Miller opened his office door and stepped inside to be met at once by his secretary, Mary. “Mr. Miller, the supervisor is holding for you.”
“Yes, yes, I expected as much,” he muttered. What a way to begin a day, he thought. Even though spying wasn’t an official duty of the NSA, in the back of his mind he wondered on whom this agency was really spying. “You’d think he’s never had a bad morning!”
He sat down behind his desk and logged into the network. Then he lifted the phone. “What line?”
“Line four, sir! Do you want your coffee now?” She was a great assistant and on many occasions had been able to cover for him getting in late.
He pushed the proper button on his phone. “Hello, sir. I’m sorry to keep you waiting.” His supervisor had little tolerance for error and acted repulsed by incompetence. He often wondered how he had kept his job with such a man. The supervisor never wasted time on introductions or personal chit-chat. He always came right to the point.
“Do you know what day it is?”
Miller looked at his monitor and selected the key that brought up his calendar. A quick scan of the meetings and events for today showed nothing out of the ordinary. “Yes, sir, it...”
“Where is Rob Anderson?”
Miller pressed another key to bring up a search window and quickly typed:
Anderson, Rob
Another window appeared:
Found: Anderson, Rob
Current Destination: Israel
Flight: Concorde, 1430
Length of Stay: 3 weeks
Additional Comments: With immediate family. On vacation.
“Anderson, R... Rob’s in Israel, sir.”
“Very good, Agent Miller, but if I wanted to know his itinerary, I could have done a network search. Now I’ll ask you again: where is Rob Anderson?”
“Uh...” He motioned for Mary. She rose from her seat and headed toward him looking very curious. He tried to mouth Rob Anderson at her but without success. She shrugged her shoulders, indicating that she didn’t know what he was talking about. “Sir, if he’s not in Israel, then I’m afraid I don’t know.”
“Whose responsibility is he?”
“Mine, sir?”
The silence that followed made Miller start to sweat. A much quieter, more concerned supervisor asked, “Have you heard about the flight that was hijacked in Iraq?”
“Yes, sir. It was a British Concorde...” He glanced again at his computer and the words Concorde 1430 jumped out at him. “Oh, my God! Was it...”
“It was Concorde Flight 1430. Was he on that flight?”
“Yes, sir. I mean, as far as I know, he was. Is anything being done to rescue him?”
“Probably not, because the agent we assigned to him dropped the ball. Fortunately, when I received the American passenger list from the British authorities this morning, I happened to recognize the name Rob Anderson and became suspicious. So I looked...”
“I’m sorry, sir. I really would love to chat, but I have a lot to do.”
Without thinking about who he had on the phone, he simply hung up and shouted, “Mary, get me Clark at the State Department and Luke at the Central Intelligence Agency. Tell them I want a meeting in twenty minutes in operations on the fourth floor. Priority one!”
Day Eleven
Third Infantry Division
Five miles east of Hafar al-Batin
Al Hajarah Territory, Saudi Arabia
For the men of the Third Infantry, morning brought an end to nearly twelve hours of continuous shelling. The Iraqi forces had unloaded everything at their disposal upon them. Long and short range artillery, rockets, missiles, howitzers, and mortars rained fire and death from the sky. Deep craters drew a line across the desert, clearly marking the positions of the American forces.
Smoking, burning trucks and armored vehicles littered the battlefield. There were countless dead and wounded, yet not a single bullet had been fired. Then came the tanks, rolling across the desert sounding like a hundred locomotives. There seemed to be thousands! The Third Infantry consolidated, moving inward from the east and west edges and bending to the south. Before the day ended, they would be surrounded!
Marine Tactical Unit
Fifteen miles east of Samarra
Diyala Territory, Iraq
Captain Wright laid along the top of a low ridge overlooking the road. It amazed him that these tribesmen kept so well-informed. Three minutes had passed since the old man told him that a convoy was coming down this road, yet he still couldn’t see any sign of it.
“This is a perfect spot for an ambush,” he said to the old tribesman.
“We know every inch of this territory.”
Wright looked around. The mountains out in the distance, the nearby brush, trees, birds, and streams had hardly changed since the dawn of time. The natural condition of this land was hardly touched by man’s hand, confirming what the old man believed.
Suddenly his thoughts were jerked back by the sound of vehicles approaching from the south. His men, along with the tribesmen, were spread out on both sides of the road. They would wait until the first vehicle had passed almost all the way though their position before firing so that the opening fire hit as many of the vehicles at the same time as possible.
He studied the approaching motorcade carefully through his binoculars. It seemed like an odd assortment of vehicles. There was an American-made hummer in the lead, followed by a quad-MG mounted vehicle, a seventy-three millimeter anti-tank vehicle, and three transports. Something just didn’t seem right, but he couldn’t put his finger on it.
He felt his muscles tense and sweat drip down his face. What was he so concerned about? He was hundreds of mile behind enemy lines. Was it just his military training that told him not to take anything for granted? The motorcade was now only seconds away and something was definitely wrong. What was it? Was just the fact that they had an American hummer?
Then, there it was. The people on the transports were not dressed in military fatigues. They were civilians. But why?
The lead hummer was just entering the kill zone, and he heard the rifles cocking around him. This was no time for a mistake or to be tricked by the Iraqis. He had to be sure. Then he saw it. The soldiers in the lead hummer
were wearing the black night fighting uniforms of the U.S. Marines. He had to stop this!
Before he realized what he was doing, he found himself running down the embankment in front of the lead hummer. “Don’t shoot! Don’t shoot!”
The lead hummer screeched to a stop a few yards in front of him. Wright was looking up the embankment, waving his arms wildly. “They’re NOT Iraqis!”
When he was convinced that his men would not fire, he turned to the hummer to find himself staring down the barrels of four Marines’ weapons. One of the Marines, a tall black man, began walking toward him, taking quick nervous glances up the embankment. “Captain Wright? Is that really you?”
“Yes,” Wright smiled. “It really is me.”
Rock saluted him. He had a thousand questions. “What are you doing out here? Are there any others? Were you captured?”
“Easy, Sergeant.”
By now, the tribesmen and the other soldiers were heading down the embankment as well as the soldiers and the passengers of the convoy.
“Where’s Colonel Dempsey?” Wright asked Rock.
“The colonel bought it during our escape.”
“You were captured?”
“Yes. We spent almost a week in captivity.”
“Who’s in command?”
“Over there.” Rock pointed at Rob, who was climbing down from the truck at the end of the convoy.
“What do you know about him?”
“Well, actually, he’s a computer programmer... But you wouldn’t believe what he can do! Before Colonel Dempsey died, he drafted him into service and gave him a field commission of colonel. Colonel Dempsey’s last orders were that we follow any orders he gave without question.”
>
“Colonel Dempsey did this?” Wright was totally surprised. He knew Dempsey to be a methodical conservative leader who placed a great deal of significance on leadership. To draft and promote a civilian into such an important position was bordering on the ridiculous.
“Yes, sir. And if I may add, sir, he could not have picked a better man.”
“So you feel that he has proved his capabilities adequately?”
“Sir, none of us would be here now if it weren’t for him. He’s the one who killed the hijackers and landed the Concorde. He broke us out of the prison camp almost single-handedly. He destroyed three AVs with an outdated rocket launcher. And he...”
“Just a minute! You’re telling me he’s some kind of covert expert?”
“No, sir. He says he’s a computer programmer. That’s all!”
“And you feel he’s fit to command us?”
“Yes, sir! But more importantly, Colonel Dempsey did, too!”
It took a few moments for Wright to absorb everything Rock told him. “Well, you know that there are very few men I respect more than Colonel Dempsey, but what you’re describing is completely unconventional. It’s not at all like the colonel to do something like this. He must have had his reasons, though.”
A small crowd had gathered around. Wright put his hand on Rock’s back. “Apparently, this man has impressed the heck out of both you and the colonel, so I guess I’ll go along with it for now. Maybe he’ll impress the heck out of me!”
Rock smiled as Rob approached them. “He will, too! His name’s Colonel Rob Anderson.”
Rob stretched out his hand as he approached Wright. “Captain, I see you’re no stranger here.”
“No. I’m Captain Wright, and these men with me were part of the original strike force with Rock and the others. Rock explained to me about your commission, and well, if you can convince two of the men I respect most in this world that you’re the one most qualified for command, then you won’t have any argument from me... Colonel.”
“Thank you, Captain.” Rob tried to hide how uncomfortable he was with his title. “Who are these people with you and your men?”
“They’re part of a tribe they call Kurdurn.”
“Can any of them speak English?”
“A few of them. The leader actually speaks English rather well.”
“It appears that you had the same idea we had.”
“What’s that?”
“Well, being this far north, you must be trying to get out of Iraq through Turkey.”
“Actually, we were on our way to check out a report of a small nuclear weapons stockpile the Iraqis are supposed to have!”
Silence fell like a rock. Then Taylor spoke up. “What are you talking about? Iraq doesn’t have any nuclear weapons.”
Wright reached into his pocket and pulled out a folded piece of paper. “Two days ago, these men here ambushed what they thought was a supply convoy headed toward Samarra. It turned out to be some kind of heavily reinforced special detachment. Most of their tribesmen were pursued and killed. But before they were chased off by gun ships, they recovered a courier’s pouch which contained these orders for the commander. Now my Arabic isn’t the best, but even I can see that it contains a list of what they were transporting.”
Rob paled and looked at Taylor. “We can’t let them use those weapons.”
Taylor shook his head. “If this is true, then those weapons are going to be in the most secure bunker in Iraq, Colonel. Our little group is not going to be able to get to it.”
Rob turned back to Wright. “What do you think?”
“Well, I think this is what we’re paid to do. Our nation’s at risk, and it’s our responsibility to do whatever is required to see to its safety. We have no way of knowing whether the targets for those weapons are our troops or our cities. It’s our duty to at least try.”
Taylor was still shaking his head. “Then we need to try and escape from this country and warn our superiors.”
Wright smiled at Rob. “It looks like you’re faced with a command decision, then, Colonel.”
Rob was not smiling. “I suppose we could try to set up a broadcast like we did before to try and get a message to our forces, but I don’t think anybody would believe it. Besides, anything we transmit will be received by the Iraqis as well, and they’d just move the weapons. The U.S. would probably send in a force to investigate and not find anything. The way I see it, we’d just be giving away our element of surprise. So I guess there’s no decision to be made.” He looked toward Taylor. “Load them all up. We’re heading to Samarra.” It was clear to all that Rob and Wright shared the same convictions.
Rob watched as the Marines and tribesmen loaded onto the vehicles. “I’d like you to ride with me so that we can talk more,” he asked Wright as they walked toward the hummer. He stepped into the hummer and told Wright the whole story, how he started on a vacation trip to the Holy Land and ended up with a field commission of a colonel. But now with the news of a stockpile of nuclear weapons, their escape would have to wait.
“That’s quite a story, Colonel.”
Because of the intelligence reports Dempsey had shared with him, Wright knew there was much detail Rob had modestly chosen not to reveal. He knew instantly that he would like this man. He possessed the charisma that every good leader needed, and the more they spoke, the more he understood Colonel Dempsey’s reasons for doing what he did. But what impressed him most about Rob were the principles he seemed to value. There were things he believed that would not be compromised under any condition. One of these was his absolute insistence that no one under any circumstance be left behind.
The little convoy made excellent time with no enemy contact as they passed through lightly wooded areas with low rolling hills. Finally, about mid-day, the tribal chief stopped the convoy and brought Rob, Taylor, and Wright to the top of a hill.
“It is barely visible from here.” The old man pointed to the north.
Taylor squinted. “I don’t see anything.”
But Wright, who was examining the distant valley through his binoculars, did see it. “Well, well. What do we have here? A single camouflaged guard tower out in the middle of nowhere. It’s perfect!”
“What do you make of it?” Rob asked.
“Won’t know for sure until we get a team up there a little closer to check it out. But don’t forget, these men say there’s some kind of underground sensor we’ll have to deal with.”
Rob turned to Taylor. “Pick some men, Captain, and scout it out.” He took the binoculars from Wright. “Scout around the perimeter far enough back so that you don’t set off any of those underground sensors. I want a report in an hour. I also want a plan.”
Taylor did not question his colonel; he simply turned and walked away. As soon as Taylor was gone, Wright said, “I get the feeling the two of you don’t exactly get along.”
Rob put down the binoculars and glanced back at Taylor. “He’s a good officer, no doubt, and I believe he’ll be very useful to us. But he seems more concerned with protocol than lives.” He stared at Wright in silence for a moment as he sized him up. “Captain, I will not sacrifice a single life because of military rule or formality. My primary objective is the safety of these people. But if it becomes necessary to sacrifice to save other American lives, then that’s a decision I will make at that time.”
“You don’t feel that Taylor is capable of making that decision?”
“If it goes by the book, yes! But the situation we’re in today, Captain... Well, let’s just say that I don’t believe any of the authors of the book were in this situation when they wrote it.”
Wright smiled. Inwardly, he wished he were as naive as Rob when it came to the rules. It would sure make their current situation easier to explain. And because of Rob’s lack of training, he could probably get away with more.
About an hour later, Taylor returned from the reconnaissance mission looking very grim. “This place is an underground fortress.
The only part that’s above ground is that camouflaged guard tower. Our land and air patrols could go by this place all day long and never see it. I would wager that it has its own self-contained air refreshing and power system. It looks like there are only two ways to get into it. The first is through a sealed hatch on the floor of the guard tower. The second is through what appears to be a vault door down this trail and over that swell.” Taylor pointed toward a swell where the trail disappeared down a slight grade.
“Well, you’re the strategist. What do you suggest?”
Ron Schwartz - The Griffins Heart.txt Page 19