Acts of Vengeance

CHAPTER ELEVEN GEOPOLITICS

With his courtly manner and his avuncular voice, Langhorne Fletcher was a public affairs officer’s dream. He was a tall man — six feet two — with a craggy, aristocratic nose and a full mane of prematurely white hair. A southerner by breeding and instinct, Fletcher could trace his roots back to Virginia plantation owners. His ancestors had signed the Declaration of Independence, served under Washington, distinguished themselves as commanders in Lee’s Army of Virginia. Since 1874 an unbroken lineage of Fletchers had been officers in the U.S. Navy. Seven had risen to flag rank, including Langhorne Fletcher.

Fletcher’s greatest asset, beyond his imposing looks and sonorous voice, was his ability to please his superiors. He knew how to make his bosses — civilian or military — look good, a precious talent that had propelled him upward through the hierarchy of the Navy. All the way to command of a carrier battle group.

Except, at this moment, he didn’t feel in command. Fletcher felt like he was standing in quicksand. Thirty years in the Navy, waiting for a major fleet command. Now this. Disaster.

In the two years that he had served under Whitney Babcock, starting with the job as senior staff officer when Babcock was still the Undersecretary of the Navy, he had been unfailingly tactful.

Tactful to a fault, he thought. Perhaps it was time to be blunt.

He gazed around, making sure they were alone in the flag compartment. “What do you mean, Mr. Babcock? I’ve got a team in serious jeopardy on the ground, and you’re telling me I can’t use all the force available to me. How am I supposed to explain that to the other officers in my command?”

“This is not the time to panic,” said Babcock. “The situation is not as bad as it seems.”

“If I lose the recovery team on the ground, I’ll be blamed for the biggest debacle since Somalia.”

“You won’t lose them. It’s a communication problem. I’ve been on the line with our people in San‘a, and they tell me that Al-Fasr is standing down.”

“He’ll be more inclined to stand down if I put an air strike on his camp.”

“No!” The abrupt answer took Fletcher by surprise. “No bombing. No overt attacks, do you understand? That would compromise the negotiations that are going on at this moment.”

“What negotiations? I have twelve hundred marines aboard the Saipan and enough aircraft and bombs to eradicate Al-Fasr. Why do we have to negotiate?”

“To avoid putting us at war with Yemen. Every peasant in those mountains is a potential guerilla. Is that what you want, Admiral?”

Fletcher hesitated. The truth was, he didn’t know what he wanted. At the moment he wanted nothing except for someone else to take responsibility for the debacle in Yemen. “We have to do something,” he said. “The media will know soon enough that we’ve got people on the ground in Yemen. We have to get them out of there.”

“Not if it means sending more troops in. This has to be a mediated settlement, Admiral.” He gave Fletcher one of his patronizing smiles. “Look at this as an opportunity. There is much more to be gained here than the immediate safety of a few marines and pilots.”

Fletcher felt the quicksand deepening. “What, may I ask, is to be gained?”

The smile again. “The security of our allies in the Middle East. The vast oil wealth of the Saudi peninsula. But you shouldn’t concern yourself with geopolitics, Admiral. Your job is to command the carrier battle group in what is nothing more than a routine military operation. Leave the bigger issues to the strategists.”

He glanced at his watch. “I’m due for a conference call with the Secretary of State and our ambassador in San‘a. I’ll brief you later on the status of the negotiations.”

Fletcher was left standing in the flag intel space as Babcock strode back to his own private quarters. Babcock’s words still rang in his ears. Leave the bigger issues to the strategists.

It was an insult, but he had become accustomed to such insults. It went with the job.

Twenty thousand feet above the battle, Maxwell could see the unmistakable black smoke billowing into the morning sky. Helicopters were burning.

He and his strikers were on their own tactical frequency, so he couldn’t hear the communications between the TRAP team leader and the Battle Group Commander. The situation was going to hell on the ground.

CAG Boyce’s voice came over the strike frequency. “Runner One-one, Battle-Ax.”

“Go, Battle-Ax.”

“Showtime. Boomer needs your services. You’re cleared to expend ordnance. The TARCAP is in place and the picture is clear. Forward air control will come from Boomer on button four.”

About time, thought Maxwell. “Runner One-one copies. Are we cleared all the way down, Battle-Ax?”

After a second’s pause, Boyce replied. “Negative, Runner. Rules of engagement. Observe the specified altitude.”

Maxwell could hear the disgust in Boyce’s voice. Boyce despised the rules just as much as he did.

He called the other three pilots in his division. “Runner flight, check switches. We’re in hot.”

Hozer Miller, on his left wing, acknowledged. Leroi Jones and Flash Gordon, flying in combat spread to the right, also acknowledged. Master armament switches hot, bombs ready to release.

He could see dirty brown puffs erupting in the clearing. Mortars or light artillery. How the hell were they going to pick out the gunners from here? They needed a real forward air controller and a reference —

“Runner lead, do you read Yankee Two?”

The voice was weak and distant, breaking up as it reached his headset.

“Is that you, Yankee Two? Where’ve you been?”

“The taxpayers get a refund on this radio. It quit, and now it’s back again, but I don’t know for how long.”

She sounded tired, Maxwell thought. Or scared. “What’s your status? The recovery team is looking for you.”

“I’m five hundred yards from them, but the Sherji are closing in. They’ve already knocked down the helos. They’ve got some kind of small missile — might be an SA- 16 — and they’re bringing up track-mounted guns.”

“How about you? Are you in a secure spot?”

“For the moment. Brick, I think Al-Fasr has been monitoring the SAR frequency on a captured radio. He knows everything we’re doing.”

Maxwell digested this news for a second. It explained how Al-Fasr knew when the recovery team was landing. Why did they keep underestimating the sonofabitch?

“Copy that, Yankee Two. Stand by for a minute.”

His four Hornets were armed with cluster bombs — CBU-59s and Mk 20 Rockeyes — designed for low-level release, to decimate personnel and equipment. Dropped from high altitude, they were as likely to hit the friendlies as the Sherji.

He considered. It wouldn’t do any good to ask Battle-Ax again for clearance to go on down. It was Fletcher and Babcock’s show. Boyce’s hands were tied.

Orders were orders. That was what it meant to be a professional military officer. You took orders, then executed them to the best of your ability. That was the career he had chosen.

Well, it had been a nice career. At least he got to command his own squadron for a while. Kiss it good-bye.

“Yankee Two, can you spot targets from your position?”

“Affirmative,” she answered. “I’ve got a front-row seat.”

“We’re inbound. Give us an orange marker smoke. All targets referenced on the smoke, okay?”

“You’ve got it,” B.J. answered. The weariness had left her voice. She sounded buoyant. “Here goes your smoke. Give ’em hell, guys.”

“Nothing? What do you mean, nothing?” Babcock was almost screaming into the handset. “We were supposed to have the accord from Al-Fasr in our hands this morning. Instead, we have a bloodbath going on in Yemen!”

“Yes, sir,” said Perkins, his aide in Washington. “Bankhead has been waiting at the embassy in San‘a all night. He says they’re stonewalling. He doesn’t know why.”

Like all his SatComm communications from the Reagan, this phone call was digitally scrambled. Still, Babcock couldn’t help worrying that someone — anyone other than Perkins and his two deputies, Triolo in Aden and Bankhead in San‘a — might somehow decrypt the message.

It would be a public relations disaster. If the press or any of the howling jackals that inhabited the United States Congress learned of his agreement with Al-Fasr, not only would his own head roll, but the ensuing scandal could topple the administration.

Not that he was the first. Hadn’t scores of security advisers and presidential deputies before him made clandestine deals with foreign operatives? The Iran-Contra affair was just the tip of the iceberg.

“Tell Bankhead to establish contact with Al-Fasr. I don’t care how. Smoke signals or carrier pigeon, that’s his problem. I need a SatComm hookup with him today, before this thing goes any further. Understand?”

Perkins understood.

Babcock hung up the secure phone and stewed for a minute. What was Al-Fasr up to? It didn’t make sense that the Arab would double-cross him. Why would he? The man had just been handed the keys to Yemen. The existing government could be deposed in a matter of hours — with the full support of the United States. Al-Fasr would be transformed from a fugitive, like bin Laden, to a head of state and staunch ally of the most powerful country on the planet.

It was possible, he supposed, that Al-Fasr was crazy. But not likely. For nearly twenty years — since they were at Yale together — he had observed Al-Fasr’s career, his rise in the military, his growing status as the scion of a powerful Arab family. The man had a formidable intellect mixed with a streak of iconoclasm. He could bring something new and modern to the feudal political system of the Middle East.

Not that he and Al-Fasr were friends. More like fellow visionaries. Al-Fasr was more of an idealist than Babcock, more romantic and impetuous. But never one of those Islamic extremists. He wasn’t crazy.

Until now. Now Babcock wasn’t sure.

It was glorious.

B.J. wanted to stand up and cheer. The first Hornet — Maxwell’s, she presumed — was coming in from the east, skimming the edge of the long spinelike ridgeline. Against the glare of the low morning sun, the fighter was nearly invisible. The sound hadn’t yet reached the plateau where B.J. huddled with her radio.

One of the Sherji moving up the slope spotted the jets. He stood and yelled something in Arabic, pointing at the oncoming fighters. Confused, they stopped, peering at the apparitions flashing toward them.

The bomblets were already dropping. The swarm of dark objects hurtled toward the ground.

Blam! Blam! Blam! Blam! A dozen Sherji who had remained standing were cut in half. The hillside erupted in a wave of exploding dirt and shrubs and flesh. In a fifty-yard-wide swath, the cluster bombs ripped up shrubs and rocks and running soldiers.

Those who survived the wave of cluster bombs were on their feet, running for the cover of the trees when the second Hornet arrived. The next swath sliced through them like a scythe.

“On target!” B.J. yelled over the radio. “That stopped the advance wave. Runner One-three and — four, move your aim point a hundred yards, three o’clock. I see a concentration of troops in those trees.”

She saw the incoming Hornets bank to the right, adjusting their aim points. They skimmed down the ridgeline, bearing down on the target. The bomblets looked like blackbirds swarming to a nest.

The trees disintegrated in a geyser of foliage and dirt and shrapnel. B.J. could see panicked and wounded Sherji running for cover.

Somewhere nearby, a big gun belched fire. Then another. The guns were concealed beneath camouflage, but she saw the ringlets of smoke that followed each burst.

“I’ve got another target. A heavy gun emplacement, fifty-seven millimeter, maybe.”

Maxwell answered. “We’ve each got one CBU canister left, and the cannons.”

She gave him the bearing and distance of the gun emplacement from the smoke marker. As the Hornets rolled in on the new targets, B.J. could see tracers and hear small-caliber guns firing on the jets. Good luck, she thought. Hitting a jet moving at five hundred knots was a feat of marksmanship far beyond these hooligans.

The first load of bombs ripped through a stand of trees, exploding a vehicle but missing the gun emplacement. The gun belched another round into the air.

“Runner One-two, move your aim point thirty yards, three o’clock.”

“Runner One-two, wilco.”

The bombs cut through the camouflaged emplacement, shredding equipment and vehicles and bodies. A secondary explosion — an ammunition cache, she guessed — belched a mushroom of dirt and flame.

“On target! On target! Keep it up.”

B.J. scanned the ridgeline and the plateau where the marines were dug in. On the far side, something glinted. She saw movement, dark shapes skulking through the bush.

“Bull’s-eye one-five-zero degrees, a thousand yards,” she called. “Looks like another troop concentration. They’re approaching the marine perimeter from that hillside on the west. Do you see them, Runner?”

Several seconds passed. “Runner One-one tallies the target.”

B.J. watched Maxwell’s Hornet roll into a shallow dive, aimed at the hillside where she had spotted the Sherji.

It sounded like a giant buzz saw. The Hornet’s twenty-millimeter cannon spat fire at the horrific rate of six thousand rounds per minute. A swath of earth erupted on the hillside, decimating everything in its path. Troops leaped from concealment and fled toward the gully below them.

From the TRAP team’s perimeter, another hail of machine-gun fire opened up, cutting down the retreating Sherji.

Maxwell’s Hornet pulled off the target as the next was bearing down on the fleeing enemy. And the next. More swaths of dirt and fire.

The Sherji were in full rout. As they retreated down the slope, the marines lobbed mortar into their ranks.

“Yankee Two, do you read Boomer?”

It was a new voice on her radio. B.J. was instantly suspicious. The SAR frequency had become a party line. “Who is Boomer?” she asked.

“The marine whose butt you just saved. Great job of forward air control, Yankee. Can you make it to our perimeter?”

“It depends on how many — Uh-oh. Stand by, Boomer.”

She lowered the radio and peered down the hillside.

Something down the slope moved — a glint of metal, a patch of the wrong color.

She waited, watching the bushes and boulders.

There it was again. Coming toward her. Taking their time, being stealthy, using the rocks and shrubs.

How many? How did they know she was here?

Easy, she realized, looking at the orange smoke that was still gushing upward. They saw the smoke and heard her calling targets on the SAR frequency. A no-brainer.

Across the valley, Maxwell’s Hornet was making another pass on the retreating Sherji. She considered calling a strafing pass on her own hillside. Forget it. The guys coming up the hill were already too close to her position.

“What’s going on, Yankee?” came the marine commander’s voice. “Are you in trouble?”

She didn’t know whether to laugh or cry. “I’ve been in trouble for the last twenty-four hours, sir. This is just more of the same. Sorry, I’ve gotta go now.”

She stuffed the radio back into her satchel and surveyed her escape routes. The Sherji owned most of the real estate on the hillside that sloped toward the marines’ perimeter. Behind her lay an undulating series of gullies and then a terraced slope that someone had cultivated with rows of sorghum. At the far end of the gullies, about three hundred yards distant, rose another wooded hillside punctuated by craggy rock formations.

Throwing the satchel over her shoulder, she scuttled up the path toward the gullies. The Sherji might get a glimpse of her, perhaps even take a shot. So be it. She would do what she did best — run.

In a sprint she reached the shoulder of the hill, then dropped into one of the gullies and headed toward the woods. At the end of the gully she ducked behind a boulder and stopped to look back.

No Sherji. At least none on her heels. For a moment she stood still, listening. She didn’t hear anything coming her way. Just the sound of her own raspy breathing — and the throaty whine of the jets overhead.

The Super Hornets were still shredding the Al-Fasr position. She saw a Hornet skimming in low over the ridgeline, flame spitting from the muzzle in the long slender nose. As the Hornet came off target, B.J. noticed something else.

A smoke trail, going straight up. It was the same squiggly, erratic kind of trail she had observed when the Cobra gunship was destroyed.

She fumbled for the radio in her satchel. While she punched the transmit button, her eyes followed the wispy column of smoke.

The Hornet was in a hard right bank. The smoke trail was following it.

“Flares, Runner!” she yelled in the radio. “Smoke in the air! You’re targeted.”