by Brian Haig
“We try to keep the rookie teams as close to the Macedonian border as we can. That way, they get in over their head, it’s a short walk out.”
I stared up at the dot that represented team seven. “That a good team?”
“Very damn good.”
“What have you got them doing?”
“As we speak, they’re pinpointing targets for the flyboys. We issued ’em some laser designators. See that line right there?” He pointed at a string of blinking red dots that were aligned from the northeast to the southwest. “That’s the Serbs’ main supply route. About half the Serbs’ ammo and supplies come down that artery. Team seven’s got guys positioned all along it. They heat up the targets with the lasers every time we’ve got an F-16 that’s got a few extra bombs or missiles to unload.”
“Very impressive,” I said.
“Yeah, well, they’re the exception. Most of these KLA teams aren’t worth pissin’ on. Most haven’t done a damn thing since we put ’em in. You send ’em orders, and they call you back and complain that it’s too hard, or they say they’re doing it, but when you get the recce photos, you find out they didn’t do a damn thing. Waste of food and ammo.”
He kept studying my face as we talked. He had that perplexed look some people get when they’re trying to remember something.
I said, “So tell me, Sergeant Major, how well do you remember Akhan’s company?”
“Ah, a damned shame, that one,” he said, rubbing his jaw thoughtfully.
“A good unit?”
“Never really had a chance to find out. Great scores in training, but they got wiped out before they ever had a chance to strut their stuff.”
“Yeah, I heard they ran into a real butcher’s mart at that police station.”
“Yeah, a nasty business, that was,” he issued forth without the slightest hint of genuine remorse. Then the corners of his mouth twisted up, and his head canted to the side. “Hey, you ever been to Bragg?”
“Years ago. I was assigned there back when I was in the infantry.”
“Yeah, I knew I seen you before.”
“Five glorious years in the 82nd. Ooorah!” I said.
He lowered his voice. “Right, and I was Columbus’s first mate on the friggin’ Santa Maria. You don’t remember me, do ya?”
“Nope, I’m afraid I don’t.”
He winked. “’Course, you don’t. I didn’t recognize your name ’cause the outfit didn’t use names when we screened. We just gave you all numbers, so’s to make sure there was no favoritism or command influence. But I never forget a face.”
I looked at Williams and tried to place him. The voice was somehow disturbingly familiar, as were the eyes, but I couldn’t recall from where, and that worried me.
“Sorry, Sergeant Major, you’ve got the wrong guy. I never heard of the outfit.”
His smile broadened. “Remember the POW camp? Remember that big, surly asshole wearing a hood that kept kickin’ the crap outta you?”
This I remembered all too well. The outfit had a six-month-long test you had to pass in order to get in. About one in every twenty applicants managed to survive the ordeal. One of the passages the outfit expected all recruits to endure was two weeks in a POW camp that was about as brutally realistic as they could make it. For some reason, this huge interrogator who was working the hard sell developed a very nasty affection for me. He liked me so much, he made sure I got one-hour personal workouts with him every day. When he was done, I had two fractured ribs, a broken nose, and two missing teeth to remember him by.
“You were that prick?” I asked.
“Hey, no hard feelings.” He chuckled. “That was my job.”
“A job, huh? Well, you certainly seemed to enjoy it.”
That brought another chuckle. “Part of the job, too. We were supposed to make it look like we were having balls of fun, ’cause they figured that would scare the crap outta you guys.”
“It did,” I said very earnestly. “I dreamed about you for years.”
I didn’t mention that they were nightmares, but I was sure he got the point.
“Well, you were a tough little bastard. You shoulda broke and told me what I wanted to know. You’d of saved yourself a lot of agony. And it sure didn’t help, you being such a wiseass all the time. Did you know all those sessions were taped?”
“I guess I missed that. A guy gets a little preoccupied when he’s being bounced off walls and punched silly. You were very good at keeping my attention.”
“Yeah, well, there was one of those little tiny cameras in the corner ceiling. Every night, Colonel Tingle, the camp commandant, would review the tapes, and he’d get all over my ass for letting you mouth off at me that way. I told him after that first week you weren’t gonna break, but he kept scheduling you to come back.” He shook his head as though he were remembering some disastrous blind date. “You know, you being such a tough motherfucker, that’s what got you into the outfit. As I remember, you couldn’t shoot worth a shit.”
“Never could,” I admitted.
“So you left the outfit and became a lawyer?” he asked.
“Yeah. After five years, I decided I needed to preserve my mental health.”
“Hey, got that. I was there six years; probably one or two too many. That POW training thing was my final fling. They let me go after that.”
“You’ve been here ever since?”
“Yeah, it’s not a bad unit. Ain’t the outfit, but then, nothing else is.”
“I guess. Anyway, we’re both a little old for that stuff now.”
I walked over to the wall of communications consoles, and he followed me over.
“You’re in contact with all the teams inside the zone?”
“Yep.”
“I guess the teams have to make daily sitreps, don’t they?”
“Twice a day. One at first light, one at dusk. That’s why we have ten of these communications consoles. That way, we can handle the load and collect all the sitreps together.”
“Anybody ever miss?” I asked.
“Once in a blue moon. Not our guys, though. They never miss. It’s the KLA guys, they get sloppy sometimes.”
“What do you do when you don’t get a timely sitrep?”
“Try to initiate contact. We’ve never had to go beyond that, ’cause so far it’s always worked. If we still couldn’t get contact, we’d get a bird up immediately. And if that didn’t work, we’d get a recon team in there, right quick.”
“Why wouldn’t you just wait till the next sitrep time to see if they establish contact on their own?”
He looked at me like that was a spectacularly stupid question. “Come on, you know this shit. Those sitreps are their only lifeline. Miss even one and we start moving heaven and earth to find out what happened.”
“Were you on duty when Sanchez’s team was in the zone?”
“Part of the time, but I gotta tell you, Major, paesan to paesan, we’ve been told to watch what we say to you about that.”
I figured that Sergeant Major Williams and I had shared some pretty intimate times together. I mean, a certain amount of repartee develops between a beater and his beatee. So I pressed my luck.
“Who told you that?”
The smile had left his face, and he began shaking his head. “Can’t really say. But you better play this real smart. Don’t go actin’ like the same stubborn shit I remember. Might not have seemed like it, but that POW camp was just kid’s play. What’s goin’ down around here’s for keeps.”
Just at that moment a fella with a full bird on his collar, who looked like he just bit into a big, saucy lemon, walked over to join us. He glanced at me like I was the guy who had just deflowered his virginal daughter, then grabbed Williams by the sleeve.
“Excuse me, Sergeant Major, we’ve got another update to send to team four. Would you step over and join me?”
The colonel dragged Williams to a corner, then the colonel’s forefinger started doing a tap dance on Wi
lliams’s chest. I could see Williams’s feet shuffling, and I guessed he was getting his ears cleaned out pretty good. I can’t really say that bothered me all that much. I mean, the guy once spent two weeks beating the doo-doo out of me, and I don’t care what he said about it being just a job and all that. When someone spends about twenty hours turning you into pulp, you can tell whether he sees it as work or sport. Maybe that’s why he left the outfit after six years. Maybe the outfit sensed he was going over the edge. If they’d asked me at the time, I would’ve sworn he was so far over the edge that he’d hit the pitch-black bottom.
At any rate, the watchdogs were on to me, so I knew I wasn’t going to get any more help here. I retreated quietly and thought about Williams’s warning. There were lots of ways to interpret it. Maybe the word had been put out to stay away from me because I was investigating some of their brethren, and everybody wanted to make damn sure they did nothing to help put some of their own guys away. From a technically legal standpoint, that was a large-scale conspiracy to commit obstruction of justice. From a human standpoint, it was an understandable, and in some ways even admirable, fraternal response.
The hitch was that added warning about this being for keeps. I mean, at right about that moment, a big, bloated corpse was packed in a container of dry ice, on the back of a C-130, winging its way to Washington. I’d call that “for keeps.”
I reached down and fingered the. 38 caliber that rested in the holster on my hip. The time had come for me to actually get some ammunition for this thing. On the other hand, given my deplorable marksmanship skills, I’d probably stand a better chance if I just threw the damn pistol at anyone who was coming after me.
Chapter 17
The fellow waiting for me back at my office looked like a spook. Maybe it was all those James Bond movies. Or maybe it was all those spymaster novels that were the rage during the cold war, but sunglasses and trench coats had become the shibboleths for anybody connected with intelligence collection. Now just how an NSA guy expected to be perceived as a daring spy was beyond me. I mean, give me a break. NSA guys and gals don’t do secret missions or any of that crap. Hollywood sometimes portrays them as furtive skulduggers, but that just goes to show what happens when you give guys like Oliver Stone a camera and a license to interpret the universe. The NSA folks are terrestrial gazers. They rely on satellites and fancy airplanes with lots of odd gizmos to do all their work. Still, I guess you can’t fault them for wanting to exploit that spurious image Hollywood has created for them. I mean, it’s a cheap way to have a little sex appeal.
At any rate, this guy was sitting in a chair beside my office door, trench coat slung across his lap, Washington Post splayed open, just trying his damnedest to look like some nonchalant, hotshot, dashing operative. Actually, he pulled it off pretty well. He was a handsome guy with slicked-back blond hair, grayed nicely at the temples, and by his build I’d say he and the NSA gymnasium were fairly well acquainted. Most NSA folks look like clerks with wide, flat asses. That’s what comes from sitting all day and peering at the world through a satellite aperture.
“Hi,” I said as I walked past him.
The newspaper was instantly closed, he popped out of his chair and followed me. “You’re Major Drummond?”
“Last time I checked,” I said.
He trailed me into my lair, where I got myself situated behind my desk, and he got his self situated in front of my desk. Digging his wallet out of his trench coat, he flung it open to show me some kind of ID. He tried to do this swiftly, the way some cops do, but I caught a glimpse of the letters NSA before he slammed it shut with a quick, violent swinging motion. I wondered if this guy was on steroids.
I said, “I guess you got my request.”
“The home office back in Maryland got it. They asked me to make contact with you.”
“Good. You’ve done your job well. We’re now in contact.”
My wiseass manners were lost on this guy. He said, “I always do my job well. And you’re in luck, Major. We did have a satellite focused on Zone Three during the period in question.”
“Great. When can I have the pictures?”
“Well, I’m afraid that’s going to take a while. Zone Three is a large area. In fact, nearly two hundred square miles. There’s a great deal of human activity inside that sector. We’ve requested Tenth Group to provide us the coordinates of the base camp, and the exact location of the ambush. Once we have those, our analysts should be able to do the cutouts. You want film or stills?”
“Both. I’d like to look at everything you’ve got and see what I can tell myself.”
“Suit yourself.”
“Do your people know I’m in a hurry?”
He said in a very condescending way, “Of course they know. Everybody wants our stuff in a hurry. In case you hadn’t noticed, there’s a war going on just north of here.”
There was something about this guy I didn’t like. I didn’t like his eyes, which reminded me of a couple of pale blue marbles stuffed inside a pair of narrow sockets. There was no life in those eyes, only color, like they were artificial. But there was something else. I couldn’t put my finger on it. There just was something.
I said, “I didn’t know you guys were directly supporting Tenth Group.”
“Sure.”
“And you’ve got a facility here at Tuzla?”
“Located right beside the Air Force’s C3I facility. It’s just a small setup, but it’s a secure facility. You can view the shots there.”
“What if I want to take pictures out?”
He broke into a knavish smile. “Uh-uh. That’s not gonna happen.”
“Why not?”
“Because they’re too highly classified.”
“Look, Mr… uh, I didn’t really catch your name.”
The smile changed to a half-assed smirk. “That’s because you weren’t meant to. Just call me Mr. Jones.”
I said, “Damn, that’s real original.”
He said, “Yeah, I’m a real clever guy. Ask anyone.”
Now I knew what I didn’t like about this guy. My office was pretty tiny. There was barely enough oxygen for one pushy wiseass, which meant he was crowding my airspace.
I said, “So what happens if I decide I have to include some of your satellite shots in my investigation packet?”
“That’s your problem. They’re not leaving my facility.”
“Am I gonna have to push this up the line?”
“Push as far up as you like, buddy. These shots were taken by a brand-new experimental satellite, with capabilities I’m not about to describe to someone like you. The President himself couldn’t order me to release those pictures.”
I brooded over that a moment. “How do I get hold of you?” I finally asked.
“You don’t. I’ll get hold of you when we’re ready.”
“You’re stationed here?”
“Yep. They called me from home station this morning and told me to assist you. Just be a good boy, and we’ll make this as painless as possible for both of us.”
“Gee, thanks. I’m really looking forward to working with you,” I said as he walked out the door.
This guy really bothered me. His eyes bothered me. His manners bothered me. You know what bothered me more than anything, though? The Washington Post tucked under his arm. And that silly trench coat. It hadn’t rained in Tuzla in days. The sun was out and was baking everything in sight. I walked out and found Imelda, who was busily reviewing the transcripts we had taken back at Aviano.
“Hey, Imelda, do me a favor.”
“I don’t do favors,” she grumbled. “I only follow orders.”
“Right. Then do me an order. Call Washington and find out what the weather’s been like the past twenty-four hours.”
“How come? You planning on takin’ a trip yesterday?” She cackled, and I had to admit it was one of the funnier things I’d ever heard her say. I guess part of me was starting to rub off on her. Unfortunately, it was
the bad joke part.
“Actually, my car’s parked at Andrews Air Force Base,” I told her, “and I just remembered I left the window open. Oh… one other thing.”
“What’s that?”
“Where are you storing our case materials at night?”
“Those cabinets over there,” she said, pointing at three large gray military-issue file cabinets.
“Requisition a safe immediately. You, or one of your assistants, sleep next to those cabinets till it gets here.”
Her eyebrows went up a notch or two, but she was a smart lady. She didn’t ask.
I went back into my office and called my big new buddy Wolky. I very nicely told him I was hereby requisitioning the services of two of his strapping military policemen to stand guard outside my building’s doorway every night.
A moment later, Imelda came in to inform me it had been raining torrentially in Washington the past twenty-four hours. Reagan National Airport was closed. Dulles International was closed to everything but emergency flights. The rain, however, had miraculously missed Andrews Air Force Base, so my car was safe. She frowned deeply when she reported this. In Imelda’s world, any idiot stupid enough to leave his car windows open deserved ruined electronics and mildewed seats.
The truth was, though, my car wasn’t really parked at Andrews. I was just wondering how Mr. Jones got here so promptly. That smug, deceitful little liar. He didn’t walk down the street; he took off from Andrews.
But why did he fly all this way? And why was he so secretive about his name? And why that spurious lie about being stationed here? People who make their living gathering and peddling secrets eventually become secretive by nature, but Mr. Jones was stretching things a little.
I pondered this until there was a knock on the door, and I looked up to see my two CID buddies, Martie and David, anxiously waiting to be invited in.
“Please,” I said, standing up and walking over to shake hands.
Martie said, “Hi, Major. Hope we’re not bothering you.”
“No, no bother at all.”
“Good. David and I thought we’d stop by and maybe discuss a few more things with you.”