looking at the phone he’d hung up. Finally he spoke.
“Ten minutes ago I was putting them all up for a medal. Now I am sending them to their deaths. Where do we find men like this?”
“Sir, you did the only thing you could do given these extraordinary circumstances,” The CJCS said.
“Oh God, I just sent Greely back in as well!” Mitchell shook off the human emotion and went back to being the Commander in Chief. “Okay, I want maximum effort here. Everything we have that can help these guys deal with whatever this nuclear thing could be should be moving 10 seconds ago! Ray, get whoever we need here right now. Bill, take a seat; you started this.”
“Yes, sir.”
“Rules of engagement are, F-E,” the commander said as the MH-60 Black Hawk hurled through the night retracing its earlier route, only this time with all deliberate speed and not concerned about alerting the enemy. The big, stinking, glowing hole in the desert floor had already done that. Although there was no actual rule of engagement designated, Frank/Eddie, the commander’s troops knew that “Fuck Everybody” meant the mission at all costs, no other concerns or distractions. He went over to the three equipment lockers lashed to the sides of the cabin. Each had a large letter on its top: N, B, and C. The C was where he had gotten the antibiotic syringes. Now he opened the N. Of the three, he always expected to someday use the Chemical or, even worse, the Biological one. But somehow, the Nuclear locker was just not a concept he could comfortably grasp. Not that that mattered one bit. He and his men had extensive training and their procedures for each were exemplary. Any of them would be an equally effective fighting unit in either an N, B, or C combat environment.
First, he distributed radiation pills and ordered everyone to take a dose and a half. Somebody once described taking a pill for radiation is like taking an aspirin for a head-on car crash. He then pulled out five nuke suits, tape, re-breathers, and a Geiger counter. He left the radiation dosimeter monitor badges in the trunk because he probably had enough residual on him to taint them already. He ordered the guys in the best shape, including Bridgestone and Ross who, because they weren’t in the refinery, were among the ones not vomiting — to suit up. The others aided the men and sealed their suits with tape at the sleeves, cuffs, and helmet collar. Each man was also draped with ammo belts and machine guns fitted into their gloved hands.
“Okay boys, this is certainly no fucking drill. We stumbled on something back there and it’s hot. You men in the suits will go in, locate, identify, and handle the merchandise. The rest of us will cover and support. Okay, I want a by-the-numbers radio check.
“1, Check, 3, Check, 7, Check….”
“Sir, in going over the tapes of the rescue, one plausible scenario is that the explosion may have been, or have acted like, a radiological device,” Hiccock said.
“So it could have been a dirty bomb?” the President asked.
“Yes. Or an explosion near some fissionable material. In either case, it spread a plume. This is what Quan Li and later NORAD picked up as a spike.”
“Could there be any good news… as a plausible scenario, that is?”
“The bad news is, sir, that
“What are you thinking it could be, Bill?”
“Well sir, I don’t think it was a deliberate nuclear placement, because there are no targets of any value whatsoever 150 or so miles from Cairo. So it must have been a storage facility as well as a safe house to hold the ambassador. Whether what was exposed was an actual bomb or stockpile for future weapons, like dirty bombs, or possibly even an atom-bomb-making lab, we’ll find out if the Foxtrots get through. And just to rule it out, I checked over my SCIAD net. Geologically, there would be no natural source of radiation in that part of the world.”
“So it’s all in the hands of the Foxtrots now.”
“Yes sir, it is.”
“
The commander looked around at the faces illuminated by the red lights of the cabin. “So far, before it turned into this cluster fuck, this mission was textbook hostage recovery. Each one of you performed and served in the best traditions of the cavalry. Brinks, that leg good enough for you to handle the mini gun?”
“It’s a scratch, sir. I got your back,” said the man with a huge bloody bandage running from his knee to his calf.
“Got three bogeys on the road heading towards target alpha,” the co-pilot reported.
“Cleared, hot,” the pilot said back over the interphone. The gunship shuttered as the mini gun, connected to the co-pilot’s central nervous system, burped as it fired several bursts.
“Instant junk yard,” was the battle damage assessment from the gunner on the door.
“Got five infrared targets on foot coming in from the east two miles off.”
“Not worth detouring for. We’ll handle them once we switch to Combat Air Patrol.”
?§?
“Let the Egyptian ambassador in on this, Charles,” the President said. “There is a nightmare happening in his country and he should know it.”
“Sir, should we tie in Cairo?”
“Let that be the ambassador’s call. Either way, I’ll speak to the Egyptian president as soon as possible.”
“Ray, shouldn’t we let the Russians and the Chinese know,” Bill whispered to the Chief of Staff. “If something goes wrong, we need them on the cool side of the equation.”
“No whispering in here,” the President said. “I need all the opinions I can get.”
“Sir, Hiccock was just bringing it up, and I think I agree…”
“Thirty seconds,” the pilot announced. The lights were off in the cabin now. The guys in the N-suits were in the middle between the men ready to jump and secure the LZ. The Longbow flared and hovered at two feet. The men stepped off and in an instant set up a defensive perimeter to cover the guys in the plastic suits as they exited. Then, as one, they retraced their original steps back into the building, peeling off one or two of their number as guards as the main body advanced. The chopper was up and doing CAP while
Kicking dead bodies, and being ready to fire if you hear a grunt, is a lifesaving practice at a time like this. This place was so hot that the Geiger counters had to be put on the highest scale in order to get a reading that was mid-scale and not pinned on overload. To determine which direction the source was in, a mid-scale was needed so that when the unit was swept in a circle, the direction straightest towards the radiation would give the highest reading. It was called a hyper-cardioid search pattern. These instruments were now pointing the suits toward the spot where Jonesy tripped the booby trap. A quick inspection showed it was something similar to a Claymore mine, probably taped to the now-blown-away doorway. On the other side of that door, the needles pinned and the Geigers were overloaded even at the highest setting, a.5 RAD scale or about 10,000 times stronger than a chest x-ray. When the trooper flipped up his night vision and turned on his flashlight illuminating the room, a muffled “Holy Mother of God!” came through his plastic facemask.
One of the operators was video capable and his signal was microwaved to the chopper. Then the chopper up-linked it to a defense satellite, which sent it to the Defense Intelligence Agency. They patched in the ops room at the White House as well as the guys in the Pentagon.
As the single light source on top of the camera illuminated the room, the lead trooper narrated, “Sir, we got a shitload of what looks like suitcase nukes. Eight, nine — they’re all over. The blast has definitely breached one or two. I can’t believe some idiot raghead placed a Claymore on the wall behind these suckers.”
In the chopper, the commander, upon hearing that two nukes were breached, took out his knife and slashed
