Acts of War

TWENTY-FOUR

Lieutenant Robert Essex was waiting for Colonel August when the Striker chopper set down at Andrews Air Force Base. The lieutenant handed him a diskette with a pressure-sensitive piece of silver tape on top. Only August's thumbprint on the diskette, scanned by his computer, would allow him to access the data.

While August accepted the diskette, Sergeant Chick Grey hustled the sixteen-soldier Striker team onto the C-141B. A converted C-141A Lockheed StarLifter, the C141B had a fuselage which was 168 feet and four inches long — twenty-three feet, four inches longer than its predecessor. The retooling of the aircraft added flight-refueling equipment which increased the troop carrier's normal operating range of 4,080 miles.

The aircraft's crew of five helped the Strikers stow their gear. Less than eight minutes after the soldiers had arrived, the four powerful Pratt & Whitney turbofans carried the jet into the skies.

Colonel August knew that Lieutenant Colonel Squires used to chat with the crew about everything from favorite novels to flavored coffee. August understood how that could relax the team and make them feel closer and more responsive to the commander. However, that was not his style. And that was not the style he taught as a guest officer at the John F. Kennedy Special Warfare Center. As far as he was concerned, one of the tenets of leadership was to make it impossible for the team to know you too well. If they didn't know which buttons to push, how to please you, then they had to keep trying. As his old Cong jailor used to tell him, "We keep together by keeping apart."

The poorly insulated cabin was loud and the bench was hard. That too was how August preferred things. A cold, bumpy plane ride. A landing craft in choppy waters. A long and exhausting march in the rain. These things were the tannin which toughened the soldier's hide.

Led by Private First Class David George, the Strikers began going through the inventory of what had been placed onboard the plane. Op-Center maintained an equipment depot at Andrews which was stocked with gear for any climate and equipment for any mission. Included in the cargo for this trip were the standard "takedown" fatigues with desert coloration, as well as desert-camouflage face scarves and flop hats. Equipment included bullet-proof Kevlar vests, rappelling belts, ventilated assault boots for hot climates, goggles with shatter-proof lenses, and gadget bags which were worn around the waist. There were compartments for additional ammo magazines, a flashlight, concussion grenades, flat-sided M560 series fragmentation grenades, a first-aid kit, rappelling rings, and Vaseline to apply to areas rubbed raw by walking, climbing, crawling, and tight straps. Weapons provided for the team were Beretta 9mm pistols with extended magazines and Heckler & Koch MP5 SD3 9mm submachine guns. The MP5s boasted a collapsing stock and an integral silencer. Since he'd first used them, August had found the weapon's sound suppresser to be both clever and effective. The first stage absorbed the gases while the second sucked up the muzzle blast and flame. The bolt noise was concealed by rubber buffers. Fifteen feet away, the gun was deadly silent.

Bob Herbert was obviously anticipating some close-in encounters.

The team had also been equipped with six motorcycles which had heavily muffled engines, as well as a quartet of FAVs. The Fast Attack Vehicles each carried three passengers and were designed to travel across the desert at speeds in excess of eighty miles an hour. The driver and one passenger sat up front, with an additional gunner in the elevated back seat. The FAVs were armed with.50-caliber machine guns and 40mm grenade launchers.

Colonel August already had a good idea where they were going when he pushed his thumb on the diskette. The tape recorded the thumbprint, the "A" slot of the computer read the print, and the diskette was booted up.

There was an overview of what had happened to the ROC, along with the photographs Herbert had shown to Hood. The evidence collected by Herbert pointed to Syrian Kurds as the perpetrators, possibly in league with Turkish Kurds. Apparent confirmation came less than an hour ago, when Herbert learned from a deep undercover operative working with the Syrian Kurds that there had been highly secret meetings between the two groups several times over the past few months. A dam assault had been discussed at one of those meetings.

As August had suspected, their own destination was either Ankara or Israel. If they went to Ankara, they'd be landing at the NATO base north of the capital. If Striker went to Israel, they'd be landing at the secret Tel Nef Air Base near Tel Aviv. August had been there just a year before and remembered it well. It was as low-tech and as safe a base as he had ever visited. The perimeter was surrounded by high barbed-wire fences. Outside the fence, every two hundred feet, was a brick outpost with a sentry and a German shepherd. Fifteen feet beyond them, also surrounding the perimeter, was five feet of fine, white sand. Buried within it were land mines. In over a quarter of a century, very few people had attempted to break into the base. None had been successful.

From Ankara, the team would fly east to a staging area within Turkey. From Tel Nef, the Striker team would be flown or would drive to the border of Turkey or Syria. If, as Herbert believed, the ROC was in the hands of Syrian Kurds, chances were very good that they would be headed to the Bekaa Valley in western Syria. That was a stronghold foi terrorist operations and a place where the ROC would be of great use. If the Syrian Kurds were in league with Turkish Kurds, they could be planning to stay in Turkey and make for the eastern Kurdish strongholds around Mt. Ararat. However, that could be risky. Ankara was still waging unofficial war on the Kurds holed up in the southeastern provinces of Diyarbakir, Mardin, and Siirt and in the eastern province of Bingol.

Because of the Syrian government's own support of other terrorist groups in the Bekaa, particularly the Hezbollah, that was a more likely destination. Herbert was convinced that the Syrians would never allow Striker into that region.

"Whatever your destination," Herbert wrote, "we do not yet have Congressional Oversight Intelligence Committee approval for the incursion. Martha Mackall expects to get it, though perhaps not in time to suit our schedule. If the terrorists are still in Turkey, we expect to get you permission to enter the country and set up a control and reporting center until we get COIC approval. If the terrorists enter Syria, Striker will not have the authority to enter the country."

The corner of August's mouth turned up slightly. He reread the passage "Striker will not have the authority" What Herbert had written didn't mean that Striker shouldn't enter the country. When he first came to Op-Center, Mike Rodgers had encouraged August to spend several nights reviewing the language in other Op-Center/Striker communiques. Often, as August well knew, one's orders were to be found in what wasn't said rather than what was.

What August had discovered was that when Bob Herbert or Mike Rodgers did not want Striker to move ahead they always wrote, "You do not have the authority"

Clearly — or rather, obliquely — this was a case in which Herbert wanted Striker to act.

The rest of the material on the diskette consisted of maps, possible routes to various locations, and exit strategies in the event of non-cooperation from the Turks and Syrians. It was going to take fifteen hours to reach Tel Nef. August began reviewing the maps, after which he'd look at the game plans for surround-and-rescue missions in mountainous or desert terrain.

Because of his years with NATO, August was very familiar with most of the geography of the region and also with the various mission scenarios. Striker's tactics were culled from the same U.S. military branches from which the soldiers themselves were drawn. What was unfamiliar to August was having to evacuate someone so close to him. But as Kiet had helped to teach him in Vietnam, the unfamiliar was nothing to be afraid of. It was simply something new.

As the colonel looked over the maps, Ishi Honda approached. August looked up. Honda was holding the TAC-SAT secure phone, which was patched into the C-141B's dish.

"Yes, Private?" August asked.

"Sir," he said, "I think you'd better listen to this."

"What is it?"

"A broadcast which came into AL four minutes ago," he said.

AL was the active-line receiver, a phone line which automatically paged Bob Herbert and the Striker radio operator when it rang. If Striker was on a mission, the call was relayed to the TAC-SAT. Only a few people had AL's number: the White House, Senator Fox, and ten of the top people at Op-Center.

August looked up at Honda. "Why wasn't I told about it when it came in?" he demanded sharply.

"Sorry, sir," Honda said, "but I was hoping I could figure the message out first. I didn't want to waste your time with incomplete data."

"Next time, waste it," August said. "I might be able to help."

"Yes, sir. Sorry, sir."

"What've you got?" August asked.

"A series of beeps," Honda said. "Someone dialed us and then hit more numbers which keep repeating."

August took the receiver, then held an index finger over his open ear so he could hear. There were nine tones followed by a pause, and then the same nine tones were repeated.

"It's not a phone number," August said.

"No, sir," said Honda.

August listened. It was an eerie, discordant melody.

"I assume that each tone corresponds to letters on the telephone."

"Yes, sir," said Honda. "I ran through the possible combinations but none of them make any sense."

Honda handed a note paper to August. The colonel read it and then read it again: 722528573. August looked at the receiver. The possible number of combinations were damn near incalculable. The colonel looked at the message again. It was definitely a code, and there was only one person who would be sending a coded communique via AL.

Mike Rodgers.

"Private," August said, "is there any way this could have come from the ROC?"

"Yes, sir," Honda said. "They could have used one of the phones built into the computer."

"It would have to have been turned on, with someone typing the number into the keys."

"That's right, sir," Honda said. "Or they could have patched a cell phone into the computer and pumped it out through the dish. That might have been easier to key up in private."

August nodded. The ROC was being powered up again. One of the crew would probably have to have done that. Their hands would have to be free, which meant they might have had time to get out a message.

"Op-Center should have gotten this message as well," August said. "See what they make of it."

"Right away," Honda replied.

The radio operator sat down next to August. As Private Honda phoned Bob Herbert's office, August didn't even try to concentrate on the maps,while he waited for Honda to see what Op-Center made of it. But the fact that it was in code and very, very short did not give him a good feeling about Rodgers's situation.