Dead Hand

Chapter 5

Each of the plans-and-operations officers assigned to the 22nd Special Forces Group had a unique specialty. Major Kevin Spatlett. for example, was the master when it came to dealing with antiterrorism issues. Captain Jon Fllison, a quiet and studious type, had proven himself unparalleled in the fine art of setting up training programs for the military of third world nations. Armed with a fertile imagination and a flair for hatching flawless raids. Captain Tony (ones had earned the nickname of "Indiana Jones."

To most, however. Andrew Fretello reigned supreme within the realm of Special Forces plans and operations. A graduate of Leavenworth's School for Advanced Military Studies, he was known throughout the group as "The Wizard of Weird." This title derived as much from Fretello's ability to deal with the unusual as from his habits while doing so. When handed an off-the-wall task in hand. Fretello would slip away to a dark corner of the group's oversized walk-in vault. Sequestered from the hustle and bustle that characterized the Group's operations section, he would conjure up a concept of dealing with whatever contingency or mission he had been assigned. Though his solutions were often unconventional and his plans frequently controversial, few could match his ability to pull together all the diverse elements that went into a Special Forces mission as quickly as he could and weave them into a clear, coherent operations order.

It was this ability that had caught the attention of the Deputy Chief of Staff of the Army for Special Operations Forces, who had drawn him into exercises at the Pentagon, much to the annoyance of Fretello's immediate chain of command. A man of uncompromising beliefs and the personification of the term "type A personality," Colonel Robert Hightower made sure that Fretello was aware of his displeasure each time the ambitious young major was called away to Washington. "A man cannot serve two masters, Major," Hightower had warned Fretello after he returned from his latest exercise in D. C. "You're going to have to make a choice, soldier. I can't afford to have my staff gallivanting off to Washington every time those folks want to play a war game."

Attuned to the internal politics of the Group, as well as to the personal animosity Hightower felt toward the Deputy Chief of Staff of the Army for Special Operations Forces, Andrew Fretello took the warning quite seriously.

Still, even Colonel Hightower understood that there was little he could do. Like the people in the Pentagon, the Group commander saw Fretello's potential and value. To punish a subordinate for simply doing his duty was not an option. It would be both mean-spirited and unprofessional, something that Hightower was not. So the colonel ignored the special taskings that robbed him of his most talented staff officer as best he could.

On occasion, however, Fretello's activities in one world collided with the other.

Orders for the Group to stand by for immediate deployment came down the chain just as the news media broke the story about the impending encounter with the rogue asteroid. As was the practice in the Group's operations section, a TV was wheeled in and tuned to CNN. The value of that network as a source of information and intelligence, long ago confirmed during the First Gulf War, could not be ignored. In many ways, CNN made the task of the American military easier by providing an overview and a background of a developing situation and thus allowing higher headquarters to skip some of those details when passing orders down to major subordinate commands. It also permitted those commands concerned with operational security and the running of deception plans to gauge the success of their efforts. Though the media types tended to become self-righteous and somewhat enraged when they were accused of being unwilling accomplices in the dissemination of government planned disinformation, the manner in which they conducted their business made them the perfect dupe in the dark and murky business of illusion and lies. For those like the operations-and-plans officers of the 22nd Special Forces Group, who knew what was fact and what was fantasy, it was a hoot to see which reporters were hitting near the mark and which ones were making asses of themselves.

At times like this, news shows also served as a diversion. With nothing but a very ambiguous warning order in hand but no specifics, the officers of the operations section had little to do but wait until they received definitive planning guidance with which they could work. This uncomfortable period, the time that existed from when they knew they would soon be receiving orders but didn't know what those orders entailed, could be very unnerving. With each ring of the phone, all eyes would turn from the TV screen or whatever busy work they had been pursuing and glance over to the ops sergeant, who took all incoming calls. When the call turned out to be from nervous battalion staff officers, calling on behalf of their impatient commanders or just trying to get a head start on their own planning process, each of the anxious staff officers would go back to what they had been doing. When a summons from the Group commander's executive officer finally did come, it was greeted with a palpable sense of relief.

It surprised no one that Andrew Fretello had been the one tagged to report to the Group commander, where the Group operations officer was already waiting. While Fretello gathered himself and his notebook, his fellow officers threw witty comments his way in an effort to cut some of the tension. From the desk that sat butted up against Fretello's, Kevin Spatlett turned away from the TV toward Fretello. "Hey, Andy, what course of action are you going to go for? The one using astronauts to plant nukes on the asteroid, or the one using a gang of roughnecks?"

Since the asteroid story had broken, the TV had been awash with scenes taken from popular movies about just such an encounter. To Fretello, the reliance by supposedly serious journalists on Hollywood's view of the forthcoming real-world disaster was a bit disquieting. It did, however, provide practitioners of graveyard humor such as Spatlett a great source of comic relief from an otherwise ominous event.

Playing along with the theme, Fretello looked at his fellow officer with a shout of deep concern on his face. "I'm not sure. A lot, I imagine, depends on how much we have left in the Group's annual budget for hiring outside contractors. We may find that we have no choice but to task this week's duty unit with the responsibility of saving the world."

From his little corner across the room, Captain Tony Jones called out to Fretello as he was headed out. "Hey, Major. Just be sure when it comes time to make the movie about this that you hold out till they agree to cast Tom Hanks as you."

Fretello paused at the door, turned, and was prepared to reply to the young captain when Spatlett cut in. "No way Hanks is going to go for that," the major sneered. "An actor like that would never consent to play a bit part in such a major production."

Rather than seeing the humor in this remark, Andrew Fretello was stung by the inference that what he did was, in the greater scheme of the universe, nothing more than a supporting role. Without another word, the miffed plans-and-operations officer stepped out of the crowded office and made his way down the corridor to where his boss and the colonel awaited him.

With no details to mull over and nothing to distract his mind, Fretello was left to reflect upon his personal thoughts and feelings. It annoyed the Special Forces major that neither superior ranking officers outside of his immediate chain of command nor historians recounting this episode at some later date would give him due credit for whatever plan he was about to generate. Outside of one or two sentences on his next officer's evaluation report, his talents, skills, and labors would go unnoticed. That this was the normal lot of the staff officer was taken in stride by most professional soldiers. It was part of the game, an unwritten rule in the Army stating that a staff officer's primary function was to make the commanding officer he served look as good as possible. In turn, the staff officer could expect to be rewarded with glowing evaluation reports and, if luck smiled on the superior officer and stars one day graced his shoulders, elevation to higher rank and positions of great responsibilities for all the little people who had made that possible.

But it went against Andrew Fretello's nature to wait patiently for a ride on another's coattails to fame and glory. Such a course of action left too much to chance, too much in. The hands of others over whom he had no control, no influence. Fretello was the sort of soldier who wanted to be the master of his own destiny, his own future.

That he was about to be a participant in what could be the single most important operation that the Army engaged in during his entire career was quite clear to Fretello. That he had to do something to capitalize upon this for himself was equally beyond dispute. As he turned the corner and entered the outer officer leading to the group's conference room, Andrew Fretello straightened up, banished whatever thoughts he had concerning his own ambitions, and prepared to do his duty as all good little staff officers were trained to do.

Colonel Robert Hightower lost no time in accosting Fretello. Even before the major had an opportunity to lay his notebook on the long, well-polished table, the group commander started speaking. "Major, do you have any of your notes from that little jaunt you took to Washington last month?"

Ignoring the fact that Colonel Hightower spit out the word "Major" as if it were an annoying bone that had been caught in his throat, Fretello found himself trying to make a connection between the subject of the war game in which he had participated at the Pentagon and the coming disaster. It took him a moment to appreciate the fact that the Russian early warning system might not be able to recognize the impact of an asteroid, which bore an uncanny resemblance to the man-made nuclear horror. Shaking his head, as if clearing a child's play slate, the planning officer looked his commander in the eye. "As is their custom, sir, the staff of the Deputy Chief of Staff for Special Operations retained all my notes and briefing papers. I was also required to sign a statement that I would not discuss the subject of that exercise with anyone who had not been involved in it."

Having expected this from his high-strung subordinate, Hightower picked up a paper and flung it across the table toward him. "Here's your authorization. Now take a seat and tell us everything you know. And remember, Major," he added, "the clock is ticking."

In the time it took him to take his seat, Fretello had managed to merge what he knew about the pending disaster and the mission he guessed he was about to be tasked to plan for. Without waiting, he began to push for more information. "What does that give us? Two days to prepare, coordinate, and war-game an operational plan?"

Hightower's eyes narrowed. "Wrong, mister. As of noon today, we have twelve hours to be wheels-up and headed for our overseas staging areas. So how about we gel down to the issue al hand."

As much as Patrick Hogg wished he could duck into another room while taking the call from Thomas Shields, he was trapped. With his wife glaring at him from across the small London hotel room. Hogg turned his back on her and did his best to speak as softly as he could. "But sir," he pleaded. "I did leave an address and phone number with the duty officer before I signed out."

Hogg could almost see on the other end of the line the pinched expression on his commanding officer's lace as he fumed. "Yes, yes. I'm sure you did. But right now, 1 don't have time to sort out how this got messed up. Nor have I time to go into any specific details as to what we've been ordered to do. The bottom line is that I need you here, right now, no questions asked."

Hogg paused as he tried to figure out which option would be best-suited for this sudden and unexpected recall: train or plane? When he had decided that catching a flight would probably be the faster way out of London, he announced this decision to Shields, followed quickly by the caveat that it would take some time to make the arrangements.

"Don't bother," Shields snapped. "As we speak, the sergeant major is on the line to MoD there in London. The arrangements to get you back here will be handled by them, including a lift to the airport. Just make sure, Captain, that you're standing in front of your hotel, ready to go, in ten minutes."

Though Hogg knew better, he had to ask about his wife. "Sir. what about Jenny? She's here with me," he. Whispered.

Already flustered by the complexity of the mission he had been given, and the ludicrously short lime in which to prepare for it.

Shields snapped, "Patrick! Jenny's a big girl. Neither you nor I have time to tend to such trivial concerns, not when we have been handed the mother of all nightmare scenarios and not near enough time to prepare for it. Now, get down to the street and back here. Understood?"

Realizing that the situation had to be critical, for Shields seldom lost his temper over anything, Patrick Hogg murmured a quick, "Yes, sir," and hung up.

For several long seconds, Hogg stared down at the phone. That this emergency recall was related to the news that had been blaring from every source for the past few hours was without doubt. What he and his NCO's could do about it was quite beyond him. Riot control, perhaps. Or more likely than not, they would be sent in to deal with the nut cases that saw this as a biblical Armageddon and went off the deep end. Already, half a dozen hostage scenarios, from storming Westminster Abbey to abducting the Archbishop of Canterbury were running through Hogg's troubled mind.

From behind him, the impatient tapping of a shoe on the thin hotel carpet reminded the SAS captain that he had a more immediate problem. He had no idea of what he would tell his wife, who was already seething in a silent rage over this untimely interruption. Unable to delay the inevitable, Hogg turned to face Jenny.

With all the practice of a woman who has endured the abrupt termination of far too many private moments by a phone call, Jenny Hogg all but growled, "Well?"

Patrick Hogg was a professional soldier, a member of Britain's elite Special Air Service. He was known as being tough and uncompromising, characteristics that had earned him a slot at Hereford. Prior to that, his knack for making the tough jobs look easy had placed him in high demand and led to frequent overseas deployments. Even when he wasn't engaged in an active operation, the training cycle of the SAS meant that he was in the field more often than not. While he was quite content with this sort of life, Jenny found it intolerable. Had Patrick Hogg been a barrister or a corporate type, tied to a more traditional community and a schedule honoring the conventions that saw him working by day and at home at night, their marriage would have been the stuff that generations of English poets romanticized about. But Patrick Hogg was not cut out to wear a suit and tie, or to lead a well-ordered, time-clock life, no more than Jenny had been raised to be a soldier's wife.

"You can't say no, can you?" she snapped.

Though he had expected a scene, he was quite taken aback by this sort of thinking on the part of a woman who knew better. "For God's sake, Jenny, I'm a soldier."

"And I'm your wife!" she countered. "I wouldn't mind if the times you had to drop everything and run out were disproportionate. Christ, I'd be bloody happy if I managed to win one conflict in ten. But I've never won, Patrick. Never!"

Like a fighter who has been hit too many times and finds that he no longer has the strength to lift his fists to protect himself, Hogg's shoulders drooped as he looked over at his wife with sad, sheepish eyes. He wanted to plead with her to be patient one more time. He wanted to implore her to try to understand that this mission was important, that he couldn't possibly turn his back on his regiment. He so wanted to cross the space that separated them and to embrace her, to tell her that everything would be different after this, that he would never again leave her side. But he couldn't do that. It would be a lie. And while he had lied to his wife on numerous occasions before, he found that he no longer had the will to do so again.

"Jenny," Hogg finally muttered, "I've got to go."

When he offered no excuse or made no effort to offer up a lie, Jenny knew she had lost. As she took a moment to control her breathing, her chin dropped down and her expression of rage fell away. "I know that you love me, Patrick," she whispered with a gentleness that surprised Hogg. "Maybe even more than I love you. But I'm just not cut out for this sort of thing. I need more than a picture on a mantel and a ring on my finger to remind me I'm married." Looking up, Hogg could see tears welling in her eyes. "I know now that you were never mine. Perhaps I've known that for a long time. For years, I thought I could beat the Army, that I could win out over this obsession that possesses you. But I was wrong. You're not my husband, not really. You're Captain Patrick Hewitt Hogg, of His Majesty's Special Air Service. Though five tried, I simply can't trump the sort of odds the Army's thrown at us. So I'm not even going to try anymore."

There was an awkward silence as the two looked at each other from across the room. Jenny, on the verge of crying, stood her ground. And Patrick Hogg returned her stare with nothing more than a blank expression. Alter a while, when it was clear that she had finished her say and he found that he was unable to meet her eyes any longer, Hogg looked down at the floor. "Will you be there when I come back?" he asked, more afraid to hear the answer to this than of anything he had ever had to lace before.

"No," she responded without hesitation. "Not this lime."

It was more the tone of her response than the promptness with which it was delivered that told Hogg there was no point in pursuing the issue.

Without another word, without even looking over at his wife he gathered his jacket from the chair it was draped across, walked past Jenny, and left the room.

Even a force as renowned for its thoroughness and toughness as the SAS could not prepare its men for every contingency.

With the hands on the clock dipping low. Stanislaus Dombrowski found that he was having to slow down lest he make a mistake. Pausing, the Polish legionnaire straightened up on the small stool he was perched upon and examined the oversized shaped charge on which he was working. With great deliberation, his eyes followed the wire from one of the detonators along the outer frame of the charge to the junction where ii would be joined to the wires from other detonators and the timer.

A shaped charge is a useful military tool. Though the principle behind it was discovered accidentally at the end of the nineteenth century, it wasn't until the Second World War that it began to appear on the battlefield. In the beginning, this wonder of technology was employed by combat engineers during special operations. The Germans who stormed the mighty Belgian fortress of Eban Emael in May of nineteen-forty were not crack commandos, as thought of today, but glider-borne engineers equipped with small arms and shaped charges. In less than a half a day, something like eighty of these fallschrimjager pioneers unhinged the entire defense of Belgium. Later in the war, the clumsy shaped charges in use for cracking the gun turrets of that Belgian fortress were modified so they could be packaged as warheads. In this role, they proved very effective as an antitank round and became the heart of the American bazooka, the German panzerfaust and panzerschreck, the British PIAT, and the Russian RPG.

Toward the end of the war, the idea of shaping an explosive charge so as to direct and magnify its force reached its ultimate refinement when the plutonium core of a bomb called "Fat Man" was encased in highly refined explosives. When triggered, the conventional munitions literally crushed the sphere of plutonium for the briefest of moments. But that proved more than sufficient to generate the critical mass necessary to initiate a chain reaction and devastate Nagasaki. After the war, the shaped charge continued to evolve, both as an antitank weapon and as the triggering agent for the world's nuclear arsenals. In a strange way, the jerry-rigged shaped-charge device being assembled by Sergeant-Chef Stanislaus Dombrowski to destroy Russian nuclear warheads was poetic. The crudest and earliest form of that principle was being employed against its most modern and sophisticated refinement.

Everything had to be exact, everything perfect. There could be no slack, no fudging anywhere. While the nature of the explosion was almost immaterial, the shaping of the explosive cone and the placement of the detonators to trigger the explosives were critical. If the lead from one detonator was even the slightest bit shorter than those of others, the electric current would prematurely reach the blasting cap to which it was connected. This would result in the initiation of the explosion on that part of the device first, rather than in synchronization with the rest of the package. So instead of generating a single, concentrated jet stream aimed with the precision of a laser beam against the desired point of impact, the entire device would turn into a shapeless, low-yield explosion that had no chance to bum through the concrete-and-steel cover it was designed to penetrate.

Done correctly, however, the bulk of a shaped charge's explosive force is directed in whichever direction the hollowed-out cone is aimed. This generates a jet stream capable of exerting over 100,000 foot pounds of pressure per square inch. Anything in the path of this jet stream with a tinsel strength of less than that is penetrated. This penetration is not achieved by burning, as is popularly thought, but by the displacement of the target's molecules, which are either pushed aside or become part of the jet stream. It is the same principle that allows a person to place a finger into a glass of water. The denser finger easily penetrates the surface of the water by displacing the less-cohesive water molecules.

Destruction of most targets occurs when this jet stream makes contact with a target that is either flammable, such as fuel and hydraulic fluids, or propellants, like those found in the rounds stored on tanks. This secondary detonation, inside the confined space of the object being attacked, is what does the bulk of the damage. There was little danger that the devices being prepared for use against the Russian ICBM's would initiate a nuclear detonation. The same was not true of the rocket fuel. The thin-skinned rocket just under the concrete cover sat confined in a very tight silo. Once the cap of the silo was penetrated, there would literally be nothing of substance between the all-powerful jet stream and thousands of gallons of volatile fuel.

Satisfied that all was in order with the device before him, Dombrowski closed his bloodshot eyes, rubbed his face, and yawned. Allowing his arms to fall away, he opened his eyes and again gazed upon the shaped charge sitting on the table. Blurry-eyed, he waited until his vision cleared before proceeding. It definitely was not pretty, the Pole thought to himself. In fact, if one of his fellow legionnaires had thrown this monstrosity together as part of a training exercise, Dombrowski would have ordered the entire thing pulled apart rather than risk removing it to the demolitions pit for immediate destruction.

From behind, Dombrowski heard footsteps. Turning, he peered into the darkness that engulfed the isolated workshop where he worked alone, perfecting his trade as the demolitions expert for his team. "I came by to see how you were doing, Stan," his captain called out. "And to bring you this. I thought you could use it."

As he emerged from the shadows, Captain Jules Pascal, Dombrowski's team commander, was holding two cups of steaming coffee before him. "If it's that used motor oil the French drink, mon capitain, then you are doing me no favors."

Stopping within arm's reach of the weary NCO, Pascal smiled and offered him the cup in his right hand. "No, I would do nothing like that to you. I know how much you enjoy that cow piss the Americans laughingly call coffee."

Taking the cup, Dombrowski lifted it slightly, as if making a toast. "Merci."

Together, each man took a long, almost ceremonial, sip of his respective brew, then paused for a moment to silently savor his drink, and enjoy this brief moment of calm in what had been a most hectic day, even by the standards of the Foreign Legion.

Finally, Pascal turned his attention to the device Dombrowski was working on. "Not very elegant, is it?"

The Polish NCO turned to face the object of his captain's comment, chuckling as he did. Only a professional soldier could judge an explosive apparatus capable of ripping flesh and concrete apart as an object of beauty. "No, it is not," Dombrowski responded. "But if this is a case where function is the sole concern, then it will work, and very nicely, I daresay, to take out the target it was designed for." Then, turning toward his commander, Dombrowski looked him in the eye. "And just what target, mon capitain, do our American friends envision using this thing against? Or should I say, on?"

A small smile crept across Pascal's face. "As I told the rest of the team, we will be informed of that at the appropriate time, Sergeant."

Not willing to be so easily turned away, Dombrowski took a sip of coffee before he launched into his discussion of the subject. "The sergeant major instructs us to prepare our arctic gear. The adjutant comes by, while I am in the midst of my efforts here, and asks me how my Russian is. On my last trip over to the riggers, when I went to deliver a completed device, a load master on one of the transports we will be using asked me why we were taking these to an RAF base in Scotland. And the special instructions detailing how these particular shaped charges are to be assembled, which no one had time to translate from English to French, referred to a diagram of a standard silo cover, which I was not given."

"And your conclusion?" Pascal asked, waving his free hand about.

Again, Dombrowski took a sip of his coffee, watching his captain's expression as he did so, trying to decide if he should continue or not. Finished for the moment with his coffee, the Polish NCO began to lay out his case. "This asteroid is going to hit eastern Russia in a region where many of their older missile silos are, the ones that the current regime never seems to get around to disabling. That region is also where that ambitious ex-general who is anxious to revive the former glory of the Soviet Empire is exiled. My guess is that the general plans on using the missiles he has in his own backyard to blackmail someone. If that is so, I suspect that we are going to be sent in with the mission of punching holes in those silos with these little beauties and disarming him before he has a chance to make mischief."

Looking down into his half-empty cup, Pascal did not immediately respond. Instead, he swirled his drink and watched it as if he were deep in thought. Finally, he looked up at the clock on the wall across from him, then pointed at the oversized shaped charge on the workbench. "I expect that the riggers are waiting for this one. How soon before you are finished with it?"

Realizing that his commander wasn't going to comment on his assumption one way or the other, Dombrowski turned and looked at the device. "It is ready now, mon capitain."

"Good! I will go over to their area right now and send a couple of men to pick it up. That will leave you free to get started on the last of them."

Though he was tired and wanted so badly to ask that he be allowed to take a break, Dombrowski knew better. Pascal was a good commander, a man who knew when he needed to push his men and how far he could go. The Polish NCO suspected that they had little time, so he made no protests, no further comments. With nothing more than a simple "Oui," Dombrowski turned his full attention back to his assigned duties. In time, he and his companions would be told all they needed to know. Until then, he could only do as he was told and trust that his superiors, and the Americans who seemed to be behind this operation, knew what they were doing.