “The other glove is missing. It must have fallen out. That would explain the DNA. Now what do we do?”

  After a moment of silence, the senator replied, “That’s why I’m here. We need to get this under control—and hopefully find out what happened to Marty Cohen if we can. Let me ask, have you unmasked your PERT since you left Canada?”

  “No,” replied James. “My PERT transponder is embedded in my right foot. To mask it I just wear these foil-lined boots.”

  “Have you had those boots off since you crossed into the U.S.?”

  The young man sat down and closed his eyes as he thought back. After a moment he slumped back in his chair and said slowly as he recalled the moment: “After I got on the plane, just as we took off from Kalispell, I took off my boots . . .”

  The two older men looked at each other and for a moment said nothing. Then Caperton said to Peter, “Okay, that explains the report that James’s PERT was detected very briefly at the Kalispell airport last night. DHS thought it was an anomalous signal, but we have to assume that whoever is trying to use him as a scapegoat will eventually cross-correlate that signal with the takeoff of the CSG jet and its subsequent landing at Dulles. That means anyone looking for him will likely come here or to the farm—or both.”

  Now Peter Newman spoke up for the first time in minutes: “Let’s prepare for the worst, pray for the best, and settle for something in between. I’ll have one of our CSG folks at the Kalispell training site take care of the motorcycle. But we need to get James out of here before the authorities come looking for him. I think Cair Paravel at Pawleys Island would be a good interim place until we can think of somewhere better, probably overseas—”

  “Perfect,” Caperton interjected. “Yom Kippur, the Jewish Day of Atonement, begins at sundown tonight. I have to be at the synagogue in Charleston, South Carolina, for the beginning of the observance. James can fly down with me this afternoon. No one is going to search my plane or motorcade. I can get him up to Rachel’s place at Pawleys by midnight.”

  “Do I have anything to say about this?” asked James, still smarting at the mistakes he had made.

  “Not unless you have a better idea,” Peter responded.

  James shrugged, turned to Senator Caperton, and said, “Why are you going to a synagogue in Charleston? You’re from Montana—and you aren’t Jewish . . .”

  “No, I’m not, but as you may know, Montana now has the largest Jewish population in the United States. Most of the Jews there are refugees from the 2020 attack on Israel and the imposition of Shariah law in so many European countries. And as for Charleston, it has two of the oldest synagogues in America. The rabbi at Brith Sholom Beth Israel is a close friend . . .”

  “So it’s all about politics?”

  The senator rose from his chair before responding and then said quietly, “Sure, James, some of it is about politics. But the Jesus Christ I worship was also Jewish. I like the idea of acknowledging the traditions He kept when He was here. Now, will you be coming with me? I’m flying out of the Flight Support FBO at Leesburg Airport at two—and the U.S. Air Force doesn’t like to wait—even for U.S. senators named Mackintosh Caperton.”

  James nodded and said, “I’ll be ready. And this time I’ll leave my boots on.”

  As they exited the room and walked down the corridor, Caperton said to James, “I will have you manifested as one of my staffers. I’ll pick you up here on the way to Leesburg.”

  The two older men shook hands, gave each other hugs, and parted. James escorted Caperton to the exit at the back of the building. When they got to the door, the senator stopped, turned to James, and said, “You know, whether you want to admit it or not . . . you really are a lot like your father. And that’s not a bad thing. You could do a lot worse.”

  “Thanks, I hear that a lot, Senator,” James replied, “but as you have just witnessed, it isn’t easy living in the shadow of someone like him. He doesn’t screw up like I did on this mission. I’m not feeling sorry for myself—but I’m almost thirty-seven years old and it has been this way all my life.”

  “Son,” Caperton said, “I’ve known you all your life—and your dad for most of his. You have already shown us you have what it takes. You don’t have to prove anything to me, to him, or to anyone else—except maybe yourself.”

  AL ’ARISH, EGYPT

  COMPANY “K,” 3RD BATTALION, 8TH MARINES

  24TH MARINE EXPEDITIONARY UNIT

  NORTHERN SINAI DESERT

  MONDAY, 9 NOVEMBER 2020

  2315 HOURS, LOCAL

  Some humanitarian mission, eh, Seth,” James Newman whispered as he crawled up beside Kilo Company’s first platoon commander, 2nd Lieutenant Seth Cooper.

  “Yeah, Skipper,” Cooper replied, using Marine jargon for his company commander. “And if it gets any more ‘humane,’ we’re going to need another ammunition resupply.”

  The two officers were quiet for a few moments, peering into the darkness through thermal night-vision scopes, scanning across the highway intersection to their northeast and periodically east and west down the railroad tracks bisecting their position. Then Newman asked, “How bad are you hurt?”

  “Two killed, four wounded. Doc Fowler bandaged ’em up. All four of the WIAs want to stay.”

  “I’m not talking about your platoon, I’m talking about you, Seth,” Newman retorted. “Doc says you took shrapnel in that last attack.”

  “It wasn’t from the suicide bomber or in the gunfight. I got hit in the volley of RPGs that came from those mud huts over there, just as the Osprey came in to take out our casualties,” Cooper replied, pointing across the intersection they were supposed to be guarding.

  “So how bad did you get hit?” Newman persisted. “Roll over, let me look at you.”

  The lieutenant did as ordered, revealing a flak jacket shredded from shoulders to groin. His throat and both thighs were wrapped with battle dressings soaked through with blood. Looking at him through his night-vision goggles, Newman said, “You’re a mess, Cooper. We ought to get you out to the ship and have a medical officer take a look at you.”

  “Not tonight, Skipper,” Cooper said, rolling back onto his stomach. “It’s just a lot of little holes—looks worse than it is—and I don’t want to be the reason we lose another V-22. Besides, tomorrow is the Marine Corps’ birthday—and I’ll bet ol’ Ahmed is going to give us a real fireworks display for our 244th. I’d hate to miss the party.”

  Newman knew his subordinate was probably right. The MEU had already lost eighty-one Marines and Navy Medical Corpsmen killed and wounded, an AH-1 Super Cobra, an F-35B Strike Fighter, and two V-22 Ospreys since landing on the Mediterranean coast of the Sinai Peninsula on November 6—two days after the surprise nuclear detonation that leveled Tel Aviv.

  Prior to coming ashore, detailed intelligence regarding the situation on the ground was practically nonexistent. At 0227 local on 4 November, Sixth Fleet Headquarters in Naples, Italy, sent a cursory warning order to Expeditionary Strike Group 4, alerting the Marines aboard the USS America (LHA-6) and USS Makin Island (LHD-8) that they might be going ashore:

  AT 0200 04NOV20, A SINGLE LOW-YIELD NUCLEAR DEVICE WAS DETONATED WITHOUT WARNING IN DOWNTOWN TEL AVIV. CASUALTIES BELIEVED SIGNIFICANT.

  NO INBOUND AERIAL THREATS DETECTED. NO CLAIM OF RESPONSIBILITY. IDF MOBILIZING.

  U.S./NATO DEFCON ONE. ESG-4 AND EMBARKED 24 MEU
, PREPARE TO CONDUCT NONCOMBATANT EVACUATION OPERATIONS & HUMANITARIAN SUPPORT OPERATIONS, VIC ISRAEL/EGYPT BORDER. MTF.

  The “MTF”—more to follow—came in a flood of orders and instructions about where the Marines would land, how many would go ashore, and the Rules of Engagement (ROE) but with precious little useful intelligence.

  The Israelis blamed the attack on the Iranians. The government in Tehran denied they had anything to do with it and said the explosion was “Allah striking the Zionist entity.” Reports in the European and Arab media speculated that the carnage was caused by the “accidental detonation of an Israeli nuclear warhead being transported through Tel Aviv.”

  But, within hours of the blast, the Syrian army was moving toward the Golan Heights and Hezbollah forces were attacking into northern Israel from Lebanon. In the south, Hamas announced a “state of war now exists between the Palestinian people and the Jewish occupiers.”

  By noon on the fifth, tens of thousands of civilians were fleeing south toward the Israeli-Egyptian border. In Cairo, the Muslim Brotherhood–dominated government pleaded for help from the U.S. Sixth Fleet to “avert a humanitarian disaster.” Officials in Sinai claimed “several battalions of Egyptian police, border guards, and soldiers were in need of assistance to maintain law and order.”

  Aboard the USS America and USS Makin Island, the Marines and Navy Corpsmen of 3rd Battalion, 8th Marines were told they would be making an “unopposed landing” to conduct a “humanitarian mission”—and a “noncombatant evacuation operation” (NEO)—to extricate Israeli refugees and Palestinian Christians fleeing the carnage in Tel Aviv and fighting in the north.

  “Just in case the natives aren’t as friendly as advertised,” the battalion commander ordered “everyone going to the beach” to take a three-day supply of ammunition, food, medical supplies, and water—or, as he put it, “bullets, beans, and bandages.” They needed that and more. There were no Egyptian police, soldiers, or law and order. But there were tens of thousands of refugees—and among them, others who simply came to kill.

  An hour before dawn on 6 November, 1st Lieutenant James Newman was the executive officer—or “XO”—of Kilo Company as they landed in Amphibious Combat Vehicles across the beach, two kilometers east of the small Egyptian port at Ezbet Abu Sagal, about thirty miles southeast of the border with Israel. A few minutes after sunrise, less than a hundred meters from the high-tide mark, Captain Bill Sharrod, Kilo’s company commander, was killed instantly when six RPGs and a French-built, Milan IV anti-armor missile hit his ACV.

  With the company in heavy contact against well-armed Hamas fighters, “defectors” from the Egyptian army, and suicidal jihadis, Newman immediately became Kilo’s “Acting Company Commander”—the “skipper.” They had been in a nearly nonstop series of running gun battles ever since.

  It was the same for the rest of 3rd Battalion, 8th Marines. As Kilo Company came across the beach, the battalion’s Weapons Company landed at the port via LCAC. India Company, with the Battalion Command Group, was airlifted by V-22 into the Arish airfield, four kilometers south of the town. Every unit was heavily engaged within minutes of landing.

  After dark on the sixth, the MEU commander ordered L Company, his only reserve, to reinforce Weapons Company at the port in case his Marines were forced to retrograde under fire. There were so many shoulder-fired surface-to-air missiles being fired at the V-22s that Lima had to be landed by LCAC from the America, as the LHA circled in the Mediterranean, twenty miles off the Egyptian coastline.

  Kilo’s mission, to secure the main east-west highway at the intersection of Egyptian Routes 30 and 33, proved daunting. By nightfall on the sixth, suicide bombers mingling with the flood of refugees had killed three of Newman’s Marines and wounded eleven more. That night, human waves of suicide bombers attacked all three companies, penetrated the defenses at the airfield, and wounded the battalion commander.

  By the morning of 7 November, India Company had secured the port and Weapons Company began conducting motorized patrols in their MTVs. They promptly lost four Marines and two of their heavily armed and armored ACVs to suicide vehicular–borne improvised explosive devices. But that night, moving under the cover of darkness, the Marines and U.S. Navy LCACs managed to evacuate more than 4,500 refugees—women, children, many of them injured—through the port to civilian ships offshore.

  Throughout the eighth and ninth, pilots flying from the decks of the America, Makin Island, and the airfield south of Al ’Arish reported that the highways from the Israeli border—west from Beersheba and northwest from Nizzana—were jammed with refugees in cars, trucks, buses, and on foot. USAF MC-17s, dispatched from CONUS, tried to para-drop food and water to the desperate refugees, but the humanitarian flights had to be discontinued when one of the cargo aircraft was downed by a shoulder-fired surface-to-air missile.

  On the ground it was even worse. Newman’s roadblock/checkpoint a kilometer east of the 30/33 road junction was repeatedly engaged, despite constant overhead surveillance provided by Marine UAVs and armed U.S. Air Force Reaper III remotely piloted aircraft (RPAs) launched from British RAF bases on Cyprus. All six of the Marines’ M-1G tanks sustained damage from RPGs and anti-armor missiles.

  Just prior to dark on 9 November, as Lieutenant Cooper was checking on his Marines at the roadblock, a Toyota Land Cruiser—the vehicle of choice for suicide bombers—came careening into the outpost. The ear-shattering explosion killed two of his Marines instantly and felled two others. Dust from the detonation was still hanging in the air when a civilian bus commandeered by a heavily armed group of jihadis slammed into the platoon checkpoint and disgorged more than sixty young men armed with AK-47s and RPGs.

  Cooper and six survivors from his 1st Squad dragged their two wounded mates into the small courtyard of a mud-walled house and tried to call for help. His radio—a shrapnel hole clear through it—was dead.

  A kilometer away, Newman was with 2nd Platoon, supervising the “search and clear” of several hundred refugees, when he heard the car bomb and saw a plume of smoke and dust. He immediately tried to raise Cooper on the Company tac-net and when he couldn’t, he and Gunnery Sergeant Dan Doan headed on foot to the sound of gunfire, collecting a dozen more Kilo Company Marines on the way.

  It took Newman and his ad hoc Quick Reaction Force nearly fifteen minutes, racing through narrow alleys, to reach Cooper’s little Alamo. By then it was dark and two more of Cooper’s Marines were wounded—but there was also a Marine F-35 on station, waiting for clearance.

  Newman quickly sized up the situation, told his Marines to “light up” any targets they could see with their rifle-mounted laser target designators, and called the aircraft on his helmet-mounted radio: “Your targets are being lazed, don’t hit us.”

  Ten thousand feet above them, the pilot of the F-35 flipped a switch on his stick. The aircraft’s sensors and computers calculated the best run-in heading and activated the guidance systems on eight of the new laser-guided, hundred-pound close-in munitions. When the pilot heard the “ready” tone in his helmet headset, he pushed the stick forward and called over the radio, “Eight Charlie India Mikes, on the way.”

  The weapons performed as advertised. The swish of the bombs, just a fraction of a second before they hit, left no time for the attackers to get out of the way. As soon as the eighth warhead detonated, Gunnery Sergeant Doan was on his feet, leading an old-fashioned frontal assault using night-vision goggles. Newman ordered a Marine with a radio to remain with Cooper and took off with Doan and the little band of warriors.

  Twenty minutes later, the engagement ended. Unable to shoot it out with Marines in the dark, the attackers melted away. Newman, concerned his troops were pursuing an enemy that would just disappear into the horde of refugees to their east, called off the hunt. But the fight wasn’t completely over.

  As Newman and his counterattackers threaded their way through dark, stinking alleys back toward friendly positions, he heard Cooper’s voice on the radio, talk
ing to a V-22 cas-evac bird. In the distance, he could hear the aircraft transition from horizontal flight to vertical and begin to descend. Then, through his NVGs, he could see the infrared strobes on the rotor tips as the big plane descended about two hundred meters away.

  Suddenly, off to his right, between Newman’s little QRF and the landing zone, there was a rapid series of dull thuds. In the darkness Doan turned to Newman and whispered, “RPGs, four or five of ’em.”

  The words were barely out of the gunnery sergeant’s mouth when they heard four distinct explosions from the vicinity of the Osprey’s LZ. As the big bird aborted its landing and clawed for altitude, Newman, Doan, and the little patrol sprinted toward where the firing originated.

  They were too late. The shooters were gone. After searching for nearly an hour, Newman called his command post on the radio, told the radio operator who answered, “Pass the word, ‘friendlies’ approaching from the east,” and headed back to the Kilo Company perimeter. An hour later he was prone beside Lieutenant Seth Cooper, the only Marine wounded by the RPG fire during the aborted cas-evac.

  “If it makes you feel any better, Seth, had I known the RPG shooters were after you, I would have kept looking for ’em,” Newman said lightly.

  The lieutenant looked through his NVGs at his company commander to see if he was serious—and saw Newman’s grin. “Gee, thanks, Skipper,” Cooper replied with a smile of his own. “I feel a lot better knowing that.”

  Their banter was interrupted by a radio call summoning Newman to his CP for a “secure voice conference call” with the MEU commander.

  Before crawling away from Cooper’s OP, James patted the lieutenant on the back and said, “You did a good job today, Seth. You’re a fine officer. I’ve known you would be since the Academy.”

  “Thanks,” Cooper replied, once again peering into his thermal scope, searching for enemies dying to kill him if they had another chance. Then he looked over at his friend and said, “You know, tomorrow being the Marine Corps’ birthday reminds me about all that stuff we read at the Academy about naval gunfire. Sure wish we had some of that the last few days. The close air support has been great—but it sure would be nice to have a battleship, a cruiser, or even a destroyer out there,” he added, pointing to the water a few hundred meters to their north.