PointOfHonor

by Susan Glinert Stevens

  The desert battle dress uniforms worn by the Force Recon Marines identified the general location; the only question was whether this mission would ultimately land in Iraq or Iran. The visibility of hard plastic ammunition boxes, a Barrett .50 sniper rifle, and a plentiful amount of C4 plastic explosives for demolition suggested the rules regarding security would once again be reiterated. In addition to those toys there were several canisters of non-lethal nerve gas, gas masks with regulators, and a dozen M-181A Claymore Antipersonnel Mines. This was being carefully packed into the HMMWVs rolling aboard the C-5BGalaxy .

  The nose of theGalaxy was still flipped up and over the flight deck that sits above the cargo deck. The mottled gray and green coloring suggested a deployment designed for Northern Europe rather than the deserts in Iraq. It was one of the newer planes built since 1989 with improved engines, structural support, fuel economy, and state of the art avionics.

  Jim Harper stood next to Louis Edwards. He had changed into desert BDUs during his flight from Chicago to Washington. The Glock 21 was strapped to his leg in a drop down holster secured to his web belt. The nylon straps were pulled snug, and an extra magazine rested in the built-in pouch secured by a Velcro strap.

  The Browning Hi Power rested beneath his clothing at the small of his back. Its holster hung on his belt as the straps slid through the built-in belt loops. The gun butt pointed to the right, making it a natural motion to grab and draw the weapon should the need arise.

  His combat knife was opposite the Glock on his left leg. It was held in a black leather sheath. The six-and-half-inch blade had a curved tip and serrated edge opposite the cutting blade.

  The distinctive Mossberg rested in the grip bag between his feet. He became the soldier he had been for fifteen years. His bag held the extra ammunition and magazines for his guns, a change of clothes, and Lynn’s small Bible that she had pressed into his hands as he left the house. As with many black ops, there were no dog tags, clothing labels, or wallets. He had left his wedding ring on his nightstand, and held secret the Bible and pictures inside.

  “It’s almost time, Jimbo,” he smiled.

  Harper grunted. He had been briefed on the plane ride about the mission. It was 1992 all over again. This time they wanted him to waltz into the buried bunker guarded by an unknown number of soldiers, raid a database, and peruse the data with a Lieutenant Stillwell—a weapons expert from the civilian sector. Somehow, the six of them were supposed to neutralize the Iraqi security detachment.

  Jim turned to Louis and asked, “Do they know we’re coming?”

  Edwards paused. “No. How could they know?”

  Jim looked down at the ground then back to Edward’s eyes. “They knew when Jerry and I went into their Data Center back in ’92. They knew. They were waiting for us.”

  “You think we have a leak.” Edwards smiled. “No way. The only people who know about this are Jonas, George Carnady, and myself. Which one of us would want you to fail?”

  Jim rested his hand on the butt of the Glock. “Louis, I don’t think you have leak. Iknow you have a leak. What I want to know is whether or not it has had a chance to leak yet.”

  Louis chuckled nervously. “It didn’t come from me, Jim. I—”

  “Louis, if it did come from you, remember something. I’ll be back. I’m not going to die in the desert this week. If they know we’re coming, you won’t be able to run far enough or fast enough.” His eyes never left Edwards’ face. The dull blue gray hue showed no mercy. The warning had been made—betrayal would not be tolerated. This time someone would pay.

  Louis shifted his weight uncomfortably. Jim Harper could become a ghost capable of passing through security systems and international borders as easily as most people change clothes. Louis had been one of his trainers. They had made a human weapon, and tonight the weapon was being pointed and fired at Saddam's war machine. In a few days, the weapon could boomerang. Jim’s certainty and passion suggested Louis spend some time investigating the possibility of a leak elsewhere in the intelligence community.

  Louis nodded. “I understand. I’ll look into it.”

  “Okay. Let’s go meet the team.” He reached down and hefted his grip. They walked towards the ramp where five men were standing. None of them wore insignia designating rank. The Marines were obvious by their young looks and excellent condition. The fifth man standing at the end of the line was pale and somewhat chubby. He looked as though the prospect of a mile hike might be more than he was capable of.

  Louis smiled at Harper then turned to the team. “Gentlemen, may I present Major James Harper—your team leader.”

  The five turned their attention towards Jim. He felt like a horse at auction. Men roved over his features attempting to evaluate what sort of major they had been saddled with this time. No one wants to take a baby-sitting mission into Indian country. They already had one over-the-hill lieutenant in their midst, but lieutenants can be ignored. Majors with command rank were a different matter. Men who had been civilians for five years represented a more ominous factor—the loss of drive and the keen edge a warrior needs in order to survive.

  “May I present Captains Anderson, Burns, and Kincaid, Master Sergeant Hayes and Lieutenant Stillwell.” Stillwell looked up from his position at the end of the line. He definitely wanted to be somewhere else. Harper did not detect fear, rather resignation to his fate. The other four dissected their new leader.

  “Gentlemen,” continued Louis, “this is Major Jim Harper. Any questions?”

  Burns looked at the civilian spook. “Yes, sir.” He was looking at Edwards, not at Jim.

  Harper knew what was coming. He probably would have had the same objections. However, age tempered youthful folly. “Captain.”

  His voice carried the command authority learned in the field. If he was going to bring these men home, they needed to trust him now. They had to believe he could do the deed.There must be no doubt . Burns snapped his head around to examine Harper, the loathing evident on his features quickly dissolved to respectful neutrality.

  “Sir?” The response was automatic.

  “Speak your mind, but be quick about it.” He nodded at the plane they were standing next to. “We’ve got a plane to catch.”

  Burns shrugged. “Yes, sir. I think I speak for the rest of us—”

  “Really?” Harper surveyed the group. Burns might speak for the Marines; no one spoke for the pudgy man standing by himself.

  Burns followed Harper’s gaze. “Yes, sir.”

  Harper became immobile. He was the fighter in the match now waiting on his opponent. When he moved, the counter strike would be swift and certain. His stature seemed to grow like a cat suddenly cornered by a large dog.

  “Sir, with due respect, you have been retired for five years. For some reason, you’ve been placed in command over us. I don’t think it’s good idea to have a civilian running soldiers in a military operation.”

  Edwards held his breath and waited.

  Harper moved a step forward sucking the air and light from amongst the group. “Captain, let me put it correctly. You tell me when I get this wrong—okay?” He never waited for a reply.

  “You’ve pulled duty to spend time in Indian country. It’s what you’ve trained for—all those simulations and drills. There were nights when they dumped you upside down in a swamp and told you to phone home. Now, when the big dance arrives, you’ve got to follow a forty-year-old Major you never heard of.

  “I’ve been told you are Force Recon Marines. The best of the best this country has to offer. I know you have trained, sacrificed, and believe you are better than anyone else around. Who knows—maybe you are. The most important thing you bring with you is not your weapons or your training or your fine knowledge. The most important thing is your honor to do the right thing at the right time—the ability to use your head and your heart, instead of just your fists and gun.

  “You’ve been lined up for a black op by a fat old spook, and you look around to find you
got an out-of-shape Lieutenant hanging around the end of the line. You don’t like what you see. You think you’re smart enough, keen enough to pull this off yourself and you resent the idea of somebody coming out of retirement to steal your thunder. IS THAT ABOUT IT, CAPTAIN?”

  Burns looked straight ahead. He had crossed a line to find steel.

  “No answer, huh?” Harper walked down the line towards Stillwell. “I didn’t think so.” He turned back to the Marines, ignoring Stillwell. Stillwell was a different problem. “Let’s all understand something. Yes, we are going to Indian country. Yes, they have guns and they know how use them. It is my fervent hope and intention to bring each and every one of you back in one piece.” He came to a stop before Burns. “That can only happen if you jump when I say jump. I’ve been there, Captain. It’s not as simple as you might think, and these things always look easier from a distance. I buried a good friend in the desert, and I had to go see his wife. I had to explain that I failed to bring her husband, her best friend, home again.

  “I don’t know what will happen this time. I’m not sure where Murphy will pop up. However, I give you one promise: I will do my best. Let’s get one thing straight—I lead, you follow. If you can’t live with that, then stay here on the tarmac. Otherwise, cross me in combat and the Iraqis may not get a chance to shoot you.”

  He looked at his four Marines. “Any other questions?” he snarled.

  They were all standing crisply at attention—except for Stillwell. He ignored Stillwell for a moment longer. “Good. Then get your gear and get aboard—or get out of the way.”

  The four Marines saluted and headed towards their gear. No one spoke. No one braved eye contact. Stillwell stared at their retreating backs and shrugged. He hefted his grip.

  “A moment, Lieutenant,” said Harper.

  “Jimbo, you really know how to endear yourself to your men.” The gray eyes were not smiling and the ruddy complexion was a couple of shades redder.

  Harper turned to Edwards. “Louis, those men have every right to be suspect of my abilities. They’re the ones under service right now, and if our positions were reversed I wouldn’t think too much of the idea myself. Now, run along and make sure the Iraqis aren’t waiting for me.” He spun on his heal back to Stillwell.

  Stillwell spread his hands. “Look—ah, Major, I didn’t have anything to do with this. I sort of—”

  Harper clapped him on the back saying, “I know that, Lieutenant, but why don’t you tell me what you are supposed to be doing. Forgive me, but you don’t look like someone ready to hike through southern Iraq. By the way, what’s your first name?”

  The animal on display seconds ago was now caged. Stillwell wondered briefly if they were headed to Iraq with a psychopath.

  “Brian—Brian Stillwell, and until this morning I had been honorably discharged for twelve years.”

  “This morning?” Harper shook his head. They had certainly been busy today. It was as if they had a checklist they were following. “What happened this morning?” He picked up his grip and the two started walking up the ramp towards the main cargo deck.

  “I was called to a briefing over at the Pentagon. They showed us the photographs of the Chinese sub and the Iraqi boat. They had lots of pictures. Anyway, there was a meeting after the meeting and, pretty as you please, the National Security Advisor handed me a letter personally signed by the Secretary of the Army. It basically says I am on active duty.”

  “Just like that?”

  Brian nodded. “Just like that. Next thing I know they are fitting me out in BDUs finding me some boots, and going through the basics of the M-16. I end up with a doctor and get half-a-dozen shots before meeting the Marines.” He shrugged again. “Needless to say, they were less than thrilled to see me.”

  The last thing loaded into theGalaxy was a trailer. It resembled a small, mobile command post. The festoon of antennae and satellite dishes were carefully tied down to prevent damage during transport.

  Stillwell and Harper found a pair of seats on the flight deck above the cargo hold.

  “Why don’t we strap in and you can explain to me what you do.”

  Brian laughed for the first time in several hours. “You know, my boy asks me the same question.” It sounded familiar to Jim as well. “Roughly, I am a specialist in unconventional weaponry. Not the simple stuff like homemade napalm or C4, but the more damaging stuff like VX, your basic suitcase-sized nuclear bomb, fuel air explosives, and the like.

  “I write books on the subjects, albeit, most of what I write is classified and has to be shared between governments. I worked with Teller’s team when Reagan announced he was going to build High Frontier. Of course, no one calls it that anymore; we all refer to it as Star Wars. Anyway, that’s where I learned aboutBrilliant Pebbles .”Brilliant Pebbles was the anti-ballistic missile system of orbiting platforms designed to seek out MIRV (Multiple Independently targeted Reentry Vehicles) platforms and explode a barrage of ball bearings into the warheads. It acted as a huge shotgun blasting at nuclear clay pigeons. “They worked too. If we put enough of them in orbit and timed the trajectories correctly the Russians could have launched as many warheads as they wished. It’s hard to land on target or intact with thousands of holes in your warheads. It didn’t even have to be explosive. When an ounce of metal hits something at five or six thousand miles an hour it leaves a noticeable hole in it.”

  “Like a shotgun spread?’ offered Jim.

  “Exactly!” His enthusiasm faltered slightly. “Of course, we never deployed anything. The Berlin Wall crumbled. You know, Reagan was right. He knew it was going to collapse. We met with him a couple of times. He never cared what they were saying about him. He just plowed ahead. His vision of the world was a world without the Soviet Empire. Teller and the rest of us were a convenient club to threaten the Russian bear. It worked. They had no doubt we could achieve a space-based defense against missile attack.

  “Reagan was too successful. We never got it deployed before the Russian economy collapsed, and with it the Soviet military threat shrunk overnight.”

  Jim nodded. “We still have enemies.”

  Brian warmed to his subject. “That’s exactly right. We have a lot of them too. The Red Chinese, North Korea, Iraq, Iran, perhaps India and Pakistan—they all want to be top dog. They all are attempting to become the bully on the block.

  “Of course, once you develop the kind of expertise we engendered when we were working for Teller, no one was willing to throw it all away. The new administration shut down SDI, but they kept most of the brains on retainer. They set me up in Crystal City in my own little office. They gave me direct access to several top-secret labs and told me to imagine new weapons systems and evaluate old weapons systems. I was discharged from the government payroll, so they could pay me more as a contractor, and that’s what I have been doing through the nineties. I think about the unthinkable. I figure out ways to bring bombs, and biological and chemical agents into this country. I read most of the classified intelligence abstracts on all the bad boys.

  “We even try and keep track of all the Russian scientists loose around the world. Some of them are working for us. Of course the current administration would never want to admit that they are just as interested in creating doomsday weapons as the rest of them. They just don’t want to build or deploy the weapon systems. If we come across anything really nasty, we work out countermeasures and then track the technologies necessary to build those systems. That’s why we watch Iran and Iraq so closely. They’ve got the money to build some bad stuff.”

  Jim nodded. “So you’re my unconventional weapons’ expert. Louis said you could figure just about anything out.”

  “Yeah, that’s me. You’ve seen the photographs of the submarine transfer?”

  “They showed me a couple of them. I assumed there had to be more.”

  “I spent the afternoon looking into those photos. They managed to get me the computer-enhanced stuff from the National Reconnaissance Of
fice. It really is rather ingenious what the Chinese did. I think the Chinese built an elevator shaft into the hull of their submarine. They probably traded some hull integrity to build a delivery truck—so to speak. It makes a certain kind of sense. They certainly couldn’t fly the stuff into Baghdad through the no-fly zones and embargoes, and with the US Fifth Fleet on patrol.”

  “So they tried to sneak it in under water.”

  “Exactly! Pretty slick adaptation of the technology. After all, theHan Class sub isn’t that their first-line boat anyway. They never were that much of a threat—too noisy for one thing, limited payload for another. They kind of copied what we do with our old missile boats. They find a new application and use the hull.

  “Anyway, they bring whatever they’re passing to the Iraqis under the cover of darkness, and we just happen to capture it on film. It’s dumb luck really. If they hadn’t started shooting at each other, we would have never paid any notice to the files. But there aren’t supposed to be rifle shots in the ocean fifty klicks south of Al Faw.

  “The NRO boys find this stuff and run the image enhancement software over the digital images returned from the U-2. They find themselves a Red Chinese submarine where no Red Chinese submarine is supposed to be. Now it makes an awful kind of logic.

  “China wants to control the Pacific Rim. There are all those Asian economies booming out there. You’ve got a couple of problems though. One is Japan, which is an economic superpower, a fragile superpower, but still the eight-hundred-pound gorilla. The other problem is South Korea. They are pumping out computer peripherals, VCRs and TV sets like there’s no tomorrow, outdoing Japan at its own game.

  “China and the Pacific Rim countries are like Russia and Western Europe. The Soviets never wanted to incinerate Western Europe. Their goal was always to capture it intact, otherwise, why bother to attack? The Russian’s problem was always the United States and its nuclear shield. Okay, so we cross out the Russians. We’ve got the same problem on the other side of the world. The Red Chinese want to control the Pacific Rim, and maybe they want Taiwan back too. Personally, I think that’s lip service.”