Sudden Threat

by A. J Tata

  He grabbed Abe, laid him next to his rucksack, and told him not to move. The volume of fire was unlike any he had ever heard before. Grabbing his M4, he moved north and linked up with Sid Bullings. They moved along the ravine, out of the hail of bullets. He could see enemy soldiers across the river, looking as if they were going to cross at any moment. It would be a long process on their part, getting down the steep bank and back up the far side. Looking back at his men, conducting fire and maneuver, he saw Benson and Lonnie White running down the line, doing something he could not quite identify.

  He flipped his M4 selector switch to semi-automatic. He had eight thirty-round magazines. Bullings was his security man. He looked through his telescopic sight and could see his weapon’s noise suppressor with his open left eye. They took cover behind a rock, and Ramsey began to fire single shots that left the muzzle of his weapon silently and violently struck their targets.

  He watched as a subsonic round struck an unsuspecting enemy, tumbling through his body like a bowling pin, ripping his insides to shreds. The lower-than-usual velocity gave the round a chance for more destruction once it struck its target. He picked another target, then a third.

  Suddenly, the enemy rose en masse. There were more than two hundred. At least there had been. His team was holding them off momentarily. But they stood, like some confederate charge in the American Civil War, screaming and climbing down the near side of the ravine. Hand over hand, they scaled down the rocks and would have to do the same coming up the other side.

  Ramsey continued to fire, killing every man he shot.

  He looked along the ravine. The enemy fell into the increasingly red waters below. Benson had ignited a series of claymore mines, killing at least sixty who had tried to enter the ravine. Ramsey saw a man with an Australian bush hat running up and down the line, screaming loudly. He laid the sight on his head, but the man kept moving through the elephant grass, never presenting a stationary target. He fired.

  Missed.

  CHAPTER 46

  Talbosa turned and looked, but did not see who had shot at him, feeling only the jet wash of the errant shot and listening as the bullet whacked its way through the jungle canopy. He was now certain that it was either Australians or Americans his men were fighting. He hoped they were Americans. We will be like Vietnam, Talbosa thought. We will have started a war with the Americans and will destroy the most powerful country in the world!

  But he was trying to get the confusion under control. He had ordered his men to open fire once they made contact. His point man had misunder-stood the directive and fired when he saw the enemy across the ravine. Talbosa would have preferred to circle around and come at them from the north, driving them into the ravine to their deaths.

  He had issued instructions to kill the Japanese man as well. Takishi had told him that Abe might inform the world that the Japanese were making weapons for Abu Sayyaf’s use, and that would effectively cut off their supply. He could not have that. Running through the elephant grass, avoiding bullets that whizzed around him, he began to get control of his men. He pulled them back, having them cease fire, or at least cover their retreat. They would stop and move into Cateel City, then move north of the river, swinging wide, and slam into the enemy.

  The firing stopped. Ramsey continued to pick off retreating soldiers with his deadly accuracy. The team kept up its volume of fire into the elephant grass until they could see no more enemy soldiers. Each man knew that the Abu Sayyaf would come again and that they would need their ammunition. They were also equally aware that there were no helicopters coming to save them.

  He organized his team quickly. Moving back to his rucksack, he looked down at Abe, who was shivering. He had pissed his pants and probably defecated, or so it smelled. Snatching Abe by the arm, Ramsey rallied his team, and they moved. Benson slung Jones’s body over his rucksack, adding another 150 pounds to his load. He would switch often, but it would slow their move considerably. When they found a safe place, they could bury his body, write down the grid coordinates, discreetly mark the location, and return another day for their fallen comrade.

  Ramsey walked hurriedly through the increasingly dense jungle. He looked over his shoulder and saw Benson struggling with Jones. His mind filled with rage. First Peterson killed, and now Jones. He took both deaths personally. When they come again, they will come from the northeast. We will be ready to kill every last son of a bitch.

  Like a zephyr, Major Ramsey and his beleaguered A team vanished to the northwest.

  CHAPTER 47

  Subic Bay, Luzon Island, Philippines

  Ramsey. That was Chuck Ramsey.

  Captain Zachary Garrett looked at the micro-phone. He had heard a shot and knew immediately that his classmate and his soldiers were in trouble.

  But so was he.

  As night fell on this incredible day, he rallied his men, as Chuck Ramsey had gathered his. The division commander, General Zater, had personally spoken to him on the radio, telling him that they were sending assistance immediately. He gave Zachary the authority to do whatever he felt necessary to further protect the lives of his men. When Zachary tried to brief him on the plan, the general cut him off, saying, “I have confidence in you. Don’t risk compromising your plan. We’ve been watching CNN all day. You’re the one who’s been squeezing the trigger.” The general’s confidence in him had made him feel good momentarily, but then the weight of his burden sank in even further.

  The Navy supply ship was not due in until tomorrow, but he was not going to wait for it. Another night in the same location would surely make his company an easy target. They could be attacked from practically all directions, and they had little cover from indirect fire. Sure, their ticket to safety would be the ship, but waiting for it might be their ticket home—maybe in body bags. Zachary had his men pilfer the ammunition stockpile, then had his forklift driver dump the rest off the pier and into the water. He would be damned if he was going to let American ammunition kill his men. They gathered claymore mines, JAVELIN medium anti-armor missiles, all of the 5.56mm ammunition they could carry, smoke grenades, high-explosive gre-nades, tear gas, star clusters, parachute flares, trip wires, antitank weapons and 60mm mortar rounds, even though they had not deployed with any mortars.

  After gathering the ammunition and waiting for nightfall, his platoons spread into a large formation of successive Vs with the point of the Vs aiming in their direction of travel. Each man wearing night-vision goggles, they walked slowly at first, then more steadily as they once again became familiar with moving at night.

  He had placed the bodies of Teller and Rock-ingham in body bags, one of those items in the supply room he’d never planned on using. Then he had Sergeant Spencer’s squad load the bodies on the helicopter. He gave grid coordinates to the helicopter pilot and told him to meet his company there after doing some false insertions in other places. They were only moving about five kilometers, but the terrain was eminently more defensible than the valley where the naval base was situated. Zachary had his men lock their duffel bags in one of the Quonset huts, expecting they would never see the clothes or Playboy magazines again.

  He made the civilians walk, despite much protest. Fraley and the ambassador had argued, but Zachary was in no mood for their bullshit. Zachary sat the ambassador down and told him that he was the commander of the unit, and he was more than welcome to stay there.

  “You guys hosed me over, and you hosed over Chuck Ramsey, who is fighting for his life, I’m sure,” Zach had said.

  He wanted nothing to do with the ambassador, the other civilians, and especially Fraley.

  “Either you let me make the decisions,” Zachary said, “or you can go hump yourself. And the way I see it, if you can’t help Ramsey, you can’t help me. And that makes you useless.” With that, he walked out of the white Quonset hut near the tire pile, threw his ruck on, and led his men into the jungle that rose above Subic Bay. We will be safer there.

  As they walked, a sliver of the
moon smiled wickedly at them from above.

  Phase III: The Beltway Shuffle

  CHAPTER 48

  Pentagon, Washington, DC

  Colonel Lionel Thompson ran from the National Military Command Center, through a small tunnel of a hallway into the Pentagon E-ring, and burst into the secretary of defense’s outer office. The administrative aide stood immediately. Thompson convinced her that he had to talk to the secretary in person and privately immediately. Stone was standing at the door.

  “What seems to be the problem, Lionel?” Stone asked his assistant. Thompson was a “fast mover” in the Army and had been assigned as an aide to the secretary of defense. An armor officer, he hated the Pentagon duty but knew that it would add that much more grease to an already-oiled career.

  “Sir, we’ve just gotten word there’s been a revolution in the Philippines.”

  “Come in,” he said, putting his arm around Lionel. “What are you telling me? Wait just a second.” He picked up his phone, buzzed Fox, and said, “You might want to get in here.”

  In less than a minute, both Diamond and Fox appeared from a side door into Stone’s office. Wordless, they sat in the two leather high-backed chairs as if they were spectators at the theater.

  “Sir. Gentlemen,” Thompson said, looking at Stone, then at Fox and Diamond. “The Abu Sayyaf rose up across the islands to overthrow the government. It appears they were successful. They have control of the Presidential Palace and the television and radio stations. President Cordero is now in jail. The news on our side is worse, however.” Stone’s eyes cut sharply upward.

  “Sir. First off, Assistant Secretary Rathburn and a CIA operator, Matt Garrett, have been taken hostage, along with one of the pilots.”

  “Christ,” Stone said, sliding into his chair and placing his face in his hands. He was sitting at his desk and looked out the window. “What else?”

  “It gets worse, sir. A stinger missile or some rocket-propelled grenades hit the DC Guard Gulfstream. It blew up, with …”—he hesitated, almost unable to say it—“with the DACOWITS committee on it.”

  Stone looked at Thompson. He had known almost every one of the women on the committee. All of them were women who had fought the barriers of discrimination and had been representing their country on a mission to help improve the lot of women in the military. Their loss was unfathomable to him. “Say what?”

  “Yes, sir. There’s more.” Thompson knew that bad news was unlike wine, in that it got worse with age. There was no way to soften the blow of the news. He just had to say it. He looked down at his Army trousers, hanging perfectly atop his shoes. His light green shirt conformed to his muscular frame. His eyes searched Stone’s to determine when he was ready for the next salvo. It was never easy being the messenger, who usually got shot, but he had learned to recognize when to talk and when to let the moment happen. Stone looked up at him from behind his glasses.

  “The embassy has been overrun. Abu Sayyaf insurgents killed five of our people there, four military and one civilian.”

  Stone grimaced. “Berryman?”

  “Sir, Ambassador Berryman flew to safety on the medical evacuation helicopter with four other embassy personnel and two officers from the embassy. We have an infantry rifle company at Subic doing an ammunition guard mission, and apparently they had some men at the embassy being treated for wounds from the attack on their position this morning.”

  “What?” Fox said loudly from behind Thompson.

  “Yes, sir. About eighty insurgents stormed the ammunition location. The company performed well, though, killing seventy and taking ten prisoners. We, um …”—it was hard to say. Thompson had never been in combat, something he was concerned about, but still, to lose a soldier, anybody’s solider, was painful—“We lost two soldiers in the fight. One enlisted man was killed at Subic, and an officer, a lieutenant, was killed at the embassy. He jumped off the helicopter and saved the embassy doctor. When he was getting back on, he was shot in the back.”

  “What the hell are you telling me, Lionel?” Stone screamed, standing up. “Just what in the hell is going on? There’s no war in the Philippines! We’re fighting in Afghanistan and getting ready to fight in Iraq! This isn’t part of the plan!” He cadenced his words, as if Thompson could not understand him. He picked up a glass paperweight with a picture of a bear inside, a gift from a Korean diplomat, and chucked it at the wall.

  Thompson was beginning to feel uncomfortable, but he could handle it. He’d never been in a worse situation, but had seen far greater displays of emotion from battalion and brigade commanders over far pettier issues.

  “Sir,” he said, “there’s one more item of infor-mation you need.”

  “What’s that, the Abu Sayyaf now has Chinese nukes aimed at us?” he said angrily, firing another shot at the messenger.

  “No sir. The ambassador sent a Special Forces team into Mindanao a few days ago. Some Filipino helicopters were supposed to pick them up today, but obviously they did not. No one has heard from the team for four days.”

  “How did all of this happen, Lionel? Tell me. How did we let this happen?”

  “Sir. I just got off the phone with the Pacific Command intelligence guys. They said that a week ago they got the order from us to collect intelligence in the East China Sea. They’ve been focused like a laser beam on China and Taiwan.”

  Stone looked at him with a dumbfounded expression. He remembered his promise to the Japanese ambassador. And he remembered thinking, Yeah, that should work.

  “Get me Chairman Sewell,” Stone said flatly, reaching for his phone. He dialed and told his wife that he was going to be working late. Waiting for the chairman, he thought to himself: Bobby old boy, you deserve an Oscar. The Rolling Stones would be proud.

  Fox and Diamond began to shift uncomfortably in their chairs. Fox was dressed in a dark blue suit with a gray silk shirt, while Diamond was wearing a dark gray suit with a blue silk shirt. Photonegatives, Stone thought.

  “Who authorized all those troop movements to the Philippines?” Fox asked, standing in front of Stone’s desk.

  “That is depleting our focus on Iraq. Jeopardizing the mission,” Diamond said.

  “Yes, jeopardizing the mission,” Fox added.

  “This is a one hand doesn’t know what the other is doing thing. I can guarantee it,” Stone said angrily.

  “We need to get both hands out front where we can see them,” Fox said. He held his hands in front of him to emphasize his point.

  “Both hands,” Diamond added, doing the same as Fox.

  To Stone, both men looked like mimes pressing their hands against invisible walls. “Don’t worry, guys, it’s under control. I’ve got Central Command bringing me the plan this week.”

  “We might have to go this spring. Just do it,” Fox said. “Get in front of this developing Pacific thing.”

  “We don’t have the munitions,” Stone said. “We can’t get there from here.”

  “What we lack in armament we will more than compensate for by surprise,” Diamond countered.

  “Why are we arguing about this? We all agree on the strategy,” Stone said.

  “Do we, Bob?”

  Stone assessed the two men, still sitting in their chairs. They had just heard that American lives were lost in the Philippines and they knew damn well that the fight in Afghanistan was a slow-motion strategic nightmare.

  While the soldiers on the ground were performing magnificently, Stone knew that the strategic window to crush Al Qaeda had slammed shut as the enemy senior leaders escaped through the rugged Hindu Kush. Stone’s position all along had been now that 9-11 had occurred, the nation should use the event as a rallying cry to attack Islamic fundamentalism everywhere. Hence, the gambit in the Philippines. It had everything to do with putting pressure on the global extremist network. The threat was so obvious to him. Stone wondered how Fox and Diamond could blindly sit there and ignore the evidence: that Iraq, while important, needed to wait.


  “We do. Now if you’ll excuse me, I’ve work to do.”

  Diamond and Fox followed one another out, and Stone shut the door behind them.

  Walking to his desk, he picked up his phone, thinking, the glider is aloft. Let the winds of chance buffet it and pray for a soft landing. He dialed Rathburn’s number, and frowned when he didn’t receive an answer. He was certain the hostage thing was an elaborate plan that Rathburn had hatched. An improvisation, for sure, but a delicious one nonetheless. Matt Garrett, our number one operator, is a hostage! Not to worry though. Stone left a message:

  “This is Mick leaving a message for Keith. It appears we have satisfaction. Good job. Ring me back straightaway. Cheers.”

  CHAPTER 49

  Stone sat at the head of the table as the usual group shuffled into the conference room on the E-ring in the Pentagon. The chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, each of the service chiefs of staff, the director of the Central Intelligence Agency, and various other high-level political appointees gathered as they feverishly worked through the night on a response.

  Stone shook his head at the first slide, which determined that the first priority was to save American lives. The next slide showed actions that had been taken to date.

  On Stone’s order, Special Operations Command had alerted the Ranger battalion dedicated to quick-reaction force duty, which was the second battalion stationed in Fort Lewis, Washington. C-17 Globemasters were flying into McChord Air Force Base next to Fort Lewis. Likewise, he alerted other elite forces located in Fort Bragg, North Carolina. He gave the Twenty-fifth Infantry Division in Hawaii a warning order to have a brigade combat team ready for deployment in less than twenty-four hours.

  Again, on Stone’s order, the Air Force chief of staff had alerted the fighter squadron at Andersen Air Force Base in Guam. They were put on strip alert, as there was no clear mission, yet. He ordered the movement of cargo aircraft to bases along the West Coast.