Warriors of God

by William Christie

  The attack was over one minute after the first missile exploded. Helicopters with rescue crews flew in hours later from the mainland, and one crashed in the unusual drafts created by the fire. Smaller ships were able to enter the tiny harbor used by resupply vessels, but efforts were hampered by the flow of casualties and the thousands of shouting workers demanding to be taken off. An accurate count was impossible, but it was estimated that over several hundred had died. Fires were still burning a week later. International companies specializing in fighting oil fires refused to enter the war zone.

  China, the world’s largest buyer of Iranian oil, was livid. Demonstrations were allowed to erupt around the U.S. Embassy in Beijing, and as usual in moments of tension military contacts between the U.S. and the Chinese People’s Liberation Army were cut off. The U.S. Congress immediately passed a resolution authorizing tariffs on Chinese-made goods.

  The international community experienced a few weeks of anxiety over higher energy prices. Oil companies made killings from the volatility of the crude oil spot markets. But, predictably, Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, and the Emirates, always quietly pleased whenever Iran suffered a misfortune, seized the opportunity for extra revenue by cheating on their OPEC production quotas and made up the shortfall.

  Two uneventful months passed, and the alerts were relaxed. Iranian protests to the World Court and the United Nations were dismissed as face-saving gestures, the anti-imperialist rhetoric as the usual hyperbole.

  PART TWO

  Such men as had the fear of God before them and as made some conscience of what they did ... the plain russet-coated captain that knows what he fights for and loves what he knows.

  — Letters and Speeches of Oliver Cromwell, by Thomas Carlyle

  CHAPTER 4

  The main parking lot of the Pentagon was always crowded long before 9:00 in the morning. An unwritten military commandment states that you must arrive at work before your commanding officer and leave after him—if you want your career to progress. Those stationed at the Pentagon followed the commandment religiously. With so much to do, and so many staff officers to do it, the ability to find an ax and vigorously grind it was greatly admired.

  Richard Welsh didn’t have to worry about finding a parking space. He didn’t have a family and wasn’t crazy enough to drive the morning commute on the nightmarish highways leading into D.C.. He had a rental in Alexandria and happily walked to work. But today it was raining and as he splashed his way into the building he cursed them all as apple polishers.

  As usually happed when he passed through the security check and entered that sea of uniforms he reflected on the irony of his presence in this particular building as a civilian. His career path could not be called logical.

  After high school, he’d managed to obtain a naval Reserve Officers' Training Course (ROTC) scholarship, necessary to pay for college. During the required summer cruises he developed a burning hatred for ships and the navy, enduring both until he could enter the Marine Corps. He found his calling there as an infantry officer, and made two tours to Iraq with his infantry battalion and one to Afghanistan as a platoon commander with Marine Corps Special Operations Command. On that last trip he’d gotten himself blown through a mud wall during a compound raid when one of his Marines tossed a grenade into a room that just happened to be full of suicide vest components.

  After a month in the hospital Welsh was fit for duty, and that required some hard decisions. Like many Marine officers at that juncture of his career he came to the conclusion that all he had to look forward to in the next fifteen years as far as commanding Marines was two years as a company commander, maybe, and then another two years farther down the road as a battalion commander, maybe. The rest of the time would be staff jobs pushing paper. And as far as he was concerned commanding Marines was the only thing that made the chickenshit that was such a vast proportion of the Marine Corps tolerable. So, figuring getting blown up was the universe trying to tell him something anyway, he resigned his commission.

  Having become fond of Washington during officer training at Quantico, Welsh managed to get a job as an aide to a Midwestern congressman. It was not a success. The man treated his staff worse than Welsh would ever have dreamed of treating any of his enlisted men. Fresh out of combat he had even less tolerance than he ordinarily would have for picking up the congressman's laundry and running errands for the congressman's wife. Then a friend who worked for a member of the Armed Services Committee mentioned a Pentagon post he thought Welsh might find interesting. So at age twenty-eight he found himself in a new job. At least it would pay the bills until he could get his law school applications together.

  As he made his way to the offices of the Assistant Secretary of Defense for Special Operations/Low-Intensity Conflict and Interdependent Capabilities, Welsh was forced to admit that if one only looked at the working conditions, then whoever said the third time was the charm had to be a jerk. Pentagon offices were once-decent-sized rooms that had been ruthlessly partitioned into a staggering number of smaller cubicles. Each individual space was just large enough to do a deep knee bend in without cracking into the desk. And the noise level was only slightly less than that of a 747 revving for takeoff.

  The office’s main job was overseeing United States Special Operations Command, or USSOCOM in military-speak, based in Tampa and run by a 4-star general. It controlled all Army, Navy, Air Force, and now Marine special operations units.

  Once a relative backwater in the military grand scheme of things, after 9/11 special operations was the place to be, and the budgets reflected it. And Congress had given Special Operations Command, alone among the major military commands, the authority to buy their own stuff. Which at the Pentagon level meant that it was much, much less about finding Bin Laden than it was about the special operations components of the Army, Air Force, and Navy all getting their agreed-upon share of the budget. Even that was more than usually tense, because the recent establishment of Marine Corps Special Operations Command meant that the Marines were grabbing a little extra slice of everyone else’s money until they were up and running. When Welsh was back in the Corps he hadn’t even reflected that the brand new Marine Special Operations Command headquarters building at Stone Bay in Camp Lejeune was the only headquarters building on the entire base that didn’t date back to World War II.

  At first he’d been amused by that, the way the senior officers fought just as hard against the rival services as the operators did in the field against the enemy. But it was no joke. Vital things just didn’t get done until the contents of everyone’s rice bowl were accounted for. Whatever you did, even the smallest thing, you had to account for the politics and watch your back.

  Welsh had barely hung up his suit jacket when a muscular navy lieutenant in summer whites sauntered into the cubicle. Above his ribbons sat the SEAL badge, which they called the Budweiser—a large gold emblem with rampant eagle perched above trident, anchor, and flintlock pistol. Accordingly, the length of the officer's blond hair skirted even liberal navy regulations, as did his moustache. To Welsh it all was a sure sign of the corruption of an Annapolis graduate—a conditioned anal retentive set free among a group of nonconformist military wild men. Coffee cup in hand, the lieutenant crashed into an unoccupied chair.

  Welsh shook his head in mock disgust. "Jesus, I can't even sit down before some squid comes in here to shoot the shit. Don't they give you people any work to do?"

  Lieutenant Roger Miles sipped his coffee and planted both feet on the desktop, knowing full well that Welsh reserved that location for his own hoofs. "Bullshit. If you'd get your ass in here earlier you wouldn't have these problems."

  Welsh smiled and casually picked up the K-Bar combat knife he used as a letter opener. The feet came off the desk quickly. One day Miles had been a little slow and lost his shoelaces. "Good morning to you too, Rog," Welsh said cheerfully. Miles was a good man. Even though he was there to spy on him. Really. They actually thought that because he’d been a Marine h
e was going to slip the Corps a little extra under the table.

  "Good morning, Rich," Miles replied. "How was the date last night?"

  Welsh groaned. "Let me get some coffee first." That was the other thing, and probably one of the main reasons he’d gotten he job in the first place. The special ops guys were beyond elitist, total divas. The SEALs literally wouldn’t talk to someone who wasn’t an operator. But Welsh could deal with the SEALs because he’d been a shooter, the Rangers because he had a Ranger tab, and the airborne guys because he had jump wings. Even though they all looked down their noses at a jarhead. Welsh just thought it was funny.

  Returning from the coffee mess, he was nearly trampled in the narrow aisle by a scowling air force lieutenant colonel. "Morning, Colonel," Welsh offered. The man sped by with a grunt.

  Miles was still in the cubicle when Welsh returned. "I almost got run over by Colonel Livingston," Welsh announced. "Who pissed in his Cheerios this morning?"

  Miles laughed appreciatively. "The full colonels' promotion list came out today, and guess who wasn't on it?"

  "What a shame," said Welsh, with patent insincerity.

  "You never liked him anyway."

  "Not since the day he tried to convince me that a light colonel outranked my GS rating, and that I should call him Sir."

  "And you told him to stick it up his ass."

  Welsh shrugged. "I don't have those Pavlovian reactions to rank anymore. I've been out too long, and working here at Fort Fumble doesn't foster much respect for authority. Besides, the only reason that prick is here is to tell the air force brass everything we do. Just like you."

  "Not me," Miles protested. "I just do the heavy lifting. My superiors take care of navy politics. Now, what about the date?"

  "Another epic saga of weirdness, disappointment, and personal humiliation."

  "Oh?" asked Miles, with an anticipatory grin.

  "I couldn't believe it," said Welsh. "Halfway through dinner she wonders out loud why she can't sustain a relationship."

  "What did you say? I'm kind of interested—that type of woman won't have anything to do with a warmonger like me."

  "I didn't say a thing; I just kept stuffing food in my stupid mouth. I was so rattled I can't even remember what I had to eat. I mean, you can call me a tight-ass, but I usually try not to strip myself emotionally naked on the first date. And this was after she'd spent the previous half hour filling me in on why men are pigs."

  "Well, you are pigs," Carol Bondurant said casually, as she walked into the cubicle with a message binder in her arms. Carol was one of the secretary's administrative aides.

  "Of course we are, Carol," said Welsh. "That's beside the point. I just expect you women to have the good grace not to cut on us to our faces. You can do that among yourselves."

  "We haven't given up trying to improve you," Carol said.

  "Any time you want to improve me, Carol, you're welcome," Miles said imploringly, expanding his pectorals for her inspection.

  Bondurant, peering over her glasses at him, took a moment to form her reply.

  Welsh shook his head sadly and waited for it.

  "You forget I was at that party in Old Town," Carol said.

  "Which one?" Miles demanded.

  "The one where you exposed yourself. Just before you got thrown out."

  "Drove you crazy, didn’t it?" said Miles, grinning.

  "No," Carol replied calmly. "It looked just like a penis. Only smaller."

  The pectorals deflated slightly, but Miles took the rejection with good humor. "I'm going to write a book," he announced, rising from the chair. "Women Who Complain About Men, and Why They Don't Get Dates." He left to continue his rounds.

  Carol sat down, taking care to smooth her tailored suit. "You don't find guys with his class every day," she said.

  Welsh leaned back in the chair and put his feet up on the desk. Carol was his best friend in the office. She had one of the sharpest brains around and didn't mind letting the boys know she was smarter than they were. Welsh loved it but worried about her lack of tact. And she always told him to worry about his, instead. "What was it you came in here for, Carol?"

  "Would you please check off on the top-secret message traffic? Sometime before this afternoon, that is."

  "Anything interesting?"

  "The usual. Nothing you won't see on the news tonight." It was their standard joke. Not because classified material was carelessly leaked, which of course it was. But because it was a little disappointing to be finally admitted to the chamber of secrets and discover that, with the exception of a few actual nuggets, the vast majority of the billion dollar product of the American intelligence community was either useless garbage or the same information cable news broke every half hour.

  "How many new messages this morning?"

  "A ton."

  "Carol, you know it arouses me when you're so specific."

  She had a wonderful laugh. "Oh, it's great intelligence, real helpful. An airliner may be hijacked in Europe today—country unknown, airline unknown; possibility of terrorist incident against American targets in the Philippines. . . every time we do something the market in rumors goes up. So, are you going to read them and get it over with?"

  "Yes, yes, I promise," Welsh sighed.

  "By the way, the secretary wants to see you at 10:00."

  The assistant secretary of defense for special operations was simply called "the secretary" in the office, since the actual secretary of defense was as remote as the Almighty. "What did I do now?" Welsh asked mournfully.

  "He wants to discuss your memo. And I don't think he's happy, so heads up."

  "Thanks, this should be interesting. I'm glad I sent out all my business school applications."

  "Did you really?"

  "Uh-huh. Please keep it quiet, though."

  "No problem," Carol said. "I'm thinking of going for my MBA pretty soon."

  "Approaching burnout?"

  "You know it."

  Waiting in the secretary's outer office, Welsh reviewed his options. The secretary either liked his most recent memorandum and had some questions or hated it and was planning to chew his ass. Considering Carol's tip and the memo's content, he guessed it was the latter.

  The previous secretary, who’d hired Welsh, was a genuine stud even though he looked like a librarian. Special Forces enlisted, Special Forces officer, then a CIA case officer who’d almost single-handedly planned the Afghan guerrilla war against the Russians. He’d since been promoted upstairs. His replacement, well… It was like when Colin Powell was the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. Every successive administration and Congress of both parties had been terrified by all the influence he’d accumulated. So after him they chose a selection of pliable nonentities as the nation’s top general. And reaped the whirlwind for it. Same here.

  Welsh always maintained that public servants on that level came in only two types: patricians or dealers. The secretary was a dealer, and Welsh wouldn’t trust him with his car keys, let alone national security.

  The intercom buzzed and Welsh was told to go into the inner office. The secretary was talking on the phone and waved him into a chair. The secretary normally sat on the couch for meetings, but today he remained behind his desk. Welsh sighed and took out a notebook. Use the desk to establish the appropriate emotional barrier between you and your employee—Management 101. Welsh tried to remain expressionless; he'd always been told he wore his emotions on his face.

  The secretary hung up the phone. "What do you hear, Richard?" he said.

  That was how he kicked off every conversation. His way of finding out what was really going on in the building. Not that he didn’t have his favorite little weasels reporting back to him. Get out of your office once in a while and don’t treat everyone like your serfs, Welsh thought, and you might find out what was going on. Shit, all he had to do was take the administrative assistants to lunch once a week and he was the beneficiary of real-time intel on everything in the of
fice, let alone the Pentagon itself, before it even happened.

  But that was all interior monologue. Out loud Welsh gave his usual answer. "Nothing much, sir."

  The secretary frowned. And then he waved a folder with Top Secret markings around. "What’s up with this?"

  "Could you narrow that down a bit, sir?" Welsh requested.

  "The entire intelligence community comes to the conclusion that Iran isn’t making any moves against us right now, and you’re out here promoting some little group of insurgent analysts who think differently."

  "Yes, sir," was all Welsh said.

  The secretary sighed. "This has been a textbook use of military force, Richard. We caught the Iranians red-handed and put them back in their box. That one dhow crewman who survived the attempt to silence everyone who inserted the frogmen on the Makin Island attack gave us the smoking gun we needed. Everything. Worldwide support, including a UN Security Council resolution to use force that even the Chinese couldn’t bring themselves to veto. And we’ve made it known to the Iranians that Kharg was just the beginning if they tried anything else. Every intelligence indicator says they’re laying low. The community is unanimous on it: CIA, DIA, everyone."

  Welsh started to open his mouth, then decided not to mention that whenever the U.S. intelligence community reached unanimity on anything, it was a mortal lock that they were wrong. Mainly because they were telling their patrons what they wanted to hear. Instead he just said, "Yes, sir. That’s why I think they’re going to try something."

  "I know," said the secretary, still waving the folder. "You and your merry little band here going on record that you think the intelligence community is full of it."

  "That’s not what I wrote, sir," said Welsh.

  "You imply it."

  Welsh thought that over. "Yes, sir, I did. My job is to vet what’s coming in and give you the pros and cons."