Acts of War

TWENTY-TWO

The State Department 727 took off from Andrews at 3:03, and was quickly swallowed by the low hanging clouds over Washington. The customized jet would remain in the clouds for as long as possible. That was standard State Department procedure to keep them from being visually sighted and targeted by ocean-based terrorists. It made for a safer ride, albeit a bumpy one.

Paul Hood knew very few of the other forty-odd passengers. There were a number of brawny, silent DSAs — Diplomatic Security Agents — a handful of tired-looking reporters, and a lot of career diplomats with leather briefcases and black suits. There had been a good deal of pre-takeoff networking going on, and ABC State Department correspondent Hully Burroughs had already organized the traditional plane pool. Everyone who had wanted to play kicked in a dollar and picked a number. An official timekeeper had been named and when it was time to land, would count off the seconds from the time the pilot told everyone to buckle in until the instant the wheels touched the ground. Whichever passenger guessed the correct number of seconds between the two events won the pot.

Hood had avoided it all. He'd taken the window seat and put young Warner Bicking on the aisle. Hood had found that chronic talkers tended to talk less if they had to lean over. Especially if they'd already had a few drinks.

Hood's pager beeped at 3:07. It was Martha calling, probably to continue the conversation they'd begun in the car. She hadn't been happy about the fact that the President had sent him to Damascus instead of her. After all, she'd argued, she'd had more diplomatic experience than anyone at Op-Center and she knew some of the players. She'd wanted to get on the plane or meet him in London, requests which Hood had denied. For one thing, he'd explained, this was the President's idea, not his. For another, if she were gone, then Bob Herbert would be left in charge of Op-Center. Hood didn't want him doing anything but working on saving the ROC and its crew. Martha had gotten off the phone angry.

Hood was not permitted to use his cell phone until tea minutes into the flight, so he waited until the flight attendant gave the okay for electronic equipment to be used. Before calling back, Hood booted his laptop. Since the phone lines were not secure, Martha would have to refer him to coded information on the diskettes if there were any new developments.

When Martha picked up the phone, Hood knew that she was no longer quite so angry. He could tell at once from Martha's hollow monotone that something had happened.

"Paul," she said, "there's been a change in the weather where you're headed."

"What kind of change?" he asked.

"It's gone up to seventy-four degrees," she said. "Winds are from the northwest. Nice red sunset."

"Seventy-four degrees, northwest winds, red sunset," he repeated.

"Correct."

"Hold on," Hood said.

He reached into his small carrying case and removed the red-tabbed diskette from its pocket. That already told him that things weren't good. The situation somewhere was code red. After booting the diskette, Hood carefully typed in the code 74NW on the computer. The machine hummed for several seconds, then asked for Hood's authorization code. He punched in PASHA, which stood for Paul, Alexander, Sharon, Harleigh, and Ann — his mother's name — and then he waited again.

The screen went from blue to red. He clicked the mouse on the white letters OP in the upper left corner.

"Warner," Hood said as the file opened, "I think you'd better have a look at this as well."

Bicking leaned over as Hood began scrolling through the file:

Hood cleared the screen. "Any chances the weather will change again?" he asked Martha.

"It looks like the front at 11F-Frank is not happening," she replied.

Hood scrolled back. He repeated what Martha had said for Bicking's benefit. Iraq hadn't moved against the Kurds, but he knew that wouldn't last. Recent intelligence reports put the Iraqi military at over two million strong. Many of those men were young newcomers, untested in battle and probably scared. Others were veterans, many of them itching to avenge their humiliation during the Persian Gulf War.

"We're also thinking that 11D-David and 11G-George may move in sooner than expected," Martha said.

Hood was not surprised by either of those. With elections coming up, the Greek President needed to do something blazingly patriotic to win the right wing. Taking long-disputed lands from an embattled Turkey would accomplish that. As for Israel, the hardline government would love the opportunity to strike at an enemy under the auspices of defending an ally.

"What're things like on the home, front?" Hood asked.

"The meteorologists are watching and talking," Martha said. "A few picnics have been called off in the area, but only one umbrella has been broken out."

That meant military leave in the region had been canceled and U.S. troops were on a low-level Defcon One alert.

"I'll keep you up to date," Martha said, "but I can tell you there are a lot of long faces at the weather headquarters."

The weather headquarters was the White House. "They're worried about storms, I'm sure," Hood said, "and they'll probably get a few."

"They can live with a few," Martha said. "It's a big one they're worried about."

Hood thanked her and hung up. He turned to Bicking. The spindly twenty-nine-year-old was a former associate professor of social sciences at Georgetown University. His area of expertise was Political Islam, and he was one of four political experts recently added to the Op-Center team to advise Paul Hood on foreign affairs.

"What's your take on this?" Hood asked.

Biking twirled a longish lock of black hair around his index finger. It was a habit he had whenever he was thinking. "There's a very, very good chance that it'll all blow up. And when it does, it could well drag the rest of the world along with it. From Turkey it can move up through Greece and Bulgaria into Romania and Bosnia. With the Iranian presence there, they can drop-kick this thing up into Hungary, Austria, and straight into Germany. There are two million Turks living in Germany. Of those, half a million are Kurds. They'll pop for sure. At the same time it can move from Turkey in the other direction, up through southern Russia."

"Don't pull any punches," Hood said. "Give it to me straight."

"Sorry," Bicking said, "but you've got all these ancient hatreds being fanned and interacting — Turkey and Greece, Syria and Turkey, Israel and Syria, Iraq and Kuwait, and various combinations and multiples thereof. The smallest thing can trigger any of them. And once those locusts start hopping—"

"You've got a swarm," Hood said.

"The swarm," Bicking replied.

Hood nodded unhappily. Suddenly, there was going to be a lot more to do in Damascus than save the ROC.

Bicking twirled his hair a little faster. He peered at Hood from under heavily lidded eyes. "Here's a thought," he said. "Let me work on the ROC situation while you and Dr. Nasr concentrate on preventing a major conflagration."

"There may not be a lot of time to work on the ROC situation," Hood said. "If there's even a remote chance that it will be used by the Kurds, the President is going to order the ROC found and destroyed."

"Pronto," Bicking added. "And finding it won't be a problem. As soon as they uplink, the military will have signal to lock on to—"

Hood grabbed the phone and dialed. "That's how we buy time."

"How?"

"If the captors manage to turn on the ROC, the signal has to go through the satellite. When it does, there may be a way Matt Stoll can shut it down. If the ROC is dead in the water, we may be able to convince the President to give us time to negotiate a release."

Bicking twirled rhythmically. "It's good," he said.

Hood waited for the connection to go through. The plan to destroy the ROC was a simple one. There was no self-destruct button. It had to be designed as a completely unarmed facility in order to be allowed into many foreign nations. Instead, wherever it went, it could be taken out by a Tomahawk missile, which could be launched from ground, air, or sea and had a range of over three hundred miles. Equipped with terrain-following computers, it could hit the ROC virtually anywhere.

Stoll's assistant answered the phone. He put Matt on at once.

"Are we secure?" Stoll asked breathlessly.

"No," Hood said.

"All right, then listen," the computer expert told him. "You know that missing rock and roll group?"

"Yes," Hood said. They didn't have code phrases to describe the situation with the ROC, so Stoll was improvising.

"There's an ambient level of juice which radiates out when their amps are on," Stoll said. "Bob lost that when the rockers pulled the plug earlier."

"I understand," Hood said.

"Okay. Now our high-dying friend the ES4 is beginning to pick up a signal again."

The ES4 was the Electromagnetic Spectrum Satellite Surveillance System. The sensors were a component in a chain of mufti-purpose satellites which read terrestrial radiation in frequencies from 10²⁹ to zero hertz and in wavelengths from 10^-13 centimeters to infinity. These readings included gamma rays, X-rays, ultra-violet radiation, visible light, infrared, microwaves, and radio waves.

"So we now know exactly where the band is?" Hood asked

"Yes," Stoll replied. "But not what they're doing."

"No audio yet," Hood said.

"Zippo," said Stoll. "What's significant, though, is that the band leader's not in any rush to get on-line again."

"How can you tell?"

"According to the tests we ran back here before they left, you can get from zero to sixty, so to speak, in about four minutes and change. You follow?"

"Yes," Hood replied. The batteries which had been removed inside the ROC could be replaced in a little over four minutes.

"At the gate El Supremo's plugging things in," Stoll went on, "the bandwagon won't be up to full power, nor the wheels turning, for another fifteen minutes or so. That's twenty-five minutes in all."

"Which means the outer band's still in charge of the equipment," Hood said.

"Very likely," Stoll said.

So Rodgers was stalling and the Kurds were in control. Hood also knew that if Bob Herbert and Matt Stoll were drawing these conclusions from the ROC readings, so was the CIA and the Department of Defense. If they decided that the ROC was fully operational and in enemy hands, it was doomed.

"Matt," Hood said, "is there any way we can shut the band down if it comes online?"

"Sure," Stoll said.

"How would you do it?"

"We'd send a command to the uplink," Stoll said. "Tell it that as soon as a signal from the band hits the receive reflector, it should ignore all other signals from that source. That'd take about five seconds."

"Give the bandleader fifteen seconds," Hood said. "If he's going to try to get a message to us, he'd do it right away. Then shut it down. He'll understand what we're doing and why."

"Okay," Stoll said. "We'll still keep an eye on them, though."

"Right." The ES4 would be able to follow their electromagnetic trail until the NRO satellite was turned on them in just a few minutes. If Hood could keep the President from issuing a destruct order, they'd have a chance of getting the team out. "Matt, I want you to write this up and get it to Martha. Tell her to send it over to the White House with my recommendation that we watch and wait. Meanwhile, you get things ready to close the door if our band opens it."

"It's as good as done," Stoll said.

Hood hung up and briefed Bicking. They both agreed that if the ROC could be shut down, the President would give Striker time to get it back. Despite pressure from National Security Chief Steve Burkow, who believed in security at any price, the President would not be anxious to take out his own team. Not if the hardware in the ROC could be neutralized.

Hood and Bicking began to study the Syrian position papers which had been loaded into their computer. But Hood had trouble focusing, and announced that he was going off to the galley. Bicking said he'd start highlighting Administration positions while Hood was gone.

The Op-Center Director got a Diet Pepsi from one of the two male flight attendants, and sipped it while he stood looking back at the cabin. The thickly cushioned seats were arranged in two rows of two with a wide aisle. Passengers were huddled over computers.

Typically, an hour or so of work got done before drinks and restlessness and reporters desperate to file stories turned the trip into a social gathering. There were two small tables in the back for conferences and working meals. They were empty right now, but wouldn't be around five when snack sandwiches were served. Beyond them was the door which led to the modest office and sleeping quarters used by the Secretary of State when he was aboard.

Hood wondered how the most powerful nation in the history of civilization, with awesome technological resources and a great army, could be sandbagged by three men with guns. It was inconceivable. But even as he wondered about it, Hood knew that it wasn't the Kurds who were holding the U.S. hostage. It was ourselves, our own self-restraint. It would be a simple matter to target pockets of Kurds and blast them one by one until our people were released. Or to capture and murder the families of their leaders. But civilized, twentieth-century Americans would not do to anyone else what they did to us. We played by the rules. That was one of the qualities which kept any superpower from becoming an abomination like the Third Reich or the Soviet Union.

That was also what gave other people the courage to lash out at us, Hood thought as he finished the soda and crushed the can. He went back to his seat determined to make all of this work through the system. He believed passionately that the American way was the best way in the world, and he took comfort knowing that history-buff Mike Rodgers believed that too.

"The Kurds and the Islamic fundamentalists don't have a corner on political zeal," Hood said as he looked at the computer screen. "Let's figure out how to do the rest of this."

"Yes, sir," Bicking replied as he began twirling his hair again.