Acts of War

TWELVE

Bob Herbert rolled his wheelchair into Paul Hood's office. "Mike was right as usual," the intelligence chief said. "The NRO confirms that the Ataturk Dam's been heavily damaged."

Hood exhaled tensely. He turned to his computer and typed in a single word: "Affirmative." He appended this to his emergency Code Red E-mail of 9:47 a.m. which contained Mike Rodgers's initial evaluation. Then he sent the confirmation to General Ken Vanzandt, the new Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. He also copied it to Secretary of State Av Lincoln, Secretary of Defense Ernesto Colon, Central Intelligence Agency Director Larry Rachlin, and super-hawk National Security Advisor Steve Burkow.

"How close is the ROC to the affected region?" Hood asked.

"They're about fifty miles to the southeast," Herbert said. "Well out of the danger zone."

"How well is well?' " Hood asked. "Mike's idea of a buffer zone isn't the same as other people's."

"I didn't ask Mike," Herbert said. "I asked Phil Katzen. He had experience with the great Midwest flood of 1993 and he did some quick computations. He says that within the fifty miles there's a good fifteen-to-twenty-mile cushion. Phil figures the Euphrates will rise about twenty feet straight down through Syria to Lake Assad.That won't hurt the Syrians much, since a lot of that area is seasonally dry as toast and deserted. But it's going to flood out a lot of Turks who live in villages around the river."

Darrell McCaskey arrived as Herbert was speaking. The slim, forty-eight-year-old former FBI agent, now interagency liaison, shut the door behind him and leaned quietly against it.

"What do we have on the perpetrators?" Hood asked.

"Satellite reconnaissance showed a Turkish 500D leaving the site," Herbert said. "Apparently, it was the same helicopter stolen from the border patrol earlier in the day."

"Where's it headed?" Hood asked.

"We don't know," Herbert said. "There're a pair of F-4s looking for the chopper now."

"Looking for it?" Hood said. "I thought we had it on satellite."

"We did," Herbert said. "But sometime between one picture and the next it disappeared."

"Shot down?"

"Nope," Herbert said. "The Turks would've told us."

"Maybe," Hood said.

"All right," Herbert agreed. "Even if they didn't, we'd have spotted the wreckage. There's no sign of the helicopter for a radius of fifty miles from the last place it was seen."

"What do you make of that?" Hood asked.

"I honestly don't know," Herbert said. "If there were any caves in the area which were large enough, I'd say they flew right in and parked it. We're still looking, though."

Hood was annoyed. He wasn't like Mike Rodgers, who enjoyed putting clues together and solving mysteries. The banker in him liked information orderly, complete, and now.

"We'll find the chopper," Herbert added. "I'm having the last satellite photograph analyzed to get the exact speed and direction of the 500D. We're also running a complete study of the area's geography. We'll try to find a place like a cave or canyon where a helicopter could hide."

"All right," Hood said. "In the meantime, what do we do about the ROC? Just leave it?"

"Why not?" Herbert asked. "It was designed for on-site reconnaissance. You can't get any more on-site than this."

"That's true," Hood agreed, "but I'm more concerned about security. If this attack is a taste of things to come, the ROC is relatively vulnerable. They've only got two Strikers covering four open sides."

"There's also a Turkish security officer," McCaskey added.

"He seems like a good man," Herbert said. "I checked him out. I'm sure Mike did too."

"That's three people," Hood said. "Just three."

"Plus General Michael Rodgers," Herbert said respectfully, "who is a platoon unto himself. Anyway, I don't think Mike would let himself be evacuated now. This is the kind of thing he lives for."

Hood sat back. Rodgers's career as a soldier included two tours of Vietnam, command of a mechanized brigade in the Persian Gulf, and leading a covert Striker operation into North Korea. Rodgers wasn't going to run from a terrorist attack on a dam.

"You're right about that," Hood admitted. "Mike will want to stay. But Mike isn't the one who has make that decision. We've also got Mary Rose, Phil, and Lowell in the saddle and they're all civilians. I just wish we knew whether the attack was an isolated event or the first salvo of something larger."

"Obviously, we'll know more when we find out who's responsible," McCaskey said.

"Well give me something to chew on," Hood said. "Who do you think was behind this?"

"I've spoken with the CIA and with the Turkish Special Forces, and also with the Mossad in Israel," McCaskey said. "They're all saying it's either Syrians or Muslim fundamentalists within Turkey. There's a strong argument for both. The Muslim Fundamentalists desperately want to weaken Turkey's ties with Israel and the West. By attacking the infrastructure, they place a burden on the populace and turn them against the government."

"If that's the case," Hood said, "we can expect more attacks."

"Right," McCaskey replied.

"Yeah, but I'm not going for that one," Herbert said. "The fundamentalists are already pretty damn strong in Turkey. Why would they try to take by force what they can conceivably win on the next ballot?"

"Because they're impatient," McCaskey pointed out. "Iran is paying a lot of their bills and Tehran wants to see results."

"Iran has already put Turkey in the 'win' column," Herbert replied. "It's just a matter of time. Their big playground now is Bosnia. They were outfitting the Bosnians with arms and advisors during the Balkan war. Not only are those advisors still there, they're multiplying like guppies. That's how the fundamentalists plan on getting into the heartland of Europe. As far as Turkey goes, Iran's going to let the political situation move at its own pace."

"Not if Turkey continues to rely more and more on Israeli military assets and on financial aid and intelligence from the United States," McCaskey said. "Iran doesn't want another U.S. stronghold in their backyard."

"What about the Syrians?" Hood interjected. McCaskey and Herbert always went at each other like this, passionately but respectfully. Darrell Consensus and Bob Gut Instinct, psychologist Liz Gordon had once called them. That was why Hood had asked McCaskey to pop in when Herbert phoned that he had news about the attack. Between the two of them, Hood always ended up with a concise but comprehensive overview of a situation — though it was necessary to keep them from turning it into a political science debate.

"With the Syrians we have two possibilities," McCaskey said. "The terrorists could be Syrian extremists who are sold on the idea of the Middle East becoming Greater Syria—"

"Adding it to their collection, like Lebanon," Herbert said bitterly.

Hood nodded. It was the terrorist bombing of the U.S. Embassy in Beirut in 1983 that had cost the intelligence officer his wife and the use of his legs.

"Correct," said McCaskey. "Or what seems more likely is that the dam-busters are Syrian Kurds."

"They're Kurds, all right," Herbert said confidently. "Syrian extremists don't do anything without the approval of the military, and the military takes its marching orders from the Syrian President himself. If the Syrian government wanted to spark hostilities with Turkey, they wouldn't do it this way."

"What would they do?" Hood asked.

"They'd do what aggressor nations always do," Herbert said. "They'd hold war games on the border, massing troops there and provoking an incident to draw the Turks over. The Syrians would never set foot in Turkey. As we used to say in the military, they like receiving. It goes back to 1967 when Israeli tanks rolled in on the third day of the Six-Day War. Defending their homeland makes Syrians look and feel like freedom fighters instead of like aggressors. That helps to rally other Arab nations around them."

"In addition to which," McCaskey added, "except for 1967, the Syrians generally like to fight proxy wars. They gave arms to Iran to fight Iraq in 1982, let the Lebanese kill each other during fifteen years of civil war, then went in and set up a puppet regime — that sort of thing."

Herbert looked at McCaskey. "Then you agree with me?"

"No." McCaskey grinned. "You agree with me."

"So assuming Bob is right," Hood said, "why would Syrian Kurds attack Turkey? How do we know they weren't acting as agents for Damascus? They may have been sent to Turkey to pick a fight."

"The Syrian Kurds would sooner attack Damascus than Turkey," Herbert said. "They hate the current regime."

"The Kurds have also become increasingly empowered by the Palestinian example," McCaskey said. "They want their own state."

"Though even getting that won't bring them peace," Herbert said. "They're Sunni Muslims and they don't want to be mixed with the Shiite Muslims and the rest of the population. That's the big war they've been fighting in Turkey, Iraq, and Syria. But put the Sunnis together in a new Kurdistan and their four branches — the Hanafites, Malikites, the Shafites, and the Hanbalites — will start tearing each other apart."

"Maybe not," McCaskey said. "The Jews have strong differences of opinion in Israel, but they coexist."

"That's because the Israelis believe more or less the same thing in terms of religion," Herbert said. "It's politics where they differ. With the Sunnis, there are some very basic, very serious religious differences."

Hood learned forward. "Would the Syrian Kurds be acting alone or with other Kurdish nationalists?"

"That's a good question," McCaskey said. "If the Kurds are behind the dam attack, it's much more ambitious than anything they've tried in the past. You know, raiding weapons depots or attacking military patrols, that sort of thing. My feeling is that for something this big they'd have needed the help of the Turkish Kurds, who've been fighting their government from strongholds in the east for the last fifteen years or so."

"And joining with them," Hood said, "what would the Syrian Kurds hope to do?"

"Destabilize, the region," Herbert replied. "If Syria and Turkey were to bash away at one another while the Syrian and Turkish Kurds unified, they could become a power in the region by default."

"Not only by default," McCaskey said. "Assume they use the distraction of war to dig in all along the Turkish and Syrian border. Infiltrate villages, cities, and mountains, set up mobile camps in the desert. They could wage an intractable guerrilla war like Afghanistan lasting for years."

"And whenever the pressure got too intense in one country," Herbert said, "the Kurds could simply slip into the other. Or else they join with the Kurds in Iraq to bring that country into the fray. Can you imagine an ongoing war involving those three nations? How long before nuclear or chemical weapons are used? How long before Syria or Iraq realizes that Israel is supplying the Kurds—"

"Which they've been doing for years," said McCaskey.

"— and starts chucking missiles at them?"

"Eventually," McCaskey said, "when there's a peace settlement, it will have to deal with the Kurdish issue in order to be effective. So the Kurds get a homeland, Turkey embraces the fundamentalists, and democracy and the United States are the big losers."

"If there's a peace settlement," Herbert said portentously. "We're talking about thousands of years of animosity being unleashed on a large scale. If that genie is ever let out of the bottle, it might be impossible to put him back in."

Hood understood. He also knew that it wasn't the responsibility of Op-Center to plan for a war in the Middle East. His job was to spot "hot situations" and manage them if they became "crises." Once they evolved from that into "policy problems," it was up to the White House to handle them. The President would let him know what help was needed and where. The question was, what could be done to manage this developing crisis?

Hood turned to his keyboard and typed in the extension of his executive assistant, Stephen "Bugs" Benet. A moment later the young man's face appeared on the screen.

"Good morning, Paul," Bugs said, his voice coming from speakers mounted on the side of the monitor.

"Morning, Bugs," Hood said. "Would you please get Mike Rodgers for me? He's still at the ROC."

"Right away," Bugs said. His image winked off.

Hood glanced at Herbert. "What's Mike doing to find that missing helicopter?"

"Same thing we are," Herbert replied. "Analyzing data. He's in a better position to scan communications in the region, so I'm sure he's doing that too. He'll be following all the procedures we wrote up for ROC operations."

"What's the minimum security requirement you established for the ROC?" Hood asked.

"Two Strikers when the facility is in the field," Herbert said. "That's what they've got now."

Bugs reappeared on the screen. "General Rodgers is not available," he said. "He's gone out to do field work."

Hood's mouth tightened. He knew the general well enough to smell a euphemism when he heard one. "Where did he go?"

"Mary Rose said he took Colonel Seden and left about ten minutes ago," Bugs told him. "They took the Turkish officer's motorcycle."

"Uh-oh," Bob Herbert said.

"What about the computer cell phone?" Hood asked. "Can you reach Mike on that?"

"The general phoned Mary Rose to check reception a few minutes after he went out into the plains," Bugs said. "The satellite uplink worked fine, but he told her not to call unless it was an emergency. Just in case anyone was listening in."

"Lots of cross talk in open spaces like that," Herbert said. "Zero security."

Hood nodded at Herbert. On military missions, Op-Center personnel typically carried secure TAC-SATs. They had their own parabolic dishes which allowed them to uplink securely with satellites, then broadcast directly to Op-Center. But those units were relatively cumbersome. Though the ROC carried one TAC-SAT, Rodgers obviously wanted to travel light.

Hood was angry with Rodgers, and deeply concerned about him being out without Striker backup. But he couldn't pull anyone from the ROC without compromising security procedures, and he didn't want to recall Rodgers. The general was his own man and he hadn't broken any rules. Besides, it wasn't Hood's place to second-guess his Deputy Director from nine thousand miles away.

"Thanks, Bugs," Hood said. "Stay in touch with the ROC and let me know at once if they hear anything."

"Will do, Chief," Bugs said.

Hood clicked Benet off and regarded Herbert. "So. It looks like Mike's gone off to do some first-hand recon."

Herbert absently punched the keys on the speakerphone of his armrest. "Yeah. Well, that's Mike's style, isn't it?"

"Why wouldn't he have taken the ROC?" McCaskey asked. "At least then he'd have been able to do a thorough job."

"Because he knew he was going into a dangerous situation," Hood said. "And you know Mike. He wouldn't want to jeopardize the facility or the crew. That's also his style."

Hood looked at Herbert, who was looking at him. The intelligence chief shut his eyes and nodded.

"I'll find him," Herbert said. He speed-dialed the NRO on his wheelchair phone. "I'll see if Viens can push everything else aside again and get us a nice clear satellite snapshot of Rodgers of Arabia."

"Thanks," Hood said. He looked at McCaskey.

"The usual?" McCaskey asked.

Hood nodded. The former G-man knew the drill. If a group claimed credit, McCaskey would have to run a check through other domestic and foreign agencies to see if they had the resources. If not, who were they covering for and why? If so, he would have to run their modus operandi through the computer to determine what their next likely move was and how long they'd wait. Then McCaskey and his advisors would have to ascertain whether diplomacy would forestall other attacks, whether the perpetrators would have to be hit militarily, and what other targets they were likely to strike.

"Put Liz in on this," Hood said.

McCaskey nodded as he left. Psychological profiles of Middle Eastern terrorists were especially important. If the terrorists were motivated solely by politics, as most Kurds were, they were less likely to be suicidal. That being the case, security against air and ground attacks was possible. If the terrorists were motivated by religion and politics, as the larger majority of Kurds were, then they were not only happy but honored to give their lives. In that case, killers could strike anywhere. They might wear six to eight sticks of TNT in a specially designed belt supported by shoulder straps. Or they might carry a backpack loaded with fifty to sixty pounds of plastique. Wires running from the explosives through two batteries were attached to a switch. This switch was usually kept in the bomber's pants pocket, which allowed him to trigger the blast anytime, anywhere. Those kinds of attacks were virtually impossible to protect against; those kinds of terrorists were damn near impossible to reason with. The most frustrating and ironic part was that a single terrorist was far more lethal than a group. A lone operator had total tactical flexibility and the ability to surprise.

Herbert clicked off his phone. "Viens is on the case for us. Says he can get the 30-45-3 away from the Defense Department in about ten minutes. It's one of the older jobs, no infrared capacity, but we'll get good daylight pictures."

The designation 30-45-3 referred to the third satellite looking down on the longitudes thirty to forty-five degrees east of the prime meridian. That was the region which included Turkey.

"Viens's a damn fine man," Hood said

"The best." Herbert turned. He snickered as he wheeled toward the door. "At least Stephen's keeping his sense of humor about the investigation. He told me there're so many nails in his coffin he's thinking of nick-naming the division the Iron Maiden."

"We won't let Congress close the lid on him," Hood promised.

"That's a nice sentiment, Paul. But it'll be real difficult to make happen."

"I like the difficult, Bob." Hood smiled faintly. "That's why I'm here."

Herbert glanced back as he opened the door. "Touche." He winked as he rolled into the hallway.