“They’ve got to be nearby,” Hardcastle said. “Keep searching the buildings near the runway. We’ll send out the I-Team if we find nothing else.”
Using unexpected severe cuts and maneuvers, Masters darted from building to building and from section to section, never being too predictable, never spending more than a few seconds on any spot before darting away. But after a few more minutes Hardcastle was convinced—the place was deserted.
Masters flew the AV-22 to the opposite side of the runway from the parking ramp and hangars and as close to a grove of trees as he could for seclusion and protection from shoulder-fired missiles. “All right, I-Team,” Hardcastle said, “we’ve swept the area and found nothing. We’ll roll in across the runway between those two big hangars there, drop off the I-Team and get out again. You guys sweep the area for a few hundred yards. We’ll orbit the periphery of the base and check for any soldiers that might be hiding and getting ready to move in on us. When the parking area’s secure we’ll come back and land.”
The AV-22 picked up about ten feet off the ground, then raced across the runway at almost a hundred miles an hour. Once he reached the parking area Masters pivoted the big tilt-rotor plane so his nose was facing out toward the runway and dropped quickly down to the pavement. The I-Team members scrambled out the rear cargo ramp, fanning out in different directions. They raised their rifles to any opening, rooftop or shadows they could find, ready to repel a sudden attack. When the last man was off, the AV-22 lifted straight up a hundred feet into the darkness, then turned and sped away.
The occupied part of the base was not very big, and it only took a few moments to cruise the perimeter. No sign of life. Off in the distance they detected a truck slowly heading toward the base, but it was several miles off and at its present speed and judging by the steep, twisting roads, would take a long time to reach them. Masters followed the main road from the front gate to the headquarters building, and although he did find a few abandoned vehicles with warm engine compartments he did not see one living being anywhere.
“I-Team, report,” Hardcastle said over the radio net. Masters cruised by the parking area again and set down in case any of the team needed support. But the I-Team had dispersed and there was no one else around—not even animals or birds.
“West sweep is negative,” the I-Team leader, Arturo Cordova, reported. “I’ve checked all hangars in this direction. They obviously left in one helluva hurry.”
“North sweep is negative,” another member reported. “I’m in the control tower. They left log books, notes, schedules, but no sign of soldiers or any recent activity.”
“Collect all the logbooks you can carry,” Hardcastle said. “We’ll make another sweep of the runway and perimeter and meet back between the hangars in ten minutes.”
“I-Team copies.” Cordova and his partner ran off toward the control tower to help with the search.
Masters lifted off and started another inspection of the trees and fence line. They found spots where towable anti-aircraft guns could have been placed, low-walled bunkers with separate ammunition bunkers nearby, but the pads and bunkers were empty. “They booked, all right,” Hardcastle said. “They packed up this entire unit and bugged out in less than eighteen hours. That’s pretty damn amazing.”
Just then, Elliott called on the command net: “Two-Nine, this is Seven-One. Looks like you might have company. Judging by their speed, you could have a light fixed wing or chopper heading toward your position. His takeoff point looked like Port-au-Prince. He’s got modes and codes—might be a Haitian military or police investigator. His ETA is one-three minutes. What’s your status?”
“The place is deserted,” Hardcastle said. “Nothing here. We’re picking up a few logbooks and records they left behind.”
“Okay. We need to start heading north with the drones to maintain contact so we need you airborne in ten minutes. Get FLIR videotapes of the base as you head out for damage assessment.”
“Copy that, Seven-One.” Hardcastle looked at Masters and shook his head. “Elliott sounds like real calm, like attacking a deserted home base is par for the course for him.”
“He couldn’t have known they’d bug out so fast. Still . . .”
“Still, it makes him, and us, look like idiots,” Hardcastle said. “This was a well-planned well-executed sortie. Only one goddamn little problem—the bad guys already got away.”
Aboard the E-2 Hawkeye Radar Plane, Lion Seven-One
Several Minutes Later
Elliott sat back in his seat between the radar operator and McLanahan’s drone-control console. He was drained, could barely stand to look at the radar scopes any longer.
“Two-Nine’s airborne,” the radar controller reported. “That air target is still ten miles out, still heading for Verrettes. No other sign of pursuit.”
“Full connectivity with all drones,” McLanahan reported. “Should be able to recover all of them back at Aladdin City.”
Elliott nodded, rubbing his eyes wearily. “Send the Stealth fighters home,” he told the controller. “We’ll debrief once we get back on the ground. Tell them well done. Which is more than I can say for myself.”
“I still can’t believe it,” McLanahan said. “A U.S. fighter base could probably pack up twenty planes and disperse them in eighteen hours, weapons and all, but they couldn’t move all of its maintenance, administrative and operational assets in so short a time. These guys moved everything. Obviously they knew we were coming for them.” He paused, then added: “You couldn't have known they would punch out so fast, general. Anyway, you had to go in there.” “They must have planned to move their operation at the same time they planned to attack the aerostat units,” Elliott said. “They figured we’d retaliate right away after such an attack—the strike aircraft were probably the last ones to leave Verrettes.”
“But where could they go?”
“Anywhere. They could be in Colombia—that’s only six hundred miles away—or they could have gone a few miles further inland. Some of the cargo-class aircraft you saw could reach Mexico, or Venezuela, or even as far as Brazil.” He slapped a hand on an armrest. “I never should have gone in without an intelligence update. My best bet was to keep them under constant surveillance when we figured out who they were. Instead I let them sneak away. Now they’ve mounted a successful attack on CARABAL, KEYSTONE, and HIGHBAL, and they got clean away. We mount a big deal counteroffensive, and come up empty.”
Elliott was quiet for several moments, then, angry at himself, straightened up in his seat. “All right, Patrick, we've still got work to do, and, I guess, be thankful that we’re alive to fight another day . . . I need an update on the situation at Hammerhead One, KEYSTONE and CARABAL, plus a status report on our available units and mission capability. When you get a report from headquarters we’ll give the Secretary of Defense’s office a call. That’ll be no later than six a.m.—he should be awake but not yet at the Pentagon—and we should reach him before any reporters do in case this raid was somehow leaked to the press. I’ll report what happened here tonight and ask to see the President in the morning. Our number-one priority has got to be reactivating the border security units in the affected areas. I’ll suggest stationing sea-borne aerostat units in the Bimini Straits, the Straits of Florida off Key West and in Bahamian waters, and we’ll get the carrier stationed near Hammerhead so we can reestablish airspace control.
“Once we’ve done that—we’ll coordinate a search for this magician Salazar and his outfit. We can check radar records for flights out of Haiti and try to follow up any suspicious flights from Haiti to isolated parts of countries in the region. We should also get together with CIA and our DEA guys to figure out a way to draw Salazar out into the open—he’ll go deep underground for a while.”
“There’s one way to dig these guys out of hiding,” McLanahan said. “Money. It can outweigh the fear of discovery ...”
But when? How long? Elliott thought. He couldn’t just sit and wait.
He needed to smoke them out. Somehow . . .
The White House Oval Office
Two Hours Later
“Say that again, Tom,” the President said, staring at Secretary of Defense Preston. “Elliott flew a mission to Haiti—an attack mission?”
“So he reported this to me a few minutes ago. His mission was—” “His mission? I didn’t order any mission to Haiti, especially not a damned attack mission. What did he do? What did he use? Another B-52?”
“Two Sea Lion tilt-rotor aircraft from his headquarters in Florida, one E-2 radar plane belonging to the Border Security Force, twenty armed Seagull drones and two F-117 Stealth fighters from the tactical fighter unit in Nevada.”
“Stealth fighters ... he used Stealth fighters on this mission without my authorization? How can he do that? How can he even get his hands on those things without my permission?”
“Sir, General Elliott was in charge of the test unit at Tonopah for many years before it became a tactical fighter wing. He’s still in virtual command of his unit at the weapons test center in Nevada even though he’s not active there—”
“I should have that sonofabitch shot. What’s he going to do next? Bomb Cuba? Bomb China? Bomb Washington if he doesn’t get what he wants when he wants?”
“Sir, if I could offer an explanation ... He was fully empowered to conduct this operation.” The President only stared at Preston. “As a member of the U.S. military, as a de facto military commander and general officer, he has authority to conduct security, defensive, counter-insurgency, search-and-destroy and reconnaissance operations in defense of his installations and in defense of the United States. General Elliott followed the rules, sir. He conducted an authorized reconnaissance mission. He briefed you yesterday on his findings, on the threat posed to his command, his installations, to the security of the country and on appropriate responses. Four of his installations came under attack last night and he had every reason to believe that the attack came from that base in Haiti. He had no other option—he had to respond with force. There’s no question—" “Can the lecture, Tom. He acted without notifying anyone—not even you . . .”
“Commanders aren’t required to immediately notify us when their bases or commands come under attack—”
“That’s bull, Preston—”
“It’s also the truth. If Russia had a change of heart and Soviet tanks started rolling across into West Germany, we’d expect our commanders there to execute their wartime responses, defend their installations and fight back—without notifying us immediately. If they saw a weakness that they felt they had to exploit, we would expect them to do it if it served to protect American lives and property. We expect our commanders to act, Mr. President. General Elliott did just that.” The President seemed'to calm down as he turned to his Chief of Staff, Jack Pledgeman: “I want Martindale, Chapman. Curtis and Mitchell in here. Quietly. Jack." Pledgeman left to use the phone in the outer office.
“All right. Let’s table whether he had authority to do what he did. What did he find over there? What happened?”
"The base had been evacuated.” Preston told him, and added the details.
“What about these drones, these Seagull things?”
"They weren’t used in the attack. 1 think General Elliott had planned on using them if he couldn’t obtain the Stealth fighters.”
"Everyone got out? No casualties?”
"General Elliott reported the loss of two drones enroute,” Preston said, “apparently due to maintenance problems. They were parachuted to the ocean and will be recovered by a Border Security Force crew. Under the circumstances, I am impressed with the operation. General Elliott organized quite a mission in little time, in utter secrecy and with considerable firepower given his limited resources and the need for fast execution. If he had encountered resistance in Haiti he still would have had a very good chance for success with few7 or no casualties. He struck with speed, precision and restraint—”
“Yeah, I know. You love the guy, everybody goddamn loves the guy. But I don’t want him running all over the Caribbean slinging bombs at every strip of land that looks like a smuggler’s hideout. I don’t want my commanders planning their own strikes against foreign nations without my explicit approval. I don't care what the book says his responsibility is. Defending American airspace is one thing— bombing another country is another, for God’s sake!”
“I’ll be sure to give that message to General Elliott,” Preston dead- panned. “He's due here in about three hours. Would you like to see him?”
"Yes, I'd like to see him. I’d also like to strangle that four-star sonofabitch. Xo, maybe I’ll demote him to lieutenant colonel and then strangle the sonofabitch.”
“I believe the people will be expecting an appropriate response to the attack, sir,” Preston pointed out. "General Elliott’s strike, as much as you disapprove of it, may fill the bill very well.” He paused, reading the smoldering doubt in the President’s face. “We may consider leaking it to the press tonight, or perhaps tomorrow7. No details, of course—but it will be that much more believable because we will neither confirm nor deny it. If the press investigates and finds a bombed-out base in Haiti—well, we still deny it but the public will have what it wTants. People love secrets—especially when they discover them.”
“There’s nothing I hate more than playing games like that. I don’t want to be forced to accept Elliott’s gunslinger act as part of my foreign policy and then have to play the informed-White-House- sources-leak game.”
“Are you certain, Mr. President, that what General Elliott did was not what you really wanted?”
“What are you talking about . . .?”
“I’m just suggesting that perhaps all you wanted was to be in control of the situation. You’re not necessarily objecting to the mission per se, you object to not being informed and not directing the effort—”
“I don’t need your two-bit psychoanalysis, Preston.” But the truth was, he silently admitted, Preston probably was right... “I want you to brief the rest of the staff for me when they arrive—delay my scheduled news conference if you need to.” Pledgeman arrived back in the Oval Office, but before he could say anything the President snapped, “They should be here by now, Jack.”
“Waiting on Director Mitchell, sir. He’s down in the communications center.”
“We’ll start without him. Send ’em in, Jack. I hope the hell they brought briefing notes for me.”
“Got them right here, sir,” Pledgeman said, holding up a stack of briefing sheets—he would condense and revise these so that the President could refer to them if he needed to during the press conference.
“I need them in five minutes.” The President got to his feet and moved away from the tall window to his right—the one that looked out over the White House lawn, the one through which reporters with long lenses could get pictures of the chief executive. He had always wanted to move his desk away from that window, but it had always been there and probably always would. It was a symbol of the presidency, an image of the man in charge, hard at work . . .
The man in charge . . . Sometimes it was nothing but a damn joke.
The White House Situation Room
Three Hours Later
The Vice President, two military aides and Brad Elliott were the only ones left in the Situation Room. The last hourly meeting with the President and his Cabinet had just broken up, and developments in the Caribbean were now being handled directly from the White House. Everyone was required to stay in touch, which meant stay in the White House. From the Situation Room most calls and messages did not have to go through the switchboard or the Chief of Staff5s office, which allowed greater speed and responsiveness.
They were all watching the replay of the President’s press conference—as expected, it had been no picnic—along with inserted pictures of the destroyed Hammerhead One platform surrounded by rescue ships. Off in the background the camera picked up the looming sight of the U.S.S. Coral Sea, n
ow on station to provide border security and area-interdiction duties. The commentators were now interjecting their thoughts on the horror that had occurred in south Florida, but the Vice President had the sound turned down as he began:
“What a damned nightmare,” he muttered. “Forced to use one of our carriers, even an old bitch like the Coral Sea, to protect our own shores. The press is having a field day.”
“Anything is better than leaving the area unprotected,” Elliott said. “The aircraft carrier is our best option until we activate a new platform.”
“And how long will that be?”
“We can have a new platform in place in two weeks. Outfitting it for full-flight operations will take another one to two months. Getting an aerostat unit on board, another few months. In all, perhaps a year for a fully operational platform. The plan is to make the new platform less of a command center and more of a remote airbase—less personnel, less computers, less monitoring systems. All those functions can be done from headquarters . . .
“A better option would be to tow Hammerhead Two from west Florida to take over in this area, and move the Coral Sea to west Florida. From there it can cruise the Gulf and stage flight operations that could control the region. We can beef up the platform’s defensive armament to protect it against attack, but with the F-16’s at Homestead so close and with other Navy ships in the area I think smugglers will stay clear of the platform.”
The Vice President did not reply immediately but closed his eyes and nodded. “Submit the pricetags for both proposals to me and I’ll present them to the Old Man. But don’t expect too much. He is plenty pissed off, and when you come to him asking for money he’s likely to blow his top—”
The door to the Situation Room opened and the President along with Chief of Staff Pledgeman, Secretary of Defense Preston, Drug Control Advisor Massey and National Security Advisor Curtis entered. The President took his place at the head of the table, waited as Pledgeman arranged reports and papers around him, motioned to the stenographer, who was sitting patiently in a corner of the room, then looked at Elliott for the first time. “Had a busy twenty-four hours, General?”
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