State of Siege

FOURTEEN

The Marine Corps base at Quantico is a sprawling, rustic facility that is the home to diverse military units. These range from the MarCorSysCom — Marine Corps Systems Command — to the secretive Commandant’s Warfighting Laboratory, a military think tank. Quantico is regarded as the intellectual crossroads of the Marine Corps, where teams of neologistic “warfighters” are able to devise and study tactics and then put them into operation in realistic combat simulations. Quantico also boasts some of the finest small-caliber weapons and grenade ranges, ground maneuver sites, light armor assault facilities, and physical challenge courses in the United States military.

Many of the base’s key functions actually take place at Camp Upshur, a training encampment located twenty-five miles northwest of the base inside Training Area 17. There, Delta Company, 4th Light Armored Reconnaissance Battalion, 4th Marine Division, Op-Center’s Striker division, and the Marine Reserve Support Units refine the techniques they learned when they were recruits. Comprised of twenty-one buildings that range from classrooms to Quonset hut-style squad bays, Camp Upshur can billet up to 500 troops.

Colonel Brett August liked Quantico, and he really liked Upshur. He spent his time equally between drilling his Striker squad and giving classroom lectures in military history, strategy, and theory. He also liked to put his people through rigorous sports competitions. To him, those were as much a psychological as a physiological workout. It was interesting. He had set it up so that the winners pulled extra duty. Garbage, kitchen, and latrine. Yet no one had ever tried to lose a basketball or football game, or even a weekend piggyback fight in the pool with their kids. Not once. In fact, August had never seen soldiers so happy to be doing drudge work. Liz Gordon was planning to write a paper on the phenomenon, which she’d dubbed “The Masochism of Victory.”

Right now, though, it was August who was suffering. Upon returning from action in Spain, promotions and long-in-the-works transfers had cost him some key Strikers. In the few days following the depletion, he’d been working hard with four new warfighters. They’d been concentrating on night targeting with 105mm Howitzers when the call came from General Rodgers to put the team on yellow alert. August had wanted to give the new members more time to integrate with the old, but it didn’t matter. August was satisfied that the new people were ready to see action if it became necessary. Marine Second Lieutenants John Friendly and Judy Quinn were as tough as August had ever seen, and Delta’s Privates First Class Tim Lucas and Moe Longwood were their new communications expert and hand-to-hand combat specialist. There was natural competitiveness between the two branches, but that was good. Under fire, the barriers vanished, and they were all on the same team. Skill-wise, the new people would fit in nicely with seasoned Strikers Sargeant Chick Grey, Corporal Pat Prementine — the boy-genius of infantry tactics — Private First Class Sondra DeVonne, burly Private Walter Pupshaw, Private Jason Scott, and Private Terrence Newmeyer.

A yellow alert meant gearing up and waiting in the ready room to see if the team was going to take the next step. The ready room consisted of a gunmetal desk by the door, which was manned round the clock by a desk sergeant; hard wooden chairs arranged classroom style — the brass didn’t want anyone getting too comfortable and going to sleep; an old blackboard; and a computer terminal on a table in front of the blackboard. In the event that they were needed, a Bell LongRanger fifteen-seat Model 205A-1 was being fired up on a nearby landing strip for the half-hour ride to Andrews Air Force Base. From there, the team would be flown by C-130 to the Marine Air Terminal at New York’s La Guardia Airport. Rodgers had said that Striker’s potential target was the United Nations building. The C-130 didn’t need a lot of runway, and La Guardia, though not a regular stop for military traffic, was the field closest to the United Nations.

The one thing the tall, lean, thin-faced colonel hated above all was waiting. A holdover from Vietnam, it gave him a sense of being out of control. When August was a prisoner of war, he had to wait for the next middle-of-the-night interrogation, the next beating, the next death of someone he served with. He had to wait for news, passed along in careful whispers, by new arrivals in the camp. But the worst wait of all came when August tried to escape. He had to turn back when his partner was wounded and needed medical care. He never got another chance to break out. His captors saw to that. He had to wait for the long-winded, heel-dragging, face-saving diplomats in Paris to negotiate his release. None of that taught him patience. It taught him that waiting was for people who had no other options. He’d once told Liz Gordon that waiting was the real definition of masochism.

The United Nations was on the water’s edge, so Colonel August had the Strikers bring their wet gear. And since they were going to Manhattan, they were dressed like civilians. While the ten team members checked their suits and equipment, August used the ready room computer to visit the United Nations home page. He had never been to the building and wanted to get an idea of the layout. As he navigated to the web site, the on-line news of the day talked about the breaking story in New York, the hostage situation at the United Nations. August was surprised — not just that a nonpartisan facility would be attacked by terrorists but that U.S. troops would be on call to assist. He couldn’t think of a single scenario in which American armed forces would be invited to help out in a situation like that.

As he studied the web site options, Sondra DeVonne and Chick Grey came up behind him. There were icons for Peace and Security, Humanitarian Affairs, Human Rights, and other feel-good topics. He went to the icon for Databases to try and find a map of the damn place. Not only had he never been there, he had no desire to go. For all their tub-thumping about peace and rights, they’d left him and his comrades from Air Force Intelligence in a Vietnamese prison for over two years.

There were other reference materials in the databases. Video records of Security Council and General Assembly meetings. Social indicators. International treaties. Land mines. Peacekeeping Training Course database. There was even a site for a glossary of United Nations Document Symbols, which was itself an acronym: UNI-QUE for UN Info Quest.

“I hope Bob Herbert is having better luck,” August said. “There isn’t a single map of the compound.”

“Maybe publishing it is considered a security risk,” DeVonne suggested. Since joining Striker, the pretty African-American had been training for Geo-Intel — geographic intelligence — which, in addition to planning reconnaissance, was being used more and more to target smart missiles. “I mean,” she said, “if you posted a detailed blueprint, you could plan and even run a missile attack without ever leaving your post.”

“You know, that’s the problem with security today,” Grey said. “You can set up all the fancy antiterrorist protection you want, they can still get through the old-fashioned way. A jerk with a meal knife or a hat pin can still grab a flight attendant and take over an airplane.”

“That doesn’t mean you have to make it easy,” DeVonne said.

“No,” Grey agreed. “But don’t kid yourself that any of it’s really going to work. Terrorists will still get anywhere they want to go, just as a determined assassin can still get to a world leader.”

The phone beeped, and the desk sergeant answered the call. It was for August. The colonel hurried over. If and when they left this room, the squad would instantly switch to the secure, mobile TAC-SAT phone. While they were here, they still used the secure base lines.

“Colonel August here,” he said.

“Brett, it’s Mike.” In public, the officers observed formal protocol. In private conversation, they were two men who had known each other since childhood. “You’ve got a go.”

“A go is understood,” August replied. He glanced over at his team. They were already beginning to gather their gear.

“I’ll give you the mission profile when you arrive,” Rodgers said.

“See you in thirty minutes,” August replied, then hung up.

Less than three minutes later, the Striker squad was buckling themselves into the helicopter seats for the ride to Andrews. As the noisy chopper rose into the night and arced to the northeast, Colonel August was puzzled by something Rodgers had said. Typically, mission parameters were downloaded to the aircraft via secure ground-to-air modem. It saved time and allowed the process to continue even after the team was airborne.

Rodgers had said he was going to give them the mission parameters when they arrived. If that meant what he thought it meant, then this was going to be a more interesting and unusual evening than he had expected.